Blog Tour: The Lonely Hearts Travel Club: Destination India by Katy Colins

Today it is my stop for Katy Colins' blog tour for her brand new book The Lonely Hearts Travel Club: Destination India! It is the second book in the series, and I can't wait to get stuck into reading it! Katy was kind enough to write an article about 'How To Write a Book', and it makes for intersting reading! I will be reviewing the book on here as soon as I've read it, so keep an eye out for that, but until then - enjoy Katy's article, and the other stops on the blog tour!

How To Write a Book

Writing a book is one of those things that appears on many bucket lists. But it’s also something that doesn’t get crossed off…time restrictions, family pressures, work duties seem to eat up any spare hours you have making it appear impossible to actually find the time to let your creative juices flow.

The thing is, as with most things in life, if you want something bad enough then you will figure out a way.

It may take you six months or it may take you six years but writing a book can be done if you put the time and effort in. It’s not easy, there will be times when you wish you’d never had the idea that spurred you to open your laptop or put pen to paper in the first place, but then there will be breakthrough moments. Those eureka sparks when the words flow, the characters are behaving as they should and you re-read what you’ve written convincing yourself you’re the next J.K Rowling. Natch.

Here are my top tips that I’d give to anyone making this the year that they write the book they’ve been thinking about for longer than they can remember:

1.Stop thinking and start typing. You can plan, research, talk about or dream about your plot for years but unless you put these ideas into some order on a computer screen then they will never amount to anything.

2.Enjoy it! It could take months or it could take years for you to finish and edit your work so you need to make sure you actually enjoy writing and that you enjoy what you are writing about. This leads me onto point three…

3.Write what makes you happy, not to follow a trend. Okay, so crime and thrillers (especially anything with girl in the title) are the genres du jours but a few years ago it was wizards, then vampires and then sado-masochistic 50 shades, so who knows what the next big thing will be.

4.Buddy up. I have the most amazing team of authors, book bloggers and family members whose opinions I trust implicitly when it comes to my work. Writing can be such a solitary job, it is important you hang out (either online or IRL) with like-minded bookworms whenever you can to support one another.

5.Believe in what you create. Yes, you can feel proud as punch when you type ‘The End’, but if you come to submitting to editors or agents then you need to have the utmost belief and confidence in your book baby as no-one else will (well, maybe apart from your mum but she thinks everything you do is wonderful).

Come on now, don’t be shy, sit that bum in a chair, open up Word and let the magic flow. Being able to say that you’ve written a book is such an achievement and already puts you way ahead of the people who say they’ll do it one day. Make today the day you start.