Benefits Britain

Bethany, depends what you mean, what to do next? Are you stuck with 'writers block' and cannot think what to write, or have you run out of material, or is there some other obstacle.

I assume you are relating true events as a series of stories, with or without connecting matter. Have you tried writing down all the separate stories, just to get them in line, and then rewriting to join them afterwards?

Might I suggest that, as a form of research, you loook at how other writers have overcome this. I suggest this hesitantly, as whatever style you have I would not like to see lost, it is too easy to adopt another writer's style when you are seeking inspiration. However, one suggestion is Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth as I am guessing your revelations will be similar in presentation as hers.

Good luck. Nothing is easy, I wish you all the best.

I've just had a quick read of your extract in the Shared Works section. I'm sure you do have lots of interesting stories to tell and there is a market for this kind of book. I've enjoyed reading memoirs by ex-police officers, teachers, doctors etc.about their dealings with the Great British public.

My only concern would be about confidentiality. As well as changing all the names, you'd have to be careful not to give any other information that might identify the real people involved. Personally, I would also be very vague about where the stories are set, perhaps even use a fictional name for the town/ city/ local authority. But I'm sure that if you can interest a publisher in your book, they would guide you on such things. Good luck with it!

Trying to be objective (and not get thrown off this site for advertising the competition):

There are advantages to each of these 2 sites. Swings and roundabouts. What's good is that you can belong to both of them.

I've only been a user of authonomy.com for a couple of weeks, but it seems that W&A is the better site for fora (this Q&A space). Everything you write, every question you pose is open to view by all users (and by visiting non-users), so it's possible to get useful advice from somebody whom you've never heard of. There's the possibility of sending private messages, which remain private (within the bounds of our snoop-snoop Democracy). On authonomy (as far as I can tell), all messages from A to B can be read by C, and D, and E... and Z.

This site is the home of the on-line version of the W&A Yearbook, which you will probably find very useful when looking for an agent.

On the other hand, everything is jumbled together: all the Q&As appear in one list, the last one posted at the top of the pile (unless you opt for clicking on "Popular" or "Unanswered", which I guess are the complete opposite of each other since "Popular" must mean "most replies received", as there is no way to vote on the quality of the original question [ ;-( ]; and once ONE,person has replied to an "Unanswered", that Q sinks back into the swamp). All "shared work"s are also piled into one list (with a frankly deficient choice of genre labels available, e.g. NO "children's stories"!!! which has caused me to choose totally spurious genre titles to label my own [genre "Practical / How To" for my "A children's story of escalating violence"])

Whereas on authonomy, it's VERY easy to search for just the sort of book that you're interested in. e.g. "Children and Young Adult" + Latest / Most read / Highest rated / Most popular / Editor's Desk / Friends' picks / Recommended / Pitch me (choose only one of these each search) + the option of restricting your search to "Complete" and/or "Downloadable".

On authonomy, you can also upload ONE image to illustrate your book (or choose one from their stock).

Six of one, 1/2 dozen of the other. It all helps.