What Bothers Me As A Writer And What I Plan To Do About It

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” — Anton Chekhov

Reality…

When you say you are a writer, the average person imagines someone plonked in a chair, dirty spent coffee cups surrounding one’s laptop, words flowing easily, one after the other. And suddenly it’s done, for there’s no more painful agony than a half-written piece!

That is not reality!

There’s madness in our profession. There’s also huge personal sacrifice!

Sometimes the writing muscle is something akin to my upper arms, a little on the floppy side, and hard to tighten up, and on some days, just absent on leave!

More often than not, words don’t flow. Things look, and sound, shitty. And the desire to give up, ever present…so much easier than to keep going.

Writers are never on holiday. They’re forever thinking, imagining, dreaming, accepting, and more often than not, tossing ideas, so that the hourly rate if one could cost it, is laughably low.

‘The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.’ William H. Gass

Yet there are pluses. Writers are omnipotent. They get to say when their story is done. They, and only they can insert the final full-stop. It’s the one time when they enjoy power, because you and I know, all stories live on. But there is no ending. Stories go on in our heads, but the full-stop is still ours to use.

So, in this article Dr Mehmet Yildiz put out yet another writing challenge. For those who may be too busy to read the full article he’s just asking writers on ILLUMINATION to talk about their frailty, as well as their successes, to talk of their writing journeys and pinpoint their highs and lows.

Yesterday I couldn’t have responded to the challenge. That’s because I was experiencing one of those lows that all writers suffer from time to time.

I tried, believe me, but those words eluded me, and I gave up.

Today though, there is a renewed me, and so I now give it my best shot.

Pain Points of a Writer…

Where do I start?

Let’s look at my first weeks of writing on Medium, where the obvious agony was writing, and writing, and not one soul read my work.

Not one clap was given.

I was invisible.

Can you imagine? It’s not that you think, especially as a new kid on the block, that your writing exceeds all others. Lord knows, we all have to start somewhere.

But still, I felt abandoned.

All the confidence I had drummed up, all the doubts that I’d had to sweep away, all the fear I had to overcome in order to send my words into the stratosphere, were back with a vengeance! It was hard. It’s not that I thought of myself as a gifted writer who overnight would be discovered. That is the stuff of dreams. And I’m not a dreamer.

But I wondered…I wondered how any writing platform might encourage and support the timid newbie. Could there be a way of assuring them that their writing is at least one sentence away from being crappy?

For that would be so good, even if it ain’t gonna to happen.

But you know what would help? A little gremlin especially dreamt up for beginners that says, I read your work, and here are a few claps to keep you motivated, as James Knight did for me when he stumbled across me. James, those fifty claps meant everything, the eventual words of encouragement, even more.

It took away the pain. I felt validated. James himself is an inspirational writer. He makes me laugh. He makes me cry, because he brings passion to everything he writes about, and to everything he undertakes. It’s why his students love him.

The fact that he spent time, clapping, if not reading, eased the pain. But the fact is he does read people’s work. And when he comments it is always worth reading. Thank you James.

Coming up with ideas for writing…

I don’t struggle for things to write about. I have a whole book of possibilities. All they need is molding and bending and I’ll be off at the races.

Too easy? I wish!

Writing that teaser, the one that is sure to hook the masses in, the one that hooks a reader for all time, is where I behave like my daughter’s cat, hovering at the door, afraid to embrace the big bad world, and going back inside, in my case, back inside myself.

I can only get better.

My desires?

Is there any censuring going to take place here?

Seriously, of course I have desires…desires that someone will read my stories, especially in ILLUMINATION where I hope that all I have imagined in my pretty little head…creates the same imagery for my readers.

Writers don’t write to make loads of money. ’Tis a bonus if it happens, but initially there’s just a need that grows and develops, and gradually takes shape, and writing prevails.

My top five stories

I am, at heart, an environmentalist, and a humanist. I want to change so much in the world. With a desire to end discrimination, to experience a world where race and ethnicity are merely hallmarks of our story, and all are valued, is my dream.

I’d also secretly like to go back in time and be the better parent that I love to write about. What a dream that would be!

And so, it’s appropriate that one of my top stories is this one. Motherhood changes all of us in ways we could never have imagined. I think that is truly where we fall in love.

Here is my top-performing story. It too is about love, through a letter purportedly written by Albert Einstein’s daughter. After I’d written it Paula Bramante, PhD contacted me with some information that suggests that perhaps his daughter didn’t write it.

Should I take it down? It was written in good faith, and, more importantly the tenet of the story still holds. Love is what will restore us as a society.

I wrote this poem to welcome a friend’s newborn. She loved it, as did many others. Gosh I have written so many Dr Seuss poems over the years,and taught his style of poetry. I should have kept them all.

Funny the things that pop into one’s head about integrity! My own daughter starring in the story, for all the wrong reasons!

And this one…teachers are challenged in so many ways, and when you are a young teacher, the challenge is real. How to deal with things, and support a child through the mire, is so hard!

Here are my ‘great’ stories that did not receive the required level of attention from readers…

How can we ever be assured that our stories are great, ergo, worth reading?

Having joined Book Chapters in recent times, I was excited to write, in chapter form, ‘In The Name Of My Father’. It’s a book that took many hours of debate in my head, and a huge number of weeks to write, because some of it was close to home! It’s a story with many twists and turns, but I now realize it was not suitable for submitting chapter by chapter.

The things is, when you have chapters that take you back and forward in time as a reader, you have to be concentrating just on my work and thirsting for more. (Joke!)

I’m wondering if this is possible in Book Chapters. Readers are not thirsting for my work. They’re simply reading one little section at a time, in my case somewhat disparate parts of a story where more often than not, there would have been no obvious connection between consecutive chapters.

Also, the story is probably too long, though Jay Toran assures me otherwise.

You know how we all thirst for curation? The reason is that it will get many more eyes on your work, and even more dollars into your pocket. So far I have had but one curation within the story. To be honest it is my favorite chapter. The story generally may be a flop from the readers’ chopped-up reading perspective, but this chapter (I am glad) did not fail curation. That pleases me because I fought tooth and nail to make the scene come alive. I still read it with tears in my eyes.

I imagined every feeling, every mannerism, every physical feature of the two characters. I played them out in my mind. I read the scene aloud many times. I could see the bishop’s drab, dreary, daunting, cold office. I imagined his paunch, his bald head, his envy of the young, handsome priest, and from that, I wrote.

So, no curation generally in my book, but I can understand why. The chapters disparate as they are, can’t make sense in isolation. The temptation is to give up, but at least what I felt was a star depiction, was curated. Should it belong here? I think yes. It’s just a star in lonely planet of words.

This next one wasn’t curated. It was highly-topical here in Australia, still is, and Grace Tame I believe, will go on the be a champion for abused women.

I Imagined this one below would have done better. It challenges us as parents to trust, to build on trust, and see all of our children becoming more the the sum of their parts. It was not curated by the way!

I grew up in an era where people with disabilities were hidden away. To be honest I was afraid of them, except for John who worked for my dad. Dad often struggled to understand what John was saying, but we kids could interpret. He loved when we were in the shop!

And now we actually realize that disability doesn’t mean you can’t learn. The door has been thrown wide for many people with learning problems. I love that. The world is a better place for it. This story was curated, but gained little traction.

To be honest I thought this one would do well, but maybe considering one’s death and how that might be managed, is a little confronting for people.

This is another disability story that was a flop in terms of readership. Sadly it speaks volumes about cracking the Medium code, or living a life on the Caribbean. Let’s just say this seems to be another dead-in-the-water, topic.

People who regularly read my offerings:

Desiree Driesenaar The Garrulous Glaswegian Britni Pepper Matt Ray Liam Ireland Roz Warren Aldric Chen

There are many writers whose stories I love to read, including, but not limited to the following.

Terry Mansfield Helen Cassidy Page Stuart Englander Desiree Driesenaar EP McKnight, Ryan Fan James Knight Jim McAulay🍁 Dr Mehmetyildiz Ayodeji Awosika Trista Signe Ainsworth Tom Handy

These are writers whose stories I love to follow…

Dew Langrial Sherry McGuinn James Frank Sanders Marley K.

Future writing plans include:

Parenting…a hot topic I hope. We all want to be better parents, better friends and inspirational leaders for our children.

Teaching…as with parenthood, so many things we’d like to change, differing perspectives on behavior and a landscape peppered with possibilities. Ideas abound, but bringing them to fruition in a meaningful way, is a whole nother story. Yes I did write that…one of my pet hates!

Environment…this is a topic that is bigger than life itself, but our willingness to be part of the change is what might restore it back to life!

If I owned Medium?

Well I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be sunning myself in….

Seriously, you ask?

I’d be doing my darndest to keep all my writers on board. We are the kernels of Ev Williams’ fruits, after all.

I’d be making sure that every writer, however humble, gets a monetary acknowledgement each and every month, one that buys them more than a beer.

But wait! There’s more. I know many writers on Medium who write impressive stories and earn zilch…or next to! I’d be working to ensure they don’t take their bat and ball and disappear over the horizon.

That’s my penny’s worth, Dr Mehmet Yildiz. I’m sure I could come up with a lot more, but for the time being it is what it is. I need to go stretch, or buy a kneeling chair. Such is the pain in the butt of a writer!