The Rights & Wrongs of Writing

Creative Strategies

If you are anything like me, writing will be one of these obsessions that we put off repeatedly until, finally, having done everything else, we set down with a huff of determination and start…when everyone else is thinking about heading to bed, or after all the other jobs are sorted.

Are you a Create When I Feel Moved type? Or do you prefer routine, a set time, a method that each day aims to ensure you prioritise your word count, ring fencing that commitment against all comers?

Whatever your method, if you would like a few creative strategies to motivate and refresh you, I find these useful:-

• Decide that creativity matters and that we are going to attend to our ideas. Maybe not today, maybe not just now, but yes, we are going to do it. Soon.

• Start with the first sentence, then the next, not censoring what you write at all. The first few pages of anything should, at the start, not be the result of a thinking process, but more a kind of flight into the unknown, an abseil, a dance off the edge of our usual, a waltz with the unexpected. If we write a short burst of a first chapter as an anchor, the rest can fizz quietly as we go about our everyday business.

• Accept that there are busy times when writing will take a back seat. When you cannot write you are still using your time productively, re-energising your desire and focus, and replenishing your ideas bank.

• When you sit to write, don’t assume you will be sitting there for the rest of the day or night. Decide that you will work for no more than ninety minutes. When the ninety minutes are up, stop whatever you are doing and do something else. You can have as many stints of ninety minutes as you wish, but you break them up. Close down your machines and leave the desk. (If you don’t, you will feel tired even as you sit down to write, thinking, ‘well, here I am for the rest of the day….’)

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Why I Write

Here are a few reasons why I write.  Each of us has our own particular reasons for spending time at the keyboard or with a pen and paper, but these themes recur.  I’m sure we all recognise them.

– To turn my mistakes into opportunities to laugh.

– To refute the supposition that we all have better things to be getting on with, more sociable and productive things to do.

– to honour my life’s purpose.

– to become absorbed so that I can go off and explore new worlds.

– to have something to show for years of insomnia and broken sleep.

– To prove that following dreams is not only worthwhile but is, in fact, the best way to live life fully and happily.

– To demonstrate the power that is unearthed in learning to work hard for long periods without apparent reward.

– To demonstrate the value of persistence and achievements in small steps (this is a writers’ blog, so I can use a word like ‘increments’).

– To demonstrate the power of success to my daughter and set a good example.  We can teach our children that they too can succeed by working towards something which inspires them.  In fact, learning to persist is its own reward.

– To have something to do.

– To use my time constructively, so that when my critics see me sitting, they will not call me lazy.

– To enjoy that feeling of hard work and to counter loneliness.

– To create something tangible at the end of the day which is never the same twice.

– To feel worthwhile.

– To get lost in writing, because that often feels more productive than getting lost in reading yet another book.

– To turn depression, fatigue, isolation, unhappiness and anger into a channel for something beautiful.

– To keep my brain active.

– To learn associated skills such as editing, organisation, culling and discarding, multi-tasking, advocacy and confidence.

– To feel connected to other writers and the wider community.  We reach out to others, explore and learn together.

– To reconcile and grow.

– To counter the notion of shortages.  The more I write, the more there is to write about.

Thanks so much for reading and commenting.

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Going it alone

If we enjoy working hard, thrive on internet communication, have a good grasp of language or a track record which includes prior publication, and if we have more ideas than we know what to do with, we may find ourselves going it alone, and contemplating self-publishing.  This is an entirely feasible alternative to the mainstream options most of us dream of reaching one day.

More and more people are happy to download books direct from the internet and pay a fraction of the cover price for new printed books.  If we do find a seam of readers who enjoy reading printed copy, there are distributors and printers who will produce small numbers of books, relatively cheaply and post them anywhere in the world.  Amazon offers printing and distribution networks that even ten years ago would have been considered too ambitious to work, and which are now becoming commonplace. Self-publishing, blogging, and e-books sites such as ‘Smashwords’ and ‘CreateSpace’ place the power of publication at our fingertips.

There are obvious advantages: we retain control, our outlays are calculable, and our royalty percentages are higher than with traditional publishers.  The disadvantages are worth a mention, though.  While the publication process itself is straightforward, and there are many tools to help us get the best from our material, the end product is all that consumers are interested in.  They don’t care that what they are reading on their kindles is “all our own work”.

Are we able to assess our work with a cool eye and produce a clean, professional-looking package?  Do we have the experience as a writer to care about the details of presentation, the syntax, the grammar and the typos that can so quickly alienate readers?  Has our editing been tempered by comments, opinions and feedback from others?  And can we build a marketing base to get our work out to a wider audience? If we can answer confidently yes, then we have the best start possible on the competition.  There is always the possibility that, should we choose to publish independently, our book may be discovered and picked up by a mainstream publisher, though there are publishers who simply will not take on any book that has been self-published.

Traditional publishers invest substantial sums before they see any return, so it is perhaps not surprising that they are reluctant to take on self-published books.  There are stories in the press every day about authors who have been ‘found’ by the mainstream and signed up on traditional contracts. The best hope, it seems, for someone hoping to migrate from self-publishing to the mainstream – apart from sheer dogged persistence and a sprinkling of spectacular good luck – is to find a commissioning editor who likes what we write, and is prepared to consider new work from us.

Publicity and self-promotion are the main bugbears of going it alone.  It is at the coalface of sales that we discover how willing we are to leave our desk, make appointments to meet sales people, smile and approach booksellers, offer promotions for our work, competitions or publicity opportunities to our local media.  If, having made the decision to go it alone, this transition proves difficult, we may have to accept that writing success remains a semi-private dream (no material uploaded on the web is private) or pin our hopes on a more conventional good luck story.  Whichever way we take to the road, we can be sure it will be a long one, with lots of opportunities for making fools of ourselves, failing and faltering.  What matters is not reaching some shifting shore we call success, so much as whether we enjoy the journey.

The school holidays start today, and I will be checking in from time to time over the vacation. Meantime, thanks for reading – I enjoy all your comments!

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Helpful communications

To make my communications enjoyable and rewarding, I find the following ideas help me.  You will of course have your own ideas, and I would be pleased to hear about them.

Meantime…

• Do keep a note of whom you have written to, and when you sent your enquiry.

You may not hear back, but at least you will remember.  If and when you receive a reply, it is your choice whether to make up a file of rejection slips, or file it in the bin and write if off to experience.  But do keep a note, so you won’t submit twice to the same agency

• Do not expect any acknowledgement.
• Do not telephone agents to ask if they have received your submission.
• Do not write and ask, unless you know your contact well .

As someone who was brought up in business to always acknowledge receipt of important papers (and to us, our submissions are very important), the realisation that no “thank you” would be forthcoming, has been hard to adapt to.  How did I know they had received my letters?  Did they like what I had sent?

Agents and publishers simply do not have the time to acknowledge everything they receive.  They are busy drumming up business, editing and publishing.  Do yourself a favour and accept that this is how the world is.

For the sake of our sanity, we learn to live with a most soothing assumption, which is that all our communications do arrive at their destination and are properly read and fully considered.  As I said earlier, any agent who sees potential in your work will certainly contact you quickly.  For the rest, send off your best (and don’t forget to stick on the right postage!) and then get on with your life.

Electronic communications are easy, and sending emails is quick and trouble free.  No stamps, no envelopes.  But because it is easy, does not mean that we can afford to be careless.  Quite the reverse is true.  Because we can assume that an email will land in someone’s IN box when they are busy, we should take extra pains to ensure that we write carefully, tactfully and to the point.

• Do always assume that everything posted on-line, whether in a private email or to an on-line forum, can be viewed by anyone else, anytime, anywhere.

• Do Decide that your on-line reputation is important to you, and that you will exercise gentleness and restraint when communicating with others.
• Do Assume that your emails are as important as letters, and take the time to edit them carefully for brevity and clarity.
• Don’t press the ‘send’ button when you are in a bad mood, tired, doubtful, having a crisis, hungry or disappointed.  You can’t retrieve a letter from an in-box in the way that you can tear up snail mail on your walk down to the post box.
• It is a mistake to assume that no-one notices or cares.  The truth is that, seen up on screen, a hurtful jibe or careless criticism disguised as ‘honest feedback’ can be immensely hurtful.
• Don’t get caught up in the blame game.
• If a troll gets hold of your account and starts to insult you, send them a smiley reply and ignore the rest.
• Some people enjoy making trouble, and it will not help you to become like them.

Thanks for reading! I appreciate all your comments and feedback.

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Submissions Etiquette

After sending a submission to a publisher or agency, realistically, we can expect to wait eight to twelve weeks before we hear anything.

Speaking from personal experience, if an agent is keen to know more, they will get back to us within the first seven days. Resist the urge to check your in-box every ten minutes, and instead, continue with writing, editing and research.

I recommend doing fewer submissions rather than many. That way, we can give each package our full attention and thus also have some basis for remembering each one distinctly. This sounds obvious, but it is surprisingly easy to forget which agent works for which business… Details matter when making a first impression, so we must make sure we target our work at those most likely to be interested. In doing so, we begin to notice that, despite our natural optimism, the list of agencies likely to be interested in our work is not infinite.

So take the time to consider why you would choose a particular agency and learn about them. Take the time to do a good job, and every agent and publisher will appreciate our effort enough to give our submission a second glance.

• Select agencies carefully.
• Find out who to write to, and address them by name.
• Never send a generic letter headed up “Dear Sir/Madam” which suggests a quick cut and paste job.
• Deal with them as they prefer (“email submissions only” / “paper submissions only”) addressing correspondence as they ask you to.
• When it comes to sales, they are the professionals, so resist the urge to suggest that, although they specialise in teen fiction, they might like to look at your life story. They will not be interested.
• Thank them for taking the time to read your submission.

When doing email submissions, I will sometimes send manuscript chapters and synopsis in separate attachments; certainly, I follow instructions which made that preference clear.

Where the choice of presentation is not specified, I am persuaded that it is better to send text in the body of an email, so that there were fewer buttons for the recipient to click and fewer things for me to forget. On a hunch, I suggest that sending text in the body of an email works better when approaching small agencies run by single agents who haven’t the time to spend opening attachments, and who are in any case, responsible for making all the decisions.

I take time to check that

• my presentation looks good, is easy to read and tidily spaced.
• Particularly for e-mail submissions, I use a simple, sans serif font, such as Arial or Tahoma in 12 point, because anything that is easy to read on-line makes a welcome change.
• I carefully re-read and edit what I am sending, even if that means re-formatting every single paragraph in my ten thousand word submission. If my researches suggest that I and the agent in question are a good fit, I have every incentive to invest the time.

Agents read hundreds of submissions, so I like to make every one I send as clean and easy to read as possible.

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