Bug Books: Joey Paul Online: Writing Your Story

Monday 24 January 2022

Writing Your Story - The Creative Process

WRITING YOUR STORY

Last week I talked about writing for yourself (found here) but this week I wanted to expand on writing your story. I mentioned in last week's piece that I'd gotten a good piece of advice from another writer who said that only you can tell your story, and it's very true. There are so many different ideas out there, but also so many that follow along a similar basic plot. Even if you were given the same writing outline as five different people, all five would write very different ways of executing the idea.

So while there's always this fear that things have been done before, which I've talked about in the past (found here) it's simply not true. I know some writers are fearful of sharing their ideas because they worry that another writer will steal said idea, or that someone else will write it and then they're stuck. The problem with that is, there are pretty much, no original ideas when you break things down to a plot level. It's the execution of those ideas that make each and every story unique in its own way.

Why is it important to write your own story? Because only you can tell it, and that writer who gave me the advice, also added an extra point. The world needs your story, which is very much the truth. There are so many different types of story, whether that's genre or tropes or age category, and there will always, always, be readers out there who resonate with your words. There will always be some who need your story more than anything else. It's important to remember that, and important to keep it in mind when you're writing, whatever story that may be.

There have been times over the past twenty-odd years I've been writing, when I've started to doubt whether the world as a whole does need my work. I've published nineteen books, drafted nearly forty and I sometimes just feel like I'm shouting into the void, that my words, my stories, my books and the like aren't needed. When that happens, I go to my random praise folder and read letters from readers, read reviews and the like that remind me that yeah, my books resonated with people. They reached soon teens, some older, and they were the story they needed at that point in their lives.

I wrote those stories to be heard, to showcase the tales that had come to me. I wrote them because they needed to be told. Whether that's because I personally needed to tell them, or because I felt like readers needed to hear them, and the same is always going to be true of your own stories. There are readers out there for you, and some of them need that story more than you realise. It will resonate with them, lift them up, and bring them the joy that a lot of us feel for the written word.

So writing your story is very much important. It matters, it counts, and while I know it can be hard to sometimes keep going when it feels like everything is against you, you need to keep putting those words on the page however you can. It doesn't matter how long it takes, it doesn't matter if it's a year or ten, or even more than that. You need to tell your story just as much as other people need to read it.

Keep writing, that's all you can do.

Any questions? Lemme know the comments below!