Right Email, Right Time

How strange it is to read back over the last post and see how much has changed in a single year. Long story short: I finished the book and got an agent. 

(It's been three months since then but writing that sentence still gives me a mini thrill.) 

The querying process this time round, though comparatively shorter, was far more painful. Wounds to my pride had not fully healed after the last project flopped, and I felt shaky and exposed sending out what to me was like a far more personal - and therefore vulnerable-making - book. Looking back, I tacked on rejections I received for the new book to the old one. That is to say, one month of "no's" felt like two years and one month, and my patience wore thin too quickly as a result.

Two months in I was sitting in a café complaining to a friend about the futility of it all when she politely yet firmly told me to cop on and get over myself. She said in the grand scheme of things, it hadn't been that long, and if I invested the time I was spending moping around feeling sorry for myself into actually querying the book, I might have gotten an agent already.

That night I smoothed out the crumpled list of agents I wrote a few years before, cringing a little at the naïve annotations beside some of the names ("This is the one!" or "They said they liked it - don't forget to follow-up!"), and made a fresh list of agencies that had yet to turn me down. Out of the whole list, I realised I only really cared about one of them - The Blaire Partnership. They seemed the perfect fit for the types of stories I wanted to tell.

I dredged up the same query I had been using since Christmas and copied my chosen agent's details in. I read over it for a final time and, on impulse, decided to change a few details, swapping out my comp* titles for more recent books and adding a small personalisation at the top of the email. A few seconds later I received an automatic reply thanking me for my email and reminding me that, due to a large volume of submissions, it will likely take up to twelve weeks to hear anything back.

Feeling proud of myself for at least getting back on the horse, I took my dog for a walk in the field behind my house. Typically, it started to rain. My phone pinged as I yelled at my dog to stop rolling on a dead bird and I glanced at the screen to see I had one new email notification from the agent:

"I’m getting back to you embarrassingly quickly but your pitch appealed to me so I dipped in… and now I need the rest! "  

To say I sprinted home would be an understatement. Sweaty, rain-soaked and covered in muck, I raced to my desk and fired off the entire manuscript (note to aspiring writers: have your full manuscript ready before you start to query). After taking a while to calm down - trust me, it took a while - I was able to asses the situation with through a more objective lens. I reasoned: Okay, so the agent got back to me quickly. That's a good sign. But what does it really mean? I got plenty of full requests before that never amounted to anything.

Going to bed that night, I felt more level-headed. I was hopeful, sure, but the hope was tempered by a healthy dose of realism. I woke up the next morning as if nothing unusual was afoot and went about my normal routine. Around midday, I got another email. This time the agent said she read the entire book and she thought that, apart from a few editorial notes, it was brilliant.

Would I be up for a chat on the phone?

Fast forward three months and I'm delighted to say I'm represented by Rachel Petty at the Blair Partnership literary agency. I'm about to embark on a second leg of edits (once I finish procrastinating by writing this blogpost).They'll probably be the last ones before the manuscript gets submitted to editors next month and, fingers crossed, sold.

What I have learned going through the edits deserves its own separate post so I won't go into it here. Suffice to say, I'm excited to see what the near-future holds. Nail-bitingly, stomach-churning-ly terrified? Absolutely. But also excited.   

There's no guarantee this will be the last batch of edits, no guarantee that the book will be sold and, if it is sold, no guarantee it will be received well by readers. As I've learned from querying, however, there isn't any point in allowing myself to get mired in the uncertainty of everything.

Instead, I want focus on the timing of sending that submission email. In subsequent phone calls, my agent told me she was just after putting her kids in the bath when my email landed in her inbox. It was a moment of sheer boredom and she just happened to open her inbox the same time I pressed send. Who knows if she would have clicked on my submission if it had been buried under the dozens of others the following morning? And, even if she did, who knows if it would have resonated the same way?

I simply couldn't get over the enormity of the odds it took for it to work out the way it did. And eventually, after they saw I was on the verge of getting overwhelmed by Imposter Syndrome, my parents had to sit me down and point out that while yes, the timing was incredibly fortunate and, yes, a large portion of whether something succeeds is left up to chance, I also had to have put in the work to write the book (as well as all the books that preceded it) and sent it out to get noticed in the first place.

I'm aware this isn't ground-breaking advice or anything, but it turns out to be true: you don't get to decide in when something succeeds or fails but you do get to control how prepared you are should the chance to succeed arise. 

And, if your pile of rejection seems insurmountable, if you feel weighed down and misunderstood and underappreciated, if you reckon the whole universe is conspiring against you to foil your ambitions and shit on your dreams, allow me to rehash the same wisdom my friend lovingly dispensed to me:

Sure cop on and get over yourself. 

;)

*Comp titles = comparison titles. They are the books with which you deem yours to have the most in common and are used to help agents and editors imagine the type of readership your work might attract. Ideally, they should be books published in the last two years and not runaway best-sellers (i.e. not The Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones). 

Leap into the Void

I began this blog after completing a book just over a year ago. Then I spent the next eight months querying that book to literary agents and publishing houses to little success. I say little success because I didn't strike out completely. Three agents and one publishing house requested the full manuscript and one of those requests lead to a R&R*.

While I was thrilled that I had gotten close enough to garner interest from publishing professionals, I was also devastated that I hadn't made it over the line. It felt like I had been accepted to compete the 100 meters Olympic sprint, only to fall flat on my face at the sound of the starting pistol.

This wasn't my first rejection rodeo. I had been trading short stories for not-quite-right-for-us's for years. I had even queried another book which similarly resulted in crickets chirping. So, in the face of this shiny new bout of rejection, I did what I always do: I moped around for a couple of days feeling sorry for myself then got back to work.

There was plenty to keep me busy. I plotted out new book ideas, I co-wrote a tv script and I taught creative writing workshops to teens and young people. But something was wrong. I couldn't put my finger on what exactly until I spoke to a playwright friend about his latest project. He said it was slow going, but he had a chunk of holidays saved up and he was excited to have that expanse of free time in which to write.

As a reflex, I said I could relate. But I later realised I couldn't really. Not anymore.

Sure, my past self would drool over the prospect of a swath of uninterrupted writing time the way a dog drools over a slab of raw meat. Since the book got rejected, however, my excitement to write had waned considerably. Everything I produced felt mechanical and clunky. I was going through the motions; writing not because I needed to but because I'd created the habit.

In short, the joy had vanished.

To make matters worse, I acted as if it hadn't. There I was, teaching young people on how to persevere with their art in the face of uncertainty while I couldn't muster up the courage to string a sentence together. I had fought tooth and nail to get enough freelance work to support myself as a full-time writer and suddenly I was questioning whether or not I wanted to write at all?

Cue existential crisis.

Talking about it helped. The way naming something can sometimes robs it of its power. But as the months rolled on and the desire to create remained stubbornly out of reach, I started making peace with the situation. I reasoned: okay, so I wasn't going to be an author, I could still use the skills I'd leant in pursuit of that goal. I could write copy for websites, edit other people's work, finally get qualified and find a job in publishing. The more I thought about it, the more okay I was with giving up.

And then, just like in a goddamned story, something unexpected happened.

An email landed in my inbox. It was from the Arts Council. They casually informed me that I'd been awarded the full amount of a grant I'd applied for. They congratulated me on my success and wished me the best of luck with the project.

I was in shock. I kept logging out of gmail and logging back in to make sure that it really existed, that it wasn't some figment of my creativity-stunted imagination. I remember blinking a lot, going downstairs, handing my phone to my parents. They were even more dumbfounded than I was. I hadn't told them I'd applied for the grant.

I had just assumed I wouldn't get it.

After a day of happy crying and screaming and calling relatives I hadn't spoken to in years to share the good news, I took a breath and reassessed where I was.

Alright, I had been awarded a grant (I won't say the amount here, but it's enough money to comfortably fund writing for an entire year - maybe more if I'm careful). And while that's huge for any young artist, it's not like winning the lottery. It would run out eventually.

Not only that, but I had just about gotten over the fact that I wasn't cut-out to be an author. Now, here I was, holding a piece of evidence to the contrary from people whose opinion I highly valued. The turn of events forced me to confront a question I'd been avoiding: had the joy really vanished, or had it just been drowned out by the fear?

I discovered the latter was true as I reopened the project with which I'd applied. The pages felt like a mirror, reflecting back all my failures and the feelings of inadequacy I'd wrestled with over the past year.  What if I finish this project, query it, and get met with the same stony silence? What if I never get published? What if I'm not good enough?

I don't have the answers to those questions. We're now caught up to the present moment. The project word doc is still there, unopened on my desktop, silently daring me to plunge into the unknown and see if I have what it takes. As I steel my nerve, I'm reminded of a photo by Yves Klein entitled Leap into the Void. I love everything about this piece; the unsuspecting cyclist, the closeness of the concrete, but especially how Yves is looking straight ahead, putting his life in fate's hands with the faintest of smiles on his face.

Looking at this picture, I see a man who doesn't think about how he'll land. He only cares about the rush of falling.

I figure it's not my job to worry about how everything will work out. My only job is to step off the ledge.

Now watch me leap.

*R&R = Revise and resubmit. Which basically means: "Hey, we see the potential in your book. We can't offer representation because of X, Y and Z issues. However, if you're willing to redraft and fix those problems, we'd be willing to take another look."  

Kill Perfectionism with a Mental Machete

Ira Glass is an American Podcaster best known for being the host of This American Life. In an interview about creativity, Ira talks about an idea called The Gap.

Here's the video of his explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQKciKfHI

I've copied the transcript below:

"Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?

A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be — they knew it fell short, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have.

And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.

And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while, it’s gonna take you a while — it’s normal to take a while. And you just have to fight your way through that, okay?"

I cannot put into words how much I love this advice. Creativity is a muscle and, like any other muscle, it atrophies if you don't use it.

The time in my life when I felt The Gap most acutely was after I had left college but before I'd started to write full-time. In secondary school, I had been modestly talented at writing. I'd had some stories published and plays put on and I was dead set on my goal of becoming an author. But when I left school and started college, I stopped exercising that creativity muscle.

As the college semester toiled on and the workload grew, I felt like I was stepping further and further away from that goal. So I did the only thing I felt I could. I slammed on the breaks and dropped out of college in an extreme course correction.

In the immediate aftermath of that decision, I experienced relief that I had been realigned with creative work I had wanted to do, quickly followed by the realisation that I was now objectively worse at that work. My younger self had put in years to close The Gap and now it was wider than ever. Not only that, but I was no longer considered a "young talent". Without noticing it, my peer group had swelled to include writers of every age, at every stage of their career. If my creative life were a game of snakes and ladders, I felt like I had just landed on the biggest snake before the final square, and now had to start from the midway point behind the other players who had been making more consistent, albeit slower, progress.

I still had my taste. I still had echoes of my voice. But whenever I tried to write anything, the execution was sub-standard.

A choice faced me: do I keep writing? Do I even bother to try and catch up with those others who had overtaken me?

If anyone reading this is a writer themselves, they already know the answer.

Of course! Of course I was going to keep playing. I didn't have a choice. This was who I was. Was it disheartening? Absolutely. Did it suck to have once felt on top of your game and now feel like an underdog? Totally. But, and allow me to re-emphasise here, I. Did. Not. Have. A. Choice.

So I did what Ira Glass commanded. I put in the work. And when I was confronted with Imposter Syndrome and felt as if The Gap had transformed into The Gulf, I kept working. Slowly but steadily, I improved. The muscle strengthened until I was on par with the level I had been at as a teenager. I lifted my head to celebrate that small victory. Then I worked some more.

Is my writing perfect now? Definitely not. But I don't despair. I've learned that obsessing over flaws is unproductive and unhealthy. If you play the comparison game, you always lose.

Perfection doesn't exist. Once you embrace that idea, once you stop thinking about how behind you are - either on your past self or your peers - and start focusing on the work itself, you'll see The Gap begin to narrow as if by magic.

Inspiration exists, but you have to find it writing

I have a friend who goes to art college in Glasgow. Her first assignment was to come up with a question, then find a piece of art that best answers it and present it to her class.

When she told me about it, my instinct was to correct her. Don't you mean they give you the question first?

She assured me no. That her job was to come up with the question herself. 

Now, my career choice isn't exactly what you'd call stable. I aspire to play make-believe for a living. Yet even I struggled to suppress an eye-roll. 

The idea that my friend was meant to work without knowing what she was working on struck me as counter intuitive to the extreme. Everyone knows the cliche: life is about the journey, not the destination. But embarking on a road-trip without a map seemed - at best - naive, and - at worst - irresponsible. In a world full of pressures and project-deadlines you can't afford the luxury of feeling your way through and hoping for the best, especially in creative industries.

Then it hit me how wrong I was.

Of course you had to feel your way through. That was the whole point. My friend's assignment wasn't some airy-fairy nonsense, but instead held a universal truth. Art is not a matter of sitting around waiting for muses to work their magic, but rather immersing yourself in something so completely that you only realise what you've done once the work is finished. It's not a matter of coming up with answers and justifying them, but rather it's a process of figuring out better questions.

What's that Picasso quote? "Inspiration exists, but you have to find it working."

I felt guilty for being dismissive, but I wasn't really to blame. After all, what does school teach us? Learn off reams of information for specific questions, and then vomit that information onto the page during exams. The same goes for college. Essays are constructed by coming up with a thesis statement, then skimming through textbooks and ctrl-f searching academic articles to find nuggets of information that prove you right, all under the guise of "critical thought". 

That particular mindset, while perhaps valid in the world of academia, falls flat when you're tasked with making something new. 

It's also a less interesting way to see the world.

Consider this: if you enter into something with fixed expectations, then you're doomed to get fixed outcomes. If you have an unshakeable opinion, then you're doomed to go through life filtering out anything contrary to that opinion.

This type of thinking is exacerbated by social media, which earns its money by affirming your biases and feeding you information that you already believe, even if that information is destructive or non-factual. 

This, obviously, isn't ideal for lots of things in life. But let's talk in particular about how it's detrimental to creativity. Beginning a new project with a stranglehold on the idea may provide you with a semblance of control. But it also closes you off to the joy of the unexpected. Just like entering a blind date knowing exactly what you want to say in the order you want to say it, over-managing or over-planning a project can make it feel wooden or stale. It leads to frustration at a time when excitement and enthusiasm are key to propelling you forward.

It's understandable why people don't want to let go. The unknown is terrifying. As with anything in life, going into something blind, with zero idea how it's going to pan out, goes against our nature as humans. It's safer to plan. To have a fall back. To know there's a parachute attached when you jump out of that plane.

It also shoots your chances of making good art in the face.

Being immersed first, allowing your curiosity to lead you, shedding the familiar - these are all essential steps. It's infinitely messier but absolutely vital. So burn your road-maps, take wrong turns and worry about course correcting later. 

And, if you've already started something you suspect is too safe, the delete key beckons. 

Publishing Your Book #2

In the last post I covered the absolute basics of the traditional publishing - i.e. how an author gets paid and what an agent is. Now it's time to dive a little more in-depth into the process of actually acquiring an agent. 

Where to find an agent?

A quick google of "I've finished a book now what?" will result in a buffet of advertisements for independent publishers clamouring for you to submit your book to their house. It's extremely uncommon for you to get a good book deal without an agent. Therefore, anybody claiming they can make you an instant bestseller should be ignored, especially if they're asking for money from you.

I mentioned this in the last post, but let me re-emphasise: you don't pay agents or publishers to publish your book. It's the other way around. If someone is charging a fee for representation they're more than likely a con artist trying to scam you.

 

Here are four alternatives where you can research genuine literary agents.

Youtube: 

Booktube and Authortube are subsections of Youtube that deal with the world of publishing. If you're not already familiar with this a type of vlogging, I recommend subscribing to Kim Chance, Alexa Donne and Bookends Literary Agency. While this won't specifically give you names of agents, it's a great resource to introduce you to the world of writing. 

Acknowledgements Sections of Books:

This is a more direct way of finding agents. Head to a bookshop, library or your bookshelf and pick up one of your favourite books. Flip to the back of the book and read the Acknowledgements Section. Authors will usually thank everyone who helped them bring their book baby into the world, including their agents. Jot down the name and move on to the next book. Eventually, you'll have a list of agents that you can search for online and start to query.

Writers' & Artists' Yearbook:

This is the publishing industry's best kept secret. I had been researching the writing industry for years before I stumbled across this book. Basically, it contains everything you need to know about publishing: writing advice, explanations of contract terms and, most importantly, a directory of every single agent and publishing house in Ireland and the UK. An updated version of WAAY is published every year, but getting your hands on any second-hand copy will be sufficient to put your feet on the publishing path. 

Query Tracker:

Finally, this website is a go-to for most authors embarking on their querying journey. It works as a directory that allows you to search for agents while simultaneously keeping track of queries you have already sent out. It isn't essential to find an agent (I didn't use it much), but it is a free tool that is available to help you keep organised and on top of everything as you continue looking for representation. 

I'll attach the link here: https://querytracker.net/

Publishing Your Book #1

This is the first in a series of posts detailing the publication process from an author's perspective... 

Okay, so you've finished a book. You've revised it, polished it, gotten feedback from friends and then revised it some more. It's as good as you can possibly make it and you feel ready to start thinking seriously about publication.

What happens next?

Well, it depends. You can go one of two routes: there's traditional publishing, where your book is accepted by a publishing house, or self publishing, where you publish the book on your own. These two routes are equally viable, but for the for the purposes of this post I'm going to be talking about traditional publishing.

What is traditional publishing?

This way of publishing is probably what first comes to mind when you envision yourself as an author. You sell the rights of your book to a publishing house (Penguin, Harper Collins, Folens, etc.) and they put it on the shelves in a bookshop.

When your book is pitched to a house, and they accept it, you'll get what is called an advance, which is basically a lump sum of cash based on how much the house think your book is going to sell. This is what is meant when you see newspaper headlines like: "Young Author Secures Seven Figure Book Deal".

Advances never have to be paid back, even if your book doesn't sell a single copy, and typically they're split in half. It depends on the terms of your contract, but usually you'll get the first half of your advance when you sign with the publishing house, and the second half when your book is published.

Royalties are the second way an author gets paid. Again, it depends. But you can expect the royalties to be about 10% of retail price for your book. Say your book is sold at €10, then you'll get €1 for every copy sold.

BUT - and this is important - you have to first earn your advance back before you start receiving royalties.

So say your advance is €20,000. That means you'll need to sell 20,000 copies first, and then on your 20,001st copy you'll make your first €1 in royalties. Royalties are also split up. You can expect a cheque around twice a year if or when you earn out your advance.

The nice thing about royalties is that they're accumulative, meaning - unlike advances, which are one-off payments - whenever you publish a new book, the royalties for the old ones will continue to build. But before all of that can happen, we need to talk about you actually pitches your book to publishing houses in the first place.

What is an agent?

An agent is basically the person who does the pitching. They represent your book and negotiate its sale to publishing houses on your behalf. Agents don't get paid unless / until your book gets sold, so they have a vested interest in your success. Their rates vary, but I think the standard is about 15% of your earnings, which come out of your advance and royalties.

You might be asking: Do I really need an agent?

And the basic answer is yes. There are some publishing houses that accept unsolicited manuscripts (meaning you can send your book directly to them for consideration). In Ireland, for example, because it's a smaller publishing territory, some houses are open to read a manuscript from a writer who doesn't have an agent.

The standard practice, however, is if you want to sell your book, you'll need an agent.

Agents know whether your book is commercially viable. Agents know how to negotiate contracts and navigate the murky waters of the publishing industry. And, what's more, agents know editors who will be interested in buying your book.

A Touch of Cannibalism

When I was in fifth year, my old music teacher came up to me and asked for a favour. She explained she had a group of transition year students who has signed up to do the musical module. My year group had done it the previous term - a parody of Fame we'd called "Fame and Forte" so the school could avoid paying the copyright.

The music teacher said that her problem was the group who had signed up this year weren't at all musical, nor did they want to act or write. I asked her what she wanted me to do about it and she asked if I had any ideas for an original musical. It was known at this point that I wrote as I had done some plays and had my first story published. I told her I'd only ever had one idea for a musical, and I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate. She said she was sure it was fine, and ushered me into her classroom. 

Facing me were a group of  ten to fifteen students with folded arms and dour expressions. Clearly, they had chosen the module for an easy ride and weren't at all impressed that the music teacher was actually taking it seriously. At this stage I was about sixteen, and the prospect of having to pitch an idea to a stand-offish crowd made my stomach wilt. But I steeled my resolve and - with a lot of ems and uhs - described what I wanted to do.

The musical was called Beauty and the Feast and was about a family of cannibals who eat a reporter trying to do a story about them.

See what I mean about inappropriate?

Remarkably though, the more detail I went into, the more enthused the students in front of me became. They transformed from a surly mob to an excited group of young people eager to make the idea into a reality. By the end of the pitch, I had one all of them over apart from one student at the back. He was adamant that he wouldn't participate and slagged off those who wanted to. This was a pivotal moment. Although the room was buzzing, they were still on the fence about whether they wanted to put themselves in the vulnerable-making position of performing it in front of peers.

This one student's reaction could make or break the play.

So I spoofed and promised him that he could play the best character of the whole musical. He feigned disinterest, but I could tell his curiosity was piqued. Inventing on the spot, I told him that he could play the Guard Granny who was basically a guard dog trapped in an old woman's body. He could wear a wig, get all the laughs, and what's best, he wouldn't even need to learn any lines. He could just bark and growl whenever he felt it was needed. 

That moment of this student making up his mind is still one of the most anxiety-ridden of my life. But, after what felt like an eternity, he broke out into a smile and agreed to give it a go.

The show was on!

From that point forward, every Wednesday, I ditched P.E. and headed up to the music room, working on the script while the students painted backdrops and choreographed dances. One particularly resourceful girl took it upon herself to go to the lab and borrow a skeleton from the biology department. We affectionately named it Steve (after the character who gets eaten during the opening number) and put him as the centrepiece of the table which constituted our set.

We even went to the lengths of stuffing Steve with long tubes of red paper mache to give the impression of entrails spilling out of his bony corpse. In the meantime, I managed to source a stage from the local amateur dramatic society and organised for one of the sixth years to op lights. Excitement was mounting and I caught snippets of teachers whispering about "that Feast play" in the hallways.

The only flaw in my otherwise seamless plan? I hadn't gotten permission. Sure the music teacher had asked me for the initial idea, but this had snowballed way beyond anybody's expectations. Yet for some reason, I was convinced that if everything was in place - if everyone had their lines learned and the school didn't have to shell out any cash for a stage - there'd be no resistance to it being put in front of an assembly. 

Oh how wrong I was.

At the last possible moment, one week before the planned opening night, I slipped the script under the door of the vice principal. A few nerve-wracking classes later, I was called down to her office.

"We can't put this on," The vice principal said straight off the bat, looking furious at the very thought.

Now I wasn't a particularly outspoken student. I'd even venture to say I was a bit of a brown-noser. But this wasn't some random homework assignment or exam that I had done to win a teacher's approval. This was my art! I was counting on this being made. What's more, and important, I had other students counting on this being made. So I looked the vice principal square in the eye and asked them why.

"For starters, it's incredibly offensive."     

"To who?!" I exclaimed "The other cannibals in the audience?"

"Who gave you permission to leave class to work on this?"

I opened my mouth, but closed it again. I didn't want to throw anybody under the bus. And the truth was I had never even ran it by my P.E. teacher. I'd just hadn't shown up. So the plug was pulled and the stage was quickly dismantled. Students and staff alike were disappointed, but nobody wanted to put their neck on the line and say so.

After Beauty and the Feast, my near-stellar reputation in school was badly tarnished and I spent my last few years (at least in my own, overly dramatic imagination) as a disgrace. But I don't regret it. I wrote an entire musical. Learnt how to direct and produce. And the reluctant student? The one who was the Guard Granny? He ended up studying acting in college.

I'm writing this post because this was the first time when I had to choose between writing and academia. Or, more pertinently, the first time I had to sacrifice something for my writing. There have been many sacrifices since then, and I imagine there'll be many more in the coming years, but I accept that as the cost of this crazy artistic pursuit.

And if you reading this are an aspiring writer, I expect you'll have to do the same. Embrace it. It means that you care about your craft and will serve as fuel for when your creativity fires burn low.

(p.s I think Steve the Skeleton is still stashed in the art room somewhere... whoops)