The terrible pull of the cliché...

A father in Waitrose to his small son, 'We'll find it, they sell everything here.'

Small son, reaching for and finding a grown-up phrase, 'They sell anything and everything, don't they, Dad?'

The boy's simple pleasure in this cliché is all too common among adults, including those who write for a living and should know better. The journalist who describes something as weird and wonderful, the delighted new author talking about what a rollercoaster ride it is to publication, the unpublished writer who pens a strangely familiar plot summary:

When mysterious forces from beyond the grave threaten life as we know it, Scarran must face his own demons and risk everything to rescue the woman he loves from a tangled web of deceit without becoming a target himself - but can he right an old wrong before it is too late? His task seems straightforward - but is it?

A story of love, murder and mayhem.

I'm sure none of my blog readers are ever guilty of using such reach-me-down expressions...are you? I'd better admit right now, I once wrote she woke with a start.

I can only apologise, and promise never to do it again.

Do you write like a man or a woman?

I've just discovered a fascinating site called The Gender Genie. You paste more than 500 words of your writing into a box, and the site analyzes it and tells you whether you write like a woman or a man.

I tried it with the first chapter of Heart of Rock (was Catch a Falling Star) and the first chapter of Heart of Bone, my work in progress. Interesting results:

Heart of Rock: Female: 3345 Male: 3986 - I write like a man.

Heart of Bone: Female: 2597 Male: 2561 - I write like a woman (just).

Have a go and let me know how you get on.

The slush pile switch, and its consequences...

Time was, when you'd finished your novel, you would submit it directly to publishers, who, if your book was good (or passable, but they thought you'd write excellent ones in the future) would give you a contract. These days, overwhelmed by the size of the slush pile since the advent of the PC, most publishers leave the task of sorting through the slush to agents. They no longer accept unagented submissions.

For new authors, this is a Bad Thing, for two reasons:

1. There are now two hurdles to leap where there used to be one

2. Agents naturally prefer to take on writers who are going to earn a big advance

Most writers I know would be pleased to get a publishing deal of any sort (MacMillan New Writing, which offers twelve basic contracts a year with no advance, receives 500 submissions a week). But an agent would be unenthusiastic about such a deal; if she can't see immediate profit for herself, forget it.

So the publishers are missing out on good books judged by agents not to be flavour of the month, or sufficiently commercial - and let's not forget, this is something they frequently get wrong. Many best-sellers have had a terrible struggle to get into print, and other books which gained a six-figure advance have gone on to disappointing sales. I think publishers need to reclaim the initiative.

The current situation is rather as if I decided I was fed up with going round the West End looking for new clothes. I'd appoint someone to do it for me, and pay her 15% of the cost of each suitable garment she found. Would she battle with the crowds to seek out the odd terrific pair of boots in Primark, costing £22? Or go to Selfridges and select a pair for £295?

Which would be to her advantage? And would I be better off?

There are two types of writers...

...so today I am going to write about the published, the unpublished, and the huge divide that exists between them.

The writers I mix with, and they are mostly the ones who read my blog, are unpublished. Some of them have an agent, some don't; some are on their first book, and others have written three or four. Many of their books are works in progress, and a few are so brilliant I can't believe publishers aren't fighting over them. As we keep being told, times are hard in publishing, budgets are being cut and it's more difficult than ever to break into print. Small wonder, then, that those who do manage to cross the great divide become a little smug.

'I got published because I wrote a damn good book and sent it out with a first-class query letter,' a new about-to-be-published writer will say, flushed with pride and success. The implication being that, if your book was good enough, it too would get a deal.

I wish this were true. While there are, of course, many dire novels in the slush pile, some of today's best novels will never sit on a bookshop shelf, because their authors lack the thick-skinned persistence required to endure the pain of rejection after rejection. They start thinking the agents are right about their book. They give up.

Let me tell you about Patricia J Delois, who wrote a novel called Bufflehead Sisters. She sent it out to two agents who rejected it. Discouraged, she gave up. A friend told her about YouWriteOn, and she joined. Her book became YWO Book of the Year, and was self-published by YWO. Astonishingly (or not - she's a good writer) she sold over a thousand copies. And was picked up by Penguin. She says herself she had 'dumb luck'. Without YWO she would not have been published.

If I ever cross that great divide, I vow not to be smug; to remember that better writers than I languish unpublished; and that I have been very, very lucky.

Be your own computer expert!

This is from the excellent xkcd: a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Indents in a manuscript

Ever since I started my fourth book, I've been fretting gently about indents.

I've always done them in Word by setting a margin and pressing Enter for a new paragraph. When I loaded my novel on Authonomy, the indents disappeared. I noticed that some books on there have indents, and worked out why: it's because their authors used Tab instead. I did some research. Not much information out there, but one editor said using Tab made it easier for an editor to adjust the formatting.

Should I change with my new novel? (Too late to alter the old ones. Can you imagine going through 80,000 words of text, switching the indent on each paragraph? Aaagh.) So I asked the advice of two writers whose opinion I respect. One said yes, the other no. I went on with the fretting, as my novel grew.

Today I was reading about epublishing, which has arrived in America but not yet here. It's probably going to be big in the future. I took a look at Smashwords, and on their style guide it says, among other things: DO NOT USE indents made with spaces or tabs (the most common bad habit of all authors).

So now I know.

A uniquely irritating cat

LitMatch, or as it will soon be known...

...I'm just teasing you. I shall not be telling you what it will be called.

As a beta member of the new, improved LitMatch site there are some things I cannot disclose. Really exciting, shiny, secret things you'd be fascinated by if only I was at liberty to tell you.

Sorry about that.

I can say that the site looks very nice, and is not at all orange like the old one.

(Go here for more information from Christopher Hawkins, LitMatch's originator.)

UPDATE: I can now reveal, the new name is AUTHORADVANCE! See link in the sidebar.

Updating the website

I've got a website for my writing, started a couple of years ago with a view to being prepared for when I was published (ah, how little I knew back then...) I used Squarespace, because their templates are so elegant. I did a special header with little dragons, because I was writing fantasy in those days, and thought it looked pretty cool.
Then Squarespace updated their options, changing the interface and making the template I'd used obsolete. It was V4, and they'd progressed to V5. I knew it would take time to come to terms with the new system, and kept putting it off - though it had to be done. And so yesterday I gritted my teeth and did it. I switched to a template intriguingly called Incident at Gate 7, and am very pleased with it. The layout is simple and spare, and does the job. I've updated all the pages, and added one for my current book.

Inspiration and long, hot baths

When do you get your best ideas? You know the solution to your novel's current problem is there, somewhere in your deep subconscious, laid down by a lifetime's observation and thought; but sometimes it's hard to get at it.

An idling brain seems to work best. Driving a familiar route is good, if you are alone. I've often pulled over to jot down the bones of a scene. But baths are best. A solitary soak seems to let my mind range free better than anything else.

Paper and pen beside the bath is essential, though, if you don't want to have to leap out and dry yourself hastily before the idea, as volatile as a dream, evaporates.

Mystery crickets, truth in fiction

Over the years on my London workshop balcony I've had waves of different creatures, some more welcome than others. One year mice ate all my lobelia; I've had a couple of outbreaks of slugs, and waves of sparrows were followed by blue tits then blackbirds. I once saw a sparrowhawk. All very interesting.

But this spring for the first time ever I heard the gentle stridulation of crickets. Though I couldn't find them among the plants, I was quite excited (Chris Tarrent used to say he liked a woman who was easily excited) and added them, for a bit of extra atmosphere, to the scene in Catch a Falling Star where Caz and her friends have a birthday supper on her roof terrace in Hoxton.

This week the crickets were still there, chirping away, as I thought. Then realization dawned that the intermittent squeaking came, not from insects, but from one of those cheap circular plastic fans set in a window pane on a nearby building (you can see it in the photo). I went to the National Biodiversity Network site and looked up the distribution of crickets. According to their map, they are in Islington, but not in the Shoreditch/Hoxton area.

I wondered if I should remove the reference to them in my novel. In the end I didn't. Caz, after all, lives in a slightly better version of reality; akin to a Richard Curtis film, where friends are funnier, weather more interesting, and life is never dull. She has the crickets; I, alas, don't.

Now this is what I call a proper fight...

Revision - is there no end to it?

No, probably not, is the answer to that. Death or publication are the only means of stopping me tweaking my novels. Each time I look at them I find new things I can improve. (Which is quite encouraging, really, as it must mean my writing is getting better.)

I am not alone in this. Jasper Fforde says, 'If it were possible I'd be around Waterstones with a pot of glue and replacement pages and perhaps after that knocking at your front door with a bottle of Tippex and a pen, "Excuse me, my name is Jasper Fforde. Do you have a copy of 'The Eyre Affair' by any chance? I've spelt Steller's sea cow incorrectly and I was wondering..."'

I've been revising Trav Zander. I've done five chapters so far. What I am getting rid of mostly are:

• Unnecessary speech tags, often where I also have a description of what the character is doing which tells the reader who is speaking.
  


• Bits that tell the reader what is going to happen, instead of just letting the story unfold.
  


• 'He thought' or 'she thought' - generally a sign the writing is under par (thank you, Alan). There are better ways of getting the information across.
  


• Deleting 'that' if it's not necessary and there is more than one.
  


• And word echoes, my bane - I'm still picking those out, but at least now I have help at hand with Autocrit. It's astonishing; I must have been over Trav twenty times, including reading the whole thing out loud, and I've still missed some repeat words. I recommend Autocrit for anyone with the same problem; it costs $47, and you can try it free first.

Form an orderly line, please

Today I am touting for followers. Would you like to follow this blog, with all the exciting benefits that brings?

(No, I don't know what they are, either. But please do.)

Just scroll down the sidebar until you come to the Followers bit, and sign up.

Easy.

Advice for unpublished authors

• Under no circumstances whatsoever, ask a non-writing friend if she would like to read your novel. She wouldn't, but she can't tell you that. She will see it as a chore, and worry about what to say if, as she suspects, it turns out to be terrible.
  
  
• Try not to mention you are writing a book, even when you are totally caught up in its toils and unable to think about anything else. Nobody wants to know.
  
  
• If you find you have inadvertently ignored my second bit of advice, then be ready with a succinct answer to the question, 'What's it about?' With TORBREK and the Dragon Variation, I would find myself saying, as their eyes glazed over, 'Well, it's fantasy, but not standard fantasy as the characters talk normally, and there aren't any elves or anything; it's set in an alternative Middle Ages with dragons, and it's about this girl who discovers that she's not only a Dragon Master, but that the black jewelled dagger her grandfather left her means she is...'
  
  
• If an agent should express interest in your novel, DO NOT TELL ANYONE. Well, all right, you can tell ONE writing friend. That is all. Because your non-writing friends will not understand how thrilled you are, and will be tepid in their congratulations; and you will have to tell your writing friends the bad news later if it comes to naught, and they will understand how depressed you are...

An insight into platforms...

I ran my daughter to Bristol yesterday - she had too much baggage for the coach. She's already accumulating books, something that's crazy to do until either you own a flat or a car, as they are so heavy to transport. Her bookcase can't hold them all, and I idly looked through the excess piled on top.

'Ooh, can I borrow this?' I said. The book I'd found was Flying Under Bridges, by Sandi Toksvig. I'd picked it because Sandi Toksvig, as The News Quiz's chairman, makes me laugh.

Then I realized what I'd done. I'd selected a novel on the basis of the author's success in another, unrelated field. Just what publishers expect the public to do; the reason why an actor/television gardener/pop star can get his first novel published while better, unknown writers cannot even get an agent.

Damn.

Starting the sequel

I'm probably crazy, starting to write the sequel to a book I haven't sold yet; but I've been thinking about it on and off for a month or two, and writing notes, and the impulse to get the first page down on Word became too much for me. Also, I've noticed I'm happier when I have a novel in progress.

So three days ago I began once more the scary, rewarding business of writing a novel. (I use the word business loosely, since no one is paying me for this. The rewards are purely creative. As yet.)

I've written just over a thousand words. Only 74,000 - 79,000 more, and I'll have a book.

Just what you're after...or maybe not.

I've just been marvelling at my Keyword Analysis on Statcounter.

There are some visitors whom I know I must have disappointed. Like the men - I'm somehow certain of their sex - who were looking for Girls Tied to Torture Rack, or Men and Woman Sex Move, or Sexi Lexi Make it a Double. Frankly, I don't care that they slunk away from this blog with their vile urges unsatisfied. (By the way, isn't it a good thing I don't write under my real name, Lexi Dick? I'd get such quantities of sad, furtive souls dropping by that my Google ranking would rocket from its current 3/10. Hmm...)

A surprising number of people come here having googled Describe the iPod. Perhaps it is frequently set as a school essay? The Most Annoying Fictional Character is popular, too, as is Metaphors and Free Rice.

But the outright winner, with more than thirty hits, is One Space or Two after a Full Stop. I do hope those visitors found my post on the subject helpful.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

P.S. What is the leopard for? I felt it was time for an illustrated post. That's all.

LitMatch Advisory Panel

I use Litmatch to track my submissions to literary agents, so when they asked for people to comment and help to improve it, I volunteered. And yesterday I was pleased to hear I'm on the panel.

I'd recommend it to any writer looking for representation. It's a handy way of sourcing appropriate agents, and logging your submissions, and updating them as the replies come in. You can see statistics for individual agents; their response times, and whether anyone has been asked to send the full typescript. It's totally free.

And it's good to know that Christopher Hawkins is actively seeking to make his site even better.

A short quiz...

Will you succeed as a novelist?

1. How much have you written?

I've begun several books, but not finished any.
I've got one or two completed books on my hard drive, and another I'm writing now.
Well, I haven't started yet, but how difficult can it be? All I need is the time to do it.


2. What's your view on grammar, spelling and punctuation?

The spellchecker is a lifesaver, but everyone makes the odd mistake. No one expects an unpublished writer to get everything right.
I take pride in getting my typescript as perfect as I can.
Typo's, grammer ect. dont matter if the story is good enough, thats what i think. Publisher's have editor's to take care of minor stuff like that for there writer's. Why do people love to nitpick? why can't they focuss on whats really important.


3. You've finished your novel, and are bursting with pride. You ask a friend to read it. She's quite critical, and makes several suggestions for changes.

That woman is no longer my friend. In fact, do you have the phone number of a contract killer on you?
Oh. I'll go through it again. Maybe some of what she says is right. Nice of her to be honest with me.
My book is my baby! She's wrong, and she'll see that once I've explained it to her. The first chapter may be a bit slow, but you have to know all that stuff about the will in order to follow the plot...when you get to chapter five, the pace picks up...


4. You posted your typescript to a dozen agents. You are now the possessor of twelve form rejections. Your reaction?
   I give up. It's too good for them. Bastards.
   JK Rowling got rejected a lot. I'll just keep sending it out. *grits teeth*
   Hmm...maybe it needs more work. I'll join a writers' group.

13-16 You're on your way. Can I have a signed first edition when it's published?

8-12 Honestly. You need to take this a little more seriously. Pull your socks up, stiffen that upper lip and buck up your ideas!

0-6 Oh dear. I fear there is no hope for you at all in the challenging world of books. I suggest you take up line dancing instead.