Week Forty-Six: Fiction in the Age of Coronavirus

We live in unprecedented, rather than interesting, times. In a few short weeks, ordinary life has become, well, extraordinary. Not to mention frightening. We have no idea what will happen next. Worst of all, some of us may die, or have loved ones who will die, a grim new reality made clear to us by politicians and news bulletins alike.

As writers, and especially perhaps as genre writers, we are accustomed to presenting the everyday and mundane in our novels, as an anchor for the otherwise outlandish world of our plots. As part of our skill set, we construct an accepted - and acceptable - fictional version of 'reality' as our characters know it and as our particular genres demand.

But what should we do when that 'everyday reality' has shifted sideways - almost overnight - and is now far from anything we have ever known in our lifetimes? When our realistic characters are now more likely to be in lockdown for anything up to half a year, and therefore unable to commit or investigate murders during that time frame, to meet friends or loiter in cafes, go to concert halls and theatres, travel anywhere beyond the end of their garden path - if they're lucky enough to have one - have sex, or fall in love? When apocalypse has actually become a thing?

We are at least used to the solitary life as writers. Self-isolating holds fewer terrors and issues for us than most other people working from home, I should imagine.

But as writers we are faced with a choice, it seems to me.

We stick our literary fingers in our ears - 'la la la' - and pretend we still live in that Other World, the one we inhabited roughly three weeks ago, and write characters who fit that lifestyle, despite the fact that it's becoming harder to envisage going out for a latte or booking a flight to Greece or dropping a book off at the library or sticking a knife between the vicar's shoulder blades ...

Or we accept that the world has changed, and therefore set our books in a speculative future world, when (hopefully) the coronavirus crisis has passed but is definitely still a thing. A world where characters may well be happy to murder each other - perhaps more so than ever! - but police are less well-equipped to investigate because of reduced numbers or shaky infrastructure, when sleek, Armani-clad executive heroes are few and far between because even the biggest companies have lost billions, and friends are less ready to shake hands or air-kiss on meeting, or new lovers to fall into bed together (just in case the infection is still around), and the world is financially on its knees.

 One of my writer friends said recently that it was becoming harder and harder, as she wrote her current novel, to remember what used to be normal everyday behaviour in a normal everyday world. Because that life and that world are both rapidly slipping away from our memories ... We are already adjusting to our new reality. Soon, even the most insistent coronavirus denier will find it hard to depict our world before the plague with any confidence, nor will readers believe in their now unrealistic reality.

And yes, what about reading fiction?

It seemed at first that people were eager to reach for plague fiction, for disaster and apocalypse novels, out of a ghoulish desire to mock this new reality with previous fictional versions of it.

But actually, it seems to me that people want to read about apocalypse because they are experiencing it first-hand, and instinctively need a fiction that reflects their strange and uncertain new reality.

Of course, as the horror continues, that urge may change. People may grow weary of finding reality in their fiction, and will turn to fantasy instead. Even though that 'fantasy' may simply be a contemporary book set before the virus, in the comforting pre-2020 world they remember ...

I think we ignore coronavirus at our peril as writers. (Though agents and publishers may well ask us to, fearing the saleability of any genre fiction that flirts too closely with reality.) Even historical writers may find themselves instinctively choosing plague periods for their next novels. Of course, we may all have pre-corona novels in hand, and can't suddenly introduce global death and disaster partway through a light-hearted romance or a chilling murder mystery, even though that is exactly what has happened to all of us, out here in Corona Land.

All of our lives have been INTERRUPTED by the virus and nothing will ever be the same again. How could it be?

We won't all come out from self-isolation or lockdown in four to six months and find life continues as usual. The virus may slow, but it won't disappear completely. And by then, many things we once took for granted - food chains, coffee shops, street vendors, household names, even global transport infrastructure - may have been irreparably damaged by a long income freeze or simply gone bust in the meantime. And some publishers and bookstores may even be on that list ...

I don't have any answers, I'm afraid. I only have questions.

But when we've finished writing our current books, do we continue in the same vein, as virus 'deniers' in fiction terms at least, on the grounds that most people, terrified by what is happening around them, must inevitably want to read about a world BEFORE the virus, because they find that lost reality easier and more comforting to experience?

Or do we start to write books set in the real world, in the post-virus world, where our characters and their choices reflect our own uncertainties in the age of coronavirus?

P.S. My latest publication is UNDER AN EVIL STAR (oh, a prediction!!) out last month, first in a new crime thriller series.

Only 99p/99c for the ebook.

Please consider buying if you'd like to support my writing. Thank you.

Under An Evil Star on Amazon UK

 

Under An Evil Star on Amazon com (USA)

Week Thirty-Eight: On Staying Energised as a Writer

Sometimes being a writer feels like the hardest thing in the world.

'What chance have I got among all these?'

It isn't, of course.

But that doesn't mean we don't become tired, getting up in the morning and seeing either that nothing has changed or life just got a little harder than the day before.

This isn't Novel Avoidance Syndrome, though it shares symptoms with that condition.

This isn't fear of success, though others may dismiss it as such.

This isn't even fear of failure. It can strike long-established writers as much as newbies. Perhaps more so, as we no longer have that starry-eyed 'anything could happen' vision to fuel our dreams.

It's about feeling swamped in an overcrowded marketplace teeming with other talented writers. Thrown in with your heavy books to sink or swim, while publishers mostly keep their dainty toes out of the water and direct from the poolside instead.

'Backstroke now. That's the spirit. No resting!'

It's about having great ideas and not being able to act on them. Like we're all on some vast synchronised swimming team.

'I said, backstroke! Not butterfly. Same as everyone else, please.'

It's about not having the publisher that's right for you, or not having a publisher at all and having to carve out your own path as an independent. How to rise above the crowd as an indie? How to successfully promote a book on your own while not spamming people with links and alongside so many hundreds of thousands of other, possibly similar books?

It's about not being able to get reviews without crawling through mud and barbed wire for them. Or increasingly getting clusters of one star reviews, often for reasons that hurt the soul. 'Didn't download properly.' 'I hate romcoms but this one was free.' 'Haven't read it yet.'

It's about things that ought to be simple going wrong, often insanely wrong, and not feeling able to complain or say anything about it in public, in case we lose our jobs.

'Another thirty lengths, please!'

It's about approaching other writers covertly for advice, and getting the door slammed in our faces for the same reasons as above.

'Stay at the correct distance! No whispering in the ranks!'

Sometimes it seems as though all the joy and excitement and the sheer drama of writing and publishing a novel is being sucked out of the process, to be replaced by emptiness and the steady creaking of some invisible conveyor-belt.

Factory Hen Novelists

So how do we get past this feeling of being jaded or washed-up, as professional novelists? How do we recapture our enthusiasm not only powerfully enough to finish our novels, but to write bestsellers, and to keep on writing bestsellers?

Here are a few thoughts:

1. SHUT YOURSELF OFF FROM THE INTERNET

If the world out there is getting you down, if your reviews are crap or non-existent, or your ranking is in the toilet, or that wet-behind-the-ears new MA course writer gets asked for her 'expert' opinion on how-to-pen-a-novel while nobody gives a flying crap what you, veteran of dozens of bloody published novels, think about writing, if you're beginning to hate everything about this process ... try not to look up quite so often from your keyboard.

In days of yore, before the internet made us all so paranoid, novelists wrote books and had very little feedback - except for scattered reviews at publication and the occasional letter. They didn't have to worry about rankings outside the top few writers on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Publishers took much longer to dump new writers, so that fear too was less extreme.

Nowadays, you can get dumped almost as soon as your first book is out, if initial sales aren't strong enough. (They just won't tell you until you start innocently asking about your next title.) Meanwhile you still have to write. Because you're a writer and that's what you do. Because however shit things are for writers, everything else is shittier. Or words to that effect.

So if the noise and the trumpeting and the sheer BLAH of the publishing world is driving you crazy, pretend like you've been spirited back to the 1950s. Shut off from the internet and trade magazines as far as possible and do nothing but write, write, write.

Put your fingers in your ears and just write ...

2. STAY FLEXIBLE AND OPEN TO CHANGE

As writers, we need to stop making career assumptions based on what used to work in publishing or what used to be the norm for authors in our position, whatever that happens to be. The world is moving so rapidly, what is the case now may already have changed in six months, and many situations we took for granted, say, five or ten years ago, may soon look like something from the Dark Ages.

Why is this? Well, much of the current instability seems to date back to the demise of the Net Book Agreement in the mid-late 90s. It was trumpeted as a time of free marketeering, but the lack of protection over retail prices means books have gradually become cheaper while midlist authors have earned less and less every year. Add to that the rise of the ebook market, where many traditionally published bestsellers are only 99p and some indie authors can't even give away their books for free, and you have a very volatile, uncertain industry.

So there's no point trying to second guess where we're heading or to control that trajectory in any meaningful way. This means developing a flexible approach to writing. Perhaps accepting that some books will need to be self-published, perhaps under a new name, or that you may need to move from one publisher to another with little warning. Only the biggest brand names are insulated from such shifts these days, it seems to me.

Though such challenges can feel like the end of the world, they can also be liberating for writers. They can provide opportunities to learn new skills as a self-publisher or experiment with new genres in a way that might not have been possible on a traditional writing path. This freedom to experiment can reinvigorate a tired or depressed author, demonstrating that her writing career is only limited by her own ambition.

Old writer, new tricks

3. SEEK REINITIATION AS A WRITER

If all else fails, reconnect with your primary impulse to write. The excitement that drove you to become a writer in the first place, that had you rushing to your book every morning. Sounds great, huh? Reinitiation as a writer, especially when you're older and have been round the block so many times you're dizzy, is what every true creative seeks.

But how to achieve it?

Well, in my opinion, there are two key paths to reinitiation. To recapturing your original drive, inspiration and creative vision as a writer before reality painted your world grey.

For the first way, you need a muse or mentor who will act as a guide back to your creative impulse. A Virgil to your Dante, in other words. (Best to seek that muse in artistic terms though, not run off with the milkman/woman, though many great writers have restarted their creative engines through sex!) For this way, look for another writer whose work you always read with the greatest possible excitement - living or dead, either should work fine - and study them, emulate them, be inspired by them, and write with them in mind until you've regained enough momentum to trundle off on your own again. Like bump-starting a car with a dead battery!

What would Hemingway have written here?

The second way to achieve reinitiation is to do something hugely dangerous as a writer, for instance by scaring yourself into a new dynamic approach. Hugely dangerous things for a novelist include suddenly starting to write a book in a style or genre or on a topic you know nothing about and/or have never attempted before. Or changing your pseudonym and writing as that person, i.e. in a completely new way. Like being a method actor, you do everything in that new idiom until every cell of your creative being has been renewed and is stamped with this fresh style.

But don't do any of this reinitiation process secretly. Do it openly so that you burn your bridges. Tell people what you're attempting. Even boast about it. This will be so frightening, especially if you're already established in one particular genre or style, that you will hopefully end up feeling - and writing - like an entirely new author, with increased vigour and commitment.

That's the theory anyway. Good luck!

Oh, and if doing something reckless with your career, be sure not to spend your last advance too quickly. You'll need it soon enough to pay your tax bill.

Week Thirty-Four: The Ups and Downs of A Writing Career

This time last year, I was in a bad spot, career-wise.

I was out of contract with all the publishers with whom I had previously worked, my debut thriller had been rejected by multiple publishers, and I was only surviving by self-publishing romcom novellas under the name Beth Good.

We were forced to leave our lovely rented farm on the edge of Bodmin Moor and rent a very small terraced house in a Devon town instead, jettisoning over half our possessions and having to part with some of our beloved pets in the process. It was a traumatic time. I started editing other people's manuscripts freelance, but the workload was heavy and the money not quite good enough to get us through. I decided that if I couldn't make money from writing or editing, I would have to get a 'proper' job again. But as I was home educating my kids, it would have to be an evening or night job. Which would mean no time left at all for writing. Or sleeping, in fact!

In the run-up to my job search, I self-published my debut thriller GIRL NUMBER ONE. I hoped for the best, but planned for the worst, in other words.

GIRL NUMBER ONE came out in late September 2015.

After a sluggish start, it began to climb the charts.

In mid-December, it hit the Number 1 spot in the UK Kindle chart, and stayed there nearly a week, selling many thousands of copies.

By then, it had already excited huge amounts of interest and comment, and had come to the attention of an editor at Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon Publishing imprint. I contacted my agent and signed with AP for a life-saving two-book deal. My second psychological thriller, LOCK THE DOOR, is already finished and on pre-order: it will be published January 2017. 

Today, August 9th 2016, a new, revised edition of GIRL NUMBER ONE has been published in digital form. A gorgeous paperback edition will follow in September.

Following on from that two-book deal, possibly because GIRL NUMBER ONE's meteoric rise had come to the attention of the team I had worked with previously at Hodder & Stoughton, I was approached by that publisher to write a Christmas book for them. That story is BERTIE'S GIFT, a whimsical, feel-good adult read about a Beagle on a mission to save both his sister and his adopted family.

BERTIE'S GIFT was a delightful change from my thriller writing - I had to write it almost in tandem with LOCK THE DOOR, sometimes morning for one book, afternoon for the other. It will be published in hardback and ebook on October 20th 2016. It is coming out under yet another pen-name, this time Hannah Coates, in order to differentiate it from my other writing.

I am now working on a third thriller, with a side venture into a brand-new romcom for my Beth Good persona, as I know many readers have been waiting for a new one from me. We are back on our feet financially, and I have been able to abandon the idea of getting a 'proper' job in order to pay the bills. Thanks to the fantastic success of GIRL NUMBER ONE, which came utterly out of the blue, I already have a 'proper' job as a full-time professional writer again - and am very, very happy indeed.

So this post is not only an indication of the often terrifying vicissitudes of a writer's life - even a relatively successful writer - but also a massive thank you to everyone who bought, read and/or supported GIRL NUMBER ONE.

However hard a writer works, they can't get anywhere without readers, and I have been incredibly lucky to have such loyal readers, many of whom have followed me from historicals to contemporary romcoms to thrillers. And hopefully will now follow me to feel-good adult doggy fiction as Hannah Coates!

Thank you, and happy reading!