Unleash the Writer Within

By Kelly Blanchard

Do you want to write a book, but you're not sure where to start? Would you like a hand to guide you through the process, help you master writing description, dialogue, character development, and more? Kelly Blanchard drew on her years of writing and mentoring writers to create this book, which is designed to give you tips, encouragesment, and resources for your journey as a writer. Unleash the imagination and embrace the potential!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Blanchard
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223723110

Book preview

Introduction

Hello, and thank you so much for picking up this book! You may be interested in writing but have no idea what you’re doing. Or maybe you’ve begun writing but would like some guidance or encouragement. Or perhaps you’ve been writing for a while, (and maybe published!) but are curious to see what this book has to offer.

Regardless of your reason, I am glad you are here. Before we get started, I’d like to introduce myself. I’d like to pull back the curtains a bit and show you my journey as a writer. The reason why I’m doing this is because if you hear of a successful author, all you may think about is how successful they are—not how they got there or how relatable their story may be. I tell people, I write 2k to 4k words a day, and they feel like a failure because they’re not writing that many words, but then I tell them, "No! I wasn’t writing that many words a day all my life! It took me years of practice to get up to that point!" So that’s why I’m going to be honest with you and tell you a bit about myself.

Here's an outline of my life as a writer. First, as I am writing this book right now, I am 36, born in 1987.

From my earliest memories, stories have been a part of my life. I've always had a wild imagination, and I would often draw stick figure stories because I didn't know how to write.

Once I learned how to write, it was a matter of figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I tried a bunch of stuff (drawing—but I’m terrible at it. Riding horses—but then I had an accident that required eye surgery).

1999 — age 12 — I finally decided that writing was my outlet, and I began to write. First, it was just a few paragraphs describing a sunset, my favorite part of the day, storms, and so forth. My oldest brother loved these pieces, and he'd brag about how awesome of a writer I was. Besides my mom, he was really my first fan.

2000 — age 13 — an older sister of mine introduced me to fan fiction, and this is where all the random pieces of writing began to finally form into stories.

From 2000-2003, I wrote fan fiction, honing my skill. I wasn't worried about what anyone else thought. I wasn't worried about writing for others. Every time I wrote a story, I had a sole purpose in mind, I want to master description, or "I want my characters to be real." These few years are where I developed the writing style I have today. I learned so much.

2004 — age 17 — I went to community college. It's also the year I met my first boyfriend, who completely derailed my writing even though I often thought of writing and maybe jolted down a few ideas.

From 2004-2006, I honestly didn't write much. My boyfriend and I broke up in 2005, but it took me a while to rediscover what I wanted to do with my life. At that time, I explored maybe becoming a sign language interpreter, but those doors quickly closed.

Sometime in 2006 — age 19 — I exchanged emails with a writer friend of my mom's over in England. I regard him as my writing mentor only because he took the time to talk to me about writing and challenged me. By this time, I hadn't written in years, and I was furious with myself. I was convinced that all my writing skills had rusted, and that I would never be a good writer. But then he said something to me, and I don't even remember what it was. All I recall was that I was blinded with fury and decided to prove him wrong, and next thing I knew, I began writing. To my surprise, my writing skills hadn’t rusted. I only wrote 1,000 words a day, but I was determined to write every day, so I did. I drew on all my experience from writing fan fiction and began writing original work. This was the year that my mom discovered NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and she encouraged me to participate, but I told her 'no' because the thought of writing more than 1k words a day just overwhelmed me.

2007 — age 20 — I finally decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, bumping my word count up to 2k words a day. I've kept up that pace since then and became more and more confident with writing. This is when I really, really became dedicated to writing. I wrote 2k words every day (except Sundays), regardless of how I felt or what I was doing that day. Working and going to school, I still made it work. This right here is part of why I am as productive as I am.

2009 — age 22 — I graduated community college and attended university, studying Creative Writing. I had two goals in mind: learn how to revise and learn how to publish a book.

2010 — age 23 — I dropped out of university because they weren't teaching me what I wanted to learn. They were trying to teach me things that were outdated. I ended up going to England for two months to help my sister who was due to have Baby #3. While there, I wrote the first book that I would publish, a historical fiction novel.

2011 — age 24 — Using a vanity press, I published the first book of my historical fiction series under a pen name.

2012 — age 25 — I published the second book of the series. This is also when I wrote 'Someday I'll Be Redeemed' and 'I Still Have a Soul’—the first two books of the Chronicles of Lorrek. At first, I thought it was a single book and that was all to the series. I would learn later on that I was mistaken.

2013 — age 26 — a very stressful year in real life. I don’t remember much of what happened in regards to my writing, but I know that summer was particularly stressful because my mom broke her arm pretty severely and then we had company visiting from England. I just remember sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting for my mom to get out of surgery. I desperately needed to write something but didn’t know what to write. I texted a writer friend of mine who I had co-written with before just for fun and asked, Hey, can we co-write another story? I need a distraction. And so we did, and it was fun.

2014 — age 27 — I began to get active in Facebook writing groups and began to network online. In August of 2014, I created my Facebook group. This is when I began to be called the Muse and started building a fanbase.

2015 — age 28 — I published the third book of my historical fiction series, and even though there was one more book left in the series, I grew frustrated with the vanity press I was using and their restrictions because I could not promote like I wanted to. This is also the year when I began the Meeting with the Muse interviews and met my husband, Matthew. This is the year I realized that the book I had written for Lorrek’s story was actually two books, so I split them up and was getting ready to publish them.

2016 — age 29 — My writer friends encouraged me to switch to CreateSpace rather than continue with the vanity press when I decided to publish the Chronicles of Lorrek, and in March of that year, I published ‘Someday I’ll Be Redeemed’. In October, I published ‘I Still Have a Soul’. This is the year that I discovered there was more to the series, and I really began crafting the universe of the Chronicles of Lorrek.

2017 — age 30 — Matthew and I got married in June, and that week, just a few days after the wedding, I published ‘I’m Still Alive’, the third book of the Chronicles of Lorrek series. The only book I would publish that year.

2018 — age 31 — January, I published ‘Do You Trust Me?’, and in July, I published ‘You Left Me No Choice’ while in December I published the short story collection. From December 2018-April 2019, my husband and I co-wrote the The Hand of Sorrow series.

2019 — age 32 — In January, I published ‘They Must Be Stopped’ of the Chronicles of Lorrek, and in June, I published ‘Find Me If You Can’. I began experimenting with marketing strategies and began to do well. I started writing another series and finished three of the four books of the series.

2020 — age 33 — As we all know, COVID hit, and it had a major impact on my writing. That year alone, I lost four loved ones including my dad. I also lost my beloved Doberman, Valkyrie. Death is hard to deal with, and deaths that come back-to-back are even harder. I pushed through the pain and grief and finished the fourth book of the other series. My husband and I tried to begin another series, but I began experiencing what I thought was Writer’s Block. In reality, it was burnout. The pandemic, all the deaths, uncertainty, and unknown just burned me out. I couldn’t write. I turned to spray paint art for a time. I was really struggling and felt ashamed of myself—felt like I was a failure as a writer.

2021 — age 34 — Three more deaths that year. Even though I was unable to write new material, I turned my attention to publishing books I had finished writing. It was always hard to prepare a book for publication while at the same time writing an entirely new book, so I dedicated that year to publishing the Hand of Sorrow series. Still needing to be creative but still unable to write, I discovered pouring paint.

2022 — age 35 — Two more deaths. In March, I began to write 2,000 words regularly again, and I thought I had made a breakthrough! But that stalled too. I just didn’t have the mental, physical, or emotional energy to write because often in stories, the characters’ lives are messed up, but this time, my own life was in turmoil, so I couldn’t write. Finances were tight, so I began working outside of the house. This severely impacted my ability to write creatively since I was writing for the job. Despite all of this, I managed to finish publishing the Hand of Sorrow series.

2023 — age 36 — No deaths this year. That is such a relief. My husband got a new job, so I was able to quit my job and resume working from home. My husband introduced me to D&D to give me some outlet for everything. It inspired a story that my husband and I began to write. This time, I’m not focused on word count or when we write during the day or even when publishing the book. We’re just writing for the fun of it, and after the last several years, I needed that. Also, I decided to re-publish my historical fiction series, The Last King of Legends, so I began doing that.

That may be everything up to the present moment, but one more thing:

From 2008-2010, I actually suffered from severe Writer's Block even though I still wrote every day. Yep. You can get Writer's Block and still write. The most interesting thing is that ninety percent of my story universe is actually comprised of all the disconnected, random stories that I wrote during that time with Writer's Block. I may even extend that through to 2015 because even though I wrote books (including ‘Someday I’ll Be Redeemed’ and ‘I Still Have a Soul’), it wasn't until I wrote ’I’m Still Alive’ of my series that I really broke through it and began to connect things.

From 2007-2019, I have been writing regularly every day. This is why word counts like 2k-8k or even 10k a day are possible for me, but it certainly didn’t start that way! Remember, I only started with writing 1k words a day when I really began to get serious about writing.

From 2020-2022, I experienced major writing burnout. 2020 really put the brakes on everything, and I wasn’t able to write for about three years. Thankfully by 2023, I’ve resumed writing once more.

From 2014-present day has been how long I have been working on building my brand/platform.

And that is my life when it comes to my writing journey. Lots of huge plans for the future! I cannot wait!

Hopefully this has been a source of encouragement for you. If you feel like you’re just meandering aimlessly and you’re not sure the direction you should be taking or maybe you don’t see any progress, you are doing all right! Hopefully this book will provide you with some encouragement as well as give you some direction. So, let’s get started, shall we?

Part One

Things to Know Before You Begin Writing

Chapter 1

No Rules for Writing

So you want to write a book and a fiction book at that, but where do you begin? What are all the rules? If you ask others, you might get some vague responses that don’t really help you much, or you might get a billion different answers that sometimes contradict one another. All of this will leave you confused and overwhelmed.

Don't worry. You're going to be okay.

I'm going to tell you a secret.

There are no rules for writing or publishing a book.

Now, there are grammar and punctuation rules, which vary from language to language. Of course, we will be focusing on American English in this book.

But when it comes to an actual story, creating characters, choosing points of view, outlining a story, and so forth—there are no rules.

There are recommendations and guidelines. If you are the kind of person who likes to be different and go against the grain, you can do just that. Yes, things might be a little more difficult for you, but it doesn't mean it will be impossible for you. You'll just have to be patient.

As you begin writing, it is important to experiment with different ways of writing, different approaches, and so forth.

You are trying to develop your own, unique writing style, and this can be hard to do.

When you are experimenting and trying new things, ask yourself this one simple question, Why am I doing it this particular way? If the answer is, Because everyone told me to do it like this, that's not a good enough answer. You need to find out for yourself why you are doing what you do. Don't worry about what other people think or say. Look at what you are doing, study it, and pick it apart just so that you yourself can understand exactly why you do what you do exactly how you do it. This way, if someone ever asks you the same question, you will be able to articulate it.

For example, someone recently told me, Kelly, I noticed you always say 'I hope you the best', but the phrase is really, 'I wish you the best'. Why do you do that?

I told them, I don't like to wish. Wishes are fleeting. Wishes may not come true. But hope...hope is a little more real—more likely to happen. That's why I 'hope' someone the best because I really do want the best for them.

That person pondered for a moment then said, You know what? That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining.

Yeah, maybe I don't say that common phrase right, but I say exactly what I actually mean. You can do the same thing, but with your writing.

So, are there rules for writing? Aside from grammar and punctuation, no.

Now, yes, it's recommended you don't shift from first person to third person in the same book, but some people can do it and get away with it. If you want to experiment with that, go right ahead. Just know that eventually you will have to decide why you are doing it and is it what you want for your style?

It is recommended not to shift from present tense to past tense in the same story, but some people manage to do it in such a way that it works for them. Experiment with that if you want, but in the end, know that it can be very jarring and distracting for the readers. So, if you’re switching tenses like that, make sure you understand exactly why you are doing so.

Some people do things differently from others just because they want to be the exception. While this is admirable, it doesn't mean it will work. Don't try to be something that you are not. Be you. That alone might be different from most people, but different is good. Don't forget that or ever doubt that.

Writing can be intimidating, especially if you're just starting off and if you don't have much support around you.

It takes time to really understand the craft of writing, so don't rush it. You have time. You will have some days when you are on fire and you’re typing faster than your computer can keep up with! But then you will also have days when you're just dragging and asking yourself, Do I have to do this? Does it even matter? And then you begin doubting yourself.

All of that is perfectly normal, okay? So don't feel bad if you feel that way. Just take a deep breath, and take it one day at a time. You've got this.

Chapter 2

Is There an Age Limit for Writing and Publishing?

So, is there an age limit for writing or publishing a book? Can you be too old or too young to write and publish?

Let me put it simply: No!

There is no age limit for this.

Now, yes, we don't expect an infant to pick up a pen and begin to write. They can't even hold their head up on their own, let alone know how to speak or write, so of course, they're not going to write. Of course, if a kid is a quick learner of language and by age three or so can actually write, then they're not too young to write. Sure, they should still take time to learn proper grammar and punctuation, but actual writing? Not too young.

Younger Writers

Being a young writer requires tender care. Younger writers don't have a solid grasp on all the rules of writing. For them, stories are the world, and they’re just bursting at the seams wanting to tell all the