Justin Boats on changing into a author with no diploma in writing
Would you like to become a writer but hesitate to try because you haven't taken a writing course yet? Wondering if you need a degree to be able to write?
Guess what? You don't need to have a writing degree to become a writer.
I don't have any and have been published dozens of times. And today's respondent is the same.
You don't need a writing degree to become a writer
Today we talk to Justin Boats about how he became a writer when he had no formal writing training. The short story: Reading is your education and perseverance pays off.
Justin decided to write one day so he did. He decided he needed feedback from other writers. So he got it. He decided he wanted to be published and sent his stories to magazines and anthologies. As simple as that! No training required.
Read on to take a look at the entire process Justin went through to become a writer and how his writing career is now going!
Meet Justin Boats
Justin Boats is an Englishman who has lived in Barcelona for over twenty years and works as a waiter in a busy central restaurant. He has been writing short horror stories for four years and has published around thirty short stories in various magazines and anthologies, including his first semi-pro story in Scare Street Publishing.
His short novella Badass, published by Terror Tract, is also available on Amazon as Kindle and paperback, as is his first collection of stories, Love Wanes, Fear is Forever.
When he's not writing, he enjoys pestering his cat, Loki, and spends long, addicting hours playing Candy Crush.
You can catch up with him on Facebook.
How Justin got into writing
Welcome Justin! I have known you for a long time and I am very happy that you published your first book! Can you tell me about your background? You have no formal writing training. How did you get into writing?
Hello and thank you for having me! Just take a look. Out here in Barcelona, where I've lived for the past 25 years, I've been writing for a little over four years.
About six years ago I lived alone without a TV, so I read a lot. Then one day I had an idea for a story. I wrote it with pen and paper. Then had another idea. That was it until about two years later.
I mentioned my writing to a friend and she said she would love to read it so I translated it into Spanish, showed her and she loved her! She said I should write more.
So i did! I bought a laptop and then discovered a writing contest on a forum called The Write Practice. Haven't looked back since!
Why horror?
For me, horror has always been my thing from the earliest memories. I remember watching the old Hammer movies with my mom when I was around ten or eleven years old. At the same age I started reading Stephen King's novels.
Then, around the same time, I saw a two-part vampire film called Salem & # 39; s Lot, based on Stephen King's novel. It did it! I remember seeing it, my hand covering my eyes and peering through the smallest gaps until mom sent me to bed.
I was scared, but I loved it at the same time – the feeling of "sure scared". But it wasn't the case when I was alone in bed. . . I think I've been looking for that excitement since then, which is why I love Jump Scare movies too. For me, horror is all I know.
They have been published a ton since you started writing four years ago. How many publications do you have so far?
Yes! Since I started writing, I've written about 160 short stories, two novels, and one novel that I'm working on.
So far, I've published a novella called Badass through Terror Tract Publishing and about thirty short stories, some of which ended up in my latest collection. Just today I received an acceptance for my fourth story for a semi-pro-paying magazine. So this is a huge bonus!
Editor's note: Short story markets pay in several ways: flat rate; Contributor copy / copies; nothing at all; per word. Very few do license shares. "Semi-Pro" means a market that pays between three and five cents per word. Over five cents is considered a "pro" market.
Get to know Justin's work
Regarding your published work, you have just published a collection of short stories. Can you tell me about Love Wanes, Fear is Forever? Why did you decide to publish a collection now?
Now? I should have published this two years ago! At that time I had about sixty stories in my files and I thought it was time.
But I kept dawdling, trying first to find publishers to send the collection to. Then something else came up to make me forget everything and so on. Plus, it wasn't possible to be completely useless on computers and try to upload everything to Amazon and self-publish.
But now with COVID and stuck at home, I thought that with all this free time. If I don't do it now, I will never do it! I still had to pay someone to do all of the formatting and coverage!
So the collection consists of twelve stories and four micro-fiction trilogies, most of which were previously published in other magazines and which I consider my favorites. Everything revolves around the idea of fear. I think every character in the stories has a flaw or weakness that makes them vulnerable to their particular nemesis, be it bugs, monsters, the darkness, whatever; hence the title.
Nothing too bloody, just good old creepy and weird stories!
Looking for ideas for stories
We both write horror and I have to admit something: I've always been a little jealous of your story ideas! You are always so creative and you are incredibly productive. While I hate this question (and most writers do), I'll ask it anyway. Where do you get your ideas from?
Ah yes. The inevitable question! Ideas.
To be honest, I wish I had more ideas. Very often I have my last story idea and nothing else to fall back on, so I have to look for them. Newspapers, films, events that happened to me or a friend that I can exaggerate or twist and turn to make a story.
I have a “Story Idea” file on my laptop which is very often a simple sentence. "Person discovers corpse in the basement", for example. So I'm going to sit and stare at that sentence and try to figure out a story for it.
I often go to YouTube and read the “Ten Scariest. . . For example, take something from everyone and turn it into a story.
Some time ago I left home for coffee and a newspaper and heard two elderly women talk. One said, “Hello, Mrs__, I see you are dressed all in black today. Has anyone died?” Immediately before the other could even answer, I imagined she turned around and said, “Yes, your husband ! " Sometimes ideas come from the most unlikely sources!
About writing as a writer without writing training
When we spoke prior to this interview, you hesitated to “teach” writing because you did not have formal writing training. What we both know isn't really necessary to get published! And see how many short stories you've sold!
How was it when you started Imagine being back there years ago and walking me through the steps you took to get pen on paper and then find publications. What was it like making that decision to get your work out there for the first time?
Yes, I am not a good writing teacher because I have never attended a course and still do not understand many of the technical terms and "rules". Semicolon or dash? I have no idea!
I once googled how to use a semicolon. The answer was even more complicated! Something about two separate clauses. Okay what's a clause? !!
If it looks right to me, that's enough for me! If the story is for a more important magazine, I'll still send it to an editor first.
When I started writing, of course, I had even less knowledge of point of view, active / passive, etc., but luckily those in writing practice were patient enough to help and point out mistakes and POV changes, etc. At this point I would get a story idea and just go ahead, no idea how it might end – I'll be worried about that when I get there!
So really, not a conscious thought of what I was doing – just write the story, post it on The Write Practice Pro, then wait for feedback.
For the same reason – a complete lack of embarrassment! – within months, I started looking for magazines in order to also submit them. After they were written, I thought, "Okay, now what? What do we do with them?" It just seemed logical to try to get them published somewhere.
Again, I had no idea about the concept of non-paying markets versus semi-professional or professional markets. Every market I found open to submissions went off!
Of course I got many, many rejections, but kept trying until I got my first acceptance about six months later, which happened to be for the first story I wrote (but obviously rewritten) all those years ago!
Talking to others, I slowly learned the concepts of formatting, which markets are good or not. As I often say to those at The Write Practice Pro who are cautious about submitting their stories for fear of ridicule, if your story is rejected you will not go to jail. Nobody will show up at your doorstep and beat you up. They do not become a mockery of the literary world. All you get is a simple "thank you but no thanks" and that's it. So you send it elsewhere.
I never cried about a rejection, never threw a party because of an acceptance. I just tick it and look for the next one. Selling short stories will never pay the bills!
Have you ever felt disadvantaged because you did not have a written education?
Yes, and I still do. A natural part of writing – as with most of the arts – is self-doubt. What chance do I have with so many great authors? Me, who can't tell the difference between a comma and a colon? Surely the editors will take a look at my grammatical mess and immediately disapprove.
And while this is true in some cases – they told me – it still has never stopped me. I like to write and when the story is finished I have to do something with it.
After being told all of this, I was also told that I am by far NOT the worst they have seen. A lot of my stories need editing, but not so much. I always felt like I was submitting to semi-professional markets that will refuse at the first sign of a typo. But I'm sticking to it.
As an example of self-doubt, this morning a semi-professional market accepted my fourth story – pending changes! – and my immediate reaction was to ask if I am the only person submitting! Something must be wrong!
The realities of a writer
How many rejections do you get per year? After all this time, does it still sting if you get one? How many stories do you think you send out each year?
The number of rejections depends on how many markets I can find that my stories could fit into. Sometimes there are a lot of filing calls. other times I can go weeks without submitting anything.
But to risk the guesswork, I'd say about forty rejections a year. Times fifty, times thirty. At any given point in time, I usually have seven or eight stories “out there”.
The only time it “stings” me is when I get a long series of rejections that instantly wake Mr. Self-Doubt, or when I write a story for a particular magazine and they reject it. Especially when I've waited months for an answer. But as I said before, depression can last ten minutes at most and then it will be forgotten. The same applies to acceptances.
After saying all of this, I don't have a decent database on my laptop. I use a notebook and pen, but I estimate I could send out about a hundred stories a year on average.
What's next for Justin?
Future plans? I'm still waiting for a novel from you! Are you finally going to pull that trigger?
I have a novel! And two short stories, all of which are linked as a series. Right now, after about a year on my files, I've decided it's time to get them done. As soon as the first one – hopefully this month – is ready for submission, I'll work on the others.
I've always said that I would never write a novel because a) all the editing and b) I get bored with them very quickly. If I've been through it twice I'm sick of it and want it to be gone!
For future projects, my editor of Badass, a serial killer novel, suggested putting together the three other long supernatural serial killer stories I have as a collection called Serial. I'm in the process of editing it. Hopefully we'll release it in about three months.
After that there will be another collection around March 2021 if I can't find a publisher for it.
And of course I'm just pumping out the short stories and in the meantime I'm finding a home for them. I don't expect to write another novel unless someone pays me well for it!
Other writing tips
What is the worst part of the writing process for you and how do you overcome it?
The worst part of writing is directly related to not wanting to write novels – the editing. I find it impossible to remove / add large chunks of a story – I am confused so I make sure the first draft is as tight as possible, contrary to popular advice. A read through, pull together a few sentences here and there and that's it. Ready to go.
Plus, I hate it and it happens almost every time I get this brilliant idea for a story, step in and then about halfway through this sinking feeling that things are not going as well as I imagined! Sometimes the struggle to write is my ability to turn pictures into words; sometimes it just feels like any other story I've read a dozen times – with no originality. Mr. Self-Doubt “helps” in this department too.
So I get over it by trying not to think about whether a story is a good thing or not. Just do it and let it go!
It's also pretty annoying not being able to think of an ending when I get there! Especially when I've only spent weeks getting there! Because of this, I have many unfinished stories on my files.
Do you have any other writing tips that you want to share especially for newbies?
Tips? I made a very big mistake when I started. I would read Stephen King's short stories (among other things) and think, “I can write that well! This story wasn't complicated or anything! In fact, I think I can do better! "
Then I would read through mine. . .
Don't compare yourself to the greats. Becoming a full-time writer is like winning the lottery. So write for yourself, develop your own voice and style, and don't try to be someone else. Their techniques are good to study, but you will always finish second best (unless you are among the 0.0001% who actually win the lottery!).
Always finish every story you start. Even if you have a brilliant idea that just can't wait any longer. There is a possibility that other stories will go hidden and never see the light of day.
Join a writing group or find beta readers. A fresh set of eyes is amazingly helpful. People will pick up on things you may never have thought of – sometimes the smallest, silliest things.
Finally, I think it is good to know the basic rules of writing but not to obey them too strictly. Rules are more like guidelines. Yes, you can use adverbs, passive language, tell, not show. Knowing when and how; There is no law that says this cannot be done. Just write your story the way you want to tell it, not the way others tell you.
And that's it!
Don't let a lack of writing training stop you from becoming a writer
Here's what you need to become a writer:
- Read everything and read especially for your genre.
- Write. Write all the time.
- Persistence. Submit your stories to publications!
Justin's story of becoming a writer is like so many (including mine): read, write, publish, repeat! No formal training required.
Thanks to Justin for agreeing to speak to me! Here you can find his collection!
Do you have formal writing training? If not, have you let yourself be deterred from being a writer? Let me know in the comments!
WORK OUT
Today's practice could be a little scary. to adjust a timer for fifteen minutes and write. That's the easy part.
The hard part is having to post your writing in the comments. I want you to take that first step and get your work out of there! It doesn't have to be perfect.
If you're having trouble finding something to write on, try the following:
Someone shows up at your door in the middle of the night claiming they are a long lost relative.
Don't forget to include your letter the comments. And give your co-authors some love by commenting on their writing!
Sarah Gribble
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