My Writing Journey: Part One
My Writing Journey:
Part One
Guest Post: by A.W. Clarke
Hello readers. My name is A. W. Clarke. Like many of you, I started with nothing more than an idea and the desire to be a successful published author. I can tell you two things that are for certain. One, if you have the desire and drive to succeed, you are already on your way to your goals. Second, having a plan and following it diligently will get your there.
The world’s wheels will not stop for anyone with low ambition who thinks everything will happen to them at some random moment. So don’t say, I was thinking of doing, but rather, say to yourself, I will and you will find completion of any goal you set your mind to.
With that said, over the course of three years, I went from having an idea for a book to achieving my goal of having my book published and available to the world for readers to enjoy. Therefore, I can say that I have accomplished my goal of being a successfully published author. I have sold enough copies of my book to reaffirm my desire to share my own thoughts with other people through words.
I tell you, there is no greater reward than hearing your readers tell you that they had a positive connection with YOUR creation. Now, since having seen my goal reached, I’d like to share this literary journey with others, since it is often the inspiration of others that can fuel our passion to accomplish what we desire.
Remember, everyone starts with a simple idea. From there, all you need is to set goals along the way, and fuel the passion to reach each of those goals until the end. Never give up!
Now Just Add A Dose Of Inspiration
It isn’t often that stories begin with an oddball background, but I’ve decided to start in just that manner. I never ever thought of being a writer. There, I said it. It’s true.
But what is also true, is that no one knows their true destiny in life at any age. So with that, I’ll share with you that I left school and entered a trade. I have always enjoyed working with my hands, and took pride in looking at the final product of any job.
Whether I've repaired machines or built furniture from simple ideas in my head, the joy of persevering until the job was finished was the driving factor behind each day’s work.
Fast forward to 2011. I had an acquaintance over and was chatting about the usual meanderings of life, when we came to talk about hobbies and interests. Being a tech geek, I mentioned everything I took interest in from cars to electronics and every machine in between.
My friend had been in the service industry for years, but did mention the completion of a novel as part of a hobby. Wow! I had never met a real live author before! For some reason-perhaps my unquenchable desire to learn new things, I was hooked!
Without sounding arrogant, I had boldly whispered to myself that night, “Damn it, if you can do it, I can do it.”
Now I had in me the passion or drive to begin. This is where all goals start for everyone. All I needed was an idea. As I continued to hear about my friend’s explanation of the journey of writing, it was apparent to me that this was a feasible way to share any ideas I had with those willing to hear about them. That’s when I remembered my time in school.
To me, school was as not only a place to learn new ideas and develop skills, but it was also the place where students learn how to learn. This is a very important concept. In a nutshell, what we do in school is a form of resourcefulness.
People aren't expected to memorize and regurgitate math formulas or descriptive essays every day of their career. More important than that, school taught me that it was up to me to find ways to figure out how to get from point A to B, either financially, socially, or throughout my career.
Indeed we all do this many times in our lives, from familiarizing ourselves with a new computer program to understanding how to reload a paper towel dispenser. If we don’t know, we ask. If we cannot ask, we watch, or research or try until we succeed. Also, in doing so, we often reach our goals as long as we keep trying, and don’t give up.
So with my friend’s inspiration, I set out to successfully write a book. I was excited. Who knows where this would lead! All I wanted to do at the end of it all, was to do what I had done many times before in my day to day career.
I wanted to hold in my hands a product of my work, and smile.
What Do I Write About?
So here I am all psyched up about writing a book, when all of these discouraging thoughts come into my mind. What will I write about? How long should the book be? However would a publishing company accept a newbie author? Where will I find the time?
Right about here, is where most people with an idea give up. But I’ll tell you, if you give up at this point, or any point in your goals, you will definitely realize an opportunity lost and failed. So, you can either accept that you will not find success at something, or simply set a goal and try. I cannot stress that last part enough.
Set a goal and try.
You can also set a series of goals and try hard to reach each one. Just one at a time. Don’t even think about the magnitude of it all. Just focus on reaching one goal at a time. Better yet, write a simple list of those goals on a piece of paper and tape it to a place you see every day, like the bathroom mirror. Every time you look in the mirror, get inspired to better yourself. One way to do that is to accomplish a small part of the next goal on the list.
I guarantee you that you will start to feel amazed by the drive you will discover in yourself. After all, unless you start to cross off each line in that list, it will just stay there and never get fulfilled. Let that small list be your source of passion.
Here’s another effective way to find and continue motivation. Tell someone what you are doing. Don’t tell someone you are “thinking” of writing a book. Tell them you “are” writing a book. If you are already a somewhat driven person, then knowing that you already told someone you will be producing something will keep your motivational engine running, lightly pressing the back of your mind to work a little on your goal each time you get a chance.
So, what will I write about?
Truth be told, I am a very technical person. I do enjoy music and the arts. But being a tradesperson, most of what I know in my day to day life is buried in the sciences. I had actually thought about writing a history book once, almost ten years ago. I even started typing out a framework for the book. But it was quickly shelved, as I thought it would be too hard to create. Then, of course, work got in the way. I had no plans to quit my job in order to take a chance at writing. The bills still had to get paid, the family supported.
So, I suppose that I’d need something striking to get me started with this literary goal I had established. The passion was there to start, but what would keep me going? It would have to be something I really enjoyed thinking about. Perhaps it was something that had always intrigued me. Maybe something of fantasy, where I could make it all up on my own, with little research and no boundaries. It took a while to figure out. Then, one day it came to me. Romance.
I might be a techie by day. But the other side of me enjoys a heartfelt movie moment as much as the next person. I’d like to think that through my years, I have learned a lot about love, relationships, and emotion through not only my own experiences, but by those of others.
I’ve been blessed with good friends who have leaned on me at one time or another, wanting an ear to listen to their stories of love come and gone. All of these stories held in them the core of some story I could produce.
I considered a novel of a romantic nature for two reasons. First, I’ve always found intense beauty in those moments where our emotional strings are tugged at hard in some love story. These moments of emotional relation are very powerful, and can be related to by almost everyone.
This would make it easy for me to reach a sizeable audience. I could write about romance. The second reason why I chose this genre was because with fiction, the sky’s the limit. I imagined it would be easier to produce something entirely out of my head, with no limitations to real world entities.
My writings could wander out as far as space, and be as distorted or unearthly as I desired. Then as I edited it through, my story would fall somewhere between pure fiction and tangible reality. This would make writing much easier for me than writing about a more technical, non-fiction genre.
So a romance story it was. Now I had chosen my genre. But it still felt a bit daunting. I mean, being good with my hands, it felt new to leave that and conjure thoughts about the heart and mind. But that in itself was enough of a catalyst, as I decided it would make the final goal more rewarding. The idea of creating something I was not entirely familiar with fueled my drive to succeed even more!
Maybe I was starting to be a bit audacious.
Though that wasn't my usual style, it felt like good fuel to the spark. So I kept going!
The Short Story That Became A Novel
I had an idea. I had a genre. I knew how to get it out to people. And I knew I had to desire to do it all.
Now I just had to start.
My romantic novel was originally intended to be a short story of about twenty pages in length. I typed away on my computer a little each day, finding pockets of time here and there.
One thing I had to overcome was finding the time to write.
At the time I was working two jobs to support my family. Being so busy each day, it was hard to plan a time to dedicate a few hours to writing. So what I did instead was keep in the back of my mind that I had to write something as soon as I had the chance, even if it was just one page of ideas or storyline. It turned out that I wasn’t able to write every day, but when I found myself with some free time, often an hour or two at night or between shifts, I would sit at the computer in a quiet place and close my eyes.
This was my engine for writing. For me, I was able to write when I pictured the detail in each scene from start to finish. One of my secrets is to pretend you are directing a scene through a camera and you purposely play it back in slow motion. By slowing down each scene, you can “look around” and picture each detail, like the colour in a woman’s hair as it glistens in the sun, or the appearance of anguish chiselled across the face of a distressed character.
During these quiet times, I was able to picture various scenes and type them down. Some writers compile and write out their work neatly in an organized fashion. Others just jot down the basic points, then polish them up later when they edit. Create your own story in a way that works for you.
One thing I found that was not helpful was to create a timeline for my story. I kind of winged it as I went, letting each day of writing take the story on its own twists and turns. But other writers find a timeline essential to balance out the workload for the story. Again, write in a way that works for you.
After numerous times at the computer, my story was finished! I had produced a twenty one page short story of romance and passion. Little did I know that I was not going to stop there!
Enter my essential friend-the beta reader!
After looking over my story, I have to say I was quite proud of myself. I had produced a meaningful short story out of thin air! Now all I needed was a reader or two to make sure it all made sense.
I had a couple of people who were close to me read it over and they both found the story enjoyable. I felt like a million bucks. But, one of them mentioned something to me the next day that didn’t sit well with me at first.
“Why not add more to your story?”
I admit, when I heard those words, I thought somehow that I had failed. What was this reader looking for? But after thinking about it, the request made sense. I had looked up at a bookshelf in my room full of novels, each one obviously way thicker than an average magazine. “Damn,” I thought, “That’s a lot of work.”
At this point, I felt the little voice return once again. “How long did my story have to be?” I knew I was a newbie to the art of writing. I seriously doubted I could pump out the next Stephen King novel by next Friday.
But one day shortly after that thought, I flipped through my manuscript of twenty pages and thought to myself, "Twenty one pages. I wrote twenty one pages. I’ve never done anything like this before, and just by being motivated, I wrote over twenty pages!"
I knew it! I had to keep going. My friend suggested that I could add another story or two to this one…maybe make it a three part novel with a roller coaster ride and some cliff hangers. So I closed my eyes one night before bed and contemplated it all.
I already knew how to write a love story. I knew how to make it dramatic. I suppose, with more time, I could simply keep going, and add more beautiful and exciting elements to the story. Continue the roller coaster of emotion my main character experiences.
I could make this short story a big deal.
And so I continued to write.
The Challenge Of Formatting And Editing
It was now my goal to take my mere 21 page short story and expand it into a roller coaster ride trilogy. By adhering to my technique of finding pockets of time to get anything typed down, I slowly pieced together an emotional storyline which took my dynamic character on a more meaningful journey. I would say that in about four months of writing here and there, my story was finished!
But it wouldn’t end there. Once again, I had my beta readers on it, assessing the flow and grammar of the manuscript. Quite a few changes had to be made throughout the edit, and I had to read it over numerous times- admittedly far more than I thought. But in the end, I would absolutely agree that it is vital to edit and re-edit your story.
Every time you read through it, you might find something else worth changing or correcting. Sometimes you may find it necessary to take away a portion, or expand another point of your story, for sake of character development etc…
Once I was content with the final edit, it was time to make it tangible! From here I could have sent a copy of my manuscript to literary agents or publishers along with a request letter asking for their consideration in getting me promoted. But I decided to go at it myself.
My philosophy has always been that I try to do as many things as I can myself without bothering people for favors. At times, it builds my confidence and skill set. Other times, I just get stressed out and crumble only to ask the favour. It’s all good!
Formatting did pose some issues. For a newbie writer, getting the body of the story to follow the right indents, line spaces etc… was a bit daunting. I would format my work according to these guidelines on Microsoft Word, then convert it into a PDF file. When doing this, it is kind of like doing a dry run on a performance. You then flip through the PDF to see what the book might look like. Pay attention to headers and footers (where the text falls at the tops and bottoms of each page). You have to adjust where each chapter starts down the page.
These little appearance issues were one of the hardest things to figure out. I had to convert my Word file to PDF many times and preview it until the final product looked just right. Remember, don’t settle for messy work. No one would buy a poorly built new car. Everything must fit together cleanly and correctly in order to look professional!
The book is done and I now found myself at a proverbial crossroads. Do I pursue traditional publishing or venture down the unknown path of self-publishing?
Keep in touch for A.W. Clarke's final installment, My Writing journey: Part Two
You can find the A.W. Clarke's novel at:
Lulu
Amazon
awclarke.blogspot.ca
Contact me if you are interested in guest blogging on A.E Albert: A Writer's Blog
