19 May 2015

Travelling Across and Up and Down The Page

Today is the official launch day of J.S.Watts' new novel Witchlight in paperback and e-versions. The online launch party is taking place this evening (UK time) and the fourth of her blog posts in the week-long Witchlight blog tour has been published. Author Susan Roebuck has generously hosted it and has also published a wonderfully positive review of Witchlight at the same time.

The post is called "Travelling Across and Up and Down the Page" and a little flavour of it is provided here, but you really need to go to Susan's Blog to read the entire piece and her wonderful review of Witchlight.



When Susan generously invited me to write a guest post for this blog I naturally asked if there was a particular subject she’d like me to write about. “How about your journey to date as a writer?” Fair enough, I thought and so here I am, pen in hand (I invariably write first drafts of anything long hand), wondering where I should begin this summary of what is, in effect, a lifetime’s journey.

I’ve always been an avid reader and writer. I used to say that my earliest significant writing moment was when I was roughly seven or eight and a poem I had written was placed (second, I think, but I may be wrong) in a cross-borough poetry competition. My mother, however, claims to have physical proof that my first poetry success was at the earlier age of four or five, when a poem I wrote about the beauty of nature was one of two chosen to be read out in school morning assembly. Apparently, for blackmail purposes, she has the original poem in question written in my infant scrawl.

Needless to say, I wrote a number of poems and short stories (and a play, if I remember correctly) during my school days and some even won some prizes. There was a brief lull in my writing activity when I went to university and the pressure of late night essay crises and analysing others’ writing won out over my own creative processes. By the time I graduated, however, my writing was once more on the up and I was back to writing poetry again.

For a while I was doing quite well in terms of the publication of my poems in UK literary magazines, but then, as my non-writing career took off, paid work got in the way. Indeed, the further my career progressed, the less writing I did. I never stopped writing poetry altogether, but the time and commitment needed to keep sending the poems out to magazines (and deal with the hundreds of rejections that come back, as well as the occasional joyous acceptance) weren’t there. Writing became, for me, a totally private pursuit. I always told myself, though, that “one of these days” I was going to see if anyone would publish a poetry collection by me and, maybe, whether I’d got a novel in me...



You can see the post in its entirety and read its conclusion at Susan Roebuck http://www.susanroebuck.com/2015/05/t...

Wednesday's post (the fifth in the Witchlight Blog Tour) will be hosted by author Ute Carbone over at her blog, Coffee With Friends: http://www.utecarbone.com/coffee-with... It will be a wonderful opportunity for people to get to meet Holly, the lead character of Witchhlight.