A.L. Michael's Blog, page 7

When writing becomes therapy…

Sometimes, I don’t want to talk to people.

It’s only after doing a counselling course, almost four years of an MSc in writing therapy, and going to therapy myself that I realised: I am a highly functioning introvert.

I thought, because I spoke loudly (and whined even louder) that I was an extrovert. But I’m not. Because talking makes me tired. And I can go a whole day in silence and it feels like being cuddled by kittens and kissed by mother nature.

But when shit happens, I want to write.

It used to be, I would write stories, but these days I write journal entries, poems, snippets of stories, lists and blog posts. In one of the many things I’ve learnt on my course, the most obvious is that it exists: there is a degree in creative writing for therapeutic purposes because creative writing HAS therapeutic purposes.

So today has been a pretty crappy day, in one of a few fairly crappy weeks, which in consideration of the things happening politically in the world at the moment, feels like a pretty crappy time in general.

And after a fairly stressful doctor’s appointment, the feeling that I don’t have the time to do enough for my job, the fact that I couldn’t work on my novel, am dealing with uncertainly, instability and have 6 weeks to fix a dissertation which for all intents and purposes a pile of wank, I had one thought.

Well, that’s a lie, I briefly thought about crying, but the cat didn’t want to cuddle, so I ate an entire pack of fruit pastilles in under a minute and forgot to check if they were vegetarian. But THEN, I had one thought:

I want to write. I just want to write.

The problem is, that’s most of my problem. My work is writing. My research is writing. My novel writing is, surprisingly, writing. And the only way I can honestly and authentically engage with the world in a way that doesn’t make me want to pass out with exhaustion is writing.

And so, dear readers, if you think you’d like to use writing as therapy, here’s a few tips to get you started:

Write a list of things that make you happy. Try and fill more than one page.
Write about a memory that makes you smile.
Write a love letter, and not a traditional one. Tell your parent you love them, write to your friend telling them all the wonderful things about themselves. Hell, write yourself a goddamn love letter, because I’m sure you deserve it.

There are a hundred ways writing can make you feel better. Sometimes it’s small and slow, journalling each day and siphoning off the sorrow. Maybe it’s an agitated tweet or an angry poem.

Or maybe it’s a slightly weary, slightly tearful blog post, where you started or moaning about your day, and ended it hoping you could make others feel better about theirs.

The Silent Author and the Social Author.

There’s a lot of discussions going on at the moment about ghostwriting, what it means to be an author and equal opportunities in publishing. I’m not going to talk about that, because people much smarter than I have weighed in on something that’s a very weighty subject.

But that’s the point:

Sometimes, being an author means shutting the hell up.

If you think back to the way writing used to be, writers didn’t have a voice beyond what they wrote. They weren’t writing articles about their books, they weren’t necessarily going to literary festivals, and they most certainly were not chatting to their readers on Twitter.

They wrote a book, and the book was loved or hated, or more likely, ignored, and the only feedback authors would get would be from the friends and family who read it, and if they were lucky, a newspaper review.

For anyone who ended up studying literature, it was ‘death of the author’ and all that jazz. It was the WORK that was important, it was the book that had to speak for itself, and say enough that a writer didn’t have to justify it. Yes, after a while, that author’s name might speak for them, but that was about style, consistency and output.

There are times, as with any job, when we want to have a moan. And just as you wouldn’t go into the break room at work and call your workmates arseholes, vocalising your dissatisfaction online is not the way to do it. This is a job. The other writers, the publishers, the bloggers, and even, oh yes, the readers, are part of a network of professional relationships.

Do authors sometimes have a little moan about the difference in grading systems, or how bad reviews with gifs on Goodreads get more likes? Do we get irritated when we get a bad review based on someone not downloading it properly? Do we sometimes get an isty bitsy teensy weensy bit jealous when we see other authors reaching heights in our career that we haven’t, or might not be open to us? YES, of course we do! Because everyone has issues with their job. Everyone works within a framework, and not everyone is going to be able to benefit from that framework all the time, as with any job.

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But you know what you SHOULD be expressing as an author online? Gratitude, enjoyment, passion. You should share what you love, share things that will inspire new authors, ones that might even then be more successful than you are. And you know what you’ll do then? You’ll congratulate them and shut the hell up, because, to paraphrase an excellent film, it’s not personal, it’s business. Someone else doing well doesn’t mean you’re crap. Someone else being successful does not mean you won’t be too. There is enough room for everyone.

Now obviously, this is difficult, because authors are praised for their ability to be sociable, to self-promote and use social media to create relationships. It’s one of the pre-requisites of being a modern author, and those magical creatures who manage to be picked up without needing that are very lucky (I’m an introvert and I find all this chatting lark quite exhausting) because for most of us, if we’re not writing a book, we’ve got to be chatting about writing a book, or reading a book, or chatting about other people’s books.

Which is why I’m going to leave this blog post right here:

Treat it like a job – and talk about other authors and publishers as if you might meet them all at a party one day. We’re a community, and it’s hard enough to survive doing the thing you love without everyone around you seeing it as a race to the finish line.

And now, I’m going to go and take my own advice and shut the hell up. Because I have a book to write, and that’s my job.

 

When the world changes: looking for inspiration and being authentic.

I have never fallen out of love with writing. I don’t think I ever could.

Last year, I wrote three books. For some, that might not seem like much, but on top of my masters degree studies and a full time job, it was a lot for me. I was overworked, burnt out and irritated with myself.

I have always been able to get stuff done. When I was self employed, I needed to be doing three or four jobs to make ends meet, to allow myself to write, and I did it. And then I’d write a few chapters and go to the gym at midnight.

Sadly, age, and a newly discovered love affair with my bed, means I can’t really do that any more. I needed to slow down in order to stay inspired, be creative and come up with new stories.

I loved the last series I wrote, and I had new ideas, lots of them, but nothing fired me up.

The problem was the world.

I could carry on writing the same stuff I’d always written, stuff that I believed was funny and bittersweet and nostalgic, but the world just seemed more horrific than usual. Some horrible things happened last year, and the world seemed like it was moving too fast. That technology was increasing at a massive rate, whilst our levels of empathy and human interaction were decreasing. We are a nation of Facebook commenters, passive-aggressive Tweeters, shouting into an online abyss. It felt like nothing I could write would express the important things happening in the world. And did I even want it to, if the world seemed so dark and dismal? Why write about boy meets girl when there were kids dying in Aleppo? Why write about a woman discovering she was pregnant, when Planned Parenthood was under threat from Trump? Every story seemed to be contradicted by reality, being made small and insignificant in the face of the terrors of the news, and the state of our planet.

When Amazon delivered their first package by drone, I actually cried. Because I was scared. That sounds silly, and it is. But I have a feeling we’re walking straight into the plot of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie, and it’s scaring the crap out of me.

The answer would be simple: write the same happy chic lit you’ve always written! Write to make people happy! Ignore the outside world, provide an escape for people feeling the same way as you! Write to escape, read to escape!

Yes, this would be the answer, if it didn’t feel inauthentic. Write something happy and cheerful, where everything ends up okay, set it in a tea shop and put some bunting on the cover. Stop feeling scared. Live in pastel colours, give everyone a happy ending  and put on your blinkers. It didn’t feel right to write that. I wanted to do more.

I wanted to acknowledge the world, I wanted to write something important that would bring people joy. I wanted to write something beautiful, and meaningful, and true.

And that right there is how you get writer’s block.

You pile on the expectation so high that you’ll never achieve what you set out to do. No one sits around thinking they’re writing something ‘important’. Even the most genius books of our time were created by someone who was just telling a story they thought needed to be written. Or they were enjoying writing. Or, more likely, they knew they would only get the relief from that endless cycle of words and thoughts scrolling around brain if they wrote the damn thing down, so they did.

So I’m writing something. And it’s not brilliant or important, and it’s not going to change the world. But writing it is making me happy and giving me purpose, and maybe when people read it, it will make them think, and remember and wonder.

And in the meantime, I should put down my pen and get out in this world that I’m so scared of being destroyed, and try to change things, and make them better. To engage in joy, and see the beauty, witness empathy and kindness and try to cultivate some of that. The pen is mightier than the sword, but it might not be mightier than a little kindness, a little action, a little intention.

Dear Reader: Writing to Reach You and Other Thoughts From 2016.

This year has gone on forever.

It’s been a fraught, emotional, politically charged year. It seems to be a year where people have cut off family members or fallen out with friends over Trump or Brexit. A year where I have wanted to scream with frustration more than once.

A year where I have been sucked into Facebook arguments and been left with shaking hands and a racing heartbeat. A year where I’ve stopped watching sci-fi, and burst into tears when I read about drones, because we seem to be better at building technology than cultivating empathy.

So, I write.

Most of you know me as an author of women’s fiction. I write (hopefully) funny books about sarcastic young women dealing with their issues and being plucky in the face of great challenges. They have a lot of bunting on the covers, maybe you’ve seen them.

But that is not all I write.

I write for me. I write crappy poems in notebooks that will never see the light of day. I write about anxiety, about the overwhelming feelings of being an overstimulated introvert. I write about nearing 30 and feeling like everyone on social media is in a race to marriage/kids/house and I’m sitting there scribbling stories and wondering if I even want what everyone else has.

I write to feel better.

And whether you’re a reader, a writer, a blogger, note scribbler, list maker…if you’re feeling overwhelmed, I would encourage you to write. It is NOT something for the privileged few.

Writers often get this idea that they’re a bit magic. And certainly fangirling over certain authors, I get that. But writers are simply people who write consistently. They create a good story, they may have a great turn of phrase. They may naturally be hilarious, or succinct or good with words.

Or they might just work really fucking hard at it.

It is my main bugbear in life that people think writing is not open to them. That it’s for the special talented few. Because it’s not. People can be magic in many ways, but authors are not magic. Authors are conduits to the magic of a story. And anyone can do that if they read lots, imagine lots, stay open, write constantly and keep self doubt from their fingertips for more than five minutes.

So I’m talking to you, dear reader. Do not think that writing is something beyond you. You have stories within you, simply by being alive in the world. All of my stories have started with ‘What if?’ and I encourage you to ask ‘what if?’ as many times as you want until a story appears. Write stories you want to read. Write poems about your crappy job. Write love notes to your partner, leave messages in your kids’ lunchboxes. Put words on paper and know that in that moment, that is you, there on the page. And be proud of it.

Our world is so full of noise. It’s full of social media, and perfect photos and lives that are through a filter. It’s full of war and terror and fear, and jealousy and cynicism and celebrity gossip. Find the quiet, and write something that means something to you. Misspelled, scrappily written and with truth – write something for you.

Because this is not the refrain of the talented, looking down from on high.

This is a joy for everyone, and I encourage you to take the joy it can give you.

 

As for me?

In 2017 I’ll be:

bringing you more books (stay tuned for news in the new year)
Finishing my studies into using writing therapeutically with eating disorders
Going down to 4 days a week at work so I can focus more on my writing
Finding more joy in the day to day
Eating delicious things
Dancing. Lots of dancing

 

A final 2016 favour – if you’ve liked any of my House on Camden Square series (or any of my books at all!) leave me a Christmas present in the form of an Amazon review? You have no idea how much these reviews matter to authors!

Enjoy the final throws of 2016, and let me know what you’re writing!

Mama Bears, Fiction and The Fabulous Return of The Gilmore Girls

I am so excited to share my latest book with you ever so soon!

Be My Baby is book three in the House On Camden Square series, and it’s out on 7th November. It should be available on Netgalley this week for any bloggers waiting for it.

This one’s close to my heart, not only because it’s the end of the series, and I have to say goodbye to Evie, Mollie, Chelsea, and the memory of Ruby Tuesday. I’ve grown to love these characters, and it’ll be hard to let them go.

Each book has had a theme, and it’s usually linked with family. Evie’s story was about escaping her family, putting up the boundaries she needed to move forward. Chelsea’s was about accepting her family and where she came from. Mollie’s story is about creating her own family, and dealing with the loss of the family she should have had.

Thing is, this year I’ve been inspired by some kick ass Mama Bears, and that’s where this book has come from. Forget the sisters who are doing to for themselves, it’s the mother’s doing it for their kids that got this book going. The whole series has been about the parenting mistakes the main characters’ parents made, and so far, Mollie’s been making it look easy.

Be My Baby is about the difficult decisions parents have to make, and how families don’t have to look the same – the characters at The Ruby Rooms have a ‘takes a village’ vibe, and Mollie and Esme have a big, loving family. So what happens when the man who should have been part of their family unit turns up again?

And in Mama-Daughter inspirational awesomeness, one of my favourite shows is returning this autumn! The Gilmore Girls is back after a seven year gap. This show was the ultimate in mother-daughter relationships, family strife and in jokes. The story of a young mum who raises her daughter alone, surrounded by a cast of nutty and creative characters, I took a lot of the feeling of GG in book 3. Plus, the main thing I love about Gilmore Girls is that everyone is ON POINT all the time, they’re witty and smart and always have a clever retort, and that’s how I like to write, because that is so not real life. Well, it’s not my life. I never have that witty retort ready!

So, having just written the acknowledgements on Be My Baby, you’ll know it’s for those warrior queen kick ass mamas – keep on keeping on, ladies.

When You and Writing are On a Break…

I know I’m a writer, because precisely at the moment I decide to take a break, that me and Writing need a little time apart, that I’m feeling a little too much pressure to commit, get the dog, the white picket fence and all that jazz, at THAT EXACT MOMENT…I want to write.

If Writing were a man, I would be in big trouble. I would send him away only to grab him desperately by the hand and drag him back again.

If Writing were a car, I would have sold it, before changing my mind as the new owners drive off, and I chase them down the street with tears in my eyes, shouting like a crazy woman.

I have always been a firm believer in the fact that writing is work. When people ask if I’m ‘waiting for my big break’ or comment on how ‘lucky’ I am, I get a little pissed. Because yes, I have been lucky, and maybe, if you’ll forgive me, there’s a little talent in there too. But I am 100% working my arse off for this.

When I was a writing student, it was a different case altogether. I thought it was about creating routine to commune with the muse, putting on my beret, smoking a roll up cigarette and tapping my beret three times before I could write something genius with my lucky pen.

That’s not writing. Or at least, that’s not writing as a professional. That’s writing for fun. And that’s great too. If you can afford to be precious with when you create magic, then that’s great. I can’t – I have and need deadlines to function. They’re stressful and horrid, but they are what you come up against in the working world, and this, for me, is work. It’s work I enjoy about 85% of the time, but it’s still hard work.

So it’s important to check in with your relationship with writing, just as you do with your human relationships. Are you both putting in as much effort, are you making time for Writing? Are you feeling disenchanted, falling out of love a little? Are you wondering where this is all going, and whether you’re wasting your time?

I think we all do. I think you could have sold a million copies of something you’ve written, and you’ll still wonder, ‘Is this a fruitful relationship? Is this making me happy?’

I wanted to break from my old pal Writing for a while. We’ve been together for ages now, producing 8 novels in 5 years. And I wondered if maybe I wanted to write something else, shake it up, experiment and explore and…well, play the field. But just like most long term relationships, writing has become a part of me, and I can’t seem to shake him.

So the minute I insisted I needed some space, I put down the pen and stuck the four or five new ideas in the desk drawer…I wanted to write again. I needed to. I missed it.

At this point in my life, it seems everyone my age is buying houses, having kids and getting married. And I’m spending time with the fictional people in my head. But I mention this because a dear friend said of having children: ‘You should only have them when you really can’t bear to not have them. When not having them is painful, that’s when you should have them.’

And that’s how I feel about writing. When it’s painful not to write, when the idea of a day going by when you’re not wondering about your characters, or plotting something, scribbling even a single word on the back of a train ticket simply hurts…well, dear hearts, I think it means he’s a keeper.

Here’s to my love, Writing, and here’s to that first flush of love and excitement all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for Reviewers!

Hello hello friends,

As many of you may know, book three in the House on Camden Square series, Be My Baby, is out on 7th November.

I have so loved writing this series, and it’s bittersweet to finish the third book and say goodbye to the girls, but more than that, I want to make sure the series finishes with a bang!

So I am looking for bloggers and readers who would like to read the book ahead of time, and get those reviews out there!

PM me on Twitter (@almichael_) or leave a comment below. The book will be out on Netgalley very soon!

 

A

 

Writing and Imposter Syndrome: The Perfect Romance.

 

I deal with imposter syndrome every day. I am waiting, just waiting, for someone to realise  I have no idea what I’m doing, that I’m terrible and worthless and that I’ve somehow been swept up in this fake life where people think I’m competent.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s a big part of modern life, where our sense of what it is to be an ‘expert’ in something is pretty fuzzy, and sometimes the things we disregard as ‘easy’ are actually a skill.

I feel an imposter most frequently in the academic world – because I am not of that at all. I want to yell it sometimes, beat my fists on my chest and yell, ‘I am not an academic!’ But I don’t think that’s necessary, because no one would mistake me for one. I am not the person who keeps hold of sources, or references, or backs up her arguments. I’m impulsive and passionate and often make decisions based on gut feelings instead of rationality and reasoning. Exactly what an academic shouldn’t do. And yet, here I am, continuing to study, the mallard in with the swans.

But what about being a writer? Back when I was studying, I thought I’d be a writer when I finished a book. Then I thought I’d be a writer when I published a book. Then when I sold ‘enough’, when I wrote three, five, ten books. I changed the goal posts every time. Never allowing myself to be ‘enough’ to claim the title. Now, I admit I’m a writer, but I change the goal posts on what a ‘successful’ writer is.

Here is what I’ve learnt: If you write novels – you’re a writer. If you scribble poems on the back of napkins, or make up fairytales for your kids at bedtime – you’re a writer. If you find joy in telling a story, if you write a diary, if you fill in speech bubbles on a cartoon strip and bloody well love it – you’re a writer.

The purists will hate me, they’ll say I’m diluting their genius, that surely there’s a difference between someone who’s written ten novels and someone who scribbles fragments in a notebook at home. And there is, of course there is. But that is not the title. That’s the detail. If you love to write, be a writer.

I’m not an academic, but I’m studying. And what allows me to do that is my skills as a facilitator; my softness, my empathy. I’m not a researcher, but I’m curious and I’m enthusiastic. And so I will study until this damn research project is done and I can be curious about something else.

If you think you’re an imposter, I want you to think of someone you consider an expert in your field, someone you think is the poster child for what you want to do. And then I want you to remember that they probably think they’re an imposter too.

 

 

 

 

A little snippet from Nice Day For a White Wedding…

In case you haven’t noticed me taking over your feed with every possible amount of promotion, Nice Day for a White Wedding is out now, and I’m shouting it from the rooftops. Possibly because I absolutely love this book, but also because I’m so excited about the great reviews it’s receiving!

So, here’s a little snippet from the first chapter, just to whet your appetite…

 

 

Chapter One

 

‘All right, babe?’

Chelsea shook her head, feeling foolish as the words escaped into the empty cemetery. Ruby’s grave wasn’t as bedazzling as it should have been, even as the sunflowers she’d brought brightly clashed with the black marble of her headstone. Time had passed – the flowers and teddy bears and cards from little girls who wanted to grow up to be Ruby Tuesday had gone. Rain-soaked and stinking, they had disintegrated in the summer storms, until eventually someone had cleared them all away.

Ruby would never have wanted such a drab headstone, plain and…appropriate. It should have been carved from a lump of garnet, showered with sparkle. Chelsea’s fingers itched with the need to improve it, to make it real in some way. She wanted to grab a glue gun and affix diamonds around the edges, but that would be wrong, disrespectful. At least to anyone who didn’t really know Ruby.

She could hear her friend’s voice in her head: ‘Go on, you’re not going soft on me, are you babe? You never cared about right or wrong before.’

And she was right, that imaginary voice. Chelsea had done whatever the hell she wanted when she knew Ruby. But things had changed.

The ground was damp beneath her feet, but the summer sun was bright and glaring, like Badgeley was punishing her for never coming home often enough. The whole town felt muggy, like there was no air, and the little that was left was stale. It seemed weird that Ruby should have been buried here, instead of in London, near her penthouse flat where people still left notes and flowers. No one in this little town gave a crap about Ruby Tuesday any more.

Chelsea wanted to sit cross-legged on the ground and put her head against the cool stone, conjuring memories of those teenage days resting her forehead against Ruby’s, pretending they could read each other’s minds, and freaking out the little year sevens. But the ground was wet, the air was dry, and things were different now.

She patted the cool headstone in a silent apology.

‘See ya later, babe.’

 

On Stepping Away from the Numbers, in Writing and in Life.

I have been working with women who have eating disorders. I’m doing research into how creative writing can be used in eating disorder recovery. One of the first rules of the room:

No numbers.

No lbs, inches or calories. No steps counted or miles walked, or hours on the treadmill. Measuring our worth, limiting ourselves to digits in order to prove we’re too minute too matter, that is where danger lies.

No numbers.

Day-to-day, numbers allow us to measure things practically – how much time do I have to finish this work? What time is my meeting? How many more words do I need to add to this? How many mistakes on this page? How many minutes to correct?

But numbers limit. Numbers define, numbers encroach and numbers do not show our worth.

As an author, numbers are another root of obsession:

What Amazon ranking am I?

How many books did I sell this month?

How much is my book worth?

What percentage of that is my royalties?

What do I get paid next quarter?

How many retweets?

How many likes?

How many times have I posted this hour?

How many new followers?

Part of the reason I loved writing was that it was free from numbers. Okay, the occasional number popped up when I kept an eye on how many words I was writing per day, or roughly what I was aiming for in total, but in general, I liked writing because it was the one place my self worth couldn’t be broken down into numbers. Just as I did not want to be the numbers on the scale or the inches on the measuring tape, I do not want to be my ranking, or my sales, or my retweets. It’s too easy to get obsessed in that same way, to define your worth by those numbers.

How to combat this? With stories.

Just as I am not the numbers on the scale, because I am my silly sneeze and the sound of my laugh and the way I move in my sleep, I am not the numbers on my rankings, because I am the people who reread my stories, or emailed me to say they found comfort in hard times, or snorted in laughter at something I wrote.

No numbers.

Stories.

That is what I am made of. Not the clicks per page or the sales per day or the discount price. Every time my sales are not what I thought they should  be, I was crushed, taking it as a sign of my failure as a writer, my gradual fading out of this world I have now taken on as my home, the world and life of an author. So I choose to reject the numbers as much as I can. I choose to remember those times people have talked to me about my characters like they’re real people, the times people have asked for sequels or have been excited about new releases.

So this is my refrain, my promise, my war cry:

I am so much more than numbers, for I am made of stories.