Mark Wilson's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-process"
Praise and Bruised Esteem
As a writer, it can be a strange old experience receiving feedback, comments or reviews on books you have written. Personally I always welcome feedback from people who have enjoyed my books. I’m also very grateful for readers who tell me about parts that left them unsatisfied or frustrated (my beta readers are great at this).
I’ve been fortunate to have been sent many good reviews and emails about sections of both books which people have identified with and kindly taken the time to tell me about their thoughts. Paddy's Daddy (a book I hated writing) in particular seems to encourage people who have had similar experiences to share them with me.
One problem. Every single positive comment makes me squirm inside. They physically hurt and serve to remind me how badly damaged I still am inside (despite my confident exterior and tremendous progress in staying on top of depression) because of childhood abuse and neglect.
In the past I would brush people’s kindness off with comments like “Na, It’s rubbish” when getting praised. I was trying to deflect the praise. What I meant was “I’m rubbish”. What they heard was “You’re a fool for liking it” or “I don’t appreciate what you’re saying”. I never do this anymore.
Now I bury and ignore the voice that tells me that I’m worthless and that everything I produce is crap, and simply say thank you, then offer them some insight into the section they liked in return and try to repay the compliment genuinely in some way. I’m new to it, this simple human exchange, but I’m learning. A small part of me is beginning to accept praise just a little and it’s a pretty good feeling.
Just a thought for today.
Paddy's Daddy
I’ve been fortunate to have been sent many good reviews and emails about sections of both books which people have identified with and kindly taken the time to tell me about their thoughts. Paddy's Daddy (a book I hated writing) in particular seems to encourage people who have had similar experiences to share them with me.
One problem. Every single positive comment makes me squirm inside. They physically hurt and serve to remind me how badly damaged I still am inside (despite my confident exterior and tremendous progress in staying on top of depression) because of childhood abuse and neglect.
In the past I would brush people’s kindness off with comments like “Na, It’s rubbish” when getting praised. I was trying to deflect the praise. What I meant was “I’m rubbish”. What they heard was “You’re a fool for liking it” or “I don’t appreciate what you’re saying”. I never do this anymore.
Now I bury and ignore the voice that tells me that I’m worthless and that everything I produce is crap, and simply say thank you, then offer them some insight into the section they liked in return and try to repay the compliment genuinely in some way. I’m new to it, this simple human exchange, but I’m learning. A small part of me is beginning to accept praise just a little and it’s a pretty good feeling.
Just a thought for today.
Paddy's Daddy
That Difficult First Novel?
Uh....Not really..No
It’s been an interesting process, writing my first book, but a fantastic one as well. I began writing as a way of emptying my cluttered brain. Bobby's Boy began life as a short story titled “The Rusted Key” in October 2011. The story was based around a simple concept, inspired by a graphic novel called “Stray Bullets by David Lapham (I won’t divulge the concept here as it would act as a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read the book).
The short story grew so I started calling it a Novella and kept writing. The Novella began to gain momentum and slowly became my first novel. I made little progress over the next few months, finding myself short of time, and even shorter of discipline. Then January came.
January 2012 was a turnaround month for the novel. I decided at the start of the month, under the advice of my best friend and Jack White (via an interview he did on keeping creativity flowing), to dedicate at least an hour every day to writing the novel. At the end of Janaury I renamed the book “Bobby’s Boy” as the previous name just didn’t work anymore.
1000 words a day was my target. According to Mr White, you’ve got to work your creative muscles like any other and use them every day. To an ex-gym addict it struck the right note.
Some days it’ll be shite that you write (like that wee bit of poetry I slipped in there), others you’ll produce work that’ll make you wonder where the hell it came from when you re-read. I take the rough with the smooth. The important thing is to keep the story moving continuously and to not “wait for the rays of the sun to shine on your keyboard, ‘cos you’ll rust your ideas”.
Some-days I managed more words than I’d targeted, a lot more, but I never fell below at least 1000 words a day. My new “working ethos” helped me jump from 22.500 words on January 7th, to 75000 words in the completed novel on February 14th. I’m not saying that these words were all brilliant, some most definitely were not, but they did moving the story on, and were re-written on another day. Not bad for having a full-time job teaching high school kids and my three year old son (my top priority) to keep me busy also.
Invariably I would sit each session with a destination in mind for where the story would go, but no idea what words would come to get my main character where he was going. It was fun to discover the story as it came onto the page.
The discipline worked and the ideas and words just keep flowing. I truly didn’t have the time to make use of all the ideas my brain was bringing to the surface. Some were utter bollocks, some were quite good. I note everything down, every idea and quirk of thought in the hope of finding a few hours sometime to explore them.
For me, books, movies and music have always been connected. The themes, emotions and character development that make or break a good story hold true for all three media. I've been a bit exasperated recently at the endless flow of vampires/detectives/spies/franchises, written to formula music, film and books. I miss good stories that develop characters over the course of one novel, making you care for, hate or love them in the process.
Ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations have always been the best stories for me, the most engaging whether in film, music or print; the best way to expose people's humour, goodness, evil, courage, fear and basic humanity. Books like To kill a mockingbird, and characters like Boo Radley I try to populate my books with people of this sort.
There a saying in the music industry that should relate to the literary world also. " work hard enou and become your own favourite band." I'm a distance behind my favourite authors, but theirs is the standard I'm reaching for.
I’ve re-visited some really dark experiences during the writing of this novel and in the construction of my characters and story. Some of these I’d forgotten about for decades. Other memories have resurfaced that I’ve enjoyed remembering for the first time in many years. I had fantastic fun writing my first novel, and resent deeply the gap I have to enforce to market and Promo the book. I just want to start my next project, but books don’t get themselves noticed.
I've very much enjoyed putting Tom (my main character) out into the world to be interacted with or ignored, what-ever the fates may bring. I’ll be sad to leave him and will miss writing about this cool, lucky, happy, tragic and a little damaged wee guy every day. Still, onto the next one, with gusto.
My next book is part one of a trilogy titled "Nae'body's Hero" and is a tale of heroism from three unlikely characters. A Scottish laddie with a gift, an American lady-agent, tasked with hunting terrorists and a British-born Pakistani lad who joins Al-Queda.
Nae'body's Hero:Conflux will be released in December 2012.
Bobby's Boy is available on amazon kindle and as a paperback.
You can find me at: www.markwilsonbooks.com
On Twitter: @markwilsonbooks
And on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Bobbysboy
It’s been an interesting process, writing my first book, but a fantastic one as well. I began writing as a way of emptying my cluttered brain. Bobby's Boy began life as a short story titled “The Rusted Key” in October 2011. The story was based around a simple concept, inspired by a graphic novel called “Stray Bullets by David Lapham (I won’t divulge the concept here as it would act as a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read the book).
The short story grew so I started calling it a Novella and kept writing. The Novella began to gain momentum and slowly became my first novel. I made little progress over the next few months, finding myself short of time, and even shorter of discipline. Then January came.
January 2012 was a turnaround month for the novel. I decided at the start of the month, under the advice of my best friend and Jack White (via an interview he did on keeping creativity flowing), to dedicate at least an hour every day to writing the novel. At the end of Janaury I renamed the book “Bobby’s Boy” as the previous name just didn’t work anymore.
1000 words a day was my target. According to Mr White, you’ve got to work your creative muscles like any other and use them every day. To an ex-gym addict it struck the right note.
Some days it’ll be shite that you write (like that wee bit of poetry I slipped in there), others you’ll produce work that’ll make you wonder where the hell it came from when you re-read. I take the rough with the smooth. The important thing is to keep the story moving continuously and to not “wait for the rays of the sun to shine on your keyboard, ‘cos you’ll rust your ideas”.
Some-days I managed more words than I’d targeted, a lot more, but I never fell below at least 1000 words a day. My new “working ethos” helped me jump from 22.500 words on January 7th, to 75000 words in the completed novel on February 14th. I’m not saying that these words were all brilliant, some most definitely were not, but they did moving the story on, and were re-written on another day. Not bad for having a full-time job teaching high school kids and my three year old son (my top priority) to keep me busy also.
Invariably I would sit each session with a destination in mind for where the story would go, but no idea what words would come to get my main character where he was going. It was fun to discover the story as it came onto the page.
The discipline worked and the ideas and words just keep flowing. I truly didn’t have the time to make use of all the ideas my brain was bringing to the surface. Some were utter bollocks, some were quite good. I note everything down, every idea and quirk of thought in the hope of finding a few hours sometime to explore them.
For me, books, movies and music have always been connected. The themes, emotions and character development that make or break a good story hold true for all three media. I've been a bit exasperated recently at the endless flow of vampires/detectives/spies/franchises, written to formula music, film and books. I miss good stories that develop characters over the course of one novel, making you care for, hate or love them in the process.
Ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations have always been the best stories for me, the most engaging whether in film, music or print; the best way to expose people's humour, goodness, evil, courage, fear and basic humanity. Books like To kill a mockingbird, and characters like Boo Radley I try to populate my books with people of this sort.
There a saying in the music industry that should relate to the literary world also. " work hard enou and become your own favourite band." I'm a distance behind my favourite authors, but theirs is the standard I'm reaching for.
I’ve re-visited some really dark experiences during the writing of this novel and in the construction of my characters and story. Some of these I’d forgotten about for decades. Other memories have resurfaced that I’ve enjoyed remembering for the first time in many years. I had fantastic fun writing my first novel, and resent deeply the gap I have to enforce to market and Promo the book. I just want to start my next project, but books don’t get themselves noticed.
I've very much enjoyed putting Tom (my main character) out into the world to be interacted with or ignored, what-ever the fates may bring. I’ll be sad to leave him and will miss writing about this cool, lucky, happy, tragic and a little damaged wee guy every day. Still, onto the next one, with gusto.
My next book is part one of a trilogy titled "Nae'body's Hero" and is a tale of heroism from three unlikely characters. A Scottish laddie with a gift, an American lady-agent, tasked with hunting terrorists and a British-born Pakistani lad who joins Al-Queda.
Nae'body's Hero:Conflux will be released in December 2012.
Bobby's Boy is available on amazon kindle and as a paperback.
You can find me at: www.markwilsonbooks.com
On Twitter: @markwilsonbooks
And on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Bobbysboy
