I also found that nighttime became a productive

I also found that nighttime became a productive time also. I would place my journal and pen at the side of my bed and waited for lightning to strike twice. It’s astonishing how many ideas can come to a writer just before you sleep and early in the mornings. I soon filled many pages with literary gems, that I have since used in many of my stories and poems. The journal is a valuable tool, I have grown to appreciate more and more as I have progressed as a writer, especially as my writing muse can hit at any time. Even if I find I have a block with a certain piece, I can walk away from the computer and maybe go for a walk, then if the answers hits I can quickly retrieve trusty journal and place the gem inside for later.

When you are trying to write your memoirs, some things can trigger another memory. The timeline can become less blurry. Scents and sounds have triggered thoughts that had long lain dormant and I have again used this whenever I can. Something small can be made meatier and placed in a story. Exploding the moment is a technique authors use in which a moment that could easily be described in a sentence or two is stretched out and exploded with details. Sometimes the moment might be only a split-second of action! The “exploded moment” is much longer than the moment would actually be in real time. So one small scent can trigger a memory that can be explored and exploded to fill one full story.

Writing about your life is also about coming to a fresh understanding if it at an early age, when you think you know yourself pretty well.

Novelist Stephen King has said, “ I write to find out what I think.” (King, 11 Oct 2012)

He means that until you set an experience down on paper, until you ponder the perfect words to describe it, you can’t fully appreciate or understand it.

Yellow Plastic Bike

In all my stories I wanted to use conflict and contrast. In the book “A Writing handbook,” it says: “ If your writing is to engage a reader’s attention and hold their interest, your original source material needs to be carefully honed and refined.” (Black, 30 Jun 2010) (Page 14)   

In my story, “Yellow Plastic Bike,” I wanted the theme to be based on how small I was to Janet, my sister, but also how little I knew of her illness. I decided to use arms, after I hit Janet with the bike, I tried to place my arms around her. This was my way of trying to protect her, and when she was having the operation I ended the story with the same thing.

I wanted to show in this story the key points, and also what kind of response I wanted the reader to have. I wanted the emotions of love to shine through the text.

Stephen King said he looks for ‘resonance’: the thing that will linger in the reader’s mind and heart at the end of a story. (King, 11 Oct 2012) (page 255).

A ‘Game of Two Halves’, but ‘Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet’.

Strange Alliances

Publishing and Social Media Networking at the London Book Fair 2013.

Now the LBF dust has settled, it’s a good time to reflect on the two seminars on social networking that were run back-to-back at the London Book Fair 2013. ‘How to Build Social and Brand Equity on a Shoestring’, delivered by Chris Hamilton-Emery, Director of Salt and a distinguished poet (he publishes with Arco) and small-publisher authors Christina James, Elizabeth Baines and Katy Evans-Bush, was the first. Snapping at its heels came ‘Social Networking: Authors Have Their Say’, with authors Jonathan Grimwood (Canongate), Elif Shafak (book fair author of the day), Phil Earle (Puffin) and Signe Johansen (Scandilicious / Saltyard Books) on the panel.

How to Build Social and Brand Equity on a Shoestring

Chris Hamilton-Emery (responsible for the Salt Blog Salt^ed) began the seminar by talking about how…

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Getting down to the writing.

Writing a set of short stories can be problematic, especially as I want the general theme to stay the same throughout the book. This means I have to be quite organized in the way I perform this writing task. I managed to accomplish this by deciding who the main characters in these stories were.

• Myself
• Mum
• Dad
• Janet (sister)
• Arnold (brother)
• Grans
• Granddads

Then I set about formulating ideas for as many stories has I could remember. I didn’t go too deep into the stories, more like.

 

• Dad’s ulcers burst.
• Our Holiday in Blackpool
• Mum gets Alzheimer’s.
• What the world was like when I was a child.

When I had managed to plot about twenty stories, using the free writing technique I had been introduced to in many of my classes, I began to accumulate first drafts for these stories. I have extended some of them, including more, so it would fit my novel.

THE ANGRY CASH COW

When is enough, enough?

Are you one of those people who are first to follow the advice a critique offers?

Or that person that pays £80 to a nice lady you offers a class to help you hone your literary babe?

Do you gather all those titbits of advice from magazines, hoping to find the tried and tested way of pitching your book?

If so beware, and ask yourself a question.

ARE THEY TELLING YOU THE TRUTH?

I have been writing seriously now for five years. In that time I have attended University, participated in a writing groups and attended many writing courses.

I have been told by tutors and other authors that they liked my work and it has potential.

Again I wonder.

HAVE THEY FED ME ONLY WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR?

I have been so caught up in this hype that it has never occurred to me that;

1. I will always be mediocre.
2. I don’t have a chance in hell of being published.

On a writing course I was once told I was too fat to be an author, and that it’s the whole package that sells a book. Maybe this is true. Is there a grain of truth to the statement?

If your face fits.

Some people are literally carried on a wave of success, everyone bending over backwards to help, and bask in their glory.

Can you be taught to write?

I am beginning to think not.

You can keep paying for all these courses, and all you will accomplish is filling someone else’s pockets.

But the biggest crime to would be writers is not being told when their writing is publishable.

For goodness sake people, put that person out of their misery. It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s a hell of a lot better than letting face rejection time and time again.

I would hope someone would do that for me.