AUTHOR'S CORNER;

THE DEVIL IN ME

Now over the years which I have endeavoured to write, I have been faced with one reoccurring question; why don't I change my style of writing?  To which I always reply, why? Only to be bombarded with reasons such as - my writing is too contemporary, too intense, full of ins and outs, saturated in devious tragedies and twisted story plots!  Some find the flavour of my work too intense, others too tragic, but most have agreed...it is different and gripping and certainly page turning!  Finding my work interesting only leaves me baffled as to why friends and family are always suggesting that I should perhaps opt for writing popular fiction!  There is nothing wrong with popular fiction; I enjoy it just as much as the next guy!  But it is simply not my style of writing....sorry.

Which brings me to my point; why should I be sorry?  I am lucky enough to have my own unique style, to see the world in my own unique way and hopefully thought provoke along the way!

You see as a writer, I feel that my job is to write the world as I see it, to indulge the reader in a different direction. Otherwise, what do I, as a new writer, have to bring to the table?  Or in other words, think of it this way, if you were going to sell something and you wanted what you were selling to be a unique hit, would you sell the same old, same old, or would you like a brand of your own? Something that is different unique only to your name?

Yes, I know that my style is different, deep, tragic even, but it's my style and nobody else!  I want to be heard and in order to be heard I must speak with my own voice!  Because (and yes, I have just started a sentence with because, I am the writer) any artist can give into pressure, anyone of us can see what is current out there and imitate. But are we being true to ourselves, our art? 

 

My writing may be deep, may be intense, I may have plots and sub plots coming out of twisted side plots and my heroin might be a little sneaky, slightly crazy, a bit neurotic!  But there is method in my madness (read my reviews) because my readers find me interesting.  And though they may be a small following at the present time (I have only two novels in publication) they are growing in numbers.  

As writers we must remember, that not everyone is going to like our style, agree with the storyline; some may even be irritated, others bored.  But none of this matters as long as you, the writer, are writing from the heart!  Because, unless you feel that passion, the tingling in your fingertips, the butterflies in your stomach when you write, then you ain't really creating!  And I truly believe that every writer must be true to themselves, because it is after all themselves that they are offering!

I do not write for a mass of readers....I write so that readers could read my writing!  And if the masses have not yet caught on...it's okay, because the only way they will believe in me is if I believe in myself.  The only way they will discover me and like me, is by me pushing my style out there!  Actions change minds.  I am creating Sammar Ally brand!

So what do I say to those who have doubted me?  Do I change course and start writing romance, horror, thrillers? What do I say to all the publishers, agents and well meaning people who have commented that my writing is good but not mainstream?  I say, it's okay, and thanks for your kind consideration, I know I have a brand that is marketable; I just need to create a niche in the market and I'll be fine. Because if you look back in history, all the great artists, famous writers, talented actors, struggled to get to the top because people thought they were slightly different from the norm! 

So I embrace the devil in me; I welcome him and let him come through my work, he is fiery, he is devious, he is plotting the biggest of plots.  He may be outrageous and slightly off beat, but he is wonderful and creative and makes me who I am! 

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

UNBLOCKING ME!

Okay, so it's the start of the week and frankly I am sat here wondering where on earth I am! I know where I am physically; I'm at home, at my desk.  But I have no idea where I am otherwise; in life, in career or in existence!  I have had three cups of coffee, taken up my electronic cigarette (yes, I'm trying to stop smoking) and practically chocked myself on the vapour (that, by the way is supposed to be harmless...hmm?) and I feel quite dizzy!  Last week I wrote two and a half chapters straight!  The inspiration was such that I could barely contain my nail polished fingers from hitting that keyboard!  That was a good week!  The weekend has come and gone and I was busy, taken up with family commitments.  But now it's Monday

again and I am deflated, disheartened and a little (a lot) demotivated!  I glance at my 'fame shelf', that's the shelf I keep my published novels on, and found two puny novels sat upon it!  Yes it is an achievement, of course it is, I am published, but one would have been happier with at least a dozen novels in one's name!

I know, I know, I know what my readers are thinking; I've hit rock bottom, I am blocked and a little depressed!  If truth be told, I have hit something, and am a little depressed; I am blocked, and no writer likes being blocked.  It is a very insecure feeling when one is blocked - oh my God, have I lost the thread???  Suddenly, what had seemed like a path to success, what had started off as an adventure, has deflated to a self doubting, self berating sequel of questions....can I actually make it in the world of literature, am I good enough, am I deluding myself, what if I only ever publish two novels?  So I trawled the net for some inspirational quotes on motivating myself out of this blockage that seems to be looming just above my head, up there, slightly off centre like an angry rain cloud.  

So, in my own self doubt and amidst my own deflated feeling, I shall share some of those wonderful inspirational quotes with you and hope that whilst I am doing so my writer's block will vanish and any of yours if you happen to be experiencing those Monday blues!

True, it is only but a state of mind, and our minds state to us weird and wonderful things each and everyday, including self doubt and insecurities!  It really is a matter of which statement you decide to listen to!

There is no gain without pain; every person who has made something out of themselves will tell you of the many years of hardship, rejection and starting over!

Nobody starts off great, nobody is immediately known to the world as soon as they decide to declare their talent.  Greatness comes from experience and perfecting your art, acknowledgement is but an opinion of the people, so by persisting you may just change their opinions!

Ever heard a relative say to you when you were a kid, 'I could have been a great singer, artist, writer, mechanic, but I never had the opportunities' as they told of their talent with a distant look in their eyes?  It's all about persistence and insistence!

It is true, if you work hard, want something enough, you will only walk in its path and when you walk the path, you will get to where it is!

This one is very true, if one is blocked, one has no option but to take up arms (computer) and write! soon you will find that the sheer force of your pounding upon that keyboard will loosen the blockage and let the writing flow through!

The more you write, the better you become, the better you become, the better equipped you are to go forth and pursue your dream.

Chances are, if you wrote that novel within a week, with no writer's block or difficulties, then it ain't that good! Good writing is difficult to create, it is well thought through, has good grammar and flows smoothly whilst being outrageously thought provoking!

Not to give us writers airs and graces, but good story telling is a precious, if not thought provoking tool. Being a writer gives you the privilege of being part of having impact on society!

If in the core of your essence you keep coming back to one pressing point; you are made to write, every inch of you screams writing, there is a deep seated need to tell a story... then even if you happen to glance at that 'fame shelf' and see only two novels, or one, or even none yet; it shouldn't matter, because it's not the stories that are out there in circulation, it's the stories that are inside your head and at your fingertips that matter!

This was therapeutic; I feel much better now, thank you.  As for the rest of my day?  I have a pressing date with my heroin, she has yet to manipulate that man she's got her eye on! 

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

REFLECTING ANNIVERSARY

There are many things a person can be in a lifetime; one can hold many positions, know many people, help others, care for children and shape the world in our own tiny, yet significant way.  The world is but an oyster waiting to be cracked open and for you to reach in and claim that pearl! Education is available for girls, whereas only as recently as my grandmother's generation women were expected to leave school at a young age (if they were lucky enough to get an education) and settle into domestic bliss (domestic bliss for the man, of course) where their lives would be sealed and done and the road ahead was mainly hard and tiresome! Women have far more opportunities than they had ever had before and quite frankly, there is nothing that should compel them to tie the knot!  Yet in spite of this, marriage still plays a significant part in our lives.  Why?  Because marriage is the ultimate declaration of love....right?  Huh?

Today is my wedding anniversary.  If truth be told, I am happily married and quite content with life.  If truth be told, I like being married and having children to fill my house and keep me irritatingly busy and unable to pursue my own personal dreams and ambitions.  I love my husband and God only knows, he has suffered terribly in this marriage (as men often do) and has put up with my tantrums and insecurities, as I have put up with his!  Are we proud to have made it this far?  Of course we are; jobs, kids and moving houses, pitfalls and scary times, arguments and celebrations, what's not to be proud of?  We have survived.  Was it a walk in the park?  You must be kidding!  Were there times we could have quite easily have killed one another, walked away and called it a day?  Yes there were!  Is he an angel?  Um, No!  Am I an angel?  Who me?  Well then what??

Truth is, marriage hurts, it stings and it smarts and it comes with tedious days and mundane nights were exhaustion, work and kids seem to have taken over your lives and consumed your every thought!  Not to mention of course, each of us has idiosyncrasies in our flawed characters and there is the small matter of interfering in-laws!  Amidst all of this one can feel quite lost and lonely in a marriage, one can lose one's self in a whirlpool of bills, cooked meals, hoovering, mothers in-law and crying babies! Soon you stop seeing each other as human beings and you nickname each other 'Mummy' and 'Daddy', it's easier that way, because that's what the children call you!  Your relationship may seem to consist of debates and frustration 

as opposed to romance, and soon you can feel a little invisible.  Because (and yes I can start the sentence with because; I am the author) in truth, life as a concept can be rather heavy on a marriage!  These are not the fairy tales of happily ever after.  In those fairy tales marriage happens and troubles stop.  In the real world, that's when trouble begins!  

In marriage, you not only have yourself to consider, you have your partner, their family, your family, the children and of course everything else that this will entail. You go from being this happy, disco goer, ambitious free spirited, young person to someone who has the weight of the world upon their shoulders.  And in reality you do; ageing parents, young kids, work and all those bills to pay, it's a wonder you have any time for yourselves.

Romance will...yes it will go out the window,because romance is not a creature which can endure stress; it is a creature which needs mellow vibes and dim lights, a creature which does not like being rushed or having to wait until that bloody toddler has finally gone to sleep!!

And you may be able to steal a moment or two, or even the odd weekend where the grandparents have agreed to look after the kids and have promised not to disturb you.  But these are only snatched moments and you can't delude yourself that just because it has happened once, it will happen again!

Okay, so I've painted a bad picture?  Remember I said I am happily married, and I am.  You see a happy marriage is not a marriage that is filled with 24/7 happiness, (that would be a marriage in a mental asylum, assisted by strong drugs) but instead a happy marriage is a marriage which is filled with understanding, compassion and respect.  It is a journey that is sometimes rough and sometimes sad, but it is a journey that if well travelled with careful and conscious steps, can be very rewarding indeed.  Marriage is a life investment, and any investment must be invested in; you can't expect to have lots of money in the bank if all you do is spend it.  Same with emotions and understanding; you have to learn the hardest lessons in life when you marry, respect, trust and longevity. You have to learn to appreciate, understand and love the person you are with, simply because they are the person you are with!  

And the only way you can learn those lessons, is to work together as a team. And like any team, you may sometimes dislike your team member, or get angry with them, you may even get fed up with them.  But remember, you can't like and want someone all the time, it wouldn't be natural.

But if all the ingredients are there, and you can still remember the reasons why you got married, then it will be worth the sleepless nights, the worries over the bills, the jabs from the in-laws and the disputes over the remote control. Because happiness of any kind can only emerge from hard work and perseverance!

 And most importantly, marriage is having something to berate your partner about in old age!

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

DEALING WITH REJECTION

Rejection; one of the most rejected words in the English language, in any language!  Rejection is a personal statement made on the core of the personal self; it is a direct no, an absolute disagreement, a definite dislike of whatever it is one happens to be offering.  Basically it is no to you!  

From a young age we are taught how to behave, to act, to speak.  We are taught how to conduct ourselves in a way which is acceptable to our peers, our elders and our teachers. We are always reminded or shown, that acceptance is the most important thing in our society, guided by our parents and teachers on how best to fit in lest we become unacceptable.  To add to the mix, in the Western Society we are brainwashed into high achievement, be it in social scenarios or work.  The media tells us that we should be sparkly, beautiful, intelligent and famous, and not only are we bombarded with fictional super humans, we are also shown reality shows such as Big Brother, where everybody is talented, beautiful and very successful.  In fact, according to that flat screen in our living rooms, we should all be Hollywood on Botox!  The life goal is set very high indeed!

We have a keeping up with the Jones' attitude to life and because of this we watch one another like hawks and in turn get watched and judged.  Dare claim you have a talent and immediately you are thrust into a sort of Hunger Games scenario where you now have limited time to prove to the world that you really do have a talent.  Pressure becomes unbearable!  One can see that not only does rejection become unpleasant, but quite frankly a phobia!

Which brings me quite nicely to my main point; the amount of rejections writers have to endure.  Claiming you have a talent is brave enough, writing the novel is a long and time consuming activity, full of pitfalls and irritating writers' block.  But that was the easy part; the fun, exciting, deluded part of the whole process.  The heartbreaking, soul destroying part is yet to come.  This part involves stepping out of your comfort zone, writing cover letters and sending them along with your manuscript to an agent or a publisher!  Basically, you might as well cut out a kidney and post that to them!  Because for every slight indication of interest on their part, there will be at least twenty rejections to a consideration, if you are one of the lucky ones!  

This goes violently against the fragile and creative soul of a writer, who by nature of his/her disposition is already self critical and very sensitive and riddled with self doubt!  Each rejection letter is a stab in the heart, a mocking laugh in the writer's direction, a chipping away at their belief in their own talents and abilities to write a novel.  The saying you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, comes to mind. Whilst not actually kissing any agents or publishers, one must understand that your metaphorical 'prince' is out there, you just got to find them!

It is a natural and easy option to allow yourself to believe that you are not good enough after a few rejection letters. This is a big mistake, because you can't allow somebody's opinion shape the opinion you have of yourself. Remember, this is just an opinion, others will have different opinions, you've just got to find them!

This comes with the job; if you want to be a writer, you have got to be thick skinned and accept that rejections are a part of your chosen profession.  In fact expect rejections as a part of your profession!

And remember, you are trying to break into a big field, not everyone can become a writer or indeed is able to write.  Of course it's hard to break into it, that's what makes it special!

If you make the mistake of giving up on your dream, I can promise you, you may regret it in time!

Look, the odds dictate that if you try often enough and hard enough, something is going to click! I personally think persistence is even more important than talent!

because we have such a commitment to our talent, we can endure a lot of rejections, because even when hope is fading, we will find that we will come up with a paragraph, a sentence even, that will restore our faith in ourselves!

As a writer of fiction, and fiction being half my world; I always hold on to the fictional belief that one day something magical will happen and that all my dreams and hopes and desires will come true.  

Finally I'd like to share a personal story.  About seven years ago I was tinkering with finally writing that novel and trying to get published; before then I was writing for fun. I finally wrote a novel, entitled Cleopatra's Hourglass, which took me eighteen months too write. Feeling really proud of myself and on the brink of sending to publishers, I decided a well earned holiday was called for. Whilst on holiday my house was burgled and the thieves did not take the televisions or the video.  They did not take any jewellery either.  They took our laptops, mine had my novel on it, to make matters worse, my memory stick (the only other thing I had saved my work on) was also in my laptop bag.  I was devastated and felt that I had been robbed of eighteen months hard work.  Not to mention, I kept visualising the damn thief reading my work and mocking me! I could have given up and curled up in some obscure corner of life and be done with it.  But instead I felt so angry and so hacked off that I vowed that I would write again and become published.  I wrote two further novels and received like a million rejections, but I carried on writing.  I finally got accepted with a third novel (which is of course my first published novel) and have recently published another!

The moral of the story.....you've guessed it, never give up, you never know what's around that corner!

AUTHOR'S CORNER;

THE TROUBLE WITH WRITERS!

Okay, let's cut with the crap; let's have a plain talking, hip shooting, honest to God discussion about writers!  Let's peel away the layers of keyboard, paper and ink and look closely at these strange, yet mildly delightful creatures, who seem to portray quirky yet quite large egos.  Let's see what actually lies behind those spectacle framed eyes and that nervous twitch thing they seem to have going with their lower lip!  

You see the truth is... ain't none of us are perfect, ain't one of us is super confident and half of us are not as smart as we actually pretend to be!  In fact, if you could see inside writers you will discover that most of us are a mishmash of complications and confused thoughts, which we somehow manage to convert into something quite entertaining and thought provoking on paper!  Whilst 'us' writers marvel at life and write quite a lot about it, in reality, and I speak mainly for myself, we are quite bothered by life in general!  Hence why we observe it so closely, describe it so passionately and highlight it so intensely!

 We are mainly loners, even if we are married and have a family and many friends; all that is fine, in the physical sense, but in our minds, we are one and alone.  Engaging completely with our thoughts and views on the world.  Most writers if not all, cherish with passion, their 'me' time.  They live mainly two lives; one in the real world and one in their own world, made up of how they see and hear things!  I would go as far as to say, sometimes genius writers are often tinkering on the brink of insanity, as they are quite often standing with one foot in reality and another in imagination.  The fact that they can distinguish between the two and flit from engaging in one to the other, only proves that their insanity is genius!



As confident as we appear about life in our books, life often frightens us and leaves us feeling slightly insecure about ourselves!  We write to readdress the balance, to extinguish the fear and put in order and make sense of our world.

To the average person who walks past our desk when we are writing, we may seem confident and sure about our talent and ability to write.


But in reality, we always approach the keyboard with a slight unease and a sense of insecurity!  We never really know how it'll all turn out!



Often our writing experiences feel like we are free falling into the abyss of the unknown and we can but hope for a good outcome!

We may pretend that we are confident about our work, but most of us will cringe when editing, flinch whilst reading our work back and worry that we might be deluding ourselves into assuming that we are any good!




We suffer from writer's block for at least thirty percent of the time!  Yes we do, even those times we have locked ourselves away for days, claiming that we are busy writing!!

And no, it is not that easy to sit and write an entire novel; the obstacles far outweigh the possibilities!  There is work, family, children, paying bills, shopping for food, cleaning the house, spending time with your long suffering partner, eating, sleeping, bathing......the list goes one!




And there is plenty, if not heaps and heaps of smouldering self doubt!  you question yourself continuously; are you for real or deluded?

And of course, there is the pressing and frankly soul breaking frustration that attaches itself to every writer! Recognition takes years, fame takes longer and making money is a hit or miss situation!

So ask yourself, do you still want to be a writer??  Good Luck!

But I know one thing; I wouldn't want to be doing anything else!