Sniplets

Well it’s Friday and I’ve a none-writing weekend ahead of me for once, so I thought I’d do a quick blog before I sign off for a couple of days of hedonism.

“Where can I…

…get a copy of The Secret War?” was a question posed to me recently by someone at work. My usual answer is “anywhere, really,” which I suppose masks the availability of the book in the UK - but that availability is growing. I happened upon a neat little tool on the Waterstones website which actually shows the availability of the book in their stores up and down the country (which you can find by clicking here).

I told them you can get it on-line too, and the list of on-line booksellers stocking The Secret War is growing (including European stockists ranging from Holland to the Czech Republic). It’s odd seeing your book described in Czech, Italian, French and Japanese, but it’s also pretty cool. I can’t wait to see Goldman’s German translation of the book when it comes out in 2008.

Roll on Der Geheime Krieg!!


When the cinema is too expensive…

…I do something else at the weekend. Usually its either going to the local pub, watching a DVD, or this Friday, going to a gig. My first gig, actually, in four years (eight if you discount a mate’s band). Which is a little sad, really. Ten years ago I’d be found at one or more gigs a week, and spend all summer at music festivals. I wouldn’t say I’ve grown out of it, just that I have other things to spend my time and money on.

But not tonight.
Myself and a few friends are off to see Scott Matthews play at Plug in Sheffield. I’ve been a fan of Scott’s for a while (through the influence of a close friend, Lee) and Passing Stranger is a fabulously eclectic album. With the possibility of backstage passes too, it’s something I’m looking forward to as the working-week winds down.

Scott’s gig kicks of the weekend nicely - followed by a drink-filled visit to Shrewsbury… and probably more shameless promoting!

Now where the hell did I put those promo-cards?

The End is Nigh

Despite taking a well-earned break from writing this weekend, the 2nd draft of The Secret of Mhorrer is almost done. And that makes me happy for two reasons. The first, is that I scheduled 2nd drafting to begin in March – to complete the final draft by the end of summer. By starting earlier than planned, the 2nd draft is two chapters away from being finished and it isn’t even April yet.
So I’m way ahead of schedule, clawing back three months that I lost during the 1st draft’s ‘mare.

The second reason for being pleased, is draft 2 itself. I can’t believe how much of an improvement it is over the 1st draft. It reads so much better – the plotting is tighter, the characters are deeper, the adventures are furious. For the last couple of chapters I’ve been writing with a manic grin stretched across my choppers.

And sometimes – just sometimes – I’ve been accused of laughing at the page.

Yet I swear, the page - on occasion – has laughed back…


And finally...

I've received my first pay statement from Macmillan New Writing!!! Don't get too excited though, it's only for the period between June and December last year (the book wasn't published until January!) so it covers only pre-ordered books and other bits and pieces.

Still, the numbers pre-ordered were quite promising (and if you were one of those who did, my dearest thanks!).

X is reckless

Even when you’ve written the first draft of a book, the second draft can throw up its fair shares of surprises. In my case, and in the case of The Secret of Mhorrer, the surprise is a character I’ll just call “X” for the sake of argument. He’s not the main character, but still a major one that I thought might go beyond this book. Yet this character has become reckless in the second draft – reckless and belligerent. I’m not saying he was a pussycat before, but now he’s really become a hostile, and quite ready for a bit of torture and blood letting to the point that it is quite possible his end is a fatal one by the close of The Secret of Mhorrer.

And that wasn’t in the script.

I quite like X, to be honest. He added a brutal low-brow perspective on a war that is hardly grounded, dealing with vampires, demons and other terrible creations. But now this character suffers a transformation midway through the book. It happens during a plot-change in a middle chapter - that I swung in on a whim because it was a natural end to quite a violent episode.
Unfortunately X gets in the way and his character has suffered psychologically because of it.

So I have choice… I can go back and remove X from the firing line, keeping him unscathed physically and mentally, or I keep going down that dark path to a conclusion that would not be unexpected to me and fatal to X.
I’m tempted more towards the latter. The book needs to feel natural, and just because I like the guy, doesn’t mean I should spare him. I used that approach with one such supporting character in The Secret War, and while a close friend lamented his passing to me - thinking I should have kept him alive - he could see why he was killed off.

But I wonder if he’ll feel the same way about X?

And I wonder if I will too at the end of the second draft?

We authors can be fickle, you know…

Another push

I am quite fortunate that the cover of The Secret War stands out, and for that I must thank Richard Evans at Macmillan for creating something quite striking from what was quite a woolly brief: two crossed swords against a fiery background, with a bronze pyramid between them.

I guess it’s that and the blurb I wrote that have sold many of the books so far – after all no-one other than friends and than those visiting this blog had even heard of me, let alone The Secret War. Word of mouth also seems to be helping it along now, but I took the plunge anyway and another push in terms of promotion i.e. commissioning the printing of 10,000 promo cards – which have now been delivered.

In the last blog entry, Sally made a good point that you can’t just go into a bookshop or wherever and plonk promo cards down on a table or a counter, but you should engage with the bookseller or shop owner, and that’s precisely what I have done in the last 48 hours. So far the net I cast has only been over Sheffield, but that includes 3 bookshops and a pub. Obviously, Waterstones in Orchard Square have taken some of the cards for display; Goldsboro books in London apart, this store has been the biggest supporter of my book to my knowledge – hosting the launch as well as taking 3 separate orders for the book (and in total selling around 100 copies since it was published) - the latest order being around 8 copies. That isn’t bad for a debut hardback.

Of the two other Waterstones branches in Sheffield, the largest was very interested in the book after I met with the manager yesterday evening. It was a very successful chat, she being a self-confessed fantasy fan and a fan of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series (others have already commented on its similarities with The Secret War). The branch also took a stack of promo cards – and if they put them on display, that’s a bonus – but I think the real bonus is finding another ally who is interested in my book, and selling it.

And allies are just as important as word of mouth.

In the coming months I’ll be armed with more cards, talking to more booksellers both independents and book-chains, and trying to “win friends and influence people”, if you believe in that hackneyed phrase.

If it all goes as well as the last 48 hours, I might soon become a true believer myself!

A post about posters

I’ve chewed down hard on the belt and taken the risk of shelling out some dosh on some Secret War promo-cards. 10,000 cards to be exact. God knows what I’ll do with 10,000, but they were on offer and I thought, what the hell? At the very least I can paper one whole wall in my study with them.

Oddly, I have an order for these cards already – some very loyal and enthusiastic friends and family have promised to got to all corners of the UK to convince bookshops, large and small to have a neat stack of these cards on show for the general public to take when they please. I don’t expect I’ll be printing any more off, so as someone pointed out, these cards are limited edition!!

You might see said promo cards floating about in places such as Bournemouth, London, the Midlands, Manchester, Macclesfield and almost definitely South Yorkshire – anywhere I guess where the shop-owner is convinced to put them on their counter or coffee tables.
And the picture above is the front of the card – an idea I had for a poster, but it was going to be a little pricey getting them into print – so I’ve used it for the promo card instead!

To recoup the cost of the cards I will need to sell 150 books over the coming months, but as the previous post pointed out, I have really no idea how well The Secret War is selling, other than more shops appear to be taking copies of the book (according to the Waterstones website which has recently added an extra dozen stores to the list of those stocking it). So, I’m optimistic that I’ll at least cover the costs - whether or not the cards inspire more buyers than that, I won’t know until September.

Patience, at the moment, is more than a virtue.
It’s a Herculean task.

“It’s still too early to tell.”

If there is one question more than any other that has been asked of me over the last weeks, it is “how is the book doing?” And I usually start my answer with “it’s still too early to tell.”

Part of me hates saying it - it almost sounds like the book is doing terribly and I’m just hiding my own failure - but actually it is too early to tell. The Secret War has been on sale for around 8 weeks now, and for a limited print run in four figures, it was never going to be a bestseller – and the bestseller lists are pretty much the only means for a writer to know how well their book is doing.

Well, outside of anecdotal evidence anyway.

Short of phoning around every single shop that is selling your book, there is no real indicator of success. As an author I resist the temptation of sending e-mails every week to my publisher asking how its doing, like some petulant child. Apart from the bestsellers list, I suppose there is also Amazon and their “interesting” ranking system that can lead some authors to obsession in monitoring how well their book is moving up (which is bad) or down (which is, well, good) the ranking. The ranking is not a very scientific thing, but at least you can gauge whether people are actually buying your book, and in that respect I can say they are definitely doing that and have been doing so over the last 8 weeks.

In terms of reception to the book, it’s been quite surprising. The greatest reaction to the book has been from readers who actually don’t read this sort of thing. “Thing” being “fantasy or horror”. I guess, as David Isaak mentioned in my last blog entry, The Secret War really isn’t a straight horror or fantasy story. Since writing it a couple of years ago I see it very much as an action adventure story more than anything else – but one with several toes dipped in blood.

I have had e-mails via the website, from friends of colleagues or friends of friends, and the overall opinion is this is a “fantastic book” for people who don’t read horror or fantasy.
Which presents me with a quandary: how does a writer of fantasy and horror promote a book using limited means to an audience “who doesn’t usually read that sort of thing”?

So far, this blog has been a great way of convincing some readers to buy a book that wouldn’t usually interest them, and I’ve also been toying with beefing up the whole promotion thing with some rather natty promo cards designed by Mel Jones (designer of the MFWCurran.com website). But other than that, I have a feeling there is an untapped reservoir of readers with no obvious way of reaching them. It’s the age-old predicament of promotion vs cost, I guess. My publisher has limited means of promotion, as do I, and word of mouth costs nothing.

But as John Highfield once told me, I need to “make the most of the moment”. It may never come again. If that means perhaps shelling out a few pennies to increase the momentum of progress, then is that too much of risk?

Or am I just being an impatient writer when it really is too early to tell?

A Big Kid Indie Find

Despite the severe lack of independent bookshops here in Sheffield, I’ve finally found one that will stock Harry Potter’s last hurrah - Rhyme and Reason on Ecclesall Road. And that little discovery has made me smile, but then I’m easily pleased. As a bonus every pre-ordered copy of the book receives a more inventive gift than the likes of your High Street bookstore provide (I won’t spoil what it is, but it’s quite special I think). However, I suspect this “event” is more geared towards children, and although I shamelessly admit that Harry Potter will be bought as a guilty pleasure for both myself and Mrs Curran, I think we’ll be ducking out of it!
(I freely admit to being a big kid in secret, but only in secret!)

I feel like I’m doing my bit to keep the independent bookshops alive too. I know it’s only a small step, but it’s pretty much like supporting your local butcher or fruit ‘n’ veg shop other than your locust-like supermarket. As Chris mentioned in my last blog, I too would never buy a book from Tescos, yet I do shop for food there. However, recently Family Curran have been buying fresh produce from local family shops instead, realising plenty has been sacrificed in the name of “convenience,” such as value for money and quality.
It’s worth going a little further for something better, I believe.

But I’m digressing here…

From what I can gather from their website, Rhyme and Reason is a family owned professional outfit who really take their bookselling seriously, and do plenty for the community and the children. They also do plenty with children’s authors, so my interest was definitely engaged – especially with my current (a)side-project, A World of Night in mind.

Hopefully, my relationship with Rhyme and Reason will eventually extend further than the purchasing of the Deathly Hallows.


And also…

Like some absent minded relative, in the last blog entry I missed off a third novella which I am also considering: a story called “Cook”, based on the Australian ghost-town of the same name. Unlike the other two stories, this one has an already formed plot and would run to around 40-50,000 words. Yeah, I know it’s still a lot of words, but compared to The Secret of Mhorrer (where the first draft clocked in at 180,000) it’s a mere footnote really!

I’ll probably make a decision on the next writing project during the final drafting of The Secret of Mhorrer, but with so many possible projects in front of me, it’s an exciting time and I feel quite childlike about it…

Afterall, I’m just a big kid, right?

Coming soon:A blog entry on where I am with The Secret of Mhorrer, how well The Secret War is doing… And I guess what I’ve learned so far (could be a big blog entry then!!)

(Almost) All Things Indie

First things first… I’ve put links to the three writing blog entries to the left under the unoriginal title “MFW On Writing”. I know it’s a bit hackneyed but hey…

Second things second

After a recent trip to Bakewell up the road, I was struck by the number of independent bookshops still in operation, and in all four shops I purchased a book (one of which I am very proud of – a never-been read signed first edition hardback of China Mieville’s Iron Council for £4).

Had the rampant book-buying malaise hit these booksellers like many in Sheffield it is likely that none of these shops would exist. But in Bakewell, there is an oasis of hope.

I love independent bookshops. They sell a greater variety of books, usually based on the bookseller’s tastes, and you can pick up bargains or be surprised by digging up out of print editions (I picked up a Clive Barker biography in Bakewell a month ago – something I’ve been looking for over the past 2 years but no avail). But above all, the people who sell books in these shops really like books, and really enjoy selling them. They get a kick out of it, not because it makes money (we are told by the press they do not) but because they themselves enjoy reading books and enjoy recommending them to others. If they can make a little money out of that business, then good for them.
I suppose in traditional “chicken and the egg” fashion I could discuss how the decline in book buying could – and I stress “could” – be linked to the decline in the independent bookseller and vice versa, but I won’t. That’s for other blogs to discuss, or perhaps people to comment at the end. But this is one writer who will lament on the endangered species of the independent bookshop.

So in the spirit of supporting the “little guy” I’ve promised to buy the last Harry Potter... book (yes, we’re one of those households!) from an independent and not Tescos, or Waterstones, or WHSmiths or anywhere else who offers huge discounts to the point of being obscene. For them Harry Potter is a loss leader – for the independent bookshop “grandstand” books are their bread and butter. If they are to struggle on, they need the support of the book-buying public who will feel their loss keenly if the independent bookshop becomes a thing of the past.

Hopefully I won’t be the only one thinking this.


Third things… erm, third?

Sarah asked me recently what project I might embark on in the Autumn after I’ve put The Secret of Mhorrer to bed. Anyone who has looked at my website (link left) will note that I have other future projects such as Smith or A World of Night listed. A World of Night is currently being tweaked for submission later in the year, and Smith is a project that needs more developing before I’m happy with it.

As it happens there are two other projects not listed there which are proving tempting. The first is The House of All Seasons which will be a gothic thriller – quite unlike anything I have written before. The second project is one I’ve mentioned before in a recent blog, Stranded Rooms, a dark fantasy science-fiction story which would be the perfect platform to explore my imagination unrestrained. The Secret War and The Secret of Mhorrer have fantastical and horror elements, but they are also bound by conventions to some degree as they feature vampires and daemons – creations based on myth and religion. Stranded Rooms would have no restraints and I could be quite perverse and crazy with my imagination (hell, any story which has a guy being sucked out into the vacuum of space from his bathroom door has got to have a slightly unhinged edge, right?)

Anyway, at the moment both projects should be novella size (though I suspect the latter could bloat itself into another 400-500 page epic). If they do retain their diminutive word count then I will probably lean towards the independent press. We’re not talking POD here but rather small press publishers with a track record of publishing limited runs of novellas, selling them through Amazon and their own sites (and of course this one).
Ever since I picked up a copy of Back Brain Recluse many years ago, I’ve found the small press quite appealing (the care and attention, the cover art, the enthusiasm…), and would love to be published by one of them.

So…

Watch this space….as always!

The Cost of Letters and the Cost of Living continued…

I know I said my blogging would be more infrequent due to writing commitments - but with the BBC News continuing with their deluge of quite miserable prophecies of young professionals being in terrible debt in the UK, it was interesting to come across a short paragraph buried at the bottom of the Guardian yesterday . A comment on the state of writers who were 25 – 34 years old (an age bracket that I fall into).

It pretty much explains my situation. I am one of those 60% "young proffesionals" who needs another job to support their writing during the UK’s slow burning financial deterioration – a full-time job that is. It should be noted I haven’t been paid yet and my first book only went into print in January (I guess that’s a hopeful aside, but the realistic part of me realises that I’ll still be doing the day-job at least on a part-time basis for some time to come).

It was interesting to see the “top 10%” of writers earn more than 50% of all authors’ income – and after visiting David Isaak’s blog a couple of days ago and the on-going debate about authors' advances, it’s another round of ammo to add to the whole question of whether the book-trade is being top-sliced to fund books that will never recoup their outlays in terms of both promotion and advance, and thus impact all the way down to struggling novelists and the quality of books being sold.
Of the 10% mentioned in the Guardian, I wonder how many writers will actually “earn” that percentage through royalties and how much is simply extravagant advances paid by publishers? It’s the royalty vs advance debate that I suppose will never leave the industry as long as seven figure advances continue to be paid – and for the record I would rather have a larger percentage of royalties than a ludicrous advance of which I know I’ll never earn back.

In respect of my writing, I’m not aiming for that top 10%. I just want to make a reasonable living to do what I do full-time – I’d say around £24K a year from my writing would be comfortable. As a first time writer, whether I achieve that, only time will tell.

It would be interesting to see what amounts other writers would settle for – and whether or not as a breed, writers are generally greedy or utterly unrealistic. I hope we are not – though judging by some writing forums and sites, I think I might be in a minority. Unfortunately for all concerned, including those writers aspiring to mountains of cash, those who are lucky to be published will probably still fall into the 90% of those earning a pittance.

How I do that thing that I do: part 3 – The Karl Jenkins effect, or how I stop myself from beating up people with my laptop

I have a soundtrack in mind, and it goes like this:

1. Adiemus track 1 – Karl Jenkins
2. Revenge of the Sith track 9 – John Williams
3. Adiemus track 6 – Karl Jenkins
4. Last Samurai track 10 - Hanz Zimmer
5. Hero track 8 - Tan Dun
6. Adiemus II track 8 - Karl Jenkins

This list is not complete, nor is it a dodgy compilation or "listmania". These tracks are actually currently on my laptop – a mere click away if I need them. And sometimes, my writing does.

I don’t necessarily listen to them to bend my writing will, nor to fashion my prose to any rhythm (except during battle scenes – I write these with the same aggression as a galley-slave pulling the oars to the pounding beat of the drum). If my headphones are being worn while I write, or the stereo is erupting with musical filigree, then it’s usually because there are distractions elsewhere.

And every writer knows, distraction is the killer of good prose…

How I deal with distraction

I write for lunch...

I write for lunch because I need to, I love to, and if I didn’t I would be using up my lunch-break in HMV, Virgin or Waterstones spending all my money on DVDs, CDs and books. I know I would – you only need to look at my collection of the former to see that I am quite the addict.
But the main reason – the real reason – is that I don’t have much time to write these days, and writing on my lunch-break is ideal. Except for the distractions.

My office environment is not such that there are people yelling, screaming, laughing like baboons nor anything like that. It’s no library, but it’s not terribly noisy. Yet I will still slip on a pair of headphones while I bash out a 1,000 words in my half hour lunch break – listening to the aforementioned tracks or anything else that is not too intrusive.
Wearing my headphones is a statement of intent, or as one Far Side cartoon says “How Nature tells you to stay away”. Like the cat with the standing-up fur, the dog baring its teeth, or the grinning and dribbling lunatic with a shotgun and rolling eyes - wearing my headphones is a clear sign to tell everyone “Matt is writing. Do not approach.”
Of course, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes a staff member might stand to the side of my desk for a few minutes, not realising what I’m doing before trying to get my attention with a cursory wave. To which I will remove my headphones, look at them with disdain and they’ll generally say “Oh… sorry. Are you on your lunch?”

I guess then, I have to bury the urge to bury my laptop in their face, but usually a quick few words along the lines of “come back in 30 mins” will do it – and then I’m back to my writing.

I’m lucky that I can re-immerse myself in my imagination within a few minutes – like having an instant hot bath on demand. But the music helps – and because of circumstance it has become an integral role in my writing.
I usually listen to classical music (songs are too intrusive – have you ever tried writing prose with U2 in the background? It’s quite maddening you know!). It also becomes familiar, a trigger for me to switch off my mundane life and sink into another world – in the current case, a 19th century swashbuckling world of vampires and demons.

I think if I suffered from the problem many writers feel – the inability to switch off the real world and get into the momentum of writing again – my books would never be written. For me, the method of coping with a slight distraction has conditioned this writer into coping with any distraction.

Well, almost any.

When your brain wants one thing, and your imagination wants something else

Travel in time with me to a couple of weeks ago and my visit to St Andrew’s school. If I may, I will plunder another question posed to me by one of their bright kids. He too was a writer and asked how I coped with having so many ideas for books.
“Doesn’t it get a bit distracting?” he asked.
“Very,” I replied.
At least once a month, perhaps even twice, I develop an idea for a new book that is so vivid and attractive my imagination starts jumping up and down with the words (in a high-pitched and squeaky voice) “Write me! Write me!”

And it is tempting.

Especially when you’re on the third or fourth draft and you’ve done the lion’s share of the creative process, left only with mechanical and self-critical task of trimming your prose – or editing to the extreme i.e. “killing your baby”. This is the most destructive part of writing, and your imagination is hardly used. Feeling neglected during this phase of the process, it is of no surprise that your imagination will do anything to lure you away from what you should be doing and embarking on a completely new project – to give that creative muscle a good ol’ workout. It’s a distraction that not even Karl Jenkins, nor any other form of music can cure.

So, going back to that aspiring writer at St Andrew’s, another question was asked on the back of the first:
“How do you stop yourself from writing something new?”
My reply was messy, convoluted and if I had thought about it longer, I would have replied with one word: “Discipline.”

A writer’s world revolves around discipline. Sorry... I should say, a serious writer’s world revolves around discipline, because if you really want to write – the desire to construct the beautiful word is like fire in your veins – then you need to have discipline.

Often a writer forces themselves to sit down and write even when there are more appealing things to do. I myself on occasion will nail my backside to the chair and write – especially when the day outside is sunny and warm while the workplace is in shadow and cool.
But discipline isn’t just about forcing yourself to write. It’s also about forcing yourself to write the right thing. Sometimes when a problem looks so great, it’s appealing to take the easier route – to start something new, and possibly inferior. But writing isn’t meant to be easy – if it is, you’re probably not doing it right! A contentious statement, I know – but look at this way – if writing is so easy, you’re probably not challenging yourself enough. You’re not getting the most of your writing and could do better.

That’s the way I look at my writing – and discipline keeps me focused on the immediate problem – even when a fresh idea comes marching through the door with a broad grin, a bottle of wine and maybe the leprechaun-promise of a pot of gold at the end.
When that guest does come through the door, I lock them away in the cellar of my imagination. In tangible terms, I might spend twenty minutes or so writing down the idea in brief and then putting it in an “ideas” folder where it might sit for years and years and years. Until I bring it out, think about it some more, and then begin the whole writing process again.

The way I see it, if the idea is a good one, it can wait. If it turns out to be a crap one, then I haven’t distracted myself too much and have lost nothing. Not the momentum, nor the time I could have wasted.
In fact I would even go as far as saying sitting on an idea is a good way of fermenting it – and perhaps charging into one without much thought is the road to folly. I have several notebooks and folders of ideas, and if I had been seduced by each one, I would have never completed a single novel. And some ideas I have are rubbish. Some are a waste of time.

And for a writer who writes for lunch, wasting time is a unwelcome distraction.

Final thoughts

And I guess that’s it for the moment. As David Isaak has pointed out in his blog – the last three “How I…” blog entries have been keeping me from my writing – another distraction, but a short term one. And so I must exercise that very same discipline and have a short blogging break (after all, the last three entries have been around 4,500 words in total).

I won’t be gone for long though…

Promise.

How I do that thing that I do: part 2 – The God Complex, or how my characters decided to run off into the desert without the author’s say so

During the first draft of The Secret of Mhorrer, something odd happened. For no reason whatsoever, while writing a 3,000 word section midway through the story, my characters decided to go off on their own adventure and without the author’s permission. I was left standing in the desert shouting “Oi! Come back here!” like a scolding parent, or that sensible friend no one listens to, watching my main characters disappear over the furthest sand-dune.

Of course, I had no choice but to follow their exploits. But, dammit, I’m the author! I own them! I AM GOD…

…aren’t I?

In the Beginning there were two words…
…and those words were “Oh, bugger.”

When I wrote my first book way back 1993 – a teenage horror story called The Forever Chain (unpublished – but then I was just 18 years old) – I had little idea what I was doing. I knew roughly how to write - having written around a dozen short stories by then - but no real idea how to write a book. I simply had an idea and wrote in one direction. The Forever Chain was a simple book you see: girl meets boy, falls in love, discovers boy has amazing powers, but also a murderous twin, boy and twin fight it out over girl, destroys the town and then each other, before finally, girl realises boy and twin weren’t real after all but actually lost spirits from a dead schizophrenic kid killed many years ago… The End.

See, told you it was simple.

It ran to 120,000 words, was full of intrigue but only one subplot. I had an idea what would happen at the end so I just sat down and wrote with that in mind. I never had a plan – never really knew what might come up between the first words and the last (although, as in part 1 of this How I? Blog, I did start with a single image and in this case it was a teenage girl dancing in a cloud of bright yellow canaries, laughing so much she was crying).
The Forever Chain worked out quite well, even garnering some interest from HarperCollins, before interest bottomed out and nothing came of it. Shelving the book, I attended university, wrote an anthology called Necrodyssey, and then embarked on my second book with the same methodology of knowing roughly where I was going and just sitting down to write it.

This book was The Apprentice and the Stripper, and boy, was I wrong.

The book ran to 200,000 words, a hulking beast of a novel with characters all over the place. This was not some teenage fiction of girl meets boy, it was a Byzantine crazy novel with a plot that sprawled. Having not really planned the book out in any detail it became a project that took 2 years to write 2 drafts and many, many obstacles to overcome. I wrote myself into plenty of holes, scrapping whole chunks of prose (the biggest being 30,000 words in one sitting), being thoroughly drained and exhausted afterwards.

The Apprentice and the Stripper is also unpublished, but then I guess it was never even complete.

It was at that point I looked at my stories and knew if I was ever going to be that ambitious again (as I was sure I would be) then I had to spend more time preparing myself in the future.

Planning sometimes pays

I first started mapping out books after writing a synopsis for my third book, The Prey and the Haunted. I bought a How to book on synopsis writing and was struck by a great piece of advice: a synopsis is not only necessary when you submit to the publisher or agent, but it also informs your writing when you embark on the novel (or something like that).
In effect, the synopsis is a plan of your novel, usually written after you’ve completed it to hook the agent or publisher who usually only has two to three chapters in front of them. But this book was saying you can go further with it.
What if you wrote your synopsis before you started writing the book? Would that be any benefit?
So I gave it a go, and tried writing a synopsis for The Prey and the Haunted, a plan as it were, of what the story was about, the characters, the setting, the key points of the beginning, middle and end. Twelve pages later and my first book map was written – if not in a vague and sketchy way.
The Prey and the Haunted was 120,000 words long and not once did I hit a dead-end, not once did I fall into a black hole, and the only scrapping of prose amounted to snips here and there. I knew where I was going, where I had come from, and how to get there, and it took 1 year to write 4 drafts.
The book map stopped me from getting lost.

It was liberating, and began my love affair with planning books – with all the attention of a Napoleonic general, mapping out who would go where, what would happen, even planning the exit. Something that was extremely helpful with The Secret War.

Book Maps

The Secret War is quite episodic, and follows the two main characters religiously only deviating near the end. My writing eye is fixed firmly on them. However, therein lies the problem without any planning. The story again is quite Byzantine if you go into all the motivations, the many characters not to mention perilous situations they find themselves in. Without planning I could have prematurely killed off characters, lost villains, resolved the adventures too soon, even included superfluous characters and situations that would have broken the pace of the book. It is, after all, an adventure story and I intended it to be a page-turner, not a ponderous novel with fits of starts.

In writing The Secret War I completed another writing plan, setting out brief notes not only on the story but the contents of the chapters. For the story to flow I planned out where the scenes of action would be, the exposition, the key events and how they would travel to the end, building up the story as I planned it – I guess much the way James McKee does (but as one of David Isaak’s commentators says, this is just a less detailed way of writing).
And again it worked.
I didn’t write myself into a black hole, and the only great chunks that were ripped out of the book were due to the publisher not wanting to take on a 170,000 word novel from a first time writer, and they eventually relaxed on 150,000 words.
The Secret War is not a natural novel – it was never meant to be – it’s a complex adventure story and was planned that way. To write it any other way would have been a nightmare, and I wonder if it could have been written without planning at all.

And so to The Secret of Mhorrer, the follow-up to The Secret War, which is even more complex with two, sometimes, three character-group viewpoints during the duration of the story. And again I planned it, but this time I went one step further (as some of the more regular readers already know) and wrote 2-3 paragraphs on each chapter to map out the whole story. I needed to know whether the plot had the legs for the entire book, whether the subplot fit with the overall story, and roughly how big the book would be. I didn’t want another 170,000 word novel on my hands with a remit to cut the heart out of it due to the word limitation imposed by the publisher.
So I planned it the nth degree.
And it was working…

…for a while, until natural instinct intervened and then it went pear shaped.

Resistance to instinct is futile

So now we go back to the beginning of this blog entry, and where my characters are dashing off into the distance, the author in pursuit, huffing and puffing after them – cursing them as I look at the word count mounting up and the book map is ripped into tiny pieces. My characters are only doing what is natural to them – so who am I to tell them “no!”? You see, writing needs to be instinctual as well, and you can map and plan and do everything else to direct the characters to the end of the book, but sometimes planning misses something – a point, a motivation, even natural progression of the story, and it takes the characters to remind the author where the story should be going.

In the end the characters were right – even to the point that their actions, unplanned as they were, added a dynamic to the story that was previously missing. Now that I’m in the 2nd draft, their unplanned jaunt is very much part of the story, and what happens later is informed by it – making the overall ending even more satisfying. The book is longer than planned, but successive drafting will take care of that – and it’s worth the extra work. I didn’t see it before, but there was a hole in the heart of the story and this unscheduled jaunt has plugged it – by chance.
It's fair to say that I’m a believer that luck doesn’t only play a big part in getting published, but in writing as well.

Not really a god

Writers are not gods, or if they are they’re the flawed Greek Gods who don’t always get things right. No matter how we like to control things, sometimes – just sometimes – the writer needs to let go. And like the previous blog entry - if the above tells me anything, it shows not all methods fit all stories, and the writer needs to be flexible.

To summarise then:
“planning pays, but don’t be afraid to go off the map in search of adventure from time to time.”

Coming soon Part 3: Where I discuss more of my writing process but will no doubt become distracted by something else entirely.