Getting stuck - and unstuck

I've been stuck with the sequel to Heart of Bone; largely because I haven't had the time to sit down and persist until I know what I'm doing. I like everything I've written, but all is not well. You know what they say about eggs and bacon? The hen's involved, the pig's committed. I've got to chapter six, and my heroine Caz is the hen when she should be the pig. Something has to change.

I always hope the solution to this sort of problem will come in a flash to me while I shop at Waitrose, or bike home, or queue in the Post Office, but actually it seldom does. I think it was Kingsley Amis who said, you need to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

There are many ways one can, in Holly Lisle's words, mug the Muse.

• Keep saying, What would happen if... until you strike gold
• Do some research into your characters' interests, or where they live
• Write a short story or a poem as a creative break
• Read a good novel
• Look for loose ends that you can turn into something new
• Re-assess what's at stake for each character
• Write a letter from each character to yourself

I've just done this with one character, Jasper Egan. He turns out to be rather rude.

Hi Lexi,

You don’t know much about me, do you? Any more than Caz does. I find that quite amusing – after all, I wouldn’t exist but for you.

Let’s see what you do know about me. My name, of course – though I happen to know, you really wanted to call me J***** D***** after that writer you’ve got some grudge against, but you haven’t quite got the bottle to pinch his whole name, have you? And you’ve got some idea of what I look like. Tall and not bad-looking, I think sums it up. And late thirties, which you refer to as being an older man. From Caz’s point of view, this, hardly from yours. Plus I’m a rich and successful artist, whose art isn’t quite as repellent as you find most modern art...

I'm going to stop him right there. He gets more offensive, and it's a spoiler.

Happy Christmas!

Wishing a

Happy Christmas

to all my blog readers - and may all of us who are unpublished writers find our very own agent and publisher in 2010.

Ereaders - so what do you think?

I'm waiting for the next generation of ereaders, the ones that will be better designed and cost less than £100. (I'm not cheapskate, just...not rich.) I'm also waiting for publishers to acknowledge that ebooks should be way cheaper than conventional books, as they cost so much less to produce, and nothing to store or transport.

At under £100, I'd have bought one for my daughter's Christmas present; she's an avid reader but hasn't got her own home or car yet, and books are terribly heavy to move about. She runs out of books to read, and the ability to instantly download a novel when you want it is just what she needs.

Like many people, she's not keen on ereaders. She likes proper paper books. But I'm sure a good ereader would convert her, and I'm equally sure that they will take a big share of the market, given time. And this opens up opportunities for indie authors. Right now, Eric Christopherson with his exciting thriller, Crack-Up, is taking advantage of the new technology to offer his book direct to the public on Amazon at a bargain price, is selling significant numbers, and making a decent profit per download.

If he can do it, others can, and will.

IZE versus upstart ISE

One of my favourite Muriel Spark novels is A Far Cry from Kensington, with a backdrop of London publishing in the 1950s. (It also tells you all you need to know about losing weight: the heroine realizes she is grossly fat, starts eating the same as before, but half, until she reaches a normal size). There is a blackmailer in the book, who is identified by his unusual spelling of 'organizer'. He spells it 'organiser'.

Not so long ago in England, all words incorporating the Greek suffix ize, were spelled with a z; so realize, civilize, ostracize. Other words like surprise, advise and surmise, having no connection with the Greek suffix, were not spelled with a z.

I stick to the traditional spelling, which also has the advantage of lessening the gap between us and Americans (damn that Webster). But so prevalent has the ise variant become, that I am often told off for 'using American spelling'.

The Oxford University Press and I are as one on this. Can I persuade anyone to join us?

See the books people buy as they do it!

I am a fan of the Book Depository, because its prices are cheap and delivery is free.

Today I ordered a book on hen-keeping for my daughter as she has the crazy idea of keeping a couple of hens in the garden of her student digs. (I have a nasty feeling they will end up on my Hoxton balcony eating all my plants).

And I discovered they have a live webpage which flags up sales as they occur on a map of the world. Self-sufficiency Hen Keeping flashed up on the screen with a tiny Union Jack, before whizzing off to a James Herriot sale in Australia.

At busy times it's strangely compulsive viewing. I can imagine if one is an author with a popular book out, one would stay riveted to it for hours, counting the sales.

Take a look, here.

Self-publishing: the future?

Today I want you to consider the following facts:

• Agents and publishers are getting more and more risk-averse; reluctant to take on new authors unless they are 100% certain of an early financial return.
  
• Print-on-demand books these days are relatively cheap, and of a quality indiscernible from a traditionally-published book.
  
• E-readers are set to become popular. Though Amazon is coy about revealing figures, estimates suggest they sold half a million in a year; compare that to the 378,000 iPods sold in its first year.
  
• Publishers charge an absurdly high rate for e-book downloads.

I'm scenting a change in the wind. Good writers I know, fed up with rave rejections, are beginning to talk about self-publishing and e-publishing as a possibility they might consider, in spite of the fearsome task of marketing this would involve.

Yesterday Ray Rhamey, well-known for his blog Flogging the Quill, announced that he is to self-publish his novel The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, because he fears the current vampire craze will have expired before he finds a publisher.

And not for the first time, I'm thinking that it will only take one novel, that happens to be self-published, to be mega-successful, and the face of publishing will change forever.

(A final thought - publishers love celebrity novels, which come with buyers ready-made. Who will be the first canny celebrity, I wonder, to twig that he doesn't need an agent or a publisher, but can hire an editor, self-publish and keep all the profits for himself?)

A modest blogging award which involves some work

Thanks to Sandra Patterson for including me in this harmless ponzi scheme with its delightful floral award (see far left).

It comes at a price: what I have to do is choose seven deserving bloggers, who then:

1. Copy and paste the award picture at the top of this post onto their own blogs, thank the person who gave them the award and post a link to her blog

2. Write seven things about themselves we do not know

3. Choose seven other bloggers to award, link to those bloggers, and notify them.

(Eventually, I guess, every single blogger in the whole world will be the proud possessor of this award.)

Seven Things About Me You Do Not Know

• I have waved from the window of 10 Downing Street, and was disconcerted when a) the group of children outside all waved back and b) Tony Blair noticed me doing it.



• I am taller than you think I am.
  
  
• I catch spiders in my flat with a glass and postcard and release them to the wild, or as wild as it gets in Islington. (Did they contribute to the mortgage? No.)
  
  
• I wore black throughout the nineties.



• My ancestor, Alice Dick, was burnt as a witch.



• I have to look up practise/practice every time because I never remember which is which.
  
  
• All knowledge of geography was wiped from my brain by an evil geography teacher called Miss Henderson.
  
  My Seven Chosen Bloggers: all worth a read

1. Alan Hutcheson
   
2. Norm Benson
   
3. Spinster of this Parish


4. Tom Raymond
   
5. Katherine Robb


6. Rod Griffiths


7. Self-publisher

Writing pleasure and pain

I'm listening to Vaughn William's Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. It's a piece of music that I associate with my first book, Torbrek and the Dragon Variation, and I am reminded of the pure visceral pleasure of writing it; the innocent thrill of creation, unequalled since. It all went straight down on to the page, reckless POV shifts, authorial interjections, slabs of backstory; nothing got between me and the intoxicating sensation of story telling.

These days I'm a much better writer. But that huge first joy is lost; not so much because I'm aware of technical concerns that went right over my head when I was a novice, but because of the consciousness of the near impossibility of getting published these days. You not only have to write a book people will want to read; you have to get that book on to the desk of an agent at precisely the moment she is hoping for a book like yours to arrive, and that's tricky.

I know, from the feedback I've had from agents, that my third novel, currently called Heart of Rock, is in the top 5% of the slushpile. I'm sending it out on its second wave of submissions. Can I just tip it over the edge? I don't know.

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...