That’s The Way It Goes…

Last week I found out that I unfortunately did not get onto Penguin Randomhouse’s Write-Now mentoring scheme. I had been waiting with baited breath, along with the other shortlisted writers, since December last year. It was, of course, disappointing but I was pleased at how easily I was able to shrug it off. If I’ve learnt anything over the years it’s that you need thick skin and need to prepare for every eventuality.

The mentees have been revealed and their work sounds really great. If I’m honest, as far as putting diverse unheard stories into the world goes, it sounds like these are narratives which need to be told. For me – I can take some solace from the fact that there were over 2,000 submissions and I made the shortlist of 47. I need to keep honing my craft and nurturing this love of writing, and someday I’ll get there. The day after receiving the news, I got straight back to sending out submissions to agents. It might take a long time but somewhere out there there’ll be an agent who believes in my work enough to take the plunge. I can’t stop now.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve also made a start on one of my 2017 resolutions to enter writing competitions. I received an email from one of my networks (with only a week to go) advertising a competition for a YA readership centring around the theme of change. The winners will have their pieces selected for addition in an anthology called ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, named after the great Sam Cooke song.

It took only a few hours to settle on an idea that I felt passionate about. I decided to write a part-fictionalisation of my paternal grandad’s journey from Jamaica to England, and to write it in Jamaican patois. I used some of my own recordings of conversations with my granddad and my own knowledge and research of the post-war immigration to flesh out a short story that I felt really proud of. It took only 4 days to finish my first draft and send to some members of my writing group for feedback. With their comments taken in, I was able to submit with a day to spare.

Fingers crossed that I will see some results this year. In the meantime, I’ll keep at it.