Archive for category: A Writer Writes

I don’t want to state the obvious, but a writer writes. Whilst other people might vent on radio phone-ins or pour it all out to a therapist, a writer has a compulsion to put into words – in whatever medium – a morsel of an idea, a moment of clarity or disillusion – something that may form an outline for a character or later shape itself into a story.

I have always believed that success breeds motivation – and I wasn’t wrong. When I was offered a 3-book deal with Poolbeg Press, the new focus of writing with a purpose precipitated a flurry of intensive work. What did surprise me was that despite my publisher’s faith in me, I realised I couldn’t abandon every other aspect of my non-writing life and superglue my rear end to the chair ten hours a day. The reality is other non-writing life has to continue as before.

What I do believe is the motivation derived from someone taking a chance on me, would send my self-belief rocketing and automatically, increase productivity!

And yet even small successes can provide incredible motivation or in equal measure, temporary discouragement. Take competitions, and why we writers continue to enter them.

The stats are there, but we ignore them, always hopeful to make the longlist, or the shortlist or god forbid, actually win something. When I submitted to the Bath Novel Award (www.bathnovelaward.co.uk): 1201 entries received, from 38 countries, whittled down to a longlist of 24.

And on the morning of that longlist announcement, I was nervous, I was full of anticipation: for some reason, I believed my title could be among the twenty-four!

I read the helpful, alphabetically-listed titles, and as my title was early in the alphabet, my disappointment was swift.

But it was the strength of my emotion, the depth of my upset at yet another ‘No’, that took me by surprise. Logic and odds didn’t enter in to it; it was a loss, a loss of possibility.

It made me recall a passage, that had struck me forcibly in Liane Moriarty’s novel ‘Truly Madly Guilty’:

“It felt like another loss. Each time he thought he was doing well, avoiding hope. Each time he told himself, I have no expectations, but with each new failure, it hurt so much, that he understood the hope had been there after all. […] It didn’t get easier either. It got worse. A cumulative effect. Loss upon loss.”

Oliver, in ‘Truly Madly Guilty.’

But a little perspective required – it was only a competition! I have since dusted myself down and entered many more with greater success.