Getting Help

There was a time when I was afraid when the postman came. I was getting very threatening letters from a collection agency which used very scary red ink to let me know that they were going to wring the money out of me in a very expensive legal battle and that with each passing minute I was getting deeper into trouble and deeper into a notional bold red-ink debt amount.

I had signed up for a correspondence writing course and failed to keep up with my payments.

I moved house and the letters, which were not delivered by owls, did not pursue me. Somewhere in Chipping Sodbury there is a ex-SAS operative who is scanning The Times bestseller list just waiting for my name to appear so that he can complete this one last job before he retires.

Thus far I have foiled his every move by not getting published in the slightest.

I read some of the materials that the correspondence course had supplied in their initiation pack but the emphasis on salesmanship before content or contentment was not very inspiring. In short it was advising me to write articles for Angling magazines and Knitting Quarterlies because they were an easy sell.

Getting help is not easy because it involves two people at least and I trust myself but I'm not sure about the other guy. I mean to say that there are a lot of questions about this other guy...like what is in it for him? What does he know anyway? Why does he wear black polo-necks?

Maybe there is safety in amateur numbers...

So I joined a writers' group but that turned out to be a mutual-appreciation society which left me with the uneasy feeling that everybody turned up just to say nice things to each other and then drink some tea. So I jacked that in.

My next experiment in getting help was to get members of my family and friends to read my stories and they all loved them and they loved me and we had a pint and we realised that we were all really good at what we do. So I don't do that anymore.

What I have done of late is to attend workshops facilitated by credible authors and poets and to soak up their perspectives on writing and their considered views on my writing. That has been both inspiring and challenging. I went to a course facilitated by Oisin McGann in Tigh Aine in Bellyferiter (bursary thanks to Sheila Deegan and the Arts Office). He was particularly engaging and talked about the business of writing or the business that is writing in a way that I had never heard expressed before. You should come and sit with him in Feb 2010 at the LWC.

Another tack that has helped me to work on my writing style was using Connerstone's commercial editing service (Google it!). This costs a few quid but is very comprehensive and comes with some very good reference materials which reveal plain truths about writing styles in a very accessible way. The Cornerstone people are very easy to talk to and not even remotely scam-like.

Finally, I have joined youwriteon.com today, on the advice of Bob, this blogs new best-friend.
This is an online community where through reviewing an assigned MS you earn the right to have a random individual review your MS. I've reviewed two online novels and it is not easy but the website provides some good guidelines and now I await the reviews of my online peers of my own humble offerings...I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

How have you got help? What worked? What really sucked? Let me know or the bunny gets it.
In a later section I will be dealing with Self-Help books - know any good ones? Know any ones that really suck? Let me know or the badger gets it.