What was your path to becoming a writer like? Any tips for aspiring writers?
It happened by accident! I didn’t really write much fiction as a teenager (which I think is when most people start seriously writing). I was too busy with exams, etc. I did some small pieces of fanfiction, which turned up in zines. This was the 1980s, pre-internet, so there wasn’t that immediate gratification of publication available. Things started to kick off when I joined a Blake’s 7 mailing list and began to write fiction for challenges, etc.
Things really kicked off after I was what I can only call tremendously traumatised by the end of DS9 and [redacted] Cardassia Prime. I just started writing and writing. I had to work through those emotions. The pieces got more complex: I moved from first-person vignettes and mood pieces to plotted short stories to (eventually) a 30k novella. I wrote these on a Psion when I should have been working on my PhD (in sociology) and got horrible RSI! The plan at this point was still to become an academic sociologist.
Then: The Fellowship of the Ring. BOOM. I started CHURNING out fanfiction. I was taking regular train trips for my PhD work, and I handwrote my first novel (a post Ring War romance about Faramir and Éowyn’s marriage) while I was travelling. Typed it up and edited it in the evenings. Posted in real-time, across 10 weeks, on ff.net. SO MUCH FUN. Then (as often described elsewhere), I was asked to pitch by the editor of the Star Trek book range. I pitched, and eventually got offered a contract for a novel.
At this point, my PhD supervisor said, “You’re going to have to choose between novel and thesis.” I said, “No, I think I’ll have both, thanks.” I very nearly didn’t pull this off (I had to revise the PhD substantially after the viva), but this taught me two things: 1. how to multitask big high-pressure projects and 2. things are fixable in revision, but a first draft must exist.
However, it was quite clear by this point that I wasn’t going to make it as a sociologist, and that I much preferred working through my ideas in fiction anyway, so I kept looking out for and pitching for writing work as and when the chances came up. I also started teaching creative writing at a local university, as a sessional teacher. On the strength of my Trek work, I got to do some Doctor Who novels. And on the strength of my sessional teaching, I got a lectureship in creative writing.
After that: ten years of combining writing and teaching writing, including teaching an amazing MA course called “Patterns of Story”, where we would sit and take apart our novel of the week, to see how it worked and what we could get from it. I loved teaching creative writing, particularly at PhD level. One of my PhD creative writing students wrote a fanfiction novel based on the MCU for the PhD project. Aced the viva. I am so proud of this student. I got so much from teaching creative writing, and I am so lucky to have done this.
Round about 2018, however, I realised I was done with academia. Universities are pretty toxic places, and there’s only so long you can keep doing deeply vocational work when the organisation in which you’re doing it is profoundly cynical. I was getting burned out on classroom teaching, and I knew that if I couldn’t bring my full self to teaching, I shouldn’t be doing it anymore. I lined up a lot of writing work, and reached out to an agent, who signed me. Then I took the plunge and quit my job. Great decision. That’s more or less where I am now.
My chief advice:
- Put the hours in. You do actually have to like spending time writing, and you need the apprenticeship. My first tentative forays into B7 fanfiction came in the late 90s. My first full novel was 2005. Also, creativity sparks creativity. Where do ideas come from? They come from having ideas.
- Learn your method. I think it really helps to be reflective about your process. Do you have a visual or auditory imagination? Do you like to move between outline and narrative? Or build associatively? (This is a separate post. This is a separate creative writing course.)
- Read. A lot. Of everything. Read against your preferences too, even if it’s just to work out what you don’t like about it, and why.
- Diversify. Be able to turn to scripting, non-fiction, whatever.
- Remember that writing, publishing, and bookselling are related but different things. Getting published and selling books involve different kinds of activities from writing. But writing is the thing you can always be doing. Right now, for example, I am writing a blog post about writing. And it’s waking my head up for the main business of the day - which will be writing.
