Why Write?

April 23, 2018 | By Women Writers, Women's Books | Reply More

Like J K Rowling, the big impetus to me getting my first book written – and then published – was poverty. No money, no job on the horizon and a mountain of bills.

To put it poetically – or as a story teller would – it was like being a donkey beaten with a big stick – then hey presto! I became a thoroughbred.

Sounds easy, yes? One thing I have in bucket loads is grit or persistence, call it what you will. Determined to get published, the words of Winston Churchill rang in my ears – blood, sweat and tears.

There are millions of authors out there and millions more all wanting to do the same. There’s a gap as big as the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific combined between wanting and achieving, but it’s not impossible. First, you need a few ground rules as per the following checklist.

1. Can you tell a story? The fact that you’ve got a degree in English Literature only goes a short way to being successful. Think The Illiad. The Viking Sagas and other myriad stories that began life being told VERBALLY over a campfire before the written word and any set rules of grammar were invented.

2. Imagination. Were you the kid who got bored with whatever the teacher was droning on about, your mind flying out of the class window, riding a unicorn across the clouds or dancing higher and higher in the branches of the tree just outside the window? My unicorn was cantering around the rings of Saturn.

3. Do you have the stamina of a thoroughbred? I meant what I said about blood, sweat and tears. When I first began writing a novel I had my eye on the ultimate goal – getting published, and what a wonderful thing to spill all the stories confined in my mind and share them with other people. Getting paid for it was jam on the butter on the bread.

4. Stamina was my watchword. I was so determined to succeed I pushed myself to write 5,000 words or more a day. Sometimes I sat at the computer eight hours at a stretch. As I straightened, my tortured joints made cracking sounds like splintered wood. Pinocchio’s wooden knees would have made less noise than mine did.

5. Take on board that all the other stuff – where you write, when you write and whether you use a computer or pen and paper, are not that important. Be yourself. Write wherever and whenever it suits you in whatever medium you prefer.

I didn’t get that very first book published – not at that time – but a genre book was picked up just fourteen months after I began writing. Another little pearl of wisdom – nothing is wasted. That first book was picked up and published ten years later.

I went on to write in many genres under quite a few pseudonyms. I also wrote scripts for the BBC and had my own newspaper column; mighty oaks do indeed sprout from little acorns.

And then there are the books; I’ve had many of my titles in the top thirty bestselling paperbacks and the stories keep coming.

So my last piece of advice is no matter if you could paper the bathroom walls with rejection letters, remember Winston; blood, sweat and tears – plus something to rub into your knees!

Before I go, I’ll just say that I’m losing count of how many books I’ve written; I think this latest one, EAST OF INDIA, is number fifty two, but it certainly will not be my last.

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Erica Brown is the pseudonym of a very successful author of women’s fiction and crime. She lives in Bath and has one daughter and twin grandchildren, one of whom is dead set on becoming a writer.

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ABOUT EAST OF INDIA

India, 1940. When Nadine learns that the Indian woman she thought her nanny is, in fact, her mother, she rebels against her English father and he arranges for her to be wed to an Australian merchant many years older. She is whisked off to her new husband’s plantation in Malaya but as the Second World War rages throughout the East, Nadine is taken captive by the Japanese. She is held at a camp in Sumatra with other women and forced to entertain the soldiers and satisfy their desires.

In the most unlikely circumstances, Nadine finds an ally and protector in a Japanese—American major caught up in the war. The two bond over their conflicted identities and gradually fall in love. But can Nadine survive long enough to find happiness?

Don’t miss this emotional and powerful saga about a woman’s determination to beat the odds, perfect for fans of Renita D’Silva, Dinah Jefferies and Julia Gregson.

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