Come Out, Come Out Whereever You Are

I've been hearing a lot about trolls recently. No, not the mythical beasts that hide under bridges, munching goats in children's stories, I mean Internet trolls, that increasing sector of Internet users that take delight in belittling, bullying and stalking other Internet users. It's a blight, but inevitable really. Some people have nothing better to do than attack other people. Their lives are so full of nothing much that they feel the need to have a go at people who do have a life.

It happens in 'real' life too. Some people are so wrapped up in their own little lives and self importance that they can't stand anyone challenging them or having a different view point for them. As far as they are concerned what they think and say goes. They can't see past their own ego and so remain in their own poisonous loop, shooting barbs at anyone they perceive to deserve their wrath.

Writers are sensitive souls who don't like conflict unless it's in the fictional sense and all the arguing and sniping and exaggerations that are going on around them doesn't help their creativity. Writers can have a tendency to dwell on things which can cause havoc with their ability to write. Of course, once the dust settles and things have moved on, all the conflict is good fodder for the writer, which is why it never pays to upset a writer because, invariably, that person or people who've upset the writer will, in one form or another end up in a book or short story, or be the subject of an article: all names and identifying characteristics removed of course, so that only the writer will know that revenge has been exacted! In fiction the villain always gets their comeuppance!

So if you've been the victim of a troll - whether virtual or real life - the way to get over it is to incorporate it into your writing. Let your words be your weapon of choice. I'm a pacifist at heart but cross me and I do tend to roar a bit! Don't get involved in the arguments and pettiness that surrounds us all as it helps no-one and, in a way, it only encourages trolls to keep trying to antagonise you. Don't let them win. Write about them then move on. Get rid of the people in your life who drain you, whose main mission in life seems to be to berate you or blame things on you. Remember you know the truth, so does it matter what they think? I think not!

Let your creativity and resourcefulness carry you forward to success and happiness,  leaving them to wallow in their self-made misery. Don't give them power over you - once they realise they have no hold on you they can't hurt you and they move on to their next victim. Carry on writing and get on with your life without them. Accept that trolls are just a sad fact of life and support your real friends, should they have the misfortune to cross paths with a troll. It's easy with Internet trolls, you can just switch them off - not so easy with real-life trolls, but not impossible.

Happy writing

Julie

Driven to Distraction

Distractions. They're all around us. TV, iPods, e-readers, Internet, other people, arguments, noisy neighbours, work, bills, money worries, the news - whatever it is, and we've all fallen prey to some of them at some time in our lives, it can drive us to distraction and prevent us from writing. Life is hectic at the best of times and there are many pressures on our time. There never seems to be enough hours in the day sometimes does there?

But have you ever stopped to think about how much potential time you are wasting? Time that has the potential to be your writing time? I know that there are some distractions that you can do little about: an elderly relative who needs looking after, your children that are and should be a priority, a work commitment that will enhance your future job prospects or lead to a promotion - that kind of distraction is inevitable and a part of life that we've signed up for. In those circumstances we need to just keep our head down and get on with it. Our parents and children, for different reasons, are not going to be around for ever an so, yes, of course  we need to devote as much time as we can to them.

But does this mean we have to give up on our writing dreams? Do we have to stop writing completely? I don't think we do. In fact, in times of great stress or intense busy periods, writing can be the one thing that gets us through it all. Writing down our thoughts and feelings can help us bring order and a sense of meaning and understanding to the chaos and apparent nonsense that is tearing around us.

You might only have five minutes a day to jot something down, but those five minutes a day add up to 35 minutes a week, seventy minutes a fortnight or 140 minutes a month -  that's 2 hours and twenty minutes of writing time - the first draft of a short story, maybe? Or a rough chapter of a novel? It all counts.

So, in the middle of the hurricane that is your life, take that five minutes, in the eye of the storm, to write. You might not think that you can get much down on paper in five minutes, well not much that will be any good anyway, but remember it's a first draft, not perfection and write it anyway - your sanity may depend on it!

Happy writing

Julie

When Inspiration Strikes

Where inspiration comes from never ceases to amaze me. I can be sitting there, quite innocently, just flicking through the TV channels, when the first few lines of a short story will pop into my head, or two characters talking to each other, the title of a short story - the skeleton of a plot for a novel. They just seem to appear from nowhere. There, quite often, is no relevance to whatever I was watching on the telly. So where does it come from?

Writing ideas are, of course, all around us. As writers we are, or should be, inquisitive and observant, taking notice of what is going on around us: snippets of conversation, the way someone walks or laughs, why is that woman sitting with her back to that man? Do they know each other or are they strangers? There are so many possibilities and opportunities when we people watch. A writer is never short of potential writing material.

It happened to me this morning. I was flicking through TV channels (I have a stinking cold and don't feel up to doing much else) when I saw Patrick Moore and his Sky at Night chums and there it was - an idea for a novel and I immediately wrote two sides of A4 of that idea. Thank you Patrick!

So strike when the iron's hot when inspiration comes to you and get it written down. It might come to something, it might not, but you have to give it a fair chance. Don't make the mistake of thinking you'll write it down later because a) you won't remember, and b) you'll kick yourself that you didn't write it down earlier!

I hope inspiration comes to you soon. If it doesn't, get out there and find some.

Happy writing

Julie

Moving on?

You know how it is. Life as a writer can hardly be described as plain sailing - but which profession is? Writers must get used to the fact that not everyone will be as enthusiastic about their work as they are. Over the course of their careers, writers will be subjected to many rejections and near misses. It's the way it goes. There's no easy way round it and you can't bypass the process. It's a hard lesson that writers must learn if they want to succeed.

But what if you've got to the point where it seems that everything you write and submit is being rejected? It happens to us all at some stage. It's the moment when the umpteenth rejection that week pings into our inbox or plops through our letter box, that sinking feeling of yet more disappointment. It's a wonder any of us have the strength or inclination to carry on. But carry on we must!

I had four short stories rejected from the same magazine this week and the month before I had three rejected from another magazine. And in between those unappetising layers of bread was the equally tasteless filling of having to rewrite and resubmit an article in a tight time frame of a couple of days, including sourcing more quotes. But rewrite it and resubmit it I did. And I will continue to do my utmost to learn from the rejected short stories by continuing to read more short stories and trying to improve mine. I know I've been doing this for a while now but there is no time limit on getting your stories to a standard that an editor might just like to publish.

One has to remember that there are many issues at play when a story gets rejected:
- The editor may have just accepted/published a story on a similar theme.
- The editor may have filled their quota of stories.
- The story wasn't quite in the right style for that particular publication.
- The story didn't sparkle enough or stand out amongst the competition, ie, the editor received better stories than yours.
- The story wasn't a story at all, just a list of events with no change or credible, well rounded characters.

The list of reasons go on and you will drive yourself mad trying to figure out which one applies to you as most editors don't have the time to tell you why they rejected it. If they do, hold on to that precious nugget of information and learn from it.

Must there come a time when you should move on? After receiving a batch of rejections it can be tempting to give up, but resist it. What I do is move on to a different project for a while until I'm ready to go back to the rejected stories. It works for me - and the distance gives me time to gain some perspective and get over the confidence knock rejections sometimes dish out so I can move on and try again. So don't give up, just move on.

Good luck and happy writing

Julie

Here We Go Again!

More short stories rejected (three in one week!) It's enough to make a writer weep and give up. Or is it?
I've had more rejections now than I care to remember and I have learned that the trick is to shrug and keep on writing. I do wonder sometimes if I'm banging my head against a brick wall, but I've also learned that I have greater success with articles than I do with short stories - so that's what I've been concentrating on of late. Should I give up on the short stories and just write articles? No way!

I need to shift the focus back to the short stories, narrow it down and only target the markets I've had success with in the past for a while before I widen my sights again. I still have four short stories out there and there would be no harm in getting a few more out there. Della Galton - one of the queens of the short story writers, sends loads of short story subs out there, as does Teresa Ashby - it's no coincidence that they're the names we see time and time again in the fiction sections of the women's mags. They are there because they write and write and write and practise their art - they also send out many more subs than I do.

So, off we go again! Luckily I have more short story ideas to work on, and a collection of women's mags with fiction in them to read, so let's hope there is some success soon. Best of luck to the other womag writers out there who are waiting for verdicts too.

Happy writing

Get it Done!

Procrastination - the scourge of the writer. We all do it. We just sit down to write when we discover twenty or so other things we could or should be doing. The temptation to get off our backsides and see to those other things is tremendous and once the urge has set in it's difficult to resist - difficult, but not impossible.

It's funny how there are some days when all I want to do is write, yet others, usually when I have a deadline looming or I'm in the middle of a project that's giving me some trouble, when I would rather be hoovering the lounge, tidying my office (actually that does need doing .....) reading the paper, shopping, etc, etc, etc - the list goes on. But I know that the only thing I should be doing is writing because it's what I do and if I don't do it, no-one else will do it for me. I also can't get published what I don't get written.

Now, I consider myself to be fairly well motivated and determined to succeed, but even I can't be bothered sometimes! I think it does us good, as writers, to take a break from it all and do something else, as long as it doesn't turn into too long a break and we fall too deeply into that well of procrastination. Once you get out of the habit, it can be a struggle to get yourself back into the mindset of a writer.

A lot of it is down to psychology - if you tell yourself one more day off won't hurt then that's what you'll believe. But if you tell yourself that, actually, one more day off means 1000 less words written, a day's more work I'll have to do to enable me to finish my writing project, then it soon puts the procrastination beast in its place.

You've got to get it done sometime, so why not now? Write yourself to-do lists if they help. They help me! In fact, I'm not sure I could function without them! So push procrastination aside and get some of your writing jobs done - you'll feel much better after it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get on with tidying my office ......

Happy writing

Julie

Why Bother With Back up?

As anyone with a computer who has ever had it crash on them, whether through virus or chip failure and who hasn't backed up, the answer to the question why bother backing up? will be clear: If you value your writing and don't want the inconvenience, expense or loss of all the words you have so carefully crafted to be lost then back them up!

Backing up only takes a few minutes out of your busy schedule. You can do it how you like: on disc, in a cloud, external hard drive, memory stick - but just do it! My little computer crashed recently and had to go to the computer doctor where he was stripped down to factory settings (sounds rather painful doesn't it!) It could have been much worse if I hadn't have backed up, double and triple backed up all of my important files. They're on two memory sticks and in the cloud! I dread to think what I would have done if I hadn't backed up.....

Now, I only have the inconvenience of putting a couple of programmes back on there and the whole affair cost me £30. I am now considering buying an external hard drive so I can back things on to there without having to fiddle around with finding the right disc.

On a good note my article about setting up your own writing group is in the new issue of Writing Magazine, featuring quotes and advice from the wonderful Penny Legge and someone called Simon Whaley - whoever he is ;0)

So, spend some time this month backing up your systems - your writing and sanity depends on it.

Julie

Can it be done?

I've had a sudden burst of activity on the writing front, not helped, however, with my little netbook becoming sick. He's (yes he is a he and his name is Rupert) got an appointment with the doctor tomorrow so I hope he can be cured.

Anyway, computer problems aside, I went to bed last night and no sooner than my head hit the pillow I had a flurry of writing ideas flow through my head. So, up I got and dutifully wrote them down. The same thing happened this morning - so through my groggy, just woken up state and with bleary eyes I wrote them down again. This is why it's a great idea to keep pens and a writing pad by your bed. That way you haven't got far to stumble to be able to record your ideas. Do not be lazy and think you'll remember it and write it down on the morrow because you won't. It will hang tantalisingly in the air of your brain just out of your reach and on the tip of your tongue, forever making you wonder if it would have been your breakthrough idea and leaving you want to kick yourself.

For some of my ideas I think, yes, they're a go-er. For other ideas I think they're  a non-starter and for some they're labelled a maybe. It's the non-starter's that concern me here. How do we know if an idea hasn't got wings? What is it about an idea that smells of failure, that shrieks 'don't waste your time with me!' Most of the time it's a gut feeling, but some of the time it's down to our bossy inner editor trying to put us off. This harbinger of doom mustn't be allowed to escape the confines of the reinforced concrete cell we have placed it in. If released you may as well kiss goodbye to your work in process.

Can it be done? Yes, with a lot of lateral thinking, serious tweaking and a cast iron constitution most ideas can be given legs with which to run with. Our job as a writer is to assemble those legs, bone by bone, muscle by muscle, cell by cell, and to banish our inner editor. I never say never to an idea until I've given it a good thrashing. If I can't make it work one way, I try another way and another way until I've exhausted every avenue available at the time. This doesn't mean that the idea won't grow legs in the future so no idea is ever wasted. It usually turns up, reincarnated, at some stage.

So, if your inner editor or gut instinct is telling you it can't be done - shout back louder and clearer that, actually, it can - so there!

Happy writing

Julie

Take some P.R.I.D.E in your work

P = Persistence: you need it by the bucket load.
R = Resilience: trying to get published is not for the faint hearted - you have to learn to bounce back from all of those rejections!
I = Imagination: this will get you a long way both in your creativity and for imagining that feeling when you hold your published work in  your hands.
D = determination: you have to want to keep going on and on and on and on - think like a toddler learning to walk: get your balance, strengthen your legs then launch yourself off, one step at a time.
E = Energy: you need more than the national grid in this game! But it's a good excuse to eat chocolate and biscuits  -  you have to keep your strength up!

Happy writing!

Julie

No such word as no

There are a few times in my life when I know that I have bitten off more than I can chew. I'm sure most of us have. But each of these times, no matter how anxiety filled they may have been, have usually taught me a valuable lesson - obviously, the lesson was not never to bite off more than I can chew as I still do it!
                                                    
What is has done has taught me not to be afraid to stretch myself, to never let my inner killjoy to stop me from trying something new or taking one step further than I have before. And this has also been true with my writing.

I believe that the word no shouldn't be in a writer's vocabulary. One of my first instincts, when asked to write something or to approach a new market with an idea would have been in the past to say no. I would convince myself that I couldn't do it and that there were loads of other, better writers out there than me who could and would do it to a higher standard than me.

Today I think that's hogwash! Yes, there are lots of writers out there but just because there are lots of writers doesn't mean that they can write better than me or you. Writers have to push themselves now and then even when the risk of failure is high. It's good to take ourselves out of our comfort zone and take that risk. Yes, many rejections may come but the mark of a true writer is someone who accepts rejections for what they are and learns from them then moves on and writes some more, implementing what they have learnt. For me it's the only way forward.

                                                                  
So banish the word no from your writing life and take up that challenge, pitch that idea, approach that agent or publisher - you'll never know if you don't try.

Happy writing

Julie xx