Milena Moser's writing tips The day I claimed: "I am a writer"

Milena Moser is one of Switzerland's most successful writers. In her latest book, she reveals how many novels she once wrote for the bucket - and gives tips to those who also want to write.

Milena Moser is one of the most successful Swiss writers. The bestselling author has lived in the USA for ten years.

In her book "Schreiben. An Encouragement", which will be available in Swiss bookshops from February 28, 2025, the 61-year-old looks back on her journey to becoming a bestselling author.

"My first three novels were never published. Later, I wrote a novel that was almost finished until I put it down," Moser told blue News in 2018.

All beginnings are difficult. In her latest book,Moser uses playful, increasingly concrete exercises to pass on tricks to anyone who would also like to write a book.

blue News is exclusively publishing the chapter "How I claimed to be a writer" in advance.

How I claimed to be a writer

I was 21 and had just finished my training as a bookseller when I received a small inheritance. My grandfather had died and had left this in his will when I was still a child, I had completely forgotten about it. It wasn't much, but enough to travel to Paris and rent a small apartment for three months.

I quickly made friends with a group of budding filmmakers who met every week to discuss their life dreams and plans and smoke a lot of cigarettes. We grandly called it our jour fixe. This was the first time I managed to say it out loud. When asked what I did, I boldly replied: "I'm a writer."

Maybe because no one knew me.

Maybe because I said it in a foreign language. In any case, no one burst out laughing. Nobody shouted: "What, you? You've got to be joking!" No, the next question was usually: "So, have you published anything yet?"

"No," I said truthfully. "Non!" But it was no different for the filmmakers. We were all just starting out. And we didn't expect to be enthusiastically received by the establishment straight away: We were young, wanted to reinvent the world, expected resistance, welcomed it.

It was proof that we were breaking new ground with our experiments, that we were taking a risk. "Success" was not the ultimate goal back then; on the contrary, it was an ambivalent term that we mistrusted.

On those evenings, we passionately discussed our projects, and I don't know if the others were as shamelessly pontificating as I was, talking about short stories and a novel in progress, when in reality I was "only" scribbling autobiographical notes in the China book, black with red corners, that I always carried around with me. At some point during puberty and my first unhappy crushes, I lost the ability to invent stories.

At some point I thought I saw a boundary where there was none, a boundary between fiction and autobiography. What was initially just a hairline crack gradually grew into an almost insurmountable abyss. I didn't know how to get from one side, from my diary, to the other, namely to a novel. It had been so easy before.

Saying I was writing a novel, even if I didn't think I was capable of it, prevented me from giving up completely. It wasn't a lie: it was a declaration of intent. I was making my dream official. I almost got used to my self-created identity as a writer, the only thing missing was the writing itself.

As chance or fate would have it, a young German joined our group. "What's the name of your novel?" he asked. I looked at the wall where a poster of a local band was hanging: Tard dans la nuit.

"Late at night," I said logically. He nodded. I should have been prepared for the next question, but I wasn't. "Can I read something?" Saying no wasn't an option. I had talked myself into a corner that I now had to write my way out of.

So now I had exactly one week to produce a credible number of pages. I'd been talking about my novel for months, so I couldn't come up with three sentences. At home, I clamped a sheet of paper into my portable Hermes 3000, which my then friend and later husband, the bookseller René Moser, had given me. He had written my name on the case, and on the pink lacquered drive it said FÜR SCHUND.

I inserted the first sheet and wrote: Late at night. Novel. Now I simply didn't have time to think about how I was going to jump, fly or climb over this abyss. And whether I could do it at all. I had to write, and so I wrote.

The first step into the void was the hardest. I had to push myself over the cliff. And then I couldn't stop. Not even when the young man from Germany showed little enthusiasm after reading it.

I wrote and wrote. The novel was almost finished when I had to travel to Munich, where my father was dying. On the long train journey, I wrote a letter by hand to the publisher Klaus G. Renner (who had also died in the meantime):

Reading Walter Serner's Handbreviers für Hochstapler, published by him, had inspired me to live as an impostor. I had been claiming to be a writer for over a year. But now I was about to be exposed. And of course there was only one way out: he was morally obliged, so to speak, to publish my novel.

When I arrived in Munich, I first drove to the publisher's address I had picked out, dropped the letter and manuscript in the letterbox and then drove on to the hospital. Sometime between two visits to the hospital, I rang the doorbell of the publisher Renner.

"It's me, Milena Moser," I said into the intercom. "I've written to you." It took quite a long time for the door buzzer to sound. It wasn't until much later that I realized how unusual my behavior was. Disturbing. Unpredictable.

No wonder he had hesitated at first. "You're crazy," were his first words. When I think back to this young woman today, I can hardly see her in front of me, she is stranger to me than a character in a novel. Painfully shy and yet unstoppable. Clumsy and fiercely determined.

Oh, and I dressed like I imagined the tragic heroines in Chandler crime novels, in gray outfits from the flea market and high-heeled shoes I couldn't walk in. I sprayed myself with cheap sandalwood essence, which I also got from Chandler.

I was 21 years old, my father was dying, I didn't know what to do with my life, and at the same time I knew exactly what to do. Confused and full of hope. That young woman was me.

She laid the foundation stone, even if nothing came of it at first. The publisher was very friendly, he quickly realized that there was no danger from me, that I was "insane" only in the literary sense and not in the criminal sense.

He took the manuscript I had put in his letterbox out of a drawer. It was full of typos; I had quickly written the last few pages by hand on the train. "Of course you can't do it like that," he said. "You must never let the original out of your hands. What if I hadn't opened the door?"

I hadn't really thought about that. If he hadn't pressed the door buzzer, my first novel would have been lost. In the meantime, it is anyway. The manuscript no longer exists. It was probably last seen in my mother's cellar.

Renner made a copy and returned the manuscript to me. He said it couldn't be published in this form. I would have to keep working on it.

Bestselling author Martin Suter"The death of my wife left me speechless"

Which I interpreted as a promise. Over the next few months, I told people everywhere that I had now found a publisher who was just waiting for the next version.

Of course, that wasn't the case. He wanted neither the next version nor the version after that, and at some point he expressly asked me not to contact him any more. The book was never published, nor were the next two novels.

But I didn't stop writing, I couldn't stop.

What does it take to write a book - talent? Stamina? Delusions of grandeur? Imposterish arrogance?

This is an original text excerpt. Therefore, no adaptations have been made according to blue News rules.

Bibliography: "Schreiben - eine Ermutigung", Milena Moser, published by Kein & Aber, 240 pages. The book will be available in Swiss bookstores from February 28, 2025.

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