A Writing Life or Writing Can Be Terribly Hard

What happens when inspiration refuses to strike? Where do you go and what do you reach for?

I recently read an article about a writer who shall remain nameless and that is what has sparked my latest foray into the world of story writing. My story is called THE MAN WHO LEAPT and tells the tale of a man who leaps to his death. During the story we meet all sorts of characters who have links to the man who leaps but are not the reason for him leaping. We eventually find out why he leaps and what causes him to choose such drastic and fatal action.

I always feel at the beginning of a story that I have no idea what it is going to be. I’m not a great one for planning a story out, which then makes writing a synopsis very difficult.

There are things to choose when deciding to write a story:

The content, important as this is what will be selling your story and hopefully connecting with an audience.

The type of story, is it a novel, a short story or a novella? Will it be published traditionally or indie?

Of course this can be decided once the story is written, the difficulty is that if you have no agent, which I don’t as an indie-author, then going the traditional route can be almost impossible. Breaking into the publishing world can be heart-breaking, but if you want people to read your work and for it to reach a large audience, then it is probably the best route to take. Did you know that James Patterson was refused 31 times and had no short stories selected while he was a struggling writer? Me neither.

My three books that I have written have all gone down the indie-path; Pirates Vs Fairies; The Sublime Maisie Canon and Pirates Vs Fairies 2 are all e-books with print books available from Lulu, which I use at schools where I perform readings of the books. But marketing is so desperately hard, when you don’t get any response from what you put out there it is soul-destroying.

Perseverance is key.

So who am I writing this blog for today? Me primarily. I have spent the morning drinking coffee, looking at Twitter and Facebook, putting things off that I should be doing before I head to a business meeting. I should be contacting schools for readings. I should be delving into my Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook to look at agents and publishers looking for work. Instead I am writing this and wasting a bit of time.

What I will be doing is writing some more of THE MAN WHO LEAPT; I’m liking what it is and where it is going, it has humour and a surreal edge to it that fits in well with my character at the moment. Perhaps it will be coming soon to a bookstore near you.