InkWell Writing Workshops - End your Self-Doubt...

Hey everyone, well as you know I started my journey into the world of writing earlier this year, having happily left behind a twenty year career in Finance.  My Journey so far as been interesting, frustrating, extremely enjoyable but mostly surprising! I hadn't been prepared at all for the different stages my little adventure would take me on..

First came the Procrastination, this really surprised me as I had so many ideas so it wasn't that i was stuck for something to say.  I sat at the laptop and I looked at the blank page and i typed away, putting down lots and lots of words on the page.  Then when i was finished I would hit delete, walk away and promise myself that better writing would come for me tomorrow. The only person judging my writing at that point was me.  So as the blank pages mounted up along came the frustration.  I wasnt getting anywhere, I was doing it all wrong after all.  In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "You may delay, but time will not ."   My light, at the end of the procrastination tunnel, was 140 tweets which I spoke about in my previous blog and that was it, I was up and running.  Running faster than my fingers could keep up with the words spilling out of my imagination. My fingers hovered over the delete word but it remained untouched.   However, unbeknown  to me at this time, was that i was about to enter into the next stage, or stumbling block on my writing journey.  This is when my confidence leave by the front door and self doubt stepped in.

But wait, don't throw down your pen or turn off the computer.. There is a God!! and I found it last Saturday in Dun Laoghaire.   Inkwell Writing Workshops had been recommended to me and I finally got around to attending one last week. I walked in the door of the Yacht club on that sunny saturday morning, without realising  just how much I was going to walk back out with that evening.
The course was attended by just 8 students so immediately you felt relaxed and welcome.  The atmosphere was friendly and really informal which was great when faced with meeting a group of strangers for the first time.  First we had a talk from Monica McInerney.  Her lovely voice alone, never mind her words was enchanting as she talked about her journey and how she got started.  She asked us all about where we were at in our writing careers and spend time at the end to talk individually to all of us.  So we were off to an inspirational start as Monica said, "The writer sees a picture in their head and puts this picture in words on a page, then the reader reads the words and paints their own picture in their heads"

After a lovely lunch and a chat with the other students, we had an afternoon session with Julie Parson's and we prepared writing exercises with her.  And for me this was where the real magic happened.  We were given one line and asked to write the opening paragraph of a story or a person and asked to explain them through the writing.  It was amazing to see what came out of me just i applied myself to the tasks.  I shocked myself.  It was also amazing to listen to other peoples interpretation of the same line.  The stories read out in that room were fantastic.  Julie critiqued our work, giving encouragement and letting each of us know what she liked about the very different pieces.   There is no better praise than having a best selling author say, wow, i really liked that.. She liked that, I wrote that!!!   I am sure everyone got something different out of the workshop that day but we all definitely got some reward.
So what did that mean for me? Well i walked out  that door last saturday with the confidence to know that I can do this, I am a good writer and other people will want to read what I write.  Self doubt gone, Self believe restored!!  I can not recommend highly enough to all new writers to attend an Inkwell Writing Course as you might be very surprised what you walk out of the door with!
I now face the next step of my journey but that is another story for another blog so when in doubt of your writing remember the words of Stephen King..

"No, it's not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside."

Twitter...120 characters that change my writing!

I thought I would  quickly throw this together about twitter.  Many people reading this will be either addicted to, ops I mean will be active on twitter or some of you will not know about it at all...

For me, I joined twitter when I started my writing career earlier this year having read many books that said to join a social networking site to increase your profile and get your name out there.  I did like many do on twitter in the beginning and I followed the trending celebrities and spent most of my time just reading through what they were doing each day.  I did this for a while until I realised that reading through their tweets wasn't getting me any closer to my dreams of being a writer as I basically wasnt writing. 

As a new writer, begining to write for me was a mind field of do's and don't. A black hole, the bermunda triangle so many cliches to use. (Stephen King would kill me now for using them!!)  Having spend my working career to date in finance where everything was planned to the minute detail.  I had no room for error, I struggled on how to let my creative side out and just let it go because for the past 20 years, I never let anything just go, it was always planned, perfect and achieved its goal each time.  So here i am now, starting a new career at 40 in a world I know nothing about and one where your approach has to be so different. There are really no rules im told  but lots of books that tell you differently.  Plan, dont plan... do character charts, dont do character charts.. awwww runs away!!

When I finally found my feet, I found a group of people on twitter who seemed to be working away with their writing professionally and more than willing to share their secrets with me. They had a laugh on twitter together and seemed to me to be genuine friends, although they may be many miles apart from each other.   They helped each other out and promoted each other's writing and blogs.  They accepted me the novice, no writing skills person and followed me on twitter.  Replied to my tweets even the boring ones and made me feel part of the group, all offering best wishes or advice etc...

Im not going to mentioned them all as there are many but I am going to mention one because  tonight he  has probably described writing to me in the best way possible and I think this quote should be remembered forever by all the lost writers in this world who don't know where to start.

"I always think of it as a sculptor's block of marble.  You hack away at it first to get the basic outline. Then you chip away at it slowly to bring out the detail"

This little gem was given to me tonight by Derek Flynn who has been a great friend on twitter to me and given me so much direction from this little tweet that I will never forget it.  It will be forever in my mind along with my other favourite quote from spike milligan when asked what he wanted on this headstone. (although completely unrelevent to the blog but seriously funny) "I told you I was ill"...

Make sure you follow @derekflynn on twitter and thanks for the 126 characters (very rough estimate) that have probably changed my whole approach to writing and giving me the direction I lacked.!!

So finally it got me pondering life in general  and the millions of people on twitter and the different people we come into contact with,  do we randomly pick who we follow on twitter and strike up friendships with or is there a part of fate in it all..... well only time will tell and I owe Derek a few pints!!

Thanks to all my followers on twitter and the people that take the time to answer my boring tweets, you know who you are....it has all been greatly appreciated and started me on what I hope will be a very successful writing career!