Ceara Comeau's Blog: Lessons From A Struggling Writer - Posts Tagged "magic"
Power of Positivity
Over the last few weeks, almost every conversation with friends and family has started with variations of this one phrase, “Man, you’re really getting out there with your books!”
I find a lot of humor in this comment because the truth is. I’m not. At least, I don’t see it that way. Sure, I’ve been keeping people updated on the latest news and such and I sound like I’m really successful. But the truth of the matter is that over the past month I have faced trial after trial. Between marketing strategies falling apart, events not going as planned, and book sales not being where they should be, I find some days are really hard to keep going. I often find myself wondering, is this really the path I should be following? Should I just write as a hobby? Some days I honestly find these trials are debilitating and my motivation for writing is just non-existent.
With my confession out of the way, I’m sure you have a lot of questions. For example, why am I only posting positive things? Why not express my downfalls and struggles? Am I just telling the good parts of my writing career to sound like I’m successful?
Simple answer. No. By no means am I trying to deceive anyone. As writers, we are almost all in the same boat. We are screaming for our voices to be heard because we truly believe our work is worth everyone’s time. I am part of many online writing groups and have noticed that many writers use these groups to vent about their struggles. Yes, it’s nice to get advice from seasoned authors about the best way to resolve issues, but the more posts I read, the more I saw people wanting to give up on their work.
That’s why you’ll never see me complain about my struggles. There’s enough negativity in the world than for me to add more to the mix about my own problems. I want to encourage people, whether it be other writers, or people trying to pursue their dreams to find the positivity in every situation they face. Sometimes the problems we face are so bad that it does take a while to find that ‘silver lining’, but by focusing on the things that went right, it changes our minds to focus on what’s good. And sometimes when we see the positivity, it can actually help us see how we can still make a situation work. Truly, the power of positivity is the closest thing I can imagine to magic.
I find a lot of humor in this comment because the truth is. I’m not. At least, I don’t see it that way. Sure, I’ve been keeping people updated on the latest news and such and I sound like I’m really successful. But the truth of the matter is that over the past month I have faced trial after trial. Between marketing strategies falling apart, events not going as planned, and book sales not being where they should be, I find some days are really hard to keep going. I often find myself wondering, is this really the path I should be following? Should I just write as a hobby? Some days I honestly find these trials are debilitating and my motivation for writing is just non-existent.
With my confession out of the way, I’m sure you have a lot of questions. For example, why am I only posting positive things? Why not express my downfalls and struggles? Am I just telling the good parts of my writing career to sound like I’m successful?
Simple answer. No. By no means am I trying to deceive anyone. As writers, we are almost all in the same boat. We are screaming for our voices to be heard because we truly believe our work is worth everyone’s time. I am part of many online writing groups and have noticed that many writers use these groups to vent about their struggles. Yes, it’s nice to get advice from seasoned authors about the best way to resolve issues, but the more posts I read, the more I saw people wanting to give up on their work.
That’s why you’ll never see me complain about my struggles. There’s enough negativity in the world than for me to add more to the mix about my own problems. I want to encourage people, whether it be other writers, or people trying to pursue their dreams to find the positivity in every situation they face. Sometimes the problems we face are so bad that it does take a while to find that ‘silver lining’, but by focusing on the things that went right, it changes our minds to focus on what’s good. And sometimes when we see the positivity, it can actually help us see how we can still make a situation work. Truly, the power of positivity is the closest thing I can imagine to magic.
Experiences
“A writer is only good as his or her own experience.” Have you ever heard this or a variation of this saying? Well, I have and for the longest time, I was on the fence about whether it was true or not. I always believed (and still do) that a story comes from within. It can emerge from an idea or really anything. But lately, I’ve been noticing a pattern in my past writings and present. In some way, my personal experiences find their way into my stories.
This isn’t always a bad thing as I have found that making a story personal to the writer tends to tug at the heartstrings of the reader. It allows people to see the real artist.
Now, what does this revelation have to do with anything you ask? For about a month now, I’ve been attempting to get back to an old story I wrote about a couple years back. But when I came back to it, there was so much that needed to be fixed. It was certainly salvageable, but something was missing with it and I didn’t know what until just within this past week. I had been focusing so much on one of the characters and I just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t “talking to me”, that was when I realized that she and I were facing similar obstacles in our lives. This was the origin of my insufferable writer’s block. How could I write about how that character deals with those obstacles if I didn’t know myself?
Well, I’ve been working along with this character to fight through these challenges. The more I look at it, the more I can see how educational writing is. Not from the standpoint of a class you would take in school, but a class you might take every day of your life.
This isn’t always a bad thing as I have found that making a story personal to the writer tends to tug at the heartstrings of the reader. It allows people to see the real artist.
Now, what does this revelation have to do with anything you ask? For about a month now, I’ve been attempting to get back to an old story I wrote about a couple years back. But when I came back to it, there was so much that needed to be fixed. It was certainly salvageable, but something was missing with it and I didn’t know what until just within this past week. I had been focusing so much on one of the characters and I just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t “talking to me”, that was when I realized that she and I were facing similar obstacles in our lives. This was the origin of my insufferable writer’s block. How could I write about how that character deals with those obstacles if I didn’t know myself?
Well, I’ve been working along with this character to fight through these challenges. The more I look at it, the more I can see how educational writing is. Not from the standpoint of a class you would take in school, but a class you might take every day of your life.
Magical Writers
At some point, all of us have seen memes on Facebook that show magic coming from an open book. But, it’s a little bit misleading if you ask me. Books are certainly magic, that’s definitely true, but it’s honestly just the result. The true magic comes from the writer—whose raw imagination developed the literary worlds we fall in love with.
Unlike the magic from Harry Potter, writing magic doesn’t always come with just a flick of one’s wand. Writing comes with a lot of patience, practice, and listening to one’s inner voice. (Sorry, I couldn’t come up with another “p” word.)
So, how do you know if the magic of writing is REALLY working? When the story starts writing itself.
Let me give you an example from my latest writing project. For the last several months I’ve been working on the third book of my trilogy. Now, to be honest, I dreaded this book because of its level of difficulty. Half of this book is written from the perspective of the villain of the trilogy, which also happens to be the creation of the main villains of my entire universe. Now, this group of creatures is not something I’ve ever written about before. They are sociopathic biomechanical creatures. Or, as I like to put it…compare it to Dr. Who’s Cybermen, but with free will. Sounds scary, I know. But thinking from the perspective of a machine was super difficult for me. I remember trying to watch/read different movies and books that contained characters who were sociopathic and no matter how much I tried to research, I still couldn’t grasp the concept.
So, what do I do? Just start writing and hope for the best. The start of the book was insanely slow and brutal. In my mind, I knew what this main character was supposed to act like, but I just couldn’t automatically figure him out. But, I kept writing though. It wasn’t until chapter four that the book changed on me a bit. I had this particular chapter figured out, or so I thought. I was super excited about it too, but the more I looked at my original outline, the more I noticed that it wasn’t working.
I fought so hard against changing my original plan, but the magic of storytelling was much stronger than my stubbornness. That’s what I had to learn this month, once I caved in to what the character wanted me to write, it went smoother. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in some of the blog posts, but I feel that it’s often overlooked when writers talk about their writing process. For the majority of us, we don’t just pop out 50,000 words in a day. If we do, then generally it’s because we’ve thought about it for a VERY long time. As a writer, I think it’s important to remember, and I often forget, that it’s not my stories that I’m writing…it’s the characters. And if the story isn’t going the way it’s supposed to, well they’ll let you know 😉
Unlike the magic from Harry Potter, writing magic doesn’t always come with just a flick of one’s wand. Writing comes with a lot of patience, practice, and listening to one’s inner voice. (Sorry, I couldn’t come up with another “p” word.)
So, how do you know if the magic of writing is REALLY working? When the story starts writing itself.
Let me give you an example from my latest writing project. For the last several months I’ve been working on the third book of my trilogy. Now, to be honest, I dreaded this book because of its level of difficulty. Half of this book is written from the perspective of the villain of the trilogy, which also happens to be the creation of the main villains of my entire universe. Now, this group of creatures is not something I’ve ever written about before. They are sociopathic biomechanical creatures. Or, as I like to put it…compare it to Dr. Who’s Cybermen, but with free will. Sounds scary, I know. But thinking from the perspective of a machine was super difficult for me. I remember trying to watch/read different movies and books that contained characters who were sociopathic and no matter how much I tried to research, I still couldn’t grasp the concept.
So, what do I do? Just start writing and hope for the best. The start of the book was insanely slow and brutal. In my mind, I knew what this main character was supposed to act like, but I just couldn’t automatically figure him out. But, I kept writing though. It wasn’t until chapter four that the book changed on me a bit. I had this particular chapter figured out, or so I thought. I was super excited about it too, but the more I looked at my original outline, the more I noticed that it wasn’t working.
I fought so hard against changing my original plan, but the magic of storytelling was much stronger than my stubbornness. That’s what I had to learn this month, once I caved in to what the character wanted me to write, it went smoother. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in some of the blog posts, but I feel that it’s often overlooked when writers talk about their writing process. For the majority of us, we don’t just pop out 50,000 words in a day. If we do, then generally it’s because we’ve thought about it for a VERY long time. As a writer, I think it’s important to remember, and I often forget, that it’s not my stories that I’m writing…it’s the characters. And if the story isn’t going the way it’s supposed to, well they’ll let you know 😉
