This one's for the writers

There are a lot of writers out there. Most of the people who initiate a chat with me on FaceBook are writing something. Three of the four people who drifted out of the crowd for a signed book at my first and only signing were writing their own opus. And the father of the fourth one soon came to stand at his daughter’s side to declare that he too had a Work In Progress. The editors of magazines featuring short stories by and large acknowledge that most of their readers are also sending in submissions.

The question that almost all of these writers get around to, generally sooner rather than later, is how did I do it? What’s the secret code? What do I advise them to do next?

So this one is for the writers amongst you.

Asking that question – the big ‘HOW?’ the question that can be beaten into many shapes and sizes, is a sensible thing to do. I didn’t ask it myself because I never really believed there was a ‘how’, but it takes only a small touch of optimism to believe there is, and armed with that faith the sensible step is to ask someone who has jumped the hurdle.

I went through a stage of enjoying those metal puzzles you can get, interlocked loops and whatnot, all begging to be separated. Well, truth be told I enjoyed the first one or two, then everyone started buying them for me and I was buried in a sea of the shiny bastards. The thing is that whenever I solved a tricky one, the kids would cluster around and ask me how I did it. And generally speaking I had no idea. The puzzles just fell apart in my hand when I stopped thinking about it. And the reason I’ve led you down this back-alley? Simply to say that just because someone has done something doesn’t mean they know how they did it or can explain it to you or can even do it again. What I did with the puzzles was to say ‘watch’ and try to do it again. So all I can do writing-wise is say, ‘here’s what happened’ and leave you to draw your own conclusions.


In 2004 I got my first ever check for writing fiction, a princely $31 for ‘Song of the Mind-born’, from a now defunct magazine. I still have the check on the wall in a $1 frame. The story had done the rounds and been rejected by a fair number of mags. Rejections included ‘Black Gate’ which I’ve found to be an excellent market, both for good feedback and for being interested in good stories without any pseudo-intellectual snobbery, secret aesthetic, or requirement for your tale to present the three pillars of political correctness in exciting new colours.

By 2006 I’d written Prince of Thorns, destined to spend nearly three years in an electronic bottom drawer.

That fantasy story you love, the one where the farm boy gets the sword and kills that monster so the bad overlord is cast down and the princess is freed ... Prince of Thorns isn’t that one. Those stories, wrapped up in more sophisticated prose with a twist and turn and an OMG, are great. They're the strength and the curse of the genre. I didn't write one. I wrote an ugly awkward thing that has seriously made someone blog 'I got that horrible feeling in my tummy and could not read any more'. Prince of Thorns is an ungentle book.

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