“To err is human, to forgive is divine.”

It’s hardly breaking news that writers make mistakes — a lot of them. You’ll probably find some in here (I’m OK with you not pointing them out to me though). We are only human after all. Just because writing is our job, or, at the very least, our passion, doesn’t mean we are going to get it right all the time. Just as footballers sometimes miss really easy goals or singers hit a bum note, or the government makes a decision that sees our country plummet to almost farcical levels of disorder, writers can misplace a comma, go off on a tangent or even write a whole book that’s not very good.

The problem for writers is that forgiveness is often hard to come by. Our readers expect perfection. Even if you’ve tried your best, and worked as hard as you can, and edited until the cows came home and grew up and had tiny baby cows all of their own you could still make a mistake. If you misspell a word, overlook an inconsistency or haven’t quite made your story as good as it could be, your readers will let you know about it.

Of course, there is nothing quite like the brutal wrath of a writer upon themselves when they realise they’ve made a mistake, especially if it’s too late to change it. Even during the writing process, we can be particularly inventive in our self-torture. If you’ve ever spent so much time agonising over synonyms that you start to question whether you might have gone mad and perhaps only ‘think’ you are typing on your computer but are, in reality, sitting in a padded cell somewhere just mashing a banana into the floor, you’ll know what I mean.

So how can we learn to forgive our mistakes and perhaps encourage our readers to do the same?

Common writer mistakes

Striving for perfection

Tying to make your writing perfect is pointless. An editor friend once told me “editors write books.” What she meant (though vaguely insulting) was that any book that’s been through a traditional publisher would have been changed so much by the editor that they might as well have just written it themselves in the first place (OK, perhaps a lot insulting). While I would argue with this, there is at least some truth to it. No manuscript that’s ever been sent to a publisher is published as is. They aren’t going to think much of a book that’s riddled with errors. However,  if you’ve written a clunky paragraph, made an egg-on-your-face grammatical faux pax or even spelt one of your own characters names wrong (why did I think it was a good idea to name my protagonist Azariah Cholomondley?), they’ll be OK with it – if what you’ve presented them with is a riveting tale full of compelling characters that’s well-written to boot.

Not taking your time

Sometimes we writers can be in somewhat of a rush. We’re sort of like the tortoise in ‘the tortoise and the hare’, we’re racing, but also getting nowhere, quite slowly. It can, therefore, be difficult not to become rather impatient when one finishes one’s novel.

It takes a long time to write a book, so when we finally type THE END, (as all good novels end), trying not to send our manuscript off to every publisher we might think could publish it, or whacking it up on Amazon and shouting about it to the world takes a fair bit of restraint. It’s somewhat contradictory – we can’t quite make up our minds whether we are perfectionists who would rather let our hard work gather dust as we um and ah over every word, or we are reckless and impulsive chancers who just think ‘to hell with it’ and throw our hats in the ring and see what happens. The problem of course, with either, is that you are doing yourself a disservice. Writers should take their time to edit their books and make sure they are in as good a shape as they can be – not perfect, but edited, reworked, checked, edited and rechecked – that ought to do it! Knowing when to hang on is as important as knowing when to let go, after all.

Being too hard on yourself

I’ve said it time and time again, but writers really need to give themselves a break, for their own and everyone else’s sake. Constantly being down on your writing is the equivalent of asking ‘does my bum look big in this?’ every 5 seconds to your coworkers who don’t want to look at your bum, nor do they care either way. Having confidence in your writing is the biggest favour you can do for yourself. It really doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. If you are going to do it, choosing to believe the former will make it a far more positive and productive experience for you. If you really can’t stop being negative about your writing, maybe you should ask yourself why you continue to struggle with something that doesn’t bring you that much enjoyment in life?

Not learning from your writing mistakes

No mistakes are as big as the ones we don’t learn from. Instead of wallowing in self-pity or shame, or fluttering nervously around your readers in obsequious self-deprecation trying to explain your mistakes before they’ve even had a chance to notice them, just acknowledge them, think ‘whoopsy’ and then figure out the steps you need to take to make sure you don’t do it again.

We’ve got to accept that while it is frustrating when we make mistakes it also probably doesn’t matter almost half as much as we think it does. Of course, it’s annoying if you are two-thirds of the way through your book and you realise that you’ve made a mistake which the whole plot sorta kinda relies upon. Of course, it’s hide-your-face-in-a-pillowcase-and-weep kind of cringey when you realise your self-published novel has an elementary spelling mistake on the first page. Being a conscientious writer, being thorough, doing proper research,  re-reading, and hiring an editor can help avoid any grave errors from slipping through the net when you go to publish, but there are no guarantees, and while it is possible to get your manuscript error-free, it is impossible to make it flawless. So embrace your writing mistakes, be kind to yourself, learn from them and move on – you’ll end up a better writer if you do.

Bethany Cadman is a freelance writer and author of Doctor Vanilla’s Sunflowers

If you were asked to describe a writer, one of the words that you would probably use is ‘creative.’ Naturally, this makes sense as we are creating our work.

However, the word creative comes with so much more meaning than just being a creator of something.

If we imagine someone creative, we might believe them to be poetic, artistic, imaginative, and unique. A creative person is a person dedicated to their craft, one who is passionate and energetic and sees the world in a slightly different, cooler, more bendy way than those ordinary, non-creative folk.

While that’s all great, and may well ring true to writers sometimes, there is nothing worse than feeling uncreative as a writer.

We’ve all been there. You know, when you sit down in front of your computer screen and frown at the blank page your hands poised with eager anticipation above the keyboard, and….nothing. Your mind goes blank, or, worse still, every word that you type is so offensively, eye-wateringly dull that if it were someone else, not you, who wrote them, you’d immediately tell them to quit forever and perhaps bind their fingers together with sellotape just to be sure that they’d never attempt to do it again.

The truth is that creativity isn’t necessarily something that comes naturally to all writers. We don’t go about our daily lives with lightbulbs flashing on in our minds every ten seconds with another brilliant, original, flawless story idea. We don’t always see the beauty in things or find the complexity of human nature endlessly fascinating. We don’t always want to read challenging literature and have intellectually stimulating conversations.

Sometimes we want to eat beans on toast in front of the TV just like everyone else.

Of course, the problem with this is that when it comes to your writing sessions, you want to be able to feel creative straight away. Unfortunately, writers are not ingrained with a creativity button that we can push on when we want to write, and, more often then not, when we try to force ourselves to be creative, it only makes the situation worse. Then, before you know it your very worst enemy, Mr. W. Block is waving at you from the corner of your office.

Most writers don’t have as much time to write as they would like. Therefore, making sure that writing sessions are as productive and prolific as possible is essential.

So what can you do to be more creative, and reduce those instances where you feel as though you are not only not very creative, but perhaps the most unimaginative, uninspired, talentless husk of a writer that ever lived?

Stop with the pressure.

Forcing yourself to be creative is like trying to get a dog in the bath. It’s an unbearable struggle, and you’ll probably give up exhausted, defeated and no better off than when you started.

Try and find the things that naturally make you feel more creative instead.

Some people love to get up at the crack of dawn to write. Others prefer to get cosy with a glass of wine in the evenings to help relax them into the creative mindset. You need to do whatever works for you.

Experiment, try different times, and settings and set different goals too. You might find that writing nonstop for twenty minutes a day keeps you at your most productive, or it may be that sitting down for a long afternoon of writing once a week means you can really get your teeth stuck into it and produce work to be proud of.

Play music.

Music is excellent at steering us towards a particular emotional state and can be very helpful at making us relaxed, energetic or tapping into particular feelings that can inspire us to write. If you are about to write a tragic scene in your book, for example, you could find some truly heart-wrenching music to help you explore those emotions. If you are writing a fight scene, a song that’s full of energy and ferocity could be all the motivation you need to help your characters beat the hell out of one another.

Get rid of your distractions.

Your mobile phone, the TV, that pile of ironing that’s been sitting there for over a week and you can feel is definitely starting to judge you. A cute dog wagging its tail with a ball in its mouth. Trying on outfits that used to fit you for no good reason, baking a cake for no occasion, eating the cake while weeping quietly to yourself…whatever your go-to distractions are, get rid of them, now!

While trying to force creativity can squash it faster than a fat man sitting on an overripe tomato, distractions can be just as bigger culprits by giving your mind permission to focus on other, meaningless tasks rather than try to tap into your creative self. So turn off those screens, shove the ironing pile in a cupboard and give the dog a bone and make sure that you can properly and fully focus on the task at hand.

Do something that makes your heart race.

If you think your creativity has been flatlining of late, you might need to jump start it to get back on the old train to imagination town once again.

Often doing something that scares you, takes you outside of your comfort zone or is at least a little bit adventurous can be all you need to get those ideas flowing once more.

Most writers find their best ideas are born out of experiences, so the more you get out there and live an exciting action-packed life, the more easily your creativity will flow.

Declutter inside and out.

There are lots of blockages that can obstruct a person’s creative self, so identifying them and removing them will help you become a more creative person.

Find whatever works for you to declutter your mind and get rid of the everyday stresses and strains of life. It might be doing some meditation, it might be going for a run on the beach, it might be eating beans and toast in front of the TV or tackling that massive pile of ironing that’s been glaring at you for days on end. Do what you need to do to declutter, and you’ll find the path to creativity a much easier one to navigate.

Trying to be more creative is all about finding energy and positivity as well as freeing up space in your mind and your life to allow it to come naturally to you. So next time you want to get those creative cogs turning, try the above and see if you set your imagination free!

It occurred to me the other day, as I once again lamented not shifting last year’s Christmas wobble to at least give me some leeway for this year’s festivities, that I tend to spend a lot of time and money preparing for things that are ‘definitely’ going to change my life, instead of just plunging right in and doing them.

I decide to get fit. I, therefore, must buy some new trainers, a cool running outfit (if I look stupid when I run people will laugh at me and I will stop running immediately), some new headphones which don’t fall out of my ears, and a Fitbit. I must join the gym and buy a juicer, and a recipe book on juicing, and the 4,000 fruits and vegetables required to make said juice.

I already have many cupboards in my home stuffed with what I like to refer to as ‘shame-shadows.’ You know, those things that follow you around from place to place reminding you of the time you tried to do something and failed. A deflated yoga ball that may have never, in fact, been inflated. Boxes of unopened nicotine patches (who uses nicotine patches now anyway?). A spiralizer that is impossible to clean, or at least so irritating it is certainly not worth the disappointment that comes with a bowl of courgetti. Clothes with the tags still on that I bought when feeling saucy and daring, and sometimes still try on from time to time, but naturally only in the safety of my own bedroom.

The same goes for my writing space. I read several insightful and useful articles on how important it is to create an ideal atmosphere to release my most creative self. A place where you feel tranquil and calm, yet also motivated and inspired. Somewhere you won’t be disturbed, where you can think, feel comfortable and let inspiration dance brightly before your eyes. Somewhere light, probably full of plants, and with the smell of fresh coffee lingering in the air. Somewhere you can laugh in the face of writer’s block because there is no way that you would ever not know what to write in such a perfect setting.

Eureka! I thought. Finally, a logical reason as to why I haven’t been writing as much as I want to – I just haven’t had the perfect writing space to inspire me.

The Perfect Writing Space – It Started With A Desk

I fell in love with a desk once. This desk was going to make me a better writer for sure. It was a beautiful shade of sailor blue, with adorable panels of blue and white flowers on its surface, decorative handles, and teeny, tiny, useless drawers. How I loved it so!

I saw it and knew straight away that this desk was going to be the one I would sit at as I wrote my first novel. The one that, when I became a famous bestselling author, would be taken to a museum somewhere and people would gasp in awe at it and say ‘ohhhhh’ that’s where she must have come up with the idea for [insert title of millionaire making bestselling novel here]. I can see why – that desk is just aaaamazing.’

So I had to have it.

It turned out the desk was actually annoyingly low which meant I couldn’t cross my legs underneath it, not large enough to put the notes and coffee cups and stationery required to have a proper writing session, and did I mention the teeny, tiny, useless drawers?

‘To hell with that’ I immediately thought and resumed my cross-legged Quasimodo position on the sofa. I still used the desk of course. It became a place to hold an ever-growing stack of bills I never looked at and mail I never opened until it was such a mess you couldn’t even see those adorable floral panels anymore.

I moved house recently, and I insisted it needed to have a room we could turn into a writing space for me, only adding a mere 300 or so pounds to our monthly rent. A small price to pay for a writing office where I would now, surely, unquestionably, write every day and get that big money-making book out there for the world to see.

The writing desk, of course, came with me. And it looked great. Did I use it? I did not. I preferred to wake up in the morning and grab my laptop from where I kept it, on the floor by my bed, and then work until so desperate for caffeine I would reluctantly go downstairs.

So I re-assessed the office and lo and behold had yet another eureka moment. It was the desk! The desk was the problem! How could I work at a desk that was too uncomfortable to sit at? It was outrageous, preposterous! What a silly, foolish girl I had been. New furniture was the answer, and perhaps a lovely plant, and a coffee machine and beautiful books to write in. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t writing as much as I should, I just didn’t have the right space to do it in.

£180 later and the desk is gone, or more precisely shoved in the spare room. A vintage, super comfy tub chair has arrived, a tiny wooden table to put my coffee cup on, a walnut bookcase to stuff with books that inspire me, and a sheepskin rug to add a cosy, slightly Nordic vibe, because, well, why not?

The day after it was all set up I sat in my chair and wrote a few thousand words of my book, occasionally stopped to stare out of the window and generally felt very author-esque and smug. I quickly decided that I should only use this room for my creative writing, not my other writing work. But, of course, as the weeks passed, I sat in the room less and less, and now a few months on I find myself in the same position (that position being hunched on the sofa) as I was before.

I occasionally pop my head around the door of my writing room to admire it. My partner sometimes uses it to make business calls, but it is, for the most part, unused and neglected and completely unnecessary.

Is The Perfect Writing Space But An Impossible Dream?

Writers are dreamers, and so it’s understandable to have visions of oneself looking quietly, unassumingly sexy, probably with arty glasses on chewing a pen in a coffee shop, while scribbling into a leather-bound book – that doing this will somehow make us better writers. However, realistically, how many times can you be bothered to pack up all your stuff, walk outside of your home, find somewhere that doesn’t begrudge you sitting and working for hours despite only buying one drink, and getting paranoid your laptop will get nicked every time you want to go for a wee?

Similarly, there is this idea that writing in the ‘perfect’ writing space somehow makes you become a more prolific, more productive writer. The problem with trying to create the perfect writing space is that it can turn into a dangerous spiral down the rabbit hole. If things aren’t quite right in it (such as a writing desk that’s too low), it becomes your new excuse to avoid writing altogether.

The good news is I feel that I have finally accepted that I am not going to be that intelligent but slightly scruffy, lightly made up, wistful-looking writer in a coffee shop. Nor am I going to want to sit in the smallest room in the house with a chair that gives me a backache and is too far away from the kettle – however tastefully decorated. I write, as I always have done, unwashed and in my pyjamas – and I think I am finally okay with that.

So next time I move there won’t be a writing room, and the writing desk will be passed on to another writer, perhaps one who might use it, definitely one with slightly shorter legs.

I realise now that it’s not about creating the perfect writing space, it’s just about writing. No writing environment, no matter how glorious will make you write if you don’t want to. Besides, just think what I could spend that extra £300 a month on – a home gym perhaps?

WE ARE DANCERS YOU AND I, FULL OF GRACE AND STYLE
WE TWIRL AND JIVE AND BOUNCE ABOUT, SMILING ALL THE WHILE
THROUGH EVERY SONG WE’VE STEPPED TO,
THROUGH EVERY MOVE WE’VE MADE
OUR WHOLE LIVES THROUGH WE’VE DANCED,
THE ONE THING THAT HAS STAYED

WE’VE HAD CHANGES A PLENTY, AND NOT ALL OF THEM GOOD
SOMETIMES IT HAS BEEN QUITE TOUGH TO GET IN THE DANCING MOOD
BUT WHEN YOU SMILE DOWN AT ME, AND OFFER ME YOUR HAND
MY FEET JUST GET ALL TWINKLY, IT’S IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO STAND

WE’VE WALTZED WHEN WE ARE MERRY,
WE’VE SLOW DANCED WHEN WE’RE SAD
WE’VE QUICKSTEPPED IN A HURRY,
WE’VE TANGOED WHEN WE’RE MAD
A RHUMBA’S WHAT WE’VE CHOSEN, ON DARK, ROMANTIC NIGHTS
AND WHEN WE FEEL LIKE IT, A FOX TROT JUST DELIGHTS!

OUR DANCE IS MORE THAN JUST A DANCE,
IT’S PLAIN FOR US TO SEE
THAT IT TELLS OUR STORY JUST THE WAY IT’S MEANT TO BE
WE HOLD EACH OTHER UPRIGHT, YOU’LL CATCH ME WHEN I’M THROWN
AS EACH OTHER’S PARTNERS, WE’LL NEVER DANCE ALONE

IN THE DARKEST HOUR, YOU’LL LIFT ME TO THE LIGHT
YOU’LL DANCE WITH ME THROUGHOUT MY DAYS,
THROUGHOUT MY TOUGHEST NIGHT
WE’LL MATCH EACH OTHER’S FOOTSTEPS,
THROUGH LAUGHTER AND THROUGH TEARS
WE’LL KEEP OURSELVES WITH HEADS HELD HIGH
THROUGHOUT THE PASSING YEARS
YES WE ARE DANCERS YOU AND I, FULL OF GRACE AND STYLE
WE’VE DANCED THROUGH EVERY JOURNEY,
THROUGH EVERY PASSING MILE
AND WHEN OUR DANCE IS OVER, FOR ONE DAY IT WILL END
I’LL KNOW MY DANCING PARTNER, WAS TRULY MY BEST FRIEND.