Blog
by Iain McLaughlin, Editor-in-Chief
May 13, 2016
I've been asked why we're not advertising this book. Let me explain.
I recently started giving creative writing workshops. They're part of what Thebes Publishing is all about. We want to reach out and find talented new people, to give fresh talent a chance to find its way. Anybody who writes was, at some point, given a break. At Thebes, we're going to pay that on by giving people a break as writers or artists. And as a publisher, it never hurts us to have a deeper pool of writers.
In giving these workshops I've touched on a number of different projects I've worked on. I've been doing this for wuite a while now - I started writing professionally in 1985 - so I have plenty stored in my memory banks. I've touched on the stuff I've done that has been successful and just as often, I've gone to the projects I've worked on that were rejected or abandoned for some reason. These abandoned projects formed part of a couple of the workshops as I look at the reasons for their failure, to examine what I did wrong. I found it quite cathartic to look at them and pass a fresh eye over them years later. I view most of these scripts as failures. I have no plans to try doing anything with them, but I can learn from the mistakes I made in those scripts. And so can the people attending my workshops.
The people attending the workshops asked if they could read the scripts and pitches, and I duly emailed them. A couple asked if they were available in book form so they could read them more easily. Obviously they weren't. Julianne Todd had been nagging me about doing something similar, though, and because of the workshops I gave in. I did these essays and assessments of my scripts for the folks doing the workshops and that's who this book is for. The points I make in the book back up the points I make in the workshops.
I see the book as part of the workshops rather than part of Thebes' publishing plan. That's why they're PoD rather than a regular print run. I hope that explains why we're being very low-key about the book. For me it's an ediucational piece rather than an entertainment.
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