Leah - Remember, Remember To Write In November

Oh boy. 

I've got my thinking horns on...

When I realised I’d put my name down for November’s blog entry, my first thought was; ‘Yey, NaNoWriMo post!’ However… now that November is here and my plans are solidifying, I’d actually like to talk to you about something else.

Those of you familiar with my blog will have probably heard me talk about Silk Over Razor Blades. This is the novel that I was working on when I joined the Phoenix Writers and have been, in some form, since 15 years old (I’m 29 now, by the way).

Each time I looked at it, I thought the piece was done. I was proud and happy with my accomplishments. I was also willing (and eager) to send it out into the big, wide world. Yet, each time I did, the opening chapters and synopsis came back with a list of depressing form rejections as long as my arm. I now have a folder full of the damn things, some from as far back as 1999.

Was novel poorly written? Was the story just not marketable? Were my characters boring and wooden? Was my dialogue fluffy and far-fetched? Did the plot resemble Swiss cheese? In truth, it could have been any of those things, and previous incarnations of the book certainly ticked some, if not all, of those boxes. However, the last draft suffered one big problem and now for the first time, I can see it.

BOREDOM!!!

I was bored of the story when I wrote it. I can’t articulate exactly how, but I know it’s there because it shows. Stiffening the characters. Stifling the plot. Clogging up the pace. Nothing spells death for a novel as well as the author being sick of it.

When you’ve worked on a novel (or anything) for such a long time, it’s inevitable that the initial spark, the joy that kick-started everything, will fade. In some cases, it will die completely. Hopefully you can finish your project before this point, but in some cases that’s just not possible. Sometimes, instead, you have to cut your losses and let go. Wrap it up. Put it away. Maybe not forever (things change, after all), but for now. Move on. Do fresh things.

I had to make myself do this. Fortunately for me the task was made somewhat easier by the birth of my sons since I had no time to write or query. As time progressed and gaps to write opened once more, I focused on non-fiction (I’ve got to earn money somehow!), flash fiction and short stories. The result of all this is a few extra pennies in the bank, a self-published ebook available on Amazon and Smashwords and, more importantly, a better understanding of plot, character, pacing and my own self.

This means that there is no time better than now to try again!

In a neat and totally deliberate way (honest!), this brings me all the way back to where I started. NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month; the crazy thirty days in which thousands of people all over the world race to write a 50,000 word novel.

I will be taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. I had planned to anyway, but this year I’ll be working on Silk Over Razor Blades and starting again. 

A daunting task, but I know so much more than I did before: I know now that I was bored of the story because I kept trying to hold onto all the ideas rumbling around in my head. Some of them from more than 10 years old. I was also bored because I wanted to ‘write something that would sell.’ While sales would be lovely, it’s boring. So, so boring!

If I’m going to write anything, it has to be for me. I’m the one that has to write it, I’m the one that has to edit it and I’m the one that has to believe it in strongly enough to convince an agent they want to represent it. If I can’t do that, then I still need to convince other people to part with their hard earned cash should I decide to self-publish.

So… wish me luck! I’ll be charting progress on my blog and using the NaNoWriMo’s dashboard to record words and keep up to date with how everyone else is doing.

Please do look me up if you fancy company; I’ll stick all my contact deets at the bottom for you. I’d love to know how you’re getting on.

Laterz!

NaNoWriMo Profile: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ileandra-young

Blog: www.ileandrayoung.com

Twitter: @ileandrayoung 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/illyandraven

What to do when inspiration has walked on by

I used to believe that writing was a somewhat rarefied activity. The writer waited for the Muse to call and then fired with inspiration and vision they wrote pages of perfect prose for a rapt and waiting audience.

Unsurprisingly, this meant I never wrote anything at all, despite vague mutterings about writing a novel sometime, while I waited for this mythic moment of creation to arrive.

More recently, I decided that writing; the actual task of producing words on paper or a screen is far more akin to training for an endurance race or a particularly vicious contact sport than the delicate posturing on a chaise longue that I had always visualised.

And actually, that, the linking of writing and sport was a light bulb moment for me.

Sport requires training, repetition, building of stamina, acquiring of technical skills. It means running on cold wet February evenings to get in the miles, it means early mornings to fit in a gym visit before work, but most of all, it means doing it [whatever the it is] day after day after day to see improvement.

Armed with this changed mind-set, I made a commitment in May 2012 to write something every day and set up a blog to give some structure to this project and because I have re-framed writing as training, I have also taken away the creative strait jacket of having to produce good work. The only criterion is that I produce some work every day.

My internal editor, the little voice that is quick to criticise and the great displacement activity organiser have been firmly kicked into touch, after all the focus is on doing, on having a go.

My writing is the literary equivalent of a fun runner preparing for the London Marathon, it’s not pretty, and it’s never going to be stylish or set the world on fire but the act of daily writing , like daily running, makes completion a far more likely outcome.

I’m using the blog like a sketch book, everything from the written equivalent of a scribbled sketch to a fully worked up short story or a chapter of a novel in  progress is posted up for anyone to see. 

So, seven months into the project, I have pretty much kept to the original commitment and like a slowly fittening runner, there are days, more and more of them, when I can see a tiny  improvement, a touch more technical ability, a slightly better sentence.

I wish, that, ten, twenty years ago, when I thought about writing, that I had done less thinking and more writing.

With that many writing miles under my belt, I might have been almost competent by now.

Visit the blog – www.rubiesandduels.wordpress.com

Show not tell

Good writing has an effortless flow. The reader subconsciously responds to its mood and style. Once the ideas start to come, the key is to translate these into words that take the reader along. But in any good novel or short story a reader must be sufficiently immersed in the scene, character and plot to forget that they reading. They must be there as a witness not a distant bystander.

The techniques to achieve this are too wide for a blog post and if I had mastered them I would be off to another book signing rather than writing this. But there are a few prompts and self-reminders which I’ve found helpful when hacking my way through the chapters and a few of them are here for the Phoenix October Post:

‘Show not tell’ is an essential component to avoid being a ‘gumboot’ writer. Avoid going out in the mud with your size tens and ‘telling.’ Show it – the reader wants to see. They need something to do and will lose their appetite if you constantly spoon-feed them.

Imagine that you are sitting watching your chapter/scene on a cinema screen. Is it clear in the readers mind? Apart from the dialogue, films can’t tell you anything, it’s all visual and therefore shown. Look at your hero by the window in the corner. You’ve just told us he’s afraid. On the screen he’s trying to light a cigarette with his shaking hands and keeps glancing out of the window. Write down those clues in facial expressions and actions that show the emotion instead of telling it. The reader will engage and get closer.

The dialogue and action is crucial to a scene on screen, just as it is for the writer. If three people are standing like stuffed dummies in a room, however good the dialogue is, dummies are exactly what you see on screen, and exactly what the reader will see unless you animate the scene by showing.  A brushstroke of description and then action as you go along is enough to set the scene off against the characters. Sit in your Pullman seat (the one with the big square arms and crisp edges) and listen to the dialogue; look at what your characters are doing. If neither cuts it on screen, then they won’t cut it for your reader.

The film you are watching is often full of panorama and detail. The writer needs to temper this so that the reader does not get overload and indigestion. Succinct ‘show’ and a steal on mood can be helpful. Music does this in the cinema; the writer has the more powerful tool of words.

John LeCarré invokes mood in Smiley’s People and gives the reader enough description for us to fill in the gaps. 

“The gates opened electronically and beyond them lay mounds of clipped grass like mass graves grown over.  Olive downs stretched towards the sunset. A mushroom-shaped cloud would have looked entirely natural.”

Here the devil is in the detail and not overdoing it.

Describing your characters you see on screen can be tricky because it’s easy to slip into cardboard cut-out clichés. ‘He was a tall dark man’; ’she had long fair hair.’ The character actions and dialogue will help create a picture beyond the basic visual, but the writer can give more by approaching it from a deeper subtler ‘show’ angle that the film cannot portray. In The Shining Stephen King describes the hotel manager:

“Ulman stood five feet five, and when he moved it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all plump men. The part of his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problem to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly. This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel. Perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.”

There is a mix in the extract above that takes the writing to another dimension and draws the reader closer to Ulmann as he works. 

These are only my thoughts. You are telling a story, so don't be afraid of telling part of it. Rules are there to be broken, but making the majority of the writing vivid and powerful by showing will keep your reader with you.

 Keep writing.

Keith Morley

http://www.theescapeline.blogspot.co.uk

Not no-man’s-land

I was standing at my bedroom window lamenting the state of my garden with this incessant rain when, in true ‘compare and contrast’ mode, I studied the neighbours’ lawns. Of the three degrees one side sported thigh-high grass wrapped around garden furniture, a giant trampoline and a dozen or so footballs. On the other someone had managed to nip out between showers and give the lawn a lop-sided Mohican. And in the middle?

The middle is in-between, neither rampant nor manicured but showing steady growth and promising success. Not much of an analogy but this is how I see my writing at present: I’m past the starting gate.

When I first attended Leicester Writing School’s critique classes I tried to interpret tutors’ comments. At the time I wanted to target women’s magazines (still trying!) but, although I religiously followed guidelines, got nowhere. In retrospect there were too many tutors addressing different genres.  All had something to give, but they also had a common denominator of ‘good phrase’ or ‘not quite there...’ I would have preferred less ‘tentative’ and more ‘definitive.’ Don’t get me wrong, I learned much.

So why am I happy to be in the middle? It’s all due to Phoenix Writers.

Well, look what you’ve done to me: you’ve made independent editors publish my work and propel me into the middle distance. Neither here nor there? Oh, I’m ‘there’ all right. And I assign all bragging rights to my fellow writers, to the band of serious scribblers who work hard at their craft and are unstinting in their support. We’ve done it with knobs on! (All right, so it’s a cliché!).

Because Phoenix Writers don’t do ‘tentative.’ Because the critique is solid. And because of the group I’ve learned to listen: I hear what isn’t said, good, bad or throw-away.

Unfortunately this has also ruined my coffee-shop experience as covert eavesdropping catches every whisper, expletive and queue commentary.

I shall file that under ‘recycling’!


Krys Wysocki

Writing with intent

I've been writing with intent for about five years now and I'm just in the process of editing a novel due to be released on the public by the American publishers Omnium Gatherum. They are a fairly new outfit (definitely what you'd call a 'Small Press'), but they already have a number of exciting authors on their books – and me! I'm trying not to let it go to my head of course, particularly as I have a lot to be modest about when it comes to writing (and editing, as I'm now discovering). One thing that keeps me grounded has been the input of other writers. I'm particularly grateful to that marvelous invention; the writing group.

I've had the privilege to have been on the 'ground floor' as two of the most exciting groups to emerge in Leicester in the past few years have coalesced. Both have their roots in the Writing School Leicester (WSL) in Wellington Street. It was there that I and fellow aspirants took on writing courses that a) taught us valuable lessons about the crafting of words and b) put us in contact with one another. There I met some amazing writers and made long-lasting friends. If you haven't already you should check out the WSL. A truly wonderful institution.

The Speculators is Leicester's first (and only) writers group dedicated to Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror (known collectively as 'speculative fiction'). It emerged from a class called Writing Speculative Fiction at the WSL which started in April 2009. From our regular pub meets after class we forged the beginnings of this group. It has been running for almost four years now and meets every Wednesday for writing, critique, chat and lots of tea. We still visit the pub a lot.

The Phoenix Writers began to form from WSL's Saturday manuscript clinics. There I met Maria Smith, Keith Morley, Keith Large (who now runs Carrotnapper Productions), Pete and Pat Kings, Sheila Kondras, Krys Wysocki, Sally Knight, Brenda Bernard and others who became the backbone of an impromptu writing group. We began to meet during summer holidays and at other times when classes at the WSL weren't running. As I recall, this all happened around 2009 as well, slightly earlier perhaps than the Speculators – though not by much. Usually we commandeered public spaces to carry out our critiques (We had quite a long stint upstairs at a Cafe Nero's!). When the new Phoenix cinema opened we started to meet in the bar. During the first few months we usually had the place to ourselves, so it was an ideal place to read out our stories, novels and do weird writing exercises. In fact we met so regularly we probably kept the bar solvent for a time with our orders of teas, coffees, toast, bacon butties and the like. Eventually, as things got busier as the Phoenix became established, Jake and the staff kindly offered us a room upstairs. Suddenly we had a home.

Four years later and both the writing groups and I have matured considerably (FYI: In my case my only my writing has 'matured' the rest of me has just 'got older'). I'm proud that I helped in my own small way to get these groups of the ground and more than that, grateful for all the help, advice and comradeship I have received from them. I am proud to be a Speculator and a Phoenix-er. Don't think I'd be the writer I am today without them.

[My forthcoming novel has the provisional title of  Vampsov 38: A Spectre Haunting Europe. It is the only Stalinist vampire hunting novel you will ever need.]

ACCOUNTABILITY

Life gets in the way but don't bury your head in the sand.

If only I had nothing to distract me – if only I could spend each day writing to my heart’s content. The truth is I've got a full-time job, a family and all the other stuff that is real life. Not writing isn’t an option, so I schedule my time. After years of struggling to ‘fit it all in’, I’ve finally got a plan that works for me. How do I do it?

I write a list each week, 'A Goal List' and I  schedule what I’m going to do for the next seven days. Not just my writing life, I also plan in other things that make me happy. Stuff I want to fit into my every day. That is the key, fitting it into your everyday life. Making an appointment with yourself to do these things. If its writing that dreaded synopsis, producing a first draft or eating cake and drinking tea from China cups in some quaint tea-room. Multi-tasking and combining one or two of them can work.

Planning is essential, which is why I’m writing a list each week. It quantifies what I need to do; it’s my own unique road map on which I travel each week. My personalised ‘Goal’ list. Yes, I do tick things off, in my notebook. The writer’s notebook. You all have one of these? You do, I know you carry one about with you, so you can jot down ideas before they're forgotten.

The notebook makes me accountable; however, putting my intentions on my blog each week, makes me far more accountable. Let me say straightaway, I don’t always achieve all of my goals each week, sometimes things happen, or I’ve given myself too much to do, and that’s a different blog post altogether. Mostly though, I’ve given myself achievable targets.

Here’s another idea, what about an accountability partner? Another writer can help you reach your writing goals. You can help each other, by checking in via email, phone call or perhaps a weekly meeting over a cup of tea, or a glass of wine! That's the fun bit.

However you choose to make yourself accountable, one thing’s for sure, you’ll get more done, and you’ll meet your deadlines and goals far quicker. What do you think? Could a plan like this work for you?

Please leave me a comment here on the blog with your ideas.

Maria (Member of Phoenix Writers Group) 

Blogs at http://firstdraftcafe.blogspot.co.uk/

Tweets here @mariaAsmith

Maya's April Blog

The typical scenario for most of us. Before the spring we have unused Christmas presents gathering dust. By February new year’s resolutions get broken. Now into April I am pleased to say because of joining The Writers Group in January, I have actually managed to stick to my new year’s resolution till spring. I always make the same resolution, which is to progress with my writing. By the end of the month (if I get that far) the resolution gets broken. A couple of close friends of mine emailed me the link to The Phoenix Writers group around Christmas time. It is certainly a present that I am going to cherish. It will not be gathering dust as many of my drafts of works in progress have.

The word/task of the week activity alone gets me writing something. The positive feedback I have already received has already taken me out of my comfort zone. I am writing this blogspot for a start. Coming to this group has already got me thinking about starting my own blog.

I echo what Leah said in the previous post I feel my writing has been nurtured and I am growing as a writer. The atmosphere is inspiring and welcoming and I not feel like the new girl in the group.