Well the contract is finally in place so I can formally announce that I’ve been commissioned by Lion Hudson (Monarch imprint) to co-write the autobiography of Yookie Budia, a former child soldier from the Congo. The book will be called Child of War. Yookie’s story is an incredible but harrowing tale of a journey from war to personal peace. As a young boy, Yookie was forced to participate in a series of atrocities and witnessed the murder of his own family. He managed to escape and after a treacherous journey through sub-Saharan Africa made his way to Durban, South Africa, where more dangers faced him as a child on the streets. If you want to know what happened to Yookie after that and how he met his wife Sarah and how they now run a charity called Hope2thehopeless then you’ll have to read the book! Yookie and I are working on it over the summer and it will come out early next year.
Simultaneously, Craig Gailbraith from Drawbridge Productions in Cape Town, is making a film about Yookie’s incredible journey. I’m sure it will be a box office hit!
If you would like to develop your own skills in writing life stories as well as other non-fiction writing, why not work through the Crafty Writer’s free non-fiction course
In my creative and non-fiction writing classes there are always people who want to write stories about animals. Here’s a contest for you.
The Angel Animals Network 2010 True Story Contest is now accepting submissions of true stories of animals helping children, parents, and families deal with difficult situations and circumstances. Animals featured can be dogs, cats, horses, gerbils, rabbits, ferrets, or any house pet or animal in nature. They can be family pets or therapy, assistance, or service animals.
The stories can be written by parents or guardians of children or by the children or teens themselves. Stories can also be written by adults who recall a special animal from childhood or teen years who helped them through a tough period.
This contest hopes to find real-life stories that demonstrate animals comforting and helping to heal children during everyday ups and downs or traumatic events such as divorce or other losses. The stories can depict how children and teens de-stress with animals while learning valuable life lessons. The deadline is 15 September 2010. For more details visit Angel Animals.
One of the most time-consuming task of any freelance writer is looking for and following up leads on new markets. I’ve just come across a website that helps you find paying outlets in fiction, poetry and non-fiction writing. You can also sign up (free) for a weekly newsletter that provides you with a round-up of market opportunities. Visit Worldwide Freelance Writer for more information. There is also a dedicated European sub-division called EU Writer.
Students from my ever-popular non-fiction writing course in Newcastle have asked for a follow-up course. The result is Write To Sell, hosted by the Centre for Lifelong Learning. The course starts on Thursday 21 May at 10am. Places are filling up fast, so to secure your place book through CLL asap. Details are here
The course is suitable for anyone who has completed the first level course or who has had some non-fiction published already. If you have done neither, then why not check out my free non-fiction course here on The Crafty Writer.
In this second session on writing history for the commercial market, we will look at how to write narrative history by using creative writing techniques to write the ‘story’ of your history.
Whose story is it?
The most marketable and interesting form of written history, is history about people. Your research will have unearthed many potential ‘characters’. Which ones are you going to feature in your story? Articles are best written when focusing on a single ‘protagonist’ or a small group. In a book you can deal with more characters, but they need to be linked. There are a number of questions that you can ask that are used by fiction writers to develop a character. By adopting this approach you will help to bring your personalities to life and to present them in a lively, readable historical narrative.
Continue reading ‘Writing history for the commercial market – 2: narrative history writing techniques’
Non-fiction history writing is a burgeoning market. If you’re an amateur historian or genealogist you may find a paying outlet for your masses of research. In this series we will look at how to turn history into commercial articles or books. Continue reading ‘Writing history for the commercial market – 1: finding the social context’
As a spin-off from the writing for the internet session in my ever popular non-fiction writing course, Rod Smith, my technical advisor, is running a 10-week course on helping people get started in blogging. And for those of you who have already tried their hand at this most modern form of writing, he will help you develop and ‘monetize’ your blog. It’s based at the Centre for Lifelong Learning in Newcastle upon Tyne. For more information visit Rod’s own blog
For those of you who can’t make it, why not check out Rod’s guest posts right here on The Crafty Writer – Beginner Blogging for Writers 1, 2 & 3
Oh, he told me to tell you, he taught me everything I know. Mmm, well, not everything, Rod.
Field Report.com is a community website that features true-life stories. Membership is free, and you simply have to ‘rate’ five other stories in order to qualify to up-load your own 2000 word story. They’ve currently got a competition going with the closing date now extended to 31 December 2008. Each month, the winning story will win $1,000 and be entered into a $250,000 prize draw in January 2009. I thought this might be too good to be true so I checked it out and found that both the Guardian and Time Magazine have featured the website and this contest and seem to think it’s legit.
So what are you waiting for? Get writing! If you need some tips on writing from life, check out this session in our free non-fiction writing course.
This month’s Crafty Writer Book Club discussion is Shakespeare: the World as a Stage by Bill Bryson. For those of you new to The Crafty Writer, once every two months (give or take) we discuss a best-selling book from a writer’s perspective. If you’re just visiting the site and haven’t participated in one of our Book Clubs before, just jump right in and leave your comments in the section below. As this is our first non-fiction book we will divide our discussion under the following headings:
Continue reading ‘Shakespeare: the World as a Stage’
Most writers, including myself, tend to write their way into an article or story. We only ‘warm up’ by about the second or third paragraphs. On editing, you will hopefully see that your first paragraph can usually be scrapped, or incorporated elsewhere in the piece. For non-fiction writing, a good tip is to consciously start with a who? where? when? what? working intro, then give it some sparkle on the rewrite. For more on the 4W intro, see my post on How to Write a Feature Article and for fiction intros see how to write a short story, although it can equally be applied to novel openings.
For some excellent tips on creating the perfect intro visit Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen’s article on Writing Great Leads in which she encourages you to shock, challenge or provoke your readers into reading on. Laurie, along with yours truly, is one of the regular contributors to the Write On blog carnival.
