Ah pride, it cometh first!

It could almost be a writer’s paradox; the belief in one’s own work viz near instant collapse at peer critique. 

You must respect your fellow tellers of tall tales, it’s hardwired inescapable, it is toast landing butter side down and cats on their feet. 

If noble scribblers praise your work your ego blooms, and Chelsea flower show book you such is your resplendence.

Ah, but if they mutter a criticism, a throwaway nothing, a murmur about the pacing or interaction between minor characters on page 23, then all is indeed lost.

Morose doesn’t cut it.

Your despair passes gothic indulgence, EMO lacks the adequate despair that you feel, even Mr Cohen or that perennial singer of sorrow Morrissey cannot articulate the true abandonment you feel.

How could you offer up such amateur scribbles; how could they be so cruel?

You buy boxes of pencils just to snap them in two.

It’s a luminous pink ball, and the dog wants you to throw it.

And therein with that saliva covered sphere is your salvation.

The world will still turn, you just have to keep throwing the ball!

Salvation is simple – keep keeping on!

Stay safe and remain sane.

Sometimes (more oft than not) you question the quality of your scribbles.

Was that phrase too long, too obscure, is that a cliché, that tale a tried old trope…

Does the pace work, the punctuation a hinderance or an aid?

Is your tale worth telling, too dark, too cruel – is it new or a poor rehash of other told tales?

Everything is over analysed.

Nothing passes as just face value.

Yet despite the perpetual syndrome of imposters lurking forever in the shadows some scribbling takes place.

Stories are created, adventures are formed.

Yet the validation you require never comes because tales are just never read.

What is the solution?

Clutching your tales tightly to your chest both embarrassed and proud of your work hasn’t worked.

Something must give, something must take precedence, something must fail.

Here’s hoping that belief in the project will succeed, because between me and you (the great empty echoing auditorium of the world wide web) I think that the tales are both worth telling AND worth reading.

Stay safe – remain sane!

Never a statement I’d associate with myself – but here we are and there it is.

This isn’t a reference to the tragedy of anorexia – and my sympathy goes out to those that struggle.

No, this missive relates to a relatively new phenomenon (for me) of multiple WIP.

As a rule of thumb, I’ve applied my scatter gun approach to one tale at a time.

I write out of sequence, create random segments that are born orphans but are eventually adopted.

I scribble an ending and work haphazardly towards this point.

But for reasons unknown, and some known, I’ve been spinning multiple plates for a while now.

What was an attempted solution to “writers block” has now become a millstone in its own right. 

And with some begrudged acknowledgement of irony, I’m now ‘stuck’ with the originating problem with all these little WIP.

So, which one is my favourite child, which one to we work on, which ones do we set aside?

In a world of real problems, I can rejoice in the triviality that are mine.

Stay safe, keep the faith, and try to remain sane!

Round and round we go, always and ever round and round, never forward, just round and round and round.

Sometimes you’ve always been this place before, déjà vu, stutters in the timeline, a black cat crosses your path…

If each step taken is progress, then why am I only seeing my own footprints?

Not a religious analogy – but it could be.

Writing tall tales, howsoever, or wherever the writer commits to the craft is a solitary business.

The potential reward for so many hours of labour is fiscally miniscule.

To be read, to be enjoyed – these though are the riches beyond calculation, these are the wishes asked of the genie.

My work is polished, the silk purse near complete.

Fear grips my chest, breath is denied.

Will they hate it, will they be indifferent, or indeed will they like it?

What if it indeed does have worth?

What then all the back clinging monkeys and self-doubt?

The day of judgement is coming.

The imposter is sweating.

Self-publishing is ever closer.

Amy Grace and her tall tale will soon be freed.

Keep the faith.

Stay safe – remain sane!

It’s a solitary indulgence.

You, your writing, your characters.

You’re never alone, but alas you really are.

Imaginary friends are just that.

Shadows that dance on the wall are only characters in your mind.

The rest of the world doesn’t see them, it never sees them.

You may at time wax lyrical to a pinned ear, but never does an enquiring mind freely race to your crafted narrative.

Flouncy shirt in a cold garret; obscure and remote.

Obstinance isn’t a character flaw.

Faith isn’t a delusion.

Our time will come.

Footfall will follow footfall.

The loneliness of a long-distance runner may be ours, but even marathons end.

We plod on.

Ever onwards.

Stay sane – stay safe!

I thought it would be a good intellectual/creative exercise.

Trim it to the bones, keep it pithy, keep it simple, keep it below 10,000.

I thought I could do it.

I think I was/am wrong.

I am a pantster/gardener/making it up as you go along kind of writer.

This should have been an exercise in discipline.

It isn’t.

I have so much more to tell.

The ride needs to be longer.

This is a real struggle in discarding colour – in keeping it black and white.

Yet Technicolour is how I flow.

Not really a problem of relevance to the real world, but it is mine.

Our 55-year-old sorcerer’s apprentice is going to need more than just a hint of magic for me to keep within my self-imposed parameters.

I may do it, although I probably won’t.

That’s it.

Stay safe – remain sane!

So, you’ve written nearly half a million words, covered seven years of her life. 

She’s circled the globe from Ireland only to come back again. 

She’s fought in Sudan, had titanic struggles in India, and showdowns of cinematic extravagance in America. 

She’s fallen to near unimaginable levels of sadness, yet she’s bounced back from each fall.   

Prison walls could not contain her, nor the cruelty of men defeat her. 

Amy is five feet and two inches of flame haired resilience hailing from Dromahair in County Leitrim. 

She is passionate and fiercely determined to rebalance wrongs.

She gets knocked down, she suffers, she bleeds, but she learns her lessons, and learns them well. 

Hooded crows follow her, Celtic myth and legend flow through her.  She is the incarnation of the Mórrígan, she is Badb, and she is herself. 

The tree of life, butterflies and mystery reveal themselves during her dreams, some supportive, many merely cryptic in their interpretation. 

She has an appreciation for the creations of Messer’s Jamison and Powers, and occasionally indulges in the escape of narcotics. 

She is happy to watch uniformed magnificence march past, to shudder at such displays of proud manhood. 

Such masculinity is not how her breath is stolen; her back arches for an altogether fairer fayre…

But most of all, for those that wrong her, for those foolish enough to incur her wrath, a sword may be levelled towards them, maybe a pistol too, but the declaration is one they most definitely should heed for she is death, she is Amy Grace!

“Is bás mé, tá mé Amy Grace”.  

So the song goes (and it is a good song).

Who is it that inspired you, who fanned that creative and curious spark?

I love the whimsy of Terry Pratchett, the darkness of Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker.  The easy-going action of Bernard Cornwell and his antihero Richard Sharpe.  I’d even offer up for praise the sheer pulp fiction brilliance of Jerry Ahern (look him up!). 

My all-time favourite book being Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – such brilliant use of the everyday to create drama – genius. 

I’m not trying to list the great and the good, more I’m trying to demonstrate a breadth of inspiration and an appreciation for the numerous ways to tell a tall tale.

Styles come, fashions forever fickle, some stories are forever hip, some passing phases. 

Some writers and their tales hit me at the right time and make the impression just when it is needed.

Like many I went through a dystopian phase – Orwell/Atwood/Huxley et others.

Intertwined with this was a passion I hold for the long tale, for those who could make the telling of just one day in the life of someone an entire book.

I did my time reading some great Russian writers.  The social commentary that wove in and out of each tale, the mirrors that they held up to laugh at us and scold us in equal measure; Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Bulgakov, Zamyatin and of course Mr Solzhenitsyn. 

And in with all the greats namedropped, I make no claim for equivalence, no statement other than they inspire(d) me.

But if I were to steer you towards suitable references for my tall tales, if under duress I were obligated to offer up writers of skill that you would know, then only because the lives of small kittens were at stake I would I say imagine if Philip Pullman wrote the Victorian adventures of a young woman who had the grit and resilience of Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and that this young woman lived in the dark and dangerous world of Caleb Carr’s Alienists – then I’d go yeah, that’s about right.   

But back to inspiration and heroes.

It is an adage, and it was the start of this missive.

The art that is created is what lasts, the lives mistakes and failings of the writers quickly forgotten.

Questionable people can create superb art.

Not too sure if I’ve lost my thread – possibly.

Such are the struggles of a one-sided conversation…

Whatever you are doing stay safe, remain sane and try your best to be happy!

If you are a writer, faith is the continual struggle.

I’m not talking about belief in lords spiritual.

Nope, I’m looking at the more temporal.

Belief in oneself.

Faith in the product of your labour.

It swings from the unshakeable bravado to the utter depths of despair.

We wilt quicker than an uncredited extra in Nosferatu as daylight floods the room…

At times we will take on allcomers and promote our project with the zeal of the true believer, and then as the wind blows, and before the cockerel has uttered his acknowledgement of the new day, we skulk away shame faced about our potato print offering…

Some call it ‘Imposter Syndrome,’ and some are right.

Some say it is the fragility of the flouncy shirt wearing overly dramatic artistic types, and again some are indeed right.

Creating anything worthy of note is an emotional investment.

Offering it for critique a true test of body confidence, your naked soul exposed for all to see.

Some will tell you what you want to hear, and some will tell the truth.

It’s then a matter of faith.

When tested will you remain true?

Will you deny your true self?

Have you got the faith to stay the course, finish the task, accept the burdens?

I hope you have; I hope I have too!

Stay safe – remain sane!

Yeah, we all know that one.  Muzzling oxen as they tread out the corn – labourers being worth of their hire and all that. 

In short what we purchase, what skills we need to procure, we must ensure that those providing them are paid; and paid a fair wage to boot. 

So, when we were creating our budget to self-publish, we did indeed make an error of some magnitude.

Our calculation, our proposal, it had numerous stages, capture of the pertinent was (we hoped) complete.

Indeed, the list of tasks remain unchanged – just our estimation of the coins required to complete them woefully negligent.

It is an oversight common in too many projects – and it is one that will cause a significant pause to be inserted into this one.

Money, despite political promises, doesn’t materialise because we want it to, and real folk must live within their means. 

Self-publishing starts on a deficit, a minus in the column that we accept because we assume that the payback will happen, or that the loss of investment can be endured.

Even if this is a project of extreme vanity, it cannot become a bejewelled white elephant. 

ATMs that are remote, isolated, easy dug out with my neighbour’s tractor and scoop are now of more interest than they ever were.  

Stay safe – remain sane!