Never mind the bollocks, just write!

I love writing: it soothes, invigorates and challenges me, and allows me to disappear into my ‘creative mind’, where I can magic words into whatever order I choose. It is the only way I can capture what life puts infront of me. How else could I honour the pure ecstasy of devouring a somerset cream tea, other than with words?

Writing is me. I have kept a diary since I was eleven, and many, many moons have passed since then. I have notebooks bursting with my poems: reams of A4 paper covered in hand-written or typed short stories: ideas for stories: discarded stories: a trail of letters dotted around the world with friends and family, and a hard-drive loaded with story-filled Word documents.  

I have written, and self-published, a novel, Spaghetti Head. The idea for the book flew into my mind and out onto a sheet of paper in 2006. Twelve years later I got around to self-publishing it. I wasn’t working on Spaghetti Head during those entire twelve years, as I’m not a full-time writer. Life took me on various other journeys, and it was only in 2015 that I re-visited my first draft. I read it through, and thought ‘what a load of rubbish, but, with some good bits here and there’. I highlighted the good bits, and started re-writing. 

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day – they should have tried writing a novel!

 The entire process of writing a novel is long. Fleshing out your initial idea and writing it in detail to form some sort of storyline or plot, can takes ages, and I love this creative stage. I love making time-lines and interlocking characters with Venn diagrams, drawing arrows and circles, using various coloured biros, post-it notes, highlighting pens, and scribbling across endless sheets of paper.  

Once that stage is over, it’s down to business, and by comparison, writing the first draft can take eons compared to fleshing out the plot. But finally, you have it – your first draft! However, before you rush out and buy a new trouser-suit for receiving the Booker Prize Award, there’s more work ahead:

Reading and re-reading. Editing. Re-writing. Chopping text out. Moving text around. Remembering what impact moving a chunk of text has on what comes after where it used to be. Printing your draft out. Crossing bits out – sometimes entire pages! Then there’s finding beta readers. Collecting, collating and incorporating their feedback. Re-reading. Re-writing. Re-editing. Creating a cover design. Writing the back-cover blurb. Writing a synopsis. Writing a cover letter. Writing to agents in the hope they may think it’s brilliant and want to publish it. Realising no-one wants to publish it, so entering the minefield of doing it yourself. And finally, and the part I have found most painful: figuring out how you’re going to market it once you have self-published.  

And that is where all pleasure for me ends, as then we move on to the endless posting on social media so that people will know a book called, Spaghetti Head, exists, and that they need to read it.  

So, I joined Twitter, and enjoyed it to begin with and made some good writing friends on there. I quickly acquired 1,500 followers and found it exciting. But I grew tired of it – after all, everyone was posting on there for the same purpose: promoting something. I found it false and didn’t feel comfortable with it. I created an Author Page on Facebook, and soon grew bored of posting writing-related info or witticisms on there. I created a website for which I had to write blogs, so I wrote some, but my heart just isn’t a blogging heart. I joined Instagram thinking it would be quicker than tweeting, but didn’t enjoy that either. Little by little I realised that the time I was spending on blogging and social media posts, was turning me away from ‘real writing’, and finally, putting me off opening up a blank Word document ever again. So, Spaghetti Head, bobs around in the amazon ether with no-one knowing it’s there, and it has now been a few years since I have felt even slightly enthusiastic about writing, which is tragic, because I miss it. But I have more motivation to go outside and turn over my compost heap using a teaspoon, than I do to write anything for social media. 

Am I purely suffering from a severe case of Writers Block?  

I don’t think so. I can best describe it as, ‘Can’t be Arsed’ syndrome. Like the momentous effort it would take to get up and manually change channel on the TV if the remote control broke, I can’t be arsed to write another novel, because of a) the time it will take, and, b) the dread of having to go back to meaningless social media postings. I ask friends how long they spend on social media to increase followers, and they say up to 2 hours a day. Two hours a day! My God! If I had 2 hours a day spare, I certainly wouldn’t want to spend it on Instagram! I cannot do it to myself. I will not do it to myself.

 These days when you write to an agent, you have to declare what kind of audience you have on the social media platforms. I hate that. So I don’t contact agents – which is actually a godsend because it means I don’t have to write either a synopsis or cover letter! I feel an agent would need to drag me feet-first through a bramble patch growing in quicksand before they’d get me back on the social media bandwagon.

 I cannot be arsed with any of that bollocks anymore.

 Yet the need to write has not left me. My inner-writing Gnome (I wish it could have been an angel, but no, I’ve got an inner-gnome), is constantly tapping on my shoulder, and feeding me good ideas. I am avoiding Gnome.

 And yet I love writing, I always have. Maybe the problem is that I have not yet found my writing medium? Maybe I should talk rather than write? That would be a lot quicker. Post it on YouTube. Job done.

 And that begs the question of why do I want to post anything anywhere? Why do I want anything I have to write or say to be heard? Why not write just for me? Because I want people to know that I have lived a life? Because I want to make money? Because I want acknowledgement? Because I believe I have stories worth telling? Or something worth saying? Because I’m sure there must be others feeling what I feel?

 And what will happen to all my writing once I am no more than a dust particle that settles on your glasses?

 You know: I think writing this has helped. I think maybe I have a plan. I shall ponder these questions, and once I can be arsed, I’ll write my answers down: in a brand-new notebook, in different coloured biros with circles and arrows and bright yellow highlighting pen. And at the top of every page, in massive writing, in, I think, red ink, I will write FORGET ABOUT THE BOLLOCKS, AND JUST DO THE BITS YOU LOVE. And stuck to the wall behind my laptop, so I’ll read it every time I sit at my desk, will be a pale-pink post-it note, saying FORGET ABOUT THE BOLLOCKS AND JUST WRITE: written in, I think, dark green ink.

 I must never forget that I write because I love it: it challenges me: it inspires me: it energizes me, and I must not let social media disconnect that spark. I will not do it to myself. I will write for me. So, Sarah, forget about the bollocks, and just get on with it!

 Now. Should I post this?

How did I know I was a writer?

How did I know I was a writer? 

That’s an interesting question, and one I thought I would never be answering on a blog.

I have never (until recently) thought of myself as a writer, even though I have written for most of my life.  I have kept a diary every year since I was eleven, and written poetry since I was seventeen.  None of which I shared, none of which I put forward for publishing - so I didn't think I was a writer.  But then, a few years ago, I was asking myself what I really love doing, and the one thing I kept coming back to was 'writing'.  As I said: I have always written.  So, that must make me a writer, yes?

In 2006, I wrote 90,000 words in 30 days as part of Nanowrimo, and there I had my first draft of Spaghetti Head.  It was at that moment I realised there was a huge leap I needed to take - from writer to author.  I can be a writer and nobody will ever read it.  If I'm an author, the whole point is for someone else to read it.  To me, that was a very scary prospect. But the story needed to be written.

Am I a good writer, or a bad writer?  I'm just a writer - it's what I love to do.  Good or bad.  Being an author is a totally different thing - that takes hour and hours, years even, of re-writing, editing, formatting, perfecting the same piece of writing.

I do not judge myself as a writer, as I do as an author. I am a writer when I am scribbling how I feel about something in my diary.  I am a writer when something inspires me to make up a poem.  Freeing my emotions through my pen is always what has kept me sane, so I will always be a writer.