Alexis Keir's Blog
July 12, 2022
On Better Being Better Late Than Never
When I received my membership card for the Society of Authors. It made me feel as excited as when I got picked to play hockey for the county as a boy in Luton. Getting that card made me reflect on the journey which had brought me to that point, such a different path to the one which has shaped my professional career.
There were two things I loved when I was a schoolboy in Luton - writing and playing hockey. I thought I was good at both and especially at making up scary, lurid, stories. But someone told me at some point that the only reason I was a good defender was that I was tall and had long arms. It took me a long time to unlearn that nonsense. Never tell someone that they are 'only good at something because...' and take away all the joy, and judgement and timing they bring to that particular skill married to all the other fine abilities they have to link together to carry out a tackle, run 100m or 10,000m, score a goal, produce a drawing, or go en pointe. They're good because...well because they're bloody good. Make sure they know that.
Anyway good or not (see even my imposter syndrome has imposter syndrome!) I carried on playing hockey. On pitches in or close to Leicester and Birmingham and Blackheath and Northland and Taranaki, in all the places where my studies and work took me. Even now when I can barely bend to make those tackles my stick stays in the boot of my car 'just in case' ( it will have to be a helluva case - half the team being kidnapped by aliens?) And one of my proudest roles right now - as well as most irksome and administratively annoying I have to say too in case the boys get too relaxed - is to be Welfare Officer for my beloved Vauxhall Hockey Club. Believe it or not, Luton Town FC is only my SECOND most favourite sports club.
Hockey has stayed with me my whole adult life one way or another. But writing didn't. I stopped writing stories sometime after my amazingly inspirational English teacher Mrs Thakoordin handed me back me my exercise book back one day in 1979 with this feedback at the bottom of an essay: 'the highest mark I have ever given, See me'. Why I stopped writing could be an essay in itself. And how I came back to it will be one day. But what's important is that I did even though it took half a lifetime for me to do so. I joined a community writing project called E17 Stories in Waltham Forest, and eventually was invited to give a public reading of Red Lion Girl at Walthamstow Town Hall. Since then writing has both lifted me to great joy and carried me through great sadness and loss. I know I can say I'm a writer now and sometime before not too long I will be able to explain why I've been admitted to the Society of Authors. But in the meantime, I just have to shout out how I have been motivated by all the talent I see around me in my friends even just on social media. To make this shorter for LinkedIn I have taken out most of their names but you know who you are because I have told you already.
I am so inspired by the imagination of the amazingly gifted Emilia French and Tia Merotto making, creating and writing, and Rosanna Cooper, not only bringing beautiful art into the world but also helping others express themselves too - each of them with decades of awesome creativity ahead of them. I am so lucky to be able to see, hear and absorb as so many friends, capture the world around them or make new music and share it with us. Elfrida Rathbone Camden's trustee, Lizzie Streeter believing and living the truth that dance is for everyone and that there is nothing that cannot be expressed through it, There are all my friends who post the beauty of the world on Facebook or Insta. And even if they don't share, those whom I know are brightening up the world at the kitchen table with their kids, family or own friends or just doing it on their own. Even by treading new footsteps in the snow. The saying goes that we stand on the shoulders of giants - well we stand beside them too.
So here I am - I can tell myself that I'm a writer after all these years. And the thing is despite the imposter syndrome and only really having the gift of long arms and all that, I already feel a success no matter what comes next. I put this down on paper recently:
'For me, participation over 2019-20 in the London Writers Awards programme run by Spread The Word, has meant success in ways which aren’t about securing a publishing contract or getting an agent. Success was being invited back to my hometown of Luton to share my words with a group in the library which I used to wander as a teenager, never imagining that I would come back as a writer. Success was being asked to be the online guest of a group of writers based on the island of Saint Vincent where my parents were born. And then having a piece selected for inclusion in a prestigious literary journal from the Caribbean region. All things I could never have dreamt of 3 years ago and which have flowed from my participation in the London Writers Awards. '
It has also felt like success to tell my friends and family and the boys in the hockey club about my writing journey and where it has taken me. Showing them a whole new me. To produce pieces for my brilliant, keen-eyed and talented mate Paul Baldwin whose daily support got me to the place where I could even contemplate sharing my words and who has forgotten more about producing compelling writing than I will ever know. I felt so honoured to be asked by the hockey club to write something on the Black Lives Matter movement during last year's summer of awakening. It has been so lovely those two important parts of me coming together. I have also been so privileged and blessed to have access to the wisdom, grace, example and support of two Vincentians of international renown, Michael McMillan and H. Nigel Thomas (who was born in the same small village as my mother) whose huge achievements haven't got in the way of them leaning down to offer a hand and guidance to me.
I saw something recently on Twitter that complained about how all the publishing headlines were about very young writers securing amazing book deals. Well I love those announcements - not because of the money they're going to get - I'm bloody jealous of that! But because they're not going to have years of missing out on doing the thing they love and which they bring such craft and artistry to. Because they have it all before them. But originality and creativity and feeling the same way that I did when I got picked to play under 21s for Bedfordshire isn't just for the young uns' - this 'new' writer in his late 50s is having the time of his life and I'm not going to put down my pen and notebook again. As various people have said, it can take years to be an overnight success.
Dedicated to my Uncle Wendell, a truly great Vincentian and Lutonian.
There were two things I loved when I was a schoolboy in Luton - writing and playing hockey. I thought I was good at both and especially at making up scary, lurid, stories. But someone told me at some point that the only reason I was a good defender was that I was tall and had long arms. It took me a long time to unlearn that nonsense. Never tell someone that they are 'only good at something because...' and take away all the joy, and judgement and timing they bring to that particular skill married to all the other fine abilities they have to link together to carry out a tackle, run 100m or 10,000m, score a goal, produce a drawing, or go en pointe. They're good because...well because they're bloody good. Make sure they know that.
Anyway good or not (see even my imposter syndrome has imposter syndrome!) I carried on playing hockey. On pitches in or close to Leicester and Birmingham and Blackheath and Northland and Taranaki, in all the places where my studies and work took me. Even now when I can barely bend to make those tackles my stick stays in the boot of my car 'just in case' ( it will have to be a helluva case - half the team being kidnapped by aliens?) And one of my proudest roles right now - as well as most irksome and administratively annoying I have to say too in case the boys get too relaxed - is to be Welfare Officer for my beloved Vauxhall Hockey Club. Believe it or not, Luton Town FC is only my SECOND most favourite sports club.
Hockey has stayed with me my whole adult life one way or another. But writing didn't. I stopped writing stories sometime after my amazingly inspirational English teacher Mrs Thakoordin handed me back me my exercise book back one day in 1979 with this feedback at the bottom of an essay: 'the highest mark I have ever given, See me'. Why I stopped writing could be an essay in itself. And how I came back to it will be one day. But what's important is that I did even though it took half a lifetime for me to do so. I joined a community writing project called E17 Stories in Waltham Forest, and eventually was invited to give a public reading of Red Lion Girl at Walthamstow Town Hall. Since then writing has both lifted me to great joy and carried me through great sadness and loss. I know I can say I'm a writer now and sometime before not too long I will be able to explain why I've been admitted to the Society of Authors. But in the meantime, I just have to shout out how I have been motivated by all the talent I see around me in my friends even just on social media. To make this shorter for LinkedIn I have taken out most of their names but you know who you are because I have told you already.
I am so inspired by the imagination of the amazingly gifted Emilia French and Tia Merotto making, creating and writing, and Rosanna Cooper, not only bringing beautiful art into the world but also helping others express themselves too - each of them with decades of awesome creativity ahead of them. I am so lucky to be able to see, hear and absorb as so many friends, capture the world around them or make new music and share it with us. Elfrida Rathbone Camden's trustee, Lizzie Streeter believing and living the truth that dance is for everyone and that there is nothing that cannot be expressed through it, There are all my friends who post the beauty of the world on Facebook or Insta. And even if they don't share, those whom I know are brightening up the world at the kitchen table with their kids, family or own friends or just doing it on their own. Even by treading new footsteps in the snow. The saying goes that we stand on the shoulders of giants - well we stand beside them too.
So here I am - I can tell myself that I'm a writer after all these years. And the thing is despite the imposter syndrome and only really having the gift of long arms and all that, I already feel a success no matter what comes next. I put this down on paper recently:
'For me, participation over 2019-20 in the London Writers Awards programme run by Spread The Word, has meant success in ways which aren’t about securing a publishing contract or getting an agent. Success was being invited back to my hometown of Luton to share my words with a group in the library which I used to wander as a teenager, never imagining that I would come back as a writer. Success was being asked to be the online guest of a group of writers based on the island of Saint Vincent where my parents were born. And then having a piece selected for inclusion in a prestigious literary journal from the Caribbean region. All things I could never have dreamt of 3 years ago and which have flowed from my participation in the London Writers Awards. '
It has also felt like success to tell my friends and family and the boys in the hockey club about my writing journey and where it has taken me. Showing them a whole new me. To produce pieces for my brilliant, keen-eyed and talented mate Paul Baldwin whose daily support got me to the place where I could even contemplate sharing my words and who has forgotten more about producing compelling writing than I will ever know. I felt so honoured to be asked by the hockey club to write something on the Black Lives Matter movement during last year's summer of awakening. It has been so lovely those two important parts of me coming together. I have also been so privileged and blessed to have access to the wisdom, grace, example and support of two Vincentians of international renown, Michael McMillan and H. Nigel Thomas (who was born in the same small village as my mother) whose huge achievements haven't got in the way of them leaning down to offer a hand and guidance to me.
I saw something recently on Twitter that complained about how all the publishing headlines were about very young writers securing amazing book deals. Well I love those announcements - not because of the money they're going to get - I'm bloody jealous of that! But because they're not going to have years of missing out on doing the thing they love and which they bring such craft and artistry to. Because they have it all before them. But originality and creativity and feeling the same way that I did when I got picked to play under 21s for Bedfordshire isn't just for the young uns' - this 'new' writer in his late 50s is having the time of his life and I'm not going to put down my pen and notebook again. As various people have said, it can take years to be an overnight success.
Dedicated to my Uncle Wendell, a truly great Vincentian and Lutonian.
