Michael Jecks's Blog, page 11

Writing Lessons 11 – Rewriting

I’ve recently discovered that I’ve been listed for the shortlist of the HWA SHARPE BOOKS GOLD CROWN award. It’s the prize for the best historical novel of the year, and as such a remarkably prestigious award. I’m very proud to read that Pilgrim’s War has been recognised for this. Wish me luck!

Writing, it has been said, is rewriting. Here’s an example:

“This has been a busy weekend. Dartmoor Folk Festival, lots of guests sharing space in our sitting room, manning my own bookstall (I sold lots of Last Templars, Merchant’s Partners, and the Vintener Trilogy this time. Strange how every year there are some clear winners in terms of popularity – and now my office has a little more space in it, at last!), walking the dogs, and stewarding duties, made for an absolutely exhausting time.”

That, as you can see, is a horrible paragraph to read. It was how my mind was working as I wrote, but with a dash in the middle of a clause, and brackets separating things, it’s not a good sentence.

It is what I mean when I say that writing  really needs rewriting. The first bit is fine. It was a busy weekend: says it all, really. It’s the next sentence that takes up the majority of the paragraph that is the problem:

“Dartmoor Folk Festival, lots of guests sharing space in our sitting room, manning my own bookstall (I sold lots of Last Templars, Merchant’s Partners, and the Vintener Trilogy this time. Strange how every year there are some clear winners in terms of popularity – and now my office has a little more space in it, at last!), walking the dogs, and stewarding duties, made for an absolutely exhausting time.”

It really is extremely unclear. Let’s clarify things.

“This has been a busy weekend. The village hosted the Dartmoor Folk Festival. We had lots of guests who shared space in our sitting room, while I spent the two days stewarding events in the main marquee, walking the dogs, and manning my bookstall. My office has become full of stock books, so I was glad to sell a lot and create a little space! It’s strange how every year there are different winners in terms of popularity. This year they seemed to be The Last Templar, The Merchant’s Partner and The Vintener trilogy. I would have sold many more Bloody Mary series titles, but I’d sold out before the Festival! A great weekend, but exhausting.”

Still not perfect, by any stretch, but it is a little more clear and easy to read. I’ve changed two sentences into seven, I think. Each is more easy to read, shorter, and logical. The first effort was more of a brain-dump, which is fine, and often won’t need too much to improve it. The second was a more considered paragraph, and reads much more clearly.

So, the moral is, try to keep to shorter sentences, keep them more active, and try to keep a logical flow to the way you write.

Happy writing!

Getting to the End…

One of those days when concentrating is difficult: I have to work around the family, getting a new tent sealed ready for a three day hike, walking the dogs, writing up the short list and winner of a prize, deal with emails and phone calls … and it’s not easy.

The simple fact is, as a writer I need regular bursts of time when I can work without interruption. All writers will have the same requirement for no interruptions. If I get a phone call in the middle of a scene, that phone call may not cost me the whole of a poem, like the visiting irritant to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but it will cost me a good half hour to read myself back into the scene and into the mood. That’s half an hour I can ill-afford. Just as 

I always say to new writers, or people who express an interest in writing, that the first thing to get rid of is any interruptions. That means no TV, no radio, no internet, and no phones. Not only because of calls, but because Facebook, Twitter, ebay, LinkedIn and all the other goodies are certain to destroy your train of thought.

It is actually a lot worse than that. Pity the poor spouse, other half, significant other, partner or whatever you fancy calling him/her. 

Why pity them? Because they are the ones who will bear the brunt of your mood-swings – but, worse than that, they will also have to cope with your inability to listen. While you’re being asked about what shopping is needed, you will be thinking about that murder on page 27 – was it too graphic? – or the way that you described the assassin on page 143 – did she need to be that good looking? – or the victim on page 221 – surely he didn’t have his head completely removed?

And then you will be wandering about the house looking lost, thinking about the scenes of carnage, and letting the toast burn (mine this morning), or leaving the soup to boil over, or forgetting that the dog is still in the yard and it’s raining like the monsoon out there. 

In short, people who are married to writers need to get used to being loners, because all the time you are writing, they are entirely alone.

I have learned over time that my best working time is from mid-afternoon to late evening. I usually stop work at about midnight. But that doesn’t mean I’m not working in the morning. I may walk the dogs, but I’ll try to read while doing so, because I get little time to read apart from then. And I’ll write emails, tweets and facebook messages, taken photos for Instagram, and do a number of other work related activities. But that is only so that I can jump straight back into editing and writing as soon as I get back. 

Although today has been a bad writing day (sorting all the purchases/sales for the last quarter so that the VAT and accounts are up to date), at least I do know I’m on the final stretch. It is possible I’ll finish the straight-line writing today. I may be a little late, in which case I’ll finish it hopefully tomorrow. Then it’ll be time to print the whole thing and begin the serious edit. 

But first, I will be taking a little time off. I won’t do much on Sunday, because I’ll be dancing with Tinners’ Morris at the Sidmouth Folk Festival. You want to see us? We’ll be opposite the Yacht club and old RNLI station, dancing on the seafront itself. And then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be walking along the South Coast path around the Lizard with a friend, before dancing with Tinners’ again at the Okehampton Show. So the next blog post will be later in the week!

Have a good week, and wish me luck. I’ll need it!

Writing Lessons 10 – Students And Novelists

This one is for students going to university – either first years or postgraduates – as well as aspiring novelists: keep it simple!

I spent two years fairly recently helping students at Exeter University with their communication skills, working for the Royal Literary Fund’s Fellowship Scheme. 

It was a great experience, although very daunting. After all, I have no degree. I was dealing with students who were a great deal better educated than me, and covering a wide range of disciplines – religious studies, English, business, law, and medicine, amongst others, and at every level of competence up to PhD.

The first thing that became clear to me was, that the students were all too often trying to write to an academic standard, rather than simply attempting to communicate. What do I mean? All too often students would use long sentences, long words and long paragraphs to try to show how clever they were. They thought that professors and others wanted to have lengthy, convoluted arguments in their writing. 

This would be fine, perhaps, if only the most basic errors weren’t being made. For example, I had one student give me a paragraph that was almost a page long and only had a couple of sentences. It was impossible to see what she was driving at. Another had a word in the middle of a paragraph that meant the polar opposite of what she was trying to say. She didn’t know what the word meant, but thought it looked ‘academic’. (Incidentally, I found 90% of the students visiting me were female; I think most males were embarrassed to come and ask for help, or perhaps never heard of the RLF service.)

When writing essays, letters, or books, the key, indeed the only, criterion that matters is making your writing comprehensible. That is the factor that is most crucial.

I have the pleasure of knowing several very bright people in education and in business. And no, I don’t include myself in that number. However, it does not matter which field you look at, all those in education and business want to have clear, precise, and ideally concise documents. They do not want to have to read a text five times to get to what the author means. 

In business, the briefer the document, the better. Ideally keeping facts and data on one or a couple of sheets. A manager wants to know what your thoughts are, what are the logical consequences, or the best approach to take in a given situation. 

In education, the reader wants to know your thinking, how logical your thoughts are, how well briefed you are, and how your thoughts flow. Categorically, he or she does not want to know how well-thumbed is your thesaurus. They want shorter, comprehensible sentences that flow, one into the next. 

I always considered (I have no idea whether this is true) that algebra and philosophy emerged at about the same time, and were developed by the Greeks into the modern disciplines. I believe that both fields, while appearing entirely at odds, are in fact quite similar. An essay, for example, will start at a given, accepted point, and then will develop by bringing in new themes, one paragraph at a time. Each new theme is explored, demonstrated by quotations from texts, and developed. The next paragraph is linked by that developed theme to a new one, and so the argument develops logically and elegantly to a conclusion.

In the same way, algebra starts from one point, and in a series of logical developments runs on to a conclusion. Both, it seems to me, use similar approaches. 

Where an algebraic equation is considered elegant if its series of steps are simple, the same is true of an essay. Keep to shorter, more active sentences, and your essay will be easier to understand. The logic of your reasoning will be clearer. And that has the result that your lecturer will be able to spend more time with his/her family, or not miss the latest episode of ‘Lecturers in the Sun’, or whatever it is that they watch of an evening. 

Leave your lecturer happier, and you will find you gain more marks. 

Einstein once was supposed to have said, ‘If you can’t explain it to a six-year old you don’t understand it yourself.’ While I was at Exeter, I often used to mention this. My strong recommendation to all students was that they should take a leaf out of his book, and write as though explaining their theories and essays to a younger sibling. By using language that could be understood by a younger brother or sister, you will write with more clarity. That means your lecturer will be able to understand your points faster, and that means they’ll be happier. And happy lecturers tend to give more marks. 

This may sound overly simplistic and, perhaps, wrong. It may not work for some university professors. Some lecturers will obviously want different things from their students. However, I firmly believe that the overriding principle to good writing, no matter what you are writing about, is that you keep it simple. Whether you are writing a treatise on the Cold War, on Nuclear Fusion or an essay on a novel is irrelevant. If you are writing, you are trying to communicate. Putting the reader off because you are trying to show off how clever you are, will never work. Too often the reader will be cleverer than you.

I will return to this subject in a little while, when I have some examples of poor writing and how to correct it at first edit. While at Exeter I developed my own system for dissecting text and making it comprehensible which may help you.

In the meantime, if you are a student and think you need more help, do please  get in touch and I’ll help if I may. Alternatively, ask at your university for the Royal Literary Fund members who are there to help you. They are all professional writers, and they are paid by the RLF, so their services are free.

Happy writing!

Writing Lessons 9

Today I have been working on a new story, and I’ve got to the magical stage of about 90,000 words, which means that I’m on the easier, downhill slopes and almost at the end of the first draft. Perhaps this is a good time to think about how things are going.

I’ve already spoken about the fact that I tend to be a ‘plan less, write more’ kind of author. Most of my friends are – even the ones you may expect to be detailed planners, like Ian Rankin. 

However, I have a multitude of notebooks and always carry at least two fountain pens with me, no matter where I am. Why? Because you can never tell where or when an idea will suddenly hit you. For example, in my Midori Traveller’s Notebook, which is a brilliant little notepad, I have eight pages which are composed purely of the ideas which came to me late at night, while walking the dogs, or at other unexpected moments. Almost all are ideas connected to the ending of this story.

But that ain’t all of it. I also have a Rhodia notebook that I carry when it’s wet out and I don’t want to risk getting my Midori soaked. There’s also a Leuchtturm A5 notebook on my desk, which is where the main drive of the story and characters is held. That has had another seven pages filled over the last two weeks. And my A3 sketching pad has another five.

The way I tend to work is, as I am writing, I am concentrating only on the one scene, that one person’s point of view. As soon as I finish that scene, I move on to the next. But when I take a few moments off, or when I’m walking the dogs, I tend to be thinking of the overall flow of the story, the way the characters are reacting to the stimuli I’m throwing at them, the additional, small characters who happen to have impinged on the story, the potential for this or that ending to the book. 

When I’m in my office, I will use the A3 blank sketch book to outline possible directions for the story, list red herrings and how they affect the outcomes, and make connections between people and their motives. I find blank paper much easier for this kind of work. I’ll also use my A4 and A5 Atoma notebooks. These are superb because you can jot down ideas, and then move them from one notepad to another – the pages are removable and can be reinserted anywhere you like. 

The Midori I always used to use with blank and lined paper. Just now I tend to use blank paper in it for my story planning, so I can be a little more unstructured in the way I put things down. I will be experimenting with dotted paper for this in a little while, but not with this book. The Leuchtturm is lined, and in this I can blank off pages for characterisation, and then more pages for outlined options for the story’s flow. I really like the fact that the pages are numbered, that there is a ‘Contents’ page, and that there are is a cloth bookmark. Oh, and that fountain pens don’t make the paper look like blotting paper. All my notebooks have to be fountain-pen-safe! 

Now that I’m getting closer to the end, these notebooks are invaluable, because they remind me what I was thinking about at specific stages in the story. I can flick through the pages to see what I was putting into the mind of my investigator at different stages, and that helps keep me informed about the red herrings I have thrown in, so that I can either resolve them as red herrings, blow them up into mainstream motives for my characters, decide to leave them as conversational pieces, or remove them completely. The options are all there for me. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying, I find it invaluable to have a series of notebooks with me or near to hand at all times. And now that I am close to the end of the book, these notebooks are always on the desk, with the thesaurus and dictionary. The basic elements of writing.

If you don’t have a notebook already, go and buy one. I can recommend Leuchtturm 1917, Midori, Citridori (which I’m using as pads in my Midori), the wonderful Atoma, and a large, A3 or larger sketching pad (I haven’t used this specific one, but I’m sure it would do the job).

And no, I’m not paid to say this, but I regularly deal with Cult Pens, Citrus Book Bindery, and use Leuchtturm and Atoma all the time and can happily vouch for them. However, it’s not the suppliers that matter, it’s what you do with their products.

Happy writing!

Writing Lessons 8

Okay, so what happens when it all goes horribly wrong?

You are sitting down, the writing has been a blast, and you have a brilliant first stage written.  It felt great, it reads really well. But now, you have a problem. This was supposed to be a romcom, but it’s gone all black and dangerous. Or it was supposed to be a book looking at a relationship gone sour, and suddenly there’s a dead body materialised – don’t ask me how this happens, but believe me, it does on occasion. And often these chance appearances can be brilliant for a story. However, right now, all you know is that your plot has run away from you, the characters have altered and the theme of the book is utterly different.

So, what do you do? Is this a happy accident, or have you got to decide to change the whole focus of your book?

The first question you have to ask is, “Does it work”?

Some stories can start out very light-hearted and suddenly go bleak or scary. It is a useful approach to a grim story, to set out with a cheerful beginning that progressively changes, or which suddenly snaps. Sometimes it works very well indeed, but what if it’s a complete change to what you had anticipated for your story?

Read it, and be really cold and objective, if you can. If you can’t, get someone else to ready it who will be brutally honest. What you want to know is, whether the style of the first part and the latter actually fit together. Sometimes you can have a superb beginning to a book, and the rest of the story works too, but the two just don’t somehow want to merge. Both feel entirely discrete, unconnected.

Okay, so you need to see why they don’t fit together – is this something that just needs a small tweak, or is it entirely wrong. The kind of thing I’m thinking of here is the bigger picture. Have you written in the first person, and that doesn’t allow you to get cracking with the other characters, who all need their own space on the page? Have you written the beginning from the wrong point of view? It can happen.

Often the best thing to do, whenever you have doubts, but also when you’re just working through a story, is to print the whole thing. Get it on paper, and leave your computer turned off. Read through all your work, and if you can bear it, read it aloud. Only by doing that will you catch your own writing voice and pick up the cadence of your language. I know, it sounds daft, but if you read from the screen, it is not as effective, believe me.

Something you may notice is, that your entire writing style has changed immeasurably. That may mean that you can rewrite the beginning, and that by doing so you will change the style and narrative voice  to suit the later sections. But I would recommend that you pay attention to that word “rewrite”. Don’t try to simply add more and more sentences. If it’s a change in your writing style, go back to first principles and rewrite it. It will save you a lot of time in the future.

Read through the entire text, and then set it aside and think about it for a good few hours.

I tend to get to this stage at about 60,000 words. I know the direction of travel of my story, and I have a good idea how the book will finish, but even so, I will print the entire work and think about it, reading it aloud, seeing how the voices work for each of the characters, adding some verbal tics to make each unique, thinking about how they all react to each of the stimuli I have thrown at them, are they credible, are they believable? Then I will go back and consider where the story has holes. Which of the plot lines need adding to, where can I throw in some new scenes to make the story flow, where do I need to carefully place some snippets of information that add to the overall plot?

This is a useful exercise, then, even if you don’t have the issue of the entire thing going wrong in the second chapter!

Second, if you still cannot find a specific area that is failing, you have the nuclear approach. You have a working start to the story, and you have a good second  section. If you really cannot see where the problem lies, or if you cannot mend the first piece to make it meld more effectively with the second, you need to ditch one or the other. And my personal advice, based on my last 43 or so novels, is – invariably, you need to ditch the beginning.

Why?

The beginning was the section where you were still feeling your way. It may be that the concept was brilliant, it may be that you had a beautifully planned story – but your style, your gut, is telling you that the story you want to write is the second half. That is the bit that has attracted you, the bit that has stimulated you. And if it does that to you, it will do that to readers too.

My rule of thumb is, if I, as a writer, cannot be stimulated and thrilled and excited by a story, I am unlikely to excite a reader. So get rid of the bit that feels wooden, clunky, or just slow. Remove it, and crack on with the book. Later, if you feel it is right, you can rewrite it and put something similar back in that is more in keeping with the rest of the book. Because you have developed a new style, and maybe that is your best narrative voice.

Hope that helps, and happy writing!

Writing Lessons 7

It is a very odd thing, that writers will often miss whole weeks of life. When you are writing from a specific point of view, you become so utterly immersed in that person’s life, that you cannot exist in the real world at the same time. Your partner will get used to grumbles and muttered conversations; they will get used to the writer being in a foul temper, because he/she has just written a dramatic scene including a shouting match, a murder, or just their character being fired and distraught. Writers live many lives, and that does distract. 

Now, I am going to digress a little.

This is something I have written about elsewhere, but it’s so important that I’ll mention it again here.

It is often said that there are two main types of writers: planners/plotters and seat-of-the-pants types. 

Planners/plotters tend to write out finely detailed synopses, with multiple coloured pens to indicate every aspect of a story. In effect, they are writing in the same way that a good programmer will work: analyze the flow of the story, plot around it, insert characters who can live it, and write. A planner/plotter will find it easy to sell an idea to a publisher, because they tend to have a detailed understanding of the story.

The second group tend not to have the foggiest idea of where the story is going before they set pen to paper. It is a serious issue if they are going to try to sell their work before writing it. A synopsis is cobbled together, loosely stitched together to make sense of some aspects of the plot, but beyond a general rough outline, and perhaps a kind of atmosphere about the story, they will often have no idea whatsoever. 

From my first attempts, I knew that I would be a planner. When I tried writing my very first novels, it soon became obvious that I could not progress because I had little idea where the  story was going. So when I sat down to write my first novel, the first thing I did was sit down with several A1 sheets of heavy paper, and plan the story in a fair amount of detail. It did look like a programming flow chart, I have to admit, and it made writing the book a doddle. 

Except, I was writing a crime thriller, and I suddenly realised, when I was about halfway through, that I was so clear in my own mind who was guilty, that it would be blatantly obvious to even the most blinkered idiot who I was writing about.

It was a salutary lesson. I tore up and threw away all my flow charts, and began thinking about who else could have been guilty. Since then I have tended always to fly by the seat of my pants. I will have an initial scene (not the first scene in the story, but a jumping-off point for my first character – it will never be the first scene the reader sees, and often won’t even appear in the book), which will give me an emotional reaction which I hope will be transmitted to the reader. From that, I then start to build up the plot and storyline, adding new scenes and characters as needed. Very often, in fact almost invariably, the main thrust of the book will change. The theme may remain the same, but the direction the book takes will almost always be a total surprise to me. 

This may sound appalling to you – it does to most people. However, it has significant advantages. First: if you, the writer, have a brilliant, detailed, twisting plot that is tuned precisely and finely, what happens when you put your protagonists in the line of fire? The first temptation is, to change their personality or motivations to suit your perfect plot. And the simple fact is, as soon as you start writing, and feel your characters develop, you soon realise that they would not respond in that manner. If you change them, they become wooden and unrealistic. If you don’t have a definite plot direction in mind, only a general flow of the story, you can allow your characters to react more realistically. It also allows you to spot a sudden new direction, and to allow your participants to wander off down that new route and discover aspects of their characters that you would not have guessed at before.

There are many people who are very scathing about this approach to writing, but it is the most common method, I have discovered, among almost all authors. 

For example, Stephen King and JRR Tolkien did not plan massively. Tolkien, in his diary, noted how frustrated he was one evening, because while writing a perfectly pleasant scene set in a pub, some fellow appeared and started engaging the hobbits in conversation. And Tolkien had no idea where this fellow had come from, what he was doing in that scene, or what he would be doing in the future. The man’s name was “Strider”, who was to become Aragorn, one of the most important characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

There is, of course, nothing wrong with planning and setting out a detailed synopsis, but if you do decide to work that way, be prepared for your characters to try to demand that you alter your plot to suit them!

Which are you going to be? A planner or a seat-of-the-pants writer?

Writing Lessons 6

So you are sitting at your chosen location, your desk, your kitchen table, your spare bedroom – wherever it may be. You have your pen, pencil, paper pad, laptop or desktop computer, and you have some quiet music playing to tempt you into your best writing mood. You have been thinking about the next scene you’re going to write. You have your character, your basic scene. 

And you have that blasted blank page in front of you! It’s horribly empty! How on earth do you start to fill the page?

No, you don’t go on social media or start “researching” things on Ebay and Amazon. The main thing here is to stay motivated.

And it is astonishingly hard to do that. Because the way that the writer’s mind works is by seeking and finding distractions. You are creative and, believe me, a writer can put a huge amount of creativity into avoiding work!

How many authors sit down and discover that they really need a cup of tea? Or coffee? Or a visit to the toilet? Or that they really ought to go and walk the dog, wash the floor, make a loaf of bread (that’s my personal favourite) or … well, the list is endless. 

My own rule is, I make a cup of something before I sit down, and while the kettle is boiling I write down a couple of elements I need in the next scenes, or even things that I need to include in the story, full stop. Then, when I sit down I have a fresh set of items I have to write. They are usually bullet points written in my Midori notebook, because that is with me all the time, awake and asleep, when I’m writing books. I can take it out and review stages of my writing in that way, which is very useful later when I am editing.

Playing the same music as I was listening to the previous night will help, as will reading through the work I did yesterday, because both work to bring my mindset into the right place, but if you have nothing from yesterday, if you are just embarking on this (bloody) book, what do you do then? 

First, prepare: as I say above, make sure that everything needed is on your desk already. Getting up to fetch something is one distraction you need to do without. I know it sounds obvious, but just make sure you have your cup of tea/coffee, a notepad and pencil or pen just in case, and your main writing device, no matter what it is. If you have a reason to get up, no matter how invalid, you will get up. And then you’ll discover you’ve already lost ten minutes of your precious writing time.

Second, present: this means to me simply grabbing my pen or putting my fingers on the keyboard. The simple fact of putting my hands in the right place to begin seems to unlock my creative flow. As soon as the two forefingers hit the lumps on the “f” and “j” keys, I start to feel my mind working again. Present your hands to the writing tools you are using and you will find things easier. If you sit with your hands in your lap while you stare out through the window, you have a block in the way of writing. Instead, sit with your hands on the keyboard and close your eyes. Imagine your scene. Then it’s a short step to starting to type. Likewise, if you have your pen in your hand, it’s a short move to actually writing. 

Third, precipitate: by which I mean, make things to happen. You have a character in mind, so use him or her. If you’re lucky, you already have an opening scene that appeals to you. Your character is in his/her car, is in a car park, and witnesses an assassination. Who is assassinated? They don’t know, but how do they feel about that horrific attack. What exactly do they see. What is the sight-line, is it between vehicles? Is it over the top of some cars, or is it straight down the exit or entranceway to the car park? Is it a supermarket? 

Don’t worry about exactly what happens: just write. Write what the weather is like, describe the smell of the sun on the tarmac, or if it’s wet, how does the tarmac smell? Think how you feel when the sun comes out just after a rainstorm, when you get that odour of fresh mud and oil, and consider how your character will feel about it? Was the man/woman used to the sight of blood? Did they have a course on first aid that sends them on to help the injured person? Are they into drugs, and automatically think that they could get some money from the body?

I remember once reading that in order to be successful, first you have to expose yourself to the risk of success. It was a motivational piece on overcoming failure, and it was quite apposite – the main thing here being, if you want to be known as a writer, first you have to write something. 

The beauty is, you are not writing about yourself, you are writing from someone else’s perspective. 

If you can do this, soon you will hopefully have about three pages written. Three pages of typed text is about one thousand words, which for me is about a scene.

And now, when you return tomorrow, you have something to start reading that will launch you on the next day’s writing. 

Best of luck!

Writing Lessons 5

Apologies for a silent Monday, but family life intruded into work life.

The next issue that writers often seem to have is the most basic one: which tools to use.

There is a belief that there is a magic series of tools to use, just as there is a magic set of instructions for new authors to follow that will inevitably lead to a best seller. I am sorry to have to tell you that there is no such magic about writing, nor about having a best seller. If you want to write, the main thing is to put in the hours. If you want a best seller, the main thing is to write several books in the hope that one may do really well. 

It does not matter what you want to write, there is no road to instant success that you can learn and follow. Anyone who tells you there is, ain’t a writer. He or she is a snake oil salesman. Do not trust them.

There are many frauds out in the world desperate to meet you and take your money. Some of these charlatans know full well the desperate enthusiasm of aspiring writers to be able to develop their skills and get their books written and published. With some it is more than a compulsion, it’s an addiction to the very concept.

At the top end of those whom I would call the fraudulent dealers there are the Vanity Publishers, who will promise you that they will get your book into the best seller listings, will tell you that yours is the best manuscript they have seen all year, will tell you that you will get the best publicity, marketing, sales drive and push into all the bookshops with them … so long as you sign the contract and pay them some five or seven thousand dollars.

That is the clue. Real publishers expect to pay the author money, they don’t expect to ask the author to pay them. If you have ant doubts, when your friendly local vanity publisher promises the moon, the sun and all the stars, before you sign over your banker’s draft, go and check the local library shelves or bookshop to see if that publisher has any books on the shelves. He/she won’t. If they can’t get the books there, you will never have a New York Times best seller. Vanity Publishing’s business model is to get your money as an author, and produce the cheapest form of book they can in order to keep your money. They won’t have sales teams, they won’t market or publicise. At best they will tell you what you can do to push your sales. 

The next level of fraudulent dealers are those who write about writing. There are many enticing magazines demanding you buy them, because they are full of articles by authors for authors – but which of their contributors have names which you recognise? Can you see Frederick Forsythe in their pages? Or Mark Billingham, or Val McDermid, or Quintin Jardine? No? Again: warning!

There are many, many purveyors of software, hardware, planning material, mind-mapping, project planning, or even just basic word processing – can you test them all? If you do, what is the point? You are not a one-person product tester, are you? How many man hours will you spend working your way through one package after another, trying to analyze which will suite you best? Couldn’t you use that time better by writing your next chapter?

I have a good friend, David Hewson, who was a reporter before he took up full-time novel writing. David has a simple approach: if it will help him get the words down on paper, it is worth it. For that, he will test new software and systems every year. He regularly buys the latest gadget to test in the hope it will make his life better. 

For me, I am a great deal happier with the basics. One basic is, not changing my tools too often. Every new software package requires learning to make it work. I don’t want to spend ages learning new products, all I want is to be able to put words down on paper as easily as possible.

So what tools can you use?

At the very bottom, you can use pen, pencil or ball-point. Yes, they are slow, because not only is typing quicker, if you have a series of pages of hand-written manuscript, you will have to get those pages transcribed somehow. You have introduced an additional stage in the writing process. BUT, and this is important, many people find that putting words on paper with the device of their choice (my own is the fountain pen or pencil) is more effective. It allows them to work more creatively. Paper and pencil is a more stimulating environment, and puts some people into a better frame of mind for writing.

The next level up is the humble typewriter. This can be a very basic mechanical device with no need for electricity – particularly effective for those who may be travelling; then there is the simple electric machine; and finally the full electronic. I have one of each, and they are delightful to use, but I do find the old keyboards a little too slow for general use. I am happier with an electronic keyboard – so long as the keys are individually sprung, and not merely resting on a rubber sheet, like most modern keyboards.

In fact I am typing this piece on my Astrohaus Freewrite, which for me has all the advantages of a typewriter’s ease of use, portability, and simplicity, but has the advantage that everything I type can be edited on my Apple iMac after I’ve imported it into Nisus Writer Pro, which is my word processor of choice, or into Scrivener, which is my writing and editing environment.

Having mentioned the Astrohaus, I guess the next logical step from that is the laptop computer. I have tried to use these many times. In fact I typed some ten or so books on Toshiba and AST laptops, but I would not go back to them now. For one thing, I was never content with the fitted keyboards. They always looked pretty, but in my case, I always needed an external keyboard with real keys that moved up and down.

Laptops do have advantages. When I started out, we had a tiny house. Having a computer out all the time was an issue, and having a laptop that could be folded up and put away was appealing. But the screens were not as good, I needed another keyboard, and the laptop just didn’t work as well. Especially when trying to work away from home. That was the killer: I always found that I could not use laptops comfortably. Even my latest and most beautiful, my MacBook Air, was atrocious to work on. It was the wrong height and weight for my lap, and when I tried to type, the whole thing kept trying to wobble off my lap.

Which is why for many years my main device for input and edit has been an Apple iMac. I am now on my third. They are wonderful devices, although the main aspect that has let  them down for many years has been the keyboard. Again, I do not use Apple’s own keyboards, but those which have individually sprung keys, like this Filco Keyboard. It feels better (to me), allows me to type faster, and reduces the risk of repetitive strain.

Which is best for you?

How can I tell? You have to sit down and try to write. You may be like a number of my friends, and find that you really enjoy the feeling of writing with a pencil on paper, or that the “clacketty clack” of a typewriter keyboard lulls you into a sense of creative daydreaming that helps you to imagine fresh situations and people.

For me, I know the best approach is to plan with paper and pen or pencil. Nothing else matters at the planning stage. I have tried mind-mapping software, but the fact is, I can mind map as effectively on paper as on computer or phone.

For input I have either my Astrohaus or the Apple. Both have advantages and disadvantages for me. The Apple means sitting at my desk, being in the right creative mindset, and allows me to keep checking previous sections of the story. The AStrohaus Freewrite allows me the freedom to sit here, in a comfortable chair in my sitting room, and allow my mind to range more freely over my topic. I love the e-ink screen that works in broad daylight, the way that I can type with it on my lap with comfort, the fact that it works really well for me on the train, in a cafe, at an airport – anywhere – and that it synchronises with my Apple, so I can import all my work straight onto my word processing package, Scrivener.

So are these the devices you should use?

No! The devices you should use are the ones you feel most comfortable using, the ones that will let you free your mind, and allow you to create your best writing environment.

Try things. Pick up a pencil or a pen, and see how you get on. Find an old typewriter and give it a bash, try a laptop, but do, please, try a real keyboard to go with it, something like my Filco which has Cherry MX keys, so you can see just how good a writing experience can be. By all means try a Freewrite. They are brilliant for creating long strings of text.

But the real choice is, to pick the thing that will work for you. No one else can decide what will be best for you, only YOU can discover that!

So the main thing is, stop researching on the internet; take up your pen, pencil, typewriter or laptop, and begin writing. Stop worrying about methods of getting words on the page, and just put them down! You can do it.

Happy writing!

Writing Lessons 4

 

So far this week I have written about how to get writing. I have suggested ways to invent characters, how to get ideas down and how to set them out.

Today I’m going back to first principles for all those of you who don’t have the faintest idea how to start. 

The first, absolute essential, I believe, is to have a place to work. My friend Jenny Kane writes her books in the local coffee shop, where she is such a fixture, they have put up a brass plaque at the place where she sits and types. Those who are lucky enough to have the money will often build a shed in their garden where they can work uninterruptedly, like Roald Dahl. Others will start off at the kitchen table – that was my own start point. 

However, when you are starting, you need to have a firm commitment to your writing. That means selecting your work area, and setting out the time when you will sit there and try to write something. It does not matter a damn where this location is. The only criterion is that it is the same place every day, and that you sit there at the same time. It is the fact of being in the place where your brain knows it has to start working and at the time it knows it must work.

Some professional writers will pooh pooh this idea. They will tell you that they can write anywhere, and it doesn’t matter where. They are right. They are also professional writers. They are experienced in preparing themselves for work and getting on with it. You are not, yet. You have to try to create an environment where it is easier for you to work. Having a defined space where you can sit and write is extremely important. 

The other point I want to reiterate is, get rid of distractions. Turn off all notifications on your computer and phone. You have defined the period when you will be writing, and now you have to make it a commitment. For that hour or two hours, you must prevent interruptions. That means no social media, no telephone, no TV, no emails, nothing!

Ideally you should try to have no noise of any sort. My own approach is to have music relevant to my work. If I’m writing a medieval story, I will have medieval music playing – sometimes film music from a film that inspired me, such as the music from Kingdom of Heaven. If I’m writing more modern spy and crime stories, I’ll have something like the music from the Bourne films. The music helps you think yourself into your story. It also has the effect of giving you an audible cue in the morning, when you’re trying to read yourself back into your story. If you play the same music in the morning as you played the previous evening, it will help pull you back into the mindset you were in when you wrote the last scene. 

So you are sitting down. Your mind goes blank, just like the screen. What do you do?

I have often been asked what on earth to do when I have writer’s block. The short answer is, I make damn sure I don’t have it. A writer is only a writer if he or she is writing. Generally, if you are a creative person, it won’t affect you, but that is only because you know how to kick yourself out of it. 

For example, one useful practice is to have a blog or similar place where I can write. It makes my brain get used to the idea of work again. As soon as I pick up a keyboard to write one of these blog posts, it is getting my head ready to be creative. If you write a fifteen minute brief blogpost, you will find it much easier then to crack on with the next scenes. 

However used you are to writing, the most important aspect of writer’s block is the fact that you cannot write. So professional writers like me will write anything. It could be that the first hour or so generates nothing more than ramblings and crap writing that cannot remain in the book you’re writing. In that case, delete it later. Meanwhile, keep writing, because it is the momentum of the story you need to find. Once you hit that sweet spot where you can feel the story taking over, life becomes infinitely easier. 

You don’t think the character is right for the plot? Then ditch him/her. Create another person. You want a villain? Remember the bastard who fired you, put him into the story. You need a vicious, gossiping harpy? Think of the woman who always bitched and moaned and spread malicious rumours about everyone in the office. You want a poor victim? (And please, avoid ‘beautiful blondes’, ‘feisty young women’ and all the other very tired cliché characters) Pick on someone like you, or a good friend, someone with whom you can empathise. If you can feel sorry to lose the character, that will come across to the reader. 

I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but it’s supposedly proven that telephone operators who smile at the phone while talking get a far better reception than those who don’t. The cheerful attitude comes across. In the same way, a writer who is experiencing the atmosphere in a book will communicate that to the reader unconsciously.

So you have your workspace, your time, you have cut out all interruptions, and you know you have to write. Your notes on the beginning of the story are on a sheet of paper beside you or on the wall in front of you, a constant reminder. 

The very first thing you’ll do now, I promise, is go to make a cup of tea or coffee. Or go for a wee. It is an unchanging fact of life that an author in search of writing will be able to distract himself or herself faster than blinking. Sitting down to work? I must sharpen my pencils. Maybe my pen needs a new ink cartridge. I should start a new notebook for this new story. I should phone Suzie about going to her house for supper next week. Did I put in the Sainsbury’s order?

An author’s mind will flit from one thing to another. The most common things often tend to be based around stationery. Many aspiring writers will grab for a notebook and pen when they start. There is no problem with that. It is fine to use whatever tool suits you. 

But you must try to keep the brain focused. Concentrate on the scene, on the characters, on the outline plot you have. Pick the main character you will write from initially, whether it is a victim or a perpetrator, witness or only someone who stumbles across the victim in the road. Decide which point of view you are going to use, and then start writing. 

For now, the main thing is, find your happiest working space so that you can write. It doesn’t matter where it is. Just find somewhere that works for you, and start writing!

Best of luck

Writing Lessons 3

Right, this is the third piece on my short run of ideas about getting started as a writer. If you haven’t looked, please go and check the first two items from this week.

So how did you get on with trying out different scenes to throw your guy into?

I’m going to give you some basic ideas now about the first stage of developing a story. This isn’t rocket science, it’s just a way to try to get your mind working more creatively. 

The real problem most people have with writing is, that they have no idea how to develop a basic idea. All too often I have people who come to me and say that they have this brilliant opening scene, but just cannot move on from it. I used to get that, back when I was starting out.

My own history is, that I was a computer salesman, and moderately happy with it. Which means I loved the money, the cameraderie, and the holidays, but really didn’t like only ever having three months’ job security. Because in those days, if a salesman didn’t hit his monthly target in a three month period, he or she was out. It was that cutthroat. And then companies kept folding and owing me money.

So in my spare time I started writing. It was for relaxation, I told myself – but in reality it was a pretty desperate search for a new career, something away from computer sales. So over the space of a couple of years I started several books. I would travel to Devon with a typewriter and bash away at thirty or forty pages, or sit in the dining room and stare into space. Once I managed to get to five chapters in total, and my wife was quite infuriated, because she always wanted to see how the books would develop. She loved the characters and what I was doing to them (poor devils). 

But the simple fact was, every time I ran out of steam. I had a high pressure job that involved working late and getting into work early. In the evenings I had no more energy to write. After all, if you go to work and you are putting yourself into a customer’s point of view and mindset, trying to see what will motivate him/her, what they want from a system, and how you can help them to achieve what they want from a system, about the last thing you want to do at nine o’clock when you get home, is sit down and try to think yourself into the head of someone else, and imagine what is motivating them. It isn’t easy.

None of those early attempts survive, as far as I know. They’ve gone to the great recycling bin in the sky.

But what I would say is, it’s irrelevant. None of them was worth the effort. They were training sessions. They taught me how to plot, how to develop characters, and how to write with my own voice. When I sat down to write my first book as a professional writer (I had lost my last job and decided today was the day), it flowed so easily, I was astonished.

There were two factors, I think, that made that happen.

One was I had spent so much time with projects that just weren’t quite right for me, and when I found one that was, it was obvious. The fact it was a doddle proved that it was perfect for me.

The second factor was the simple aspect of concentration.

People underestimate the lack of time they have to imagine. 

If you are a normal human being (you lucky devil), you have lots to do. Every day. You get up, probably slightly late, and hurry to get showered and dressed; you hurry your breakfast; you commute; you work; every break is a coffee chat around the water fountain or coffee  machine about work or colleagues’ families; you have lunch at your desk all too often, trying to clear up the things left over from the morning; then it’s the afternoon; you stop and commute again; you get home – time for supper and festering in front of the TV.

When I stopped working with computers, we couldn’t afford a TV licence. So the TV went. I had no commute, unless you count walking downstairs. We had no children, so I had no school run or after school clubs. 

In fact I could concentrate, seven days a week, for some fourteen to fifteen hours a day. It made the writing a breeze.

Not everyone can do that, though. So how can you try to bump-start your imagination?

You have a character. Get a sheet of paper and do as I suggested in Writing Lessons 2 yesterday. Remember X and all the questions about him? Put your character in the middle of the page, and then imagine you are somewhere with him (I’m working to the character I set down yesterday). Imagine yourself in his body, looking at the world through his eyes. Imagine what might happen to him. Something exciting, something that will make other people sit up and want to take notice. Mine is in a car park outside a local supermarket.

Perhaps he sees a crash, or a fight, or a kid running into a road, and he saves the child, or he holds the mother back so she doesn’t get killed as well. Put these down in simple, short lines around the central character. Write as many ideas down as you possibly can. What are the implications of this? Maybe the mother turns and hits him, or she turns and hides her face in his shoulder, or … What?

There are lots of software packages to do this job. You can buy them for your computer, phone, tablet or computer – but in all honesty, why bother? You can write straight to a sheet of paper. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you don’t have to spend anything or learn a series of new keystrokes. 

When I used to get stuck with a plot, I used to write down these pointers on sheets of paper from old A4 drafts. I would tear each into about 8 strips, write the ideas on them, and stick them on my wall with blu-tac. Then I’d change the order and play with the ideas until I had a basic concept or flow. 

In fact, as I wrote my books in the 90s, this was how I kept track. Exciting scenes (written in red), scenes from one character’s point of view, or another’s (picking different colours for each), and a short synopsis of what happened in the scene. It made editing a lot easier from hard copy, because I could see roughly where the scenes fitted together. It also meant I could occasionally pull scenes completely when they just didn’t work, or move them around. 

However, for now, try to imagine the various things you could do to your character. Will he/she be a killer, a witness, a victim? Will the police arrive, will someone be kidnapped? Or is it going to be a romcom, with your main character drinking at a coffee shop, perhaps idly daydreaming about a man she likes the look of, and then he walks over to ask directions somewhere, and she accidentally spills her coffee over her lap?

It’s your story. Start to think about what it will be.

However, don’t forget what I said about my early attempts. If you find that nothing inspires you, don’t panic. The waste paper bin is nice and close. Use it. Invent a new character, write out his/her nature on a new sheet of paper, and put them into a different location. See what ideas that sparks for you. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in detail. You’re trying to kick start your imagination with a scene so that you can develop the broad sweep of a story. 

As before, do please leave comments here or contact me on Twitter at @MichaelJecks if you want any help.

Best of luck!