Monthly Archives: January 2014

3: What should I do before I start? Will passively reading do it?

31 Friday Jan 2014

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3: What should I do before I start? Will passively reading do it?

Right, you’ve read a few hundred books ­− Bare minimum you should be looking at, at least 200. You think you’ve got the grip of it; the plot, the characterisation, the reveal, the measure, the dialogue, the tone, different devises, point-of-view – But have you?, or have you just been reading passively ­− Nothing wrong with reading passively, enjoying a book; being entertained and enthralled. But you have only read it, not really studied it, why might you do that if you don’t have to, you’re not at school, you have a busy life after all. Here’s a simple determinant, when you have finished a book and someone asks you what it was like, if you reply, ‘Yeah, it was good,’ and very little else, you have not thought about it enough – You ain’t going to be an accomplished writer: Readers read. Writers read, and then analyse, simple as.

I was once dragged across to someone at a party and demanded to tell this unknown person how many books I had read in my then life, probably about 350. He had read 10,000! He had been in prison in Britain for a complicated and intriguing political crime. I didn’t feel sorry for him, I felt jealous! He told me he once read three books in one day, banged up for 23 hours ­− I thought I could easily do time! My intermediary, a sparse reader of fiction, laughed when I told him – how many books you have read is completely relative – generally it’s, quality not quantity.

When you have read at least two hundred books, but you know you are the gentle passive reader, if the evaluation of the book has not felt like unarmed combat in your mind. The most important thing you need to do is read about ‘The Craft’ from those that have been bothered to share. There are many of these books, some heavier than others. This is what I suggest you do, well what I did. Read all of these, to start with, in this order:

How Novels Work – John Mullan

The Art of Fiction – David Lodge

Reading Like A Writer – Francine Prose.

If you manage these three and you are still determined, then read some more, but read the type of Authors in the genre you want to write within. If you want to know what Stephen King did at school, read his.

What fiction books should you read? That’s a hard one, but read different genres than those you are intending to write, this will give you more scope and ideas. You have to read some of the masters/masteresses to learn the skills and lineage of good writing, but save this until you really want to! Some of the old dead gezzers wrote some very long books that require a lot of commitment, listen to the learned people around that you know and trust. Join Goodreads or some such similar sight. I still have Joyce’s Ulysses on my shelf – I know it’s shameful, but I’m being honest. Look at the 7 most started but never finished books of all time, Dedalus and Bloom’s ramblings in Dublin in 1904 is third. It is not the content putting me off, it’s the length – I quite like a bit of modern realism. Followed by an argument about synecdoche – if you are not sure what ‘synecdoche’ is, you will after reading about the ‘the craft.’

Once you have leant more about ‘The Craft’ you will not be just looking at the narrative and your empathy to the characters any more. You may well be deconstructing the sentence, and saying this adjective would work much better here – What would Henry James use? Sometimes analysing a single word! But remember you are thinking of embarking on a dangerous path, were you might never see the end over the hill. You might end up like James, spending the last years of your life inserting and removing commas out of your pantheon (22 fiction novels) of work.

So what should you read: Read books that excite you first, if you aren’t getting excited you ain’t going to be a writer, or, you are going to have some very long frustrating days at your keyboard. Then read about the craft, this will inspire you to read the works you need to study. But ignore Francine Prose when she says, read The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen – your life is too short, believe me, and you might be so depressed by the end of the 2,000 pages, (that’s what it felt like anyway), it will put you off reading a book longer than 400 pages ever again in your life-time! I suspect Prose and Franzen are close friends, or he is holding her hostage in his basement? (The arts are subjective!) Once you have read some of the craft and lots of books, what are you waiting for; you are starting on the road to enlightenment and/or angst. Not until you start writing will you improve – remember you are aiming for a million words just as a start!! You will then realise about some of the intricacies that even the ‘craft sharers’ neglected, or thought too trivial to mention. Do I use a dash, comma, semicolon, hyphen or ellipses? Should I use “” or ‘’ speech marks for direct speech and vice versa for indirect speech? Or should I pretend to be Cormac McCarthy writing The Road and not bother? Etc, etc.

So just to recap: Don’t even think about wanting to be a fiction writer unless you are inspired, excited enough to give yourself a push, well read, understand some of ‘the  craft’ and then dedicated to the point of OCD.

If someone asked you the question: How many books do you want to read? If the answer is not somewhere between hundreds and thousands – you ain’t got the fervour to be as good as you want to be.

Next week: Right here goes, in at the deep end. I’m going to write my novel. What should I do first?

www.ianmpindar.com  @thewritingIMP

Ian M Pindar’s latest books, under his real name are: ‘Hoofing It’ and ‘Hoofed,’ the first and second novels in The Robert Knight Series.

2: Why even bother to write? A lot of pain, for very little gain.

24 Friday Jan 2014

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2: Why even bother to write? A lot of pain, for very little gain.

Quite simply: because you love it. If you don’t, give up now, no one will think any less of you, most won’t know and those you told about your ‘dream’ will have soon forgotten. Once you have ticked the first box, then ask yourself (again) why do I want to write? Here’s why I do it: I want to tell interesting stories that entertain, educate and have soul. Which is the same as saying; writing books that I would love to read. You may have a different agenda; knowledge, make sense of the world, sharing, escape, self-help, leaving a legacy (in case they don’t name a day after you or build a statue – more men this!) literary skill advancement – which may well, just be maintenance, rather than any advance. I could go on, everyone’s different, but, it doesn’t matter what it is, make sure you have an answer, because someone will ask you.

George Orwell said one reason people write is for egotism, some definitely do, but less these days, and again this is more a man-thing. Think about writers that you have heard bragging, nearly all men. So from that point of view Orwell was right. I write like a lot of others because I have something to say, or at least I think I do, and that is part of the belief and confidence you need.

Make sure you have something you want to say. And make sure that something excites you, that falls together at some point in the body of your writing and you feel a mini epiphany. If you don’t feel it, why should anyone else? If you don’t feel it, if you are never going to feel it, don’t bother, go shopping, watch a sports match, watch crappy tele. Be prepared to feel the pain and elation of your characters. I was working on the final instalment in a trilogy of books, 450,000 words in, tears were running down my cheeks and my wife was concerned for my mental health. (“Suffering is only intolerable if nobody cares!” – Cicely Saunder.)

“God, what’s wrong, has someone died?”

“Yeah, in my book!”

“Oh, right. I thought someone had really died!”

Imagine a book that has made you cry, maybe for the first time ever. Mine was: Unbearable Likeness of Being – Milan Kundera, when the dog dies – I don’t even like dogs that much. That is when a light goes on, and you think with greater clarity. I want to be able to do that! Well, now try and imagine that you have lived within a main character, walked in their shoes, thought like them, behaved like them, slept like them, eaten like them, had sex like them. If you are brave enough, you have the power to kill them off, even though you want them to live desperately, you might even lay down your life for them, because they are better people than you! When they die, you cry, but they have to die because in real life people we love die, and you are now not just a writer, you are a healer, you are showing other people they are not alone, if you so choose? You are no longer looking in at the words; you are looking out from the character.

But when you have based a character on someone dear to you that you loved and they die, your loved one dies again, not as bad as the first time (hopefully!), but you have not only written about it and cried, you have to go back and edit it, and you know with almost certainty you will cry again, even though you have told yourself otherwise! – can you deal with that? Can you really? Now you can start to see why some writers are so tortured!

So do you still want to be a fiction writer? If you do, stick close, we might just get through this together – might?

Next week: What should I do before I start? Will passively reading lots of books do it?

thewritingIMP

1: So you want to be a fiction writer? Think very carefully.

18 Saturday Jan 2014

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1: So you want to be a fiction writer? Think very carefully.

Because I did, I gave up my job. I had a good job, well paid – I was a High School Teacher – ‘madness’ I hear you say as you shake your head from side to side, like watching two naked male tennis players. If that is you, taking risks like being a full time writer is not for you, and you need not read any further – Your work here is done. If you want it to be, there is another route for you, which I will come to later.

Surely you don’t just give your job up and expect to make a living from fiction writing? If you worked 55-60 hours every week and some of holidays in a demanding job that you physically and emotionally gave your whole to – You sometimes have to take the plunge right into the deep end. I have always written when I could, instead of watching crappy tele; that is when life’s laundry is not turning you around and around and around. I wrote my first book in 1997 and a major publishing house was very keen on it. When I say keen, it got to the last meeting before they decided, “It is not different enough for a first time novelist.”  It was a very rough and ready draft that I just sent off speculatively – then no interest from any others. So I knew I could do it, if I had the time to dedicate to ‘the craft.’

So a decision had to be made, do you wait until you get a massive chunk of time, because don’t kid yourself, that’s what you need. There is only ever going to be two big chunks of time; if you lose your job, and are not spending every waking hour finding a new one, or when you retire, and by then it’s too late. There are always exceptions to the rule – Frank McCourt is the only one I can think of. Someone said William Burroughs was really old, he was 40. You could argue the likes of George Elliot (40) and Marquis de Sade (47), were, because of the time they lived, and the life expectancy… So if you want to go for it, you need some ‘time’ to do it.

I gave myself a year to produce 4 completed and self-published novels! FOUR, not as crazy as it sounds. I had two not far off and one I had published under another name to re-edit and reissue, and then I was going to write another one from scratch. This is where the experience of ‘doing’ comes in. Everything, absolutely everything, takes at least twice as long as you think. What have I managed, two, about to be three and the second draft of a fourth (you will need at least 4 drafts, or 17 if you are Geoffrey Archer!) So when people say, ‘Are just having a bit of a break?’ It is not as demandingly physical as my old job, but when you have a critical devil and creative angel constantly duelling behind your back, that often spills over into your brain. It is easy to see why Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. You just sit at your type-writer and bleed.” I never understood why some writers are sooo tortured, I do now. Or another way of looking at it, ‘here’s an empty book with 300 pages in – fill it with words, ideas, characters and plot that some other people might want to read!’ Still want to write a novel/novels? Here’s another depressing one: To become good writer you need to write about one million words! Yes, one million, and I am not talking the lines you did in detention in school, although you learnt something quite valuable that day. I used to think that was rubbish, and just rhetoric put about by older grizzled writers – one million is the bare minimum. I have finished two novels and thrown them away, just kept the main idea, Iris Murdoch was right when she said, “Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.”

Money: Don’t expect to make any, if you do, cartwheel through your City centre dressed as a superhereo and have a party when you come to rest. (I have kept my first cheque – £1.87!) Ok, you’ve seen the exceptions to the rule; Rowling, King, a few chick-lit and thriller writers, but these are by far the exception. I set myself the goal of making the national average UK wage (£26.5K or $43.5K) after three years. I have my hands pressed together, but am not expecting a miracle! Forget about minimum wage, that’s for conventional well-defined toilers, not for writers, or hardly anyone in the arts….

So do you still want to be a writer? – Hold your novel in your hand, smell it, feel it next to your skin, go to bed with it, have it placed next to you in your coffin? …Well you might just have the dedication and drive to do it… might!

Next week I will be talking about: Why even bother to write? A lot of pain, for very little gain.

thewritingIMP