MacEwan Student Sells His Novel on Campus
A lot of things happen at SAMU, but it’s not every day you come across a student author selling his novel on campus. I decided to give into my inner bookworm and bought the novel: The Malignancy by Liam Wilson.
Wilson is an 18-year-old first-year student at MacEwan. He’s currently in the bachelor of arts program with an undeclared major. He’s a recent graduate of Archbishop MacDonald High School, though his path to creative writing began much earlier in his life in grade 8.
Every day, his English teacher — whom he mentioned was very strict — gave his class a creative writing assignment. So, each night, he completed his English homework of writing a short story. From those stories alone, Wilson developed the drive to write his debut novel, The Malignancy.
The author says that it was his Tourette syndrome that gave him the idea to write his novel. During the school day, Wilson suppresses his tics, then spends an hour or two at the end of the day letting them all out. During this time, his imagination runs rampant — almost like there are movies playing in his mind. Wilson can articulate those moving images into a literary format, a skill developed through his mandatory creative writing assignments in grade 8. Wilson’s debut novel incorporates time travel and the Roman Empire, an idea spurred from going down Wikipedia rabbit holes while expressing his tics. Through this combination of research and tics, Wilson retrieved the ideas for a basic storyline. The author had the broad plot points, a solid beginning, middle, and end, but he struggled to get the meat and potatoes to supplement the story.
In order to commit himself to the writing process, Wilson forced himself to get into uncomfortable positions. He went to coffee shops and set deadlines for himself to stay accountable. He wrote down his plot points longhanded. Wilson did what a lot of writers do when they start their stories: pulled his computer out and stared at a blank page.
All in all, Wilson wrote four drafts of The Malignancy. It took the author some time to think about the little details. For instance, all he had when he began to write were caricatures. To focus on the story, he focused on his novel’s protagonist. Wilson knows how an author can’t get hung up on the original story and its subsequent drafts. “It’s your story,” he says, “it can change all the time.”
While writing, Wilson, like most writers, got new ideas. The urge to start new projects bubbled up, but he managed to find a solid solution: incorporate the new ideas into one project. Case in point, he had an idea for a horror novel, completely separate from his original idea. His solution? To add horror elements to The Malignancy.
“It’s your story, it can change all the time.”
Liam Wilson, author of The Malignancy
A major piece of advice from Wilson is to just write out your whole draft sooner rather than focus on the details along the way. Besides, writing and rewriting just one draft can mix things up.
The young author received a ton of help with his drafts. He encourages every writer to do the same: ask for help. As an example, his grade 12 English teacher gave him feedback to hone his craft for free. He also had the help of a coffee shop barista, who solely focused on the grammatical errors of his novel and completed the grammar edits for $180 — a fair price, in Wilson’s opinion.
All Wilson had to say about the experience of selling his novel on campus was that it was interesting. He had a good turnover and sold 22 of the 30 copies he brought. Everyone who came to his table was really friendly. On the other hand, the table booking at MacEwan wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Wilson thinks the price for a table was a little too high. He couldn’t recoup the cost of the table by selling his books.
You can stay up to date on Wilson’s book signings on his website, which lists one upcoming signing so far in late January.
Photo by Rochelle Hermano
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