Feeling Like A Fraud by Laura Lovelock

Hey lovely readers

It's time for the next guest post. The wonderful and talented Laura agreed to write a post on being a writer, thank you so much gorgeous, that means a lot, xxx.
You'll find her blog here: http://shelovestoread.wordpress.com/

And now enjoy :)

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Feeling Like A Fraud

When I’m asked to talk about my writing I feel a bit of a fraud. Yes, I write, but I’m not a published author or someone with a lot of writing success to speak of. So, really, I am not very qualified to talk about ‘writing’ as such. However, this blog post is about my writing. So, here goes..!

I’ve always written. When I was little I would have small notebooks with half written stories in them, I would relish making up stories to tell friends and family and I would stand in complete awe in the library – overwhelmed by the number of stories waiting to be told. (I even made it my mission to read every single book in the children’s section!) Reading and writing go hand in hand and as I grew up and became a voracious reader, I developed a real hunger to write my own stories. Over the past five-ish years, I’ve taken writing more seriously but it wasn’t until the end of 2012 that I decided writing was what I wanted to do. I wanted to make it my career. (Difficult, I know.)

Since then I have started (and abandoned) three manuscripts – each one seemingly irredeemable from embarrassing awfulness. I’ve also penned a few short stories and had a bash at entering some competitions but nothing seems to have turned out very well.

Then, I was struck by an idea for a female character and her perfect male companion. She would be a wedding planner bored with life and need someone to show her how perfect she was. He would be tall, dark and handsome with a penchant for chivalry and lover of everything romantic. Overnight Isabelle and Luke were born. I opened up a blank word document and started typing and it wasn’t until twenty thousand words later that I stopped and realised I had a bit of a story going.

That was a while ago now and Luke and Belle are still a work in progress but, what they have shown me is that I can write more than thirty thousand words – the point where I’ve hit a wall with all previous novels. Their story currently sits at fifty thousand words and I am quite proud to be able to say I’ve written fifty thousand words of my first novel.

If you are at all interested then I have uploaded the first sixteen chapters to WattPad. (No, you don’t have to read them.) http://www.wattpad.com/story/11619589-isabelle-winter%27s-wedding-dream

Writing is tough though. It’s not something you can sit and just ‘do’. You need to be in the right frame of mind to do it, have a cornucopia of ideas that will spill endlessly onto the page and be willing to refrain from human contact for the foreseeable future. Not only that, writing also turns you into a coffee drinking - comfort eating monster. Never before has my body been so fuelled by caffeine and Fox’s biscuits (or packets of crisps).

I am currently working on a collection of short stories that I am hoping to self-publish around summer time. I was going to pen a short story collection called A Summer Of Love and have an abundance of happy, summery stories about love but I’m swaying towards a new idea now, one that involves a YA audience and a little bit of an apocalypse!

(This is my problem. I can’t stick to one thing. I’m fickle.)

However, my goal for 2014 is to finish Luke and Isabelle’s story and have a collection of short stories up on Amazon. Oh, and I’m also part of an anthology with my gorgeous writers group which will mark my second involvement in an anthology!

I have big writing plans for this year, ones that I hope I can achieve. Writing is now a huge part of my life and whilst I often spend a lot of time moaning about having writer’s block and struggling to find the time to write, I love it. In fact, it has helped me to discover the real me. It’s a cathartic process and one that will continue to be the one thing I turn to in life.

Even if I never make it as a published author, I will never stop writing.

Thank you Simona for inviting me onto your blog! Xx

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