Glenys O'Connell, Author of Romantic Suspense and Mystery Novels

Writers' Realities (reprinted from Romantic Journey Blog)

The Secret Formula for Writing Success

Writer’s Block – Is that Old Bogey Man still hiding under your bed???

I started out with every intention of writing a stunningly funny and erudite essay to make a splash for my first post on the Romantic Journey site, Well, the best laid plans of mice and writers go aft awry, to misquote Robbie Burns (a nod to Burns’ Night!) so you get this piece instead.
Sometimes I get very confused. Not just because I’m blonde, but because my writing life is split up into two different Realities.
Reality One: I write romantic suspense. Ok, so there are sometimes rather nasty, bloodthirsty scenes, but that’s par for the course. You’d sort of expect it, right? But I also weave in a lot of humor into my work (I lived in Ireland for a few years; the humor sort of rubbed off) . Romance writing almost always has a happy ending, so that reality is all warm and fuzzy and Happy Ever After,
Reality Two: This is quite different. I write non-fiction books and ghostwritten biographies and novels. Hey, I was a journalist and this is a good way to pay the bills. But at any given time I may be translating a battered wife’s memories of her brutally unhappy marriage; writing a dating manual for the unhappy and panicking lonesome souls; or using my training as a counselor to write about depression and its treatment. Soon, I may be plunged into researching and writing about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or rewriting a semi autobiographical novel a client has poured their heart and soul into.
Can you see what I mean about my two realities being confusing?
But if my working life is confusing, imagine the plight of the journalists who travel to foreign lands to cover wars and disasters. When I was a young journalist, my big ambition was to be a foreign correspondent. I thought it would be incredibly romantic and noble. Now I’m thankful my career path took a different turn.
But I have huge admiration for my journalist colleagues who regularly put their lives and sanity in jeopardy to look deep into the Abyss on our behalf and bring back the Truth that they find there.
Next time you hear or read reports about wars or disasters, about the terrible human suffering that plagues our planet, please send up a brief prayer for the dedicated professional writers who went out and gathered that information. Ask whatever Power you believe in to keep them safe so that we can continue to see, through their eyes, the truth.
Sometimes the writing I do leaves me sleepless. Yet I cannot imagine the sights and sounds that disturb their dreams.
I’d love to hear comments about your Realities and how you deal with the confusions that inevitably arise from the balancing acts of writing, earning a living, and Real Life!

I teach a creative writing course called ‘Naked Writing – the No Frills Way to Write Your Novel’.
Okay, have you stopped chortling yet?
The name seemed a good idea at the time, trying to get over the idea that this was simply a course designed to help writers finish their own book – there’d be no analyzing the classics, here, just plain old hard work. I suggested that students put ‘Naked Writing’ in the sub line of their emails to help me quickly pick them out of the inbox.
A simple idea, you might think. But no. I got complaints from some students that their servers spotted the word ‘naked’ and automatically thought ‘spam’ and refused to send the email.
Oh, yes, censorship may well be alive and well and living in cyberland….as a reaction to THOSE kind of spam messages. You know the ones that are usually accompanied by pictures of body parts you’d rather not see on strangers unless you’d specifically asked to, right?
Of course, for writers, everything is grist to the writing mill and when I thought about it….sometimes we can be a little like that – so determined to ‘do it right’ that we lack the flexibility to see and explore the worth of new ideas and opportunities. So often I’ve heard people talk about ‘the formula’ for writing a novel, a biography, a text book, a romance, a best seller…..as if there is some secret recipe that will guarantee writing success. There is a sort of one, actually – but not the one that these people are looking for.
In fact, it seems to me that there are several secrets to being successful as a writer and getting published.
 1) Believe in yourself and don’t give up. Writing can be disheartening at times – you sacrifice time you could be doing other things in order to write. And it’s hard, and sometimes it seems there are only rejections and you think maybe it will never get better.
2) Write the book of your heart, let your passion for the story shine through. Forget the idea of a ‘formula’ and write the book you’d want to read, the book that tells a story that you need to tell.
3) Realize that a good writer is in a constant state of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ – writers should always be honing their craft, learning and growing, so they are constantly becoming a better writer rather than merely being a good writer
4) Be prepared to put yourself out there. I think there are probably many wonderful books that their creators have consigned to a box under the bed for fear of rejection, or fear or what other people might say or think. You have to believe in yourself and in the story you want to tell.
What someone else thinks – be it a relative, a friend, your boss, an agent, publisher, editor – or even your creative writing teacher – counts only so far as you can see a way to use their comments to make the book better in your own eyes.
5) Do the work.This is the biggy. No-one ever became a successful writer by talking about the book they’re ‘gonna write someday’. Get the words on paper, learn to edit and polish, send your work out and learn from the critiques you receive from editors and agents. Then, when you’re published, be prepared to promote, promote, promote….no matter how difficult you find this, or how shy you might be.
Like I’ll be doing when I’m standing all alone in Chapters, hoping that some compassionate souls will stop and chat about my book, about writing, about the weather – anything so that I won’t feel like a fool standing there with my pile of novels waiting to be bought and signed, and a silly grin on my face.
Maybe you can add some thoughts of your own to what makes a successful book?

Glenys O’Connell’s next novel, a romantic comedy entitled Marrying Money, was released as an ebook by Red Rose Publishing (http://www.redrosepublishing.com/) on April 8th! Watch for the sequel: Marrying Money: Sally's Story!

              Remember when you were a little kid, and you were afraid to get out of bed in case the monster that lived under there grabbed you? I’m sure you do – you’re a writer, and writers are born with over active imaginations. Your childhood was probably peopled by characters both human and fantastical who were as real to you as if they actually existed. And some of them were probably genuinely scary. Like Writer’s Block.

            And you were probably genuinely  scared, just like that heart pounding, no-one-can-save-me-now feeling you get when you sit and stare at the blank screen, absolutely sure the Writer’s Block monster is going to grab you and drag you down to….well, you probably had your own ideas of the scary place those monsters took little kids to.

            BUT – the whole point of this article is that Writer’s Block is exactly like the monster under your bed – it’s scary but really, really it simply doesn’t exist. And yes, you’re scared, you’re really, really scared. But the source of your fear isn’t real.

            Now, do you feel silly?

            Well, don’t. You’re not the only one to break out in a sweat, convinced you’ll never write again. And, as a counsellor and coach, I can tell you I’ve had clients afraid of stranger things than Writer’s Block – and their demons have seemed every bit as real and inevitable to them as your Block seems to you.

            Want to know how I can speak so definitely? Well, it’s not some alchemy born of training as a psychologist, I can tell you that. Even though that kind of training encourages students to poke and prod at all the monsters in our heads, learning just what particular button to press to make them disappear in a puff of psychic relief, that’s not where I learned the secret about Writer’s Block.

            No, I learned it from successive news editors at newspapers where I worked for years. News editors – now there is a really scary monster and believe me, they do exist, and their teeth and fangs are real…..

            And when the deadline looms and your editor yells across the newsroom: “I want 500 words and a sidebar on that(fill in your own blank!) for the front page!” No reporter who wants to live long enough to get a lunchtime, paper’s-to-bed pint is ever going to say: “Oh, Mr. News Editor, I’m sorry but my Muse has left me and I’ve got Writer’s Block, so you’ll have to publish with a blank space on page one. Maybe people can use it for a grocery list…”

            Yeah, right.  And maybe that reporter can join the ranks of the unemployable.

            So, what to do about those times when you can’t write? Well, first of all, drop this idea of Writer’s Block. Ever noticed that, when the words of the beast appear in writer’s journals and articles, it’s always capitalized? We’re scaring ourselves, is what we’re doing. Creating monsters to excuse the fact that we’re simply not doing our jobs. And there are a number of reasons why.

            Fear is probably the most common. Let’s face it, being a writer is a dream most of us have nurtured for a long, long time. And we can go about saying that we’re writers, we’re going to write a book/article/screenplay, whatever and people will look suitably impressed or insultingly bored, whatever. And eventually, they’ll ask like, when is this going to be published.

            And that’s the scary thing at the root of most so-called blocks.  Because eventually, if we every finish our work in progress, we’re going to have to send it out into the big bad world. A world that may reject it. What if we’ll not make it? What if people laugh? What if our stories are old and hackneyed and boring and…..what if we’ve no talent?

            Well, the sad news is that you won’t know until you grab that monster by the nose and wring out your story, painful word by painful word, until it’s there in all it’s glory. Then you’ll send it into the world, and start on the next one. And the next. And someday, if you hone your craft, you’ll be published. And I hate to burst that glow of hope, but then you’ll face Writer’s Block’s big brother – SecondBookitis. The paralysis that grabs writers of a newly published first book and convinces them that they can’t perform the same trick again. Welcome to the real world, baby.

            Another reason, and perhaps a more realistic one, why you can’t seem to make your fingers fly across those keys is that there is actually something wrong with your story. There’s a clash between what you’re writing and what your brain, or your creative muse, or whatever, feels is right. Sometimes if can be as simple as an implausible scene. Someone’s being asked to step out of character, and refusing to do so. You’ve got an unlikely situation, and it’s simply not working, no matter how wonderful it may have seemed when you dreamed it up.

            Go back into your work in progress. Read what you have. Research, research, research. Maybe there’s something there that you’ve got by wishful thinking, not by checking facts. Think about it. Take long walks and consider your story– your cardiovascular system and your dog will love you for it. And somewhere around all this, the answers will pop into your head The plot will right itself, the characters act as they should, and all’s right with your imaginary world.

            But dwelling on the idea of writers’ Block will only reinforce your righteous conviction that something is stopping you from writing. Something is. You.

            There are a few tricks around writers block. One often recommended it to simply sit and write – anything at all. Gibberish. And eventually it will metamorphosis into something meaningful. That no doubt does work for some people. All it does for me is give me a few pages of depressingly useless nonsense and a headache, but it’s worth a try. It could work for you.

            My own favourite is to always end my writing sessions at a point where it’s easy to pick up and carry on. Some writers stop mid sentence, or mid page, mid-chapter. I always stop at the end of a chapter (yes, I write short chapters!) but with the following events very clearly indicated. Those days I used a novel planner notebook with an outline and small outlines for each chapter. Okay, I don’t keep strictly to the outlines, and something I;ve scheduled to happen in chapter seven might not occur right then – or even at all – but it means I know where I’m going. And when I sit down and start writing, the first thing  do (well, after playing several games of solitaire and checking email) is to read the chapter from my previous writing session. I allow my Infernal Internal Editor the opportunity to do his thing (I just know my IIE is a male – only a male could be THAT nitpicky!) following the guidelines of the outline, I head off merrily down the path that flows directly from that chaoter, marked out in the outline for the next chapter.

            Maybe wouldn’t work for everyone, b ut if you’ve reached the stage of thinking you’re blocked, well, it's worth trying anything rather than suffer.

            One thing you can be sure of is that the only way to rid yourself of the pain  of all those words and ideas dammed up in your head is to put them down on paper, or disc, or whatever. Get the work done. Pour out that story. Tell what's in your heart. Polish it and primp it and send it off like a mother sending a child to school for the first time. Weep a little. Be scared for you know all the dangers that lurk out in the big world that threaten your baby. But that baby needs to be out there – and you know it.

            So just get on with it. You’ll feel better for it, you know.

            Now. Altogether: There is no such thing as Writer’s Block.

            We’re writers, and we will write.

            We may not be a good enough writers now, but we will be as we hone our skills – and that involves writing, writing, writing. And that’s just what we’ll do….we’ll reduce the monster to a pretty pussycat!

            Writers’ Block – phooey!

© Glenys O'Connell 2006