Whether you’re a new writer or writing your third novel, a community to share ideas and receive encouragement is something special.

Follow my Club (Writers’ Pool) on Clubhouse to get this benefit. A community for writers to discuss, collaborate and support each other. It’s a non-judgemental, non-stuffy space which welcomes writers of all experience levels. It’s about helping each other up rather than knocking each other down. 

I run regular ‘rooms’ on the app about lots of aspects of writing and storytelling. Sometimes I invite special guests to join me in the room who can offer all kinds of valuable insights into the writing process and industry.

Writers’ Pool on Clubhouse

Clubhouse is an audio-only mobile social media platform which promotes real connection between people. There’s no pressure to speak in any of my rooms if you’re a bit shy. So whether you’re a speaker or you’d prefer to stay in the audience, my Club is a great way to get support and motivation in your writing.

What new writers find hard

Writers find it hard to put their story ideas onto paper for various reasons. It can be an unhealthy degree of perfectionism. It can be a lack of confidence in their skill or originality. It can be the lack of a writing habit – that is, a lack of consistent practice.

A new writer often meets a stumbling block early on when they realise that writing a novel (or any other book) is not as simple as they first thought. It’s the difference between appearance and reality. To the reading public, it looks as though an author sat down one day and produced the book straight from brain to page.

You should be reassured that this is not the case. An author does not sit down with just an idea, start writing, and have it all come out perfectly. Stream of consciousness writing is fine for your own diary or journal. It’s also fine for getting your initial story ideas out of your head so that you can stop carrying them around inside your brain. But that first brain dump is not what everyone reads on the bus or by the pool.

How can you make writing less hard?

There are two things to do. Firstly, learn about the craft of writing. Learn about creating characters, showing not telling, plotting, and a myriad of other skills. Secondly, form a writing habit. Write often. Even if you don’t like what you write, keep writing. You will improve if you keep at it. It’s impossible not to improve if you keep giving it a go.

There is also the option of getting help. 

Hiring an editor is the help most new writers have heard of. Most people are also aware that there are courses and programmes out there through which they can learn about the craft in a more time efficient way than ploughing through a whole library of books on the topic of writing.

Another option is story coaching. You can get help to develop your story ideas and characters. You can make sure you have a strong enough conflict in your story to sustain the plot. You can get the clarity and lightbulb moments to reignite your passion for your story and to get you over that road bump and back on the path to getting your story out of your head and into a book that will make others think you just sat down and wrote it!

Does this sound like you? Have you hit a bump in the road with your writing? Lost direction with your character and plot after a few chapters? Or got a load of notes but no idea how to form them into the story as it sounded in your head?

I have the perfect package to help you navigate that writing ‘road bump’ and move on with your novel-writing journey. My Navigate Your Writing ‘Road Bump’ Package helps you figure out the shape of the book you’re trying to write so that you can get over this sticky patch and move on with clarity and confidence.

Perfectionism – why its not serving you as a writer

Perfectionism is a common trait amongst writers. It is especially true of fiction writers, who often spend hours worrying over their exact word choices and word order. They might lose half an hour deliberating over a comma. Does this sound like you?

If you recognise yourself in this, then know this. Perfectionism is not serving you. 

Spending forever trying to make a single story perfect does not serve you. Carving out your single novel over years does not serve you. Keeping your writing secret does not serve you. Not moving on does not serve you.

Writing one single piece of fiction keeps you stuck. And while you’re stuck, there are people putting out books that are not as good as yours. They’re writing blogs on the Internet. They’re sharing their imperfect stories. They’re making sales. They’re becoming known. 

Most importantly, they are becoming better writers.

How to Overcome Perfectionism

In the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, the writers explain how this works. They tell the story of a ceramics teacher who split his class into two groups. The first group would be given a grade solely based on the quantity of work they produced. Their grade would have nothing to do with the quality. The second group of students was required to produce just one item, but in order to receive an A it had to be perfect.

Both groups worked away. The first group made piece after piece. They moved on quickly, not lingering on their work. The second group focused on a single piece, trying to find a way to make it flawless.

How to Overcome Perfectionism as a Writer

Yes, it can hurt to put out a story that someone might criticise for being less than perfect. But keeping your writing secret until you’ve crafted that one masterpiece will mean that masterpiece is never going to happen. You’ll have formed some great theories about how to write that perfect novel but you won’t have it there in reality.

Sticking to your one single novel, painfully carving out the words over years, is not the way to end up writing a great novel. The way to write great work is to write often and to write new stories and new scenes. 

Keep moving on. Form a writing habit. When you combine this with time spent learning the craft of writing fiction, you can’t help but improve in your storytelling, your structure and your style.

Write a story that will make someone cry

Many writers wish they knew how to write a story that will make someone cry. They want to know how to make their readers feel such strong emotion that they sob while reading about fictional characters. Many such writers get part of the answer on their own: they understand that to make people cry they need to have characters in their stories who feel strong emotions themselves. However, they are often still missing a key part of the characterisation process. That key part is character resilience. 

Once you’ve created this character we admire, give them something to struggle with. Give them an event that’s really hard for them to cope with, because it challenges the thing they care most about. If they care most about their young family, threaten that family. If they care most about getting a promotion that they’ve worked for since forever, introduce a character who’s even better qualified.

OK. You’ve challenged your character and they’ve answered the challenge. What next? Your character now needs to encounter hardship and difficulties on their journey to solving the problem. Things have to be hard. You have to give them something that’s difficult to achieve. You also have to make the obstacles in their way tougher and tougher to overcome. Their emotions need to be stretched tighter and tighter as they start to crack under the pressure.
They might feel a great temptation to give up and let the bad guy get what he wants. They must sink into a pit of despair. And there must be a terrible loss. To make someone cry when they read your story, you must put your character through an event that is too much for anyone to realistically bear. But even that is not enough.

You must go a step beyond this. What will make your reader cry is not so much the fact that something awful has happened. What brings your reader to tears is your character’s reaction to this event. There will be the immediate despair, of course. But then he or she must show their true mettle. They must pick themselves up, look their defeat in the face, and face it anyway. They must be defiant and resilient even though it is surely impossible that they will overcome.

Again, The Hunger Games offers us a great example of defiance and resilience. Katniss loses a friend and ally. She initially despairs but then shows her true courage and is defiant in the face of the enemy.

It is the resilience of the human spirit that makes a reader cry, not the sight of a character crumbling.

Will your character finally overcome the obstacles to their happiness and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Maybe. That’s up to you. You’re the writer. In a sad story with a tragic ending, certainly your character won’t. But they’ll go down fighting. The key to making your readers cry when they read your story is always your character’s resilience. 

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“I’ve got an idea… but I haven’t got a clue where to start.”

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard those words! What is that fear of getting started all about? It can be different issues for different people, but the most common reasons I dig out of people are as follows…

People sometimes don’t think they’re good enough to be a writer – as if writing a story, never mind a whole book is something only the elite can do. Remember this – every famous writer had to start somewhere. J.K Rowling was about as poor as a person can be without actually being homeless. Charles Dickens spent some of his childhood doing very unpleasant, dead-end work in a factory. They both had ideas. What made the difference was that they made a start. What you come up with first might not be very good – but I wouldn’t mind betting that those authors’ early attempts would make their famous later selves blush.

Often, that person with an idea hasn’t done any creative writing since they were in school. They feel they’ve forgotten the ‘rules’. How about marathon runners who only began running seriously as adults? It’s the same thing. We can train our brains just as we can train our bodies.

Some people worry that they’re going to get it wrong because they were ‘no good’ at English in school. Writing as an adult, when you get to choose exactly what to write, is completely different from writing in school. You’re not being given marks out of ten any more – you’re being given a chance to put your own voice out there… and having your work checked for you isn’t cheating any more – it’s called editing and proofreading!

Occasionally, it’s as simple as a nervousness about the blank page – that empty new document staring back at you. Just start writing. Write anything. You don’t even have to show anyone that first attempt. The point is that the page won’t be blank any more.

You can always get help. 

I can’t be the only one who is more interested in what a villain gets up to than the struggles of a goody-two-shoes hero.

We are taught from the time we are very small that we ought to be kind to others, aren’t we? That we shouldn’t take advantage of those weaker than ourselves? That it is wrong to cheat, lie and steal?

Of course we are. Of course it is right that we are. But when we write a story, we can have our ‘bad guys’ do anything we want them to do. We can have them commit audacious crimes, incite them to terrible deeds, and make them lie glibly through their teeth, all without any of the pangs of guilt a ‘normal’ person would feel.

We can make our creations do any, or all, of those things, without the risk of detectives knocking on our own doors.

The enduring appeal of a villain, from Count Dracula to Big Brother, Bill Sikes to Sauron, Moriarty to Voldemort, is his (or her) complete embodiment of evil in the story to which he belongs. Never sorry for his deeds, never tempted to mend his ways, he is the fascinating dark side of our own selves. Exploring this dark side within the safety of the covers of a book is a brave adventure.

A braver adventure still, though, would be the creation of a villain of your own. What heinous deeds could find their way from your brain to the page? Could you dare to explore the dark side?