Write, and you will experience A MIRACLE

by Ksenia Anske



Photo by Casey Muir-Taylor

I know, cheesy title. I tried to turn it this way and that and couldn't come up with anything better to describe how I feel and hopefully to try to help you do the same. Deciding to write full time was the scariest thing I did in my life, but ever since then the universe has been aligning everything for me to make it happen. Actually, it is ME who is aligning everything, but I wouldn't have been able to see universe's offering without committing to it first. You know, it's like that video with kids playing basketball. DID YOU SEE THE GORILLA? Once you watch it again and look for gorilla, you'll see it. Same here, once I started writing, told everyone I'm writing, committed to writing, all the things that I wanted and dreamed of started showing up. Seriously. It's like every day I have an epiphany, to the point of goose bumps. Here are a few:

The perfect story. I don't mean that my story is perfect, far from it (I'm still on Draft 5 and still not fully satisfied with it). Actually, no story is ever perfect and if we all waited for writers to crank out perfect stories, we'd have no books to read. I mean it in the other sense. FOR ME, my story is perfect. It let me see myself for who I am, accept myself, be myself, and even start to like myself (because I usually hate everything about myself). My story did it by slowly pointing me to the most hidden corners of my mind and pulling them to the surface, to where I could see them, over and over and over, until I understood that this is the stuff I'm made from, and it's OKAY, it's okay to be me, it doesn't suck. For example, my book has a ton of cool expensive designer gadgets in it, from a Neiman Marcus limited edition 1998 silver Ducati 748L to Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT S to Ferretti Group Pershing 64 yacht to a sonic gun with which you can kill sirens (haven't fully researched this one yet) to... well, I'll stop here. Writing made me stop worrying about being so hung up on tech things and actually enjoy researching them for hours online. AND I HAD GUILTLESS FUN! It felt like a miracle.

The perfect life pattern. For the longest time I was afraid to do what I wanted to do and constantly tried to do what others wanted, to make them like me, to, hopefully, start liking myself a little better. I was going to places I didn't want go, did things I didn't want to do, hung out with people I didn't want to hang out with, even ate food I didn't want to eat. Ever since I started writing, I started settling into a certain routine that allowed me to write more productively, slowly learning to decline things that interfered with it, at first because I was afraid I won't be able to finish my book on time (savings only last THAT long) and then more and more because I realized it's okay to not be interested in things other people are interested in, okay not to go to places other people want to go to, okay to read books all day long and okay wanting to escape into my own head when others want to talk and talk and talk. The more I did it, the happier I felt, yet at the same time my guilt wouldn't let me allow it. Until one day I realized, this is it, this is me, and I'm happy this way and I can stop trying to make others happy. I FELT LIKE IT'S OKAY TO BE HAPPY. And it felt like a miracle. 

The perfect future. I know what you're thinking. It's not that. I have no clue what will happen. I don't know if I will ever get published or not, or if anyone will ever want to by my books. What's funny is, people keep asking me about this, and I keep telling them, I haven't finished my book yet, so I haven't gotten to that point yet, so I don't know! What I do know is that ever since I started writing, it's like a faucet has been opened in my brain. I'm flooded with story ideas, barely having time to write them down, not knowing if I will ever be able to write them into books, but at the same time being so giddy and happy and mesmerized by them in the moment I get them, that all worries about future disappear from my mind. I'm so in the NOW right now, like never before. That's what I mean by the perfect future. There is none, and I get it. Every time it happens, it feels like a miracle. This is the best way I can describe it.

I can only tell you that I look back at my life and think, why the hell didn't I do this earlier? What is it that stopped me? Why was I so afraid to drop everything and do what I really wanted to do? And you know what the answer to this is? It's not that I had to make money and for that I had to have a job, or was raising kids and couldn't carve out time for anything else, or was going to college and was busy, or <insert your perfect excuse here>, IT WAS ME. I was the problem. I was the one who told myself, I can't do it. I'm bad, I'm horrible, I won't ever succeed at this, English is not even my first language. I'm crazy, I'm... you get the idea. THAT was a horrible thing to see. What, nobody else to blame, nobody I could point my finger at and bitch at for not letting me do it? Yeah. So, seeing that felt like a miracle too. The miracle of knowledge that it's up to me to make myself happy. Ouch. That hurt.

SO, DON'T REPEAT MY MISTAKE. START WRITING NOW! DON'T WAIT. LIFE IS SHORT. DO IT.


Break through your writing ceiling with KILLER POM POMS!

by Ksenia Anske


Photo by Cindy

Ok, this is the weirdest analogy ever and I don't know what crazy corners of my brain it came from, but it seems to be fitting the picture. And the picture is this - we writers set our own ceilings and then we don't dare jump through them. We're like flies that have been trapped in a jar with a lid, but when the lid is removed, we still don't dare to fly out because we've been trained by hitting our heads against it to not even try. Wrong. We should. We need to learn how to jump through our own limits. Guess who set your ceiling? YOU! Who says you can't write a novel?!? YOU ARE! Here is a laundry list of the most common excuses I hear. 

I can't write a novel, I'll start with a short story. What? Why?!? Oh, it's because I have to practice on short stuff. I'm a nobody, I don't really know how to write, I will practice, I will submit my story to competitions. Maybe one day, if I win something, I will get the courage to write a novel. Wrong. You can. You don't need to write short stories first to practice, you can practice while writing a novel. For example, I haven't written a single short story, not one. I haven't submitted anything anywhere. So what? If you have a book begging to get out of you, begging to be written, you should let it out and write it. It will take care of itself and it will come out in the length it wants to come out. So don't be scared if it's long, it will be as long as it wants to be. Please, write.

My writing is not perfect, and it has to be perfect for a novel. Bullshit, it doesn't. In fact, it has to be as un-perfect as you can possibly make it. The secret to a great story is to reach into the deepest, messiest corners of your soul and pull out a bucket of terrible grime that you haven't shown anyone before but that gives you nightmares some days and incredible highs on others. It has to be as untangled as you can possibly get it - to be real, to be you, to be uncensored and pure in its un-perfection. Now you have to keep pulling this stuff out of yourself day by day until you finish Draft 1. Don't worry about plot or characters or storyline. None of it matters. What matters is that you write how you feel. Everything else will form itself, and then in your rewrites you WILL make it perfect.

I'd like to write a novel, but I don't have the time. Yes you do. You can stop watching that TV show, stop eating breakfast (it's better not to eat in the mornings anyway), start riding a bus and write on the bus (and save on gas and insurance). Here's the problem - a novel seems like such a large beast that it almost feels impossible to be able to finish it. But you can if you set yourself a goal of writing for 1 hour a day. That's it. And set yourself a word limit. Write what you feel, weave it like a thread out of your deepest cavity and put it down on paper. If you slipped on your neighbor's dog poop that morning, write into your story how it made you feel. You know why? It took me months to get this trick. And the trick is - trust your subconscious. No matter how irrelevant your daily events to your story are, your brain is working. And it will give you the right material. I mean, you should have seen my 1st Draft, it was atrocious. Little by little, draft by draft, I cut away the nonsense and tightened the story further. But if I didn't write that 1st Draft, there would be nothing to cut stuff out of, you get my drift?

Nobody will care for my story, it's boring. It is only boring (and will be boring no matter what you do) if you write logical conclusions to events instead of writing about pure emotions between people. Here is an example, Twitter. Many times people ask me, why do you tweet so much, what do you tweet about, who would care to read it anyway? Who would care about me tweeting about riding a pony? BORING. Right, it's only boring if I state it as a fact. But if I say how it made me feel, I will connect with someone else who just rode a pony too. Let's say, I rode a pony for the first time in my life and I fell face first into mud. It hurt but it also made me laugh because it was ridiculous. There, did you just smile? I know you did (totally tell me in the comments if you didn't). Write about the stupidest thing ever if that stupid thing made you feel buckets of grief or joy or some other strong emotion. We will connect with you, and we will want to ride a pony too.

Here, I give you a pair of KILLER POM POMS (fine, a pair of mittens with KILLER POM POMS), it's my cheerleading gift. Stop being comfortable, get your pom poms ready and start climbing the stairs, break through that ceiling and write what you want, how you want, as long as you want. Shake those pom poms at the ceiling, it will run away and hide in terror! The most important thing is, keep writing, shoot for the starts. And then one day you will reach them (with the help of killer pom poms, of course).


WRITE A NOVEL. Change this fucking world for the better.

by Ksenia Anske


Photo by Emma Katka

This was supposed to be a happy post. This was supposed to be a post about a victorious feeling after finishing Draft 4 of my 1st novel, getting 50+ Beta Readers to read it, getting an enormous amount of positive feedback on it, and much much more. Well, it's not going to happen, because 20 elementary school kids died this morning when a gunman, a father of a student, opened fire on them.

HOW CAN YOU LIVE AFTER HEARING NEWS LIKE THIS? TELL ME. I'll tell you. I will write. I will write as fast as I can. I will use every second of my existence to do it.

I won't let a gunman stop me. It is my job, to change this fucking world for the better or die trying. 

IT'S WHY I LIVE.

People keep asking me where I got inspiration for my book. It wasn't inspiration, it was pain, an incredible amount of pain that I didn't know how else to release and help others feel it with me, in hopes of doing something about it together. As I disclosed on Twitter a few weeks ago, I'm an incest survivor, my father and my step-grandfather sexually abused me and I had complete amnesia until I went back to Russia and saw my father. This triggered memories, panic attacks and the like. At 33 I wanted to kill myself, but then decided, NO, FUCK IT, I will talk about it instead. For the first time in my life, I understood why I wanted to take my life at 16. Why I ran away from home. Writing SIREN SUICIDES was my therapy. It's heavily laced with issues of teenage suicide and the antagonist is a woman hater. This is my cry for help, this book. I want to stop teenage suicide. I want to stop abuse. I want to change it.

YOU CAN DO IT TOO. WRITE A NOVEL. PLEASE.

Dig deep into the pain you're afraid to face. All of us have this one forbidden topic that nobody mentions at family gatherings but that gives you nightmares. You're afraid to mention it, I know. Don't! Make up a fictional character with the same problem and pour out your heart into a fictional story. Magnify the issues you want to talk about, it's the best thing ever. You can be as mad as you want, as angry as you want. In fact, the more you feel while writing, the better it feels when you're finished. I can testify to you that I'm a hundred traumas lighter after almost finishing my book. So go ahead, start today. Take one step closer to being happy.

Forget about plot and stay true to your feelings. Stop reading books about how to write books. 1st Draft of anything is shit. Just sit down and start from the place that hurts most. Keep pouring until it's empty. I'm sure it will take you several months (though it took me only 6 weeks, I carried it so long, I guess it badly wanted out). Keep writing. Don't stop. Don't think. Don't talk to anyone. Don't share it with anyone. Write. Stop at the end when done. Ignore your doubts. Imagine that you're writing a complete stream of consciousness. And one day you'll be astounded to find Draft 1 completed. Voila!

Divorce from your story, make it about your characters. Now that you have 1st Draft completed, let it rest for a week and then read the whole thing to see how it makes you feel and find the story that's there. Let it live on it's own - each consecutive Draft is about the story, NOT YOU. Remember this. That's why people will read it. They don't know you, they won't care for your pain. That's why a novel is so powerful. You create a fictional character that is a magnified version of everything you ever wanted to be (or not), and readers will notice that person. They will root for her or him, and they will feel it together with you. The most recent example I have of this is 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I can literally feel what he's trying to say, and it made me that much more driven to continue with my own writing.

Stop existing and start living. Think about it. You carry suppressed pain. We all do, to one extent or another. Your body and mind spend energy suppressing it, instead of enjoying life. So, depending on the amount of pain you carry, maybe about 20% of your energy is spent keeping it in check, maybe 50%, maybe even 80%. Ever meet those people that look like walking zombies? Yeah. You don't want to turn out like that. Cut yourself open, I know, it's painful, but it must be done in order for you to spill your pain on paper. And you will gain your energy back. I did. I'm happy. I've never been happier in my life than I am now. You can do it too. Please!

Now that I've written my pain out, in this post, I actually feel better. I only have one question for you - why do you live? Right now, right this very second, if you knew you had only 1 hour left to live, what is it you wish you had time to do? Would you wish you weren't so afraid and had the guts to tell your story? You still can.

START NOW.