Send your views to: Way Ahead Electronic Publishing
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England or Email wayahead@cix.compulink.co.uk

Transported to a place beyond time . . .

Prizewinner! Valerie Thome wins a copy of Way Ahead’s
Short Story Acumen on-disk tutorial for her views

I’ve wanted to be a writer since the age of 6, but have never really done anything constructive about it. As a schoolgirl, I wrote imaginative stories; as a young adult, I struggled to be creative. In my late 20s I did English A level and was pretty mad to find out that all the best writers simply drew on personal experience and wrote about people they knew – no one liked them for this, but at least it was easier than making things up!

People fascinate me. I love to observe, analyse and report them. I have a good ear for speech rhythms and can reproduce them on paper. The fact that it was so obviously true-life stopped Weidenfeld accepting my first submitted novel. They advised rewriting, but it wasn’t the same. I’ll just wait until all the characters are dead!

My life has been busy – four husbands, two children, countless lovers, at least three careers – but I’ve always written: letters, journals, poetry. I’ve had a spell as a performing poet, and become famous for 15 minutes in a Jacuzzi. This netted me two admirers – the deaf video man, who said he wanted to make a poetry video for the deaf (much the best place for me, some said) but turned out to be more interested in exploring my cellulite, and the then editor of a county magazine, a workaholic who couldn’t bear anyone to be unproductive, and set himself to make me write a publishable novel (I’d already written unpublished ones). It got written, but it’s on the shelf with the others, because we fell out over the editing. I kept putting back what he took out.

Of recent years, I’ve written many thousands of words, as an astrologer, and am always in demand to write people’s life stories. I’ve also written for my local paper for six years, without payment, having allowed myself to be conned into it.

Last winter, I decided I really must do something about getting published (after all, I’m now 55!), bought the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and started at A. Anything I knew anything about, I wrote something for.

After three weeks I got discouraged and went back to astrology. Eventually, this initial foray resulted in three acceptances, earning me £345, and I’ve had a further acceptance for Spring on a gardening feature.

Encouraged, I subscribed to a writers’ marketing magazine. I’ve followed up lots of leads in the two months I’ve been a subscriber, but apart from an idea for a novel, I’ve not found a paying market. A lot are dead ends, there being either no payment (one offered payment in magazines – presumably you become a newsagent on the side!) or they want you to pay them. One wrote from a Box Number purporting to be about to “launch” a magazine, stating they could not afford to pay contributors. Since the letter asked for “high quality literary work” yet showed no basic appreciation of grammar and did not appear to emanate from a native English speaker, I got the strong impression any work sent would be shipped abroad to earn money for the advertiser.

Then I saw the advertisement for Writers’ Update free diskette. By this time I had taken the plunge and bought the new computer I’d been hankering after for two years, so I was able to take advantage of your offer. I’m still at the stage of familiarising myself with the PC, which I find absolutely fascinating – the third thing in life that transports me to a place beyond time. The other two are cooking (I trained as a chef in my 30s) and gardening (I took up organic gardening eight years ago and run three allotments with my husband).

When I sit down and switch on I enter “computerworld” and neither see nor hear anyone in the real world. Anyone coming into my office appears as a dim, shadowy presence. I can answer questions this figure puts to me, even hold limited conversations and reply to messages. But it’s merely that strange someone we leave minding the shop when our minds are elsewhere. When I switch off and return to earth, I’ve no idea what’s happened since I left.

Yours is my first experience of on-screen publications, and this is my first creative piece on the new computer, if you don’t count letters! I find editing difficult, and the words don’t flow the same as on the old Amstrad. No doubt fluency will come. You want my views? I still find it easier to read from paper, so I’ve made printed copies. So far so good – there seem quite a few openings for me here. Give me a little time, and if it’s as good as looks at first sight, I’ll subscribe.

Valerie Thome
Nelson
Lancashire

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Are you serious about PC publishing?

Come off it – does anyone really think that publishing exclusively for the PC is sensible for writers/self-publishers? There is so much resistance to technology on the part of the average person, and the market for printed material is so vast by comparison, that publishing for any computer format is really secondary.

Please don’t take this the wrong way – I found Writers’ Update very useful and entertaining and, as you will know, I have subscribed, so publishing for the PC obviously works in certain instances.I do believe, however, that Writers’ Update is purely an aid to those writers who happen to use PCs, and that it’s purpose should be to enlighten them regarding ways of achieving publication in the traditional way – ie, on paper.

James C. Lafferty
Edinburgh

Come off it, James – where did we say that any writer/self-publisher had to publish exclusively for the PC? The points we made were that publishing for the PC is extremely economical compared with publishing on paper, and that if you have a PC, you have already made the major investment to enable you to start publishing.

Because you publish for the PC does not mean you are prevented from selling work to traditional publishers, or from publishing on paper yourself. In fact, in an ideal world, the two kinds of publishing can complement each other.

The PC market is growing, and writers who ignore this fact could well be limiting their potential income.

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Nothing ventured . . .

I would just like to say that I am very pleased with the magazine. I like the competitions, even though, as yet, I have been wary of entering any – but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Recently, I did an A level in English Literature as a mature student and was successful in obtaining a grade B. This has helped to give me the confidence I needed and I am at the present time busy writing short stories.However, these have yet to be published, but with hard work and the help of excellent magazines like your own I hope this may be realised in the near future.

I was very interested to read about Creative Writing 2 and will probably send for it at a later date.

B. J. Powell
Bury
Lancashire

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Brilliant!

At last, we have a magazine which doesn’t treat writers like second-rate citizens when it comes to computer technology.

I breathed a sigh of release when I read your pages (or should I say ‘screens’). You were not condescending, yet explained everything we needed to know. You didn’t let the interface get in the way of the information. And you actually told us something that we writers with computers (decent ones at that – I mean PCs, of course) can put into practice to make names (and money!) for ourselves.

I love books, and any intelligent writer (is there any other sort!!??) will know that we will never be without printed works of fact and fiction. However, the PC as a publishing platform, as you stated, really does have great potential, and for self-publishers with an ounce of technical ability, it is a godsend.

I was delighted – proud, even! – to subscribe to this digital magazine, in the belief that it will prosper and grow, and help us to realise the potential that already exists for us.

Stephen Prior
Blackburn
Lancashire

Don’t go over the top now, Stephen – remember, we can’t afford to pay you for this!

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