We were lucky to catch up with Alice VL recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alice, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
Looking back, I’ve always written and always wanted to give life to my stories. I wrote the outline of my first book as a teenager, and kept it hidden while growing up, starting a family and through the years in my career as a Recruitment Consultant. I would lay awake at night and be bombarded with stories running around in my head, keeping me from sleep. One became two, then there were four and at one time, as many as a dozen.
I was frustrated and was so busy earning a living, building a career and then a business, that I never found the time to take them seriously.
I was in my late forties when a close and dear friend gifted me a publishing voucher from a South African publisher and when I finally submitted one of my books, holding it in my hand and feeling as though I did it, I realized I had the confidence to perhaps, make a career out of it.
6 years later and I can no longer remember what exactly held me back and why I didn’t start sooner. I love my stories, and I love the fact that they are real once they find a home between the pages of a book.
I regret not finding that confidence sooner, or realizing that my stories are mine. I didn’t write them for the world, but for my characters and myself. If no-one ever reads a thing I’ve written, I am quite okay with that.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am an author of fiction novels and non-fiction writings. I was lucky enough to have had to publishers simultaneously in both the USA and England. Living in South Africa at the time with quotas being limited for published books, even though I was in the process of publishing with Kwela Publishers, I finally felt that my work was good enough and that I was okay at what I was doing.
I am proud of the fact that in 2018, I was a finalist in the Author Academy Awards with one title and again in 2020 with three titles, one of which was my non-fiction book, My Turn – South Africa and The Bookstore Series were in the lead.
I don’t think anything specific sets me apart from any other author or speaker. It simply is a question of the audience I attract might be drawn to my way of writing, and perhaps the stories I tell.
I currently have two ongoing series out, and a few stand-alone novels. I speak at events on personal life experiences and enjoy engaging with people who attend and who have similar life experiences.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Being an author is an extremely lonely profession, but getting your work out into the world is becoming impossible to new authors who are talented and deserve to have their books in front of readers.
The problem with that is that self-publishing institutions to not have a set standard for published work and publish anything despite the fact that most self-published books are awful. There are so many of these less-than-deserving books that the good ones written by great authors are drowned underneath all the really bad ones.
Also, it’s a money game. If an author with a really badly written book can afford a great cover and blurb, they are able to spend hundreds of dollars in advertising, giving the impression of having the next bestseller. Unfortunately, readers are then skeptical of trying new authors, impacting struggling, but deserving-of-success writers.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
When I published my first book, I was careful to write a certain way and to use language in a certain way. It felt cold, and impersonal.
It was only when I started blogging short stories, that the immense feedback made me realize that writing the way I did those stories, are what people can feel and relate to. I have always tried to keep my emotions out of my books, but feeling my way through a story was what transferred to readers.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s one thing to write words, it’s another to feel the words, and then writing them down. I had to unlearn the fact that there is only one way to write that was acceptable. There isn’t only one way. Each writer will write the same thing, differently.
Contact Info:
- Website: alicevlo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alice_vlo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AliceVLAuthor
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-vl-2b217a157/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliceVLAuthor
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg6bEI111NBD2I8bodqi9ww