Oldgnome
Dreamer
Hello.
I began writing long before I was diagnosed with an autistic spectrum condition, which happened in my late thirties. My first love was poetry and this led to a bursary from the arts council in the U.K. in the 1990's while I was a member of a large poetry network in Kirklees here in Yorkshire in the U.K. I published a book of poems through small press, but even then I was interested in the half-told and the half-seen. I gained a reputation for delivering mysterious poems and for creating atmospheres through unusual structures. These structures naturally passed into my stories and into one particular story that I had been working on for around twenty years at that point. That story, which turned out to be a novel, was self-published on my birthday (this week). Dear Happenstance may turn out to be my only novel. My first poetry tutor told me that writing a novel would nearly kill me, and indeed it nearly did. From the first seed of an idea to the finished work took 42 years. I never knew it was a novel, at least not at first, because Its structure was so unorthodox.
Anyway during this extraordinary marathon with the novel I also wrote short stories whilst training as a fine art landscape painter. The degree courses involved many concise essays and these helped me to narrow the focus of my stories. Strangely, after all these years spent writing I have only completed a small number of stories and have only read books with a small number of characters. I have attention problems and I can easily lose track in books that are populated by vast numbers of similarly named characters. I love The Hobbit, but lost my way in The Lord Of The Rings. I love The Little Prince (Exupery) and Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. I love Titus Groan but drifted a lot in the rest of Peake's Gormanghast trilogy. My attention is so poor that I have tried to give up writing many times but found myself wandering back to the desk. At the moment I am back at the short stories but without much momentum. My life as a painter will probably snatch me back soon and keep me for the whole of the summer. In winter something happens, the cold weather and early darkness send me into stories, which is how it has always been for me.
I began writing long before I was diagnosed with an autistic spectrum condition, which happened in my late thirties. My first love was poetry and this led to a bursary from the arts council in the U.K. in the 1990's while I was a member of a large poetry network in Kirklees here in Yorkshire in the U.K. I published a book of poems through small press, but even then I was interested in the half-told and the half-seen. I gained a reputation for delivering mysterious poems and for creating atmospheres through unusual structures. These structures naturally passed into my stories and into one particular story that I had been working on for around twenty years at that point. That story, which turned out to be a novel, was self-published on my birthday (this week). Dear Happenstance may turn out to be my only novel. My first poetry tutor told me that writing a novel would nearly kill me, and indeed it nearly did. From the first seed of an idea to the finished work took 42 years. I never knew it was a novel, at least not at first, because Its structure was so unorthodox.
Anyway during this extraordinary marathon with the novel I also wrote short stories whilst training as a fine art landscape painter. The degree courses involved many concise essays and these helped me to narrow the focus of my stories. Strangely, after all these years spent writing I have only completed a small number of stories and have only read books with a small number of characters. I have attention problems and I can easily lose track in books that are populated by vast numbers of similarly named characters. I love The Hobbit, but lost my way in The Lord Of The Rings. I love The Little Prince (Exupery) and Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy. I love Titus Groan but drifted a lot in the rest of Peake's Gormanghast trilogy. My attention is so poor that I have tried to give up writing many times but found myself wandering back to the desk. At the moment I am back at the short stories but without much momentum. My life as a painter will probably snatch me back soon and keep me for the whole of the summer. In winter something happens, the cold weather and early darkness send me into stories, which is how it has always been for me.
Myth Weaver
Troubadour
