Ghost writer

Field 21

Ghost Writer

Let’s start with a cliché; ‘Get in as late as you can and leave as early.’ If you’ve ever attended a creative writing group this old chestnut will have shown itself sooner or later. As the story takes shape and the focus shifts, ideas fall away until the reality of the page matches the author’s intention. But stories are never finished, they just arrive at a satisfactory state of incompleteness with all their existent possibility still lurking. 

This issue is dedicated to that ghost writing. The wrong turn a story took. The character that never showed. A door that a writer chose not to walk through. We celebrate some of our favourite books published this year by asking their authors to retrace their steps. One returned with a single piece of much loved work that hadn’t fitted, some opened a treasure trove of material left over. Others chose to write away from the original work in a new and thrilling direction. All brought new angles to the ‘finished piece’. 

The heart of the magazine is a spotlight on a new talent too; Abby Walker, an MMU Creative Writing MA alumni and recent recipient of a Faber scholarship. Cover art duties are met by the wonderful illustrator & collagist Laura Scott who has taken a set of biros, a fax machine and some sandpaper to the faces of our contributing authors.