Week Nine

On closer inspection, the Quick Reads aren't as short as I thought, as the first chapter of one was around 900 words, and there was ten chapters. So I'm definitely ruling those out, as they're obviously far too long for the assignment. Also, after the lecture this week, I've decided that perhaps doing a short non-fiction piece would be easier than a fiction piece.


However, although discussing how to choose a subject to write about and how to write it will be helpful when I come to start writing my creative piece, the questions actually made me worry that I may not know enough about one subject to be able to write about it and sell it. At least not a subject I can imagine enough people wanting to read about. 


For example, in the lecture when we had to pick a subject we know a lot about, I chose the ATC (Air Training Corps.) However, although my four years experience with the ATC as a teenager means that I do know a lot about the subject, it's not something everybody is interested in. Or anybody, as far as I know. Sure, the 'I can fly a plane' line is always good to have when I'm asked for an interesting fact, (coincidently, a game we used to play a lot in the ATC) but although people are always interested to hear how I learned to do it, I don't think it's something people would want to read 2,000 words about. 

There is an Air Cadet magazine that's read by the organisation, and my mum used to read it when I took it home and the adverts were on, but I think it's just issued to ATC squadrons, not in shops or anywhere else. 

Although, strangely, this was being auctioned online!

I did have one idea of perhaps writing an article for a young teenage magazine, promoting the organisation, but I just don't think it would work. So, something else then. If I didn't learn anything else this week, I learned that I need a new hobby. 

Although, if I was to write a fictional piece, I wouldn't necessarily write only about things I know. I've written stories before about subjects such as teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, post traumatic stress, antenatal depression, and death (yes, all of my stories are full of joy!) I didn't know much about those subjects to begin with, and yet they turned out alright (according to my marks anyway!) I suppose writing a non-fiction piece requires writing about a subject in more detail, but that's what research is for. In college as part of my English Language A-Level, we were given two information packs on random subjects, and given a month to study them. Then we had a three hour editorial exam in which we had to turn the information into a creative piece in one of two choices of genre. I chose to write a radio show, although the subject was that boring, I can't remember what it was. I was the only one to get an A, though. (Not that I'm bragging.) My point is though, if I can write a piece about something I didn't honestly research that much, and had absolutely no interest in, I could do it again. Although I would obviously research it a lot this time, and be interested in it, as well as a lot of other people too. 

So the plan this week is to think up some subjects that I could easily write about, and research if needs be, and in which publication to write about them. This might not be an easy task though, as, thanks to my dissertation, my brain is full of publishing and e-books and slush piles etc. I know the module is called Writing for Publishing, but I think writing one 10,000 word essay on the subject is enough; there's no way I'm writing another piece about it too. 

Week Eight

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but in the middle of all that, a chance reading of an article in Company magazine gave me an inspiration for my creative piece. It shows that the article Victoria Gallagher wrote for TheBooskeller.com  is true. With so much work to do, I've got no time to get stuck into a big, thick book, and so the feature on speed reads appealed to me straight away. Company says 'Our fave authors are releasing short, sharp 'lit' shots. All are under 130 pages long and cost just £1.99. Any shorter and they'd be on Twitter.' 


This seemed perfect for me personally, so I ordered four of them, but then I thought...this could be something I could do for my creative piece. I checked out the quick reads website, which describes the books as 'These exciting, dramatic and funny stories are ideal for adults who've stopped reading or find reading tough, and for regular readers who want a short, fast read. Quick Reads have helped hundreds of thousands of people to pick up books and enjoy reading again.'


When they arrived, I realised how short they actually were. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting the typeface to be so big, but it's Times New Roman, size 14, so there's not much on each page. This is obviously good for new readers, or those with not a lot of time on their hands...I read the first one in about 20 minutes. The next one I'm reading, Strangers on the 16:02  is literally meant to be read on a train, which is what I'm going to do later!

Week Seven

I've started thinking about my creative piece now that the presentation is (nearly) over. I think I've settled on the idea of writing a short story, but that depends on whether I can find a publication that I can write a suitable story for. I'm going to research different short story publications next week/this week and see if I can find one I could imagine writing for.

I decided on a short story because, obviously there is a limited word count, and the only other thing I could think of doing was an article for a publication such as Cosmo, but I think that's too predictable and possibly going to be done by a lot of people people in the class, and I've also struggled with Cosmo style articles in the past. I don't think my writing style suits Cosmo.

Hopefully after getting stuck into research my next blog will be much better than this, but that's all I have to say about my creative piece at the minute.

I'm giving my presentation soon, which I'm actually suprisingly confident about, considering how I thought I'd been too ambitious. I've touched briefly on the history of the Bible, which I think needed to be done because I couldn't talk about one, new version without mentioning old versions and how the new one arrived.

Then the rest of the presentation is about the NIV, and how the theme of it is to appeal to everybody. I think this makes it interesting, as there are numerous different versions of the NIV to appeal to different audiences, and that makes for a good discussion on cover choice and design etc.

Week Six

I genuinely thought for a while that I'd been a bit too ambitious with my Bible idea for the presentation, but then I realised the logical thing to do was to just pick one publication and find as much information about that as possible. (I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier, but better late than never!) So I decided to research the publication process of my Bible, the New International Version of the Every Day Devotional Bible, with notes by Selwyn Hughes, published by Hodder and Stoughton.


As the presentation is a minimum of ten minutes, there's quite a lot of time to fill and a lot to talk about. I plan to take a few minutes to talk about the history of the Bible and it's different versions in general, and then talk in detail about the publication of the new international version. I think the Bible is an interesting choice because it is obviously different and isn't just published by one publisher. I found an article from the December 18 issue of New Yorker magazine, called The Good Book Business: Why publishers love the Bible, which sums up why I am so interested in Bible publishing...

"The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars." 

After the presentation is over, I'm going to start my creative piece. I have to admit that I haven't given it too much thought yet, as I've been focused on other work. However, with the presentation out of the way, I can start to construct my piece without worrying about other Writing for Publishing work. 

Source
Daniel Radosh, 2006. The Good Book Business: Why publishers love the Bible. [online]Available at: <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1> [Accessed 6 March 2011].