Friday, 30 June 2017

Withdrawal of Seeking from Distribution

Hello! I'm in Portugal at the moment and actually wrote this, like, a week and a half ago! Creepy, huh?

Well, as some of you may know, Dying Ember wasn't actually my first published novel. It was called Seeking, and it was published in 2014. Writing and publishing it changed my life and gave me the confidence to keep writing and the experience to improve, etc. - and barely a year later I was ready (I thought) to publish Dying Ember. I'd already done it once, how hard could it be...?

Since I finally published Dying Ember two years late, I've thought a lot about Seeking, how it was written and published and what it meant. After speaking to Lulu, I made the decision to withdraw it from print. This was done formally a few weeks ago, and by the time this post goes out it should have disappeared from distribution as well.
Seeking meant so much to me, and obviously still does. I still love the story, the whole idea of it - but all I've felt about it recently is... Badness. Quite a few copies of Seeking were sold just after Dying Ember was published, and every time that happened I felt uncomfortable. Obviously we always grow and you can't spend your whole life throwing old achievements under the bus in favour of your new ones, but when you feel that uncomfortable with something, it's probably not good to... Let it keep happening, you know?

This isn't the death of Seeking, even if I felt like I was garotting it as I finalised the decision with Lulu to discontinue the first edition print. Really, I've been neglecting it a lot - I could have kept up the Facebook page, I could have promoted it, I haven't even mentioned it or linked to it on this website. I've been trying to sweep it under a rug for the past six months, and that's not something you should do with a soul-child like your first published novel. It's kind of like Red to me now; I was obsessed with it, and when it didn't live up to my expectations I hated it and tried to bury it, and in the past five years I've learned to nurture it again, let it grow into something better rather than curse it for not being enough. I have worked on Red on and off for the past five years, and I intend to complete it and publish it when it's the right time; now, the same goes for Seeking. It's not dead, it's just taking a very long beauty sleep.
I won't discuss the specific reasons I'm no longer comfortable with my readers being interested in Seeking here, but suffice to say I do not feel it represents me appropriately as a person or a writer any more. Again - I'm not erasing it from history out of shame or anything; really, I'm just setting it aside to make it, one day, into something better.

And if you're now disappointed that you could have read another novel by me and didn't get the chance, fret not! Sylvestus is a scant five months away - and trust me, it is far, far better.

Is there anything more trustworthy than a winking doggo?

Thursday, 22 June 2017

Making the Firewood Portraits

I promised a little info on the Firewood portraits for those who were interested, so, here it is.

I mentioned in the Firewood post that I'd wanted to do this project for a long time. Actually, I did start a version of it in 2015 - it was meant to take a long time, but I only did one portrait, and then didn't dedicate it in the intended way.

2015, North, intended to be the first Firewood portrait

This is the portrait in question - North, based on a few actual photographs of models. It was the fourth (and last) digital portrait I made, and it almost didn't get finished because my Wacom was so battered that it was almost nonfunctional by the end. It took somewhere close to thirty hours; I can't remember precisely. The original was supposed to have the FAG written across it, as in the book; the idea was to make portraits of the characters at the actual riots, as they would be, but I couldn't make the text look right. With the failure of my tablet, the strain of thirty-hour pieces during A-levels, and the fact that Dying Ember had just missed its initial publication deadline and didn't feel like it was ever going to get out there, I abandoned the project and published the portrait as a standalone.

I started with a different idea this time: to leave the slur out, but instead to add flags to each of the characters, inspired by Sia's video The Greatest, which she put out in memorial a year ago to the Pulse victims.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GKSRyLdjsPA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I was still considering adding the letters, and didn't decide not to until I had all the portraits together to leave them out. The idea was that the flags should smudge as if with tears or rain - the grief, mixed in with the pride of the memorial.

I knew the best way to pull this off would be watercolours. I used an A3 watercolour pad, two portraits per page.

The second layer of the North pencil sketch

Sketches were made multiple times for each portrait in pencils. In the past two years I've become much more confident in drawing people as I began to work on comic book style, and in particular human faces in the past few months. Still, there were some issues in the initial shape of the faces; the first three portraits initially were slightly out of proportion. Atarah was done twice because the first portrait was so badly out of proportion, and also the initial painting was too heavy - the one published with the project is much improved on it. I was intending to re-do North, but timed out on the project.




Completed lines of North
The lines were done in art pen, the same ones I use for my comic book pages. One size nib was used for the main lines, a smaller nib for details and the minimal shading. The first portrait, North, used extremely experimental shading, which I decided I liked - until that point, I hadn't considered it.







Dany's completed lines - my favourite portrait


Colour was done lightly with watercolour pencil. This involves colouring with a pencil, then adding water to use the applied colour as paint. The difficulty was in using shading right - I wanted there to be no skin colour visible beneath the flags, as if the faces were bleached by a bright light, without losing the skin tones of the people beneath. This was another issue which caused the first Atarah to be abandoned.





Finished lines of (the second) Atarah and Junayd
I had a very rough idea of how to do the flags. I have watercolours, watercolour pencils, and watercolour pens - which would work best? In the end, I set the pad upright, balanced on the open pages. The square of each flag was soaked with water, and then thick paint quickly applied. Naturally the colours smudged together, even running down the cheeks to the bottom of the page - exactly what I'd wanted. For most of them, I did have to also reapply some of the layers to add distinction and stop, for instance, the bi flag on Atarah and Clay becoming one indistinct purplish mess.

Garnet's pencil colour, before water was added


Then it was just a matter of waiting for the flags to dry... Rinse and repeat.

On average, one portrait probably took about four hours. Dany's was without a doubt the longest, but for a happy reason - I wanted to do her hair "properly". PoC hair is doubtless a... Contentious issue in certain parts of the internet. Especially black women's hair. In the books, when her hair is described it's mostly as being braided - a simple description, but vague and encompassing a broad range of actual styles. Generally when drawing her in the past, I've done simple cornrows, pulled back and either hanging loose or tied into a knot behind her head; it seems practical, and Dany is definitely practical.



Dany, half-painted - the braids in the bottom right show the stage before
I wanted to do something different for this portrait. With help from my Tumblr followers I found a few PoC hair tutorials, then looked at a lot of photographs and pieces of art to figure out what would suit her, and how I could create it well. Drawing the braids took half an hour alone; colouring them with pencil took over an hour, and even painting them was complex. I was, however, extremely happy with how that turned out.
Junayd's finished hair I was also extremely pleased with.




V, completed but for flag


Annoyingly, my second favourite portrait is probably Clay's. This is annoying because he does not deserve to be the second-favourite portrait. Although the project is based around the Firewood riots and a memorial to Ezek, and all the other characters featured are those who in the novel specifically participate, I wanted to include Clay because he is still a main LGBT+ character. Even if he is an unmatched b*stard.




The finished North (proportion slightly wack because of the angle)





My main priority with the order of the portraits was to target main characters first, but also to highlight diversity. With more time, I might have moved onto the other minor characters who join Dany and North in the final few chapters - Grace, Wren - and also contentious characters, such as Brooke, who is engaged to Clay's co-worker Bay, but whom Dany notes is extremely close to (and flirtatious with) Atarah.

North bears the traditional rainbow pride flag: gay. Atarah and Clay ID as bi, their colours being blue, purple, and pink. Dany is asexual, her flag being black, grey, white, and purple (lots of fun in the fact of me not actually having a black paint, and not quite being sure how to show the white - I think it worked out pretty well). Junayd is a gay transgender man; I considered using two flags, but decided on simply the pink-blue-white-blue-pink trans flag in the end, to highlight the identity as unique among the characters, and to maintain uniformity. Similarly, Garnet - who is mentioned as talking to Atarah at the Mid-Disc, and who later becomes a key participant in the Firewood Riots - is genderqueer and pansexual. Because Vadek (V. of Rev. B. and V.) is also pan, I chose the green-white-purple genderqueer flag for them, and the pink-yellow-blue pan flag for him.
If you do have any questions about these identities, I encourage you to look into them - most of them have an official website, and all are recognised by international LGBT+ associations. While you can drop me a comment or email with questions, the internet can help you faster and with better information. There are many helplines and websites, as well as organisations near you, if you are questioning your orientation or gender identity.


I considered making a similar portrait of Ezekiel - after all, the whole Firewood Riots came about because of him, just as Ferguson and Orlando all came together for their victims. But somehow it never seemed right.
Because Ezek did not get to be proud of his identity.
Clay may choose not to, but Ezek couldn't. Ezek's absence in this project about - for - him represents those who were never able to be public and proud and safe in their identities.

So, those were the Firewood portraits.

Maddie Ziegler in Sia's The Greatest
Also, I'll be away for the next two weeks on a volunteer project. I have one post prepared and scheduled to go out while I'm gone, but I won't be answering emails or actively visiting the blog during the time, so don't think I've died or anything. I might have, though. I'll delegate someone to log in and tell you I've died if I have, I guess.

Monday, 12 June 2017

We Are Firewood

On 12th June 2016, the largest hate crime in recent history took place in an LGBT+ nightclub in Orlando, USA. The attack claimed the most lives of any mass shooting in the entirety of US history, with 49 people shot dead.
It was a tragedy. Musical artists released tributes; the entire Tony's ceremony the next night was dedicated to the victims. But even then, and now as well, the political undertones of world media stain the memorial of the attack and those who lost their lives to hate one year ago today.

After the Pulse massacre, US media faced a dilemma. Because the acts were carried out by a man who declared himself to be Muslim.
If there's one thing the good and fair God-fearing white American hates, it's a Muslim terrorist - but how to mourn the deaths of people they hated also as much...?
So what the media - not just in the US, but around the world - tried to do was to obscure the facts of the tragedy. The deaths were instantly political, simply because of why they were killed. The fact that every victim was a member of the LGBT+ community was obscured, barely mentioned if possible. The majority of the victims were Latinx or black, but where did you see that reported? All of the discussion moved away from What can we do to make the LGBT+ community feel safe? and right into What can we do to get rid of Muslims?
To even discuss and commemorate Pulse is to prepare yourself internally for the political onslaught about to come. Will the person I'm talking to blame this on Islam? Will I have to explain how Islam is not homophobic, one man was? Will they start talking about how he was probably a closeted homosexual himself? Will I have to go into all of the problems with this entire trope, why it's just a way for other heterosexual people to distance themselves from guilt? Will they try to tell me more guns would have helped? Or that we shouldn't remember them as being LGBT+ and PoC because that's not relevant, it's all hate we should eliminate?
But the fact of it is simply this: a man went into a space specifically designed to be safe for the LGBT+ community, and he killed 49 people and injured dozens more because he hated them for who they were.
Because they were queer, and many, many people continue to hate that. If you ever think that homophobia is over, or political correctness needs to calm down ("you guys already have equal marriage, gees...") and snowflakes need to toughen up, imagine being told that within a year of 49 members of your community being murdered because that is who they were.

If you've read Each Separate Dying Ember, and you're reading this now, it probably feels a little familiar.
In Dying Ember, a south Asian boy is killed because he is gay. As he dies, the slur FAG is carved onto his forehead. That is the catalyst I mentioned in this earlier post, the event which turns the entire story on its head. Overwhelmed with how powerless he feels, and with a mixture of terror for his own life and a sudden realisation of his own privilege, the white gay North writes FAG on his own head in marker pen, and begins - in a state of dissociation - a protest outside the Enforcement (police) head-quarters. The protest quickly gains traction, and the course of the story is skewed along a new path, mourning and bringing justice to a murdered brown LGBT+ boy, a boy who otherwise would have been forgotten.
I've included a (slightly abridged) transcription of North's speech below, because it says everything I need:


Click to enlarge & read

Here's the thing. The deaths of the Pulse shooting victims aren't the only thing that's inherently political, whether they like it or not - the lives of all LGBT+ and PoC people are. For some of us, politics isn't a choice. People say to me, "I support my gay friends but I don't agree with the local council flying a rainbow flag during Pride". People say, "You can be neutral when it comes to big issues; you're allowed not to have an opinion."
But... When I exist, I am at risk. And I'm white, living in Britain. I'm at less risk than most of the LGBT+ population. And if you aren't going to stand up for me when I am threatened, that inherently means that you are willing to potentially let me die, rather than interfere with your beliefs. Like North says, we all have free speech - you can use slurs, be they racial or sexual or ableist; you can "disagree with" being gay - but to speak against a group is to inherently threaten its individuals. The Pulse shooting proved that for us, just as Ezek's death in the book proves it to the other characters. And to not speak?
That's holding your hands up and going, "Yep, you carry on with that murder, I'm just gonna' groom my personal beliefs in this safe little bubble..."
I get the need to shut off from the world and forget all the bad sometimes. But some of us don't have a safe little bubble to retreat into. A rich straight able-bodied white person in Britain or the US can shut off the horrible things that happen to minorities when they get upset about them. For some of us, there's going to be a point when we're the ones on the line. And what we do is reach out a hand and ask for help. If you put your earplugs in and raise your magazine in front of your face while we drown, I hope you can understand my chagrin.

So that's the angry part. That's the *political* part.

Because I have another thing to say about Dying Ember and the Pulse shooting: I didn't actually write Ezek's death and the Firewood speech about it.
It wasn't written to commemorate the victims of Pulse, though in July 2016 I changed the dedication and afterword of the book, and modified the Firewood speech slightly. But it was actually written shortly after the murder of Michael Brown, and the suicide of Leelah Alcorn.
Michael Brown was an unarmed black boy killed by a police officer who also had ties to the KKK, who was never brought to justice for it. Leelah Alcorn was a transgender girl who was abused by her Christian family and community, who blamed them in her suicide note and begged the world to change so that in future, no more LGBT+ teens would have to suffer as she did.

After what becomes known as the Firewood riots, Daneel, North, and several others make repeated references to a "list of names" - of those murdered because of their colour, sexuality, or gender identity; of those whose killers were never brought to justice, whom the media demonised in order to justify their deaths. As if a black boy who might have robbed a store when he was twelve deserved death more or less than a white man who repeatedly raped girls on his campus. As if bad grades and no intention of attending further education mean it was okay for a police officer to hunt and kill them.
The afterword of Dying Ember consists of a list of such victims, from the end 2012 to mid-2016. It's not all of them, but it's the ones I could find.
Click to enlarge & read
If you dared to cry for the death of Poussey in Orange is the New Black, or agree that Ezekiel's murder was unfair, look at these names. Read them. Look them up, and learn about their lives and stories.
And go and make some damn change.

The final part of this memorial post is a project I thought about for a long time, but was never actually brave enough to try and pull off.
For the past month, I've tried.

North York

Atarah Dayal

Clay Nicholson

Daneel Thulani Baheleh

Garnet Denzel

Junayd Gisemba Yar'Adua

Vadik Nagarkar

These are portraits of the LGBT+ characters within Each Separate Dying Ember. They show their diversity, and their pride. I plan to talk a little more about the experience of creating them later; for now, they stand by themselves as memorial. It's not all the characters; each portrait took 4-6 hours, and through university exams I just didn't have the time for the most minor characters, or those whose sexualities is ambiguous, including Brooke and Kiah.

Read the names above. Look at their faces. Spend today mourning the victims of discrimination worldwide, and specifically the Pulse victims.
Spend tomorrow making sure this doesn't happen again.

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

So, What is Dying Ember... About?

Summarising novels can be incredibly difficult, and it's also an important skill, especially when you have a few seconds of someone's interest to try and sell it to them. If I can, I usually just pass across the blurb. I've tried a few different starting points to explain from, but there's so many plot details that it's always difficult. People have wings, okay, and it's like a dystopian modern-day city, and these three strangers have to work together in this kind of murder-Olympics, and there's a weird virtual reality fighty thing...
It gets complicated very quickly.
There's a lot of world-building to explain that sometimes is better just left to be read, but even then you have the characters and their stories. I love complicated plots and intricate world-building, but I love my characters more - yet explaining the intricacies of Kiah or the importance of Dany or the symbolism of North tends to fall flat when other people haven't met them yet.

Then someone asked me, "What is it really about?"
And I knew exactly what he meant. And I can't remember really what I stumbled out, but I know I wasn't satisfied with it.

So, what is Dying Ember... About?

I hate the word "society" because in this context it sounds... Weak. You can blame everything on society. I prefer not to use the word at all. And trying to explain what I mean in person gets difficult because I struggle to say things with the same sincerity I write them.
So Each Separate Dying Ember is about people. Not society. People.
The city is introduced as dilapidated, buildings abandoned and warehouses empty and whole districts unpoliced and lawless. In the very opening line, a teenage girl mentions shooting someone and then seeing them a week later. Secret organisations kidnap people and force them into a gladiatorial death-match that by itself seems alien. People fight to the death in a real-time, real-pain public VR system; their technology is clearly at least a little beyond ours, yet most of the characters don't even own a phone. Television, movies, and cars were never invented. The government is called the Regime, and the police, ambulance, and fire service are rolled into one militarised Enforcement.
And they have wings - and surely any society that grows with that kind of divergence from our own has to be different. That's fundamental to the whole world-building ideal: if you can say, "Everything is the same but..." you're doing it wrong, because if something as major as that is different, everything else would be too.

But then the novel goes on.
It gets frustrating trying to write things like this without spoilers, especially so soon after publication. I have things sat and scheduled that I'd love to talk about, but daren't without risking all my new readers' experiences. However, I'm going to talk about this more, and regardless of whether readers have reached that point yet, next week, so for now I'll go light with it.
Something happens just after halfway through the novel. And everything changes.
Each Separate Dying Ember isn't about winged people, or murder-Olympics, or real-time real-pain VR. It's about people. It's about children of privilege, and children of war, and children of squalor. It's about the North Yorks and Daneel Thulani Bahelehs and Jedekiah Khouries, and the Atarah Dayals and the Clay Nicholsons and the Mrs. Guleed Kamars and the Ezekiel Lachmans. It's about someone who grew up reading dystopias where everyone knew it was a dystopia and the heterosexual white girl saved the day (at the unfortunate sacrifice of the token minority friend) by overthrowing the government and making a speech about the empowerment of the people, who looked out of the window and knew that those stories don't change the world. White people hail The Hunger Games and condemn Ferguson in the same breath, call Rogue One inspiring and then say it's wrong to punch Nazis immediately afterwards.
Each Separate Dying Ember isn't about winged people living in a dystopia.
It's about us.

When you read it, or if you're reading it, or if you've read it, remember simply this: cities in Britain have Steppes, and they have Flats, and they have Old Docks. There are Flixtons, and EE12s, and 23 Hazelcrest Roads. I never meant for it to be overly political when I started, but when I was writing I knew what had to happen. And you know what? It's not even political, to me. It's just about people.
The figures North quotes in the third act were taken from the Manchester crime statistics for the last six years.
All of the names that serve as an afterword are real.

You may not agree with what the novel says, you may feel tricked into reading SJW propaganda when you were promised a tidy, non-political fiction, but do not forget:
It isn't half-humans in an unnamed city in dystopian alternate-universe Britain.
It's just people.

An example of a people, because I am imaginative as heck

Friday, 2 June 2017

Lottery Winners

This is a post about choices. It is a post about dreams. It is a post about mistakes, and about life from the perspective of a 19 year-old, and about lottery winners.

I've had a problem for a very long time - pretty much my entire life, in fact. But it never really became a problem until September 2016, because that was when I actually really acknowledged it for the first time; I had to.
My problem is this:
I have always wanted to be an author. Always. Stories have called out to me like it's in my blood or my bones or that place that fills up your shoulders and chest when you have an idea and have to do something about it or it will tear itself free. Acting comes in a similar way - after all, they're just different ways of making the story. And with both of them, it's like it's... Right. In both I grew and got better and I can look back in horror at what I thought was good five years ago (or more), but it's still the case that there's always been a knack. I'm hesitant to use "talent" because it's generally dismissive of the person behind it. Even a child who is "talented" at drawing has spent hours and hours and hours - in class, in the playground, at home, with a handheld torch after bedtime - drawing and drawing and drawing, but because they're so young and so good we just consider it a "talent". So along those lines, arguably, it's just my practise that's given me a way with stories. A way to make letters on a page into laughter, or a body on a stage into tears. But even then, I like to think there was at least some kind of innate ability there. Maybe, though, it's simply the ability to see things from a slightly different angle - to pick apart the story from the Thing That's Happened, and after learning from observation, to know how to make it into something more. I was younger than seven when I wrote my first novel; it was about a bat adventurer who was sent by a bat princess to retrieve her stolen necklace. And to this day, I am still in awe of the plot twist less-than-seven y/o me delivered to the invisible audience: the princess turned out to have been a villain all along. I continued to write for the next twelve years (and hopefully more) so you can definitely argue for practice, but frankly I think that there has to be some kind of "talent" for a less-than-seven y/o to come up with that kind of plot twist off their own back.
My problem is this:
I have always been a smart kid. Above average intelligence. Clever. They say that the worst thing for a child is to be slightly above average IQ-wise, because when you're young it sets an expectation of being better, not through work or perseverance but simply by nature, and at some point the world is going to come crashing down on you with the reminder that there are people who are much, much better than you.
My problem is this:
I have always been told to follow my dreams. Until I was thirteen, when I was told by high school careers officers and by enthusiastic teachers and by the parents of friends to follow a dream. And because I was smart, I knew that what I wanted wouldn't be acceptable. I can't even remember how long I've known that I needed A Back-up Plan. It seems like a lesson that's been with me since birth: Sure, kid, have your big dream, but... Make sure you have something else. Something real. Just in case, y'know? Not that we don't believe in you, but...

And... I'm not slating that. Not really. I once overheard two teachers discussing a boy in my year who was determined that he was going to be a Premier League footballer when he left school. They were terrified to knock down his dream, didn't want to destroy his ambition, but they also knew that he was not a particularly good football player, that he didn't have the resources to actually pursue the dream, and that he refused a back-up plan because that would be giving up on himself. And everyone knows that the underdog always achieves it when everyone else knocks them down, right?
And thirteen year-old me probably scoffed. Yeah, football kid wasn't gonna' achieve his dream. And he wasn't even smart enough to lie to the careers officer about it!
Because that was what I did. I was different, you see. I had talent, I had determination. I was a story, and in a story... You always win in the end.
But I wasn't actually brave enough to run with that to anybody's face, because I knew what would happen: English teachers who had read my stories would concede that they were good, and a nice teaching assistant would give me a thumbs-up, and then they would gently remind me, while handing me leaflets about A-levels and apprenticeships, that I needed A Back-up Plan.
And I couldn't hear those words, I knew that I wouldn't be able to hear them, because football kid was right. A back-up plan would be giving up on myself.

So I pretended. That was easier. I lied. I told the careers officer I had a wide range of interests but I particularly liked animals, literature, and theatre. She frowned and said that was a little broad to build a career on - I would have to start specialising at GCSE, or I'd never get ahead in the job market. I don't know what they told kids thirty years ago or what they tell them today, but when I was in high school we were honestly expected to have our career planned before we even ticked the boxes to select our optional GCSE subjects at the age of fourteen.
I held my ground here, and I picked three subjects not that would allow me to specialise in one discipline, but that allowed me to do things I liked.
By the time I was sixteen and applying to colleges and sixth forms, the careers people were getting pushier. I had to come up with a better lie. I picked my third or fourth favourite subject, Biology, because it was the only one that had a viable career behind it (I thought).
Before I started A-levels, though, two further things had happened.
The first was that I had decided I wanted to do an Animal Management B-tech/apprenticeship. I liked being hands-on with the animals, and it was practical, and it definitely had careers ahead of it, even "menial" ones - and after all, I didn't even need a high-paying career; I was going to be an author.
The second was that I had written two full novels, one of which I had published.

I did not take a B-tech or apprenticeship. I took five A-levels, one of which I failed and two further of which I dropped in the first year (I picked up a sixth and did both years in one year to make up the UCAS points).
And my writing career did not magically take off and save me from all of these choices. I kept writing.

And then, suddenly, in less than a year, it was time to apply to universities. Now I was definitely under pressure. I wished I'd thought about it more when I'd chosen my A-levels; my choices in degree were now limited by my odd mixture of A-levels, and why hadn't I considered this earlier?
Oh, yeah - because I never expected to get to this stage. Like, obviously I did, but I think in a way I'd still refused to accept it. This was my back-up plan, but it wasn't real. It was just an illusion to trick the disbelieving adults into thinking I wasn't being overambitious... Right?
About the same time, I started to take my writing more seriously. Acknowledge The Red Prince was terrible, but that it had importance as my first full-length novel (350,000 words, actually, so really more like three full-length novels. I went all out). Acknowledge Seeking was not great, but that it had importance as my first published novel (a more modest 120,000 words, thank goodness). Now, Dying Ember. Edit it properly. Get feedback. Close up those plot holes. Spend time. Take a risk with it. A bigger risk even than asking a friend to proof-read The Red Prince, even than publishing Seeking, had been.

Despite my limited choices I still ran with Biology. I was rejected from both of my first choice universities because I had done badly in my first year and also chosen the wrong subjects, and then...
Then it all kind of happened at once.

Summer volunteering at the Hawk Conservancy. Make big leaps with the first draft of Sylvestus. Trip to Amsterdam with friends.
And then I started my Biology degree.

What I had realised was this:
I wanted to work at the Hawk Conservancy. Or somewhere like it. It was more physically demanding than I was used to, I've never been a massively outdoorsy person, it was about common sense more than intelligence... But I wanted it. I wanted it more than I've ever wanted anything since I used to imagine giving talks about my books in packed convention halls and talking to fans and changing lives with my stories.
What I had realised was this:
If I had taken an animal management B-tech or apprenticeship when I was sixteen, I could have been here already. But I was "too smart". Teachers and friends' parents had told me it was beneath what I was capable of. They said I wouldn't be fulfilled and it was a shame to waste my talents. And I was filled with overwhelming rage and grief with the realisation that their doubt - and that my own dispassionate desire to please - had stripped this away from me. I was too old to take an animal management apprenticeship; the Conservancy told me outright when I summed up the courage to ask that I was already too overqualified to ever be staff there.
What I had realised was this:
I wanted to live in Amsterdam. Every second I spent there it was like my soul was reaching out of my body and begging for it. Maybe that's what the thing in my shoulders and chest is that pulls itself free when I'm filled with an idea. It rarely happens when I think about writing any more.
What I had realised was this:
I had spent my entire life trying to be smart enough to still be considered the best by everyone I came across. I would watch endless episodes of QI and The Unbelievable Truth just so that I could spew random facts whenever I met someone new to try and impress them. But it was like being smart came with a responsibility - to be a scientist, or a doctor, or a lawyer. And people may admit that Stephen Fry is very intelligent and also an actor slash satirist, yet if a smart kid says they want to be an actor, most adults will grimace and suggest that... They probably want a back-up plan, though, you know, not that we don't believe in you...
What I had realised - what came crashing down on me, overwhelming and crushing and breath-taking, while I sat in a plant biology lab session listening to lists of dates of assignments and tests and exams - was that I didn't want to be here.
I didn't want to be a biologist. I didn't want to be at uni. I didn't want to be in this lab, I didn't want to learn this information, I didn't want to suffer through exams and assignments for something that would go somewhere I didn't want to end up, I didn't want...
Anything I had done for myself.

I had made a mistake.
That was what came to me.
I realised, overwhelmingly and inescapably, that I would rather be dirt-poor and treated like a drop-out, but working every day of my life with spectacular birds of prey, than be here. That I would rather be working an ordinary mundane job in Amsterdam, a city I had fallen utterly in love with, where I could sit in the Oosterpark and listen to the cello beneath the Rijksmuseum and write in the evening in my tiny sun-filled apartment, than be here. That I would rather be a broke actor with no time to write and no chance of ever really "making it", working in an industry I had tried to dampen my love for because it wasn't considered prestigious enough for my above-average intelligence vanity.

The only reason I didn't drop out in October was fear.
Because there is one thing I have always been overwhelmingly afraid of, and that is living an ordinary life. Because writing still took priority, and because the Hawk Conservancy and Amsterdam were both equally as out of reach now. I was terrified of working 9-5 in a suffocating office or strictly-managed shop. The thought genuinely still makes my throat start to close and my eyes water with panic. I would die. People say it's okay to hate your job and love your free time, but I am terrified of wasting my life hating half of it and waiting constantly for the good parts.
And an ordinary job? What if it exhausted me? What if I spent so much of my life trying to pay bills and stay alive that I never had the time or energy to write? I knew I could work five days a week and volunteer at the Conservancy one day a week and just live like an ordinary person in the ordinary world who works an ordinary job and has hobbies but it terrified me just a little more than staying in uni did, to think that I might one day look around and realise I had been trying so hard to just survive that I was nothing but a shell, and all of my dreams and stories were dust in my shoes.
This is quite existential for a 19 year-old. I imagine older readers being slightly alarmed by this point. When you're raised on a mixture of Follow your dreams and Have a sensible dream, on Do what you love at the same time as Do what will secure your financial future, you get stuck with this kind of hysteria. And if you're in doubt about it, trust me: pretty much everyone I've spoken to in my generation about it has had the exact same crushing panic at some point, most constantly.

Of course, I was also acutely aware that I was hurtling toward something I still didn't want - a career in ecology, or cell biology, or plant anatomy, where I would be just as exhausted by the long hours and soul-sucking bureaucracy, but where I was expected to feel rewarded by the fact that I was working in an area I loved and found fascinating.
Which I didn't. Not enough. Fascinating enough to have wanted to study it when studying meant no more to me than a hobby does to someone with a better career plan, but nowhere near enough to want it to be that career and to be able to find it sustaining enough to live on.
So I made myself a deal. I would stay for first year. You get one fail-year covered by student finance, so I'd be in more debt if I ever decided to go back to uni, but I would still get the loans and grants interest-free for the second attempt. And I was going to come to a decision in that year. I either came up with an actual career in biology I was excited about and willing to follow to the end, or I dropped out and admitted what I had been hiding all my life: I wanted to be an author. I would work an ordinary job and make new plans, ones that settled for second-best. Not slightly above-average. Just... Precisely average. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes you can't be better, and you don't have to.

Up until now my life-plan had been this: pretend you have a viable career goal e.g. scientist; follow expected career path with elaborate ruse so no-one is suspicious about your lack of genuine interest in it; write write write in the meantime; get published; make £££; stop other career; do whatever u want in regards to acting, birds of prey, and art, because ur super-rich and technically qualified for one of them.
Of course it had occurred to me before that this might fail - when I was sixteen, I believe, in one soul-crushing cascade of realisations that I gradually came to terms with and built back from - but now the fact was clearer and closer.
And I genuinely can't remember who, but I confessed this to an adult, laughing it off and pretending like even saying the words didn't hurt, and they laughed too. "We all believe that," they chuckled. "We still do. All our lives we keep believing that one day we'll follow the proper dream and get rich. It's nothing to be embarrassed about hoping for."
And I appreciated their words, I did, and I suppose a part of me was reassured. But I was also terrified because for a second, what I had thought was this:
I am not everyone. I am not hoping. I am the person who succeeds. I am the person who is slightly better. I am a story. I was born with this gift and I have worked on it and perfected it until it is an art. I am a story. I am the main character. I know not everyone can achieve their dreams, but I can. I have to.
I will.

Typing it out sounds like crushing narcissism, but I think we all think this way. We know everyone can't achieve their dreams and we acknowledge this but in our hearts... In our hearts we know the truth.
We are all special. We are all going to be The One.
I think even when we try for humility and realism, we have to hold onto this just a little bit or we lose hope completely. Maybe I'm special because I had a knack even when I was as young as I can remember, or maybe because I am prepared to work exceedingly hard for it, or maybe because I have a tendency to take centre-stage and do small amounts of remarkable things.
We have to keep believing that.

I saw an interview with Bo Burnham, a... Comedian-musician-thing? I've only seen clips and gifsets of him but it's that kind of genre. The interviewer asked, as they always do, what advice he had for all those kids who loved his work and wanted to follow his career path. And what he said is terrible, and it is also perfect:
"Give up. The system is rigged against you. Your hard work and talent will not pay off. I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, 'Liquidize your assets, buy Powerball tickets, it works!'"

In April, I made a decision. Even as I prepared to power down for the editing of Sylvestus, I started looking at graduate accelerated veterinary programmes. So, the new plan is to graduate from this university with a BSc in Zoology, then somehow acquire ~£90,000 in order to do a graduate accelerated Veterinary Medicine programme at another university; because of the BSc I'll be able to do the BVetMed in half the time of an A-level entrant. The intention is still to specialise in avian treatment.
It was a hard thing to start looking at, because the decision felt like failure.
By acknowledging that I might not ever be a famous writer who spends their non-writing time speaking to packed convention halls and arranging television adaptation deals, it felt like giving up completely on that possibility. That's why I've never, truly and in all honesty, tried to achieve something like getting onto the VetMed before.

When I'd looked at courses and written down open day dates and calculated how much money I'd need, I couldn't write for a while. No point pouring my soul into Sylvestus when no-one would read it, no point making more Dying Ember illustrations, no point no point no point...
JK Rowling saying that she almost gave up on Harry Potter because she thought no-one would like it and "the world needs your story; keep going" doesn't help, because JK Rowling won the lottery. Stephen Fry won the lottery. Maggie Stiefvater won the lottery. I'm happy for anyone who can be inspired by their stories, but they don't cut it for me any more.

I set deadlines and started again not because the world needs my story, or because someone told me how much they enjoyed Dying Ember, or because I saw a motivating quote on Facebook, but because I wanted to. Because stories live in the winged place in my chest that reaches out sometimes and takes hold, and writing them makes me happy. Because I've been writing nearly every day for the past six years solid, and old habits die about as well as white heterosexuals in an action movie.

Maybe this post reads as nihilistic and depressing, but it wasn't intended that way.
I'm not here to tell you to follow your dream no matter what the #h8rs say, and I'm not here to tell you to give up on your dream and accept your fate as an ordinary person.
This post is for the people my age who have never thought beyond getting to uni and suddenly find themselves stranded with no further plans. For the kids who know their dream is impossible and are terrified to tell people about it because they know they'll be expected to fail. For the people who scoff at what a 19 year-old could possibly know about life, already.
I haven't reached a conclusion yet. Maybe when I'm old the answer will become startlingly clear, but I doubt it. I don't know whether settling on a VetMed plan counts as giving up on writing, and I don't know whether I should have dropped out and started working in a cafe in Amsterdam, and I don't know whether I'm ever going to *make it*, whatever that actually means.
But I'm trying. And I'll keep trying. And I'll damn well be happy while I do it, even if it kills me.

Daniel Radcliffe, offering relatable resignation in these troubling times, as ever