Sigh
Yes, sigh. I know I’m not supposed to open a blog post with ‘sigh’, let alone entitle the post that way – but then I’m not supposed to tweet about what I ate for lunch and I do – so you know….at this stage of the proceedings I’m not exactly going to worry about it. Which brings us full circle to … sigh. (more…)
Calling all Indie authors….
Are you an Indie Author? If you are, you still have time to enter this years Best Indie Authors 2012 competition.
The team over at The Kindle Book Review - where yes, yours truly is one of the review team – there are some awesome prizes up for grabs along with the possibility of finding yourself named as one of THE Indie authors of they year.
The six winners will receive $100 cash each and an advertising package with The Kindle Book Review. Only novels are eligible but within that category the following genres are open:
- Mystery/Thriller
- Romance
- Suspense/Horror
- Literary Fiction
- Sci-fi/Fantasy
- YA
There are also prizes for readers available too – a Kindle Fire to one lucky winner, loaded with some of the very best indie books out there. Registered readers are also in the draw for free kindle books each week.
Entries close on May 15 so don’t waste any time – head over to The Kindle Book Review and enter your novel or register as a reader.
You can also follow The Kindle Book Review on Twitter: @Kindlbookreview.
Innovative Online Book Tours
{EAV:1b7b8ffe500d4ad3}I am thrilled to announce that I have just been accepted, over on Just Heard, Just Read, Just Seen as a Online Book Tour Host (yes those are Winnie The Pooh capitals, no I’m not correcting them – move on) for Innovative Online Book Tours.
I’m really excited about this as I’ve been working really hard to grow my blogs over the past few weeks. I’ve overhauled how they look, I’ve updated them, I’ve tweeted them, I’ve Facebooked (oh look I know it’s not a word but it’s late so for tonight – just move along, nothing to see here) them and I have joined what feels like a million blog communities. In fact, girls and boys, I’m starting to feel like I’m something of a social media tart. But I swear I’m not a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of community member, I’ve been logging in faithfully every night to each of them. In fact by the time I’ve visited each of them there’s no time left to write or blog. Ooooops.
So, I am very excited to see it starting to pay off in small ways. My traffic is increasing, my book review requests are increasing ( hmm those who can, write – those who can’t, review? Let’s not go there…), and of course becoming Online Book Tour Host (oh look Winnie strikes again).
For those of you who don’t know, basically publishers organise for blog owners to ‘host’ an author and/or book during its release. This can mean an interview, a review, an excerpt, a give away, or a guest blog from the author. It’s an all around win situation – the author gets exposure, the blogger gets exposure and readers get great material.
Of course, all of this means I need to order – let me think – oh another 24 hours in a day should just about do it. Reading, reviewing, editing, blogging, posting, tweeting *pant, pant* – and that’s all before I head downstairs to make breakfast for The Offspring, put on my suit and head to the day job, or kiss The Man of The House good morning.
Am I super woman? Hell, no. I’m nuts is what I am.
Seriously though – there is method in my madness. I love to write, I love to connect with people, and I love the cyber world. It seemed to make sense to start building my writing career in a way that worked with those components. While I admit it would be nice to be making more money at it - used to have a guitar teacher in France, who used to roll his eyes and mutter “Angelique, your problem is you want the moon and you want it yesterday, which should tell you something about my patience level – I have to say that I’m feeling creatively quite satisfied with myself.
In other news, we’ve had a sad couple of months here at The New Beach House. Both our darling old slobradogs have left us for the doggy playground on high – Fitzy in January and Barney just a couple of months ago. While it was very sad, having to say goodbye to them it was a comfort knowing they had good lives, were very much loved and brought much love to everyone.
The Terrible Twins and Rosie now have full run of the place. The Twins spend a lot of time curled up at my feet at my desk while I write. My writing desk is upstairs in our bedroom, looking out over the water – and as the chimney runs up through our room, it’s lovely and cosy on blustery day (sigh, NZ winter is looming, dammit).
The Offspring are all settled in school for the year and doing really well. Master 19 – and I’m sorry but no he is NOT turning 20 in September, I don’t care what he says – is doing brilliantly in his third year at music school and has a lovely girlfriend named Sammi, who we all adore. Master 13 is enjoying being a high school student (I think) and has taken up parkour – aka free running, aka driving your mother’s blood pressure through the ceiling. Miss 11 is loving being in the senior grades at primary school and to the horror of all the men in her life, turned into a teenager while they weren’t looking. The cute little girl is gone and a rather formidable (not to mention beautiful) young woman is emerging – look out world is all I can say.
Next week is my one year anniversary of my sleeve surgery – I’m trying to think of something special to do to celebrate it both in the real world and something to share here with readers. Especially as over the past year I’ve lost a little over 50kg….I am literally half the person I used to be. Stay tuned.
See you a little further on up the road guys.
Please…get an editor
It doesn’t matter who you are, what genre you write, how old you are, whether you are aspiring, published, or still hiding under your desk quivering at the thought of writing. You need an editor.
I realize that for some readers, this post will sound dreadfully self-serving – me being an editor and all – but honestly boys and girls, I don’t care who you get to edit your manuscript, just get someone.
You see, in addition to writing, editing, blogging, listening to Bruce, chanting, and being bossed around by the resident Cat People, I also review books. Over on Just Heard, Just Read, Just Seen I review (mainly) mainstream books from mainstream publishers, On A Far Away Bookshelf I concentrate on Young Adults (YA), and on the soon to be live Incredible Indies the focus will be Indie authors. In other words, I read a lot. Let me say that again: I read A LOT.
Today, I want to talk to those of you who are Indie and/or self published writers. No, Virginia they are not necessarily the same thing. Some Indies will be published by small, indie publishing houses, while others will take the self publishing route. What’s more, I am a big fan of Indie writers – there are some amazing authors out there who are just not getting the exposure they deserve because of some silly notion that to be a ‘real’ writer, let alone a good one, you must be published by one of the big mainstream publishers. But I digress.
Every day I get books across my desk – the real one and the cyber one – from authors and indie publishing houses asking for reviews. I add the book to my list, load it up on my e-reader/fold back the cover and settle in to read. Let me tell you, boys and girls, there are some very talented writers out there, with some very cool stories to tell. Invariably, though, there comes a point when I think “uh-oh…”
These ‘uh-oh’ moments are generally editing issues. Issues the writer has not noticed for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is knowing the story too well. As writers, we know what is happening and is going to happen, we know what we mean, and we know every little detail about our character and plot. After months of working on the project, we forget other people don’t know those details. We also don’t notice we have used the word ‘angry’ in every sentence on an entire page, or that we have consistently misspelled a word or that our formatting is inconsistent.
We simply don’t see those things. Our friends and beta readers might pick up some of them, but chances are high they will assume they are issues you intend to sort out anyway. A good editor will assume nothing. A good editor will cover your beloved manuscript with all kinds of red marks and comments that will make you wonder why you bothered starting the project in the first place. And a good editor will explain to you that in fact you started because it’s a good story, you are a good writer, and if you just put down the heavy object you are about to throw in her direction you’ll see why.
Correcting grammar, spelling and formatting issues will give your book a better chance of a good reception with readers and publishers – and should be the first thing you address. If you get an editor to look at nothing else, get them to check for these things. It’s not about writing like Shakespeare, it’s about keeping your reader engaged.
Trust me, even the worst spellers out there will notice something wrong with “the cat’s pause were covered in butter” ( I kid you not).
Oh and repeat after me: “I will not rely on spell check”.
When it comes to plot, character, style, genre think of your editor, not as a Big Bad Witch but as your cheerleader. Remember it’s going to look good on her portfolio too – especially if it turns out you really are the next J K Rowling.
Any issues your editor identifies are an opportunity for you to take your writing from good to great. If you have used the same adjective fifty times on one page, maybe you do need to go back and think about what you were trying to get across. Maybe you could expand on a description or perhaps the reader doesn’t need to know every little detail of your character’s morning routine if it doesn’t advance the story.
An editor who just looked at the first 1,000 words of my current WIP had an issue with a joke I had included. She didn’t get it. When I reread it, with that comment in mind, I realized two things: first, most people would be like my editor and not get the joke and secondly, it didn’t add anything to my story anyway. I deleted it.
Sometimes your editor will be wrong, but in examining why you are including the paragraph she wants to kill, you will gain a better understanding of your story and your potential reader.
Nearly every ‘uh-oh’ moment in a book I am reviewing could be resolved with a little judicious editing.
Indie authors are less likely to have access to an ‘in-house editing team’ provided by a publisher, so they need to take matters into their own hands. Start by asking in your writing group for names. Remember google is your friend. Do your homework until you have found someone who is a good fit for you – someone who will be strong enough to tell you the truth but who isn’t going to bully you. Editors are just as susceptible to being wrong as anyone else (but if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it).
Remember the greatest marketing your book will get is not the review I give it or the press release your publishing house sends out; the greatest marketing your book will get is the way readers are talking about it. So, please, do as much as you can to get them talking about your story and not your spelling.
Everyone’s an expert
Like most people, I want to be successful at what I do and I’m always on the look out for better ways to do that (for the sake of the argument let’s just call it writing – the medium is immaterial in this conversation). So over the past week I’ve been reading a lot of blogs and books about being a successful writer, with a particular focus on blogging.
While I picked up some very useful tips – yes, yes I’ll share in another blog post – the thing that stood out the most was just how many experts I found. In particular experts who were more than willing to relieve me of some cash in order to show me how great their expertise is.
I’m sure you know the kind of thing I mean: ‘Make millions blogging TODAY’, ‘How to become a successful blogger OVERNIGHT’, ‘Break into Fiction,’ ‘How to Write Shop’
It all became a little overwhelming to be honest.
Now don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against people sharing their expertise or making money from it. In fact, I think it’s great. As long as they are in fact an expert and are not expecting to retire to Bora Bora by taking advantage of your desire to break into writing.
With that in mind, I made myself some guidelines to apply to the expert sites I visit before I sign up for, or more importantly, pay for anything on offer.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is
The first two blogs I mentioned above – ‘Make millions blogging TODAY’, ‘How to become a successful author OVERNIGHT’ – don’t exist, but I’m sure, you’ve seen zillions of sites making those same promises. I know I have.
Most of them tell you the only thing required from you is a few bucks and they will deliver the secret to an easy, and very wealthy, writing future.
Newsflash: Writing (and blogging) is hard work and like most things in life, success is not over night. The Rowlings, the Gilberts, and the Kings, not to mention all the successful bloggers you are in awe of, put in a lot of time, energy, and effort into their work.
It might seem like they were an overnight success, but trust me, it wasn’t.
There are no shortcuts to success so don’t be taken in.
If it looks like a bunny, hops like a bunny, smells like a bunny ….chances are the thing is a bunny
In other words, if it looks like a scam, it probably is a scam. Don’t just hand your credit card details over without checking it out. You wouldn’t walk into a store, close your eyes, hand the sales girl your card and say “give me the most beautiful shoes in the shop, I don’t need to try them on, I don’t need to see them, just put ‘em in a box and charge me for ‘em” (if you would, well maybe this isn’t the blog you need to be reading…) so don’t do it when looking for advice and support for your writing either.
Equally don’t assume that because the blog owner/expert wants you to pay for their services, they are out to fleece you. The two sites mentioned above: ‘Break into Fiction,’ ‘How to Write Shop’ are genuine sites, with great services and products on offer to help you with your writing career.
Expertise or Opinion?
There is I admit a thin line between the two, but before you start typing in your credit card details, it’s a good idea to be work out whether you are getting expertise (Break Into Fiction) or opinion (this blog) and if the price tag reflects the value of what you are buying. In fact it’s probably a good idea to establish which of the two you are looking for before you start. Are you just looking to see what others think or are you searching for training? Do they have testimonials from clients supporting their claims? Are they able to show some proof of their expertise or back up their claims with solid examples?
Rules are made to be broken
Keep in mind there are very few rules set entirely in stone. The ones that are, you will probably recognise instantly(grammar, spelling, and the likes);for the others it is, in my experience, a case of using some common sense. Trust your instincts; if something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. And just because someone else has said it’s a rule, don’t feel you can’t challenge that rule. Writing is a creative exercise so be creative with the rules as well - who knows what you might achieve.
It’s the same f****in’ riff
It’s 1.47am and I can’t sleep. TMoTH is away at a family wedding. The Offspring are asleep. Even the critters are asleep. Only I am still awake – and really I shouldn’t be, since I need to be up in a few hours for boxing training…..
I didn’t intend to still be awake at this time. I watched DVDs with The Offspring then came to bed thinking I would check my email and turn out the light. Then I remembered I hadn’t watched the keynote speech from SXSW . Why would I want to watch that you ask? Well, because the speaker was Bruce Springsteen.
The key note speech is amazing - it’s funny, it’s touching, it’s smart – and so much more. In it Springsteen talks about the things that influenced him, the things that made him want to do what he does. He talks about hearing The Animals and how, when he listened to them, he wanted to do what they did. He wanted to make people feel the way they were making him feel.
I sat here in bed, listening to the wind drive leaves around our front lawn, my mouth open in amazement. You see I’ve heard those words before – except usually I’m the one saying them and I’m talking about Springsteen.
When I was 12 we lived on a farm in a fairly remote area of the east coast of the north Island of New Zealand. My father had died the year before and my mother was working every hour of daylight to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table while lawyers do whatever it is lawyers do with wills and estates.
We had no television and our nearest neighbour was about two miles away. We did however have a radio and every Sunday afternoon I would sit at the table with my ear pressed to the radio listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40.
This particular Sunday, not long before my 13th birthday, Kasem announced a new song from some guy I had never heard of. As the song began to play I remember very clearly being mesmerised and forgetting completely about my French homework.
The singer was Springsteen and the album was The River. Springsteen wasn’t big in New Zealand at the time and I was only 12 – too young to really understand the themes in his music – so it’s not surprising I didn’t really know who he was. But I loved what I was hearing and by the time Fade Away was released I did know two things: a) whoever he was, I was hooked and b)I wanted to do what he did: I wanted to write things that made people see images in their head and feel something they didn’t know they felt.
That was 33 years ago – and today I feel exactly the same way. There is a joke in my family that Springsteen is ‘the other man’ in my life and luckily for me my partner Dennis is as big a fan as I am – although he does have a rule that there are to be no pictures in the bedroom. I have no idea why….
Springsteen’s lyrics inspired me- and still inspire me – to start writing. My dream is to one day interview him – if only to get the chance to thank him for all the joy his music has brought me over the years. So it felt a little surreal to hear him say the very things I’ve been feeling all these years.
Many of Springsteen’s songs have inspired in me ideas for stories – both short and long – but I have never had the courage or the confidence to write them down. They are, afer all, his songs. His stories. I have this weird, unwritten rule that while his music and lyrics are possibly the greatest influence on my creative writing, I can not use them as a spring board for that writing. Why? Who knows?
So, when he went on to not only explain, but demonstrate, how “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “Badlands” were (and I quote) “the same fuckin’ riff, listen up, youngsters — this is how successful theft is accomplished.” I, unlike everyone else, did not just laugh.
I got excited.
Not that kind of excited – get your minds out of the gutters. Okay maybe a little but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
I got excited because Bruce Springsteen gave me a green light to use all these characters who have been living in my head all this time; he may not have looked up and said “hey, the loopy red head down there in New Zealand, get over it, it’s just the same fuckin’ riff, write it already” - but he may as well have.
It’s funny, his new album Wrecking Ball makes me feel that same breathless wonder I felt when I was 12 and hearing him for the first time. I sit and listen to it, sometimes (often) in tears, and I wonder “how does he DO that? I want to do that.”
My next thought is invariably “I am so grateful he does that.”
For so many years, his music has held my hand and my heart, and played the background music to my life. Like I say, since the age of 12 I’ve wanted to interview him - partly so I could say thank you for all his music has brought to me.
But maybe the way I say thank you is to use that riff…
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2012/03/sxsw_springsteens_keynote_addr.html
The saga of the touch screen and the ferry
Or – why you should only do One.Thing.At.A.Time
DISCLAIMER: This may only be funny to the two people involved. For those of you left scratching your head and muttering “huh?” when you get to the end, I apologize.For someone who makes their living writing, sometimes I’m not very good at it all. I mean that quite literally. My handwriting is shocking, especially if I’m tired or the arthritis in my wrists is playing up. And while I am (usually) an excellent speller, I am A Very Bad Typist.
Unlike my handwriting, my typing does not vary according to my fatigue level. It is simply bad. I have in fact an extremely well developed ‘backspace’ action – to be honest it is one of the keys I can find blindfolded, in the dark without having to think….
What I should never do, however is try to type with a touchscreen or while moving or a combination thereof. Should the day ever come that I am the proud owner of a iPad, you can guarantee I will be one of the real geeks with a wireless keyboard – at the request of anybody who has to read Facebook updates, Tweets, or LinkedIn messages.
Multitasking is overrated
This was proved today when I tried to post a Facebook update, be romantic (what? it happens), and display my admiration for Springsteen – from the touchscreen of my iPhone, while waiting on a moving dock for my ferry home. As the ferry docked, thus making the dock move even more, I raced to finish my transcription of a verse from Springsteen’s Land of Hope and Dreams, get my ticket clicked and find a seat.
Seeing the problem yet?
“You must be a whizz.”
As I slid into my seat the lady across the table smiled and said “gosh you type so fast on that, you must be a real whizz.” That alone should have made me sit up and pay attention, but no I was too busy basking in the glow of her admiration. Right up until Patti sent me a message on Facebook asking if I had meant to make her laugh or did I need to install spell check.
Oh no; this couldn’t be good. I clearly had a spectacular typo in the middle of a public, romantic, Springsteen message. Did I mention public? On Facebook? I tapped on the screen – that I can do without too much disaster – and pulled up the post. And promptly dissolved into loud giggles (my ferry companions are quite used to my weird behaviour – but that’s another story).
Bug in the USA?
What should have read ‘Big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams’ read Bug wheels through fields…BUG? Where did BUG come from? It took most of the remaining trip to navigate the delete buttons, find the lyrics on a website, copy them, paste them, and repost the status. This time it had nothing to do with the ferry and everything to do with my manic giggles.
Quit while you’re ahead
Still sniggering to myself I sent Patti a DM designed to deliberately make her smile this time. What I meant to write to my fellow Springsteen fan was “You know given some of the things I’ve been known think about where that man is concerned, it could really have been so much worse lol.” By the time I had managed that, it was time to disembark and I thought no more of it, until a chime told me Patti had replied. I clicked on my phone and before I could read her reply saw what I had actually written: “You know given some of the things I’ve been known think about where that man is concerned, it could really have been south worse lol”
Yes folks I am a professional writer and editor. Scary isn’t it?
What’s in a name?
Something tells me I’m hardly the first writer to head up a blog post with that title. But hey at least I resisted the urge to use a rose as a pic….And trust me it wasn’t easy coming up with an alternative; I nearly bowed to the cliche but I digress. Yes I know, I do that a lot.
What was I talking about? Oh yes – names. I like to think of myself as being fairly smart; my family suggests that in fact this is a delusion and that I bear more than a passing resemblance to Dory from Disney’s Finding Nemo, but what would they know? I’m not even blue and I don’t sound anything like Ellen DeGeneres. Hmm? Oh right – names.
Oh zat ees not a very common name, hein?
I’m one of those rare people who actually like their name. I don’t know whether I fell in love with France and things French because of my name or if would have happened anyway, but my slightly unusual name in all its forms has never bothered me. Although when I first moved to Paris I did assume I would for the first time ever have an ordinary, garden variety name. HA! People still commented on it everywhere I went – they simply did it French. Go figure.
A name for everything…
So when I started writing, I wasn’t especially interested in pseudonyms. My name would be just fine thank you very much. Right up until I hit a whole other bunch of names – the names of genres. Romance. Horror. Erotica. Sci-fi. Chick Lit. If you think about it each of those labels or names carries with it a resonance and image of what it represents – just the same way our own name does.
Of course what often happens is if a writer begins writing to one of those genres, they become pigeon holed to that genre. Now, there is nothing wrong with that at all. If your passion is romance or sci-fi or chick lit or whatever, then get out there and write, baby, write.
What about me?
What happens though if, like yours truly, you tend to be a little hyperactive (okay maybe a lot) and you don’t know what genre you’re passionate about because you just love words and writing? Then what?
I’ll tell you what – you end up in the middle of a metaphorical snarled fishing line of massive proportions. It is scary how many story ideas I have sitting in folders in Dropbox that have stalled because I’ve woken up one morning either dying to try a different genre or I’ve been paralysed by the fear of actually writing something good, selling it, and never being able to write in a different genre again. Yes there are massive holes in this theory – not the least being that I’m assuming I’ll write something that will be picked up and published – but fear does not care about holes in theory. Fear is just fear.
Eureka
After struggling with this for several years now, two days ago I found the solution. I realised two things in that moment – the first was that the next year is going to be incredibly busy and the second was that maybe my family is right and I’m more like Dory than I thought.
The solution is pseudonyms. You see, I’m one of those people who takes on the identity of the genre they’re writing in. If I’m writing romance, I tend to become floral and romantic. If I’m working on my post-apocalypse piece I get very Sarah Connor – ish. If I’m writing erotica – well, anyway you get the idea. All I need to do is give those identities a name.
Meet the family
So I did. Lily writes romance, Georgia writes erotica, and I write general fiction and YA. And believe it or not – though by now I’m picking you’ll believe it – I have found myself dressing to the identity. Jeans and tee for me, soft pastel, feminine flowy skirt for Lily, leather and lace for Georgia.
The kids just shrugged – they’re used to their mother being weird. The Man of The House is starting to realise there could be definite advantages to this set up. The cats are not impressed. As for me, I’m just looking at the names (and their personas) as another set of tools in my writing kit. It’s all just a case of finding the right one (tool/name) for the job.
By the way…
In case you’re wondering why I chose jellyfish….it’s because although we call them jelly fish their real name is Scyphozoa. If you’re Dory, of course it’s Squishy (I shall call you Squishy and you shall be mine). What’s more, you would be amazed at how many sites exist dedicated to jelly fish – who knew? I got the pic from a funky site called Jellyfish Facts which while cool, has a vaguely disturbing tab labelled Pet Jellyfish……
And so it begins….
So what begins, I hear you ask. Sure you did, it was in between the sip of coffee, the bite of sandwich, and the turn of the page of your book. I heard it clear as a bell.
What begins, girls and boys, is the long, hard slog that is the road to turning things around. Having banished the word but ( I can say it when I’m talking about the banishment – sheesh, you guys are a tough audience) I’ve set about trying to work out exactly how to achieve my goals.
What is the issue?
You see the goals are not the issue. The issue is the strategy for achieving them. For me there are two strategies – the strategy of The Lotus Sutra and the action strategy. The strategy of The Lotus Sutra, which we’re not going to discuss tonight but will discuss later in the week, but can be summed up as faith – although there is a bit more to it than that which is why we’ll come back to it (I’d like to be clear the order is not indicative of the importance – simply of the time I have available for blogging and faith requires a lot more than I have this evening).
Action Strategy
My action strategy is going a bit like this: get up, make tea, turn on laptop, do gongyo (that’s part of the other strategy), go to work, appreciate being at work, appreciate the people I work with, leave work, come home, make dinner, spend some time being Mama,research/ blog/write/actively promote both blogs and work, do gongyo again, go to bed. Maybe, if I’m lucky, spend some quality ‘nice’ time with the man I share my bed with. Or if I’m too late for that (he doesn’t really do late nights), read.
It works
Sound boring? You might be surprised to learn that not only is it not boring – it’s not only helping, it’s actually working. Ha! I knew that would get your attention. First of all actually making the effort to do gongyo is giving my day rhythm, routine and a strong foundation. Doing all the mama stuff, is making me feel happy because I LOVE doing stuff with my kids.
I’m actually engaged in my work. At this stage I’d like to just take a moment to say my issues with my job are less to do with the job and more to do with my frustration with life in general – and in particular with my apparent inability to advance my personal writing career. I’m not sure I can say I enjoy my job – and again this is about me, not about the job or the company – but I am engaged. And that is a very good start, because when I leave at night, I feel quite comfortable dedicating my evening writing time to my own writing.
The result of that, has been surprising. Obviously my word count is increasing (hmmm, spend more time on writing project, see output increase – I could be on to something here….). More importantly I have A Plan (complete with Pooh Bear capitals). I have a clearer – thought not quite sparkly, crystal clear – idea of my work and where I want it to go.
Counting down
All of this is a good sign since I have five weeks left of my deadline – and am beginning to feel as though I may just have found my way off the dreaded merry go round of “I would if I could bu……”
Stay tuned, folks, stay tuned.
Photo: http://www.funnyphotos.net.au/images/dangerous-mountain-trek-through-china1.jpg
Guest Blog: Sue Fitzmaurice
The fabulous Sue Fitzmaurice has dropped in to talk about … finishing a writing project. So with no further ado, take it away Sue….
Finishing a Writing Project
There are three especially difficult parts to writing anything – the start, the middle and the end.
Sorry to say.
No-one who writes for a living will tell you different, albeit that there will be different challenges in the different parts. Me, I have no problem finishing. I have a problem starting. Which of course becomes rather a challenge for the finishing…
The biggest writing project I’ve had to complete has been the publication of my first novel. You may think you have finished at a certain point, but the process goes on and on and on; by the end of which one is very lucky if one does not completely hate one’s own work. And therein lies an important key to successful completion: don’t start something unless it’s a project or topic you enjoy, or in the case of something especially large: if you’re not really and truly in love with it.
These are a number of practical things that help me to write and to complete my writing – some of these may be of assistance to you, but we must all experiment with, observe and understand our writing processes to come up with what works for each of us.
- More likely if you’re a woman and you work from home: you WILL do housework instead of writing. Fantastic. Do the housework. It’s similar to being in the shower – you do it without thinking about it, so your mind is free to wander and be creative while you’re vacuuming. And when you’re done you’ll have the proverbial tidy desk to sit down at and start writing.
- Know where you’re going with your project: if you don’t have some kind of idea of the end before you start, then you’ll have a hard time finding your way TO an end. There are different ways to draft a map before you start – one that you update and play around with as you go through. You could write your ‘table of contents’ – I always start a piece of research or report writing that way; or you could do a mind map of some kind. With a fiction piece I start with a large sheet of paper – poster size – and I draw 6 or 8 or so circles evenly across the middle of the page, into which I write the main events or turning points of the story. Leave a gap between the circles so that you can add more circles – smaller ones generally – that match up with the pieces of story you add. This is a little like doing a jigsaw – separate the edge pieces first and get them all joined together… get the idea?
- Immutable deadlines: ones that someone else has imposed and that cannot be changed – thank heavens for deadlines or many of us would never get anything done at all. This is tricky if you’re working to your own rhythm, particularly with a fiction piece; try joining or establishing a writing group, with a commitment to share something new once a fortnight or once a month. I wrote most of my first novel this way; I’m certain it would not have happened otherwise.
- Get feedback: Especially early on, and especially if this is your first work of fiction. An experienced writer will give you constructive criticism that WILL make a difference to your work. Learn from as many reliable reviewers as are available to you.
- When it comes to the actual ending: and especially if you’re stuck – do the unexpected. If the predictable happens then it’s less engaging for your reader. Of course it has to be believable to0, but that is more in the telling than in the plot. A good book leaves its reader wondering…
In the end though, you must trust your instincts:
“If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.” – Lillian Hellman
Sue Fitzmaurice has been a business owner, business consultant and CEO, working in a range of different industries. She has degrees in philosophy, political science and business; her first novel is Angels in the Architecture. Her blog is at www.tryinggodspatience.com but you can also find her on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trying-Gods-Patience/278916238806666
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angels-in-the-Architecture/238526799541240