Unleash Your Imagination

set your stories free

‘Write what you know’ – It’s a phrase we hear a lot and while I think it’s a piece of advice worth taking in terms of being familiar with the content of your work, be that through research or planning, I must admit I’m not as convinced in terms of the more literal sense of the phrase.

You don’t have to be a serial killer to write a good novel about one, nor do you have to be a doctor for your lead character to work in a hospital. If you have ever felt restricted as to what you can write about, I would put to you that if everyone were to stick exclusively to what they knew, the world of fiction would become profoundly dull. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones; none of these multi-million selling franchises would even exist if their respective authors had not been willing to embrace the unknown; to push boundaries and write out with the restrictions of the real world and their everyday lives.

So, by all means do your homework and strive to make your books believable within the context of whatever genre or setting you may choose but never be afraid to set your imagination free.

It’s a Balancing Act

Can you strike the right balance?

Sitting in a quiet, secluded cabin surrounded by trees, marvelling at the lake beyond the window as we spend our days writing, releasing a book every year or so and grinning as the royalties come rolling in; it’s a dream that many writers have but a reality for so very few.

The truth is that most writers, be they budding, self-published, traditionally published or otherwise, will be able to relate to the ongoing struggle of maintaining both their beloved writing adventures and a day job that helps pay the bills. Maintaining a steady income from selling books is not easy after all and the road to that lifestyle is a long and difficult one.

My work/writing balance is somewhat unorthodox however, as my day job is also as a writer. I do freelance work for blogs, websites and local magazines. I love it – and feel hugely lucky to be earning money for producing the written word – but it’s the more creative and open world of prose and poetry that rules my heart. As side jobs go for authors, it’s fantastic, as it means in all aspects of my work life, I can call myself a writer, plus it means I get to flex my writing muscles and try out a broad variety of different styles and topics.

It can be frustrating sometimes though. If you write in any capacity, hopefully you will agree that while not physical at all, it can be very tiring for the brain. This means that on days when I have several freelance assignments to meet, my mind has turned to something of a pile of mush by the time I am done, meaning little or no creative work is possible. Having just emerged from a couple of busy weeks work-wise, I can now appreciate how much it affected my work in progress, which sits feeling sadly neglected of late. Don’t get me wrong, I do really enjoy my freelance work, as being a writer in any shape or form is a dream come true but must admit I do sometimes crave extra time to write the stories forced for now to live inside my head.

I imagine no matter your area of work, it plays a role in your ability to write creatively and so would love to hear about other people’s experiences in balancing the different aspects of their lives.

Are you lucky enough to write fiction full-time? Does your extra job take up a lot of time and energy? How do you divide your time to manage both?

Is It Set In Stone?

How rigidly do you follow your plans?

I’ve written a few posts relating to the planning process before, in particular about what percentage of your work is pre-decided and what you leave up to your instincts as and when you actually write. Recently however I read an article that sparked off yet another consideration I hadn’t really given much thought before: To what extent would you be willing to change the course of your story when you wrote, even if it went against your finalised plan?

The piece in question that got me thinking was an interview with JK Rowling in which she seemed to say that with hindsight, she regretted having Hermione and Ron – two of the Harry Potter series’ main characters – get together romantically at the conclusion of the books. She implied that she now felt it was the wrong decision from the perspective of the characters and that her main driving force in including the plotline was to honour her plan and own arguably selfish wishes as the author and creator of their world. The quote was as follows:

“[I] wrote the Hermione-Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfilment for reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron. I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.”

I found this fascinating. Throughout my own writing, I have indeed added extra subplots or supporting characters that came to me as I wrote even though they weren’t included in the initial plan but have never changed – or been tempted to change – such a major plot element.

Have you ever drastically changed elements of your story that affected the entire plot or do you always try and stick to your plan? Have you ever regretted decisions you made with regards to your characters?

Slow and Steady

Do the books you read inform your own writing?

My current work in progress hasn’t – by my own admission – actually made that much progress yet. I have a fairly solid plan that I’m happy with and have jotted down a rough couple of opening chapters. So while I can’t say a huge amount about how the final product will look and feel, I am already noticing a recurring feature that seems present in most of what I write.

Just like in my first published book, The Vessel, and several other manuscripts at varying levels of success and completion, I can see that my chapters are in general fairly short. I think it probably stems from my desire as a writer to move the story on at a fast pace but also as a reader to be able to choose how much I read. I hate putting down a book mid-way through a chapter but sometimes there simply isn’t time to get through a whole one when they seem to be competing in length with War and Peace. With short chapters, you have the freedom to read several if time allows or to just squeeze in one or two as and when you can. This isn’t to say I don’t read and enjoy books with long chapters, of course I do; it’s just an aspect of certain books that I personally like.

I suppose this is a small example of how the books we love most growing up help to shape and inform our own work, as I try to emulate the feeling of relentless progression and fast-paced tension.

Do you have a preference of longer or shorter chapters? Are there any stylistic aspects of your favourite books that you think have inspired your own writing techniques?

Did You Plan This?

How do you plan your work?

I was asked a question by fellow blogger Harliqueen recently about how I plan when I’m writing poetry vs how I plan for prose and immediately it sparked a train of thought. I love when a discussion with someone else is able to unlock new insights into your own methods by putting things into perspective and so decided to write this post about what I came to learn.

When I plan a piece of prose, I get fairly in depth with the details. Initially it will start with a plot synopsis of around a paragraph or so which I will use to develop characters, sub-plots and other important details. I will then usually write a series of bullet-points talking myself through all of the significant moments within the story in chronological order to help keep me on track when I actually come to write.

Poetry is a completely different scenario altogether. The furthest I will ever go with planning a poem is to quickly jot down a few words or a sentence at most describing the theme, bare concept or general message of what I want to write. Everything else – word choice, stanza structure, rhyming scheme, imagery – they are all decided as and when I write.

At first I found it odd when I realised how starkly different my methods were for each form of writing but then I stumbled upon a possible explanation: I see stories as detailed, rounded pieces that are created through the culmination of many different things. Each element needs to be carefully considered so that they will fit together and the final puzzle can be created. I see poetry instead as a snapshot into a single fleeting thought or emotion. To me it therefore has to feel a lot more organic, stripped back and raw; its content guided by how the writer is feeling in the specific moment they wrote it rather than having been constrained by a rigid structure or plan.

Do you plan in different ways depending on what form of writing you are working on or do you stick to a universal method?

Genre Crossing

There are just so many to choose from…

We hear quite often that no matter what it is we do, we should find our niche and stick to it. I don’t see why writing would be considered any differently and have for that matter seen a couple of writers saying they only ever write within one genre. To this I ask: Where’s the fun in that?

I can of course see the argument for staying faithful to what you are good at and if your passion happens to sit firmly within one genre and one genre only then by all means immerse yourself in that world and write away – It’s just not something I could bring myself to do.

One of the first and most important things you will hear if you say you want to be a writer is that you should write the stories you want to read and that’s just it; there are so many things I love to read. One day I crave a dark and chilling thriller; the next a fantastical adventure, the next a murder mystery and the next a rib-splitting comedy. It is not necessarily that I will write in all of these specific areas but I wouldn’t only listen to one genre of music, nor would I only watch one genre of film, so why should I limit the spectrum of my possible writing opportunities?

There will definitely always be common threads that link my work, like conflict and human emotion, but due to the vast scale of genres that appeal to me as a reader, I could never restrict my own imagination to just one overarching subject area. The lure of other worlds would simply forever taunt me to visit them until I had no choice but to relent. Better yet, I believe that pushing ourselves beyond the realms of our previous ventures and trying new things not only breaks monotony and keeps the writing process fresh and exciting but it also flexes our creative muscles and increases the depth of our abilities. This is why I hope that throughout my life and career, I can be bold enough to push myself into taking paths that may not seem the easiest or most obvious.

What kind of reader/writer are you? Do you stick to one genre or do you like to dip your toe into unknown areas every now and then?

Fail to Prepare; Prepare to Fail?

Notebooks are a writer’s best friend

It seems like in every corner of my house there is another notebook to uncover. Some are new, some are years old and others I haven’t even gotten round to using yet but simply couldn’t resist the lure of a crisp, fresh booklet just waiting to be graced with untold creativity.

Each one I use inevitably ends up being filled to the brim with lists, thoughts, plot ideas, character information, concepts for the likes of poems, short stories, blog posts and who knows what other frankly nonsensical ramblings that seemed perfectly important to me at the time I wrote them. I love them however and the whole idea of feeling organised that they play into – even if in reality I am perhaps a little more scatty at times than I would like to think.

Filtering through a selection of them and rediscovering ideas I had forgotten all about, it got me thinking about the process of planning as a whole. Most writers will preach of the importance in always outlining your stories and detailing your protagonists long before you ever put pen to paper but there are certainly those who are much more comfortable with the idea of allowing the plot to drive their imagination as and when they actually write, with plotting feeling more a hindrance than a help in the long run.

I find myself being a strange hybrid of the two types. I certainly do like to outline major plot points and briefly think through my main characters before I dive fully into a project of any kind but the small details and nuances of personality that flesh out a story and make it feel real I much prefer to allow the chance to develop naturally, so as not to make me feel too heavily restricted when I write. As a lover of writing down my thoughts and ideas, I can completely understand the appeal in having every detail already planned out so you always know exactly where your story is heading but for me, I worry this would make the writing process itself feel too much like joining the dots and the stories not free to grow arms and legs and take on a life and voice of their own.

What kind of writer are you? Do you plan your work rigidly, only enough to guide you in the right direction or do you simply trust your instincts?

What’s in a Name?

How do you choose a name for your work?

The name of anything – be it a book, a movie or a song – can and often will have an important influence on its eventual success or lack thereof. Given this, I struggled for a long time to find the name that best suited my debut novella before its publication and the working title was not even close to what it eventually ended up being called. In fact, I was only able to definitively choose the name, The Vessel, after I had finished writing the final chapter and the phrase stood out to me as being exactly what I had been looking for all along. After that, I couldn’t even consider anything else; I just knew it was right.

This time however, as I start out on the very early stages of the first draft of my next book, I am already almost certain of what the finished work will be entitled and I found it rather odd that with each experience, the title came to me in completely different ways, despite its equally huge importance for both.

So I wondered, to anyone who has or is currently working  on novels, novellas, short stories, poems or anything else of the ilk; How and at what stage of the process were you able to finally say to yourself, “Yes. This is what my work will be called.”?

The Light Bulb Moment

We all long for the next great idea

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a clear-cut, fool-proof way to come up with ideas to write about? Be it for books, short stories, blog posts or poems, I wish I understood how and why certain waves of unexpected inspiration wash over me but that in itself is the very problem, as they are inevitably always random, fleeting thoughts that can leave just as quickly as they come.

I hope this is something that most writers out there will be able to relate to, as even though there is no denying the frustration it can cause when we slam full force into a wall of writer’s block, I like to reassure myself with the thought that it is all just part and parcel of being creative and that every bout of staring vacantly at a blank page takes us one step closer to our next great idea.

Stimulus in the past has come from things as varied as news reports and nature to song lyrics and briefly overheard conversations. I can to this day remember for example the first moment I got the idea for my now available book, The Vessel. Sitting one evening watching a television report about possible government tapping of emails, I simply thought to myself: Just how far would a government go to try and keep control? And so, the bare concept of The Vessel was born and the plot of a young woman fighting to expose the truth about a corrupt government in a dystopian setting began to form in my mind. The excitement I felt meant I knew for sure, this was something I had to write.

I would love to know how and when you’ve come up with your best ideas and if, like with me, no two ideas ever come to you in the same way.

Free Book Giveaway

As a special promotion, the kindle version of my book, The Vessel, will be completely free to download for three days on Amazon starting from today. The story follows a young woman in a dystopian setting as she tries desperately to expose the truth. You can view a short trailer for it here and if you like the sound of it, now is your chance to get a copy for nothing. A huge thank you to anyone who checks it out and please feel free to leave a brief review on Amazon or Goodreads afterwards, it really helps. Happy reading!

Click here to get The Vessel on Amazon USA.

Click here to get The Vessel on Amazon UK.