Allow me to introduce you to wonderfully talented Scottish author Jo Chumas

Q. How would you describe your personality?

Hi Tracey, thanks for having me! It’s good to be here.

In answer to your question, I’m a socially capable introvert. By that I mean that I am able to pass myself off as an extrovert, but this is just a mask – not in the bad sense, in that it’s fake (it’s a protective mask) but this mask is something that hides my true self. The wearing of the daily mask comes from a) being born a female and b) knowing/realising from a very early age that the only way to protect myself/get what I wanted was to ‘shine/smile/and effuse’ in a feminine way.

I learnt about human nature very early on in life, learnt that to get what I wanted (permission to do this or that/a bit of money for some nice clothes/understanding and communication, sympathy, support – you name it) I had to smile and pacify and this involved being socially extremely empathetic and in tune with other people. It’s the female disease and comes from the deeply ingrained misogyny in our societies.

I became an expert at faking ‘niceness’ and being seen as an ‘extrovert’, smiling, happy, in tune with any situation. But this is not who I really am. I need alone time like I need oxygen. I don’t like group anything. I die inside when I am put in the spotlight and here I am in your ‘spotlight’. I feel comfortable with you Tracey, so all is good.

I’m also a person who doesn’t like to play by the rules. I like to do things spontaneously, like making plans then doing the opposite. It’s my nature, to do the opposite.

I like to live on the periphery of society, observing. This sounds a bit ‘freakshow-ish’ but it’s not. I’m so introverted that I shy away from anything involving group activity, preferring to make my own way.

I dislike intensely crowds of people amassed together, big social events, groups of people congregating, anywhere where a social situation is set up for an expected result, like a wedding or a large extended family get-together. I like peace and quiet and nature above all else, but I am scared of the countryside – not if it were just me and the countryside, but rurality and all that it entails. Because of this I always live in small places in inner-cities. I feel protected by inner-cities; protected by the anonymity of late-night places, the energy of the streets. Life in the country would send me insane.

Q. From what I understand you had a very interesting childhood. Could you tell us a bit about that?

My childhood was interesting – that’s one way of putting it. I was a loner in a big family. I was called the ‘black sheep’. My father used to call me Greta Garbo, because her tagline was ‘I want to be alone’. He’d laugh at me, in a loving way, and call me that. But it stuck. In being the ‘black sheep’ I felt removed of all responsibility to be ‘normal’ and play by the rules of the family dynamic. That was left to my two sisters and brother. I was glad I didn’t have to be ‘normal’, but I also felt very alone. I still feel alone.

I was sent to boarding school at a very weird age – 15; was there for three years. Looking back I feel/know I had some sort of ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ but those terms were not used back then. Socially I feel awkward, but I learnt the rules early on. The fact that these rules were not natural for me and learnt, and knowing my son who has the condition, I feel I had it too and still have it (Asperger’s Syndrome is not something you grow out of).

I was considered ‘weird’ as a young child, but it didn’t really bother me. I made a few close friends but I had my secret life – in my head. Prior to boarding school I was the daughter of a European diplomat who travelled the world, trying to help solve the world’s problems. I was probably a deep disappointment to my parents because I wasn’t a girly girl. I looked like a girl – with long hair, plaited, and I had a sweet little face. I would wear pretty colours – pink tee shirts and little skirts – but inside I was a raging mass of anti-men hormones. Not anti-men as such but angry at men, and angry at women for eating up the prejudices that men played out. I was devoted to my father though; a nicer, more decent man you’d never meet. He was the rock of the family and I loved him to bits. When he died, the family fell apart. Hard, but true. By that time I had my own little family. We still talk about grand-dad very often.

Q. You’ve spoken about the European Union previously, would you describe yourself as having an interest in world politics?

I’m passionately interested in world politics and read avidly on it. It doesn’t matter the country; I follow politics from many countries around the world. I’m also passionately pro-European. I grew up in Europe. It’s a continent that is totally unique, always interesting, always home. I voted REMAIN in the European Referendum we’ve just had in the UK, and see myself as resettling in Europe. The continent was my playground when I was little. That sounds privileged and perhaps it was, but my father was a senior figure, an architect of the European Union, helping to build the EU when the UK first joined. He helped build the UK’s role within the EU. We’d spent our lives back then driving from European country to European country and languages became another of my obsessions. Politics is in my blood, but I’d never get into politics myself. I like to observe. I need a quiet existence and politics could never provide that.

Q. Your mentioned your twitter tagline reads ‘full-time human being’, could you expand on that for us?

I used that tagline a while ago (I don’t use it now, but I might use it again). I wrote it during a time when I was dealing with some communication issues with some people I know. I remember feeling at that time that these people were automatons, were acting like robots and there was no humanity in their interaction. Peel back the layers of any human being and you’ll find the full-time human being in all of us, yet so many wrap themselves up in layers of automatic thinking. Their ‘busy-ness’ as in ‘I’m so busy and can’t talk; I’m so busy I can’t have you over’ ‘I never phone you because I’m so busy’, becomes a robot shell of thinking/being. I like to think of myself as a full-time human because I accept completely my life with all its short-comings and loveliness and I never pretend to be anything I am not. I am always available to help anyone in a jam (I get this from my dad, this need to connect on a real level with anyone who needs help), but many people are shut down with their own sense of importance and busy-ness that they become robots, almost non-human.

Q. You are very generous in your support of fellow authors; did you receive the same kind of support when you were starting out?

No I didn’t and I still don’t. There are rare exceptions; you’re one Tracey, but I can count on one hand the amount of authors who are prepared to engage with me and support me with my writing. In my experience real, substantial author support of other authors is a total myth but this is my experience and I hope and pray that other writers have different experiences to mine, otherwise the world would be a very sad place. I love supporting other writers, but there has to be some engagement and reciprocity, otherwise what’s it all for? We’re all equal in this game. No one is better than anyone else in the human sakes.

Writers are extremely competitive and threatened by other writers. I think the rise of social media and self-publishing has pumped up author’s/people’s egos and it’s not nice.

Selfishness is part of human nature but people really have come to think that their opinion is important and no one else’s matters. Everyone’s opinion matters, but we don’t have to hear everybody talking all at once. It’s nonsense. Tweeting/blogging and engaging with Facebook actually makes us think we’re important and that our opinion is important. It is not and we’re not.

Q. And how did your writing career start?

You’re so sweet to call my writing ‘a career’. I wouldn’t call it that. I’ve been writing since I was very little, but wrote my first novel 19 years ago. A career implies a profession from which one can support oneself. I’ve been a journalist, a freelance writer, a PR expert on international media, specialising in education, and a novelist. I made more money as a PR, but the company I was working for was a soul-destroying place to work in the end.

The publishing world is just another industry that has been decimated by technology. There are good and bad sides to every story, and the publishing world is no different. It’s a profit-based industry and profits are made by reducing manufacturing costs and elevating product costs. It’s no different from any other industry. I’ve had to support my writing ‘career’ with all sorts of income-generating revenues in order to survive.

I have no illusions about writing novels anymore. It’s a fun thing to do, and I love it, but I am getting older now so we’ll see what happens. I don’t see it as a career, I see it as a duty (I have stories that need telling), a love, an enduring obsession. A career implies retirement and a salary. There’s no salary, although I have made a bit of money out of it, and there’s no retirement.

Q. Was there any particular reason for your choice of genre?

My life is a mystery; how I survived; how I’ve coped; how I have reached my age and not buckled under the pressure. I write mysteries because life is a mystery. Everything is a mystery to me – pretty much – except one or two things. And if there wasn’t mystery there would be grey/beige/dreary day-to-day boredom on a nuclear scale and that would be death.

So I create mysteries for myself to keep myself alive. It sounds dramatic but I thrive on mystery. It keeps me thinking and creating, all the time.

Q. What’s your approach to writing a new novel?

I usually take an idea, a sentence, a word, a concept, a feeling and this becomes the starting point of a story. From that first feeling, it’s a long, long road of plotting, planning, researching, writing, and more writing………..it takes around two years for me to write a novel, although that’s with life included. I have a son with Asperger’s who I have home-educated for a long time. He takes up most of my time, making sure he has a life filled with opportunities, teaching him, looking after him, but in between this I write little scraps of notes which turn in ideas, which turn into paragraphs, which turn into chapters, which turn into a novel somewhere down the path. Then the whole thing is rewritten up to five times.

Q. Your novels are rich with intricate details; does that require a lot of research on your part?

Depends on the scene, but generally yes. Research is one thing I love doing. I’ll inhale the scent of a 100-year-old magazine to get the feel of it. I’ll examine the font of some historic papers and create a story in my mind about the font and everything it represents. I have a very good memory for scenes and details within a scene, events which happened to me and I use these in my novels.

I have a very good memory for details that happened in the past. I think in terms of pictures and images as well as words. I can see the intricate details of someone’s jacket or house, simply by thinking about these things.

Q. What advice would you give to someone thinking of writing a book?

I’d say don’t do it. Seriously though, everyone thinks they’re a writer these days and that’s just nuts. I would love to build a palace in the vein of the Taj Mahal, but I don’t do it because I am not an architect and I don’t have the funds, the time or the genuine desire to see this dream become a reality.

I write stories because that’s about all I can do. I’m good at it because I’ve spent close on 20 years doing it. Prior to that and during these 20 years I’ve been a journalist and a PR. I can write. My writing has been published the world over. I have experience.

Don’t write a novel because you got top marks in English at school and all your friends are doing it. Write a novel because you’ll burst and die if you can’t tell this story you’ve come up with.

Writing a novel is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. And once you’ve written your novel, the path forward is full of landmines ready to explode in your face.

There is no safe path through the landmines. They’ll be there ready for you, as you step on them, ready to blow your body to pieces. And on top of that, the landscape is barren and the vultures are circling ready to fly down and eat you alive.

The vultures are the add-on ‘service-providers’ who attach themselves to the indie and traditional publishing industry. They will peck at you and eat your flesh, flatter you and empty your wallet. They are everywhere, fluttering around you like unbeautiful fire-flies.

So between completing an 80,000 word novel of complete and utter originality that’s going to floor many, many people with its flawless sentences and moving passages; in between editing it and rewriting it over and over; in between submitted it to agents (that’s another war); or self-publishing it (not an easy route – don’t let anyone kid you about that); you’ll have to dodge the landmines while you get to the other side of the barren landscape that’s the publishing world.

If you feel you can handle this, then by all means go ahead and write a story, but never kid yourself it will be easy; never kid yourself your friends and family will care you’ve written a novel; never ever kid yourself that you’ll be able to make a living out of it (you might make some irregular money, you might not); and never ever believe a word you read on any indie website on how to achieve fame and fortune. Limit what knowledge you ‘consume’ on indie publishing.

Read my website (or don’t) for advice on resources to use: www.jochumaswriter.com – I have read everything there is to read on publishing and Indie publishing and it sent me crazy. I’ve bought the marketing books (many are pure rubbish), I’ve read thousands of blog posts on the subject, I’ve been traditionally published and I self-publish and I know which one I prefer.

I recommend one or two industry ‘expert’ sources on my website to read on publishing – ignore everyone else or watch your own sanity slide down the toilet, like informational diarrhoea.

All of the above said, if your story is one that simply must be told, then go ahead and tell it. But expect a long relationship of many years with this story; expect some crazy-making experiences, expect highs and lows and expect to feel frustration/joy/insanity/relief/happiness/misery and everything in between.

If you think all of the above is beyond negative, then start out on your own path down the novel-writing road and prove me wrong.

But however good you are, however brilliant, you’ll have to do your apprenticeship. There are millions of good stories out there, millions of decent writers. Think of which author’s names we hear of over and over in the press, in the general media, and ask yourself a few questions about them, their success and their genres. The truth often hurts or it illuminates, or a bit of both. Do some soul-searching (am I in this for the long-haul? Do I have the patience/tenacity/the funds/the experience/the creativity/the temperament) to go with this?

If it’s still for you, start very small and local. Write a beautiful story and submit it to writing magazines or to online competitions. Start building a small portfolio of writing. Take yourself seriously and ignore most everything anyone tells you about writing novels, including me.

Do it for yourself, find your voice, and remember to be a realist. You’ll need other income to survive, and you’ll need the thickest skin alive – an armour to protect you. Full stop, end of story!