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Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Fear and Loathing

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

I had an idea for a new book today and, I have to admit, it scares the crap out of me. Not because I’d have a hard time writing it – it’d be easy compared to my first novel – but because I’d be putting so much into it, and taking HUGE artistic risks. The potential for failure – financial and critical – are massive, and I could end up looking like a complete amateur for even trying to tackle this project.

Yet it excites me.

I suspect that in every successful creative career, there’s a point where the artist took a risk. I took a slight risk self-publishing Make a Move, but I was reasonably confident I’d at least make my money back. It wasn’t a leap of faith. This… is something of a different magnitude.

I needed to capture this moment so I could look back at it later – either to recall this feeling of fear in taking a risk, or to loathe myself for being a loser and not jumping for it. It might not work out; there might be too many obstacles in the way, and it’s an idea I have to “sell” to at least two different parties, but I’m more interested in finding out how I respond to this situation as/if it develops. Details, hopefully, to follow.

And don’t worry, Make a Move fans: Freddy, Jay and Holly WILL be back soon. This project, by its nature, would have to be a very fast turnaround, and it could be the creative burn I need to get Make a Move 2 fired up.

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Judgement Day

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

There’s no turning back now; I just dropped a review copy of Make a Move in the post, and I can’t get it back. I knew this was a hurdle I’d have to get past at some point, but it’s still a nerve-wracking time. Creative people in the public domain always suggest against reading your reviews, but I need reviews to promote the book, so I need to know if I should draw attention to the comments, or pretend it didn’t happen. Regardless of the marketing and promotion options it gives me, I always knew I wanted to get the book reviewed by an impartial reader. I’ve received comments from people who don’t know me, and they’ve been unanimously fantastic, but they paid £12.99 for the book, so they have a vested interest in enjoying it; they want it not to suck to justify their outlay. With a reviewer, they’re just looking at your book and comparing it to the other books in its genre. If a reviewer likes it, it’s good.

I’d like to say I don’t need the validation, but I do. I can’t take myself out of the equation as I wrote the thing, so I need someone else to do that for me.

I’ve done everything I can to make sure the book receives a sympathetic review (apart from getting a friend to review it, which is ultimately pointless). I chose a local publication with a readership that sits squarely in my target demographic, and I queried the literary editor without sending in the book, who is now keen to review it himself after reading the blurb I sent. So far, it all looks good, but I’m not making any assumptions; I need this review to be objective, which means no safety net.

I’ll post a link to the review (if it’s also in the online edition of the paper) once it’s out.

Fingers crossed…

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Adverbs are for Children

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

It’s a curious coincidence that somebody sent me this link today, as I’ve been planning a post on writing tips for a while now. The problem is, I’m not a big fan of writing tips, as writing is such a personal endeavour, I think it’s incredibly pompous to think that what works for you has value for others. Also, people love to give advice whether there’s any worth to their ideas or not; the joy, for them, is in the giving.

So, this post isn’t writing advice; it’s just some changes I made to my writing and life styles that got me through Make a Move, and that are on my mind as I plan book two. Maybe there’s something in here that will inspire you to make your own changes.

The List

  • Don’t plan in too much detail. If you already know every last plot detail of a book, there’s nothing left for you, as the author, to discover. If the writing of a book isn’t filled with delights and surprises, it’s just work, and most day jobs pay better.
  • Make it as easy as possible to write. For me, this meant buying a new battery for my laptop and taking it with me everywhere. A lot of people create a sanctuary of creativity in which to work – a haven of peace and inspiration. If you need that to write, what are you doing when you’re not in it?
  • Stop watching tv. Okay – this was one bit of advice I did take on board from Stephen King (in his book, On Writing), but I added my own twist. I like tv – I think Make a Move would make a great tv show, so I’m not going to dismiss it, either as an art form or a source of inspiration. What I did instead was to break my watching habits so I watch a show in my own time, rather than when it’s on. I have Sky+ for that, but there are many ways to “time-shift” your viewing (legally…): HD/DVD recorders, catch-up tv services, hell – even a VCR. The trick is to get out of that mentality that tells you “it’s 9pm, time for show X”; that hard stop is like an incoming truck ready to crush your productivity. And try to limit yourself to having one or two shows on the go at a time unless you’re working to a 30-hour day.
  • Create demand. The first book you write has nobody waiting on it, so the only pressure to complete it comes from within. If you can, deliver it to your first readers in stages, so that their expectation for subsequent parts is driving you. Make a Move is written in six episodes, so it’s perfect for this, but any book can be broken up during the writing. Those smaller project goals make it easier to keep going too.
  • Write something new. Okay – this is a contentious one, but it applies to me, and that’s what this list is about. If you’re writing your own take on a story that’s already in print, all you’re doing is walking in someone else’s footprints, and chances are, their story was pretty good (or why else did you read it) so you’re setting the bar even higher than it needs to be. My biggest issue with this approach is that I feel like I’m copying/rehashing/riding coat-tails (choose a term based on which is least offensive to you), and I can’t think of anything more likely to sap energy and creativity. If you think you’re in familiar territory, make it REALLY different. Play with textures of writing, with readers’ expectations. Break the rules. And if you’re convinced that you can’t get away from that previous work, ask yourself if there’s even a need for your book. Maybe you should move onto the next idea instead.

Like I said, this isn’t advice; it’s just a summary of the thought processes that got me where I needed to be, but like I said above, people love to give advice, so I’m going to give in to temptation and share one cast-iron writing tip:

Adverbs are for children.

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Going Non-linear

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

There’s an established process to take you from writing a book to it reaching a reader’s hands, and it goes like this: submit to an agent > agent pitches book to publisher > publisher buys, prints and distributes the book. There’s more to it than that, obviously, but that’s the bare bones (and I’m ignoring the option of bypassing the agent step as although there’s a chance of getting a deal by going direct to a publisher, 0.0001% is zero in my book). From the moment you step outside of your story-in-progress to research your potential markets and study the process, you’re conditioned to believe that this is the only route to success (not your definition of success, mind you, but everyone else’s) and that failing to make it through this process is failure.

Fair enough. Money and celebrity – or lack of – seem to be the benchmarks for success in modern culture, so let’s assume the masses know something I don’t.

So what if you can’t make it through that process, and you’re stuck without an agent? Would you keep trying for a year? Of course. How about 10 years? Maybe. How about your whole life? What if the inability to get a deal on your first book is mentally holding you back from writing your second? Would you blow your entire career waiting for someone to give you a chance?

Or would you try something else?

The Past

I submitted Make a Move to 5 agents and publishers. These were people/companies who’d expressed a taste for the kind of work my book vaguely falls into, so I thought they’d be worth a try. As I’ve said before, Make a Move is a hard sell, and I targeted people I thought would give it more than the cursory look it needs to understand why it exists. I got stock rejections from all but one of them. I was ok with that, as I’d prepared myself for that rejection, but I admit I was disappointed. A bit.

About that time, people were arriving in my life who helped me break out of that linear mindset, and stimulated me to look at other options. Readjust my perspective. Break out of the box. I recalibrated my definition of success and what my goals were in getting Make a Move out. I looked at the money in my bank account, decided that having more of it wasn’t going to make me any happier, and thought hard about what I needed from my writing. I needed connections. Ideas. Human interaction. Life.

And all of those things were there for the taking, without needing a single nod of approval from anyone in “the process”.

It’s been two months since I released Make a Move, and in that time I’ve met more cool people than I have in the previous two years. I’ve created relationships. I’ve given people ideas. I’ve changed.

The Present

I received some comments today that implied that I’m nothing more than a vanity publisher, and that my book, by definition, must bite. It’s not the first time. What was scary to witness though, was that the negativity was aimed at myself, and another writer, who have both put out work online for free download, and who are both “out there”, and that it originated from a number of unpublished, unrepresented, unfinished writers. It’s the internet, and we all know the joke about arguing on the internet, so I left it, withdrew with my honour intact, and thought about what I’d learned. And what I learned is this:

People need the validation the system gives them, as they’re too scared to say “my work is good enough to sell”. They cling to that system, even when it steals their productive years from them. Sure, the system keeps mediocre or even terrible books off the shelves, but there are more good writers than there are publishing slots, so good writers – good people – are going to be left behind.

The Future

I’m not turning my back on the system – I’d love to land a deal with a reputable publisher who could get me into the big retailers – but I’m not waiting around either. I’ll send some more submissions once I have time, but I know that establishing a readership is probably the only way I’ll find someone willing to give Make a Move a read with a view to taking it on. A lot of people dedicated to the process would call that arrogant; I call it self-aware. A lot of people would say I’ve given up; I say I’ve opened myself up to possibilities.

I’ve been thinking for some time that I’m too tuned-in to the internet and the ideas and opinions of its denizens, and today confirmed that. I’ve found a few good people online whose opinions I know I can trust, but aside from them, I’m going to tune out the noise . Take a step back and focus. Enjoy this new clarity.

I’m going to go non-linear for a while.

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Scrivener: The Only Writing Advice You Need

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Disclaimer: I’m in no way connected with the developer of Scrivener, and I don’t benefit financially from writing about it.

So why promote it?

Because it’s that good. Writing with Scrivener is the one piece of advice I’d give any writer looking to be more productive, experimental and successful. I wrote the first draft of Make a Move in Microsoft Word, which was fine, but Episode 6 came out all wrong and needed a thorough rewrite.  I’d seen Scrivener, and decided to try it out to see if it would make the rewrite easier. I imported my Word doc, sliced the scenes up into separate files, then moved them around to fix the structure, making notes on each scene that needed fixing in more detail. I was impressed with how easy editing was in the application, so I bought a license. As I used it more, the further the application faded into the background, just letting me research, plot, write and edit as I wanted without any intrusive, misjudged design decisions interrupting my flow.

There’s one problem with Scrivener: it’s Mac-only, which means I need to write the following section to clear a couple of things up.

MacTruths

Disclaimer number 2: I like Macs, and I’m writing this on one, but I don’t hate Windows, and only mildly dislike Linux. I installed Windows 7 on my Mac for some gaming, and I like it a lot. This part isn’t about why you should switch to Mac, it’s about the realities of switching to Mac for Scrivener.

Apple computers are expensive. If you don’t have the best part of a grand (sterling) to spend on a computer, you’re not going to be buying a new Mac. But this is the buy-in price, not the total cost of ownership (TCO), and that’s what matters to me. If you buy a £500 Windows laptop, after four years it will be completely outdated and be worth nothing on the second-hand market. If you buy a base-spec Macbook (just over £800 at time of writing) after four years it will be worth around £200-300 and will sell very easily, so at a push, the TCO of the Mac is £100 more than the Windows laptop, or the same if it’s in great condition and you have a keen buyer. I’m not going to talk about bundled software, pre-installed adware, viruses, build quality or image as, like Scrivener, this is just about writing.

Regardless of TCO, that buy-in price – even on the entry-level machines – is a lot of money, but that second-hand Mac market I mentioned works both ways. You could pick up an Intel-based Macbook for a couple of hundred pounds and it would run Scrivener, as well as Office for Mac, iTunes, an email client and a web browser with speed to spare. Go back further, and as Scrivener still runs on the old PowerPC-based systems (PowerBook/iBook), you can get even more of a bargain. As long as you can install Mac OS 10.4 Tiger on it, it’ll run Scrivener.

Back to the App

So what is it that makes Scrivener so good? In short, it’s everything you need to write.

  • Any research/bookmarking applications you use can go, as Scrivener lets you drag almost any digital content into the interface to file away for reference; videos, web pages, text snippets, images, music files – they’re all supported and can be viewed/played right in the application. And it doesn’t matter how much information you drag into the application, as Scrivener uses Mac OS’s Spotlight search to let you find anything within a couple of seconds. Imagine taking your cork board and filing systems with you wherever you go, but actually being able to find things too! This is actually my favourite thing about Scrivener: as all of your research is portable, you’re not tied to that restrictive concept of your “writing space”, so you’re free to write when and where the mood takes you.
  • Scrivener lets you outline in a number of ways, but regardless of your method, nothing you write is lost. Add notes to a scene in the inspector, separate from the body text of the scene file, and it can be used later to generate the skeleton of a synopsis, to mark up editing ideas, or to keep a to-do list for that section. And again, this meta-text is searchable.
  • Scrivener supports experimentation. If you want to rewrite a scene but don’t know exactly how to do it, just take a snapshot and go for it, knowing you can roll it back if it goes wrong. And if you’re not sure where a scene should sit in the narrative, just switch to the virtual cork board and play around. Drag scenes into whatever order your feel like trying. Go nuts.
  • Scrivener doesn’t dictate style or structure in any way. They’re your ideas and words, and Scrivener respects that.
  • Scrivener is tidy. Everything is stored in a single database file, so there are no folders full of drafts and ideas to keep track of. Okay, so I still have folders elsewhere, but it’s a habit I’m determined to kill off. That single database file is so easy to backup too – either copy it manually, or zip it up and backup to another location from within the application. I have a local backup running under Time Machine and I also backup a zip every couple of days to an online directory. Scrivener makes it easy to keep my work safe.
  • It’s cheap. Not as in rushed or basic, but as in around $40 (at time of writing).

So what else does it do?

  • Fullscreen Mode – black out the rest of your desktop, and the application, and just write in plain text without distractions
  • Google search within the editor, and Dictionary/Thesaurus and Spelling/Proofreading tools provided by Mac OS – with an internet connection, you have almost all of the research tools you need.
  • Cross-file linking – allows you to link to other scenes or research information using a hyperlink, building navigation into your manuscript to aid in cross-checking. All the links are removed when you export the final draft, of course.
  • Spotlight search EVERYWHERE – if you want to see every occurrence of a character’s name, or you know someone said something, but not when, you can search for it and see the results almost instantly. There’s no need to step through a document again and again using Find Next.
  • Scriptwriting support – full auto-formatting support for scriptwriters. I never thought I’d use it when I bought it, but it was in there for when I found I needed it. Like I said above, Scrivener just replaces the need for other applications.

Of course there are some weaknesses in the application. I understand that Final Draft is more full-featured as a scriptwriting tool, and Scrivener lacks the formatting options of a standalone word-processor such as Microsoft Word or even Apple’s Pages, but this is about writing and story and ideas and pure, uninhibited creativity, not about industry standards and anchored frames. It’s easy to get caught up in the hunt for new software that will make you write better/faster/stronger – I’ve seen it happen and felt the pull of new software demos, but there really is only one 30-day trial I’d recommend, and it’s at www.literatureandlatte.com, along with an active forum and lots of tips, tricks and tutorials.

So, in summary, if you want writing advice, get Scrivener.

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The Business of Creativity

Friday, January 1st, 2010

After a long Christmas break, I’m starting to think about my next steps in marketing the book. A large order from one of my retailers has forced me to look at my supplies and printing plans earlier than I’d intended, and that situation has a number of side-issues tied to it:

  • I need to maintain a stock of books for the fulfilment of web and direct sales.
  • I need to maintain a separate stock of books for potential retailers, as the last thing I want to happen is for a new retailer to place an order and not be able to satisfy it.
  • One goal for the next few weeks is to submit review copies to local publications; I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t think I was going to generate sales off the back of the reviews (thinking positive…) so I have to keep a stock of books for any sales spikes reviews cause.
  • I’m going to contact a larger retailer who may require ISBN barcodes printing on the books. A block of ISBNs takes at least two weeks to order, then I need to amend the artwork before resubmitting to the printers. I really want to avoid using ISBNs, but this is potentially a big retailer.

It all comes down to timing – making decisions and taking steps in the right order to make sure new print runs arrive just in time to avoid both running out of stock and having to sit on a new shipment (and invoice) for longer than necessary.

That second part is the main problem I’m facing as try to plan this out; even though the first print run has broken even, I’m not significantly into profit yet, certainly not to the extent that I can fund a second printing from the profits from the first. On paper, I’m in the same position I was when I started: I have to pay for the books up front. The issue this time is I don’t have a large number of pre-orders to satisfy, so I’m ordering the full print run with no guaranteed sales. It’s more risk this time, but I knew this point would come, and I’m committed to seeing it through.

So that’s where I am, and the tasks ahead of me. I know I can work through this transition by focussing on one thing at a time within the framework of the broader plan, and by working efficiently, but that doesn’t solve the other problem I’m facing: I need to start the next book.

I know that by deciding to self-publish, I’d always be fighting to balance the business with the creative process of writing, and I hope that the successes (or failures) of one endeavour will inspire the other, but it could go horribly wrong. I guess that’s why, traditionally, authors have a marketing team working for them while they write. Whether I ever land a book deal or not, it seems those days are over, so my only choice is keep working, keep generating ideas in both areas, and keep having fun.

2010 is going to be a busy year.

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Shorter Stories

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Stories have to be the length they have to be. Some ideas are so pure, they suit the short story form perfectly – just a high concept, in-and-out narrative that is stronger for taking up less space. Other ideas have reach, grandeur, longevity, and when coupled with a couple more like-minded concepts, form the backbone of a novel-length tale. You can always tell when a writer has tried to stretch a short story into a novel, or has an idea crammed into a short that really needs more room to breathe and evolve. Ideas are born with a genetic word count, and have an inherent resistance to modification.

For the sake of discussion, let’s ignore novellas. They’re a marketing ploy to sell long short stories and short novels.

When I was outlining Make a Move, the ideas I felt drawn to write about weren’t “novel” ideas. They didn’t have the substance to carry a full-length book. Thing is, they weren’t “short-story” ideas either, as they relied on character background to work. I’d been messing with the idea of writing a book formatted as a sit-com (a British sit-com with 6 episodes, rather than the 22-25-episode US variety) for a while, but couldn’t see the point without a good story to justify it, and it was just sat in my back head waiting for a reason to use it. I think I’d just finished rewatching Spaced on DVD and was craving more. So there I was, with a collection of serial, but short, story ideas and an idea for a multi-part framework…

I think most people see the decision to write Make a Move in 6 parts as a gimmick, and I admit it was for a while. I referred to it as a lit-com, but that kind of marketing speak makes me feel dirty, and not in a good way, so I stopped. Once I started to write, though, I realised I’d hit on something that was going to inspire me in new and scary ways. I knew it was working for me when, despite not aiming at a word count, all of the episodes were dropping at 17-18,000 words. Episode 6 ran to 20,000 in the first draft, but I had to rewrite it extensively to make it not suck; the unsucky version is 18,000 words. That was the story (stories) dictating what length it wanted to be.

There was a side-effect to this structure that I became aware of early on, and I exploited it in every way. All of the writing books/websites tell you that characters have to have a reason to exist. They have to advance the plot, and must have detailed, convincing motivations in order to come alive. Fair enough. But what about all of those characters that are just cool, or fun, or scary, or sexy? Should they not exist just because they have no lofty goals? I have lots of characters like that; they turn up, do their thing, and then leave. Many writers would condemn that as frivolous, but my readers don’t, as they know that, due to the episodic nature of the book, there’s more coming, and my core characters will guide them along the way. I read somewhere (I forget where) that in writing a book, a writer establishes a contract with the reader, and they have to satisfy the terms of that contract or the reader will feel cheated. Make a Move comes with a contract too, but it’s not a pro forma deal; I changed the terms. I think my readers know that by the end of page one.

So the point of this post? A call to those writers wrestling with ideas that just won’t fit into the current accepted templates. The concept of the novel is in flux right now – some might say it’s in jeopardy – and it’s the perfect time to experiment. If eBooks get a foothold (a real foothold, not the toe poke the evangelists are currently creaming over) all manufacturing limitations will be removed, and there’ll be a market, and a platform, for stories of all length. I love short books – 100-150 pages – but they don’t cost half as much to print and bind as a 300-page novel, so they’re bad value, and I need to really like an idea before I’ll buy. Maybe it’s time for those diminutive ideas and marginalised characters to emerge. Make a Move and the (cringe) lit-com is just one idea (actually, it’s 15 ideas, but let’s not talk about that headache in this context) and it came to me before the Kindle was first hinted at; now, all boundaries are flexible, and all bets are off.

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Paris, Why?

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

I believe I found my voice in the writing that followed the discovery of my muse: Paris. I know that for most people, a muse is a person, but people only have one story, while Paris has near-infinite tales. It doesn’t matter where you walk (and you always have to walk to find the stories) you’ll see people interacting, communicating, creating drama. Once you get on the Parisian wavelength, it’s a beautiful experience in which to immerse yourself, but it’s not just the natives: the tourists are as much part of the fabric of the city.

I know there are probably other cities with a comparably rich vein of narrative, but I’ve not been to them. English cities are populated with people getting from A to B as quickly, and with as little interaction, as possible. Rome felt equally focussed. Florence’s charms are hidden in its galleries. New York is like being in a film with one main plotline. Boston is refined, but too small. What happens in Vegas is mostly orchestrated. Budapest has stories, but Hungarian is such a complicated language, I haven’t a clue what they’re about. I hear that Berlin has character and excitement to spare, but I’ve yet to visit, and it’s already too late for me: Paris is my mistress.

Two months before releasing Make a Move, I went back to Paris for a few days to build some energy, take photos for the cover art and do research for the follow-up to Make a Move, provisionally subtitled “Season Two”. Just me, my camera and a couple of changes of underwear. So much of Make a Move is drawn from my observations on the streets of Paris, I have to be there to get ideas – to get the feel for the stories. Google Street View is not enough. I found so many stories this time, my mind was buzzing with ideas for the sequel while I rode the train back to Charles de Gaulle (Roissy) airport. I captured a lot of them on camera (I was practising being less “reserved” in my street photography) and I’m going to share some on here, so you can get a feel for where Make a Move comes from.

This first story is pretty obvious, but it’s the incongruity that piqued my interest:

You see this sight in Vegas all of the time: newlywed brides, with or without grooms, being photographed in front of whatever photogenic background is available, but at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe? The photographer in the picture has a pretty standard wedding setup – crop-sensor DSLR with a portrait-length lens, assistant with a similar spare camera – and there were no other helpers with additional lights or reflectors, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t staged. I was there to try out a new photographic technique (which kind of worked…) and it took a lot of work just to fight through the crowds in the underpass to get into the centre of the Place de l’Etoile. How this bride managed it while remaining fresh-looking is beyond me. I’ve also no idea why she (they?) chose this location to take pictures, but therein lies the story. Maybe they wanted to capture the softness of the bride’s dress against the rigid lines of the arch, or to juxtapose her serenity with the swirling traffic. Maybe they just wanted a guy in shorts and fluorescent vest in the background, and this was the only spot in Paris they were guaranteed to find one.

I don’t know – maybe I’ll use it in a book, maybe I won’t. Either way, it made me smile.

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Posted in Paris, Photography, Travel, Writing | 2 Comments »