Today has been quite exciting; I’ve been talking with publishers about moving Alfie Slider to the next stage, thinking about cover design, illustrations, and marketing strategies. Do you ever get the sensation that what you’re doing is exactly right? That everything is on rails, in synch, going exactly how it should? That’s how I was feeling.

Then the phone rang, and being an introvert I groaned, and made my husband answer it but he soon handed it back to me. It was a lovely lady from the National Association of Writers’ Groups who wanted to let me know that my submission to their ghost story competition had been shortlisted! I am one of four in the running to win the trophy on the night of their gala dinner in September for my short story, ‘The Pause’.

It’s been a great week; completing my poetry course, honourable mention for ‘The Steps’, finishing the first draft of Alfie Slider and the Frozen Prince, talking to publishers about Alfie Slider vs the Shape Shifter, and now this. I think a gala dinner sounds like a perfect way to celebrate, don’t you? What a shame it’s not until September.

I’ll probably have remembered I’m an introvert by then 😉

I’ve done readings in school before; but today I took a big leap into the world of educational workshops. I was asked by the good people at Howsham Mill if I’d help run a creative writing workshop for children in year 6 & 7 from the small schools around York, and I said yes because I’ve really enjoyed sharing my work with children in the past.

I started off reading them a bit of Alfie Slider. We talked about what Sci Fi was as a genre, and how you could tell a story was Sci Fi rather than fantasy. We translated some well known stories from their original genre into Sci Fi; so Harry Potter received a telepathic message offering him a place at Space School where he learned to fly a space ship and battled an alien!

After that I talked to the group about how Science Fiction stories can be used to highlight social issues. I did a presentation with examples, talking about TV shows and films the children knew about (and some they didn’t) like Star Wars, Wall-E, Doctor Who and more. Then I set them the challenge of creating their own alien race, specially designed to highlight a social issue. They certainly rose to that challenge; it was a real pleasure to walk around the groups and talk the ideas through with them children.

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I had a great day, sharing things that I’m really passionate about in the most beautiful setting. If you ever get the chance to visit Howsham Mill, take it! It’s a really peaceful and interesting spot in the heart of Yorkshire.

I had the great pleasure of being the first person to be interviewed by Dan Crow for his new Piece of Cake vlog series, featuring the ‘movers and shakers’ of the York Literature Scene. It was a lot of fun! If you’d like to learn more about Alfie Slider, among other things, then you can visit Piece of Cake by clicking here.

After my moderate success in the NYC Midnight Short Story contest, I was tempted to enter the screen writing challenge but as I hadn’t written a screenplay before I decided not to. Then they sent me an email telling me it was the last day to get the early bird discount and my resolve crumbled. I entered.

I was lucky; my assignment genre was Science Fiction. I had to include a character who was a maid and a theme of space tourism; all that gelled into a nice idea. I used Amazon Storywriter to work the script up and sent it off in sure and certain expectation of being eliminated in the first round.

I got through.

I placed third in my heat! My very first screenplay, entered into an international competition, and I got through!

One of the really useful things about NYC Midnight is that your work is judged by three different individuals, and they all give you feedback. It’s good feedback too, as you’ll see below.

Today I get my new assignment. I’m really looking forward to the next challenge. I don’t expect to get any further in the competition but it’s nice to dream…

”Hotel Kali Phor Nia” by Sarah Dixon

WHAT THE JUDGE(S) LIKED ABOUT YOUR SCREENPLAY

Even though the concept is one that has been used before – aliens looking in on humans – this script does a nice job of not making it feel trite or overdone because it focuses on the humans and their conversation much more than the alien analysis of it.  It also helps that Pearl and Mike are so recognizably repetitive and simple – this is not necessarily a reflection of them being “trailer trash,” but simply a fact of them being human.

Pearl and Mike’s relationship is funny. I like when they start moving in different directions. The zoo at the end is a nice reveal.

This is a really cute little script. While the space zoo story is not a new one, the characters are so strong and the twist of Pearl putting on airs and putting their position at risk is really fresh.

WHAT THE JUDGE(S) FEEL NEEDS WORK

A bit more could be added to the conversation that takes place before they make the decision.  What is the brochure like?  Why is Pearl so keen on leaving?  Is it very common for humans to make this decision?  Even if the answers to these questions were merely hinted at in the beginning, it might help setup what’s to follow a bit more strongly.

You’ve got a class Twilight Zone episode here, but I’d like to challenge you to do more. Move your ending to the middle — and let Pearl and Mike rebel against their circumstances. That will raise the stakes and draw us more deeply into the story.

I think Pearl could be a bit more “active” rather than just being passively rude. The script could use a technical polish for an easier read.

So, apparently Second Novel Syndrome is where an author who has had some success with their first book, comes to write the second and they panic, because of the weight of expectation on them from fans of the first book.

Obviously my success with Alfie Slider vs the Shape Shifter has been limited to positive reviews from beta-readers, but there was still an amount of ‘can I pull this off again?’ when I came to write the second.

I felt like it should have been easier, because so much of the world and its characters was already defined in the first book. I knew what I needed the second book to do to move Alfie’s story along, and I knew what the plot was going to be.

So I sat down, created a new scrivener project and wrote the opening chapter. It just flowed out, and it felt good. Here I was, back in the creative zone after weeks of editing and tweaking. Oh, how I love telling stories!

And then I got my report from Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, and went back to the first book for a re-work, and then it was Christmas and…

When I went back to look at the second book, it suddenly felt like work rather than pleasure. The story has a couple of distinct sections, each of which needed some thinking about, and when I got to the end of one I felt stalled. I wasn’t sure how to start the next.

I got over that by just starting, not worrying about making it perfect, just putting myself into the situation I had left Alfie in and letting the ideas flow. They did, and I liked them (I hope you do too, when the time comes) but there was still a heaviness to it. The weight of expectation from myself: Can I do it again?

I’m just a few chapters away from finishing the second book, stalled again (procrastinating by writing this blog post) because I can’t quite envisage the big, dramatic ending. I think I’m probably lucky that I’m writing the second book before the first has had any major success; but I’m not looking forward to Third Book Syndrome 🙂

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. My earliest imaginings had me as a successful author, wealthy enough to live a reclusive life in a big house in the country. Back then, it wasn’t an entirely unrealistic dream; authors could make big bucks.

A few decades later, and I’m told things are very different. Less books are getting published, advances are pretty much non-existent and publishers don’t throw their marketing budgets behind a project unless they’re sure it will sell; which is why you see a lot of high profile books with celebrity names or sequels to very successful books.

When I tell people that I write for the 9-12 age group, it’s common for them to say something like, ‘Oh! You could be the next J.K. Rowling!’ I always say, ‘Well, wouldn’t that be nice!’ but the chance of achieving that kind of success is minuscule.

The reality is more as described by Jon Mayhew in the Children’s Writers and Artists Yearbook 2015, where even as an award winning author of several children’s books he still makes more than half his money from school visits, appearances and the like.

So, a few months ago I put my thinking cap on as to what I could do to enable me to keep on doing the thing that makes my soul sing, writing, whilst also bringing some money into the household budget. I’ve read Alfie Slider to 90+ school children, and am working on developing workshops that I can take to other venues.

I’ve also started working on a business idea that will launch soon – watch this space. It’s an idea that makes me want to jump up and down with excitement, and whenever I’ve explained it to other people I see their eyes light up too.

Money isn’t the measure of a successful life, happiness is. Since I started writing full time in September 2015 I’ve felt the most fulfilled from work that I ever have and each new challenge only increases that. By all the important measures, my writing career is already a success, and I’m incredibly grateful for it but I must admit I am looking forward to the first ‘paycheck’.

Back in March, I wrote an entry for Hour of Writes in response to the prompt ‘Writers without Borders’. The prompt reminded me of an idea I’d had for a story but never done anything with; so I did something with it! It was very well received, it got my highest mark to date from reviewers (89%) and was a featured entry that week. More than that, when I shared the core idea with friends, they agreed with me that it was a much bigger idea than a single, very short story.

So I worked it up, from about 1,400 words to almost 8,000. It’s the same basic idea, just fleshed out a bit more. Even as I was writing it, though, I realised that this wasn’t the end of the story and I was right; the end of the 8,000 words felt more like the end of the first chapter.

Still, I submitted it to the Luna Press Publishing Contest under the title ‘Beyond Fiction’. I’m delighted to say that today I received an email confirming that the story was shortlisted and will be included in their 2016 anthology ‘Beyond Realities, Volume II’.

What’s next for this particular story? Well, I could take it to the next stage and write another 12,000 or so words and make a novella or I could go the whole hog and work it up into my very first adult novel. Choices, choices.

It’s amazing to me that the germ of an idea can grow and grow like this; from tiny acorns written in an hour, to an anthology and way beyond that, into the hearts and minds of the people who read it.

Magic.

I’m an introvert. I consistently come out as an INFJ in Briggs Meyers’ tests; The Advocate. Basically this means that whilst I prefer my own company, I’m actually quite socially driven. I like to feel like a part of a community, not just to live in one but to contribute something to it. I also consistently test as a Hufflepuff, which means pretty much the same thing but is a lot more fun to say.

I thrive on working alone. I enjoy my own company, silence, and the studious nature of a lot of my work; researching, thinking, and of course writing. Ultimately, though, I am writing to be read, which means that I need to know what reaction other people have to the things that I’m creating.

One of, if not the best decisions I made when I started writing full time was to join York Writers. From the very first meeting I attended, it nourished me as a writer. It was a joy to spend a couple of hours a month in a room with other writers; people who understood what it was like, who had been where I was right now and could offer their advice. They were, and are, an incredibly generous and talented group who have been no end of help in the creation of Alfie Slider and everything else I’ve written since then.

Last night was a perfect example of why being a part of a group, even for an introvert like me, is such a great thing. You see, it’s been a bit of a milestone week for Alfie Slider because I have had my first personalised rejection letter. A personalised rejection may not sound like a good thing to someone outside the writing world, but when agents are getting hundreds to submissions a week, being one that they actually take the time to write a note to rather than copying and pasting a standard ‘thanks but no thanks’ is a big deal. The contents of the email was really encouraging, in spite of the fact this agent didn’t think Alfie was the right work for them. They praised the ideas and the writing, and said that saying no was a tough decision; and maybe more importantly they gave me some feedback as to why they’d said what they had.

Over the days since the email had arrived, I think it’s fair to say that I’d obsessed over it a bit. I’d read it, re-read it, tried to read between the lines and work out some hidden subtext. I’d imagined scenarios, and created a complete and complex narrative to explain everything. I’d paralysed myself with over-thinking; I couldn’t decide what to do, to move forward.

So last night I took the emails to the Novelist Support Group and read them to my colleagues, the same people who have heard me reading through Alfie Slider vs the Shape Shifter as it was created and encouraged me when my faith was flagging. They listened, they commented, and they made suggestions for how to move forward. I left the room feeling so much happier and empowered.

Today, I’ve written some of Alfie 1 for the first time in weeks. It made me happy, like it always does. I have a bit more work to do, but I’m really looking forward to cracking on and getting the MS out there again. One day soon, Alfie Slider is going to be making a lot of other people smile, too.

So yes, I’m an introvert, but I couldn’t do this alone. Thank you, colleagues. You’re amazing.