Juiced On Writing

Christmas and Seasonal wishes to all. Here’s my personal Christmas wish list for the writer within. Following up, I’ll have a Twelve Days of Christmas Gifts for The Writer and some New Years Resolutions also. Oh, and an actual Business (Action) Plan to make some of these so-called wishes or resolutions come true.

1. To Be a Writer

This is a mind-set thing more than anything. I keep thinking others won’t accept me as a writer unless I have something published. Never mind the thing where many well known authors never found fame until they’d died, or that other thing where being published doesn’t actually produce any income on some occasions.

So, taking away those facts I remain out of control of, brings me back to the inner focus of this Christmas wish – I need to think of myself as a writer. I need to accept that. And I wish for a time when the vocation panel in my passport simply says “Writer”. In the meantime, perhaps a mug might do the trick (see Twelve Days of Christmas Gifts for the Writer).

2. To Be Published

The ultimate wish, to be published. I need not say any more.

Although…

It’s highly unlikely that No. 3 below will come to fruition unless I ramp up No. 2 to being published – often.

3. To Make a Living Writing

Okay, so it’s much more likely to deep down be a wish to be the next big thing, literally rolling in disposable income. But at this point in time, let’s just tone it down a little and go for something slightly more realistic if not just as hopeful -

Make enough money to live off. Comfortably.

4. To Create or Find a Unique Position in Writing.

There was no Stephen King before that first successful book of his. There was no JK Rowling – until that first book of hers. Even then, stories about wizard schoolboys weren’t 100% a new idea when Harry Potter was born. And people were doing horror fiction before Stephen King was born also. But as examples of authors who have succeeded in finding themselves a unique position in the industry, both open up that possibility in this later day for the rest of us.

Maybe, just maybe, that can happen again. Maybe there is hope or room for more Black Swan authors – authors who effect society in larger proportions than their own work might ever suggest it being worthy of.

Luck, great timing, fortune or fate – finding yourself in the unique position of being a best-seller write-your-own-cheque to richness author, and as the accredited author who everyone goes to if they want to read about true-to-life disasters, or wizard schools or bone-chiller thrillers or…this is one of the ultimate secret-wishes of many writers out there.

This wish is not to be mistaken for being the author who got the next big idea (teenage vampire heroes, anyone?) but then is followed by every man and his dog getting in on the act. See No. 10 for that one. No, a unique position means you can continue to write in that genre or theme, even if every man and dog is doing it after you, and you’re still guaranteed some good sales, because you do it well, and you are known to do it well. You are the one (if not the only). That’s a nice wish.

5. To Have a Writing Office / Writing Space

Nothing says “professional” like having a dedicated place to evidence where that professionalism goes on. For some of us, this might be a “proper” office with a real desk, bookshelves, a calendar, memoirs, frames ready for book jackets.

For others it might remain the dining room table, with the daily detritus moved over in a pile to make way for your journal, or laptop.

I have a couple of writing spaces – a proper office which makes me feel too quiet, and a laptop on my lap sitting on one of the family sofas. The later is much more productive. In fact, I can write just about anywhere, so a bed is just as good, as is a cafe, the living room with blaring television sets, and outside if only laptop screens could be seen in daylight. But many of us crave that ultimate of things – an actual writer’s studio, or office.

6. To Find an Understanding Agent / Editor / Publisher

Actually, if you’re lucky enough to have found one, I figure you already have an understanding one. Throughout the lifetime of a writing career, I believe many agents or publishers might come and go. Editors swap out on you, too – moving onto new jobs just in the middle of your latest book publication. Or so I’ve been led to believe, as this has happened to many published authors.

Having worked in the corporate world for many years, I know the difference between finding a kindred spirit, or soul mate in your career – someone who will stick with you through hell and highwater, even if it costs them money. And then I know the truth of it all – that we’re all in it to make money, and as a business. Maintaining a professional and working relationship with that agent, editor or publisher is, I believe, a better Christmas wish – one which requires me to work just as hard as I expect them to be working on my behalf. And letting them do their job is also helpful, without hassling them too often. Whether I like them as people and will make them the godparent of my next child or not.

7. Accreditation and Acknowledgement

I wrote this one down, after thinking back to the Writer’s Strike of early this year, and how ultimately it effected the entire world, especially around television programming and television series from America – and for almost this entire year also.

Writers have long been the forgotten heroes of television series, movies and west end shows. Entertainment. Yet we, as a society, continue to imbibe the actors and producers of such media with many more accolades (and monetary awards) than those who created the ideas, the dialogue and the stories in the first place.

Many writers aren’t used to, or even ready to go out there into the public. The inner hermit of being a creator is, in fact, encouraged in many of us. I personally prefer to sit in the background, shying away from any kind of compliment so I understand this somewhat stereotypical trait of the creative, yes I do. And attending a Hollywood ceremony to receive an award for my own writing would go against the very grain of my ego (If I should be so talented or lucky). But I think it a reasonable wish to ask that Writers receive more acknowledgement of their additions to our society, both in fiction and non-fiction than currently still exists. This seems a worthy wish to ask of Santa.

8. To Be Able to Write – and Have Accepted – Exactly What You Want to Write

Probably not a compatible wish with that of either making a living as a writer (unless you’re a Black Swan author like Stephen King or JK Rowling – and even then, Stephen King couldn’t recreate his success writing as Richard Bachman, could he?) or of finding an understanding Publisher.

But it would be kind of nice to be able to just write that witches and vampires story sitting in my head, even if it’s been done a billion times before. You know what I mean?

Anyway, Christmas wishes away, there’s no such thing as a new idea, but maybe there are different markets and approaches which will work. Being stuck down to one genre is not something I particularly want, no matter how successful that might be for me. So, for the sake of my inner muse, allowing me to look at different genres when I need to may sound like a career problem, but a little wish won’t do me any harm.

9. To Break the Writer’s Block Wall

Just like a real brick wall, simply wishing it away (unless you happen to have a genie in your pocket, perhaps) probably won’t work. So don’t bother wasting a Christmas wish on this one, either.

I have a belief – I don’t suffer from writer’s block in the first place. When I was working in the corporate world, telling my boss I wasn’t going to attend his precious meeting because I was “blocked” would have gone down with a ton of bricks, unlike the wall we are talking about metaphorically. So it’s not an excuse I accept in my own creative life.

Yes, there are times when ideas don’t come when I’m wanting them to. But there are equally times when too many come at once, and those can be saved for that more trough-like day. And in writing a novel, I’ve often struck times where the scene or chapter goes exactly no-where and I have wasted days of my life not producing. I figure my muse just needed the break, and he’ll come back strong some other day. It’s all a negotiation process.

What I refuse to believe exists is the thing called “a block”. There are differences in quality or quantity of work, and between inspiration and procrastination, but I’m never blocked. I might be slower, or less creative than other times. But there’s no wall there.

10. To Find Fame or Fortune with that Next “Great Idea”

Don’t we all hanker to be the next JK Rowling, able to write our own cheques, and stop writing forever if we please. With houses all over the world, and the power to give a small country’s national deficit as a charity payment to any cause we believe in? To pick and choose what work we might bother with?

Still – go back to No. 8 above. There’s no such thing as a new idea. Everything has been done before. The best we can hope is to write in a genre that suddenly becomes cross-over or best-seller, to be that ground-breaker first author having written something a little different around a less popular theme or genre which co-incidentally – and at time of publication, the public seem to suddenly be looking for. And better yet – the creator of a published and copywritten idea that Hollywood might like to make a movie from. Or to write so well we get nominated for a Man Booker Prize, or Nobel Prize or…to become the expert source of knowledge for thousands of students. I dunno. All of that.

The best form of this wish, as far as I can see, given the possible millions of competing writers out there with the same airy-fairy wish (and statistically, a good chance of swiping that “great idea” away from us anyway) is -

To write in the best way possible for yourself and your readers. To know your markets and their rules, but also how to break those same rules. To keep abreast  of trends (in case somebody beats you to publishing that new idea of yours six months earlier than yours will be ready- which is guaranteed to happen). To be willing to try out and fail at those new ideas (just like Einstein or Thomas Edison or anyone else who suddenly had an overnight great idea after years and a lifetime of having rubbish ones). And to constantly work on improving your own writing, so that at least you’ll die a well-spoken literary writer, and the best writer you possibly could ever be. But mainly to write to make yourself happy, and if others fall in line then that’s just a happy bonus.

Merry Christmas Wishes to all Writers Out There.

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