Can't stop

Since printing out my novel, things have changed. I've completely failed at writing a blog a day, although it had pretty much become two every other day. I'm slipping back into old ways.

When writing my novel, I'd try and start around 9.30am and keep track of how much time I had until I had to leave work. I'd feel good if I had anything more than 5 hours in which to write. Now without a project on the go I find I'm looking at the clock trying to work out ways to kill time before work.

I've got a short story that I keep meaning to write but I'm just not feeling it. I think it's a decent enough idea and it's all planned out and it's worth my time but in many ways it's too similar to my novel. What i mean is that it's sci-fi but not excessively so and I feel inside me that what I want to write is something incredibly, indulgently sci-fi. I want to write a story with robots and spaceships and hovercars and laser beams. I want to lash on helping upon helping of cyberpunk and tech noir motifs.

I've got such a novel planned but that's just the thing; it's a novel. I can't be getting into writing another novel with my first one still on the go, can I? And yet I'm being drawn to it. Planning and writing little snippets of this new novel is brilliantly addictive and it's the only thing stopping me from wasting my mornings.

I guess if I've gotta write, I've gotta write.

72 - Two little three-letter words

I'm still riding a vague wave of euphoria having reached the end of my second draft today. I'd been aiming to finish tomorrow, maybe Thursday but the words couldn't wait to get out today. I feel good about it. Better than I did at the end of the first draft. I feel like I've achieved something. I didn't until now.

When I finished the first draft last year I felt as though I still hadn't written a novel. As I was typing the final 500 words today I could already sense that anti-climactic feeling returning. I expected to feel similarly underwhelmed and not any sense of achievement. Yet as soon as I wrote those two little three-letter words I felt good. Pretty bloody good.

In part this is due to the fact that the first draft trailed off. I wrote 'The End' but it wasn't really the right place to finish. I wrote a half-arsed epilogue that I eventually cut. Today I wrote a finite last line. Also, the first draft was really closer to a half draft. There were frequent parts where I'd written, 'Put in description in later draft.' 'Emotional scene here.' 'Sort this bit out.' It wasn't complete. Okay, so it's still shoddy and needs a lot of work but at least it's complete. I feel like I can honestly say I've written a novel now as opposed to before where it felt like I was still writing one. Hopefully with each redraft the sense of euphoria and achievement will become more intense.

71 - Who am I?

author n 1 a person who composes a book, article, or other written work. 2 a person who writes books as a profession; writer. 3 an originator or creator.

creator n a person or thing that creates; originator.

novelist n a writer of novels.

storyteller n a person who tells stories.

writer n 1 a person who writes books, articles, etc., esp. as an occupation. 2 the person who has written something specified. 3 a person who is able to write or write well. 4 a scribe or clerk.

Can I say that any of these accurately describe me?

70 - The end is nigh

When do you end a story?

Someone told me once that you should write a story until it naturally ends, then go back and remove the last paragraph, page or chapter. Many of us have a tendency to overwrite. Novels can often be compared to songs with endings that fade out over a very long time when often they need to end with an explosive drumbeat.

My story originally had an epilogue. I knew it had to be there. After the first draft I realised it was completely superfluous and unnecessary. Writing chapter 19 the other day I typed a couple of words that I realised could be the new ending. The novel could end there, two chapters earlier than expected. There'd be a whole lot unresolved but is that such a bad thing? For the time being I'm going to continue up until ch.21 but I'll keep this earlier ending it mind. It definitely pays to think about it all in a new light from time to time.

67 - Murder

We give birth to characters. We give them life. We grow up with them. We give them back stories. We get inside their heads and they become a part of us. And then we kill them.

Why?

Because they annoy us? Because it's their time to die? Because it's necessary in order for the plot to continue? Or simply for a shock tactic that will keep readers/viewers interested?

A character's death should serve a purpose. Okay, sometimes that purpose is to not have a purpose. Sometimes killing off a character simply for shock value can be a great way to breathe new life into a piece, but only if done well. Generally character deaths should give birth to something else, no? We can't just go around killing off character after character. Spooks quickly got into the habit of introducing characters just to kill them off and generally it's more of a shock if a character survives.

Like everything else in writing there's no exact formula for killing off characters. I know there are many examples where it works brilliantly and many where it doesn't. We can all think of a TV series where they kill off one of the audience's favourite characters. Sometimes it works. Often it reduces the audience.

I think the best way to know if a character has been killed off well is if we regret their death but we don't regret the decision to write them out. If done expertly, we actually mourn these fictional people's deaths. We feel like we want to go into their world and save them and yet, we know the piece is better for their death. We know that these raw feelings that have been awoken in us should be treasured. For fiction to make us feel like this is phenomenal. We're glad and yet we love these characters. We want them to survive. We want them to have happy endings.

62 - For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

So the title of this entry is thought by some to be the shortest story in the world. It was allegedly penned by Ernest Hemingway. So, can you really tell a story with just six words?

To consider "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" to be a story, I guess we look outside of the words and to the picture they conjure, right?

We think of a couple who were having a baby and bought some baby shoes in anticipation and then the wife had a miscarriage.

Or perhaps, in a slightly less harrowing interpretation, the baby was adopted just after birth because the husband left the wife and she couldn't cope on her own.

Or maybe it's a whole lot more banal than that and the couple decided they didn't like the baby shoes they'd just bought and couldn't return them because they'd lost the receipt.

Then again, perhaps on a drink-fuelled night, a student went to an all-night supermarket and bought some baby shoes for a laugh. When sober, he decided he wanted to salvage some money from his misadventure so put out an ad in the local paper.

Alternatively, maybe it's only a six word advert that simply doesn't qualify as a story.

61 - Stubborn bastard

So there's this arts competition that runs every month that I've been entering since the beginning of the year. Each month there's a brief or theme and you simply have to create a piece that somehow fits the theme. The number of participants varies, but some months it's a couple of hundred, other times it's around fifty, so it's not exactly an overwhelming amount of competition.

Each month I tell myself I'm going to write a very simple piece that somehow relates to the theme and yet, for the third month in a row, I'm experimenting. One month I wrote in a bizarre, stilted phonetic style. The next I created a fake magazine article. This month I'm writing a spam email for my entry. Oh, and they're all sci-fi pieces of course.

Now I'm not sure if my stubborn refusal just to write a simple straightforward story is some belief that I'll only have a chance of winning if my work does something bizarre. Or maybe it's no more than it makes a nice change to writing my novel. I should either congratulate myself for allowing my need to write to takeover, or I should castigate myself for getting too carried away and not being able to write something simple and straightforward.

58 - Where am I?

The pace has slowed a bit on my current redraft. I'm drawing closer to the big climax which is, as it almost always is, the most fun to write. It's difficult, but fun. Everything comes to a head and it's addictive, shaping the way your characters' journey come to an end.

But in many ways it's the part just before the climax that is most important; the quiet before the storm. These lulls in the action before that final act have to be pitched just right. They have to slow the action down enough to let you get a breather and let you take in everything that the characters have achieved so far and what they're soon sure to achieve. They also provide a well-needed break and stop the action rolling forward in an unmanageable, indistinguishable rush. But too slow and you lose all sense of rhythm you've built up and end up boring your audience. Either way, you don't want the scene to feel like it's been awkwardly crowbarred in there to provide variety.

I'm struggling tremendously with this at the moment and though I'm still erring too much on the side of deadly slow and boring, I'm sure (as I keep reassuring myself) that I'll fix it in a later draft. Rather than turning to books or movies for inspiration, I've found the best examples of these 'quiets before storms' in videogames.

One such is in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater when just before the climax, you climb slowly up a ladder (it takes about 3 minutes) as a beautifully haunting vocal rendition of the theme song plays. It's a staggeringly simple and mind-blowing way of slowing the pace.

Even better is in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You've just charged through a warzone, fought your way on to a train, fought your way along the speeding train, crashed the train, climbed up the train's wreckage hanging precariously off a cliff and battled a hit squad before finally collapsing. When you awake, you find yourself in a Tibetan village. You can't run, jump or climb. All you can do is slowly walk towards the end of the village taking in the amazing scenery and the almost tangible sense of sun on your skin. It's not only a perfect way of slowing the pace before the huge final act of the game, but it's easily the best moment in the entire game. And that's how you set up a ending.

52 - Last action weirdo

When we create characters, how much responsibility do we take for their actions? Sometimes we create characters who have a set path and a set purpose; characters who are defined by their actions. But really we should be hoping to create characters that are so fleshed-out that we should know how they'll react to any scenario; characters whose personalities defines their actions, not the other way around.

Some of my characters have started behaving like dicks, and I think that's a good thing. We all behave like dicks from time to time, and to have characters behave thus makes them that little bit more human. I'm beginning to get a feel for how my characters will behave in certain situations, but how much is their reaction my responsibility?

I've been thinking of Last Action Hero in which the hero, Jack Slater, learns that he is fictional and, not only that, has been forced to live a hard life in which his son was cruelly murdered. He hates the films' writers for this.

When I purposefully dangle something good in front of a character, then snatch it away and torture them, that's my fault. I'm being sadistic to these people, even if they are fictional. But when I've created a character and know that they'll now start behaving like a dick to another, is that my responsibility? Or once my characters have become fully fleshed-out, do they have to start taking responsibility for their own actions?

51 - Will this ever end?

Over the Summer months last year I pushed to write the entire first draft of my novel. Frequently throughout I would doubt my ability to get to the end. I wondered if I really would get the satisfaction of writing those two little three-letter words, and yet I did. Rather than taking a step back and feeling pride in myself, however, I threw myself straight back into reading it over and making notes.

I spent the following few months trying very half-heartedly to redraft it. Over that time I was firmly under the impression that I might never get the second draft finished.

So I've been pushing hard this last fortnight and although the end of this draft is clearly in sight, I'm beginning to doubt whether I'll ever complete a final draft. Sure that'll be a long way off but I just can't picture myself ever being so satisfied with it that I'll consider it 'ready.' I don't see myself giving up - I see myself getting caught up in the process of redrafting it again and again for eternity.

But here's hoping, eh?

47 - Routine

Sometimes writing is spontaneous. Doesn't matter where you are, you have to write.

However, as much as I love writing, it doesn't mean that whenever I get a free moment I write. Even if I do want to write, it doesn't mean I will. Often I just can't be arsed. I used to think that writing when I wanted to write, when I needed to write, produced far better pieces than if I forced it, so I'd only write when I really wanted to. Maybe I was right, but writing in that way took a long time to produce anything.

So I've gotten into a habit and One A Day has been a huge help with this. By writing something every day I'm now firmly back in the routine of writing. I don't need to force it. I was worrying at the start of this month that One A Day had replaced my fiction writing. It hasn't. It took about 6 weeks of writing a blog a day but now this blogging has become habitual. I don't feel like I'm forcing these blogs out anymore. I now feel that I can sit down and write, in moderation, at any time. Having rekindled this 'ability' to write without needing the flaming desire to, I transferred this routine to my fiction writing.

As boring as this is, this has been my schedule each day this last week or so:

8:00 - Alarm goes off. Press snooze 5 times.
8:42 - Get out of bed. Have tea. Check emails, Twitter etc.
9:00 - Have shower. Put on comfy clothes. Eat bit of breakfast.
9:30 - With coffee, sit down and write.
10:30 - Have cup of tea and variety of cake.
11:00 - Write.
12ish - Finish.

This method's working really well for me. It's not as much as I could write but 2+ hours a day's not bad and I think it strikes a good medium for the time being between forcing it out and wanting to write. So yeah, thanks One A Day.

46 - Feeling sexy

So I was redrafting Chapter 12 of my novel today and had to write a sex scene. Man, I felt awkward. That's a pretty pathetic attitude to have, right?

I wouldn't include the scene if it didn't need to be there. Unfortunately it does. I don't want it coming across as a desperate attempt to be sexy. As long as it's functional, I'll be happy. Still, I was writing it feeling like a teenager whose dad was trying to have 'that talk' with him.

I tried thinking of other novels with sex scenes and only one sprung to mind as I wrote - American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. If you haven't read it, then know the sex scenes, like everything else in the novel, are graphic but serve a point. They're not too sexy or ludicrous, just graphic. Oh, and they nearly all end with Patrick Bateman mutilating the women involved. Good stuff, but it wasn't much help.

Hopefully by the time I come back to this chapter on the next draft I'll have manned up a bit or done some actual research into better written sex scenes. For now, I'm sure the scene has been imbued with a great sense of awkwardness, and what's sex without awkwardness, right?

43 - I'm my own grandfather. What?

Writing time travel fiction is a nightmare.

I tried writing a short story about a time traveller once and had to give up due to the fact that I couldn't keep a grip on the facts.

She travelled back in time just after her seventh birthday, lived for twelve years in the past then returned to when she came four years after she left.
How old is she again?

He just met for the first time a man that he's already killed.

What?

For him this is the ninth time they've met. For her it's the third. However she's aware of all fifteen times they've met due to the fact that the second time she met him was the final time of them meeting and he filled her in.
Run that by me again.

Quite.

So I've been playing around with it in my latest story and I think, I think, I've just caused a temporal causality loop. At least, I may have. I really don't know.

I think the key hope as a writer is that your readers won't be able to keep up either and so will just give in and go with the flow. Hopefully.

40 - The book inside you

You've got a book inside you, because apparently everyone does, and I want to read it.

I've decided that when I'm older I'm going to have a bookcase reserved solely for books written by people I know. It's one of my bizarre compulsions than whenever I find out that somebody writes fiction, I immediately want to read any and everything they've penned. I want to know what genre they write. What ideas they employ. How they write.

So for anyone reading this blog, if you've ever written a story, I want to read it. This isn't a big plea for you all to send me things to read, but just so you know, there is an audience out here.

Reading a story by some random author is great. Reading a story by someone you know, be that your oldest friend, someone you've gad a pint with, or someone you only know over the internet, is a far deeper thrill.

39 - Twice as long as half its length

How long is a story? The same length as a piece of string, right? Twice as long as half its length.

I know the generally agreed upon word counts for what constitutes flash fiction, short story, novellas and novels, but when get an idea, how do we know whether it will be a short story or an epic tale told over three books?

Obviously certain ideas lend themselves better to shorter tales than longer ones and vice versa. Sometimes it's quite intuitive. You just know that an idea, even if it's only the bare bones of one, requires a novel to be told or only a few sentences.

And I think you need to stick to your gut feeling initially, at least when planning it. Trying to compress a novel into a short story can result in a piece that reads like it's screaming out for more words. And not enough words won't do it justice. But trying to turn a short story into a novel can stretch a great idea to breaking point. Even by beefing it up with subplots you risk diluting the narrative. Too many words can tear apart a piece.

But then as you write, I think you need to write the length that's right. You might start off with the plan for an 80,000 novel but you soon reach 20,000 words and feel you're already over halfway through. Conversely you might find yourself needing 15,000 words extra for a short story. Don't necessarily constrain yourself to what you originally set out to do. It can be heartbreaking finding your piece won't be as long as you intended, or is far longer, but a story needs be the correct length - it shouldn't be the length you want it to be. It should take as many words to tell as it needs, and not one more

38 - Writing music #4

Spotify playlist - 'writing'
This has to be the number one thing I listen to when I write now. It's not a cleverly crafted playlist in which I've obsessed over the order of every song. It doesn't just feature certain genres or indeed only songs I specifically associate with writing. It started off that way, but it soon evolved. I added various songs I hadn't heard for years in that Spotify way. Songs I wanted to listen to as I wrote.

Nine times out of ten when I'm redrafting my novel I'll be listening to this playlist. As bizarre as some of the selections might appear, I've been writing to it for so long that each of these tracks gets my fingers typing, even the screaming melody of In Flames's 'Take This Life.' Wizard.

1. The Awakening - York
2. Offshore - Chicane
3. Now We Are Free - Hans Zimmer & Lisa Gerrard
4. Saltwater - Chicane
5. Adagio For Strings - Tiësto
6. Big Love (live) - Lindsey Buckingham
7. Edge Of Seveteen - Stevie Nicks
8. All Along The Watchtower - Eddie Vedder & The Million Dollar Bashers
9. All Along The Watchtower - Francis Lockwood
10. Never Had It - Flobots
11. Bullets - Tunng
12. Bandages - Hot Hot Heat
13. Sweetness - Jimmy Eat World
14. The Boys Of Summer - The Ataris
15. Huddle Formation - The Go! Team
16. Take This Life - In Flames
17. Trojan Horse - Bloc Party
18. Sway - Lostprophets
19. The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel
20. 747 (We Ran Out Of Time) - Kent

Listen to it here if you desperately want to.

35 - Writing music #3

We Don't Need To Whisper - Angels & Airwaves
I can't honestly say that I think We Don't Need To Whisper is a good album. I don't think I can even say that I like it. But I do enjoy listening to, if that makes any sense.

Like Crystal Castles it was an album I was forced to listen to by a friend, and put it on while I did some writing. So I'd be writing into the early hours night upon night listening to this album. Whenever I hear a song from it all I can think of is those nights I stayed up when the words would pour out of me.

Even if I don't really take it in as I listen, it has great nostalgic value. I'll put it on after 1 a.m., let it wash over me and all I can do is write.

34 - The Chris-ening

I'm rubbish at naming characters. I don't really know what I'm doing. I know that naming characters should be very important. Names can allude to various texts and can suggest subtle whatsits about your character and the plot. I however take names from wherever because they seem like a good idea.

Generally on a first draft of a story I might decide on the main characters' names but for everyone else I use stock names such as Jim and Jeff in the hope that I'll have decided upon better names on the redraft.

So I'm currently about halfway through redrafting my novel and have met most, but not all, of the cast. What I've got is:

1 character named after the lead from a favourite novel
1 character named after a pot plant at my friend's work
1 character named after someone in The Bible
1 character named after a friend
3 characters named after work colleagues who asked me to name characters after them
4 characters named after work colleagues who didn't ask me to name characters after them
1 character named after someone l met on the train who asked me to name a character after them
1 character named after a character in a video game
A variety of characters given the first name that popped into my head

I'll give them better names in the third draft.

30 - Writing music #2

Destroy Rock & Roll - Mylo
Destroy Rock & Roll got me through University. I must have listened to it while writing every single essay given to me. It's that peculiar mixture of being relaxing and soothing as well as being energetic and inspirational. One of my favourite memories of my three years in Aberystwyth is writing an essay, listening to Mylo, next to an open window with a cool sea breeze and coastal sun flowing in.

Unfortunately there's not a huge reason to write essays once you've left uni, so I don't listen to it as much when I write now. I do put it on now and again, but prefer other albums that I associate more with fiction writing.

I'll listen to it on train journeys all the time and train journeys, as other bloggers will testify, are quite possibly the greatest place for brainstorming ideas. I'll sit with a notepad and Destroy Rock & Roll playing, scribbling endless nonsense with a broken biro. Beautiful.

For me, this album is essay writing music, it's brainstorming music, it's travelling music and it's summer music.

26 - Writing music #1

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Christmas 2008, like every Christmas, saw my brother receiving a heap-load of obscure albums and not a lot else. I have a pretty poor music taste and knowledge. His is apparently overwhelming and vastly superior. He forces albums upon me all the time and generally I never get round to listening to them, because I like sticking with what I know and I just don't like what I hear coming from his room.

Anyway, that Christmas he forced Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles onto me. Determined to give it a go, I stuck it on while I did some writing and it just worked. It fitted perfectly. It's a simply extraordinary album that somehow manages to both play along unobtrusively as I write, and yet affect me and spur me on. Particular favourite tracks are Alice Practice, Crime Wave and Black Panther.

Unlike other albums I put on when writing, this doesn't have a specific association. I'll play it when I write fiction, when I write non-fiction. I'll play it at night, during the day and especially when I'm sitting on my bed with a notepad jotting down a hundred and one bad ideas.