How Many Miles to Babylon

‘I want to be a writer.’ Words that come easy for a life that isn’t. Writing can be all consuming, all demanding, taking time away from normal interests, sport, TV, visiting, you name it, writing can interrupt it. Memories of making sandwiches from bread I baked the day before, packing a lunch to go on a day trip by coach… the act of making the sandwiches from home-made bread triggered a short story idea. I wrote it in my head all day… no notebook, left home in too much of a hurry, clutching the sandwiches, to think about it… Writing can get between you and work, if you’re not careful. The characters tend to ease their way into your thoughts, to demand your attention, to stand on the sidelines waving madly, sometimes with huge flags which say TAKE NOTICE OF US!

If you’re already experiencing that, my sympathies. There’s no way out, I’m afraid. You’re hooked for life.

Equally, welcome to the writing world. It’s a demanding profession/way of life but one that writers, on the whole, would not change for anything. The joy of translating an idea into a story or novel, of bringing people alive and letting them walk and talk their way through your pages, cannot be compared to any other way of life. Artists may think they have it pinned down with their easels, palates and paints, but a canvas is not a hefty tome of 100,000 words, is it? So let the painters gather on the hillside to capture the landscape, the sunset, the bowl of fruit and we, the writers, will gather in solitude behind our monitors and let our creations become our companions.

This handbook is a small effort to try and help you on the way of making the idea become a profitable hobby or even a profitable life.

So, what are you waiting for?

Make haste, Babylon is calling…