The Rights & Wrongs of Writing

Deciding is the hardest part

How long do we spend wondering about something, before we do it?  I’m willing to bet that the thoughts about what we should do, what we think we can do, or want to do, take a great deal of headspace in our lives, especially when we live and work for ourselves and by ourselves a lot of the time.  But what if we were simply to go ahead and do stuff, without thinking about whether we should, all the time?

How long would it take, for example, to think of a plot for a story, with a beginning, middle and end?  It could take forever, and be our excuse for never actually picking up a pen, or setting down to type.  It’s a fallacy that things have to be perfect before we start.  The trick is to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, to experiment, to make a start at something, because every small action forward is better than any number of theories and grand hopes.  It is normal to try twenty things and only one of them ‘works out’.  That is how we discover what we really want to do.  Everything we are brave enough to attempt is valuable.

Perhaps I feel really strongly about this because, if I want to go out and do things, I have to really decide, and discipline myself to just do it.  If I didn’t, I’d still be sitting in that comfortable window seat over there, reading books and wondering when I was going to do something with my life.

When we make a decision to do something, that is when we should feel proudest of ourselves, really.  Because, as every tired worker knows, deciding is the hardest part of life, whether that be to write a book, bake a cake or learn to drive a car.

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Ten Strategies to help us write a whole book.

Rachel’s question raises further questions.  Why would a good writer find it hard to write a full-length work, a book?  Short stories, no problem, novellas, no problem.  A book?  Ah, that will take me three years….

Partly it’s what we tell ourselves, isn’t it?  I’m great at editing, a brilliant short story writer, but a whole book?  Well, I suck at that!  Actually, no, you don’t, because a book by any other name is simply a word count with a couple of zeros on the end.

So, I’ve dreamed up ten strategies to help us write (which means: finish) a whole book – Yes!

• Stop calling it a book.  Call it a prospectus, an outline, a fairy story, a compilation of our favourite characters’ lives.

• Just write, for a whole day, and see what you end up with.  Ignore the word count, and focus on the movement of your fingers over the keyboard.  To help with this, don’t think about it, don’t rationalise, don’t answer the phone, and when our significant others ask us what we are doing, we don’t have to reply.  When we do, let us reply with minimal information.  The goal is not to get distracted.

• Don’t censor.  Editing is one skill, writing is quite another.

• Fall in love with your characters and write all about them.  Notice how they think, why they might not be very nice, what they might do next.

• Throw out the plot plan.  The best characters lead the author, who merely has to observe, suspend disbelief and transcribe.  Truly, it is not up to me to force my characters.  It is up to me to observe, listen and record.

• Don’t judge, correct spelling or worry about inconsistencies. These will all be taken care of later.

• Don’t think about whether a plot development – which is not yours and which belongs to your characters – is realistic or feasible.

• Enjoy the feeling of being simply the typist taking dictation.  It is not your story.  You are simply the recording clerk.

• Don’t print off your work, but do save it every day onto a pen drive, CD or similar.  If you put a lot of time in, your valuable work deserves to be protected from disaster.

• Allow your characters, scenes and scenarios to unfold, while you float over the whole thing listening, nodding and being generally agreeable.  The secret is to have fun, not save the world.

• Don’t aim for a particular word count.  I am reliably informed that long books are in vogue, so give full rein to your imagination.

• Ring fence and respect your desire, not your time.  Keep that flame of enthusiasm bright, and if you are like me, avoid timetables – though you might like to believe that you will set aside two days a week to do nothing but write, it will drive you crazy if those two days never happen.  Instead, write in between doctor’s appointments, while waiting for the plumber, just before you have to take your daughter to her fencing club…..

Thanks for reading.

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‘Help! I can’t write a book’.

Okay, I have to admit, this was a new idea for me, a novel perspective – excuse the pun – but thanks to a FB post by Rachel A Dyson, I am currently obsessed with a new thought, a new possibility that there are writers out there who write well, and with discipline, and who are brilliant editors, but for whom the challenge is to write enough words to make a full-length book.

There are lots of strategies we can use to help us handle the slightly scary notion that if we wish to write a book, it is up to us to pen something in excess of sixty thousand words into story-like order.  For example, a short story = 3000 words; one short story a fortnight = 78,000 words.  Or if we write novellas @ 30,000 words each, just write three of these.

But why would a great writer have problems writing a full length work in less than ten years?  Actually, it can take that long, and for some, it is the price of success.  Not everyone has the time, inclination, discipline or method that allows them to churn out a book a year, though personally, I feel that one book a year is a reasonably comfortable ambition, assuming we don’t have an editor breathing down our necks, insisting that we procure a book a year, which is an entirely different proposition.

Perhaps our fingers clam up and our minds go blank because we feel self-conscious about the process of writing, or we grill ourselves into expecting that we should be writing because this is our writing time.

Oddly, I have discovered recently that I do much of my best creative work when I’m about to take daughter fencing, or while I’m making pancakes – the batter has to cook on both sides, so I have a comfortable two minutes on the first side, and one minute on the second side.  It helps wile away the boredom of standing in the kitchen, and I can get a surprising amount written in a hurry when I have to get back to the stove right away.  Or when I should have been going out ten minutes ago: When I don’t plan to, and there is no heavy, empty white page in the diary screaming, “THIS IS YOUR WRITING TIME, AND BY GOLLY, YOU WILL WRITE” that is when I find myself set free.

The pressure of other jobs to do, of people wanting their next meal and of tradesmen expected, can be brilliant for forcing us to simply dream up the wildest, craziest ideas and run with them.  But then, I’ve always been a contrary soul.

(To be continued.)

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Killing Our Darlings

One of the main reasons we don’t get round to finishing a book, is because we become too attached to our words and cannot bear to edit them down.  All our words are beautiful, and we cannot bear the notion that many of them, maybe even as many as half of them, will have to go.  Who wants to publish a first book running to two hundred thousand words?  Not me, I’m afraid, no matter how brilliant. (‘War and Peace’ is good, even sublime, but I gather that Tolstoy was not a nice man, so I feel quite free to skim over endless details about battle tactics, troop movements and such like. Interesting, but I don’t need to know about quartermaster’s supplies…)

It hurts, having to delete good, even brilliant passages from our work.  But it gets easier, and we can console ourselves that actually, there is no shortage of good stuff waiting to see the light of day.  Every book is a compromise, a tiptoe through scenarios that may go this way or that, a flirtation with characters who may or may not decide to take up starring roles or supporting parts.  And brilliance is subjective.  If our audience is not, and is not expected to be, as learned as we are, then no number of veiled references to Nabokov will hit the mark, no matter how apt, witty or erudite.

There is probably no point having written a wonderful book, brimming with ideas and potential if it contains

• Too much information. Some details need close focus, others prefer the broad brush. No reader can read close focus for the entire length of a novel.

• Too many words.  A high word count suggests that at least a third of the total can be culled, re-written, or tightened up.  Some characters may need to take a back seat – which may give us scope for a sequel, or a new branch of novels.  As a reader, a high word count is exhausting to contemplate, and not all readers can spare that kind of commitment.  That said, one publisher I spoke to at the Frankfurt Book Fair actively searches for longer manuscripts, following a trend that suggests readers perceive fatter books as better value for money.  (Lesson: Ideal book length is apparently as much a matter of fashion as any other aspect of publishing.)

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Writers Block

There is an on-going – and often rather heated – debate about whether writers block is real, or imaginary, a figment of fertile and rather sensitive imaginations.  Whether, in fact, it would be easily solved with a dose of Epsom salts and a canter over Hampstead Heath or any other rather forbidding and earthy expanse of hill, moor, rock or mountain.

For the sake of the argument I will assume that Writer’s Block is real, and that it is a symptom of writers who try so hard to get it right, that one day, their brains simply refuse to co-operate nor write another word.  Writer’s Block is that outcome which says, You want me to write about feisty heroines, dashing cads – or dark and gloomy molderquarshes and franticulating fantoozies….again?  Now?  I just wrote you a wonderful piece last year?  You need another one??  Oh the hell with it, no, No, NO!

Writer’s Block is that outcome which manifests in a total inability to write anything except laundry lists, and even these have to be overseen by a kindly laundry mistress who holds the pen and croons soothingly, ‘There, there….’

Some wonderful authors have indeed had very serious writing allergy syndrome.  Their lives collapse, as around them the publicity machine, their agents, publishers and the hopeful public wait for another gem from the pen of…. Which simply refuses to materialise.

So to avoid writers’ block, these are my top tips:-

• Scrap perfectionism.

• Get the plot down in outline first, without obsessing about the details.

• If the thought of writing makes you dizzy or ill, nauseated or stressed, LEAVE IT and go for a bracing run on Hampstead Heath or some other or any other rather forbidding and earthy expanse of hill, moor, rock or mountain.  Nothing is more important than being happy and relaxed.

• Life is not about writing.  Life is about friendship, love, companionship, having fun, being kind to people.  If you can’t remember what that feels like, (if you can’t remember what fun means) you need to get away from your desk for at least a fortnight, probably a month, and preferably somewhere where you will be fed peeled grapes by an adoring acolyte who makes you feel special.

Thanks for reading!

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