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Caren Kennedy
Like most things in my life, writing
came to me arse-ways. And it would have stayed that way but for Vanessa O’Loughlin’s support and
encouragement. I first contacted her as one might contact The Samaritans –
hysterically.
“I wrote a book proposal and secured an agent,” I said. “But
before writing the book, the agent wants me to turn the proposal into a TV treatment he’s sure he
can sell.”
“Wow!” Vanessa said. “Good for you.”
“You think? I still have to write the stuff and I can’t. I don’t even know what a TV
treatment is. And as for the book …”
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“Bullshit. You’re a writer, aren’t you? Plaster some glue on your bum and go write.”
“That’s just it,” I whispered. “It’s all bullshit. I’m not a writer. I’m a spoofer. The proposal
is the longest thing I’ve ever written. And even then I was making the whole thing up. I didn’t
expect it to go anywhere.”
“Eh, that’s what writers do Caren,” she whispered back. “Make things up. Just carry on spoofing.
What’s the worst that can happen? And why are we whispering?”
Indeed. The worst was this: Warner Bros bought the TV treatment and, by dint of team work, the
book was also finished. It’s called Fake Alibis (BenBella 2009) and is currently on sale in the US
and due for release in Europe shortly. Meantime, it can be purchased online at Amazon. The TV series might hit the screen one day and then again it might
not. Who knows?
But that’s not the point. The point is having backed myself into a corner I had no choice but to
plonk my bum on a chair and write. And keep on writing until I learned how to. Or at least improve
along the way. 5,000 plus words a day, every day, Sundays included, will do that to you.
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During this time I attended a few of Inkwell’s workshops where I learned something about the craft of writing.
But more than this, I heard new and established writers talk about their own struggles, fears, and insecurities. It
was enough to silence my whinging and when doubts niggled I recalled what crime writer Alex Barclay said during the
CSI workshop, “Don’t talk about it. Do it.”
After finishing Fake Alibis I lost my direction for a while but found it again when I signed up for Memoir Tell
Your Own Story workshop facilitated by Martina Devlin and Ferdia MacAnna. The next day, I dusted off some forgotten
personal essays and sent them out. Most of them boomeranged but one didn’t. It was published and paid for on
delivery. I followed this up with some more and am now writing regularly for Get Born, a publication based in Colorado, with others in the pipeline.
Want to know more? Then hop on over to my website at: Caren Kennedy or better still email me at: carenkennedyireland@gmail.com
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