Sighing and Other Irritations

I was reading back over the last couple of chapters of my work in progress last week (before I carry on with my writing, I always read and edit my words from the previous day) and something soon became clear to me.

A lot of my characters stand in doorways. 

In fact, it's amazing how many doorways there are in my novel... and how many times people stand in them. 

Sometimes they lean
Sometimes they loiter
Sometimes they eavesdrop
Sometimes they hover

... but mostly they just stand.

It reminded me of the time (a long time ago now) when my husband told me that a lot of the characters in my magazine stories 'furrowed their brows' and occasionally even 'knitted' them. Yes really! 

You'll be glad to know they never do that now.

It made me wonder about other writers. Do their characters also have a fear of crossing the threshold or are there other irritating things they do much too often? With this in mind, I took to Facebook and asked the question. Here is a list of the answers I got back - they may or may not surprise you.

• sigh
• blush
• rise to their feet
• take a deep breath
• shrug
• smile
• giggle
• roll eyes
• lock gaze
• nod
• shake head
• raise eyebrows
• check watch
• turn on their heel
• frown
• linger on thresholds
• stir tea
• pull up a chair
• put kettle on

My favourite answer by far was the writer whose characters often winced and gripped each other's elbows (that sounds very painful!)

When the novel is finished, I shall definitely be on the look out for all these sneaky little actions - just in case they've crept in when I wasn't paying attention.

So pull up a chair, take a deep breath, stir your tea and smile while you think of some other actions we could add to the list. If you do, I'll be the one shrugging and rolling my eyes in the doorway!

Impostor Syndrome - Yes, I have it!

Impostor

noun

A person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others

I belong to a choir and, last week, a new member asked me what I do for a living.

I hesitated before answering, knowing I had two options. The easy one was to say, 'I'm a teacher.' The hard one would be, 'I'm an author'.

If I answered the first way, I guessed the conversation would move on quickly. If I answered the second, all manner of things could happen.

What to do?

I had no choice really. I hadn't taught in a classroom for seven years... but I had been writing for six.

Biting the bullet, I answered, 'I'm an author.' This was  followed by a brief explanation of what that meant - I wrote fiction for magazines and that I had written two novels that would be coming out next year.

Then came the wait. I was in the grips of  'Impostor Syndrome'. How could I dare call myself an author. What cheek! What pretense! How conceited! 

These are the types of replies I imagined she might give:

• Will I have read anything you've written?
• You write for magazines? I didn't know they did fiction.
• What a lovely hobby.
• I've got a little book in my head too. I'll write it some day.
• Will your book be in the local book shop?
• Is it another Fifty Shades?
• You must be rich then.
• You're going to published by who? Not Penguin? I've only heard of Penguin

Ridiculous I know, but it's a feeling I'm sure most authors have had at some time or other.

But, to my surprise, it didn't happen that way at all. What she actually said was, 'That's wonderful and so exciting for you. I'm going to buy the magazine next week to read your story and you must let me know when your book comes out. I couldn't write a novel to save my life!'

I could have kissed her.

Why had I even considered denying what I did?  It was all in my head - just my own self-doubt talking. I've had hundreds of stories published in magazines and I have a publishing contract for two novels. I should be proud, not embarrassed by what I've achieved.

And I am proud. 

So I'm pushing that little voice that says 'impostor' away (hopefully for good) and, next time, I will answer with no hesitation. 

I am an author. Oh, yes I am!

Have any of you suffered from Impostor Syndrome? If so, how do you rid yourself of it?

P.S When I first wrote this post, I spelt the word  'impostor' as 'imposter'. It belongs to the group of words such as 'actor' and 'impersonator'. I've learnt something today!

I Joined The People's Friend Team for an Hour!

An exciting thing happened last week. I was asked by The lovely people at The People's Friend magazine if I'd like to co-host their first ever live 'Author Q&A' as part of their Writing Hour on Twitter. 

Even though I've written over two hundred stories for this magazine, I was surprised to have been asked and very flattered. Of course I said a very quick yes. 

So what is this Writing Hour? Well, it's on a Tuesday and a Thursday morning at 11am and it's a place where readers and writers can chat about a variety of things to do with writing. Using the hashtag #PFWritingHour, the Friend team pose a series of questions which will elicit conversation amongst the hashtag readers. 

This time though, the questions would come from the readers and they would all be directed at me! (gulp).

Now, I'm not new to answering questions (I've been interviewed on people's blogs many times) but I've never done it live! It made me feel a little bit panicky. What if I was asked a difficult question and didn't know the answer? What if I sat there for an hour with no questions? What if I let myself and the lovely magazine I write for down? I certainly hoped I wouldn't.

Tuesday morning came and the first thing I did was advertise the event. I certainly didn't want to be 'Billy No Mates'. At eleven O'clock, armed with a large cup of coffee, I logged into the People's Friend Twitter account and introduced myself to the readers. I needn't have worried about no one asking me anything as immediately the questions came pouring in. I was very proud when the People's Friend profile picture came up every time I commented - I felt just like one of the team!  

The questions were from both new and established writers and all of them were great. Here are a few of them to give you a flavour:

What's the best way to deal with rejection?
Have you ever written a story that has upset someone?
How long does it take you to write a short story?
Do you have a favourite PF character of all time?

I could barely keep up with the questions and I'm ashamed to say I had to type the answers so quickly, there were one or two little typos - oops!

The whole experience was really enjoyable and, if you are on Twitter and would like to read my answers to these questions and many more, you can still catch them by typing #PFWritingHour into the search bar and scrolling down to last week's chat.

Much to my surprise, I've been asked if I'll take part in a Q&A again another week... I'd be delighted. In the meantime, here is a picture of my latest story in this week's People's Friend. It's called, 'Let Love Grow'.