The Rights & Wrongs of Writing

May 30, 2017

Waiting to see

Fran Macilvey, Happiness Matters, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 4 Comments

Waiting to see

In the midst of setting up the paperback of Happiness Matters for publication, I find myself quite literally waiting to see what it looks like. I have ordered a first proof from CreateSpace, and another proof copy from IngramSpark and I will be delighted, as well as intrigued, when they arrive. How will they compare? Which copy will have the edge? I’ll let you know.

It isn’t just publication that is now waiting for the next stages. Lots of other things in my life seem to be hanging at that ‘soon but not quite yet’ moment before stuff happens. (Our kitchen badly needs a revamp: I am happy to live without a working dishwasher – I had no idea how expensive they were to run– but with the best will in the world, am finding it a challenge to live without a dishwasher, a freezer and an oven, and with a fridge on its last legs.  Hopefully I can get some ideas about that in the next few days.)

Because of the number of things I have on my mind, my writing and editing – of which I am so fond – are taking a reluctant back seat. Yes, I could write a few paragraphs here and there, I could slot in some writing around and about everything else that is going on, but would what I write be any good? Would I find myself going over it again? Probably.

I have found, to my cost, that there is absolutely no point forcing myself to meet daily targets, deadlines, as what I produce suffers and has to be re-written, painfully, at a more considered pace. So, I comfort myself that all my hopes and plans will come together at the best time, and are still on the right track.

In any case, life is to be lived in the meantime, and I aim to stay happy. If that means taking it slow and careful, then that is what I shall do.

Thanks for reading.

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May 15, 2017

‘Choose Me’ by Kay Langdale

Books I Have Reviewed, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 0 Comments

Book Review – ‘Choose Me’ by Kay Langdale

It’s very rare that I read a book I really, really don’t want to end. A book in which I feel so invested, I want to congratulate the characters for what they have achieved.

This is the story of how a young boy’s mother dies, leaving him an orphan – his father, a shadowy figure, introduced his mother to the drug habit which killed her and apparently left behind nothing, except that Billy looks exactly like him – and the quest to find Billy a new family. Since Billy is not a cute Guatemalan girl of five, his chances, apparently, are less than bright, especially after his mother’s parents turn away from him in their grief.

What strikes me about this novel is the strength of the characterisations. I agonise with the social worker, charged with the job of finding Billy a new family; I empathise with the grandparents, riven and destroyed by grief, blinded to the needs of their grandson until it is almost too late. The thoughtful and searching interplay of the characters is so true to life, I was pulled along by this story, and now I really want to hear more about them, and what happened next. Will Kay Langdale write a follow-up?

Motivations are part of what make a book credible, whether the ending is happy or not. If the characters come alive to me, and I can hear their voices, I don’t really care if they believe in Santa, live in a mansion in Santa Barbara, or in a squat in Glasgow. I want to listen to their voices, hear their story and cheer them on. And Kay Langdale manages that process so beautifully, Choose Me really is a marvellous story.

I won’t tell you what happens, because I think you should read it.

 

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May 7, 2017

Every indie author is different

Fran Macilvey, Happiness Matters, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 0 Comments

Every indie author is different.

We all do things in our own ways, and indie publishing is one area in life where it is impossible to generalise. The technology and the rules, the specifics are always changing, so publication represents a best guess snatch at the options, which will have changed again by this time tomorrow.

But how exciting to realise that the indie landscape is constantly evolving: so many other landscapes are fixed and uniform, it is delightful to consider that indie publishing creates and fosters a huge number of choices, an infinite number of options.

It has been commonplace to assume that indie publishing is the new kid on the block, a parvenu who has a lot to learn. But indies have a lot to teach, also, about the power of publishing, the mobility of modern communication trends, and the right of all to have access to publishing media. Many, many books which have long been classics on our shelves started life as indie published books, modern indie publishing merely refreshes a trend that has been around for hundreds of years. In some ways, indies are keeping alive a noble tradition, and helping the industry to evolve and keep pace with modern communications.

A president of the Michigan Savings Bank said to Henry Ford’s lawyer, “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” He ignored the advice. Publication is an adventure that we learn from, and that teaches us there are as many publication variables as there are flowers in the park, and the remit is constantly expanding.

I am enjoying preparing my second book Happiness Matters for publication, which should be happening later on this month. The details of how that will work, once broken down into bite-size chunks, are manageable…and meantime, I’m looking forward to having another publication to my credit, another string to my bow to make music with.

Thank you so much for reading!

 

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May 4, 2017

Taking Advice

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 2 Comments

Taking advice

It is good to listen to our audience, and taking advice is always useful, whether that is from a single reader or a roomful of expectant hopefuls. As I may have mentioned, writing is a solitary and often isolating preoccupation, so it is essential to maintain contact with people in the real world outside. Without that grounding, our work, and our whole world, can come adrift.

But…. we mustn’t listen so hard to our audience – unless we are a paid writer of text for a company brochure or publicity machine – that we become bendy like spaghetti.

For a first-time fiction author, the temptation is to listen and incorporate all changes, ideas, thoughts and suggestions, in the hope that doing so will make our work more appealing and marketable. But our energy creates our work, and if we listen too closely to what others might suggest – do we run the risk that we give up writing all together?

Who are we writing for? Ourselves, first of all. The first stage of any creative project must be free of self-consciousness. It must be free to fly and fart in the face of critics and friends alike, blissfully shielded from concerns about marketability, reader appeal or plot holes. That kind of energy is what makes writing a joy, a privilege and a rare pleasure, and while in the midst of creative frenzy, we have to feel free to say, ‘Go away, I’m not finished yet.’

That initial process is taking me far longer than I thought it would. With my rational mind, I calculated a year is enough time to get a book down and dusted. But, creatively, especially as I work best with several projects on the go at once, I’m finding that two years is about my minimum. The longer time-frame, paradoxically, allows me to work more freely, not worried about time scales and deadlines. And in all that time, we are really writing for ourselves, first – because that – selfish? – motivation keeps the voice alive, allows it to anchor and refine, before other people get a look in.

Thanks for reading.

 

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April 24, 2017

A lovely way to edit

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 2 Comments

A lovely way to edit

Over the holidays, I’ve been learning how to de-format and re-format text for uploading onto Kindle, because I’m going to publish Happiness Matters and Making Miracles myself (with a lot of help from my editor, cover designer and typesetters…).

One Saturday afternoon I decided to sit down and learn how to do formatting, as per instructions in Chris Longmuir’s book – see my previous blog post – and I finally got a handle on the process by about seven o’clock the same evening. Enough of a handle, at any rate, to be able to relax , want to keep learning and to marvel at the ingenuity and precision of the process.

As an added bonus, in the process of learning how to upload books in different file formats, I discover that uploading any of my work onto a kindle is a wonderful way to proof read it, the flat screen clearly exposing any typos, page glitches and blanks that I can then set my hand to sorting out.

I may have read a piece a thousand times, but it never ceases to amaze me what the eye does not see. E-book formats give us the chance to read a book as if for the first time, and to quickly highlight issues that we simply can’t see while at the keyboard: a superfluity of commas, for example, or an over-use of one phrase…. Amazingly, these jump of the virtual page, demanding to be noticed when read on a kindle.

If nothing else, I am grateful to have learned that this is an excellent way to review and crit work.

Having thought about it some more, I don’t think I will do all the formatting myself. I am now paying more attention to how other books are set out by professionals, and appreciating the value of detailed exactitude, and I would rather ask a professional to take that on, and continue learning about the process gradually without the added stress of deadlines and so on: it is invaluable to know how the process works, more or less, so that I can see where and how it fits in the overall process, and understand what I have to do in any particular case, but not so that I can feel I immediately have to become very good at it. Professional skills take years to acquire, so why not ask a professional?

Thanks for reading!

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April 20, 2017

The Joys of Self Publishing

Fran Macilvey, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 2 Comments

THE JOYS OF SELF PUBLISHING

As the season turns and I find myself looking forward to a warm Summer, I am also embarking on a new career as an indie publisher, contemplating all the joys of self publishing.

My second book, Happiness Matters is ready to go and all the pieces of the jigsaw are slowly coming together. I have spent the last few weeks learning about formatting – for kindle, Epub files – and setting up accounts on IngramSpark, CreateSpace and KDP. (For the moment, HTML eludes me, but if someone tells me it is a synch and this is how it works, I would be more than happy to give it a bash.)

So I thought now would be a good time to start a new series of articles about self-publishing. It is an  interesting enterprise, filled with tax implications, royalty puzzles, discounts and resellers, but – the learning has lots of advantages, not the least of which is that I can now ask semi-intelligent questions about subjects which until only months ago, were a total mystery to me. It is lovely to feel, at last, that I can contribute meaningfully to the indie publishing debate. And, I know roughly what questions to ask.

It becomes apparent that I cannot leave all this stuff I have to know, to other people. Yes, there are services available to those of us who simply can’t get our heads round any more information, but similarly, there are books available that are a joy to read, easily demystifying the jargon into something easy enough to understand, with a bit of practical application and repetition. Knowing what de-formatting and formatting involve, I can now, at least, decide whether I am confident enough to do that, or whether I would, after all, prefer to pass it to a professional. Knowing what it involves, I feel very confident to delegate.

If anyone would like to read an ARC of Happiness Matters please do contact me. I can let you have a recent version in mobi or as a word document.

Thanks for reading.

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March 27, 2017

Two books at once

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing, Women's fiction and chic lit 0 Comments

Two books at once

I am writing and re-writing my work. We all do this, and for me, it is an essential part of the process of proving: Allowing a work to lie fallow for a time, then going back to it, in a different mood, with new thoughts, and a more reader-like, objective view. And for most of last year, particularly because I’ve been busy with loads of other stuff, I’ve been writing one work, one book, to get it finished, I said to myself. Writing one book does, admittedly, help us to keep all our plot lines and timings internally consistent. And it is good to make a virtue of finishing a book.

But, remembering that enjoyment and motivation are what this writing is all about, I have to admit that singledom is not how I work best. Though I find it takes me quite a long time to feel that any piece of writing has reached its best – I suspect at eighteen months to two years – I don’t thrive when I’m writing only one book. Call me faithless, call me flirty…. but

Ideally – as I did when I was writing Trapped – I like to write two books at once; I need another work in the background, so that I have a kind of ‘double weave’ arrangement going on. For me, that adds flavour and depth to both works, in different ways.

When writing and editing Trapped I also had Happiness Matters on the go, which actually motivated me, adding ‘cross-fertilisation’ rewards, and helping me to take both tasks more seriously, and in the best spirit. It’s hard to explain, but two books make the whole adventure more real, and I’m less hung up – in all the wrong ways – on the one project that has all of my current attention.

It’s as if, with only one to focus on, the tone gets too serious and pedantic. Does anyone else find themselves needing two books to work on, or am I unusual in that way?

Double weave takes longer, but for me, it’s stronger.

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March 24, 2017

Rewriting again and again

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Memoir, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing, Women's fiction and chic lit 6 Comments

Rewriting again and again

If anyone was to ask me, ‘How many drafts did you write of Trapped before you were happy with it, before you knew it was finished?’ I might, borrowing a phrase of my grandfather’s, reply reflectively, ‘Thoosands and thoosands….’ Which, over the course of a three year period of trial, error and reconsideration, is not such an exaggeration. At least fifty drafts, then.

The lesson I can draw from this, is that for me, it takes time for the right tone, the right angles and the comfortable, conversational colour to emerge. It takes time to shed the reserve that at first, I hardly notice, and get down to a more immediate and conversational style that I really do prefer, and that I know helps me to enjoy what I write. Perhaps it is the writer’s equivalent of shyness, or a need to come closer gradually, but this process of casting and recasting simply cannot be rushed.

I’ve tried rushing, and this is what happens:-

  • The tone of my book flattens out into business-like precision, (which has its uses)
  • I start to worry about timing, timetables, word-counts, daily disciplines
  • My work flattens out even more
  • I assume this is the best I can do and become disheartened.

Now if I assume that I can always please myself, I can always write exactly what I want, whenever I want – and last night, that happened to be from eleven pm ‘til one am – if I assume that I am free to be me not just sometimes, but all times, in all places and in the midst of all my work, this is what happens:-

  • I smile and feel liberated again
  • A sense of fun and assertive joy invades my work
  • My characters are let loose and can speak to me in much fresher, clearer voices
  • My plots twist and turn nicely, because I am intrigued, instead of scared, or bored.
  • I enjoy my work, and my life

If it takes me three dozen drafts to get my books right, whether they are memoir, MBS or fiction, I better just accept that and start having fun. No more timetables, no more strategies for writing ‘a book a year’, no more ‘must get this finished today’ – because all these …anxieties…. result in work that is not my best.

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March 22, 2017

SAW Conference continued

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Memoir, Path To Publication, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 0 Comments

SAW Conference continued…

This is the second part of an introduction I gave to a seminar at the Scottish Association of Writers Annual Conference at Cumbernauald on Saturday, 18th March.

‘….The first 25 or 30 drafts of any memoir that we are writing can, and often will be as sentimental, overblown, subjective, unfair, emotionally exhausting and entirely self-obsessed as we need them to be. But as we write, and once we get to draft 35 or 40, as part of the process, we gain distance and a different perspective, and we have an amazing chance to learn real empathy with the story of others.

Despite the fact that readers may consider memoir writers self-obsessed, the real value of the process is that, though a process of self-reflection, we gain empathy with others, and with ourselves.

As part of the process of writing our memoir (which we hope to see published one day) we:-

  • approach the task with trepidation, on tiptoe.
  • Are subjective, emotional and sometimes very unfair when in the early stages of writing. But no-one else is going to read our first thirty-five drafts, so we can write what we want!
  • Get through all the emotional work and come out the other side feeling different, better and more aware.

If and when we finally reach our goal of publication – which can take ten years – as part of this process, we have to accept that:-

  • Our work is no longer ours. It becomes public property.
  • Other people will expect to have a view about what we have written, so it helps to let go of our darlings.
  • Having spent years getting to this point, what have we to show for it? Not a lot, on the face of it.

But we do come away from the process with more empathy; so empathy is our ultimate reward for a long, hard process of reflection.

Increased awareness may be all we get, but this in itself is extremely valuable and worthwhile. Empathy for others, and for ourselves; and a much clearer, and calmer appreciation of our value in the world.

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March 20, 2017

A Workshop at SAW Conference 2017

'Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy', Fran Macilvey, Memoir, The Rights & Wrongs of Writing 0 Comments

Memoirs and Autobiographies – a workshop at SAW Conference 2017

Cumbernauld, 18th March 2017.

This is the first part of a talk I gave as part of a workshop at the Scottish Association of Writers Annual Conference in Cumbernauld on Saturday.

‘……Memoir is classed by publishers as narrative non-fiction, and sits, in a category all its own, between pure fiction which has characters, a plot, and is based (at least in theory) in our imaginations, (though we all know that fiction is based around what we know and have learned in our own lives) and non-fiction, a ‘How To’ book by an author who has to demonstrate his expertise and get their facts right.

However, we are the experts when it comes to writing our memoirs. So, do we have to write the truth or get our facts right? The tagline of my book, My Life with Cerebral Palsy is there to signal to a reader that s/he is not reading a narrative of pure fiction, but a story about real people.

But as a memoir writer, I do not have to tell ‘the truth’, nor can I. (Autobiography makes that attempt, usually starting with an anecdote about Great Grandpa Wilfred who treked across the Apallacian Mountains, but even autobiography is subjective.)

It is not possible for me to tell the truth. I can’t remember what happened when I was three; and in any case, everyone’s version of the truth is different. My mother tells me that my memoir is simply not what she remembers, and that is fine: her view of what happened will never be the same as mine.

So, when writing about our memories how do we protect ourselves from allegations that what we have written is unfair, untrue, unkind, just plain wrong? People are only too ready to tell us when then they think we have got it wrong.

It helps to remember four things.

  • Sincerity – be as authentic and sincere as you can. You may have to write a hundred thousand words – of anything – until you find your voice, but you will. Persist, until you find your voice, and be sincere. Avoid exaggeration, if you can, and be honest.
  • Even-handedness. Your final version must be even-handed. If you dish it out to or about other people, give yourself a hard time too. If anyone then suggests that I have been unkind to my parents or my colleagues, I can, in all sincerity, say I have been at least as hard on myself.
  • Walk your own path – Stick to your own story. Always. Only borrow the minimum of what you need, and resist the temptation to poach other people’s stories for your own purposes.  If you are writing your story and you find it boring, that is the challenge to go out and make your life more interesting.
  • Avoid naming or shaming anyone – malice. Do not be tempted.

Don’t use the occasion of publication – a public platform – to lambast or wound any named individual. Obviously, (A Child called ‘It’) there are times when that warning will have to be tempered by the need to tell as story, but it is an aim. We can lambast classes of person – When I was writing Trapped I have it in for doctors, lawyers…but no one single individual is singled out…..’

(To be continued)

Thanks to Jen Butler for inviting me to participate in the Conference, and to everyone who signed up on the day! It was lovely to meet you all and share our stories.

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