Making life harder..
..for people on the page
I never really set out to become an author. I don't really make any money at it so the title might be a bit of a stretch, but I do have published work out in the world.. so I'm having it!
The first proper story I wrote was for my daughter Emily.
I've always made up daft stories at bedtime with my kids and this was meant to be a one-off Christmas present. Something personal, throwaway and slightly ridiculous but hopefully memorable.
..then she asked for another one. And another. As she got older, her friendship groups changed and new friends became characters, ideas became plots, and somewhere along the way I realised I actually quite enjoyed making this stuff up.
But, something which I realised early on, was that the part I enjoyed the most was the bit before a story becomes fixed.
A finished book is done. Its no longer 'alive' in your head in the same way it once was. There's pride there obviously and satisfaction of creating something but the story itself has run its course. The decisions have been made, the characters have done what they’re going to do and, short of attacking the pages with a cigarette lighter, the reader doesn’t get any say in what happens to the book.
I think the interesting bit happens earlier.
That’s why the stories here are shared while they’re still being written.
If a character is annoying you, tell me. I probably wont kill them off, I'll likely try to make sure they stay annoying, but if something doesn’t make sense, point it out. If you think I’ve missed an obvious opportunity, I genuinely want to hear it. And if you suddenly suggest something completely unexpected that sends the story somewhere I hadn’t considered, even better.
It isn’t crowdsourcing the writing, and it certainly isn’t laziness. I still have to decide what belongs in the story and then actually write the thing.
The point is to introduce a little unpredictability. I'm just one person with a finite life expectancy and I'm not expecting to create the next New York Times Bestseller. I just want to know I'm writing things which people actually look forward to reading.
Writers naturally follow their own habits, assumptions and favourite ideas. Readers don’t. You notice different things. You become suspicious of different characters. You want answers to questions I may not even have realised I’d asked.
That makes the finished story better and frankly, it makes writing it more fun. Which, unless you're relying on writing to keep a roof over your head or are happy to churn out AI content, is kind of the point.. At least for me.
So this site is part library, part workshop and part experiment.
Read the stories. Tell me what works. Tell me what doesn’t. Argue with my decisions. Suggest something better.
You might just change what happens next.
