My apologies for the tardy appearance of a new blog on this web page. I have no real excuse, I was just suffering from one of the common Writers’ ailments, possibly the last, procrastination complicated by  inertia.- There are, it seems, a range of ailments quite peculiar to writers.

WRITER’S CRAMP is well-known, the unfortunate sufferer has such painful cramp in the fingers and arm muscles that holding a pen becomes almost impossible. This became less common with the advent of typewriters and with the availability of computers even less so. This is fortunate for this ailment inevitably led to Editor/Publisher’s Eyestrain which considerably reduced the probability of publication.

WRITER’S BLOCK another unfortunate malady that has been around for a long time. This disease attacks the imagination of the sufferer who finds that the myriad peoples and situations hitherto filling the mind and insisting that the writer commit them to paper have completely disappeared – taken flight to – where? The only cure for this appears to be to sit it out and wait for them to return. If the attack is not too serious it may be possible to lure them back by a process known as ‘association of ideas’. The sufferer sits down in a quiet spot with a blank sheet of paper and jots down a word at random, such as apple then whatever word that brings to mind and so on until something clicks and an idea presents itself.

PROCRASTINATION. the most serious disease of all to infect writers  can be both  subtle and totally devastating at the same time. The main symptom is an eagerness to do anything BUT write. The odd thing about this ailment is that it affects almost all writers in some degree. However much we love our craft it seems we can be lured away from the computer to do - well almost anything. Read other writers’ books, talk to friends on the phone, go on a shopping spree, out to lunch, gardening, a very insidious lure this, walk the dog, housework – you name it you will find a reason to do it. The cast iron excuse we give ourselves is that we have to live, meet people, have experiences, or what the hell are we going to write about? Treatment is strict self discipline,  so many words per day.  A nagging editor, publisher or agent demanding the finished work can be a great help. Success is also a great spur and on that note I am happy to tell you all that I have just signed the contract for my 10th. novel. This is set in both England and Australia and follows two generations of women. It was inspired by the popular saying Your son is your son till he gets him a wife but your daughter is your daughter all her life. The underlying theme of the book  is the mother/daughter relationship. Publication date will be announced on this website as soon as known.

It is because truth is indeed so often stranger (and less believable) than fiction that helps to make growing older an advantage. But…isn’t imagination the vital quality that makes a fiction writer?’ I don’t think so – I think it is the seasoning that turns real life experience into interesting and exciting reading with that vital ring of truth, the factor in every good novel that makes the reader keep turning the pages.

How often have you read a novel and felt This is ridiculous – it could never happen in real life and it has lost its hold on you? On the other hand when you recognise the reality of events, emotions, situations, then you can truly relate to the characters and eagerly read on.

The art in writing a believable novel is not to write events exactly as they happen with deadly accuracy, that is biography, autobiography or narrative non-fiction but to search your personal store  of  memories (and here is where the advantage of many years of living comes in) for incidents or events that stand out.

 In  everything that happens in life there are always choices. The way things go depends on the reaction and actions of the people involved. You can take the same situation and change the characters and events will move in a totally different way. As a fiction writer you are in the unique position of playing God. You create the situation, create characters with the personality traits you want them to have, put them together and pull the strings.

The best fiction is based on truth. We can look back down the years and see events that stand out, moments when we had a choice, now we have taken on the role of the Almighty we can shuffle things around, alter the main characters, change the dialogue,  make a different choice this time and see what happens. Here is where your imagination comes in, now you can say and do what you like when at the time you may have felt there was only one possible course to take.

From your rich storehouse of memories pick an incident, or maybe a phrase or a sentence you remember  someone said that has stuck in your memory, use this as the starting point and let your imagination do the rest as far as the action goes but it is remembering and recording your own feelings rather than imagining them that helps to make your fictitious characters ‘real’ and totally believable to your reader.

When it comes to describing places then we need to decide whether we are going to create our own imaginary country or whether we are going to set our stories in real locations. Here I think the dictum Write about what you know is all important. If you make a mistake someone, somewhere will spot it. I can remember many years ago reading a novel in which a character took a train from Snow Hill Station in Birmingham (England) and arrived at Euston (London). Trains from Snow Hill went to Paddington. To get from Birmingham to Euston one took a train from New Street station. From that moment on the book lost its savour for me because this error had jerked me out of my immersion in the story, I lost my belief in it. A good editor should have picked this up.

I set one of my books in the riverside suburb of Barnes, London. I had lived there for a time and liked it very much and thought I knew it pretty well but my editor knew it better and pointed out to me that I had a street name wrong. That taught me to either have  a map handy or revert to the omnipotent role and create my own town.

As publishers become thinner on the ground and writers thicker the task of finding a publisher gets more difficult. This has opened the door for self publishing firms. No longer termed ‘vanity publishing’ this form of getting into print for the writer convinced they have something worthwhile to say is a valid option. Modern technology has also made it easier to publish a book at reasonable cost without resorting to enormous quantities destined to be stored in closets, garages, attics, sheds or even under beds while the author struggles to sell copies.

Conviction that I had something worthwhile to say, (or my ego) and the fact that I had already had twelve non-fiction books published, in addition to the ten books of fiction published under another gave me the confidence to offer my book to publishers who had similar titles in their lists. Many ignored me; some turned my idea down flat, one or two said that ‘It was a lovely book and they would like to publish but ….’ The buts ranged from the world financial situation and theirs in particular to my admission that I was not prepared to spend years traveling the world to promote it.

It was when an English publisher who had actually asked to see the whole manuscript, suggested self publication that I first looked seriously at the idea. I contacted self publishers in the U.S. England and Australia. The response ranged from completely ignoring me to inundating me with publicity for their own business and a bombardment of emails. I was totally confused. Then I saw a small news paragraph in the ASA newsletter about a presentation on self publishing in Sydney. Almost as a last resort I emailed the firm presenting this. There was no way I could get to the workshop. I received neither a chilling silence nor reams of bumff but a personal call. After a few minutes I was confident that not only was I in expert hands but that my own ideas would be listened to.

I wrote the book, provided the photos, did the proof reading, fixed the price and said when I wanted it ready. Knowing the vital importance of the cover I asked them to design it. They got the ISBN and barcode, the boxes of books were delivered to my door ahead of the agreed publication date and I had helpful supportive advice throughout. The result is in every way a professional production. I am now faced with the biggest problem of all for self-published authors – selling it! In the desire to actually get into print this is sometimes overlooked.

I have done no paid advertising, but sent review copies to places who have expressed willingness to review. I have approached distributors with an even more depressing result than publishers. NONE have had the courtesy to even email a NO response! Extremely frustrating when booksellers say they only buy through distributors! However small independent specialist shops who already stock my books have placed orders. My biggest sales however are from word of mouth, I have had more than one person order a single copy as a present for a friend and follow with another order because ‘it looks so interesting they want to read it themselves’ Without exception comments on the cover are full of praise.

And the subject of my book? Cats – but a cat book with a difference. It is basically a memoir of my own life through the special cats who have shared time with me. The few publishers that did comment on the subject all said the same thing, it fell between two stools, it could not be classified as a memoir or a cat book! The comments I have had to date from those who have read it tell me that is exactly what they like about it! Maybe publishers and distributors are mistaken in feeling they need to classify books so rigidly.

To sum up I would say publish yourself by all means if you have faith in your work, but do it with professional help. I have talked to people who have done the entire hard slog themselves from getting the ISBN to dealing with printers and they have said how tough it was. Then at the end they still had to sell it.

My advice is write the best book you can and get it produced as well as possible. With interesting content and an eye catching cover the book will sell itself. Each copy that goes out is an ambassador for the others. Even if sales are slow but are mostly at the full retail price you will end up better off than selling through distributors at a huge discount.

THE POWER OF THE CAT by Ann Walker. Can be viewed on the author’s website, www.annwalkerbooks.com and on www.publish-me.com.au

We love it, For some reason it has us by the short and curlies, it is as necessary to us as the air we breathe. This is both our strength and our weakness. It keeps us going when any sane person would cry quits. That is our strength. It is our weakness because loving writing we are even prepared to do it for nothing, or very low financial return for the many hours of hard slog.

I have wanted to write stories since I was seven years old and had a mastery of the English language sufficient to allow me to do so. One of my very first efforts, a harrowing tragedy, was written for my father when I was about seven and a half. I was in my first year at boarding school so was probably unconsciously expressing my own feelings through my chief character who died 'in the heart of a wood' where she had managed to get lost. My seven-year-old self was certainly lost in the dark maze of boarding school life in those first months. No doubt it was very therapeutic for me to write this, and that maybe is another reason why we write, we need to, we have this deep urge to express ourselves on paper through our alter egos, our imaginary characters. Twenty-five years later when my father died my mother found this early masterpiece of mine tucked securely in one of the pigeon-holes of his desk and returned it to me.

From that first story on I wrote for pleasure. More cheerful stories, mainly about the horses that were the passion of my teenage years. Still at boarding school I wrote stories in the time allotted for homework. I went on writing when I left school. Mainly because no one else seemed to see any point in writing if I didn't also sell I sent my stories off to various likely and unlikely magazines. They returned with the reliability of Homing pigeons and my mother urged me to stop, it was, she felt altogether too distressing. I could not make her understand that it was the writing that mattered; selling would be the icing on the cake.