Dogma, agnostics and the Red Chair…
My guest today, Stuart Aken, says that he was born against the odds to a widowed mother in a neighbour’s bed. Then raised in a number of homes by an artist mother who knew what love meant and a step-father who lacked imagination but made up for it with affection and education in things natural. Stuart maintains he wrote all the wrong things for a lifetime until he learned who he was and I thought that apart from the initial burst into the world, all we writers have done exactly that: written all the wrong things until we ‘grew up’. Stuart welcome,
To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
Hull, more properly Kingston Upon Hull, is a largish city on the Humber estuary in the north eastern part of England. I was born in a neighbour’s house, since flattened, as it was considered a slum. My Mum, widowed only 3 weeks earlier, had been thrown out of the house she lived in as it belonged to my late father’s employer, who wanted it to employ a new man.
Mum married again when I was five and we moved to live in a converted railway carriage, still on its wheels, perched six feet from the cliff edge at Hornsea, overlooking the North Sea. It was a wonderful, idyllic childhood; walking the mile or so along the beach to the local primary school and spending summer days on the sands.
My step-dad found a new job, complete with a car, and we moved to Hessle (a dormitory town for Hull), where, following my mother’s death, I finished my education at the age of 16 and left to join the Royal Air Force as an apprentice photographer.
What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
At twelve, I wanted to be a priest in the Church of England, as I had a crush on the local curate, a man who married and spent his first two years ministering to the Inuit in Alaska.
At eighteen I discovered that the Air Force wasn’t the experience I’d hoped and dreamt it would be. I just wanted to be back in civvy street.
Thirty, I was nine years into my first marriage and living down south in Colchester, Essex, working in the Unemployment Benefit Service. I wanted to be a full time writer back in my northern home, and away from an increasingly unhappy marriage, which loyalty had me endure for another nine years.
What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?
Raised in the traditions and beliefs of the Church of England, experience made me question the validity of religion around the age of eighteen. There followed a lengthy period of atheism, where I rejected the whole idea of God and especially the paraphernalia of organized religion. Later, limited maturity (I am, after all, only a man!), reflection and further experience made me rethink that stance. I now describe myself as an evangelical agnostic and take a passionate stance that there may or may not be a force or power we can call God, but that this would be something so far beyond our experience and capacity to understand as to be inexplicable. My distrust and dislike of all organized religion, which attempts to define a force I believe to be beyond such restrictions, remains.
What were three big events – in the family circle or on the world stage or in your reading life, for example – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced you in your career path?
Career path is a grand term for what’s been a fairly organic and chaotic development. That I would write was a given from around the age of ten, I’d say. I’ve always loved reading and books and, being without TV until I was fourteen, I read a great deal as a child. The Air Force was effective in a negative way, though it did afford me the opportunity to further my education: I read every book in the library on base, which included works on philosophy, psychology, the sciences, history and many different works of fiction. It was negative in that it taught me I didn’t want a life prescribed by the false discipline of others. I discovered I was, like my mother, an artist by temperament.
My mother’s death, in a car driven by my step-dad (not his fault) just two days after my sixteenth birthday, was influential in many ways. It had a detrimental effect on the school exams I took only a couple of weeks later but, more importantly, it was the event that moved me out of home and into the Air Force.
Later in life I looked at the world around me and saw so much injustice in so many different areas and became convinced that leaders, in all walks of life, are generally bad for the rest of us (though I can think of no viable alternative to democratic government). This attitude still drives my writing, as one of my major themes is to do with the effects of injustice.
Considering the innumerable electronic media avenues open to you- – blogs, online newspapers, TV, radio, etc – why have you chosen to write a book? Aren’t they obsolete?
Much is made of the technological revolution. I’ve lived during a period of exponential change in terms of technological advance. But, whether I’d call that change ‘progress’ is open to debate. The book continues as the first choice for many in terms of education, entertainment and informational resource. Whether this is as a printed package between soft or hard covers, or as a digital display on some form of screen, doesn’t really matter in the end.
Although I was initially trained as a photographer, and still enjoy making pictures, words are what fascinate me. I love the infinite possibilities that reside within this wonderful language of ours. Stories have been told since mankind first gathered into groups for protection and social intercourse. To be part of that long and exciting tradition, to add my own tales to the vast compendium, is a great honour and a fabulous means of expressing my feelings, ideas, fears and hopes.
Oh, and I write a daily blog as well.
Please tell us about your latest book…
The Methuselah Strain was born as a short story (a rather long one, at around 10,000 words), which I entered for a novelette contest run by The New Writer magazine in the UK. It won a special commendation and then rested in a drawer for years, for want of a suitable outlet.
Recently tidying files on my PC (I have over 14,000 Word files and they need a bit of culling from time to time to avoid the hard drive becoming engulfed by over-population) I came across this almost forgotten work. A second reading showed both flaws and missing elements. I developed the story and the characters until I had around 26,000 words describing the lives of the remaining human beings on an Earth depopulated and overcome with technology. The love-story, which I believe to be an integral part of any successful work of fiction, came naturally out of the interaction of characters and environment.
This is the story of a future Earth and one woman’s attempts to save humanity from the indignity of fading away through indifference and indolence.
If your work could change one thing in this world – what would it be?
Amazing, I know, but it would be something to do with reducing injustice and the influence of organized religion on life in general. Go on, admit it: you never expected that, did you?
Whom do you most admire and why? Many people set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
Most admire? That includes a great many people. I admire courage, individuality, creativity, persistence, and wisdom. So, the panoply of heroes includes, amongst others, Nelson Mandela, JFK (for all his faults, he moved things in the right direction), my mother, William Horwood, Gandhi, J K Rowling, and the millions of unsung, unnamed women who carry on their lives under the rule of despotic and frightened men the world over.
Ambition? Well, it goes without saying that I’ll be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature (one way to ensure you never get that, by the way, is to suggest you should), and, of course, the Booker, and maybe a Pulitzer.
But, actually, I’d be happy if a few people were sufficiently changed by my writing that they became better human beings. That, of course, is far more ambitious than any of the previous realms of fantasy I suggested.
What advice do you give aspiring writers?
Oh dear, this is where I become even more unpopular. So many writers and industry gurus seem to actually want to encourage the wanabees. The industry professionals do this, of course, to increase the number of gullible fools who’ll invest in their often inadequate schemes.
My advice is to aspiring writers is to forget it. Go and do something you’re good at. Around eighty percent of so-called writers are incompetent and, if employed in some trade or other, they’d be sued for the poor quality of their work.
I say this in the full knowledge that those who are truly writers, those who cannot do other than write, will continue to do so in spite of anything I might say. That’s the true measure of a real writer: it’s something you do because its absence from your life would be intolerable.
What are the last five websites you visited?
I have the memory of a gnat when it comes to trivia. But I can, with some sweating and pain from the effort, recall that I visited LinkedIn, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook and your own website this morning. Though, whether that tells readers anything about me, is a moot point.
What is your guiltiest pleasure that few know about?
Having ditched the guilt gifted us by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I feel no remorse at enjoying what this life provides for pleasure. But, in the spirit of the game, I’ll confess to a sneaking enjoyment of the company of women. Not for lascivious reasons (I’ve been very happily married, this time round, for 23 years), but because I find them both physically and mentally far more fascinating than my own gender. (Now, all the men hate me as well; oh dear!)
If music be the food of love, what do you think writing is and please explain your answer?
For all that I admire the Bard, I’m not sure I agree that music is the food of love. But we’ll bypass that thought.
Writing, to me, is a raison d’être. It fulfills the role of educator, informer, entertainer and recorder of events. It allows the building of stories to enlighten, amuse and engage the mind and emotions. Words can make a reader smile, cry, rage, hate, fear, love, laugh, and engage in any human emotion you care to name. Powerful, influential, persistent, interesting and elevating; writing is, perhaps, the essence of intellectual existence. Hope that doesn’t sound too pompous.
I’m a Brit, so some of the above (I leave it to you, as the reader, to determine which) is necessarily ironic in flavour. This also explains the idiosyncratic spelling, of course, as well as some of the phraseology. Who was it who said of America and Britain that we were two nations divided by a common language?
Prue, this has been fun. Thank you for the opportunity to put some flesh on the public bones I expose to those who do me the honour of reading my words.
Links, as follows:
Amazon UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stuart+aken&x=15&y=19
Amazon USA – http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stuart+aken&x=12&y=17
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/stuartaken
Web site: http://stuartaken.co.uk
Blog: http://stuartaken.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@stuartaken
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StuartAken
Great interview! Such an interesting path.
I would say it’s one of the deepest and most elucidating interviews from the Red Chair. Thanks for commenting, Gary.
Interesting that so many hard or difficult experiences left the greatest influence, Stuart. I appreciate your advice to writers, too. If you can NOT write (ie, if you can stop)–then give it a miss. This life, as you suggest, can be a hard one.
What an awesome interview! Thank you Stuart. And thank you Prue.
Stuart… I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but your life reads like a novel. So intense. I will take a peek at your books. Quoting Celia Rivenbark… “What does not kill us, makes us meaner.” Would that be appropriate? Although you do sound quite mellow.
What a fantastic interview. A real peak into a writer’s soul. I don’t think I’ll ever dare be interviewed again. Thanks for asking such searching questions.
I’ve read ‘Breaking Faith’ – it’s set when I was a teen and in landscape I know – and it asks some deep questions of attitudes and expectations of the period, highlighting injustices large & trite. I found myself trying to recall whether I was a party to something similar, and found that the answer was…. mmm… Not a shallow read, and I expect ‘The Methuselah Strain’ to set its own questions in a very similar way.
I think 16 is a pivotal age for loss. On the verge of adulthood but still a child and I say that from experience. I allowed my loss to cloud my life for years until I met my soul-mate and it is obvious that your wife is yours, Stuart. It is also obvious that your life experiences have provided such a rich seam for your imagination to people and write about. Which, as a regular reader of yours, makes so much sense now I’ve read this interview. Touching, humble in places but with a strength of character and belief that I truly admire.
Thanks, Barbara. You’re right; many people have commented that my life is like a novel – I might write it one day, when I’ve lived a little more. And I agree with the original quote, subverted by Celia Rivenbank. Life has taught me that many experiences do tend to strengthen us.
Mellow? Most people who know me consider me ‘laid back’. Of course, they see the swan gliding without noticing the feet paddling furiously beneath the surface. (Although, in my case, a scruffy duck might be a more apt metaphor.)
Stuart that is a delightful image. Nice to get to know you, Mr. Scruffy Duck. 🙂
Jenny, Barbara, Avril… I think that the harder times in one’s life are what shape the depths that a writer may plumb successfully. Whether they are writing satire, tragedy or romance. There has to be a benchmark against which you can measure all sorts of emotions and I think a journey such as Stuart’s has a very definitive benchmark in it!
Prue, After reading your amazing book… A Thousand Glass Flowers and “living” through the trials of the heroine, Lalita… I can’t imagine what you might have experienced to draw such a strong character. I can’t wait to dive into Stuart’s books. I’m stunned by his life story, not so much what happened, but how he lays the facts before us. Gently but firmly.
Once again setting the bar for author interviews, Prue.
Stuart, there is something instantly appealing about the simplicity of the cover for The Methuselah Strain that would have had me buying even without the interview. Knowing the background to the author will make this an even more interesting experience.
On your advice to aspiring writers I can only disagree totally. If they give up where will our future literary greats come from?
No-one is born a writer. Some are born story-tellers, which is a bonus, but even then writing comes from hard work learning and building the skills and techniques needed.
As we at MWi move into publishing I am once again moving in the field of aspiring writers on peer review sites, etc, and for every talentless wastrel who is seriously deluded there are a dozen more who just need the right encouragement, kind words and sound advice, to achieve their dreams.
I think all those of us who have been lucky enough to realise our own dreams owe it to the next generation of writers to give them a fair chance.
What would the world be like now if Gandhi and Mandela had told their people to forget their aspirations and give up?
Thank you, Mark for the plaudit. As for the rest? Stuart… I shall leave you to answer.
Well, ‘my whelm has never be so overed’ as one British comic used to delight in saying. Thank you all very much.
Mark: I had no intention to discourage new writing or new writers. I suppose I see people who write in 2 distinct classes. There are writers and there are non-writers. In my definition, a writer is someone who writes; i.e. they express their thoughts, ideas, dreams, hopes and anxieties in a form intended to convey those emotions and aspirations to those who read them. The non-writers, and they include a large number of wannabees, are those who consider writing to be both easy and lucrative. Most of this type simply clog up the works with banal, poorly-written copies of the works of others.
Real writers will never be put off by anything discouraging because their need is deep, the infection is incurable. It is possible, I admit, that a few ultra-sensitive souls may be discouraged and they may, with the right encouragement, have produced a work of genius that is otherwise lost. But I suspect such souls are few and far between. My comments were aimed at those who see writing as a cash-cow and believe, against all the evidence, that they are the answer to the world’s need for literary merit, when, in fact, they are even poorer than the most illiterate child.
The competition for attention and space out there in the world of books is hard enough, without the untalented, uneducated and deluded clogging it up with works that give the rest of us a bad name.
As I pointed out, I was bound to upset some. I just hope my intent in the comments is now a little clearer. The wannabees get all the encouragement they need from the many journals, industry professionals and others who wish to make money from their efforts. I was simply ‘balancing the books’ by giving an author’s view of the world of writing.
Your statistics, Mark, intrigue me. Mine has been the exact opposite experience. I’ve come across far more of the untalented and very few of the promising. But, perhaps we’ve visited different peer review sites. I avoid them now because there seemed to be a climate of unprovoked vitriol (not personally suffered) coupled with a clannish attitude that appeared to have no basis in the talent on display.
I do a fair bit to encourage those I encounter with talent and I welcome good writers into the fold.
At risk of taking over Prue’s blog with a dialogue, I can think of any number of briliant writers who have been brought to the brink of surrender by the failure of the system.
Check out Tom Winton’s story over at MWi – http://markwilliamsinternational.com/2011/03/26/fellowship-of-kindle-writers-tom-winton/
Tom wrote what is, in my humble opinion, a future classic. Beyond Nostalgia is one of my fabourite books ever. A breathtaking love story that was rejected so many times by the gatekeepers that for over a decade he gave up writing altogether. Not ultra-sensitive, by any means. But just how much rejection should a writer be expected to take?
Tom’s book is a slow-burner. One day it will be up their with the great literature of the twentieth century. yet it took the digital revolution of the twentyfirst century to even let it see the light of day.
Or check out the story of Mark Edwards on MWi – http://markwilliamsinternational.com/2011/07/08/living-the-dream-the-gatekeepers-eat-humble-pie-yet-again/
Another writer who gave up, only to return when the digital option emerged. Mark’s two books – both thrillers slated as wannabe rubbish by the gatekeepers, took #1 and #2 simultaneously on Kindle UK and landed them a six-figure publishing contract.
How many more writers throw their manuscripts away completely?
On peer review sites, I have to agree the vitriol and clannish attitudes are close to intolerable sometime. I get it far more than most, because I dared challenge the status quo, say digital was the future and we should self-publish, then prove it with a Kindle best-seller. The self-appointed gatekeepers of the old order that try to control the forums on these sites detest anyone who does well and anyone who dares to be different.
But I’ve been committed to helping other writers for as long as I can remember, and as a creative writing tutor of many years I’m used to identifying potential underneath the surface, and to taking risks supporting authors in their early careers.
So much so I’ve teamed up with two teenagers still at school to write what will be next year’s best-seller, “St. Mallory’s Forever!”
In cyberspace there’s enough room for everyone. The bookshelves are infinite, and there’s an entire world of potential readers to reach.
as JFK might have said, “Ask not what the publishing industry can do for you – ask what you can do for your fellow writers.”
I really don’t mind spirited discussion on my blog. It’s the spice in the curry and I welcome it. If you glance back at the TWILIT TRIUMVIRATE post, only yesterday I was having QUITE a discussion with someone who has very black and white opinions on Stephanie Meyer and the perceived damage she has done to a generation of young women. It was interesting and to see my opinion, you’d have to read my comment in reply.
In think you are actually both arguing from the same corner: write if you want, but don’t publish unless its the best it can be. That, in itself, requires not just talent, but determination and effort.
A blog is a great place for discussion, especially as visitors live at opposite sides of the globe and can’t meet for coffee. Think of we three: Stuart in the UK, Mark in West Africa and me in Tasmania, Australia!
Absolutely fascinating! I have seen such railway carriage homes, and wondered who could be living in them.
(The) “need is deep, the infection is incurable”
That explains a lot. And even when it seems you will never arrive, you still plod stubbornly on. 🙂
Thank you, Stuart and Prue, and all those who have contributed such interesting comments..
Lovely to have you here again, giselle. Stuart has certainly stirred some fascination.
Giselle, thanks for your comment. That railway carriage, by the way, was still on its wheels when we left. My dad sold it to a local farmer, who wanted it for his chickens. He towed it off with his tractor, going great guns, but he left the wheels behind and the carriage crashed to the ground, smashing all the windows. The farmer just laughed and towed it over the grass as it was; he said he was going to take out the glass anyway and replace it with chicken wire!
Stuart, Your life has been sort of like The Importance of Being Ernest but 180 degrees in the opposite direction. 🙂
Just rushed back to the Twilight post. The best discussions are so often in the comments, and somehow I missed this.Unfortunately time does not permit to engage further this weekend.
Perhaps sometime it would be interesting to debate those issues in a full blog post, and with a wider remit than just Steph Meyer’s work.
Mark, I think your comment backs up what I’m saying. The writers you mention may well have been brought to the ‘brink of surrender’. The fact is, they didn’t give up. And that’s my point: those who really are writers, the ones who have it in their bones, won’t give up, even if they are never published. The people I want to discourage are those who have no interest in learning the ropes, no wish to understand the tools of the trade but who nevertheless turn out volumes of utter drivel to inflict on the readers out there. And, the others are the industry professionals (in particular the vanity publishers and some of the so-called gurus) who actively encourage the talentless to clog up the works in order to make money out of people who are gullible, deluded or simply too egoistical to recognise their own deficiencies.
Encouraging those with talent is a great thing to do and I support it wholeheartedly. That’s one of the reasons I devote regular space to interviews on my blog with indie authors, and why I review books there as well.
Just one other comment on this. You ask how many writers throw away their MS completely? Add me to the list. I once wrote a thriller, in longhand; at 76,000 words, and a little way from the conclusion, I tossed the lot into a bin. It was rubbish, and the bin is where it deserved to go. But the exercise was useful in my writing apprenticeship, so not the waste it might otherwise seem.
Stuart, your Red Chair interview has had the highest view rate for a long time and I so welcome all the comment from those brave enough to put themselves forward.
As cliched as it may sound, it has been thought-provoking and I am grateful that you decided to be a part of the segment.
Stuart! Never throw away a manuscript.
Story: Years ago I took a couple of workshops with Stephen King. He told the story of how frustrated he was with writing female characters. He was sure he couldn’t do it. No matter how much his wife Tabitha encourgaged him. He threw away – binned – the manuscript for Carrie. Tabitha rescued it and insisted he submit it. For those who haven’t heard this tale… he subsequently received a $400,000 advance for the book. Carrie put him on the map.
Moral: If you’re inclined to throw away your writings… get married first.
Note to self: That’s what’s been missing.
I have to laugh! You always know how to lighten the moment, don’t you?
Well, I’m married, and I actually deliberately trashed a story because I was just so over the continual effort of submission. My life just disappeared down the plughole by the minute as I waited and waited for responses. How things have changed!
Oh, just to be clear: the marriage hasn’t changed… merely the writing and the mindset… the assurance, the freedom and the relief that I can fill every minute with writing more and more novels without waiting for a moribund industry to approve me… or not!