Improbable Press Blog — Atlin Merrick

You’ve written tens of thousands of words of short stories, fanfiction, character development, and you want to sell something damn it. Obviously you’re already a writer — you write, so that makes you a writer, that's the rules — but now you want to be a professional. A professional is paid to write. Even if she makes £1 she’s a pro. She was paid. So, how do you do it, how do you make that first sale? I know it seems hard (it did to me), because you get a lot of rejections or just silence (which is worse? Is...

I've spent all morning reading about Catherine, the Empress of Russia, as I'll be writing biographies for two dozen new and already-existing dioramas created by artist Lee Harper, of History Bones, including one about this eighteenth century monarch. I’ve enjoyed reading in Catherine’s own (translated) words how she considered herself a knight, honest and loyal, while she saw her husband Peter as difficult, impossible, irritating and, (happily quoting her Empress aunt-in-law), an idiot. After nearly two decades of miserable marriage to one another, four children, and many more than twice that many extra-marital affairs between them, Peter ascended the throne...

"I hope and pray no on has had this idea for a story yet!" That's a tweet I saw this week, and it made me fly off the handle in about twelve different directions because, because, because... ...the thing about stories and human beings is that the first thing we probably did as human beings was tell each other stories. Even before language we told about the fish we almost caught — it was this big! — about the spark we think might be something more, about how that person over there makes our heart go fast like this. What...

Improbable Press' submission guidelines used to ask for works about differently-abled characters. That phrase, differently-abled, was mine and with it I wanted to include my friend with almost-daily migraines, a person with chronic anxiety or depression, as well as people in wheelchairs or with limb differences. Disabled Fiction, Differently-Abled Fiction…Or? The thing is, I didn't research at all what phrasing was appropriate, and I did not ask disabled people for their thoughts on the phrasing, and then a disabled woman kindly dropped me an email to tell me that overall, disabled people use the word disabled. I did do some...

Along with writing for a living, in the last nine years I've written nearly a million words of fanfic and two books. I love writing, I love it, I love it with shouty fire. However. Sometimes I just want to drop-kick my laptop out the window, shouting obsenities after it. The feeling is not unfamiliar, so I know that when it comes, so shall it go. I've also learned what to do in the meantime. Turning Turtle: Recharging My Creativity * Saturday's Become Sacrosanct I turn turtle to recharge, booking nothing on Saturday that I can book some other day....