R
Robin
Guest
Hi all, I'm Robin.
Who am I? Well -- surprise, surprise -- I like to think I'm a writer. Naturally, I also have a day job
; I run the stakeholder management team (communications, PR, customer management, and various other nefarious duties required to get our evil doings done), at an air traffic control centre somewhere in deepest, darkest Europe.
My background is mixed - I won a few prizes as a kid for creative writing, but then decided there wasn't much future employment opportunity in the English field, so I went on to study Astrophysics. That was a major lesson in life. Just because you're pretty good at maths and physics, and you have an interest in astronomy, doesn't mean those aspects should be combined.
(Only much later did I discover Alastair Reynolds' solution for combining prosaic science with real prose).
Do you have any idea how boring it is, spending months gathering sufficient data until you are able to calculate the temperature of a star 222.8 light years from Earth? Well, for me, it was incredibly boring. I mean, who really cares? So boring indeed, that I decided to do something much more interesting -- that is, ensure that aircraft travelling with 1000mph closing speeds don't actually close.
Now this was fun; video games with people's lives, if you like. Air traffic control.
Lots of stories (some comical, some more leaning towards the horror genre) from a career 'pushing tin' for fifteen years, or so. Then, typically for me, I decided I was bored again, so I went into development and later, management roles (up to my current post).
Throughout all of those years I kept writing. I've lost track of the number of short stories and novels I've started/sort of completed. One of the great benefits of life as a shift working controller, is plenty of time off to read and write! Writing has remained my passion, my hobby; perhaps because it's so damn hard to get it right.
I took a few creative writing courses, and I've read many books on the writing craft in the meantime -- my favourite being a book by Walter Mosley, closely followed by Stephen King's legendary guide. At a certain point, I decided that the biggest weakness I had, was exposition. I needed to make my writing much tighter, and since (perhaps you get the idea by now), I was bored at work, I signed up and completed a Law degree over several years. Hard work, but I do think it helped.
Subsequently I wrote a number of short stories; a recent effort called "The Apothecary's Tale" was published in the British Fantasy Society Journal at the end of last year. It's an allegorical agitprop, about the life and death of the United States, based upon my experiences travelling around that beautiful country for several months at a time.
That success spurred me on, and I persevered with an idea I'd had rattling around for a while. And this time, I was determined to push myself through not just the fun creative parts, but also the 'boring' editing and redrafting too. I've now completed draft nine of a 100,000 word novel called... well, actually, I don't know what to call it yet, but that's part of the reason I'm here... , which is a post-apocalyptic thriller with, again, a background of an allegorical agitprop.
Which brings me to today, and my membership here. I was wading through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook recently, when I came across Redhammer Management (literary agency) and Peter's advice: come to Litopia. And my hope is that here, I can learn a little more, gain more valuable feedback, until I'm pushed off the edge and sending 'Whatever it's called' out to agents. That's the plan.
Good plan. But now what do I do?
Greetings to all.
Who am I? Well -- surprise, surprise -- I like to think I'm a writer. Naturally, I also have a day job
; I run the stakeholder management team (communications, PR, customer management, and various other nefarious duties required to get our evil doings done), at an air traffic control centre somewhere in deepest, darkest Europe.My background is mixed - I won a few prizes as a kid for creative writing, but then decided there wasn't much future employment opportunity in the English field, so I went on to study Astrophysics. That was a major lesson in life. Just because you're pretty good at maths and physics, and you have an interest in astronomy, doesn't mean those aspects should be combined.
(Only much later did I discover Alastair Reynolds' solution for combining prosaic science with real prose).
Do you have any idea how boring it is, spending months gathering sufficient data until you are able to calculate the temperature of a star 222.8 light years from Earth? Well, for me, it was incredibly boring. I mean, who really cares? So boring indeed, that I decided to do something much more interesting -- that is, ensure that aircraft travelling with 1000mph closing speeds don't actually close.
Now this was fun; video games with people's lives, if you like. Air traffic control.
Lots of stories (some comical, some more leaning towards the horror genre) from a career 'pushing tin' for fifteen years, or so. Then, typically for me, I decided I was bored again, so I went into development and later, management roles (up to my current post).
Throughout all of those years I kept writing. I've lost track of the number of short stories and novels I've started/sort of completed. One of the great benefits of life as a shift working controller, is plenty of time off to read and write! Writing has remained my passion, my hobby; perhaps because it's so damn hard to get it right.
I took a few creative writing courses, and I've read many books on the writing craft in the meantime -- my favourite being a book by Walter Mosley, closely followed by Stephen King's legendary guide. At a certain point, I decided that the biggest weakness I had, was exposition. I needed to make my writing much tighter, and since (perhaps you get the idea by now), I was bored at work, I signed up and completed a Law degree over several years. Hard work, but I do think it helped.
Subsequently I wrote a number of short stories; a recent effort called "The Apothecary's Tale" was published in the British Fantasy Society Journal at the end of last year. It's an allegorical agitprop, about the life and death of the United States, based upon my experiences travelling around that beautiful country for several months at a time.
That success spurred me on, and I persevered with an idea I'd had rattling around for a while. And this time, I was determined to push myself through not just the fun creative parts, but also the 'boring' editing and redrafting too. I've now completed draft nine of a 100,000 word novel called... well, actually, I don't know what to call it yet, but that's part of the reason I'm here... , which is a post-apocalyptic thriller with, again, a background of an allegorical agitprop.
Which brings me to today, and my membership here. I was wading through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook recently, when I came across Redhammer Management (literary agency) and Peter's advice: come to Litopia. And my hope is that here, I can learn a little more, gain more valuable feedback, until I'm pushed off the edge and sending 'Whatever it's called' out to agents. That's the plan.
Good plan. But now what do I do?
Greetings to all.
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