Sometimes it is difficult to know what to write about for this column. I mean, readers do not want to hear about what I had for breakfast nor do they wish to hear me harping on about ‘when I was living in...’

Rob Innis and his sister Yve

So today I thought I would tell you about my friend Rob.
Rob lives in Spain. He relocated there from England in 2000 when it seemed as if a chapter in his life was closing following bereavement, divorce and redundancy. With the new millennium he hoped to start again, in a new life.
Now he runs a villa sales company near Alicante, has remarried, to Julia, has a mother-in-law who sounds like she knows her own mind, a new Spanish family and is an aspiring writer. He and I are pen friends, having been introduced to each other through the Writers Bureau, which trains writers in all genres of penmanship (www.writersbureau.co.uk).
Rob recently sent me his first published article, a piece humorously entitled, ‘Tranquillity with Vultures.’ This is a great travel piece, detailing a visit to Marina Alta in the Alicante province and what can be found in the area, vultures included. It has been published in the Inland Magazine in Spain (read it on www.timspain.com, in the ‘Download’ section, the article is on page 6 of the magazine) and Rob was very excited while waiting for it to come out. I can understand when he said of the wait, ‘It’s like Christmas!’’ I remember when I was first published. It was a piece in a now defunct magazine on the bed and breakfast trade in the UK, in about 1995. In one of our frequent moves I lost my copy of the magazine and I cannot find it on the web, being such an old article in a long dead publication. It is now just a memory for me. I remember being really happy to see myself in print at the time. I know the feeling of anticipation Rob felt.
Spain has a huge English speaking population and there is no lack of readers for his work but, as with writers all over the world, he has a problem with the market for his writing. He has sent me some really fun to read articles but he cannot find a suitable outlet willing to publish them. He has to learn the golden rule, which is to tailor his writing to a publication by studying what it prints and the style it prints it in. All writers have a stock of items that they have written because they feel like it. They know that the chances of these articles seeing the light of day are remote because they do not fulfil editor’s criteria for what they need. Never the less, the creative urge inside us drives writers to express ourselves, regardless of whether or not the work is published. It can be that the mere act of writing something down is an outlet valve for stress or because the idea just will not go away, but we all sit down and write things we know will never be read by anyone but ourselves. I have a great true story about meeting an elephant when I was having coffee in Starbucks one day, but the chances of finding an editor who wants such a piece are remote! (If, by any chance, an editor is reading my ‘Thoughts...’ this week and wants to know more about elephants, please do contact me!)
Recently Rob has been worried about his lack of good quality photographs to illustrate his work. He asked me what I thought about his current camera, for which he can no longer buy memory cards and which does not have the capacity to take jpeg images. I advised him to look for another camera, one capable of taking high resolution shots and to invest in some image manipulation software. I find that editors seldom want words without pictures. If anyone was out in Road Bay last Saturday they would have seen me in a dingy with my husband and two good friends, zooming around Charm III as she went out on one of her charity sails for the Anguilla Youth Sailing Club. I was trying to take ‘action shots’ of her in full sail as she thrust out to the open sea. I say ‘trying’ because there was virtually no wind and with the best will in the world the word ‘thrust’ did not describe the gentle gait of this majestic craft as she glided along at a stately pace! Why was I there? An editor wanted some photos, that’s why.
Rob has just started his first internet site (robinespana.blogspot.com) which promises to be a fun read, full of insights into his life in Spain. I was introduced to the net by a couple of friends, one of whom assisted with my blog (pennylegg.blogspot.com) and one with my website (www.pennylegg.com). My thanks to my two friends, Jo-Anne and Shashank, without whom I would have still been saying, ‘I really should think about a web presence!’ Rob is much more IT savvy than I, having been in the business in his previous life in the UK, so it took him mere minutes to bring his new creation to life.
I look forward to hearing more of Rob’s successes as he works his way up the slippery slope of professional writing.

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

World News