Novel Thinking

Are we there yet?

2012-02-08T16:34:00.000Z

...or why you need a professional editor. At the end of last year, I almost published the opus magnus online, but a tiny inner voice told me to go for another review before I did it. I asked Nicola Morgan if I could book her manuscript appraisal service, through her Pen2Publication service.

I’m glad I did. The first thing that matters is to have someone who is unfamiliar with your work, and can view it with impartiality. Secondly, at some point your work must be assessed according to industry standards, otherwise you’ll never escape the slush pile. In any case, once you are lucky enough to have your very own editor, assigned by your publisher, it doesn’t mean the task gets any easier.

Nicola identified problems of structure, logic, and continuity that I had handled badly or not seen at all. A relatively inexperienced writer may not have the editing skills to spot these things, and only persistent practice improves those skills; it’s very hard for the writer to switch into editor mode. So much of this stuff is subjective, but the golden rule seems to be, if it jars with a reader who happens to be friend/editor/agent/publisher, it’s likely it will jar with the target audience.

Here’s the bad news. She said I have a good story with a lot of promise but the elements are in the wrong order. That means doing a big chunk of dismantling and moving things around. Two of the voices don’t work - which I think I knew, deep down - and one character behaves inconsistently. Crumbs, I hadn’t meant to give her a split personality!

The good news is that she thinks it can be improved and she has given me specific guidance on how to tackle the major faults. Of course, the best news of all is that by holding back, I haven’t put it out there, on the eSlush pile, to languish and gather space dust.

Remote Control

2012-02-06T18:28:00.000Z

This post is apt after my last one about wireless technology. I am astounded at what companies can now do, remotely. Recently I needed to resolve a security issue and in the last few days, I had trouble installing a wireless printer. You know the score, you get onto their support website, and you go round the houses looking for solutions. You try everything and in the end, you have to contact support, and they send in the eCavalry, courtesy of Citrix.

Citrix are well known at retail for GoToMyPC and they provide these fantastic industry solutions too. Using a really neat application called GoToAssist, the support engineer takes over your screen and fixes your problem. I refer to McAfee and Dell, both of whom I’ve called upon for help. A huge bunch of thanks to Hari at McAfee Support and today to Shrikanth Nayak at Dell Support, who installed my wireless printer. It took a while and we had a lovely chat about books, eBooks, reading and all sorts. Shrikanth is in Bangalore and I’m in the UK. I'd like to say well done McAfee and Dell for installing this level of support. Of course it makes it a lot easier for the consumer (me) and it makes sense commercially because your stuff is more accessible if you can extend the boundaries to include the lesser-tecchy-enabled user.

I must stress, I call on this service as a very last resort. It's the first time I've used online support with Dell. It's important that consumers value this facility and use it appropriately. Even though, Shrikanth told me, he’s doing this support stuff all the time, even he marvels at this remote comms capability. He said he loves chatting to people all over the world. It’s amazing who you meet in the cloud.

Taking the fiction out of sci-fi

2012-02-01T06:19:00.000Z

A new mathematical algorithm applied to signal processing might soon make the technology in our lives bigger and faster than ever. Engineers use a branch of mathematics called Fourier Transform, devised by French mathematician, Joseph Fourier, to manipulate the waveforms of signals that enable us to do all the stuff we like doing on our mobile gadgets.

As Gary Mitchell and Bill on the BBC tech programme, “Click,” explain, engineers use Fourier Transform “in the digital sphere to combine a signal into one stream of bits and separate it at the other end, or unpack a compressed file into smaller components.” They ask Brian Eno to demonstrate how Fourier Transform works in music files. Now a team at MIT has devised an algorithm to apply to certain forms of compressed signals, that they call “sparse,” to process them ten thousand times faster.

A key point is that they can do this on existing hardware, but speed things up to achieve more efficient processing power and longer battery life. The Click presenter says, “forget Moore’s Law, this is a better way to do it.” Limited battery life has long been one of the intractable constraints of tech development.

Watch the space, folks. I think this advance will be significant for more than just mobile phone signals, music and photos. It is an enormous leap forward and technology is about to get more awesome than we can possibly imagine. What a great time to be a writer of science fiction.

(If you listen to this piece on BBCiPlayer, it is the last one, towards the end of the stream.)

Care for a piece of fudge, anyone?

2012-01-29T11:18:00.000Z

It’s time for a rant. Good grief, I need one but you may have noticed that recently, I haven’t been doing so many of them. They’re bad for my health, they upset me, and they detract me from bringing my novel to publication, which is almost as big a task as writing it. Besides, any blogger has to be careful what they say.

Paranoid? Absolutely, it’s the only way to be in today’s political climate; let the people with deep pockets dish out the nitty gritty. However, The Andrew Marr Show was spot on this morning and Helena Kennedy summed up the state we’re in admirably, and I’m not going to repeat her summation on here; you can find it on iPlayer.

Funnily enough, it isn’t Stephen Hester’s bonus that has upset me, (well it has, but other things have upset me more) it’s the referendum for the independence of Scotland. I’m upset for purely personal reasons. I’m one-quarter Scottish and the family anecdotes of our Scottish side, are wonderful stories. Our family name is Ross, we hail from Inverness, and we have our own tartan. The Acts of Union (1706/7) were passed for good reason. You can research the history yourself, but as I see things from the current media debate, enormous pieces of fudge are being handed out to the Scottish electorate. The separatists want monarchical union (whatever that is) but they don’t want fiscal union. They want the pound but they don’t want, oh goodness knows what...this but not that, that but not this. I hope with all my heart that the Scottish people decide that a breakaway is A Bad Idea.

More...

On the subject of Mr Hester’s bonus, I notice the Parliamentary opposition has taken a particularly high moral tone on this one, and I would point out to them that since they were the ones who handed round this box of fudge in the first place, perhaps their moral mountain is a little shaky.

I progress from being upset to being annoyed. Have you heard this one? ‘Everyone has a business inside them.’ Actually, no they don’t, in my opinion. This idea was born in the Thatcher years and somebody has revived it. The majority of the population are working people, whether in a profession or some other form of specialisation, manual work, clerical work, etc, etc. Most people are Extremely Good At One Particular Thing. Pick any occupation and you will find examples of individuals who excel in it, having trained for many years to do so. If we have a mass exodus of people away from doing what they excel at, to running some sort of business, we will impoverish society or possibly even destroy it. Okay, some people could go self-employed, I grant you, but during my lifetime, I have watched dozens of family, friends, and acquaintances screw up their businesses, usually aided and abetted by some maverick bank manager, who would pull the plug at a crucial growth stage. Who will teach your children if all the teachers are off touting for business during the day and doing their accounts at night? It’s another big pile of fudge and a stupid idea.

Shall I progress from annoyed to steaming mad? No, this post is already too long...oh, go on then, quickly. This one came up briefly on The AM Show, too: The silent phone calls and unsolicited text messages from banks, financial institutions, and ambulance chasers. Don’t get me started.

We should give up the fudge anyway, there’s no nutrition in it and it, too, is bad for our health. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to my characters. I’m working on illustrations of them and they will not tolerate one crumb of fudge in the execution of the artwork.

The Premise

2012-01-23T19:04:00.001Z

The premise. I’ve happened upon an extremely interesting book, for writers, that is. The book is HowTo Write A Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey. (To be honest, Amazon found it for me. The customer management software is really too efficient these days, and ultimately it could have a negative impact on the human initiative for doing research, but that’s another post.)

Anyway, let’s put this one down to serendipity and here’s why.

I’ve been struggling - or perhaps I should say, wallowing – in the plot for book two. It all got a bit muddy. There were shallow bits and deep bits but I had no clear chart of how the bottom looked under the waters, not good for a writer planning a novel, and I sort of knew where my boat would end up, but...

I had a clear idea of character motivation (on the conscious level) and conflict, and the domains in which the battles would be fought, but it all lacked something. In his book, Frey explains the purpose of The Premise more clearly than any other ‘how to’ that I’ve read.

What is The Premise? It’s the reason why you are bothering to do it at all. At school, the English teacher would have said to you, “Decide what your story is going to be about.” This sounds horribly trite and obvious, but I am amazed at how a fundamental point such as this has become buried under thousands of words of the finer points of fiction writing, in the march of the ‘How To’ books.

If you were writing a nonfiction book, your proposition would be, for example: “This book describes the benefits of increasing the percentage of vegetables in a human diet (and shows you how to do it, where to buy them and gives you the recipes).”

If you were a scientist, your premise would be the hypothesis you wish to test: “An experiment to test whether a higher percentage of vegetable matter in the human diet is beneficial to human health.”

It may surprise you, the fiction writer, (it did me), to think you need a premise upon which to base your novel. After all, you’re making it up, right? It’s fiction; who needs to prove a premise? Actually you do, it’s only that you are making up hypothetical scenes to illustrate how your premise could become reality. Your characters, storyline, motivations etc are all fiction, but your story must prove your premise, if you see what I mean. You need to demonstrate how your premise might work in the real world.

Apparently, agents ASK for it? They do? I never knew that.

Here’s an example of a premise (not the one for my second novel). A little girl, who is unappreciative of what her cash-strapped parents do for her, discovers that there are grown-ups who are truly evil towards children, and she learns to be grateful for her own loving parents. Sound familiar? It’s Coraline by Neil Gaiman (I love that story). You may have received a different message, but I got that as the core premise.

Oh gosh, this was such a light-bulb moment for me; I just wish I’d found it expressed clearly like this, before, so clearly that I tripped over it and bashed my nose. I’m pleased to say I now have a crystal-clear premise upon which to hang the plot of my second novel, and the fuzzy edges have gone. It’s going to be a darn sight easier moving along this reference than the way I was working before.

I'm back

2012-01-23T11:11:00.001Z

I’m back, one week before schedule. It’s a good sign, I think, that I want to come back early. I’ve had a ‘retreat’ from the web. I have indulged in only minimal activity on the web since mid December, and I’ve lived pretty much only in the physical world.

It’s an interesting twist on an old concept. In prehistoric (pre-internet times) going on retreat meant to withdraw from the physical world. It struck me how the retreat from the web into my own private physical world gave me a similar feeling of isolation (in a good way).

2012 feels exciting to me. I have a list of projects and need to get started on them. The first one, to despatch the manuscript for a critique, is underway. I'm also working on the plot for the second book.

I have a mountain of reading to get through, and as much as I read, the bigger it gets.

It also surprised me that I didn’t actually miss the web as much as I thought I would, probably because I still had to manage my email account, and I did stay on the forum, so it wasn’t a full withdrawal. The apps I missed most were twitter and my blog feeds. Oh well, normal service has been resumed (as they say)...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-19T14:05:00.001Z

A Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year and Happy Holidays (if you're across the pond) to everybody out there, including my friends, fellow writers and acquaintances. May all your wishes for publication come true, all your agents be successful, and all your books sell well (although statistically that is unlikely, dreams are still free as far as I know).

Spare a thought too, for the people who dread Christmas, the homeless, the poor and penniless and the lonely. The media and the big machinery of commerce and business broadcast the message of "The Family Christmas" but this is increasingly a myth as the number of disenfranchised people grows. Christmas for many people can be grim and their lives would be better off without it.

This blog will be closed until 1st February 2012. I will be back in the New Year with some exciting plans and I look forward to seeing you all then. Enjoy the holiday.

The Power Of Dramatisation

2011-12-18T10:45:00.000Z

I also caught this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Gargantua and Pantagruel and I laughed. I enjoyed this so much. I missed the beginning and I didn't know what I was listening to, so I checked it out this morning. Lavinia Murray is clearly brilliant.

I did French at A Level at school but Rabelais was not on that syllabus, so I'll have to read him for myself; I'm captivated. I read Camus (La Peste), Jean Anouilh (Becket) and I think we did Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant. Still, you can't read everything (I have tried, believe me), although you can attempt to catch up. What struck me was how modern Lavinia Murray's dramatisation sounded, and how relevant is the satire to today's society.

I have recently become interested in dramatisation for radio (the power of words again, because there are no visuals; that's what appeals to me). I should like to learn how to do it.

In addition to the genius of the adaptation, the acting made the production sparkle. The whole thing is wonderful. The voices of the giants were luscious but it was the voice of the sun which really cracked me up.

The Power Of Words

2011-12-18T10:22:00.002Z

I simply have to bring this to your attention, some thoughtful and inspired ideas about the power of words, based on the theme of a book by Liz Gray, on Something Understood, BBC Radio 4. I have posted the link to the programme page only, because the links only stay up there for a limited time.

It's easy to lose your way, as a writer, and to be overwhelmed by the negatives dumped on you like a load of slurry from a wheelbarrow. This programme reminded me that fundamentally, it's all about the power of words.

I wish my fellow writers renewed inspiration, dynamo-driven pens and superfast processing power (both wet ware and computer kit) in 2012.

Next Level

2011-12-13T19:03:00.000Z

Virginia Woolf got me thinking...

How do I take my writing up a level?

In terms of:

SUGGESTION

A higher order of showing, hinting, rather...

Let’s say I already use this in the forms of

foreshadowing
observation
prediction
opinions

but how far can I extend it, by exploiting opportunities in

the setting
the actions/reactions
the sensory clues and observation
any which way but telling it right out

EXPLORATION

How far can I explore my theme? How many angles can I find? Which character viewpoints do I use and how do they compare and contrast?

ENGAGEMENT AND DISENGAGEMENT

How do I disengage my personal stake (in the writing) but engage my reader?

How do I pull my reader in?

I do it essentially by manipulation. I hint at the ominous, the dreadful, the enlightenment, and the high points, and I make him think it’s his idea and I lead him, entirely by chance, it seems, to those omg moments.

Update

In response to Moody's comment (see below), I would say, I should have used a modal verb in my last sentence, instead of the future present, for example:
'I should do it essentially by manipulation' ('should' as in I strive for that level of skill). Thanks for the correction, Mood. I hadn't meant to imply I'd got there already!

Hard Nuts To Crack

2011-12-12T00:12:00.001Z

I treated myself to a goody bag from Mslexia, for my Christmas present. The deal includes a year’s subscription to the magazine, the diary, and a copy of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, a Penguin edition with an attractively embossed cover. It called to me and I read it straight away. Inspirational. Written in 1928, her advice and exhortations to female writers hold as much relevance today. Her ideas have dispelled any looming bouts of critical crisis that threaten, but how long my euphoria will last, I cannot say. Success, as defined by the work of the writer, is a hard nut to crack.

Talking of which, and despite the application of various sledgehammers, the Euro crisis seems to be an especially tough one, more like a lorry load of brazil nuts. Marathon negotiating sessions are not going to crack it any time soon; they should have sorted this problem out decades ago. After all the press hoo-ha, (don’t you just love a hysterical red top in full rant?) I get a creeping feeling that the Prime Minister made the right decision, in currency and fiscal terms, but at a huge cost in terms of foreign policy.

I fully understand The Deputy Prime Minister’s angst. I too, believe that we need Europe as a trading partner; the bulldog spirit (puh-lease - grow up and get global) might prove to be horribly expensive in the long run. However, the PM was, in my view, between a rock and a hard place. In a lose-lose situation, he probably did the right thing. Mind you, let’s not go too easy on The City. It might have escaped the dreaded Tobin Tax but if it continues its same old frivolous ways, our social problems will only get worse.

If you want to feed your own sense of worthlessness as one of the pitiful 99%, check out the interviews on YouTube with William Engdahl, author of Gods of Money, and listen to his explanation of the overblown (in my view) Euro Crisis as a displacement strategy to take the focus off other global financial problems. You can draw your own conclusions. I’ll just excuse myself for finding it so hard to read between the media lines these days, because so much manipulation is going on, it’s impossible. The poor Greeks, I feel so sorry for them.

However, a hugely entertaining edition of What The Papers Say (BBC Radio 4 Sunday night) by Andrew Porter described the antics of the EU summit brilliantly.

I’ve had enough of them all wielding their political sledgehammers at each other, missing the target, and I shall return to Virginia Woolf. The most important thing, she says, is, to write outside your sex. ‘It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple,’ she says. If the writer in you can transcend the gender thing, you stand a better chance of producing work that endures.

I shall confine my nut cracking to the Christmas walnuts and the challenges of producing good fiction. Meanwhile there are two tasty new sf films to check out: Another Earth and Melancholia.

Hugo The Movie

2011-12-07T20:39:00.001Z

I did see Hugo today. Every frame is a masterpiece, and Scorcese exploits 3D in ways you couldn't imagine. It's a must have for your video library, but you have to see it on the big screen first. An enchanting story and history lesson, bringing into magical colour and 3D some of the earliest ever moving pictures. Wonderful. I shan't say another word; go and see it. I have to go again.

Delayed Gratification

2011-12-07T18:30:00.000Z

Gosh, are we in another week already? I took my eye off the ball whilst deciding which viewing of HUGO to go and see. PM wants us to write a post and delay publication of it.Okay, I wrote this on Tuesday evening and I have scheduled its, as requested by PM, to appear later. It’ll be published tomorrow (that's today for you lot) after I have been to see Hugo, which was earlier today.

I heard a great interview* with the director of Hugo, Martin Scorsese, and listening to his erudite recounting of the history of cinema techniques has given me insights into his motivation for making this film that has heightened my anticipation. My next post will be a review of it, which I expect to be good, because as my regulars know, I’m a sucker for all this artisticky filmic stuff with bucket loads of CGI thrown in for good measure...and it’s in 3D.

Ciao.

* I haven't put a link; these iPlayer pages change so quickly but it was the Anne McElvoy interview I heard.

Feeling Glum

2011-12-07T10:03:00.001Z

I'll confess to getting out of bed the wrong side this morning. I really must change it for a bed with two right sides. I've since found this post and it made me chuckle, so I'm sharing it with you. Writers will immediately identify with the spirit of it, but if you are not a writer, please remember that unpublished authors are like baby birds, beaks open, hungry for every scrap of food - or in our case - attention. Pathetic isn't it? Mind you, I suspect musicians and artists are the same.
No seriously folks...I really must start that homework...

It Could Be You

2011-12-07T07:40:00.001Z

More than three million people plan to take out short-terms loans to last until payday (source BBC Radio 4 Today programme), so says a report by the organisation R3. Somewhere in today’s press is a report that says Britons are less tolerant today of ‘poor people’ and believe that benefit recipients are there by choice. Here is a great article by Hugh Muir in TheGuardian about our general mean-spiritedness, which seems to have displaced the former quiet tolerance of the typical Brit. I noticed it immediately on my return to the UK in 2008. I was on a day out with a friend in London and I clearly remember our discussion about it over a cuppa. She had noticed it too.

What makes people poor? Laziness, of course, but what about the person who used to be a high flyer for a multinational, earning shed loads of money, now struck down by a debilitating illness? I know someone like this, now on crutches and on benefits. What about the woman forced out of her marriage and family life by abuse or cruelty, or simply for being ‘old and frumpy’? It really does happen. What about mothers abandoned with a whole clutch of children? That happened to several of my former school friends so I take comfort that I am not the only ‘pariah ex-wife’ in existence. What about the young person who can’t afford the new fees for higher education, or the graduate in debt, or the swathe of lower-than-boardroom-level staff, public sector workers and others about to be made redundant? We can’t all be rich – I mean, the stinking rich kind, not merely a life with a secure income which traditionally was middle class; the planet can’t afford it. I saw a programme on telly the other day about unemployed professionals in the USA, cashless, jobless and hopeless, living in their cars. Are they despicable?

And what about those three million taking out the payday loans? Presumably, whilst they can live the lie that they have money, they are acceptable to society and when it all stops, we’ll despise them. Britain used to be a tolerant and a charitable society, these values driven partly by the middle class – now the squeezed or even non-existent middle - with their social and charitable initiatives. Whilst those at the top continue to waste our taxes on white elephants such as this one, and now that the bankers really do rule the world, we must take care whom we despise for ‘being poor’ because next week it could be you.

Update

Great discussion now on The Wright Stuff about 'Beige Britain', discussing the other side of the coin. Are we too cowed or lazy these days to stand up for ourselves or express talent, or do we simply view the past through rose-tinted spectacles? Have the opportunities for creativity diminished? Has political correctness and litigation crushed all initiative?

Out In The Cold

2011-12-03T13:20:00.001Z

An unpublished author like me gets used to being out in the cold. When another rejection freezes me out, I simply add another layer of skin. There are plenty of rejects out there with me, so perhaps we should make a bonfire of our manuscripts in the car park, and indulge our bad temper in a communal passing round of vodka and hot black coffee. At least we’d be saving on heating bills at home.

Talking of which, fuel poverty hit the headlines again last week. It seems the number of citizens left indoors in the cold in the UK, has risen from one in five to one in four this year. Fuel companies and price regulators please note. A tweeter observed ‘there are a lot of "old people" on the buses' during the day. It’s because there’s heating on the buses where there isn’t at home. The buses are hothouse warm. As a bus user, I speak with confidence.

The current political mantra ‘We’re all in this together’ was trotted out again as part of the anti-strike criticism (30thNovember), but I’d say whether you’re in it or out of it depends on who you are and which club you are in or out of. If you don’t belong to Britain’s rich club, then you certainly are out in the cold, as the arguments highlighted by this strike have made clear.

The position of the UK with respect to the Euro Club is by far the most confusing one. In terms of currency, we’re ‘out of it’, of course, but in trade and legal matters, we are very much in it. Our position is that we need some bits of Europe but not others. You know, these days I find it hard to have a political opinion. I’ll admit to feeling mightily confused. BBC TVDateline made an excellent summary of both sides of the debate today but I am no less confused. I’ve no idea what the answer to the Euro Crisis is, but it seems nobody else does either.

Our democratic structures make it both easier and harder to propose solutions, but as Nigel Farage (UKIP) observed today, both Greece and Italy are technically locked out of ‘Democracy’ for the time being, as technocratic government has been imposed on them.

Oh yes, I've done all my Christmas shopping, and I did it all on line. I didn't go out in the cold.

Life Writing Class No. 8

2011-12-03T11:53:00.001Z

Attendance on this course has held up remarkably well and now we only have two weeks left of this term. Some of us are nervous because the deadline for the term assignment is next week. There will no doubt be at least one submission produced in ‘whites of the eyes’ mode. Mine’s already in, at the expense of a clutch of other failed objectives, but never mind, you can’t write everything.

This week’s homework is interesting. We have to write a story about our family but done as a storyboard. It’s not any easier a technique and I’m already struggling but I’m going to have a go. Often that’s the way with writing. You have to reach in and wrench it out. It’s the 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration thing.

Only four of us had work to read out. One class member was very uncertain about his and yet it was very enjoyable and the germ of something hugely entertaining. That was the universal opinion of the class and it just goes to show how fragile a writer’s ego can be, how different a piece of work looks to the audience. A writer might fear a piece is utter rubbish but in fact, it could be the opposite. Peer group feedback is useful to provide a sense of balance and improve the ability to assess one’s own work. Anyway, we soldier on. (This blog is cliché-enabled).

Fifty Per Cent Up

2011-11-28T18:27:00.001Z

Hey! You lovely readers have made more than three thousand hits on my blog! That is a fifty per cent increase on October, small in numbers but huge in significance. I never imagined I was that interesting (only joking, folks).

So, am I doing anything interesting at the moment? Not really...I’m working up to it. I seem to have several odd little projects on the go at the moment.

I’ve written a sci-fi story and a ghost story.

I’ve started mapping out and writing copy for the new web site and I need artwork too, so that’s a bit involved.

I’ve done an Outline Plot for my second novel (no I can’t believe it either).

I have homework to do for Thursday which may or may not get done.

I’m reading an inspirational book called How To Write Science Fiction by Orson Scott Card who wrote the now legendary Ender’s Game. It's going to be a funny bitty time until Christmas but that's just the way life is sometimes.

Alliteration

2011-11-28T12:22:00.001Z

The Post Mistress PM requires alliteration from us this week.

An idea...a non-idea...an elusive entity sought by an inaccessible imagination in a wimpish wetware engaged in a fruitless foraging for words... (or how I feel this morning).

End of effort.

How can a post be this hard to conjure on demand?

It must be Monday, a mundane Monday, talking of which, Nicola Morgan's Mondays Are Red, is out now as an eBook. I’ve got mine. It’s a great read.

Buy yours now!

Spill It

2011-11-25T13:15:00.001Z

When I make Spanish coffee, I use this. Yesterday I managed to spill the whole lot all over the stove. Today I was more careful.

When we write, however, it’s useful to spill it. Just get it out there, all over the shamefully bare white page. You can tidy it up later. The NaNoWriMo people are almost at the end of a stressful month doing just that. Some of my pals on the forum have dropped off along the way and I never got started at all this year. For me NaNo was a NoNo. You need the bones of a plan even for the spontaneity of the NaNo experience.

Political news just gets worse and worse. If it’s not Euro crisis it’s the endless churning of the Arab Spring with all those frustrated electorates spilled out into their respective main squares and city centres.

Today we returned to domestic politics with the row over how the new initiative to get NEETS into work will be funded, but the coalition doesn’t want to spill on that. In my view we should bring back the technical colleges. That's where they used to learn all that stuff, and to a high standard too.

It’s all horribly depressing and we haven’t had the snow yet. I find when it all gets too much for me I take comfort by getting lost in a piece of writing. I suppose that does make me a writer, and it stops me thinking about my dear novel, which is languishing in a slush pile somewhere, sobbing because it needs a hug from an agent. Apparently, we all need thirteen hugs a day. I make no apologies for the uninspiring photograph.

Sarah Duncan haswritten a marvellous piece about the unloved and unhugged novel, and Nicola Morgan has written an equally brilliant one about the unloved and unhugged author. You get used to it after a while, but I shan’t send the WIP out again. I have plans to launch it on its own shiny platform where it can sing and dance and boast to its heart’s content and it will find it its own adoring audience.

Anyway, I do have a couple of pieces to be getting on with, so fortified by the kick from the Spanish coffee, I shall leave you and get spilling. Here’s an afterthought: After the spell check routine, it wanted to change my ‘unhugged’ author, to ‘unhinged’. I refused of course, but still...

Life Writing Class No. 7

2011-11-25T12:01:00.001Z

I missed Week 6 because of my flu but they told me everybody had read out a piece of work. I was sorry to miss hearing those because I find it enlightening to hear how other people view the world. Every piece of writing is unique in voice, style, and experience. We have established a practice of printing out copies for those who want them, so I was able to read one or two.

This week PB handed out Ordnance Survey maps. They included maps of Wiltshire, different parts of Surrey, the South East, and Wales. I chose the map for the Gower Peninsula, as I have fond memories of childhood holidays there with an Uncle and Aunt and my cousins. PB then set us the task of scanning them for interesting information. I have never thought of doing that. Funny how many times a writer can hear the expression ‘mapping out a story’ and never make the connection.

I had more fun than I anticipated. I found all the place names that evoked those memories, and new ones which I had missed, or didn’t remember. Most of us found plentiful sprinklings of ‘Earthworks’ and there were several ‘Hangman’s Crosses’. One map covered the territory of the battles of England’s Civil War (1643 – 1658).

PB then asked us to use our information to create a piece of writing. As I’ve hinted, many map features suggest themes for historical fiction, or historical fact. One feature that grabbed my imagination was ‘Arthur’s Stone’. It’s on the top of the huge hill, Cefyn Bryn, behind my Uncle’s house, which my cousins and I used to climb, and dizzy with breeze, exertion, and sunshine, we’d shout and make the sheep scatter. We’d try to get to the top, being far too ambitious, and we usually gave up halfway. I wish now I had persevered so I had a memory of the stone.

Of course, this stone has its own legend*, and I decided to invent a new story from it. I shan’t tell you now. Our homework is to develop our themes and if mine works out, I’ll put it up here for you to read.

*scroll down the page from the Cefyn Bryn link to read the legend.

Is it boring or is it just me?

2011-11-23T14:01:00.001Z

I want to start the next novel. I listened to an interview with an author on the radio the other day. He said words to the effect that: ‘The first novel is a like a gift, and the second novel proves to you that you can do it, and after that you have the confidence that you are a writer.’ (Unfortunately, I can’t find the reference and I missed the intro to the programme so I can’t give you the link.)*

I’m at the stage when I want to prove to myself that I can do it and the proof is the second novel. Now by nature, I’m a ‘seat of the pants’ writer, what some of you call a ‘pantser’ but I am trying very hard to be a plotter. I’ve read all the books and I’ve sharpened my pencils. I’m doing an outline right now, and I have a deadline because I made this outline my term assignment, this being a case where having a deadline is a useful spur to action.

It’s heavy digging though. I have a good motivating premise, and I have a better understanding of structure and things which must be considered in outline plotting ‘n all that, but so far this morning all I have managed to do is rearrange some headings and try to decide precisely where the crises points are. At least I have the ending, that’s a good start.I’d love to ask you all to comment and give me your suggestions but until they clear the cockroach husks out of the Comment Function, I suppose you won’t be able to. Mind you, you can always tweet or fb or google+ it.

I have a plot, I have a structure to hang things on and it has loads of potential, but, like a metal frame waiting for the shiny top stuff to go on it, it looks kinda boring right now. Is this normal? Does every writer go through this? Is this the moment to go into first draft mode? At least I’ll get some feedback when my tutor marks it.

Any fellow blogger like to award me a badge today? It might inspire me. Ta.

* It was Jeffrey Eugenides and I found the reference here but I don't think it's available on iPlayer anymore, so here is a link to other quotes of his.

You pays your money...

2011-11-22T18:15:00.001Z

The 'fair salary' debate is raging once more. The people at the top of the business sector are earning unimaginable sums of money. What do they DO with it all? How much moolah do you REALLY need to be secure and happy? The annual salary of a top exec just quoted on the news, three million plus, would, frankly, set most of us up for life. Do they really have to be paid so much?

No, you argue.

The counter argument, which has been around since Christ kicked over the moneylenders' tables in the temple, says that you have to pay those high sums to attract the talent. I am sick of hearing that argument and it patently doesn't apply.

I would ask you, where's the talent? Look at the tsunami wreck left by the global financial shenanigans, and look at the rubbishy political debates in Europe and the USA, in which NOTHING IS BEING DECIDED and they are simply watching everything go downhill. No decisions, just hand-wringing, made entirely by these 'top of the pile' decision makers.

Is that talent?

If so, let me have a go. I'll sort it out. You or I could easily muster enough talent to do better than they do. For a mere one million a year, I'll do a damn sight better job than they've done, and I bet you could too, so bring it on.

Finally, if it is simply that successful companies are not reported, then I for one would like to have them featured more in the news reports. I am sick of undiluted Gloom and Doom, really, it's too much.

Update

Marvellous programme by Ian Hislop on BBC2, a succinct and powerful presentation of the current injustice of the misalignment of the Earth's wealth, together with its basis in history. Structurally, nothing much has changed in a couple of hundred years, the important ingredient which has disappeared is philanthropy, or at least a minimum sense of social justice, which the Victorian Quakers did have.

How was it for you?

2011-11-22T16:03:00.001Z

Much hilarity ensues on our forum when the press for the ‘Bad Sex Awards’ appears, and it seems it’s that time of year again. For your convenience, I provide here the first link made available for our enjoyment. Already the normally cool temperature of our forum is rising rapidly over the hot and steamy discussion of good and bad ‘sex’ writing.

Stephen King has made this year’s shortlist, so it seems, and some of us think he deserves the nomination and others of us don’t. Let me say immediately I fall into the latter group. I don’t think SK could write badly if he tried and I line up with his main defender on the forum, who says the scene needs to be read in context, and then it makes sense.

And there’s the rub...

I have learned in my apprenticeship as a fiction writer that certain conventions prevail in certain genres. For example, in science fiction and in some fantasy, if it is in there, the sex is generally explicit and full on; emotion tends to be optional. In crime novels, the lurid moments are saved for the violence, which again can be explicit and full on, and sometimes the sex is mixed up with it, depending on the author. In romantic fiction, the sex can range from the mushy emotional stuff to explicit, again, depending upon the author. If we move along the genre-ometer from genre novel towards ‘literary’, the sex tends to migrate from the body into the mind, so you get less of the physical and more of the emotional. Nothing wrong with that; whatever turns you on but...

It presents a problem for award giving of this nature. The writing is judged out of context, and out of the expectation of the reader. It is pilloried or praised by a motley mob gathered from all genres of the literary landscape, and each will react according to his own taste, because taste in fiction is so subjective. If a reader unwittingly ingests something from a genre he normally avoids like the plague, then naturally, his response will be negative.

Having said that, if a piece of writing manages to rise above all these critics, in its awful crassness and crudity, then it no doubt deserves its award, but I still think it’s almost impossible to judge, unless you go all the way and read the whole work.

Yup, it’s a hard one.

(I make no apologies for any double entendre lurking in this post. It’s just your dirty minds.)

Advice for Writers

2011-11-20T18:29:00.001Z

Last week's challenge set by PM was to offer advice to writers. How do you meet your writing objectives? Do you even set them?

It's crucial to set yourself targets if you want to achieve results. For example if you want to build up a repertoire of short stories you should set yourself a realistic target of how many per month, say, you want to complete. Any approach based on 'I'll do it when I'm in the mood' is likely to produce no output. The blank page/screen can be daunting and starting something is the most difficult part.

I have more experience of writing a novel than I do of the short pieces and I set myself an overall target for my last book, say ninety thousand words, then I divided that into monthly/weekly/daily targets. In the end it came out at eighty six thousand words.

I make sure I do my daily writing target before I check my emails or do any social networking or blogging. You can complete your target at any time during the day, so long as you do it.

I also set myself a weekly target of three posts on the blog. I don't always achieve this, but some weeks I manage more, so hopefully I achieve the average over the year. This week flu has flattened all targets, but never mind, that's life.

Closely related to this topic is time management, which is this week's topic. Targets and time management are closely related. Some writers are luckier than others in the amount of writing time available to them.

How hectic is your life and how do you manage your writing targets? I would love to hear. If you have any useful tips, let us know.

Edit 22/11/11
I am aware many of you are trying to post comments. I don't think it's my blog, or anything I have done with settings. I'm pretty sure it's a global Blogger problem. I say this because:

I am receiving comments from several sources, from people who are trying to post a comment and finding that the comment box bombs out, or goes through to a second comment box which also crashes.
I have attempted to comment on other Blogger blogs and I am getting the same problem.
It appears to make no difference whether the format is the new 'Dynamic Views' format (as mine is) or whether it's the traditional Blogger format, the problem is the same.
It's annoying because this is clearly a topic which many of you would like to discuss further, but alas, it's THEIR problem and they will have to fix it.