Week Twenty-Eight: The Importance of Retreating

Welcome back to the main blog after a few guest posts and a random promo. (My debut thriller got to Number One in the UK Kindle chart - yippee! Sorry, my ego is still loving that.) This is where we resume normal service. Assuming it was normal to begin with, of course.

This week I want to talk about the importance of retreating. I don't mean in the face of an enemy offensive, I mean as a writer, i.e. packing up your kit bag and toddling off to some quiet hotel or place in the country or friend's empty flat for a few days or even weeks in order to devote serious time to your current work in progress.

Ditch home comforts, slip a discreet laptop into your rucksack, and slope off for some quality writing time alone.

As the mother of many noisy kids, three of whom are now home educated, I find a writer's retreat invaluable, especially at the start or end of an important writing project. But I accept that not everyone is like me. (It's hard, but yes, I have found a way to accept this strange truth.) Some people may already live alone and not need to get away for peace and quiet. They may have peace and quiet coming out of their ears, and would prefer to write in a floating cocktail party. Others may be like me, but need a change of scenery so their creative brains can recharge (rather than so they can write without endless distractions).

Whatever the reason, it does seem that many writers produce more when they go away specifically to write than when they stay home and follow their usual routine. More words. More pages. More chapters. More books.

I guess this is not merely because of wonderful distractors like kids and spouses, who, darling things though they are, do seem intent on disturbing us right when we're in the middle of an important scene. And often for no good reason at all, it seems to me. Simply because they can't find clean socks, or you've absentmindedly left their pizza in the oven for forty minutes and it's now a charred, smoking wreck.

No, going on retreat also avoids all those boring domestic tasks that get in the way of a good story. Some of these are unavoidable daily essentials like shopping or household maintenance. Typical scenario is you start to write, then have to stop because you're remembered the old fridge is due to be collected by the council. Then the cats need to be wormed. Someone has to find the Christmas tree at the back of the shed - and put it up! Or the milk has run out, so a quick trip to the shop is in order. And that permission slip still needs to be signed. And where the hell did we put last summer's wetsuits?

If all the above are not just part of Novel Avoidance Syndrome, you finally close the door with a sigh and sit down to bash out a few thousand words. But then the phone rings and you spend the next forty-five minutes having a circuitous conversation with Mad Aunt Maud about the aliens she can hear scratching around in her loft at night.

"He crept barefoot across the shards of broken glass and ... " Oh shit, is that the phone again?

Suddenly a writing retreat seems more and more appealing. We open our laptops and book a place, pack our cases, jump in the car or taxi, and vamoose ...

So we retreat to concentrate on our work. On ourselves as writers. Retreating is about creating and ring-fencing an important space in our lives and minds which is for nothing but writing. And the odd panini.

There will be some who can't stand their own company though, or who prefer being with other writers when wrestling with a manuscript. For these, any residential writing course will be useful, but especially a 'retreat'. My own favourite has always been those run by the marvellous Arvon Foundation. I've been on many courses with them, and even tutored one in Scotland. You get to write in a room of your own all day on one of their 'retreats' or to share your work with experienced tutors on a course if you prefer. Plus chat with other writers at meal-times and in the evenings. It's heaven for writers who get enough of their own company all year round. And of course there are many other writing retreat-style courses all around the country.

If retreating alone, here are a few useful things to consider:

What kind of retreatee are you?
If you prefer silence and solitude, a cottage in the woods or on the moors is an excellent choice if your budget will stretch to it. But beware the branch squeaking against the window in the night or the wind moaning under the eaves. If you're writing a ghost or horror story, it might be best not to go for total isolation, especially in winter (when the rents are cheapest).

I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that creaking sound upstairs ...

If you like noise and bustle and people, but anonymity with it, a city centre hotel is perfect. I have gone down both routes and find them equally useful. A budget hotel is often the cheapest option, but make sure the chain you pick has a good desk and chair for working at. And a comfortable bed! (You can always take a laptray for writing in bed if you get sick of the desk.) I usually go for Premier Inn but everyone is different. Ask if there's a coffee shop or restaurant attached or nearby - you will soon find the four walls of your room a little unvarying.

Avoid free wifi if you can, though it's becoming widespread at hotels. You will only end up spending your entire retreat on Twitter or Facebook.

What resources do you need?
Under this heading I include drinks and snacks - a bunch of grapes or a Pot Noodle can be a lifesaver when you're on a winning streak and don't want to go out for food - and books on writing or research materials. Historical or thriller writers often find themselves carting around ludicrous amounts of maps, manuals and background books. Not great if you're travelling by train or bus. If you can get such books on Kindle or iPad etc., all the better, though personally I find it easier to flick to a frequently-consulted page in a paperback or hardback.

I take how-to books on writing with me to all retreats. Like comfort food. Often I never open them. But they're on hand in case I get stuck. The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler is my all-time favourite, full of practical and inspirational - if sometimes oddly couched - advice. It's about screenwriting ostensibly, but can be adapted for any medium.

Other special items (beyond drinks/snacks/research material) to consider taking include:

laptray (for writing in bed or on a sofa/garden bench)

any DVDs that could be useful (not your fav film, in other words, unless you're writing something similar!)

headphones (for excluding outside noise and/or listening to music)

warm and/or comfortable clothing (for slouching around in) 

bedsocks or slippers

a local map or map app

your dongle or whatever you use for internet access (to perform back-ups to Dropbox etc: make sure it's up-to-date/covers that area)
a USB pen/data stick for belt-and-braces file back-ups

any extra pillows or comfort items you need for sleeping

--- and don't forget chargers for all electrical items!

How much should I expect to write per day on a retreat?
I often write very little the first day or two, depending on how long I'm away. If I have a week or more, I like to get the feel of the place first and get comfortable there, like an animal laying down its scent. Then I work hard, maybe ten hours a day at the desk, until the day before leaving, when I start to wind up mentally and look back over what I've managed. If it's only a mini-break, you may need to work from day one all the way through to the last minute, which can be an exhausting process.

Generally, I expect to write between 3000 and 7000 words a day of neat prose, by which I mean prose I've tidied up as I go along. Those who write fast, dirty drafts might do far more. We all write at a different pace, so whatever works for you is perfect.

Well, as I swing off on my latest writing retreat, to a quiet and unassuming city hotel (with free wifi, unfortunately), good luck with your own endeavours!

Week Twenty-Three: The Rehabilitation Of Lost Novels

If there's one thing most novelists have in abundance, it's failed or unwanted novels in the bottom drawer. And perhaps most of them deserve to be there, products of a mind not yet attuned to the rigorous demands of plot, structure, narrative.

But among those lost manuscripts, there may be the occasional gem. Something worth retrieving from that bottom drawer, dusting off, polishing, and resetting in a more publishable context.

Here follows the story of how my latest new release, MIRANDA, came into existence.

Thirteen years ago, I gave birth to twin boys, and immediately began to write a novel. It sounds strange, but I felt released by their birth like a sprinter by the starting pistol. You might think breastfeeding and caring for newborns twins should have kept me too busy to write. But at the time, I had not written for some years. I had been wandering in a creative desert, afraid of failure but thirsting for inspiration, and suddenly being granted that inspiration was like stumbling across an oasis.

So I jumped straight in and slurped up all the water!

Besides, these were not my first children, and in a way, the twins proved relatively easy to care for in those muddled early days after a birth. I had a loving partner who was only too happy to do his share, and two older girls for baby-minding, and the twins shared a cot and seemed to keep each other company, which meant fewer needy wakings between night feeds. So perhaps my situation was a little easier than most mothers of twins.

I had agreed to manage nights alone - as breast-feeding is a hard job to share! - so I bought a baby monitor and set up a temporary study for myself. Because within days of the birth, I had been blessed with an idea for a story. A story about the generations, about handing things on to your children. Not just possessions, but genetic material, memories, looks, personality, even secrets. The book had to be written, it would not be still. So I started to write, mostly at night, and kept an ear open for the babies over the monitor.

"Never resist when inspiration strikes, but get it down as quickly as possible."

Wasn't I tired? Well, oddly enough, no. I felt light as a bird in those first months after the birth. I felt as if I had slept all through that long, dragging twin pregnancy, and now I had been released from my burden and was floating!

I have never needed much sleep, and having to breastfeed twins gave me the perfect excuse to stay awake all night, then cat-nap during the day. It was a glorious experience, and I look back on that time as one of enhanced creativity, where I was totally alert and aware, and everything just flowed ... after years of stagnancy.

My partner's mother visited us during that period, and scolded me for being so self-indulgent as to be writing a novel when I should be concentrating on my newborns. Her disapproval was tangible. Mothers should not be writers, was her opinion. But I paid no attention. Babies don't know what you're doing when they're asleep. So I kept writing.

The book took six weeks to write. It wasn't a long novel, only 70,000 words. I initially called it THE BLOOD ARK, thinking about genetics, and after some tweaks, I sent out the first three chapters to a few agents, as my former agent had retired. None of them were interested. I had committed the cardinal sin of stepping away from my 'chosen' genre. My debut novel - about women in sport, marketed as chick-lit - had bombed, and this was a very different book. This was literary fiction, and there was no getting around that.

Easily disheartened, I put the novel away without any more attempts to place it. I decided it must be flawed beyond redemption if three or four agents had turned it down. (Yes, I was very naive.)

Being a bit deranged, I had got pregnant again when the twins were only six months old, and the new pregnancy and two house moves in quick succession were consuming my energy. Soon after that, I started writing erotic fiction to help pay the bills, and forgot all about THE BLOOD ARK. My literary novel in the bottom drawer. The book that had to be written, but would probably never be published.

"I can fix this book ... I just need more experience."

Enter Kindle Direct Publishing and the brave new world of self-publishing. And my own independent publishing venture that sprang out of that, Thimblerig Books.

I had long intended to resurrect my literary novel. But my memory of it was of a deeply flawed book that would need masses of rewrites and also be hard to place, having been written over a decade ago. Then this summer, I had a rush of blood, opened the ancient file, and started to read.

The book was a lot better than I remembered. Having written many novels since putting this one away, I saw at once how the structural issues - that had seemed insurmountable when I abandoned it in the early noughties - could be fixed with a few rigorous tweaks. I set to work, and after only a few weeks, the book was ready for copy-editing.

The biggest change, for me, was the title. It had been THE BLOOD ARK in my head since its inception. But now, with a stronger grasp of the market, I saw how that sounded too much like a thriller and would fail to reach the right readership. I toyed with various fashionable alternatives - titles with the words GIRL or WOMAN are very popular right now, as are curious phrases, like ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE or ME BEFORE YOU. But in the end, I decided on something very simple. And more in keeping with the original inspiration for the story.

So I present to you MIRANDA, the novel of my postpartum insomnia, taken down, dusted off, tweaked and retweaked, edited and repackaged thirteen years on.

MIRANDA: on sale now at Amazon

No abandoned novel is ever entirely lost to the world. It can be neglected and forgotten, but you never know when it may resurface in your consciousness. So if you have any novels languishing in that bottom drawer, why not take them out and read them again? Take notes, be generous to yourself, look at them structurally above all else - structure is usually where you'll find the most serious flaws in an abandoned novel - and consider, from your position of greater experience, how they could be fixed.

Rewrite in sections, trying to avoid any major changes that will alter or over-write the DNA of your original idea. Novels, it seems to me, come to us with their themes intact. (Even if we don't recognise that at the time.) So when we rewrite in any major way, we risk destroying that thematic integrity. Too massive a change can 'corrupt' the original idea, to borrow a word from computing, and the book will always be flawed after that, however much we struggle to fix it.

Unfortunately, if the original concept was flawed, and only major rewrites that change the book's thematic structure can hope to fix it, you may be better off giving up and starting a new project instead. Some books are beyond redemption. (Often because of botched rewrites in the past, before you were experienced enough to understand what you were doing, or perhaps because of bad advice.) But it may be worth trying again later, because the more books you write, the more experienced you become as a novelist, and the greater the distance you are putting between yourself and any earlier, failed novels. You may also become either famous enough to make it financially worthwhile to brush off old material and resubmit, or poor enough to make it imperative that you find new books to flog.

So the convergence of these three factors is usually required before a writer can successfully mine for lost gold:

EXPERIENCE - Writing is a craft, and the better the craftsperson, the better the artifact. So no attempt at writing a novel is wasted, as you are learning all the time you are failing.

DISTANCE - Think of Henry James and his 'figure in the carpet' analogy. The closer you are to a failed work of fiction, the less likely you are to see the pattern clearly. Step back a few years, or even a decade, and what needs fixing may suddenly spring out at you.

NECESSITY - It's damn hard work, fixing a flawed novel. Only people with great need or too much time on their hands are likely to manage it without failing again. And no good novelist has too much time on their hands ...

In the end, only you can know for sure whether your abandoned novel is worth saving from that dusty bottom drawer. But if it is, rejoice. For there is no satisfaction like the rehabilitation of a long-lost story.

MIRANDA is published by Thimblerig Books on Friday August 21st 2015.

QUESTION: Do you have any old unpublished novels you want to resurrect and rehabilitate?

Week Ten: Planning Your Novel

For me, not planning my novels before writing them would be like marrying someone I had never met.

A novel starts with a single idea. Sometimes a line or two of dialogue. Most often for me it's a visual scene in my head. Two lovers parting at dawn. A man creeping through the darkness, a knife in his hand. A body twisting slowly in the wind ...

From that idea or line or concept or image springs the plan. The blueprint of a novel.

Some writers - probably shaking their heads over my foolishness at this very moment - eschew the plan. They are 'pantsers', i.e. they write by the seats of their pants. They have no desire to know how their novel ends; that would spoil the surprise! So they sit down and write out that line of dialogue or that image in their head, and whizz, they're away, thumping the keys, page after page until they discover who dunnit.

I can't speak for those people, as I have never done that. Or at least not with any success. For me, things go badly awry when I attempt to write without making a plan. For years I wrote literary-style novels that meandered this way and that, and were either unfinished or became curiously flat and lost in the end stages compared to the great energy and promise of their opening chapters.

Then I fell on hard times, and like many writers, turned to pulp fiction to scratch a living.

The discipline of writing pulp fiction to a deadline has always been a fantastic training ground for writers ...

Writing pulp fiction was my great salvation as a novelist. The money was not wonderful, and neither were the novels themselves, but it was work I could easily do at home while breastfeeding baby twins.

The parameters were fairly narrow: not formulaic, per se, but certainly there were strict expectations about length and content. And deadlines were tough. Having only 8-10 weeks in which to write an 85,000 word novel was not unusual. So I learned in a hurry how to plan and structure one of these novels so it would not fall apart in the middle. And my editors wanted - demanded, in fact! - a synopsis before they would commission a new book from me. So I would plan the novel from start to finish over a few days, then write a shiny one or two page synopsis to hook them into offering for it. Then the finished book had to match the expectations set up by this synopsis, of course, so it would morph into a working outline for me to follow as well as a selling document.

After years of drifting along fruitlessly in a literary dream, writing a novel became all about structure: beginning, middle, end; goal, obstacle, resolution; trigger, disaster, success.

In basic terms, your main character enters the first scene in one situation, then turns in a different direction because of some triggering action or event. A new goal has been set for them: win the lover's heart, rescue the hostage, save the world, or perhaps just survive a series of dangerous obstacles. These obstacles need to behave like a crescendo: each is more dangerous than the last, until the ultimate test is faced. In some genres, they call this 'the dark moment', the point at which things seem to be going the heroine's way at last, and then abruptly, a mistake is made, a baddy comes back to life, and all hope is lost.

Our intrepid hero and heroine, braving the whirlpool .... James Gillray: Britannia between Scylla & Charybdis.

As writers we have to steer our characters through the whirlpool of this 'dark moment' and out the other side into catharsis, to sail on into the future, all questions answered, all loose threads drawn up and satisfactorily resolved.

At some level at least, your plan needs to represent the successive stages of this archetypal story. You may be quite mechanical about it, estimating chapter length and events within each chapter, or chart graphs on a whiteboard or a series of sticky Post-It notes. Or you may dash off a loose plan on the back of an envelope, then pin it above your desk - or chuck it in the bin. Whatever works for you is best. But if it's not working, you may want to try another method. I highly recommend the whiteboard and stickies route. I have a thought, scribble it on a stickie, then push it onto the wall next to my desk while I work. It saves having to reach for a notebook, then recall which notebook and where I put it.

The trick is remembering to check your stickies occasionally. Not find them after you've finished the novel, and think, ah ...

Every story has a shape, a 'story arc' that exists in the head long before it exists on paper. For truly massive, multiple-character novels, this shape can be horrendously complex to plot out, taking in many different events in any number of characters' lives, so their high points and low points all coincide to create a really strong climax.

The important point of planning is to establish that arc in your subconscious, so while you're typing away furiously late at night, lost in a character's struggle, some deep-buried part of your brain is remembering that story arc and instinctively laying it down and sticking to it as each scene unfolds.

But if you really can't face the idea of knowing in advance how your novel will end, there's always the no-planning, 'just type Chapter 1 and start writing' approach. Good luck with that!

QUESTION: are you a planner or a pantser?

Week Seven: Learn To Love Your Synopsis

I've been writing a new synopsis this week, so this topic is of acute interest to me. The discussion that follows is an amalgam of several I have written before on the art of writing a synopsis.

What Is A Synopsis? 

Generally speaking, a synopsis is a short document, sometimes one page, maybe 2-3, in which you briefly describe your main characters and the chief action of your story. Leave out anyone and anything non-essential. It's not a blurb - i.e. cover copy. That merely sets out a scenario without giving you the end result. In the synopsis you must tell the reader not only how it starts, but how it ends. And you're in trouble if you don't actually know by now.

 

This is a selling document, so write and present it professionally. Check your spelling and punctuation. Try to sound sane. This may be your only chance to showcase your writing skills to a busy agent or editor.

Whatever you do, keep the synopsis easy to read and check that, even if the book is dark, it never feels depressing or dull. If you enjoyed writing your book, let it show in the synopsis. Let your story shine.

Be a great synopsis writer: it's never too soon to start taking your work seriously.

 

What's the Point of a Synopsis?

Writers hate the synopsis. It interferes with the old illusion that writing fiction is a mysterious creative process, handed to us by a lyre-playing Muse, to be messed with at our peril. It makes our writing feel like a grubby commercial venture.

But you have to tell agents and publishers what's in it for them, just as a blurb tells the reader what to expect inside the covers of a book. Though a synopsis is more than an extended blurb. It has to achieve a number of goals. First, and most importantly, it should tell the person reading it what happens in the book. Note, not what the book is about, per se, but what happens and in what order.

Produce professional-looking synopses

Don't Include Everything

That's trickier than it sounds. Good novels often have sub-plots that weave through the main plot. So should we mention those or leave them out? If they have a genuine bearing on the main plot, they need to be in the synopsis. If not, then we can safely leave them out.

Some synopses are only a page long. With two to three pages, you can afford to mention the milk-maid's dalliance with the master, which provokes the son to leave home and join the army, which makes the wife hate the husband - and the freckle-faced milk-maid - when her beloved boy is subsequently killed in action. Otherwise, just start with the granddaughter packing her bags years later ...

Only mention these subsidiary details in passing. A few words should suffice.

Basically, a synopsis should sketch out the plot, location and main characters without going into too much detail. It should convey genre, where appropriate. Best not to open though with 'This is a funny book.' Keep the slick one-liners for the 3-minute pitch.

But Always Tell Them How It Ends

One common thing writers feel instinctively when describing their stories in advance is that they shouldn't reveal the ending. 'I won't tell you what happens after that ... but it's very exciting.' We don't do that in the synopsis. It's a non-fictional document. It's like packaging. It should tell the buyer what's inside, and how many grams of fat, and is that saturated or Omega-3?

In the synopsis, we tell the editor precisely what happens at the end, and why. Yes, even if it's going to spoil it for them.

Be A Little Imperfect

Having said all that, the synopsis must be a flexible document above all else. It should be constructed like a house in an earthquake zone, to move subtly with changes of mind and heart. It should not resist such changes and tumble down, killing your protagonists in their beds. Agents and publishers have an infuriating tendency to ask for changes. Sometimes they ask for them at the start of the writing process and sometimes halfway through. (Or later, when the book is actually finished.) You will need to be open to those changes, and not have your story so tightly bound together that no daylight can be admitted between plot points.

So the ideal synopsis is a little imperfect: it should err on the side of being too lightly written, kept flexible, with gaps - rather than holes - left for the editor's input, and neither too pithy nor over-ornate. A synopsis should always suggest rather than state baldly.

Keep things flexible

A Collaborative Document

Never forget that your synopsis will become, in many cases, a collaborative document. Writing a novel isn't quite like writing a screenplay, but by the end of the process, a number of different experts - often with clashing views on how a novel or even a synopsis should be written - will have stuck their fingers in the pie of your story and cheerfully wiggled them about. So be prepared for interference and try to view it as helpful in most cases. By the end, you may no longer recognise the novel you intended to write. C'est la vie!

Not Written On Loo Roll

Sadly, the days of the writer as an eccentric genius who goes off into a hotel room for ninety days and emerges with a ground-breaking novel written on a roll of perforated paper are long gone.

The synopsis has become unavoidable for most people, and can be one of the banes of a writer's life. But it represents the key to the first gate of the contract, beyond which a writer may not pass without permission. This may not be ideal for every writer, and there is a strong case for rebellion. But while the people who pay our wages continue to say we have to produce them, it might be wiser simply to capitulate.

QUESTION: do you love or hate writing a synopsis, and have you got any tips on how to do it?