In one of his teleseminars, bestselling author Mark Matousek said that when he teaches people how to write, he doesn’t deal with grammar. What he does is help them get to the point where they are ready to write.

How does one get to this place where one can write freely? You get there by finding your writing niches and then, by creating your writing niche.

Elizabeth S Tyree has written nine books. When someone has written so many books, we always wonder how she or he does it. Elizabeth’s comment to the previous post about finding your writing niche gives us a peek into an author’s life. I asked her permission to publish the comment in this post and she graciously agreed.

Maybe not all of us are meant to be or want to be authors. I myself have not decided if I really want to write a book. All I know is I want to write as freely and creatively as I can. Next week, we’ll discuss how we can arrive at a point where we can freely write.

Right now, let’s see how one author spends her days, as well as how and why she manages to be such a prolific author:

“I think that I must be an odd duck in this because, while I have a great little space in the old choir loft of the 1930s era church building, (ok, so it’s rather a large loft with an included side niche that will be made over into a huge writing/reading chair), I have a tendency to write wherever I can, whenever I can. Until the loft’s closet is made into a play room, I’m going to be downstairs with the toddler most of the time anyway so I use the couch or my over-sized chair/ottoman to curl up on and write while she plays.

I carry at least one notebook, usually 3, with me at all times and have been known to even write in the dentist’s chair as he’s trying to numb me up and take x-rays (that was yesterday…I wrote almost 3 pages before I had to put it away).

While I tend to stick with my ‘comfort’ zone of YA fantasy, written in the classic style (why oh WHY do people seem to think that books written for 8th graders need sex and spurting bloody cursing in them??), I enjoy the occasional tryst into other areas. Maybe because I can always retreat to my niche and write with my dragons. Or maybe the only reason any of those places work is the large pouch of colored pens and the journals I carry around. Maybe those are my niches.”

How to Find Your Niche (4)

 

 

Featured image Joy writes by the Kern River via photopin (license)