What story to write? Andrew and Tasha
The seeds of our stories often come from deep within. Here, Andrew and Tasha from the 2023 MA cohort tell us how their life experiences gave birth to their manuscripts in wholly different ways.
Photo by Monica Valls on Unsplash
“When I was eight, I was given an Adventure Kit - a bumbag with a water bottle, compass, rope, that kind of stuff. I wrote an essay about it at school and got my first ever gold star, so I knew then I was destined to be a writer. And I went into the woods to build a bivouac out of sticks and bracken to sleep in. Amazingly, my parents forbade that. What is it with grown-ups and safety? Fifty years later, I have my revenge with Jack’s Back: a story about children (me) living in the wilds with a wild creature (also me) and having a wild adventure (mine). Jack’s Back also coincided with a rise in environmental awareness and the idea that forests are essential not just for our planet but for our own physical and mental wellbeing. But most of all, it’s an adventure where children get to do what they want, and the adults don’t.”
Jack’s Back, Andrew’s u
pper MG Eco-fantasy, imagines that overnight, woodland covers half of Britain.
Jack-in-the-Green, the primeval spirit of the forest, has come back. Two teenagers go into the woods to protect Jack, the magical new forest, and their future. They face more than wolves and wild boars: the savage Wild Hunt of dark mythology is on the loose; a millionaire with a private army wants them dead; and a secretive government isn’t telling the truth about its plans for the country. The heroes must survive more than just the forest to save more than just the myth.
“As a writer who writes from the heart, Blue purely came from one of the hardest points in my life, losing a loved one and learning to grieve and learning to live again for the sake of both of us. Experiencing my first major loss was an incredible turning point, it changed and shaped who I am today. I personally struggled tremendously with my grief, but one day I started writing about it. It was more therapeutic than anything else I’d tried. And so the novel idea was born. Born from grief, and loss, and pain – but also from love, happiness, laughter, and family. So really, how lucky was I that I had something so wonderful that it was that hard to lose. And whilst it began about my grief, it became about so much more than that – other people’s too. With the idea in mind that someone reading it, might realise they aren’t alone, and we all grieve in different ways. So even though it may appear as something sad, it’s actually something beautiful. And of course, when we’re sad, it’s also known as feeling ‘blue’ — which just so happened to be my lost loved one’s favourite colour. ”
Tasha’s YA Contemporary story is called Blue.
The ones that love us never really leave us … Maddy’s world comes tumbling down when her best friend, her Uncle Neil, dies suddenly and mysteriously. With no explanation for his death so far, she can’t understand why this has happened. After the funeral, a figure appears behind her, resting his hand on her shoulder and speaking to her with a voice she knows all too well – Neil. Is he a ghost? Or a figment of her imagination? And will they find out the dark truth about his death together? With the help of biker boy, Jay, maybe Maddy can finally learn to live again.