February 2023

What a weekend.

I’ve always loved Crime & Publishment. Cosy, intimate (in a nice, wholesome, way). A meeting of like-minded souls who share a common, and wonderful, dream. To write. To take what burns inside of us and give it voice. To share it and celebrate it. To help ourselves and others understand what makes us tick, and what makes our poor, mis-guided and fallible, species do the things we do, both wonderful and awful.

I needed it, this year. Personal stuff around mid-2022 set me back a bit, had me doubting my writing ability and my faith in people and my staying power, my ability to rise above my own insecurities and achieve my lifelong dream of taking what rattled around in my knackered old head and make sense of it, learn to live with it, own it. It’s a well known feeling that most writers struggle with. A nasty little bastard called “The Poison Parrot” (as the lovely, lovely, Caro Ramsay calls it). Also known as “Imposter Syndrome” but calling it “The Poison Parrot” makes it so much easier to hate the wee shite and send it packing.

The Poison Parrot sits on our shoulder and whispers to us. Every time someone kindly compliments our writing it whispers to us that they’re lying, or misguided, or falsely-flattering us. When even seasoned and experienced industry professionals read our scribbling and tell us we’ve “got the juice” (thanks, Mr Broadfoot – still love you for that one), the Parrot whispers to us that these people just want something from us, or they want us to piss off and stop bothering them.

And the Parrot has all the time in the day to work it’s nasty little beak on us. Even the loveliest and most inspiring comment from a good friend or a fellow C&P attendee or fellow scribbler stays fresh in our ears for only so long, but the Parrot has all day and all night to “put us straight”.

Worse, the Parrot’s best mate and co-conspirator, Confirmation Bias, is always on hand to magnify our belief in what the Parrot tells us.

I’ve had to learn a new meaning to the word “faith”. I’m not religious, but I’ve learned that a “leap of faith” can not only be a good thing, but a necessary thing, sometimes. When I believe my writing is shit, I try to remember when so-and-so said they loved my writing (so-and-so being someone who knows what the hell she or he is talking about). When The Parrot tells me I’m kidding myself and that I wouldn’t recognise good writing of mine if it smacked me in the face, I try to remember when some wiser and more experienced and better informed so-and-so told me to stop flogging myself and listen to her/him instead of that damned bird.

The Parrot is a wee bastard. The Parrot wants me to fail, so it can spend the rest of my life reminding me it always knew I’d fail. Bastard Parrot.

Good news? I’ve found that the Parrot is terrified of the sound of fingers banging away on a keyboard. It pisses off sharpish when it hears that. So, the solution to the wee bastard Parrot is easy – arse in chair, fingers on keyboard, mind in our stories and with our wild and wonderful characters.

My own damned Parrot got blasted off my shoulder at C&P (and is hopefully still lost somewhere between Kirkpatrick and West Lothian) by the love and inspiration and belief I got, and always get, from any time I spend with my tribe, the very best of people, Crime Fiction Writers.

I think that’s a leap of faith I can, er, have faith in.

xxx