Being Honest

Whether you are drawn to writing fiction, fantasy, chic lit, New Age or memoir, there is really nothing more fundamental than being honest. Not brutal, but honest and clear about your motives, your intentions, what you are trying to say and how you express your voice. It is only through honesty that we can build the conviction that leads to convincing writing. The talents on display for each genre are going to be different, and each of us will find our strengths as we continue to write. But without honesty, any surface appeal will soon wither.

Honestly writing to make a living is a good enough motive, and will help to clarify for you what parts of your material feel commercially attractive. Writing in order to gain understanding or empathy is another worthwhile motive, and one which will come into play a great deal in fields such as memoir and New Age. Purely as an outlet for personal or artistic expression, writing is equally valid, though as a justification for spending regular, committed time on our craft, this reason, the purest of all, is often in danger of being downplayed, particularly by women writers who tend to be dismissive of what they bring to the writing table. It is not that women are less talented than their male counterparts; it is that we appear to take our ambitions less seriously.

I hope you read a lot, look, listen and squirrel away details. I hope you go out and have an interesting life, because being active as well as reflective will bequeath you material to use in your writing, and, more importantly, it will give you oxygen to breathe, time to rest and appreciate, time to notice the outside world. Writing cannot grow in isolation. It needs a source, it needs time out, just as we all do. Getting away from the desk gives us pause to reflect, allowing time for new ideas and inspiration to spark up. Energy is what gives writing its focus, and without outside interests, either our energy will be misapplied, or it will sag and wilt from lack of refreshment.

Writers spend a lot of time thinking, dwelling inside their heads or with their thoughts and feelings. If you are anything like me, you will watch people with fascination, just to notice their facial expressions, to try and imagine their motives. You may linger at the beach or be drawn to gaze hypnotically at waves crashing on a beach, or at the sunset, long after other people have packed away their picnic bags and gone home, brushing sand from their feet and already caught up with what happens next. Observation, empathy, intimacy and patience, all these qualities inform our writing and make it authentic. So, take time to do other things, to notice how life moves. That kind of patience is time well spent. If it makes you feel better, you can always call it research!

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A new mini-series in which I explore how we start writing.

We start writing seriously when we finally accept that there is nothing we would rather do, than sit all day and craft a story.  Or explain something that is dear to our hearts.  Or cut a swathe through old literature with a bright new perspective.

Writing – or communicating with others – has to be what motivates us to leave aside the laundry, work late at night, ignore the telephone and neglect to cook complicated meals.  In short, it has to be something of an obsession.  If it is not, we will fail to prioritise it enough, give it our love, our thought, our energy, tears and precious time.

For every writer out there who does write and who is struggling to make it, there will be many dozens who say, “Yes, I would love to write, and I would be good at it, too.  I have a great story to tell….” but who will look askance when it is suggested that they could put pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard. “Yes, of course I would love to, but once I got started, I would never stop, and I have too much else to do!”  Then, no matter how good our story, no matter how perfect our writing style or how witty our voice, nothing can happen.  We write when we sit down to write, and nothing else will do.  Simple.

Actually….not so simple.  As soon as we sit down to write, a dozen or twenty other things that we “ought to be doing” will pop into our heads for a look see how we wasted five hours today.  Everyone, is seems, has something better to do than write.  Perhaps it is a very British obsession, this idea that we should be occupied with something ‘more worthwhile’.  Sooner or later, most writers have to consider how they will handle the critic in their heads that suggests they “should” be doing something else more sensible, practical or lucrative.  That voice, which talks such convincing common sense, may come from our family members, from disillusioned parents who only want the best for us; from our spouse who is worried about the monthly payments; from our colleagues who think we should stop taking all this creative stuff so seriously; from other writers who see nothing but difficulty and disillusionment coming our way, and from ourselves, when we are unused to doing something as frivolous as actually writing a book from start to finish.

(To be continued)

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