Writer’s Blog
The diary of a quest to become an author

10th May 2011

My name’s Paul, I’m 39 next month and I want to be a writer.

This blog will chart my progress.

Like most diary keepers, I’m doing this for myself. The idea is that I can look back in a few years or months (let’s stay optimistic) as a hugely successful published author and be reminded of my humble beginnings. As I travel along the road – oh, God, I’m in danger of creating something that could be turned into a film with the byline ‘One Man’s Journey’ – I want this journal to keep me honest, to make me do the things I say I’m going to do. Believing, as I do, that the writer’s job is to tell the truth, I shall be doing that here. And because the diary is by its nature an intensely personal medium, I’ll be writing only for and to myself, even though it’s in a public forum. That said, if my other blog’s anything to go by, this may well retain its pure ‘by-me-for-me’ diary status.

Stephen King, a great hero of mine, wrote a book called On Writing. In it, he describes how he became the writer he is and offers practical, often brutal, guidance to wannabes like me. You know what it’s like when you’re given advice from someone you like and trust. You instinctively latch on to parts that chime with your own views (I was thrilled to learn that King, for the most part, holds little truck with the idea of plotting before writing his stories, as my own half-written novel has been created in this more organic fashion) and shrink from those that are more difficult to hear (King’s distaste for adverbs made me cringe as I recalled a flurry of them in my work and did I really need that ‘instinctively’ earlier in this sentence?). Reading King’s book has been one of the catalysts to get my arse into gear.

The most important thing for an aspiring writer is to read a lot and write a lot. I’ve been guilty of not practising either of these life-blood activities enough. Why? One word: fear. Fear that I’m not as good a writer as I think I am. Fear that I can’t sell my work to agents, publishers, film makers, publications. Fear that it could all be a waste of time. Fear that I’ll have to make sacrifices to a lifestyle that I love. All the rest – the full-time job, the time demands of modern life, the wife and child – well, they’re just excuses for not writing. No, the only genuine reason is the fear.

As King says: ‘The scariest part is right before you start.”

So I have started. Or, rather, restarted. Yesterday, I had a session with a careers consultant and, with her, outlined the basis of a new regime that will culminate in my being published. I’ve committed to 15 hours of writing and at least 5 hours of reading per week (I do have that full-time job, remember). Of course, there’s so much else I’ll need to do: entering competitions, finding agents, approaching publishers, prioritising my work, getting myself out there and selling myself as well as the writing. But let’s start with these fundaments. Writing and reading.

Today’s news. I looked at my poor neglected novel last night for the first time in two and a half years. And I wrote. Yes, it was clunky. Yes, it was awkward, like getting back into bed with an ex lover after years apart. But do you know what? It felt bloody marvellous. I didn’t know where to start so, in an act of deliberate perversity, I went straight to the end. Wrote the epilogue that will close the story, complete with tantalising opportunity for the sequel (why go for a one-off when you could have a franchise on your hands?). Oh, and I made a start on removing so many pesky adverbs. How did I do this? Gleefully and willingly.