Writing is Easy...?!

 The title of this blog is from my favourite quote about writing, by newspaper reporter Red Smith, although it is sometimes attributed to others, including Ernest Hemingway. The full quote is 'Writing is easy... just open a vein and bleed.' 

So, really, writing isn't easy at all--or if it seems easy sometimes, it can also be painful, messy, dispiriting, and thankless! Which begs the question why anyone dares to do it at all... the answer to that, I usually find, is that writers can't not write (sorry for the double negative, writers, but in this case it works!). 

When we write, we give of ourselves. We lay our intimate thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, longings and dreams, completely bare, even if they're cloaked in the thin disguise of a story--whether that story is science fiction or suspense, romance or historical or anything in between any of those. It's still essentially us, which is why writers can sometimes seem a little thin-skinned about their precious children, ie, books. Readers often say that writers need to separate their books from themselves (usually in the context of a bad review), and yes, that is true, but it is also very difficult, because so much of a book is the writer. The best books, I find, are the ones written from the heart, with deep, heartfelt emotion (not mere sentimentality!) and speak a truth that strikes a chord with the reader.

So despite the (ironic) title of this blog, writing a story is HARD, not just because it can be challenging to find the words, or the story, or the characters, or even the time to put any of it down, but because it involves a sacrifice of self, bleeding onto that page and then offering it to the world--or maybe just one person--to see, which can be, frankly, terrifying.

This blog is meant to help with the nuts and bolts of writing. Only you, the writer, can provide the emotion, the honesty, the vulnerability, that elevates a humdrum story to one that can be transformative. I can't do that, but I can, I hope, help you to do it well.

I've had over one hundred novels and four hundred short stories published by seven different publishers (twelve, if you include magazines) over a career that has spanned twenty-three years. I don't claim to be an expert yet, but I hope to impart something of what I've learned. There are loads of writing blogs out there, so I'm not claiming that I'm re-inventing the wheel, just adding my own perspective to the mix. Stay tuned for my first blog post tomorrow on how to begin!