Meeting Val Ormrod

The Art of Being a Writer

Meeting Val Ormrod

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Meeting Val Ormrod

Hysteria 2022 finalist and prolific writer

Linda Parkinson-Hardman

and

Val Ormrod

Jan 18, 2023

At the beginning of December, I chatted with Val Ormrod about her writing career to date and her memoir, In My Father’s Memory.

Val is a writer and poet from the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. She has won the Ware Poets Prize, Magic Oxygen Poetry Prize and Carers UK Writing Competition, and has been recognized in the Bridport Prize, Wells Festival of Literature, Plough, and Welsh Poetry Competition. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has been published in various anthologies and journals including Stroud Short Stories, Graffiti, Hedgehog Poetry, Ink Tears, Eye Flash Poetry and Reading the Forest. Her memoir In My Father’s Memory, about caring for her father, has been adapted into a stage play called My Favourite Dog, performed in the UK and Thailand.

Key takeaways

Val Ormrod’s poem Unspoken was shortlisted in Hysteria 9
Val self-published her memoir In My Father’s Memory about her experience of caring for her father through his dementia in 2022.
All proceeds from the book are being donated to Alzheimer’s Research
Adele Cordner script writer bought a copy of the book and asked Val if she could adapt it as a stage play.
In My Father’s Memory was adapted for the stage with a new title, My Favourite Dog. It was first performed in the summer of 2022 and is being performed in Thailand this month.
Val is passionate about riding and it was her way of coping with the stresses of being a full-time carer.
Val started writing her book before her father passed away, gathering stories and anecdotes. Her original intention was to write it as a diary for a magazine or newspaper but she didn’t get the opportunity.
Val was interviewed by Fay Weldon when she applied to and was accepted by Bath Spa for a creative writing master’s degree.
She was reluctant to go public with the original manuscript because it was so personal. After being encouraged by her father’s sisters she self-published for a few people who had helped and supported her during his illness.
Since doing a self-publishing course with me in the Autumn of 2021 she has published it more formally through Amazon so that people attending the stage play could buy copies.
Writers find it difficult to stop tweaking a manuscript.
Val’s sister was also diagnosed with dementia and died just six weeks after her father.
Val has been contacted by a theatre student about adapting a short story she wrote called The iFairy for television.
Val was always meant to be a writer creating her first short story as a child. She also had poetry and short stories published as a student. Later, during her 20s and 30’s she wrote short stories for magazines like Horse and Pony and True Confessions.
Val taught English and Maths before moving into IT working on user manuals and management reports.
As an accomplished horsewoman, Val decided to create an equestrian version of Trivial Pursuit. She created questions in six categories related and made it compatible with the original game. She sold around 2,000 copies through the International League for the Protection of Horses (now World Horse Welfare).
When you’re writing you become so involved that you can see the characters as real. She finds she writes at what is often the opposite end of the spectrum, humour as well as challenging topics such as child abuse.
Val mentioned research that shows people who read fiction are kinder and more empathic than those who don’t read.
The way we interpret words is very individual and this offers up a rich seam for authors to play with language.