So, who is Minki?
I’m Minki Manzi, and I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, way before I was even a Manzi — sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, and quite often when I was supposed to be doing something else (ssh, don’t tell!).
I’m a writer and musician (alongside various other things), which means that words have always been part of my life in one form or another. Sometimes they become songs. Sometimes stories. Sometimes poems. Sometimes they are just a sentence, a thought, a character, a conversation overheard in my head, or the beginning of something that may or may not ever become anything more.
I have also never been particularly good at throwing those things away.
Over the years, words have ended up everywhere: in notebooks, on scraps of paper, in Evernote, Google Keep, in text files, in old documents and in the digital equivalent of the back of a drawer. Some have grown into proper pieces of writing (two novels and a yet-to-be-illustrated illustrated children’s book currently in progress). Others have remained tiny fragments, waiting patiently — or perhaps impatiently — for their turn.
Some of my writing has been shared, published or performed. Some has been written purely because I needed to write it, or didn’t need to, but it just happened and I have no idea how or why. Some has been sitting quietly for years while I got on with everything else life decided to throw at me.
Why so many words?
I’m not entirely sure.
I’ve never really thought of myself as someone who decided to become a writer. Writing has just been something I’ve done, like breathing. I loved books as a child. My parents sang folk music, which is basically like poetry to music, and writing my thoughts down developed into poetry and lyrics. Writing has been there alongside music, work, travel, family, life and all the other stuff in between, and I never really realised it was the glue that brought it all together.
Writing was never a ‘thing’ but, over time, I have realised it really, really is.
I am fascinated by the stream of consciousness that sometimes happens when the pen hits the paper (very rarely typed, unless it is a lyric to a melody or I wake up at 4 in the morning without the pen and paper by the bed).
At times like that, I will find this snippet, perhaps unfinished, and have no recollection of how it got into my head. I do feel sometimes that we are given the gift of a lyric, a song, an idea, a sentence, and it is our duty to capture it.
Where does it come from? Is there some creative ether up there?
I think so.
Tiny thoughts flying around, waiting to be captured like butterflies in a net. Words, poems…
Sometimes a sentence arrives and simply won’t leave me alone until I write it down.
So I write it down.
Then another one arrives.
And another.
Which may explain the folders.
The problem with folders
At some point I realised I had accumulated a rather ridiculous amount of writing.
Torn bits of envelopes, Post-its, bits of notebooks, old diaries, beermats, even.
Little stories. Half-stories. Poems. Lyrics. Ideas. Book plots. Characters. Bits of dialogue. Things that made me laugh. Things that made me uncomfortable. Things I couldn’t quite explain.
I started gathering it all together, partly because I wanted to see what was actually there.
It turns out there was rather a lot.
And that led to the slightly terrifying thought that perhaps it was time to stop simply collecting the words and actually let some of them out into the world.
(Before it was too late and I was too late, the late Minki Manzi.)
Which is where Tall Stories and Tiny Tales comes in.
And now…
This website is my attempt to give all those words somewhere to live.
The tiny stories have their own little experiment: one tale a day, for a year, and perhaps beyond. But they are only one part of the picture.
There are poems and lyrics, longer stories and unfinished ones, characters who keep turning up, things I’ve written about people and things I’ve written about absolutely nothing at all.
Some of it will be polished.
Some of it won’t be.
Some of it will probably make you laugh. Some might make you think. Some might leave you wondering what on earth I was thinking.
That’s OK.
Not everything is for everyone.
But after years of keeping so much of it tucked away, I’m rather enjoying the idea of finding out what happens when I let it out.
Welcome to my writing cupboard.
Have a rummage.
And be gentle whilst you’re in there!