Tag Archives: advice from writers

20 Jun 2014 · 1:44 pm

What do you see, you people looking at me?

As many of you probably know, there’s a little bit, in WordPress, that tells you what people typed into their search engines to get to your  blog. I’ve just been looking at fellow Gumbee Writers’ Guild author, Jim Webster’s latest post about the absurd things people type to get to his – apparently it’s a big favourite with people looking for Marks & Spencers knickers.

Boringly, most of the people who come here have either typed a variant of “why do so few UK agents handle sci-fi and fantasy” into their search engine and come up with this post or they’re actually looking for me. Or at least, they were. After reading Jim’s post I had a quick look at my stats and this is what I found.

the beebatron cbbeis, the beebatron tardis
Excellent. Yes, random person, I can confirm that I, too, have noticed that the Beebatron which was on CBeebies a while back, was the old 1970s Tardis control console. Did you also notice that it then went on to be come Riff the dog’s mixing desk in Carrie and David’s pop shop.

Second: snurd, phn erotcia ah ah ah oh

Yeeeeeees. That one’s a bit of a worry.

The word “snurd” didn’t mean anything when I came up with the concept but I have checked the Urban Dictionary since and discovered that “snurd” is also a contraction of “snotty little turd”. Which, in itself, is quite interesting.

Tangental Hint: the Urban Dictionary is kind of like Rogers’ Profanisaurus – only a bit more serious. However, if you write any kind of spec fic it’s always worth checking it out before you name anyone or anything. You don’t want to discover that your hero’s monika is also the slang term for one of those loud honk-like farts that sounds as if someone’s dragging a table across the floor of the room above. I didn’t know about the Urban Dictionary when I started out.  That’s why I have a race of bad guys called the slang term for a fellow who has one ball that hangs considerably lower than the other.

So there you have it. The Urban Dictionary: gold. Now then, where was I? Ah yes…

What all this illustrates to me is two things: First, what we write on the web can be taken very differently to the way in which it is meant. Second, it’s going to be there for a very long time.  Your views my change, your outlook may mellow but that rabid rant you posted in 2008 will be with you always. This thought crystallised further when I opened my second blog alert this morning and found this article about whether or not agents google the writers who query them: short answer, they do.

Today’s advice, then. Think twice before you speak on the net, especially if you’re an author. Think extremely hard before you make any flippant remarks at anyone else’s expense or anything that might paint you as mean or vacuous or prejudiced. Remember, if you’re prone to bitch about publishers and agents, that if you ever want to work with them one day, they’re going to check you out. They’re going to read everything you’re saying now. So think, my lovely peps. Otherwise, hitting that ‘post’ button, or publishing that book, could constitute several high-calibre rounds to the foot.

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18 Mar 2014 · 2:12 pm

You what?

Occasionally, I go metal detecting. Thus far, no enormous gold hoards have been discovered on my watch – how surprising – but I do find other things which are far more intriguing.

Most of the things I dig up are unrecognisable; to the point where I’m tempted to throw them away but my eternal optimism that the lump of twisted metal I have in my hands might be ‘something interesting’ ensures I never do, or at least, not until one of the other detectorists, who actually knows what they’re doing, has seen it.

This is probably a good thing if these examples are anything to go by.

IMG_1081A few weeks ago, I dug up a bit of metal that looked like one of those things old people put under the legs of chairs to stop them marking the carpet. This thing (pictured left). I assumed it was part of a tractor, but once again, ever hopeful, I stuffed it in my finds bag and kept going.

At the end of the day, when I looked closely, I realised it had two lines round it and a little hole drilled in the bottom from both sides, which didn’t go all the way through.

You know what this is? It’s the equivalent of one of those plastic medicine spoons. The hole is to keep a pill still – they were round then – the line is to mark out half a dose and the drill hole on the underneath is so it stands steady.

What I find so amazing is that everyone but everyone in the… I dunno, 500, 400 years preceding 1900 would have known exactly what that is and what it’s for. And me 100 years later? No clue.

A couple of weekends ago, I found something else; a huge lump of lead. Again, I assumed it was part of a tractor. Again, I was wrong. IMG_1078

Turns out it was a hand guard; something people sewing canvas or leather would use, similarly to a thimble, but in the palm of their hand. The ridge is the but you’d put the end of the needle into as you pushed it through.

Almost anyone alive from the Middle Ages to the early 20th Century would know exactly what it is, as instinctively as we know what a car tyre is, or a thimble.

Why was it there? Because everyone in the village would work on the fields and the women folk and kids would come out and picnic there, in the summer. That’s why one of the best places to detect is near the hedge under any old trees, because it’s where the workers’ families would have sat and where they would all have had dockey (elevensies) and lunch.

What amazes me about this is how much of history has been taken for granted and thrown away. I’m sure it’s something most people are aware of. How many times have you gone into an antique shop, seen some kitchen implement and thought, “Bloody hell! I remember using one of those at my granny’s house!”

Well, OK, maybe that’s just me but it does intrigue me how many aspects of our world, which we intuitively understand today, our vernacular surroundings of stuff, if you like, will probably flummox our antecedents. Exactly the same way that the vernacular, every day items of 70, 80 maybe 100 years ago regularly flummox me.

It also amazes me how a learning a few simple things about how our predecessors lived, and finding these unremarkable, vernacular items, illuminates their world. Suddenly it is real, alive and with substance.

So what has this to do with writing?

Well, I suppose, the first thing is my favourite topic, that you can build a rich and complex world with little more than a few hints. That if you give the right information as a catalyst the reader’s imagination does the rest. Second, how fast life and the world moves and how soon things are forgotten. Most of the items I find were in common use from the Middle Ages; earlier in the case of the hand guard, until the early 19th Century. That’s 500 years. 80 years later and I don’t know what they are. Such is the price of progress.

Third thing… how amazing it is to find a truth in history. When the causes and factors behind so many world events are down to interpretation it’s incredible to find things that can be expressed as black and white facts; it’s that and this is what it was for.

And to make the header post for Facebook more interesting, here is a picture of Chewbacca, my cat, who died 18 months ago, sadly but who was very cute.

Image019

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4 Mar 2014 · 11:23 pm

Amazon is not your friend – reblogged from Chuck Wendig

Except he doesn’t have a reblog button but readers, writers, anyone, read this because what he says is true. Amazon has been involved in a giant price cutting war to annihilate the competition. Once that’s done. Once it’s the only option, it’ll do what it likes. That means if it decides to give self published authors a 1% royalty and keep the rest, it will. Or if it decides to move to a standard model and set it’s royalty rate at 10%, it will.

The competition needs us but more importantly, we need them because we need a free market and we’re close to a monopoly. If you have an iPad, use iBooks, if you have a kindle, buy your .mobi files from Smashwords and send them to your kindle, yourself. Mr Wendig is bang on the nail with this one free trade has to survive or we’re stuffed. So if anyone out there has any ideas as to how we can attract the customers using these other retailers answers on a post card please!

Here’s the post, warning, if you are upset by that kind of thing, he’s quite a sweary bloke. Think that man I can never remember the name of, Cardinal Richleau, Dr Who… oh yes, Peter Capaldi, doing In The Thick of It. Yeh… like that only less angry and not nasty. You can read the post here.

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11 Feb 2014 · 12:00 am

Book Blog Chain. Yes, I’ve been tagged.

I was invited to participate in this blog chain by the lovely Jo Robinson. Sporadically connected to the internet at the moment, Jo lives in Africa with her husband, four birds, some chickens, and a dog. That’s a serious menagerie. I follow her blog because it’s completely random and I enjoy that… then again I suppose I would, after all look at this mess I call ‘home’.

Here’s a little bit about her latest book, Shadow People.

Cover of Shadow People, by Jo Robinson

After Natalie and Gabe discover a hidden room, they are hurled across time and space, and find themselves on Lapillus, a beautiful world made up of precious gems. But they soon realise that Lapillus is home to an ancient evil when they are attacked by the demonic wraiths of the Nefandus.

They find themselves thrown together with a group of beings vastly different to them in this lifetime, but closely connected through the aeons. They realise that the prophesies of all have come to fruition, and that without their intervention the fate of the universe is at stake.

With the guidance of the angelic Gluri and the help of the mysterious sentient spacecraft, the Vimana, the race is on to find out what the Nefandus want, and prevent evil from winning the battle of all time.

The rules of this tag are to answer the following four writing questions, and then tag three other authors. Next week, February 17, 2014, these three authors will answer the same questions and tag three others, and so the chain continues to grow larger. It will also give you something to read in  my absence as it is half term and I will be morphing into Mumzilla and entertaining McMini. This will enable readers to get to know more authors and their books. It will also allow everyone to get to know these authors a little better.

Questions:

1. What are you currently working on?

The third and fourth books in the K’Barthan Trilogy. Right now it feels as if I will be working on these for THE REST OF MY LIFE gah it’s the #slowwriter in  me. On the up side. Book 4 is fixed it’s just Book 3 that’s bust. I think… we shall see. It’s a pain because I’ll have to delay the launch but there we go, such is life. I’d rather release my best work late than go off half cock.

2. How does your work differ from others in the same genre?

Mmm, well… if you want the honest answer to this one, I don’t really know. However, what I do know is that many, many of the tens of people who I have forced, at gunpoint, to read it a) like it and b) come up with comments along the lines of “this is not like any other book I’ve ever read,” and such. Between you and me, I actually think it’s a rather hackneyed stab at the standard messianic plot – tweaked to add interest and weirdness – but luckily, no-one else seems to have noticed. Pinning down a genre is difficult; I would class the K’Barthan Trilogy (which is what it’s called) as a humorous science fiction fantasy adventure, with also features a dash of squelchy bit-free romance (just kissing) in books 2 and 4.

3. Why do you write what you do?

Because when I sit down and pick up a pen that’s what comes out. Some people can follow what’s trending and say, “ooo look, erotica and vampire books are selling well, I’ll write one of those,” and clean up. They are gods. I’m not one of them. I am mortal and hotwired into a different plane of existence to them, or anyone else really. Ho hum.

4. How does your writing process work?

Oh. I’m not sure. Which puts me in the pantser camp, I believe. Usually I will be listening to music and I’ll see pictures in my head. I’ll wonder what they are and I’ll think about then. Or I’ll read something and an idea will form and start to grow. Next, I’ll get a couple of lines of dialogue maybe. Perhaps the characters are arguing. Why? What’s the cause of the emotional tension? Then I’ll write that scene, and usually, after a little while, I’ll write another one and gradually the characters and the plot will form, the world they live in will slide into focus and I’ll have something approaching a book. By that point I usually have all the major scenes. Then I write the minor scenes which link them all up.

My nominations…

This was so hard but I think I have sorted it out now. So, without more ado, here we go.

On Dark Shores: The Lady by J A Clement

J A Clement was one of the first people I ‘met’ when I started writing and has been a cyber buddy ever since. We loved each other’s books and she was the one who pointed out, with extreme tact, that my first effort to produce a book needed editing – which it did – and who gave me the name of an excellent editor. He still edits my books – phnark, I bet he’s cursing her. Reading On Dark Shores had me on tenterhooks all the way through. I loved this book, because it’s so well written, tense and gripping. J A Clement is another #slowwriter but all her books are worth the wait. She probably won’t have time to do this but I couldn’t ignore her because this is the one that sort of started it all for me. I’ve been reading mostly independently published fiction ever since. JAC has a blog with news and views and posts about upcoming releases… and you can find it here.

On Dark Shores by J A Clement

Trapped in fear and poverty after the death of her parents, the thief Nereia will go to desperate lengths to protect her beautiful younger sister from the brutality of Copeland the moneylender. No-one has dared to attempt escape before; the whole of Scarlock trembles in his grasp. Only Nereia’s cunning and some unlooked-for help give her hope….

In a country still recovering from war, events are stirring, and the little harbour-town will not remain obscure for long; but in Scarlock, right now, Mr Copeland is coming to call – and this time he’s not taking no for an answer…

Dead Man Riding East by Jim Webster

This is the second book that follows the fortune of Benor Dorfinngil, an ageing lothario who lives in the Land of the Three Seas a made up world from Jim’s warped mind. I loved the first book – Swords for a Dead Lady but I suppose I’d got to know Benor over the course of that one, so in this book he felt like journeying with an old friend. I read it in one sitting. Jim has a new book out, soon. A sci-fi whodunnit, I believe. So I’m hoping to persuade him to do a guest spot here when he promotes it on a blog tour. In the meantime, you can read about it – among other things – on his blog, here. Like Jo, Jim has also sporadically connected to the internet recently but I hope he has been readmitted from the outer darkness into the realms of pixelated light. Sorry…

Dead Man Riding East by Jim Webster

Dead Man Riding East is a fantasy adventure where the unintended theft of a tyrant’s concubine, followed by the inadvertent acquisition of a wife, leads to revenge, the fall of dynasties and over exposure to the world of high fashion. Such are the further adventures of Benor Dorfinngil.

The Satnav of Doom and The Banned Underground Series, generally, by Will Macmillan Jones

This is a great series to read if you want to follow one writer’s development. The books are flights of Milliganesque whimsy but, possibly against the author’s wishes, there are deeper undercurrents encroaching in places. Will is another cyber buddy from my early forays into the world of the internet, a top man. The Banned books took me a while to get into and they are marmite, you like them, or you don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll also love watching the writing getting defter and sleeker as the series progresses. He writes a cracking blog, too.

The Satnav of Doom by Will Macmillan Jones

Abandon all hope all ye who go looking for The SatNav of Doom

Once again, the Dark Lord has a cunning plan. And once again someone else is going to have to carry it out for him: that’s what henchmen are for, isn’t it? To hench? Oh, and to be sent on the risky missions…

Not that this one should be risky. What could be easier than secretly inserting computer spyware into a laptop, using a Banned Underground gig as a diversion? The Tax Office probably does it all the time. But the Tax Office is not normally being chased for an unpaid credit card bill for a huge round of drinks. (That’s the politicians. And the henchmen, of course.)

And it isn’t just any laptop the Dark Lord wants to spy on either. The Government is struggling to find the way out of the Recession without a road map, and what better aid than a SatNav linked to a computer? If the Dark Lord can get inside information on future economic policy, maybe he can clean up and buy a new Mercedes.

Then there is a mystery: where did the time-travelling SatNav come from in the first place? What if the original owner wants it back?

Magic, mayhem and macro-economic policy collide in the latest surreal instalment of the acclaimed comic fantasy series, The Banned Underground.

Scratch, by Danny Gillan

This book is one that I’ve added as an extra because I suspect Danny will break the chain… Danny doesn’t know me all that well, we pass, like ships in the night on Facebook and places like that. Also he’s quite busy with a lot of other stuff; like the excellent magazine, Words With Jam (which I highly recommend, by the way). He doesn’t blog that often and I’d bet my bottom dollar he doesn’t read my blog. But his books are awesome and this one is just a cracker. I absolutely loved it. Think Nick Hornby, for a parallel. It’s funny, poignant, witty and uplifting all at once. Just wonderful.

Scratch, by Danny Gillan

An unexpected reminder of his past prompts Jim Cooper, a 33 year-old Glaswegian call centre worker, to make a big decision. He’s going back to adulthood ground-zero – no job, no debt, no, er, home, and starting again. Maybe this time he can do it right and get the girl. The fact that the girl is already married and living in another country and her Bruce Lee obsessed dad apparently wants to turn Jim into his latest pet are only two of the obstacles he faces.

Given Jim’s forward planning skills don’t extend beyond praying and having panic attacks, it isn’t surprising that he soon finds himself living with his parents and working for minimum wage, in the same pub he worked in when he was 18. What is unexpected is Paula Fraser walking through the pub’s door for the first time in 12 years.
What’s even more surprising is that Paula admits she still loves Jim. But yes, she’s married, and no, she won’t cheat on her husband. She’ll tell him the marriage is over. Soon. When the time is right. As soon as her husband’s sick grandfather gets better – or fatally worse.

And so, Jim and Paula embark on the tricky business of not having an affair, and not telling anyone they know that they’re not having an affair. As Jim reflects, ‘If not being physically intimate with her in any way and denying to everyone we knew that anything was going on between us was the best way to prove I loved her, then that’s what I would do.’

Scratch is an un-sanitised, emotionally honest and hilariously candid story about what it is to grow up as opposed to simply change age, as told by a man who doesn’t know what any of those words mean.

There we go. Just in time (there’s still an hour of Feb 10th left). I hope you all enjoy my recommendations!

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16 Jan 2014 · 11:30 am

Hybrid. Not just for cars.

This post, on Chuck Wendig’s blog, got me thinking today. (BTW I can thoroughly recommend Chuck Wendig’s blog, unless you’re sensitive to swearing but then, if you’re sensitive to swearing I doubt you’ll be here either).

He was talking about hybrid authors. That is, those of us who self publish their work and also have a trad deal. Apparently, these folk earn more.

You know what. I’m not surprised at that.

Frankly, I would kill for a trad deal, so I could do both. Unfortunately it’s never going to happen. I used to have a reasonably high end business job, and I know how business works. I’m a really crap proposition. It won’t always be that way, but right now it is. A stay at home mum who takes two years to write each book. Even if I managed to pen a query letter covered with just the right amount of fairy dust and unicorn pooh to score that magic read (yes even with an ‘in’ I failed to the point where they sent me a letter back with comments that showed, quite clearly that one of the readers hadn’t even read the book). Even if an agent or a publisher, absolutely loved my stuff, there would be somebody who could churn out a book every 6 months, whose work they loved just as much, who’d get the deal. Geesh! I mean seriously, I wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole, so I don’t expect them to.

If I want trad, I’ve got to have a ‘proven track record’ – ugh I loathe and detest that phrase – and to get one of those, I’ve got to make it the hard way; as a self published author.

However, at least with self publishing, I do have the option to get my books out there and, possibly, succeed. It will be much harder – although not as hard as getting someone to read my query letter – and if I do succeed it will happen in slow motion. But the opportunity IS there.

This is what I love about self publishing.

What I hate is that anyone would bung their first attempt at a novel out there unedited, unrested, without thought. It absolutely amazes me – and gets me into a bit of a frothy mouthed rage, to be honest – because they’ve turned the only route to market for many of us into a slush pile that no-one will touch.

Thanks you bunch of complete and utter bastards.

The K’Barthan Trilogy (actually it’s four books so I’ll have to call it something else, ideas on a post card please) took me 25 years to write.  That’s if I count them from the first attempt. Although I admit I’ve done the donkey work in the last few, between 2008 and now. A lot of people, who would probably enjoy it will never will never find out about it, and others will never touch it because I’ve committed the terrible sin of publishing it myself.

Whatever people say, the prejudice has not gone away, with good reason (cf the complete and utter bastards mentioned above).

That is pretty galling.

Which brings me neatly onto hybrids and why I think they do better.

They’ve sidestepped the prejudice.

Those who ‘don’t read self published books’ will read the self published work of a traditional published author. They’ll pick up that author’s work in the first place. Those book shops who ‘don’t stock self published books’ will stock the self published work of someone with a trad record. It really is all about the brand. It’s the same road; getting to the point where there are enough people out there who trust you to write a good book, who will be confident giving them to their friends to read.

Hybrid is win-win. Hybrid authors have the endorsement of the establishment, they have fans from the normal off line world and they bring them with them. Those fans give the author the momentum to get their books up the listing past the glass ceiling of other authors, amazon book police and jaded, indie author loathing forumites, into the light where the ‘normals’ who are just looking for a book to read, see them. Their trad pub background gives them the golden key onto the review sites and into magazines that ‘won’t accept self published work’ but will from someone with a trad pub background. It’s definitely where I want to be.

In short, the way I see it is this.

If you’re a hybrid, you get to keep the cash and sell without the prejudice.
If you’re trad published you get to sell without the prejudice but there’s less cash to keep.
If you self publish you get to keep the cash but you earn less because until you’re seriously established, everyone you approach will assume that your work is sub standard, poorly edited crap.

It’s a conundrum. Hmm… would knowing what I look like help?

Well, you asked...
See how trustworthy I am.

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14 Jan 2014 · 10:32 am

After the first three thousand years we’ve about got it right.

Hello everybody peps! Take a look at this from my good friend – and fine writer – Jim Webster. He has a new book out, sci-fi, on March 1 and he also posts an interesting snippet about dykes – which are drainage ditches where I come from but something completely different where he is.

Here’s the post. Enjoy.

After the first three thousand years we’ve about got it right..

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3 Nov 2013 · 6:11 pm

Yes, you can polish a turd… if you light it well.

— Caveat, the whole point to the less is more bit of this post was that the prop under discussion was the one used in the actual series of Dr Who. It wasn’t. It was built by a fan. Looking at the equipment available to the BBC props department and a chap in a shed, the whole perspective suddenly changes. Basically, a 19 year old lad has made something, himself, that I thought was an actual BBC prop. So it’s more on the freaking awesome level than what I call it. So what I say about attention to detail still stands but actually, the example might just as well be made up. So there you are. Check your facts. All of them. Even the ones you don’t even realise need checking. —

This week has been half term so all meaningful work on K’Barthan things has dropped in favour of doing stuff with the ankle biter. We went to a sci-fi exhibition at the local museum, great fun, and opened with a host of look a likes, Dr Who, Darth Vader, a rather handsome jedi knight, a cyberman, Boba Fett and McMini was pictured with all of them.

Inside the exibition they had the actual control console from the Tardis. There have been several, anyone with kids who remembers the beebatron on CBeebies, or who has subsequently seen Cari and David’s Pop Shop will know what happened to the one out of the 5th Doctor’s Tardis. The one in the exhibition was the current one. Here it is. So what do you notice?

IMG_0689

That’s right. It’s really shit. And close up, it looks like this?

Dodgy Tardis

and this….?

dodgytardis3

So this is what amazed me; the difference between the way it appears on film and the way it looks close up.

On film: slick, sparkly and kind of steam punk with all that shiny brass and bits of 1960s telephones. Of solid, robust and more to the point cool.

Close up: shit.

And here’s the magic.

It doesn’t matter how hit looks close up because, it’s designed to be seen on film and the minute I take a picture it ceases to become a load of old tut and turns into to something else.

And what does this have to do with writing?

Well, my point is this. It’s easy to get hung up on world building and character back story when you write spec-fic. But what this teaches me, at any rate, is that the trick is not so much what you put in as what you leave out.

Yes, the Tardis Control Console looks terrible to the naked eye but on TV it looks bloody brilliant. Sometimes, less, or a hint, is more and the reader – or viewer’s – imagination does the rest. The secret is selecting the trigger details, the odd snippet here and there which people reading it will embellish for themselves. The real Gods are the writers who do that in a way that will have every reader seeing the same picture.

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11 Aug 2013 · 9:00 am

Redline it but don’t pop it.

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that I should explain why it takes me so effing long to write each one of my books and today I’ve been galvanised into it by reading this cracker of a post, here. As well as why it takes me so long to write a book this also brings me onto a subject dear to any writer’s heart; mojo management.

Basically, the premise is that a lot of people are a bit wishy-washy about art and not ‘forcing’ it and use the ‘don’t force it’ line as an excuse to give up and be lazy. He talks about how mood alters your perception and how you can write stuff you think is rubbish only to find, the next day, that it’s not so bad (unfortunately, in my world that process also works in reverse, but I digress).

Now, I get exactly what this fellow means, especially the bit about writing stuff that looks crap and then finding that it’s not so bad. I find reading the first draft of a scene incredibly depressing but I shut my eyes to it and edit. And then somehow, if I put in enough work, it becomes magically transformed and when I read it and think,

“Blimey, I can’t believe I wrote that.” I know it’s time to move onto the next scene.

However, for what it’s worth, I think most of the people talking about not forcing art are actually talking about burning out.

Burn out is way different. Burn out is dangerous. Let me explain.

OK, so, I’m a stay at home Mum with a very lively little 5 year old, elderly parents who aren’t too well and who live a long way away and as the result of a recent traffic accident I currently have to snarf painkillers like smarties. So my life right now features three things in sensurround; worry, constant interruption (welcomed but constant nonetheless) and chemicals.

Hmm… so as you can guess, none of these things are conducive to quality writing outside school hours and none of them make for a lively brain. The chemicals are temporary, so the background is usually just the two things; Mumzilladom and worry about my folks – I’m definitely not the dutiful daughter I always assumed I’d be, which is kind of grim face on.

What I mean is that in anyone’s life there’s a lot going on. Add the odd curve ball, traffic accident at the moment but things like family deaths, organising a surprise party or something like that and it’s easy to find that the heart, not to mention the diary, is too full to create. In my case that’s usually at the point where my mind is so fucking knackered it can’t be arsed to wander.

Trust me on this, I’ve been there and hit the wall and at that point if you don’t step back, you’re going to end up mental. This is not about laziness or procrastination or refusing to start in case we fail, this is about capacity. That’s the point when it’s almost physically painful to write – not at the end of the day, we all feel like that then – but at the beginning.

That’s when you’re in danger of losing the love, of becoming a slave to the addiction as opposed to in love with your characters and addicted to the process. When this happens to me, the only cure is to stop everything, rest my mind and spend a few days/weeks/months, however long it takes putting stuff back in until my mojo returns. It’s entirely natural so if this happens to anyone else, don’t worry, the mojo will return you just have to be patient and wait.

So the big trick, for supreme mojo-management, is never reaching that can’t be arsed to wander point; knowing when to stop spewing out words. There is no option, in times of impending burn out but to sit back and reset.

RevvingRevs

There’s no harm in redlining your mojo occasionally, except that… hang on… where is the red bit? Oh for heaven’s sake! Trust me to have a car with no red bit. Alright, look, just try to imagine it in OK?

So for me, never getting burn out means writing a bit less but giving it more welly when I do. It’s worth it because when I can’t write, I miss it. There’s no harm redlining your mojo occasionally to, erm, de-carb your chambers (phnark) just don’t keep it there. Burn out is why it’s good plan to have more than one project on the go. Burn out is deeply unpleasant because it leaves you desperate to create, but unable to.

However, burn out should not be confused with laziness. Writing, painting, any art is the most fantastic fun, more than fun, it’s a drug, but it’s also bloody hard work. And frankly, if it isn’t, I suspect you’re doing it wrong.

There are days when writing my book feels like weeing a full sized house brick, except that there are days when I think pissing a housebrick would be easier. What I’m trying to say is that I have never done anything so hard in my entire life. But I can’t let it go. Right now, I’m not writing, but that’s because it’s the holidays and trying to write now is the fastest short cut to burn out there is. I know my limitations and that, I’m afraid, is why I take two, whole, sodding years to write a book. I know, it’s shocking isn’t it?!

Please be patient, K’Barthan three is nearly there but it may well be next April before I can release it.

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7 Jul 2013 · 9:36 am

Real life is not like films…

Talking about thinking coolly in a crisis, in this post reminded me of an instance where that very much didn’t happen.

Yeh, so you know in films where some bloke runs in and shouts, “They’re beating up thingwot, come and help” and everyone gets up and runs with him to the rescue? Yeh well that doesn’t happen in real life. What they do in real life is ask you about fifty million pointless questions interspersed with the phrase ‘calm down’ while you shout, repeatedly, “Will you just come the f**k with me to rescue so and so?”

Here’s how I learned that this scenario is in absolutely no way, whatsoever, based on fact….

One Saturday night, aged about 18, I was walking home with a boyfriend and about 100 yards from our house he was attacked. We knew his assailant had 10 friends round the corner because we’d walked through them. I thought about kicking the bloke in the nuts but he looked pretty beefy and able to take down both of us. I wondered whether to knock on the door of a nearby house but I knew they wouldn’t dare let us in. So I hit on a cunning plan. I would go and get reinforcements. My own house was 100 yards away containing my dad a 6ft 2 ex rower and my brother, a well built 6ft 4.

So I ran to my house as fast as I could; speed was of the essence. I was calm until I tried to unlock the door. Lots of adrenaline = shaky hands. Did it but the thing that made it hard was not my shaky hands. It was the key my parents had left in the other side. Yes, they’d locked us out, and left the key in, making it impossible for us to get in. Except that by some miracle, I managed to get my key into the lock – yay! But it dropped out and jammed under the door meaning it opened about five inches and wedged fast.

I try to pull it closed again but it’s wedged fast. I ring the bell.

Dad and brother come to the door, taking their time.

“Quick! come with me, X is getting beaten up. Please come and help him,” I say. Imagine a voice of urgency here and a slightly shaky demeanour but I still had a handle on the panic. I push at the door. Trying to move it but it’s wedged fast.

“Calm down, we’ll get this open,” Dad gets down and sees the problem at once. “You’ve jammed the key underneath it.”

Why was it even in there? Yes, I thought that.

“Forget about the key. Come out of the back door, X is getting beaten up. NOW. I came home for your help.” The tone of my voice has gone up and the decibels have increased.

“Why would I want to come out of the back? It’s alright, it’ll be open in a minute. What’s the hurry?”

“They’re beating up X. Please come and help.” (Screaming).

“There nearly got it. Where’s X?” asks Dad.

“For fuck’s sake! Why d’you think I’m in this state? He’s getting beaten up!”

“What?” asks Bro.

“Beaten up, attacked just down there.” I point.

“OK calm down, come inside and tell us all about it,” says Bro.

“I can’t come in and fucking calm down. X is just down the road being beaten to a pulp and he needs our help.”

“Ah that’s got it,” says Dad. “We’ll have this door open in a jiffy.”

They opened the door then. The porridge-headed smeckers. Just as X turned up looking reproachful.

“Oh hello X. What happened to you?”

X throws me a look as if to say “you didn’t fucking tell them?”

“Everything alright?” says Dad.

Of course it’s fucking not.

“No I’ve just been attacked,” says X.

The penny finally drops.

“Where did you go?” X asks me reproachfully

“I came to get help but it went wrong.” I glare at Dad and Bro. Very wrong.

X looks at me even more reproachfully, and I realise he’s thinking, “yeh right. Coward,” and know that our relationship is doomed.

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2 Jul 2013 · 3:19 pm

Dangerous situations: How not to do the school run.

This morning, I was a bit of a tit.

Actually, I was a wanker of monumental proportions. Not intentionally, I hasten to add. It was just that an amalgamation of badly made small decisions culminated, this morning, in one catastrophic misjudgement. It was Victorian day at school and McMini was all got up as a Victorian boy. He is small and mercurial, with blonde curly hair. The epitome of cute. But he can take a while to get ready. So we were a bit late and after a weekend gardening, I’m a bit stiff. Consequently, though I needed to get a wiggle on, it was a bit of a labour getting us going on the bike – he sits on a seat behind me – and we start out with a hill. It can be a bit of a grim haul sometimes, getting us up that hill. Today was particularly pants, I felt very stiff and tired and seemed to be going incredibly slowly.

However, I’m not so sure I was. I’ve got a lot fitter over the course of the term without noticing. So when I get to the top of the hill, I build up speed and go faster sooner. I did notice this a couple of days ago, when frustrated with my snail like speed I looked down and realised I was cycling up the hill at 12mph which, at the beginning of term, is about as much as I can achieve on the flat. I suppose the nub of it is that when I think I’m going quite slowly, I’m actually riding faster and it could be that my judgement has not caught up. Yes, this is the making excuses for myself paragraph. But despite noticing I was cycling faster in places, I hadn’t really hauled in the implication of what that meant.

So this morning, after creeping up the hill I am trundling along the top and I approach the cross roads at the top. It’s a pretty blind junction so I always slow right down and either stop completely or roll very slowly, so I keep a bit of momentum to get across and get going again. Today, I got there, slowed down, as I usually do. I saw a car coming up the road but it was far enough away not to worry and braked some more, saw nothing coming the other way and started pulling across the road. Then I noticed there was another car. Very close. Something a bit panicky happened about the braking, here. I recall worrying that I hadn’t gripped the levers; whether it was true or borne out of the shit-I’m-not-stopping aspect of it, I don’t know. But I remember consciously ditching Plan A: stop because I knew that I wasn’t stopping and that braking or no braking I was going to overshoot the junction into the oncoming car’s path.

“Shit!” I thought. “Not with McMini up.”

My brain dropped words after that. They took too long. Instead, a picture of us being pushed five yards along the tarmac, trapped under the bumper of the stopping vehicle flashed into my head. I had to get out of its path. I pedalled like fuck. She got our back wheel, there were about 4 inches in it I reckon. There was a massive bang, the back of the bike came round, I didn’t consciously put my foot down but I knew I had because I felt my knee pop and then we were on the road, and McMini was crying, but clearly fine and trying to get his seatbelt off and get up. I unclipped him and held him tight. Telling him it was OK. Telling myself it was OK when I knew damn well that I’d almost killed both of us.

The first thing everyone said; the policeman, the nurse, the doctor – if you’re going to get knocked down, outside a Doctor’s surgery is a very good place – was that it could have happened to anyone, that we all misjudge things. I know this is true. And I know that when I do stuff up, there’s nothing to be gained by worrying about it. Keep calm and carry on. But there are times when I wonder, because either I misjudge things a lot more than other people, or I’m unlucky enough to receive full retribution every time. The short of it is, I don’t usually get away with my misjudgements, or maybe I’m no different to anyone else, but just more prepared to admit it.

And what does this have to do with writing?

Well, all this made me think about how I write about pain and danger. I write them from my own experience. I have endured the kind of pain, in both knees, that has made me whimper and reduced me to tears. The most recent moment being just now, when I went to the freezer to get a frozen chicken out. I’d say there are levels of pain I haven’t experienced but I definitely cry at about level 6. The most pain I’ve ever experienced was, er hem, wind after a c section. Yes ladies, they don’t tell you about that. Sudden evil pain that makes you cry and apologise to everyone round you for the fact you’re rolling about about whispering swearwords under your breath – an 8 for that one. Gripe Juice fixes it in minutes.

So when I put my characters in pain, or danger, they tend to react the way I do. Because using my experience is the only way I can make it believable. But I’m not sure it would be believable to everyone, because we all react differently to peril and pain.

So far, though, through any amount of pain, my thoughts have always been clear. Likewise, in danger, though I may make the wrong call, I weigh up the situation before making a decision.

Likewise, in pain, I’ve always been able to think. Which means I probably haven’t experienced the heights of agony I might think.

To be honest, four out of five times in moments of peril I’ve had very clear concise thoughts. As usual, I was surprised after this morning, at how incredibly clear and fast my thoughts were. But also disappointed at how, if I’d just been that little bit smarter, I could have kept braking and turned the bike sideways, allowing the girl to move her car out round me. I think that in some ways, it’s rather harder to write dangerous situations realistically once you’ve been in some. Because the way they unfold is so different to the way you would expect. And I suppose that’s why you can only really make things in your plot work if you, yourself, can believe that they can. And I suppose that’s how so many of those mad 1960s shows like the Avengers, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and the like were so popular. Because while you have to have that grain of truth upon which to hang it all, it’s that writing with conviction, rather than what actually happens in real life, which allows us to suspend disbelief.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and have a bit of a lie down.

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