A tale of hope and humanity
during which the boy’s drawings point to discoveries that will restore Mackie’s hope and give him a new beginning.
The boy is also on a journey to a fresh start – if only he can break free from the pursuer who drove away the woman who had been like a mother to him.
There’s no doubt that Bigg’s ability to handle gritty topics sensitively comes from her long career in health and social work settings – she and her husband were also long-time foster carers, and she worked as a family aid, helping families through difficult spells so that they would not be split up.
“I’ve had a lot of experience of people who’ve got lives that are a lot more challenging than mine has been,” she says. “I think the theme of people who are struggling, who have not had it easy, has probably come from a lot of the work experience I’ve had, as has this idea that sometimes things do work out – sometimes something or somebody comes along and it’s not what you’re expecting.
“Sometimes it’s not massive, but that’s the thing that changes or starts the change.”
Biggs’ book takes Mackie and his co-workers Trev and Sharon – a part-time pub singer caught in an affair that’s going nowhere – on a redemptive journey that is profoundly moving, shot through with sparks of humour and, ultimately, joyful.
Biggs writes like she’s been doing this for years, but she only started writing recently after being made redundant. While exploring what to do next, she discovered a creative writing lifelong learning course run by Aberystwyth University.
“It was just an eight-week course, two hours a week short story writing, but I never looked back after that,” she says.
She had some success entering competitions and then a short story she was writing for homework took on a life of its own and became The Luck, which came out in October.
“I was massively lucky to be picked up by the publisher Honno – they’ve been absolutely marvellous and then they took on Scrap too,” she says.
Scrap was written on a set schedule of two to four hours writing first thing in the morning, but beyond this she is not a planner.
“One of the courses that I did looked at how to structure your writing and how to structure a novel, but it kind of stopped me in my tracks – so I learned just to trust my own process,” she says.
She adds that the biggest challenge of writing the book was switching the narrative from first person (it was initially narrated by Mackie) to the third person.
“I enjoyed being in Mackie’s head and in his life, but third person gave me a lot more scope. It changed the whole feel of the story. I loved writing it. I loved writing Sharon – I would like to meet her – and I did lots of laughing and quite a bit of crying along the way. I just loved this idea that you can change, that things can change.
“When I was sending it off, somebody told me it was good to say, with your submission, who you’re writing that book for – who you’re sending that message to. And I said that on those days when I’d be coming out of a really awful case conference, thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, nothing good is ever going to come of this’, this is the book I would want to read, because it’s a reminder that you never know what or who is round the corner.”
■ Scrap is out now, published by Honno