Naturally Talented?

I saw one of my fellow students from my MA yesterday. At first I didn't recognise her - it's been ten years and we weren't particularly close. But I could remember her writing, how confident it was, how polished. I could remember how impressed I was when she shared her work in class, how much I envied her talent, and how far behind I knew my work was compared to hers.

I had similar feelings with the first creative writing class I went to. One student shone, her work far better than any one else's. I struggled with the exercises, especially free writing - there's something about being told to write now this minute that freezes my brain - but this student was brilliant. The words flowed, her imagination apparently boundless, flair and intelligence combined into delightful prose.

And yet, and yet. And yet I am published, and they aren't. I remember my fellow MA student, how she announced that she'd finish her novel if an agent or publisher was interested, but wouldn't waste her time otherwise. I remember the student I was so overawed by, and know that she - despite interested enquiries from agents and publishers - refused point blank to even consider changing a single word of her novel.

I remember them, and realise that sheer natural talent on its own isn't enough to make a writer. A whole raft of abilities are needed and close to the top of the list are the ability to finish work, and the ability to work with others. Which I find pretty comforting, to be honest, because those are things we can learn to do.

Self Publishing and Me

There's been a lot of comment recently about self publishing, what with the Harlequin decision to promote a 'self-publishing' wing of their business. For about ten years I made a haphazard living as a self publisher of careers books, first as a one woman band operating from the kitchen table, then as a small publisher employing six part-timers. What I learned was...

1. Publishing a book ie producing something you can hold in your hands is the easy part. You just pay a printer, typesetter, cover designer etc and they do the work for you. Companies such as Lulu.com effectively do the same, but get their money from a slice of the cover price.

2. Distribution is the problem. It's very hard to get into bookshops that either buy centrally or buy from wholesalers ie most of them. That's not to say it can't be done, but it requires hard work.

3. The paperwork can be tricky. Ebooks are easier, but you'll still need to keep receipts, send out invoices etc. Self publishing is running a business, even if it's only got one product - your book.

4. It is much much easier to make a success from non-fiction than fiction. Non-fiction means you can target a defined market. I published careers books; I sold them to careers officers at secondary schools. Fiction sells to...people who like reading stories?

5. Not all your friends will buy a copy, and neither will all their friends. Despite reading about success stories the chances are you will lose money on self publishing. At best you will break even. Sad but true. At least if you epublish you won't have 2,457 books stored under your bed.

6. Books are heavy. 2,457 books under the bed will strain your joists. I worked out that 500 of my books were the same weight as a baby elephant. No wonder the car died after carting a small herd around.

7. Self published books usually look amateurish (cartoon covers or illustrations by your partner/neighbour/child are a giveaway). It is worth getting them professionally designed. Ditto professionally edited.

8. Book marketing and publicity is a full time job and buying in expertise is expensive. That's why niche books for small markets work.

9. Discounts are high in the book business. 65% is not unusual for the chains plus you'll have to pay the p&p. And then wait for 30+ days to get your money. If you sell directly to customers then you keep more of the cash, but single copy orders eat time and energy.

10. Define what you want to get out of it. Make lots of money? Hold your book in your hands? See it on the shelves at Waterstones? Win the Booker? Work out what YOU really really want to get from this, and make that your target.

I loved self publishing and as a mum with a baby and a toddler, living in the middle of nowhere, it was the only way I could make some money. I averaged about £10,000 per annum from it and my children grew up knowing how to stuff envelopes with mail-shots and stick stamps on parcels (fun for all the family). I stopped when I realised I was spending most of my time managing others and hardly any of it writing. So I wound the business up and gave myself two years to get a novel published. But that's another story.

The Morning After.

It happened. It was good. Hungover.

Publication Day

It's here.

For the last few weeks I've been living an extended version of a Stephen King film. I'm walking through an empty house, knowing that there's something exceptionally scary around the corner. The tension is mounting, I'm terrified but somehow I can't bring myself to turn around, I edge onwards, getting closer and closer, wanting to go back, my palms are sweating, my heart is pounding, feeling sick with apprehension, I stop, but now it's edging towards me, I can hear it creeping nearer and nearer, I can't move, I can't go back, it's here, it's here.

Yes, it's Publication Day. My nearest and dearest have been aware of the looming presence for several months as my blood pressure rises to explosion levels over innocent topics such as 'have you seen my bag?' Friends and acquaintances have been aware for the last few weeks as I bludgeon them to attend the launch party (it's at Waterstones! In Bath - tonight - 7.00pm. Do come!). I tell them again and again, by email, phone calls, face to face, forgetting who has said yes in my anxiety that No One will be there.

Then there are the Amazon ratings. Don't get me started - or rather, can someone stop me from obsessively checking the ratings. Get the right hour, the right day and it's gratifyingly low (No 1 is obviously best of all), get the wrong moment and you're down in the five figures. It changes every hour, up and down the scale, so at any moment a poor author may be thrown into despair or elation, driving them to return in a manner reminiscent of B F Skinner's work with pigeons and erratic reinforcement.

I'm aware that some people might read this and think, yeah right, but at least she's being published. I don't want to whinge, I know I've been lucky. But I also know that, while the step from unpublished to published can seem impossibly vast, the step from published to unpublished is a short one. The only thing stopping me taking that short step is the sales figures. A year's worth of work, hopes and dreams, tied up in one day. Publication day. Today. Wish me luck.

Ideas R Us

It's one of the standard questions writers get asked: Where do you get your ideas from? The short answer is something like, Ideas-R-Us, where you can get a boxed set for £9.99 and the deluxe version (bestseller guaranteed) for only £19.99. The reality is that ideas are all around us, whether from something we hear from friends, or see on television or read in the papers or just from observation of daily life. Finding ideas really isn't a problem. Finding a good idea is another matter.

A good idea is one that matters to you. That's why it's no good telling me all about your amazing idea and suggesting I might like to write it up. The idea is amazing to you, so you should write it. It's not MY amazing idea, so I'm not going to spend the best part of a year slaving away - writing is hard enough when it matters. The next thing to look for is scope. When you think of your idea, lots of possible directions should come into your head. Some writers use spider diagrams for this stage - you know, those ones where you start with a word in the centre and radiate ideas, joining them with lines so the end result is a page of words all linked like a spider's web.

I prefer to play What If. What if this happened? How would I react? What might happen next? What would make it really tough? What if that happened? And so on. With A Single to Rome, I started with What if you thought you were going to marry someone, and then they dumped you? How would you feel? What would you do? Would you want revenge? (By the way, that's why my working title was 38 Bonks.) I knew I wanted to send Natalie to Rome because I'd been a student there and fancied writing about it, so why was she going? To escape, fine, but who was she going to stay with? How would she meet them? What if they had their own problems?

In answering those questions I was able to start writing, and in the process of writing the novel, ditch some of the original questions and ask new, more interesting ones (which is why it didn't end up being called 38 Bonks, although that stayed as the working title because it makes me laugh). Good ideas inspire good questions. Good questions inspire good answers. Good answers mean - I hope - good novels. It's either that, or this year for Christmas I'm asking for the deluxe idea set.

A Matter of Focus

Last Saturday I watched films until my eyes ached and my bum was numb. This was not the result of a decision to watch the complete boxed set of Spaghetti Western DVDs I got in my stocking last Christmas, but because I went to Brief Encounters, the Bristol Short Film Festival. 'Short' ranged from 1 minute 3 seconds to 29 minutes, and made up about five hours of screen time. Some films were compelling, while others had me checking my watch. I tried to pin point what it was that made the compelling ones so absorbing, and came to the conclusion that it was a matter of focus.

Focus meant keeping one's eyes on what the story was about. There were sometimes multiple strands, but each was always turning back towards the central story. So in one of my favourite films, Light and Dark, a documentary about the alter egos of a film maker and an illustrator who happens to be autistic, everything came back to their relationship, both in real life and in their virtual life. There was no information on their lives outside this relationship - there didn't need to be.

In the same way, when we write, we need to concentrate on what the story is really about, and weave everything back to it. This is particularly true of short stories, where there's precious little space to allow any digression, but also true in novels. Everything must earn its place, even if the reader isn't aware at first why the digression is there. In The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, each chapter starts with the description of an apparently randomly chosen knot. But gradually the descriptions tie in with the story. English Passengers by Matthew Kneale is narrated by over twenty voices, but each tells a separate part of the whole story and the focus of the novel as a whole is maintained.

Sometimes I scribble down the main story theme on a Post-it and stick it to the corner of my computer screen. Then when I get stuck it's always there to remind me: what is the focus of this book? And then I work out how to get my characters back on track and, by focussing on the main story, I find I can move on.

Torture for Writers Part III

The last two blogs were about assembling the raw materials, this one will be about putting it all together. Synopses are always written in third person, present tense. Start with an opening paragraph that says what the novel is about and the story line. It should be clear from this what genre it falls into. Also make it clear if the structure is non-linear, for example, there are two or more parallel plots, or multiple voices. Let the reader have a good idea of what is coming.

Now write out the plot, concentrating on the most important story points and summarising the rest - 'After an unpleasant encounter at school, Jennifer decides...' The unpleasant encounter may have been worth a chapter to itself, but the important bit is the decision. Be bold, be brave, be ruthless. You can't get everything in (because then it would be the novel). It might inspire you to go to the cinema, as films often come with sharply written synopses covering the main plot points, the characters and the themes into one or two short paragraphs.

7 things to look out for...

1. Tone. The tone of the synopsis reflects the novel, so if the novel is humorous, so should the synopsis be.
2. Verbs. Use the most active verbs you can. Characters shouldn't go anywhere, they should rush, run, sidle.
3. Time. Because you're concentrating on the best bits, it's easy to make vast leaps in time that give the synopsis a stop-start impression, or completely lose...
4. Logic. Which can all too easily go out of the window as you cut, cut, cut. My first synopsis included the line 'Suddenly she realises she's having an affair.' What - she was just walking down the street when, whoops, it happened?
5. Genre shift. It starts out techno thriller, ends up as romance. Or vice versa.
6. The End. If the butler did it, say so.
7. Confusion. You need a willing volunteer for this. Get them to read it, and if they're confused at any point, you need to rewrite.

And there it is. Easy peasy.

PS Also easy peasy I discover is how to make links. My thanks to Peter Richardson for the info, complete with diagrams, and to prove I've learned the lesson, here's the link to his blog Cloud 109