Why do i like writing fiction?

I was asked earlier why I like to write fiction and my answer was simply why not? I mean is there any reason out there not to enjoy writing fiction?

The thought of taking a story and making it your own, with whatever twists and turns you can come up with and never worrying that you are doing something wrong because the fact is that fiction isn’t fact, it blows my mind. If I was to write in any other genre I would most definatly stumble over legalities, what is correct and what isn’t etc. but with fiction the possibilities are endless!

I mean think about it, why can’t we have a book that starts with a romance story, then leads to introduce a vampire friend before zombies attack and it ends with a nuclear bomb destroying an alien invasion. Action packed yes although probably slightly confusing. But still possible!

I have a habit of spelling things incorrectly or saying the most stupid ideas that come to my head, do you know what that is called? Excitement. My fingers fly over the keyboard as I try to get all of the ideas out of my head and on file before they are gone forever and yes 70% of the time I will read through it later and think “What the ……” but the point is I am excited about fiction. Romance, mythological, historical, mystical, magical, adultery whatever you want to write about is possible with fiction.

My passion is to write and I write with passion. 🙂

Confession time.

So in my last post I mentioned how much this promoting and marketing is taking it out of me and that I spent all day in my dressing gown and didn’t even brush my hair. The truth is, I spent all of today the same way and do you know what I did? Not a damn thing LOL. For day’s now I have been saying ‘Tomorrow I’m going to move the living room around and bleach the floor, hoover the sofa, antibacterialize the kids toys after throwing most of them because they don’t play with them!’ And still I have yet to see tomorrow.

It would seem it is not the book stuff that’s taking it out of me, I am just pure lazy. I need to start looking after my appearance now, nobody will want me to do a book signing if I turn up in stretchy pants and face paints! But let me tell you a secret. Come closer. Closer. 

I LIKE stretchy pants and face paints! SSSHHHHH Don’t tell anyone or it will ruin all of the credibility I don’t have! 

I have three children and the oldest isn’t even 6 yet, don’t get me wrong I would LOVE to turn up for school every morning to drop them off and look not only successful but awake! Instead of rice crispies in my hair and tea stains on my top, but it just isn’t happening. I am a mother therefore I dress like one. My shoe collection is fit to burst of lovely peep toe heels and boots, but I don’t even go out, so why do I obsess about buying them? ( actually I don’t have a pair of green shoes, hang on need to check eBay ^_^)

The point is that I may struggle with my kids and wake up thinking ‘is it nearly bedtime yet?’ and i may walk around looking like a zombie, and yes OK that jumper underneath my coat IS part of pajama set i have had far to long but can’t bare to part with, but i am also living my dream! A dream i have had for many years now, and it is only one of many. As well as writing i love crafts and singing and dancing, and i also love painting and decorating, trimming hedges, plastering walls, putting pictures up, wallpapering! you give me a task women aren’t supposed to do and i will tackle it with even more passion!

Don’t let anyone stand in your way, go forth and claim your place in this world with whatever it is you want to do. who says the stay at home wife and mother cant be successful? i sure as hell don’t! 

Book reviews, promoting and marketing strategies!

My head is in a fuddle right now, from writing a book and getting the publisher deal its been hectic with editing, learning to blog, remembering my twitter password!, organizing Facebook accounts, creating official pages etc. etc.

I was not cut out for this kind of thing and seriously it is taking it’s toll, my hair is un-brushed, I have been in my dressing gown all day, I was so tired when I woke up this morning I barely even had a chance to glance in the mirror before it was time to collect school uniforms and walk out of the door. And of course when my hand touched that handle ready to go my youngest peaked out from her buggie and said in the most beautiful voice ever ‘Mummy… baby pooey.’ and sure enough, she needed changing. Frustrated and tired doesn’t even describe how I feel all the time!

Want to know what else I feel? Absolute pride in myself for accomplishing my dream and fighting through the hard times. I used to say I had writer’s block when I picked up a pen and quickly put the entire project to one side, now I know I just wasn’t strong enough then to knock the wall down that hid the path in front of me. Now it’s down, and I smell roses! (When my daughter isn’t in the room anyway!)

My point here is guys that we all have dreams and although some people will try to put you down and say you are aiming to high you are the only person that can prove them wrong. I am standing tall, proving myself right and everyone that doubted me wrong and when I finally reach my finish line I will dive over it crying tears of joy and screaming ‘oh it was easy really!’.

How about you? how will you make it to you’r finish line? or will you just watch someone else take the self satisfaction from you as you whisper ‘it’s OK because their ankles look fat!’. 

GO GET YOUR HAPPY ENDING!!

Stupidest smart idea I ever had!

Well i must say that although things are soaring with my first book, my inner author is currently berating me for my lack of enthusiasm for new projects! So i have decided to set myself a rediculously impossible goal, to write another 5 teenage fiction books, 5 adult romance books and 5 childrens books. Impossible? Only if i dont try it 😉 i dont mean have them published might i ad or even finished to the quality of publishing, no if i can do it for fun and end up with another 15 stories by the end of the year then that has got to calm the nerves of that slice of my mind just desperate to get started again! I think this is going to be major fun and who knows, i may very well have some more exclusive never before read snippets of my work for you guys!

 

Randomn thoughts of a tired woman

So here i lay in bed after a tiring few hours reading editors comments on my manuscript and seeing ‘this sentence seems out of place, is there some text missing?’ And thinking about the fact that i re-wrote it awhile back. I knew some parts wouldnt make sense becuase after going over and over the manuscript for my fiction book it started looking more like a recipe book or something! I am very happy to make these changes dont get me wrong, this is NOT a negative post.
My point is while getting frustrated with myself for doing so much ‘wrong’ i also stumbled across a mistake THEY made. It reminded me that it doesnt matter what qualifications we have or how good we are at something, we will still get it wrong sometimes and that is nothing to be ashamed of.
While thinking to myself about my work ‘i bet who ever edited this for me thinks im a real ditz!’ I found i picked up on mistakes and didnt think anything bad of them.
I think we put ourselves down more worrying what other people will think, and that goes for everything not just writing. I want to scream it from the roof tops that im a success! But it doesnt stop me from making mistakes, it never will. I wouldnt want to stop making mistakes.
I guess what i am trying to say is stop worrying so much, the worst critique you NEED to impress… Is you. 🙂

Well thats enough nonsense rambling for one night lol

Article i was asked to write for AHA authors helping authors.

How A First Time Author Overcomes Writer’s Block

 

For years I had a story line in mind for my first book. ‘Re-write the legends’ I thought, ‘it will be easy!’ I was very wrong. I would constantly stumble, falter over what colour whose eyes were. To stop forgetting minor details I tried writing them in a file titled Notes, but before I knew it I had 16 different files within that file on everything from character descriptions to character backgrounds and even building descriptions and places! There was probably more than 15 times I started writing again and stopped soon after, completely confused and frustrated at why the story was in my head and yet it wouldn’t go on paper.

When my daughter was born with a rare condition I was stuck, I wanted to fight to raise awareness but I wanted to be a fiction writer as well. Suddenly I had the idea to mingle awareness of my daughter’s condition within a fiction novel using my own experiences as leverage. Before she was born I wouldn’t have listened to statistics and numbers, I needed something exciting to grab my interest. Like a book about vampires. Inspiration struck and my passion for writing merged with my passion for making a difference. ‘I will write disabilities as though tied with the legends! Make people remember it, even if they only remember reading about some condition in a book once they can pass the knowledge on to any one they have contact with that might need it. I could really help people!’ the passion was nearly making me explode at that point! So… why was it still not going on paper?

After deciding I was going to go for it one day whether it was rubbish or not, I researched ways to help and how to move on and discovered it was a common problem known as writer’s block, so I decided to see just what writer’s block really is and if there are any tips online. What I discovered shocked me and spurred me on to get my story down and it is now being published. I can call myself an author and my dream is really happening. What I discovered is that writer’s block is only a trick of the mind and is when a writer over complicates something or writes something they THINK is rubbish and then just gives in. That made me smile.

After reading up on writers block I decided to just go for it and have fun, stop being so serious with it and just write. And I did. When people say to me now “I would love to write a book but…” my advice is simple. Open a file on your computer, write the beginning of your story and don’t stop till you have written the end. Don’t worry about characters, where they are or details or anything just write the bits that are in your head and use this as a basis to write an extended version, if you decide at that time you DO want a certain character to do something and you know what colour hair or eyes you want them to have then open another file called ‘notes to remember’ and copy the descriptions in there to use later on.

Oh and before I forget, the greatest thing I found to help my writing was caffeine. After three energy drinks and the coffee percolator on again things just started flowing, and even if it didn’t make sense when I went back to it (after recovering obviously!) it turned out I had so many terrific ideas to work from then. I found ways to spice up the boring parts and got the energy to just keep going without my eyes going blurry or closing on me half way through a sentence!

 

My book might never sell one copy, but in all honesty my dream was to see my name on the shelves as an author. That dream is coming true, that’s worth more than any amount of money in the world.  And writer’s block will not stop me again!

 

~~~~~~~~Susan Hatton. Author of Awake Again available for purchase this summer.

 

Blog: https://susanpolp.wordpress.com/