How to Embrace Your Quirks In Order to Be a More Successful Author
We’re not sure exactly what it is in some of us that drives us to create. We do know that this compulsion to mold narratives, develop characters, invent lives is not exactly normal. If it were, there’d be a lot more of us out there dedicating our free time (or in some cases, every waking hour) to the craft. In reality, only a small percent of us seem to have this itch. And among those that do, it’s been our observation that there’s a marked correlation between creativity and quirkiness. Perhaps this trait is even more prevalent among indie authors, who are unique and bold enough to forge their own paths in this challenging industry.
If you’ve already learned to embrace your quirks and use them as fuel for your creative output, great for you. You clearly realize there’s nothing more real that could appear in your characters and stories than that which stems from what makes your own self original, weird, different, or just plain out there. On the other hand, if you’re still coming to terms with your quirks, we encourage you to hold dear what makes you uniquely you and to use this personal distinction as a lever for your imagination.
We love the anecdotes of legendary authors and their unusual writing habits. James Joyce, as one odd example, used to write lying on his stomach in bed, with a large blue pencil, wearing his favorite white jacket. John Steinbeck always kept twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on his desk while working. Truman Capote made a point not to begin or end a piece of work on a Friday, would change hotel rooms if the room’s phone number contained the number 13, and never left more than three cigarette butts in his ashtray. Huh.
These may seem like silly superstitions or eccentricities to the common individual, but we know as writers how important our rituals are to us. It’s important to embrace whatever it is that helps us to gain the necessary mindset to produce, regardless of how strange it may seem to others. What’s important is how our rituals make us feel, because the biggest hindrance to creative expression is the inability to feel at peace with the way we are.
Our quirks don’t just aid us in the way we produce, but also in what we produce. Can you remember the last bland character you came across in fiction? Probably not, as that character was not likely worth remembering. When we close our eyes and try to recall all the interesting personalities we’ve come across in our literary travels, it’s the defining idiosyncrasies of these individuals that stick out. We remember harmless character obsessions, such as Felix Hoenikker’s enthusiasm for turtles, or Sherlock Holmes’ fixation with tobacco ashes. We also remember with ease the more destructive traits which shaped our favorite characters, such as the protagonist of Gillian Flynn’s 2006 novel Sharp Objects, who collected words on her body. And we could never forget the majority of David Sedaris’ essays, which are basically nothing but finding humor in the everyday peculiarities that make us human.
Chances are, a lot of the quirks that make it to the pages of our favorite stories stem from their author’s personalities. And chances are you’ve probably got your own string of abnormalities that would make for some great fodder for fiction. Don’t be shy, use them!
However, it’s important that you don’t run with this advice blindly. Making characters odd for the sake of being odd has a tendency of putting readers off. It’s important to focus on meaningful oddities, quirks that don’t just embellish a character but encapsulate their very essence and contribute on some level to the progression or texture of the narrative. It’s quite pertinent that Holmes is obsessed with tobacco ashes after all.
So what are the quirks that define you, for better or for worse? What about your friends and family? As an exercise, try listing them out and then doing quick creations of potential characters they might suit. It never hurts to have potential interesting characters on standby for that future bestseller you’ll someday write.
Much love to you and your mighty quirks!
Happy Writing,
Marquina
Embrace Your Quirks to Be a More Successful #Author https://t.co/p40e4BTJtH via @Marquina – RT if you #love your quirks!
— Marquina (@Marquina) February 2, 2016
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