I had an interesting discussion with some writing friends the other day. It started when one of us posed the question "How do you get to be a 'great' writer?"
We'd been (re)reading Stephen King's book On Writing, and specifically the part where King states that, with enough time, determination and years of practice, mediocre writers can learn to become competent writers and competent writers can learn to become good writers. But that's as far you can ever get up the pyramid with persistence and hard graft alone. Great writers, he argues - the ones with a god-given talent that puts them head and shoulders above the rest in a class of their own - are born, not made. If you didn't have that magic fairy-dust sprinkled on you from the day of your birth, you will never be admitted into that exclusive Great Writers' Club, no matter how long and hard you try.
It's not a new claim by any means. Great Writers Are Born Not Made has been argued for centuries, with people defending their favoured camp with passion and fury. On the opposing side to Stephen King and chums are those who claim great writing is a learnable skill just like carpentry, bricklaying or plumbing, and that with enough repeated practice even the most cack-brained pen-wrangler can become an accomplished writer. Might take some of them a very long time, but if they never give up eventually they'll get there...
Who do I think is right? Well, if you're interested (and I'll assume you are if you're still reading this, otherwise you'd already be looking at cat videos on YouTube instead...)
I think both camps are at least a little bit right. Yes, if you have the drive and the desire to write, no matter how terrible you are at it to start with, or lacking in the 'proper education' - or even 'not of the right social class, old bean' - you can learn all the necessary skills for being a writer. And then, if you practice those learned skills for a long enough time that they become ingrained into you, you can produce work that people will want to read. You can get to that standard, no matter how swampy and bottom-dwelling your starting-point in literary gene pool was. So - hurray!
Buuuut.... you wanna be an actual Stephen King? Or Hemingway? Or on a par with any of the other 'great' writers who have achieved worldwide fame, enduring success and ridiculous amounts of money? You want the world to say your name with the same kind of reverence they reserve for the likes of 'Charles Dickens' or 'Mark Twain?' Because that's what we're talking about when it comes to attaining the title of 'Great Writer.' So what are, say, your odds of achieving that?
Statistically? Not that brilliant, if you want the truth.
Don't worry, mine aren't either. In fact, most writers who produce and publish stuff for others to read have more chance of being struck by lightning than getting a pass to the Great Writers' Hall of Fame. It's the same reason everyone who takes up running doesn't eventually become Usain Bolt, or everyone who sings every day of their life doesn't acquire a voice like a young Pavarotti. When it comes to sorting the Greats from the Try Really Really Hards, life just doesn't buy into that kind of Equal Opportunities malarkey.
Talent - pure, natural talent that burns like a mystical internal flame - exists. Skills can be honed and perfected, experience and knowledge can be accumulated, but natural talent is that something extra - the mutant superpower that only the select band of spandex-clad heroes have. This has to be true, because otherwise the whole concept of 'great' writers - or 'great' anything, for that matter - would be meaningless. After all, people don't attempt to climb to the summit of Mount Everest because anyone can do it - they do it because it's recognised as being a badass-hard task that only a small percentage of the population are capable of doing. That's what makes the achievement 'great.'
So this is where we've got to. Yes, to truly be a 'great' writer you do have to have that elusive McGuffin they call 'natural talent,' and if you don't have that spliced into your DNA your chances of ever wearing that Great Writer Badge are eye-wateringly small in the grand scheme of things.
Now for the really important question with regards to the rest of your writing life. How do you feel about that?
I suppose the answer to that depends on your answer to 'why do you write?' Is it because you saw J.K. Rowling's or E.L. James' phenomenal rise to fame and fortune and thought "I'd like me some of that?" Is it because the idea of working in a dead-end desk job or life as a sales rep sounds like Hell on Earth, and you'd much rather make a living doing Something Creative instead? They're not bad reasons, and there's certainly nothing illogical about them. But if they're the only reasons you have... well, they're not going to sustain you for the long haul as a writer. And it is a long haul.
The best reason for wanting to be a writer - and the one that will carry you through anything and everything the road to being one throws at you - is that you couldn't stop being one even if you tried. Even if you never make a penny from writing, even if you never become well-known for your work, if you'd still carry on writing anyway, you've got a fighting chance of staying the distance. By all means dream of literary fame and fortune, because dreams are great. Dreams are like the carrot you wave in front of you to spur you on. But just remember they're not real carrots, as in, you can't actually eat them and stave off real-life starvation. So don't make them your only plan for survival.
If one person on the planet loves your book, you'll be a Great Writer to them. If lots of people do, you earn even more Great Writer Points. But those points are pretty meaningless when it comes right down to it, because the best way to be a Great Writer is to be the best writer you can be.
Never stop aiming to reach the top of your own mountain - and don't worry about how high your mountain is compared to everyone else's. It's great to be you.
Showing posts with label self-doubt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-doubt. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Monday, 30 May 2016
BAD WRITING AND BAD WRITERS ARE NOT THE SAME THING
This week I read the article 'What Makes Bad Writing Bad?' on The Guardian UK website. If you are at all insecure about your abilities as a writer this rather high-handed pontification will not help matters, so I suggest you proceed with caution when it comes to reading it for yourself.
From just reading the title, it would be reasonable to assume it's about the things that make bad writing bad. wouldn't it? You know, the usual suspects; adverbs, passive voice, filtering, repetitive phrases...
Spoiler alert - it isn't. Somewhere along the line the author decided instead that it was certain kinds of people who made these grievous errors - and they personally were the 'things' that made bad writing bad. His issue wasn't so much with the way words were laid out on the page, but with the personality and motivations of the person who was putting them there.
I will concede he did make one or two good points. It's certainly true, for example, that any writer who believes they have nothing more to learn because they've become Masters of the Craft are generally full of something, and it isn't good writing. But overall I feel he swung his Bat of Shame in a pretty broad circle without much regard for who he might have been hitting. If you are an aspiring, as-yet-unpublished writer - or even an already-published one - I challenge you to get through the entire article without feeling at least a little bit stung by the end of it, because it's cleverly worded to stab little needles of doubt into the sensitive writer's self-esteem.
Aspiring to write boundary-breaking fiction like influential authors such as Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace and Maya Angelou? You're probably a Bad Writer then. Been working for a few years on the novel that's been burning in your brain, and can't start another until you've got this one out of your head? You're probably a Bad Writer too. Writing a novel that explores certain ideologies and issues that are dear to your heart? Yep, you guessed it - you're a Bad Writer as well.
Now these declarations might make sense if every author who's ever written anything that fits in any of those above categories has always produced something bad. But that clearly isn't true, as - ooh, I don't know, several thousand classics and bestsellers over at least a couple of centuries will testify. Yes, these things can certainly be done badly by writers who lack the necessary skills - but that in itself shouldn't be clarion call to all writers to never even attempt to write what their heart wants to write. The problem is, this article doesn't make that distinction; it takes what it regards as 'bad writing,' looks for the genres and motivations most commonly associated with it and then brands everyone who writes or wants to write that stuff as 'bad writers' before they've even begun.
Bad writers don't realise they're bad, is the takeaway message from this article. They keep on writing their terrible stuff, convinced it's what they're meant to do, that their instincts are right and they should keep on writing, no matter what everyone else says. Bad writers believe in themselves and their writing ability when they really, really shouldn't.
And isn't that the very head-demon most halfway-decent, good and even great writers fight, every day of their writing life? That, actually, they're not as good at this writing lark as they think they are, and they should just quit their narcissistic dreaming and get back to the Real World? How many of us have heard those same sentiments echoed out loud by the naysayers among our friends, families, teachers, peers and work colleagues?
I bet you can picture the looks on their faces as they say it too. That half-pitying, half-contemptuous look that says "I'm just trying to make you see how much of a delusional loser you really are, because I'm smart enough to predict your eventual humiliation and kind-hearted enough to warn you about it in advance." Ironically, they're often not so kind-hearted that they'll be happy for you if you prove them wrong - in fact, their little hearts will shrivel with secret fury if you dare to defy their cutting non-expectations at some point in the future. Because here's the secret those people don't want you to know; if you're a creative person who's actively chasing your dream, you break their world view and that scares the crap out of them.
Society at large is not encouraged to 'think big.' If you want a guaranteed system for Making It in life, you work your arse off in a normal, steady job that pays a regular wage for practical skill sets that can be applied to everyday life - skills like retail, office-based, trades, hospitality, catering and managerial skills. Not only that, but if you're really serious about supporting yourself and then later on providing for your family, this is the path you should be committing your energies to. That's how you get respect in this society - playing the game by The Rules.
But while a large proportion of society accepts and abides by these Rules, that doesn't mean they're always happy about it. Even people without a single creative bone in their body have crazy dreams about the kind of life they'd live instead, if they didn't have to do their duty in their job that Pays The Bills and Puts Food on the Table. But they bury those dreams, shoving them aside for the Greater Good, and the only way they can do that without tumbling into a pit of inner misery is to convince themselves that they're doing it because the way they've committed to - the sensible, real-world-thinking way - is the way that works. That taking the rule-breaker path of following their dreams and sucking up knockback after knockback - probably for years and possibly forever if they never succeed - is the choice so life-wrecking and impossible it shouldn't even be contemplated. They need that to be the absolute truth in their life if they are to keep trudging down their safe but humdrum life of stability.
And then someone like you comes along. You, the creative, who hasn't locked her dreams away in a box marked 'Unrealistic' and stuck to The Rules like you were 'supposed to.' You're taking all the risks they're too afraid to take and - well, you may not have achieved all the things you've dreamed of achieving, but you also haven't died or been left destitute and friendless either. You're making chasing your dreams look... kind of attractive as a life strategy. You even look like you're enjoying the process, damn you! You're breaking everything - if you can do it and not get swallowed down a hair-clogged plughole of disaster, that means it might not be wrong for them to try it either... You're making everyone who takes the safe path look like wusses, you troublemaker!
You must therefore be stopped, before you convince others to follow in your footsteps and make those too scared to try feel even more resentful for choosing to stick with their safe life choices. And since rejecting and ridiculing what you do clearly hasn't been working so far, because you still insist on doing it anyway, the only alternative is to go personal and reject and ridicule what you are.
And that's how you get from 'Bad Writing' to 'Bad Writers' in a single web article. It's also why you can swap out 'writing' and 'writers' for 'art' and 'artists, 'performances' and 'performers...' You imply the two are one and the same, a symbiotic relationship where each 'partner' feeds off the other to survive.
And no creative person on the planet is immune from such a judgement - if the kind of person who judges creatives in this way decides they don't like the way Stephen King writes his stories, they will judge him a Bad Writer until the day they die, in spite of a cosmic crapload of evidence that this can't actually be true. That's not to say he hasn't produced bad writing in his career - the man himself has owned up to that on more than one occasion. But doing anything badly is part of the process toward becoming good at it; every one of us once had to have bums regularly wiped clean by an adult because we hadn't figured out toilets yet. Imagine if, instead of being encouraged to keep trying, we'd all been branded 'bad children' and told to give up on our dreams of ever being able to control our own bowels?
So yeah, when people tell you they don't like your writing... they're entitled to their opinion, and you're entitled to make up your own mind whether you want to try and change it or not. If people tell you what you've written is 'bad writing,' the same applies, but it might be worth your while taking another look at your work and seeking some other opinions to see if there's any truth in what they're saying.
But anyone who tells you you're a 'bad writer?' Unless you're stabbing them in the eyes with your pen, abusing people on social media or committing crimes that have nothing to do with written prose it's a meaningless criticism. No writer in the history of forever was ever born a 'good' writer. We all suck in the beginning, and no two writers' journey from 'crap' to 'okay' to 'good' (and maybe even 'great') are the same, or take the same length of time to travel. That person who produces 'bad writing' now might bang out a kick-ass best-seller in a couple of years' time - or ten years' time, or maybe it'll take them twenty or more years to finally crack it. Meanwhile, another writer who wrote fantastic stuff in his early twenties might struggle to maintain that standard as he slides into his thirties, spend his forties in creative doldrums and then suddenly have a resurgence in his fifties and beyond. You could try and slap the 'Bad Writer' label on both of them - but you can't make it stick.
Even when your writing is bad, it is not because you are a bad writer. Remember that in your deepest, darkest moments of self-doubt. Mistakes are things, not people.
From just reading the title, it would be reasonable to assume it's about the things that make bad writing bad. wouldn't it? You know, the usual suspects; adverbs, passive voice, filtering, repetitive phrases...
Spoiler alert - it isn't. Somewhere along the line the author decided instead that it was certain kinds of people who made these grievous errors - and they personally were the 'things' that made bad writing bad. His issue wasn't so much with the way words were laid out on the page, but with the personality and motivations of the person who was putting them there.
I will concede he did make one or two good points. It's certainly true, for example, that any writer who believes they have nothing more to learn because they've become Masters of the Craft are generally full of something, and it isn't good writing. But overall I feel he swung his Bat of Shame in a pretty broad circle without much regard for who he might have been hitting. If you are an aspiring, as-yet-unpublished writer - or even an already-published one - I challenge you to get through the entire article without feeling at least a little bit stung by the end of it, because it's cleverly worded to stab little needles of doubt into the sensitive writer's self-esteem.
Aspiring to write boundary-breaking fiction like influential authors such as Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, David Foster Wallace and Maya Angelou? You're probably a Bad Writer then. Been working for a few years on the novel that's been burning in your brain, and can't start another until you've got this one out of your head? You're probably a Bad Writer too. Writing a novel that explores certain ideologies and issues that are dear to your heart? Yep, you guessed it - you're a Bad Writer as well.
Now these declarations might make sense if every author who's ever written anything that fits in any of those above categories has always produced something bad. But that clearly isn't true, as - ooh, I don't know, several thousand classics and bestsellers over at least a couple of centuries will testify. Yes, these things can certainly be done badly by writers who lack the necessary skills - but that in itself shouldn't be clarion call to all writers to never even attempt to write what their heart wants to write. The problem is, this article doesn't make that distinction; it takes what it regards as 'bad writing,' looks for the genres and motivations most commonly associated with it and then brands everyone who writes or wants to write that stuff as 'bad writers' before they've even begun.
Bad writers don't realise they're bad, is the takeaway message from this article. They keep on writing their terrible stuff, convinced it's what they're meant to do, that their instincts are right and they should keep on writing, no matter what everyone else says. Bad writers believe in themselves and their writing ability when they really, really shouldn't.
And isn't that the very head-demon most halfway-decent, good and even great writers fight, every day of their writing life? That, actually, they're not as good at this writing lark as they think they are, and they should just quit their narcissistic dreaming and get back to the Real World? How many of us have heard those same sentiments echoed out loud by the naysayers among our friends, families, teachers, peers and work colleagues?
I bet you can picture the looks on their faces as they say it too. That half-pitying, half-contemptuous look that says "I'm just trying to make you see how much of a delusional loser you really are, because I'm smart enough to predict your eventual humiliation and kind-hearted enough to warn you about it in advance." Ironically, they're often not so kind-hearted that they'll be happy for you if you prove them wrong - in fact, their little hearts will shrivel with secret fury if you dare to defy their cutting non-expectations at some point in the future. Because here's the secret those people don't want you to know; if you're a creative person who's actively chasing your dream, you break their world view and that scares the crap out of them.
Society at large is not encouraged to 'think big.' If you want a guaranteed system for Making It in life, you work your arse off in a normal, steady job that pays a regular wage for practical skill sets that can be applied to everyday life - skills like retail, office-based, trades, hospitality, catering and managerial skills. Not only that, but if you're really serious about supporting yourself and then later on providing for your family, this is the path you should be committing your energies to. That's how you get respect in this society - playing the game by The Rules.
But while a large proportion of society accepts and abides by these Rules, that doesn't mean they're always happy about it. Even people without a single creative bone in their body have crazy dreams about the kind of life they'd live instead, if they didn't have to do their duty in their job that Pays The Bills and Puts Food on the Table. But they bury those dreams, shoving them aside for the Greater Good, and the only way they can do that without tumbling into a pit of inner misery is to convince themselves that they're doing it because the way they've committed to - the sensible, real-world-thinking way - is the way that works. That taking the rule-breaker path of following their dreams and sucking up knockback after knockback - probably for years and possibly forever if they never succeed - is the choice so life-wrecking and impossible it shouldn't even be contemplated. They need that to be the absolute truth in their life if they are to keep trudging down their safe but humdrum life of stability.
And then someone like you comes along. You, the creative, who hasn't locked her dreams away in a box marked 'Unrealistic' and stuck to The Rules like you were 'supposed to.' You're taking all the risks they're too afraid to take and - well, you may not have achieved all the things you've dreamed of achieving, but you also haven't died or been left destitute and friendless either. You're making chasing your dreams look... kind of attractive as a life strategy. You even look like you're enjoying the process, damn you! You're breaking everything - if you can do it and not get swallowed down a hair-clogged plughole of disaster, that means it might not be wrong for them to try it either... You're making everyone who takes the safe path look like wusses, you troublemaker!
You must therefore be stopped, before you convince others to follow in your footsteps and make those too scared to try feel even more resentful for choosing to stick with their safe life choices. And since rejecting and ridiculing what you do clearly hasn't been working so far, because you still insist on doing it anyway, the only alternative is to go personal and reject and ridicule what you are.
And that's how you get from 'Bad Writing' to 'Bad Writers' in a single web article. It's also why you can swap out 'writing' and 'writers' for 'art' and 'artists, 'performances' and 'performers...' You imply the two are one and the same, a symbiotic relationship where each 'partner' feeds off the other to survive.
And no creative person on the planet is immune from such a judgement - if the kind of person who judges creatives in this way decides they don't like the way Stephen King writes his stories, they will judge him a Bad Writer until the day they die, in spite of a cosmic crapload of evidence that this can't actually be true. That's not to say he hasn't produced bad writing in his career - the man himself has owned up to that on more than one occasion. But doing anything badly is part of the process toward becoming good at it; every one of us once had to have bums regularly wiped clean by an adult because we hadn't figured out toilets yet. Imagine if, instead of being encouraged to keep trying, we'd all been branded 'bad children' and told to give up on our dreams of ever being able to control our own bowels?
So yeah, when people tell you they don't like your writing... they're entitled to their opinion, and you're entitled to make up your own mind whether you want to try and change it or not. If people tell you what you've written is 'bad writing,' the same applies, but it might be worth your while taking another look at your work and seeking some other opinions to see if there's any truth in what they're saying.
But anyone who tells you you're a 'bad writer?' Unless you're stabbing them in the eyes with your pen, abusing people on social media or committing crimes that have nothing to do with written prose it's a meaningless criticism. No writer in the history of forever was ever born a 'good' writer. We all suck in the beginning, and no two writers' journey from 'crap' to 'okay' to 'good' (and maybe even 'great') are the same, or take the same length of time to travel. That person who produces 'bad writing' now might bang out a kick-ass best-seller in a couple of years' time - or ten years' time, or maybe it'll take them twenty or more years to finally crack it. Meanwhile, another writer who wrote fantastic stuff in his early twenties might struggle to maintain that standard as he slides into his thirties, spend his forties in creative doldrums and then suddenly have a resurgence in his fifties and beyond. You could try and slap the 'Bad Writer' label on both of them - but you can't make it stick.
Even when your writing is bad, it is not because you are a bad writer. Remember that in your deepest, darkest moments of self-doubt. Mistakes are things, not people.
Monday, 16 February 2015
4 Ways to Smack Your Writing Grinch Down
It aint easy, this whole writing-a-novel malarkey.
It's not supposed to be easy, obviously, otherwise everyone and Pavlov's dog would be doing it and MyFace and TwitterBook would be a whole lot emptier. Writing a novel that you hope someday will get published is definitely not an endeavour for softies or quitters, because with every novel you attempt to write you get a free gift. You didn't ask for it, and once you know you have it you certainly don't want it, but there's no shop to take it back to so you're stuck with it. I'm talking, of course, about your Writing Grinch.
You know that nagging voice in your head that tells you your writing sucks? That no-one's ever going to read your crappy novel anyway, even if you actually finish it, which you probably won't because it sucks so much? That's your Writing Grinch. Stephen King and many other writers talk about having your Writing Muse show up if you spend enough time putting in the graft - well, the bad news is your Writing Grinch does a pretty good impression of your Muse, and it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes (because even your Muse can be hard on you.) Tricksy little so-and-so, that Grinch. So what we need to do is arm ourselves against him; know his battle tactics and be ready to kick his butt like Buckaroo when he comes a-calling. (Note: I'm using 'he' throughout this because my Grinch happens to be a he. Yours might be a 'she' or even an 'it.' Adjust as necessary.)
My Grinch has been something of a regular companion during my draft two process ('bless' his little steel-capped bovver-boots.) So, because I'm the kind of person who cries at charity appeal adverts on the telly, I feel a need to encourage anyone out there who's thinking of abandoning their novel along with their writing dreams. I'm not quitting on mine, so I can't let you quit on yours without a fight!
So, without further ado, let's run down through the Grinch's most common mantras...
1 - "This novel is unpublishable. No agent/publisher is ever going to want it, because it's not what anyone would want to read."
...And so, what's the point of even finishing it, right? Give up, and start on something that has got a chance of seeing the light of published day. Except... didn't your Grinch say that about the last one you didn't finish as well - and the one before that, and the one before..? I think there's a pattern emerging here. Thing is... he might well be right. This novel you're currently slogging your guts out might not ever get published - in fact, if it's your first, the odds are pretty high that it won't. But the only way to even have a hope of ever getting the medal is to finish the race. Keeping your eye on the prize is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to keep on running towards that finish line, but if that's all you're in it for... well, it won't sustain you when that Grinch starts whispering in your ear and sapping your confidence. After all, nobody knocks themselves out to get a prize they no longer believe they'll win.
So at least for now, forget the prize. It's experiencing the whole journey, from the very beginning right to its end, that matters. Just keep putting one word in front of the other, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Map out the journey and learn from each stage of it, so that you can take your experiences with you for the next one. And the next and the next. Because the best way to get to the Holy Grail of being published is to teach yourself to stay on the journey towards it - time after time after time...
2 - "You know, everybody laughs at you behind your back - you and your crazy dreams about getting your novel published. They all think you're wasting your time."
It's lovely when you have loyal friends, family and spouse around you, encouraging you and being totally supportive of your writing endeavours. Lots of writers have them in their lives - and, unfortunately, lots don't. If you're in the second category... well, there's not a lot you can do to remedy that situation, I'm afraid. Actually, finally get your work published? That'll hush their sniggering, disapproving mouths, right? Pfffft, no. Unless you can morph into the literary love-child of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King overnight (and flash the resultant wads of banknotes in the faces of your naysayers as proof) you can merely expect comments along the lines of "well, I think I might write a book as well then, if it's that easy to get published..." Seriously, I wish I was joking - but I'm not. Been there, heard it, and - trust me, it's like a knife in the heart every time.
So you can't write for those people. You can't write to win them over, prove a point to them or to finally show them - finally - that you're not just a feckless dreamer who'll never amount to anything worth talking about. Harsh as it sounds, your best strategy is to teach yourself to not give a flying eff-word about what they think. Ever. You are a writer, and you don't need their approval - or anyone else's, for that matter - to do what you do. And if there's any part of you that's doing that, even if it's because you think it'll make even the tiniest difference in the long term, stop it. Stop that shizzle right now.
The only people that will ever matter when it comes to your writing is the people who want to read your writing. You won't know most of them - you'll probably never even meet most of them. But they're the people you write for. Not the unbelievers in your life. Screw them.
3 - "Okay, so you finish this novel - and then what? What if this is the only novel you have in you? What if, after this one, all your inspiration dries up and you can never write another one ever again?"
Because creativity, after all, is like a beautiful snowflake - unique and special and, once it's had its moment of glory melts away into nothing and disappears forever...
Mmmm... no, not really. You're not necessarily destined to 'use up' all the currency in your Bank of Imagination on just one novel, any more than you would eat the most delicious meal in the best restaurant in the world and then immediately say "Well that's it - nothing will ever come close to this experience and so from this moment on there is no point in eating anything else ever again. I can only hope it doesn't take too long to die of starvation." As long as you've got senses to engage and a brain to interpret them, your creativity is more like a well that fills up whenever you allow the rain to pour in (and let's face it, the only way for that not to happen is if you take steps to stop it getting in.)
Still not convinced? Okay then, let's imagine for a moment that you are one of those rarities that truly only does have one novel 'in you' and nothing more. Is that such a terrible thing? You'd certainly be in good company. Among other famous authors who only ever published one novel are; Harper Lee, with To Kill A Mockingbird, (although the world is currently aflame with rumours about a second one about to be published, some fifty-five years later) Emily Bronte with Wuthering Heights, Oscar Wilde with The Picture of Dorian Gray, Margaret Mitchell with Gone With The Wind, Boris Pasternak with Dr Zhivago, Anna Sewell with Black Beauty...
Would the literary world have been better off if they'd not bothered to finish those novels, just because they didn't go on to write any more after that?
4 - "It's taking too long! You're not writing fast enough for long enough! Your word count is pitiful! You'll be a-hundred-and-ninety-three before you ever finish this novel - hell, you'll probably die before you finish it!"
You've seen those books on Amazon too, admit it - 'How to Write 2,000 Words an Hour and Pump Out a Book Every Thirty Days and be a Stinking Rich Kindle Millionaire Woohoo Bring on the Wonga!' And I'm not about to laugh in the faces of such books and say it's all a pack of lies. Some people do, in fact, write at least 2,000 words an hour and a book every thirty days (although in fairness, most of them are the authors of those types of books.) James Patterson seems to bring out a new novel roughly every two-and-half minutes, but that's because he has an entire army of ghostwriters in a magical fortress somewhere, who each take an outline he dashes off in a day or so and then beaver away at writing the books that he no doubt edits a bit before getting them published under his 'brand name.' (Harsh? Perhaps, but unless he actually went out and kidnapped those writers and keeps them manacled by their ankles to a desk, releasing them only for meals, sleep and toilet breaks I can't really diss him too much for having a factory-production-line approach to novel writing. I just hope he's paying them well for it and they genuinely don't mind not receiving much credit for their efforts... but even if that's not the case, I'm assuming they still have the choice to break away and strike out on their own.)
Some people can be full-time writers, some can only be part-time writers, and some have to squeeze in precious writing time between a gazillion other commitments. That will have some bearing on how quickly (or not) a writer can progress with their novels. Some writers are fantastically prolific: the mystery author John Creasey wrote six hundred novels in his lifetime, romance author Barbara Cartland wrote seven-hundred-and twenty-three and childrens' author Enid Blyton wrote over eight-hundred. (I'll let you have a moment for your mind to boggle.)
And then we have James Joyce, author of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. His average wordcount was widely rumoured to be six words a day (I don't know about you, but that makes me feel like a writing machine by comparison.) George R.R. Martin has also been accused of being a slow writer (albeit mainly by fans desperate for the next instalment in his Game of Thrones series) along with J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Crichton. All of which suggests that there's room for tortoises as well as hares in the writing world.
The point is, whether you write for eight hours a day or two hours a day (mine is the latter) you can only write what you write in that time. As long as that's what you do for at least the majority of your allotted time - as opposed to checking your emails, surfing the web or sneaking off to watch Bargain Hunt and claiming it was 'for research' - there's not much more you can do. No honestly, there really isn't. I know all those books claim everyone can write 2,000 words a day if they put their mind to it - but what those books don't tell you is that anything between 300-1800 of those words will be utter drivel that you'll end up deleting anyway. Some of us know that already, and simply don't allow the drivel to make it onto the page in the first place. That's what reduces the wordcount for us.
By all means measure your progress - I use an Excel spreadsheet to mark in how many hours a week I spent writing and my wordcount at the end of each 'session.' That's a brilliant thing to do to keep yourself on track and strengthen your commitment to finishing your novel, because it puts you in the mindset of treating your writing like a job that you 'clock in' for. It's also the best way to work out exactly how much you are capable of producing in the time you have available; a few months of tracking your wordcount-per-time-allotted will give you an average that's realistic and achievable for you. This will help you when it comes to writing towards deadlines - whether self-imposed or set by external sources - because you'll know if you're likely to meet it, and how much more time to negotiate for if you're not.
If you can improve on your wordcount over time - fantastic! But if you can't... accept it and don't use it like a measuring stick to hold up against other writers and then beat yourself over the head with. Forget about what everyone else is doing - you are you. And if you're more James Joyce than Enid Blyton... that's okay, it really is.
Well, those are my big Grinch Moans... what are yours? Are there things I've missed? I'd love to know.
It's not supposed to be easy, obviously, otherwise everyone and Pavlov's dog would be doing it and MyFace and TwitterBook would be a whole lot emptier. Writing a novel that you hope someday will get published is definitely not an endeavour for softies or quitters, because with every novel you attempt to write you get a free gift. You didn't ask for it, and once you know you have it you certainly don't want it, but there's no shop to take it back to so you're stuck with it. I'm talking, of course, about your Writing Grinch.
You know that nagging voice in your head that tells you your writing sucks? That no-one's ever going to read your crappy novel anyway, even if you actually finish it, which you probably won't because it sucks so much? That's your Writing Grinch. Stephen King and many other writers talk about having your Writing Muse show up if you spend enough time putting in the graft - well, the bad news is your Writing Grinch does a pretty good impression of your Muse, and it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes (because even your Muse can be hard on you.) Tricksy little so-and-so, that Grinch. So what we need to do is arm ourselves against him; know his battle tactics and be ready to kick his butt like Buckaroo when he comes a-calling. (Note: I'm using 'he' throughout this because my Grinch happens to be a he. Yours might be a 'she' or even an 'it.' Adjust as necessary.)
My Grinch has been something of a regular companion during my draft two process ('bless' his little steel-capped bovver-boots.) So, because I'm the kind of person who cries at charity appeal adverts on the telly, I feel a need to encourage anyone out there who's thinking of abandoning their novel along with their writing dreams. I'm not quitting on mine, so I can't let you quit on yours without a fight!
So, without further ado, let's run down through the Grinch's most common mantras...
1 - "This novel is unpublishable. No agent/publisher is ever going to want it, because it's not what anyone would want to read."
...And so, what's the point of even finishing it, right? Give up, and start on something that has got a chance of seeing the light of published day. Except... didn't your Grinch say that about the last one you didn't finish as well - and the one before that, and the one before..? I think there's a pattern emerging here. Thing is... he might well be right. This novel you're currently slogging your guts out might not ever get published - in fact, if it's your first, the odds are pretty high that it won't. But the only way to even have a hope of ever getting the medal is to finish the race. Keeping your eye on the prize is a fantastic way to motivate yourself to keep on running towards that finish line, but if that's all you're in it for... well, it won't sustain you when that Grinch starts whispering in your ear and sapping your confidence. After all, nobody knocks themselves out to get a prize they no longer believe they'll win.
So at least for now, forget the prize. It's experiencing the whole journey, from the very beginning right to its end, that matters. Just keep putting one word in front of the other, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. Map out the journey and learn from each stage of it, so that you can take your experiences with you for the next one. And the next and the next. Because the best way to get to the Holy Grail of being published is to teach yourself to stay on the journey towards it - time after time after time...
2 - "You know, everybody laughs at you behind your back - you and your crazy dreams about getting your novel published. They all think you're wasting your time."
It's lovely when you have loyal friends, family and spouse around you, encouraging you and being totally supportive of your writing endeavours. Lots of writers have them in their lives - and, unfortunately, lots don't. If you're in the second category... well, there's not a lot you can do to remedy that situation, I'm afraid. Actually, finally get your work published? That'll hush their sniggering, disapproving mouths, right? Pfffft, no. Unless you can morph into the literary love-child of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King overnight (and flash the resultant wads of banknotes in the faces of your naysayers as proof) you can merely expect comments along the lines of "well, I think I might write a book as well then, if it's that easy to get published..." Seriously, I wish I was joking - but I'm not. Been there, heard it, and - trust me, it's like a knife in the heart every time.
So you can't write for those people. You can't write to win them over, prove a point to them or to finally show them - finally - that you're not just a feckless dreamer who'll never amount to anything worth talking about. Harsh as it sounds, your best strategy is to teach yourself to not give a flying eff-word about what they think. Ever. You are a writer, and you don't need their approval - or anyone else's, for that matter - to do what you do. And if there's any part of you that's doing that, even if it's because you think it'll make even the tiniest difference in the long term, stop it. Stop that shizzle right now.
The only people that will ever matter when it comes to your writing is the people who want to read your writing. You won't know most of them - you'll probably never even meet most of them. But they're the people you write for. Not the unbelievers in your life. Screw them.
3 - "Okay, so you finish this novel - and then what? What if this is the only novel you have in you? What if, after this one, all your inspiration dries up and you can never write another one ever again?"
Because creativity, after all, is like a beautiful snowflake - unique and special and, once it's had its moment of glory melts away into nothing and disappears forever...
Mmmm... no, not really. You're not necessarily destined to 'use up' all the currency in your Bank of Imagination on just one novel, any more than you would eat the most delicious meal in the best restaurant in the world and then immediately say "Well that's it - nothing will ever come close to this experience and so from this moment on there is no point in eating anything else ever again. I can only hope it doesn't take too long to die of starvation." As long as you've got senses to engage and a brain to interpret them, your creativity is more like a well that fills up whenever you allow the rain to pour in (and let's face it, the only way for that not to happen is if you take steps to stop it getting in.)
Still not convinced? Okay then, let's imagine for a moment that you are one of those rarities that truly only does have one novel 'in you' and nothing more. Is that such a terrible thing? You'd certainly be in good company. Among other famous authors who only ever published one novel are; Harper Lee, with To Kill A Mockingbird, (although the world is currently aflame with rumours about a second one about to be published, some fifty-five years later) Emily Bronte with Wuthering Heights, Oscar Wilde with The Picture of Dorian Gray, Margaret Mitchell with Gone With The Wind, Boris Pasternak with Dr Zhivago, Anna Sewell with Black Beauty...
Would the literary world have been better off if they'd not bothered to finish those novels, just because they didn't go on to write any more after that?
4 - "It's taking too long! You're not writing fast enough for long enough! Your word count is pitiful! You'll be a-hundred-and-ninety-three before you ever finish this novel - hell, you'll probably die before you finish it!"
You've seen those books on Amazon too, admit it - 'How to Write 2,000 Words an Hour and Pump Out a Book Every Thirty Days and be a Stinking Rich Kindle Millionaire Woohoo Bring on the Wonga!' And I'm not about to laugh in the faces of such books and say it's all a pack of lies. Some people do, in fact, write at least 2,000 words an hour and a book every thirty days (although in fairness, most of them are the authors of those types of books.) James Patterson seems to bring out a new novel roughly every two-and-half minutes, but that's because he has an entire army of ghostwriters in a magical fortress somewhere, who each take an outline he dashes off in a day or so and then beaver away at writing the books that he no doubt edits a bit before getting them published under his 'brand name.' (Harsh? Perhaps, but unless he actually went out and kidnapped those writers and keeps them manacled by their ankles to a desk, releasing them only for meals, sleep and toilet breaks I can't really diss him too much for having a factory-production-line approach to novel writing. I just hope he's paying them well for it and they genuinely don't mind not receiving much credit for their efforts... but even if that's not the case, I'm assuming they still have the choice to break away and strike out on their own.)
Some people can be full-time writers, some can only be part-time writers, and some have to squeeze in precious writing time between a gazillion other commitments. That will have some bearing on how quickly (or not) a writer can progress with their novels. Some writers are fantastically prolific: the mystery author John Creasey wrote six hundred novels in his lifetime, romance author Barbara Cartland wrote seven-hundred-and twenty-three and childrens' author Enid Blyton wrote over eight-hundred. (I'll let you have a moment for your mind to boggle.)
And then we have James Joyce, author of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. His average wordcount was widely rumoured to be six words a day (I don't know about you, but that makes me feel like a writing machine by comparison.) George R.R. Martin has also been accused of being a slow writer (albeit mainly by fans desperate for the next instalment in his Game of Thrones series) along with J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Crichton. All of which suggests that there's room for tortoises as well as hares in the writing world.
The point is, whether you write for eight hours a day or two hours a day (mine is the latter) you can only write what you write in that time. As long as that's what you do for at least the majority of your allotted time - as opposed to checking your emails, surfing the web or sneaking off to watch Bargain Hunt and claiming it was 'for research' - there's not much more you can do. No honestly, there really isn't. I know all those books claim everyone can write 2,000 words a day if they put their mind to it - but what those books don't tell you is that anything between 300-1800 of those words will be utter drivel that you'll end up deleting anyway. Some of us know that already, and simply don't allow the drivel to make it onto the page in the first place. That's what reduces the wordcount for us.
By all means measure your progress - I use an Excel spreadsheet to mark in how many hours a week I spent writing and my wordcount at the end of each 'session.' That's a brilliant thing to do to keep yourself on track and strengthen your commitment to finishing your novel, because it puts you in the mindset of treating your writing like a job that you 'clock in' for. It's also the best way to work out exactly how much you are capable of producing in the time you have available; a few months of tracking your wordcount-per-time-allotted will give you an average that's realistic and achievable for you. This will help you when it comes to writing towards deadlines - whether self-imposed or set by external sources - because you'll know if you're likely to meet it, and how much more time to negotiate for if you're not.
If you can improve on your wordcount over time - fantastic! But if you can't... accept it and don't use it like a measuring stick to hold up against other writers and then beat yourself over the head with. Forget about what everyone else is doing - you are you. And if you're more James Joyce than Enid Blyton... that's okay, it really is.
Well, those are my big Grinch Moans... what are yours? Are there things I've missed? I'd love to know.
Sunday, 18 January 2015
What Keeps You Writing..?
To any Writer With A Capital W, the above looks like a very
simple question with an equally simple answer. We keep writing because we have to, because it’s what we were meant to do, because, if we stop writing for any period of time, we
actually get cranky and more than a little bit cheesed off with our lives, the
world and… well, existence in general.
In that sense, it’s like choosing a career path; starting at
intern and working your way up the medical profession to become a respected
consultant, for example. You have to be a certain kind of person with certain
particular qualities to not only want to go in that direction, but to keep
wanting it as you rise up the ranks and then continue to enjoy it once you've
got there. It’s definitely not for everyone, but the ones it is for have the same passion for it as a
Writer (with a capital W) has for writing.
But that’s not what I mean with this question; I'm going
deeper than that. Three levels deeper, actually. So let’s take them one at a
time…
For those of you out there making a living from what you
write already this is obviously a no-brainer – it’s what pays my bills, dear. You know what you do works for that
purpose, so you carry on doing it so you can… afford to carry on doing it. The
Circle of Life! (Well, at the very least the circle of making a mostly
enjoyable living, I would hope.) For you guys, that carrot is a real one, and
you know it’s real because when you’ve reached out for it in the past you were
able to grab it and take it.
Unlike the yet-to-be-published writer, who can only hope the
carrot they’re reaching for isn’t
just a fanciful illusion that exists only in their yearning writer’s imagination.
What keeps you yet-to-be-published writers chasing that carrot, pushing through
that nagging fear that it’s not really there at all?
I’ll use myself as an example, purely because I’m here now
and ready to answer any questions I might ask me. My ‘area’ in the past was
song lyrics – for straight-up commercial songs, for two full-length musicals
and a lot of parody lyrics. That’s where the bulk of my writing experience
lies, while Redemption is and will be
my first completed novel. It’s a hell of a switch – in terms of genre, expected writing style,
size of finished work… just about everything really. Who’s to say that, just
because I’ve had some success writing lyrics, I’m also capable of writing a
decent novel? Ultimately, for all the effort I’m putting into it, I might suck
as a novelist.
I can write lyrics for a complete song, start to finish, in
two hours if I put my mind to it (and my personal best is twenty minutes – but
that was a really good day…) So the idea of spending more than two years now on one project is… well,
it’s been an adjustment, to say the least. Jeez, no wonder I’ve worried about
being crap at it! Why am I making life so hard for myself? I could just go back
to writing lyrics instead – stick to what I know, and cherish that feeling of
finishing something without watching entire birthdays
fly by…
But for some reason I can’t. I’m still hell-bent on
completing my novel, scene by scene, chapter by chapter – even though the
process seems so agonizingly s-l-o-w
compared to writing lyrics. What the heck is driving me? What is that intangible thing that keeps any aspiring-to-be-published-writer
plodding down the road towards that carrot-that-may-be-just-a-mirage on the
horizon?
This relates not just to the fact that you’re writing a
novel, but that you’re writing that
novel. You’re investing a heck of a lot of time and effort into this one story
burning a fire in your brain that ultimately… people might never bother to
read. Or all the ones that do read it
don’t like it -- hate it even, to the point where they vow never to read
anything else written by you ever again. That thing you just spent ages toiling
and sweating over? It was a bad idea, chum. Should’ve gone with something else
entirely.
Ouch. Now they
tell ya’…
I know many writers (including myself) talk about these
stories as being tales they have to
tell, that almost have to be extracted
from their minds and released into the world before they can sleep normally and
carry on with their lives. They even say things like “I don’t care if it never
gets published or no-one ever reads it, I'm still going to finish it because I
have to” (I know that, because I've said it myself, about Redemption.)
It’s easy to motivate yourself into writing something that’s
guaranteed to work out just fine. But what about that thing that “will probably
never get published, because no first novel is ever good enough to get published...”? How do you make yourself
believe that’s still worth slogging
your guts over? I suppose the argument is that you can’t write the novel that will get published until you've written
all the ones that won’t first – but that’s
like telling a kid if he doesn't keep eating all those Brussel sprouts he’ll
never get to eat the ice-cream… someday. Sooner or later most kids just say “Y’know
what? I don’t want the ice-cream that
much anyway.” And stop eating their sprouts. But what about the ones who don’t?
What is that magical thing that keeps
them shovelling down the sprouts?
Okay, so you've got through levels one and two – but this
one’s the real toughie. Because this
level happens even with the stories you’re most in love with and most desperate
to tell. All of us writer-types are in on this secret; writing a labour of love
is a roller-coaster ride, and on the downward-sloping parts even trying to put
one sentence in front of the other – without the results looking like the work
of a monkey after a bottle of Jack Daniels and a spliff – is harder than
sucking porridge through a straw. That’s when your Inner Grinch pops up, and
tells you there’s only one reason it’s suddenly become so hard; it’s because
this story sucks, and you suck too… and y’know what? You’re
probably always going to suck,
because you’ll never get past writing
stuff that sucks because you know
you suck soooo much…
(Or is that just me? Not that I’d wish it on anyone else of
course, but I’m kind of hoping it’s not…)
This level is the reason I – and probably a gazillion other
writers out there – have a Novel Graveyard somewhere on their hard drive. And a
secret pile of half-filled, handwritten notebooks in a musty-smelling cardboard
box in the loft. All of them containing stories that begin full of fire and
promise, before slowly petering out and being left to die in the pit of their
own loneliness somewhere around Chapter Four. Maybe they really were stories
that were never meant to be… but even if they were, ultimately the Grinch won.
Redemption is the
first novel that my Grinch has thus far been unable to kill. I finished –
actually finished! – its Draft One,
and, even though it’s been hard going, I am still squirreling my way through
Draft Two. And I am in no mood to give up on it – someone or something will
literally have to kill me to make me do that. My Grinch has still been making regular
appearances, acid-raining on my parade with the schadenfreude of all his previous attempts. And, in low moments, I
still listen to him and feel sad and hopeless for a while. But then I punch him
in the face (metaphorically of course) and carry on writing. What’s changed
this time around? What is it about this
story that’s making me believe in it so deeply, where I didn't or couldn't believe
in the ones I attempted before? What is
that special ‘thing’ in every writer’s first completed novel that kept them
believing this was the one they
should put a ring on?
Why am I even asking these questions anyway? It’s certainly not because I
know the answers (sorry if that’s what you were hoping.) To be honest I wouldn't
even know where to begin. Maybe it’s better not to have a definitive answer
anyway. Sometimes analysing something too deeply is the surest way to kill it –
in the same way the Victorians thought knowing how butterflies lived required
chloroforming them and sticking their corpses on pins. Or maybe it’s just something that can’t be
defined by some sort of formula for human behaviour – “So, you want to actually
finish a novel? Try X + Y = screw you, Grinch!”
So I'm putting it out there because I'm wondering if any of
you have any theories. I’d love to know, seriously. ‘Cause even if we don’t
manage to come up with any answers, it’ll be nice to know if we’re doing
similar sums to get there.
Saturday, 4 October 2014
Genre Writing: Whose Rules Are They Anyway?
I'm at that stage in my current work-in-progress Redemption where the big-picture doubts are starting to creep in.
These aren't related to the actual mechanics of the story per se. The plot fits together, the characters do what they're designed to do and the story world is coherent enough that any consistency boo-boos that do appear can be ironed out with very little heartache. No, the doubts I'm referring to are the ones over which I have far less control - the ones my Inner Grinch gets a massive kick out of taunting me with. And his favourite one at the moment goes something along the lines of:
"No-one will ever read this novel of yours, because it's not 'proper' sci-fi! You're doing it all wrong! The people who like proper sci-fi will hate it, and the people who might like it won't notice it because they won't be sci-fi fans and you've classed it as a sci-fi novel!"
So... am I an ignorant dumbass who mistakenly thinks Redemption is a sci-fi novel when it is in fact not? Well, let's see... it's set some thirty years in the future, in a city under the martial law of a rogue organisation that deposed the elected government following worldwide resource shortages. Almost all of the technology available can only be obtained by the rich and powerful, and anything else is retro junk that clever hackers and tinkerers have recycled and learned to jerry-rig into functionality. And the aforementioned rogue government have an army of super-enhanced soldiers to dispense 'justice' to rebellious citizens. Well, that sounds pretty sci-fi to me. But what does my Grinch mean by 'proper' sci-fi? I believe the clue to this question lies in my previous writing experiences...
You see, Redemption is the first sci-fi novel I've ever completed (even to Draft One stage) - but it's not the first one I've ever tried to write. In the past, I began at least two other sci-fi novels and - being a naive and not-well-versed-in-the-etiquette noob at the time - posted a couple of chapters to writing critique forums to get some feedback. (I have since learned that it's best to have at the very least a completed draft one of the entire novel before I even consider posting chapters for critique.)
A lot of the feedback I got was very useful. Some people even liked what I'd written. But the ones who didn't, really, really didn't - and had two very distinct things in common. Thing One: they all hated the 'emotional stuff' in it, and Thing Two: those reviewers were all men.
I'm not coming over all angry feminist now; those are the plain, simple facts of the matter. Their universal complaint - and one they clearly felt very strongly about judging from their feedback - was that characters having any kind of internal emotional issues alongside the more practical, external conflicts of the story was not what proper science fiction was about. For example: in one of my stories I had a major character who was a scientist that had become a virtual recluse both in his home and work life, following the death of his little girl some five years ago in an accident he blamed himself for. It formed a huge part of his character arc and influenced his actions in relation to the plot - but that, apparently was the problem. As one of those critics put it (this isn't a direct quote, but as close as I can remember to what he said)
'Why put in all this emotional crap about him being tortured about his dead daughter? You're turning what should be a straight science fiction story into bloody chick lit! Stop trying to girlify the genre and you might actually write something genuine sci-fi fans would want to read.'
Now let me assure you, at no point did this scientist character ever pour out his feelings to his friends at a Boys Night In, where they all watched Bro movies and trimmed each other's facial hair. Nor did he record all his emotions in a private diary, along with the calories he'd consumed that day and whether or not he was having a Fat Day. In fact, the character never spoke about it to anyone else at all - the information was revealed to the reader gradually through his own internal dialogue and the odd remark from people who knew him well enough to know the history. So I was (and still am) a little baffled by the 'chick lit' comparison.
But the fact still remains, more than one person had echoed this sentiment - and that makes it a Thing, an ethic that at least some proportion of readers of the sci-fi genre subscribe to. Question is, how established is this ethic? Was I really violating deep-seated genre conventions, upheld by the Masters for generations? And did that really mean I had to completely change my whole writing style, or forever remain unpublishable?
If that's the case then I'm already in trouble, because Redemption is chock-full of characters with various 'emotional issues.' Not to the point of the whole thing reading like a Dear Deirdre problem page, but... well, dammit these characters have got to have some reason for doing the things they do, other than simply 'because, woooh - sci-fi plot!'
Of course every genre has conventions that, by their very nature, are what enable the publishers to define those genres in the first place. You can't put a novel in the Romance genre if the two main characters don't remotely fancy each other, and a Thriller where the only crime committed is Mrs Pendles forgetting to return her library books on time would certainly be considered a violation of the Trades Description Act. Those conventions exist for very good reasons.
But surely, within the more concrete rules of genre, there's some creative wiggle-room? Is it not possible to have a Comedy-Thriller? An Urban Fantasy Romance? Steampunk Vampires? An Emotional Science Fiction story?
Whatever the answer, it's not going to stop me writing Renegades - and writing it my way, the way this story needs to be told, not to fit some pre-defined template of What Sci-Fi Stories Should Look Like. If that renders it 'unpublishable,' or 'something true sci-fi fans would never read' - well, so be it. While I can and will always strive to improve the way I write and how I write it, nothing could ever change the why in everything I write. Because the why is me - it's who I am.
Can we bend the boundaries of genres? We won't find out unless we try. If enough of us are bold, I think we can do it. The publishing world is changing, with more opportunities for experimentation than ever before. The laboratory's open - let's get mixing potions!
These aren't related to the actual mechanics of the story per se. The plot fits together, the characters do what they're designed to do and the story world is coherent enough that any consistency boo-boos that do appear can be ironed out with very little heartache. No, the doubts I'm referring to are the ones over which I have far less control - the ones my Inner Grinch gets a massive kick out of taunting me with. And his favourite one at the moment goes something along the lines of:
"No-one will ever read this novel of yours, because it's not 'proper' sci-fi! You're doing it all wrong! The people who like proper sci-fi will hate it, and the people who might like it won't notice it because they won't be sci-fi fans and you've classed it as a sci-fi novel!"
So... am I an ignorant dumbass who mistakenly thinks Redemption is a sci-fi novel when it is in fact not? Well, let's see... it's set some thirty years in the future, in a city under the martial law of a rogue organisation that deposed the elected government following worldwide resource shortages. Almost all of the technology available can only be obtained by the rich and powerful, and anything else is retro junk that clever hackers and tinkerers have recycled and learned to jerry-rig into functionality. And the aforementioned rogue government have an army of super-enhanced soldiers to dispense 'justice' to rebellious citizens. Well, that sounds pretty sci-fi to me. But what does my Grinch mean by 'proper' sci-fi? I believe the clue to this question lies in my previous writing experiences...
You see, Redemption is the first sci-fi novel I've ever completed (even to Draft One stage) - but it's not the first one I've ever tried to write. In the past, I began at least two other sci-fi novels and - being a naive and not-well-versed-in-the-etiquette noob at the time - posted a couple of chapters to writing critique forums to get some feedback. (I have since learned that it's best to have at the very least a completed draft one of the entire novel before I even consider posting chapters for critique.)
A lot of the feedback I got was very useful. Some people even liked what I'd written. But the ones who didn't, really, really didn't - and had two very distinct things in common. Thing One: they all hated the 'emotional stuff' in it, and Thing Two: those reviewers were all men.
I'm not coming over all angry feminist now; those are the plain, simple facts of the matter. Their universal complaint - and one they clearly felt very strongly about judging from their feedback - was that characters having any kind of internal emotional issues alongside the more practical, external conflicts of the story was not what proper science fiction was about. For example: in one of my stories I had a major character who was a scientist that had become a virtual recluse both in his home and work life, following the death of his little girl some five years ago in an accident he blamed himself for. It formed a huge part of his character arc and influenced his actions in relation to the plot - but that, apparently was the problem. As one of those critics put it (this isn't a direct quote, but as close as I can remember to what he said)
'Why put in all this emotional crap about him being tortured about his dead daughter? You're turning what should be a straight science fiction story into bloody chick lit! Stop trying to girlify the genre and you might actually write something genuine sci-fi fans would want to read.'
Now let me assure you, at no point did this scientist character ever pour out his feelings to his friends at a Boys Night In, where they all watched Bro movies and trimmed each other's facial hair. Nor did he record all his emotions in a private diary, along with the calories he'd consumed that day and whether or not he was having a Fat Day. In fact, the character never spoke about it to anyone else at all - the information was revealed to the reader gradually through his own internal dialogue and the odd remark from people who knew him well enough to know the history. So I was (and still am) a little baffled by the 'chick lit' comparison.
But the fact still remains, more than one person had echoed this sentiment - and that makes it a Thing, an ethic that at least some proportion of readers of the sci-fi genre subscribe to. Question is, how established is this ethic? Was I really violating deep-seated genre conventions, upheld by the Masters for generations? And did that really mean I had to completely change my whole writing style, or forever remain unpublishable?
If that's the case then I'm already in trouble, because Redemption is chock-full of characters with various 'emotional issues.' Not to the point of the whole thing reading like a Dear Deirdre problem page, but... well, dammit these characters have got to have some reason for doing the things they do, other than simply 'because, woooh - sci-fi plot!'
Of course every genre has conventions that, by their very nature, are what enable the publishers to define those genres in the first place. You can't put a novel in the Romance genre if the two main characters don't remotely fancy each other, and a Thriller where the only crime committed is Mrs Pendles forgetting to return her library books on time would certainly be considered a violation of the Trades Description Act. Those conventions exist for very good reasons.
But surely, within the more concrete rules of genre, there's some creative wiggle-room? Is it not possible to have a Comedy-Thriller? An Urban Fantasy Romance? Steampunk Vampires? An Emotional Science Fiction story?
Whatever the answer, it's not going to stop me writing Renegades - and writing it my way, the way this story needs to be told, not to fit some pre-defined template of What Sci-Fi Stories Should Look Like. If that renders it 'unpublishable,' or 'something true sci-fi fans would never read' - well, so be it. While I can and will always strive to improve the way I write and how I write it, nothing could ever change the why in everything I write. Because the why is me - it's who I am.
Can we bend the boundaries of genres? We won't find out unless we try. If enough of us are bold, I think we can do it. The publishing world is changing, with more opportunities for experimentation than ever before. The laboratory's open - let's get mixing potions!
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
The Wall of Self-Doubt
It's official; Simon Cowell has come to visit my brain - and he's brought a bloody great pile of suitcases with him. For the purpose of progressing with my writing, this is Bad News.
This week I finally trundled over the hill that is 50,000 words of Draft Two of The Renegades (now at 54,500 actually.) While I realise that, for the 'professional' novel writer, this ranks in terms of achievement roughly equivalent to getting up in the morning, for me this is a big deal. It's the furthest down the novel-writing road that I've ever travelled. So right now I should be doing The Carlton Dance while simultaneously trying to high-five myself, right?
Mmmmm... yeah, not so much, as it turns out.
I've seen all those talent shows Mr. Cowell has created. The ones where some people - not all, but definitely some - strut in front of him, brimming with the confidence of their own awesomeness, and then indulge in the most godawful spectacle of self-delusion a human could inflict on three minutes of other humans' lives. And when Simon systematically (and some might say, for the sake of humanity) tears their performance to pieces, they stand there wide-eyed and uncomprehending, as if they're not quite sure if they're dreaming all of this.
"He surely can't be serious, can he? He can't possibly be saying that about what I just did - it's obvious I am the most freakin' amazing bucketful of sheer, raw talent he's ever seen... "
Whatever they're hearing when they open their mouths and make sounds come out, it sure as hell can't be what everyone else hears. And they believe in their own hype too; like conspiracy theorists, there is no logical argument you can present to them to sway them from their conviction that they are fabulous and all the naysayers are just insanely jealous...
By the same logic, I could well be the writerly equivalent of those people. And, like them, I wouldn't even know it either.
Since I passed the 50,000 words mark of The Renegades Draft Two, more and more often I've found myself thinking "what if this really is just a gigantic pile of suck? I might think it's coming together okay, and that it makes sense and I've come a long way as a writer because of it - but what if I'm deluding myself? What if, when I've finally finished this thing, it becomes the solid, cast-iron proof that I'm actually a terrible writer who'll never get any of her novels published ever because every novel she writes is a steaming mound of horse-poo?" And then the Simon Cowell currently squatting in my brain does That Face at me, which really doesn't help.
Apparently this is what's known as A Typical Thing among writers. Apparently Number Two: I'm even having this Typical Thing at a Typical Stage of the Writing Process. The Fear of Being Judged is tiptoeing away from the cozy sanctuary of fantasy and edging ever closer to becoming kick-in-the-guts reality. And yeah, it's blimmin' scary. After all, just because I've gone through large portions of my life expecting to be told I suck doesn't mean I learned to like it at any point...
But other writers have got past this. They've admitted that they too hit the wall of self-doubt - but they just kept on going anyway, until they got published... and then they kept on writing more stuff after that. If I'm not willing to let my novels be judged, I'm never going to finish writing one; I already know that's true from the stacks of half-finished and just-begun attempts languishing in W-I-P Hell on my hard drive. My personal Brain Simon may be right; in the end, even after a metric tonne of rewrites and polishes, The Renegades might turn out to be a legless donkey. And I'm sure, if that's the case, it'll hurt when I actually hear people tell me so.
But... it's a bit of a First-World Problem really, isn't it? There are worse things that could happen. The Fear of Being Crap is a powerful thing, but many of my fellow writers (god bless 'em) have assured me that not only can it be beaten, it must be. I've got through it with writing lyrics, and I've got through it with writing short stories - now I have to suck it up and deal with it when it comes to writing novels.
Does it end? Is this just a phase every writer goes through at a certain stage in a novel's lifecycle, until they come out the other side and say "Hell yeah, let's start submitting/self-publishing this puppy?" Or is it one of those things that pops up on a regular basis to mess with your head - like PMS, but with less chocolate consumption? (Ohh.... alright then, in my case, roughly the same amount of chocolate consumption...)
Perhaps I should just get myself a t-shirt with "I'm having a Mid-Write Crisis!" printed on it.
This week I finally trundled over the hill that is 50,000 words of Draft Two of The Renegades (now at 54,500 actually.) While I realise that, for the 'professional' novel writer, this ranks in terms of achievement roughly equivalent to getting up in the morning, for me this is a big deal. It's the furthest down the novel-writing road that I've ever travelled. So right now I should be doing The Carlton Dance while simultaneously trying to high-five myself, right?
Mmmmm... yeah, not so much, as it turns out.
I've seen all those talent shows Mr. Cowell has created. The ones where some people - not all, but definitely some - strut in front of him, brimming with the confidence of their own awesomeness, and then indulge in the most godawful spectacle of self-delusion a human could inflict on three minutes of other humans' lives. And when Simon systematically (and some might say, for the sake of humanity) tears their performance to pieces, they stand there wide-eyed and uncomprehending, as if they're not quite sure if they're dreaming all of this.
"He surely can't be serious, can he? He can't possibly be saying that about what I just did - it's obvious I am the most freakin' amazing bucketful of sheer, raw talent he's ever seen... "
Whatever they're hearing when they open their mouths and make sounds come out, it sure as hell can't be what everyone else hears. And they believe in their own hype too; like conspiracy theorists, there is no logical argument you can present to them to sway them from their conviction that they are fabulous and all the naysayers are just insanely jealous...
By the same logic, I could well be the writerly equivalent of those people. And, like them, I wouldn't even know it either.
Since I passed the 50,000 words mark of The Renegades Draft Two, more and more often I've found myself thinking "what if this really is just a gigantic pile of suck? I might think it's coming together okay, and that it makes sense and I've come a long way as a writer because of it - but what if I'm deluding myself? What if, when I've finally finished this thing, it becomes the solid, cast-iron proof that I'm actually a terrible writer who'll never get any of her novels published ever because every novel she writes is a steaming mound of horse-poo?" And then the Simon Cowell currently squatting in my brain does That Face at me, which really doesn't help.
Apparently this is what's known as A Typical Thing among writers. Apparently Number Two: I'm even having this Typical Thing at a Typical Stage of the Writing Process. The Fear of Being Judged is tiptoeing away from the cozy sanctuary of fantasy and edging ever closer to becoming kick-in-the-guts reality. And yeah, it's blimmin' scary. After all, just because I've gone through large portions of my life expecting to be told I suck doesn't mean I learned to like it at any point...
But other writers have got past this. They've admitted that they too hit the wall of self-doubt - but they just kept on going anyway, until they got published... and then they kept on writing more stuff after that. If I'm not willing to let my novels be judged, I'm never going to finish writing one; I already know that's true from the stacks of half-finished and just-begun attempts languishing in W-I-P Hell on my hard drive. My personal Brain Simon may be right; in the end, even after a metric tonne of rewrites and polishes, The Renegades might turn out to be a legless donkey. And I'm sure, if that's the case, it'll hurt when I actually hear people tell me so.
But... it's a bit of a First-World Problem really, isn't it? There are worse things that could happen. The Fear of Being Crap is a powerful thing, but many of my fellow writers (god bless 'em) have assured me that not only can it be beaten, it must be. I've got through it with writing lyrics, and I've got through it with writing short stories - now I have to suck it up and deal with it when it comes to writing novels.
Does it end? Is this just a phase every writer goes through at a certain stage in a novel's lifecycle, until they come out the other side and say "Hell yeah, let's start submitting/self-publishing this puppy?" Or is it one of those things that pops up on a regular basis to mess with your head - like PMS, but with less chocolate consumption? (Ohh.... alright then, in my case, roughly the same amount of chocolate consumption...)
Perhaps I should just get myself a t-shirt with "I'm having a Mid-Write Crisis!" printed on it.
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