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The Borrowers: Illustrated by
Emilia Dziubak
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Recycle
- Repurpose – Reuse. We are finally getting it! But writers
have been savvy about this from the start. As authors we recycle our own
experiences and obsessions. Many popular authors, ancient and modern, reuse the
same premise for each best-selling novel, and writers of non-fiction have mastered
the art of repurposing the same information to the interests of multiple
audiences.
Today we repurpose content to social media, a tweet can
expand into a blog, which becomes a you-tube presentation and/or podcast that
can become a magazine article, which emerges as a ‘how-to’ book - or vice
versa!
You know that feeling when you’ve written a piece of
fiction and even after you have sent it out into the world or tucked it away in
a drawer, it stays with you? Grab that emotion before it’s washed
away from the shore and use it to write a creative-half-cousin. If the
character or story-line has affected you this deeply – it will affect others
too.
For example, some years ago I wrote a 1,000 word short story
about the actions of a woman, Maggie, who had suffered a devastating
loss. The story is quite dark and I couldn’t find a suitable outlet for
it at that time. Some months later I started writing a poem and realised
that the character was a version of Maggie – she too had suffered loss and was
struggling to move on; the poem was published in the Poetry Supplement of the
Teesside Evening Gazette (United Kingdom.)
Two years later, now living in New Zealand, I decided to
enter the Commonwealth Short Story Contest. Maggie still haunted me so I
rewrote it to fulfill the 600 word requirement, resulting in a much more
powerful piece. Maggie won
first place in the Australia/New Zealand segment of the competition, and was
published in the Commonwealth magazine and professionally recorded to
disk. The winning stories also aired on BBC Radio. Following this,
a literary magazine, Bravado asked
to republish it, alongside the other NZ finalists. So - one idea led to a
published poem and an award winning multi-published recorded/aired short story.
And then -
And then - there were further unplanned consequences:
Oxford University Press contacted me and adapted the piece for their Bookworm
Library for foreign students of English: they also purchased the recording rights.
Now some of you may be thinking ‘but you were just
lucky – apart from the poem the rest was just a domino effect that isn’t likely
to happen to my work’. But those of you who read my previous post Invite Luck into your Writing Life, will be aware
that this is the point I am making. Chance and serendipity do play a part
in success. But you do have to have to have well-written work out there
for Lady Luck to trip over.
Remember - if the piece means something to you it is more
likely to mean something to others so why not widen your audience and re-write
it in a different genre? The more versions you have out there the better
your chance of finding success. Speaking of which - for all the film
directors and producers reading this - it just so happens that I have a
finished, well written screenplay version of Maggie available if you wish to
take a look?
If you would like to read South
Gare, the poem inspired by Maggie it appears in mycollection Carved by Gravity available on Amazon
(99cents at time of posting).
If you teach creative writing, my books Creative Writing for Children (tutors and home-school
parents) and Creative Writing: A Teacher’s Guide are also available on
Amazon ($3.99 at time of posting)
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