Tag: writing

Aye Write! 2021

~ Angela Hughes ~ Leave a comment

The email asked if I would be interested in taking part in this year’s Aye Write! book festival, to talk about My Heart’s Content. I read it three times to be sure.

What you grinning at? Paul asked. I read him the email.

Well are you interested? he said. I nodded vigorously and asked if he wanted a cup of tea. He raised an eyebrow.

I’m playing it cool, I said. Don’t want to appear too eager.

Half way to the kitchen, which in our flat is around 10 steps, my coolness, such as it is, dissipated and I rushed back to send my reply, fully expecting to see a message telling me my window for responding had expired and I’d missed the opportunity. Or dreamed it.

Let me set my excitement in context. For those of you who aren’t aware, Aye Write! is Glasgow’s annual book festival. As with the city in which it’s based, it is big, bold and friendly. And this year, it was online, which means you could buy a pass for the whole festival and watch at your convenience.

There were sessions about dealing with grief, and the healing power of nature. Rock stars talked about memoirs and authors talked about fiction being the new rock n roll. There were authors talking politics and politicians, including Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, talking books.

Participating authors included big hitters Andrew O’Hagan, Douglas Stuart and Maggie O’Farrell, alongside those less well known but equally brilliant, such as Helen McClory, Ruth Thomas and Jenni Fagan. And there were those just starting out, like me!

Scottish Debuts: Aye Write! Festival 2021

The Scottish Debuts, of which I was one, opened the festival, with a flurry of Tweets and a dance around the living room (in our house at least). The event was pre-recorded, which given my nerves, was just as well. We were each allotted a few minutes to do with what we wanted – read from our book, talk about our writing, grin inanely. I opted for all three.

And so, on Friday 14 May, there I was, reading from the book I had written, to an invisible audience (which would have included my mum, if she had been able to get the link to work on time) as part of one of the UK’s biggest book festivals.

Just another ordinary day then: aye right!

*Although the main Aye Write! festival is now over, you can watch the events online for up to three weeks from the date of their release. Check out Glasgow Life TV to find out what’s available.

The Scottish Debuts event is free and still available to watch for a couple more days.

To buy a copy of My Heart’s Content: A Journey to Transplant, visit Liminal Ink.

Almost there

~ Angela Hughes ~ 1 Comment

The few weeks since the end of the Kickstarter have been a whirlwind of tweaks, layouts and design decisions. And now it’s all done. The book cover design is finalised, the manuscript is typeset and print ready, and the e-book versions are complete. All that’s left is to send everything to the printer and wait for the book to arrive. The real-life, proper book.

Remember how it felt as a child on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa, body tingled, eyes screwed shut, sleep elusive, willing time to go faster? That’s a fraction of the excitement simmering inside me. My Heart’s Content was a labour of love; an exorcism. It wasn’t my planned first book, nor even my preferred genre. It’s the one I couldn’t not write (double negative intentional and necessary). The end was a long breath out.

The prospect of writing memoir fascinated me – not so much deciding what to include but rather how to present it. When I arrived at the format of a day per chapter (I know, not exactly ground-breaking and yet it took months to get there), it freed me to be more creative with the content. With little experience of biographical writing, I began by reading other memoirs, across many subjects. For several weeks I inhabited the genre: from brain tumours to birds of prey. What struck me was the stylistic crossover between biography and fiction. The weaving of a story around a moment in time. None of the dry, factual text I had imagined but instead a journey into another life, a glimpse of a different world. A revelation.

“There is another side of writing a memoir for which I wasn’t prepared.”

There is another side of writing a memoir for which I wasn’t prepared. The emotional toll. Not the writing, which was almost cathartic, not even the reading of the story over and over, although there were moments where triggered memories were almost too much to bear. What I hadn’t expected was the underlying fear of those unknown readers. People with whom I have no connection, who don’t know my story, who have no vested interest in me and don’t need to be careful with their comments. What if these people don’t like it? Or actively dislike it? If it were fiction, it would still hurt but it wouldn’t be my story. I knew releasing a book into the wild would be tough but this extra dimension …

And yet.

Whatever the readers think, I’m proud of my book. I’m proud of Paul and my friends and family who helped me through my experience. I’m proud of our NHS and the care and dedication of the staff in the transplant unit of the Golden Jubilee Hospital. I’m proud of the team of professionals who proofed, edited, typeset, designed, primped and preened my book ready for its prom night.

My book’s all grown up. Time to make its own way in the world. All I can do now is let it go.

* My Heart’s Content is launched on Thursday 22 October. Backers from the Kickstarter campaign will receive their copies as soon as they are ready.

A sense of community

~ Angela Hughes ~ Leave a comment

It’s just over a week since I launched my Kickstarter campaign to publish my memoir about the time I spent on the urgent transplant list, waiting for a new heart. What a week it’s been. As many of you probably know, we hit our funding target of £1000 in less than an hour and a half; one hour 24 minutes to be exact but hey, who’s counting?

To celebrate the launch Paul and I invited our friends to share photos of themselves raising a glass at 7pm. The response was fantastic. I’m still reeling from the excitement. And I wasn’t the only one. Even if I hadn’t been refreshing the Kickstarter page with obsessive regularity, I would’ve known the exact moment I hit my target: from my mum!

Raising a glass for the launch

Paul answered the phone: 

Mum: ‘You hit your target!’

Paul [trying not to laugh]: ‘Really, we weren’t checking. Don’t tell me, it was you who pledged all the money using false names…’

Mum: ‘No! Although I would’ve done if I could’ve worked out how to do it!’

It felt fitting to launch the publication of my book in this way; for it to be a shared experience. During the wait for my transplant and the subsequent long recovery, I was supported by a community of positive, uplifting people. From my family and friends to hospital staff, workmates, even those strangers who would stop to ask me if I was okay or offer to carry my shopping. 

Even the journey of the book, from first draft to final, has been a team effort. Several friends contributed their perspective to my situation in the form of letters talking about how they felt when they received the news about my transplant. To help me start to write the book, I was mentored by Karen Campbell a Scottish author whose work I admire, who also read the final draft and provided me with a quote for the cover.

An early draft won a work in progress grant from Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s creative writing centre, where I was able to spend a week working with other writers to develop my manuscript, and a further week, several months later, to edit it. It also meant I was invited to read a section of my writing at the Ullapool Book Festival.

On completion, several friends read my manuscript and contributed their thoughts: from Lisa, who suggested I change the ending (or rather where the book ended – she was right and I did), to Stephen and Ali who made the first edits and helped the book to shine.

One of the good things to come out of the short time I was signed to a publisher was that it was professionally edited by Iain Maloney, another Scottish author who I also really enjoy reading. Iain immediately understood what I wanted to do with the book and every one of his suggestions improved it. He is responsible for the other quote on the cover.

When Paul and I decided to publish the book we sought the advice of those who knew more about the world of publishing than either of us. By my own admission I am not the most organised of people and it is an endless source of frustration for me that I have the kind of brain that struggles to follow instructions and is devoid of logic. Ade’s help walking us through the stages to publication, and warning us of the potential pitfalls, has been invaluable. 

What would you consider a success as far as your book’s concerned?

Thanks to Laura, the image of her embroidery on the mock up cover made a striking banner for the Kickstarter and an engaging visual when sharing the link on social media. We follow each other on Twitter due to our shared heart stories and Paul chanced upon her image when she posted her work in progress. We had just been discussing the kind of image I was thinking about for the cover of the book.

‘Is this it?’ he said, turning his phone to show me.

It was; is.

On top of all of this, there are 77 people (so far) who have decided to take a chance on my writing and support my book. Some are friends and a small number have read earlier drafts, but most of them haven’t. It’s a leap of faith from each of them for which I am grateful.

‘What would you consider a success as far as your book’s concerned?’ Paul asked me during a walk along the beach a couple of days ago.

‘It already is’, I said.