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 Seventeen: Researching Your Novel

Every novel requires some form of research, even if it's only where you might buy a ribbon for an old typewriter like this. Sounds like detective work? It has its moments ...

Every novel needs to be researched, not just stories set in bizarre or exotic locations, or historical novels. If you already know your world well - you work or live there, for instance - this research may be minimal. But you will still need to allocate time to do it. For instance, does your fictitious law firm share its name and location with a real-life company? Better change that, or you risk being sued. And how many doors does that particular make of hatchback have?

Basic tips include: keep a notepad at the ready, in case you spot an answer to a riddle while out and about, or hear an interesting fact on television; keep copious, detailed notes of all your research, preferably in one place (I learned this the hard way); if taking notes from the internet or a book, keep a note of URLS, article titles and author names, page numbers and full publishing details (remember to do this even when you cut and paste, so you can refer back to that website if you later need more details or are compiling a list of acknowledgements or a bibliography). Also, importantly, if a fact is vital to your story, double or indeed triple-check it with a respected source. Don't just accept Wikipedia's version, in other words!

Try to research in a meaningful way. If you're looking up a fact about handguns, don't get sidetracked into reading three chapters on field artillery, however fascinating. Don't let research become a fetish.

Some facts can be easy to research or double-check. A few clicks and you have that missing data. But for complicated settings, especially historical ones, you may need to compile a vast wealth of accurate, double-checked details, some of them hard to discover in the first place. Sometimes thorough research may be your only path to a finished manuscript. Sometimes you can type Chapter One with an easy conscience, and deal with issues as they come up.

So how to go about this?

I can't write this novel yet. I don't even know what my main protagonist's surname should be. He's Russian, born 1947, his father was a political prisoner ... Time to hit the books!

Research First, Write Later
Some writers prefer to do their research before they begin the novel. That way, all the information they need is close at hand. They can plan a book, secure in the knowledge that their plot hinges on a particular stagecoach journey time in 1823; not only have they checked that timetable, they know all the inns along the way, what kind of meals they might have offered a weary traveller, and even how the coach driver would have been dressed.

But this method - research-first, write-later - holds considerable dangers for the unwary writer.

If you think research is more entertaining than the hard work of writing the actual novel, and have not set yourself a cast-iron deadline for beginning to write, you may find yourself drifting. One month, two months, three ... and the novel is never started. In the end, you may find you've spent a whole year on researching the minutest detail of your proposed story, and are now so bored by it, you chuck it over for some new, as yet unresearched idea.

To avoid this danger, decide beforehand when you are going to start writing the novel - and stick to it! Anything you don't know by then will have to be researched on the hoof. Which brings me to method number two for researching a novel.


Researching on the Hoof
Those impatient to start chapter one may well decide they know enough to begin writing without further research. Hopefully these are not delusional types whose efforts will soon end in disaster, but those who have prior experience of writing about this world or location - or are in the category I mentioned above, i.e. they know it intimately because it's their everyday world. My own preference is for plunging in at page one, perhaps after a cursory check on date, time, location for my story, then researching on the hoof, i.e. as I write.

The method is simple.

You're writing an historical novel, and your protagonist is changing her dress. You can't recall what might have been worn to an informal soiree in the late Regency. Or you know the gown, but not the shoes. What would they have looked like? For my Tudor stories, I have used the internet and also fantastic book and website resources like The Tudor Tailor to ensure my descriptions of clothes for various social classes are as accurate as possible. So to check those facts, to get each tiny detail correct, you stop work for a few minutes - hopefully not more than an hour! - and do your specific research. Then get back to the job of writing.


Visiting Locations
Whichever method you use, if you need to visit a certain location for your book - a local factory, for example, or an area of London - you will need to plan ahead. There's no good visiting after you've written that scene, as seeing a place with your own eyes may completely change your approach. If it proves expensive - for instance, involving a trip abroad - try to find a way to use that location again. That way you're getting more than one book for the cost of a single research trip.

Take notes and photographs, which should be as exhaustive as possible. Write down what you photographed and in which order so you can readily identify your shots later. Buy postcards, guide books, local maps. Grab secret candid shots of the locals for your own use. Making your own film on an iPhone or camera is also advisable if you need to really capture the atmosphere or remember how you got from A to B. After all, you don't know when you will be able to return there. (You could even share it on Youtube and social media, and get a little advance publicity for your project.)

Don't simply wander a location though, taking notes and photographs. You're a novelist, which means you need to write in the narrative voice of a person who is actually in that location, at a certain time, doing particular things. So approach your visit as if you are that person. Imagine where he or she would stand or sit, how they might act, what kind of smells and sights and textures they might experience. Make notes later, if you like, but that part may need to be deeply internalised. Drawn into yourself and experienced through the senses of your narrator, in other words. And that's something no external fact-finding can replicate.

Plus, don't forget that research is a legitimate tax-deductible expense if/when your book is published. So even if you don't have a contract yet, keep all receipts from research trips and general expenses.

When writing THE QUEEN'S SECRET, I was lucky enough to live only a few miles from Kenilworth Castle, where all the action takes place in 1575. Being a 'local' meant I was able to visit the location frequently, check all my facts personally, and really soak up the atmosphere.

Writers' Resources
Never underestimate the usefulness of long library visits, especially to specialist libraries - though getting a Reader's Ticket may be tricky - or a good research book written by an expert, but the internet is where you're likely to find most nuggets of information quickly. It's also great for turning up odd information, the kind that's hard to pinpoint in a book. The toilet habits of medieval princes, for instance.

Join groups on Facebook in your chosen field, or on Goodreads, or an informative group blog like English Historical Fiction Authors - anywhere people gather to exchange information. If really stuck, try a shout-out on Twitter and hope people retweet your request for information until someone turns up an answer or a possible resource to try. Social media is a great place to ask research questions, so make friends with other people interested in your research area. Some historical programme presenters are actually on Twitter and might reply to a question or two, if you're polite and not pushy.

And get yourself a Youtube account, or browse there. If you can't visit a location, you may find it's already on film on Youtube - someone's amateur holiday film, perhaps, or a genuine expert's view, perhaps compiled themselves or a snippet from a television programme. It's free, and it all helps.


Employing the Writer's Flannel
Sadly, it's not always possible to find the fact you need, or not at the time you need it. In that case, you may need to use 'writer's flannel' to bypass your problem. This is a kind of textual shuffle, a little narrative sleight-of-hand, whereby you appear to have used a fact, but have actually sidestepped it. In other words, when in doubt, write around the unknown fact and hope nobody notices. They probably won't. 'Her shoes pinched' is better for conjuring up an atmosphere than a detailed description of the stitching and fabric of a pair of Regency shoes.

There can be such a thing as too much research, often evidenced by large wodges of barely digestible information or description. The ideal is to digest it all yourself, then only use a small percentage of what you know, keeping the rest on hand so that you sound like an authority on the subject, yet never bore the reader with your excess of knowledge.

Queen Victoria finished her slice of plum cake and glanced at the text message alert on her iPhone ... wait, that doesn't sound right. Oh hell, no one will notice!

Finally, remember that no one version of history, or indeed any other 'fact', is the definitive one. Some facts and dates may be reasonably solid and easily verified: when Queen Victoria died, when the First World War began, the current members of the cabinet etc. But most 'facts' are rather more slippery than that. How long is a piece of string, how many minutes to soft boil an egg? Bear this simple truth in mind when taking notes: just because the writer of an article or book is respected as an expert and has letters after their name does not mean their version of the truth is the most accurate one. We all have opinions and biases, and that includes 'experts'.

I repeat: trust no one. Do your research, double and triple-check it, then write what you believe to be the truth. Oddly enough, that's all anyone else can do too.

QUESTION: do you prefer to research beforehand or on the hoof? Does it jar you out of a book when you spot a fact that's wrong?

Week Eight: Dealing With Rejection

Dear Novelist, your book sucks.

This week I have decided to talk about how writers can deal with rejection. I've written about this before elsewhere, so here are my expanded thoughts. I hope they're as useful to anyone facing this situation as they have been to me. Please do join in and comment afterwards!
 

Why does it hurt so much to have a novel rejected? 

By the time you’ve finished a novel, it’s become a part of you. To have it rejected by an agent or publisher can feel like a personal affront. And indeed sometimes it is personal. A novel is an extension of who we are, yes, but when a book is rejected, occasionally it's not because the book sucks: you may not be the most marketable person around, and these days publishers want authors they can sell, not shy types with odd histories. They may pass on a reasonable book from someone with no social media presence, or whose track record makes them nervous.

The first is fixable. Get yourself a Twitter and Facebook account, and learn how to blog with the rest of us poor promo-monkeys. The second is more insidious. You may need to be equally sneaky if earlier books have bombed and no one will touch you. Send out your book under a different name, and remember to create a whole new persona to go with it - including new social media accounts! (There's no escape from it, is there?)

Yet rejection is an intrinsic part of the publishing business. We can fix these problems, but we still go through it at some stage, and sometimes it’s the quickest way to improve, to get a feel for what's currently good and what's not. 

So, how to cope with the hurt of rejection, and still keep writing and believing in yourself?

Stay professional (even if it kills you). Allow yourself some natural moments of pique - throwing darts at the rejection letter used to be a favourite of mine, before everything became electronic - then get yourself in hand again. Rejection is horrible. But you can’t please everyone all of the time, and you can never be entirely sure why a book was rejected, so you might as well shrug it off and move on. It’s as simple as that. 

Learn to shrug off rejection and keep writing. There's always the next book.

Still seething? Okay. Ask yourself, was your rejection justified?

Consider whether your work was less polished than it should have been, missing some vital element that would have made it more successful, or if it was on the wrong track altogether. Then act on your findings. This should not be an emotional decision. If advice or feedback came with the rejection, take some time to digest the hurt, then sit back and assess it coolly. Not all advice is helpful. Some of it may be plain wrong. Perhaps you simply sent your book to the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong time. We all know of famous novels that were rejected and became bestsellers. We all know - or should by now have started to understand - that an editorial judgement on your novel is not the word of God.

People can be wrong about a book. Even en masse. 

On the other hand, few novels spring fully formed from a writer’s mind. Even a rejection note may be useful if it spurs you into action that may get your novel accepted elsewhere.

If you choose to revise, submit again to different places. Be brave and send out your work as soon as any changes have been implemented. Be sure you target the right people. Check that the agent or publisher handles your genre. Sometimes a rejection has a simple explanation like that and is no reflection on your work. One example of an ‘unseen’ disadvantage is when a similar book or writer has already been accepted, so they can’t commit to yours because of a potential clash of interests. This may seem incredible when you've written a niche book for a niche market. But in fact it happens quite frequently. Subjects are up there, in the ether, and people pluck them down at the same time with astonishing frequency. Then it becomes a case of who writes the damn book first. If you were too slow, you may have missed your window.

Or perhaps the publisher is feeling worried about a particular genre or sub-genre, and has decided to stop accepting it for the time being. This also happens. Genres have trends. They become wildly fashionable, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Then abruptly, sometimes for no obvious reason, those books crash into obscurity. The market is saturated and nobody wants them anymore. Again, don't be slow if chasing a bandwagon. They can move with surreal speed.

This happened recently to erotica. In the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey, everyone wanted to write S&M adult novels. For months, there were whole bookcases, not just shelves, devoted to erotic tales in otherwise prudish high street stores. Straight novels could not get a look in. Then suddenly, BANG, the rows of generic grey/black erotic covers vanished, almost overnight. To find them on the high street now, you'll have to search a few dusty high-up shelves somewhere between Fiction A-Z and Romance. S&M erotica is back where it came from: the dungeon. So again, act swiftly or not at all. By the time you notice it's a popular trend, and start to knock out your own bestseller, the bandwagon may have tumbled into a ravine.

Forget that book, and write something new!

This can be the hardest advice to follow when you’ve pinned your hopes on one particular novel, one wonderful group of characters, one high-concept plot that cannot fail.

I initially wrote THE EARL & HIS TIGER for Mills & Boon Historicals. They rejected it. I self-published and have sold over 36,000 downloads so far. That's one way of dealing with rejection.

But as with so many things, the battle-cry for writers these days is, 'Diversify or die!'

If you feel you can't rewrite that book anymore, and are unsure where else to send it anyway, then put the rejected ms aside and write a new story. Knuckle down and do the best job you can. Always finish what you start. Then send the new novel out again to publishers or your agent. If you can demonstrate that you’re more than a one-book writer, it tends to work in your favour, especially with agents who need to keep believing that you are worth representing. New writing also allows you to create much-needed emotional space between yourself and a rejection. It spreads the load, if you like, of emotional angst. Now you have TWO novels to worry about, not one!

However, don’t keep starting new stories rather than improving work that’s been rejected. You should always take the time to fix a story if several people have told you it needs attention and you truly believe it can be salvaged. But don't get hung up on this. It takes most writers several years - and at least three or four novels - to really get into the swing of this novel-writing lark.

It's a complex and often mysterious process, writing a novel, and rejections only serve to underline that point. NOBODY knows for sure what's going to work for readers, what's going to be popular, what's going to sell. You may feel sure your book will sell, but in fact, it's a lottery. If there was some kind of clear criteria to tell us which books are sure hits, and which will bomb, we would have more millionaire writers. As it is, most writers exist in a kind of twilight zone, somewhere between broke and just pulling even. They sell enough to be worth publishing, but not enough to get a poster advert in an underground station. And even they get rejected sometimes. You are NOT alone!

GIRL NUMBER ONE was rejected by over a dozen publishers. I rewrote it, self-published it September 2015, and in its first ten weeks it has sold over 15,000 copies and had 1.5 million page reads on Kindle Unlimited. The moral of this tale? Editors are not infallible judges of saleability.

Besides, getting used to shrugging and starting again is part of an essential process of hardening up that writers need to undergo. So when that unpleasant rejection letter arrives, you can pull a face, eat some chocolate cake, then remind yourself, ‘There’s always the next book.’ 

QUESTION:  Have you found a good way to combat rejection?

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?

Week Six: Novel Avoidance Syndrome

Okay, huddle up. It's time for an awful truth to be exposed.

Novels do not want to be written.

How silly she is, I hear you cry, novels do not have a mind of their own. Novels are inanimate objects. In fact, they are both invisible and ineffable while still unwritten. Novels come from our own heads, ergo the author must be in command of the novel-writing process, not the novel itself.

The machine gun hammer of keys should be all your brain hears. Not the siren call of new ideas ...

Well, yes. And most of us are in command of our novels, most of the time. But sadly, at some point, if circumstances are right for revolt, the novel may end up leading the author round by the nose.

Novel-In-Charge or Novel Avoidance Syndrome are closely linked, and are both diseases that manifest in various forms, some less serious than others, some positively fatal if allowed to progress unchallenged.

When the novel wrests control from the author, there may be stubborn runaway characters with minds of their own, narratives which demand to be in first person instead of third, plots that won't follow your synopsis, books that refuse to finish, books that refuse to start, and worst of all, those dastardly novels that simply stick their thumbs in their belts partway through and refuse pointblank to be written at all.

Sometimes there's a subtle progression from hiccup to total collapse. The novel does not always make it obvious to the author what's about to happen by manifesting the tricks noted above. Instead, your novel simply creeps away into the back of your head when you're looking the other way, a potentially dangerous shift which allows a space to open up. A space where other ideas - more beguiling, far superior ideas - may begin to take the place of your current novel. Then BANG, you wake up one day and your novel has gone.

There may be other, less obvious warning signs of imminent collapse.

You take more coffee breaks than you should. You stop for unnecessary research. You gaze out of the window. You watch the entire boxset of something vaguely connected to your novel's background. You accept invitations to lunch. You shop online. You tweet all morning and share funny photos on Facebook. You put off writing for a day, then fail to come back the following morning. You suddenly decide to cook a special supper. Every evening. For several hours when you would normally be writing.

If you've spent your precious writing time browsing in the local library, there may be worse problems ahead than a late fine.

This is how the final collapse may happen. Late one evening, after a successful day at the word-face, often when you're feeling on top form and the novel is swimming along nicely, you find yourself reaching for a notepad or the back of an envelope to scribble down an idea which has just flashed through your teeming brain.

Wow, you think. That's the best novel idea since *insert name of Famous Novel here*. I must write this book. But not yet, of course. First I must finish Novel One. Brilliant, two fantastic ideas one after the other. I'm on a roll. What a clever author I am.

The next day, you wake up with this new novel idea still bubbling away in your head. Go away, you say firmly. I'm writing Novel One first. And so you slope off to your desk, or where/however you write, and try to concentrate on today's word count.

But bizarrely the going has become heavy since the day before. Your boots stick in the mud. You may be taking enemy fire. After some valiant attempts to write, you pause, puzzled, and read back what you've written so far.

To your horror, the novel that was racing along superbly now sounds thin. Your great story idea, once so promising, is hollow and superficial. It lacks ... Well, it lacks what Novel Two is clearly bursting with.

You are dismayed. What now? You look at your unfinished typescript, and suddenly you can't face that long trudge through mud to the finish line, through howling wind and rain.

But Novel Two ... Ah now, that's a charming prospect. The sunny uplands of that intriguing first chapter beckon, a story so compulsive it will almost write itself, characters so powerfully drawn you can see that writing award dancing before your eyes.

So you throw Novel One aside, type Chapter One again, and head off into the glorious unknown, whistling a happy tune.

A few weeks or months later, you find yourself reaching for a notepad or the back of an envelope to scribble down the most exhilarating idea for a new novel that you've ever had. Wow, you think. This is bloody brilliant, it's bound to be a pageturner ...

STOP!!!

Okay. Here are some ways to deal with Novel Avoidance Syndrome. You learn these as you get more experienced as a writer, mainly from having suffered too many times from lost and broken novels. So here is my approach.

In the early stages, note when you are taking too many breaks from writing, whatever the reason, and change your schedule to push yourself back into the book. Put your head down and write whatever comes out, even if it sounds like garbage to your ears. It may be garbage, but equally it may not. Your creative brain may be out of kilter and you can no longer tell. Just stick it down anyway. The theory is, you can't rewrite what hasn't been written.

And ignore pleadings from the soul that the book is flawed in some way. These are often dream voices from a weary psyche, begging you to stop working so it can rest. If the book is genuinely broken, promise yourself you will start again. BUT NOT UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED THE WHOLE NOVEL. Only when you have finished will you - or another reader - be able to see if this 'broken plot' thing is an illusion of the writing process, or a true problem.

And new novel ideas? The ones that come in the night, or while staring out of a rainy window?

Always keep a notepad on hand.

Write the new novel plot down in a notepad, or type it up in a few spare moments, then put that new idea away AND DO NOT THINK OF IT AGAIN.

Exercise self-discipline, even if you think of creative writing as something floaty and marvellous. It really isn't. It's actually hard work. It's a job like any other, like collecting the bins or doing someone's annual accounts.

Tell yourself, There is nothing wrong with the novel I am writing. Repeat after me, one novel at a time. Finish what you start, regardless. Consider the novel writing process as akin to clearing your plate. Eat those lovely greens. Type THE END, and then you can get that notepad out and type Chapter One of your new novel.

Teach yourself to succeed by teaching yourself to finish. Visualize yourself finishing your current book and starting a new one. Don't despair, don't give up. Keep on truckin'.


And if all that fails, don't ask me to read your unfinished book and explain why you no longer want to write it. I've told you. It's all in the mind.

QUESTION: Have you ever suffered from Novel Avoidance Syndrome, and if so, how did you beat it? Or are you in its grip right now?

Answers in the comment box below please. Thanks for taking part in the debate!

Week Three: The Impossible Idea

Novelists heading for the Pick 'n' Mix Ideas Counter at Woolies. 

(Photo credit: SecretLondon)

'Where do you get your ideas from?'

This is one of the most common questions writers get asked. Non-writers are constantly intrigued by the mysterious - to them, and sometimes to us - process that is novel-writing. My prolific mother, who in her lifetime published over 150 novels, was asked on a regular basis where she got her many ideas from. Deadpan, she would look people in the eye and say, 'Woolworths.'

But on a serious note, where do we get our ideas from as novelists?

Novelists work in many different ways, so there are multiple answers to this question: historical accounts, snippets of conversation overheard on a bus, a clipping from the newspaper or something seen on a documentary, a real-life experience, a close friend's story, an unusual anecdote told in the pub or office, meandering thoughts jotted down in a notebook, then perhaps forgotten about for months or even years, until something else comes along to light the blue touchpaper ...

The word 'novel' means 'new', of course. It always reminds me of the old wedding day rhyme:

Something old

Something new

Something borrowed

Something blue

There is something in this simple piece of traditional advice we can take away as novelists and re-use for our own purposes. Something borrowed, in particular.

Novelists are the ultimate Borrowers. (Thank you, Mary Norton.) Writers were recycling and re-using long before it become an important and necessary habit to save the planet. Chaucer lifted his impressive 'Canterbury Tales' structure from Boccaccio's Decameron, and Shakespeare kept a much-thumbed copy of Holinshed's Chronicles under his straw mattress. (Or so I like to imagine.) But don't get me wrong; I don't consider these to be instances of lazy writing. Borrowing is as much about the way our brains work, leaping at a tangent from idea to idea, as it is about needing impetus for a new story. We can all agree, I'm sure, that Shakespeare was no slouch in the imagination department. Yet he constantly borrowed - a far nicer word than 'stole' - story ideas from history or other writers so he could keep writing at what must have felt like an insane pace, feeding the insatiable monster that was the Tudor taste for theatrical extravaganza.

Shakespeare's imagination was caught by the fantastical suggestion, noted in Holinshed's Chronicles, that Macbeth was influenced by witches. "Ching!" Into his basket it went.

So borrowing an idea or two that's already been done can provide a shortcut to your own story idea, and even a shortcut to your own brain and the way it tells stories.

That's why we like some writers better than others. Some writers - however popular with others - may leave us cold. Others fire us with excitement. That's because we recognize something of ourselves in their work: the way they write, the way they see the world and tell their stories, connects to our own beliefs and identity on a deep level. We say, 'Yes!' when we read them, and feel they are speaking directly to our own experience. That mental click is what we reach for as writers when we begin to scratch about for a new novel plot.

This is not plagiarism, of course, which is something no self-respecting writer would do. You do not take work wholesale from other people. That would be theft and is against the law. Just saying.

 Death by Stickies ...

Instead, you might keep an 'ideas' notebook on the go, plaster a wall with Stickies, scribble on a whiteboard in the kitchen, or pack your own 'teeming brain', as John Keats put it, with possibilities. Then, when you're ready to write a new story, you cherry-pick from this chaotic jumble of ideas and images, and put them together in a brand-new way: that pub conversation about the successful businessman who jumped to his death - and no one knows why - may fit neatly with that drama you saw on television the other night where the wife accidentally intercepted a blackmail letter, and maybe your own loose floorboard may give you the hiding-place for those incriminating photos.

So we cobble things together. Our own ideas, our own lives, a mishmash of things we've seen or heard or read or experienced. We tear things up in our mind and stick them together again in a new order. We recreate Dr. Frankenstein's monster each time we plan a new book. We may take something that existed in another form or universe, and breathe fresh life into it, make it new.

There's room for everyone's novel: even yours.

And an idea may feel new to us. Flushed with the triumph of imagination over torpor, we tell ourselves a plot has come straight out of the ether, that it came clean and true and unrelated to anything else, that it owes nothing to anyone. But really? 

At the heart of it, there is something a little bit shady about the idea-generating business. The novel idea. Because 'novel' does actually mean 'new', remember? And we have been told since antiquity - Ecclesiastes - that there is 'nothing new under the sun.' So finally we have to turn and face the dreaded word we have been trying to avoid all along.

Originality?

As novelists, we are always told to make it new, to be original. Agents clamour for it - to avoid selling the same old stories to jaded editors. Publishers demand it - to avoid being sued. Readers hope for it - to avoid being bored. And we ourselves - to avoid professional embarrassment, if for no other reason - hunt for originality like the Holy Grail, even when writing in a self-limiting field like series fiction. In fact, novelists being grandiose types, we want our latest idea to be the most original idea in the history of novel-writing. (And if we can't quite stretch to that, then we will reluctantly settle for the best idea we've come up with so far.)

But here's the thing. The truly novel idea is impossible. So just do what you can, and don't sweat it too much if another writer - or indeed several other writers - have books out the same month that echo yours. (This happens uncannily often.) Novel-writing has a lengthy and respectable tradition, and your novel is adding to that, like one of those chain poems where everyone contributes a line. You cannot be read out of context and so should not feel you need to write out of context.

What can be original and new in all this borrowing and cobbling is you. Your narrative voice. Your treatment. Your unique way of seeing things and putting them together. You are the magic ingredient that makes it new. So when you're stirring the pot, don't lose confidence because there are thousands of other blackmailed husband and betrayed wife stories out there. None of those stories are like yours because they were not written by you. (Hopefully! I'll deal with writers who repeat themselves or have 'favourite' themes in a later post.)

Question: where do you get your ideas from? Answers in the comment box, please. Join the debate!

So yes, the idea for a novel is always impossible, because it is never simple, never original, and almost never turns out exactly as you intended at the planning stage. But just remember that your idea cannot be seen out of its context in the grand parade of novels that came before - and will come after - and that you yourself are the magic ingredient that makes your hotchpotch of characters and ideas into something novel, something new.