#30

I’ve been writing for a music site for a little while and have managed to finish a bunch of short form fiction pieces after years of starting things and never finishing them. It’s all varying degrees of awful but being able to draw a line under stuff and move on was in itself a huge step forward for me.

I’ve just started something longer form and I’m determined not to let it get buried in my graveyard of unfinished novels. In some ways I’m a bit disappointed that my ambitions have diminished from ‘craft a lasting world peace through the sheer force of my genius a la Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey’ to ‘just finish one shit novel for the love of god just one.’ Life, eh?

#31

I used to write a lot for myself - it was therapeutic, cathartic and helped me unload what was in my head.

After a while I began to post some bits anonymously on a blog and the feedback I received from a lot of pieces I wrote on there gave me enormous confidence to the point that now I am able to put my name to pieces with a bit of pride.

This year I’ve spend 6 months producing a couple of issues of a new paper fanzine for HFC which has been enormously diverting, a labour of love and again, the feedback other people have given me has been fabulous. The odd constructive comment, which I’ve tried to take on board for Issue 2 (out this evening, as it happens).

This is just my experience, I would always urge anyone that enjoys it to write. With practice your style evolves, and if you want to find an audience, there will be one out there.

Sadly, I can’t really offer advice with the RSI aside from glibly and unhelpfully suggesting you channel Churchill and employ a number of typists to dictate to day and night.

Good luck with it, though pervo, I hope you’re able to sate your appetite for scribing.

#32

I’ve been writing creatively for about 7 years now and, like you, have also been published locally. I totally empathise with you on the “how can I get somewhere with this?” question and the resulting self-analysis against others you see getting somewhere.

I think the key thing is focussing on what you want to write and keeping an eye out for opportunities relating to that genre / market. Becoming involved in a group or specialist online forum around that subject can help you network - even from your desk - and I think that’s the most important factor in gaining opportunities. The old “it’s not what you know, it’s who” rings absolutely true here and you need to keep focussed on your markets to make sure you don’t miss out. Sometimes only a small handful of people actually apply for what might seem like very prestigious programs e.g. BBC writing ones!

in terms of the football piece (which sounds excellent, by the way) I guess I can understand the football website’s point of view. Football’s their main market, and comedy and world events could certainly be aprt of a piece, but not at the expense of what their readers go there for. Why not try sending it somewhere like Private Eye or a similar publication? Yes, you’d have missed the boat topically perhaps, but you never know!

For me, I’ve stopped writing short stories and poetry for the time being and trying to get my way through a first draft of a novel for children (which I started over 2 years ago). I’m not necessarily writing a lot more, but my focus is on it only and I’m actively saying “no” to other opportunities I’d have taken in the past to give myself a sporting chance. Just sitting down and working out where I wanted to go really helped.

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#33

How do you get past the embarrassment, fear and quest for perfection??

I’m kinda lucky (or unlucky) that I’m really keen to share my creativity with others and crave feedback. But it’s a great idea to try out a local writing group. No matter how remotely you may live, there’s pretty much always one nearby. The good thing about these groups is they’re always stacked full of people who write but are a little embarrassed (maybe just at first) to share and also stacked full of supportive people who know how it feels to be in your shoes.

They’re also pretty good for your social life. I met my wife at one!

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#34

write about music (and sometimes film) semi-professionally nowadays… but I say “semi-” because I still hardly get any money for it and for only a handful of places so far. I do enjoy it a lot but I’m heading towards an age where I need to consider how feasible this is when no one really pays aspiring journalists very well anymore

#35

oh also my wavering anxiety doesn’t help

#36

Hardly any money is pretty good these days. Sadly. I keep meaning to try and find some place that’ll pay actual cash money for pieces but there aren’t many around. Which since the vast majority of the bands I write about don’t make any money is probably about fair.

Also, yeah, the anxiety makes making money out of words something of a pipe dream.

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#37

Writing a lot for my job has now absolutely crushed any enthusiasm I have for writing in my spare time.

Used to write a lot of song lyrics for my bands and - in that limited experience - I never once got past the embarrassment, fear and quest for perfection. I just don’t think those things ever go away in any creative pursuit.

I have a friend who’s an author and her advice is just to write loads, even if you hate it afterwards. Also, she’s a big advocate of Stephen King’s book ‘on writing’.

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#39

My dream when I was a young 'un was to be a writer, and I guess I’ve managed to make that a reality in one form or another. I wrote (appalling) fiction as a teenager and some (passable - won a couple of prizes) poetry at university, but always understood it would be practically impossible to make a living from that (I kind of wished I’d been in the US where writing MFAs are more of a thing - but c’est la vie). So I stared doing stuff for the student newspaper as well, reviews and interviews and columns, then got a job as a reporter on a local paper, then a trade magazine, then moved into marketing and doing copywriting. So I’ve always made a living from writing, even though it’s not the glamorous side of things.

As for writing for pleasure / creative writing, it’s nearly all been focused into doing my blog, which has been popular enough for me to keep it up - I’ve been nominated for some awards, get sent freebies, been offered paid work off the back of it. Outside of NaNoWriMo, I haven’t really done any fiction for a long time, even though I really enjoyed it when I did it.

I don’t know what I’d suggest for getting over fear of embarrassment of failure. I guess I have quite a lot of self-belief - if I thought it was crap, I wouldn’t do it - but I’m aware of my shortcomings too. But ultimately, you just have to write, get stuff down, anything, no matter how crap, because you have to start somewhere. And over time you’ll start to realise which bits are crap and which bits you’re proud of and you’ll start to do more of the latter.

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#41

I feel like I have the opposite problem - my writing is good but I never have any ideas. I always thing I’d be good at doing ghost written autobiographies or movie tie-ins or something, where I don’t need to actually develop a plot, just write nice scenes.

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#42

Usually at some point in a year, I’ll start writing a short story and then hit some point and abandon it. I might go back to the one I started a few months ago and (gasp) actually finish it.

I’ve found with fiction writing, writing a short screenplay for my course (and then making it) has helped a bit with my confidence. Given the nature of it, I found I could get an idea down without worrying about the prose necessarily having to be great: I like what @jazzballet says above about accepting good ideas being able to carry with less than amazing writing, which is maybe a mindset I should try to adopt more, especially because one’s writing will probably be better when not being burdened with whether or not it’s really great or whatever.

I wrote another screenplay (and surprised myself by it being twenty-four pages) recently, which maybe I can rework into a prose short story at some point if nothing goes ahead with it.

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#43

I’m guessing that’s not for pieces on self released drone metal albums. I should probably find a more saleable niche.

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#45

I think that’s all about right, tbh. I’m so fidgety lately though, like I start writing or reading something and find something else to do within thirty seconds. Feels like the concentration levels have drained completely.

I think that’s why I post in paragraphs on here this last year tbh, it’s like channeling it somewhere else safe in the knowledge it’ll be mostly forgotten about within a couple of days.

I hope your children’s book goes well though, you should post some excerpts if this communal group gets going.

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#46

Stephen King is a perfect example of someone who clearly just plows through regardless. Sure it results in a lot of waffle but the man is more than capable of producing gems for fun, his entire run, with the odd exception, between 1980 and 1990 is almost perfect perfect pop fiction.

#47

Hmm. The fact I had to google b2b probably doesn’t bode well for my prospects.

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#49

Was reading about journalists like Lily Lynch who took off for the Balkans and Russia, and dig dirt and sleaze on local politicians and gangsters and send dispatches back to the west. I would love that job if I wasn’t cripplingly terrified of strangers and gangsters.

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#50

She’s endlessly fascinating to me - she seems to hate everyone equally, so she’s far less predictable/dreary than a lot of foreign correspondents in that region. So many of them on Twitter are uncritically in thrall to the EU, anti-Russia, basically parroting liberal talking points. I don’t necessarily disagree with those perspectives but my GOD it can be boring to sift through the same hysterical Russia take 20 times. She’s a breath of fresh air even though I think she can be a bit “political correctness gone mad” at times and dismissive of her own privilege.

Balkanist is such a great idea for a project and has made me far more cynical/wary about what I read regarding Eastern Europe. Sadly I’m not original, confident or knowledgeable enough to do anything like that!

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#51

I think I’m similar to you in a respect. I currently write at a magazine, but will likely move into copywriting or content stuff in the future. I’m not especially journalistic (don’t have NCTJ for a starter) and there just aren’t that many positions in editorial anymore. It also seems a bit of a closed shop, but I think that’s probably just an excuse I make to myself. It’s a bit of a cliche, but I wish I was around before the dawn of the internet when everyone was still buying newspapers and magazines.

Still, I love writing. I’m much better at getting ideas across in writing, rather than speaking.

#52

Yeah, over the last year I’ve started reading a lot more independent journalism, it helps you learn how to be more cynical about what we’re told, which can only be good IMO.

#53

Yeah I sort of knew print was dying as I was getting into it (I’ve said here before, but I was made redundant from my first reporter job while I was still training to begin it), it’s been a perfect storm for a long time. But there are a lot of content / marketing roles out there. It’s easy to think of it as selling your soul but I don’t know how many people out there in editorial positions feel like they’re contributing much to society so shrug emoji

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