Seduced By Strangers

I saw him across the room.  Tall, dark and looking at me with definite intent.  Who, me? I glance around to see if anyone has noticed. My heart is thumping. I look at the stranger again, and our eyes meet. You're not free I tell myself, but my body doesn't seem to have noticed. Nor has my partner - well, we've been together for a while and I love him to bits of course, but we're having a bit of a rough time, we're working things through and I'm sure we'll get there in the end but - the stranger's looking at me again.  I feel drawn to him.  Almost with out thinking I take a step towards him and -

STOP!  

I nearly allowed myself to be seduced by a stranger.

I've got an idea.  It's a really really good idea for a children's novel.  It's for the 6-8 year old market, so it's not going to be long, just a few thousand words.  I could knock up a first draft in a week.  A week's not long to spend away from my current novel is it? The novel's going through a bit of a tricky patch, a break would do both of us good. In fact, it would be entirely reasonable to get that quick first draft done, and then I could go back to the novel, refreshed and even more appreciative of its charms...  

No.

Writing doesn't work like that, at least, it doesn't for me.  Every time I dally with another idea I lose impetus with my novel.  The trouble is, those new ideas are just so seductive.  They look great, they're full of promises about the future, they're fresh and untainted by the drudgery of the daily word count.  But you have to remember that your current project was once a new idea too.  Once you were being seduced by it in just the same way this new idea is sneaking around your consciousness. 

Like a marriage, writing is more than just the initial attraction.  It's about the long haul, sticking together even when the going is tough - those treacle days.  It's about delayed gratification, putting in the hours when there is no prospect of reward on the immediate horizon.  It's about keeping the faith when the writing doesn't seem to be going anywhere.  It's about writing with hope and not allowing yourself to be distracted by flashy strangers.  

Some writers manage to play the field and have several projects on the go at any one time.  That's not for me.  I can't handle more than one project at a time.  That children's novel idea will have to remain untouched until this novel is finished. As a writer, I have to accept that serial monogamy is the only way forward.  

Emotional Intelligence When Writing

At the weekend I watched The Social Network. It's about the founding of Facebook, and in particular the suing of Mark Zuckerberg by various people who felt that they had a claim in being one of the founders.  Mark Zuckerberg is shown as being highly intelligent, a computer genius and - as many people in the film point out - a complete asshole.  He's an asshole because he lacks any awareness of how other people feel.  He lacks any emotional intelligence.

I've met writers like that.  They have usually had extremely successful careers in something science or computer related. They've now retired and have decided to write a novel.  They write one.  They send it out; it gets rejected.  They methodically send it to every agent and publisher; everyone rejects it.  This, one suspects, is the first time these people have had a rejection.  They don't understand why.  

They lack emotional intelligence.  It doesn't matter if you're writing a scientific paper - in fact, empathising all over the place would be a hindrance - but it does matter in a work of fiction. Writing fiction is all about the ability to put yourself in someone else's imaginary shoes, understand how they tick, and then convey that to a reader.  

The saddest thing about an author who lacks emotional intelligence is that they lack the emotional intelligence to know it.  There's an example of this in action over on How Publishing Really Works where author John Streby reacts to Jane Smith's review of his self-published novel The Devil Won't Care.  

The worst example I've come across was a novel which had the hero having sex with a woman who had been brain-damaged, so now had the mental age of an 8 year old child.  She was portrayed as a trusting, simple, innocent child. I protested that that was like paedophilia.  The author didn't agree - the woman was in her 20s so well over the age of consent, so it was fine as far as they were concerned.  I don't know where the law would stand on the issue but I knew where I as a reader stood - it was morally wrong and definitely non-hero action.  

I'm not sure why people who lack emotional intelligence want to write fiction in the first place. I've heard one EI-less author announce that they didn't bother reading novels as they were a waste of time, which is a legitimate opinion, but doesn't explain why anyone else should waste their time by reading that author's novel. Another was writing short stories aimed at the women's magazine market, because this was a market that paid, but couldn't understand why stories featuring women who were washed-up, shrivelled shells once past 35 had never got published.   

There are definitely genres where EI can matter less - thrillers, for example. Plot, pace and setting can compensate for cardboard characters speaking wooden dialogue.  But overall, fiction needs some EI to work.  

  

Cherry Cake Pacing

On the few occasions I’ve made a cherry cake I’ve carefully followed all the instructions, stirred in my glace cherries (full of E numbers, but stickily delicious), carefully spooned the mixture into the cake tin, then popped it in the oven. Half an hour or so later the cake is ready. Then the first slice…and all the cherries have ended up in one glutinous lump at the bottom. It’s a bit like pacing a novel. The best scenes – the cherries – need to be distributed evenly throughout. The easiest way to check your novel for pacing is to use index cards, one scene per card. 

Start with a big table or a clear floor. Draw a few imaginary lines, one for normal, one for exciting, one for incredibly dramatic. Now lay the cards out scene by scene, according to where you think they are on the scale (depending on your novel, the scale may be normal: scary: scariest, or normal: emotional: tempestuous, etc). When you done the lot, step back. Ideally the novel should follow the line of a series of hills and valleys, with the hills getting higher as the novel reaches The End. Of course, not every novel follows this plan – The Lovely Bones is one best-selling exception – but it’s a good one to aim for. 

It’s about pace: readers need the contrast in fast and slow, between the heights and the depths, with the ordinary stuff connecting the best scenes like cake mix. If your cherries are clumped into a sticky mess, then spread them out. In cake making the answer is to dredge the cherries with flour before dropping them into the mix. For novels, the answer is some dismantling and rearranging. I love this bit. The hard slog of the first draft is over, and now it’s like cooking: necessity, pleasure and craft are all mixed up together and the result is…mmmmm.

(Another one from the archives...)

Losing Confidence In Your Writing

I don't think there's a writer alive who, at some point, hasn't looked at their work and thought: That's rubbish.  

I do it all the time, throughout the writing process.  The flip side is I also get moments when I'm thrilled by my cunningness at plotting, my abilities to create new words (like cunningness), my nifty bits of description.  I ricochet from despair to elation and back again, like one of those pendulum games that used to be a fixture of every executive desk in the 1970s, eventually settling for: It'll have to do.

What I can do without is outside comment that it's rubbish.  It's a strange thing - I don't mind reading between the lines when my writing friends tread gingerly round the rubbish writing question - 'No, no, it's fine, I just wasn't sure you'd got the right approach...' Then, I'm quite happy to have a giggle at my own idiocy and get re-writing.  

But outsider comment is lethal, especially when that person might have a stake in it like an agent or an editor.  I once sent my agent a synopsis for a novel I was 20,000 words into.  She didn't like it.  I stopped writing immediately and started something new, not because I didn't like what I'd already written but because I'd lost confidence in it.  My editor occasionally volunteers to have at look at work-in-progress, but I refuse - I know my limitations and one negative from her would scupper the whole thing.  

So, how to cope if your outsider comments are coming from real outsiders, by which I mean people who you are writing to on spec, like agents and publishers? 

1.  Only send out work that you are as confident in as it is humanly possible to be.

2. Get a friend (or friends, even better) to vet your submission before you send out in case there's some major league problem you haven't noticed.  (I recently looked at one where they'd forgotten to put their contact details anywhere in the package.  Strange but true.)

3. Send out multiple submissions so one negative response doesn't derail you.

4. Send out multiple submissions so one positive response doesn't derail you.

5.  Put all comments you receive, both negative and positive, to one side for at least 48 hours until you've calmed down and can attempt to be rational about them.

6.  Ask a friend to read any comments.  Their take may be quite different from yours - I once consoled a tearful recipient of what was supposed to be the most soul destroying letter in the world.  It was full of nice, albeit slightly guarded, comments, and a request for more.  The teary writer had only registered the qualifiers and hadn't taken in the request for more.

7.  Build a support network.  It could be writing friends, it could be your mum, it could be your partner.  It could be people on Twitter, Facebook, it could be anyone.  But a support team is vital to keep you going in those dark moments when you know you're rubbish, your writing is rubbish, there's no point to carrying on. 

8.  Use negative feedback as a spur.  It's fine to wallow in misery for a short while after receiving a rejection, but far more useful is to grab your 'I'll show them,' attitude and use the energy to get writing again.  

9.  No one has to write.  It's not compulsory.  I make my living from writing, but there are other jobs I could do.  Tell yourself you can walk away from writing - but if a spark flares up inside you that you don't want to walk away, then use that spark to motivate yourself again.  

10.  I look back at stuff I've written and some of it IS rubbish.  And some of it is really quite good.  But it rarely coincides with what I thought was rubbish or good at the time.  You are not always your best judge, but time and experience can help to make you so.  

I think all of us writers have to accept that we can be both rubbish and brilliant at the same time and just because someone gives you a negative opinion today, it doesn't mean there won't be a positive one tomorrow.  Positive, negative, rejection, acceptance, brilliant or rubbish.  These are words we have to live with if we want to be writers, two sides of the same coins.  

Sectioning a Novel

The outline extract for A Single to Rome I posted yesterday started with a big headline: Section A.  This post is all about how, and why I divide my novel into sections.  

It's not the beginning of a section that matters, it's how it ends.  Each section should end with an event from which there is no going back.  From this point the story has no choice but to move on.  Examples would be...

Somebody dying - there's not much chance of going back there. 

A married woman having sex with a man not her husband - she can never claim to be faithful again.

A revelation - "I am your mother!"

A realisation - I don't have to stand for this any more.

A complete change of location - In A Single to Rome, Natalie relocates to (there's a clue in the title) Rome at the end of Section A.

I recommend that writers have an idea of what at least 3 of their section ends are going to be before they start writing.  That will provide the novel's basic structure and make it easier for you to write as it breaks the novel into more manageable chunks.  3 section ends = 4 chunks of writing (the final section end will, of course, be The End). If your novel is aiming for 100,000 words, that's 25,000 per chunk.  4 section ends, and it's 20,000 each.  It's much easier to think of 20,000-25,000 words in one go than it is 100,000.

The starting point for the sections is 3 Act Structure.  Each act ends with a turning point (my 'you can't go back'), with Act II split into 2 sections with a turning point in the middle.

Act I

turning point

Act II Part I

turning point

Act II Part II

turning point

Act III

I'm a fan of 3 Act structure because I think it's a useful tool to help you write a novel, but it's easy to get hung up on the academic aspects.  Calling the acts sections helps to keep it more fluid, less technical.  Besides, you may end up with more than 3 turning points - I ended up with 4 in A Single to Rome, so technically it has 5 Acts (or a 3 part Act II).  

But I'm only interested in structure when it actively helps writers and because every writer is different I don't think it's helpful to be too prescriptive - which is why I'm not a fan of The Hero's Journey.  

An outline and thinking of a novel in sections help me.  Hope they help you too.

Outlining

An outline is both less and more than a synopsis.   A synopsis gives the flavour of the novel, but concentrates on the main characters and events.  It's a piece of prose. An outline is more like a list of what happens.  It doesn't have any fancy writing but shows everything that happens.  

I never write a synopsis for my books beyond a brief paragraph to give my editor an idea of what I'm up to, but I do write an outline.  This usually comes after I've written the whole novel at least once, I've laid out all the scenes on index cards and done whatever moving around or adding of scenes to make the best shape.  Then I write the outline. 

Here's the beginning of one I did for A Single to Rome....

Section A

 

Michael leaves Natalie

He wants space, it’s unclear if they’re going to get together, he leaves the door metaphorically open.

Vee’s hen party/Natalie’s reaction to getting dumped.

At first there’s shock, - how could he? Then plots and plans to get him back Natalie gets pissed, tries to pick up men, she wants someone to go to vee’s wedding with her.

Natalie’s plan

Make him appreciate what he’s missing.  Make him jealous.  Needs a bloke = and fast.

Work scene.

Tries to get colleague to go on date with her.  One of the colleagues suggest speed dating as way of meeting lots of new guys.

Then with client, Mrs A – they’re going to screw Mr A.  Xegesis idea.

Natalie goes speed dating.

Meets various blokes including Guy.

Work scene.  At the court.  

Judgement goes against Mr A.  He’s furious.  Natalie triumphant.

Arranges Michael to meet on pretext of keys

Goes on date with Guy, with Michael supposed to see Guy and be jealous.

With Vee on set of Celebrity DIY. 

After the date with Guy, Natalie thinks it’s worked – Vee tells her Michael has asked to bring someone to the wedding. Natalie invites Guy to be her date at Vee’s wedding.

Anyone who has read the book might recognise the scenes, though in the finished book the order was different, characters got renamed, I researched the correct name for the legal loophole etc. But each section shows where the scene is going to be, the main characters who are in it and what events are going to happen - events being my catch-all phrases for stuff including internal changes of direction as well as external changes.

I will read and tweak the outline until it makes sense as a complete novel, checking things like making sure the main characters are to the fore, while the subsidiary characters bubble along, or there aren't several similar scenes together. When all that is sorted I can really get to grips with the re-writing.  

The outline becomes a security blanket, although one that I can adjust and readjust as I go along.  I print it out and it sits beside me as I re-write, an overview of where the novel is going, where it's been, and what's coming up next.  I find it a very useful tool.

And I'm going to talk about why it's called Section A tomorrow. 

Re-Write? Or Write Another?

So your manuscript has gone out, and come back more than several times.  You've had feedback from friends, fellow writers, possibly some comments from agents, perhaps a book doctor.  Do you re-write - AGAIN - or do you put it in the bottom drawer, and start another?  You know that persistence is key, but does that mean persistence with this novel, or persistence in getting on and writing another?

I think this is a very hard decision to make and it's one that only you can find the right answer to, but here are some pointers to help you along the way.

1.  Have you put the manuscript away so you're coming to it fresh?

You need distance to work out what you're doing wrong.  The easiest way to get distance is to put your ms away for at least 4 weeks, more if you can bear it.  Up to you whether you start a new novel project in this time, but I'd definitely recommend writing something else.  

2.  Can you see what needs doing?

If the feedback you've already received doesn't make sense to you, then there's no point in fumbling around trying to rewrite.  You have to write with conviction; if you don't understand the fundamental problem you won't be able to correct it.  I'd be inclined to write something else in this situation and wait for time (and experience) to show you what wasn't working.

3.  Does what needs doing involve a lot of work?

I've been there.  I realised what needed doing would involve a major rewrite and put it off for several months because I didn't want to do the work before deciding to just Do It.  I've seen other people decide against re-writing because they didn't want to do all that work.  Your call, but I think if you understand what needs to be done, then it's a lot less work to fix that than it is to write another novel.  Plus you will learn a lot from the re-write, and maybe won't make the same mistakes again...

4.  How many times have you sent it out?

One of my writing friends has sent her novel out twice, and has had encouraging responses both times - but no acceptance.  She's now re-writing it, which I think is daft.  Another, even dafter friend hasn't even sent it out because she thinks it's not quite right yet, despite everyone telling her it's fine. (You know who you are - get on with it!)  I think you need to send it out at least 6 times before you can begin to judge where it stands in the market place.  Leave the novel alone until you've had that feedback, and get on with writing something else.

5. How much have you written before?

It always amazes me that people launch themselves into writing a novel with no previous writing experience, knock it off in a couple of months (or even weeks) and then think it's finished to a standard that someone else should give them thousands of pounds for it.  You wouldn't treat any other creative discipline in the same way, such as painting or pottery.  Get real!  Yes, it's possible you may have written a masterpiece without any previous experience, in the same way that buying one ticket might win you the Lottery jackpot, but it's not very likely.  And the chances are you won't understand why your work isn't up to the standard required which will lead to frustration.  Re-writing will teach you a lot, as will writing something new.  Going to classes, reading lots of novels (both in and outside your genre), joining a critique group will also teach you more about creative writing.  

There are plenty of successful novelists out there who wrote several novels before they got published - I personally know at least 4 novelists who are now doing very well who have 6 or more unpublished novels in their bottom drawer.  Writing something new worked for them. 

I was advised to treat Adultery for Beginners as a learning experience and start another novel.  I did an extreme re-write instead (in the end, about 90% was substantially re-written).  So extensive re-writing worked for me.

But - and this is the big but - I understood exactly what the problem was, and could see how I could fix it.  If you don't, writing another novel may be the learning experience you need.