Hi Poppy
Well that’s quite a turnaround you asking me a question for a change! I had better put my list of questions to one side (15 left at the last count).
Your explanation as to why you think people only ask “did you have fun?” once again demonstrates your increasing maturity. I was hopeless in reading social situations and circumstances and used to be very frustrated that my twin sister could always read the underlying situation, whereas I put my very large size 13 feet (I’m 6-4 by the way) straight in it.
Beautifully eloquent reply to Ana-s*x-: in the Brats thread by the way – that’s the way to deal with them.
Turning to your desire to write a book and your question as to how to have it published. I think it’s a fabulous idea to write a book and I am all for it, but it is no small undertaking. I have pondered what are the likely issues that may need to be considered. Hope this is not getting to deep and sending everyone to sleep!
Taking the negatives first (its not all negative by the way so don’t give up here!)
It’s a huge undertaking – for example my first post “Fond reflections of the Brats” was not just knocked out in half an hour. It took me about 4 hours to write with a number of redrafts and I have still spotted one factual error in it (prize to the person who can tell me what it is. Hint - Lydia is not allowed to enter if that gives you a clue where to look).
I suspect that it will take much longer to complete your book than you currently anticipate so you may become disillusioned with the process.
I believe that this year is GCSE year for you – so your time is probably short (especially working on Sundays
) GCSE are VERY important (but you didn’t need me to tell you that)
Realistically you would have to publish the book privately (i.e. pay a publisher to print it and I would imagine small print runs are very expensive)
I don’t know if your parents have signed a contract with Channel 4 but there may some form of confidentiality or copyright obligation to them which may restrict what you can say. (This may just preclude you from making money from it which I don’t think is your intention anyway)
Realistically, Channel 4 will not keep the Brats forum open indefinitely and with the series having finished interest will inevitably wane. You need to start publishing something pretty much straight away to maintain interest (this may not be a concern but I always like to think that something I make an effort to write will be read by somebody)
Positives
There are lots of us who would love to read it – especially as you could fill in many of those unanswered questions that could not be covered in the TV programme because of time constraints and (tongue in cheek) it would certainly look good when C4 do a program in 12 months to see how you and your colleagues got on and find you became a writer
I also think you would gain a lot personally from writing it – you are already expressing yourself and emotions very well and reflecting further on whom you were and what you have become will only be to your further benefit.
Possible solution
A possible way forward is to publish it on the web (accepting that once published online its public for all to see) but before you start panicking that you have no idea how to do this read on …
You may have heard people talking about blogs (or blogging). A blog is basically a personally diary that is published electronically on the web and anyone who is interested can read (you can restrict access to them by passwords etc but it would rather defeat the object in your case).
Commercial companies offer to host blogs.The sites that host blogs provide a user friendly WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type of interface so you don’t need to be a geek – if you can post to a forum then writing your own blog is not much more complicated. Most have the facility to upload photographs and for people who read the “blog” to ask questions of the writer (bit like the C4 forums really but you control what gets deleted!).
They normally have a time line as an index so in your case you could have week 1, week 2 etc or actual dates (July 2005) if you preferred.
The big plus is that you could start writing straight away, without having to complete the whole story and build up a following who could log on weekly/monthly to read your latest entry/update as you progressed through your story.
I have been following the blog of a guy who is renovating a Victorian terrace for over 12 months and it is often compulsive reading. I won’t link to it from here as Channel 4 are a bit fierce about people putting their email addresses or external links in postings and I don’t want to be banned from this forum.
If you went down this path and if Channel 4 were very nice they might even put a link from their Brats site to your blog (unlikely but may be worth a shot) There are other ways that could be used to increase its profile, but I wont go into them here now.
So there you go – my ten penny worth. I should add that I do work within IT so I am not totally without knowledge, heck we could even set up a basic website for you.
I can explore what’s available further if you like, but I think it might be a good idea to discuss this with your parents at this stage (assuming your mum is not already reading this!)if you want to go down this route
Now back to my 15 outstanding questions – do you want them one at a time or in one long list? I think Ponyluv is becoming impatient to hear more
.
Cheers
Alan
Ps sorry I seem to have written another novel!
and no one understands it because they're not going through it and ahhh i sound stupid. I'll stop now.
