Doomed By Honesty

I’ve considered myself a writer for many years now, despite the lack of publications to my name. There were certainly a number of years where I was fully immersed in the weaving of tales, improving my craft and living in a world of my own making. I was undoubtedly a writer. A wordsmith. Or at least an apprentice.

Then I got divorced, gave up work, lost a lot of weight and began to have an actual social life. None of that was achieved without pain and determination but it seems all of it drew me away from that wonderful world (or worlds) that I had created. Dust gathered on my Word files whilst I navigated new relationships, strengthened the bonds with the girlfriends that had stuck with me throughout all the flux and endeavoured to divide my time equally between my children and the things that just have to be done. Not Writing though.

Don’t get me wrong. I still spent most of my day at my laptop, still spent a lot of it tapping away at the keys etc only there was very little to show for it. In the last four years I can safely say that I have created very little. This fact worries me. It nags me awake at night and sits on my shoulder during the day. It asks the questions I haven’t dared speak aloud.

If I’m not writing stories then does that mean I’m no longer a writer?

I’ve considered that I might be suffering Writer’s Block. I’ve considered that I write more/better when I’m miserable but none of that helps. I’m still planning stories but HERE is a problem that I’m not sure can be overcome. I am totally, pathologically and psychotically honest.  Ask anyone. I don’t lie, have difficulty skirting truths for the sake of hurt feelings, and become physically ill if I try to say nothing about a situation/fact/feeling. I also share without filters. That may be an unrelated and totally separate character flaw but I’ve a suspicion that it’s part of the first one (only? maybe I have only the one flaw and it just happens to be a big one).

Yeah but that’s life you say. Hmm maybe not just life – maybe imagination too. So I’m planning a story and it sort of comes to a stop, I think I just need to complicate it a bit – add some interest (as we wordsmiths do). Then I stop. Grind to a halt. I can do convoluted happenings, troublesome friendships – other people’s lack of communication are all possible to me but I have to strain – think weight-lifters at the Olympics – to make my character dis-honest. (You’re probably getting the idea that I have a high standard as to the line where honest and dishonest blur and you’d be right). Then again, how many books have you read where you just think – that’d all fall apart if they just had a conversation.

Hmm, wondering if that is just me. Is it only me that thinks that all those romance heroines storming off in a huff for a hundred pages would be a lot less stressed if they just asked more questions. “Did you mean that you thought my arse did look big in this or was that grunt simply an indication that you liked my arse as it is?” And the all important – “When you said you could never love another was there a review date built into that statement or should I just jog on now?”

Don’t get me wrong I can ‘imagine’ a character who might deceive lie fudge the truth a little, it’s just not my first thought (or twenty second really). Sadly it’s not just the good guys – it’s the bad as well. And if considering that my antagonist might tell the odd porky is hard then consider how crippled I am at anything approaching Machiavellian.

So – doomed by own happiness and doubly so by my honesty. Does everybody have a handicap (can I still ask that without being prejudiced?) that they must overcome (please say yes and not that I am such a freak) if so what is yours?

All Sassyed Out

I started this blog as a method of recording/promoting the final stages of my book. Once my goal was stated in irrefutable black and white life conspired to throw a bag of spanners into my workings.

A wedding, a funeral, and a bouquet of navel gazing (hmm good title for a book there) later I am placing Sassy, my long adored protagonist, onto the shelf. I can’t say for certain whether this is permanent or not. Guilt and sorrow twist my insides but I’m growing more convinced that Sassy is my learning curve and not my road to celebrated literary success. It’s a tough call.

I have a new heroine, a new setting and whole new list of hoops for her to jump through but unlike when I set out with Sassy I have a lot missing this time. I have no name for a start, this is very strange for me since it’s usually the starting point, I have only a vague idea of where she might lead me and a very worrying problem. The antagonist I have envisioned for her is so much more compelling to my wicked brain.

This antagonist, this problem to be conquered, also has no name but she has a justified reason to be riled and vengeful. Just thinking about it makes me want blood on her behalf.

My last post was about setting, time and place etc, and I’ve dallied and delayed the start of this project thinking that my problem was in deciding this setting but I’m not sure that it is. I think my problem is deeper than that. I think I might have to fundamentally change my affinity within this imaginary conflict. This is not something I’m used to. I’m a set in stone type of person, or so I like to think, not so closed down that I can’t reconsider my stance on a subject (theoretically at least) but fairly definitive by nature.

So RIP Sassy and Gunner I have loved you dearly for so many years. Long live what’s her name!

My question is has this ever happened to you? Has one of your imaginary friends managed to coax you to an opposing viewpoint?

Story versus Characters Which One is Most Important

So I’m sitting at my computer with a great idea for a new storyline. I have a rough sketch of some new people I want to terrorise but I’m stuck on my setting. I’ve been running around the same urban fantasy land for some years now but one of those shocking ‘what if…’ moments hit me a few months back and I’ve been reeling ever since.

It doesn’t really matter if your story is based in the here and now, a historical place and time or a build your own fantasy world, what matters is that it is believable and that the surroundings don’t make people go wtf! this is ridiculous. Bear with me – because from this point of view it’s the story that is important.

So two months of working out the most realistic shake down of post-apocalyptic anarchy in Britain and I had to most life-changing thought.

DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

Not in a ‘is this a worthwhile enterprise’ type way but does the setting actually matter at all, maybe some more capitalisation, full stop, . Does anybody care whether the story is set in post social meltdown England or in a less different near-future world, come to that does it make any difference if I tell the story in present day or historical past? Meaning – isn’t it the story that is the point of the exercise. I mean if your lead character can just as easily go through their life affirming revelation without the need to wear tights and a frilly shirt doesn’t it just make him a closet transvestite?

It’s probably an age-old writers conundrum that I’m just very slow at discovering but that little brain bomb made me think about the stories that I have loved over the years. Made me consider whether it was the story (usually good conquering evil) that made me love them or was it the characters (usually mouthy women and the men that adore them for it). Okay so none of this is sounding very highbrow but do consider that I’m condensing this into the very driest of bones here.

Maybe that leads me to a third option. Perhaps it’s not the story or the characters but the way that story is told that is of most importance for an enjoyable read.

What do you think?

A Childish Thrill

As you know I am experimenting with Twitter at the moment. Thank you to all you who joined me there.

In the spirit of fairness I entered the experiment with a non-judgemental bias towards the whole thing being a waste of my time. Several weeks on and I have been proven right really. All those great communities out there where the writer set live; sharing their ideas and giving expert tips on making agents and publishers worship your words… well they don’t exist. If they do then they live in some foreign/mathematical code that I cannot decipher because no search words seems to give any hint of them.

On the whole Twitter is the realm of ‘I’m eating a turkey sandwich’. A whole stream of meaninglessness 24/7 BUT (stick with me it’s not all I told you so) then Illona Andrews replied to my Tweet and I’m instantly 12 years old, bouncing in my seat and squealing that I won’t ever refresh my screen again…

So my question to you. Do you know the way to the secret societies within the web? Have you demystified the power of the search engine? What have you found in the shadowy realm of the interweb?

Meet Sassy – Excerpt

Sassy lives in my head and sometimes she kicks me. Here is how she starts:

My toes clenched in my boots. I missed my steelies; they were downstairs in Murdoch’s car. Though perfectly safe beneath the more supple leather my toenails itched for the missing protection. It wasn’t the climb up the outside of the warehouse that had left me breathless, it wasn’t the corpse that stared unblinkingly through me, it was the knowledge that I still pulsed with the magic that had altered my shape from rodent to human. If it weren’t so dead then that corpse would have seen me.

That squished my lungs like an obese fist around a chocolate bar.

I tried to slow my breathing. I couldn’t afford to pass out and I needed to clear the fermented decay from my taste buds. Lying still forced my pulse rate to drop a little with each second until I was no longer at risk of seizure. Magic rode too close to the surface, flickering like moths just beneath my skin. My eyeballs tingled sharply with it. I closed them against the magic. Watched the road map of tiny veins traversing my eyelids. Magically enhanced I could see the blood pumping through them. Very slowly the speed of that flow stilled. In truth my eyes merely reverted to their regular green and I could no longer see the detail that held me entranced. They would no longer give me away as other if I were to confront Murdoch waiting at the front door and ask him for my boots.

The thought of Murdoch tipped my heart rate back up to the three hundred mark forcing a shuddering gasp from my lips. My stomach revolted at the wash of death I’d inhaled. Snapping my eyes open I lay still, eye to lidless eye, and exhaled my breath until my lungs flat packed. It wasn’t as though the corpse could hurt me. Not packaged in its shiny cage with bars thicker than my thighs.

Though grotesque it was uniquely compelling. As the vampire killer’s lock pick I was accustomed to bodies. Vampires had a habit of collecting them. This one was different. Not least for the cage that resembled a magician’s stage set. And the smell wasn’t so foul, just beneath the sour rancidity of rotting flesh was something peculiarly sweet. I lay there trying to filter through the layers to sample it more closely.

Get in and get out. That was all I needed to do. Get in, check, now get out.

I shook my head to clear it and very slowly put my palms to floor, shakily pushing up to my knees. The floor was so dusty I left holes in the thick grey felt when I rose. I clapped my palms together twice. The sound was a shockwave snapping the silence. The movement sent a shower of woolly grey dust floating up into the spikes of wintry sunbeams.

My lip curled as I watched a dust bunny flutter and settle onto one clean white canine of the corpse’s lipless smile. It seemed so wrong, so blatantly discourteous that my hand twitched to nudge it away. No need. A blunt ended tongue slipped forward, curled around it, and drew it back between its dry teeth.

The Point of Social Media

I started September with such a buzz. To me it’s the real New Year. Not really an academic I still associate September with new beginnings in a much more positive frame than the hungover regrets of January 1st.

September is all about starting over, new beginnings, new stuff. Oh how I love new stuff. New books, new pens, new clothes (ok usually a school uniform but it’s brand spanking new guys). I loved the whole writing my name in my newest neatest handwriting and all that. Nowadays September arrives after an August filled with claustrophobia and tension. Three children at home needing to be entertained (wishing to be left alone probably) planning days out and activities to while away the school-less haze and wistfully shopping for the start of the new school year.

So I arrived back at my blog last week with all the best of intentions. I wrote my new year blog with my very neatest of neatest typings only to have the computer eat it. So I was already snarling when I pushed myself to investigate this site further, determined to make it work at last despite the lost blog. Against all my principles I opened a Twitter account today on the advice of many forms of media. I’m in a self-help crisis right now. Unpublished author seeking recognition and publishing contract, maybe just a little solidarity too. I had every intention of using this site to meet new people in the same situation, earnestly writing gazillions of words with goal of seeing them bound together on paper. But how do you do that? I have searched, I have thought up foolproof combinations of words to find unpublished fantasy freaks who are obsessed with magic and words and combining those two but to very little avail.

So how do you guys do it? How do you network on these things? And why? Is this truly just a dumping ground for ‘check me out I’m reading a book/eating shreddies/writing stupid stuff on wrist’. I am not a technical dunce but I am lost here. I am starting to feel like I am just too damn old to use the internet. So leave a comment or better still Twat me!

WordPress Ate My Post

I’ve been quiet lately. Not really but virtually. Here in the virtual world and that’s because the stunning post I prepared for you guys last week has been eaten. I know that all the rules and hints etc say that it is impossible but it happened. My internet collapsed mid-sentence and the famed autosave must have been on a coffee break.

So all my upbeat doodlings about September being the real new year are lost in the netherworld. I will not be beaten but I thought I’d best get the ‘my dog ate my homework’ excuse out there before I get detention.

Endangered Species Hotline – English Fantasy Writers – Please Report Your Sighting

So I’m English and I write Urban Fantasy. I have written three novels in the genre and am looking for an agent who will nurture my talent and cosset my magical obsession, failing that flog my manuscript for shed loads of money (preferably in untraceable used bank notes).

I’ve read the advice on how to do this and have fallen at the first hurdle. Find an author that you are similar to in genre/style and try to steal their agent. Well there are many urban fantasy authors but they all appear to be American by birth or residence. Not only that but their adventures seem to all take place there too.

My challenge to you is to name one. I can start you off with Kate Griffin what can you add? Oh and don’t give me names of ebooks and their authors. I want real authors who got paid and got their work printed on actual paper.

To be published or self-published…

Hmm, that is the question on my mind. There is a quote flitting against my brain and I don’t know who it’s from but it goes ‘The great thing about self-publishing is that anyone can be published. The terrible thing about self-publishing is that anyone can be published’.

So how do you know?

How do you know if self-publishing that fabulous little nugget of soul on your hard-drive is a work of greatness or a pitiful display of your unworthiness. I know that there are people on here championing the cause of self-publishing but I remain to be convinced.

Okay my few forays into the loop have been sparse and tinged with great scepticism. The first was a person requesting a critique on my writer’scafe page (faeshifter in case you are interested) – something that I love doing but is rarely received well – this man sent me three chapters of terminal boredom. There was no firm POV, there was no voice, and then nothing happened. I mean it. NOTHING happened. On pointing this out (it’s a critique, you can’t NOT mention it) his reply was that he was already published and had planned to ask me to paste my rave review into the feedback section for his book sales. Fail. You would think in this day and age of internet access, self-help books, blogging etc that people would have covered the basics.

We ALL know about the HOOK. We all know you capture your audience on the first page, and we all know that characters must have depth, a journey and an epiphany. So why would you ignore that and publish something so poorly written?

Okay so that was my first. My second was an idea I had to win a professional critique. I subscribe to a writing magazine and it had details of three such  prizes. Wow. Perfect timing. Kismet and all that. The competitions ALL involved reading a three page section of many, many, ebooks and answering questions on them. Hmm, okay so far. It wasn’t challenging but it was soul-destroying. Badly written, poorly edited and poorly structured, book after book. Find the name of the dog, what colour was the dress, what was the time when… There were twenty two book excerts and I must have found only one that struck me as a ‘real book’.

I know that many of you will be offended and offer up names and titles of wonderful ebooks you have found. But in all honesty can you say that there wasn’t a moment when you skimmed through the virtual pages and wondered if it might have benefited from a professional proof-reader or a structural editor?

So I am slowly coming to the conclusion that as quick fixes go this route might (or maybe should) lead to professional suicide. I have grounds for this conclusion. I am sending out query letters to agents at the moment because I think that my novel is the best thing that I have written, it has plot, sub-plot, likeable characters, action, tension, pacing, everything that it should have. But this is the third I have started this process. This is the third time I have thought that.

And do you know? Those other two times I was wrong. So how badly would that have reflected on me if somebody had published it? or worse, how much money would I have wasted had I self-published? To have that in print (even virtual print is forever) with my name attached? Ouch!

Did I say I’d finished?

Hmm, hitting a problem this week. I had thought my current dilemma to be one thing when in fact it was something else.

I was busy deciding between sending my decidedly complete novel to agents/publishers or cracking on with book two of said completed novel. Then it happened, quite suddenly whilst distracted by wedding planning (did I mention forthcoming nuptuals?). My book, the aforementioned completed item, might be better if I just tweaked a scene or two… then ALL.

My main protagonist needs to be more fearful, more gobby (yes, a decidedly English character would be gobby rather than sharp tongued/quick witted), secondary protagonist needs to be more fearsome. Then the realisation that with all this amping up of main characters the secondary characters need to step up their game.

So is this inner editor on overtime right, thus making me wrong when I declared the book finished, or is this just a continuous process? Do you always think that it could just be a little more?

I have read about one author that continues to edit even AFTER publication (sadly I can’t remember her name). Is it a publishers job to call time? That would make me under qualified to pronounce time on the tome…

Tell me when do you stop?