Clara Brooks's Blog: The Diary of a Nobody Writer - Posts Tagged "self"

This nobody woke up one morning a few weeks ago and decided that she was going to be a writer. That is, for the first time in her life she would actually put some writing out there in the world that consumers could physically purchase with real money and then proffer their opinion - for good or ill - should they so desire.

In some ways this was one of the biggest decisions of my life and it’s certainly one of the scariest. The reason being that I know almost certainly that this endeavour is destined to fail in every way (resulting in pain, frustration and feelings of social abandonment), but I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I decided to do it anyway because - for good or ill - I love writing and I have things that I want to share with the world.

When I say hat I *love* writing, I actually do mean that I *love* it. Not the potential money, not the potential fame, not the cult of reading/writing, but the actual sitting down, the creating of strange stories in my head and the expressing them through writing. Everyone has that *thing* that they have that takes them to a happy place where they feel that nobody can hurt them, and my happy place is writing. And by writing I mean reading too, of course (how many writers don‘t even enjoy reading all that much?). I've read voraciously since I was a child. You all know that story; sad little loner with no friends takes comfort and solace in the world of imagination. The passion for reading is perhaps not quite that simple, but that’s how it inevitably starts and being an awkward, anti-social geek all of my life, that’s how it started for me. And my love of reading stories quickly turned into a desire to tell stories. And that desire was quickly crushed by a society that doesn't want people to have inner lives that they can express outside of the dreary narrative of the 9-5 job. I don’t have time, money or motivation. I'm mostly too busy trying to find a Room of My Own

You see, I've considered become a writer many times in my life but being an anti-social, awkward unconfident geek I've always withdrawn into myself when others have been better able to exert their own egos. I'm the girl who never aces the job interview because there’s always some other guy who with supreme cocksure arrogance who can talk the talk. I'm the girl who sit and giggles and does her best to look cute in the hopes that will be enough to get my by. It never really is though.

And so I've always felt that I'm destined to fail. And so I've never made the decision to do it. And I feel like I'm destined to fail because if you have a little surf on the internet everyone involved with writing, writing communities and publishing will tell you that *you* are not good enough. Encouragement inevitably comes through copious criticism. Not that I don’t appreciate criticism but my fragile ego just can’t take that much of it. I have spent countless hours reading blog posts and articles telling me I don’t work hard enough, I don’t grammar check, I don’t re-draft, I need an editor, self-publishing is so difficult and I won‘t be famous overnight, I need to re-draft and also I need to redraft (virtually every time I've brought up the topic of struggling to write someone has kindly informed me that I need to redraft more). Not that I don’t appreciate the tip-off on “you need to work hard to write well” but I always wondered where the plain and simple “I am awesome” part came in.

I mean, I'm working hard to write stories to entertain people. I think that is awesome.

Well, I woke up a few weeks ago and realised that that was, in fact, awesome and that I should write and the pursuit of the endeavour should come before the online obsession with perfection. Before getting an editor, proofing, grammar checking and publishing perfection. Before waiting 2+ years to put anything out there in which time my fragile ego will have been disintegrated. I'm not saying that I intend to put out substandard work but I am saying that what my writing is about is *me* expressing myself to other people and if that’s a little bit wobbly in places, well I hope that the fun, frivolity and general awesomeness - the fabulousness of Clara Brooks - will make up for that. When did self expression become so bound up with perfection anyway? (Ok I’ll answer that - when reading as a hobby became marketed like coca-cola)

So I woke up and I had an idea - which I have now published as the first fabulous erotic adventure of Clara Brooks - and I thought it was awesome so I wrote it down in a couple of weeks of furious excitement. I edited it myself, I proofread it myself, I made the cover myself and I self-published on Kindle myself. And the whole process made me unspeakably happy. It probably won’t make me rich but an economic exchange or two may take place whereas some people give me small amounts of money in exchange for the pleasure of reading it an in my wildest dreams some people might ask me to write another (NB they’re getting another whether that ask or not but that’s besides the point).

Anyway, I was going to write about why I chose to write and publish erotica of all things but that will have to wait for the next post!