Yes, They Could Be Serious

Many, many years ago I wanted to read a book about how to get into acting as a profession. Every book I could find was written by an old, already famous person, like Judi Dench. I'm sorry about the old, but I was still in my teens, and at that point age didn't equate with useful experience. I wanted something written by someone in their 20s, someone who was still climbing the ladder, someone who would know a few short cuts.

Fast forward a few years, and I was possibly that person. I was in work pretty much non-stop and earning good money, but no way could I call myself famous. So, I decided to write the book I'd wanted to read. Having written it - and I don't remember any angst about writing, so unlike now; that too must be an age thing - I knew that there was one publisher who published all the plays, so I wrote to them telling them what I'd written and why.

They wrote back - they were interested, but wanted to know a bit more about me: why was I the one to write this book? At which point I decided they were giving me the brush off and didn't bother to reply.

Argghh!

I simply can't believe I did that. But it is true. I think, deep down, I was worried that they would think I wasn't famous enough for them so it was easier to reject them first before they rejected me. Idiot!

Because now I know differently. These people - agents, editors, publishers - are so swamped with manuscripts that ANY flicker of interest is good. Every day they are besieged by thousands of voices going Me, me, me! so if they offer you some individual attention, be thrilled and flattered, even if it doesn't lead to the publishing deal of your dreams. Take it as a positive sign you're on the right track and don't be silly like me.

Some Thoughts about Self Publishing

I started my writing career as a self-publisher 20+ years ago. I did well, expanded the business until it employed 6 part timers. It was a good business for a stay-at-home mum as most of the work could be fitted around nursery school and Tumble-Tots. My babies grew up knowing how to stuff mailshot envelopes, to stick stamps on parcels and were on first name terms with the parcel collection man. Then I got bored, gave it up and became a fiction writer.

The trouble with self publishing is that the inexperienced person thinks producing the book is the issue. It's not. Producing a book is easy, it just takes time and money. It takes less time and costs far less than when I first started. Distribution is also less of an issue now there's print on demand and ebooks.

The big huge mega problem is SELLING the wretched thing. That means letting people know it's out there, and then persuading them to buy it. Then, when you've sold a copy, you've got to have a paper trail of some sort - receipts, invoices, orders, accounts. Publishers have whole departments devoted to these aspects: you have just you.

You will find it easier if you are writing non-fiction. If your book is about, for example, woodworking, the chances are you know there's a gap in the market for your book, that's why you wrote it. You will know all about which magazines, newspapers, TV or radio programmes are devoted to woodworking, you will know about woodworking societies, clubs, tool manufacturers. In other words, you know exactly who is going to buy your book, and how you can tell them it's out there.

Fiction is not so easy. It's a huge market potentially, but that makes it harder to reach. The newspapers and magazines which can reach this market are nigh-on impossible to get coverage - even traditional publishers struggle. Bookshops don't like self published works - you might get into your local bookshop assuming a) you have one and b) you're a regular customer and don't buy all your books from Amazon or the supermarket. Don't be deceived into believing all your friends and family will buy a copy. Some will, but surprising numbers won't, and you'd have to have an awful lot of friends to make it viable.

But my biggest reservation about self publishing is why I left it. I wanted to be a writer, not run a business. It was fun at first - ooh, the thrill of putting in fistfuls of cheques - but I didn't want to set up systems for processing payments and chasing unpaid invoices: I am not an administrator and have never wished to be one.

Self publishing is basically the same as setting up a widget-selling business, one where you also make the widgets. If you're thinking about going into self publishing you need to ask yourself: Do you really want to be a widget salesperson? Or do you want to be a writer?

What is a Bahookie?

When my children were small one of their favourite stories was about a small dog called Sam who kept on getting into various forms of mischief. At no point was it said where Sam came from, nor was the story scattered with apostrophes. One of the stories concerned Sam trying to get through a hole in a fence. Now Sam was also known as wee Sam, or wee fat Sam. Trying to get through the fence, his wee fat bahookie got stuck.

Now, I don't know what a bahookie is exactly, but I didn't need the illustration to make a good guess as to which bit of Sam's anatomy was stuck. And you can't say "wee fat bahookie" in any other way than with a Scottish accent. Bahookie: it's such a great dialect word, and putting it in the text - one aimed at small children - conveyed the dialect better than any Och aye would have done.

Dialect words are precise. They say 'me duck' in Leicester as a form of endearment, but it's 'me ducks' in Nottingham not that far away. In Cornwall it's 'me cock'. What about cariad, dearie, love, my lover? All the same meaning, all different locations. Get the words right, and the reader will hear the right accent in their heads.

Shall Us Do Some Dialect?

A friend was describing an excellent but eccentric plumber who was working on his house.  At one point, halfway through the working day, the plumber set down his tools and said, "Shall us go for a walk round the village?"

Say it out loud.  Shall us go for a walk?  

Now try this. Shall we go for a walk? 

Your voice will be different.  You can't simply can't say Shall us go for a walk? without a hint of a West Country burr. 

This is the best - the  only way - to write dialect.  Forget funny spellings, forget apostrophes, it's all in the rhythm of speech, phrasing, grammar - and use of dialect words, which I'll do tomorrow.     

Making Assumptions

Last month I chaired an event for the Penzance Literary Festival.  One novelist, Jessica Mann, was talking about the memoir she is currently writing.  It's about the 1950s, and how life is so much better now than it was then, even though many people hark back to the 50s as a Golden Age.  She explained how, as a young woman she'd believed she was free, but her assumptions about life were coloured by the prevailing mores and in reality she had been constrained by societal expectations.

We discussed whether one could get into a character's head if they lived at a different time.  Rosemary Aitkin, the other panellist, who (as Rosemary Rowe) writes crime novels set in Romano-Britain, said that it was impossible to write about accurately, the writer had to adapt it.  Real life Romano-Britons would have had a mindset about, for example, the place of women in society, that would be unacceptable to us now.  

Closer to home, I find it hard to understand the mindset of many young people, for example, about drinking.  I just don't get the idea of going out with the intention of getting wasted.  Looking the other direction, I know my mother's expectations of marriage were quite different from mine, and what I might consider to be a bad marriage, she might see as a successful one. 

If we want to write about characters other than ourselves we have to examine our assumptions about other peoples behaviour.  We don't have to understand them - I am never going to understand why cars matter so much to some men - but we have to know that they're there.

Motivation and Habit

I heard this on the radio the other day, can't remember where or in what context, but it struck me as being very true for writing. 

"Motivation gets you started, habit keeps you going."

We all need motivation to get any project going, whether it's learning Italian or going to the gym, but after the first flush of enthusiasm dies down, a lot of us drop out or give up.  Same with writing.  We get motivated to write a novel or a short story because we have a great idea, or some characters or a place we feel compelled to write about, but even the shortest of short stories will take more than ten minutes to write.  

We'll have to come back to it, and that's where habit comes in.  Sometimes I find I'm at the gym before I've almost realised it, my subconscious habits having propelled me along. (If I thought about it, I wouldn't go.) It's really important to develop good habits if you want to write.  

- Come in from work, and instead of sitting down in front of the TV with a cup of tea, take the tea to the computer.  

- The alarm goes off and instead of hanging on to every last second of sleep, you roll over, grab your pen and notebook and start to write. 

- Sunday morning, and while the rest of the household sits down with the papers, you're off writing.  

Whatever your writing style, develop a habit around it, and it will help you to finish your writing  projects.  

Don't Read Dead Authors

It happens at least once a term.  The feedback is that a section is too wordy, too descriptive, and you're busily defending your work on the grounds that Dickens did it like that.  Trouble is, Dickens is a Dead Author.  He's not a good example for you to follow because he's not a new author getting his first book published now.  

Established authors are nearly as bad as dead ones.  If I pick up a new novel by Anne Tyler, Nick Hornby, Ian Rankin or Jilly Cooper, I've got a fair idea of what it's going to be about, where it's going to be set, what sort of people the main characters will be, and what the style of writing is going to be.  If the opening is a bit slow to get going, I'll stick with it because I know I enjoyed their previous books.  

The rules are different for the unpublished to the previously published.  That's just a fact. So you should read first time novelists, and as you're reading, you should be working out why were they chosen off the slush pile.  What are their special qualities?  I'm not suggesting that you should follow what they did (for lots of reasons but not least because the market will have moved on by the time you've finished writing your novel), but it will give you an idea of what the market is looking for and how much better you've got to be to get noticed.