Today I'm honored to be the first stop on author Martin Willoughby's blog tour. Martin and I have been friends for quite some time now, and I'm thrilled that he invited me to help with the recent release of his book, TEMPERS FUGIT.
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| Isn't this a great cover? Click here to go to the Amazon page. |
Martin has joined me at my blog today to share his useful (and hilarious) writing advice, How Not To Tear Your Hair Out When Writing. Take it away, Martin...
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First of all, thank you to Dana for hosting me today and for being the first gullible victim...errr...first reliable friend to host me on my tour of the world's blogs to celebrate the launch of my comedy novel, TEMPERS FUGIT.As you can see from my photo, I'm not good at avoiding tearing my hair out, or at least I wasn't. Over the past few years, I've developed several methods to lower stress and anxiety and, thereby, remove the moments when I place my hands on my head, grip, then pull out what little hair I have remaining.
1. Shave it off. If you have no hair, you have nothing to pull. Yes, I admit it's a bit drastic, but it does work. On the downside, it doesn't help long term and wouldn't suit everyone, especially the ladies, which is why I came up with...
2. Wear a swimming cap. Far less drastic but not as effective, though I did find myself ripping it off, throwing it on the floor, and jumping up and down on it like a crazed kangaroo. Also, when tearing it off my head, I pulled a few hairs out as well. So I moved on to option...
3. Walk away from the computer. I went and did something else for a while, anything to take my mind off the frustration. Read, wash up, bathe, wrestle an alligator, start World War 3, etc. Alternatively I would write down an idea that had been going round my head for a while and sketch it out using pictures. I got into severe trouble once when I kidnapped two people and forced them to act out several scenes from an upcoming book. Turns out that making people act out your stories in front of you is illegal, so I went back to writing. Still, I learnt a lot about police procedure, the law, and how not to act in court. This led me on to...
4. Reminding myself that there will always be bad days/weeks. The good thing about these days is they pass if you don't fight them. I found that if I tried to force inspiration and ability into my body, it gave energy to the negativity and helped it to last a long time. By accepting it as a bad day and typing what little I could, however bad, it lost the will to live and left me alone within a few hours or, at worst, a couple of days. Finally, there's number...
5. Get (almost) everything done ahead of time. If you can get something done, do it. Okay, there'll be days when you can't get something done, such as the last week before a book launch and your Internet connection goes down, you get yourself involved in a play that requires you to be out till midnight for five nights, etc., but this passes and teaches you a valuable lesson.
When I ignore these pieces of advice, things go wrong; when I follow them, the last three at least, things go reasonably well. After all, nothing ever goes completely, totally right, does it?
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Martin Willoughby is an author of some repute and a legend in his own lunchtime. When not writing, he fixes computers, raises teenage children, and acts in an amateur theatre group, where he's always cast as the baddy. He's won many awards in his lifetime, including an Oscar for best actor which he received from his mother as a Christmas present many years ago. TEMPERS FUGIT is his first book; his second, APOLLO THE THIRTEENTH, will be released later this year to even more fanfare and approval. You can stalk him on Twitter (@Willabywriter) or via his blog, From Sand to Glass.
