A Life in Words

Mum, Am I Weird? Yes Darling, Because All The Best People Are

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

My son is nine and for the past few years he has often stopped mid-sentence and asked me this question: ‘Mum, am I weird?’

For the record, he isn’t overtly weird, well, not in my opinion. He gets on really well at school and finds it easy to make friends. He is known for being able to make people laugh and since he started school at aged four, his teachers have always told me that he is kind, empathetic and very diplomatic. I expect part of that is his experience of being the youngest of four children.

At home, however, he is free to let all his weird out whenever he wants. We all are. In fact, we often have conversations where we debate who is the weirdest in our family of six. Most of the time, they all agree that it’s me, but my youngest son is often next. Our ‘weirdness’ takes many forms and is often the source of belly-aching laughter and a fair amount of teasing. I think it’s what makes us, us and I wouldn’t change a thing. However, I suspect that at school, to be labelled ‘weird’ is not a good thing. I can recall that from my own schooldays. No one wants to be the weird kid. No one wants to stand out.

What things mark a person as ‘weird’? Often its the way they dress; perhaps in a wacky or eccentric or unusual fashion. Perhaps its their hair. Maybe its something to do with their social or conversational skills. Sometimes its because of their hobbies.

I don’t think my son looks or acts ‘weird’ in any way, and yet he keeps asking me this question.

I tell him he is eccentric, one of a kind, and memorable! When he was small he had a host of imaginary friends he would make up long and complex stories for. Even as a toddler he pretended to carry around a creature known as ‘Hock’ who sadly died one day when my son sat in the pushchair and squashed him. I tried to say Hock was fine but my son insisted he was dead and even carried his dead body home! I once caught him running a bath by himself for another ‘friend’ and at the dinner table he would have us all in hysterics with his stories about made-up characters. He even had accents for some of them.

My son is obsessed with music. When he was only one, he danced non-stop to Peter Hook from Joy Division at a local music festival. This was in the rain. He just kept going and going. At the same age, I videoed him reaching up to the CD player in the kitchen to turn the volume up on a song. I have videos of him dancing on tables, dancing at restaurants, dancing on holidays and rocking his highchair back and forth violently, yet in tune to the music! When he started nursery at three, he’d get a bit anxious on the way there, but if I played ‘Birds’ by Eels, he would cheer up instantly. As a newborn baby, I could only get him to sleep in the car if I played ‘Hold on’ by Tom Waits.

These days his favourite band is The Clash, but he is also obsessed with Tom Waits, Beck, Blur, Oasis, The Black Keys, Talking Heads, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and many more! He has his own CD player next to his bed and falls asleep with a CD playing. He fills up notebooks with information about bands and singers and because he wants to be in a band himself, he has even designed his first four album covers.

There is absolutely nothing he does not know about Joe Strummer.

Yes, he is a little unusual. At home, he lets out his ‘noises’, as he calls them. He developed a habit of releasing strange noises sporadically during the Covid lockdowns. Home-schooling him was interesting and I often videoed him doing his work whilst making random noises and movements. I researched Tourette’s Syndrome and even spoke to a health professional about the possibility of him having it. Going back to school seemed to cure most of it and school have never seen or heard the noises we still sometimes get at home.

He gets very easily distracted and although he is almost ten, I still have to direct him with getting dressed, brushing his teeth etc. I have to tell him to do these things over and over again, as he will forget seconds after you saying it. He is so bright though, the sunshine in all our eyes, he lights up every room he walks into and has a beautiful habit of taking people under his wing if he feels they are a bit left out. He will then talk to them endlessly about music, but adults love this! Everyone comments on his unique personality. He can be hard work, but he’s so pure at the same time, there is just no malice in him at all.

He’s very creative, always doodling in various notebooks. Recently, while waiting to go into school, he whispered to me how interesting all the details were. I asked what he meant and he started pointing out things like the treads on car tires and the reflections in puddles. It was such a sweet moment. A few years back, we were driving to school and he was watching the world go by the windows and suddenly announced how the world was better when it was green. He was only little, but his words reflected my own thoughts, and I felt, as I always do, what good company he is. I always tell him he is ‘good value’. He asks what I mean and I say, you just give so much, I get more than I paid for! I can’t wait to find out what his future holds, yet it saddens me when he worries about being ‘weird.’

But as I constantly tell him, all the best people are!

All those singers and songwriters he idolises at such a young age, they were different too. I bet they often thought of themselves as ‘weird’. ‘Normal’ people don’t tend to be as creative. You’ve got to be a little bit weird to be an artist of some sort. I tell him it is something to be proud of.

And it is.

I know how weird I am. (No one else knows the extent of it!) But I love myself anyway. I’m my own best friend. I’m good company for myself. I couldn’t write books and poems if I wasn’t weird and eccentric….

I hope my son soon realises the same.

I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.

The Best Life Advice I Ever Had Came From A Character I Created: Prove Them Wrong, A Mantra For Misfits

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

This article was previously published on Medium!

It’s probably a bit weird to take life tips from a character you created yourself, but hey, I’m a writer, and we all know how weird they are. Besides, my characters are real to me. I talk to them every day, play their scenes like movies in my head at night, and yes, I take life advice from them. Why? Because they’re the best friends I never had and they’re right.  

Let’s jump back to the beginning.

Back to me, aged twelve: painfully shy, chubby; always the odd one out, at home, at school, or even just walking down the street. I was already addicted to writing and much preferred it to real life. Every day I’d run home from school, dash up to my bedroom, put on my favourite music and start writing.

At aged twelve, I had this one story I was totally obsessed with.

You know what it’s like when you’re a kid of that age and you really fall in love with a band? Or a song? Or an actor on TV? You obsess over them, paste their posters to your bedroom wall, watch everything they’re in or buy every album they release? They’re all you can think about?

Well, that was me and this story.

And I was kind of ashamed of it. My family and friends knew I loved writing and some of them vaguely knew what sort of stuff I was working on, but the gist of it, the details and, more importantly, the characters, were all mine. I felt very protective of them, like they were my guilty secret. The extent of my obsession was embarrassing to me.

I wrote the story aged twelve and it was the longest story I’d written so far. It was hand-written at the first, scribbled onto lined notepaper and held in a ring-binder folder. I showed it to my English teacher at school and got a merit certificate in assembly. I was very, very proud of it. When I saved up and bought my electric typewriter, I painstakingly rewrote it again and printed it out.

Oh boy, did I feel like a real author then!

I rewrote that book again and again. I just couldn’t leave it alone. I’d start other stories, sometimes very similar ones, but I’d always go back to that one. Every night I’d watch my characters in my head, listen to them talk and come up with more scenes. I did a big rewrite aged sixteen and another aged nineteen and finally, when I was in my thirties, I realised time was running out and I needed to get it done.

I rewrote it again, published it and before I knew it, it had grown into a five-book series which now has a spin-off book on the way. The series is also part of a bigger universe of inter-connected books.

So, you can probably see by now how obsessed I was with these characters and this story.

I guess, as a lonely, awkward, introverted weirdo of a kid, I found a way to belong. I built my own world and filled it with friends.

Anyway, on to the life advice.

There is a scene in the first book where my main character, Danny, is feeling defeated and negative. It’s partly because of his home-life and it’s partly because he and his friends have been stereotyped as bad kids and troublemakers in their town. Because of this, when he and best friend Michael try to secure lawn-mowing work to make their home-lives easier, they are refused by everyone they ask.

Both boys have a rough time at home. Both struggle at school. Both are obsessed with the music of the time. (Early nineties.) They are the best of friends and throughout the series they go through some incredibly difficult, scary and dark times together.

Through it all, Michael is always the positive one. The optimist. Danny suffers from darker thoughts and is drawn to self-destruction.

When complaining about his life, his family, and the posh people in town who won’t let them cut their lawns, Danny is at a very low ebb. He is feeling miserable and thwarted by everything.

Michael teases him, laughs at him and tells him to stop complaining.

‘Prove them wrong,’ he says.

Three simple words but they have stuck with me ever since. Three simple words that I wish someone had said to me when I was a confused and troubled teenager. Three simple words I put into the mouth of a fictional character created in my own mind. Three words I live by every day.

Prove them wrong.

In many ways, those three words form the main theme of the books. I didn’t know that at the time, aged twelve. They were just the type of words that Michael would say to cheer Danny up. But throughout the books, Michael stays true to his advice and refuses to give up on Danny until he believes it too. If they think you’re a troublemaker, he says to Danny, prove them wrong. If your mother thinks you are stupid, prove her wrong. If this town thinks you will never amount to anything, prove the whole damn place wrong. 

Prove them wrong. I think about those words all the time. Its not about revenge or holding grudges, it’s about holding your head up high and sticking to your values, your beliefs and your dreams.

When I was a kid, people tried to talk me out of being a writer. People laughed at me, ridiculed me and didn’t believe in me. I was an extremely sensitive child and by the time I entered my twenties, I had given up on writing. My dreams had been eroded by real life and the pressure to be sensible and get a real job.

I didn’t allow myself to think much about writing, but every time I did, I felt so sad and hollow inside, like a chunk of what made me who I was had been clawed out.

It took a while, but Michael’s words, his advice, eventually won me over. He was right all along, after all. When people think badly of you, look down on you, judge you or laugh at you, the very best thing you can do is prove them wrong.

Do it anyway.

Do it for you, so that you can smile when you think of the thing that you love, the thing that defines you, the thing you would always rather be doing, the thing that makes you, you.

Do it anyway and prove them wrong.

Throughout my life that has been the perfect mantra for a misfit like me.

Thanks for reading! If you are interested in Michael’s advice and the story behind it, here is a link to the first book in the series. Please note that I am currently revamping this series and adding fresh front matter to the books with a suggested reading order for the connected books in this universe. That should not impact your enjoyment should you read them now though!

https://amzn.eu/d/cYlh2AQ: The Best Life Advice I Ever Had Came From A Character I Created: Prove Them Wrong, A Mantra For Misfits

My Medium Experience Updated Plus Top Tips For Success

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Anna from Pixabay

Two months ago I posted about my experiences on the writer’s platform Medium, so far. To briefly recap, I first joined the site in April – finally giving in after other writers had been suggesting I try it for some time. I signed up to the paid membership because I knew if I didn’t fully commit, it would fall off my radar and get ignored. Knowing I was paying five dollars a month to the platform would, hopefully, encourage me to be active.

It did, though for April and May I was very quiet – time was spent just adding my About Me story and reading and researching publications that would be a good fit. You need to reach 100 followers to meet the Medium Partner Programme criteria, so that was another incentive to read, follow and comment on other writer’s work. I was pleased to discover there are many excellent writers on the site and it was not the chore I had envisioned reading and enjoying articles. I got to 100 followers by August and received my first payment from Medium in October. This was just over two dollars and was payment for what I had written in September.

In November my payment was just over eight dollars. At this time, I was enjoying the platform so much, I hadn’t actually examined my stats page yet. However, when I received a payment in December for $189 dollars, I was astounded! Luckily for me, I had been boosted in October, and again in November. Your story, if written well and received well, may be chosen to be boosted by the editors of the publication you had it published in. Looking at my stats, it’s obvious that while some of my poems and pieces of flash fiction have made me a few cents or a few dollars, my boosted pieces have made me a lot more. So, the trick is to get boosted if you can, but I’ll come to that in a bit.

I didn’t expect my January payment to be the same but it turned out to be even more. I was paid $249 dollars which is around £193. Amazing! Looking at my stats, I was reminded that in December I was boosted three times.

So far in January, I have published eleven pieces and obviously, my aim was to get boosted again if I could. I was delighted to discover I was boosted just last week! Now, that doesn’t automatically secure me a large payment. It still needs more reads and responses and at the moment it has less than my other boosted pieces.

The stats page is fascinating and I am learning more about Medium every day, but here is a quick run down of my top tips so far!

  • Once you’ve reached 100 followers and posted a certain amount of content, you can start getting paid so this is when you need to start paying attention to your stats if you haven’t already. It shows you how many reads, views and responses each published piece had and it shows you how much each piece earns you. This should help unravel the mystery of why some pieces make you more money than others.
  • I suggest submitting to publications. That is what has worked for me so far, but I am sure other writers might say different. There are millions on there so it’s just a case of looking for writers and content that are a good fit with your own. For example, I like writing about women’s issues such as motherhood, family relationships and the perimenopause, so Modern Women is a great fit for me. There are other similar publications and you can ask to write for as many as you like. In terms of poetry, I am a writer for three poetry only publications, and two that are a mix of poems, stories and articles. I submit to particular ones depending very much on the style, format and content of my poem.
  • Research the publications! Very important. Read as many of their published pieces as you can. Get a feel for their writers and their readers. Check their submission guidelines very carefully. Once you feel your work would fit in, ask to be a writer and hopefully you will be added. Some are stricter and fussier than others. Very large publications obviously have a bigger readership but I assume that makes it harder to be boosted, I’m not sure. At the moment, I am satisfied with how it is working out for me in the eight smaller pubs I write for. At some point, I may try getting added to bigger ones but at the moment, its not a high priority. I am still finding my way and don’t want to give myself too much pressure.
  • Make sure you format correctly! Publications have specific requirements but formatting your title and sub-title correctly are universal, so remember to do that. You simply highlight the first letter of your title then click on a big T to make it a title. For the sub-title, you do the same but click on the smaller t. You then need to add a main image and it gives you an option to upload one of your own, one from Unsplash or one from elsewhere. Make sure you credit it and make sure it fits with your piece and draws the reader in.
  • Pick alluring titles that make people curious to know more. My boosted titles so far have been: Less Is more: The Most Important Lesson The Perimenopause Has Taught Me; An Emotional Haircut: At Age 45, I Finally Like My Hair (my most read and highest paying piece!) I Was The All-Seeing Eye: But Who Saw Me? ; Take It From A True Cry-Baby: It’s Far Healthier To Let It Out Then To Keep It In; One Toothbrush: A Tale of Days Gone By (previously published on this blog!); and finally, I See You, Single White Eyebrow Hair: And You Don’t Scare Me At All (again, previously published here, updated, shortened and reworked for Medium.)
  • Make sure you send your piece to the right publication! Know your pubs and know them well.
  • Leave it overnight before submitting – I’ll write a piece, read it through, edit a bit, read it again and then leave it overnight. The next day I will always find bits I want to sharpen up or edit.
  • Be authentic and write from the heart – This is just what has worked for me so far. When I look at my boosted pieces, and other articles or poems that have done well on Medium, I can see a common thread; writing from the heart. I would say my style and content on Medium is exactly the same as it is here on my blog. My essay style pieces are usually about life, relationships, obstacles, mental health, parenting, etc. I write from the heart, I write as me. I don’t try to be anything I am not. I don’t try to impress anyone. Writing advice style articles are popular but there are so many… I’ve earned a bit from these sorts of pieces, but the ones that have got me the most views and earned me the most money are the universal ones, the ones people can relate to. It works both ways. The pieces I am more likely to comment on or highlight are the ones I can relate to. Everyone wants to feel understood, after all. So, if you’ve got something to say, a point to raise, a life obstacle to discuss, then do it.

I am still learning a lot about Medium and I’m sure I’ll update my progress again at some point. I can definitely see it as something I want to stick with though – something I am happy to devote time and energy to.

My 2024 Goals

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Quốc Hùng Hầu from Pixabay

It’s hard to believe it, but here we are again, tumbling wearily towards the end of yet another year with a brand new one just peeking over the horizon. The world does not seem to be getting better sadly – there seems to be more at stake than ever. But I will distract myself from that for now by following my yearly tradition of setting out my goals for the year ahead. I find it keeps me on track, feels good to write them down and it is fun to revisit them a year later and see how many I achieved! In my last post I wrote about my 2023 goals vs the reality. I achieved 6 out of 8, which I’m happy with. https://chantelleatkins.com/2023/12/09/my-2023-goals-vs-the-reality/

Here is what I hope to achieve in 2024, writing related and otherwise:

  1. Publish the next two books in The Day The Earth Turned Series – with the first two books ‘Summer’ and ‘Autumn’ already available, it will be perfectly doable to stick with my plan of releasing book 3 ‘Winter’ in January and book 4 ‘Spring’ in April.
  2. Publish At Night We Played In The Road – this spin off from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series has been a long time coming. I first got the idea about four years ago, when enjoying the shows Supernatural and Breaking Bad. Those two shows gave me the idea of two co-dependant brothers (Supernatural!) trying to navigate and survive the criminal drug world they are growing up in. (Breaking Bad.) At the time I was working on The Boy With The Thorn In His side series and suddenly figured out a way I could add these characters, Alfie and Tom Lane to the series. I thought that might be the end of their story and introduced them in book 5 of the series where they find themselves entangled in main character Danny’s fight to escape the clutches of his own criminal past. However, I fell so in love with Alfie and Tom, I had to know more about them, and started writing notes in a notebook, even whole chapters, in order to explore their back story. The book was a tricky one to write, especially because towards the end the timeline crosses over with book 5 of The Boy series and I had to make sure the scenes were not too repetitive for anyone who has read that series. My editor has played a huge part in helping sculpt this book into something I am really excited about. I will be tackling her final edits in the new year and plan to release the book around June/July 2024.
  3. Publish The Mess Of Us – This sequel to my 2013 debut novel The Mess Of Me has just come back from my wonderful beta readers. They’ve been tremendously helpful and overwhelmingly positive and I can’t wait to dive in and do another edit of the book with their valuable feedback in mind. I’ll get to this once I’ve gone through my editor’s comments for At Night They Played In The Road and once that is done I’ll send it to her, bringing it one step closer to publication. I don’t foresee any structural edits for this one, so hopefully it will be minor edits and I can plan to get it published for autumn/winter 2024.
  4. Republish The Mess Of Me with updates and new cover – Before I started The Mess Of Us I reread and updated The Mess Of Me and arranged a new cover. I would have set it up for an update but I have not had the time this year, however waiting to coincide its update with the release of its sequel is probably a good idea!
  5. Send The Dark Finds You to beta readers – this book is now ready for beta reader feedback. This book wasn’t meant to happen, but writing The Mess Of Us, and At Night We Played In The Road gave me ideas for a crossover book and I just couldn’t resist. Many of my books are linked in the same universe, with characters and places reappearing in different books, and writing these two books which link up with previous books, led me to an idea that would neatly tie up everyone’s stories. Bill Robinson from The Holds End trilogy was already linked to Elliot Pie from Elliot Pie’s Guide To Human Nature as they are neighbours on the same estate and are briefly mentioned in each other’s books. In The Dark Finds You, Elliot’s mum is now with Bill’s dad and they are expecting a baby together, making Elliot and Bill almost brothers. The main story-line involves Elliot’s best friend Finn being missing. Leah (Elliot’s other friend) and Laura (Elliot’s mother) are also in the book and have chapters from their points of view. Bill is on a downwards spiral as his addiction problems from The Holds End trilogy are still an issue, but he cares about Elliot and promises to help him find Finn. Bill’s band have a regular slot at Chaos, a nightclub owned and run by Danny, from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series… He also makes a small appearance in the Holds End trilogy and gets drawn into the search for the missing Finn, as a favour to Bill, who he has a lot in common with. Meanwhile, at the end of The Mess of Us, Leon (the main antagonist in The Mess of Me) has somewhat redeemed himself but is in debt to the drug dealers he used to work for. His brother Joe joins Bill’s band, and Leon is instructed to circulate drugs at Chaos, putting all these characters together in one book. It was so addictive to write because I knew all the characters so well! I don’t plan to publish it in 2024 but hope to at the start of 2025. It will be the final book in that universe.
  6. Continue to publish and grow on Medium – I joined Medium in April and I am so glad I did. I am extremely pleased with the earnings I’ve made from this writing platform and I find it to be a very warm, friendly and inspiring place. At the moment I am trying to submit 3-4 pieces a week and I’ll aim to keep that up in 2024.
  7. Launch the website for Chasing Driftwood Books – Chasing Driftwood Books is an indie collective started by myself and Sim Alec Sansford. It’s basically our own publisher! We published our Fortune’s Well trilogy under it plus our collaborative lockdown book, Stay Home. At the moment there are eight of us in the collective. Our plan is to support and promote each other and eventually let other authors join if they’re a good fit. The website will have all our books available to buy on author pages for each of us. I really hope 2024 is the year we push this forward as its been a long time coming!
  8. Tackle the third draft of Black Hare Valley – this won’t be a priority and will only happen if and when I get gaps between editors and beta readers getting back to me on the books mentioned above. Black Hare Valley was an idea I got about five or six years ago. My son helped me design the town with a huge map we drew together. I wrote some ideas and some character bios and that was it. Then, almost two years ago, we had a long power cut and an even longer time without the internet so I couldn’t work on the books on my laptop. I suddenly had the opening chapter to Black Hare Valley so grabbed a notebook and wrote it. Of course, this led to the next chapter, and the next and so on. I ended up writing the whole thing into five notebooks by hand and then put is aside to go back to the other books close to publication. Just recently, I was waiting for feedback from beta readers and my editor so decided to type up Black Hare Valley. This was technically the second draft but didn’t feel like it as I didn’t make too many changes. I just finished this a few days ago and will now leave it alone while I get all the other books ready for release. I have had some extra ideas for the plot though, so I added them to the end in note form and I am so excited to get back to this at some point!
  9. Add paid and free writing resources to the Chasing Driftwood Writing Group website – The site is now split between my writing group which provides writing opportunities to young people, and Chasing Driftwood Books which aims to support our group of indie authors. I’d like to add free resources to the writing group side. Regular prompts and challenges, as well as blog posts and tips and advice. I’d also like to add some paid resources such as some notebooks we have designed and some non-fiction books we are working on to encourage writing. I’m not sure if I will get time for this but I had to add it to the list to try and keep me on track!
  10. Get into hiking – We recently bought a caravan in Ilfracombe, Devon, which is close to the South West Salt path and Exmoor. It’s a beautifully wild and rugged coastal environment and I’ve had a strong urge to get into hiking for a while now. I just bought myself hiking boots with some Christmas money and I am so excited to get started! I am longing for adventures and keen to explore the area more as its just so beautiful.

That is a challenging list and I might not achieve them all but I always find it helps me to write my goals down so that I can refer back to them and try to stay on track. I’m excited about all of them and looking forward to a brand new year of writing, publishing and adventures.

What about you? Any hopes for the year ahead? Are you setting yourself any goals?