Author Q&A with C. Akinyele

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Caroline is a very talented friend of mine. She helps others, sings, writes music and she has just published her first book.

Cazzy is a writer, poet, songwriter and artist on a quest to make a positive impact on others through creative work and words of empowerment. With songwriting being a passion of her’s she writes lyrics to address the lack of female recognition in creative industries. Through her work, she’s always aimed to inspire, help and/ or humour others going through tough situations, whether that is suffering from stress, low self-esteem or a bad romance.

A wonderful book about stress and the impact it can have on your life. The book is well-researched, easy to read and light hearted in all the right places. It was fascinating to read about stress and I loved all the tips to cope with it. The author accepts that certain levels of stress will always be a part of everyday life. Despite this, she makes it clear that we shouldn’t just accept stress and put up with it. Certain stresses can be avoided and others can be managed.

An insightful read, filled with lots of helpful coping mechanisms that I will be using in the future!

1. How do you approach starting a new book?

I do a mixture of free writing and brainstorming. I start with a brainstorm including things like title suggestions, who I’d like to impact (gender, age, country), topics I’d like to cover, how many chapters I want and what is essential to be included in my beginning, middle and end. With this being loosely planned out, I write as much as I can with no rules or restrictions, no regard for punctuation or spelling (which can be annoying as a writer) but it gets all my ideas out of my head on to a page I can review and edit into a book over time.

2. What do you do when you have writer’s block?

This happened to me multiple times whilst writing this book and happens from time to time with my songwriting. I think it’s almost unavoidable as a writer. What has helped me get over it is taking a break to do something completely unrelated but setting a reminder or an alarm to come back to the project. I like to go for walks an get some inspiration from things I see on my trip. My last tip is a weird and wonderful one, but I pretend I’m in deep conversation with someone I respect and trust on the phone about my writer’s block and tell them that I need ideas. I keep a pen and paper or notes app close by and pay attention to what the voice in my head has to eventually say. A more normal approach I try if people have availability is to talk to a REAL person I trust and respect about the same thing.

3. How do you choose your book’s title(s)?

I love a pun or a play on words and if I can’t think of one, I love to think of something catchy. A title is a very important part of a story and can even persuade people to purchase or find out more. When I struggled to think of stress-related puns for my most recent book, I thought of how I could make it engaging instead. We live in a society where we search for answers to help us solve problems so my first title idea I came up with was, ‘How to stop stressing about stress that doesn’t need to be stressed about’. I know, that’s quite a mouthful! So after saying the title out loud to my trusted friend Makeda, I decided to drop half the title in the hope to keep it memorable, catchy and to the point.

4. What advice would you give to someone wanting to write their first book?

Just start writing! It’s easy to say, I’ll do it tomorrow or next month or next year but the longer you wait the more of a distant memory it becomes. Write what makes you happy and what you believe in and don’t try to please too many people as you can’t win over everybody and your writing becomes confusing and lacks conviction. Most importantly, be consistent when you decide to start, set an hour or half an hour, at the same time if possible, every day or once a week dedicated solely to writing.

5. Do you do research for your books? If so, what kind of research?

Yes. Always. I briefly like to see what books are out there covering my topic in the first place, what they cover, how long they are and the style they write in. As my book relates to stress I read a lot of posts from organisations and the NHS dedicated to helping people suffering from mental health conditions.

6. How do you handle criticism?

It can be hard to deal with but I always write with the mindset that I will not be able to please everybody so I am not so shocked if someone has something negative but reasonable to say. If I were to receive an unreasonable comment then I think about the fact that even the most talented and knowledgable people in the world have received criticism, and continue to create and deliver great content for the people out there that matter, so I will continue to do the same.

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Author Q&A with C. Akinyele