Featured Writer
Ann Burnett
I’ve always wanted to write. Even as a young child I wrote plays and poems and stories but it wasn’t until we came back from several years teaching abroad that I joined Dorothy Dunbar’s writing class in Prestwick. Dorothy was one of the founder members of Ayr Writers’ Club and a feisty wee lady to boot so she was not at all pleased when I dropped out of her class after only a few weeks, claiming pregnancy as my excuse. She kept in touch and when my first son was a year old, I presented myself at Ayr Writers’ Club, then held at the Wallace Tower. Someone must have seen my discomfiture as, when I blurted out that I used to be a teacher and was now a mum, I was kindly told to see Dorrith Sim as she ran the children’s section.
That was just at the time when Radio Scotland was starting up the daily children’s programme, Nickety Nackety. Dorrith had already a foot in that door and with her encouragement and help, I eventually sold them a story. My first success! I received £12 for it and I was entranced and hooked. I wrote many more stories for them and by the time I was pregnant again, I had become a scriptwriter for the programme. I delivered my second son the same week as I had a series of programmes broadcast and upset the hospital routine by insisting I listened to Nickety Nackety rather than taking the obligatory nap.
With two young children I set out to earn enough money from writing to enable me to employ a childminder/treasure who cleaned my house while I wrote to earn enough money….you get the picture.
I began writing weekly Postman Pat stories for the children’s comic, Buttons. I had been contributing other stories to the comic for some time and the editor asked if I would like to try out for the job. I had to write two scripts by a certain date and so keen was I to get the job, I wrote three and had them to her long before the deadline. So for the next five years, Postman Pat became part of our lives and his weekly adventures mirrored very closely events in the Burnett household. I also wrote the Postman Pat annuals and holiday specials and must have written altogether over 300 tales.
I was also commissioned to write four picture books and two activity books based on the Moomins, working from Tove Jansson’s original book and a TV series. As well, I contributed to Storyteller and Little Storyteller, partwork series for children, and Thames TV We’ll Tell you a Story.
But then, Buttons ran into financial difficulties and I went back teaching just for a short while or so I thought. It took me eleven years to extricate myself again and meantime my writing dwindled to a trickle. These were thin years from a writing point of view.
Again Dorrith came to the rescue. She was writing for a BBC Radio Ulster programme, One Potato, Two Potato, and I sold a story there. I was back to where I had been all those years ago. But again, I became a scriptwriter and formed a close relationship with the producer, Bernagh Brims. One day she told me she had been given a weekly slot to fill with ten programmes for the under 5’s. ‘I used to script for Nickety Nackety,’ I said. She asked to see some of the scripts I’d written and I got the job of scriptwriter for Hurley-Burley. The programmes proved so popular that four series were made before Hurley-Burley was transferred to television last year. Because of the cost, only six programmes could be made but it was such a success that the second series has just been recorded and will be on TV in January 2007.
I’ve also been writing for the schools programmes for Radio Scotland such as Hopscotch, Stop, Think, Wonder, Scottish Resources, and Search Inside.
But I don’t just write for children. Over the years I’ve written articles for My Weekly, The Herald, and Healthy Way, short stories for Secrets, My Weekly, New Writing Scotland, two University anthologies and of course, 800 Words. I’ve tutored creative writing classes at Glasgow University, the Harbour Arts Centre, Writability, Swanwick writer’s week and Writers’ News.
And I’ve just completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Glasgow University where I learned a great deal and not just what was on the syllabus either. I wrote a novel as part of the course, not my first, there are several mouldering under the bed, but one which I am much more satisfied with than my earlier attempts.
I’m still learning about writing. And getting rejections, but I’m still hooked on the whole business. I never realised the pleasures and friendships that would accrue as a result of joining the club. Thank goodness Dorothy Dunbar didn’t let me totally drop out.