Okay, this is just a little quick note just to let you know what happened with the Bandit Fiction submission. I know you were all on the edge of your seats wanting to know what happened, so here we go…
They rejected it! They did give me some really good, quality feedback though, which was very much appreciated. Time to take that little story back to the drawing board and give it a polish.
Onward and upwards!
(told you this was a quick one!)
Be kind to each other,
Steven x
As part of my MA (that’s right, it’s been so long since I updated this blog, I’ve passed my degree and am now studying for my Masters!), we had to write a piece of fiction specifically tailored to a publisher/magazine/whatever of our choice. Then, we had to actually submit the thing!
Now, I’ve always been very hesitant about submitting my stuff because, well, I’m not a big fan of rejection and I can always manage to convince myself that whatever I submit is going to get rejected.
dealing with rejection like a boss…
So, I don’t submit anything. See how that dragon eats its own tail?
Anyway, I had to submit something this time, otherwise I would have failed the module, or at the very least would have been marked down for it. So, as reluctant as I was to do it, I started looking around for somewhere to post to. That’s how I came across Bandit Fiction.
Bandit Fiction are a new company, specialising in digital publishing. What I like about them, and what drew me to them as a target for my submission, was their emphasis on giving opportunities to writers who are currently studying or have recently graduated from Creative Writing courses.
For the most part, the lecturers and the course content of most Creative Writing degrees show you how to break into the industry and often provide definite ways to do so. It’s not always easy though when you emerge, blinking at the sun, from your safe university eggshell. Newborn baby writers often have no idea where to go once their degree is finished and wander around staring in wonder (and sometimes horror) at the possibilities that lie before them.
That’s why it’s a breath of fresh air to see publishers like Bandit Fiction who want to provide a bridge between education and application. I should point out that they aren’t exclusively for Creative Writing students. Their website makes it very clear that they don’t care about your age, race, gender, disability. All they care about is whether your story is good and suited to them.
yep, shouldn’t be long now…
That’s pretty refreshing to see too, right?
The long and the short of this blog post then is simply to say that I submitted something to Bandit Fiction!! Hooray for me!
Now I just have to wait for the rejection email…
Be kind to each other, yeah?
Steven.
So, when I was in my third year of university, which ended in June of this year (2018), I wrote a fiction piece which took its inspiration from the Greek myth of Perseus and the Labyrinth. We all know the one, right? Perseus heads into the labyrinth as a ‘sacrifice’ and with the help of Ariadne, navigates his way through with string. In the end, Perseus defeats the Minotaur that lives in the labyrinth and returns home (sort of) triumphantly. This is an oversimplification of the myth, I know, but it serves as a good introduction to this blog.
You see, I wanted to write this story because of my struggle with depression and how much it sometimes feels like wandering through a labyrinth, only without the string. The Minotaur, in this scenario, is played by my depression itself. It loves its role. The story itself took on a life of its own, as these things often do, and it didn’t go in the direction that I thought it would. That was okay though because I’m happy with how the story turned out, although it might need a little more editing before I think it’s finally finished.
I guess what I wanted to talk about in this blog post, was how much it actually feels like my depression is a maze, a labyrinth. I feel like I’m stuck in here, wandering through a labyrinth of past thoughts, past mistakes, present thoughts, present mistakes etc. You get the idea. Without the string though, this maze gets pretty disorienting pretty quickly. It’s really easy to get caught up in what could have been, what should have been, and it’s really easy to get lost in all of that. Ultimately, I think the maze is made up of my lack of self-esteem. It’s the linchpin to everything that’s wrong with my mind.
I have a really, really low self opinion of myself. I have no idea why. I can’t trace it to any traumatic experience in my past, so maybe it’s just all in my head? I don’t know, to be honest. I guess if I did know, I could fix it. The fact of the matter remains that I don’t like myself, like, at all. It’s probably some kind of mental illness, it probably even has a name, but if it does, I don’t know what it is.
Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I feel that my ‘labyrinth’ is made up of my self-esteem issues and that my depression functions as its ‘Minotaur’, stalking the halls and making sure that anything that find its ways in never gets out again. You know, things like me. I feel like I’m trapped in here and can’t ever really find my way out.
I’m always hopeful that one day, someone will come along with a ball of twine and help guide me out of this maze, but the deeper and deeper I get into this place, the less likely I feel that I’m ever going to find my way out. It is what it is, and, as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I can be pretty stubborn when I want to be.
So, while my actual maze isn’t quite as dramatic as the one I wrote about in my short story, it’s still very much a real thing and I’m trapped inside of it, even while it does an okay job of keeping me connected to the outside world. Well, it sometimes does a good job of that, anyway.
Maybe this post lost its thread along the way, which in the context is kind of ironic, but not entirely unexpected. I suppose I’m trying to say that my problems probably stem a lot deeper than just simple ‘depression’, but every maze has a way out, right?
Be kind to each other,
Steven
So, it’s been well over a year since I posted anything to this blog. That is entirely on me. I have been busy though completing my degree and living my life, so that could serve as an excuse, but it really shouldn’t. The original idea of building this whole website was to keep my writing skills flowing when I wasn’t at university, but then I kind of let that slide.
I’m here now though and even though this blog post is only going to be a short one, I do intend to keep up to date with it and add new stuff going forward from here. So for those of you who follow this blog, the good news is that I’m back and will be making more of an effort to keep up to date and keep in touch with you here on the blog. Thank-you for your patience and for following me in the first place! I’ll try not to let you down in the future.
Be excellent to each other,
Steven.
Wow. What a journey that first year at university was! I’m so sorry you didn’t really get to experience it with me, I think I misjudged the volume of work when I said I’d keep this blog updated. Still, I’m here now with plenty of time on my hands over the summer, so I’m going to try to keep it updated a little better.
Our amazing library. This place saved my life more than once!
First things first, let me tell you how I felt my first year went; it went great. It surpassed all of my expectations and managed to blow a few of my fears out of the water. I’ve done well in the majority of the assessments that have already been marked, including an absolutely mind blowing 80% in one of them. I still can’t believe that 80% mark is actually right! The classes were all interesting and while sometimes it felt like we were feeling around in the dark without much guidance, I guess that’s just how universities operate. A lot of the stuff you have to work out or decide on for yourself; it’s not like the less advanced kinds of further education, where you’re spoon fed the information you need. The tutors seem to give you just enough to get you thinking and then the rest is really up to you. It takes some getting used to, but I think I worked it out fine in the end.
The other thing I want to mention in this blog post is that I will be putting my assessment submissions up here on the website in the future, but in order to avoid the university’s plagiarism filter, I have to leave them off until they’ve been marked. Look for them at the beginning of June, if you’re interested in how they turned out.
Other than that, thanks for sticking with me, those of you who still read these things! I PROMISE I will try to keep this thing updated and will hopefully be adding new work and stuff as I keep my skills up over summer. Unless I become world famous in the meantime, of course!
Be Excellent To Each Other!
Steven
So, the second week of university is over and our third week is about to begin! Last week brought with it new challenges as well as some surprising revelations!
I guess you could say that last week was the first time ‘shit got real’ at university, as our tutors gleefully threw tons of information at us and chuckled as our heads
Someone catch my brain!!
revolved (I might be embellishing that a little). We did suddenly find ourselves with lots to think about and lots to study; it’s hard to know where to start, but start I must!
Even though there’s work to do, the reading part of it doesn’t really feel like work and as I read books written by authors I’d never heard of, in styles I’d never consider reading, I find myself enjoying it. It really is amazing how much you can learn by getting out of your comfort zone and reading things you wouldn’t usually. I found myself initially confused and disliking Dan Rhodes’ writing style in Anthropology, but by the time I’d finished it, I’d come to love those little surrealist vignettes of his and I will be seeking out more of his work.
Another surprising thing I discovered was how much I’m actually scared of
Scriptwriting in a nutshell…
scriptwriting! Before I started the course, I thought it was easy, but after our first four hour (yes, four hours of scriptwriting each week!) class, I was petrified by the
technical complexity of scripts. Hopefully as the weeks go on, I’ll be able to get it straight in my head and I think that ultimately, I will enjoy scriptwriting. Still, it was scary, eye opening stuff!
For me, the lesson of the week has to go to Building The World. We were spoiled by having it as our very first class and it was so much fun! Everything else was struggling to match up to it. We started easily enough by discussing what secondary worlds were and why we create them. We then had to imagine what our world would be like without a single invention. It was fascinating to imagine the possibilities that could exist when just one essential invention was removed from the world. Although I have to say to some of my classmates, who imagined a world
It’s early days in World Building…
without the internet, that I remember that world very clearly already! Jokes about my age aside, the whole lesson was fun and thought provoking.
So we start week three with a good idea of how our lessons are going to go and a very real idea of the amount of work we have to do. Even with all of the work, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else right now and I’m so happy I have a great bunch of people to go on this journey with!
So, here we are, my time at Edge Hill University has finally started! That means that from now on, this blog will be getting regularly updated as I keep a journal/blog/personal rant of the things that I’m learning here at university. I would have posted on Monday, but the only thing that happened was a tour of the campus and while that was fascinating for me, I doubt those of you who read this would have been enthralled to learn the opening times of the library!
“Oh my god, he’s talking about the library again!!”
As enlightening for me as Monday was, Tuesday was the real deal. I finally got to meet my department tutors and the other Creative Writing students. We had our Creative Writing Programme Induction in the morning. This was, as our Programme Leader said, just to get the nuts and bolts of both our course and university life out of the way before the real learning starts next week. It was really interesting overall, from both a student point of view and from a personal one, I felt that the personalities of our tutors shone through and they seem to be a likeable, relaxed group as they talked us through some crucial (but, admittedly, a little boring) pointers about how our time here will run.
We were told the times of our seminars/workshops as well as a little from each tutor about what these would include. Those of you who know me well will know that my particular interests lie in Speculative Fiction and Writing for Games. It bodes well, I think, that the tutor for those particular workshops came across as very friendly and approachable (ultimately though, they were all very nice!). Best of all, the whole course kicks off with ‘Building The World’ next Wednesday.
Tuesday afternoon saw us in a lecture hall, getting a talk from the English Department head and from Student Services. It wasn’t interesting enough to warrant a breakdown on this blog and so I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say that it served to make me feel glad that we won’t be spending too much time in big lecture halls. Those places make me so sleepy it’s untrue!
“Must…take…notes…zzzzz”
The rest of the afternoon was spent getting to know some of the other mature students who are studying in the English Department, as well as a chance to have a chat with the tutors. I also had a couple of really interesting chats; one with Peter, who will be running our Building The World class, about RPG’s and tabletop games and other with one of the history lecturers, whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten, about how a good knowledge of historical research can be useful when creative worlds for your fiction to exist in.
Finally, the rest of the English/History/Creative Writing students joined us for a few drinks, some snacks and a fun little quiz which saw us put into groups of six, fighting it out for a grand prize of Book Tokens!! (Remember: writers are readers who write!) Unfortunately, we missed out on third place by one point, but were satisfied with being the highest of the also rans! It’s the taking part that counts, right?
So that’s more or less my first week at university. Apologies to those of you who thought it was going to be a rambunctious tale of wild drinking and partying,
Not pictured; me tucked up in bed…
which you probably remember from your own Freshers Week, but you have to remember, I’m 38 and the last thing those 18 year old kids want is some creepy guy twenty years older than they are hanging out with them. I’m happy just to be doing this course in the first place!
I look forward to next week and getting my teeth stuck into the course properly. Watch this space for further exciting tales from academia!
When you think about art, what’s the first thing that comes into your head? I guess for many it’s the classic idea of painting or perhaps drawing. A colour spattered painter holding a palette, stood in front of an easel. That image isn’t incorrect of course, painting and drawing are art, but for me, that three letter word encompasses so much more.
Bob Ross, a genuine legend.
You see, far too often I’ve had discussions with people who’ve boldly claimed that they don’t like ‘art’. Now that concept is alien to me and to be honest, I have a hard time believing that it’s true. I guess that somewhere in the world there must be someone who doesn’t like art at all, but when people say it to me, I’m more inclined to think that they just mean paintings, museums and things like that, because otherwise their life would be very shallow. Music is art, so does that mean that someone who doesn’t like art doesn’t like music? Who doesn’t like music!? Television programmes are art, so are movies, books, magazines. Even buildings are art.
I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that a creative mind isn’t just something monopolised by artists, writers, poets etc. I personally believe that art is anything created by a person that causes you to have an emotional reaction or response towards it. It doesn’t matter to me if that response is positive or negative, the only requirement (for me at least) is that it makes you feel something.
I just want one. I can’t even drive. I. Just. Want. One!
With that said, in my eyes, a hell of a lot of things can be considered art. I’ve already mentioned buildings, I love a good building, especially one that’s of an interesting design or has some kind of unique architectural quirk or construction. I think that cars can be art, too. Some of the better looking supercars out there in the world today have definitely made me have an emotional reaction to them (mainly jealousy towards whoever was driving it, but it counts!). Trains, planes, boats, all of these things can be beautiful or well crafted enough that they make you have an emotional reaction. Bear in mind I’m not talking about making you fall over weeping at the beauty of it all, but even if it just manages to stir something inside of you, however slightly, then it’s done its job.
I am quite an emotional person anyway, which is probably the reason that I love the arts so much. I expect that not everyone would agree with me that a car or a plane is a form of art, but think of the construction and the technical know how that’s gone into constructing these things, the intricate way the parts all fit together and work in perfect harmony. That sounds a lot like art to me. I especially love it when something someone else created makes me want to know why the creator made it, what was the thought process behind it? What does it mean to them? What do they think of what it means to me?
But is it art?
I’d love to know what your own perception of art is, leave me your thoughts in the comments section below and let me know? For now just consider it the next time something moves you, even just a little inside, and ask yourself ‘but is it art?’
Before I get going with this post, I feel that I need to offer a little disclaimer. I am not a student of Psychology or Sociology and have no qualifications in these fields, so the opinions that follow are my own, uneducated observations, unless I link directly to something written by someone with a greater knowledge in the field of the mind than I. With all that said…
At various points in my life, I’ve had conversations with friends, colleagues and even some strangers about the links between creativity and mental health. The image of the ‘tortured artist’ is prevalent in society to the point where it has become somewhat of a cliché. Are we all tortured though? Do we have to be mentally ill to write, paint, sing, compose, draw or do anything creative? Obviously, the answer is no. I am pretty sure that there are plenty of creative people out there who are of sound mind and body. There is some interesting evidence linking mental health to creativity out there though.
Douglas Adams knew what he was talking about…
Some of you reading this will know about my own personal battle with depression that’s been going on for years now. It’s not an easy illness to live with and it can make me not only suicidal, but incredibly self-destructive too. Despite all the drawbacks, I did find that while I was in one of my lowest phases, I was writing an awful lot of poetry. Yes, the poetry was dark and sometimes depressing, but it was helping me to express how I felt in the only way I knew how.
There have been a few studies done over the years to try to establish if there is a link between mental health problems and creativity. Most notably one conducted in Sweden, which found that creativity and mental illness do not necessarily have a link, with the possible exception of Bipolar Disorder and the possibility that writers tended to suffer from depression more than other creative types.
The problem with these kind of studies is that the notion of ‘creativity’ can be very subjective. The Swedish study didn’t properly define what they considered creative, except to say that scientific creativity consisted of doing research and teaching at universities. Furthermore, they didn’t specify a difference between artistic creativity with the exception of writers. Finally, even if they had specified between artistic creativity, their idea of what that creativity is might not necessarily be the same as everyone else’s.
The creative brain. Squishy and encased in glass.
The American neuropsychiatrist, Nancy Andreasen conducted a study of the writers of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She conducted first person interviews with them regarding their personal struggles with mental illness. She discovered that the idea of the ‘tortured artist’ wasn’t necessarily true, that these writers had become successful despite their mental illnesses, not because of them. They overcame their struggles and even mentioned that while they were in a period of depression, they found that their creativity was stifled by the illness. Andreasen documented her findings in the book ‘The Creative Mind‘.
Since the Andreasen study seems to show that the Iowa writers overcame their mental illnesses in order to become successful, I think it’s fair to say that the ‘tortured artist’ cliché is just a myth. It’s certainly true that at first, my own depression was adding fuel to my creativity, inspiring me to write quite a few poems in a short space of time. I think though, that for me this process was a cathartic one. It helped me to take stock of and understand the emotions I was going through at the time. By interpreting those emotions into words and putting them down on paper, I was able to look at them, analyse them and see what was going on in my mind. Sort of like an emotional ‘selfie’, which I guess most poetry is anyway.
The thing that stands out the most to me is that after that initial flurry of creativity, I stopped almost completely. Perhaps, as the Iowa writers attested, my mental illness had become a barrier to my creativity once I had poured my feelings out. Certainly my attempts at writing since then until now have been half-hearted. Now that I know that my mental illness has this effect on my creativity, maybe I won’t be so hard on myself in the future if I’m feeling down and finding it hard to write. If that’s the case, maybe that can help me in controlling my depression by introducing another positive thought into my CBT bat-belt of tricks. That can only be a good thing, I think.
Creativity – Like having the whole world in your hands. I’ll stop now.
In conclusion, while nothing that’s been said above can definitively answer the question regarding the link between mental illness and creativity, I think that, wherever your creativity comes from, whether you’re artistically creative, scientifically creative or creative in business, as long as you’re taking risks and dreaming your dreams, that’s all that matters. So while the answer to our question may remain ambiguous, it does seem that you don’t actually have to be mad to work here, but in some cases, it might help!
.
I guess this is a fairly basic question to ask on a blog about writing. It’s a question that I’ve never actually asked myself in the past, so I thought that I might have a go at answering it now.
It’s alright, it’s only a first draft…
I must have been about six or seven when I actually realised, for the first time, that I enjoyed putting the thoughts that were in my head down on paper. I can’t even remember now what things I wanted to share with the world at that age! I do remember writing things down when I’d played a particularly cool game with my toys and I wanted to remember the specifics so I could play that game again.
Even though I’ve said that I didn’t do much writing during my teenage years, it would be a lie to say that I put my imagination to rest and dulled it with alcohol, because I didn’t. My teenage imagination was mostly preoccupied with tabletop role-playing games. Yes, like Dungeons and Dragons, but no, not Dungeons and Dragons. It still amazes me even now that you could tell someone you once took a dump on a cat and they wouldn’t flinch, but tell them you’ve played D & D and they look at you like you just slapped the pope. Tabletop RPG’s are amazing and really, really good for your imagination. I thoroughly believe that more people should play them!
Tabletop Roleplaying – More fun than it looks!
As the saying goes though, ‘One door closes and other one opens’ and I found myself at a loose end one night, when a friend of mine, Louise Fazackerley (if you’ve never seen her perform before, you owe it to yourselves to do so, she’s amazing!
Louise Fazackerley*
Click on her name to visit her website and see where she’s appearing next!), suggested that I attend the open mic poetry night at the much missed Tudor House Hotel in Wigan. This fired my passion for writing again and the rest, as they say, is-well, it’s just below, actually…
*Photograph of Louise Fazackerley taken by Richard Davis. Used with permission.
Angst, Love And Other Monsters Of The Mind 