Category: Writing

23August2012

What the publisher said: how to get published, from the horse’s mouth

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As part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh City of Literature arranged for writers to meet with industry experts – an agent, a publisher, a creative writing coach, a publicist and an Edinburgh literary expert. We got 15 minutes with our chosen expert on a sunny Sunday morning. My expert was Francis Bickmore, Editorial Director at Canongate Books, a well-known Edinburgh publishing house. Francis is an experienced editor and has worked with Nick Cave, Yann Martell and other big names. I’d sent him a 500 word writing sample, a writer’s CV and questions. I also sent him some background: my questions were about making writing into a career. Here’s what I learned:

  • Write, speak and network. Do what you can to get seen.
  • Apply for everything you can to get the time and space to write and get your name out there.
  • Finish a book before even thinking about contacting agents or publishers.
  • Get an agent.
  • Make friends with other writers, especially established ones writing in your genre. They’ll give you access to publishers and agents.
  • Surround yourself with writers. You’ll need the support.
  • Don’t give up the day-job.

I also asked about the size of their slush-pile and how many new writers they take on. The figures were scary and illustrated how important an agent is. They are the first level of quality control. They are your way in, but also a publisher’s way to filter out a lot of the chaff.

It was an encouraging experience. I know that I’m doing the right things, but have realised that it might take a bit longer to get where I wanted to be than I thought. Never mind. Step the first is to finish my first novel. Bring on September.

25July2012

Themes: I write about what?

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Having complained about werewolves turning up all over my writing, and people thinking I wrote for children, I decided to take a close look at my preoccupations. My themes, you might say. What I found was interesting.

  • Children feature in seven out of 17 stories, but
  • werewolves only in three (four, if you count a mention).
  • I thought legs was a strong theme but they only appear in two of my stories (with a third coming).
  • Half of the stories feature supernatural beasties of some kind, add magic to the mix and we have a clear majority for speculative fiction with a fantasy bent.
  • Two stories are entirely mundane.
  • Five are told in two different voices.
  • It’s 50/50 whether I’ll write a story in first or third person,
  • but in ten of 17 stories the main character is female.
  • In about a third of my stories, the main character doesn’t have a name because, to me, they’re just an observer, a vehicle for telling the story. (In a couple of stories it’s not even clear whether the narrator is male or female because I don’t think it matters.)
  • More often than not, my stories don’t have a clear resolution but
  • stories in the third person are more likely to be resolved than stories in the first.

The last two points are of particular interest to me. When I look the other people’s stories, the ones that appear on websites and in anthologies, it becomes obvious that a resolution, a good, honest, “that’s what happened” end, is very popular. I don’t know many stories that end without closure. I will work on that, and to that end, try to write in the third person more. Even if it’s only part of the story, what with my habit to write in two voices at the same time.

Another thing I found interesting is that my short stories are urban fantasy, but not crime.  The novel I’m writing is an urban fantasy/crime cross-over so you’d think I’d be interested enough in the genre to write crime short stories. I didn’t even submit to the Bloody Scotland short story competition. The prizes looked great, but I find that I don’t have any crime ideas that don’t involve a hint of the supernatural and I didn’t think that would fly. Next year, maybe.

What did I learn from this analysis? Good question.

There’s a tension between stuff I want to write and stuff people want to read. Finding a middle ground – writing what people wants to read – involves adjusting my approach somewhat, but that can be difficult. I’m trying to get better at setting up problems so that they can be satisfyingly resolved, and anchoring my main characters. We’ll see how it goes.

11July2012

The irrationality of producing cultural product

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Last year I went to a couple of talks that discussed copyright and what people are willing to pay for. The speakers suggested that there’s a change in how publishing – of music, film and literature – works and a change in how consumer wants to pay for these products. With online piracy, finding stuff for free is easy and a lot of people don’t think of downloading without paying as stealing. Meanwhile we hear stories of self-published e-book authors who’ve made million by selling their books cheaply and focusing on shifting in bulk. The barrier to purchase for a £0.99 book is lower than for a £5.99 book.

The pro-copyright and tight control camp suggests that piracy snatches food from the mouths of musicians, film makers and writers (from now on “producers of cultural product”). I’m not going to go into the details, but one guy I saw said his research failed to find evidence that copyright laws really protect the people it’s supposed to. It works for the big sharks but it’s irrelevant to the small fry.

One of the problems with “cultural product” is how you define it and who you count as being a producer. If you look at the people who consider themselves professionals, we find that most of them don’t make much money from cultural products. Writers and musicians work all kinds of jobs but only a few of them actually do their thing full-time. The figures suggest that about 90% of the income goes to 10% of the producers. (There’s a lot of small fry in the cultural pool.) Hence the title of this post: if you’re writing to make money, you’re in for a tough time. It’s not a logical career path if you want a steady income. Instead you should go off and become a teacher, or a software developer, GP: whatever job will give you the income you need to maintain the lifestyle you want. Chances are that producing cultural product isn’t going to do it for you.

Except… It does for some people. And there are strategies for success. Most importantly, producing cultural product is so much more fun – so say some of us – than most other jobs. So if it’s what you want to do you have to go for it.

I’m ignoring all the stats and going for it. (But I’m not giving up the day job.) It might not be rational, but it’s what I have to do.

 

4July2012

Status update: successes and failures

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I had targets and goals. A plan. It’s been four months since my last update so it’s time to have a hard look at where I am against it.

  • Send out one new story per month: it kind of depends on how you count it, but I think I’m still behind by one story. Editing. I need to finish editing the three stories that are sitting in my pile, waiting to be finished and submitted.
  • Send each story out at least five times before retiring: in progress. I have five stories doing the rounds at the moment.
  • Start plotting novel: I won’t claim that it’s entirely complete, but I’m far along enough that I can get started.
  • Start writing novel: started. I’ve got some 15,000 words which means I’m behind.
  • Apply to Story Shop: total fail. My story did not get selected. Better luck next year.
  • Do three spoken performances: three down, one to go.
    That was as far as I got the last time I took stock. Since then I’ve added goals…
  • Make £75 from writing: done. Once the cheques arrive.
  • Get four stories published: three down, one to go. (The Wolf at the Door was on Flashes in the Dark in May, Foundling will be in New Writing Scotland 30 in august, and Salanntúr will be in The Seven Wonders of Scotland in October.) I’ve got five months to sell one more story. Wish me luck!
13June2012

Doing it for real: writing a novel

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OK. This is it. It is June and that was when I was going to start writing.

Plotting started in April and took a frantic turn in May. There’s still some research I need to do and a couple of character studies that need a bit more of a polish (What really drives Anna’s mum? I need to know!) but I’m in a position to start.

The starting line is an oddly scary place to be.

I’ve only just put fingertip to keyboard but I can already tell you something about the difference between NaNoWriMo and doing it for real. When you do it for real, the pressure is on. I can feel myself reining myself in even before I’ve started. The writing of this novel isn’t just about having fun but rather about creating something that I can share with the world. This is not high literature, that’s not where I’m going – not with this one – but at the end I want something that I’m not embarrassed to ask people to read. After all, the point is to share it, as widely as possible.

Here goes.

31May2012

Finding the peace to focus: eliminating distractions

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Making the most of the evening, getting stuff written between dinner and bedtime, means cutting out the faffing. You know, all the getting ready, just going to check this or do that first…  Faffing gets between me and productivity so cutting it is important.

  1. I write on my laptop, not my desktop.
    My desktop’s in my office and the office is where I work. I need to avoid work-related distractions to get anything written.
  2. I write in my special chair, wrapped in my special blanket if it’s cold.
    The chair is comfortable and placed so that I can’t see the TV or look out the window.
  3. I plug my headphones in and listen to music.
    I need music that I like, but not love, so that I can, to a great extent, filter it out. It’s a careful balance: music’s that’s too good, or too engaging takes me out of the  story and into the music. Not productive.
  4. The last step is closing down any open web browsers.
    My special chair is not for research but only for writing. It’s a rule.

Despite the fact that I want to write, sometimes my mind skitters away from the task. If I remove as many distractions and barriers as I can, my mind is forced to focus and get down to business. That’s my theory, anyway. So far, it’s working.

I’ll be sitting on my special chair a lot over the coming weekend because I have a commission* for a story and want to write the first draft ASAP so that I have time to get it reviewed.

* Yes, a commission! I won a competition and the prize is a commission. I found this out almost exactly a month after having found out that I’d sold my first story. It’s been a a corker of a month! I’ve been published online and by the end of the year, two anothologies will feature my stories. Oh, and I signed up to read at the next Illicit Ink event. Corker. Of. A. Month. (I also collected three rejections. The universe hasn’t suddenly gone entirely out of whack: rejections continue.)

25May2012

The Wolf at the Door is on Flashes in the Dark from today

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If you’ve come to this post from Flashes in the Dark, welcome! Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoyed the story. (For those of you who came from somewhere else: I have a story – The Wolf at the Door – on Flashes in the Dark, an online horror flash fiction site, today.)

There are a few more stories on this website, shorts that I wrote last year:

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Later this year, you can also read me in New Writing Scotland 30 where I have a story, Foundling, about a woman who finds a lost little girl on her way to work on morning.

If you’re in Edinburgh, UK, or nearby, you can occasionally see me read at Illicit Ink and at other events. You can find out more about where I’ll be on the Events page. (Check out Edinburgh City of Literature if you’re interested in readings and other literary events. There are always things on.)

2May2012

And so the plotting begins

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To write a story, you need a plot. The longer the story, the more detail you need. This I have learned. I’m a somewhat seat-of-my-pants writer but am beginning to like to know where I’m going. And if I’m going a long distance – say, 100,000 words, for example – I want to have a good idea of the route. I’d get lost otherwise, I’d go nowhere, or in circles, boring my readers and myself. Since I’ve worked with this set of characters before, I know how I want them to change over the course of the book. So that’s great: character arcs are in place. The plot is another issue. I don’t have one. Or rather, I don’t have much of one. (This is what I’ve got: a chap dies and is found by our heroine. She’s put out.)

I’ve started working on the plot in a very similar way to the method I used for NaNoWriMo last year. This time I’m using a bigger piece of paper and many more coloured pens. It doesn’t look very structured and that’s OK. It isn’t. At the moment I’m at the brain-dump stage. I’ve put what little I know on a piece of paper, set out a time line and started putting in the few plot elements or scenes that I have. Hopefully, holes will become apparent and patterns will emerge. Then I can do research and generate ideas where the plot is weak. Finally, I’ll have a map. Then the writing starts.

Plotting begins in earnest. Timelines, interactions, mind-maps.
Plotting begins in earnest. Timelines, interactions, mind-maps. Sharpies!
18April2012

Finishing: therein lies stories.

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I read something the other day – a snippet of freely given internet advice – which said something like “don’t start anything until you’ve finished what you’re working on now”.

Good advice.

But a lot more difficult to follow than you might think.

The way I work, I have several projects on at the same time. Some are very short, some are longer and some are novel lenght. (I boast. This year is the first time I’ve got one of those on the go. I have yet to finish one outside of NaNoWriMo.) I have an idea, I take some notes, let it steep and ferment and then I write a draft. Then I leave it for a while – sometimes a very long while – before reading it and performing surgery. Once it’s in some kind of shape, it goes to my first reader for feedback. A brief hiatus follows.

After first reader, I make changes to the piece before sending it to a writers group or friendly editor (second review).  Then it sits. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for months. When I finally pick it up again, it is to do a final edit. The final edit isn’t as final as it sounds. It can take several rounds to get to the  final-final version. And even that isn’t really final.

I send the story out and depending on what comes back, I might make further changes before sending the story out a second time. And so it goes.

What was the advice again?

Don’t start anything before you’ve finished what you’re working on.

When you get going, coming up with ideas is a lot easier than finishing stories. Ideas take seconds; finishing a story takes hours, days and weeks.

For this year, I set myself the task of completing one story a month. I’m two months behind and I have eight stories on the go. One is on the concept stage, meaning, I’ve got notes and ideas but I haven’t written words yet. Three have some words, but not their full complement. One has been read by my first reader and the remaining three have been reviewed by my writers groups. If I sat down and finished editing those three I would catch up on my goal. Easy peasy. There are a host of reasons for why I don’t, not one of them particularly good.

It’s not always possible to work on only one thing at a time. Take my word for it: I freelance. External deadlines are useful to force you to finish things. Unfortunately, some of my works in progress don’t have markets, never mind deadlines. So I make excuses, allow myself to lose insterest and move off to other projects. To some extent, I think that’s OK. Not everything I write is worth finishing. Some of it wasn’t worth starting in the first place. That’s part of what this year is about: learning where to put my efforts. Still, the things that are sitting there, twice reviewed, I clearly like well enough to finish.

So I should finish them. Because drafts can’t be published.

9April2012

Status update: I’ve made friends with the plan. Almost.

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A couple of months ago I took my plan for the year public to goad myself into sticking to it. It’s time to reflect and see how I’m progressing against my goals.

  • Send out one new story per month: behind by two stories. I’m not going to catch up this month but I want to be behind by only one story by next month.
  • Send each story out at least five times before retiring: in progress (am circulating Neon Tetra Suicides, Space Carrot, L.V.I.S. and the flash version of Liz & Bob). It’s been suggested that sending them out five times isn’t enough so some of them might go out a few more times.
  • Start plotting novel: I’ve started and am making progress. I’ll publish some of my scrawls later for the fun of it.
  • Start writing novel: planned for June.
  • Apply to Story Shop: looking dicey since I haven’t managed to get published yet I’m keeping an eye open for the call for stories. Last year it was released in May.
  • Do three spoken performances: I’m upgrading this to four and am two down.