Hello my name is Nicola Batty, I am in my forties and I am from Manchester...
I’d like to tell you about myself and my writing, which go hand in hand - one cannot be mentioned without the other!
MY WRITING
Throughout my childhood in Cheadle Hulme, I was always writing; I completed my first novel Flash the Robin (fully illustrated!) when I was about ten, and ever since then I have gone from strength to strength. In more recent years I have written seven novels and a collection of short stories; they are all quite different from each other - science fiction, black humour, historical subjects, fantasy, and even religion! Although I consider the novel to be the natural form for formal writing today, I have recently turned my attention to film and TV scripts. One of my TV scripts Skin was actually published by the BBC several years ago in an anthology called Debut On Two, and then it was published again by Longman’s in Ten Short Plays - which was used on the school curriculum, so school kids throughout the country have studied Skin!
RAWPRINTZ
After many disappointments concerning publishers letting me down, I decided to take the initiative by joining forces with my partner, Andy; together we set up RAWPRINTZ to publish my work, ourselves. Andy has given me constant support and encouragement along the way. The name of our company came from my Newsletter RAW MEAT, as I use the Newsletter to advertise and talk about my work (for more details about RAW MEAT see below). We recently published a collection of my short stories called The Ziggy Collection, which is available on CD-ROM (see below). Soon to follow will be my first novel, Dry Rot.
ZIGGY
Over the past few years I have been writing several autobiographical short stories, which have been collected together to form The Ziggy Collection which is now available from me – the price is £2.99 and all money will go directly to the Manchester Ataxia Branch. Ziggy is the name of my wheelchair; I originally named him when I was really into David Bowie. I was just about seventeen then, and have been through many Ziggies since that date, but the name has stuck!
FRIEDREICH’S ATAXIA
The disease that I have is called Friedreich’s Ataxia, a progressive condition that affects the nervous system. For much of my younger life I allowed the fact that I was in Ziggy to affect me as little as possible; I lived alone, I went to London for a few years, I took a BA at Polytechnic, I went to Transylvania… I did all the usual crazy things people do! Several things happened around the same time at the beginning of the 90’s… I moved in with Andy and had Jack.
SENSELESS?
It was when Jack was a baby that I first began to have problems with my eyesight, which had never really given me trouble before. I think I realised right away that the disease had chosen to attack my senses, for my hearing also has become deficient in recent years. I had to give up using a word processor to write, when it became impossible for me to read what was written on the screen. My imagination, however, is still active and raring to go!! But seriously, the loss of my eyesight has been the most difficult thing for me to come to terms with, because I was an artist as well as a writer, and it meant the end of my painting and sketching. Thankfully, this interest in art has been passed on to Jack, so it’s not dead! But still, the deterioration of two of my senses presented problems not only with writing but also reading…
UNIVERSITY
Recently I took an MA in English Studies at Manchester University, which I enjoyed! I needed to prove to myself and to others that I was still capable of achieving such a thing. It wasn’t just a question of a piece of paper saying I had passed, but it was a continual battle against people’s embarrassment and ignorance. Still, my MA was a success, and so my life continues into the 21st century, with new targets to be achieved and improvements to be made always!!
