Picture taken from the Myburgh Designs web page, and copyright Myburgh Designs.

January’s list:

London’s Strangest Tales by Tom Quinn. 
Not mad keen on the style and the author seems to start each chapter with a sweeping generalisation, but full of fascinating nuggets of information, that could well turn out to be seeds of stories. I’ll be re-reading to follow up on some of these.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
I’m not a great student of history, and certainly not historical politics. I’m also not a huge fan of Ms. Mantel’s style, having found Beyond Black depressing and unsatisfying at the end. I bought this because it was a Booker Prize winner, and I found it in a discount shop.  But Ms. Mantel does a great job of bringing the politics of the Tudor Court to life, as seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell.

He started life as a butcher’s boy and rose to become one of Henry VIII’s most powerful courtiers. The book covers the period 1529 – 1535 as Henry tries to divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn.  This edition has a short but interesting  interview with Ms. Mantel at the back where she talks about balancing invention and research. I enjoyed it.

Slide Rule by Neville Shute.
A recommendation from a member of the T party, following a discussion about the comeback of zeppelins. Mr. Shute was a novelist and an engineer. In his autobiography, he talks about his time  in the 30s working on the R100 airship, developed by a private company in direct competition with the Air Ministry’s disastrous R101. 

The book is written in a betweeded stiff-upper-lip style and just-roll-up-your-sleeves-and put-your-mind-to-it attitude that seems very much typical of the period. One of my favourite quotes concerns a test flight (in 1930) that runs into a storm:

“Supper was laid on the centre table of the saloon and shot off, downstairs, up the corridor, till some of it reached Frame 2.

I think the ship must have been at least 35° nose down for a bit of cold meat or a slice of bread to get as far up the nose curvature of the ship as this.” 

There’s a fair bit of technical detail, and some talk of finances, but accounts of test flights and in-flight repairs on the external strucutre are hair-raising. I still think zeppelins should make a come-back. Three days to India from the UK seems speedy enough and with 50 cabins and a fry up served for breakfast, immensely civilised.

In The Place of Justice by Wilbert Rideau

Mr. Rideau committed manslaughter in 1961, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. After several legal proceedings, his sentence was changed to life imprisonment. He served time in Angola, Louisiana’s vast state penitentiary (5000 prisoners, 1800 staff members, 18,000 acres farmed by the prisoners) and writing for the prison paper, became an award-winning  journalist.

The book highlights the bigotry and injustice of the American legal system surrounding his case, from the 60s onwards.  I was after a bit more on the day-to-day life in prison (research for a currently nebulous next book idea). However, there are some startling snapshots, and an insight into the inmates’ and guards’ psychology and power plays.  It’s a fascinating read.

In other Viking news, the vampire viking Eric returns to our UK TV screens this Friday at 10 on FX. Oh yeah, and there’s Sookie and Bill and rest of the characters in series 3 of True Blood. (Now with added werewolves!) There’s nothing sparkly about True Blood except Alan Ball’s writing. In a similar vein, HBO made a series of “minisodes” to advertise the new series.  This one  is my favourite, for various reasons, including the haughty disgust of the bloke in the gold shorts as he leaves the stage. Unfortunately, there isn’t a playlist, but you can find them all on youtube by searching for “true blood minisode”.

*featuring Jay Baruchel. Who is also in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Which was also fun and much better than I thought it would be.

To summarise: he had a teeny tiny budget and just two professional actors playing the main leads. Everyone else in the film is a local amateur, hired on the spot.  Mr. Edwards didn’t try to tell his novice cast how to act, he just explained what was supposed to be happening in the scene, and then let them get on with it in their own way. He didn’t even have a complete script to start with. He explains that with most films, the script is your target, you aim to hit it with the scenes you’re filming. With this film, they drove the route that the characters took, shot a whole load of scenes and painted a target around them.

That’s a whole load of trust. Mr. Edwards trusted the untrained people he collaborated with. He trusted himself to pull the whole thing together into a coherent whole. And he trusted that it would all work out.  Quite a lot of creative types believe that if you move to make something happen, the Universe will move with you (and I believe it too).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I am (for now) a dyed-in-the-wool plotter. I love the idea of gaily scattering scenes and ideas and then stitching them together into a coherent whole, but I don’t trust that I can do it.  I know other writers can and do. If you’re brimming over with ideas and scenes, but don’t yet have a plot, it could be worth a try. You could jot them all down on index cards, scraps of paper, excel spreadsheet entries, anything you can do quickly and easily rearrange.  Then you could see if you can paint the circle around them.

Styles of visual language, just like the written, land on the page freighted with context. We’ve all been absorbing it all our lives.Writers use styles of language to help set time and place for readers, according to the rule of “show, don’t tell”.

It’s particularly handy for flash fiction, where you don’t have the word count to lovingly describe the setting. So, I could write:
“What ho, old bean,” said Freddie, making somewhat free with the brandy and s.
and you could guess I’m setting my story in 20-30s Wannabe Wodehouse Way, Clichéville.

Similarly, a graphic designer can do this:

Choosing a typeface and a drawing style appropriate to the book’s period is a bit like writing your narrative in the voice of the viewpoint character, complete with idiom and vocabulary appropriate to the time and place.

I *love* the kawaii Yo! Sushi menus to an unreasonable degree. They are beautifully clear and easy to read, they take the potential intimidation factor out of the vast array of Japanese food on offer, and they manage to be friendly and fun without belting you over the head with it in a way that makes you want to throttle the waiters (I’m looking at you, TGIF).  You can get a sense of it here, but the online menu isn’t a patch on the real thing.

I like the visual language they use, walking in cute on the right side of cliché. Similarly, in writing, we’re told to go easy on the “pushbutton words“, to be sparing with the obviously manipulative.

Another (kind-of related) tool designers have at their disposal is pattern recognition. The human brain is so good at it that you can put two dots and a line on a page in the right way and we see a face. This gives a vast potential for elegant, stylised and stripped-down designs.  So what, in the name of ink and pixels, were the designers for the London 2012 Olympics thinking? The whole thing seems to be a world of wrong in so many ways.

Let’s explore this together. Are you ready for a Rorschach test? Let’s begin.

This is the Olympic logo. What do you see here?
a) The number 2012.
b) A private recreational act of the type “insert tab a into slot b”.
c) Er - *ominous pause* – a pretty butterfly.
d) I have no idea, but it’s ugly and jagged and it’s making my eyes hurt.

What is this?
a) Awww. It’s Wenlock, a cute little one-eyed monster and mascot of the Olympics.
b) Um. Does it come from Ann Summers?
c)Er - *ominous pause* – a pretty butterfly.
d) It’s looking at me. IT’S LOOKING AT ME!

The designers of the Olypmic website have come up with a story to explain the existence and appearance of Wenlock and its co-mascot. If you didn’t answer a) to both questions above, you might want to have a bucket handy. Prepare yourself for extensive rainbow abuse. http://www.london2012.com/mascotsa

It’s taken me a while to write this post, because I wanted to write (with Miss Sebold’s permission) about how she did it. But it kept coming out with a hectoring tone, and the person who needs to be on the receiving end of the lecture is most definitely me. So instead, I’d like to tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Gaie who wanted to write books and have them published.  So she started writing. Her first book took her years, and it grew and it grew and it grew, so she asked her big sister to set her a deadline. 

Big sister said, “How long do you think it will take to finish it?

“A year,” said Gaie.

“Then that’s your deadline.”

So Gaie finished her first book, and she sent it out into the Forest of Submissions, to find the path to Novel Publication Mountain,  for every story must make its own path through the forest. 

As the book entered the forest, the Blizzard of Rejections struck.  Book One struggled in the storm, was driven back, and stumbled home. When it returned, Gaie thought about everything she had learned, and decided that Book One wasn’t strong enough to survive in the forest.

So, Gaie carried on writing. She wrote stories and poems and she kept studying to find ways to make them stronger. She joined a writers’ group who tested them further.

She sent her pieces out into the forest. Some of the stories and poems struggled in the Blizzard of Rejections and turned back. But more battled through, and collected awards and nominations and climbed the foothills to the shining heights of Paid Publication in Good Markets.

As Gaie kept writing, ideas collected around her. One day all of her ideas said, “We are a book, and you must write us.” So she wrote her second book. And then she rewrote the book. And then the book was critiqued, and then she rewrote it again and sent it out into the forest  to find a way up Publication Mountain.

Book Two was funny and sweet and charmed everyone it met. It struggled through the blizzard and found the Agent Path. It followed the path half-way up the mountain,  and found refuge at the John Jarrold agency. It set out again and again from the agency on many different paths, assailed by the blizzard, but it couldn’t find the right path to the summit. It is wandering still.

After her second book set out, Gaie wrote (and rewrote) her third and sent it on its way. Number Three was mysterious and tricky and intrigued fellow seekers of the path. It followed its sibling’s trail straight to the John Jarrold agency.  But then it too stumbled in the blizzard and meandered, lost in the many ways on Publication Mountain.

After Number Three had gone, Gaie wrote (and rewrote) her fourth book and sent it out. Number Four  also followed the trail to the agency.  It set forth boldy with sword drawn on the paths of Publication Mountain and it kicked arse. And after several adventures it found the right path through Publishing Contract to the top of the mountain. It sent back the secret path for two other siblings, as yet unwritten,  to follow it there.

Although every story must make its own path through the forest, there are signposts left by fellow travellers to help find the way.  I’ve listed a few here.

My favourite 3 books for buffing up writing skills:

Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain.
Story by Robert McKee.
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.

For critiques of query letters visit the Query Shark.

For critiques of synopses have a look at Miss Snark’s now defunct crapometer.

For avoiding the scammers check  Preditors and Editors and  Writer Beware.

Good luck in the forest!

That includes footnotes, but not the short story I originally wrote *cough cough* years ago that gave me my main character. Or the folders of handwritten notes on world-building and character. Or the two other false starts that I’ve made over the years. Or the recent mind maps and plot outlines.

It has a delivery girl with suicidal tendencies, urban vampires (yeah, I know, but they’re essential to the plot), a lot of aliens, and a trail of missing females.

It’s quite possible that I should ditch this thing. But instead, I’m going to give myself a year to get a first draft down. And I’ll document some of it here and pass on any tips that get me through the hard bits. Or, I’ll crash and burn and look like an asshat, and be a cautionary tale to real writers.

Anyway, anything to do with this novel will be in the “Blue Shift” category, and anything to do with my writing – er – let’s call it a process – will be in the “plot witter” category.

Thanks for listening.

Ok brain, I thought. You won’t write without a plot, so let’s get plotting. So I did mind maps and an outline, and then a more detailed outline, and built structures to convey the plot, and then I rewrote chapter 1 to do some very specific things. But I didn’t like it.  It felt like the life had gone out of it. It felt too tidy.

Now, I know that in first draft you’re supposed to just keep going on. But I hadn’t got the voice I wanted for my 1st person viewpoint. And then I started dreading having anything to do with the novel. Playing around with the structure was no longer satisfying, and I felt stuck on the writing because my stubborn subconscious told me it was wrong, but wouldn’t cough up what was right.

And I started to have all those thoughts about how I just can’t cut it as a novelist, I don’t have the stamina, I can’t write and I’m a deluded wannabe who sucks at everthing, and I’ll have to just write software until my head explodes or my company fires me, and then I’ll be forced to go and live under a rock and eat mud and I won’t be able to afford any books or a TV, and I’ll spend my time trying to make passersby take pity on me and shout a line from whatever they’re reading as they go past or reenact last night’s episode of House with finger puppets made out of crisp packets. And they probably won’t.

Then a couple of random things put me back on track. First I had a dream in which the uber-hot celebrity I have a tiresome adolescent obsession with smiled at me. He was happy to see me, and I was flooded with joy. Yes, total wish fulfillment. But come on, that’s part of what writing books is about, right?  And I thought – yes, that’s what I want for my protagonist  (Monday) when she finally gets it together with the right guy.

I’ve also started mentally collecting a sound-track for the novel, and as I was explaining to my ever-patient other half the other day, although the lyrics are part of what make a song right for it, it’s all about the feeling.

So yes, duh, I have finally put it together and realised that I’ve been doing too much thinking and not enough feeling about the book. After all, feelings are ultimately what we buy fiction for**.

So, I’m going to try and feel my way back into the story now. And all that day-dreaming and listening to music is now legitimate research and creative work. Right? Yeah - it’s quite possible I’m still a deluded wannabe. I suppose the proof will be in the wordcount.

*Actually, the ”5 whys” process is good for generating character backstory (top tip from a lecture by the wonderful Mr. Tim Powers). Start with a character action and keep asking “why?” until you get to something interesting. Or ask “why”, and then “but why really?”

For example: Rowan kidnaps Monday to force her to look for his missing wife.

Why? Because Monday refused to be hired to do it.

Why? Because she doesn’t trust Rowan.

Why? Her last delivery went wrong. She was being used to track someone, and they got hurt.

Why? Her instincts didn’t warn her that she was headed for trouble.

Why? Ever since The Incident, she hasn’t been able to trust herself.

**Funnily enough, I caught a brief  interview with film composer David Arnold on BBC breakfast this morning, where he was saying pretty much the same thing. He talked about “walking around with your antennae out”, keeping the film or TV series in his head, and trying to capture the right feeling. No video available yet, but if I find it, I’ll post it here.

All the cool kids know about this already. One chap even used it for his take on the state of the publishing industry. (Warning the following videos are NSFW).