The Quandary

Posted on October 5, 2020 by mkmacinnes

I’ve sweated these past few days about how to write this post. I had intended to attempt to justify the course of action I am about to take, before then realising that I didn’t have to explain myself at all. Firstly, the circumstances that led me to this juncture are too complex to pack into a single post – secondly, I’ve over-explained myself already – and thirdly, too many spoilers! No amount of explanation can adequately convey what is the most finely sprung state of affairs you can possbly imagine (think tight-ropes, nooses and crocodile clips).

I have no doubt that many will look at my actions and think “What the ****?” Suffice to say that I have agonised long and hard over this and, given the specifics of my circumstances, it is the most appropriate action I can take.

It is what it is. Stay tuned …

M K MacInnes
5 October 2020

The Poet

Posted on September 17, 2020 by mkmacinnes

I follow the path of poets of old.

Their voices beckon me into the fold,

Many cut short in the days of their prime,

but nevertheless remembered in rhyme.

For somehow in the throes of death,

They cry out with mortal breath

“O kindred spirits, living or departed,

carry on the work I started.”

For aspiring poets share a trait,

a common tendency to emulate

to the point of near obsession

those who leave the headiest impression.

Now inspired to the point of distraction,

I write of comrades wounded in action

of rescues effected in countless battles,

mothers and children herded like cattle.

I do not know from whence it comes,

the cries of the dying, the pounding drums.

These are the things that came from before,

days long since gone, ages of yore.

I have no desire to write of such things

as flowers and trees and tiny birds’ wings.

In poetry books they have their place,

but me I will write, by the gift of God’s grace,

of karmic desire and brave young men,

journeys beyond and back again.

Written during my Wilfred Owen phase!

Reality check 2020

Posted on June 16, 2020 by mkmacinnes

Young woman wearing virtual reality glasses

WHEN I published my first short story collection, Close Call: Short and Bittersweet, I dedicated it to ‘the two Gerries, without the shadow of whose memory this my first book would never have seen the light of day’. My brother asked me who the other Gerry was and I told him it was a reference to our late mother’s schizophrenia (she was a Gerry too). Well, that was only partly true. My choice of words was designed to be ambiguous. So in effect, I lied.

There are things even my closest friends and family never knew about me that I’ve lugged around for years. I may have dropped little jigsaw pieces here and there, that is when I did feel inclined to discuss it. But the bigger picture was so mind-blowing and at times surreal that even when I tried, I could never find the words. The only way was to write it. And that has taken years and many false starts.

My biggest problem was never the writing but the perceived risks of attempting to get it published. It describes a unique inner journey and under normal circumstances, the right publisher would bite my hand off. However, it is loaded with legal implications and I can’t very well pass it around in the expectation of confidentiality. And I can only disguise my characters up to a point without killing the story. Particularly as it has an ethical and spiritual angle to it, it has been my goal all along to act with the best intent towards the individuals who co-created it. Which is all very well if you can get hold of them and they are not surrounded by a metaphorical barbed wire fence.

Another dilemma I faced was deciding who my readers were. The closest genre would be ‘spiritual memoir’. However, a wider readership, for whom some of the themes I touch on would have little or no appeal, might have altogether different motivations. I would rather sell fewer copies to a smaller audience, for whom the subject matter is meaningful and potentially life-changing. It is something of a paradox that to get people to read it at all, I have to play to the crowd.

And so for the past several years I have danced around the invisible elephant in the room. Pissed in the wind, if I’m honest, by trying to produce ‘other’ stories while the real, the important, the infinitely more sellable work grew arms and legs (two sequels are already underway).

That I now find myself about to publish the first couple of chapters in order to get the ball rolling and generate income to get myself out of the proverbial is deeply unsettling. I have had to weigh up not only my interests and those of my master catalyst but those of society at large. For a start, the full version of my story offers insights that may be helpful in gaining a better understanding of PTSD, possibly even Alzheimers, and I have a duty to share what I know. Having suffered a neurological condition for the last two years, I am only too aware of the role of the psyche in self-healing. Which brings me to the inescapable truth that in order to fully recover, and safeguard my mental and physical health, I must tell my tale. The risks of doing nothing outweigh the risks of doing something.

With the most recent plot twist in our collective fortunes, the COVID-19 pandemic, I have found myself staring at an opportunity – and justification – to act. With recession imminent and my options to keep a roof over my head running out, that’s one almighty stick. The carrot is the global appetite for stories of self-healing that capture the collective imagination – and potential readers have time on their hands. I have known for at least the last decade that telling this story was the sole reason for my very existence. If our hour of direst need is not the time to bring it to fruition, then my entire life will have been for nothing.

The course of action I am taking now, touch wood, is the most significant hurdle I am likely to have to deal with. Before a publisher will stake their reputation on it, I have to remove at least some of the risk. I will almost certainly need the broad shoulders of an established publisher to pull this off in the longer term.

Over the years I have remarked that the best analogy for my life is walking a tightrope with a noose around my neck and crocodile clips around my balls (I don’t have any but you get the drift). If I make it to full publication, you will discover just how accurate that statement – and warranted my occasional use of profanity – really is.

Click here to purchase The Lost Secret.

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M K MacInnes
June 2020

Reality Check 2017

Posted on July 25, 2017 by mkmacinnes

reality check graphic

A YEAR and a half ago, having got Close Call: Short and Bittersweet under my belt and deciding that becoming the next J K Rowling was a tad ambitious, my master plan was to develop my ‘brand’ and complete all the projects I had already started … while holding down two day jobs …

It still hasn’t quite gone according to plan. I have failed miserably at maintaining my blog and I still haven’t got any of my short stories published in a literary journal. As ever, the biggest barriers are time and resources, particularly a quiet place to work during down time from my day job – and perhaps too much emphasis on entering competitions to try and raise funds. Meanwhile, the passion project I started in 2013 is on the back burner, while I concentrate on more achievable goals …

On the bright side, I’ve had all the therapy I’ll ever need and never had to pay for it …

Moe recently, since my writing style leans towards the filmic anyway, I began to experiment with screenwriting. Now, since completing an introductory course at Edinburgh Uni, I am renting desk space one day a week in a film production office and have started a feature film and script versions of three of my short stories. I let each story ‘choose’ the medium it is most comfortable with – a story that has potential as both a book and a film is more appealing to me right now and I have a wee bank of stories in both formats.

My priorities then over the remainder of 2017 are:

finish a novel I started a few years ago and secure an agent, with an eye on later developing it into a script
finish my feature film script before October, so that I can get it to just the right industry professional at a writers retreat for which I have won a partial scholarship that I still can’t afford (bawling my eyes out). But since I do believe in miracles, you just never know …

Both projects offer me the best chance of success, with scope for some form of mentorship. Also:

plug away at getting short story publication in a literary journal
seek out an indie film-maker who might be interested in one of my short scripts
maybe even resuscitate my blog.

And so ends my manifesto to myself …

July 2017

Reality check November 2015

Posted on November 9, 2015 by mkmacinnes

THIRTEEN months ago, I was in the first stages of setting up my online presence as a newly self-employed ‘writer/ghostwriter’ and my first collection of short stories, Close Call: Short and Bittersweet. Woo hoo! My intention was that by the end of 2015, I would be well on my way to becoming the next J K Rowling …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

BY the time I published Close Call in April and got the marketing underway, I was already running low on funds. So I swallowed my pride and looked for a day job. The timing couldn’t have been worse – I lost momentum at the most crucial point in my campaign.

In the end, I found myself with two part-time jobs, one office based and one as a waitress. On one level, I was trapped for most of the summer, on another I would have gone mad with the isolation of writing at home all day. The sheer physicality of working in a busy tea room has kept me grounded and in reasonable shape and I have had the great pleasure of working with a great bunch of people – mostly half my age!

For the first time in my life, I have just enough job security to pay the bills and just enough flexibility to write my little heart out. What more could a girl ask for.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THING is, even with more free time on my hands, production and marketing don’t mix – which is why self-publishing is such a ball ache. I am the publisher. This means by the time I have faffed around with my blog, twittered around with my social media, requested reviews, networked with other writers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, I have even less time to write. In fact, contact with my iphone switches off my creative juices altogether. And this only compounds the sense that my window of opportunity is closing …

So I have had to make a decision. Continue plugging my first book, or move on. Methinks I should draw a line. Although Close Call has hardly made a dent in the bestseller list, I did achieve what I set out to do. That is to produce a portfolio that would demonstrate my style and approach as a ghostwriter to potential clients. And it’s been an excellent dry run for my next projects.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

MY master plan now is to continue building my social media network, develop my ‘brand’ and soldier on with the bigger projects I have already started, while in the short term produce individual short stories for publication in literary journals. As for this blog, it simply isn’t feasible for me to pump out masses of ‘content’ every single day, so my goal is to consistently produce one short story a week (and anything else that inspires me in between). It’s a tall order, I know, but I have a whole winter ahead of me and more free time to get my act together.

2016 promises to be my most challenging year yet. Watch this space.

The Poet

Posted on February 1, 2015 by mkmacinnes

I follow the path of poets of old.
Their voices beckon me into the fold,
Many cut short in the days of their prime,
but nevertheless remembered in rhyme.

For somehow in the throes of death,
They cry out with mortal breath
“O kindred spirits, living or departed,
carry on the work I started.”

For aspiring poets share a trait,
a common tendency to emulate
to the point of near obsession
those who leave the headiest impression.

Now inspired to the point of distraction,
I write of comrades wounded in action
of rescues effected in countless battles,
mothers and children herded like cattle.

I do not know from whence it comes,
the cries of the dying, the pounding drums.
These are the things that came from before,
days long since gone, ages of yore.

I have no desire to write of such things
as flowers and trees and tiny birds’ wings.
In poetry books they have their place,
but me I will write, by the gift of God’s grace,
of karmic desire and brave young men,
journeys beyond and back again.

Written during my Wilfred Owen phase!

Ragged rocks

Posted on September 26, 2014 by mkmacinnes

“SELF-EMPLOYED …. Oh, shit, what have I done?”

The enormity of jumping off the hamster wheel was still sinking in. The feelings of panic I kept in check by reminding myself that I could jump back on at any time. Still, the whole point of doing this was that there was no Plan B.

Blog. Tick. Facebook page. Tick. Linkedin. Tick. Twitter … reluctantly … tick. Now, back to that damn blog. What do I put in it? Where do I start?

While foraging online, I had spotted the title of a talk that evening in town. The Ragged University … hmmm. So, in the space of the few hours left, deciding that I was feeling a little ragged myself from being holed up for days hatching my cunning plan for world domination, I forced myself. I had only a semi-notion of what it was about.

As I waited for the talk to begin, I chatted with another member of the audience I hadn’t seen in a while. It was good to get the craic. He asked me what I was up to.

“Well …”

I had had some strange reactions from people since I had stopped coughing the word ‘writer’ as if it was something I had to apologise for. But he didn’t bat an eyelid. Instead he told me that he was hoping to do the same. He reckoned the first thing to do was set up a blog, standard advice these days for authors, but he needed to find out more about it.

I guessed immediately that he might have read The Writers and Artists Yearbook, which these days tells aspiring writers that in order to put themselves out there, they need a blog. Only thing is, it doesn’t adequately explain why (although I am prepared to concede that I might have missed a bit!). I told him that the main reason for having one was to draw people to your website so that you were more likely to be found online, assuming, of course, that you were writing material that people liked. The other reason was that it gave you a chance to show people the quality and style of your work. I was about to add that it allowed you to chat with the very people who might buy your books when you finally got published, when the talk began.

The ragged schools, I learned, were a network of volunteers operating in industrialised areas in the UK from the middle of the 19th century. Rural areas had been getting the benefit of free community-based education since well before the time of Robert Burns. This is quite incredible, when you think that a formal universal education system as we know it only started in 1870.

The ethos of the ragged school philosophy was that everyone, regardless of social, economic or educational status, has a personal library of knowledge and experience as valid as that of the person standing next to them. In that sense, everyone is a school in their own right, exchanging information with other such schools on a daily basis – any time, any place, anywhere. There is no right or wrong way of thinking or doing things. People are free to take information or leave it as they see fit. Trial and error takes care of the rest. The Ragged University is a modern reworking of the ragged school philosophy.

It became instantly clear to me that the earlier conversation about blogging was a perfect example of a ragged school in action. And I knew straight away what my first blog article would be about.

TICK.

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