Tag: Writing

Lightning Bolts and Dragons

Well, it’s time to come clean. I have been holding off telling my family that I am writing until I had something that I could be proud of. The last couple of days have finally delivered that something in a dragon-shaped lightning bolt.

I have a finished book! No, really. Ok, maybe I should have warned you to sit down first…Recovered? I’ll carry on then.

The thing is, the book is not a major, groundbreaking work that I’ve been meticulously researching for months, nor an outstanding literary feat. It’s not even the kind of thing I envisaged myself writing a year ago when I decided to start taking this writing malarkey seriously. I always thought the first book I wrote would be a novel, almost certainly a Regency romance, which is what I’ve been brought up on. It turns out, my very first book is a children’s picture book featuring dragons. And it may never be accepted by a publisher, I don’t know. The thing is, I have an achievement – I have written a story and I am very proud of that fact alone. It’s a real story, with characters and a beginning, middle and end. There are a couple of minor tweaks I need to do but on the whole I am very happy.

And the biggest lesson for me in this is to take hold of lightning bolts that appear to strike from nowhere, however unlikely.

I didn’t set out to write a children’s book. It was probably the furthest thing from my mind to be honest. But this character has been sitting, twiddling his thumbs, in my head for a few months. Then he acquired a setting, but still no story, and busied himself until I could decide what to do with him. Then bam, in a lightning bolt out of nowhere, he starts talking to me. I guess he got fed up of waiting. And now I have 24 pages of picture book, waiting for me to finish editing and fiddling and send them away with everything crossed for luck.

It took some nerves to confess to my family that I was writing – it feels to me like a huge step, I don’t know why. Maybe because up until now I haven’t had anything I’ve been really proud of. But their reaction when they read it was the moment I have been waiting for for ages, maybe even years.

Oh, and by the way, I was wrong. Taking hold of lightning bolts is the second biggest lesson for me in this. The first is to remember how much fun it was. It was hard, getting the language the way I wanted it, asking my friends to test drive it on their children and waiting to hear their reaction. It was probably the hardest 500 words I’ve ever written. Trying to make sure that every word delivers the picture I see in my head, and that every line is entertaining. I think I’ve managed it, although I will probably always have some doubts. But, I can’t say it enough, it was fun. Entering the world of my characters, playing around with words to find ones that are musical and rhythmical, thinking of what my son would like to hear and how I could deliver it – that was magical, and has opened up whole, hereto-unconsidered world of possibilities for me. I’ve already got another little character whispering that she wants a turn at being a story.

I shall be updating regularly with progress, and when I’m a multi-millionaire just remember – you saw it here first.

The Joy of Titles

I would love to be able to offer a really useful, insightful post here on how to craft a fantastic title for a piece of writing. Any piece, be it poem, story, novel, article, blog post, etc.

There are two reasons why I’m not. Firstly, there are lots of helpful how-to books, articles and blog posts out there which offer advice on all aspects of writing, including titles. I don’t want to be another one in the crowd. That’s my ‘save-face’ story anyway. The other, and slightly more pertinent reason, is that I am absolutely terrible at it.

So this is more a tale of woe and a call for people to comment with their own title failures so I don’t feel quite as utterly useless.

I’ve read a good bit of the helpful advice mentioned above, and to be honest it hasn’t really helped so far. I’m hoping that this is because I am taking on other lessons and techniques and my brain is resisting being overloaded. In which case the trick to crafting titles will click in in its own good time. The alternative is that there is a special knack to titles which you’ve either got or not. In which case, I’m doomed.

My main problem is short story titles. I have started entering a monthly short story competition, which always gives a set theme. This is great, it provides structure and a springboard, especially good for beginners like me. The problem is, being on a theme, there feels more pressure to provide a stand-out title. After all, they will be receiving hundreds of entries, all on the same topic, and they have to start a cull somewhere. Assuming I manage to get through the “Oh-dear-me-this-person-has-sent-it-in-on-pink-paper-with-a-flower-border” stage, and the this “this-person-can’t-even-spell-their-own-name” stage, I then have to make it through the “oh-dear-Lord-couldn’t-they-think-of-a-better-title-than-that-have-they-no-imagination” stage. And I have visions of my masterpieces, which would otherwise unfailingly win first prize, falling through the filter right there.

I have tried using a phrase from the story, or twisting a phrase from the story. This seems to give me the result I’m happiest with, but it’s not the witty/ironic/highly intelligent/achingly beautiful thing I’m looking for.

So my next mission, in my journey to become Millionaire Writer, is to crack titles. I will leave no stone unturned. I will experiment, play with words, seek divine guidance, etc, until I am the Mistress of Titles and you are all begging me for help and inspiration.

In the meantime though, I have a story with a not-bad title to print and post.

A Helping Hand

I’m coming to the conclusion that writing can be a teensy bit frustrating. You can be flying high one moment and then totally without inspiration the next. Now, I realise this is groundbreaking stuff that no-one has ever written before. You may need to sit down to carry on reading. But joking aside, you don’t actually grasp the reality of it until you are doing it, and it’s a lot like parenting in that respect. A complete shock to the system.

I have also realised, however, that writers as a breed are supportive, caring and genuinely want to help each other. I know, this is a sweeping generalisation and there will always be the odd recluse who likes to tuck himself up away from the world and avoid contact with other human beings as much as possible. In general, though, through my experiences mostly on Twitter and my own fledgling blog, the writers I have encountered are caring people who want to help you through sticky patches.

In a world where publishing seems to exploding – everyone is writing and blogs and sites like helium.com give opportunities to anyone to be heard – it is a huge challenge to get anywhere. I am always reading advice on how to stand out in the slushpile, descriptions of mountains of manuscripts drowning publishers and agents, warnings that for every success story there are x number of rejections. It would be natural that in such a competitive world, every writer would be out for themselves, and offering help to someone else would be akin to shooting yourself in the foot. I remember auditioning for Oklahoma! once in a local dramatic society, and another girl had missed the rehearsal where we were given scripts and set audition pieces. I typed out the pieces for her and emailed them to her in time to practice for the big day, and she actually got the lead part and I was in the chorus. If I hadn’t done that, who knows? I could be on my way to the West End right now (probably not, but since we’ll never know I can daydream a little).

But there isn’t that kind of mentality at all. Everyone I have come into contact with since calling myself a writer has been kind, encouraging and genuinely pleased at their colleagues’ successes. I would like to take advantage of that a little.

I have set up a social network on Ning called Writing Cafe – writingcafe.ning.com – where I’m kind of hoping to start a sort of online writing group. I know there are probably lots of these already, but my Google searches haven’t really brought any to light so they must all be hiding somewhere – perhaps run by the miserable recluses I mentioned earlier. The idea is to connect with other writers  (with a little more intimacy than Twitter allows), publish pieces of writing to receive feedback (with a little more privacy than sites like Helium allow for the more bashful among us), and basically see what else people would like to get out of such a group. I also had the idea that there could be a regular online chat time.

Anyway, that’s my little contribution towards helping writers connect together. And it’s completely selfish, I felt so touched by the support I had during the week on Twitter I want to take it further. Have a look and sign up!

Writing Cafe

Why Write?

I’ve been congratulating myself a little the last couple of days. Having gone from being close to giving up completely on writing I am now feeling more confident and have even finished a couple of projects. I can feel writing becoming a more and more integral part of my life, to the extent where it seems strange to go a day without writing anything. It’s taken me a while to get there, but I feel much happier.

This has led me to wonder why I ever wanted to write in the first place. What was it that, even when I felt so low, kept me going instead of giving up as I usually do so easily with other things?

I had a dim memory, a few days ago, of when my grandma died. She had always lived in London, whereas we live in the north east, so we didn’t see her all that often, but when we did she was always good fun. She was a proper old Irish lady, full of stories about the fairies at the bottom of the garden and tales from the part of Ireland that she came from. When she died, about fourteen years ago, we went down to London to sort out some of her things, and came across a rejection letter from a publisher.

She had written and submitted a children’s book – I don’t remember whether it was a collection of stories or one long story. It was something I had never known about her and I had a strong feeling of pride that she had actually taken the leap and submitted something. Now when I am starting to take myself seriously as a writer it feels quite apt to keep hold of that memory. It feels like a link to someone very special, and in some strange way like I am carrying on from her.

This isn’t the only, or main, reason I write though. I only remembered this incident a few days ago, after all, and I’ve been writing on and off for a while. I have been a voracious reader since childhood, does that explain something? A desire to emulate the authors I admire and to make up for the ones I don’t?

I have always enjoyed words – at school I was best at subjects that used words and language like English or French. I was the one people asked about spellings and synonyms. I have written little pieces since I was a child, just for the fun of it, until I became a teenager, and fitting in and being cool became more important (not that I ever managed it!).

But perhaps the most important reason to write is just…because. Because I can, and I know that with work and perseverance I can do it well. Because it feels right (no pun intended) and increasingly natural. Because when I am doing some mundane, everyday activity and I get a story playing in my head, the logical next step is to jot it down to play around with.

I’m fairly sure I’ve missed some reasons, and I will shout out at some random point “Yes, that’s another one!” In the meantime, what are other reasons people write?

Writing Is Hard

For the first time in a while I am feeling good about myself. I finally feel I have a story worth writing and I am determined to actually do it.

It is going to take a long time and a lot of hard work. At the minute for various reasons I am only spending a small amount of time each day on it. I am still building up background and and noting plot points, still figuring out exactly what story I am trying to tell. But the real achievement for me is that I am spending time on it each day. I am thinking about it all the time, I am beginning to see the world of my story open up, and coming from the state I have been in for the past few months this is very exciting.

The crunch will be when I have outlined as much as I feel I can or should, and actually start writing. I need to accept in advance that the first couple of drafts will be poor and there will be parts that I hate. Hopefully there will be parts that I love! But I must not expect to be happy with the first draft, else there will never be a final draft for me to be happy with.

It is easy to question yourself when you have dry times like I have just had. Should I even thinking about writing, my inability to do anything is just making me frustrated and miserable? If I was meant to be a writer, wouldn’t I feel energised and motivated, compelled to write anything and everything constantly? Shouldn’t it be harder to stop me than to start? But I read a few things lately that have made me think twice, and have given me permission to say: writing is hard. It is like alcoholism – acceptance is the first step to recovery. Allowing myself to say that writing is hard allows me to keep restarting, retrying and not give up.

Right now I am actually pretty proud of myself for not giving up – I have kept a journal going, I have restarted my blogs, I have drafted a couple of competition entries, and now I finally have the basis of a novel I think I can do something with. I am putting in some writing time every day, and it is becoming natural, even necessary. I intend to stop feeling guilty that I am making slow progress, and start feeling proud that I am making any. I will let myself work at a comfortable pace now and work up as the words begin to flow better and faster.

Because I think that now I am becoming a writer, and once I get going I will not give up. Individual projects may falter and fail, but my goal will not.