Insecticide

Apologies for lack of posts.

I've had two more rejections, from Marjacq Scripts and Curtis Brown.

I haven't been keeping count,  but that's definitely zeros yeses so far.

And yet my self confidence still shines brightly, like a torchlight in a thousand miles of caves.

Anyway, more positively, I chatted to a friend of a friend on the weekend.  She works for a humongous publisher and happily suggested that I send the usual 50 pages and synopsis to her 'because someone in the office next door wants to buy thrillers'.

She also said that agents often don't take new authors on because their quotas are already full, and even if they did take you on, they would not necessarily give you the attention your book required.

She also said the the 6-8 week reading time is because all agents have country houses and are perhaps not as committed to reading manuscripts as they might be.

Anyway, I think she'll be a good touchstone for whether there's any merit in Insecticide at all.

I wait with the bated breath of a starving, genetically-engineered giant wasp.

I'm sure you all read The Guardian...

...But if you don't, they're currently doing a series of guides on how to write various things (comedy, screenplays, children's books etc.), the first of which was on the subject of fiction.

It's a handy little pamphlet, but if you're knee-deep into writing a book already you'll probably have read much of the advice.

However, there were a few interesting bits that I hadn't already seen:

Turn off your word count.  You'll probably re-do most of those thousand words anyway.  (In my own experience, word count helped a great deal during the first 'shit' draft because I was just spewing them out to reach the end of the story.  It was quite gratifying to see that I was 5000 words closer to the end, and therefore 5000 words closer to starting a less shitty draft.  It spurred me on during those quantity-over-quality days.)

Find a simple but compelling way to answer the question, 'What's it about?'  This helps to  keep your confidence up because it avoids having people's eyes glaze over when you reply, 'It's um...well, there's this priest and he's having a bit of a hard time.  Then his cardinal visits and all these weird mind games start...um...but not right away...first there's this nun who comes in and...Wait!  Come back!  It's really good!'

Stephen king says that plot is the good writer's last choice and the dullard's first choice.  He suggests coming up with a couple of characters, putting them in a predicament and watching them trying to work their way free. (it's odd that I've never come across this because it's from his book On Writing, which I've read three times.  Brain like a sieve).

The rest of it seems to be the usual stuff about killing your darlings, creating a biography for each character and avoiding adjectives and adverbs as much as possible.  

There's also Robert Harris's advice to plan your plot in advance, which he then sort of contradicts by saying that maybe you shouldn't.

Anyway, it's at least worth half an hour's procrastination.

If you're looking for any more reasons not to work that could be disguised as research, try Nick Hornby's Blog.  It helps if you're an Arsenal fan (and/or a Nick Hornby fan), but it's an entertaining light read. 

(No more rejections at the mo.)

Authonomy

A couple of days ago Hollie (thanks, Hollie) suggested I check out www.authonomy.com

I had a look and it is really interesting.  

You upload at least 10,000 words of your book and visitors to the site (authors or otherwise) can read what you've written.  If they like it, they recommend it, then all the recommendations make up a chart of the best books on the site.  Each month a panel at Harpercollins (who run it) discuss the top five and if they think any are good enough they might choose to publish them.  There are other mini charts by genre and further little complications that I can't be arsed to go into, but if you've written something, have a look.  If you haven't, have a read (there's another chart for the best talent-spotters) and help the process along.

It is subject to a degree of corruption from friends and family, so when I get round to loading Insecticide up (hopefully next week) I might ask you to speak favourably on its behalf.  Actually, no I won't.  I can't imagine anything more pathetic.  I'll just let you know I've done it and you can proceed as your heart suggests.

No rejections for a couple of days, now.  I assume the other recipients are working out how much they can afford to advance me.

Bloody Revision

When I was at school I hated revision.  I recall spending two hours face down on my bed thinking that my copy of Great Expectations was just a couple of feet away, but I just could not be arsed to get up and re-read it.  The effort required seemed impossible to muster.

Well, now that I'm writing a book I'm faced with the same choice on a regular basis.  

In the last post I suggested to Franfran that no one can write your book for you, but I didn't say it was easy and I didn't mention rewriting the sodding thing.

For those of you have not yet completed a first draft, perhaps I can give you an idea of the reality of that achievement: it's a wonderful, joyous occasion, as satisfying as watching your team win a championship, but then it dawns on you...you're probably not even halfway there.  For me, redrafting and rewriting and revising has been a process that has taken far longer than the first version of the book.  And it's annoying. It's like being asked to retake a penalty that you think you've scored over and over again (sorry, I'm watching football as I type).  And you have to rebuild your enthusiasm each time you revisit those pages, even after you've read your own book ten or twenty times.

Assuming you don't come across giant unsolvable holes in your plot, each subsequent draft should get easier, but it doesn't always work that way.  Once you've polished enough to show friends, they might point out the wood that you've missed because you were staring at the trees.  Then it's a major movement that might lead to further seismic shifts.

I suppose that the impossibility of perfection means that a book is never completely finished.  You've just got to decide when it's uncrap enough to share, then live with that decision.

What fun.

PS: Today's decliner was Diane Banks.  A nice email but with no constructive advice.  Not that I expected any.  These are busy people.

How long is long?

Yesterday, Franfran commented on this blog: I have an elementary problem: I can't write my first book. I'm working on it for 7 years (SEVEN YEARS), and it's just the beginning. Any tips for me in my despair? :(

Far be it from me to suggest I'm able to offer 'tips' to any aspiring writers (my lack of success kind of precludes me from doing that with any authority) but I thought it was an interesting dilemma.

How long does a book take?  How long should it take?  Are we saying from very first idea to final draft, or from first word on the page to last?

I went into the process of my own book in an earlier post, but from the initial idea to this point has been a minimum of four years.  I can't remember exactly when the very first thought came into my mind, but there was a lot of gestation and crappy writing before I actually got anywhere, and it wasn't until last year that I really took it by the scruff of the neck.  I don't know for sure, but for a first-time author that feels about average.  I didn't know what I was doing; I didn't know how bad it was; I hadn't developed any ways of working through problems; I was finding my feet.

For proper authors I'll bet the time it takes to create a book varies enormously.  Barbara Cartland: five minutes.  JD Salinger: we're still waiting.  They might have ten plots knocking around their heads simultaneously or carefully nurture a single story for decades.  This would appear to be another one of those fascinating grey areas that makes writing both maddening and satisfying.

From my point of view, the only 'advice' I could possibly give Franfran is that seven years is nothing if the book turns out right.  If someone could guarantee me that I'd have a really good book written in ten years' time but nothing until then, I'd be delighted.  I'd also say the same thing I've said to several people who tell me they've got a great story that they haven't written: the only person who can do this is you.  Once you accept that, it frees you from the yoke of the myriad excuses that are so easy to find. If you want to write a book there can be no excuses.  You either write it or you don't.  It's as simple as that.

That's the fun bit of today's post.  The dull bit is two more rejections (they're reading/rejecting faster than they said they would): Darley Anderson and Coombs Moylett.  I might start sending a few more letters out. 

  

The extra gland no one told me about.

London International Books have informed me that they would not be interested in representing me.  

As you can see, I decided not to title this post 'third rejection'.  That's because the rejection news is just keeping you up-to-date.  The real point of this post is how compelled you feel to write.

As well as writing ads, I maintain two blogs and am making various changes to the middle of Insecticide. I reckon that ends up at a couple of thousand words a day, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

When I thought I had finished Insecticide I felt a strange mixture of freedom and discomfort. Perhaps the same feeling a convict gets after a long spell inside: you like the idea of doing whatever you want but you miss the routine.  My brain now knows there's a little book-writing section that it has to visit several times a day and it likes that.  If I have nothing else really important going on I always know that I can revisit my places and characters to give them that critical, miniscule tweak that will get the story a few steps closer to the better it can always be.

Sometimes, the writing side of me feels like a kind of extra gland, which gives me real physical sensations that I might have become dependent on without realising it.  I've read a few books about writing and I don't recall anyone mentioning that side effect.  It's very welcome, though.

By the way, when I finally finish Insecticide I'm going to get back into the screenplay I've been writing with my wife.  It's called Fuck Me Backwards and it's about a man whose premature ejaculation is so bad, he goes back in time whenever he has sex.  

I can't wait.

Second rejection.

When I started this blog I thought that the only real appeal in it would be the honesty.

If it all fucks up, any readers I have left can watch me slowly succumb to the indifference of the publishing/agency community.

Well, like I said, the odds of success are tiny, so I feel neither shame nor panic in revealing my second 'no' out of a possible seventeen.  J.K. Rowling had more rejections than that.

So thank you, LAW agency, for your standard 'thanks-but-no-thanks' card.  It was printed on very nice stock but contained no useful feedback.  No feedback at all, in fact, other than the revelation that I'm not right for them.

Roll on number three.  Or acceptance number one.  Whichever.

School of Life: have some bibliotherapy.

The School of Life is a new organisation which enables you to find all sorts of brain-stretching, eye-opening, edifying ways to pass the time.

They also provide a service whereby you can tell them what's up in your life and they suggest books to read that can improve things for you.  They call it bibliotherapy and will oversee your reading for five months or just do a one-off.

Here's a sample issue and answer:

Q: My Dad’s going into hospital for major heart surgery. I want to get him a book that’ll take his mind off it and cheer him up. The thing is, everything I pick up seems to have someone dying in it - if not right at the beginning, then at least before the last page. Also the doctors say it’s bad to get him over-excited. What does this leave me with?

Ella and Susan: Something that will give him such a surprise to receive that it’s guaranteed to push all other thoughts from his mind isThe Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius, written in Latin in about AD150 but available in a brilliant translation by Robert Graves. It’s the story of a young man who has the bad luck to be turned into an ass, which should put his situation into perspective. Abducted by robbers, he joins in their exploits before being finally returned to manhood by the goddess Isis. Bawdy and hilarious, there’s also a serious undercurrent in there about what it means to be human. 
You could also try The Mystic Masseur, by VS Naipaul. Set in Trinidad, it portrays the life of Ganesh, a failed primary school teacher and clumsy masseur who metamorphoses slowly into a healing mystic, proving that anyone can develop extraordinary powers. The tone is light and the atmosphere wonderfully Trinidadian – a sure escape from British hospital life. 
Frankly, though, we’re not convinced that avoiding the subject of death is the way to go here. Since when has denial made everything go away? What he needs is Ben Rice’s slim and utterly beguiling novella Pobby and Dingan, a tale which certainly has death in it (of both the real and imaginary sort), but is also awash with love (without being sentimental). It’s about a little girl called Kellyanne who lives in the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge in Australia. When her two imaginary friends go missing, she’s so convincing that the whole town ends up looking for them. Your Dad will end up believing that love makes anything possible, and be highly likely to make a full and instant recovery.

If this appeals to you, have a go and tell us if it helped.

Bookshops: rubbish places for buying books.

I don't know about you, but when I go into a bookshop, the sheer volume of what's on offer is overwhelming.  I'm not talking about the whole shop, just the tables and shelves near the window.  In Borders I'd guess that there are at least 300 to choose from, and if you're browsing it's hard to know where to start.

I usually look through the top twenty (paper and hard) to see if there's anything vaguely zeitgeisty that I ought to be reading now, or that's just had an interesting review in the weekend papers.  There's rarely anything good there, so I scan the tables.  Are there any good three-for-twos, or has a good hardback just gone paperback?  I usually remain disappointed here, after all, so many books just look and seem the same: why bother spending a week reading one over another?

That's why I often find myself looking in the non-recent fiction or non-fiction sections, which is where I've recently found myself buying some Elmore Leonards and John Updikes.  Then the problem is, I buy three at once, get into the most interesting one and forget about the other two.

Anyway, so far so dull (if you have any strange book buying habits, let me know in the comments), but imagine if you had to select your weekend movie on the same basis: 3-400 movies at the local multiplex, fifteen of which you've heard of; a big new release which you might want to see so that you can chat to the other people who have seen it, but otherwise perhaps twelve or so that interest you from which you have to choose one.  Sounds like a lot of hard work.  I'd probably go home without seeing anything.

This is what's known as the tyranny of choice: too many possible selections means you often end up going for none of them.  We only have a certain amount of room in our lives for so many movies, books, clothes brands, holiday destinations etc.,  so a massive number of possibilities doesn't help the situation, it hinders it.

Even then, publishers don't seem to help themselves.  They seem to think, 'oh it's in this genre (eg, chick-lit), so let's make it look like all the other books in the genre (hand drawn picture of a woman or something she might buy and a handwritten title on a pink background) so no one can distinguish one from another'.  I can appreciate why they don't make chick-lit look like horror, but a little more diversity would surely help.

So I probably buy more on Amazon.  At least you can check out a few reader reviews and buy when the urge takes you.  And you barely notice parting with the cash, especially as there's often someone selling the book you want for 1p.  AND you're not confronted with 300 choices when you log on.  Much less annoying.

I wonder if bookshops are aware of the extent of the imbalance.

Motivation: does shit beat brilliance?

I'm reading Rabbit, Run by John Updike at the moment.  So far, it's absolutely brilliant, but as I continue to turn the pages, I wonder: is it better to read masterpieces so that you're spurred on by seeing just how incredible writing can be, or is it better to immerse yourself in complete cack so you can keep thinking, 'Well, I'm bound to get published because I'm better than this dickhead'?

I think there's a scene in  the Beer episode of Blackadder 2 that springs to mind:

Edmund: Well, it is said, Percy, that civilised man seeks out good and intelligent company, 

so that, through learned discourse, he may rise above the savage and closer to God.

Percy: Yes, I've heard that.

Edmund: Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead to remind me I'm best.

Is that it?  Are we motivated by the greatest practitioners of what we want to do, or demotivated by the notion that we may never scale such heights?

And does the worst work give us a warm feeling of superiority that boosts our confidence for another chapter, or is it like feasting on nothing but McDonald's chicken testicle nuggets, each subsequent morsel rotting the brain/stomach a little more?

Perhaps it's a mixture of the two.

A wise man once said that creative advertising has to be done with a mixture of fear and arrogance.  I think that can apply to so much: enough humility to keep those internal wolves snapping at your heels, but enough confidence to make you believe there's a point to what you're doing.