NaNoWriMo: The End

I gave up. According to early projections, I would have been finished by now. In terms of word count, I'm still technically on course to complete on time, even though I've not written a word for a week. I was a fast writer back in those days.

Something bad happened. Something pretty devastatingly life-changing and personal, and I took some days off from writing the novel, safe in the knowledge that I'd built myself a six-day buffer. And then, when I came back to my computer... I just couldn't do it. More than that, I just didn't want to.

It's probably because I lost momentum, I know. But it also seems a bit stupid now, writing a novel in a month. It's not going to be good, is it? You'll never be proud of the work, beyond the fact that you have done the work, and if you can't be proud of it, I'm struggling to see the point.

It's not hard to imagine that come next November, I'll be desperate to do another NaNoWriMo. But I'm hoping that that will follow a year of having tried to write a novel in normal time and failing, and not because I couldn't be bothered to do any writing in the months of the year that aren't November. (Obviously my hope is that I won't be doing NaNo at all because I'll have successfully written a novel in the forthcoming year, but... baby steps.)

This could all be justification for my quitting, of course, but really if I needed justification, I already had the Bad Thing. I think this was genuinely a good choice. I want to continue the novel (perhaps with a big rewrite of the first 25k words!), and finish it in my own time, and for it to be great. That's what I want.

NaNoWriMo, Day 9: Everything is FINE

Ish.

I just about got to the halfway point today. I don't as pleased as I hoped I might, to be honest. I feel like the book has slightly lost its magic.Maybe because I'm at that middle third now, book-wise, or maybe because I plotted badly, or I just started too fast out of the blocks and now I'm tired. I think I may give myself a day off if I continue to have bad writing days. I want to find myself hilarious again!!!!

Current word count: 25079

NaNoWriMo, Day 8: Sorry I'm Late

Yesterday, I work travelled, and was out of the house from 6.30am to 11.30pm, so I wasn't able to blog. I was, however, able to write on the trains, so I did complete the word count. I would say that it's probably the worst two thousand words I've written so far. It felt like a bit of a slog and, criminally, I don't think any of it was very funny.

Still, onwards and upwards, as your mum says. Today will almost certainly be better... if I only I weren't so damn TIRED! Pity me. Oh, also, I should be hitting the halfway mark today. Yes!

Current Word Count: 23,018

NaNoWriMo, Day 7: We're in Heaven

We're not really in Heaven. It just rhymes with seven. Having said that, I have started getting in to the religious aspects of the novel a bit more today, which will play a bigger and bigger part as the novel progresses. That's fun.

I like talking about religion and people who follow religion; it makes me feel like my first degree wasn't a big fat waste of time. It is quite difficult writing about religion in a way that is both funny and inoffensive, but I suppose the beauty of NNWM is that you don't overthink or talk yourself out of these kinds of things.

I'm now pretty far ahead of schedule (five days), so I should comfortably meet the deadline. In fact, all going well, I am hoping to get something like 60-70k down, and beyond that, I will hopefully keep going until I reach the end of the book (I'm guessing about 80k, but WHO KNOWS?!)

Tomorrow, I'll be travelling for work, for the first time this month. Which means, I'll basically only have the train from Bristol to Didcot and back again to do any writing. Hopefully this will be enough. Blogging may be difficult...

Current Word Count: 20,974

NaNoWriMo, Day 6: In the Mix

Today, I wanted to get loads of words down but yet again I am doing a thing, so writing time has been cut short. Having said that, I have written nearly 3000 words today, so it's not like I've done nothing. It just feels that way for some reason. Today, though, I have been updating the future plot a lot, inspired by the things I've already written. I'm finding it helpful, slightly adjusting my plans as I go along.

UPDATE: Since I wrote that last paragraph, I have done the thing that I was going to do, and am back home, waiting to do the other thing that I am going to do (namely... watching Downton Abbey).

Oh, today, I need to back up what I've done so far. It's Backup Sunday (previously known, of course, Downton Sunday)!

Current Word Count: 17,798

Finally, what you've all been waiting for... yesterday's croquembouche!

Yes, that's my very own finger in the background, cooling down after a run in with sugar lava. We made it by doing this, this and this:

NaNoWriMo, Day 5: Fivember

Bit busy today. Wrote some but not loads. Made a croquembouche. Drank mulled things on top of Brandon Hill, looking out over the whole of Bristol, while a million fireworks did explosions. Had friends over for drinks. Got a Magic Roll. Didn't do much writing but I did enough. Feel like I may be slightly delirious with tiredness. More tomorrow.

Current Word Count: 14,872

NaNoWriMo, Day 4: Pfft.

Last night, we went to a very fancy restaurant, determined to spend lots of money. While we were there, we bumped into a friend of mine and his girlfriend. Suffice it to say, much fun was had by all (in a weird way, we all kind of got excited by theprospect of the other diners thinking we were just two random couples who'd hit it off) and I got drunk on fancy wine.

I also ate some amazing food (see below foodies), but mostly I got drunk. Which meant that today, I did not feel much like doing anything. I went to work, obviously, and I did my work. I even spoke politely to people and nobody even knew! But then came writing time, and it took me a lot longer than usual to get started.

I know a lot of people say that when you're writing, you should never finish a chapter, because then the next day you have to start by opening a chapter, but I don't think I find it any easier to start in the middle of a chapter! Well I did start, eventually, and I got my words done, so I did. Actually, I got at least double the words done. I wonder if they're good. Eh.

I spoke briefly to a friend who's NaNo-ing too today and we both agreed that this year is easier. Maybe it's because of the weather, or our situations in life these days, but I like to think that it's because we're getting better at it. I hope we are. In any case, I have to say, four days in, I'm really enjoying NaNoWriMo this year.

FOOD!

Beetroot (three ways, including salt baked, with goats cheese and an olive crumble).

Rabbit (ballantine with pickled carrots and a damson sauce - BTW pickled carrots are my favourite thing int he world now).

Mushroom and white chocolate gateau (I didn't take a photo because I'd already embarrassed everyone enough but rest assured, it was weird and delicious.)

PS. Last night, I ate more flower petals than I ever had in my whole life combined before last night. If that makes sense.

NaNoWriMo, Day 3: You Can Never Go Home Again(?)

Today was a nice writing day. I did a bit before work, a bit at lunch, and a lot after work. I wrote fewer words than the previous days, but I think they're better, more engaging ones, so I'm not too sad about it. And it was still something like 2,500, and that's a lot.

I'm past all the scene-setting now and in to the fun-happening. I realise that first chapters should be fun too, as they're the most read, and I'm sure that some parts of my first chapters are fun to read, but they weren't always fun to write. My third chapter has been super fun to write. I've set it in the village I grew up in, and have inadvertently led the reader from the local car park to my old house. Is that legal if you don't live there anymore...?

Also, I'm already having to move back some plot points because I've written more fully than I'd planned, so I imagine my beloved storyboard is going to look quite different when this is all over. Maybe I'll post another picture of it after the first week to show you how it's changed. Would you like that? I bet you would.

That's it for today. I'm going out for a fancy dinner (here) and won't be back til late. Did you notice how I didn't even mention a graph today? I am so over graphs. My face though, is smiling, so that's something.

Current word count: 9358

NaNoWriMo, Day 2: Day 1: The Sequel

Today has been just like yesterday, except much longer and not nearly as good. There was a time, a happy, yesterday kind of a time, when I grew to like my writing, and thought that my novel was going to be brilliant. It was all inventive and funny and well-written and stuff. What a boob I was back then.

Spinning out of bad day of work, I've felt somewhat dejected and sick feeling. Which has almost certainly come out in my writing. I've written nearly as many words as I did yesterday, but I can't help but feel that they're probably a bit lifeless and drawn out.

I dunno, maybe I'm just no good at the set up parts. Maybe it'll get better once my story really kicks off (is it OK to have written six thousand words without much having happened yet? I'm not sure).

Today, my graph of writing life is very much a frowny face. Still, word count wise, I'm about 12% of the way through the month already! Clever Rhysy

Current word count: 6065

NaNoWriMo, Day 1: (Just Like) Starting Over

Yesterday, I flagrantly boasted about my NaNo smug/time graph and how over the month I would run the gamut of emotions. Well, check this: it's day one and I've already done ALL of the emotions. Admittedly, they were fleeting, not deep and fatigue-laden like they will undoubtedly become, but I've been through it all.

This morning, there was The Fear of Starting Things, as there always is, and then I went through the Depression of Being a Terrible, Terrible Writer, which stretched from lunchtime until about mid-afternoon. And then I made myself Chuckle With My Own Inventiveness and Wit (I may be stretching the capitalisation now, sorry), before I eventually began to Like My Writing by dinnertime.

Thinking back, this does all feel vaguely familiar. Maybe the beginning wasn't quite as fun and easy as I have managed to convince myself. Reading back, the first few chapters of last year's book were by far the most uninteresting and aimless. It was really only by the middle of the book that I'd got into the groove and started to enjoy it, and it was the end where I lost steam and went whole days without doing any writing. My smug/time graph won't look like a smiley face at all! It'll look like a bell curve or, to those without a C-grade Maths A-level, a Big Fat Frowny Face.

:(

Current word count: 2134

NaNoWriMo, Day 0: A Prelude to November

I have a clipboard. It has plans on it. It has story plans, and sub-story plans, and coloured stickers, and post its. Writing-wise, I don't think I've ever been prouder of myself.

Last time I did NaNoWriMo, I didn't have a clue what I'd be writing about, and I wasn't even sure of who the characters would be. This time, they're all fairly well-defined in my head, and will hopefully be able to speak, through my hands, on the page in a reasonably convincing way.

And I know all of the events! That's good, isn't it? It's nice to build to something. I spent about three quarters of my last novel alluding to something that I had made up yet, and it just kind of meandered to a conclusion that I scrapped together from what I'd sort of laid down in all of the building up. I don't think it was great. This time, I know the ending, and how the main character arrives there. Yay me.

This post serves as a smug, old warning. I am going to be posting on here every day, a short little post, to update on my NaNoWriMo progress. I predict the smugness graph will look something like a smile.

:)

Writing Novels and Things #14: Giving up

You think this is going to be me telling you how I've quit editing my novel again, because it's complete and utter shit. But it isn't [about that]! Novel editing continues apace, I'm about three quarters of the way through. I think I'll have increased the word count by about 25% in the process. Not sure how that happened...

ANYWAY, no, this is not about that, exactly, but it is about the virtue of quitting. I was listening to this Freakonomics podcast, about quitting and it struck a chord, largely because it was saying that quitting is a Good Thing. Admittedly, they meant like if you're in a bad job, or you're a prostitute, or something, but it works with all walks of life, including in literature.

Hope Clark wrote a little blog post about quitting books, recently, where she says that when she's reading, she'll give a book 75 pages to interest her and if it doesn't, she'll stop. That's what I do! Though I will, generously, give it 100 pages. If it doesn't entertain me, or at least make me feel things, I get rid of it, and still, crucially, feel entitled to have an opinion on it.

I know a lot of people who will not abandon a book. It might mean that they barely read anymore, or they don't enjoy reading anymore, but they will finish that book, and they get a bit upset when you say you didn't like something so you stopped reading it. There are, sometimes, insinuations... but whatever; in the time it took them to read that book, I read three others, and they were great.

This works with writing too, obviously. If an idea is not working, you should probably just give it up, and move on to something else. Maybe the idea just wasn't very good in the first place, or maybe it will be good one day, but not right now, with where you are as a writer/human being. It doesn't make you a bad person. There are loads of other things you can do!

And that is the crux-a-mundo. When you're reading a book you don't enjoy, you read much less than normal. If you're writing something that is not working, and is painful to write, you'll be writing less often that you usually do. Which is not a good thing. To keep it interesting (if not necessarily fun), you really do need to know when to cut your losses, however painful it might feel.

I'm assuming here that you're a slightly obsessive type of person who finds it hard to quit things, or to leave food on your plate. Waste is bad, I agree, but giving something up is not waste. We only have so much time to play with, and you waste it when you don't enjoy your leisure time.

Writing Novels and Things #13: Making Deadlines

Before I start this post, I just want to say that everything I said in my last post is still true: I have begun editing my first novel (again). In the first paragraph I saw, which I had apparently already edited, I found about eighty mistakes. It was excellent. Still, I am persevering on account of how it is good for me, and things.

HOWEVER, I have also decided that I am going to write another novel. And this novel will be written in November, or 50,000 words of it, and I will be doing it with others. That's right, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again! I said I wouldn't but I will. And the reason that I am doing it again is, mostly, because it makes me write, and the reason it makes me write is because it gives me, to all intents and purposes, a daily deadline.

Writers are, I imagine, like most people, and like to procrastinate. I like to procrastinate a lot. When I'm not procrastinating, I imagine that I like getting things done, but in those times I am completely deluding myself. I like not getting things done, if they don't need doing quite yet. I love writing, but I also like, well, lots of other things and some of these things are a bit easier than writing, so sometimes I do those things instead. Things like watching Hollyoaks and making hummus and eating hummus, things like that.

But when I have a deadline, and certainly one that is imminent, I work hard, like a normal person who likes working hard. When I was doing my CW masters, I read all the books and wrote loads in and out of the classes, because the deadlines were weekly, and I had to do all that work to be good for the next lesson. I barely went out for two years, outside of term-time, and I felt very pleased with myself.

NaNoWriMo is a bit like doing a masters, except it's about 1/24th the duration and involves far less reading and much more writing. When I did it last year, I very rarely felt stressed by the experience, I was just happy. It's satisfying, being able to tick off your word counts every day, you see, and, also, writing all the time is a bloody pleasure. You get to make things up and then make them real! It's pretty sweet.

This year, I have only vague ideas about the novel I want to write. I know I want it to be an comic adult fantasy novel (and by 'adult', I don't mean sexy, I just mean not 'young adult'), and I have some notion of characters and setting, but nothing very concrete. Which is fine! The best part of NaNoWriMo for me last year was watching my own story unfold and evolve before me. I barely even knew what was going to happen then (which would be obvious if you'd seen the first draft - which you will not!).

When I get round to writing my proper literary novel, I will be planning intensely, and crafting as I go, and the writing will take me a lot longer than a month. I don't know if NaNoWriMo (incidentally, the most irritating word to type in all existence) produces good-quality literature, possibly not, but for me it has been so useful in showing me that I can write a book, even if writing a good book is still somewhat beyond me.

This time, I am going to let the lesson stay learned. I am going to give myself a daily deadline for writing (say, 300 words) and I am going to stick to it come hell or high water. Definitely.

Also, this now gives me a deadline less than a month to finish editing my last book. Please do nag me about this.

Writing Novels and Things #12: The Fear

You know how, sometimes, you get yourself into a routine, like going to the gym every morning, say. You feel virtuous, and healthy, and then you get a bit pious. Friends will find you harping on about how much better you feel ever since you started going to the gym before work, and you've lost weight, and you're a better lover, and it's actually kind of easy, and your friends will pretend to care, because they're nice (probably) and, anyway, they do the same with kids and sports and the television and things.

AND THEN, you get sick, or you go away for work, or you get drunk and can't get out of bed, and the habit slips for that day. And then the next day, it's kind of hard to get out of bed, when you don't absolutely have to, so you don't go to the gym that morning. And the next day it's the same, so you say, 'OK, the routine starts back again on Monday,' so that's fine. But then it doesn't! Because you have The Fear! And then you get fat and die.

So let's do away with the charade and admit that this has all been a metaphor, and I'm actually talking about writing. The gym is writing, the weight loss is probably weight gain, but your friends are still your friends, I'd imagine. The Fear, as always, is The Fear.

Well, when I started writing my novel, I didn't give myself time to give in to The Fear. I wrote it in a month, at break-neck speed, and I was in the beginning stage of loving smugness right up until the final page.

Afterwards, I left it for six months before I started editing, which I began with the same kind of vigour and self-love. The thing about editing though, is that it takes a long time and that it forces you to engage your brain. This time and brain engagement leads to thinking, something that can be quite destructive when applied to a writer's sensitive disposition, and can end in creative meltdowns.

I had one, a little one, about halfway through editing the novel. It wasn't so much that I was upset, just resigned and tired. I felt like I was wasting my time, because it was rubbish, and it wasn't even fun anymore. So I walked away from it, to rejuvenate for a bit, and now, a few months on, I want to start it again but I'm afraaaaaid!

I'm not really sure how to tackle The Fear. Eventually, you just go and do it, don't you? If you're serious about wanting to do it. This week, I've just had the feeling that now is the time that I have to start, or I never will. And i'd be pretty annoyed with myself about it. It was OK for me to be made weary by the book, and I think it was the right decision to walk away at the time, so that I made sure to do the best job that I could on its editing, but it is time now. It's time.

Rhys

PS. I totally started back at the gym this week!
PPS. I have a little piece about libraries up at Paraxis (with my first ever published 'art'), feel free to read it.

Writing Novels and Things #11: Talking on paper

I am reading a book about writing. I am not going to mention its name because I don't think it's very good (the writer keeps quoting his own works of fiction to illustrate his point and they really do not inspire me, if you know what I mean). However, he does quote some good people and the chapters on dialogue got me actually thinking about dialogue.

Usually, I don't really think about dialogue, largely because I think I'm better at it than other aspects of writing, so I don't work very hard on it. But these chapters made me THINK. I think I'm going to have to go through my novel once more, looking exclusively at the dialogue, and rewriting it all. (Sigh.)

Anyway, in my attempts to discover how best to write good dialogue, I have done some research and found some good hard and fast rules to stick to when writing the words that people say in your mind.

Only half of your words should be dialogue

I hadn't heard this one before but it does make sense. Essentially, the dialogue to action/thoughts ratio should be no more than 1:1, but preferably lower. I guess if you want it to be higher, you may want to start thinking about writing a script...

As with all of my excellent rules, there are exceptions. Frankenstein, for example, is technically all dialogue, and I think Trouble With Lichen is about 90% dialogue. But those novels have a storytelling premise, so it is OK. If you're trying to write a reasonably conventional story, then don't let your dialogue take up more than 50%.

Only let one thing happen per paragraph

We all know that when someone stops speaking, and another person starts speaking, we start a new paragraph. However, what I didn't know, but now see in every bit of dialogue I read, is that only one new idea should appear in a paragraph.

So instead of:

'Hi! How are you? What's going on with your hair? Do you think Davey murdered my Granny?'

'Hello! [Answers to the three questions]'

You would have six separate paragraphs where the first person asks one question in each, and the answerer responds to them one by one. It makes things much clearer and advances the plot much more effectively.

Dialogue must always advance the plot

When that one thing is happening per paragraph, something else must be happening. Without everything becoming completely expository, some information must be released to the reader with every line. This doesn't have to be the story, I don't think, it can be character points, but it has to have a purpose.

This holds true of all the words in your fiction, but I think it's worth taking extra care with dialogue. It's very easy to get sidetracked and blown off course when your characters are taking through you. They start having actual conversations like real people. This does not read well.

If you use dialogue tags other than 'say' or 'ask', you are a bad person (or Enid Blyton)
 
'Goodness me,' exclaimed Judy, 'there's a crab in my bucket!'

'Calm down,' reassured Clive, 'it's a dead crab, the crab in your bucket.'

'But as a child, my beloved hamster Muffy was killed by a crab,' exposited Judy.

'You're a ridiculous person,' grumbled Clive.

Even though it is quite fun to write like that, adding anything other than 'said' or 'asked' does sound a little parodic. According to Elmore Leonard, it also draws too much attention to the writer, and detracts from the story.

It also doesn't work if you add an adverb to the word 'said'; that's just the same thing. So, using the above example:

Judy said, exclaimingly.
Clive said, reassuringly.
Judy said, expositorily.
Clive said, grumblingly.

I realise that these sound wrong largely because those adverbs are mostly of my invention, but even if you might want to use real words, a 'said'-aligned adverb something you should avoid. Trust that the character's actions and the actual dialogue can convey the tone.

And these are the only four definites that I will give you, the rest is about you and yoru characters and how they want to say things. There are layout concerns, obviously, but those can easily be dealt with when you've done the writing.

Writing Novels and Things #11: Taking inspiration

There are certain things about writing that I find relatively easy, that others find difficult, stuff like starting projects, finding a voice, sending my stuff off to be rejected, sitting down and doing writing, stuff like that. Then there are the things that others seem to have a surfeit of, that are seemingly essential to the creative process, that I lack. One of these things is ideas.

(I am quelling the desire to justify this, so that you don't think I have nothing to say and/or shouldn't be working in a creative field. Have I also just given too much away, admitting as I have that I care what you think? As this paragraph is bracketed, I would prefer if you never mentioned having read this. Thanks!)

If I sit there at my computer and think, 'OK, let's find something for my characters to do,' I will freeze, entirely. My characters will do nothing. They'll sit around an office, or a coffee shop, or a living room, wittily, insightfully, charmingly, gazing into their navels and remarking on the world around them (and this world will, probably, be quite a lot like mine). This kind of fiction is rarely of interest to people who read things. Honestly.

So, I have learned that, for me, I must come to the empty Word document with a hook or concept, lest I write yet another moody coming-of-age tale where nothing happens (which I love, by the way, and will never stop writing). You come up with these concepts by having things called ideas. These can be found all around, and when you get these ideas from around you, it is said that you are drawing inspiration.

Mur Lafferty wrote a good little blog post about ideas and generating them. Essentially, ideas are like a magic penny, hold it tight and you wont have any, but spend it, lend it, and you'll have so many that they'll roll all over the floor. Yes, I just stole those lyrics from a song about God, but I think it works in this regard too. Basically, you're supposed to use all your ideas all the time, and don't save them up for later. You'll think of new ones. Getting the old ones out of your head and onto the page will actually clear room for new ones. This is, I think, Science.

So, in summary, in order to be a good fiction writer, you need ideas. You may well have known that already. The good thing is, prompts for ideas are all around us because we live in a world where there are so many things! One of the first assignments in my masters course was to find a picture and write a story about it. I can't find the original picture, but I'm fairly sure that it was a Studio Ghibli film still with a little girl looking at her reflection in the river. So I wrote a terrible (not in terms of subject matter, in terms of quality) story about that!

It's a good exercise, because it teaches you not to be too precious about your subject matter, and to look deeply into everything around you. If you can create a story sparked by just one little picture, what can you do with a whole world at your disposal?! Write more stories, mostly.

Music is good for that. Just this week, I was very inspired by an Elbow song. I haven't yet turned it in to anything, but it made me want to write a poem for the first time in ages. I then realised, while trying to write the poem, that I had no idea how to write a poem and that copying song lyrics is not the way. However, the first short story I ever got published was based on a song by Air, called Le Voyage De Penelope. It wasn't so much the song as the title; and it was a very literal interpretation. If I tell you that the title of the story ended up being Le Voyage De Lady Penelope, I think you'll get a good idea of where I went with it. I still quite like that story though, which I almost never say, modest bastard that I am.

It doesn't always work. I was fascinated by the painting below for about ten years, I even made a sculpture of it, from wire and black feathers, and have, in my head, turned her into a superhero, but I have never been able to write something about her that isn't, well, a bit rubbish.

 See also: the above Elbow anecdote. they can't all be winners!

Still, this is my advice to all those struggling for ideas: steal be inspired by someone else's! You won't be sorry.

Writing Novels and Things #10: Write what you (don't) know

I've been meaning to write about this for ever, and I think I wrote it down in a notebook somewhere (writing tip: be organised with your notebooks - it's all very good writing things down, it's excellent, but it is only an effective planning/idea-generating exercise if you can find the notebook when it comes time to do some writing), but I lost it and had to write about short stories and stuff instead. (Another writing tip: try to avoid overly long parentheses - well the sentences between the parentheses - as these can derail the flow, and more importantly the meaning, of your sentences.)

The reason I've been wanting to write about this for ever is because the old adage.. ,

'You should write what you know,'

... is one of the pieces of advice that people love to bandy around about writing. It would be a commandment, if Creative Writing were a religion. Creative Writing is not a religion. Anyway, yes, it's a little bit of a universal truth. But is it universally true?

Not really.

I remember reading an interview with Phillip Pullman (I honestly am not in love with him or anything), where the interviewer asks him how on earth he, an old man, could get into the head of Lyra, who is, in fact, not an old man. He says this:

People often forget that there's such a thing as imagination. What imagination does is to take the things we know and play with them so they're not always recognisable.

  And then he says this:

Some people would say "Always write about what you know". I don't think that's good advice at all. Nor is the advice to write what you think people will like. I think that's just silly. We shouldn't bother about other people at all when we write. It's none of their business what we write.

He's an opinionated man.

Anyway, yes, he says is perfectly. If people genuinely wrote what they knew - their lives - and this was what publishers wanted, there would be millions of books all about boring office jobs and watching X-Factor. There be some of those, but not many.

The job of a writer is to make everything mean something. Conversations in real life rarely go anywhere, they're just to fill time or for entertainment's sake. They don't help move forward the plot of our lives, and they are filled with stutterings and affectations and repetition and stutterings and affectations... Ha! And the same goes for our actions. We make dinner and it doesn't affect our relationships. We brush our teeth and go toilet and call our mums and it doesn't mean anything.

In One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde, a fictional character comes into the real world and is completely confused. So many things happen, and she can't tell if any of them are salient to the plot or if they just, you know, happen. It's impossible for her to solve the case she's working on because there are so many clues that could be meaningless. And time passes so slowly; if she wants to wait for something that's happening in an hour, she has to sit through that whole hour. In the fictional world, it take three words: 'An hour later...'

What that book, and Phillip and I am trying to say is this: fiction is not real life and real life is not fiction. And that is OK.

I'm taking quite a literally approach to the 'write what you know' maxim when I say it's rubbish. In essence there are, in fact, good things to take from it. As Phillip says, we 'take the things we know and play with them,' in fiction. You may know how feelings work, or certain professions, or certain sciences and fantasies, in the real world, but really these should just be tools that you use in forming your fiction. Like... knowing how to spell? Stuff like that. You don't, when you write fiction, write down a long list of the words that you know how to spell. That's not fiction, and neither is a blow-by-blow account of the daily minutiae of your life. Not that you were going to write that either...

And thus we get to my point. When we start writing fiction, we should start with our imaginations. We create a story. From there, everything else hangs: character, dialogue, voice, our real-life experience, word-play, sentence construction, and so on. Your reader will thank you and, I can guarantee, be much more interested in the things that you know.

(Big thanks to the articles below for reminding me that I wanted to write about this (and also for their contents, which I slightly stole).)

Writer Unboxed
The Atlantic

Writing Novels and Things #9: Short stories, Part 2

So my last post may have been all about how pointless it is to write short stories, but this post is all about how to write short stories! I am breaking you down in order to build you up. Using a combination of my own experience, my creative writing history and the internet, I have compiled a list of five rules that you should always obey when writing short stories. They are, I am happy to say, quite prescriptive.

The rules are in no particular order, so I haven't numbered them. Please do let me know if bullet points aren't enough and you would prefer them in numerical order of importance. Onwards!

Try not to feature too many characters

I hate this rule, personally, because I like to have loads of characters in all my stories; I love them (and they love me). However, editors like this rule, I think, and so do readers. There needs to be one main character and one significant foil character and that's about it. You can, of course, have other plot-piece characters come along, but the idea is to keep these to a minimum and don't give them undue narrative attention. The longer your story, the more flexible you can be with this rule but I think it serves as a good guideline when you're creating a story. You are, of course, in charge of the story, so if you really try, you can keep the character tally down to publishable levels.

[The last short story I wrote had three main characters and two prominent supporting characters. I wanted it to be a novel, really, which is why it will probably never see the light of day as a short story.]

You don't need to resolve everything

But there does need to be resolution. Short stories are often small moments in time, little windows into the characters lives, that you know are going to change them forever. But we don't need to add epilogues or neatly sew everything up in order to satisfy the reader. They will get that things are different now, if you have laid the correct groundwork. There does need to be a resolution, of course, and all the better if it links back to the beginning, or moments throughout the rest of the story (thematically, with imagery, or dialogue, however you like), but this isn't a novel, where all plots, sub-plots and so on need a proper ending. In a novel, the couple may end up getting back together, whereas in a short story, we can be satisfied if the potential for this is alluded to without, you know, a big sloppy kiss. That's a crude example, but hopefully that serves as a decent example.

[I can think of a number of strong examples that disprove this rule, but I don't think any of them would have been harmed by following it. So... I stand by it.]

Know what your characters want (at the very least)

We should, we fiction writers, know our characters intimately. Or, at the very least, we need to know them better than the reader. You can find forms online, to help you create a character, and it's usually two pages of things like hair colour, age, hobbies and pastimes, middle name, birthplace, pets?, and so on. For a novel, I think these are a great idea, and moreover, I think it's good to write first-person monologues for all your main characters, so you start thinking as they think. For a short story, that feels like quite a lot of effort (and I see no need for physical description, almost ever, but that's a preference, not a rule). The most important thing you must know about a character is what they want, and why, and write it down and stick it somewhere visible while you're writing. It's the driving force of your whole story.

[In the first short story I had published, I knew nothing of this but subconsciously, I had a very clear idea of the main character's motivations, so it worked. It does not always work, believe me. Eventually, it will become automatic, but until then it's something you should force yourself to remember.]

Tell a story

Which is my way of saying that you should structure your story like it's a story (see handy diagram). This is called the Five Act Structure and was invented by some guy called Freytag. It's a perfectly good structure to follow and, to all intents and purposes, still allows for an infinite number of story possibilities. However, in a short story, the Exposition bit should be super short, if non-existent, because you don't have time to waste. You should, really, begin at the point of Rising Action, though sometimes a little scene setting is required, so I will be lenient and say that you don't have to if you don't want to (but you should). There is also the Three Act Structure, which was invented by Aristotle and is comprised of the Setup, the Confrontation and the Resolution. Everything I said above still holds, but with two fewer acts.

[I find structure the hardest bit about writing but this is likely because it is probably the most important aspect of story telling. You should always be thinking about it, even if it's not a predefined one like I've given above, you can't just put the words down in any old order. Unless you're writing a blog. Self-zing!]

Try to get it published

You might as well. You also may as well try to get it published by the most well-respected, high-profile publisher of the kind of short stories that you write. If it's literary, for example, just send it to Granta Magazine. You never know! And then when you have experienced rejection (which will lead to most excellent personal growth), try other publishers who are more willing to take a punt on a newcomer. It's best to go for the ones that pay, but not vital (or even possible, depending on what kind of story you are writing), and I think the joy of getting published will doubtless override... um... poverty.

[Please see previous post for depressing news about writing short stories.]

Writing Novels and Things #8: Short Stories (Part 1)

Me and my novel have parted ways, for a while. It's a trial separation, at least that's what we're saying right now; we have every intention of getting back together some day and making it work. We just need some time apart, some distance, so we can learn to appreciate each other some more. It'll be better, eventually, when we reunite, whenever that is.

I don't even miss it.

But I do miss the writing, so I have been doing the odd bit of non-novel, non-blog writing in the meantime. I have a little piece (and possibly some artwork) coming out in the next issue of Paraxis, about my love of libraries. I have had a super-short story published today at Paragraph Planet (if you want to find it after today, go to the archive and search for today's date). And it's kind of, technically, Science Fiction, so that's a first. Also, I have finished my first proper short story since my masters, and it feels good. It is currently being read my oldest friend (and most adoring reader) Leila, before I consider what else to do with it.

The question is though... what do you do with it? I was looking at a short story journal's submissions page recently and they said something along the lines of:

'If a fifth of the people who submitted to our magazine, actually bought one, we'd be rich.'

Sadly, I totally believe that. Newspapers may do one short fiction supplement annually, few magazines feature them (maybe some of the women's weeklies), there are no mainstream magazines or journals devoted to them and even Radio 4 is trying to cut back on their short story output (or is it?). Weirdly, in our crazy bite-size-loving world, the popularity of short stories is still on the downturn.

I have to confess, my Granta magazine subscription aside, I have read only one short story collection this year, and none by a specific author. I love Raymond Carver, obviously, but, well, reading a whole book of his short stories is so much harder than just reading a novel! There are so many endings, and so many characters to invest in from scratch, and then there's more endings and all these new characters and just when they're starting to mean something to you... it ends! Basically, you just can't immerse yourself in a short story the way you can with a novel.



I think, though I may be wrong, that it would be almost impossible to make a living as a short story writer. The only person I can think who might have a chance is Tobias Wolff, though they are undoubtedly a few others. [The only book of his I've read, I have to confess, is his novel Old School - though it is about short stories, at least.] It's exceptionally difficult to get publish (relative to, say, a feature article), and almost nobody will read it. And yet every writer, and especially a new one, wants to write them!

They're shorter, I suppose, than a novel, so that's easier. You won't get bored. If it's rubbish, there's less shame in giving up and walking away. If you make mistakes, there won't be too many people that notice. And who cares, anyway, because you'll be on to the next one by the time anyone says anything. Writing a novel is a huge commitment, writing a short story is, like, whatever. You know?

Well, in theory. For me, writing and editing a short story is every bit as difficult and painful as my novel has been. Except it's worse, because you don't have 80,000 words to get someone invested, you need to keep them riveted with each word. With a short story, by necessity, you have to rip apart and rewrite every sentence until it is perfect and exists solely to serve the story. If you're anything like me, you will start out thinking this is a fun, worthwhile experience that will result in your own personal growth. Moments later, you hate yourself, your loved ones and the fact that language was ever invented.

[If this doesn't happen to you, and you like the editing phase, I don't think we could be friends.]

The point of this post was to lay out my ideas, and findings, about how to approach writing a short story, but have slightly detoured. In summary though, people who write short stories do not have it easy. Writing a good short story is extremely difficult and I'm not entirely sure I ever will. So I am in awe of those who do, and I am going to make more of an effort to actually read them.

So... you know what that means? Two-parter!

Incest

So, one time, I wrote this blog post about incest. And then I was asked to write an essay on the subject, and I think, though I don't know, that this essay was published somewhere.

Well today I was thinking about things I've had published (there aren't loads) and I thought that I wanted to post this essay up on here. It's probably not entirely in keeping with the tone of the blog, and there's no pictures, but I hope you like it anyway.

Without further adieu, I give you:

The love that dare not speak its dirty stinkin’ name

One’s natural inclination when writing is often to celebrate (imaginatively) the familiar.  We’re told, to make it easier, to ‘write what we know’.  The fun though, sometimes or always, often lies in the unfamiliar.  Sitting down at a desk and setting to work, that is the hard part but when you’re there, there’s no need to go easy on yourself.  You’ve overcome the fear, which is really just your imagination or something, so you may as well put the work in; you never know when you’ll be back.  So I look at what I do not know.  And further, what I do not want to know.  What do I not want people to think I know?  Well, there are a number of things that I have little interest in exploring – I shan’t list – that might provoke anything from boredom to outrage to disgust but there’s one topic the mere mention of which gives me the proverbial willies.  Incest.  I feel it’s safe to say that a fair amount of the world’s population feel the same as me, and most legal systems too when it comes to the physical act of love between immediate relatives.  We’re a world that is united in our extreme and automatic distaste for incest.  The thing is though, I do ask myself, why.  What is so inherently disgusting, wrong and/or evil about incest?  Well, obviously, it’s not natural, it results in mutant babies and it’s just not right, ethically and stuff.  And so, I would like to look at whether that is in fact true – why exactly is the practice of two consensual adults who are related privately engaging in non-abusive sexual relations deemed unlawful in these generally tolerant times?

Imagine a couple, called Hansel and Gretel, who met each other as adults.  After a brief and terribly romantic fling, they get married and have babies.  After which things get a bit Moll Flanders as Gretel’s Aunt Dorothy reveals that she is also Hansel’s Aunt Dorothy - for the two are in fact long-lost brother and sister.  Dun dun daaaaah!  And then Hansel and Gretel are locked up and their perfectly happy and healthy children taken away.

Now imagine another couple, named Jack and Jill.  They have lived next door to each other since birth, went to school together and became boyfriend and girlfriend as teenagers.  They attend the same university and get married upon graduation, after which they live a very happy life together, uninterrupted by shocking revelations.

While some might find the first couple’s story tragic and the second a bit odd, I imagine the general reaction to each of the couples as so: Jack and Jill, sweet; Hansel and Gretel, gross.  I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of going out with your neighbours but I think this example shows that our issues with incest don’t come from any kind of emotional reasoning.  By which I mean that it’s not the intimacy of the act, it’s not that fact that we know our family too well that we can’t be with them romantically.  It’s the physical act that turns our stomach.  Two biologically similar humans doing the deed.  The relatedness. 

So, if it is the biology that we are hung up on, it must be because incest is not natural.  Nature doesn’t like incest.  Does it?  Well, the short answer is kind-of-maybe-yes. But only in the absence of any other suitable candidates.  Nature would prefer it that all organisms have sex with someone who can add something new to the gene pool.  This way, there is always the potential for new and stronger genes to permeate throughout a bloodline and ensure its continued survival.

Yet many species of plant or animal, particularly in secluded areas like islands and mountaintops, are happy to either reproduce asexually or with close relatives - whatever's easiest.  It’s kind of lazy and/or desperate and doesn’t, on a large scale, help a species to evolve but it does happen enough that we could call it a natural behaviour.

It hasn't been discovered yet, but it is thought that some animals, in particular humans, have evolved past incest.  This would mean that our psychological revulsion towards any physical expressions of love towards family is by biological design, to keep human bloodstreams interesting.  But the gene responsible for this remains undiscovered and I’m sure that a simpler explanation would be that our psychology in this regard, as in most others, is learned. 

It's not a huge stretch to say that most societies these days are not big on incest.  Any sexual relationship with a direct family member is almost always illegal and marriage between first cousins is even forbidden in some countries, including a number of states in the US.  And one can’t forget that that all of the major world religions refer to it only as an abhorrence (if you don't think too much about Adam and Eve or Noah).  All of this, I would imagine, colours many of our opinions on the matter.  If something is illegal, majorly frowned upon by religious leaders and widely thought to produce deformed offspring, one's natural reaction would be repulsion.  What leads me to believe that it can't be natural for us to have evolved past incest is that 2000 years ago, such a short time evolutionarily, incest was routinely practised by a number of societies. 

At this time, a Roman census revealed that the Ancient Egyptians, including the royal family, celebrated all kinds of intra-familial marriage, be it father-daughter, mother-son or brother-sister; Cleopatra VII, for instance, married more than one of her brothers.  Graeco-Roman society was less a fan, with literature such as Oedipus and Antigone displaying disastrous results for incestuous couples and their offspring.  Conversely, many gods and titans of the ancient Greek pantheon were married to siblings, Zeus and Hera being the most famous, and nothing much was made of that.  And, while illegal in Roman society, Caligula was still thought to have done the deed with all three of his sisters.  While generally the practice was forbidden, it seems to have been enough of a concern that people needed to be warned against it.  If people were doing it or warning people not to do it just two millennia ago, evolution has not had enough time to create a genetic failsafe against incest.  Which again leads me to think that the biggest influence on our negative thinking on this are societal rather than biological.

One big argument levied against incestuous relationships is the fear that any offspring could easily spring forth from the womb sporting an extra arm, no toes and a magic finger.  It will come as a surprise to such thinkers that, in actual fact, having a baby with a relative will not, in and of itself, result in any deformities/superpowers.  Breeding within the same gene pool is merely increasing the chance that the child will develop any genetic weaknesses inherent in either of the parents .  If you have an unhealthy but recessive gene, often your partner will have a healthy version of the same gene, which will override the unhealthy one.  This wouldn't happen if you had the same genetics and the two unhealthy recessive genes might result in a defective baby.  So there is a slightly increased risk of genetic illnesses but if both parents are healthy, this will result in a similarly healthy child (physically).  Putting this into some perspective, one could say the same of those who carry cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s genes.  Carriers of these genes could potentially be responsible for passing on terrible, life-shortening genetic conditions and yet it is not illegal for them to ever have children.  And they’re certainly not forbidden from ever having sex with each other... ever!

And if the sex is not procreative, then this issue is eliminated anyway.  What then, would the problem be?  I'd imagine that most sex, in the Western world, isn't of the baby-making variety at any rate. Contraception is, I feel confident in saying, recommended by most.  Abortion... less recommended, but still legal.  And homosexual practice (which I’m not likening to incest!  I add, defensively) also does not result in babies.  So while the lack of (healthy) children, and the aforementioned potential genetic weaknesses, are often touted as a reason to condemn incestuous practice, I don't think that this is the cause for our distaste towards it, at least not today with our more liberal attitude towards non-procreational sex.

Blaming our culture, the media or whatever seems a bit simplistic and, in any case, I don’t think I could ‘blame’ anything for incest being illegal.  But I just can’t see the reason for two consenting adults making love in the privacy of their own home as something prison-worthy.  Yes, it’s possibly indicative of an unhealthy approach to relationships and sex but one could say that about commitmentphobes or fetishists or prostitutes…  Oh.  Well the first two still stand.  It might be something that we would find completely unarousing or possibly disturbing but you don’t arrest someone because they have an interest in watersports.  Moving on, I feel that the reason this particular sexual act garners quite so much revulsion must run deeper.  A huge part of this has to be the inherent association with abuse, because we rarely hear stories of mutually loving and caring incest, just the abusive and the paedophilic.  And then there's the madonna/whore complex, whereby we view our mothers (and other female relatives) as saints who we don't want to imagine anyone having sex with.  When they're up on a pedastal, untouched by earthly contaminants like sex, the last thing one would want to do is have sex with them oneself.  Plus incest is illegal, don't let's forget, which makes it even more taboo, and less advisable.
 
The standard, and best, argument in the defence of incest is Mill's Harm Principle which is the belief that a victimless crime such as this should not be punishable by the law.  Essentially, if they’re not hurting anyone, leave them be.  Liberally guilty and open-minded as I like to think I am, the thought of doing anything with my family does completely freak me out.  And I can’t imagine a time will ever come that a parent fixes her children up because ‘they’re just perfect for each other!’ or even a time when each social circle has its token incestuous member but (and this is hard for me to write) this is what I think: incest should be legal.  There, I said it. 

Eep.