A post about how apparently unrelated day jobs can help hone your writing skills
In a recent WhatsApp discussion with some author friends, we were talking about starting writing relatively late in life. One kindly said to me, “Oh, but you’re a natural”, assuming that my capacity for storytelling had got off to a flying start without any training in 2017 when I published my first novel.
I explained to her that spending decades in a series of day jobs had honed my writing skills, giving me a head start when I began to write fiction. Composing news stories, features and articles as a journalist, and brochures, website copy and press releases in public relations provided a fine apprenticeship in writing prose. Oh, and my degree in English and Related Literature probably didn’t do me any harm either!
Being a lifelong voracious reader has also helped me learn better writing, almost by osmosis.
Every writer should be an avid reader. In my view, writers who never read are like chefs who never taste food. I wouldn’t want to eat meals they’ve cooked.
I’m still learning now, I told her, even with 13 published novels to my name. Every time I go through the editing process, my editors’ comments help me improve my writing craft.
I was pleased when our conversation prompted other writers in the group to reflect how their previous careers and experiences had influenced their later writing lives. Huge thanks to novelists Rod Griffiths, Nicola Kelsall, John Lynch, Nigel Messenger, and Peter Turnham for allowing me to share their experiences with you here on my blog.
Rod Griffiths: “A career in medicine and public health”
I wrote stories at school and was commended for them. Medicine as a career pushed them into the background. When I specialised in Public Health, communication was a vital part of the job. Stories bring lectures to life, so to some extent, I was always writing. Those stories were nonfiction, drawn from experience.
In the mid 1980s I was appointed as Director of Public Health for the West Midlands, a population of 5.2 million people. In the second month of that job an entrepreneurial small businessman in Shropshire dumped several cubic metres of water polluted by recycled paint stripper into the upper waters of the river Severn.
The weird taste made it to the drinking water in Worcester the next morning. By mid-day customers all over the south of the region were complaining to the water company. The protocol for pollution events covering multiple districts said that the Regional Director of Public Health was in charge — me.
I spent the next 48 hours leading a team of people working with the water company and local authorities, trying to find out why the water tasted strange and finding ways to keep the population safe.
The first night, I spoke to every toxicologist that I could wake up. So many different possibilities went through my head. When it was all over, nobody died, and everything got back to normal, but for several weeks I found it difficult to get it all out of my mind — I suspect it amounted to a sort of post-traumatic stress.
I remember saying to my wife, there ought to be a novel in this, not the real events, but all the other possibilities that ran through my mind over those 48 hours.
I took a week’s holiday in a ski chalet in the Alps and wrote forty thousand words of Don’t Drink the Water, an as yet unpublished novel. I finished the book by getting up half an hour early every day, writing about three hundred words each morning.
I sent the finished book to various agents. Most had no comments, but one said I needed to decide whether it was a textbook, a memoir, or a novel. I think that was the most useful advice I have ever had about my writing. I think anyone who was inspired by their career to write fiction would do well to heed that advice.
Rather than revise Don’t Drink the Water, I wrote an entirely new novel, based around a different scenario. Side Effect, based on Guillain Barre syndrome, was the first book I completed and published. Aimless Fear, my next book, was inspired by aspects of the foot and mouth epidemic.
In the last years before retirement, I was in charge of emergency planning across the region. Although that experience could have provided many scenarios for fiction, I took a personal decision to not write anything based on that experience, in order to avoid any possibility that my knowledge might provide assistance to terrorists, or other people with malign intent.
For more about Rod Griffiths’ books and writing, visit:www.blackpear.net.
Nicola Kelsall: “Everything goes into the melting pot.”
I had no idea that the things that I experienced as a young adult would have any bearing whatsoever on my current life as an author, (I didn’t think of publishing until I was 55 years old). but I’m so glad now that I did have such a lot of different jobs and life-experiences in my past.
I also met a lot of very different kinds of people and was lucky to be exposed to a myriad of views and attitudes to life which have informed my writing life hugely.
On top of this, is the enormous number of books I’ve had time to read and absorb into my subconscious, which I’m sure has had the same effect! (Although I have to admit, my memory isn’t terribly reliable, so don’t ask me about specifics!)
I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that all these things go into the melting pot of your brain and hopefully have the effect that the writing one produces is at least interesting and at best, original.
To find out more about Nicola Kelsall and her books, visit www.nicolakelsall.com.
John Lynch: “Being a salesman is the best grounding for being a writer.”
You ask for people who started writing later in life and that isn’t me – my earliest memory of telling a story dates from 1947, when I was 4.
Six years later, aged 10, I stood on the stage at Benton Park Primary School in Newcastle one parents’ day and read to the assembled pupils and parents a story I had written. Mr Hall, the headmaster, and Miss McGowan, the teacher, told me I was destined to become a writer. And I did write a great deal – all of it unpublishable.
Then, in 1968, I was working for IBM. I had just written my very first program when IBM said, “We’d like to make you a salesman.”
I said that’s ridiculous, everyone knows salespeople have to be extroverts and I’m not. (I wasn’t the most extreme kind of introvert – I’d look at your shoes rather than my own when I was talking to you but still, an introvert was what I was).
And IBM said, “No, that’s a common misconception: you can’t know what’s going on in the other guy’s head unless you understand what’s happening in your own, so the best salespeople are introverts who’ve learned to present as extroverts. And we will teach you.”
And they did, and that made all the difference for me as a writer because with their guidance I learned, in effect, to look out at people from behind a screen. The screen was the person they thought they were talking to, and the person behind it was analysing their behaviour and working out what lay behind it. I can’t think of a better grounding for a writer. (Mr Hall and Miss McGowan, by the way, turn up under other names in my coming-of-age book, The Making of Billy McErlane).
For more about John’s books and writing, visit www.jlynchblog.com.
Nigel Messenger: “Meeting interesting and inspiring people”
I had never considered whether my background had any relation to my current efforts as an author until you asked your question, Debbie.
I have spent a lifetime in the hospitality industry, specifically working in hotels. During this time I have met thousands of “celebrities” including members of the Royal Family, actors, business leaders, comedians, sporting stars, authors, politicians and the like.
Invariably we chatted and exchanged stories and gossip and I have a clear memory of most of these encounters.
I also had the privilege of working for the Poppy Factory for more than 30 years and again have heard stories from hundreds of veterans, giving me a fund of information.
For more information about Nigel Messenger’s books, visit www.nigelmessengerblog.com.
Peter Turnham: “The New Scientist – plus a snapped Achilles tendon!”
Looking back, it’s difficult to see any indication that I had even the remotest writing skill. The fact that I have achieved a small degree of writing success I find amazing! Dyslexia in the 1950’s and 60’s did not exist, and so the inability to read and write with any fluency closed virtually every academic door. Dyslexia is a strange beast, it seems to be a case of swings and balances. Dyslexics generally seem to excel in other areas, which is counterintuitive when you carry a label saying dimwit!
I strayed into dental technology, which is a combination of artistry and engineering skill. I owned one of the most successful dental laboratories in the country before I was 30 years old. I’ve had a personal secretary from the age of 25, and so what little writing I needed to do was done for me.
I did write a few technical papers and promotional literature, but these were scribbled with a pen and left for my secretary to decipher.
Later careers and projects include house building, trout farming, building lakes and running a trout fishery. None of which requires any literacy skills. Once again I wrote some technical papers and promotional literature, and by then my wife Carol had the onerous task of deciphering it.None of my activities involved any great writing skills.
My reading up to the age of 69 was exclusively non-fiction.
I read technical literature to do with my careers or projects, and general science for pleasure. I have read every copy of New Scientist for the past 40 years! But crucially for the purpose of this debate, I had never read a novel! This was my background when at the age of 69 I snapped my Achilles tendon. With a trout fishery to maintain and a lot of land to manage, sitting with my foot up for weeks on end was mentally disastrous.
In serious desperation I said I was going to write a novel! For someone who had never read a novel, can’t spell, and reads very slowly, it was like saying I would climb Mount Everest.
The intention was to provide a mental challenge in an attempt to maintain my sanity.
The first draft achieved exactly that. It contained all the words, but definitely not in the right order. The second draft, with considerable help, was almost readable. A third draft was sent to a professional editor who provided me with six pages of reasons why it was utter rubbish.
He did, however, say there was a spark of something there if he looked hard enough. I therefore produced yet another draft and eventually published it. It sold a few copies and paid for itself. A sequel followed which also paid for itself. A change of genre followed, this time historical fiction, and it became an Amazon best seller!
If there is any lesson to be learnt, it is that the technicalities of writing can be learnt at any age, even by dimwits.
The only “gifts” I bring to writing are determination, perfectionism, and a creative imagination, all of which are typical dyslexic traits. There is no such thing as perfection in writing, but you can be determined to achieve your own version of it.
It’s never a case of, do you want to succeed, it’s a case of how much do you want to succeed.
So You Think You’ve Got a Book in You?
As these examples show, it’s never too late to start writing – and whatever your past career and life experience, you will be a better writer for your unique experience.
If you’re teetering on the brink of starting out as a writer, or have stalled and need a kickstart, you might like to attend the workshop I’m running at the Evesham Festival of Words on Sunday 30th June, called “So You Think You’ve Got a Book In You?”
The workshop will help you define your book idea and turn your idea into reality, whatever your chosen genre – novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, memoir, local history, and more. The session will include helpful case studies, constructive exercises, top tips for writing well and consistently, an overview of publishing opportunities in the UK today, and the best route to publication for your project.
Find out more about this workshop at the Festival website here.
