Steps to improve your writing

Becoming a famous writer does not of course happen quickly, but to call yourself a writer and have faith that you are a writer, happens from the moment you decide to be one and you start to write regularly, even if hardly anybody except a very few people read it, or even the cat sat on your desk.

So, how can you reach people and write as a professional not an amateur, here are some steps to help you improve your writing 

At first, a lot of your writing will be for little if any financial profit and mostly for building up your profile and portfolio, you cannot apply for paid writing opportunities without any examples of your work, that would be rather like expecting to pass a school exam with nothing written on the test paper.

The progress on the journey to being a good writer is in part about helping readers to see things through different eyes and to maybe even change their thinking on some matters because of it …it is about giving their readers an insight into things, places and cultures and attitudes that may well have no experience of. Certainly Rhonda Partin-Sharps book , The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate did this for me , transporting me to the Appalachian mountain area of the USA …

However, I was also able to identify with similarities in my own background , coming from a family with its roots in the East End of London , a place where while geographically part of a larger area, in this case London, it is just like those mountains across the pond , a place apart with its own customs and standards of morality and where the biggest influence is family , work can be hard to come by and poverty does not mean a loss of pride but is almost something to be proud of. You know your place and do not jump out of your class unless these days you can do so knowing you will not need to turn to your community if it all goes wrong.

For an example of this, the British soap opera EastEnders, set in the East End of today, or rather a fictional portrayal of it, has a story line where a young son, deeply disturbed emotionally, some years ago killed his sister …shades of The Blood Moon Sealed My fate. The boy’s stepmother, who actually loves him like her own child, moved the body to another location and someone else was framed for the killing and sent to prison. This is how east end families used to react to such a situation, amazing lengths would be gone to, to protect the family. Just as in The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate, when Sinead was beaten to death by her step mother, even the child’s own father covered the circumstances of the death up, getting away with it because nobody in this society interfered in a family’s affairs …. many a body in the East End of London has been quietly spirited away. The East End of London is the home of gangsters such as The Kray brothers, though even many a gangster will do anything to protect their family.

In EastEnders, the boys obviously violent behaviour was becoming increasingly hard to cover up and so his father and step mother sent him to a posh by East End standards boarding school, not the sort of school the local children attend. Before long the family run out of money to keep him there and so decide to sell a restaurant that they own to property developers wanting to build a supermarket. The arrival of the supermarket would however threaten the livelihoods of the local street market stall holders. I am really able to identify with this as my grandfather was himself an East End market stall holder, running a bacon stall and known as The Bacon King of Bethnal Green. These days there would be no need for a bacon stall …bacon is bought in sealed packs in the supermarket.

My Grandfather ~ The Bacon king of Bethnal Green

  The boy loved his school, the discipline regime and extracurricular activities seemed to contain his temper, but when he returned home, the local children hated him for going to a posh school. The local community, especially those with a market stall hated the father, for as they felt selling them down the river to keep his child at a fancy school .Feelings ran even higher for both Ian the father and the locals because his father Pete had run a fruit and vegetable stall in the market as had his father Albert before him ….The locals saw Ian being prepared to sell his restaurant to keep his son at a posh boarding school  and by doing so cost them their livelihoods in the market as a huge betrayal. Ian pulls out of the deal with the property developers, feeling the pull of his loyalty to his old roots, but it is left to Jane, Bobby’s step mother to tell him that he cannot return to his school as they can no longer afford the fees. Bobby decides that he is going back to the school anyway and believes in his mind that the school will keep him and that his parents cannot stop him running away and going back, he is in his uniform with his hockey stick and his bag packed when Jane his step mother tries to force him to remain in the house ….he bashes her over the head with the hockey stick, leaving her at deaths door and at least at the moment paralysed …This has not stopped Ian from doing all in his power to try to prevent his son going to prison for the attack and the earlier murder of his sister, in spite of Bobby having gone to the pub where a wedding reception was in full swing East End style and East Enders know how to party , when Bobby bursts in announcing Dad !! I killed mum, just like I killed Lucy…Shocks have a way of coming out in The East End, and indeed they appear to in the mountains of the Appalachians too and great lengths are gone to in order to cover them up. Although somewhat before my Fathers time but certainly within memory for many of his family, Jack The Ripper operated on the fringes of Bethnal Green where my family are from and in neighbouring Whitechapel and to this day nobody really knows who he was!!! 

By Unknown - http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/image_galleries/jack_the_ripper_gallery.shtml?5, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12131137
A policeman discovering the body of prostitute Catherine Eddowes, one of Jack the Ripper's victims

In the east end of London in the 20’s and 30’s where my father and his brother and sisters grew up, tea leaves may be used over and over until the last drop of what could pass as tea was got out of them and it may well have been bread and dripping for tea, but the front step was polished and the net curtains washed and white. In EastEnders, a very amusing touch is that hardly anyone owns a washing machine, it seems to be suggested that this is because there is a local launderette, run by …Dot, a much loved very elderly local stalwart of the community, and when she was alive …Pauline Fowler, who was Ian’s aunt.  if they all got washing machines, Dot would be out of a job. Dot is Dot Branning and related to many members of Albert Square, the fictional area where EastEnders is set and so, they do not have washing machines, but go to the launderette to keep Dot in her job. 

Scrubbing the front step ..a job next to Godliness !!! 

There are other questions asked about EastEnders and East End family life that mirror The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate and those far away Appalachian Mountains. Why do people only ever go to the pub and have their celebrations in the local pub? because certainly in years back in both places there were no nightclubs, there was the local bar or your own home and that was where celebrations were held, at home, or in the bar/pub. Many an East End home had its own version of Moonshine and One of the proudest possessions a family could own in both those Appalachian Mountains and indeed the East End when my father grew up there, was a well-polished piano.


Why is everyone related? The answer to this one is simple …because they are simple as that, in EastEnders there are The Branning’s, Beale’s, Fowler’s, Mitchell’s and Carter’s and they are all either blood related or married to each other, The East End of my father’s time was like this too, many a marriage ‘contract’ had been sealed in school or within the families. Families can be closely knit and inter related in the Appalachian Mountains too, but one of the problems these close relationships can make no matter where is genetic and hereditary health issues that run through a family. Mental health is a theme that Rhonda Partin-Sharp writes on with insight and experience. On the other hand, families in both the East End of London and the Appalachian Mountains can hate each other with a passion and a feud be carried on for generations with the original reason for it lost in time. All that younger generations know is that they don’t talk to each other .

Why do people only ever get jobs locally? The answer is because this was where the jobs were, locally. People did not have the means to travel to work, in the East End of the 20’s and 30’s there were very few cars other than for the rich, i.e. such as the landlords and in the Appalachian Mountains, what transport there was for a family was more often than not a horse and cart. However, people did not need to go travel to work. The East End of my father’s day suffered from mass unemployment but what work there was, was local and the community and the businesses were mutually dependent on each other. Of course the people needed work and the businesses needed the people if they were to be profitable. Dockers really called the shots, if the Dockers went on strike then the ships were not unloaded and if ships were not unloaded then food was in very short supply and the shops and cafes did no trade. If people did not eat and they would sometimes resort to stealing food from the unloaded ships and then getting sick, then the doctor may have done ok, but in England I am writing about before the days of the health service and nobody called out the doctor unless they could afford to pay. However, the bosses at the docks also knew how to get the upper hand, men had to have a card to get work each day at the docks in London and indeed the other towns and cities in England where the docks were a major source of work. You got the card by paying a fee, your dues to the union, and if you could not afford the fees and you did not get to the docks early each day to see if you could get taken on then you did not work that day, there was no regular contract, many building sites operated a similar system.

Not so long ago, I went to the cinema to see the movie Suffragette and was deeply moved to find that it is set in …. Bethnal Green, where my father grew up and many of the women recruited from the area to the suffrage movement were from local businesses such as in the movie, the laundry. Laundries have played a big part in the life of the East End. I am currently tracing my family tree and cannot help but wonder, will I turn out to be related to a suffragette who worked in a laundry in Bethnal Green? So far it looks as if, once some links have been confirmed, my great grandmother was a widowed boot stitcher with several children to support, boot making was a big industry in the East End of London.  Ironic actually as so many children went to school with no shoes and my father told me a story of a family he knew where one brother went to school one week and the other brother the next week, because they had to share the shoes. Story telling Rhonda Partin-Sharp tells us is ingrained in the traditions of the Appalachian Mountains and it is also essential to the continuation of old East End customs and traditions and them being passed on, EastEnders are wonderful story tellers, my father rarely read me a story, but rather each night he told stories from his own life, my uncle his brother did the same with my cousins Jennifer and Keith.

In those Appalachian Mountains also, what work there was and the people were mutually dependent on each other, men either worked on the land or in the mine, and the mine owners also owned everything else in the community ~ the houses and the local store.  

      Many did indeed owe their soul to the company store ....But not so much has changed when we think that one of the biggest debt issues arising from the recession of the last years has been debts to mail order catalogues and people using them to buy essential clothing for their families and household items ....


So, what is it then that improves your writing? You will be able to see that I write from experience and what I know about, just as in my blog I write about being an older person with disabilities needing to make a new career. I am told by readers that my blog is enjoyed so much because I write from experience not from the point of view of someone working in recruitment, but from the viewpoint of an older woman needing to make a new career that she can carry on into later life ~ being a writer.


Valerie Hedges with thanks to Rhonda Partin-Sharp