Writer

Phillip Gwynne is an interesting character. He spoke at the author spotlight last night. Unlike Maureen McCarthy he seems to have achieved his success without needing a social connection in the industry. After growing up as an avid reader, becoming a professional footballer, going back to school and studying to be a marine biologist (and then being a "bad scientist" as he put it, since he didn't have a passion for science), travelling a lot, becoming a computer programmer and not being happy about his vocation, he did a short adult-education course on writing.

His fellow wannabe-writers responded well to his writing. The course teacher told him "you are a writer". He quit his job and started writing "Deadly Unna?" - a collage of his childhood experiences woven into a story for teenagers. He spent about 9 months writing about 100,000 words. He showed it to a friend who told him it was a mess. He got depressed for a couple of weeks before taking an axe to it and "cutting out the crap".

Without knowing much about getting published he sent the manuscript to lots of different publishers. About eight months later Penguin responded, offering a contract. (I think I would have given up hope by that stage.) Getting an agent was important at that point and he was fortunate that someone told him. Had he just signed the contract he would have given away the film rights.

The book was a success - over a hundred thousand sales now. Getting onto a lot of school reading lists made a big difference. After a couple of years of sales he had the opportunity to re-write it as a film script. He accepted. This is where he got a big surprise. Despite the patently anti-racist message in the book, a pressure group started up to try to ban the film, labelling it as racist. They did all the usual things that these groups do - take selected phrases from the book out of context and build a subtext around them, have letters and editorials published in newspapers using editors who never took the trouble to read the book. It got to the point where Gwynne started to question himself - was he really a racist?

Were all the school teachers who selected his book for classroom reading racist? No. The leader of the pressure group had his own agenda to push and was milking the situation for publicity. Wherever there are people who are concerned yet gullible, or even just unprepared to do their own research, there will also be people who take advantage of them.