G.R. Mannering's Blog, page 9
November 27, 2014
November 11, 2014
November 10, 2014
Writing Isn’t Glamorous
It’s become very clear to me recently why writing is not in the same glamorous league as singing/acting/dancing etc. Below is a list I compiled of the reasons why. I should, of course, have been writing when I made this list, but I wasn’t. Let’s not talk about it.
1. It takes so blooming’ long! Books take months and years to write. After the initial excitement, people aren’t that interested anymore, which is fair enough. It’s more a case of, “Call me when you’ve finished.”
2. No one looks good writing. I can’t vouch for everyone on this; to be honest, I’m mostly using personal experience. There’s nothing attractive about someone who is obsessively drinking diet coke, while wearing ‘comfy’ tracksuit bottoms and muttering about magical creatures with their hair piled high on top of their head because it gets in the way otherwise.
3. You’re alone 99% of the time. Unless you have a furry friend to interrupt your typing (like my own little critter above) then it’s just you and that laptop. How utterly depressing.
4. Bad reviews will get you down. Now this one probably is true of all things in the public domain, but writing is so darn personal that when someone destroys your story in a few sentences, then it can pretty much destroy you too. Besides, some people will actively seek out details to pull you up on. Not fun. Solved by copious amounts of chocolate.
5. People think you are rich. Unfortunately, writing books actually doesn’t earn a lot of money at all. Bummer. Unless of course you’re J. K. Rowling or Hilary Mantel. But everyone will assume that you are loaded and they will think that it is totally okay to ask you to break down your salary for them. Frustrating.
So there we go, five reasons why writing isn’t glamorous at all. Of course, all of this negativity is completely counteracted by seeing your book published and in your hands for the first time. That is completely magical and it makes it all worth while! I wouldn’t swap my experiences for anything and, to be honest, glamour is probably overrated. I doubt I’d be allowed to stand on stage in my ‘comfy’ tracksuit bottoms with a diet coke.
November 6, 2014
October 31, 2014
October 16, 2014
Two Books, One Writer
There are so many myths surrounding writers and I’m totally into it. Apparently Wordworth used to walk up and down the path outside his house devising poetry because he liked the rhythm his feet made. According to legend, no one was allowed in the office of Charles Dickens while he was writing apart from his deaf cat. Supposedly, Hemmingway was always hammered when he penned anything worthy…the list goes on and I buy into all of it, whether I actually believe it or not. After all, you’ve got to make the (often) tedious process of putting words on a page (or letters on a word document) seem a bit more magical.
But one such writing myth I heard recently piqued my interest – apparently Stephen King writes at least two books at a time, switching between the different manuscripts. Now, I don’t know if this is actually true, but it resonated with me. At the moment I am doing just that and it can be a bit taboo around other writers. A lot of people are very precious about their work and they have certain ‘rules’ that they stick to, one often being that they work on stories one at a time. I suppose it’s a little like reading. I have always been the sort of reader that can have one or twenty books on the go without any trouble (probably because this was a necessity at uni) but I know many who hate the idea.
I’m not saying that one approach is best, but often people can be a little ‘sniffy’ if you reveal that your reading/writing more than one book at a time. The implication is often that you’re therefore putting only half the amount of effort in and I just don’t think that’s true. At the moment, due to my work on my YA fantasy novel Feathers and my work-in-progress for my MA in Creative Writing, I am working on two books simultaneously. I’ve never done this before, but I’m finding that it is actually a very productive way of working for me. Neither story ever gets old and I find that swapping between them keeps things fresh.
Ultimately, I think that it doesn’t matter how you write. Whether you work on one book at a time or fifty, as long as the stuff gets from your head and onto the page then everything is going to be okay.
