Personal Statement

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The challenge of thinking of a thrilling sentence excites me, particularly, the creativeness and flow it allows me to have. From journalism to fiction and non-fiction writing and poetry to media articles, writing is something I enjoy all aspects of. Reading and writing has always been a passion of mine as well as my interest in languages, this progressed my love for media and creative writing. Being bilingual, I always found it fascinating seeing how differently things are portrayed in the media, as well as literature. Observing how each culture has their own way of presenting opinions and issues. What we perceive is always good to question. From my point of view, the media and literature play a very important role in our everyday life. It is a powerful tool which can influence people's opinions, feelings, actions and sway and change their minds on certain subjects and choices.

 

Researching and reading between the lines are skills I am proud to say I have. Having researched topics for my projects I have understood the importance of being thorough. I have learnt to find out what is relevant in the current time during my project work, finding out what resonates most with society and what would touch my target audience. This is why for my Final Major Project during my first year at college I created a short spoken word poetry film: https://bit.ly/2WUV3fK The skills which I have built over the years including researching, filming, creative writing, performing, composing music and editing with Adobe Premiere Pro all came together in this piece and helped me. For example, I was able to rearrange and perform a piece of music which I chose to use as background sound in my film. This allowed me to publish my film onto youtube without worrying about copyright laws because everything was my own.

 

Throughout my life I have had multiple achievements: I was successful in a number of competitions such as children's film making, I was awarded a Noscar (children's Oscar) for creating a short animated film in a team. In addition I took part in a number of creative writing competitions and my poetry and short stories were selected for publications in Young Writers' anthologies and I received several Young Writers Creativity Awards. My short story and book cover illustration won a competition in a European children's magazine. As a result of this I was awarded a trip to London to meet publishers and a famous author of children's books, Paula Harrison, who I was interviewing. The interview was published in the magazine where I was featured on the front cover. I also came 3rd in a local Rotary photography competition and took part in several musical festivals including playing ensemble piano pieces and winning trophies. My participation in these charitable musical festivals opened up the opportunities for disadvantaged children to be able to learn and play musical instruments of their choice. This inspired me even more to participate in these festivals.

 

Music and art can be very therapeutic in our lives which makes me even more passionate about incorporating it in my portfolio. I am always open to learn more about how to communicate my works to an audience. As a writer I am philosophical and open minded and this shows through in my poetry and stories. I use writing as a way to express myself, my feelings and opinions. This shows in my recent project works which are presented on my website to enable to reach my audience showing my favourite pieces of work: https://bit.ly/2WVBMuA

 

I strongly believe that going to University will open up my opportunities to pursue a career in the future that I will both enjoy and love and it will let me learn and study more about my subject of choice. I am looking forward to meeting creative people like myself who will inspire and motivate me even more in my creativity.

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Interview

 

Would you like to introduce yourself? 

 

Hi, I'm Malcolm Croft and I'm a writer, author, publisher, ghost writer and consultant across all genres.

 

How did you get into the publishing industry?

 

I got into the publishing industry through my love for writing stories. English Literature was the only subject at school which I was good at and it was actually the only subject I passed for my gcses. After school I went to university and studied English Literature and I was part of the student newspaper and that accelerated my love for interviewing people. I did a masters in english literature and film studies and moved to London, and filed people’s music away. I worked for the Daily Mirror for a year and Empire Magazine. While I was doing that I really wanted to get into publishing books so I applied for a 12 month internship with a major music publishing company called Chrysalis. I was actually chosen out of the 15,000 people who applied for the internship. I was 22/23 at the time. This meant I dedicated a year to learning about everything to do with book publishing which went from commissioning, developing an idea with an author, marketing, press, promotion, the production process, editorial process, writing. 

 

How do you think you got chosen out of the 15,000 people? 

 

I had to come up with an idea for a book and a covering letter and the idea which I came up with was about the end of the world and they liked it. 

 

What university did you go to? 

 

I went to university in Bedfordshire and then Nottingham for my masters.

 

What are some works you have done? 

 

I did the official Elton John book, the glastonbury book for the 50th and I did a book with Coldplay which was their autobiography recently. 

 

How did you go from an internship to where you are now working with some of the biggest music acts and festivals?

 

My internship meant that I became very attractive to publishers because I knew how to put and bring a whole book together. From editing to designing to being able to write a press release. They are all good skills to have. I was given a job which was all about publishing books, gift books, kid books etc. At this point I really wanted to become a commissioning editor. To find a person who was writing about something which I found interesting.

 

What was the process behind some of your works?

 

I would pitch my ideas to publishers and sometimes people would come to me. I knew Coldplay and I really wanted to do a book on them and they agreed to it. So for their 20th anniversary we did an autobiography. 

 

How do you come up with your ideas for books?

 

Well my bestseller idea actually came to me when I was cooking. It came out of nowhere and it was very random. It was the book of embarrassing dad jokes. Most good ideas are stories which resonate with people, if people can relate to it, they like it. 

 

What books are you most proud of?

 

Well most of the books im most passionate about disappear however the books which usually do well are the ones which resonate with people. I’d say the books im most proud of are the ones which end up in peoples homes. 

 

What do you think are the key things to being a successful publisher in the industry?

 

Work for free and have no pride and someone said this to me before and it's stuck with me throughout, write, just write even if you think it's bad. If you love writing you’ll do it no matter what, it's the reason I wake up in the mornings.

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Referencing

 

What is referencing?

 

Referencing is the acknowledgement of books, articles, websites, and any other material used in your written piece of work. There is also a referencing style which is a set of rules which you follow telling you how to reference in a particular way. For example:

 

Citing - Referring to sources in a document as justification of an argument or statement which can be done in 2 ways in-text citations or (author date in text) or footnotes (number in the text and further details at the bottom of the page) the citation refers to the reader to the full details of the source in your bibliography or reference list. 

 

Bibliography - list of all sources consulted in preparing the document 

 

Reference list - works specifically cited in the document

 

Referencing is crucial because it allows us to have a reliable source of backup for the information we are informing people about. This allows you to have a support system about the research. This makes it more believable and understandable as it is giving context to the reader. If we didn't reference our information it wouldn't be credible and people would not be able to follow up on the information you are informing them on. It also helps avoid plagiarism because it makes it clear what ideas are your own and what you’ve taken from somebody else. 

 

Plagiarism - presenting someone else's work as your own with or without their consent and incorporating it fully into your work with no credit to the rightful owner. 

 

 

 

 

Sources: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1402/referencing/47/referencing_explained#:~:text=Referencing%20correctly%3A,and%20which%20are%20someone%20else's&text=gives%20supporting%20evidence%20for%20your,the%20sources%20you%20have%20used.

 

https://www.citethisforme.com/

 

https://nuim.libguides.com/referencing

 

https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism#:~:text=Plagiarism%20is%20presenting%20someone%20else's,is%20covered%20under%20this%20definition.

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Inspirations - Jacqueline Wilson

 

Jaqueline Wilson is an English novelist famous for her popular children’s literature. Born in Bath on the 17th of December in 1945. As a child Jaqueline Wilson was very imaginative and loved reading and writing stories from an early age. Before the breakthrough of her fame in 1991 with her book ‘The story of Tracy Beaker’ she had mixed success with 40 books prior.

 

The reason I chose to research Jaqueline Wilson in particular is because from a young age she has always inspired me with her books and to this day, I still remember stories which I read by her even though I was so young. She inspires many young children with her books due to them being informative and some may say controversial however they highlight real life problems but in a subtle and suitable way for children. One of the reasons why she still inspires me to this day even though I have grown out of her stories is because of how she was able to paint the story in my mind. From a young age one of my dreams has always been to become an author who is able to tell a story so good that the person reading it doesn’t only read it through the words but visualizes it and is able to see it come to life. Jaqueline was successful in this and inspired and motivated me to carry out and pursue my dreams as a writer.

 

She has a website for her target audience to interact with her book lovers. As we can see from the website her content is mostly aimed at younger children. Her book covers, very much like her website, are bright and colourful filled with images and words to attract her audience as children are more likely to be attracted to bright colours rather than muted and pastel colours.