Winter Reflections...

# "So please don't lose your mind.... cos it doesn't belong to anybody else..." # - Pomplamoose

Every picture tells many stories?

A large part of my time in 2012 has been spent setting about trying to begin to pinpoint, for my own curiosity, what kind of writer I am...   I know some days I can be a lazy one but then others I can be the most productive scribbler around if I just set my mind to it...  I also know that I like to write adventure stories inspired by the blockbuster films of my youth which had good storytelling at their heart and... I know I'm not embarking on a quest with my creative words to be some literary giant with my first novel... I've always just wanted to be a "working writer" - that's the true aim, to be someone who always has a project on the go (and by 'project' I mean, the next book) so that I can finally say I can devote my full-time to writing...  (But I think this is the dream of every amateur scribbler, to be honest)

One thing has definitely become clear though in this search for my "writer type" and that is: the more I try to discover or label myself as a particular kind of author, the more I rail against being pigeonholed and put into a particular kind of box.  This can be a good or a bad thing in the traditional world of publishing which wants writers' books to fit into a certain section of a bookshop, within a particular genre and a specific age range...  But I do wonder if living in these exciting times of the days of changing face of publishing through ever-changing technology, resisting this "scribble-profiling" could be a negative thing?  

A good winter read...

Over the last few years, I've become increasingly interested in the idea of "transmedia" after reading a brilliant book not so long ago called "The Art of Immersion" by Frank Rose  (which I'd thoroughly recommend).  In that book, he was primarily using examples of TV shows and film (and also computer games) which deliver on multiple platforms, but ultimately what he focuses on is the fact they do this to 'extend the story" of their product, to give fans not just special features but also other ways to view the worlds they've created.

It's this kind of multi-faceted, multi-narrative style of authorship that I know I want to head towards and become, making extra features and insights into my stories that add to and explore other stories hidden within an otherwise "standalone" novel...  I've begun this process, these past 6 years across at my Official Writing Website by linking pages and short stories together and attempting to create intriguing puzzles for readers to solve that begin to unpeel the fruit of the narratives I'm trying to plant seeds of in these early years of my scribble-practice...

Can YOU decypher the colourful tales at:
www.findthemissingreel.com ?!

I guess what I'm ultimately trying to reflect on at the tail end of the old year is the future of MY own writing and where I as a new writer might fit into the ever-evolving but currently exploding world of publishing...  I remain committed to finding a literary agent to represent my work and getting published in the traditional way, rather than launching myself on Amazon and becoming a vanity publisher myself... But I'm also attracted to the unforseen riches of story opportunities that the emergence of the "e-book" will bring... As I've said in my recent "Story Starts" section of my homepage, I'm still bursting with ideas of tales I want to tell, and the happy mix of technological and scribble-worlds that we're now living in really gives me hope that I might be able to someday properly put those ideas out to the world in a suitable and legitimate way...

One way I've been trying to add to the "intrigue" of my writing in 2012, has been to develop a YouTube  page for myself and to create short teasers for some of the stories I'm showcasing on my writing website and so perhaps a good way to end this Winter Reflections post is to give a link to where you can pull up a comfy chair, sit back with a hot mug of something and enjoy the trailers before the main features begin...

You can CLICK HERE to go to C.G.Allan's YouTube Channel

Tales on the big screen are what inspire my writing most...