An IWSG update

Thank you to everyone who commented on my IWSG post this month. If you didn't see it, I was trying to decide whether I should cut words to fit a specific market, or continue with the story as I wanted to tell it.

I decided to cut words! I realised I had no choice, I would kick myself if I didn't at least try - on account of my huge crush on this publisher! It was only 3300 words over the absolute maximum (and I checked, there's no leeway), I could cut that easily... In fact, my words in the IWSG post was easy peasy.

Oh dear... those dreaded last words.

As I started to cut a few words here and there, tightening sentences that admittedly were already pretty tight because I can't write any other way, I also started to add words: I needed to clarify a certain point I was trying to make, I'd cut off a train of thought halfway through. And I'd forgotten Christmas. When you're trying to denote the passing of years in a small number of words, Christmas is always a great bullet point.

My word count now stands at 4000 words over the maximum. Looking at the numbers alone, I can see where I can slice it - the story is top heavy, the first chapter is over three times the length of the final one. But I've read and re-read, and I just can't slash any more words without losing the impact of the story.

It looks like I won't be able to submit to this imprint after all...

The telling and showing balance

I've been editing some of my previously published stories for a collection I'm hoping to put together. It's a really fun project - some of the stories are pretty darn completely perfect and don't need any editing at all, others needed a bit of updating (a couple were written before mobile phones became common, one needed Facebook mentioned). And one needs a whole rewrite.

And that's the one I'd like to talk about, obviously.

Yesterday, I made a start on it, and realised I tell everything and show nothing. This is bad. All the advice points to showing not telling, and it makes sense - it keeps the prose varied, it draws people into the story, it even breaks up the page because speech and action naturally have more gaps.

So, I got out my red pen and started slashing. It was a massacre!

And then... I read The Beacon by Susan Hill (not all of it yet, so this isn't a review... but I have read the ending because I do that!)

There's an awful lot of telling in this short book, but it works - for most of the story so far, a woman is alone in her farmhouse after her mother dies and she's recalling growing up.

In my story, a homeless girl is telling us what her day consists of. She's so busy surviving that conversations with people don't have much meaning to her... so writing conversations would jar against the story. Wouldn't it?

What are your thoughts about showing v telling?

Have you ever written a story/novel that is mostly telling?

Do you have any tips for me?

the first person and other stories by Ali Smith

Goodreads link

I love, love, love short stories. I love writing them; I love reading them. Over the years, I've had a few published, although they are probably all long forgotten now :-(

It's not quite so easy to find good collections to read, though. As a result I grab them wherever I can and hope for the best. When I picked up this Ali Smith collection, I hadn't read her novels but I knew her name.

These stories are an experiment in viewpoint - many of them are written in the second person, which is why I picked it for today's recommendation. (If you don't know, I'm highlighting books which have influenced me in some way - these posts are not intended to be book reviews.)

The second person viewpoint interested me because I'd already had my story That Sadie Thing published - a story written partly in second person. It's a viewpoint that challenges the writer - fingers crossed that I got it right, then! As with anything, when done well you hardly notice that the story is being written in an unconventional way; when done badly, it's the only thing you notice!

Have you read Ali Smith's short stories or novels? Have you written a story is second person? Do you enjoy reading stories written in second?

From Santa Fe to... Sarah's place

Today, I'm taking over Sarah Pearson's Empty White Pages blog, talking about word count.

So a big thank you to Sarah for inviting me.

As I don't know exactly where Sarah lives, I thought this tea cosy pretty much sums us up as a country. (Apologies, Sarah if you don't come from England.)



After today, I have one more guest post lined up and then my little blog tour is all over, and normal service will be resumed - at least until April, when I'll be posting every day bar Sundays!

To coincide with that, I thought I might have a Cat and The Dreamer give-away. And then I noticed I currently have 92 followers (a big thank-you to all the newbies), so I thought that maybe, if I can get to 100 followers, I'd give away two copies! Watch this space...

Just me?

Time for another insecure post. Click the logo and it'll take you to Alex's original post about it, and give you the opportunity to sign up  - although I can't believe there is anyone who doesn't at least know about this blog hop by now.

This month's insecurity was inspired by a post I read recently here. I've been thinking for a while now that I'm the only person in the world ever who's not writing YA fantasy. But now I know I'm not the only one... there's two of us!

(This was a scheduled post, I had it all written and done days ago, but I've just had my attention drawn - by someone reading an old post - to the fact that I've written something similiar to this before. I must prepare better next time!)

Anyway...

Since I discovered how much fun blog hops and challenges can be, and I've started to follow more and more people because of them, I realised that almost all of the people I follow - and a lot of the people who follow me - are YA writers. And I'm not. Not by a long shot. In fact, what I'm starting to wonder  is whether people think that I am.

What I mostly write about is the psychology of my characters - how they react to things around them, how they react to the things that happen to them. Hmm, okay, that doesn't sound as exciting as I was hoping. Mostly there's a dead body - is that more exciting? Sometimes the dead body is right in front of them, sometimes it's in the past, sometimes it's in the process of becoming dead.

It's not that I don't love all the YA writers I follow - I think your blogs are fantastic, and obviously, first and foremost, you are writers, with exactly the same issues and problems with the process of writing that I have. But it does seem, a bit like the post I linked to above, that the reason YA writers are so prolific is that no one is reading anything else at the moment.

Before I start my second draft...

In my last post, I was being secure when I was supposed to be insecure. Now, today, I'm feeling insecure! Let me share the problem:

I've written a novel - granted, it's very short at the moment at only 45,000 words. Four beta readers read it, liked it (at least that's what they told me) and made a few suggestions which I happened to agree with anyway. The fifth reader was my hubby who said it was a brilliant start to a psychological thriller, but that  I stopped it too soon, and another 100 pages and a really big twist would make it perfect.

Now, I hadn't tried to write a psychological thriller. I don't read psychological thrillers; they're not my thing. Anyway, because the story I've written is very character-based, I suppose - at a push, although I could never bring myself to call it such to an agent or editor - what I've written is... literary!

My hubby reads a lot of Jeffrey Deaver who writes thrillers, so maybe he's just hard-wired to need a dramatic twist. But... am I missing a trick by not writing in this amazing twist (although I have no idea what that twist would be)? I wrote something of a 'aah' moment, but it's not very obvious because hubby didn't get it until I explained it. Hubby's asked me to read a Jeffrey Deaver novel, which I will, because he says that will give me a better idea of what he's talking about.

So, my problem and my question is: should I stick to the story I wanted to tell, or take a right-turn into a completely different genre? Is the label literary something that other people apply to your work, or is it possible to write for that genre? Do you have to be much cleverer than I am to even consider writing something literary?

I'm hoping, when I start to re-read the novel myself, the answers will come naturally. But, in the meantime, if you have any comments, I'd love to read and consider them.

The trouble with writers block when writing to a deadline

The trouble with writers block when writing to a deadline is that the deadline comes ever closer, and the work stays the same length, to put it simply. The deadline I have is a self-imposed one, in a way - I'll be entering it into a competition, if I ever finish it. But if I don't finish, it's not the end of the world. There are other competitions, other stories I could enter instead.

But, I came round to the thought that if I can't meet self-imposed deadlines, how will I ever cope when I'm faced with a real live deadline from a real live publisher (as opposed to the dead publishers who are always on my case to submit stuff :-))

Part of the problem is that I've been without my study for over six weeks, so everything I used to have at hand is now scattered around the house. I started off setting myself up at the dining table, and that was quite productive; but now I sit cross-legged on the settee, with rough drafts and notebooks all over the floor, and the lure of Homes Under the Hammer. I know it seems like I've answered my problem, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

The story I'm working on was written and complete; but then I re-read it and hated it. I'd somehow slipped into a sort of stream of consciousness, which doesn't suit me, too much waffle. Easy, I thought, a cut there, a rewrite here, and it would be sorted. It's a little less easy than that. I can't get the voice right, I can't get the plot worked out the way I want it. I know the ending, it's the getting there that's difficult.

Cheers, Chuck!

For the past two weeks or so, I've been scribbling in a notebook: full scenes, short sentences, random things that people might say, character traits.... and so on. It's been liberating and fun, and best of all they all relate to the same story. All these scenes etc have now been attributed to just five very flawed characters and a rather sinister plotline.

Unfortunately, the main bulk of this was written when I was reading Diary by Chuck Palahniuk who I've mentioned a couple of time before on this blog. The problem is, his style is infectious. Granted, it got me writing with abandon, but in his voice; so now as I start to move the words from the notebook to my computer, I have to edit Chuck out and put me in.

Sometimes I feel I just make work for myself!

A problem with tenses

English teachers have rules about writing prose. Don't start a sentence with And, Or, Not, But... don't use Said, use a wide array of other words you discovered under the Said section of Roget's Thesaurus. There were probably more, but I don't remember them. As soon as you start to read contemporary novels and short stories, and in my case write them, you realise that the form, the flow and the rhythm are - in my opinion - more important than trying to swim through lots of clunky verbs.

The rules, therefore, are made to be broken! Yay for that!!

However, there is one rule that probably does hold true. And that is the problem I'm having at the moment. After my recent bout of writer's block, the words are flowing once more. But I am mixing my tenses and can't work out how to solve the problem. It's not just that I'll write one day in present, then come back to it the next and start in past tense. I'm doing it within the same paragraph, in the same minute of the same day.

Each sentence is so complete and so perfect in whichever tense I've used that to change them to conform to the sentences around them would ruin the image they are conveying.

I'd love to think that writing this way would be ground-breaking and inventive and experimental... but I fear it's just one broken rule too far.

Curious incidents with mirrors

How often do you look in the mirror and think: my long blond hair flows over my shoulders, a little straggly at the ends but nothing a good brushing won't sort out. My eyes are wide and bright and eager, the colour of the sea on a summer's day. My skin is porcelain, beautifully clear on account of the full skin regime my mother insisted on since I was fifteen; my neck is long and elegant... etc etc

My guess is that it's not often - if ever. So why do authors invent such peculiar ways to describe their characters?

As a writer, I rarely describe what my character looks like unless it is vital to the plot. It doesn't seem relevant to me, because as a reader it jars. I've been reading Light on Snow by Anita Shreve, which has inspired these thoughts. On the whole the book was enjoyable and seemed only to have the degree of description needed to convey the plot... until she had her twelve year old narrator look at herself in a mirror in a police station staff room and describe what she saw, in much the same awkward way I did at the start of this post. It was unnecessary to the plot at that point and totally jarred with the rest of the scene, which was quite tense and serious.

I much prefer to visualise for myself what the characters look like; I think that the character of the person is more important. If, for example, my character was very vain, yes I would definitely have her look in every single mirror and describe what she saw. If a character was obsessed by another, I was probably use that as the need to describe every tiny insignificant detail because that's what the obsessed person would be seeing.

Perhaps I should try it though: I could have people checking out their features in their turned off mobile phone, the concave of a desert spoon, the highly polished surface of a High Def flat screen TV.... oh, the possibilities :-)

Until my next rant, enjoy the snow!!

Past or Present?

I've just read this article, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7994914/Philip-Pullman-and-Philip-Hensher-criticise-Booker-Prize-for-including-present-tense-novels.html

I don't know where to begin... yes, I do - I write in present tense.

I don't do it because it's fashionable, I don't do it because other people are doing it. My first published story in 1994 was in present tense and it's how I feel most comfortable writing; it's not a conscious decision, anymore than the voice that emerges. I haven't eshued past tense - although I can't think of an example right now, I'm sure I have used it in the past (excuse the pun) and I'm sure for those stories it felt entirely natural.

I find the present tense adds urgency, a sense of foreboding (which creeps into my writing quite a lot) and draws the reader in.

When I am reading, I certainly don't notice the use of present tense as a device; I don't notice it at all. I am usually captured by the story. The style adds to the whole experience, indeed; but if it jars as much as Philip Pullman suggests, he's obviously not reading a novel that is truly engaging him.

(Apologies for still not knowing how to do the linky thing properly)

Summer Slowdown

It had to happen eventually; in fact, I've been expecting it. The kids being off school has finally interfered with my writing habits. Of course it has! I can easily squirrel myself away from 9 until 3 and do nothing but write and eat... (and surf the net when the words aren't flowing... sshh) but it's not so easy when the kids are looking up expectantly waiting to go out for the day.

Ideally, I'd be the type of writer who could write anywhere - I'd take the kids on a wet day out to a play centre, sit and write over a hot chocolate in a small notebook, watching the world pass by and grabbing inspiration. But my inspiration usually appears suddenly and dramatically. I can easily be sat watching old epsiodes of Location, Location, Location when I suddenly jump to my feet and scramble for my latest WIP. Then I write until the idea is exhausted and return to what I was doing previously.

So, I think it's time to just enjoy the summer, and equally enjoy the opportunities to write when they present themselves.

In the meantime, I'm still waiting for a response from a publisher. I hate waiting so very much. In these days of email, I tend to expect instant replies, and obviously that is never going to happen. I'm taking the time to research other markets and maybe send out a few queries, but the novella/short fiction market is difficult to get in to and there aren't too many publishers out there for that length. I'm thinking of taking a leaf out of Fay Weldon's book (literally, hahaha) and putting spaces between every paragraph just to make the whole thing longer...