Book publishing is a hard and often lonely business for authors, but for the past decade and a half the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society has proven quite conclusively that reality doesn’t have to be so.

In fact, their Reality is Optional program has been a collaborative place for youth to gather and improve their writing skills, and even earn a royalty cheque from the Centre’s publishing arm also named Reality is Optional.

Kim Firmston, founder of the Reality is Optional youth program for the Alexandra Writer’s Centre Society, said that over the past decade the participants in the program had been working towards writing a book that would help future writers hone their craft.

“It’s very tongue-in-cheek, how to write book,” she said.

“It’s written by kids, for kids, or by kids for everyone. We kind of changed our motto along the way. It’s very comprehensive, kind of dense information, but we also kind of took the bathroom reader [approach], and right at the beginning, we were like, how do we make keep this engaging?”

That meant a book that wasn’t really meant to be read cover to cover in a sitting—although that can also be done—but instead serves as a guide for different topics that writers might want to learn about, said Firmston.

“All our articles are that short. They’re all done in youth speak, without getting into the trends that kind of come and go. There’s lots of jokes in there,” she said.

“‘I need to know how to do this?’ You can look that up. ‘I need to know how to do that’ and look that up, or ‘I’m curious about.’ So, it takes you all the way from what you need to do to start a story all the way to how to publish a story, novel, or whatever. It has resource sheets at the back so you could create on it.”

Firmston said it also includes a novella that is both enlightening to the writing process but also a funny read.

“The different parts of writing are characters. So it’s, I love Otto Cucumber, who is auto correct, and the Grammar Police. So it’s really funny, and you will find yourself continuing to read even though you were only going to go as far as how do I get over writer’s block,” she said.

Since being launched, the book has hit number five on Amazon’s nonfiction writing guides list in Canada.

But Firmston said that there was bigger plans for the book, including getting it into the hands of librarians and schools.

“I would love to see it in schools and libraries, just for like that one weird kid if they find this book, they will start feeling the community,” she said.

Finding a purpose, and a paycheque

There are probably not many authors who can say that they’ve published two books and have gotten a royalty cheque while still in high school, but one of the Centre’s youth writers, Maddie Somer, can.

“I’ve always loved writing, but I had never, like, really thought about getting published until I was an adult. It never really seemed like a reality,” she said.

Her first book Space Transit Services, which also contained writing by Willa Holmes and Issac Milne was a crazy experience to actually hold physically in her hand, said Somer. Doubly so when the first royalty cheque came.

That also was the experience for fellow Reality is Optional writer Oyin Somefun, who published her first book about a young espionage operative in B.C. entitled, My Mountain, when she was just 14.

“I remember coming home that day, I got back from the gym, and my friend and I went to my mom’s office, and there’s a book on the thing. I was like, What’s this? Like, oh, my goodness, that’s my name,” she said.

“You’re working on 400 pages, you don’t know what that means as an actual physical form. But then actually holding that book, you’re like, I actually have something. I actually did something.”

Working with other youth in the program has been a way to improve both her writing and her illustration skills, said Somer. She has also served as the book cover illustrator for many of the Reality is Optional books.

“Everyone has different ideas of what writing is, so they each bring something different. Different ideas about how to develop characters, or just different characters in general, or just writing in ways that I hadn’t really thought of before,” said Somer.

“It’s really helpful to get multiple perspectives with anything, if you’re an artist, getting different eyes on it, or, just really anything multiple perspectives. It really broadens your view of writing and allows you to write more and become a better writer.”

For more details on the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society or the Reality is Optional programming, see www.alexandrawriters.org/store/p330/Reality-Is-Optional.html.