When I first joined my local writers' group, among the first people I met was crime author, Dave Sivers, who has self-published a range of ebooks for Kindle and recently found his work among the top selling books in his genre.
His latest book is Scars Beneath the Soul, a detective story of murder and mayhem in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire. I asked Dave to tell me about his writing journey. This is what he said...
"I seem to have been a ‘writer’ for about as long as I have known how to
read and write; it has been a constant for me through all the changes that life
throws at you. In a sense, either my writing has been like a soundtrack to my
life, or my life has been like a soundtrack to my writing - I’m never 100% sure
which.
"My first love was fiction. I
started trying to write 'proper' novels in my twenties, and produced something
half-decent in my thirties, which received encouraging feedback from agents and
publishers - but no publication deal.
Over the next ten years, I found that I had a tougher outer shell than I
had realised. Writers have to learn that
rejection is an occupational hazard - you either learn from it and move on, or
give up in favour of something less challenging, like alligator wrestling.
"Joining a writers’ group marked a big step-change. Suddenly, I was
exposed me to a wide range of 'real' writers who were doing all sorts of stuff
that I hadn't thought about. And I realised that I needed to be flexible
as well as persistent if I was going to make a success of writing.
"So I tried my hand at journalism, first securing weekly columns with two
local newspapers. This developed my
professionalism, gave me discipline, and led on to success with magazine
articles. I won prizes and publication with short stories, and have also
dabbled in amateur stage material and TV comedy sketches.
"The big life lesson I had learnt was this: if at first you don’t
succeed, don’t just try again, but try a different approach. I've quite
recently become a songwriter, almost by accident, and found I'm rather good at
it. I have also started self-publishing my fiction as e-books, after years of
‘near misses’ with agents. If I'd only been getting standard rejections, I
would have known I was rubbish, but there has been enough positive feedback to
encourage me to take the plunge.
"As a self-publisher, I’m not only author, but
editor-in-chief, typesetter, publisher, marketing manager and press officer. If
I really was doing it all by myself, then writing really would be the lonely,
solitary occupation the clichés say it is. But you know what? It doesn’t have
to be. I have a little team of readers
whose opinions I trust who read my stuff and offer suggestions. I have enjoyed
collaborative work with various co-writers. I have my writers group and other
writing mates to ‘talk shop with’. And I have my family, who have always
supported me. Writing can be as much about team work as any other profession.
"I've also discovered that, for a writer, no
bad experience is wasted. It can lead to an article, or it can be grist
for fiction. Instead of getting mad at people, I can make them characters in
short stories and murder them horribly. There’s no other job like it."
Dave's Books: You can view Dave's literary collection here: www.amazon.co.uk/Dave-Sivers/e/B005OUQCD0/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0. Follow him on Twitter @DaveSivers or visit his website www.davesivers.co.uk
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