By Mark Blackburn
I always loved writing and English was my favourite subject – I came top of my whole school of 500 in the end-of-year exam! I’ve even got the results sheet somewhere that I pinched off the noticeboard when it had been up for a few days. But in my aspirational middle England middle-class household being an author was never going to fly as a career option, so I went to the London School of Economics for my degree and then spent my working life in commerce – retail and property, to be precise.
But when a job separated me from my wife and home during my forties, to fill the evenings I started an evening class in creative writing. I carried on when I returned to London, doing classes at the City Lit and seeing my writing in print for the first time in the year-end review as ‘best in class’. At the end of my course there, my tutor invited me into her workshop group, where the other participants were all published authors! Imposter syndrome? You bet! But gradually my writing life took over from my working life. I became A Writer.
Soon I began to have short stories published and winning prizes – I even won a trip to Sydney (the Heathrow 70 Writing Prize)! I was also the runner-up in the 2022 Ruth Rendell Short Story Prize judged by Dame Margaret Drabble. The awards ceremony was held at the grand Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond on the outskirts of London and my story was read by a professional actor! But the never-to-be-forgotten moment was when Dame Margaret herself told me how much she related to and loved my story.
I started work on a novel but then writer friends who knew something of my personal history and very dysfunctional family suggested my real-life story was itself worth telling! This resulted in my memoir/travelogue ‘Final Approach: My Father and Other Turbulence’ being published by Claret Press. Memoirs need a device, and mine is that each chapter is based around a different airport which has some sort of significance to the story. Each chapter is titled with that airport’s IATA code! So the LHR chapter tells of my days as a planespotter at London Heathrow! The book has been very well received, with great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. It was shortlisted for the TLC Pen Factor Pitch Prize, named as one of Psychogeographic Review’s Books of the Year 2024 and was a Finalist in the 2024 Eyelands Book Awards.
What really pleased me though was some of the individual reactions to the book.
Writing it had certainly been very cathartic – I had a very difficult relationship with my estranged father who accused me of some pretty awful things. (You’ll have to buy the book to find out exactly what!). I was surprised to find out that for many people reading it was also a cathartic experience. It seemed that although readers might not have had exactly the same experience with a parent, there were points in common which made them find my story very relatable. This affirmation seemed to give my writing real validation. This was not something I’d anticipated from the process; it helped me to realise it’s about far more than just book sales.
In a similar vein, it gave me immense satisfaction and pleasure to create something during Covid which brought joy at a difficult time. A chance discussion with a local illustrator friend caused us to collaborate on a children’s book. A local legend held that a teddy bear was kidnapped and taken hostage to the neighbouring village! Hence Brian the Barrington Bear was born. During lockdown when children were unable to get to school, we decided to offer the book free online and to our amazement over a hundred families took up the offer and our little bear ended up travelling all over the world! As the book was so well received we published it, and have now also released a sequel, Brian the Flying Bear. (Brian gets stranded in Spain after getting mistakenly left behind on a family holiday and has to find his own way home!)
So I’m now pretty much a full-time writer based in Somerset, and as well as my books I have had numerous other short stories, poems and other pieces published and shortlisted for prizes. Most recently I’ve won the 2024 South Hams Literary Festival Short Story Prize.
As for the future, my book Final Approach will also be released early next year in an illustrated hardback version and I’m currently editing a draft novel Can We Talk? and nearing completion of a short story collection (The Lost Shore). I also have about 200,000 words of Covid journaling and I’m considering how I might publicly release some of this. Extracts have already been published and shortlisted for prizes. I do love my writing; I was successful in commerce but now I feel I’m back to doing what I really do best and what makes me happy. Finally, I’m the person I want to be –
A Writer!
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