Want to write a book? You can. Someone once said that if you’ve survived your own childhood, you have more than enough material to write all the books you want.
You can turn your life into fiction, or nonfiction. Your choice. Your thoughts, your ideas, and your emotions, come together as creative inspiration. All you need to do is allow it.
If you want to write fiction — a novel or short stories — your emotions are key. Readers read novels to feel, rather than to think. They also read in order to make sense of their own lives. Novels are not real, they’re constructed. However, they can feel intensely real to readers, and this is what readers what — an emotional experience.
You may feel that you have the world’s most boring existence, and that nothing exciting has ever happened to you, but you can use everything you are in your fiction. It’s the only way to write novels which touch others.
One point: you’re not using your life as it is. Real inspiration lies deeper than your thoughts and even your memories. You’ll explore your life, and use your emotions as the basis of your fiction.
The best way to get started writing your novel is just to start. Let’s look at three easy ways you can fictionalize your life.
1. Uncover Evocative Childhood Emotional Experiences
Ready to write? Think of a childhood experience — a pleasant one. Perhaps you remember a holiday, or a special family event. Recall the experience. Allow yourself to be there.
Allow the emotion to come back to you. Now start to write.
Write whatever comes: don’t control your writing.
At this stage, you’re just aiming to touch the experience. When you keep writing and allow yourself to feel your emotions, sooner or later a story will come to you. When it does, go with it.
2. Use Triggering Images from a Photo Album
Take out an old family album. Leaf through it slowly. Allow emotions to arise. Remember the day each photo was taken.
Now, choose one photo to which you have an intense emotional reaction, and start writing.
Again, don’t try to control your writing. Let your writing take you where it wants you to go.
By the way, once you start writing your novel, if you get blocked, take out your photo album again.
3. Let Music Inspire You
Music is inspirational for many people, especially music which was around in their childhood. When you listen to music which you heard in your youth, you’ll find that you’re taken right back to those long-ago days.
Sit down to write. Then close your eyes and listen to the music. Images — memories — will arise. Start writing.
You now have three ways in which you can access your emotions. These emotions trigger your imagination, and deepest inspiration.
Not only will writing your novel be fun, it will be meaningful to you, and to your readers.
Turn Your Words Into Gold: Write and Sell An Ebook In Just Eight Hours
Here’s what I love about writing ebooks: you write them once, and they keep on selling forever.
I know several writers who’ve taken to the Kindle platform like the proverbial ducks to water. One writer friend turns out a new Kindle ebook every month, like clockwork. The last time we spoke, she had 11 ebooks selling — and her income is rising month by month.
Another writer friend mixes writing her own ebooks, with writing ebooks for others. Currently she’s been commissioned to write a biography, and a family history, for the same client. She’s finding it huge fun, and she’s making more money than she’s ever made.
The benefit of writing and selling ebooks is that once written, they can keep on selling forever. Would you trade eight hours for an income stream?
Angela Booth
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