With the release of my first book, Dating the Alphabet, fast approaching I get asked plenty of questions like Are you going to make lots of money? Is it necessary to drink that much to be creative? And have you always wanted to write a book? The answers being fingers crossed, probably not and up until a year ago it had never crossed my mind.
Dating the Alphabet
I haven't had the most traditional path to getting this book published and to me that's what is most rewarding. I started writing Dating the Alphabet as a sitcom, I signed up to a course, Concept to Script, it required a group of us to turn up each Saturday for six hours and at the end of six months you would hopefully have something to pitch and show prospective producers. With three episodes written, a killer logline and enthusiasm brimming I went out and got lucky. I got to work and talk with some amazing producers but even with their guidance and support it became clear it was not going to get made.
As writers we're used to rejection, well at least I am, I once got three rejections about different projects in one hour, one hour! But if you don't learn from those rejections and move on you're in the wrong business so that's what I did from my sitcom, I moved on. I kept the title, the jokes and decided to write a play, okay a short ten minute one but I used one of the character dates from the sitcom, wrote it, took it to a local group that does read throughs and out of that was invited to put it into a short play festival.
I suddenly had producing and casting roles to do but the beauty of being rushed is you don't have time to think you only have time to do. The short play festival was a whirlwind, we got three performances and the laughs and enthusiastic responses buoyed me on to go ahead with the plan to write the book.
Looking back that was a pretty big goal, the only real thing I'd written was a sitcom episodes, a short play and blogs on my site Ramblings of a Quickwit so to say I was a little daunted is an understatement but the thing I was confident about was that I knew my style and that I had a funny, heartwarming story to tell.
About a third of the way through I became a bit lost and searched for answers, I came across a five day course with a prolific author, Fiona McIntosh who promised if you were prepared to do the work she would help give it the best possible chance. I listened to her advice, practically became consumed by writing and found myself with a publishing deal with HarperCollins Australia five months later.
I'm so excited about its release and that my story will finally get an audience, it may not be the audience I imagined in the beginning but it's now the audience I want.