So please help me to burst out of my naive little bubble and come join me...amidst the shameless delights of blogging.
My birth name is Karen-Zanda, but please...Kzee to you.
I have rather had to talk myself into this one, being a fairly private person. Alas, it became more and more difficult to ignore the fact that if you wish to write and have people read what you write it's an absolute necessity to enter the ring and make your presence felt!
Over the past weeks I have poured over blogs and Twitterers, links and kindle posts, seamlessly filling my waking hours with an inexhaustible array of 'how tos' and 'what nots', until my head was crammed so full as to render me incapable of 'writing' a single word of my beloved Novella.
A satisfying recent read - 'Wild Mind' by Natalie Goldberg nataliegoldberg.com urges us to write our insecurities out so, as I had been struck by a large dose of self-doubt I decided I would give it a go. If this isn't true sharing and baring then I don't know what is!
Here we go....
Top of the Plops -
'I feel like a writer version of one of those really bad 'Britain's got Talent' Acts, who actually believe they have something to offer but don't. Deluded comes to mind - I've just begun another fiction book after promising myself I wouldn't, because although I love to read them it distracts me from writing my own stuff. All I want to do then, each morning when I wake and before I go to sleep is read it...and escape. So I shut down my own writing process and become engrossed in someone else's - which is cool - but it won't get my book written! Then of course I'm stricken with that comfortable old slipper of infurr-iority because I can't possibly write to their standard or for as long as they do. Who would want to read my amateur dribblings anyway? What am I thinking?
The anxious rumblings creep in...So what am I going to do if I don't write? But I want to write, I need to write!
I fantasise about writing forever - my world existing between a pen and paper...or keyboard and screen, whichever... I shall write the plot to top all plots - I said plot not plop! I will write...it will come to me sooner or later for I am a writer!
I experiment with several plots a day in my head, only to watch them shrivel and die before my eyes as I pick them to bits or don't even get that far. That was obviously not the one. Having never been a patient sort I tell myself that my lesson in this futile exile is to learn exactly that.
So I wait each day for inspiration to strike, the elusive story that will transform me into a proper writer - I said proper not plopper! I even introduce the characters, mess about with them a bit and tell myself, 'they'll decide what they want to do next'. True to my word they curl up comfortably between the pages and sleep dreamless sleeps.
'I have no imagination!' That's it! and 'But I don't have as interesting life experiences as those other writers!'
Next days ponder - 'I'm just not all that clever then...'
I write myself off - not on - as a future writer. Maybe I just need to find a coffee shop like Ms Rowling and write there.
How did she do that? In front of people? Wasn't she distracted? Self conscious?
Ok, one more book might just do it - 'Writing Down the Bones - Freeing the Writer within', again nataliegoldberg.com. Another superb read that did manage to get my juices flowing. To the point where I was waking at 4am and writing a whole chapter!
Bearing in mind this is the first time I've attempted the challenge of a longer piece, being more familiar with short stories and poetry...I am now questioning whether I should break it down into bite sized fiction as I'm feeling a little impatient...' ◦
