Along with other young writers in the UK, I attended the Wicked Young Writers' Awards in June. It was a fantastic afternoon which inspired me to kickstart this blog -- albeit it took me a while! Luckily, some of these talented writers agreed to let me interview them to get an insight into their motivation and aspirations. Finalist entries can be found here: http://www.wickedyoungwriters.com/downloads/Wicked_YWA_2015_18-25.pdf . And Sugar Scape finalists can be found here: http://www.wickedyoungwriters.com/downloads/Wicked_Sugarscape_Award2015.pdf
Interview with Rachel Loughran
Tell me a little about your writing journey. When did you start? Why? How many pieces have you written so far? Have any of these been published? Where are you hoping your writing will take you?
My journey, let's see. Well I've always been a massive
reader, to the extent that at family events my cousins used to ask my parents
what I'd done wrong, and why was I being punished and made to sit in the corner
and read the whole time. I devoured books, and my mum used to read to me when I
was little, and I never had any fear about using a big word, even if I didn't
know quite yet what it meant.
When I was about fourteen, I started rewatching Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, and I discovered the murky world of fanfiction, where I've been
a sometime resident ever since. I wrote my first story on fanfiction.net shortly after
that, but it wasn't until I wrote a Harry Potter piece, a little comedy story
about Fred and George called Things I'm Not Allowed to do at Hogwarts that I
really started to get a reaction. Suddenly where I'd been getting a few hundred
hits - total - on a story previously, with this one I was getting hundreds a
day. The feedback was addictive, and over a few years the story swelled to sixteen
chapters and over half a million hits. Today, I've just finished an English
Honours degree at Strathclyde and I've not written any fanfiction in a few
years - my focus has been on original fiction. In terms of fanfiction, I'm not
very prolific; I've written about sixteen stories of varying length. Original
fiction, maybe around the same number, in the last couple of years. I was
published last Christmas in the Octavius Literary Journal. It was a story I
wrote for a class, about a long distance couple in 1962. I'm still submitting
to other journals every few months, with hopes that I'll be published again! I
currently work in life insurance - hopefully not forever.
Oh wow. Half a
million hits is fantastic. Did you use some of the feedback you got to feed
into your future work?
The feedback that is useful always sticks in my head, yeah.
I remember the bits that people say struck then the most, I know from people
reading my original stuff too that it's often tiny repetitive details that
people like the best, hints of foreshadowing, a reoccurring theme here and
there. I love doing research for stories, I like to be coming from a place of
knowledge when I write, and people in my writing classes at Uni often mentioned
the detailed research. They were like 'how do you know so much about winter
blooming plants?!'
And I was just like '...Google.' But I like that
people pick up on that and appreciate it. Often my fanfic reviews are people
just saying that I'm funny or that they loved it, which is amazing to hear but
not exactly helpful!
Where did your
inspiration come from for your WYWA piece? What’s your favourite thing
about the piece? What did you struggle with?
The piece I wrote for this competition came to me almost
fully formed when I did my annual reread of the Deathly Hallows. I always
reread it on the 21st of July, staying up all night to do it (if I can - it's
got a lot harder since I graduated and have to do that whole job thing) just
like I did when it first came out. After I finish, I always go back and read a
few favourite parts, and in this case, I went back to Godric's Hollow, and read
about Harry looking at his house, and the sign in front of it with the
signatures all over it. The story came from that moment. I wanted to know where
the signatures came from. In its original form, the story involves the
perspective of several people who signed the signpost, which I whittled down to
one quick scene to submit for entry - this scene was my favourite, the scene
where a muggle born wizard sees the house and the sign and realised all his
accidental magic isn't as strange as he thinks. With some stories, there's a
struggle, but this one was easy, like something I already knew and just had to
write down before it slipped away.
What do you think are
the main problems you face when writing? How do you combat this?
My main problem with writing is time. I work long hours and
when I come home it's easier to just eat dinner and go straight to bed most
nights than sit up at my breaky old laptop and try and be creative, which, as I
took this job to keep me afloat while I pursue writing, makes me feel horribly
guilty every time I ditch the writing to watch TV or have an early night. I try
and combat it the same way I did when I had to write essays in university - I
find a block of free time to dedicate to writing, and I pour myself a whisky,
and make it last for a thousand words, at which point I'm allowed to pour
another. It sounds compulsive and perhaps isn't the most recommendable way to
do things, but it got me through four years of studying. The system
works.
Writing when you work
full time is so difficult! I always have a problem finding the time, especially
because sometimes I'm just tired and want to watch crappy TV and put my feet
up. Is your block of free time the same time every week, or does it vary? Is it
several evenings or just one?
My time varies - I finish work early on a Tuesday and
ideally I'd like to be writing every Tuesday, but my boyfriend lives about an
hour away from me and also works full time, and so he usually comes to see me
on a Tuesday, because it's my longest free night. Which I love, obviously, but
it's just another thing that gets in the way of writing, you know. The odd
couple of hours here and there usually get me inching along. It's never enough,
but it's all I can give at the moment!
What are you working
on at the moment?
At the moment I'm working on a novel. I'm about 40,000 words
in, roughly halfway. It's coming of age fiction, I suppose. It's about a girl.
It's not fantasy. It might be funny sometimes? It's peculiar. I'm also always
working on a thousand little stories, some just in my head, some have the bones
laid out on paper and some are fleshier than others. I'm reworking my
dissertation, I'm hopeful that it could be submittable for competitions or
journals soon. There's always a million things to do.
What's your dissertation about?
My dissertation is a 6000 word story told in three parts,
about a music teacher and his affair with a pupil. It's all in the third
person, but the first part is told from his perspective, and focuses on their
first meeting and the genesis of their relationship, culminating in his
proposal, and it's all told in flashbacks from the point of view of someone who
already knows how doomed it all was. The second is told from her perspective
and covers their wedding and her becoming more successful than him and
eventually leaving him after leeching all his musical contacts, and is also
told in flashbacks, where she feels guilt and fear at returning to herald
school for a reunion concert. The third is told in present day and revolves
around the gossip mill of the school on the day of the reunion concert which
sees the couple reunite on stage.
It sounds really abstract and bonkers written out like that,
to be honest.
Is writing solely a hobby, or would you like it to lead onto something else in the future?
Writing at this point can probably only be referred to as a hobby,
but it'll be the whole picture one day. I'll keep going with the small
successes I've been having (every six months or so it seems - shouldn't be too
long before the next one rolls around) and I'll keep writing and submitting and
one day it'll happen, and I'll be a writer, and not just an English graduate
with a job in life insurance.
So is the dream to be a full-time writer one day?
That is indeed the dream. I'll keep writing, one day I'll
finish the book and send it to agents, hopefully they'll like it, and in the
meantime I'll work on the smaller stuff and send that out too. Ideally someday
soon I'll be able to afford to work part time which will let me write more. But
yeah, I have faith it'll happen. I also have all the crossed fingers and if I
thought it would help id carry around rabbits’ feet and four leaf clovers
too.
You can read Rachel’s
other work published in Octavius magazine, here: http://www.octaviusmagazine.com/writing/buy
0 comments:
Post a Comment