Unravelling the 'Strong Female Character.'

Over the last few decades there's been a change in attitude to female characters - in books, television, films... pretty much all media actually.

Back in the Dark Ages of yore we all (apparently) liked to read about hapless captive-princess-types, who were stunningly beautiful, so sweet-natured they practically farted rainbows and could transform every man in existence into a love-drunk white knight simply by aiming their impossibly lovely gaze in his general direction. Solve her own problems? Nooo! How bloody unromantic is that? Much better to have her flop around being all trembling and powerless at her horrible, perilous situation. But not - heaven forbid! - angry or grumpy, or even the teensiest bit cross about her trauma, because such behaviour is soooo not feminine, y'know? Bearing her misfortunes with resignation and infinite optimism is how the girl does it - if she wants to actually be liked for the beautiful, non-threatening quest mcguffin she truly is, of course...

Mmmm.... yeahno, actually. Most women have to solve their own problems in their real lives, so fictional female characters who rely on their magical beauty-powers to get everyone else to do it for them are not exactly helpful role models in that respect. So we all started to wise up; the Female Lead Character needed a serious makeover if she was to appeal to the modern reader. And so, if the weak, passive female character was no longer acceptable in fiction, she shall henceforth be replaced with....

The complete opposite! Ta-daaah! Ladies and gentlemen, meet... the Strong Female Character!

And the world rejoiced. Strong Female Character? That sounds gooood. It must be good, because it sounds completely unlike the one we had before and we already know we don't like her any more. So.... how to make a Strong Female Character then? Mmmmmm, lemme see....

Oooh, I know - make her do everything a man can do! But better! And in sexy clothes (but not too sexy, 'cause she's not an object of lust any more, remember? Unless of course that's entirely her choice and she's doin' it for the empowerment, gimme five, sisters!)

Oooh no, wait, I got a better one - make her intellectually superior to 98% of the men around her! In which case she'll need to be a bit of an ice queen, maybe even a ballbreaker. No man could ever be a match for her when it comes to braininess - not that she'd even be looking for a man in that way of course, because she's, like, sooo above that sort of nonsense. In this lady's world, men are the weaker sex, and if they dare to be attracted to her for reasons other than her phenomenal boffin-power they can say hello to a sharp kick in the 'nads.

And lots of people clearly went "Yeah!" to all of that, because from that moment on there were quite a lot of those types of 'Strong Female Characters' karate-kicking and equation-solving their way into fiction. All fine and dandy. But then at some point something changed.

Having 'Strong Female Characters' stopped being merely a cool thing to do and started being a mandatory default setting for every female character in every book ever. And if you're a female writer, the pressure to conform is double-strength - because if your Female Lead Characters are not Strong With a Capital S, you're letting the sisterhood down. Yeah, you - personally and wilfully, you traitor!

And so we had the Buffys, the Witchblades, the Seven of Nines, the Katniss Everdeens. All fine characters in their own right, but... the gold standard for Strong Female Characters? How many women in the real world do you know who are just like them?  Is being super-brainy or able to kick butt in a fight the only way a female character can be defined as 'strong' now? And if she fails that test, is the novel she's in doomed to fail along with her?

In Redemption (my current w-i-p) my main character is a female called S12, and the story is told from her POV. So... is she a kick-ass babe who can handle herself in a fight?

Errrr... no. She does have some specialised skills, and she would certainly try to defend herself physically if the situation required... but the odds of her succeeding in smacking down a would-be assailant are pretty darn small. She's learned that negotiation is a much more effective strategy for her. Yeah, I know - that much-maligned 'feminine' trait of trying to resolve things peacefully!

O-kay.... butt-kicking's not her thing then, so she must make up for it by being super-smart, yeah?

Errr... no again. She was raised in the ghetto zone of a future earth, which means that, while she has a level of street-smarts necessary for survival in such a harsh environment, she aint no college graduate. But she's savvy enough to know that sometimes playing up to her apparent 'dumbness' can make a smart person tell her things they wouldn't tell her if they thought she could understand them. Tsk tsk - pretending to be an airhead to manipulate people. How horribly anti-feminist!

Ahhh... okay, but she's still a confident, independent woman who always behaves appropriately for the situation, right?

Errrr... you already know where this is going, don't you? She tries to do the right thing... mostly. She even gets it right sometimes. But many other times, she gets it woefully wrong. This is mostly because in her previous life in the ghetto her survival depended on being subservient to men, in a big way. Now she's suddenly found herself in an unfamiliar environment where she doesn't have to play that role anymore... but it's all she instinctively knows. And since no-one in this new place seems in any hurry to state what's required of her instead, the only way she can learn is by trial and error. A lot of error.

So how does she score? In terms of the Popular Concensus for what constitutes a 'Strong Female Character,' it seems she pretty much goes against most of the ideals. But to write her any other way for the story she's in wouldn't make a lick of sense. She's who she is because of what's happened to her before the story begins - and what happens once it does and what will have happened to her by the time it ends.

In short, she's not the 'Strong Female Character' beloved of the traditional default requirements. She's a fish-out-of-water, good-intentioned-but-flawed female character who's trying to find her way in the strange and scary world she's been dropped into. Is that so bad? Is that really a handbag-slap across the face of feminism?

For a long while I was seriously worried I was the only one asking that kind of question. But this week I found out I'm not. In this guest post on Chuck Wendig's terribleminds blog, the author S.L Huang discusses the idea of flawed female protagonists, and in it she also references this essay by Rose Lemberg. It seems the idea that all of them must be kickass and super-capable might finally be losing its appeal, and a new generation of readers are looking for more down-to-earth characters they can relate to instead. Because when it's not done well, isn't the kick-ass, super-capable Strong Female Character really just another version of a Mary Sue? Male characters have the freedom to be anything and everything in novels. Why are female ones only allowed to be awesome role models, simply to avoid being branded an outdated - and 'chauvinistic' - stereotype?

What do you think? Should we continue to champion the Strong Female Character as an ideal? Or should it be enough to just accept them as 'a female character' - in whatever of a million different flavours that happens to come? Y'know... kind of like females in real life?

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…

Level One: What keeps you writing what you write?

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?

Level Two: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing?

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?

Level Three: what keeps you writing that specific thing you’re writing… when you’re getting sick to death of trying to write it?

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.

How Natalie Goldberg saved my Christmas (and possibly my 2015.)

Anyone who's been following my blog in a way that isn't accidental (and I'm saying that to qualify the statement that follows this one, not because I'm deluding myself I actually have hordes of followers) may have noticed a slight downturn in mood over the last couple of months or so. I even addressed it head-on in this previous post, although at that time I didn't offer any theories or suspicions as to why I'd got myself into that particular funk. I did say I'd think on it though, in order to Get It Sorted.

And Christmas, as it turned out, was a good time to do that. Mostly because I got so caught up in planning, preparing and doing all the crazy stuff required to make Christmas run so smoothly no-one believes any effort goes into the process at all, that the writing schedule I'd been adhering to like a good little girl for the rest of the year went... well, not just out the window, but down the road and probably into the nearest pub to get drunk and have a few fights, for all I know. I actually had one week - admittedly the actual Christmas week - where my tally of hours spent writing was a big fat zero. As in, nothing. Nada. Zilch. For an entire week.

I still can't look at that week in my spreadsheet without getting a lump in my throat and wanting to beat myself about the head with my copy of Stephen King's On Writing. Either that or go back in time and try and do it all differently, but I'm thinking the first option is probably more achievable. And what with the New Year chasing the heels of Christmas like a deranged stalker, the last two weeks of December inevitably became a time to reflect on the year that's just passed and take that wisdom with me into the year about to start.

And bloody hell, what a depressing five-minutes-that-felt-like-a-lifetime that was. In January of last year, I imagined draft two of Redemption being finished and that I'd be deep into the nuts-and-bolts editing stage by now. I imagined succeeding at this would give me such a boost my productivity would double and I'd be positively champing at the bit to get it beta-read. Most of all, I imagined saying I was a writer would be something I could do with pride, rather than with the vague suspicion that people were either rolling their eyes or laughing at me behind my back.

As of this moment, I have achieved precisely none of these things. And that, I have realised, is the skeleton of my current depressive slump. The meat on those misery-bones? Writing advice. Tons and tons and tons of writing advice. As I've also mentioned before, I've read a lot of writing how-to books this year. One big reason for this is that there are several gazillion such books to be found in Kindle form via Amazon, and the majority of them at ridiculously low prices. While the possibility of spending frivolously on ebooks is easily tempered when you're paying £7-£10 a pop for them (because you're able to make a more rational decision about whether you really want that book that much) when they're only 77p you'll happily trade that rationality for "Hey - it's only 77p! That's, like, a bar of chocolate!" And, to be fair, some of them were very good...

Trouble is, a book-diet that's low in story and fun but high in writing advice can eventually start to feel like a food diet that's low in fat and sugar but high in fibre. As in, you keep telling yourself it's doing you good and you'll see the benefits in the long-term so WHY THE EFF DO YOU FEEL SO EFFIN' MISERABLE ALL THE EFFIN' TIME THESE DAYS?

All those books, filled with all those rules, that's why. The 'should's, the 'must,'s the 'you'd be advised to's and the 'don't ever..'s. An endless list of all the ways you can fail as a writer - wait, no, not just as a writer, but as a person too, because if you can't even see that's how you're failing you must be an egotistical asshole as well! And after a long period on a low-story, high-advice book diet, you start to feel like you're being followed around by a drill sergeant who's constantly looking over your shoulder at your work and going "Not good enough, slacker! Try harder! Work faster! Move your ass, you worthless piece of shit!"

That's how I was starting to feel. About Redemption, about writing a novel - heck, about whether I had the right to think I was even capable of ever being a published novelist. All those endless voices, yelling in my brain about what not to do, how not to write... check yourself before you wreck yourself, Mrs Wannabe-Author... 

But then I got lucky. I got a Kindle book voucher for Christmas, which meant I could use it to buy two or three quality £7-£10 books without feeling like Selfish Mum. (Much.) And, right within that price bracket, were two new books by Natalie Goldberg: The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life With Language and Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open The Writer's Craft.

I first encountered Natalie Goldberg's writing some ten years ago, when I enrolled on an online writing course for which two of her books - Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind - were required reading. This was in the days before e-books (that's right kids, but don't worry - we had moved on from gramophones by then) so my copies were made of dead trees rather than megabytes - but they were two of the most important books I've ever read. I know it sounds clichéd when people say a book 'changed their life,' but these two books truly did change mine. They were the first books I ever read that made writing and being a writer feel like an okay thing to want to to do and be - it didn't mean you were a nutcase, a feckless dreamer who failed at everything or a pretentious narcissist overestimating her cleverness. If I'd never read Natalie's books, I would never have gone on to read Julia Cameron's The Artists' Way, or Stephen King's On Writing... I wouldn't have gone on to write 100+ parody song lyrics and then progressed to getting a couple of short stories published, and I certainly wouldn't have even attempted to write Redemption. My writing life before I read her books had consisted of me standing in front of the Big Door To being A Writer, hoping that someday I'd be considered good enough to have the key that got you inside. Natalie was the person who said "Y'know, that door isn't locked. It's open to anyone and everyone - all you have to do is want to step inside." It sounds so simple, but sometimes the simple messages get drowned out by the everyday racket of dissenting voices all around you.

Natalie and her books are a lot like Marmite. Many people - myself included - love her enthusiastic zen approach to writing and life, while others dismiss her as little more than a navel-gazing hippie who peddles false notions that everyone has creative potential. For me, Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind were like the secret letters from a best friend, passed under the desk when the teacher's not looking. They set me free, encouraging me to see my need to write as a positive thing rather than the delusions of an airhead who was too lazy to aspire to a 'useful' ambition.

If anyone could show me the way out of my current self-dug pit of crumpled confidence it was her. I started reading Thunder and Lightning on New Years Day, and, ten years after reading her previous books, I can feel her magic starting to work all over again. I'm only a third of the way through, and already I'm starting to recover; I've (re)-realised that:

- Writing Redemption until I'm happy with it will take... as long as it takes. And however long that takes... is perfectly okay.
- Not driving towards a goal of 'being able to fully support myself financially as a full-time writer'... is also perfectly okay. And not wanting to do so... does not mean I'll 'never make it as a writer at all...'
- When other authors say what writers 'should' be doing... they are offering advice, not laws. Their way is not mandatory, and not following it to the letter does not necessarily mean you 'can't be a writer in the proper sense of the word.'
Writing from the heart requires courage - but it's the courage of a lamb, not the courage of a lion. It's not about 'kicking ass' and 'taking no prisoners,' it's about going into the dark and neglected corners of your mind and facing your innermost fears.
- You write what you write because it's what you need to write - it's your heart and your mind on the page. Listen to advice from others about how to make it better, but don't let them try to grab your lump of clay and mould it into something else - something you never intended it to be.

 From a writing point of view, 2015 might not be any faster or more productive for me than 2014 was, but it's starting to feel like it'll be better. So thanks Natalie. You saved writer-me ten years ago and now you're saving me again. We've never met, so I can't really call you my best writer-friend, but that's how I've come to regard you through your books - you're the best writer-friend I'd choose if I was free to choose anyone in the world.

I can only hope that I might one day be as good a writer-friend for others. I'd take that over some stellar career as a high-flying author any day.

Why The Perfect Writing Space Probably Isn't.

Imagine for a moment that you are a rich and famous author. That you've 'made it' already as a writer and you're making enough money from your work to live very comfortably indeed, thank you very much.

(And don't any of you writers out there dare tell me you've never done that, because, quite frankly, I will refuse to believe you. Every writer's done that at least once in their lives, no matter where they are on the ladder.)

Perhaps you’re fantasising about the beautiful big house you’re now living in – or maybe you swap-rent between a few swanky places to grab the best of the seasons (a pad in the Bahamas for summer, a chic beach house in Hawaii for the chilly winter months and a des res near Hollywood for the rest of the year…) Maybe you've got a flash car – heck, maybe a whole fleet of them that you've been collecting like kids collect Pokemons (are they still a ‘thing?’) Or maybe you've been out-Kardashian-ing Kim, with the plastic surgery (sorry I mean ‘all-natural’ beauty enhancements) and style choices that would’ve made Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman go “hmmm, yeah, but it’s not very classy, is it?”

Whatever you’re imagining, at some point I'm willing to bet your attention turned to your Writing Space - that sacred temple where you go to Do Your Thing with the words and the pretend people and stuff. After all, this is the place that helped you get to where you (imaginarily) are right now, so giving that a major makeover as well can only send your success rate soaring even higher, yeah?

Right now, my current Writing Space can best be summed up as ‘small and cluttered.’ My desk area is just under 80cm x 80cm in size when my pull-out keyboard drawer is fully pulled out, and it’s between the doorway to the living room and the cupboard under the stairs, facing the dining room wall. Because said dining room is in the back of a house that is tiny, Victorian and terraced, it doesn't get much natural daylight even in summer; it literally has to be full-on sunshine outside before I can get away with not having some form of artificial lighting to support the glare from my computer monitor as the main source. And because the house has no internal doors on the ground floor except for the one to the downstairs bathroom, in the winter the wind whistles under the back door in the kitchen and chills my feet while I write. (On a good writing day, I only realise this when I finally get up from my desk to get lunch or something and wonder why it suddenly feels like my toes have snapped off.)

Put away those tiny violins please, this isn't my pitch for a Kickstarter appeal. My point is that, while I am perfectly able to do what I do in this space, when it comes to thinking of ways to improve it I'm not exactly short of options. Your writing space might be nicer and more comfortable than mine or it might be even less so, but either way I'm sure you also have plenty of ideas about what you could do to make yours better. Let’s look at some of the most popular fantasy must-haves:

-          Huge, stonking, mahoosive desk usually comes fairly high up the list – the kind you need a wheelie-chair for just to get from one end to the other. Preferably in some sort of posh, shiny wood for that added ‘yeah, I’m doing important shizzle here’-factor.

-          Talking of chairs… gotta look like it means business, which means it needs to be deliciously comfortable, with a good, high back and that all-important ‘twirl action.’ As a general guideline, if it’s good enough for Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, it’s just about serviceable for the average writer, I would say.

-          Windows! No, not the eternally-Frankensteining Microsoft ones – actual ones you can look out of with your eyes. Biiiiiig windows naturally, with the most fabulous views on the other side, so that you can gave upon the loveliness of your environment and be inspired, dahling! (Of course the only snag with this is it may involve moving house to a place that actually has said fabulous views – or if you’re really rich, perhaps you just buy the places and have them relocated to ‘outside the house I’m already living in, please.’)

-          Catering facilities! No more of that ‘toddling to the kitchen for a cup of coffee/tea’ malarkey, the multitasking writer should be able to just lean across her desk-the-size-of-Canada and grab her beverage of choice from her every own tea-and-coffee-making-thingy, right there within easy reach. And why stop there? Why not have a designated ‘snack drawer’ too? Oooh, hey – how about dispensing with that long ol’ walk to the kitchen entirely and have a mini-fridge and a microwave on hand as well? Now you see why you need that mahoosive desk..!

(Just so you know, in the process of writing the above list my eyes went all misty and Louie Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World began playing on the jukebox inside my head.)

As fantasy ‘wants’ for a writer, these are pretty darn good, yeah? But what about in real life? What if, by some miracle, all of these things were achievable for even the most cash-deprived of writers? Well, let’s see…

A mahoosive desk would require a mahoosive house to put it in, for starters. Which would mean more housework, ‘cause bigger spaces to clean and all that. How many of you writers out there love housework? (And I mean, love it when you haven’t hit a writing rough patch?) Mmmm, yeah, me neither. So maybe just ‘big enough’ then. But how do you define ‘big enough?’ I don’t know about you, but give me a space and I’ll fill it, no matter what size it is. Okay, so maybe size isn’t everything (insert your own innuendo here.)

Big windows with a gorgeous view? Sounds amazing in theory… but in practice that would probably be a very bad idea. I’m the kind of person who can be fascinated for a good twenty minutes by the pattern left in the dregs of an empty coffee cup, so add in a glorious vista to gaze upon instead of my usual magnolia-coloured dining room wall… Far from beautiful scenery being ‘inspiring,’ I’ve a feeling most of us would spend more time staring out through those giant picture windows instead, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed – and that sort of nonsense would seriously eat into writing time.

The same could be said of a luxurious chair too. Of course anything cradling your writing bum for long periods of time should be comfortable and supportive – but if it makes spinning around feel like too much fun that’s a potential time-wormhole right there. (Especially if it also generates an irresistible urge to stroke an imaginary cat and say “Mister Bond, I've been expecting you,” in a dodgy accent.)

And while having food and drink within constant easy reach might seem like a massive time-saver in the grand scheme of things… for me at least, the flipside would be ending up the size of a house, with diabetes and fingers too pudgy for my keyboard. As people whose calling in life is to sit down and make stories, opportunities to inject a little non-sedentary activity into our lives – even if it is just walking to the kitchen and back - should be embraced, not minimised.

So… the ideal writing space then? If the one you have now is kind of small, kind of basic and kind of boring… maybe it already is ideal. Maybe it shouldn't feel like a place of wonder and luxury - no matter how rich and famous you become. And maybe a ‘productive’ space is actually one that doesn't pamper you, keep you entertained or boost your ego.

What do you think?

The Dreaded D-Word and its Effect on Writing.

I haven't posted anything on this site for nearly three weeks just lately. And my posts in the two or three months before then were less regular too. I've also mentioned - oooh, maybe one or two (hundred) times - that draft two of Redemption has been going much slower than I'd like, with my daily wordcount grinding to a tortuous crawl. 

There were other things too. Having less and less energy over the last few months, to the point where the choice became having a twenty-minute nap during the day or actually falling asleep at the keyboard. Wanting to eat chocolate and junk food a lot more of the time - even when I really didn't (if that makes any sense.) And feeling like there was no hope for the world and we were all descending into the bowels of Hell every time I opened a newspaper or switched on the news to see yet another horrible item about how terrible human beings can be.

Looking at the above now, all the signs were there. But, as is usual for me, I didn't see them at the time. While I can pick up the very subtlest of signals in other people's emotions, when it comes to deciphering my own I have to be practically battered over the head with a blunt instrument. This is quite a common thing amongst those of us who suffer from these periodic bouts of sadness - we're generally the last to know that we're even having one.

...Have you noticed how very reluctant I am to use 'The D-Word?' You know the one I mean. That's also quite common, apparently, and there is a certain, albeit delusional, logic to it. Because when you call it The Blues, or a Periodic Bout of Sadness, or a Rough Patch or any of the other myriad of euphemisms that exist, it feels like a temporary, trivial thing. Like a little midsummer shower that'll be over soon and then the sun will come out and everything will be sunny and smiley again... nothing to worry about, just ignore it and time will fix it all by itself. 

However, the minute you utter the word 'Depression' you're officially upgrading the status to Problem - and one that won't just go away on its own if you ignore it for long enough. In fact, if you don't acknowledge it and sort it, it'll very likely get worse the longer you leave it. That's a pretty scary thought. So surely the best way to face up to the fact that what you have is a Problem is to... pretend even harder that you can't see it! Yeahhhh...

Mmmm, no. See, that's what I've been doing since... probably about August. And I was doing a blimmin' good job of it too, to everyone else and particularly myself. I came up with all sorts of creative excuses for all my collective quirks of lethargy and random over-emotion, and stuck to them like a crook to his alibi. This was definitely just a pesky ol' down period, that's all - and I was gonna get through it by harnessing the awesome power of denial! Yaaay, go me!

And then last week happened.

After weeks of growing more and more dissatisfied with my dwindling wordcount for Redemption, it was suddenly and unexpectedly slashed to zero when my computer died. As in, really died this time. It's 'died' twice before in the last couple of years, but on both of those occasions I was able to jump-start its corpse back to life again after some Frankenstein-esque skullduggery with its innards. The cheap and effective solution. But this time there was no saving it; when the motherboard (i.e. brain) of a twelve-year-old computer pegs out, you're pretty much looking at buying either an entire new computer off-the-shelf  or all the bits to build one. Which is of course an effective solution - but nowhere near as cheap. Luckily for me I was in a position to do that - but I wrestled with my conscience over it for an entire week. Spending all that money on something for me, instead of treats for the family? But I'm a writer and I need it, so I bought the thing, mentally slapping myself upside the head the whole time.  (And yeah, I'm still feeling the guilt big time, in case you were wondering...) 

And then I got some sort of virus that temporarily made my throat swell up and swapped my joints for those of an eighty-year-old. I spent two days unable to swallow anything solid and mostly asleep on whatever horizontal surface I happened to flop down on. After two days I'd recovered though, so all in all the whole Disaster Period only lasted about ten days.

So... why did I then spend the days after that feeling permanently like I wanted to just burst into tears and sob like a baby? But whenever I was alone and thought "Oh sod it, just do it then. Let it all out - no-one's around to see..." I couldn't. The tears were most definitely there, but I couldn't persuade them to fall, even though it constantly felt like I was losing the battle to hold them back. That's like having an itch you can't scratch - except even that makes more sense than feeling like you can't stop yourself from crying while simultaneously not being able to start either.

And let's be clear here. I had that virus for just two days. I had a new computer to replace my dead one in just one week. I didn't even lose any of the writing work on my old computer (the only stuff I really cared about) because I've always backed all of that up to the point of paranoia on a USB stick and the Cloud, so copying it and the writing programs I use to my new computer took twenty minutes, tops. If you're looking for definitions of First World Problems, they're right here. Getting that upset over such things is ridiculous. But I did anyway. For days. 

But now I realise that's because they were the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The one piece of crap too many in the game of Buckaroo that is life. Which means, if I want to get back into my writing groove so that I don't have to keep beating myself up about lousy wordcounts and missing blog posts, I'm gonna have to Sort My Shizzle Out. Admit that, actually, if I'm truly honest with myself, I have... 

*screws up face, fights facial tics and takes a deep breath*

... depression at the moment. About something. Or maybe nothing. Maybe it's just one of those who-knows, sometimes-it-just-happens depressions. Either way, I need to sort it.

And that goes for anyone who suffers from depression, whether they're writers or not. As tempting as it is to not upgrade the status to Problem, you can't fix it - or anything else that's not working with your life - until you do. It's not 'selfish,' you're not 'weak' and you're certainly not 'attention-seeking.' You're being kind to yourself, and you deserve that. And if you're suffering, it's a fair bet your loved ones are too, watching you suffer and wishing they could help. Let them help. Apart from anything else, it's a great way of showing them you love them too.

Going Through The NaNoWriMo-tions

Yep, it's That Time of The Year again. Writers and would-be writers across the world are sharpening their pencils and clearing some space on their hard drives for the literary stress-fest challenge that is NaNoWriMo. Flippin' heck, a year goes fast!

Some writers look forward to it all year. For them, it's like the Writers' Olympics - a chance to flex their muscles and show off their already-well-honed skills of speed, dexterity and stamina in all their glory. Others view it as the Kick Up The Bum They Need, so they can finally stop dreaming about becoming a writer, put their money where their mouth is and actually write that novel they've always dreamed of writing, dammit. Some don't care if they don't meet the 50,000 word target by the deadline - the point is just to write and have fun doing it. Others take it deadly seriously - for them, failure is not an option.

And then there's the folks like me. At least, I'm assuming I'm not the only writer on Planet Earth who feels this way.

The minute the word NaNoWriMo starts popping up everywhere, I'm that person who dips her head down and tries to disappear into the wallpaper. Don't get me wrong - I love the idea of it. If it gets people writing who would otherwise not have the courage or motivation to write I'm all for waving my pom-poms at that ball game. Just so long as I can do it quietly and discreetly, without anyone asking "So, are you doing it too then?"

Because that's where it gets awkward. 50,000 words, in one month? I already know I'd fail at that, thanks. I get two hours a day at the most for writing and I'm - well, just not that fast at transferring my brain contents from their squishy home to the digital page. And that's been my reasoning for not doing NaNoWriMo for... probably since forever. Is there any point in setting yourself a challenge you are almost 100% certain to fail, other than for the purpose of kicking yourself when you're already, if not down, at least not that far up?

Besides, for the past two years I've had another excuse reason for not NaNoWri-Mo-ing; I'm concentrating on Redemption, and trying (and probably failing) to write 50,000 words of another, completely different novel will set my progress back - and maybe even cause me to lose focus on Redemption completely. I've come this far with it, and I intend to see it through, no matter what.

But something weird's happened to me this year. I've found myself thinking things like "Maybe I could give it a go..." "It wouldn't matter that much if I didn't make the 50,000 word target..." and even "Maybe a bit of freewheeling-down-the-hill-with-no-brakes-style writing is just what I need to get my mojo back while I'm thrashing my way through The Difficult Middle Phase of Redemption..." In other words, I think I may be, kind of... warming to the idea.

Of course, the longer I leave it to make my mind up, the more failing to meet the 50,000 word target becomes a given; it's November 2nd now, so I've lost two days of potential writing time before I even start. But since I've made peace with that already, perhaps I can tweak this whole NaNoWriMo thing a little more. I've got lots of story ideas tumbling around in my head right now, and I'm going to have to write them down at some point anyway...

So, for those of you like me, who find the official NaNoWriMo goals a tad too intimidating, here is my proposed 'lite' version:

To write 10,000 words a week of anything creative during the month of November.

- This includes (but is not limited to); novels, novellas and short stories - and ideas, character profiles and outlines for any of the former, scripts, poems, lyrics, comic strips, blog posts, free-writing exercises and (non-work-related) journal entries.

- This does not include; letters and emails, comments left on forum messageboards, the blog posts of others or social media sites, forms and questionnaires (both in paper form and online) shopping lists, to-do lists and post-it note messages to friends and family.

Personally, I may well fail at this too. But no matter - what's important is the process of freeing up those brain cogs and grinding the rust offa them. And if it goes well, I might continue the regime for the next month - and the next, and the next. 10,000 words a month every month - of anything creative. Let's see if that helps me get through the Difficult Middle Phase!

What are you doing for NaNoWriMo-vember? Are you embracing it - or avoiding it? How does it normally go for you? I'd love to know.

Why Engaging With the Haters is a Fight Everybody Loses

This week, an author by the name of Kathleen Hale wrote an article for The Guardian, describing her attempts to track down and confront 'Blythe Harris,' an alleged 'Goodreads Bully.' If you're an author or aspire to be one, it makes for disturbing reading.

Personally, I don't think either 'Blythe' or Kathleen emerged from the story as morally victorious. Yes, 'Blythe' certainly displayed all the hallmarks of a professional online troll - but the tactics Kathleen gradually descended to in her somewhat obsessive mission to unmask and confront her nemesis could justifiably have qualified as stalker behaviour by the end. (Not to mention put her in considerable danger - all she knew of this woman was that most of the personal details she'd posted about herself online were lies. What if she - or maybe even he - had turned violent in response to being finally confronted?)

It all started with a tweet, apparently. 'Blythe' offered suggestions to Hale about her next book, to which Hale responded pleasantly - and then subsequently discovered 'Blythe' had already left a blistering, one-star review about her latest book on Goodreads. It wasn't the only one-star review she'd received there, but Hale was particularly aggrieved by this one and so, ignoring the warnings about responding to negative reviews issued to those signed in as Authors on the Goodreads site, she commented back to 'Blythe.' And that, as they say, is when it all kicked off. 'Blythe' enlisted her friends to mount a campaign of hate on Hale and anyone who supported her, while Hale, on discovering that 'Blythe' was on the Badly Behaving Goodreaders list, Followed and Googled the woman to within an inch of her life, to the point where she actually visited her house and, when that failed to result in a face-to-face meeting, phoned her up at her workplace pretending to offer her a book reviewing gig.

A week earlier, the law was changed in the UK so that persistent trollers could be jailed for up to two years, which indirectly resulted in the suicide of a woman who was alleged to have trolled the parents of Madelaine McCann. Trolling has suddenly got a lot more serious, for all parties. But why do people do it in the first place? I'm no psychiatrist, but I have a theory or two.

Imagine your life is... well, not all that great at the moment, in these uncertain times of wobbly economies and our governments getting us into wars for reasons they're never quite clear about. Perhaps you're in a dead-end job you hate, with no chance of promotion or getting a better job because no-one appreciates your skills. Or perhaps you don't have a job at all, and you're finding that the longer you don't have one the harder it is to convince potential employers of your capabilities - whilst simultaneously dealing with the media ranting about the long-term unemployed not really wanting to work anyway, because they're happy to sit around on their backsides claiming welfare for the rest of their lives. More than anything, you've probably got to a stage where you feel like nothing you do or say matters or makes a difference in the world anymore; you're just an invisible drone that just gets walked all over and shouted down at every turn.

Now imagine you've found a magical place where all your thoughts and feelings can potentially be seen by the whole world, in an instant. You can speak the deepest, darkest thoughts of your mind and millions of people will see them. If people agree with them they'll say so, and you'll know you're not alone in thinking and feeling that way - you'll have new allies. And the people that don't agree... well, they can shout at you all they like, but they can't find you or know who you really are, because you're using a secret identity. In fact, you can even work it this way for yourself: anything you say that gets a good response is you, but anything that gets a bad response is actually your online alter-ego - an alternative personality you can slip in and out of like a comfy suit, but isn't the real you at all...

Unsurprisingly, this is going to go to the heads of some people. As long as you never meet the people you're horrible to face-to-face, it's all too easy to kid yourself that you're not doing any real damage, and anyone who gets upset by mere words on a screen should get a grip, grow a pair, etc., etc. Completely forgetting that, if you were to say those same words out loud to the face of the person you're directing them at, you could reasonably expect some nasty repercussions from pretty much anyone in earshot. What the internet has done is to remove the consequences of screwed-up social interactions, and as a result many people have got lazy and unlearned the fine art of treating others as they would wish to be treated. Sounds logical written here, but the problem is hard to solve in practice because human beings don't evolve at nearly the same pace as our technology. Our little fleshy brains are still trying to catch up - and by the time they've done that technology will have sprinted on further down the line anyway.

Bearing all of that in mind, is it really worth calling out someone who gives your work a nasty review?

Are they allowed to rip into all your hard work and call it a pile of stinking trash, using horrible grammar and spelling that would embarrass a five-year-old? Do they have the right to tell everyone outright lies about your book, saying they found it racist/sexist/anti-ginger-people when it clearly, absolutely is not? Are they entitled to say they think the author must be a brain-dead moron with no talent for writing whatsoever?

Erm... yes, they are. Sucks I know, but that's the way it is, unfortunately - because it's their opinion. And any time an author responds to a reviewer to tell them their opinion is somehow wrong... well, you'll never score any points for that, I'm afraid. Yes, that even applies if you think the reviewer got some facts wrong - "I honestly don't know how you can say my book is racist when it doesn't even have any ethnic minorities in it" - because again, that's an opinion the reviewer formed from reading your book. Most importantly, if the angry reviewer is the kind of person who's going to enlist all their friends to carpet-bomb you with bad reviews and generally try to kick your writing career in the 'nads if they decide they don't like you... do you really want to hand them ammo by engaging in dialogue with them? Even if you try to make it friendly and polite?

So stay out of it. Bite your tongue, step away from the 'net, walk away and eat cake (or whatever it is you do to make yourself feel better.) I'd like to say I'm speaking from an unblemished standpoint on this - but of course I'm not. I've had a couple of smackdown reviews of parody lyrics I've written online in the past - and yeah, I did respond to them. I was as polite and friendly as I could possibly have been (considering I was telling them I thought they'd misunderstood the motives behind my lyrics - and yes, I am facepalming as I type this) but even so, my response added absolutely nothing of value to the conversation, and if I could go back now and erase what I wrote I would, in a heartbeat.

Bad reviews hurt, I know. Bad, malicious and completely unfair reviews hurt like hell. But at the end of the day, once your book is published it's not your job to fight for it anymore. Your baby's all grown up now and it has to make its own way in the world, and you can't keep roaring up like a mother tiger every time someone rips into it. Let it go. And write the next one.