Stuart Bone's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

When I first took a break from my career in banking to write full time, I took the decision to keep regular office hours. It was something I was used to and I soon realised that writing as a career is totally different to writing as a hobby in your spare time.

As much as I love doing it I also enjoy having weekends off and switching off each evening. I think that's very important otherwise the writing can take over.

That's not to say I don't suddenly think of something during the evening or weekend but usually I'll just note the thought down and come back to it during my writing day.

The worst thing is thinking of something just after you've closed your eyes to go to sleep at night. Fortunately I do keep a notebook in the top drawer of my bedside cabinet but writing down one idea invariably leads to something else. I've brought in a rule that I will only switch my light on to write notes three times. After that I force myself to switch off.

The other thing that I'm fortunate in is having an office in the third bedroom where the door can be closed when I'm done and this really helps with switching off. A number of years ago I had the opportunity to take a year out after being made redundant from my job. I did a short story writing course and also worked on my first attempt at a novel. At the time I was living in a small, two-bed roomed apartment where all the rooms came off of a tiny hallway. To get any light into this space I had to keep the door to the second bedroom open. This was where my desk was and so every time I walked through that hallway I saw the desk and I either began thinking about the stories I was working on, or I felt guilty because I hadn't been working on them that particular day. I wasn't ever able to switch off properly. Still, it was a lesson learned.

Today is Saturday and after I publish this I will not be doing anything else book related until Monday; and that feels great.

I've been able to spend all this week concentrating on the new novel. I've been rewriting notes, adding new characters, working out when a particular murder takes place and how it helps the story develop; it's been brilliant. (I promise you it is still a comedy, even though there are killings. One of my characters is on medication that gives her the side effect of feeling horny all of the time...she doesn't want to change the dose).

I had to draw myself a map of the setting yesterday; the city centre of Cunden Lingus. Well I say draw, a few squares inside a big circle that represents a ring road on a scrap of paper isn't going to win me any art awards...unless I scrunch it up, piss on it and call it 'Artist's Struggle' and then it will be up for the Turner Prize!

I'm really pleased with how the ideas for the novel are progressing. I have the opening of the story prepared, which is always handy as writing the first few lines of what will become a 90k - 100k words book can be daunting. Mind you, by the time you're up to draft five, the original opening will have gone completely and been replaced by something totally different.

Still, that's all part of the writing process and I absolutely adore it.

I've not written too many blogs this month but there is a reason for that. At the end of February I had a literary agent take an interest in my second novel, Nothing Ventured and I gave them time to read the whole novel to see if they wanted to take me on as a client. Obviously I couldn't really say anything about that so there was little to write about.

Sadly they contacted me last Friday to say they wouldn't be representing me; which was a big disappointment; especially as they've had a lot of success with one of their other clients. She wrote a series of novels about a boy wizard, I can't remember her name at the moment...

Anyway, they told me they weren't sure the tone and concept of the novel were commercial enough for what they were currently looking for.

It made me think about my genre of writing in general. I've mentioned before about the lack of agents willing to look at humorous fiction for adults. They either want funny children's books or non-fictional humour; something written by a celebrity who has a large enough following for the book to sell widely.

I think the number of celebrities who "write" books these days is making it harder for new voices to be heard. Obviously there are some who are very good writers but there are plenty who put their name to something that has been written for them by a ghost writer. But then again writing & publishing is a business like any other so why wouldn't an agent/publisher focus on a project that has a guaranteed success rate. I suppose I could try and become a celebrity myself either by having a few singing lessons or dropping my trousers in front of Theresa May as she delivers Article 50 and get myself on the ten o'clock news; but I don't think that's right for me.

I still believe humorous fiction can be as popular as other genres. How many comedy films appear in cinemas each year? How many sitcoms are there on the TV? Look at how stand-up comics fill arenas these days, rather than just performing at small comedy club venues. Comedy novels are getting published by established writers but it's still mostly crime/thriller/mystery submissions that agents are requesting on their websites.

I think the problem may be that people think humour subjective; which it is. We all laugh at different things; but then again; aren't we all subjective when it comes to books we read in general? Take crime as an example, not everyone reading Val McDermid will want to read Agatha Christie. There's a plethora of crime writers out there catering to everyone's tastes. Humour is just the same.

I don't want to sound like I'm whinging, I'm just stating a fact. I'm not deterred from continuing with my own writing career. After all, a successful literary agent did just think my writing good enough to take a closer look at. As an agent receives, on average, 150 submissions each week mine stood out among the many so I can only take that as a positive thing. I think my first two novels are good and, judging by the ratings and reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, so do a lot of others.

The recent experience has made me rethink my next novel though. The one I was writing was another humorous novel that did have a crime story in it (it was about a woman using her developing psychic abilities to help the police solve a murder. I can tell you that now as I'm not continuing with it) but it was definitely more a humorous crime story, rather than a crime story with an element of humour in it (if that makes sense).

For me personally, I've never wanted to be an 'indie' author; someone who goes it alone, but I've had to become that and have tried my best by self-publishing my first two novels and trying to market them as much as I can. I still feel the best way forward is to have an agent. For others that's not the right path but it is for me and that's why I'm going to make my next novel appeal to as many of them as possible. The new characters of the crime novel are already forming and there will still be humour as they each rub up against each other (metaphorically speaking. I'm not writing "that" sort of novel. That would mean a whole different research path!!)

So I now have a private detective character forming and a missing person mystery that takes him back to the case that got him sacked from the police force.

Mind you, the way I've casually abandoned two novel ideas in the last six months that could all change by next week!

Trying to be a bit less creative at the moment as I'm filling out my tax return for last year. Yes, I'm doing it very early but, although I've been writing full time for the last four years, those prior 20 odd years as an accountant still have an affect on me.

I'm a couple of chapters in to the first draft of 'Crime & Nourishment' now and the characters and plot are developing nicely. It's actually quite fun being the only person who knows the outcome, but like a gossiper who's desperate to let someone know the secret they're keeping; I'm able to drop in a few clues and hints here and there to pique people's interest.

A first draft is great once you've actually started it. Beforehand the entire novel stretches before you; a great big, daunting task; but once you've typed that first sentence then you're away. It doesn't have to be the best sentence you've ever written yet; that comes later. A first draft is just getting the entire story written, ensuring the plot and characters work and that the novel is a decent length. With this draft you can just keep writing and writing and writing and not look back until you've finished.

I think with each new book the first draft does become a little more detailed. In 'Driven to Distraction' it was about half the length of the final story and there wasn't much of it left in the published novel. With 'Nothing Ventured' the length was fine and the structure didn't change much by the end. Now with 'Crime & Nourishment' I've spent a lot more time planning and I'm probably a bit more conscious of detail at this early stage than I was in the previous two, but I'll still be following the same format of just writing and writing and writing until it's done.

It doesn't matter if I make mistakes or if I feel I want to change large chunks of the story; that's what a first draft is for and every new draft brings me closer to the final, polished novel that's ready for publication. My last first draft resulted in me abandoning the entire project. That can happen too but so what; all it's cost me is a little time but I still learned from the experience and some of the characters I created are stored away for use in the future.

I've seen a lot of comments on Social Media sites where people say they want to write but haven't. I think they're just daunted by the task but the answer is just to begin. Take a piece of paper or switch on your computer and write one sentence - now you've begun.

Another week starts. There's no such thing as a Bank Holiday Monday when you're self-employed. (Ok, I'm working today because I won't be tomorrow).

I left off Friday having just killed someone. I'm sure there's a lot of you who feel like doing that at the end of the working week. For me it was purely fictional. A character needed to die so (in a sinister voice) "I dun 'im in!"

Obviously that wasn't a humorous part of the novel. He wasn't killed by a custard pie or anything like that.

Today I continue on with the fallout from that death and how it moves the story on. (I know things are working well when I'm excited to see what happens next!)

I'm glad that I'm excited about the new novel. I've been in one of those, 'Why am I bothering' moods for the last couple of weeks. I'd had a five/six week period where I hadn't sold any books and a discounted price promotion on Nothing Ventured; advertised on Facebook and Twitter, resulted in a total sale of one copy!

I wasn't happy as I'd pretty much done everything that marketing articles advise a writer to do to get their books noticed. I had my website, a Facebook & Twitter presence; I wrote a blog and did some online paid advertising. It wasn't going well. I didn't know what to do next and then towards the end of last week it came to me. I understood what it was I should be doing...nothing.

That was it. Why hadn't I thought about it before? It was so simple. I realised I needed to take the slow path and allow my novels to be discovered gradually. It's only just over a year since my first novel was published and less than six months since my second one was. It's going to take time for people to notice them. It's happening, I just need to be patient.

So, apart from my blog I'm not doing any more advertising at present. I'm just going to concentrate on writing number three and leave the rest to word of mouth. I've had a lot of positive feedback from those who have read my novels and if those people rate/recommend on Amazon or just tell a friend about the novels then the news will spread.

That's going to take time. Just because my books are the most important thing to me it doesn't mean they're going to be to anyone else. Why should they be? For example I've had friends/family members say, "I haven't got around to getting your second novel yet" which is absolutely fine. When I read a novel by someone I don't necessarily want to read their next one straight away or even read another in that genre, no matter how much I enjoyed it. I like to read something different and then come back to it.

Ironically, as soon as I made this decision to take the slow path, I sold two copies of Driven to Distraction. Doing nothing has started reaping rewards already.