The Writers Bureau

Creative courses can destroy your passion for the subject you've chosen to study. Or so I've been told many times and even heard it said by Stephen King. However, with a strong desire to become a published author and an education that consisted of getting high and trying to do as little as possible, it seemed like a logical step for me to increase my writing ability. 

Having originally stared a Writers Bureau course several years ago, with their promise that you'll get your money back if you don't earn what the course cost you from your writing, I decided to resume where I left off. If I'm honest, I don't care about the money back guarantee, it's more about getting valuable, or what I hope is valuable, feedback from experienced tutors, and learning the methods that will hopefully allow me to see my name in print.

My tutor seems like a nice chap, if a little stuffy, and his feedback on my first assignment has helped. I was tasked to write a short story for a market. The idea was to select a market and then write the story. This is lesson one on how to get published - Know your market before you write the piece. So this is what i did. Unfortunately, I write on a Mac and I'm guessing my tutor doesn't. So when I labelled my proposed market and contact details in a header, compatibility issues between the two systems meant that this wasn't visible on the other end. This was unfortunate as most of my feedback was about selecting a market and how I MUST put my contact details on each assignment. 

What was left was a critique on character development that was very helpful. I was asked to make the piece more human. To describe the mannerisms of my characters to give them depth. An example was to show how meticulous a character was by making them roll a cigarette with machine like precision, evenly laying the tobacco. I was also advised, once the market was confirmed, that aiming for The Writers Bureau Short Story Competition probably wasn't the best market. I think I may have been aiming too high!

As a result I lengthened my story and added characterisation that the previous word limit restricted. I have now entered my story into the Fylde Brighter Writers Circle Competition, with a closing date of the twenty-eighth of April 2012. Watch this space. 

My feelings on the Writers Bureau so far is that they are efficient at replying, have easy to understand resources, and offer valuable feedback. Passion still in tact.   

Internet Publishing - The True Leveller?

With so many things being offered for free online, how long will it be before this is the norm? As time passes it seems that more and more creators are prepared to offer their product for free. Radiohead, for example realeased their album online and allowed people to make donations if they felt inclined. Warren Ellis, a well established comic book creator, offers the fantastic 'Freak Angels' for free, making money from merchandising and advertising. Online comics are growing in popularity and some of the best, such as 'Freak Angels' and 'The Abominable Charles Christopher', are being well supported. How long will it be before books appear online for free and is it a good thing for other creatives that some are offering high quality content for zero cost to the consumer?

If one felt inclined to agree with the theory behind a free market economy that levelling the playing field allows the rubbish to sink and the cream to rise to the top, then maybe it is. And unlike a free market economy, which is still dominated by large corporations, the internet seems like a true leveller. Because it's so easy to get content out there, anyone with an internet connection and computer can have their thoughts and feelings published. So we still have to accept that a lot of the world are without even these basic apparatus, but if you have access to this equipment you have a voice.

In the past to become a sucessful creator, you would often need to be backed by your own, or someone elses money. The music industry being a good example. What we end up with is large corporations controlling what is put into the public sphere. When huge amounts of money are being put into their projects they want to reduce risk as much as possible. This means taking less risks and backing sucessful formulas. What the internet has allowed creatives to do is to publish their work themselves, to place it into the public sphere and to allow the public to decide what they like, rather than a risk averse business person. Surely this is better for creativity? With things like advertising and merchandising, revenue is generated and it goes to the creator of popular work, rather than it's corporate owners, as well as giving the consumer more freedom to chose what they like.

Having written a book, and being about to embark on a quest to find an agent to represent it, do I bite the bullet and publish it for free on a blog instead?