When Your Best Laid Shemes Gang Aft Agley...

It was Scottish poet Robert 'Rabbie' Burns who first penned the phrase "the best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley." These days it sounds more like something a Scotsman might say after ten pints, but back then it meant "even the most carefully-planned plans can end up whooshing down the toilet when life gets a hold of them." Or as close as. And that's certainly what's happened to me over these past two weeks.

Remember how I had my outline for Draft Three of Redemption all ready to go, and I was eager to make a start and do this thing? Well, on that first Monday that's exactly what I did - out of those traps like a greyhound, so I was. When I went to bed that night I was happy I'd made a good start, and that, if I could keep that momentum up, I should finish draft three in a fraction of the time it took me to do drafts one and two...

...Except that, when I woke up the next morning, I was feeling... not so good. My right leg was so painful - from hip to toes - I could barely stand on it, never mind walk, and I was pretty sure I had a temperature. As the morning wore on the pain got worse, and by eleven a.m. I was lying on the sofa wearing a cardigan and shivering under two coats trying to keep warm (this is when it's a relatively mild 20 degrees c outside.) Obviously something was wrong, so I decided to ring the NHS Direct Line.

(For those of you not in the UK, that's a number you can ring to get medical advice from trained professionals before you head off to a hospital or ask for an emergency appointment from your doctor, to determine whether or not you really need to to do so. It was set up because the already overstretched and under-resourced hospitals were getting a bit fed up with people rocking up to their local emergency rooms with period pains and the flu. Yes, that was really happening.)

When I got through I answered all their questions about my symptoms, fully expecting to be told, at most, that I probably had some sort of virus and to take some paracetamol until I could get an emergency appointment with my doctor for some antibiotics. So I was more than a bit surprised when they said they were sending a couple of paramedics round to my house straight away. I was even more surprised when, after prodding me a bit and taking my temperature and blood pressure, those paramedics then radioed for an ambulance to take me to Pembury hospital. Blimey, must actually be something serious then. This was a diversion from my plans for the day, to say the least.

Less than twenty-four-hours later I was diagnosed with a severe form of cellulitis - and, with blood oxygen levels below 90% and a temperature hovering close to 40 degrees it was clear I wasn't going anywhere for a while. After a further seven days of being stuck with more needles than a shaman from one of those rainforest tribes Sting liked to hang out with back in the day, and intravenously pumped with so many different antibiotics I actually wondered if I'll have to spend the rest of my life living in a bubble-tent, I finally went home with strict instructions to continue the two antibiotic courses I still have left, and to spend as much time as possible with my leg elevated for at least the next couple of weeks, preferably 'above heart level.'

Having no desire to take up a career in a can-can line, this is why I'm now typing this with the offending leg propped up on a cooler box, at a not-particularly-comfortable 45-degree-sideways angle. 'Above heart level' is, unsurprisingly, not an option for this activity, but since the payoff is being able to write again, I'll settle for 'bum level' and to heck with it. Besides, I've had to deal with the knowledge that I Missed A Whole Week of Writing.

Before I began Redemption this wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest. A whole week of no progress on a writing project? Meh, so what, I got a busy life. But that was before I got serious about my writing; before discovering Chuck Wendig's website and reading his tough-love blog posts about finishing what you start, before drawing up a proper timetable for myself and treating my writing like an actual job that I showed up and clocked in the hours for. Now there was a gaping hole over a week wide in my time spreadsheet and it was bothering the heck out of me.

Of course I didn't spend the whole week doing no writing at all. Even in hospital I managed to scribble in a notebook after a few days (turns out a cocktail of intravenous antibiotics and morphine makes for some crazy-ass dreams, and there's no way I was going to let them disappear into the ether.) Besides, when you've read all the books you have with you and the only other alternative is watching The Jeremy Kyle Show... hell, I'd copy out the bloody phone book rather than put myself through that. But I never wrote anything to do with Redemption in my notebook - in fact, it's fair to say I wrote about anything and everything other than that. And yet, the feeling that I should be never left me.

What kind of rubbish, non-motivational guilt is that? To berate yourself for being a slacker on your w-i-p, but then blatantly not do anything to fix the situation? Maybe I felt there wasn't anything 'useful' I could handwrite in a notebook about Redemption. Maybe I needed a break from it for that week - particularly since I spent most of it feeling like utter crap, so most of anything I wrote would probably have been equally crap. Or maybe... some subconscious part of me decided I needed to step away from the actual writing of the thing, and spend some time just thinking about the writing of it instead. Because I certainly did a lot of that.

In every project - whether it's an architectural design for a building, the computer code for a software program or the order of events in a surgical procedure - there comes a moment when the person in charge has to step back and take a broad look at it from above, seeing the whole thing all at once from a godly overview. My moment for that just happened to coincide nicely with being very ill in hospital (or, more likely, forced me to take that moment at that time.)

Or maybe... it really doesn't matter and I should chill the heck out.

Do I need a boatload of excuses (even good ones) to justify taking a week off? Of course not. And that's what I've learned from this experience. Life just gets in the way sometimes - for all of us. And when that happens, beating ourselves up over the things we haven't achieved just saps our confidence when it comes to getting back on track. Everyone deserves a holiday at some point - yep, even writers. And while mine wasn't the kind to get me writing 'wish you were here' postcards to friends and family, it took me away from my normal routine for a bit (I certainly didn't miss the housework!) Once you have schedules and goals for your writing it's easy to pin all your expectations on them, so that falling behind even a little bit can feel like a downhill free-wheel to failure. It isn't. Just put the wheels back on and carry on trucking. Forget the past - tomorrow is another chance to start anew.

Even if you have to do it with one leg propped up on a cooler box.

A 5-Step Process to Unsticking a Stuck Bit in Your Novel

As I've mentioned previously, I'm about to embark on a third draft of Redemption.

My outline is done, the Emergency Chocolate Supplies are stockpiled and - most crucially - my kid is back at school again, hurrah! I mean, god I'll miss him and the house will seem sooo quiet when he's gone. (And it genuinely will. Faced with the prospect of not hearing him bellowing to his best friend over Skype through his mike-and-headphone-combo, at a volume that suggests he thinks it's just for decoration and he actually has to shout loud enough for said best friend to hear him from several streets away.. yeah, I can feel that hurrah coming on again...)

I'm going to have a guess at what you're thinking now. "Third draft? It's taken her three goes to even get the basic story sorted out?" Um, yeah. This is largely because I pretty much pantsed it through the first draft and only constructed a proper outline for the whole thing after re-pantsing it to at least the three-quarter mark of the second draft. Not the best way to do it, so it turns out. Lessons have been learned - albeit the hard way, which seems to be how I usually do it. And part of creating the outline I now have for Draft Three was finding the problems in the story I had, and then figuring out a way to fix them.

Some were easy, because the problem was obvious. Others, not so much. I knew something wasn't working, but I couldn't figure out why or what I should change to put things back on track again. When you spend long periods of time looking at something from a close-up view you can get too familiar with what you're seeing, so you stop seeing it as weird or broken because it's become your 'normal.'  I had plot-holes I couldn't see how to fill in (or find an alternative way around), sub-plots I wasn't sure I should include and characters suddenly demanding bigger roles in the story than I'd planned for them at the start. And for those problems, sitting down at my computer in front of my w-i-p and pulling the text apart just wasn't enough.

Talking story problems out with another human can be a good option - particularly if that human is a fellow writer. But sometimes that's not possible. If the only other fellow writers you 'know' are online, there's a delay to the whole 'talking' process - and it might be that the people in real-world, close proximity are either not interested in discussing your latest w-i-p or... let's just say they're less than ideal for the purpose. That's a position I've been in at least a few times since I started Redemption, so it was clear I needed to have some way of figuring out problems for myself - at least until getting to the beta-reading stage. Luckily, through a process of trial and error, I found one. And I'm sharing it here today because I thought, if it helped me, it might help others too.

Step One - Walk away from the work.

Yes, you read that right. Like a partner who's pissed you off, to get right down into the gory guts of the problem you need some time apart. That means walking away from the computer or whatever word-crunching machine your w-i-p is stored on, or the notebook and kitchen table if you still handwrite everything (you cute little quirkster.) Don't just leave the room, leave the house. Go somewhere outside - a public place where there are lots of other humans, all going about their business and none of them particularly interested in what you're doing ('cause they're not, you know - even when you do your very best to look all writer-ly.) What you need is a new environment, somewhere completely different from your usual writing space, and filled with the kind of 'white noise' of busy people all doing their own thing. Cafes are good, since the seating is comfy and  - well, coffee and cakes, yeah? Other options include libraries (handy for any impromptu research) and local parks if the weather allows. But before you go, make sure you take these things with you:

- a blank notebook. Because you will be doing some writing.
- at least one nice pen, for the same reason. Just the one is fine, or you might like to make notes in different colours for different categories of notes. Your call.
- something to spark your mind for your warm-up exercise, which I'll get to next. One of the best things I've found is a series of books called 642 Things To Draw, where an object or one-word concept is given and a blank space left below for you to draw that thing - except, as a writer, instead of drawing it, you write about it. (They also do a series called 642 Things To Write About, but they're more like a collection of traditional writers' prompts that encourage ideas for stories. They're great for when you're looking for that, but too much of a distraction for our purposes now.) If you don't want to splash out on one of these though, you could take a newspaper or magazine - or don't bother if you're going somewhere that's likely to have signs or promotional reading material (cafes have menus, for example.)

Once you've arrived find yourself a comfy place to sit, where you're not likely to be disturbed or told to move on (another good reason for coffee and cake in a cafe.) And then...

Step 2 - The warm-up exercise.

This is important for two reasons. First, it eases you into the right frame of mind to pick the problems in your novel apart in a public place with noise and general hubbub around you. I don't know about you, but I always have this slight worry about looking.... we-ell, a wee bit pretentious, poring over a notebook and looking all studious in full view of people having a laugh and a gossip over their paninis. (I know, it's ridiculous; in reality nobody gives a monkey's what I'm doing.) So doing this first is a way of getting comfortable with doing something that nobody else around you is doing, before getting down to the part where, if you're anything like me, you're going to be pulling a lot of faces and laughing/tutting/sighing to yourself.

And secondly, it gets your brain into the right creative frame of mind; an abstract, random-thoughts mindset that doesn't necessarily grab for the logical by default (this is why the Draw books I mentioned above work better than the Write books for this exercise.)

Take your one-word prompt from the Draw book, or a single word from the newspaper of magazine you brought, or a single word from a sign or menu around you, and write on that subject for either: ten minutes, a whole page of your notebook or the size of the designated space in your Draw book.

(This is why it makes sense to pick a noun or verb as your single word, unless you really think you can wax lyrical on the subject of 'and'...)

Don't stop to think about what you're writing, don't go back to read anything you've written and don't reject any of the things that come into your head to write about - just let it all pour out without censoring or mentally editing it. You might only need to do this exercise once to get 'in the zone,' or you might want to have a few goes at it. Whatever it takes to get you feeling comfortable and ready to tackle the next step, which is...

Step 3 - Identify the problem.

Well duh, yeah, I hear you cry. No, I mean you need to drill down, be specific. For example, 'I can't get from this bit of the plot to the next bit' isn't specific enough, you need to look at what's causing you to have that problem. Why can't you get past it? Do other things need to happen before the two plot points will connect? It doesn't matter at this stage if you don't know what those things are, just knowing they're missing is enough. Alternatively, perhaps you now can't use the ideas you had for this part of the plot because they're not plausible any more; perhaps something else happened earlier in the plot that now makes what you were planning to do at this point seem far-fetched or out-of-character for the people involved. Write it down in your notebook, and then read it back. If what you've written generates a new question - why, how, where, when, who - write that question below it, and then write down whatever answer comes to you. Keep going with that; reading what you've written, writing down any questions that arise from it and the writing down answers to those questions, until you feel you've reached a point where can't drill the problem down any further. Here's an (albeit generalised, because - spoilers) example from my w-i-p:

PROBLEM: I need a reason for the bad guys to have suddenly 'picked up' on the heroes location right now, just as the heroes believe they've contacted someone else to help them.

QUESTION: Is there anything already existing in the plot that would enable them to do that?

PROBLEM: Yes, but that only works within a twenty-yard radius. The heroes are well out of that range at this point.

QUESTION: So what's needed is something that works from a further distance - about a mile radius or something?  How would the bad guys suddenly get this ability?

ANSWER: They've always had it - but it should only kick in at this very specific point in the plot.

QUESTION: Why wouldn't it have kicked in before? What would've stopped it kicking in?

THAT'S THE PROBLEM! I need something to happen that suddenly 'triggers' the bad guy's ability to be able to track the heroes down from a much greater distance, that they weren't able - and had no motive - to use before this point.

The trick is in writing it all down like this in your notebook, because just thinking or talking about it is like mist in the air; there's nothing to grab on to. Writing it down forces you to make it real, something you can see right in front of you (like an IKEA flat pack, but with more available floor space.) And once you've done that, you're ready for the next stage...

Step 4 - Reconnaissance

Now it's time to make some lists.

First list: what else is going on in the scene where our problem first raises its gnarly head? Where are we, who's here, doing what, to and/or with whom? Put down everything, even the seemingly insignificant details - "Fred takes off the band-aid on his hand from his earlier accident with the tin-opener and replaces it with a clean one."

Second list: what's happened in earlier scenes that are - directly or indirectly - causing these things to happen in this scene now? So for Fred's band-aid adventure, for example, you would certainly include the tin-opener accident - but you might add that it happened because Fred is left-handed and therefore somewhat clumsy with a tin-opener (I'm a southpaw too, so I know that pain.)

Third list: what is likely to happen in the future as a result of what's happening now? These might be things you already have scheduled in your secret diary of plot happenings (because they're all part of your master plan bwah ha haaaa...) but equally they can be things that only occur to you now, as you write the previous two lists. To pick on poor Fred again, perhaps his leftied ineptitude extends to applying Band-aids as well, and as a result his wound turns sceptic and his hand falls off. Write it all down, no matter how crazy or plot-ruining it sounds (in fact, if it is a potential plot-ruiner I'd argue you have even more reason to write it down, as you may have just inadvertently discovered a new problem you didn't even know you had. You're welcome.)

And the final list: what needs to happen in your plot - both to get past your problem and to keep the story as a whole working? This will probably include some of the things you've already listed, but don't stop there; go deeper and look between the lines of what you've already got for new angles that maybe you haven't considered yet. This is to identify things that are non-negotiable; changing them, cutting them down or removing them completely is not an option because the whole plot would fall apart. You can then take this into consideration when you move on to the next part...

Take those lists and go through each item on it. Do any of them have any effect - direct or indirect - on your current story problem? Does anything actually prevent your problem being solved - or could anything actually be used to help solve it? It's surprising how many seemingly insurmountable problems get fixed this way; the one I used as an example in Step One was fixed by getting to this stage of the process, as I realised ramping up a reaction already occurring between two characters in a scene would change the game in a crucial way.

Has this helped you solve your problem? Great! Or maybe it hasn't. In which case, there's one more step you can try...

Step 5 - Switch it up, flip it around

If you get to this step, it's a good indication you can upgrade your problem from minor to major - which means you're gonna need to do a lot of work to fix it rather than just a few sneaky plot tweaks here and there. Yep, we're talking major rewrites I'm afraid. Don't do that face. You've come this far and you're a writer - you can do this.

Still got your lists from Step 4? Good, because you'll need them again. This time, take each item on each list and use it to make another list - only this time, we're going to change it up. First write the opposite of each event, and then write as many different alternatives to it as you can think of. Let's grab Fred and his tin-opener accident again for an example. Here's what we originally had:

Fred cuts his hand trying to open a tin, because he's a lefty-paw and tin-openers were designed for right-handed people.

The opposite of that might be... well, Fred doesn't cut his hand, because even though he's a lefty-paw he is world bloody class at opening tins. Or... Fred does cut his hand, because he's actually right-handed after all and some heinous monster swapped his normal tin-opener for one of those so-called 'left-handed' tin openers!

Both of which, I think you'll agree, are pretty crap as alternative scenarios go. So let's change it instead. What if... Fred got the cut on his hand when his girlfriend threw a tin-opener at him in a jealous rage? Or maybe it wasn't a tin-opener - maybe it was a glass... or a knife? Maybe it wasn't his girlfriend - maybe it was a contract killer, hired to wipe him out? Maybe his hand wasn't cut after all, but injected with nanobots that his evil nemesis can remotely control, causing him to do things with that hand completely against his will? Hmm... erring more towards bonkers now, but it's interesting so this is good...

Go nuts - anything and everything goes. And yes, that includes all those sacred items on your list that you previously marked as non-negotiable. Could be that it's one of those very things that's causing your problem - and if you've got this far I bet you'll have a sinking feeling that's true already. Keep doing it with all the items on all of your lists, and something should eventually click. In fact, quite a few things might click all at once. You may even end up with a radically different plot from the one you originally had. But that's not a bad thing. It's a lot of work ahead of you, for sure - but you're a writer so it's not a chore. It's just a brand new story, sitting in a pot ready for you to cook.

I really hope this 5-step process helps anyone who's wrestling with the roadblocks and wrong turns that every novel can occasionally hit. It's not perfect by any means, and I'm always up for any other suggestions you guys might have. Writing a novel is hard - and the only way to truly know that is to actually try and write one. And to keep on doing it anyway, because we love it. We're kinda crazy like that.

5 Ways My Writing Has Been Like Working On My Allotment

As of this month, I have now had my allotment patch for one whole year - at the same time, I have also been working on Draft Two of Redemption. And during this time I've learned a lot of useful stuff from both activities.

On the surface they don't seem related to each other. But a lot of the stuff I've learned can be applied to both writing and growing stuff, so maybe learning the lessons from one has helped me to look at the other in a different way as well. And because this is a Blog and I like to tell people about my stumbles and tryouts so they can be more sensible than I was... let's do this:

1 - Aim for Functional Before You Go For Beautiful

As I said previously on this very Blog, the plot of land I was given was in a right old state when I got it. Neglected for over two years, it was a wasteland of couch grass, ivy and thistles with roots that practically had an Australian accent by the time you got to the bottom of them. Added to that the wire netting, old pipes and half-rotting bags of fertiliser entwined underneath said urban foliage.... well, Kew Gardens it certainly wasn't.

But I had visions - oh, yes I did! One year from now this weedy eyesore would be transformed into a thing of beauty, with perfectly symmetrical plots lined with neat, green lawns, bearing more fruits and vegetables than I could eat in a lifetime...

Mmmmyeah, didn't quite happen like that. Oh I've done pretty well when it comes to the fruit and veg part; I've grown and harvested potatoes, onions, curly kale, sweetcorn, peas, gooseberries, tomatoes, peppers and a metric tonne of courgettes ( or 'zucchinis,' if you're American.) But only in the spaces I managed to dig in between the jungle infestation I didn't get round to clearing. So it's a functional allotment... but still not what you'd call 'pretty.'

And that's a pretty good description of the process of draft one through two of Redemption, to be honest. Draft One was a weed-infested wasteland - like most first drafts are - and maybe I was a little naive to think I was going to be able to sort it out and make it beautiful in a single, second-draft pass. Weeds have very deep roots, after all, and sometimes you think you've pulled one out only to find you didn't get all of it and the darn thing's grown back again. It takes as long as it takes, so sometimes you have to scale back your goals; first get it functional, then work on getting it beautiful.

2 - You Gotta Have a Plan, Stan

I'll stick my hand up and confess; when I took on that allotment I didn't have a chuffin' clue what I was doing. I'd grown stuff in pots and containers before, and that had worked out okay... surely it was the same, but just, like, in huge containers, right?

No. Soooo much no. The world invented gardening calendars and manuals you could demolish a shed with for a reason, and this reason is that plants are kinda picky about when they're going to start growing and for how long. In our modern world of global trading and intensive farming most of us take it for granted that we can stroll into our local supermarket and buy things like potatoes, onions and carrots any darn time we want to, from January to December. So it can come as a surprise to discover that, when you're trying to grow them yourself, they're working to a goddamn schedule - something to do with 'seasons' or some such malarkey. How inconsiderate of them...

As a result, I couldn't grow a lot of things I wanted to grow in my allotment because to do so successfully I would have to travel back in time and plant the seeds a couple of months before I decided I'd quite like to grow them. Sometimes you can cheat and buy them as young plants from a garden centre if you're quick (and I confess, I did do that for a couple of things) but the more sensible way is to assemble the aforementioned gardeners' calendars and manuals and work out your battle plan for the whole year in advance, so you know exactly what's happening, when it has to happen and for how long...

And if that sounds an awful lot like an outline for a novel... it's meant to. Yes, this was the year I finally figured out that outlining was something I needed to know how to do properly and then actually do it. No more going in blind and rewriting the bits I wasn't happy with 'organically,' to see what 'felt right' when the time came; I had to look at the whole story and decide in advance precisely what was going to happen and when, where, how and why. My outline for Draft Three is taking shape already - and it's good to know that, this time, I already know most of what's ahead of me. Heck, I might even make some spreadsheets - for my novel and my allotment.

3 - Sometimes You Don't Get What You Thought You Were Gonna Get

I planted a load of King Edward potatoes in one patch, and in the picture on the front of the packet they looked like... well, your standard King Edward potato. So I was a bit surprised when about half the potatoes I dug up a few months later were red-skinned -  still lovely, perfect for chunky, oven-baked wedges in fact - but not what I thought I was going to get.  I don't even know how that happened. And lets' not even mention the carrots... oh okay then, I'll mention the carrots. I sowed lines of purple carrot seeds (yes, they were going to grow into actual purple carrots!) between my rows of onions (that's supposed to stop the carrotfly getting to them, apparently.) When their little tufty green heads appeared above the soil I thinned them out as per instructions, watered them and cared for them as lovingly as if they were my own children. Until, months later, at least two other seasoned allotment-ers gently pointed out that they weren't carrots at all, but weeds. How on earth straight rows of weeds with tops that looked very similar to carrots manage to grow in exactly the place I'd planted carrots I'll never know, but that's what happened (and it is what happened; carrots don't produce little purple flowers in July, like mine did - nope, not even purple ones.) Point is, plants can be tricksy little hobbitses.

I also got a few surprises with Redemption draft two. For example, I'd been writing from two POVs up until this point, convinced that I needed both to tell the story properly. And then it gradually dawned on me that one of those POVs, far from providing tension and foreshadowing crucial plot points, was actually ruining them in the style of a human Spoiler Dispenser with his 'can't tell anyone this, but...' diary entries. Either that or repeating in technobabble what he'd previously said in laymanspeak to the other POV character. Not cool, Dr Harvey. You are hereby demoted to Standard Major Character.

On the one hand, I don't know why it took me so long to see such a basic error - but on the other, maybe I needed to see it in full bloom to know it had to be eradicated (like my carrots-that-weren't.) Other characters have turned out to have more depth than I'd previously realised, and will now be playing a bigger or more complex role in Draft Three (Junor, Jim, Randy and Fraser.) So, like my surprise crops, at least not all the unexpected results were unwelcome ones. And I've learned some useful stuff for next year.

4 - You Need To Tend To Your Plots Regularly...

Some days - mostly the baking-hot, beach-weather ones - I looked out over my allotment and thought "Y'know what? I can't be arsed to go over there and dig today." Other times I watched the rain sliming down my windows and thought "My god, I can't go out in that - I'll catch some form of Victorian consumptive disease!" And it's fine to play hookey and have a duvet day... every once in a while. But the thing about summer is that you get quite a lot of hot days - even the UK, believe it or not - and when it comes to the wet, windy and cold days of winter the UK's got them down to an art form. So when I started letting the climate dictate whether or not I would go to my allotment, those 'odd days' quickly turned into two or three weeks at a time. Which meant that when I eventually sloped back like the kid who knows she hasn't done any of her homework for ages, everything was overgrown and neglected again. I had to fight my way through 2-foot-high weeds and couch grass to get to my crops, and when it came to tidying it all up and preparing new plots I barely knew where to start. It felt like I'd gone a step backwards, and now I had twice as much work to do just to get back to where I was - all because I'd got lazy and kept telling myself "Tomorrow. I'll go over and do stuff tomorrow..."

I had bad-weather days with Redemption too. Days when  just the thought of sitting down to open up that Scrivener file and knuckle down into a writing session was enough to make me wish I cared more about housework than I do (so I could at least run away from the screen with a feeling of 'fifties housewife pride rather than lazy-arsed shirker's guilt.) Being a mum of a school-age child guarantees an excellent supply of excuses for slacking off; sports days, birthday parties, various PTA-sponsored events...

I told myself it was fine. I was just taking a break from the thing for a few days because I'd hit a gnarly bit I didn't know what to do with, and when I finally came back to it my brain will have magically unblocked itself - like sneezing out a really gluey bogey, presumably - and I'll just know what to do to fix the gnarly bit.

Except that nine times out of ten I didn't, any more than I did before I left it. And on top of that I'd forgotten a lot of what I'd done so far, so I had to go back and look through all my notes to remind myself again. Leaving the problematic bit alone wasn't what caused the problem; running away from the rest of it as well was my mistake. Even if I'd switched to adding new info to my character biographies, putting all the subplots into a spreadsheet - or even restructuring the outline - I'd still have been keeping myself in the loop with the story as a whole.

It's the same as it was with the allotment; if I'd made myself walk over on those sunny days just for five minutes, to water the plants or pull up the weeds in one patch, for example, I could have saved myself a lot of work later on and still indulged in a little bit of slacking off.

I guess that's why so many authors who've 'made it' say you need to write every day, like working a muscle or training for a marathon.

5 - ...But Sometimes It's Better To Leave One Part Alone For a Bit.

Weeds were - and are - a constant annoyance on my allotment - if there was some sort of award from growing the strongest and most impressive weeds, I'd walk away with it no problem. Accidentally bend the stem of a precious little seedling? I can practically hear it scream in agony before it crumples into a Camille-esque heap and dies. Gouge out the heart of a thistle and roar like Brian Blessed as I tear its roots from the ground? The bloody thing just pops up again a week later like I've done nothing more than give it a haircut and a massage. How does that even work? Damn you, Mother Nature!

At first I thought the answer was to swoop on every weed in every patch when it was just an ickle baby, smiting it while it was at its most vulnerable. Until I realised that meant being hyper-vigilant, scanning each patch on a daily basis and turning weed elimination into a never-ending job with standards of perfection that would make a professional forger beg for lenience. "I only weeded this bit two days ago, how in the holy heck have they all come back already?" became something of a catchphrase for me (and a lousy one for someone aspiring to the superhero title of 'Weeder Woman.')

Eventually I realised a far more effective tactic was to... just let the weeds grow. Because for most of the ones that grow on my allotment, trying to dig them out while they're tiny is a fiddly and messy job that involves getting right down on your knees and tooling around with mini-forks and dibber-things. You can easily spend an entire day faffing around like that, only to find that when you've finished things don't really look much different from when you started. However, letting each baby weed grow a foot high and then yanking the whole thing out, roots and all, is a breeze - five minutes work per patch, tops. And boy, does it look like you've accomplished something afterwards!

I've now adopted a similar approach when I'm working on Redemption too. For each rewrite and edit of a scene, I decide in advance what element of improvement/cleanup I'm going to be focusing on - and stick to that task and nothing more. If I spot things I can fix on the fly - spelling or punctuation errors I hadn't previously noticed, for example - I'll do that, but if I see anything that requires switching my focus from the Plan for Today - for example, further research to check if that thing this character says is still true, adding in new plot elements to explain that new bit I added into the previous scene - I leave it alone, to deal with another time. Yank it out, roots and all, when it's time to weed that particular part of the patch.

So... that's the lessons I've learned this year. I shall be taking them with me into the next one, and hoping the processes - in both writing and gardening - will help me be more effective at both.

Have any of your non-writing-related hobbies taught you more about your writing? Why not drop a comment below?

4 Things This Pantser Has Learned About Outlining

I've said it more than once before on this blog of mine; I'm a pure-blooded Pantser when it comes to my writing.

Most times I might have a vague beginning, an approximate end and a sort of squishy-malleable bit that constitutes the middle in my head when I sit down to start writing something new. Sometimes it's no more than a "What if this was going on, and then that were to happen? That might be cool..."  But in either case, the process is largely an unmapped journey for me - jump in that car. put the pedal to the floor and see what there is to see, baby!

And while that usually works out just fine for me with short stories and song lyrics, for writing novels... not so much. Not at all, in fact. Truth is, for something as big and many-headed as a novel, you need to have an outline to work to (unless you're Stephen King, but that's only because he is an anomaly in the fabric of storywriting-space and has more than earned his free pass on that one.) Outlines are your road map. Outlines - way more than Google could ever be - are your friend.

But can a Pantser outline? Doesn't that go Against Nature? I used to think so. The very idea of sitting down in front of a blank page and laying down a numbered list of plot points before I ever got to writing a word of the actual story was enough to make my brain blue-screen. But that was before I finally wrote a complete first draft of a novel (Redemption.) And as I ploughed through Draft Two the jury delivered its verdict: if I didn't want this thing to tangle itself into an unholy mess, I needed to outline it before I jumped any deeper in. And I'd better learn how to do that, whether I liked it or not.

It's been a bumpy road, but I've learned a lot of stuff in the process. And since I know I'm not the only Pantser out there, I thought I'd share what I've learned. So here we go...

1 - Even the purest-blooded Pantser can outline.

It's true! There a gazillion ways to outline, and they're all different. Some of them barely feel like outlining at all. The one that works best for me is the Index Card Method, since it feels exactly like pantsing, except... well it's pantsing in advance, if you like. You fill out one index card per story event as it comes to you and then stuff it in an envelope or something for safekeeping. You can do this over as long a period as you like; one or two massive brainstorming sessions for the whole story, or in spare moments of inspiration as they come to you over a period of days, weeks or even months. You can even do it for a future project while you're working on your current one, with minimal disruption to either.

The great thing about this method for a Pantser is that nothing feels 'locked down' - you can shuffle the order of the cards, add more in or take some out without the whole structure collapsing. So if you really do believe you're allergic to outlining, I suggest you give this one a go. It might just be the cure.

2 - You don't have to outline right from the very start.

Sometimes your brain is just so full of story you want to pour it all over the page like a Jackson Pollock painting, or your head will just, like, explode, man. You can see the whole thing, playing like a movie in your mind - the set, the costumes, the characters...

And when that happens, the very last thing you want is some mental schoolmarm-type yelling "STOP! NO! Thou must OUTLINE thy creative outpourings first!" You can practically feel the vacuum from the fun being sucked right out of the process. You don't have time for that shizzle - if you don't release your creative waterfall right now, it might drain away to nothing before you can capture it in all its story goodness. Well the good news is... you don't have to.

Ninety-nine-percent of the time, first drafts suck anyway. So really, it doesn't matter if it sucks because you went in there with no map, no compass and no Kendall Mint Cake or because the gear you did have (i.e. the Outline) didn't help you one bit. Unless you tell people, no-one's gonna know - and even less will care, probably. So if you prefer the barf-it-up-and-see method for first drafting, have at it and leave the outlining stage for... well, when you've got something to outline - i.e. a completed first, second or beyond draft.. 'Cos that's just how most Pantser's brains work anyway.

3 - Sometimes you think you've outlined when you actually haven't.

This is certainly what I thought when I started work on the second draft of Redemption. "Well duh, yeah! Here's my outline, look at it; I've got a perfect little summary of every single scene I've written, including where and when each scene happens and what characters are in them, and they're all in the right order... that's me good to go..."

Mmmmyeah, that's not an outline. Not really. It's no more an outline than trying to figure out how to make a cake by reading the list of ingredients, i.e. it might tell you what's in it, but it doesn't tell you what to do with the stuff - or even if you need all of it in there or maybe need to add in some stuff that isn't and should be... 

I'm not saying it's not useful. In fact, I'd say it's essential - for helping you to create the real, actual outline.  Because only by looking at the complete but summarised form of what you've already done, using the cold and distant overview of Story God (bwah ha haaa) can you make hard-nosed decisions about what needs to be cut, what's still missing and which order everything needs to go in to make sense. And you'd be amazed how much things can change in that process. For example, I've removed an entire secondary POV from Redemption Draft 3, because it was only when I read my Draft 2 'outline' as a complete document that I realised the character's take on events wasn't needed - in fact, far from being a form of foreshadowing, most of the time his input only sucked the drama out of them. (He's still in the story, but he doesn't get a turn on the mike any more - sorry Dr Harvey, but that's showbiz for ya...) 

And once you've made all those decisions... that's your outline. Don't worry if it looks different from the one you had before - in the early drafting stages, it should. Because even if it means you've got a metric ton of rewriting ahead of you, that's progress. You're another ledge closer to the top of the mountain, intrepid story-sherpa.

4 - There are many resources out there that can help with Story Structure. But not all of them are good for Pantsers.

I know this because I've read a metric lorryload of them over the past few years. There are good ones, great ones and bloody terrific ones, and there also 'meh' ones, bad ones and truly terrible ones. But... there are also 'right' ones and 'wrong' ones. Books that aren't bad in any way - but will nonetheless not help certain types of writers in the least - and may, in fact, actually hinder them.

A great book for Pantsers is the wonderfully-titled 'Take Off Your Pants!' by Libbie Hawker. It teaches a lot about story structure without locking you down into a blow-by-blow blueprint that Thou Must Stuff Thy Story Into, like trying to squish an entire pig through a sausage machine. Pretty much any of Chuck Wendig's writing how-to books are also a great investment, and while it goes quite deep into the psychology of the human mind and storytelling, The Story Book by David Baboulene contains a load of useful stuff about the essence of creating good, well-paced plots. I generally read bite-size chunks of books like these in the morning, over breakfast, just before I start my daily writing session, and not only did I feel like I learned a lot from these books, I would actually get up from them inspired to go write, right now..!

However, on the flip side... other things inspired the opposite mindset in my Pantser brain - as in, left me feeling like a total doofus who was just kidding herself she had the intelligence to write anything anyone would ever want to read, ever. I mention them here not to be snarky, but so that if any of you have, are, or will be trying any of the following you won't feel bad if they don't help you either - it's no reflection on you or your intelligence, they're just not geared to the Pantser, that's all:

The Snowflake Method - I'm sure it works wonderfully for plotters... but to me it just felt like that thing where you're trying to untangle a ball of wool and somehow every loop you try and untangle just puts two more new knots in it that weren't there before. When I was a software technician I used a similar process to the Snowflake Method - they called it 'Top-Level Design' but it was the same principle - and I found it helped me a lot with computer programming. I don't write stories like I write computer programs though (and that's probably a good thing, because most of the computer code I wrote was pretty darn boring.)

Mind Mapping - this one surprised me. I mean, all those free-wheelin' bubbles with lines coming off them, and bubbles connecting to other bubbles sounds like the way a Pantser's mind works, right? Turns out, no. From my experience, I think it's actually just a Plotter's way of trying to be freeform. I made some mind maps - and hell, they looked pretty darned good too. But they didn't tell me a single thing I didn't know on a gut instinct already - about my characters, the plot, themes, anything. I don't need to see what's already stored in my head drawn out in bubbles and lines in front of me, any more than I need a set of instructions to make myself a cup of tea.

Anything with a rigid 'story structure template' to follow - and there are some titanium-knickered examples out there, believe me. The worst example I saw not only had a detailed, non-negotiable schedule of events that absolutely must happen for your story to be considered worthy of reading, it even dictated the time in percentage of the book's whole for each of those events to happen - and gave you a handy formula for calculating those percentages in your own book, including necessary adjustments if you had a Prologue...

Yeah, that one felt like it actually ripped my IQ out of my brain and beat me around the head with it crying "Fool! Call yourself a writer? YOU ARE NOT WORTHY!"

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Even if you're the Pantsiest Pantser in Pantsville, outlining is a useful skill to have in your toolbox. It's kind of like learning CPR; even if you never use it on an actual person in the real world, you carry this nice little feeling of security around with you forever afterwards, knowing that you could do it if you ever had to step up to that plate.

What's your take on outlining? Love it or hate it? Any tips and experiences to share? Feel free to drop a line in the Comments below.

Why I Write

This post is a bit different from my usual ones. The wonderful Chuck Wendig set a challenge on his terribleminds.com blogsite for a 1,000-word piece entitled 'Why I Write.' (Full challenge details here.) Normally I post these on my Prawn Crackers Blog, but since this one isn't a short story I decided to post it here instead.
I'm well aware of the risk that I may come across as a pompous ass with this post. If that's the case.... here's my 'Sorry Face' in advance. My intentions were (and are) good, I promise. 

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I learned from an early age that bad stuff happens in life. Lots of it, frequently and with no apparent limits on a person’s designated quota.

I learned that the Universal Karma System employed by life was pretty screwed up too. That no, being a generally good person and trying to Do the Right Thing didn't grant you automatic immunity from any crap flung by the Angry Monkey of Fate, in the same way that being a monumental asshat didn't cause crap to rain down from the heavens on said asshat in a constant shitstorm until they mended their ways. Life’s default setting when it came to crap-flinging was Bloody Unfair. And nothing could or would change that system, so best suck it up and deal with it while you’re still a kid, so you've got plenty of practice under your belt by the time you finally bungee-jump-with-a-blindfold-on into adulthood.

Imaginary life doesn't work like that.

Pick up any storybook and the life inside it is neat. Ordered. Controlled, from start to finish, by the author. In a good story everything works the way it’s supposed to, following the plan until it ties up into an ending that makes sense and feels right. The good people might get some Angry-Monkey-crap over them for a while, but in the end it’ll all be washed away, while the asshat drowns in the shitstorm of his own making. Balance is restored, karma dispensed, hugs all round. The way real life should work, but all too often doesn't.

For an insecure kid living in polite chaos as a failure-in-training, falling brain-first into an imaginary world where the rules were fair, consistent and easy to understand was the perfect escape.

Sometimes the imaginary worlds I visited were created by other writers, sometimes they were mine. In either case, I would spend hours in my room becoming explorer, anthropologist and detective all in one as I walked the same path and chewed the fat with the heroes in story-worlds. Like me, they were flawed and suffered for their screw-ups, but I always felt that, if I could hang out with them for a while, maybe some of the strengths and special talents that helped them win through in the end might eventually rub off on me.

But more than that, those imaginary worlds changed the way I looked at my own, real world. Sometimes this was because they were so different – but more often because of the subtle ways they were the same. The imaginary worlds often had the same problems, injustices and cruelties as the real one – but unlike the real world, they weren't smothered by a chorus of indifference. The story didn't just crash and burn against the wall of “well that’s just life isn't it? Life sucks and it’s pointless being a crybaby about it, so let’s all think about puppies instead.”

The characters in story-worlds could – and did - talk about that stuff. They were proactive, pointing to the shit that was wrong with a big neon arrow and saying “this needs fixing, and we’re gonna need help with it so come on, get on board!” And those who did were immediately members of Team Good, while those who didn't had, by their very inaction, signed up to Team Evil and the inevitable shitstorm-retribution finale.  The good people of imaginary worlds want them to be better, fairer places - for everyone, not just the career-driven, or the religiously pious, or the financially astute, or the ones with beautiful faces and ‘perfect’ bodies…

Of course, if they tried that malarkey in the real world they’d get squashed pretty damn quick; there are enough non-imaginary people on this blue and green ball of rock who like the status quo just as it is, thank you very much. Those people don’t like being made to feel it’s wrong that there are people starving in third-world countries while their leaders expand their rocket-launcher collection, because putting that right would mean having to pay more for their exotic grocery items. They don’t want to hear scientists shouting at them on telly that the ice-caps are melting thanks to global warming, because that messes with their dream of owning a gas-guzzling people-tank. And they hate being told that belittling someone just because they’re somehow ‘different’ from the idealised, cookie-cutter norm is unfair, because – well jeez, how are they supposed to feel good about themselves if they've got no-one to feel superior to?

It’s all about the self-interest, you see. In today’s world we’re all taught to look after number one first – “everything someone else gets might mean less for me…” So ironically, the more we see and learn about people suffering in every corner of the globe, the less we empathise with them. Instead, we fear. Fear that, but for random luck and geography, that could’ve been us. What if we ended up in their situation? No, mustn’t think that. Stick our fingers in our ears, la la la…

And that’s where the imaginary worlds from stories come in. The people who’ll shut their ears to reasoned debate and impassioned pleas will dive into story worlds without fear or hostility, because they always know where the exit is should the going get tough. It’s a safe space – for them and that world’s creator - to exchange messages that get drowned out by the Darwinian white noise of the real world. Messages that just might get through, hidden like the jam in the tasty doughnut…

That’s why I write. 

The words of insignificant little me won't change the world, but they’re my way of adding my tiny ant-squeak to the chorus of other tiny writer-ants, pointing out what’s wrong and how maybe we should try and fix that. I can whisper in the ears of others who are afraid they’re a failure and say “no you’re not. You’re okay, and it’s okay to be you.”

Because everyone needs an imaginary friend sometimes.  Even writers. Hell, especially writers.

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If You're A Writer, You're Probably A Bit Weird*

*But that's okay.

If you were to ask someone what they wanted to do with their life, and they told you "I want to put all the little people that exist inside my head through all kinds of intolerable hell just to see what happens, and then I want to tell as many people in the real world as possible all about it"... you'd probably back away slowly while wondering where to obtain the phone number of the nearest psychiatric institution.

But those of us in The Club know that this isn't a sign of mental illness - or at least, no-one's proved it is. (Yet.) It's just the Call of the Writer. To the non-writers of the world, however, this doesn't sound like the healthiest or most productive way to get life done, which is why they offer the subtle but customary eye-roll and suppressed snigger/groan whenever the dirty little secret is revealed. Add to this that many writers are introspective observers rather than table-dancing tequila-slammers at the party that is life, and it's easy to see how the equation 'writer = a bit odd' evolved.

I quite liked being on my own as a kid. I had friends that I played with of course, but on those occasions where they were elsewhere for whatever reason, the prospect of having 'no-one to play with' didn't faze me at all. In fact, the concept didn't really exist; I had 'friends' in my head that I could play with in the absence of real-world ones. Some grown-ups - and kids too - found this a bit weird. Some of my friends also found the way I played make-believe games a bit weird. Most of us have had favourite tv programmes that we 'played' as our own make-believe games. But while all my friends would pick existing characters from the show to 'be,' I preferred to invent a completely new one. This didn't always go down well with friends who were particular about Realism in Their Fantasy Games:

FRIEND: I've never heard of that character before. She's not in that show!
ME: I know. I made her up.
FRIEND: What? You can't do that! You can't just make characters up!
ME: Why not?
FRIEND: Well - because then she could just be anything! She could just be and do anything you wanted her to!

Well, duh!

But apparently, this sort of extreme roleplaying had the potential to Ruin The Game, so I did my best to temper my maverick tendencies in those situations. It wasn't that I had this megalomaniac urge to be a Mary Sue on Steroids - the characters I invented myself had just as many flaws and limitations as the pre-existing ones. I just wanted to take our make-believe games in new directions - create new adventures and scenarios, rather than just re-enact the episodes we'd seen on the telly. But I also didn't want to annoy my friends.

Not all of them felt this way, I have to say. Others were more than happy to jump on the creative train and swing it the heck off the designated track. But the ones who preferred to ground their fantasy in the undisputed reality of its TV series origins tended to be Leaders, Type-A personalities, They were assertive, persuasive and probably destined to be Managing Directors when they grew up. Everyone listened to them because they sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Heck, even I listened to them. After all, what did I know? I wasn't Managing Director material. I was too weird.

As an adult I had a string of office jobs - and never seemed to fit in with any of them. I was that tiresome, awkward one who would try and do the job a little bit differently, rather than doing it 'the way it's always been done' - "Wendy, I appreciate you feel a cartoon drawing of you as a skeleton waiting for a phone call from IT Support is a more succinct way of saying you waited for seven hours for them to fix your computer yesterday - but I'm afraid it's not standard company procedure for documenting progress in your Project Log Book." (Nobody ever looked at those things. Nobody. Until that one day I did that cartoon...)

You can only be the Anakin Skywalker of the office environment for so long before it starts to get you down. I was only 'let go' from a job once (and that was mostly due to my thinking that working on a telephone helpdesk was a savvy career move when you're hearing-impaired - you live and learn...) but I've ended up quitting every other office job I had because... well, to be honest, I couldn't believe they hadn't fired me already. I just seemed to be rocking the boat all the time, with my rebellious ideas and opinions and stuff. And yet my bosses were always surprised when I handed in my notice - as if the idea of not having me around anymore hadn't even crossed their minds. Maybe they secretly enjoyed getting exasperated at my efforts to do things differently - as if I was a variation of Christian Grey, but not so much with a Red Room of Pain as a Stationery Cupboard of Crankiness...

So I learned to accept the idea that I was A Bit Weird. That, even if they sort of liked me, Normal People were always going to think there was something a bit wrong with me upstairs, and any attempts I made to fake Normalness were destined to fail at least fifty percent of the time. Obviously I didn't like feeling like a social misfit, but I realised the only way to not get terminally depressed about it was to just admit that I had the problem and try to minimise the fallout when it occurred.

I never associated any of it with being a creative person though - until I started spending a lot more time among other creative people. I didn't feel like the Nutter on The Bus in their company; in fact, it felt more like I'd jumped on board the Busful of Fellow Nutters (no disrespect intended, guys.) They knew what it was like to feel 'all social-ed out' at the end of a day, only to realise the 'people' you'd spent the most time with during that day... were the imaginary ones in your current w-i-p. They understood that sometimes that statement coming out of my mouth was raw and undiluted from my brain, because it flashed along my neural pathways too fast for the oh-my-god-you-can't-say-that filter who knew that, actually no, it didn't sound like a good idea at any time. And they totally got the long-term love affair with all things stationery, and the deep truth that is there is no such thing as 'too many' pens or notebooks...

If you're a writer, maybe some of the things I've talked about have rung bells for you too. Perhaps they've got you into trouble on occasions - or at least earned you the odd funny look or two. Maybe you too have been forced to accept the idea that non-writer friends and family think you're a teeny bit strange. It's okay. Being somewhere to the left of Normal is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Without us, the world would be one giant Stepford Wives metropolis. And there would definitely be a lot less books to read.

What first clued you in to realising that you, as a writer, thought differently from non-writers? I'd love to know. Let all of us writers gather together - whether in real life or via cyberspace - and embrace our special kind of weirdness!

5 Things I Wish I Knew about Novel Writing Twenty Years Ago

"Non, je ne regrette rien," sang French chanteuse and all-round stoic Edith Piaf. And while she made a good point, I bet even she succumbed to the odd facepalm now and then. It's only human to look back over your life and think "If I knew then what I know now..."

But until the time machine gets invented (and they sort out some way to deal with that pesky Grandfather Paradox) you can't nip back to greet your younger and more naive self and give them the almanac from the future. So all that's left is the next best alternative; to put what you wish you'd learned twenty years ago Out There for others to see, hoping to prevent them from taking twenty years to learn it as well.

It's not stuff about style, or language, or story construction or any of the mechanics of writing a novel. It's not about how to dream up the perfect story or how to get it published and become rich and famous. But it is stuff that, once you know it, makes all of the previous stuff more achievable. And yet you won't find it in most books about writing, or taught in most creative writing classes. So here is my Top Five. Do with them what you will...

1. - Finish What You Start. No REALLY. FINISH. IT.
Are you one of those people who starts a novel with megaton-bomb's-worth of enthusiasm, steaming through the first two or three chapters, and then slowing down a bit... and a bit more.... and then, about a third of the way in, deciding to 'put it aside for a bit' and work on something else instead? And over time, have you acquired a collection of part-written novels that still languish like embarrassing mad relatives in some dark and lonely attic (either physical or virtual?)

Yeah, I did that too. For years. I always had 'good' reasons for switching to a newer, shinier project in favour of the current one, of course - and I was never 'giving up on' a novel, nooo, I was just 'taking a break from it.' I was going to come back to it again in the future, of course I was, but... mmmyeahno, I never did.

That was a mistake, and one I repeated time after time. I shouldn't have given up so easily - and yes, if I'm honest that's what I was really doing. I gave up whenever the initial excitement of creating something new wore off as it became less and less new in my own head. But here's the thing; you can't achieve success at creating a thing until that thing is finished. How far would Mr Harley-Davidson have got if he'd said "Hey everybody, look at this cool bike I'm making here! Admittedly I haven't put the wheels on yet - or brakes - and yeah, I'm still sort of deciding how the engine's gonna work... aw, but trust me, when this baby's finished she's gonna freakin' rock!" He got where he got by finishing that bike we know and love - and probably after he'd already finished a few ropey prototypes that tanked.

So if you start something, finish it. Try it with short stories first, if finishing anything you start is a real problem, and then work your way up to full-on novels. But finish it. Because...

2 - You'll never learn how to write a novel properly until you COMPLETE (at least) your first novel.
You can read all the books on writing that ever existed. You can take a million writing classes. You can read the wise words of every successful author on the planet who's already been there and done it. None of those things will teach you even a tenth of what actually getting out there in the trenches and doing it will teach you. Even just completing a first draft of a novel will be a massive learning experience that no amount of tutoring and sage advice can offer.

Why? Because until you've got that far, all the lessons and lectures are just words; the equivalent of the instruction manual for flat-pack furniture. Sure, they'll take you through every step of building that wardrobe, but they won't tell you all the stuff you can only learn by doing - like how if you don't hammer those wooden pegs in pixel-perfect straight you're screwed, trying to build the thing in a room with furniture already in it is just asking for trouble and the Allen Key is the most stupid and infuriating invention in the world. (Yeah, IKEA don't stick those little gems in their cartoon-men diagrams, do they?)

Most of us would prefer to think surgeons at least had a practice on something before they embarked on hacking and slashing real patients for a career, and the principle is the same with novel-writing (albeit with less chance of actual death.) Once you've completed your first novel, you'll have a brand new set of tools that you now know how to use when you write your next one. At which point you'll discover there are even more tools, and you can have a practice with them while getting more proficient with the tools you picked up previously. Learning by doing. It's the best way.

3 - Set goals for yourself. And stick to them.
But not just any old, floaty-cloud goals; make them specific, measurable and realistic. "I am going to finish this goddamn novel," for example, is a great goal in terms of passion and drive, but it's not specific or measurable enough, which renders it unrealistic by default. It's also flippin' huge in terms of ambition; like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, ninety percent of it is sitting under the water where you can't see it. If you're going to nail this project, you need to break it down into smaller chunks. You'll need a way of tracking your progress too; I use an Excel Spreadsheet I made for the purpose, but you could just as easily use an old invoice book or draw tables on some squared paper - whatever works for you.

First off, start with time. Look at your week and decide how much time - realistically - you can devote to writing. If you have a day job that isn't writing, or your time is taken up with caring for other people, you'll probably have to snatch hours when and where you can. That's okay; pinpoint those precious hours and own them. No ifs or buts, claim them as your writing time, tell everyone who needs to know that those are your writing hours - hell, mark them down on a calendar or weekly planner so you can see them too. Make them official, like a real, proper appointment that you must show up to. Add them up, and that'll give you your minimum target of hours per week. (You can split up those hours any way you like; the same amount of hours spread over each day or big chunks on some days and small or no chunks on other days - it's the weekly total that matters.)

Later on, when you've got yourself into a regular routine of showing up for your target hours each week (and that can take a while, especially if you haven't done that before with your writing) you can start tracking your weekly word count as well. But don't set concrete targets for that until you've tracked it for at least a couple of months, so you can see what your average weekly output is and come up with a target that doesn't shoot ridiculously beyond that (because setting goals that are impossible to achieve is way worse than setting no goals at all.)

That's when things like deadlines and completion dates can become more concrete; the average novel is 100,000 words long, so if you can write 10,000 words a month, for example (which is only 2,500 words a week, which in turn is less than 355 words a day...) well, that's a full draft of an entire novel in ten months. So you see, even the smallest efforts done regularly can amount to great things in less time than you might think. But it's only by seeing it happen, right in front of your own eyes, that you can motivate yourself to keep at it.


4 - Writing a novel isn't fun all the time. And that's totally okay.
You're a writer because you love to write. It's the only thing you can imagine yourself actually wanting to do for a career rather than just having to do for, like, money and stuff. And because you feel this way, if something you're writing starts to feel like a grind, a miserable chore that makes the ironing look like a thrilling diversion, something must be so wrong with it that you should probably give up and start something else, right? Because writing's supposed to be fun - it makes you feel good and happy and creative...

Mmmmyeah, not always. Even with a novel you love like your own baby-child, there will be days when you hate its plot-stall-ed, wooden-character-ed, nonsense-dialogue-d guts. When the mere thought of sitting down and opening up that document - again - will fill you with an urge to weep and watch marathon sessions of Keeping Up with The Kardashians instead. Suddenly this baby isn't a joy anymore, it's a wailing, demanding poo factory that takes up your valuable time and energy. And it's starting to look pretty ugly as well.

So surely, if you carry on trying to write it when you're this 'uninspired,' won't the effort suck every last drop of creative fire from your veins like a vampire, leaving you jaded and unable to face writing anything else ever again? You cannot let that happen! It would be Creative Death! Writing is your mission, your life - writing should only ever be Fun Times...

Ask any published author on the planet, and they'll tell you there were days when sitting down and writing the next chapter of their novel was the last thing on earth they felt like doing. But they still did it anyway. Inspiration doesn't fall from the sky like rain, it's the sweat that comes from exercising those writing muscles. You don't exercise, you don't sweat. And sometimes you have to do a lot of dull and miserable exercising before that sweat appears.

So if the urge to write that next scene from your w-i-p isn't there, get your arse in front of that manuscript and write anyway. Remember those targets I talked about previously? It doesn't matter if all you end up with is a steaming pile of donkey-poo. Even donkey-poo can be shaped and sculpted into something amazing - but you need the donkey-poo to be there in the first place.

Of course there's nothing wrong with only writing what you want to and when you want to... if writing is just a fun little hobby and you have no desire whatsoever for anyone else to ever read your work. But if you're hoping to be published someday, you can't afford to sit around waiting for creative lightning to strike. Gotta make them sparks yourself, Chutney.

5 - Not all writing advice is helpful or useful.
No, I didn't stick this one at the end just to mess with your head. Well maybe a little bit...

The point is, what works for some writers won't work at all for others, no matter what. However, this doesn't mean you should stop looking and listening to advice and feedback on how to improve your writing chops. In fact, the more advice you seek out and absorb, the better you'll continue to get at knowing what to hold on to and what to drop like a deep-fried Mars Bar (a great idea in fantasy, a Crime Against Chocolate in reality.)

For example, by now I must have read the equivalent of a small forest and a PC hard-drive's worth of books and eBooks about writing, writing fiction and writing novels - and that's before you even start to include the blogs of other authors I follow. That's more advice than one person's brain can hold or needs in a lifetime. In the course of gathering all that information, I have discovered that, although I do have some plotting and organisational tendencies, overall as a writer I am a natural, red-blooded Pantser.

Now there are some fabulous writing how-to books that are perfect for all the Plotters out there - but I've discovered the hard way that, for me at least, they are Kryptonite in literary form. Anything that involves measuring the progress of your plot by dividing your entire story up into small fractions and making sure you hit a certain 'beat' by a particular percentage of pages written.... jeez, even reading that back makes me want to head-desk. My brain don't work like that, Professor! So I've learned to stop reading them in the first place now, because they just make me feel like a thicko (and it's not like I need that in my writing life as well...)

On the other hand, anything about the craft of writing - creating great characters, settings and dialogue and what I suppose you'd call 'making better use of language in your writing' - well, those are the kind of books that get my blood pumping and me desperate to sit at my keyboard and write my stubby little fingers off. So those are the books I seek out when I feel the need for a little Writing Espresso.

Not all writing advice is supposed to fill your heart with glee, obviously. Much of it is meant to instil in you just how much hard graft is needed to write a good novel, and that's as it should be. However, if any advice you get - whether from books, websites or even other authors - makes you feel like you have no hope of ever succeeding as a writer, because you just can't think that way or buy into that concept, then it's probably the wrong advice for you. Don't sweat it. You won't have to look very hard to find an alternative viewpoint from someone else who's had just as much success doing things the opposite way. And don't ever - ever - let anyone else tell you you'll never make it as a writer unless you subscribe to [insert Success Blueprint of the Moment.] There is no magic one-blueprint-fits-all. You are your own blueprint, made of whatever components of advice work for you.

So... over to you. What do YOU wish you'd known about writing a long, long time ago? What stuff do you think all writers should be told when they're just starting out? Why not drop it in the comments below, and maybe we can pass some nuggets of real-world wisdom around!