Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

The Star of the Sea, Una McCormack’s second tale in the Weird Space saga, has just been published by Solaris. The author of several science fiction novels (including a New York Times Bestseller), and numerous short stories in that genre, McCormack is also a prolific fanfiction writer, setting up and organizing a number of online writing groups and resources for fanfiction writers. Here she talks about one of the major problems many writers face…

When I was asked to write a post for this blog, I kept putting it off. I couldn’t think of any ideas. Someone had said something wrong on the internet and needed to be put straight. Eventually, I knuckled down and opened up Twitter. “Help!” I said. “I need a topic for a blog post!”

The suggestions came in thick and fast (thank you, friends). What do you do about the nasty little voice that says you can’t do it? Why do writers self-sabotage? How do you cope with crippling self-doubt and its good friend procrastination? All these seemed associated, so I’ve put them together.

In an ideal world, I would be left alone to lie on the bed reading books and eating crisps. Sadly, we live under capitalism, and I have to make a living somehow. Also I’m cutting back on salt. This means I have to do other things, like teach, do readings, and, indeed, write. All of these put me out there. They take little old book-reading, bed-inhabiting me and stick her in front of an audience.

It helps that I’m something of a show-off, and that I like the sound of my own voice. But I have evolved some tricks over time to keep myself writing, and the rest.

Tell yourself it doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things. To be honest, what with all the nuclear winter misery literature that was a staple of my teenage reading during the 1980s, I didn’t think I was going to live past the millennium. The world is going to hell in handbasket. In the meantime, you may as well crack on! (Am I helping?)

Learn your rhythms and what makes you tick. At the start of this summer, I knew I had a deadline of mid-November for an 80k novel. Did I work assiduously and carefully throughout the summer, plugging away for an hour or two in order to steadily make progress. Of course I didn’t. I took the opportunity to have a good break, lying on the bed reading and eating crisps, all the time thinking that I would probably regret this in October. October and early November were a bear, but in fact I don’t regret that summer of rest and reading. Writers write, yes, but they do other things too. They have to replenish. They have to fill the well. So learn when you’re telling yourself that you need a break. Let your subconscious do some work for a while.

Leave your real self in peace and put your performer self on stage. This works for teaching and performing, and for writing too. If you are a sensitive sort, and we are most of us sensitive sorts, then don’t punish that person by putting her on stage. Find your writing persona. She will be part of you, but she will be the part of you that doesn’t mind talking and performing and saying what she thinks. If, when you sit down to write, you find that you need to hold a part of yourself in reserve, or put on a mask, or simply speak in a different voice, then let yourself do that. You are not being inauthentic. You are finding the means by which to safely allow yourself to speak. Confidence is substantially performed, but like all acts we can, with practice, make it second nature.

Just keep swimming! After twelve novels, I think I am in a position to be able to say something about the process. The truth is that most of what I write is irredeemable shit for most of the time I am writing. But you can’t finesse your work without having something to work with. Once I surrendered myself to the inevitable shitness of the draft, I suddenly become so much freer. Give yourself permission to be rubbish.

Please yourself. Writing is chiefly a very good way to get lower back pain without making much if indeed any money. So remember that there’s a reason that you’re doing this. Once you get going, it really is a lark.

Take risks – you never know what might happen. When my students tell me that they would never think of performing a poem, or that they’re afraid of having their work read out in class, I tell them of the time I fell flat on my face in front of my entire school year at speech day, and that I have not only survived but thrived. So if you are sitting looking at the blank page in frank terror, remember that I have looked as foolish as it is possible to be so that you don’t have to. This, my friends, is my gift to you. Forth, and fear no darkness!

This blog post, by the way, is about 3 weeks late. I kept finding more good reasons to put off writing.

Thanks to @captainraz, @KaddyBenyon and @LynnAFraser on Twitter for suggesting these topics. Hope I’ve helped!

The Star of the Sea is out now from Solaris; click here to order from Amazon.co.uk