How to Turn Your Life Into Fiction Part 8: Write With Confidence

In my previous posts on how to turn your life into fiction, I’ve talked a lot about what you should not do and what you should think about when turning your life story into fiction. Admittedly, when writing fiction, there are a lot of things to consider.

If you haven’t seen the other posts, you can find them here.

You have a story to tell

You should not feel overwhelmed by all the advice I’ve dispensed in the previous posts. What you should remember is that the biggest problem most writers have is a lack of inspiration. 

If you’re reading this, it’s fairly obvious that you have a story to tell. A tale that you are inspired to write. Such creativity is the biggest gift you can have as a writer.

So don’t worry about letting your pen fly when you start writing. Don’t worry about the genre, whether the beginning is exciting enough, about the timeline, characters, or what the dialogue looks like at this stage. These are details you can fix later. I’d say the only thing you have to decide is whose point of view you are going to use. But even this can be changed in the editing process!

I find it very useful to write a small passage from the viewpoint of each of the main characters and choose the one that one feels the most comfortable. You might be surprised by your own reaction. When writing your own life story, it’s often easier to write someone else’s viewpoint first and add your own later.

You may find that since you know the plot – and the characters (if you’ve already analyzed them as I showed you in Chapter 6) – writing the novel can be very quick. If you decide later to change scenes, plot, or tweak your characters, that’s easy. 

Another tip is to forget about the ‘truth’. I find that if I don’t worry too much about how closely aligned the story is with real life, my writing becomes much more fluid and confident. In all the books where I’ve used my own life as inspiration, the ‘true’ story is only a framework for the novel.

Write Regularly

The most important thing you can do is to write regularly. Try to at least look at your manuscript once per day, and if you can get a few words down at the same time, so much the better. Even if you just do a few edits every day, this keeps the story and the characters fresh in your mind and makes it easier to sit down and write some more.

Think of writing as physical exercise; the longer you leave going to the gym or for a run, the more difficult it is to take it up again. 

Blog

One way to ensure you write regularly is to start a blog. You can do this anonymously, which makes it easier to write about your own life. Blogs are not as fashionable today as they were when I began writing one in the early 2000s, but they are still a hugely useful tool for writers. And you never know, if you learn how to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you may gain a useful audience by blogging, ready for when your book is published.

I wrote the first version of The English Heart in a series of blog posts. I’m not sure I would have ever told the story had I not received such a lot of encouragement from the readers of my blog. These wonderful people spurred me on to eventually edit the posts and write the novel.

The two blogging platforms I would recommend are WordPress and Blogger. Both are free, easy to use, and have ready-made blogging communities that you can engage with. But there are many more platforms out there. You could even write short posts using Twitter, Instagram, or submit chapters to online communities such as Wattpad. 

If you have the money and time, setting up a website with a blog attached is the best solution, as it ensures that you alone own the copyright to your blog. And later on, when you have several published books under your belt, a website is a good platform to have where you can market your books directly and promote your writer profile.

I’m old-fashioned and love blogging, so even if many other authors have stopped the practice to save more time for writing, I still try to put out a post at least once per month. (You can find my blog on www.helenahalme.com/blog/) . 

Writing prompts

To get motivated, it’s also worthwhile investigating online writing programs. Some of them are designed to speed up your writing, such as the National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo happens every November and has a community of over 400,000 writers around the world who undertake to write 50,000 words in one month. You update and share your progress with your chosen friends each day, and get badges & other encouragement from the community. This is great fun, and each time I’ve taken part, the process has produced a novel.  

When it’s not November, NaNoWriMo online community provides writing prompts on its Twitter feed, which are incredibly useful if, for example, you are in a difficult phase in your story.

There are many other sites and meet-up programmers out there. Some are local and some are online. It’s worth investigating the ones nearest to you, especially if you are confident enough to go and write together in a cafe or library with other people (I wasn’t for many, many years!). If not, check out Twitter and Facebook for groups that encourage you to write. The hashtag #WritingCommunity is a brilliant one to follow, but there are several general writing ones, or those associated with a genre.

Free Writing

Another way to release your creative juices is to write fast, using something called f-r-e-e-writing. Orna Ross speaks about this process of allowing your mind to wander while you write for a few minutes in her Go Creative books. 

Freewriting is a technique I’ve used on several occasions, so I heartily recommend it, especially during the plotting phase of your book.

The Occasional Writer

If you can’t commit to a daily routine, you could try writing in spurts. Many authors do this. They go on a retreat or allow themselves a few weeks or months each year to complete a book. I tend to find it easier to write a little every day, be it writing for my blog, nonfiction, or fiction. For many people, it’s not possible to devote time every day because of work and/or family commitments. Some writers also find it easier to live in the book for an intense period, rather than flip in and out of real-life and fiction while completing the novel.

Turn off your inner critic

When you are writing your first draft, it’s important to turn off your inner critic. It’s rumored that Ernst Hemingway said, ’The first draft of anything is rubbish.’ Whether it was him or someone else, it’s a good sentiment to remember when you are writing. Nobody ever has published the first draft of their book. Let’s repeat that.

No-one has ever published the first draft of their book.

I have covered in the previous chapters how to think about telling your life story. I’ve encouraged you to go professional with your research and decide on the genre of your story. I’ve advised you to have an exciting beginning and end, as well as consider the timeline and point of view. I’ve urged you to make your characters engaging and complicated, and to use dynamic dialogue.

BUT

It is also very important that you do not let all the technical issues stop you from writing. Particularly if the central character is you, don’t hold back, just write how you felt, explaining your emotions as if talking to a friend.

The most important thing is that you write with confidence, be it a little every day or intensively for a few weeks at a time.

I hope you have enjoyed this series on writing your life story. Don’t forget, you can find other posts on the subject here and my book, Turn Your Life Into Fiction in 10 Easy Steps is now available in both eBook and paperback.

This post is an excerpt taken from my book, Write Your Story: Turn Your Life Into Fiction In 10 Easy Steps. To find out more go here.

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