My Life as a writer
When did you first realise you wanted to write for a living?
When, at the age of five, I was inspired to produced a semi-legible comic book starring my newborn brother.
Which writer, past or present, do you most admire?
Difficult to pick one, let’s go with David Foster Wallace, Alan Moore, Don DeLillo, Charlie Kaufman and Thomas Pynchon.
What was your first published (or performed) credit as a writer?
Probably the two text-based adventure games I wrote and programmed as a teenager, which were published by Zenobi Software in the mid-1990s.
Which piece of writing work are you most proud of?
Whatever I’m currently in the latter stages of finishing.
Who or what inspires you to write?
Some kind of constant internal drive, a compulsion that feels like it might have to be medicated away one day.
How do you switch off when you’re not writing?
Cinema, music, sleep, various intoxicants, telling myself to ‘switch off’ repeatedly under my breath.
Which one piece of advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Put in the 10,000 hours. By then, you’ll be good. Also, as someone once said, the difference between a writer and a dilettante is very simple: a writer finishes things.
Why are you a member of WGGB?
To take advantage of the service for writers (since I don’t have an agent), learn about opportunities for writers, network and stay ‘in the loop’ for all matters writing. And because, right now, trade unions are more important than ever.
Alan Devey was raised on a council estate and his recent spec scripts include a TV mini-series about serial killer Roy Fontaine, low-budget gangster feature Passive-Aggressive and co-written sitcom The Home Front.
He holds an MA in Creative Writing from the London Metropolitan University and the stories written for this will make up a forthcoming collection. He has previously self-published three novels,
Alan presents the show Comes With Mp3s on Radio Woking and is working on a series of crime novels, a memoir and numerous scripts for film and TV, while also building experience as a script reader via alandevey.net
