Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

That’s right, I’m getting nasty. Why? I guess it’s just the way I’m feeling at the moment - and the way I’m feeling at the moment is that I need a pep talk. In fact, I need a good kick up the arse. I figure other ‘aspiring writers’ are feeling the same way; and if they aren’t they will, at some point. So, now I’ve got your hackles up, I’ll begin.    So, aspiring writers everywhere, the very first thing I have to say is stop ‘aspiring’. You don’t ‘aspire’ to get out of bed - you get out of bed. You either write or you don’t, simple as that. The only caveat I’ll give is, of all the things you should aspire to, being a better writer is one of them. I’m not allowing complacency here, don’t think I’ve started being nice, because being a better writer takes hard work - so register the aspiration and get toiling. Almost everyone wants to be a writer, possibly almost everyone could be, so what makes you different? What’s your USP? (Don’t answer that last question, I don’t n...

“First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.”   Gore Vidal In Greek mythology the nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. They were the patron goddesses of intellectual and creative ability, literature, music and dance and provided inspiration to mortals.   It's a romantic notion, that of a writer having a muse. It feels like something rather grand and lofty, pretentious maybe, something to be claimed by those writers who like to work in fountain pen lying on a chaise longue with Edith Piaf warbling in the background and a fog of Gitane smoke suspended above their heads. For me, the presence in my writing life of a muse, or, being honest and greedy, muses, is of vital importance. So much so that I wouldn't be able to write without them. And trust me, I am not the chaise longue smoker. Far from it. To whom would you pay the ultimate compliment: you make me want to write? Who have you visualised as a po...

We rescued a little mongrel puppy a few months ago and I’ve been working hard at the dog-training. I’ve been working particularly hard at the command: ‘Leave it!’ It’s an important instruction.  In theory at least, it dissuades the puppy from stealing other people’s balls, snatching food from the table, or worrying his toys into half-chewed fragments. Without the ‘leave it!’ command, the dog will happily chew at his toy until there is nothing but a pile of stuffing and a deactivated plastic squeaker on the carpet.  In between dog-training and dog walks, I’ve been working on my first novel. The dog curls up in the orange armchair by my desk, and when I read my work aloud, he lifts an ear and keeps a baleful eye focused upon me. If the truth is to be told, he has been looking a little bored recently. Perhaps this is because he has heard chapter sixteen a dozen times over the past two weeks. If the puppy could talk as well as he sometimes seems to think he can, he would pr...

I volunteered to write this blog and said 'give me any letter and I'll figure out something to write'. So I was presented with K. And my mind went totally blank! I couldn't even think of any words beginning with K, well, except for kangaroo, which didn't help much, never mind an actual title for a topic regarding writing. So I reached for the dictionary for inspiration. Kaleidoscope had potential, every written piece, fact or fiction, long or short, needs to combine a kaleidoscope of information, characters, locations... and pull it all together into a cohesive and pleasing whole.   A bit more flicking through and I came up with “karma”, now as an atheist I don't believe the universe has any scales balancing someone's morality but I do think that in the context of a story there needs to be some. The 'bad guy' needs to get some comeuppance and the good, hardworking characters get rewarded. Readers can be left feeling cheated and that the...

Yes! J is for Joy. That’s what I decided. It could have been Julia Cameron, Jane Austen, Jabba the Hut or jetlag. But it wasn’t. It was joy. Joy ? Isn’t that a bit tree-huggy and misty eyed? Evangelical, even? The realm of New Agey self-help books teaching us how to get back in touch with our inner child? Yes! All of the above. And why not indeed. But there is one thing I have found to be true, and that is this - (insert pearl of wisdom here) - joy is fundamental to writing. Without joy, writing is just a mechanical act, a dead dance, a tired man dragging himself through a bog. The joy of discovering new life, lives, worlds, stories, sounds through the happy combination of words is what keeps us going. They may be words that we combine or words that have been combined by others before us. But they bring us joy whenever we happen upon them, like the sweet delight of meeting an old friend on the street. When I am blocked or just feeling like I have lost sight of the way, the...

Igloo, innocence, Ichabod Crane were some of the ‘I’s that were thrown at me when I told people I was writing this piece. Although some of these ideas were appealing, I’ve decided to write about a thoroughly different ‘I’, the personal pronoun ‘I’, as in “me, myself and…” Cue to start singing in a silly voice. I (can’t get away from it now) have just started writing what I hope will turn into an autobiographical novel. You might think that autobiography would be simple; you don’t have that pesky business of inventing characters, plot lines or places. Why not just splurge it all down on the page? You could even do it in chronological order - what could be easier? It even fits with the old adage of “write what you know.” I’m actually finding that it’s very difficult to know where to start. I want to draw people in straight away, so I need to begin with some of the big, important stuff. But then it’s important to move quickly into telling the story in a linear fashion, to avoid con...

I’m writing my first novel, but I couldn’t do it without the help of my friends. There are practical forms of help that any aspiring or accomplished writer needs. For example, Margaret Atwood employs several assistants to ensure the historical accuracy of her novels, and an academic colleague from my previous life used to pay a young woman to sit in his room and listen to the ideas for his latest book (although whether her role was muse, eye candy, or amanuensis was never made quite clear). Writing groups can be helpful, providing fertile environments in which to grow and share one’s writing. Editors, agents and proof-readers can all support authors in the final crafting of their books through attention to the mechanics of the plot, the readability and flow, the grammatical appropriateness of various sentences, and removing surplus apostrophes. I don’t doubt the value of each of those kinds of help as a means towards becoming a better and more accomplished writer. But the kind of ...