Time, space and writing habits are the focus of many a good how-to-write book, and make for an endlessly fascinating topic for most of us keen to glean yet another secret weapon for our arsenal of writing tips and tricks. Alexandra offers more than her fair share of tricks with us today. Writers need to be selfish about their time and the space they need to write, whether that’s headspace or physical space. We chat about procrastination and the barriers to sitting down and actually writing. We also chat about my current bug-bear, the noise about how self-publishing is considered by some to be a road to riches and how people sometimes expect that they can start from scratch and churn out a book that will make then squizillionaires. What the rest of us are interested in is the value we place on our writing, what it means to us and why it matters. Add that to how creativity is one of the most foundational and creative drives of human nature. If you’ve read Julia Cameron then you’ll like where Alexandra is coming from when she talks about the spirituality of writing. You can find out more about Alexandra and Faster Fiction here.
Alexandra Amor
Duration: [00:43:45]
Melinda: Welcome to another episode of Writer on the Road. Today I'm with a friend of mine, an old friend of mine who has turned up in a few different places over the last few months and it's Alexandra Amor who I believe is over in Canada. Good morning Alexandra!
Alexandra Amor: Hi Melinda, how are you today?
Melinda: Good thank you. I don't know whether to be excited or terrified to have Alexandra with me today simply because she's an author mindset mentor. I've been fossicking through her blog this morning and the first thing it says is are you ready to stop thinking about writing and actually writing. I'm going maybe I don't need to talk to this woman right now. Tell us all about it please Alexandra and don't asked me any detailed questions because I might have to lie to you.
Alexandra Amor: I can say the same back. Well thanks so much for having me on the show Melinda I'm thrilled to be here and I always find it so fun to talk to somebody on the other side of the world, so yeah I'm on the west coast of Canada in Vancouver and the new site that I've got up fasterfiction.com is brand new, it went up about a week ago and the intention there is for me to help writers and people who are really maybe even want to be writers, they haven't written their first thing yet to get out of their own way, to stop procrastinating, to stop thinking about writing as you mentioned and get their bum in a chair and start writing.
Melinda: What can we say about that everybody? Everyone who's listening out there we're all writers, we all know what it's like and we all have very good intentions as well. My problem is I have people on my podcast who mention things like 5,000 words a day, do I need to talk to you Kevin Tumlinson and there's lots of other people out there who are putting me to shame, I've got Joanne Dannon doesn't do a bad job either at churning out the words, I don't even want to go into my romance writers like Amy Andrew and co because they've been writing for years and they're up to 50/60/70 books and I'm going oh give me a break but I'm still out there, I'm thinking about it and I'm going to write a book. So Alexandra I need you today. Let's start with that favorite word of ours procrastination.
Alexandra Amor: I think this is such a big topic for writers and Steven Pressfield calls it resistance, I don't know if you've read The War of Art but that's a really great book to start with and...