On Writing: Blog Hop

A writer who I admire for many reasons such as the way she brings her characters to life with so few words, gets to the raw truth of an experience and most importantly gets her novels out there (rather than stalling an moaning like me), invited me to take part in a blog hop.  Thank you Katie O’Rourke.

The simple principle for this blog hop is to answer a question about what I am writing and why and to link to two other writers blogs whom I rate.

Why are you working on the project you are writing now? Why is it important? (to you, or to the world, or…)

This is a painful question to answer as I am still working on a novel I started seven years ago and can’t seem to move on from. I think I know why it is important to me, although knowing doesn’t necessarily help.

1) It is based on my sister’s experience and she asked me to tell her story before she died (no pressure then).

2) I have had a number of agents interested (based on the partial MS) only to turn it down once they had read the full MS. This make me believe it has something, if only I could tell it right.

Whether it is important to anyone else (the world) I am hoping to find out by publishing it in serial chapters on this blog (see tab in top right hand corner – Forever In-between). If nothing else I will at least have got it out there to succeed or fail (subjective terms I know) and I can move forward.

Now onto the nice bit, giving a shout out to other writers who have been there for me (despite my pathetic track record of actually getting anything completed).

First off I would like to introduce Anne Goodwin and her blog Annecdotal which in her own words

is the persona through whom I navigate that in-between space both here and in the comments boxes on other blogs, with mutterings about reading and writing peppered with snippets of psychology and a quiet rage at social injustice and stolen childhoods.

I first read Anne’s writing on Your Write On and was blown away by her ability. I am honoured she counts me as one of her writing friends.

Secondly is a writer I met through the peer review site, Authonomy. Juli Townsend and I were part of the Women’s Fiction Critique group, but Juli, unlike me, has gone on to get her novel, Absent Children, published and I admire her tenacity and self-belief and wish it would rub off on me.

I know I am only supposed to nominate two writers, but there is one more shout out I must do. Stephen Gallup has written an incredible memoir about his son with a developmental disorder and the fight he and his wife faced to get him help.

obody knew what hurt little Joseph, and no one was offering a way to help him. He cried most of the time, and thrashed about as if in pain. He wasn’t learning how to crawl, talk, or interact normally. Doctors told his parents to seek counseling, because nothing could help their son, and the quality of their own lives was at risk. Refusal to accept that advice changed their lives forever. WHAT ABOUT THE BOY? A Father’s Pledge to His Disabled Son chronicles a family’s rejection of hopelessness and their commitment to the pursuit of normalcy.