One of the questions that bemuses, confuddles and even occasionally downright annoys successful writers of all genres (apparently) is that well-roasted chestnut "Where do you get all your ideas from?"
I can imagine why this question is irksome to a successful writer with a clutch of published works under their belt. It's a bit like asking a cyclist "how do you manage to not fall off your bike when you're riding it?" What you do, by that point, is subconscious; you're trusting on inner instincts that help you make decisions about what you're doing without thinking about the mechanics behind them. So you can tell people you just watch people, and life, and keep up with current events, and all the obvious things that work as sources for stories, but you can't tell people how to process that source information in a way that turns them into 'ideas.' That's just crazy magic mojo-shizzle that goes on inside the noggin, and there aint no brain-scanning machine that can record that happening just yet.
In short, to the successful writer it looks like those people are asking the question in the hope of finally discovering The Ultimate Secret. And the truth is - as any writer, published or otherwise, will tell you - there aint one.
But on the other hand, I can understand what drives many aspiring writers to ask that question of writers who, in their eyes, have already 'made it.' Because when you've just started out and you're still finding your feet as a writer, it can feel like the getting ideas part is something you struggle with. Oh sure, you'll get a ton of inspirational flashes every time you people-watch, pick up a newspaper or watch the telly. But getting them any further than that? That's the tough part.
Do you have a teetering stack of unfinished short stories hidden away somewhere? A sad graveyard of novels that never made it further than Chapter Five? Yeah, me too - and so has just about every famous and prolific author since the beginning of forever. Because here's the painful truth... not every Great Idea For A Story makes a Great Story. In fact, in ninety-nine percent of cases, a Great Story needs a lot more than The Great Idea For A Story can offer.
Let me give you an example. This week I responded to a post on Chuck Wendig's terrribleminds blog about the CleanReader app (a whole separate topic in itself.) While doing so an idea popped into my head: 'What if a group of people invented a microchip that could be implanted into a person's brain that could somehow 'censor' real-life, everyday situations and interactions with other people, so they would never have to hear anyone saying 'bad' words or expressing viewpoints that made them uncomfortable?' Imagine it - a whole section of society who, to all intents and purposes, would be living an entirely different reality to everyone else around them! How would that affect them - and what impact would it have on the world at large? Would they use this power for good or evil? But best of all... what a totally awesome and bell-rocking idea for a story, right?
And yet, after about ten minutes brainstorming on that idea, I was forced to admit... erm, no actually, it isn't.
No really, it isn't - because it's not enough on its own. Trying to make a great story out of just this idea would be like trying to make a cake when all you've got is flour. (You could of course say "screw you, Christopher" and give it a go anyway - but all you'd end up with is a solid block-of-flour-cake, and trust me, aint no fool gonna eat that can of mess.) This idea is a great premise for a story - an intriguing set-up for all sorts of potential shizzle to happen. But what's missing is that potential shizzle. It's just a backdrop - the green-screen in a George Lucas movie. We're gonna need a ton of other ingredients before this Great Idea can become a potential Story Cake.
When I look back through all my abandoned novels and short stories, it's clear this was the problem with all of them, and why they all petered out and died less than a quarter of the way through. They all started off promisingly, but once they'd made it out of the starting blocks there was just nowhere for them to go; no master plan to work towards, no destination at the end of the journey - heck, there wasn't even a view out of the window for them to check they were still heading in the right direction.
But y'know what? I'm keeping every one of those abandoned babies - and you should keep every one of yours too. Because there may come a time when you get another Great Idea for a Story that, when combined with one or more of those rejected ideas, has all the magical elements of a Great Story. Don't look on your never-finished projects as failures - see them instead as potential ingredients in your store cupboard, just waiting to be transformed with the right recipe.
And how do we create those amazing recipes? Well, that's a question I'll be exploring in future posts - because there must be some method to it all, surely? Wanna come along for the ride? It could be an interesting journey...
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Saturday, 14 March 2015
When Did Feminism Become a Byword for Intolerance?
I am annoyed with a certain type of feminist right now.
Not all feminists, let me hasten to add. Most of them are reasonable, intelligent people (of both genders) who look at words written on a page or screen and actually think about the possible subtext within them, rather than just adding them up like word-numbers and coming up with some total of infinite chauvinism. If you've been anywhere near Twitter or social media in the last few days you probably already know where I'm going with this. I am of course talking about the Andrew Smith debacle.
For those who don't know, YA author Andrew Smith gave this interview to VICE. In it, he was presented with what was, quite frankly, a loaded question containing the accusation that his stories aren't 'woman-friendly' enough. The response he gave, in that moment and as an attempt to defend himself from a question with distinctively disapproving undertones, was actually two paragraphs long, but it was this first paragraph in particular that kicked everything off:
"I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all. I have a daughter now; she's 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life. I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I'm trying to be better though."
And lo, the Supreme Feminists of the Movement did descend to vent their wrath on the poor sod. 'Oh, so you're trying to be better, are you? Well that's not good enough, Mister Manly Male Author! How DARE you not be well-versed in the mysterious wonderfulness that is the female entity - you get an F, you rampant misogynist!' And various other comments along that particular train of thought. Within hours Twitter had divided itself into two camps; one attacking Andrew Smith for his inadvertent 'misogyny,' the other attacking the attackers for 'bullying' him.
I'll admit, taking his words at face value, there is a certain dismissive quality to them when it comes to his views about women. But only if that's as far as you choose to think about those words - like I said previously, if you're adding them up like word-numbers instead of looking for the subtext beneath them. So how about we try that? Let's look at it in a little more detail.
"I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all."
I was raised in a family where there was just me and my younger sister, with a father who was in the Navy and so was away from home a lot, often for months at a time. Let me tell you, in families where you get little to no contact with family members of the opposite gender, being clueless about the mind-workings of the gender opposite to your own is a genuine thing. It's not even just clueless - it's clueless and a little bit scared of just how much your cluelessness puts you at a disadvantage with that opposite gender. The fact is, people with both genders present in their family will predominantly - not always, but certainly in the majority of cases - have that extra layer of knowledge and confidence compared to those who don't. It might only be a slight advantage, or it might be huge - but it's there, and to those that have it it'll always be invisible, because it's such an everyday thing they take it completely for granted.
"I have a daughter now; she's 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life."
Any first-time parent will tell you, the moment you hold that newborn in your arms and realise that you are completely and utterly responsible for its safety, wellbeing and happiness for... ooh, at least the next eighteen years of its life - when you still feel like you've barely figured out how to keep a handle on your own - is as terrifying as it is momentous. Now factor in the fear from the previous statement on top of that. I heard that fear in the statement Andrew Smith made, because I know I felt it too, when I held my baby boy for the first time. Before then, knowing precisely nada about the care and maintenance of willies, for example, had never seemed like a problem to me. Suddenly I found myself worrying that this very lack of knowledge would make me a neglectful parent, but actively seeking the knowledge to remedy the situation might alternatively earn me a visit from social services on suspicion of child abuse. In case you're wondering, I still don't know much. His daddy has the same equipment, so I feel he's better qualified than me to know what needs doing and when and how often. If that makes me the female equivalent of what everyone's bashing on Andrew Smith for, so be it.
"I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I'm trying to be better though."
This is the statement that seems to have caused the most outrage - and yet, when you really think about it, it's the one that all those angry feminists should be taking heart from. He uses the word 'ignorant,' for a start. That's not a complimentary word - no-one calls themselves 'ignorant' with any sense of pride, do they? He's being honest and acknowledging it as a personal fault. And then he follows that up with 'I'm trying to be better though.' Not only is he acknowledging the problem, he's acknowledging that it needs to be fixed and he's trying to fix it.
I could've just stopped there when it came to reading between the lines of what he said. But then in this other interview (a more in-depth version of the original) he talked about his childhood, and how he was regularly beaten by his parents (father and mother.) Which added another layer of poignancy to the statements he made and was now getting so vilified for. When you are regularly and repeatedly hurt by the very people you look to for love and to keep you safe... well, from then on, trust is something you don't just hand out willy-nilly to people. Usually because you spend more time looking for clues that you might suddenly be about to get another beating than figuring out how to just, like, totally get where they're coming from. Y'know - priorities and all that...
So, to all those people who jumped on his statement and tore out a definition of 'passive chauvinism' or whatever the heck it was that put those ants in their pants... is this how we're going to play this now? We're just going to scream like harpies at every single man who says anything that isn't utterly pro-women? Jeez, have you people ever even looked at the comments under the average Jezebel article or YouTube video that even discusses women? That's where you go if you want proper, serious misogyny m'dears. How many men have you known in your life who've ever uttered the immortal phrase "Women - I'll never understand them!" (Usually accompanied with a heavy sigh and a sad shake of the head.) Are we going to hunt all of them down too, in our Quest To Eliminate Sexist Man?
If that's truly what modern feminism has come to, we've got a problem. Because they're not the real bad guys. I know that's what makes shouting at them so much easier and puts us at far less risk than going for - ooh, I don't know, the guys that have downright dangerous views, let's say... but it's also hugely counter-productive. You don't attack people who say they don't understand, you offer to educate them, politely and with the intention of making them an ally rather than another moosehead to hang on your wall. Gandhi knew that, and so did Martin Luther King.
When you attack the 'ignorant' (as Andrew Smith openly called himself) you become intolerant. And then you're less than one step away from becoming the very people you claim to be 'fighting against.' You want to know who your real enemies are in the struggle for equality? Go visit their watering-holes. Like big cats looking for dinner, they tend to hang out where their prey gathers - Jezebel, YouTube and the like. Read some of the comments left there. Seriously, read them. They'll make what Andrew Smith said look positively pro-sisterhood.
Not all feminists, let me hasten to add. Most of them are reasonable, intelligent people (of both genders) who look at words written on a page or screen and actually think about the possible subtext within them, rather than just adding them up like word-numbers and coming up with some total of infinite chauvinism. If you've been anywhere near Twitter or social media in the last few days you probably already know where I'm going with this. I am of course talking about the Andrew Smith debacle.
For those who don't know, YA author Andrew Smith gave this interview to VICE. In it, he was presented with what was, quite frankly, a loaded question containing the accusation that his stories aren't 'woman-friendly' enough. The response he gave, in that moment and as an attempt to defend himself from a question with distinctively disapproving undertones, was actually two paragraphs long, but it was this first paragraph in particular that kicked everything off:
"I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all. I have a daughter now; she's 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life. I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I'm trying to be better though."
And lo, the Supreme Feminists of the Movement did descend to vent their wrath on the poor sod. 'Oh, so you're trying to be better, are you? Well that's not good enough, Mister Manly Male Author! How DARE you not be well-versed in the mysterious wonderfulness that is the female entity - you get an F, you rampant misogynist!' And various other comments along that particular train of thought. Within hours Twitter had divided itself into two camps; one attacking Andrew Smith for his inadvertent 'misogyny,' the other attacking the attackers for 'bullying' him.
I'll admit, taking his words at face value, there is a certain dismissive quality to them when it comes to his views about women. But only if that's as far as you choose to think about those words - like I said previously, if you're adding them up like word-numbers instead of looking for the subtext beneath them. So how about we try that? Let's look at it in a little more detail.
"I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all."
I was raised in a family where there was just me and my younger sister, with a father who was in the Navy and so was away from home a lot, often for months at a time. Let me tell you, in families where you get little to no contact with family members of the opposite gender, being clueless about the mind-workings of the gender opposite to your own is a genuine thing. It's not even just clueless - it's clueless and a little bit scared of just how much your cluelessness puts you at a disadvantage with that opposite gender. The fact is, people with both genders present in their family will predominantly - not always, but certainly in the majority of cases - have that extra layer of knowledge and confidence compared to those who don't. It might only be a slight advantage, or it might be huge - but it's there, and to those that have it it'll always be invisible, because it's such an everyday thing they take it completely for granted.
"I have a daughter now; she's 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life."
Any first-time parent will tell you, the moment you hold that newborn in your arms and realise that you are completely and utterly responsible for its safety, wellbeing and happiness for... ooh, at least the next eighteen years of its life - when you still feel like you've barely figured out how to keep a handle on your own - is as terrifying as it is momentous. Now factor in the fear from the previous statement on top of that. I heard that fear in the statement Andrew Smith made, because I know I felt it too, when I held my baby boy for the first time. Before then, knowing precisely nada about the care and maintenance of willies, for example, had never seemed like a problem to me. Suddenly I found myself worrying that this very lack of knowledge would make me a neglectful parent, but actively seeking the knowledge to remedy the situation might alternatively earn me a visit from social services on suspicion of child abuse. In case you're wondering, I still don't know much. His daddy has the same equipment, so I feel he's better qualified than me to know what needs doing and when and how often. If that makes me the female equivalent of what everyone's bashing on Andrew Smith for, so be it.
"I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I'm trying to be better though."
This is the statement that seems to have caused the most outrage - and yet, when you really think about it, it's the one that all those angry feminists should be taking heart from. He uses the word 'ignorant,' for a start. That's not a complimentary word - no-one calls themselves 'ignorant' with any sense of pride, do they? He's being honest and acknowledging it as a personal fault. And then he follows that up with 'I'm trying to be better though.' Not only is he acknowledging the problem, he's acknowledging that it needs to be fixed and he's trying to fix it.
I could've just stopped there when it came to reading between the lines of what he said. But then in this other interview (a more in-depth version of the original) he talked about his childhood, and how he was regularly beaten by his parents (father and mother.) Which added another layer of poignancy to the statements he made and was now getting so vilified for. When you are regularly and repeatedly hurt by the very people you look to for love and to keep you safe... well, from then on, trust is something you don't just hand out willy-nilly to people. Usually because you spend more time looking for clues that you might suddenly be about to get another beating than figuring out how to just, like, totally get where they're coming from. Y'know - priorities and all that...
So, to all those people who jumped on his statement and tore out a definition of 'passive chauvinism' or whatever the heck it was that put those ants in their pants... is this how we're going to play this now? We're just going to scream like harpies at every single man who says anything that isn't utterly pro-women? Jeez, have you people ever even looked at the comments under the average Jezebel article or YouTube video that even discusses women? That's where you go if you want proper, serious misogyny m'dears. How many men have you known in your life who've ever uttered the immortal phrase "Women - I'll never understand them!" (Usually accompanied with a heavy sigh and a sad shake of the head.) Are we going to hunt all of them down too, in our Quest To Eliminate Sexist Man?
If that's truly what modern feminism has come to, we've got a problem. Because they're not the real bad guys. I know that's what makes shouting at them so much easier and puts us at far less risk than going for - ooh, I don't know, the guys that have downright dangerous views, let's say... but it's also hugely counter-productive. You don't attack people who say they don't understand, you offer to educate them, politely and with the intention of making them an ally rather than another moosehead to hang on your wall. Gandhi knew that, and so did Martin Luther King.
When you attack the 'ignorant' (as Andrew Smith openly called himself) you become intolerant. And then you're less than one step away from becoming the very people you claim to be 'fighting against.' You want to know who your real enemies are in the struggle for equality? Go visit their watering-holes. Like big cats looking for dinner, they tend to hang out where their prey gathers - Jezebel, YouTube and the like. Read some of the comments left there. Seriously, read them. They'll make what Andrew Smith said look positively pro-sisterhood.
Saturday, 28 February 2015
When Draft One is Only The Job Interview for your Characters
Now that I've passed the 60% mark for Draft Two of Redemption, I'm starting to realise how completely different the story is from Draft One - whilst at the same time essentially the same. Confused? I don't blame you. I shall explain...
The original key plot points are still there, unchanged in their purpose or meaning within the story as a whole. The settings and locales are still the same. And I haven't added or removed any characters or changed their names, ages or occupations. And yet, when I compare my first draft rantings to my second, they read so differently in style and context as to almost seem as if both were written by completely different writers. So far I like the second writer's version much more, I have to say (just as well, or may have to either give up writing or find a way to travel backwards through time to do the stages in the opposite order.) But what's changed, exactly? What is it about my revised version that was missing from that first draft? I've felt a need to figure this out from the moment I noticed it, if only so that I can apply the lessons learned to future novels. And this week, on completing a very particular chapter, it finally dawned on me.
It's the characters. I've finally got to know them as people, rather than just walking, talking plot devices.
If you've been writing stories of any kind for any amount of time, you will have doubtless heard the advice about creating detailed profiles for your characters. The advocates of this approach proclaim you must know everything about every important character in your story; not just the basics like their name, age and physical attributes, but even the most minute stuff. Like where they went to school, their shoe size, their most embarrassing memory, whether they'd be Team Jennifer or Team Angelina...
I did that thing. Well, most of it anyway. If I'm honest, I didn't bother with many of the trivialities. My protagonist has lived a pretty hellish life even before she got to her current place in the story, so is it really going to help me to know what her favourite tv programme would be - if she ever got the chance to even see a working tv, never mind watch it?
The thing is though, I did all of that malarkey after I'd worked out the basic plot, filling in the information as I came to it while writing the first draft. There's a popular school of thought that says you shouldn't even begin to write the words 'Chapter One' until you have these complete biographies of every significant character in the story, all written up like handy mini-Bibles for you to refer to with each twist and turn of your plot. I'm sure that works like a charm for some writers, but it doesn't really match the way I dream up stories. I usually start with a 'What if..?' and chase the premise to its ultimate conclusion via a series of even more 'what if..?'s piled on top. Part of that process involves asking questions like "What kind of person could find themselves in that situation in the first place?" "What sort of things would they do to get out of that situation?" and "How could their solutions to those problems make the resulting situation even worse?" (Bwah ha haaaaa..!)
Those are things you can't really figure out until you've actually put your little LEGO-men onto your Head-Stage and watched them improv their little plastic socks off. So, if you ultimately discover you need a Benedict Cumberbatch to drive your plot forward, you're going to be pretty gutted if you've only got a pre-made Bruce Willis available in your character-bank.
So, while I had a basic idea of what sort of characters I might need to populate Redemption as I began to write it, I didn't really get to know them as individuals until I'd spent some time with them, watching them on my Head-Stage and making notes about their performances. Hence the job interview analogy in the title of this post (see, it wasn't just a random thing..!)
The benefits of this approach are that you have a much better chance of putting the right person into the right job, and that, should there be some areas where they're not quite compatible with certain duties, you can make alternative plans rather than writing yourself into a black hole (i.e. delegate tasks to another, more suitable candidate, or allow them their awkward little foibles but then hit them from another angle with something more 'suited' to their personality... *strokes imaginary white cat and cackles*)
The downside, of course, is that your characters will be... well, little more than LEGO people for most of your first draft, as you watch them get to grips with your script and attempt to deliver the performance of their career. By the time I was ready to do my first read-through of Draft One, I'd spent enough time with them to know what they were really like, and was able to get completely frustrated when they weren't performing their roles to their full potential thanks to the lousy script some knuckle-headed chump had given them. ("Why does my protagonist cry so bloody much - at just about everything? Whoa, Mr Doctor-Character, do you not think that's waaaay inappropriate behaviour? And as for you, Mr Supporting Character - no sweetheart, you are not a stand-up comedian...") Take some familiar-ish stereotypes and give them a few double-espressos with Red Bull chasers, and that was pretty much the Draft One population of Redemption.
For the second draft I had all the pieces of the plot already in place, which meant I could let them marinate while I focused more deeply on the characters playing them out - and the biggest shift was in viewpoint and motivation. In the first draft my approach had been pretty rudimentary; the protagonist would do or say something and the other character would do or say something in response that fitted in with both the plot and what I'd discovered about their personality so far. This character was tactless and socially inept? Boom, he'd do/say something tactless and socially inept then. Job done!
But by the time I got to starting the second draft, I'd learned something about characters - all characters, not just the ones in my novel. That, no matter who they are as far as the structure of the story works, in their eyes they are the protagonist - the only life they're living is theirs, and they're the star of that, baby! So now, for every interaction between my protagonist and other characters, I had to consider the feelings of two or more people, not just one. To think beyond "What is this typically socially awkward and blunt character going to say and do in this particular situation with my protagonist?" and instead think "how is that character likely to feel about this situation? Would he misinterpret the words/actions of my protagonist? And if he did, would he still respond the same way - or would he be defensive or fearful instead?" Sometimes this took my plot in new directions that I hadn't even anticipated - but even when that happened, the new twists still worked within the plot structure I had. If anything, they even explained parts that previously didn't have as much depth as I wanted.
As a result, some characters who started out as mere extras in my story have found themselves with bigger, more defined roles in this second draft. One character in particular has evolved in ways I could never have foreseen. In my first draft he was little more than occasional light relief, a bit of comedy filler to make the major characters look good. But once I started to see the way his mind worked and the reasons he became the person he'd become, I realised how much potential influence he could have on many existing plot points. He went from being a walk-on stooge to an unlikely but helpful ally for the protagonist and her friends, and became a much more interesting character as a result.
I still have a way to go, of course. Even once draft two is finished, there'll be further edits and polishes before I dip my toes into the cold cold waters of beta-reading... and then probably further editing and polishing. But it's an exciting journey, getting under the skin of my characters and letting them riff with the existing script to see what develops.
So, all you fellow writers out there... do you have a character from one of your stories who surprised you with their capabilities once you got to know them? One you grew to love (or hate) once you saw their true potential? Feel free to share them in the comments - I'd love to meet them.
The original key plot points are still there, unchanged in their purpose or meaning within the story as a whole. The settings and locales are still the same. And I haven't added or removed any characters or changed their names, ages or occupations. And yet, when I compare my first draft rantings to my second, they read so differently in style and context as to almost seem as if both were written by completely different writers. So far I like the second writer's version much more, I have to say (just as well, or may have to either give up writing or find a way to travel backwards through time to do the stages in the opposite order.) But what's changed, exactly? What is it about my revised version that was missing from that first draft? I've felt a need to figure this out from the moment I noticed it, if only so that I can apply the lessons learned to future novels. And this week, on completing a very particular chapter, it finally dawned on me.
It's the characters. I've finally got to know them as people, rather than just walking, talking plot devices.
If you've been writing stories of any kind for any amount of time, you will have doubtless heard the advice about creating detailed profiles for your characters. The advocates of this approach proclaim you must know everything about every important character in your story; not just the basics like their name, age and physical attributes, but even the most minute stuff. Like where they went to school, their shoe size, their most embarrassing memory, whether they'd be Team Jennifer or Team Angelina...
I did that thing. Well, most of it anyway. If I'm honest, I didn't bother with many of the trivialities. My protagonist has lived a pretty hellish life even before she got to her current place in the story, so is it really going to help me to know what her favourite tv programme would be - if she ever got the chance to even see a working tv, never mind watch it?
The thing is though, I did all of that malarkey after I'd worked out the basic plot, filling in the information as I came to it while writing the first draft. There's a popular school of thought that says you shouldn't even begin to write the words 'Chapter One' until you have these complete biographies of every significant character in the story, all written up like handy mini-Bibles for you to refer to with each twist and turn of your plot. I'm sure that works like a charm for some writers, but it doesn't really match the way I dream up stories. I usually start with a 'What if..?' and chase the premise to its ultimate conclusion via a series of even more 'what if..?'s piled on top. Part of that process involves asking questions like "What kind of person could find themselves in that situation in the first place?" "What sort of things would they do to get out of that situation?" and "How could their solutions to those problems make the resulting situation even worse?" (Bwah ha haaaaa..!)
Those are things you can't really figure out until you've actually put your little LEGO-men onto your Head-Stage and watched them improv their little plastic socks off. So, if you ultimately discover you need a Benedict Cumberbatch to drive your plot forward, you're going to be pretty gutted if you've only got a pre-made Bruce Willis available in your character-bank.
So, while I had a basic idea of what sort of characters I might need to populate Redemption as I began to write it, I didn't really get to know them as individuals until I'd spent some time with them, watching them on my Head-Stage and making notes about their performances. Hence the job interview analogy in the title of this post (see, it wasn't just a random thing..!)
The benefits of this approach are that you have a much better chance of putting the right person into the right job, and that, should there be some areas where they're not quite compatible with certain duties, you can make alternative plans rather than writing yourself into a black hole (i.e. delegate tasks to another, more suitable candidate, or allow them their awkward little foibles but then hit them from another angle with something more 'suited' to their personality... *strokes imaginary white cat and cackles*)
The downside, of course, is that your characters will be... well, little more than LEGO people for most of your first draft, as you watch them get to grips with your script and attempt to deliver the performance of their career. By the time I was ready to do my first read-through of Draft One, I'd spent enough time with them to know what they were really like, and was able to get completely frustrated when they weren't performing their roles to their full potential thanks to the lousy script some knuckle-headed chump had given them. ("Why does my protagonist cry so bloody much - at just about everything? Whoa, Mr Doctor-Character, do you not think that's waaaay inappropriate behaviour? And as for you, Mr Supporting Character - no sweetheart, you are not a stand-up comedian...") Take some familiar-ish stereotypes and give them a few double-espressos with Red Bull chasers, and that was pretty much the Draft One population of Redemption.
For the second draft I had all the pieces of the plot already in place, which meant I could let them marinate while I focused more deeply on the characters playing them out - and the biggest shift was in viewpoint and motivation. In the first draft my approach had been pretty rudimentary; the protagonist would do or say something and the other character would do or say something in response that fitted in with both the plot and what I'd discovered about their personality so far. This character was tactless and socially inept? Boom, he'd do/say something tactless and socially inept then. Job done!
But by the time I got to starting the second draft, I'd learned something about characters - all characters, not just the ones in my novel. That, no matter who they are as far as the structure of the story works, in their eyes they are the protagonist - the only life they're living is theirs, and they're the star of that, baby! So now, for every interaction between my protagonist and other characters, I had to consider the feelings of two or more people, not just one. To think beyond "What is this typically socially awkward and blunt character going to say and do in this particular situation with my protagonist?" and instead think "how is that character likely to feel about this situation? Would he misinterpret the words/actions of my protagonist? And if he did, would he still respond the same way - or would he be defensive or fearful instead?" Sometimes this took my plot in new directions that I hadn't even anticipated - but even when that happened, the new twists still worked within the plot structure I had. If anything, they even explained parts that previously didn't have as much depth as I wanted.
As a result, some characters who started out as mere extras in my story have found themselves with bigger, more defined roles in this second draft. One character in particular has evolved in ways I could never have foreseen. In my first draft he was little more than occasional light relief, a bit of comedy filler to make the major characters look good. But once I started to see the way his mind worked and the reasons he became the person he'd become, I realised how much potential influence he could have on many existing plot points. He went from being a walk-on stooge to an unlikely but helpful ally for the protagonist and her friends, and became a much more interesting character as a result.
I still have a way to go, of course. Even once draft two is finished, there'll be further edits and polishes before I dip my toes into the cold cold waters of beta-reading... and then probably further editing and polishing. But it's an exciting journey, getting under the skin of my characters and letting them riff with the existing script to see what develops.
So, all you fellow writers out there... do you have a character from one of your stories who surprised you with their capabilities once you got to know them? One you grew to love (or hate) once you saw their true potential? Feel free to share them in the comments - I'd love to meet them.
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.
Saturday, 31 January 2015
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?
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?
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.
Sunday, 4 January 2015
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.
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.
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