#Writing Your Own Book? Take Our Advice...

It's never easy writing a story. The #words may sound great in your head but seem dry when written on the page. So how do you write? Read on...

Sketch by Liza Okropiridze

I try to write the way my characters would speak. I write with contractions ("I'd like" instead of "I would like"- though it took a bad #review for me to realise I'd started writing my books using long form which made the voices sound stiff and formal).

I'm an English teacher so grammar is important, as is vocabulary. Getting it right makes the reading experience easier and more comfortable. I'm also a proof-reader / copy-editor, so I spot mistakes really easily- which makes reading any self-published book less fun because they usually have some mistakes which annoy me. My books weren't perfect- it took 4-5 tries to get Book 1 exactly right. The Amazon team is patient when it comes to uploading new versions, thank god! I took more time and care with my next books before uploading them.

So how do you write? I write from random inspiration. I write what my characters tell me to write, because my story already exists and I'm just telling it the way it should be told...I believe in my characters and I believe in my story. Everyone has their own way and you should practise until you find yours.

#AnneRice says: “There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn.”

#JohnSteinbeck said about writing: “If there is magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no-one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.”

Another writer says this: "Editing is the process that hits this nail hard. Read your work like a reader will. Does it impact you as you the writer intended? Never be ambiguous in your intent. If you lose them along the way, you have failed.

It may be a chapter, it may be a paragraph. It could be a sentence. It could be a word. It very will could be word order or sentence order. When you clarify in the editing of your work, in the eighth and tenth reading of your work, you reach a point of your true intent for what you have written. That's the hard work that makes the #magic connect for the reader.

The rules are there to help. The idea of breaking them is minor. Learn to use them and you have a tool. Master your tools and you have trade craft.

When writers or artists in any genre or medium are about rule breaking, they usually have no substance. The great rule breakers have great things to say.
The others produce noise."

Get writing, get playing. Enjoy your creations and do everything you can to make them a success with readers. With any luck you'll find readers as wonderful as the ones reading the #BloodOmen Saga right now- readers who believe in your story as much as you do! 

Good luck!