{"id":1086,"date":"2015-07-04T16:30:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2015-07-04T16:30:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-04T14:30:17","slug":"chris-hill-bridport-prizewinning-lad-lit-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=1086","title":{"rendered":"Chris Hill: Bridport Prizewinning Lad-Lit Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chris<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s back to the very popular Writing Cave feature today, with Bridport Prize winning writer and Twitter fan, Chris Hill. He’s no relation, by the way! We met at an author event.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many thanks for having me along today Georgia! In some ways I don\u2019t need a special place to write – I can find that special place inside my head. All I really need is some time on my hands, peace and quiet and a notebook and pen.<\/p>\n

I write on the bus, in \u00a0the summer house in my back garden, sitting in front of the TV with my family, with headphones on so I can\u2019t hear Eastenders. I scribble away wherever I am and that is the first part of the process for me.<\/p>\n

You must have incredible powers of concentration, Chris!<\/em><\/p>\n

There comes a time though when you have to turn notes and scribbles into a proper story which hangs together and that\u2019s when I do need to sit down at a desk. I have one in the spare room in our house. There\u2019s a big bookshelf up against one wall with a whole lot of books on there. I have a bunch of curious rules surrounding what I read and one is that I like to hang on to novels once I have read them – so they are all there, in case I need to refer to them!<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s a decent sized dark wood desk with the computer on it. It gets used by all the members of our family. My wife uses it for work, our boys to do their homework on it. Often it looks like a bomb has hit it but, before I sit down to write I always tidy it up as I like a nice clear space to work in. It makes me feel calm and in control if I\u2019m not surrounded by mess!<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

The guitar is in the picture because \u00a0I often keep it by me and strum away while I\u2019m thinking things through. It\u2019s a Fender strat and I\u2019m very fond of it, I used to be in bands when I was younger and I\u2019ve taught both my teenagers to play.<\/p>\n

The old newspaper in a frame at the back of the picture is a present my brother brought me back from a trip to America maybe 25 years ago or more. I spent many years working in newspapers and so it was an appropriate gift. It\u2019s like a little window on the past – to a time just before the second\u00a0 world war with headlines about Hitler\u2019s aggression on the one hand and little local stories like a young boy being rescued from a pond on the other.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m in writing mode I try to put in an hour sat at the desk most evenings, tapping away, and I find the work slowly gets done. Writing a novel can seem a formidable task if you look at it overall but, like most big jobs, it\u2019s not as daunting if you break it down into smaller pieces. It\u2019s like building a house – you keep adding the bricks one by one and eventually it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

Great advice!<\/em><\/p>\n

Rewriting is a big part of the process for me – that\u2019s when you make your book good. So I print a hard copy of my first draft and scribble all over it. I don\u2019t have to be at the desk to do that scribbling – I can be back in the summer house or on the sofa again.<\/p>\n

Here’s a little more information about Chris:<\/em><\/p>\n

He’s an author from Gloucester in the UK whose new novel The Pick-Up Artist is published by Magic Oxygen Publishing. You can find it on Amazon here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Pick-Up-Artist-about-Dating-Digital\/dp\/1910094161\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436019257&sr=1-1&keywords=the+pick+up+artist<\/a><\/p>\n

Chris works as a PR officer for UK children\u2019s charity WellChild and spent more than 20 years as a journalist on regional newspapers. He lives with his wife Claire, their two teenage sons and Murphy, a Cockapoo.<\/p>\n

\"chris<\/a><\/p>\n

The Pick-Up Artist is the story of a young man\u2019s attempts to find a girlfriend using techniques developed by an online community who claim to use psychological techniques to appeal to women. Chris\u2019s first novel Song of the Sea God, \u00a0published by Skylight Press is a literary novel set on a small island of the coast of England where a strange figure washes up and tries to convince the local people he is a god. It was short listed for the Daily Telegraph Novel in a Year prize and won the efestival of Words award for Best Literary Fiction novel. Chris has previously had some success as a short story writer including winning one of Britain\u2019s biggest story awards, The Bridport Prize.<\/p>\n

Chris is a social media addict with more than 20,000 followers on Twitter:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChilledCH<\/a><\/p>\n

and on Facebook here:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chris.hill.3726?fref=ts<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks so much for coming on and sharing your writing cave with us, Chris!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s back to the very popular Writing Cave feature today, with Bridport Prize winning writer and Twitter fan, Chris Hill. He’s no relation, by the way! We met at an author event. Many thanks for having me along today Georgia! In some ways I don\u2019t need a special place to write – I can find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[351,387,382,385,384,383,386,388],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chris-hill","tag-magic-oxygen","tag-skylight-press","tag-song-of-the-sea-god","tag-the-bridport-prize","tag-the-daily-telegraph","tag-the-pick-up-artist","tag-wellchild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}