The Second Draft: It's Just The One After The First

I learned a valuable lesson this week - and it's all thanks to Chuck Wendig (whose latest novel, Under The Empryean Sky is out now. Of course I'm going to inform you of that - and not just because I'm grateful, but because I also happen to think it's a ruddy marvellous book, so there.)

As you may have noticed in my previous posts, I have whinged about this Draft Two of my novel-in-progress The Renegades taking much longer and seeming to be much harder than Draft One... ooh, maybe several gazillion times. Anyone still in possession of their World's Smallest Violin has probably long given up on the idea of just playing it at me and moved on to fantasies of smashing it over my whiny little head.

*Shrugs.* Sorr-ee. I'll stop now.

No seriously, I will. I'm sure it was annoying - and now that I've made this amazing little leap I shouldn't need to do it anymore. Much. No - at all, honest! Because now I see why my Draft Two was causing me so much angst - and how changing my attitude to it, even in these last couple of days, has helped me get my Renegades mojo back again.

It started when I wrote my previous post about NaNoWriMo. I believe there was this little statement I made along the lines of 600 words a day being a really productive writing sesh for me, yeah? Well, I'm doing my embarrassed face right now as I admit that was a massive lie.

I get two hours of 'writing time' a day in my life, so I doubt I'm ever gonna be one of those writers who can churn out two novels a year - but there was a time when 600 words a day would've been a piece of cake for me. (Mmmm.... cake...) But I haven't been writing anywhere near 600 words a day for... urrgh, at least a month now. I've been squeaking 300,  maybe 400 at very best  - and even then, only with the aid of PURELY MEDICINAL chocolate supplements. Fun and tasty as that is, I'm not sure chomping my way to Type II Diabetes is a great strategy for raising this novel into a functional, publishable grown-up, so I knew I needed to fix my shizzle. But how?

And then I read Chuck Wendig's blog, where he stated that it took him five years to write his first novel, 'Blackbirds.' Well, heck - if a real, properly famous and successful author is allowed to take five years to write his baby, then surely that means a little ol' 'who?' like me can take that long as well! I'm only on Month 20 since the entire Renegades Process began, so I'm kind of on schedule, if you look at it that way...

Then another thing occurred to me. If he really spent five years on it, then it can't have just been on Draft One, Draft Two and then a final spit and polish for grammar and typos. In other words, he probably had more than just a couple of gos at getting the story part right, before he even got as far as moving on to the technical bits.

And that's why I was struggling so much with my Draft Two!

All this time, I'd been thinking of Draft Two as my final chance to get the story right. After this, all subsequent edits would be purely for trimming and polishing the language and sorting out inconsistencies and the aforementioned grammar and typo bombs. Which meant I was putting my Editor Hat on - and an awful lot of pressure on myself - every time I sat down to work; "This aint no disco - this is Draft Two, Cupcake! (Mmmm... cupcake...) So every word you hammer out had better be freakin' good, if you don't want to prove to the whole world that you're not a good a writer as you like to think you are..!"

I'd lost that mindset of "just write - you can go back and fix it later" and gone headlong into "this has to be right now!" But the truth is, I'm still putting the story together in many areas; now I know all of it, I've realised there are bits in Draft One that don't need to be there, and important stuff missing that definitely does. I can't expect to fix all of that and have it all flow perfectly, first time, as well. So I'm going to need to do a Draft Three for that. And maybe a Draft Four... and Five...

And if I do...*fanfare*... IT DOESN'T MATTER!

It sounds so simple when it's written down, in actual words. But it's taken me a while to see it. So, if there needs to be a Draft Three, and Four, and Eleventy-One... so be it. No-one dies if I cock it up on Draft Two; I just get another go at putting it right. Which feels... kind of good, actually. Yeah.

So if you'll excuse me - I got some more Draft two to write. It'll probably be crappy, but I'm down with that now...

Saying Nah-Nah-No-No to NaNoWriMo.

So... NaNoWriMo is upon us again!

And yes, you are correct in concluding - simply from the fact this post dates from 4 days into the event itself - that I am not partaking. But I'm cheering all you guys on who are, rest assured. Go team! and all that.

It's a fabulous idea, of course. The bestest kick up the backside an aspiring writer could have, with the added benefit of instant membership to a club of like-minded masochists comrades-in-arms for support. For many it provides the motivation for writing that novel that would otherwise never be written - and I'll admit it, I have an admiration bordering on awe for those people that actually complete the challenge. Fifty thousand words in one month? You guys rock. Seriously.

But NaNoWriMo is not for everyone. I know this because, for this year at least, I myself am very much not one of those everyone, even if I wanted to be (and oh! I so want to be..!) I could offer up the usual excuse - I'm a mum who has to juggle looking after a lively kid and running a house with my writing, blah blah, etc. etc, and yeah, I get it so put away that teeny-tiny violin RIGHT NOW...

But that, of course, is complete baloney and an insult to those who hold down full-time jobs AND have kids AND still manage to churn out best-selling novels by the bucketload.

No, the real reason I would fail at NaNoWriMo this year is because I am in the wrong place, at the wrong stage, to have any hope of achieving the goal. As anyone who has read this blog more than once will know, I am currently in the Draft Two stage of writing my novel The Renegades. I love this book like a sibling, i.e. it frequently drives me nuts and makes me want to pull its hair when it annoys me, but I am fiercely loyal to it because I believe I need to write it even if it ends up never being published. So I am not about to abandon it for another story, even for a month.

I did the maths (well, okay - I got a calculator to do it for me) and it soon became clear that, in order to complete the challenge of fifty thousand words in thirty days, I would need to write at least 1,667 words a day (I rounded that up because I'm not sure how you'd write .6-recurring of a word, but anyway...) And that's if I wrote every single day; if I decided to do the standard 'working week' thing of five days a week and two days off, that word count goes up to 2,381 words a day. On a Draft Two manuscript.

That's never gonna happen for me. At the moment, 600 words a day is me on fire. It's not because I'm lazy, or a crappy writer (well I certainly hope it's not the last one...) it's simply because I'm spending more time unpicking and rebuilding what I've already written to make it better - and that's harder and more time-consuming. No free-wheeling, brain-candy-dumping in that process...

And that's the key to succeeding at NaNoWriMo; having the freedom to write whatever crazy-ass stuff comes pouring out of your noggin. When you don't have to care about what you're slamming down on the page because, hey, you can fix it all later, you can party on through the alcoholically-liberated moonings and dodgy one-night-stands that constitute the average Pantser Draft One novel. After all, you get the prize just for writing those fifty thousand words; no-one has to actually read them as well.

(But even if you do end up writing fifty thousand words of utter pants at the end of the thirty days, you still rock. I wouldn't dream of taking that away from you, never fear.)

Some people like the ceremony of NaNoWriMo. Perhaps there's a part of them, deep down inside, that feels like they need... I don't know, permission to knuckle down and all-out focus on Getting A Novel Written. Maybe they don't have partners, friends and family who are supportive of their writing ambitions, and so they feel guilty about indulging in it - as if it's little more than a slightly nerdy hobby to be confined to snatched moments of free time. To do it with any degree of conviction at any other time feels self-indulgent, maybe even (shudder) selfish - but hey, it's November, so for this month being crazy-OCD-dedicated to that hobby that everyone sniggers at is officially allowed... the calendar says so. Well then - hell yeah, let's do this!

For those people, NaNoWriMo is a wonderful thing, and I'm glad it exists if only for them - although I can't help wishing I could just wave a magic wand instead, and give them the power to claim their writing time for themselves, all year round, without feeling guilt or shame. (If this person is you, hear this: you deserve that time, it's yours and you've earned it. CLAIM IT!) Or maybe getting a proper, formal kick up the writing jacksie that comes bang on schedule every year is a much better motivator for others than trying to maintain it all year round at a lower intensity. I'm glad NaNoWriMo exists for those people too. 

I wish you all the very best of luck if you are partaking - go nuts, enjoy the ride. But I will be cheerleading from the sidelines, if that's alright with you. I can't bring myself to cheat on The Renegades with some flighty new November fling - or, alternatively, to give her a month's worth of lousy lovin' just to rack up the number of times we've Done It. (That may well be the weirdest analogy I've ever used to make a point... but hey...)

Whether you write slow or fast, a trickle all year or a massive burst every November... enjoy it and claim it. It's yours. Do it.

Write! Go!

Wherefore Art My Writing Mojo?

Writing is flippin' hard sometimes.

Admittedly it's not 'hard' in the same way as, say, going to war or working in an A&E department is hard...

(I see you amazing people there... what's that you're holding? Oh - the world's smallest violin. Okay, well, that's fair enough...)

No - writing-flavoured 'hard' is a different kind of challenge altogether. Not least because, when it is hard, it has this magical ability to make you feel like you have suddenly become the most stupid person in the universe.

I started learning to talk from about... ooh, fourteen months old, according to my mum. I've been doing it ever since - maybe not as much as more extrovert people, but even when I was shrinking against the wall trying to be invisible I was still practicing in my head. I started learning to write at about five, when I first started school - and I've been doing that ever since as well. With both of these abilities under my belt, that's a lot of years of using words and stuff to get my point across.

So you'd think, after all that time, I'd have got the hang of it by now. And, for most of the time I believe I function quite ably. But, in those dark periods when Writing Gets Hard, it seems as if something freaky happens to my brain.

I know what I want to say. The movie scene playing in my head is very clear; I can see every detail of the action and hear every word of the dialogue. All I have to do is take what's unfolding in my brain and put it down on the page in front of me, right? Simples.

Except, for some reason, it isn't.

It takes me ten solid minutes of word-wrangling to convert one teeny-tiny aspect of the scene in my head into one sentence - and when it's done that sentence reads like someone whose native tongue is Chinese and they only just started learning English half an hour ago. When I read it back, even I think "What the heck does that mean?" I started writing 'The Renegades' because I thought I actually had the ability to do it - what the gubbins happened to my brain between believing that and now?

I can state with conviction that I didn't have this problem with Draft One. Draft One poured out of my brain in a crazy, uninhibited gush and I just spilled it all over the pages like a kid let loose with the nursery paints. That's because Draft One was my happy-fun-go-nuts-and-CREATE! time, when there were no limits and no 'wrong' way to do anything.

But now I'm about a third of the way through Draft Two - and  Draft Two is the time to put on the Serious Pants and say "Right - let's sort this shit out then." This is the stage where I'm supposed to be rebuilding the story foundations so they'll actually take the weight of the unfolding events, making sure all the pieces fit together and that it doesn't look so bloody awful it'll bring down story property prices for the whole neighbourhood. In Draft Two, it seems, there's a wrong way to do everything - and I seem to be pretty damn good at finding them all.

Everything I write looks messy and repulsive at the moment. I almost wish I could just pull out all the story-stuff dancing around in my brain and squish it onto the pages and say "There you are - ta-dah! Screw words and sentences and all that crap -  that's how it's supposed to look." But I suspect that would just look messy and repulsive in an entirely different way.

I have been assured by many writers that this is normal - indeed, some have even gone so far as to say that it's a necessary part of the Draft Two process. (Oh. Hooray then.) But it's not a fun part, no it surely isn't. Writing like a drunk idiot without the actual fun of first getting drunk and then behaving like an idiot is not good for the self-esteem, it has to be said.

But I made myself a promise with this book; I was going to FINISH IT. Come what may. Even if, at the end of all the hard work and effort, it turns out to be monumentally crap. And I intend to honour that promise. Because, even though I don't like how hard it is to get this thing written at the moment, I still like writing it. Crazy-ass writer-type that I am.

So I'm going to keep turning up, keep on truckin' through it and keep on working through the pain. Apparently (according to my writing friends) by doing that I can eventually come out the other side of this Tunnel Of Crapness and into the light of Yay, I Might Be A Writer After All-ness.

Until then, I may have to get emergency supplies of chocolate shipped in. Dig for Victory, and all that...

Writers vs. Writers Who Write

I've often wondered if there was a certain, defining 'thing' that separates the wannabe writers from the real writers.

In this modern era of self-publishing, e-publishing and reality TV shows making 'stars' of the kind of people you wouldn't normally even want to sit next to on the bus (who then go on to 'write' their autobiographies) it seems like just about everybody in the world these days has 'a book in them,' just screaming to get out in all its chest-bursting-Alien-esque glory.

And the e-publishing revolution that's kicking off now potentially brings that birthing process even closer to reality; all those people who can't get past or don't want to deal with 'The Gatekeepers' (otherwise known as publishers and agents) have another way to crash the party. In some ways this is a good thing; they might turn out to be the greatest party animal ever, the one who should've been invited all along. Or they might just be the one who cries for no reason and throws up everywhere before passing out in the flower bed. Either way, the point is that when it comes to getting your work published, it no longer matters if your name's not down - you can still come in.

So now your nan could publish a book if she wanted to - along with your next-door neighbour, your boss or even that weird kid you knew in school who pulled the legs off spiders and ate them. On the whole though, most of them don't. Even if they talk the talk, the majority of them will not walk the walk - or, if they start to, they end up doing the literary equivalent of giving up about halfway through, nipping into the shop for a Mars bar and calling for a taxi to take them back home.

But what is the difference between the people that are really, truly writers at heart - and the ones who just like the idea of being a writer every now and then, when the mood feels right? Is there a difference - I mean, a real difference, like a variation at DNA-level or something? Until some scientist somewhere actually finds it, there's no way of knowing for sure. But I think this article on the i09 site shines a little light on the debate.

It showcases an 'open letter to J.J. Abrams' video, made by one Prescott Harvey who was previously a production assistant on Abram's Mission Impossible III movie. The renowned director has just landed the job of directing George Lucas'/Disney's next Star Wars movie, and Harvey's video basically offers four golden rules on exactly how Abrams should go about the whole thing to make it great.

(I could of course take a minute to laugh myself silly at the breathtaking chutzpah of an ex-production assistant issuing a set of  How To Make A Movie Properly Instructions to a highly experienced and successful director of blockbuster movies. Okay then, I'll admit it - I did.)

And then I read all the comments below the article, from other Star Wars superfans. Loads of comments, all debating the finer points of The Rules as laid out in Harvey's videos; whether they were right or wrong, what other rules should've been added, what they would tell J.J. Abrams to do if they had the chance...

Again, I couldn't help marvelling at the - well, okay, I'll stick to the nice word 'chutzpah*' - of all these hordes of Star Wars fanboys (and girls) essentially telling a famous and highly successful director "do this movie this way, asshole - and try not to mess it up or we'll have your balls on a silver platter." I think I'm probably right in assuming that a fair number of them aren't famous and highly successful directors themselves, yeah?

If I hired a builder to do some work on my house, I'd probably tell him what it was I wanted him to build (well, that would certainly help...) and make sure we were both on the same page regarding what it would look like when it was finished.

What I wouldn't do is give him a giant list of Must Haves, like what cement he should use to stick the bricks together, the best and most efficient way to do all the wiring and where he should go to get all his building supplies to obtain the best quality for the right price. Why? Two reasons:

1 - Because I'm not a builder, and I have no experience or training to be one. He is and has, because that's his job.

2 - If I was a builder, with the aforementioned experience and training, I wouldn't have hired him to do the job. I'd have done it myself.

And I think that, in a nutshell, is the 'thing' that separates the real writers from the ones that are only in love with the idea of being a writer.

Real writers write real, actual stuff, not essays on how other writers aren't doing it the way The Public wants. They don't waste precious time telling the world how they would've written the Harry Potter books, or what Stephen King should do if he wants to make his novels more cerebral; they see a gap, they hunker down and fill it themselves.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for those who tell others how to write rather than do it themselves; some do it for a living and do it very well. I just think it's a good idea to determine which category you really belong in - if only to rid yourself of a lot of unnecessary pain and struggle in the long run. If you are a real, writing writer you can free yourself from the tyranny of keeping one eye on what everyone else is writing and just write what you want to read - because if that's what's in your heart, being compared to what's already out there isn't important.

Alternatively, if you're the back-seat driver writer, who prefers to analyse what others have written and suggest ways to fix it... well, recognising that means the pressure's finally off you completing that novel/screenplay you've been slogging at for years (and years and years...) just so you can hang out with the writing writers. Don't worry - it doesn't mean you'll get disowned, or that your membership to the writing club automatically expires; if nothing else, you could have a fine career as a beta reader, and they're like gold dust in the writing world. You'll just need to accept that, while other writers will be happy to listen to and respect your opinions about their work, they may still prefer to ultimately do things their way in the end. And if they do, it doesn't necessarily make them an idiot/arrogant/stubborn.

So, for the purpose of discovering which of the two flavours you are, I offer the following litmus test:

Imagine you've been given a glimpse into the future - and discovered that everything you write will sink without trace. Even if you do get anything published you will make no money from it and remain a complete unknown - even if you self-publish it. Forever. Everything you write. Knowing all of this to be true, an absolute certainty - do you still keep writing the stuff anyway?

If you answered 'yes' - you're a real, writing writer. Pull up a chair and get cosy.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*Best definition of 'chutzpah' I ever heard, courtesy of comedy actress Maureen Lipman: little boy pees through the letterbox of a house and then knocks on the door to ask the occupants how far it went.

Can A Little of What You Fancy Do Your Writing Good?

Writers are creative people, yeah? And creative people are sensitive, requiring a higher degree of stimulation in their daily lives than non-creative people.

(Not in a kinky way, of course. Well, okay, maybe some... s'okay, I won't ask. Not my business after all...)

This is the reasoning behind the popular idea that many writers have vices - which, in spite of messing up their everyday lives on a scale of 'not that much' to 'monumentally,' are also what 'fuels their genius' and 'frees their creativity.' Hemingway, for instance; a man renowned as much for being a great drunk as a great writer. Lots of creative types in other fields are also well-known for having a strong liking for stuff that's not entirely good for them; Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones regularly consumed enough drugs to floor an elephant.

This has led to another popular idea/myth; that, without those hedonistic lifestyles, these people would not have been able to create their masterpieces. The drink/drugs/debauched sex orgies were the oxygen for the raging fire burning within; take away that and there would never even have been a spark, never mind a flame.

Sorry, but I think that's mostly bollocks.

When Hemingway famously said "Write drunk, edit sober" people probably took his words a little too literally because of his obvious liking for the former state. I'm willing to bet that the 'drunk' he was talking about was more to do with shutting out your internal censor, writing without stopping to read over what you're writing - not 'drink Jack Daniels until you're writing in your own drunken drool.' I doubt even he would have got much writing done in that state. All the same, the idea persists that his problem with the falling-down-juice was as much what 'made' him a writer as the fact that he... well, y'know, wrote. Would he never, ever have achieved what he did if he'd just limited himself to a couple of beers a week? Seriously?

Then there's Stephen King; in the earlier years of his writing career he admitted to being a massive coke-head, whacking out bestseller novel after bestseller novel while flying high as a kite on the white stuff. He hasn't touched drugs for over twenty years now, but he's still just as prolific - and as popular - as he ever was. He didn't need the drugs to be great at what he did - he already was.

So no, if you want to become a better writer, taking the kind of 'trip' that doesn't involve some form of transport is not a required part of the process. Sure, some dubious substances make you hallucinate, see wondrous visions, smell colours or simply transform your iPhone into Robert Pattinson's butt-cheeks. That's not your imagination on fire. That's just your brain going funny, and it doesn't just happen for the 'creative types,' it happens for the dunderheads too. Y'know, the kind of people who think The Jeremy Kyle Show is a documentary...

On the other hand... there is another school of thought that's become popular recently to at least preach about, even if it's not necessarily practised. You've probably heard it at least once or twice - feel free to stop me if this sounds familiar...

'A creative mind requires a healthy body; you should eat only healthy food that nourishes you, and take plenty of exercise to keep yourself fit - don't put junk food into your body, you must treat it like a temple in order to be a productive writer... ohmmm... *sound of wind chimes*...'

Sorry, but I think that's bollocks too. Well, just a little bit anyway.

I like chocolate. No, let me put that into better perspective. There are times when I would crawl through fire, acid rain and shards of broken glass for chocolate. Chocolate, however, as all those nutritionist-types and Government Health Officials will tell you, is Bad. Naughty. To add to this, I also have a medical condition similar to diabetes type II which means I have to restrict my sugar intake - bad news if I had any plans to embark on The Chocolate Diet. So I don't eat it as often as I'd like to - along with all other sugar-packed naughties like tomato-based sauces, bread (yes, bread!) and - somewhat surprisingly - an awful lot of diet foods (honestly - check the packets. Who knew, eh?)

But here's my confession... when I'm drying up on the writing front, when nothing's coming and I feel like I have the world's worse case of literary constipation - I eat chocolate. And not just your cheap, everyday bar of chocolate either. I'm talking badass chocolate; the really good-quality stuff with a ridiculously high cocoa content and the ability to make you put on ten pounds just by reading the ingredients on the wrapper. Hey-ell yeah - bring it on, baby!

And you know what? It helps. It always helps. Badass chocolate never lets me down! 'Treat my body like a temple?' Pffft - yeah right - only if it's a chocolate temple! Yes, I know, before you even say it - the effect is psychological rather than because of any magical wonder-substance in Badass Chocolate (why has nobody marketed a product called that? Hell, I'd buy it..!) Don't care. It works.

A little of what you fancy does do your writing good - don't be bullied by the Healthy Body Healthy Mind Brigade! Embrace your chosen vice; chocolate, coffee, cake, pizza, whatever - for those times when your writing soul needs a big hug. (Although I'd still discourage embracing hard drugs as your chosen vice, of course - 'a little of what you fancy that's not illegal and likely to seriously mess you up' is more what I mean.)

Just remember though, that - like a hug - if it goes on too long and with too much enthusiasm it gets restricting and just a little bit creepy.

Fifty Shades of Fifty Shades (Or The E.L. James Effect)

Has there been a book in modern times that's caused quite the furore of the Fifty Shades trilogy?

It caused controversy for obvious reasons - mostly for being full of the sort of sexual shenanigans that would make Samantha Whatserface from Sex & The City come over all Sandra Dee. On the one hand, it gave legions of frustrated suburban women all over the world a kick in the mojo so powerful that their husbands and boyfriends wore either permanent grins or expressions of cross-eyed terror. On the other, it was denounced by many women's' groups (and even BDSM groups) as being degrading and reinforcing dangerous sexist stereotypes.

But the phenomenon of particular interest to writerly types like me was that it divided the world into two distinct camps regarding the quality of the prose. I'm paraphrasing here of course, but the general gist was that it was either a) spectacularly horny in a way no other book could ever make the reader horny, or b) atrociously written, woefully unrealistic and read like the work of a Emo Teen With Issues.

Now let me make my position clear here. I have no beef whatsoever with Ms. E.L. James; regardless of how much of any of the above is true or not, the plain fact is she gave a gazillion trillion people exactly what they wanted from a novel. She got something very, very right, and that's one, solid-gold fact you can't argue with.

What DID wind me up, however, was the angle the media chose to take with the story behind the books - and in particular the way Ms. James and her meteoric success was portrayed. She was touted as the 'shy housewife and mum,' who'd written what was essentially a piece of fanfiction that 'borrowed' heavily from Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels. It was the very first novel she'd ever written in her life, so - being such a 'shy and prudish housewife' who just happened to have a taste for writing porn - she thought "Hey, what the heck, I'll self-publish it." And then - boom! Instant fame and fortune.

Except of course it's not entirely true, is it? When you picture a 'shy housewife and mum' do you picture someone in an executive position in a television production company? Nope, me neither. But that's what E.L. James was before she stormed into a novelist career. Obviously she would still have been a housewife and mum at the same time - so technically the media weren't lying there. The 'shy' part is pretty much open to interpretation as well. Does someone who's worked their way up to an executive position in a television company and then gone about self-publishing their debut novel - which is, incidentally, all about a BDSM relationship - strike you as the 'shy and prudish' type? Perhaps she said she didn't like dancing in nightclubs in some interview somewhere; that's one kind of 'shy' - albeit not that relevant to the image the media shoved down our throats..

It's all about dressing up the fairytale though, isn't it? Changing the slant on the mundane facts just a teeny bit makes the whole story a little more heart-warming; after all, the public are suckers for a good old-fashioned rags-to-riches story.

All well and good; I like a bit of the old Horatio Alger-ism as much as the next person. But turning someone who is clearly a very astute and business-savvy woman into some sort of literary Cinderella bothers me. I mean, what message does that send out? That writing a novel is easy-peasy, something that anyone who's ever loved a sci-fi or fantasy series can knock out on a fanfiction website and become the biggest-selling author on the planet. All you have to do is take something that's already been done, tweak it here and there, change the names and - voila! Jump on that bandwagon and count the money, baby!

The proof that this message was heard can be seen in any bookstore in the western world. Entire bookshelves are now needed to stock what could quite justifiably be called 'the Fifty Shades Rip-Off' genre. Some pay only the 'subtlest' of homages to the novel that spawned them (Sylvia Day's 'Bared To You' - which proudly screams "If you liked Fifty Shades of Grey' you'll love this!" on the front cover) while others were far less... um, 'covert.' (Seriously - 'Fifty Shades of Green?' That's not even trying!)

All of which just reinforces the idea that becoming a successful novelist is a simple as picking a winning formula and then banging out your own, slightly-adulterated version of it - crank 'em out like strings of sausages from that money-making sausage template. Sure, the chances are pretty high that most of the imitations are cataclysmically rubbish. But they're still sitting on the shelves in bookshops; some publishing company somewhere believed in them enough to take on the people that penned them. Rather than, say, novelists who've been writing for years and honed their skills accordingly... but, unfortunately for them, in genres that aren't the current flavour-of-the-moment...

No, this isn't a sour-grapes rant. It can't be; for starters, Whilst I've had some minor successes in other writing fields, The Renegades is the first novel I've ever got to Completed Draft One stage, so I can't even legitimately call myself a novelist yet. It's just worry, that's all. This is a virus that originated from outside the world of writing, but is now threatening to cross-breed and infect us too.

You've only got to look at programmes like Britain's Got Talent, when some excruciatingly un-talented individual does something godawful in an attempt to 'entertain' and looks utterly shocked and outraged when they're told they're terrible. And then marches offstage, snorting that the judges are idiots and they'll prove them wrong in the end, when they finally get the recognition they deserve and become the superstar they're just born to be..! And they believe it - they believe every word of their own hype. Why? Because they saw Susan Boyle do it. And Paul Potts do it. They saw them step onto that stage, with their bad hairdos and wonky teeth, and blow the world away, in the space of a three-minute audition. Because that's all it took - three minutes...

Except it didn't, of course. Both Paul Potts and Susan Boyle sung for years before their auditions. But telly doesn't show that part - only the three minutes that launched them to superstardom. And now, with this insistence of the media of applying the same, rose-tinted wash to the likes of E.L. James, there's a danger of the same thing happening in the writing world. The quality of published works will suffer for it (while the vanity publishers will make a killing.) Writers with genuine talent but without the abundance of self-confidence required to 'self-publish and be damned' may become disheartened and simply give up on the idea of ever being published altogether.

Veterans of the Performing Arts may laugh bitterly and say 'that's life, kiddo - welcome to the real world.' And I suppose no-one knows that better than them. But that doesn't make it any less sad to me.

If I never get anywhere with my novel-writing, I'd rather it was because I'm simply not quite good enough to make it, or the things I need to write about aren't interesting to anyone but me. Not because I just can't bring myself to sell my soul and crank out touch-up-and-tweak copies of whatever's selling at the time.

Being The Literary Equivalent of Homer Simpson

I wonder what images the above title conjures up... Am I in fact bald with yellow skin? Drinking a Duff Beer and saying 'Doh!' a lot? Or attempting to type this blog with my face and going "Oww! Why does writing hurt so much?"

(Actually the third one is probably closest to the truth. Except for the typing with my face part.)

Still working on Draft Two of The Renegades. If you want a fanfare to go with that statement, you'd best play it on a kazoo, because that's about all it's worth. The good news is of course that I am still writing it, rather than reverting to the strategy I always used in the past (which mainly consisted of going "Sod this for a chocolate chip cookie" and abandoning it for some other project.) The bad news is... it's taking so blimmin' LONG!

Draft One was a blast. Draft One was like freewheeling down a hill on a bike, with just your feet for brakes. Draft Two, so far, has been like trying to walk back up the hill after you've been eating too many doughnuts and sitting at home watching daytime TV until your arse resembles a space hopper...

(Huh! I should be so lucky, to indulge in such luxury..!)

Like the aforementioned Homer Simpson, I am feeling distinctly unfit for this task. My writing pace has slowed to a crawl, and after each daily 'session' I come away from my keyboard feeling like I've been trying to rewrite the Magna flippin' Carta. In Ancient Greek. How can rewriting what I've already written once before make me feel so gosh-darned lazy and STOOPID?

If I were the Big Yellow Guy himself, I would probably be wailing "it's too hard, and it's making my brain unhappy" right about now. And my smart-alec daughter Lisa would probably make some pithy comment about getting in better shape in order to feel like doing more exercise. And then I would tell her to go to her room... but anyway, enough with the Homerisms, there's a point in all of this somewhere. And I think it's that, rather than get hung up on the negative aspect of how much slower the process has become, I should instead focus on the positive aspect - that in spite of the trials and tribulations, I'm still turning up to put in the effort each day.

When it comes to the Metaphorical Olympics of Writing, I am quite obviously going to have to spend some time (okay then - a long time) being Homer Simpson before I can progress to being Usain Bolt. The words are definitely coming slower - but, when I compare my new Draft Two chapters to the old Draft One versions, they are better second time around. And not just a little bit better; a lot better - enough to make me think "Yeah, I'm glad I've done it that way this time around..."

So I think it's worth sticking at it, however long it takes. And that's what I need to remember whenever I get impatient, or frustrated... or hear that doom-heavy voice in my head saying "Y'know what? Maybe the real reason you're finding this so tough is because you're just not any good at writing after all."

I'm hearing that voice a lot recently; I think he's been listening to all the hype surrounding E.L. James and Amanda Hocking and comparing me unfavourably. After all, they both woke up one morning and thought "What shall I do today? Ooh I know - I'll become a best-selling author!" - and then banged out their debut novels in a few months and became instant millionaires, didn't they? 'Cause that's exactly how it works if you're truly talented!

Hmm... I think I may well be exploring that notion for a future post...

Pantsers: Dancers Not Sprinters

Oh lordy lordy lordy. Completing Draft 2 of  'The Renegades' is going to take a LOT longer than my laughably optimistic Schedule is still telling me it will.

It's said there are two types of writers; the Plotters and the Pantsers. If writing this novel has taught me anything, it's that I am pure, crack-cocaine-strength Pantser.

Outline? Pffffttt! What's one of them? I've got a Beginning, a Middle and an End, what more do I need? My brain's filled up to the top with fuel, so I'll just pootle me little old way to each destination in me own sweet time. I might take a few wrong turnings - okay, a lot of wrong turnings - and it might take me a little longer to get to each checkpoint - okay, a flippin' eternity to get to each checkpoint - but hey! I'll be learning all the way! And I won't ever get downhearted, or doubt myself, or even get bored and frustrated that the whole thing's gonna take twice as long as I thought it would. Hell no - ha ha, how could anyone even think such a thing?

What a Grade One prat.

I'm on Chapter Four of Draft 2 now. Yep, Chapter Four. After nearly four months.  That means I've done precisely one chapter a month of what I'd always imagined would be mere editing of existing writing.

Except of course I imagined wrong. This is because, even though I'm still telling the same story, the way I'm telling it has changed dramatically. The bare bones, skeleton-frame of the novel has barely changed at all; the themes, story arcs, character goals and motivations are still as they were in Draft 1. But the perspective has altered radically. Reading Draft 1 back, it seemed as if I were hovering above the action like some sort of all-seeing, all-hearing fly on the wall. For Draft 2, I've realised I have to get down to ground level - get right inside the heads of my two POV characters and experience everything through them. Which means there's lots of new stuff that isn't in there yet and badly needs to be - and lots of stuff that can't stay because it no longer belongs in my new, on-the-frontline view of events. This is beyond even rewriting - this is coming up with brand new events and discarding existing ones... in order to tell the story I've been intending to tell all along. Now I've reached the outlining stage; when I've finally realised what the flippin' heck I'm actually doing with this story. That's the way your cookie crumbles when you're a Pantser, I suppose.

How many of you Plotters are reading this now with that strange, warm glow of smugness-disguised-as-sympathy, nodding and saying "Ah yes, well - that's why it's always best to outline first, you see... I know it might seem tedious, but it saves sooo much time in the long run..."? Well, enjoy that warm, fuzzy feeling, guys. No seriously - pat yourselves on the back, have another cake, whatever. I could wish that I was as organised, as methodical and as forward-thinking as you are, and endeavour to adopt your mindset and outline to within an inch of my life before even typing the words 'Chapter One' - from now on and forever into the future...

Except that my little old brain simply doesn't work like that. Can't work like that. No, I'm not being stubborn, it's Mother Nature, goddammit. And so, rather than beat myself up for not having the kind of Writer's Brain that can predict imaginary futures with the precision of an Excel spreadsheet, I am instead going to accept my Pantser Brain for the undisciplined problem child that it is and try to love it like a proper parent.

I may probably never become one of those authors who can churn out two or three books a year, happily working on my outline for the next book whilst doing a final edit of the current one. Does that make my methods wrong? I don't know. All I do know is that they are the ones that work for me. I may take longer to reach the finish line - but hopefully the end product will be worth the wait.

And now - time to hoik up those pants and carry on with the writing...

When Writing Feels Like Constipation

With a title like that, you'd be forgiven for suspecting that there may be a lot of toilet references in this entry. I will try not to use them gratuitously, but use them I must, as it is the best analogy I can think of for those certain times when the writing is going... not so well.

I know people who are massively preoccupied with their bowel movements. They have decided, a long time ago, exactly how many times a day they 'should' do a Number Two, and even what time of day it 'should' make its presence felt. They hold this view regardless of what they may have eaten, drunk or done during that twenty-four hour period - to the point where, if they have a bowel movement at a time that does not comply with the schedule they immediately decide they must be ill. For such people, a poo arriving without a scheduled appointment is something to be feared - and being stood up by an expected poo comparable to the end of the world.

It's easy for writers to feel the same way about their craft sometimes. Most of us who try to keep to a regular writing schedule gradually develop natural ways of self-tracking our progress. For some it's to write for a certain number of hours each day. Others prefer a word count - "I cannot leave the page until I have written at least a thousand words" for example. Whatever the chosen method, when we hit or exceed the target all is well with our writing world and everything is working as it should. If we miss the target once or twice - well, that's unfortunate, but nothing worth worrying about, because we'll just catch up another day and it'll all work itself out. But if the failure to hit the target runs into days, weeks... well, just as people who dread the thought of constipation worry that the condition will cause their entire bodies to fill up with poo, until they are nothing but a big, fleshy balloon of poo waiting to explode, the writer can worry that they are becoming nothing more than a big bag of literary poo. And that, should they explode all over their work, it will become obvious to the world that, as writers, they're actually... well, 'poo.'

But in the same way that constipation can be caused by blips in a person's normal lifestyle - eating something different, not drinking enough fluids or having a few couch-potato days, for example - Writer's Constipation can be caused by blips in the writing lifestyle. Stress, for example. Unless you're already a successful writer (and in many cases even if you are) the chances are that you have other things to do in your life besides writing; running a house and/or holding down an unrelated day job, for example. Roles like that will occasionally throw curveballs in your direction that demand your attention, be it physical or mental. If those curveballs are big and emotional enough, that can disrupt your natural writing rhythm.

I have been getting to know this feeling very well over the last few weeks. What with family members in hospital, a sick child and various other incidents paying unexpected visits, focusing on getting on with Draft Two of The Renegades seems almost selfish. Today, according to the nifty piece of software I'm using to write it, I had written minus 173 words at the end of my scheduled two hours. Yep, minus.

It's enough to make a girl think she ought to just give up on the whole thing. But if you have genuine constipation in your body you can't just give up on the idea of ever performing a successful dump again; you'd end up in a pretty bad way if you took that approach. You just have to keep going off to the toilet and sitting, and trying, and hoping that eventually there'll be a breakthrough. After all, if you're still putting food in the top end, it all has to come out somewhere eventually, doesn't it? And this, I've decided, is the approach that's needed with my writing. Keep turning up at the page and sitting and trying, because eventually it'll work its way out.

Oh - and in the meantime, try and banish all those mental images of spontaneously exploding in a big shower of literary poo.

Even In A Pretend World, You Need A Map

I've been having a bit of trouble finding my way around lately.

My sense of direction is pretty rubbish at the best of times, but nothing brings out my navigational doofus tendencies like trying to get to various places in a building I've never actually, physically been inside. Partly because said building is located three thousand miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. And partly because it only exists in my head.

You guessed it - I'm talking about a location in my Renegades novel. A large underground base hidden in the side of a quarry, to be precise.

In its real-life geographical location in New York state where the novel is set it doesn't actually exist, but some specific infrastructure is really there so that, at some point in the future, it plausibly could. (Yep, I did the research for it - God bless the internet!) So even though I've placed it in a real-world environment, the base itself is pure fantasy - mine to carve out of that hillside however I like.

So if it's just a pretend place, I don't need to know exactly where everything in it is in relation to everything else, do I? I mean, it's my secret base; I invented it, so I can tell the readers whatever I want about it, right?

Well... it turns out that no, I can't. Or, to put it more accurately, I can't tell them whatever I want about it whenever it suits me. If I say there's a gymnasium just down from the dining area in Chapter One, then that's where it always has to be - forever, for the entire life of the story. And I can't just blithely assume that, should I make a geographical slip-up at some point, 'no-one will notice a little detail like that.' Because that's like assuming everyone else possesses navigational skills as dire as mine (and that's a hell of a lot of people I'd be insulting.)

To put it bluntly, fans of science fiction novels are smart cookies who aren't easy to fool; some of these people have actually taught themselves to speak Klingon, for crying out loud. They're gonna pick up on every little detail - even those that seem trivial and insignificant to those of us with smaller brain capacity - and if it's wrong, it will jerk them out of the story and that's a bad thing.

I have a fairly flexible imagination, which enables me to create these places in the first place; unfortunately flexible imaginations tend to come with an equally flexible memory. This results in a brain that enjoys creating things on the fly so much, it rarely mentally files anything away so that it'll be the same every time. But, for the purpose of building a believable story, my world has to be the same every time; it can't change from scene to scene. The only way to ensure constancy then is to set it in stone from the start; design and plan it, the same way an architect designs and plans a real-life building.

So, after several hours of: searching through the text of the entire novel for all mentions of the various rooms in my base, cutting out, fiddling with and glueing bits of squared paper, and then faffing about trying to make Microsoft Excel work like a floor-plan-drawing tool (I'm pleased to report that it can, and the results look surprisingly good) I have now made myself a thoroughly detailed map of my fantasy underground location. I could even tell you where the toilets are - if you really wanted to know.

Boring? Yeah, sometimes. Headache-inducing? Oh, heck yeah! But unnecessarily nit-picky? Not on your life. Because now, not only will the map ensure my characters will always be able to take the right route to reach the places they want to get to - but I can make my descriptions of them more interesting. More real, because now I'm properly 'with' them, following them around like a little spy. I'll know, for example, that they can smell disinfectant as they're walking down a particular corridor, because my map tells me they're passing the medical room. And when you're mentally walking through the same environment as your characters, it makes it so much easier to get inside their heads and know what they're feeling and thinking.

Tolkien famously drew detailed maps of Middle-Earth and wrote vast, sprawling back-histories for all the races inhabiting his mythical lands. J.K Rowling did a lot of the same for her Harry Potter series. I can see now that their reasons for doing so went much deeper than mere nerdish pleasure in creating little extra nuggets of trivia for their fantasy worlds. I guess if I'm going to learn a valuable lesson from anyone, it might as well be from two of the greatest storytellers of them all.

Happy New Year, everybody! Let's make this the year that we Get Stuff Done!

Pesky Life... You're Getting In The Way Of My Fantasy World!

Soooo... how long is it since I last blogged?

No, don't go and actually look, please, I'll just be embarrassed... Yes, that question was hypothetical. I know it's been a while, and there are many reasons for this.

Reason number one is discovering that, for Draft Two of The Renegades, I have to actually write a whole new chapter that fills in a lot of stuff currently missing from Draft One. Which means even when I've finished Draft Two, that chapter will still be a Draft One and suck more than the rest of the book, so I'll have to go back and do the whole stew-and-review process again for just that chapter. Assuming I don't find other moments in the story where I have to add in extra chapters of course... and they in turn don't mess up some structure/facts in any of the other Draft Two chapters...

And there I was thinking pregnancy and childbirth was a long and complicated process (although it has to be said my novel-writing process also seems to involve sitting down a lot and eating weird stuff.)

All of which is a rather weedy way of saying that it aint been flowing easily. Writer's Block? Well, I'm not sure if I should succumb to that kind of thinking (see here for my thoughts on that) so in order to not do precisely that I've been doing other kinds of writing instead, to stop my brain getting flabby and bored. But not a lot of Renegades writing, it has to be said. And because this blog is mainly about the progress made with Renegades, not a lot of blogging here either. (I am doing my ashamed face right now actually.)

Reason number two is a bit more universal; it's that thing called 'life.' That blimmin' thing that gets in the way of so many creative endeavours, because most of the time it just isn't as interesting. (Unless of course you are a fabulously wealthy and maybe even a bit famous person, in which case you could probably buy yourself things that would take the edge off the humdrum. But I'm not, so in my case that doesn't apply.) Christmas, for one thing. I realise I'm massively generalising here, but when you are a man, Christmas generally doesn't appear on your mental radar until... oooh, I don't know - maybe December? It certainly doesn't warrant much practical attention until you realise you've heard Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' at least five times in various public places in the last two hours or so. But for the average woman - most especially one with kids - Christmas starts way earlier than that. Planning for it is on a par with organising a war. Presents, food, who's going to who's house on which day, costumes for the school play.... it's okay, I won't go on, because I can hear you all yawning from here. But it eats chunks out of potential writing time, there's no getting away from it.

So there you have it; two potential excuses to choose from for my recent tardiness on Renegade writing. But that's in the past now, I'm glad to say. I'm turning the corner, crossing that bridge now I've come to it (and hopefully not burning it as well) and The Renegades is BACK ON. Hurrah!

So I suppose I'd better get back to it then. As Dory from 'Finding Nemo' says - "Just keep swim-ming, swim-ming, swim-ming..."

Draft Two - Time To Get Real...

Well, my Date With Draft One of my novel The Renegades hit last Saturday, and I've spent the last seven days reading over it in preparation for the Draft Two process. And I have discovered two things:

1 - I'm not as bad a writer as I thought I was!
2 - I'm also not as good a writer as I thought I was.

It's a strange thing, to reach both conclusions at the same time, but then this isn't maths we're dealing with here, where every question only has one right answer (which probably also explains why I'm hopeless at maths. I'm a rubbish conformist.)

I suppose the best way to explain it is to say that the bits of Draft One that were good were... well, actually good, like a real, proper writer wrote them. While the bits that were bad... well, apart from the fact that I found myself guilty of some of the very things I'd been picking at in the writing of other authors, I also found myself at one point thinking "Jeez, this is note 163 - and I haven't even got three-quarters through the book yet!" (And my numbered notes are just the ones detailing changes too big to write as a one-liner on the manuscript... )

So I've learned something new from this exercise - something that, had I been taught it in a writing class or told it by an experienced author, I probably wouldn't have believed it. It's something I've had to learn the hard way - by actually going through the process for real.

Before now, I always thought Draft One was where I'd be doing the bulk of the donkey work. That the long, hard slog of actually getting the story down, from beginning to end, for the very first time, would be the most time-consuming part of the whole project. Everything after that would just be tweaking and polishing all the stuff I've already got down - editing what already exists. That won't take nearly as long to do - it'll be much quicker and easier than Draft One was. Wouldn't it?

I can see now how wrong that idea is. The real, sleeves-up graft is only just beginning.

Draft Two is not just a matter of dusting off Draft One and making it better; it's about upping the game considerably. It's about putting in all the parts of the story that are still missing (and my god, there's a lot more of that than I thought there'd be.) It's about finding and correcting every single plot, character and world mistake (and it pains me to confess there are a lot more of those than I thought there'd be too.) But most of all, it's about making every single part of the whole book better - even the bits that are already pretty good. It's not just an editing exercise - almost every chapter will have to be pretty much completely rewritten.

And that's what I've learned; Draft One is not, as I'd previously thought, the block of marble from which you carve and polish your literary David - it is merely the wireframe on which the whole thing is built. That means it won't look like anything much until I start slapping the clay on top - and that, clearly, doesn't happen until Draft Two, the real donkey work of the novelwriting process.

So... if Draft One was the conception stage, it looks like Draft Two is the pregnancy. I wonder if it causes weird cravings, backache and swollen feet too?

But I'm not downhearted - far from it. It's actually quite exciting, and I'm up for the challenge. Well let's face it - if I'm going to fall at this hurdle I don't have much chance of making it as a bona fide novelist in the future, do I? So bring it on, Renegades Draft Two! Meet me at the computer in ten minutes time -  'cause you and me have an appointment, and I don't like tardiness...

Six Weeks Is Longer Than I Thought

OMG (as I believe people under thirty years old say these days) have I really got three-and-a-half more weeks to go before I can start on 'Renegades' Draft 2? I'm sure weeks weren't this long when I were a little girl...!

I've given up on the kid's comedy novel, by the way. Well no - not given up exactly, just pushed it aside for a future project. Mothballed it, I suppose you could say. Instead I am now working on - another sci-fi novel. Yep, it seems I just can't leave the genre alone, no matter how hard I try, so I decided not to fight it and just go with it. Although I suppose I'd better not get to like this one too much, since I'll have to put it aside again when I start 'Renegades' Draft 2 - and even when that book's fully complete, it's just Part I in a trilogy, so I'm going to have to write the other two before I can go back this new one... Tsk! Get me, with my 'Oooh, I'm writing a trilogy" line - without even knowing if Draft 1 of Book 1 will make the cut yet. Me and my ridiculously lofty future plans!

How on earth do the professonal novelists deal with this? How do they resist the burning temptation to take 'just a little peek' at their simmering Draft One for six whole weeks? Some of them wait even longer. I haven't taken any sneaky peeks yet - but most of my writing thoughts have been consumed with what I remember of it, already debating in my head what I'll probably need to change, cut, add in... Am I allowed to do that? Is that breaking the rules? Ah, Stephen King et al - you give us these rules about 'setting your manuscript aside for a time,' but when we have questions WHERE ARE YOU, eh? EH?

Writer's Block: Like A Unicorn, But Not As Pretty

Well, it's now official; in the past three days I have only written about another 800 words of my 'Avalaff' children's novel; that works out at about roughly 1.5 hours of writing. About a third of the output I set out to achieve for my weekly writing schedule. Pititful. Lazy.

What can I say? It aint coming, it's not working, it just doesn't seem to be flowing at all... now, where and when have I heard myself say things like that before? Oh yeah, I remember...Those times when I fell victim to that curse of all writers. The dreaded malady that no writer ever wants to catch, because it can be crippling, life-destroying - even fatal to the fledgling writer if left untreated for too long. I'm talking, of course, about Writer's Block.

Now even as I speak those two words, I can picture half of you fellow writers out there coming over all funny and having to go for a sit down. And then I see the other half getting a twitchy eyelid and fighting an urge to punch a wall. (I'm not suggesting for a moment that you're all lunatics, that's just the crazy, over-dramatised way my brain works. No offence meant, believe me.) Because, as we all know from all the Writers' How-To books and courses and whatnot, opinions about Writer's Block can be neatly divided into two camps.

Firstly, there are those who know, with sharp, icy fear in their hearts, that it is completely real, it does exist and anyone who says it doesn't is lying through their teeth because they think denial is the only way to fight it, the poor, deluded fools..! These are the ones who have known the pain of sitting in front of a blank page/screen for what seems like days, weeks... hell, hundreds of years sometimes... waiting for something to bubble to the surface in their brain, and getting precisely nothing. Or, worse, a load of bubbly brain farts that are about as welcome on that blank page/screen as they would be floating around in the air. There's no way of knowing how long they're going to suffer from it, and there's nothing medicinal they can take to make it go away (although popular 'home remedies' include junk food, nicotine and alcohol.) All they can do is hope that it will go away eventually, and their mojo will return once more.

And then there's the other camp, who say that Writer's Block is a big, fat myth, a lie, and a conspiracy. There's no such thing, they cry - it's just procrastination and laziness masquerading as some kind of giant mental fog that threatens to engulf your creative brain! These are the ones who get angry with themselves and go straight into full-on Fix It Mode whenever that stream looks like it's running dry; "Too many distractions, that's what it is - I'll shut down my email... and my web browser... in fact, I'll come off the computer entirely, hah! Yeah. In fact, I won't even write here at my desk, where I can keep getting up to make coffee and go to the toilet and stuff, 'cause that's more distractions. Yeah, I'm gonna go and lock myself in the broom cupboard with an A4 pad and a biro! And I'm not gonna let myself out until I've written at least two pages of something decent! Right, here we go then, get myself comfortable, let's DO this... Damn! Where are my Jammie Dodgers? I can't write a word without my Jammie Dodgers... I'm going to have to go out and buy some more before I do anything else... Damn, damn, DAAMMNN!!!"

(Again, the above is likely to be a mild exaggeration of Real Life. I can't help it, my brain just does that, okay?)

I would like to propose a third theory, if that's alright with everyone. And that is, that Writer's Block is like a unicorn. Most of us at the very least suspect that it doesn't exist and has never existed - even if we can't actually supply conclusive proof - but for those who do believe in them they are very real indeed, and they don't need to gallop across your telly screen with Clare Balding commentating in the background to justify their existence, thank you very much. If you believe in something, it's real for you - and if you don't, it's not. Simples. So let's not fight about it, and instead try to think of ways to cure those pesky bouts of Writer's Block/Procrastinatitus, shall we?

Well, perhaps it helps to first define what the 'Block' is in the first place. For me, at the moment, it's this blimmin' Avalaff novel. Don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of it and feel it has potential as a 'keeper' work... but I've hit a speed bump with it now, and my creative stream has dwindled to a sad little trickle over the past three days. But does this stop me writing anything? Well, no... I'm writing this Blog right now, for starters. So, if it is a Block, it's only with this particular piece of work. Which automatically doesn't make it Writer's Block - just 'Writing Avalaff' Block.

So, maybe the answer is to just acknowledge that, and instead work on something else for a couple of days. After all, the important thing to keep yourself going is simply to write - to come to the page/screen regularly and keep those writing muscles toned, like athletes do when they're training. (Although I don't think they're allowed to scoff junk food, nicotine or alcohol at the same time, so that's one-nil to the Writer's Life already - woohoo!)

So, however much I may want to adhere to my 'schedule' of sticking exclusively to writing 'Avalaff' until my six-week stewing period for 'Renegades' is up, I think I may have to cut myself some slack on that. Switch to something else for just a day or two - probably something completely different in feel - and give the 'Blocked' work a little time to breathe.

I suppose it's a bit like crop rotation really. After a field's been used to grow crops in for two or three years in a row it needs a period of time to 'lie fallow,' where it's left to rest and replenish its nutrients ready for the next planting session. But the farmer still grows crops in the other fields - one of which will be a field that lay farrow last year, and is therefore ripe and ready for planting new stuff in.

Yes, I know - I can hear you saying it out there, and you're right; it is alright for me, I'm not on a deadline, having to finish a piece of commissoned work that someone's screaming at you to get done. Well my answer to that is that I think it's good to have an alternative bit of writing to do anyway - even if it's something that's never going to see the light of day - for just these 'Block'-y periods. After all, surely the alternative is sitting in front of a piece of work for hours and not getting anything done anyway? Might as well fill your time up with the equivalent of 'writer's star-jumps' - it's got to be better than 'non-inspired writer's facepalms.'

And, while you're about it, why not have some more junk food, nicotine or alcohol?*

====   =====   ===   =====    =====    ====   ====   ====   ====    ===

*Disclaimer: Yes, Mr. Lawyer-type, I  will of course stress to impressionable writers that indulging in any of the above substances may be harmful to their health, no,  I am not under contract to endorse Jammie Dodgers and yes, other biscuit-related products are available.

This Week I Have Mostly Been... Procrastinating

Well... it's Confession Time, I guess.

During the writing of  'The Renegades: Redemption' I was cracking out a steady pace of about 10-15 hours a week of work on it. Yeah, alright, I'm not asking you to faint with admiration, don't worry. I'm well aware that's not many hours compared to, like, a full-time job or anything. But when you're a mum and housewife you don't get many hours that you're 'allowed' to call your own for 'indulging' your 'little hobby.'

 ( I HATE that word - 'housewife,' by the way. Makes me feel like a mindless drone. 'Domestic Engineer?' Makes me sound like a plumber or something. Not that I've anything against plumbers... it's just not a very accurate description to apply to running a house and bringing up a kid, that's all. We need something more dynamic that doesn't sound like a patronising mickey-take. Future project, perhaps? Anyway, I'm digressing...)

The point I was making, just before my brain randomly took a wander away from it, is that I had myself a nice little writing schedule whilst writing Renegades and - more importantly - I stuck to it. Now I've had to put it aside to stew for a while, and work on something else that's about as different from that as it's possible to get, my schedule's gone... a little wonky, it's fair to say. To the point where this week, for the first time in about six months, I am unlikely to achieve my minimum 10 hours of writing.

Okay, as Crimes of the Century go, it's hardly up there with Grand Larceny. But it's made me feel twitchy. Does it mean I'm Failing As A Writer? Aren't writers supposed to bounce out of bed every morning going "I want to write today, I was born to write, let me write right now, damn it!" ...Or something like that.

I've got to be honest, I haven't felt like that any day of this past week. Now that I'm working on this other project, it's been more like "Oh god, I suppose I'd better do some work on this again... nothing's coming... aw jeez, I'm not sure I can even do this..." It's not because it's not a 'fun' thing to write; it's a comedy, after all, so it should be ten times the fun of the predominantly giggle-free Renegades. And, if I'm completely honest with myself, it's also not because my six-year-old son is still off school, and doesn't go back until Wednesday next week. Sure, he has the energy of a Tasmanian Devil, and I've long run out of ways to get him out of the house that don't cost tons of money, don't need a car to get to and don't - JUST DON'T, MUMMY - involve going anywhere near shops to buy ANY things that aren't new toys or games. But that in itself is not what's slowed my momentum down. So what is the cause then?

Perhaps I'm 'missing' Renegades. After all, I devoted six months and some 200-plus hours of writing to it - and once I start on Draft 2 it'll be at least another 200 more before it's completed, I'll wager. Perhaps I'm just having trouble adjusting to the shift in perspective, from dark, gritty sci-fi to children's comedy in the space of a week. Or perhaps I'm just subconsciously trying to 'take a week off work' and feeling too guilty about that to let it properly happen. I can't imagine that, if I did, my Writing Brain would really shrivel to the size of a pickled walnut and I'd just be sitting there drooling and grunting the next time I tried to write. But it's there, in the back of my head, nagging away like an exasperated parent. The Fear.

Is that the Writer's Ultimate Nightmare, I wonder? That you somehow 'lose the muse' forever if you stop, for even a couple of days? Or have I just become as nerdy about my 'schedule' as I am about many other aspects of my life? Maybe I should join a support group or something.

Or maybe I should kick myself up the bum and get back to my writing, like a good little writer. *Sigh*... okay, ta-ta for now then...

New Novel... New Identity Crisis

Okay... while Draft One of my sci-fi novel, 'The Renegades: Redemption' sits and stews for a while, I've started another one. Well, it keeps me off the streets, doesn't it..? Anyway, this one is a childrens' fantasy novel, and is completely different from Renegades in the same way that Joyce Grenfell's humour is completely different from Frankie Boyle's. Which has got me thinking, for the first time, about the thorny issue of Pen Names.

Y'see, my sci-fi novel is very 'adult.' No, NOT in the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' sense - but certainly not the sort of thing they'd consider televising on CBBC any time soon, if you catch my drift. If, in the magical world of Dreams Come True, it gets published with one name attached, I'm going to have to think about using an alternative name for any kid's books I write - purely to avoid the scenario of some innocent mum going into a bookshop and thinking "Ooh look, a Wendy Christopher novel. She wrote that jolly tale about the king of Avalaff that my little Tyler liked so much - I think I'll buy this 'Renegades' one for his seventh birthday..." You know what I mean. Don't want to be accused of corrupting the nation's youth.

So... how do I want to play this? Which genre would I want my real name on, and which one the pen name?

And no, before you ask, I would not do that thing where an author has "Jenny Bloggs writing as Matilda Saucebucket" or whatever. I've never understood that. I mean, I understand a writer wanting to write novels in different genres under different names, so as not to be pigeonholed... but surely announcing the fact on the front of your books just makes you seem like you have sort of multiple personality disorder? Isn't it a bit like an undercover policeman turning up to his 'case' in full disguise - and then lifting up his fake beard in front of the crims and going "Woo-hoo! It's me all along - did you guess? Oh whoops - sorry, just pretend you never saw that..!"

So no - if I'm going to use more than one name, I won't be listing them all on the front of my books like some sort of Pick Your Own Alt-Fest. I will be using them purely for the altogether higher purposes of deception and subterfuge.

This is of course, assuming that ANY of my novels get published. I have to have the attitude that they will, because otherwise my confidence will crumble like a sandcastle and I will just give up on my writing dreams and - in all probability - go completely insane, which is not something people approve of in suburban Maidstone.

So I'm bigging up my own ego for entirely altruistic reasons. I'm glad we got that cleared up.

I Think I'm Finally A Novelist..!

This week I finished the First Draft of my science fiction novel, The Renegades: Redemption (working title that will probably become the actual one unless I can finally dream up something better.)

That's 'finished' as in 'actually got to the bit where I get to type 'THE END' when the final chapter's been written.' This is the first time in my life that this has happened to me!

Sure, in the past I've written the lyrics for two musicals (both of which were performed in the USA) and had a couple of short stories and parts of collaborative short stories published - but when it comes to novels... well I've got enough halfway-through and only-just-started ones to stock a library (admittedly a very rubbish library, seeing as none of the books would be finished.) Until now. Now I've actually FINISHED a novel!

Well okay - I've actually finished a first draft, which isn't quite the same thing, as I'm sure all the proper novelists out there will tell me. But for me, this is still A Big Thing. For one thing, it means I'm not the big old, lazy, procrastinatin' lightweight I thought I was (well, okay then - I'm a little less like it than I used to be.) And second - now it means I actually have to find out if I've got what it takes to reach the next stage - completing Draft Two.

In six weeks time I will need to unearth my Draft One copy and rip it to pieces with my distance-critical eye. I might discover it's so awful that actually taking it to Draft Two stage could be considered a crime against literature, and while that will probably hurt at least I will have discovered it early rather than late in the journey. I'm hoping that won't be the case, of course - I invested a lot of time and effort in it, after all. I even made an Excel spreadsheet to track my hours spent writing it, for crying out loud. (I know - dead nerdy, but it seemed to work for making me write each day. I suppose seeing those little numbers adding up in my Total Hours columns guilted me into keeping at it.)

And then, if said Draft One proves to actually NOT suck, I will be able to dive headlong into the process of creating Draft Two. And heck, I might even finish THAT too. Providing an asteroid doesn't hit the planet and vaporise us all of course, or some other natural disaster of a world-ending nature. (That would be just typical of my luck, that would; finally get my posterior in gear with my writing and then get wiped out in a global crisis of bad B-movie proportions.)

But no! I must think positive, happy thoughts. Today is the first day of the rest of my life as a novelist. Not necessarily a successful one - but a novelist all the same. This calls for a celebration!

I may well eat a colossal amount of chocolate tonight...