Beth Greenslade's Blog, page 121

Are You A Serious Writer? Here’s How You’ll Know.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping writing as that special hobby that gives you great pleasure, but you only do when you have the time, if you want to take your writing to the next level and get serious about it, there are certain things you have to do.

It’s all well and good dreaming of becoming a full-time writer and making a ‘proper’ living from it, but without changing your writing habits you can’t expect this to happen.

There are traits that all serious writers seem to have in common. Those writers who finish their novels, who get those publishing deals, or who secure those lucrative freelance writing contracts.If you want to be one of them, here’s what you have to do.

You write.

Yes, it might be obvious, but really, how much writing do you do? Serious writers are completely committed to their craft. They make time for their writing, and they make sacrifices in order to get it done. If you want writing to be your job, make it your job. Put the hours in, get things done. You can call yourself a writer all you like, but if you’re really only spending a couple of hours lazily writing each month then you’re simply not producing enough material to call yourself a serious writer. Make goals, make sure you stick to them, and when they become routine, try and push yourself even further.

You zone in.

If becoming a full-time writer is really what you want, you need to get focused. Don’t add it to a long list of things you need to do, or things you want to be. Make it your one, all-consuming goal, and make sure everything you do helps you get that little bit further towards achieving your goal. It’s super easy to get distracted by all manner of things, but if you are serious about your writing career, you just can’t let this happen.

You want to improve.

Writing is a craft and the more you work at it the better you will get at it. Taking your time to actually study the art of writing, experiment with different styles, genres, and points of view, and taking on board advice from critics, seasoned writers, and from books, can help you learn and grow as a writer. If you want to be on top of your game, you can always learn more.

You read.

Reading really does make you a better writer. The more you read the more your creative brain is becoming in tune with what it means to be a writer, what ingredients make a great story, what it takes to write a book.

You edit

Love it or hate it, editing is a huge part of becoming a professional writer. If you just write as a hobby, for the love of doing so, you are probably going to be far less obsessed with editing your work, and getting it into the absolute best state it can be. Polishing and perfecting, reading and re-reading, cutting out scenes you were in love with, killing off characters who you’ve formed an emotional attachment to makes the hardest part of writing. However, every serious writer knows it has to be done, no first draft is ever the finished piece.

You take yourself seriously

When it comes to writing do you really take yourself seriously? This is an important question to ask. Sure we all have an inner critic telling us that we are rubbish or that we can’t do it. But that’s not really what I’m talking about. Do you behave like a professional writer? Do you value your own work? Do you put your all into it? Taking yourself seriously means really caring about your work, never missing deadlines, reading submission guidelines carefully, taking criticism on board and seeing your writing as a proper business. If you take yourself seriously as a writer, you’ll be so much more inspired to dedicate yourself to it.

If you want to become a serious writer now might be a good time to take stock. What have you already achieved? What could you work on? What are your goals? Think about where you want to be in 12 months time, work out a plan and just get on with it!

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post Are You A Serious Writer? Here’s How You’ll Know. appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

What’s Standing In The Way Of Your Publishing Deal?

Most writers aspire to get their work published, and while there have never been more opportunities and help for indie authors to see their work in print, the dream of having one’s book picked up by an agent or publisher is, for many, still the ultimate goal.

There is no denying that getting published is difficult and no matter how exactly you follow the submission guidelines if your work isn’t up to scratch, you may end up disappointed. However, there are plenty of things you can do to make sure you stand the best chance of success.

So what are the things authors do that stand in the way of getting an amazing publishing deal?

Submitting before their work is ready.

When you get to the end of your novel it can be very tempting to just start sending it off to publishers and agents immediately. You are so proud and excited by your achievement that you are blind to the fact it needs more work. Your elation gives you a false sense of bravado, otherwise known as the ‘my book is amazing’ feeling. However, if you don’t take the time to painstakingly review and edit your book you won’t be sending in your best work. You can’t resubmit your manuscript with a note saying ‘sorry, I’ve bothered to spellcheck it now’ so make sure you feel completely confident you have put your all into it, and it’s the very best you can do before you seal that envelope or hit the send button on your email.

Not sending it to the right people.

One of the main bugbears of agents and publishers is that authors send them their manuscripts even though they clearly don’t publish that kind of content. This will get your work chucked onto the rejection pile without so much as a second glance. Take your time to research publishers, find out what sort of genres they are interested in, and who exactly to send your work to within the organisation. Then, in your covering letter, explain exactly why you think your work is a good fit for them. If your work is particularly niche try to find specialist publication who might be interested in it rather than pinning all your hopes on a major mainstream one. Try to step back from your work, be distant and critical, step into the publisher’s shoes. You are looking for what’s going to sell, how can you make your work more commercially viable?

Not putting the hours in

Some writers are so focused on getting that publication deal that they forget to write in the first place! Sending out queries is great, but if publishers ask to see more of your work and you’re not ready this will immediately raise flags for them. No one wants to work with an author who can’t deliver so make sure you get your writing done first, then start to enquire after it is finished and ready to go.

You aren’t focusing on what you are good at.

You are desperate to get your harrowing memoir about a rich daddies girl who loses everything published, but it’s your hilarious weekly blog about the exploits of your dog that gets the most engagement. Sometimes you need to understand what’s working and what’s not and let go of the latter.

You give up too soon.

It’s hard not to take rejection personally. But, as with any creative discipline, the sad truth is that it is so easy for talented people to be overlooked. Just because you receive a rejection doesn’t mean that your work isn’t any good. Don’t give up until you’ve explored every avenue, you never know, a publishing deal could be right around the corner!

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post What’s Standing In The Way Of Your Publishing Deal? appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

When Should You Give Up On Getting Published?

Every writer knows that getting published is no mean feat, and, in most cases, they have to have nerves of steel and amazing perseverance in order to keep trying.

But is there a point where writers should give up trying to get published? The hours and energy wasted, and the heartache each time you get another rejection sometimes feels rather overwhelming and, let’s face it, a little pointless too.

It would be lovely to have a magic ball we could stare into that would let us know exactly what the future holds. If we knew that if we just kept at it for another year we’d get our big break -of course we would continue! Similarly, knowing with absolute certainty that you will never get a publishing deal would also be helpful, however disheartening, as then you could spend your time doing other creatively fulfilling and rewarding things.

So when should you give up on getting published?

When you aren’t willing to revise your work

Getting published is all about compromise. You may find that you are getting a lot of positive feedback for your work, but yet deals keep collapsing when agents of publishers ask you to change something. If you are too in love with your story or simply want to stay true to yourself and are unwilling to revise and change your manuscript then maybe a traditional publishing deal won’t work for you.

When you don’t have an audience

Are you writing for an audience or are you writing for yourself? If you aren’t able to identify the kind of people who would read your book, and you aren’t willing to write with that audience in mind it is going to be very difficult to sell your work to a publisher. Publishing houses are businesses, they are in it to make money. If you book is commercially unviable you’ll never get anywhere – and you may need to accept this.

When it starts affecting your relationships

Jealousy, depression, obsession – these are all worrying emotions, but one that writers frequently face and if they don’t check themselves they can take over. If you find yourself unable to be happy for any other published writer, if you fall into a pit of depression every time you get rejected and if you become obsessed with getting published so you have no time for anything or anyone else, your relationships will start to suffer, and then you have to ask yourself – is it really worth it?

When it starts affecting your finances

It’s great to throw your heart and soul into your passion, but if you’ve been at it for years, refusing to self-publish in the hope that you will get a traditional publishing deal and make your fortune, it might be time to get a reality check. If you can’t pay your rent and have been living off tins of soup for six months, perhaps you should reevaluate your priorities.

When you realise all the love has gone

If you start to resent writing and yourself, you feel full of blame and anger, and every time you try to write you already feel utterly disheartened, then it is time to shift your focus. Writing can be tough and painful at times but overall it should be something we love, and something that gives us great pleasure. If you are so intent on getting a publishing deal that all the love has gone, maybe it is time to step back.

Giving up getting published doesn’t mean giving up on writing, and there are plenty of other avenues to explore if you still want to see your work in print. Just remember that while it is important to follow your dream if doing so is making you miserable, is it really your dream anymore?

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

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How To Challenge Yourself As A Writer

Setting yourself challenges is an important way to learn and grow as a writer. Naturally, the easiest way to improve your writing is to keep practising it. The more you write the better you will become at it.

However, there are also plenty of exercises you can undertake and writing challenges you can set yourself if you want to really focus your energy on learning new things, improving and experimenting with your writing.

So how do you challenge yourself as a writer? Here are some of the things you can do

Set goals

Setting goals is an excellent way to make sure that you keep working at your writing and remain productive. Your writing goals can be anything from making sure you write a certain number of words by the end of the week or editing those first 5 chapters. Make your goals specific and obtainable, but not so easy that you don’t feel like you’ve had to put any effort in.

Set deadlines

Once you’ve set goals make sure you give yourself deadlines. You should have deadlines for finishing chapters, finishing your book, editing your manuscript and sending it off to publishers. Try to treat your writing as you would any other job, and take your self-imposed deadlines super seriously.

Give rewards

Reward yourself each and every time you achieve what you set out to achieve. This can be anything from having a tea break to booking yourself into a luxury spa. Make your reward proportional to what you have achieved – it’s probably not wise for your bank or your productivity to do the spa thing every time you’ve just finished a chapter!

Write in a different style

Challenge yourself by experimenting with a completely different style of writing. Try writing for different purposes, for example, poetry, short stories, articles, or blogs. However also try to write in a different genre too – you never know, you may discover a whole new side to writing self you never knew existed!

Read a different genre

Read books you wouldn’t normally read. If we pigeonhole ourselves too much we can never learn and grow. Reading books across a range of genres can be so helpful, and really enjoyable too.

Don’t edit yourself

If you are one of those writers who can’t help but go back and edit themselves after every few pages, maybe it’s time to stop. Being a productive writer often means accepting that your writing isn’t that good, but trying to keep perseve anyway to ensure you get through to the end of your story.

Do writing exercises

If you are feeling creatively stumped why not try some writing exercises? These can help you get back into the swing of things, free your mind, relieve some of the pressure and help you come up with new ideas too.

Share your writing

One of the biggest challenges we writers face is having the confidence to share our writing. However, it’s so important that we do. Join a writing group or post your writing on a forum and ask people for feedback. When you are ready don’t just sit on your manuscript, bite the bullet and send it to agents and publishers – if you don’t you’ll never know!

Next time you are feeling in a creative rut, or simply want to go in a different direction with your writing, why not try some of the above tips to see if they can inspire you, boost your writing confidence and make you a better writer overall?

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

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How To Find Your Writing Muse

For some writers, finding inspiration is so easy. Wherever they go, whoever they meet, wherever they look they find things that interest and excite them, that fill them with wonder, things  that make them excitedly reach for their pen and paper already bursting with so many ideas they can barely contain themselves.

Unfortunately, we are not all so lucky. In fact, it is a common writer complaint to sometimes feel creatively stifled, uninspired and that writing is difficult, frustrating and tiresome.

The good news is, feeling this way doesn’t mean that writing is not your calling, nor does it mean that you are any less of a writer than those that float around finding creative joy wherever they go. Writing is like a relationship, it has its ups and downs and requires a lot of work to keep it alive and healthy.

If you have been feeling a little uninspired of late and are looking for your writing muse, why not try some of the suggestions below to see if they can help you get back into the groove?

Listen to music

Music is extremely powerful, it heightens our emotions, makes us feel things, and sometimes even do things that we wouldn’t normally do. It can make us feel in love, angry, brave, tearful and a whole range of other emotions in between. Make different playlists from tear jerkers to power ballads and listen to them while sitting down to write.

Socialise and pay attention

You won’t find your writing muse by sitting indoors and staring at your computer screen. You need to get out there and meet people. Socialise as much as you can, and when you do, really pay attention to the people you meet. There are so many interesting characters in the world waiting for you to capture them in your writing. So get out there and find them!

Try something new

Taking up new hobbies, undertaking new challenges, getting out of your comfort zone – all of these will put you in situations you never expected to be and take you to places you never thought you would go. Make your life as interesting, adventurous and exciting as possible and you never know what could be around the corner that inspires you to write.

Find people with shared passions

Finding people who share your passions and get excited about the same things as you is always helpful. You can not only bounce ideas off one another but conversations about your interests will rev you up, and you’ll encourage each other to keep doing the things you love, get excited about one another’s work and be there to share each others success.

People watch

People are fascinating creatures. Why not head out and pick a spot – in a park, in a train station – anywhere where you’ll get a good footfall. Then have your notebook and pen poised and ready and see what unfolds. The conversations you hear and the interactions you see can be just what you need to inspire you for a brand new character.

Get into nature

Nature is formidable, beautiful, frightening and majestic. Go and watch the sea on a windy day, or take a sunset walk in a forest. Many famous writers say that nature has inspired them to write, and when they are feeling creatively blocked a good walk tends to fix them straight away.

Get writing!

The most important thing to remember while trying to find your writing muse is that often it is writing itself which inspires us. So however blocked you are feeling try and force yourself to keep writing, you’ll soon break that cycle and feel motivated and excited to write once more.

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post How To Find Your Writing Muse appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Researching Your Writing

While some writers love research, for many of us it can feel like a huge undertaking. We love to create, to shape stories, to use our imaginations and invite readers into our made-up worlds -however, research seems almost the opposite to this. The rather dreary undertaking to check facts, to understand procedures – to make sure everything actually makes sense makes our eyes water and our ears bleed. In fact, we sometimes wonder if we really have to bother in the first place.

However, even the most imaginative, otherworldly, wonderfully bizarre books require research. Obtaining facts for your fiction can seem like a waste of time, and can indeed be very frustrating. What you must remember is that it is a necessary part of your job as a writer. Readers are happy to suspend their disbelief, to trust that you, the author will explain what needs to be explained and leave things that should be a mystery, well, mysterious. However, if they get to the end of your novel and it is clear you haven’t bothered to check your facts or have just been lazy with your writing so it lacks the necessary detail to be believed, well, then you can rest assured that your readers will let you know.

If, like me, you find the drudgery of researching what needs to be researched in your book a little overwhelming, a little creatively stifling, then finding a way to make researching a more positive part of your work is crucial.

So what can we do to make research fun?

Don’t mix business and pleasure.

By this I mean it’s sometimes best to keep your writing and your fact checking separate. It’s important, as you write, to make a note of the things you need to look up later, but don’t stop your creative flow to do it there and then. It can be the smallest details such as how far one city is from another and how long it would take to get there by car, or serious undertakings such as how to do a brain transplant. However, while you are in the writing zone you should do all that you can to stay there so while it’s good to highlight things you need to research along the way, don’t let these interrupt your writing.

Don’t leave fact checking until the very end

While the above point holds true, you should try to keep up with your research, and fact check as your story develops. At the end of every chapter go back and look at what you need to research and make that your next task. This is particularly pertinent if the premise of your book relies on a particular thing being true – it can be a whole lot of pain having to fine comb your novel trying to weed out all the incorrect references you have made about something, or, worse still, having to change or scrap your story altogether because you’ve got your facts completely wrong.

Be curious

In order to enjoy fact checking and research, you need to try and see it from a different point of view. You could try gamifying it, guessing the answer to your question and then seeing if you got it right and giving yourself points every time you do. Or just see it as an interesting way to learn new things!

Do it when you don’t want to write

We all have times where we simply don’t feel creative enough to sit down and get on with our writing, and it’s very easy for us to beat ourselves up about it. Just because you are not feeling your usual creatively dazzling self, it doesn’t mean you can’t work on your writing. When you feel like procrastinating why not do some research instead? You might start to see it as a welcome break from writing, rather than forcing yourself to when you aren’t feeling it, or just doing something completely unrelated, and then feeling guilty.

Perhaps you love it, but if you are like me trying to make research fun isn’t easy. At the end of the day however, if we want our writing to be the best it can be we need to resign ourselves to doing research – and these tips certainly help to make it that little bit more bearable.

 

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post Researching Your Writing appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Solve Your Writing Problems

Writing can be a scary process. However often it is our writing fears that stop us from becoming the kind of writers that we want to be.

There are so many risks with writing that create these fears within us. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear we will be ridiculed, fear we will waste our time endlessly chasing a dream that is never meant to be.

The problem with our writing fears is that they are often cunning. The don’t simply walk out and present themselves to us clearly. It is, therefore, difficult sometimes to isolate them and address them. Fear disguises itself in many ways. It is about learning to recognise those disguises, pull them off and confront your writing fears that will help you learn and grow as a writer.

Fear is particularly destructive for many reasons. The most obvious one being that it breeds self-doubt.

This is a common complaint of many a writer and fills us with paralysing worries that can stop us from doing the thing we love the most. We don’t believe we are good enough, we mock and torment ourselves, we are our own worst enemies.

The good news is that every writer, yes even the most eye-waveringly talented ones, have to face up to self-doubt from time to time. The only way to overcome it is to be real and fair to yourself.

Not everyone will like your writing.

You will have to face criticism and rejection, no matter how good you are.

Next time you are feeling doubtful take a look through some of the reviews left for the most famous and celebrated books. You’ll find many singing their praises, but also plenty of negative ones too. Before you dismiss all the haters as just jealous, some of them make good points – they simply didn’t enjoy the book. No book can appeal to everyone, and that’s OK.

Be patient with yourself, practice experiment and keep trying. If you do this you’ll find new ways to improve and perfect your craft and you’ll soon find an audience who appreciates what you do.

Another huge fear for writers is never being able to finish their work, or getting writer’s block. This is often disguised as perfectionism. You just can’t quite bring yourself to put your book out there without giving it just one more read over first.

Perfectionism is pretty destructive for writers because it ends up stalling their writing or stopping it from happening altogether. You keep changing your ending or start a manuscript only to throw it in an exasperated fury into the bin a few chapters later!

To tackle perfectionism promise yourself that you will write first and judge later. Give yourself a chance to get that first draft down before you start ripping it to shreds. Once you have edited your work to the best of your ability know when it is time to let go.

Fear of time is another common issue writers must face. They always seem to be chasing time, and never quite managing to get hold of enough of it to actually do any writing. Many of us know this pesky problem as procrastination. Writing is always put off until tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. You dutifully set time aside in your busy day to write and then a pile of washing catches your eye, then you just need to take the dog for a quick walk, pay that gas bill, book a restaurant for later, make a cup of tea, and then…oh – all your time has gone.

Facing this fear is all about doing a little soul searching. You must be honest with yourself and the reasons why you avoid sitting down to write. Usually, you realise it’s really about the first fear -self- doubt. If you never write anything no one can judge you on it after all. Often once you are truthful with yourself you can stop procrastinating and get to work.

Try to think of your writing fears as a positive thing. For a start, they are shared by writers all over the world, so there is a sense of solidarity there. Plus working through your fears and getting over them is rewarding and satisfying. Fear of writing just shows that you care about it, and really – knowing that it means something to you, that it is important to you, that you are passionate about it can often be all the motivation you need to face those fears head on.

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post How To Solve Your Writing Problems appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Practical Advice For Editing Your Manuscript

Editing your manuscript can feel like a mammoth task, and can almost take as long as writing the first draft itself! Often, when faced with the task of sitting down to edit it can be difficult to know where to start. You want to be as thorough as possible and know there will have to be a point where you say ‘enough is enough’ and the whole task can feel somewhat daunting.

With this in mind, here are some practical tips on what to look out for when you begin to edit.

Long sentences

It’s so easy when you are in the writing ‘zone’ to let your sentences go on forever and ever. Look out for these when you are doing your first edit and either cut them down or break them up into two. Long sentences can be difficult for the reader to follow – it feels as though they are running out of breath. Short and powerful sentences deliver the greatest impact.

Watch out for adverbs

He walked slowly, he spoke quietly, she shut the door noisily. Excess adverbs make your prose seem weak and if you use too many of them you will fall into the age old trap of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ the reader what is going on. Try to be more imaginative with your descriptions and always leave room for the reader to picture the scene themselves.

Make sure your plot is consistent

It can be very easy to make little errors in your book which the eagle-eyed reader is sure to pick up on. If your protagonist puts her bag by her feet make sure she picks it up before she moves on. If it’s a cold winter’s night don’t have her wearing a t-shirt and shorts outside. Times, days of the week, even the year can sometimes accidentally change if you are not careful! Mistakes like these are more commonly made then you’d think so go through your work with a fine tooth comb and make sure that everything makes sense.

Don’t over-punctuate

Use exclamation marks sparingly. A dash here and there is fine, in fact, some authors use punctuation very cleverly to enhance their writing. However, a manuscript stuffed with colons, eclipses, exclamations and capitalised words just looks messy and will distract your reader from what’s being said.

Don’t over complicate

You might think that using the fanciest words you can think of to describe something will make your readers go weak at the knees, but the truth is no one wants to have to stop their reading to look at a thesaurus. If your writing reads like you have tried to find a complicated synonym for every descriptive word, this won’t go down well. Same goes for removing words that are redundant, don’t say something using three words that could be said with one.

Be on the lookout for certain words and phrases

‘In order to’ can just be ‘to’. ‘Start to’ can be ‘begin’. Don’t use words like ‘seemed’ ‘really’ ‘currently’ or ‘very.’ Look out for uses of ‘make’ and ‘that’ and see whether you really need them or could replace them with stronger alternatives. If you are using the passive voice excessively try to think of ways to change it so it’s in the present. This will make your writing clearer and more direct.

Check your spelling and grammar

This is a no brainer. Make sure your manuscript is pretty flawless when it comes to grammar, spelling and punctuation. Potential publishers and your readers will notice this so it’s worth doing well.

Editing your manuscript can be tough but it is always incredibly rewarding and satisfying when you are finished. by following the above tips you’ll get your writing into the best possible shape and can rest assured you have done everything you can to make it a success.

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post Practical Advice For Editing Your Manuscript appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How Being Positive Can Help Your Writing

It’s important to be positive in general, however, when specifically thinking about our writing, staying positive can really help.

Here’s why:

Being positive opens creativity

Think about it. When you are feeling positive and happy about life, you are more likely to open up those channels of creativity and become more free to use your imagination, to daydream, and will feel inspired by the word, the people around you and how you feel within yourself.

If you’re feeling negative and down, often this can block your creative energy and leave you feeling stuck, which can, in turn, become a vicious downwards spiral where you are constantly beating yourself up for not being able to write as well as you should but only making it worse and harder to come up with ideas and concentrate on your writing in the first place.

It makes you more productive

When you are actually feeling positive about your writing you are more likely to do it. Simple as that. The more that you do write, and the more you feel great about writing the more you will want to do it! Try to stop any negative thoughts about your writing from entering your mind, and if they do try to quash them immediately. When you get into a cycle of writing and feeling good about writing try to keep it up and you’ll become a super productive writer in no time!

Staying positive increases your self-belief

If you are in a positive mind frame you will feel more confident, happier, and more comfortable in your own skin. This makes your sense of self-worth greater and makes you believe in yourself more. The more self-belief you have the more you can keep that pesky inner critic at bay! Writers all have times of doubt, where they start to wonder whether writing is actually the right thing to be doing. But staying positive will make you see that it is all worthwhile in the end!

Makes you thankful

Being positive makes you thankful each and every day for the good things in your life and what you have achieved. The more you focus on how grateful you are the more positive you will feel. By focusing on positives you will not only feel better overall but you will become so grateful to have writing in your life. You’ll see what a joy and a gift and a pleasure it is.

If you want to be more positive why not try starting a ‘positive journal?’ At the end of each day, you can write down three things you are grateful for. This will slowly encourage you to shift your focus from negative to positive, and you’ll soon begin to reap the rewards of doing so!

Bethany Cadman -author of ‘Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers’

The post How Being Positive Can Help Your Writing appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

The Stupid Beliefs That Stop You From Being A Writer

Sometimes we writers are our own worst enemies. We spend so much time wallowing in a pit of self-doubt, beating ourselves up for not doing enough, and smarting from rejection that we end up shying away from writing altogether.

There are many things we tell ourselves that hold us back. But facing up to them can make all the difference.

Here are the stupid beliefs that can stop you from writing.

My book has to be amazing

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. Writing the perfect book is impossible. Sometimes it’s OK to lower the bar and be realistic with your expectations. You don’t need to write the best book in the world. In fact, it’s good to accept that, your first draft at least will be pretty rubbish. If you put too much pressure on yourself you’ll end up not being able to write anything good enough, and spend so much time trying to make each and every sentence perfect that you’ll never get any real writing done. Your aim should be to get the book written – you can go back and make it great after you’ve got it down.

Writing fiction is too difficult

While no one can argue that writing a book is a challenge, constantly telling yourself it’s too difficult won’t get you anywhere. If you find it all a bit overwhelming the best thing to do is to break it down. Plan your book carefully. Do the research, write chapter outlines. Then when you get going you’ll know exactly what to write and already have a firm idea of how it is all going to pan out.

I’ve got to have fans before I release my book.

In an ideal world you already have a successful blog, have had several short stories published in high profile magazines, and have thousands of followers on social media. However doing this takes a lot of work in itself, and for most of us we just simply don’t have the time. The good news is you don’t need a giant readership already in place to launch your book. Write a good book, have a clever marketing plan and you have a solid chance of seeing your book take off.

My book must be completely unique.

It’s horrible when you excitedly tell someone the plot of your book and they go ‘Oh yes, that sounds just like…’ The truth is that no matter how hard we try almost everything has been done before. But no one has written your story the way you’ll tell it -if your book has similar themes to another one then at least you know there are readers out there who will enjoy it!

I need a publisher or an agent to be successful

So many authors, even well-established ones, now choose the self-publishing route in order to sell their books. There are thousands of authors who have made a successful career from self-publishing. So can you!

I’m a terrible writer and an imposter!

So many great writers think they are bad writers – you could be one of them! Even if you have the smallest amount of success you feel like a fraud who is about to be ‘found out.’ You don’t tell people you are a writer because you feel silly doing so.

If you want to be a writer and you write then you are one.

Don’t hide behind your insecurities – believe in yourself, be proud of yourself and don’t let anything stop you!

I need to do [insert excuse here] before I can finish my book.

Whether it’s reading it over one more time, redesigning your author website, or getting a thousand people on your email newsletter list there is always something stopping you from writing. If we let ourselves, the list of things we have to do before launching our book will go on forever. There has to be a point where you bite the bullet. Give yourself a deadline and stick to it, and then take a big deep breath, and go.

The path to finishing and launching your book is long and full of obstacles, but once you get to the end it is so worth it! So don’t let stupid beliefs stand in your way – believe in yourself and what you are capable of, you can do it!

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