Call for Working Class Writers

Opportunity for more people to join us

It has been so long since I have published a post. My excuse is that I have been busy on deadline filing another book (non-fiction ghosted memoir), and I have immediately jumped onto the next. This one is about death… well, that’s what it appears to be about but I have learnt even in these first few weeks of research that writing about death means remembering how to live.

I learnt this week that there is a euthanasia movement in the Netherlands that is nicknamed ‘five to midnight’. It is called this because, for those who are living with a progressive or terminal illness and wishing to end their life, that phrase represents their dilemma of when to go. Often they need to depart just before the end, before they lose their capacity to make decisions, or carry out the act in a safe environment with the help of specialist services. They actually have to leave the party just before they’re ready.

But there is another way of looking at this idea of five to midnight. Yes, it is applied in the Netherlands to those with a progressive or terminal illness, but aren’t we all living in this ‘five to midnight’? For example, what if I were to get hit by a bus when I finish writing this piece, I would have spent my own ‘five to midnight’ sitting at a computer writing to you – pleasant as that is!

This week, I lost a dear friend suddenly, someone I had known for pretty much my entire life. In the same week that I discovered this sad news, Wendy Mitchell (another dear friend, and whose books I ghost) sat on the wing of a plane as it ascended into the sky to raise money for charity.

Wendy, as many of you know, is living with dementia, and the gift of this disease is that it has robbed her of the fear of those ‘what ifs’. What if the plane crashes? What if she comes tumbling out of the seat on her wingwalk? What if therefore we don’t get to finish the book we’re currently writing together?

‘Doesn’t matter,’ she told me before the wing walk, ‘because what a way to go!’

Wendy published a couple of blog posts this week detailing her adventure for which she raised more than £3,000 for charity. At the end of one she wrote this: “We often regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do. So everyone, if you have a desire, something on your bucket list, just do it – no-one knows what’s around the corner…”

You can read more about Wendy’s wing walk here.

That’s Wendy up there on that plane!

I thought of my friend who died suddenly, who was due to turn seventy in September, she had often written to me about this big looming birthday milestone, and she never made it. Because we just never know.

So, what has this got to do with working class writers, you might – quite rightly, actually – ask! Well, the point is this, as Wendy says, don’t put off those ambitions, don’t think ‘one day I’ll write that book’, just do it.

What was my motivation for writing my own debut novel, The Imposter? It’s rather morbid, but as we’re on the subject I’ll share with you, it was the thought of getting hit by a bus (that damned bus) and never having done it. That was a worse thought than any of those neuroses of writing.

In October, I found myself at a bit of a loose end, so I decided that I would mentor one working class writer a month for one year. I am only nine months in but it has been the most wonderful and rewarding decision. Each month, I take on a new mentee, we have four one-to-one sessions to discuss their work in progress during that month, and they join my Facebook group and the growing community of working class writers there. It is a wonderful and supportive space where we share in each others news, writing and otherwise. Each Friday we have an accountability check to see what everyone has achieved in the last seven days, myself included. Some of them have set up their own workshop where they share and critique each other’s work, and every month we have a group zoom where I introduce them to another person from the book world, be that an author, agent, or someone working in publishing.

Last night we were joined by Ruth Knowles, a publisher at Puffin, and oh how I wish I could have recorded that zoom call for you because it was so fascinating – even for me having published numerous books.

Here we are chatting to Ruth Knowles (bottom centre)

The group has now swelled to thirteen and this has been due to a wonderful sponsor, who wishes to remain anonymous, who has paid for extra places for others to join us. My new mentee for this week, although a working class lad, did not feel comfortable to take the place of someone who could really benefit from all this support for free, and so he decided to pay it forward and paid £250 for someone else to join next month alongside the free space that I offer each month.

Credentials to join are that you must be from a working class background, you must also be unrepresented, unpublished and have a work in progress. I offer a free space each month for someone to join, but if you would like to join and pay it forward for someone else to enjoy a free space like this month’s mentee did, then do let me know.

Deadline for July applications is June 30th, please tell me in no more than 300 words a little about yourself and your working class credentials and your current work in progress. This is open to UK and Ireland only. If you have applied before and been unsuccessful, just keep on applying and try again in July. I am afraid I can only respond to the selected mentee for that month.

Please send applications to: anna@annawharton.com

This has turned into a truly supportive community for working class writers and I would like as many people as possible to benefit from it, so please share this post if you can.

And like I said at the top of this post, don’t put off your ambitions to write, gather all the help you can get, because the time to write is now.