BIN TO BESTSELLERS: THE IMPORTANCE OF OTHER PEOPLE IN YOUR WRITING LIFE

Making money writing is the hardest job on planet earth, however, there are people who do it effectively and make a living out of it. Being not one of them is not your problem, but aspiring not to be one is.

Is finding a publisher the best option for you as a writer? Richard Bach once mentioned in an interview; it’s not a publisher a writer searches for, but an editor. This relationship is one that should last for a lifetime. An editor understands where the music of words has to be slowed down or where it must run faster. But to get one worthy enough, you must do a lifetime’s waiting.

As a beginner in freelancing and in professional writing, how do you get an editor whose service can be worthwhile? Beginners are always stuck with the same problem; lack of funds. This in turn hampers your look out for an editor. Good editors are sale items with relatively high price money. There are many writers’ communities that offer editing services. Even some literary agencies offer you with editing services. However, if you are a first timer and one without enough weight in your bank account, hiring an editor for your book or manuscript will not be, normally, easy.

The best way to tackle this situation is to find reliable and easy options for editors. One need not go much farther for this end. Just look around and you will find yourself to be blessed with many minds, gifted with the one serum of eternal life—love—around you, ready to help reading your manuscript.

Showing your manuscript to your friends and family or girl friend would be a better option. In such a case, the money spent would be much close to null on editing services. The best editors are those who actually care for our work. You must be open to their criticisms; however, in harsh criticisms you can always rely on their lack of professional experience as the hideout from humiliation.

Stephen King, when he wrote his first novel, Carrie, did not think it would make up to the publishing standards and threw it into the bin. But his wife Tabitha King accidentally discovered the manuscript and read it. Thinking that it would be something worth of a quality, she put it back on the table and later helped King to rework on it. The novel went to become a best seller of its times and was made into a successful Hollywood movie.

This is one real life example from the life of America’s most celebrated and enthusiastic writer, Stephen King. This could be yours too. A relationship not just helps an individual to maintain one’s emotional health but the creative output as well. Now wait your sweet heart to tell you where to put the period.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colors and Other Stories. His latest book is Clenched Hands, Bloody Nails.  You can catch up with him in Facebook too.  

PSYCHIC REALITIES: Writers and their Minds

Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I just abandoned it. I had been working on it for the past one month. It’d been six weeks since I hadn’t touched it. Would I be able to resume it? How could I do justice to the story, now, after such a long time of discontinuation? I did have some notes made from the times, while I worked on the stuff. I do not think those notes are of any help, anymore, though. 

It is clear to me how vague the classification of writers would be if I categorized them based on such feelings as above. A writer, at almost all stages of his or her growth feels this way. Most of those super-successful writers may not experience it the same way, because they have the ability to pursue writing without bothering much about another day-job, but apparently have other issues that affect them the same way.

If writing gives a person immense pleasure or joy, and the person is forced to work in a bakery in order to make a living, the resulting conflict could damage the mental equilibrium of that person. Those person(s) who have no aptitude for working in a bakery, when forced to compromise their psychological ecosystem with the sophistication of an altogether different system of things, creative writing suffers. This is when one feels; “Oh my God! I desperately wanted to finish that story. Look! I have abandoned it.”

The fear for being not able to do justice to one’s work of a lifetime deserves wise handling. If not, it will consume the writer, wholly. The totality of all fears has their common grounding in the unknown. In the case of the above-mentioned writer (let us call him Paul), the unknown part is the quality of his work. Paul does not know and fears this fact: how would it all turn out to be. How could I do justice to the story now, after such a long time of discontinuation?

In order to undo the fear of the unknown, the simplest method can be the Jungian concept of assimilation of psychic realities. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a German psychoanalyst, whose groundbreaking theories on human mind, guided the world into a modern-renaissance. He argues about a specific course of action through which a human being can bring out the contents of his unconscious and experience it in the conscious level in order to alleviate the pressure from the unconscious side.

This same method is useful in undoing the fear for the unknown in Paul’s case. If Paul is uncertain of the results his work could bring him after a considerable gap in the process of writing, he should first, look at the results. There is only one way he can get the result—by completing the work. Paul just needs some gut feeling to cross the initial fear.  

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If one is stuck with the fear of how the work would turn out to be, the possibility of writing a book or a story is obliterated entirely. It is up to you to take that step courageously. Your work deserves to be born, simply because you have such strong feeling for it. Let your fears not obligate the stopping of your creative work.

If you liked this article, you might like my book too. Take a look.

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colors and Other Stories. His latest book is Clenched Hands, Bloody Nails. 

You can catch up with him in Facebook too.      

FREE THAT SEAGULL IN YOU

That Unforgettable Story: Bestselling Author Anu Lal at Capitol Mall, Kannur, Kerala

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a small volume of fiction written by Richard Bach. Some of you have read it. Some of you haven’t. It’s a highly readable novella with a seagull named Jonathan Livingston as its titular hero. The totality of the essence that shines through this story is not just about a seagull and the quest for success. More importantly, one must look at this book as a motif that corresponds to the inner voice of an individual. When I read this book, as a young student of English literature, I immediately associated it with a writer’s journey. I contemplated on the many nuances Mr. Bach, who I consider one of my gurus, must have employed to reveal his own life through the pages of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The reason I considered the possibility of an autobiographical element in this book is that in every writer, there is a seagull.

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Those very few successful authors are able to free the seagull engraved in their consciousness by the same creative power that generated their life force. Is it possible to live without consciousness? Perhaps, but think about the quality of life one must be missing under an unconscious state of existence. Every writer goes through stages of evolution. We evolve into being who we are. This evolution need not be biological. It could be spiritual or intellectual. Just like an ordinary person having lost his consciousness, a writer struggles if one does not free the seagull within one.

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What do I mean by “the seagull within us?” The seagull within us is our inner voice. This same voice sometimes gives a character in one of our stories, a unique individuality, and the narrative a significant identity. Voice is literature has a different meaning. It is not literally an audible sound. But in a novel or a story, ‘voice’ is the narrative style and peculiar alignment of thoughts and words. In order to achieve a unique and poignant voice on paper, one must achieve the same in life outside the paper.

There may be a multitude of concerns that haunt you each day—electricity bill, water bill, cable and internet bill, food, family, house maintenance or mortgage, etc. Often, these many concerns put a lock in the cage in which our inner seagull resides. This inner seagull came with us while we were born, within the same package that is we.

Once we realize our karma that is the cause of our restlessness, the path that we need to travel, we must take the courage to let the seagull free. Let it fly, away and above, everything we have known and seen; let it find new horizons; let it guide us. Let your inner voice take up thoughts that were, until then, impossible for you to handle, or improbable. Let your imagination accompany that inner voice. This is where fiery books were written.

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In the last decade of the previous century, a woman had a dream-like idea. It was highly improbable and senseless. Had she been living in Kerala, her own self-respect might have prevented her from penning down this story. But she lived in Europe, and she took the courage to free her seagull that is in her. In a few years, her book became a phenomenon. You must have heard of her, everyone does. She goes by the name, J. K. Rowling.

About The Author:

Anu Lal is the author of Wall of Colours and Other Stories, Book-1 in the Hope, Vengeance, and History Trilogy. He resides in India. His upcoming book is Clenched Hands, Bloody Nails. His second book You Should Know How I Feel has been a bestseller in Amazon India.

Blog: http://anu-lal.blogspot.in/

Author Page: Here

Twitter: @Anulalindia

AFTERWORD TO BEGINNING

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In his admirable attempt to bring submissions and participation one final time into Writers Get Together, author and Editor Scott Bury wrote an article the previous year. The article was published in November 17 and is titled “Not farewell, but au revoir”. This article beautifully narrates the grand message that Writers Get Together (WGT) stands for. He writes that WGT is “a blog that serves the function in the digital world of the old-fashioned coffee house, where writers can share new work, experiment with new ideas and get feedback from colleagues.” What better definition could serve the purpose!

Shortly after the appearance of this article, WGT was shut down. Although, WGT was “up for grabs” for anyone who could make use of its wide possibilities, as its owner Siggy Buckley reluctantly suggests in her post that followed Scott Bury’s, no one else discovered Scott Bury’s vision. Perhaps, this is one of the drawbacks of the internet era. There is too much noise out there that the possibility of listening to a conversation has become minimal.

 

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In my personal journey as an author, I have realized that writing a book is definitely not a subjective affair. It has to involve people. From cover designing to editing, from proof reading to printing and from penning the outline to selling or buying, a writer is never alone. Should never be alone.

In my research, I discovered that most successful writers are those who have successfully established their connections with the reading public. This they achieved, in the past era, through print magazines and articles or serialized version of stories in newspapers. Charles Dickens from nineteenth century is a good example of this style of writing. It is part of the profile building procedure for a writer. The more people who love your style of writing, the more will be the number of your books sold. In reality, this is true. I have experienced personal success in this same manner. The success with my second book was greater than that with my first book. My second book, You Should Know How I Feel was noticed by a greater number of readers and became a bestseller in Amazon India.

In our time, the role of print magazines and newspapers are effectively supplemented by blogs. Using blogs writers can let the world know about their presence in the literary scene. Write a guest post, or a regular column. You can make your presence felt.

Also please remember, it is not always about making more money or marketing your book. By writing about your writing life, books, or any other affair, you are essentially being connected with another individual, sharing your life with that person, and receiving their feedbacks and blessings. Scott Bury’s coffee house analogy is in perfect harmony with what a writer wants in the current era to perform at the best of one’s abilities. It will give an opportunity for working in teams as well as nourishing one’s craft with newer possibilities and suggestions by fellow writers working from different parts of the world, an idea Mr. Dickens would have died for, in his times.

 

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I am a writer from India. If you are reading this article from the US or Ireland, or Japan, we must realize one thing immediately, without fail—this could be our best chance of bringing out the best in us. It never was like this before.

The coffee houses in London during the 19^th century had writers from England or nearby European countries. If you sit in a room in New York, the US, right now and discuss your work with a writing group, you are essentially communicating with a few Americans or people who experience similar cultural, social, and political environments. In other words, if it’s snowing outside, all those writers in a small writers’ group in the US will have an unbiased say about the weather of the day. There is monotony, a complete lack of diversity. On the other hand, be a member of a writers’ blog group and you will have a person from Rajasthan, India or Texas, USA communicating with you about their individual experiences, separated spatially but united intellectually. That’s what diversity is all about. It gives great meaning to group work. Great writing is always a product of living a meaning-centered life. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anu Lal is a bestselling author, book reviewer, and blogger. His recent book, You Should Know How I Feel... has been a bestseller Contemporary Romance in Amazon e books, and paperback. He is the first Indian author to write a trilogy in short story collections in English: 'Hope, Vengeance and History' trilogy. His upcoming book is the second one in this trilogy.  

His works are: Wall of Colours and Other Stories; You Should Know How I Feel...; Unclassified Intelligence; Prabuddha: The Clear-sighted  

Visit his blog: The Indian Commentator

Visit his author page HERE