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1st July 2015 This isn't actually my post but rather a post from a trio member. I love what Kay has to say and can't help wondering how many others are out there feeling the same way. As much as I would like to be a published author I am loving so many like minded people coming my way. Is that an ego thing? I honestly don't believe it is. Instead I think that knowing so many others out there dare to dream somehow makes the desire for the dream so much stronger. It becomes less lonely to take a chance and failure less frightening.
Hello, this is Kay here, just popping in to add my support
to Barb and Alison in our mutual endeavours to get our writings out into the
world.
To write or not to write?
Three years ago I was no writer – I was a reader, sure, and
a mother, and an engineer. If you’d asked me the question then I would have
shrugged my shoulders, uncaring. After a day of writing technical reports I had
no wish to put fingers to keyboard at home as well.
What happened? It’s hard to say - frustration with work,
perhaps, or with the direction of my life. Just another mid-life crisis. I took
time off work and took an idea that had been kicking around in my head and
wrote a novel. In the process I caught this disease, this addiction. You know
what I mean.
There was a point when my direction hung in the balance – I
returned to work and set the book aside – but the condition of the local
economy saw me back at home. As you can imagine, I became the writing
equivalent of the alcoholic at the bar or the gambler at the casino.
Three ‘UFO’s and another three started and I’m still
reeling, trying to understand what on earth I think I’m doing. Somewhere along
the way, there was no denying that in terms of the direction of my thoughts and
how I was wanting to spend my time, I had become a writer. So in one sense the
answer to the question seems obvious – the compulsion to keep writing is
overwhelming.
BUT… Whether I should
write is still a question I ask myself, because writing is, frankly,
terrifying. Here I am plugging away for months on a
manuscript which may never be read. One of the first things I learnt was that
it is impossible to judge the merit of one’s own writing. Why else are there so
many unsolicited manuscripts turning up on Agents’ desks? Few of us are the
writers we believe ourselves to be, and fewer still the writers we would wish
to be. The odds are against me getting any decent financial return for all the
effort I’ve put into my books. To know this and to continue is the greatest
leap of faith I have ever taken.
This is why I’m so grateful for the support of fellow authors,
like Barb and Alison, who are in the same place and understand. Between us, we
will get our books published, whether through traditional publishing or
self-publishing - it gets to the stage where you just need your work to be out
there, rather than sit and struggle with ‘what-if’s. Just as importantly, we
can kick around ideas and hopes and fears that may be incomprehensible to
people like the old me, the normal one, before I developed this wonderful and
terrifying addiction.
We can do this.
Like I said, I love what she has to say. I really hope Alison and Kay inspire other people to have a say even from a reader point of view only. I am hoping that the way we write is coming through as much as what we write and is enough to keep you interested in following this blog, and that eventually the blog can showcase small pieces and get some input along the the way. We may want to write but a good writer cherishes the reader, is a reader and never forgets that, and depends on the reader to get better, to be that little bit more. Writing and reading, writer and reader - the relationship is a marriage with mutual trust and appreciation.