Questions That Boggle A Writer's Brain

If anyone has known you're a writer for more than, say, five minutes of their life, you can bet they've asked you at least one of the aforetitled (is that a word? My spellcheck says no, but my brain is saying "it is now, bucko!") You know the kind of questions I mean. The ones that any writer knows can only be answered with a blank expression and a New York shrug.

Non-writers ask them because... well, if you're not a writer they seem like the Great Mystical Secrets that writers keep from the rest of the world, lest they become common knowledge and the truth emerges that anyone and everyone can be Stephen King with the right set of tools and ingredients. Which is true, of course... but neglects to point out that Stephen King and all the other uber-famous and mega-rich writers are just naturally in possession of a more 'right' set than the majority of writers just trying to make a living. And even they still can't answer those really head-mushing questions.

Am I going to attempt to answer them? Am I heck! I'm going to join all my fellow writers in blankness and New-York-shrugginess. But while doing that, I shall be pondering and marvelling on how unanswerable they truly are. Questions like:

1 - "Where do you get all your ideas from?"
Do we have a special box hidden in the attic, marked 'Story Ideas?' Do we sit within a circle of candles, chanting "om" until inspiration strikes? Head into the woods at midnight and play Black Sabbath songs while sacrificing a chicken to Underlord of Stories?

Shrug Number One right there. I dunno - where does a person get the idea he wants a pizza with pineapple and anchovies but NO OLIVES? Part of it comes from life experience ('had that one last time and it was awesome') but other than that it was just... there, in that grey mush under the skull. Non-writers must get ideas, surely? Maybe the only difference between writers and non-writers is that when writers have ideas... they write stuff from them?


2 - "Why do you write [insert genre here]?"
Stephen King, why do you write horror novels? Why don't you write Mills&Boon romance instead? Far less people would accuse you of being weird if you did that, y'know. And you, Catherine Cookson - why didn't you ever have a crack at writing cyberpunk, you silly old thing? You could've been so much more 'down with the kids!'

It's as if they think writers hover over a great List of Genres and either: a) shut their eyes, stick a pin in it and see where it lands or b) scan the choices and think "Hmmm, which one's making the most ker-ching for authors at the moment?" Of course neither of these is true (although that's not to say it's never been tried... it's just never really worked that well as a strategy.) The simple answer is that writers tend to write in the genres they enjoy reading. But then that leads to "Well, why do you like reading those genres in particular then?" Well jeez... why does anyone? Time for another New York shrug...


3 - "How can you write a [insert opposite gender to yourself] main character when you're a [insert your own gender]?"
There seems to be a belief in some sections of the book-buying public that this is somehow impossible at an X-chromosome level. And on one level, I can... sort of see their point. After all, if you as a female have never possessed your very own love sausage, how can you really know what it feels like to carry one around in your pants every day of your life? (DON'T - way ahead of you and let's not go there, thanks...)

But consider this; do the people who ask this question of writers also ask them "How can you write a main character who's a horse when you're not a horse?" No-one considers that an arrogant thing for a writer to attempt - and yet I'd have thought imagining life as a horse would be a lot tougher than imagining life as a fellow human of the opposite gender. Especially since humans are gifted with the power of asking questions of their opposite gender if there's stuff they want to understand. Questions that couldn't be answered by horses. Or dogs. Or mice. Or pigs...


4 - "What's the best way to write something guaranteed to be a bestseller?"
The writers that truly know the answer to this question are the ones who own a continent, eat grapes coated in gold leaf hand-plucked for them by their own personal Oompa-loompa and walk barefoot on specially-constructed clouds, so that their precious tootsies are never sullied by that dirty old thing they call the ground (that's for mortals, losers!) Let's take a moment to count those writers up, shall we? Oh yeah, that's right...

I'm pretty sure even Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin and Stephanie Meyer would lurve to know the answer to this question. But even they don't. Getting each new idea to a completed first draft is only the first stage in a long journey - and even doing that is a Herculean milestone that every writer has to reach before they can even think about how great their final work might (or might not) be. Writing isn't like baking a cake or building an IKEA wardrobe; put all the right bits together in the right quantities and the right order and you'll get the same thing every time. It's more like alchemy.

(Not to be confused with "ALCHEMY, Khashoggi... pure ALCHEMY!" Although that would be pretty darn cool...)

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Is there a writer alive who could actually provide the all-seeing answers to any of these questions? Truth is, you might as well ask them what's the best way to guarantee you'll win the lottery...

(Except I have a nagging suspicion there actually might be a way to do that. Not a legal way, but a way, nonetheless... )

Writing is not for sissies, 'cause there aint no guarantees. It's years and years of slogging away, our work possibly being ignored for most of our lives - heck, maybe all of them, we don't know for sure until that magic bell rings. And even when it does, we might end up being hated for it as much as loved (I'm sure E.L. James has had to grow a skin of armadillo-esque strength since 'Fifty Shades...') That's why some of us drink and get depressed sometimes.

But that's also why we love it. We're suckers for a challenge. And just a little bit crazy.

Writing Distracted versus Knowing When You're Beaten

At this very moment, I'm sitting here attempting to write this post while my seven-year-old son is playing a computer game on his daddy's computer, less than five feet away from me. Which means that, while attempting to put words on a screen that actually sound like a human being with a working brain, my world is filled with the sounds of:

"CHING-CHING-CHING CH-CHING! DUUUUUUDDDE! AWW DUUUUUDDDDE," *pounding of jumping feet and sound of several nearby objects crashing to the floor from the vibrations* "CHI-CHING CHING AAAAAAHHHHH NO-NO-NO-NO DUUUUUUUUUDDDDE!!"

And guess what? Today is the first day of his two-and-a-half weeks of Easter holiday.

Now don't get me wrong. I adore my little laddie and I'm thoroughly looking forward to spending time with him, doing all kinds of things out there in the big wide world outside while he's off school. And he is independent enough now that he can find other things to occupy himself for a two-hour period of a day without needing my constant supervision. So, grabbing my precious two-hour daily writing slot even while he's at home should still be doable, right?

Well yeah - in theory... the 'theory' being that I can still make my brain work while an accompanying backing track that sounds like a cross between the lyrics of a Katy Perry song and a battle scene from 'Lord of The Rings' plays constantly at ear-splitting volume nearby. Seven-year-old boys are incapable of playing any game - computer or otherwise - quietly, as anyone who has one will know. And, as a mum, I am also constantly aware of the potential for damage and/or danger that can come from the actions of a mega-excited seven-year-old living the dream of being a Jedi Knight in a tiny terraced Victorian house. It's not like you can afford to just switch off and ignore the racket entirely - you gotta keep one ear open just in case...

I don't know if this is a universal truth (since I'm only married to the one bloke) but my impression is that Dads (i.e. men) appear to be wired differently. They have this innate ability to focus in so deeply on whatever they're doing that the rest of the world almost seems to disappear into the ether. My husband can sit in the same room with my son, tapping away at his laptop or watching something on the telly, and remain completely oblivious to the chaos unfolding around him, to the extent that my son will come and find me elsewhere in the house and say "Mummy, can you get me a drink, please? I've asked Daddy ten million times but he won't listen to me." (Don't worry - it was probably only about three times really, but my son has a sublime gift for exaggeration.)

HOW DO YOU GUYS DO THAT? No seriously - what's the technique? Because if I can't master it, I'm thinking that I might have to give up on the idea of sticking to my writing schedule for the next two-and-a-half weeks. I don't really want to do that - even thinking about it makes me sad. But then, so does the idea of spending every two-hour session writing six words (five of which I hate so much I'm probably going to to delete next time anyway) because I can't stay 'in the zone' for more than thirty seconds at a time.

Hmmm. Need to decide which of the two options I hate the sound of less, I suppose, and go with that. Sorry this isn't an upbeat post today, but I have, throughout the time of writing this, been hearing mangled lyrics of various songs mixed with shrieks, lines from Star Wars movies and occasional suspicious-sounding crashes and clatters. And it's kind of hard to concentrate.

I am completely and utterly open to any advice or suggestions, believe me.

Writers' Snake Pits Part II

Last week I talked about Writers' Snake Pits, and how they can stall or even just distract a writer from getting on down and getting stuff written. I've come back for a second forage in the jungle, because there are more of them out there and Indy doesn't want us falling into them either. (At least, I'm pretty sure he doesn't - after all, he's played by Harrison Ford and he's a nice enough guy, isn't he? I mean, he's never punched a journalist or anything..?)

1 - "I wish I knew how to quit you!"
This was actually pointed out to me in the last post's comments section by Patrick Ross (who writes the excellent blog theartistsroad) so credit goes to Patrick for this one. It's sort of a contradiction to the first Snake Pit of Never Finishing What You Start (and as such is important to note, because the last thing we want to do is fall into a pit we weren't expecting because we were too busy avoiding the one we were.)

Sometimes we work on one thing for a long, long time because we love it - like that irresistible, bad-seed lover your mother and all your friends disapprove of because they're unreliable and don't respect you. We blind ourselves to their faults, thinking we can change them with enough love and attention. We turn a deaf ear to the warnings of our friends and loved ones, saying our Beloved is just misunderstood. But sometimes we need to face the truth; this romance is just never gonna work out. It's about knowing when to walk away from a work-in-progress that'll never progress - and that in itself is a whole other skill writers can only acquire through practice. So yeah, the postscript to 'finish what you start' is 'But know when to call it quits.' (And also 'hide all the cheesy photos in the attic, but don't burn them.')

2 - "So... I don't fit in with your club, huh?  Well, maybe YOU'RE the misfits around here - ha yeah, I'll show you!"
I'm going to tell you a true story now which doesn't paint me in a particularly good light (well there's a shocking change, but hey ho...)

I once joined a writers' group after seeing a poster in my local library. It proclaimed it would be run by an 'internationally famous author,' but other than that there were no other details except for venue, meeting dates and times. No matter; it was a chance to hang out with other writers, and I was well up for that. Within the first couple of meetings there was a brief 'tell us about yourself' session for everyone, to get an idea of educational backgrounds and writing experience - and it very quickly became apparent there was - well, let's call it a dominant dynamic in the group. Everyone in the group - the 'internationally famous author' presiding included - had struggled at school, either dropping out before getting any formal qualifications, or not achieving any they could really use to get ahead. Everyone that is, except for me and one other person.

I had no problem with this whatsoever. I've never believed that a person's level of education should be a permanent barrier to writing success. But as these introductions went on - accompanied by much fist-pumping and "yeah you go, mate, sticking it to all those educated snobs!" from other members - I started to feel a bit uncomfortable about getting to my turn. I'm no academic wunderkind, but I went to college and university, which, if the current vibe was anything to go by, was going to make me about as popular as a stripper at a mother and toddler group. I wasn't wrong; for both me and the other guy there - who was an ex-university lecturer - you could actually feel the atmosphere in the room change after we spoke. It was as if we'd told them we drowned kittens as a hobby.

Things got a bit frosty for the two of us from then on. If we made any comments or expressed any opinions we were met with a loaded silence followed by a sharp change of subject. When it came to the round robin of members talking about things they'd written, we were both told that the genres we were writing in were "dead" and  "not the sort of thing normal people want to read." Loud comments were regularly made along the lines of "all these snobs who've been to college thinking they're better than us." And at one point the author/group leader himself made a long speech with the theme of 'don't let all those pretentious educated people tell you that spelling and grammar and all that crap is important if you want to become as famous as I am; they're just trying to stop you achieving because they're jealous you've got raw, natural talent without all the schooling they had!' And stared at me and the ex-lecturer throughout, as if daring us to respond. (We didn't. We both just sat there in meek silence, occasionally swapping uncomfortable glances.)

Now I can obviously only speak from my own perspective. I don't know; maybe when I did voice an opinion in the meetings, I used  the odd long, fancy word when a shorter one would've done the job. I and my ex-lecturer friend wouldn't have noticed that so much, but perhaps the others did and it wound them up. Perhaps, in our efforts to show we didn't think any less of them just because they hadn't taken the same paths we had, we overcompensated and unknowingly came across as patronising or smug instead. We'll never know, because nothing was ever openly articulated like that - it was all snarky asides and dirty looks. All of which came to a head when it was announced that the group would be producing an anthology of members works, to be published and sold in local bookshops. It was, as the author/group leader put it "our chance to show the world that real writing talent isn't all about getting a fancy education and knowing how to spell properly."

I'm afraid it brought out the petty side in me. By this time my ex-lecturer friend had quit the group, sick of being sidelined and snarked about, so I was the only Enemy Within left. I probably should have done the dignified thing and followed his example. But something about the battle cry for that anthology irked me. I resented the implication that being educated somehow automatically meant I grossly over-estimated my writing ability. So I made up my mind that I was going to submit to that anthology - and I was going to make it the best quality I could. I was going to use correct grammar and punctuation and I was going to spell every damn word right - and it was still going to be good enough to get included. I was going to show them that - well, y'know guys, maybe sometimes a person with an education is allowed to be a talented writer after all...

It was a petulant motivation from an immature place in my soul, and I'm not proud of it. It was the first time in my life I ever wrote anything purely with the goal of 'sticking it to the haters' - and I will make sure it's also the last. In the end I got one short story included in that anthology, while almost all of the other members had at least three. My work doesn't stand out as the shining beacon of correct writing style - in fact, it barely registers a ripple within the book as a whole. That's exactly as it should be. I left the group shortly after - and I doubt they were sorry to see me go. I was never going to fit in there - I just wish I'd had the maturity to see that earlier.

But it did teach me something important; writing isn't a giant battleground, where opposing sides flail their swords of technical skill and shields of style. There's room for everyone - and just because there's a ton of writers rampaging around the field, it doesn't mean they're all waiting to stove your head in with a mace so they can be 'the winner' and not you. So just write, and try to be the best writer you can be. Forget about being 'better than [insert random category of writers here.]'

Avoiding The Snake Pits on The Writer's Road

Writers are a bit like Indiana Jones; at random times in our lives, we choose to abandon our stuffy day-jobs and set out on perilous adventures in unexplored worlds, to hunt down and claim the golden thingamajig as our very own before some rival gets there first and grabs all the glory.

Well, alright - that's what's going on in our heads rather than our everyday lives, but... the adrenaline rush is the same. (Hey, there are people out there who put prosthetic pasties on their heads and speak Klingon for fun, so don't judge us, okay?) And, like Indy, we have to negotiate ingenious and deadly traps along the way. Writers' traps, designed to stop us reaching our goal and remove us from the movie before we even get a chance to have our name listed in the credits. Snake pits. And of course Indy hates snakes...

I've fallen into many of them in the years I've been a writer, and lots of my writer friends have too. In fact, if you haven't, you aint no Indy yet. And during that time, I've realised that half the battle of getting out of a Writer's Snake Pit is knowing you've fallen into one - because it isn't always obvious. Sometimes you can mistake it for a Hole in the Road of Destiny, a Sign that your work-in-progress/writing career just Isn't Meant To Be. Or sometimes it just doesn't feel like a bad hole to be in at all - heck, you could sit in here for a while quite happily while you carry on diddling about... But either way, you're trapped; treading water (or snakes)  instead of moving forwards.

I don't claim to have The Answers. If I did, I'd be doing this blog from my beachfront property in Hawaii, sipping on a strawberry daiquiri and wearing a tropical-flowered kaftan that doesn't care how much chocolate I've eaten. And I'm definitely not doing that right now. But I figured that, by listing snake pits I've become aware of, others who've fallen into them might be reassured to know they're not alone or going crazy. And hey - maybe we can swap hints on how to get out of them too.

1 - This One Aint Working - Oooh, Let's Try This One Instead!
In the case of novel-writing, I've spent years doing this. My cupboards, hard drives and data sticks are filled with so many draft one novels that never made it past chapter five I could probably fill the shelves of The Crappiest Library in the World with them. Maybe even if I had finished any of them, they would still have been monumentally shite (in fact, I deeply suspect that would be the case for just about all of them.) But at least I would have learned why.

By never finishing any novel I started, I never allowed myself to know where I failed with them. I also never allowed myself to experience writing a novel when it was hard work, or 'not fun' - or just plain felt like kicking my own poo into my own face. As soon it stopped being enjoyable, I dropped it like a hot brick and moved on to the next idea to excite me. It's only now, with The Renegades, that I'm finally learning the truth; writing novels aint fun all the time, and it's not meant to be. Like... pretty much anything worth doing well. It's like a relationship; you want it to be the best it can be? You gotta stick with it and work at it, even when the going gets tough.

Finish stuff. Even the crappy stuff. It's the only way to make the next stuff less crappy.

2 - Oh my god, this author's already written a story about [insert theme or subject here] - and it's brilliant! My story's going to seem like a sub-standard rip-off by comparison... I'll have to give up on it right now!
Yes, it's definitely true - there are story ideas that seem to have been popping up, over and over again, for eternity. And bandwagons that haven't so much been jumped on as are starting to buckle under the weight of people hanging off the sides and other people hanging on to those people. From lovelorn, non-murder-y vampires, to naive nice girls hooking up with kinky-but-damaged rich guys, from brave adventurers of different races banding together on a quest for the magical doodad, to a group of brave young kids with special powers fighting the ultimate big bad guy...

Here's the bad news: no story idea in the world is completely original. Somebody somewhere will have thought of it and written or told it already. Even the great classics, written by those we consider literary giants, used ideas that someone else had used before them. Many people have said that Star Wars is Lord of the Rings in space, and even that the Harry Potter Series is Lord of the Rings at boarding school. The world would be a poorer place if J.K Rowling and George Lucas had never written their works based on that assessment (although I won't get into a debate about the Star Wars prequels here, thanks very much...) The point is, there's still plenty of room for variations on classic storytelling themes. The difference is - you.

Even if your story treads a well-worn theme or idea, it can still be original - because you are original. And the way you choose to tell that story doesn't have to be anything like the way it's been told before. You can change up so many things; setting, era, worlds, characters... There's no limit to your imagination, so if anything does start to feel like a straight imitation of something already done at any point.... well, that's when you can stop and think "how can I tweak this to make it my own?"

Sure, there have been stories written that are terrible rip-offs of existing stories - but those are the ones that, in many ways, were trying to copy the originals. That's because there are people out there who believe writing a novel is like building a LEGO model; follow the step-by-step instructions, using exactly the same bricks in exactly the same order every single time and - ta-dah! There's your little car. Those people are not writers in the true sense. They are people who, above everything else, want to make money and have got it into their heads that applying the same tactics they would use for any other get-rich-quick scheme, like pyramid selling or 'shipping a mass-produced product,' will work for producing a novel as well. But y'know what? Even they will sell copies of their novels. There are people out there who will buy them and read them - and even love them - nonetheless.

So don't be overly afraid of 'borrowing.' After all, as a writer you are also a Word Artist. By all means take a template - just be prepared to cover it with your own crayons, paints and glues. Get messy!

3 - When people ask how my novel's coming along, they do it with 'That Look' on their face. They 'know' they're indulging me, being oh-so-kind to me by 'letting' me write this thing and 'allowing me to chase my dream.' But I can see they secretly believe I'm wasting my time and I'll never get anywhere as a writer. And they're probably right.
People who aren't writers don't 'get' how it feels to be one. To them, it's the same as the little kid who says they want to be an astronaut or the Prime Minister when they grow up; kind of cute while they're still little - as long as they eventually grow out of it and start thinking about what they really want to do. But most of us don't 'grow out of' wanting to be a writer. For us, it isn't like we just decided to pick the job we thought sounded the coolest until maturity and cynicism gives us a reality check - it's a need, an inbuilt passion that won't go away just because now we've got the right to vote and a mortgage. But, to non-writers, it's not a grown-up passion to have. And as such, there will always be this little part of them that sees you as that lovely person who still has that funny little childlike side... who just hasn't quite grown up yet...

That, my dears, is a fact of life. Even if you have proved yourself as someone with writing talent in the past. Until you are The Next Stephen King/J.K Rowling/George R.R. Martin, you will be regarded at best as nice but deluded, and at worst as arrogant and pretentious. And nothing you do can or will change that.

But... that doesn't mean you have to buy into that too. You want the truth? You probably were a slightly rubbish writer to begin with. There is a possibility you might... *deep breath*... actually-be-a-slightly-rubbish-writer-at-the-moment. But that's not a static status you're doomed to remain in forever - the more you do it, the better you'll get. Especially if doing it is what you love to do. Your writing is NEVER a waste of time or effort if that's what you want to do.

Smile politely at the disbelievers, the patronisers, the eye-rollers and the constipated grinners who give you that subtle feeling they think you should quit writing and do something more sensible instead. But don't let them crush your passion. You are the one in charge of your writing destiny, not them. They have no power at all over that. And if, by the time you're on your deathbed gasping your last gasp, it turns out they were 'right' all along, and you didn't get to be the published author you dreamed of being...

Well, so chuffin' what? At least you stayed true to yourself and never gave up on your passion. And you'll have had a much better life for it.

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An Experiment in Improving Creativity: The Results!

**Dun-dun-DURRRR!!!**

Yes, it's that time. Just over three weeks ago, as detailed in this previous blog post, I embarked on a self-hypnosis program designed to give my creativity a kick in the mojo, and I promised I would report back on my experience. This was in no way a promotional gig, nor was I getting any kind of kickback, favours or other form of backscratch-love for doing this; it was an experiment, pure and simple. And for that reason what you're about to read is a completely honest account of how successful (or not) that experiment has been.

As I stated previously, I have done hypnosis therapy before; I used it as a pain-relief method during labour when I had my son. It worked extremely well for that. However, I wasn't about to let that sway me in my assessment of this program, because a) it was for a completely different purpose and b) seven years have passed between the two, and both I and my brain have changed a lot during that time. This is why I've been extra cautious about providing a fair and balanced assessment. I'm well aware that my previous success with hypnosis might easily lead me into looking for more positives into this experiment than were actually there.

*Deep breath.* Not doing that. This is going to be 100% objective, clean slate stuff.

And so...

First off, let's start with the practicalities. In order for each session to be effective, you need to have between 35-45 minutes of your daily life all to yourself, alone, with no interruptions of any kind at all. People without children are the ones not laughing hysterically at this point  - and hell yeah, this was definitely Major Difficulty Number One for me. Weekdays during term-time were fine, but weekends and a perfectly-placed half-term holiday in the middle of the program did cause some headaches (yeah... well, that's why none of the jobs I've ever done in the past have had the word 'Planner' in the title, isn't it?) Fortunately on the Kindle the sessions can be adjusted, so that you can choose between ending them with a 'Wake,' 'Delayed Wake' or 'Sleep' setting. By setting it to the 'Sleep' session on those days when I was going to be shadowed all day by a rampaging seven-year-old, I could do my session at night, just before I went to bed. There's also a choice between 'Long Induction' and 'Short Induction,' which varies the length of the talky bit that sends you 'down' into the hypnosis session proper. After the first week I changed it briefly to the Short Induction, believing (particularly with my previous experience of hypnosis) that I no longer 'needed' the long one - but changed it back to the long one after only three days, because... well,  the short one just didn't feel as effective. Which brings me on to my next observation...

The days when it really felt like a session had 'worked' (i.e. that I really had 'gone under' and hit that deep-trance state) were the days where I felt tired prior to that session. I am a very poor sleeper; I cannot seem to remain asleep for more than two hours at a time. This means that, for years, I haven't slept through a whole night without waking up  - and I mean fully waking up, for about half an hour - at least twice before I have to get up for the day.

At weekends and during the half-term, when I could get away with sleeping in a bit (some days as late as 7am - woohoo!) I was obviously less tired. Those were the days when I felt I wasn't really absorbing all the positive messages; I was just dutifully listening to everything that was being said - and actually getting a bit bored as the weeks went by, because by then I'd heard the same words so many times already... 

However, on school days, where I was having to get up at ridiculous o'clock to get everything sorted in time and then hitting that Wall of Knackered halfway through the day... well, let me tell you, those hypnosis sessions kicked ass. Hell, regardless of whether or not my creativity was being enhanced - and even though I wasn't actually falling asleep during those sessions - they were ten times better than a quick nap on the sofa. When they finished I felt as good as if I'd slept all the way through the previous night (I think I can still remember what that feels like...) So, as a quick daytime energy-topper-upper for the sleep-deprived I can definitely recommend this program.

(Ironically though, when I switched the ending of the session to the 'Sleep' setting so I could play it at night, it had the opposite of the desired effect. I was wide awake when the session finished, and my positively-hypnotised brain had no inclination whatsoever to go to sleep for a good hour or so afterwards. Maybe that's just me, but after a night-time session I just felt... I don't know, is there such a thing as 'benevolently wired?')

But now we get to the meat of the experiment... has it done what it said on the tin? Has it 'improved my creativity?'

Well, in terms of making me more committed to writing... I've got to be honest here, it scores a 'meh.' I track my writing hours each week with an Excel spreadsheet (my personal version of 'clocking in') and I haven't noticed myself doing much in the way of 'overtime' since I embarked on this program. Still hitting the targets... but no sign of striving to exceed it, judging from my timesheet.

But... within those hours at my keyboard, my word count appears to have gone up. for Draft One of The Renegades, I was hitting 400-450 words per two-hour session. In my Draft Two Phase (when my Demon-ass Internal Editor started showing up) that had dropped to about 200. In this last week or so, my word count has consistently hovered around the 500-600 mark. And... I'm liking what's coming out this time around - more so than I have since starting on Draft Two. To the point where I'm looking at what I've been rewriting over the past week and thinking "Hmmm... looks like I'm going to have to do another rewrite of all the previous chapters just to get it up to the standard of this one now." (Notwithstanding, naturally, the next stage of rewrites that will come after Draft Two is completed.)

(Of course even saying all of that has given me the heebee-jeebees, and I am touching everything wood-based and clutching rabbit's feet even as I lay the words down. But... if these are permanent changes, that's gotta be good.)

So, to conclude, it seems to have made a difference - for the moment, at least. And I can't deny it, when you get to the point where you've slipped into that cozy, shut-the-whole-world-out state of trance-y meditation it is the best feeling, ever. Better than being wrapped in a warm blanket, drinking hot chocolate, in front of a crackling log fire, with the rain beating down outside. That good.

I shall certainly be using it again, as a top-up measure for when Novel Constipation strikes in the future (as I'm sure it will.) And I shall definitely be using it in place of a quick daytime nap on the sofa to avert those times when my lack of sleep becomes so cumulative I start responding to everything and everyone like Kramer from 'Seinfeld.'

I've Been A Terrible Writer - Which Is Good To Know

At some point in their life - many, many points, if I'm to speak from my own experience - all writers worry that they're maybe, actually... rubbish at this writing lark.

They look at the Stephen Kings, the J.K.Rowlings, the George R.R. Martins and cry "I am not any of them, therefore I must suck!" They look at their current work-in-progress, stalled halfway through that awkward middle zone, and fret that it's not so much Writers' Block as 'writer is a blockhead.' Or they get yet another rejection from a publisher/agent, and imagine them cackling and emailing snippets of the submission to colleagues for them take the piss out of it, before struggling to type out their 'thanks but no thanks' with a straight face.

This week, I discovered that reading your old stuff is a great antidote to those 'I will never become a good writer' blues.

Sounds like a no-brainer, I know. But the reasons it can work so well are twofold. First, it lets you know you were definitely more rubbish in the past. And second, you can see exactly where and how you were rubbish. Both of which means you are now less rubbish - so if you keep on doing it, you can only get less and less rubbish until you are - pretty darn good at this writing malarkey. There's hope! It's not impossible - you just might make it someday!

Reading through the half-dozen or so novels I started but never finished, still languishing in their WIP Folder of Death on my hard drive, it was very clear I made the same mistakes with them, over and over again. That was why they never got finished. These were classic writing flaws; the kind that make successful authors and writing gurus do that face like they've just had lemon juice rubbed in a paper cut. I wouldn't have seen those glaring errors back then. I probably thought I was doing great. But now I'm doing the same lemon-in-the-paper-cut face - which is no easy feat when you're trying to bang your head on your desk at the same time. How could I have thought this was the right way to do it? What an utter plank!

In order to elaborate - and hey, maybe give you a laugh and help you feel better about your own insecurities - let me give you some idea of my cringiest sins. Don't worry, I'll spare you the actual text itself, in favour of brief summaries that could be applied quite universally to just about all of my early attempts:

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Main Character Info-Dump!
 "Chapter One, first paragraph - right then, here's my main character. I'm now going to tell you everything about him; what he looks like, what he does for a living, a nice big chunk of background info about his childhood - ooh, and all his issues and insecurities as well. Hell, can't forget THAT! Hey wait - where are you going? No, come back - you NEED to know all this stuff before I can start telling you the actual story..!"
 I did this Every. Single. Time. In every half-finished novel from my past. You'd literally only just met my main character and there I was, giving you not so much an introduction as a case study from his psychotherapist. Readers don't want that. It feels like they've met the literary equivalent of The Nutter On The Bus (you know - that complete stranger who comes and sits next to you and within five minutes they've told you their entire life story, including that bit about their operation that meant they couldn't sit down properly for six weeks afterwards...) Most importantly - and it clearly took me a while to realise this - they don't need to know it all upfront. Get on with the bloody story, and drip the background stuff in quietly as events unfold.

I'm Going To Tell You Exactly How She Really, REALLY FEELS!
"She's upset! Really REALLY upset! I need you to be in no doubt about just how upset she is - how can I convey this? Goddamn it, I don't think there are enough adverbs in the English language to fully convey the depths of her upset-ness -  I've already run out, and I haven't even finished the paragraph!"
Ermmm... yeah. When it came to Big Emotional Scenes, I had this tendency to go huge. If you'd turned any of my early efforts into a movie, they'd probably look like one of those early talkies from the 'thirties, where the heroine would clasp her hand to her forehead and fling herself face-down on the bed to show she was unhappy - in case the audience didn't quite get it from her wailing "Aaarrrggghh, Rodrigo NOOOOOO!!" and bursting into tears. Lesson learned: you really can have too many adverbs. Way too many. In fact, you don't need them at all more often than you think.

How It Works 101
"Okay, if you're going to believe in this funky new techie thing I've invented for the purpose of this novel, you need to know EXACTLY how it works... Whaddya mean, 'you don't care?' This is SCIENCE FICTION, you Luddite! Now pay attention..."
A variation on the Main Character Info-Dump, this was a side-effect of working as a software technician for four years. In that line of work, if you came up with some new snippet of coding, software program or Way of Doing Stuff, you had to justify the hell out of it if you didn't want to endure the ridicule and scorn of your peers and superiors (especially if you were one of that rare and peculiar species, a Female.) And, for a long time, I got into a habit of thinking I had to do that for the pretend techie stuff in my novels as well. You don't - at least, not to that extent. You still need to do enough research to be sure what you've invented is at least plausible - because if you don't, there are certainly people out there who'll pick holes in it if it isn't (I've worked with some of them.) But you don't need to include the instruction manual in your novel.

Green Screen, Green Screen, Blah Blah Blah...
"Where are they? Well... it's a ROOM, isn't it? What kind of room? A - a ROOMY room! Aw jeez, bored now - can I do dialogue instead, please?"
For all my Baz Luhrmann-esque enthusiasm when it came to conveying character emotions, when it came to setting the scenes I barely even bothered to phone it in. Obviously you can go over-the-top when it comes to painting your scenic visuals - but it's fair to say I was under-the-bottom. It seemed to me like an unnecessary chore to offer any description of the venue in which my characters were acting their little socks off; I'd already said they were on a street, and everyone knows what a street looks like, don't they? Y'know.. roads, pavements, stuff...
Maybe I forgot that readers didn't have an admission ticket to the inside of my head, to watch the same brain-movie I was watching. As it was, all they were getting were the blank green-screens, while I was taking my full-on, writer's-privilege-CGI-experience completely for granted. I still find writing descriptions of my settings a bit of a chore. But now I take the time to do it anyway, because if I'm always the one getting the best view of the movie, it's only fair.

Thunderbirds Are Go!
"Okay... so now we're on the Adverb Diet, how else can I make my characters convey emotion? Nodding heads - yeah, that's a good one, especially when the character's about to answer a question with a 'yes.' Ooh - and head-shaking for 'no' - GENIUS!  And don't forget arm-waving and shrugging - whoops, I mean shrugging HIS SHOULDERS... and - oh look, if I pull this string his leg goes up and that makes him look anxious..!"
Yep - that was my compensatory strategy after identifying and attempting to cure my Adverb Overload Disorder. Hey, why make them sound bloody ridiculous when I can make them look bloody ridiculous instead? From thirties pulp movie to sixties puppet show; there's progress for you. I had a whole bunch of 'stock gestures' I would roll out for each specific emotion - over and over and over again.... In one of my novels, I used the phrase "he raked his hand through his hair" so many times I began to wonder if this was actually a story about mullet gardeners. It's not a bad phrase for describing character action - but after bingeing on it so indiscriminately in that one project it'll probably be a cold day in hell before I ever use it again. And if I'm honest... this is an affliction I'm still battling. I'm aware of it now, which is a good thing - but I'm still very much in the process of trying to cure myself. One day at a time, and all that.

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Betcha glad you never read any of my early works now, eh? (I know I am.)

I've still got a long way to go before I'd be comfortable actually saying, out loud, the words "I am a good writer." But after today, I'm totally happy to say "I'm not as rubbish a writer as I used to be." I have grown. I have improved. I haven't reached my destination yet - but at least I know it's worth carrying on up that highway.

I might go back to some of those old novels one day; with my new perspective, the basic ideas behind them could still work if I took the time to write the actual stories properly. I'm glad I looked at them again, and I'm glad I don't do those things I used to do anymore (or at least that I'm better at catching myself when I do.)

But most of all, I'm really glad I don't still believe those early works stood a chance of being published - as I'm pretty sure I must have done back then. Now that would be embarrassing....

Life: Too Short for Regrets, But Long Enough To Be A Writer

I had another birthday last week (and no, you're not getting a number out of me.) I'm reasonably sure I'm still only having the requisite one a year, but sometimes it feels like more; I know there's a sad part of my brain that's still clinging to the fantasy of being thirty, and reality is starting to seriously mess with that now.

I was a writer before I could actually write; by the time I was three I was apparently filling sheets of paper with rows of  meaningless squiggly lines and telling anyone who'd listen that I was "whiting a storwee." At the age of seven I made my first, proper book, with sheets of paper folded in half and stapled through the middle, that had not only a story with real, readable words in but pictures as well. I don't remember much about it, except that it was a shamelessly plagiarized hybrid of Louisa M.Alcott's 'Little Women' and whatever random Famous Five book I'd recently read (and yeah, it probably was as dreadful as it sounds.) Over the next few years I won some storywriting competitions and a playwriting competition twice in a row. It looked very much like writing was going to be My Thing when I grew up.

When I first read Stephen King's book 'On Writing,' it struck me that, even though I'm almost twenty years younger than him, I caught the writing bug at a much earlier age than he did. He's since done pretty darn well for himself, selling gazillions of novels all over the world and acquiring a devoted fanbase the size of a small planet. Whereas I... well, I won't compare my achievements to his, if it's all the same to you - I don't need that kind of kick in the self-esteem nuts, thanks.

Now I'm not begrudging Mr King one ounce of his success; it's very clear from his book that he worked his ass off to get where he's got, and everything he's achieved is down to putting in the graft and never giving up. But, aside from also being ridiculously talented with a healthy amount of self-belief, this is precisely why he's achieved everything he has and... I haven't.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not so arrogant as to think that's all it would take for me to be as successful and revered as him - I'm highly unlikely to reach those heights no matter how much graft I put in. But I do know that now I'd be further along the path to my own level of success if I'd followed his example. He applied bum to chair and churned out those words every single day - even when it was hard, even when it was the last thing he felt like doing - and never letting anything in his life stand in the way or distract him from his goal.

And I didn't. I let everything get in the way; work, relationships, mental dipshittery... you name it. I only wrote when I wanted to write, when I was 'in the mood' to write - when writing was an exciting, considerate lover that got my mojo revving and made me feel good. Which was nowhere near often enough. Writing when it's fun is easy; it's writing when it's hell on earth that sorts the Michelin-starred from the McDonalds Happy Meals. I wish I'd learned that some twenty years earlier.

And it became obvious to me this week, after speaking to several 'older' writer friends, that I'm not the only one feeling this way. All of us mourn our lost opportunities; so many wasted years, missed chances, if only if only, what have I done with my life..? And now, with the free-for-all that is digital self-publishing, it's hard not to look at all these self-pub authors half our age churning out books by the bucketload - and feel like hopeless slackers by comparison. We've already lost the race... and now maybe we're too old and knackered to ever shamble across that finish line?

It's all right for the likes of Edith Piaf, singing "non, je ne regrette rien" - at least she got a hit record out of it. For the rest of us though, it's hard not to count up all those 'wasted' years and think of ourselves as failing somehow. But we're forgetting something; during all those 'wasted' years we may not have been banging out literary masterpieces... but we were doing something equally valuable in the quest to become better writers...

We were living our lives. Filling them with the richness of experiences - of other people, places, professions, cultures, lifestyles - everything. All manner of things that can't be learned from a How-To book or any number of creative writing courses. And all things that add depth and meaning to whatever we choose to write now, when we've looked back over them and turned them around in our more mature minds and made new sense of them.

If you wanted to be an Olympic athlete or a glamour model... well yeah, those are career choices that have a limited age span. But writing isn't. Many of our best-loved authors didn't achieve success until they were well into their forties and fifties - and 'The Camomile Lawn' novelist Mary Wesley was 71 by the time she was first published. You're never 'too old' to be a writer! As long as you can still hold a pen, bash a keyboard or talk to someone else who can (Barbara Cartland dictated all her novels to her PA in the latter years of her career) you can still produce the goods. Time hasn't run out for you - time's only just beginning!

So, if you only started 'taking your writing seriously' at a later stage in your life, maybe there's a very good reason. Maybe you just needed to come to it when you were ready. And there's no shame in how long it takes to do that; some writers are minute steaks, others are pot roasts. Both are equally delicious - but only if they're cooked in the right way, for the right amount of time. Be proud to be a pot roast if that's what you are, because even the best minute steak in the world can never taste like you.