The lonely lot of being a writer
The thing about being a writer is that it can be lonely and so I cannot overstate the joy I’ve felt in finding “my writing people” at the Writers of the Future workshops.
I don’t mean to say I am lonely as a person, because I’m not. I am blessed to be surrounded by a loving family, especially my very supportive wife who understands my need to write and lets me be me, and my children who provide a wonderful distraction from the stresses of life. They are there to pick me up when I face rejection and they are there to celebrate with me when I succeed.
But there are few people in my life who can really relate to the overwhelming urge to seize upon the deluge of daydreams swirling around inside my head—images of different worlds and people, aliens and robots, mages and monsters—and turn them, over hours and hours at a keyboard, into a story that, most likely, few people will ever read. It is hard to explain why I write despite facing rejection after rejection, and how and why I pick myself up and keep going when the prospects of success are so small. All I can say is, writing for me is a compulsion. I have to do it. Now I must admit, when I set it out like that, it does seem hard to relate to! And that is what I mean when I say that being a writer is lonely. Few people “get” why I write.
I’ve found my writing people, and I couldn’t be happier
The absolute highlight of my week at the Writers of the Future workshops was meeting and getting to know the eleven other winners in my Volume 41 cohort. Each of us are at similar points in our writing careers, each of us are trying to break into the industry and turn a hobby into a career, and the shared experience of Hollywood really brought us all together.
We are a group who have been through the same intense, brilliant, and unforgettable experience, and we are now part of the Writers of the Future family. But within that wider WOTF family, which spans 41 years of winners and judges, we are our own little band, or Writing Group. And I reckon we’re a pretty awesome bunch; here we all are rocking the red-carpet at the annual Writers of the Future awards gala.
Becoming a winner of the Writers of the Future contest feels like a real milestone moment, a before and after kind of juncture in my writing career. And as I move forward and seek to build on this success and hopefully continue to publish stories for the rest of my days, I know I have a group of writers that will be cheering me on and offering advice, promoting me and my stories, and likewise I to them. It’s a shame that we all live in locations scattered across the world (the UK and North America, and even China), but it’ll make it all the better when we next meet up in person.
Find out what the fuss is all about
And in the spirit of supporting my writing people, why don’t you go and buy a copy of Volume 41 of Writers of the Future and check out the stories from my fellow winners. They are awesome, and don’t just take my word for it, watch this trailer and take a sneak peak at some of the reviews and the amazing illustrations for our stories.
Oh, did I mention that I’m an Amazon bestselling author!
Volume 41 of Writers of the Future was released in the USA and Canada on 22 April 2025 and, not long after, it shot to #1 on the Amazon bestseller list for science fiction anthologies! Here’s the proof:
I now even have an Amazon author page which says I’m a bestseller:
It’s a pretty incredible feeling, I never thought I’d have a book which achieved this feat. And I owe it all to the fine folks and judges at the Writers of the Future contest.