The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or someone else, as he chooses. Like those wandering souls who go looking for a body, he enters as he likes into each man’s personality. For him alone everything is vacant.
Baudelaire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Baudelaire
Nick Cave has hard-won wisdom. I’ve recommended his weekly Red Hand Files newsletter before, and it’s worth subscribing to for the thoughtful replies he gives to questions, including “What do you do when the lyrics just aren’t coming?”
Nick Cave – The Red Hand Files – Issue #108 – What do you do when the lyrics just aren’t coming?
I’ve just finished reading a novella written by one of my favourite authors. Patrick Gale lives in Cornwall, though most of his novels are set elsewhere.
Ease is an early work. Somewhat fanciful and self-indulgent, I found myself wondering if it would have got published had it been submitted by a debut author. My paperback copy has five bits of blurb on the cover, only one of which is applicable to Ease:
‘A remarkable insight into the vagaries of the human heart.’ Independent
The other four are general comments about him as an author:
‘A huge treat…He is one of my favourite writers.’ Daily Mail
‘Gale is a master of character, and he slips under the skins of his women protagonists with such wit that it’s often hard to believe he’s a man.’ Elle
‘Patrick Gale is among the great, unsung English novelists. Think Austen, Hardy or Murdoch. Remarkable.’ The Independent
‘Gale is a master at getting under the skins of his characters and revealing the undercurrents that drive apparently normal lives.’ Mail on Sunday
I dislike it when publishers do this, but there are no regulations to prevent them from doing so.
Blurb has a long and chequered history:
The term ‘blurb’ can include a condensed description of the plot. If you haven’t yet written such a précis, it’s a useful exercise, as it forces you to focus on what your story is about. When querying literary agents, you’ll need a blurb to sell your story.
How to write a book blurb for a query letter to a literary agent
If you self-publish, a blurb should tempt potential readers into wanting to buy your book. Formatting the cover of an eBook, there’s only so much space to use for a blurb.
Here’s the blurb for my third Cornish Detective novel, An Elegant Murder:
And here’s an imaginary blurb of praise for my book from two noted reviewers:
‘The author captures the menace hidden beneath the beauty of Cornwall. Evil forces stalk in paradise on two legs and four.’ Richard & Judy Book Club
What’s the blurb for one of your books?
How will it be praised by reviewers? (Let yourself go!)
Although perseverance is the most important quality that a writer should have, I think that there comes a point in whatever project you’re devoting time and energy to, where you say to yourself: “That’s good enough.”
Perfection is impossible. No publisher in the world has ever said to an author: “You know, your manuscript is perfect, it needed no editing, we’ll publish it as it is.” No matter how many times you trawl through your completed story seeking mistakes, there’ll always be some that you miss.
This dilemma has been brought home to me recently, as I’ve been editing chapters of my first audiobook. As fellow narrators will confirm, fettling an audio file into perfect shape can become an obsessive pursuit. Although I learnt how to apply the required modifications to satisfy Amazon’s ACX scrutiny in one fell swoop, this doesn’t involve such things as intonation, pauses, breathing and applying dramatic effect by varying the speed you narrate a sentence or paragraph. Audiophiles can be fussy about the details of narrating. Take breathing. If a character is arguing about something, then including their gasps adds to the drama. But, what about hearing the narrator breathe? Some experts recommend removing every trace of the narrator reloading their lungs with oxygen, while others permit a certain amount to prevent the audiobook from sounding like it’s read by a cyborg! 
I was dealing with this last night, when I recalled an advice book I read in the spring. Seth Godin is a marketing guru. I subscribed to his blog a couple of years ago, in the hope that something he says will inspire me how to market my books. His short book The Dip: the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) offers thought-provoking advice about what to do when you’ve entered a creative cul-de-sac and are faced with a dead end. If you want to be successful, get out of there and try a different route. At the very least, admit that you’ve done all that you can. Refocus your energies.
As Godin says:
“Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt”
That doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on mastering the recording of my novel. It’s rather, I’m going to prevent myself getting bogged down on a repetitive task. I could spend the rest of 2020 making the audiobook of my first Cornish Detective novel Who Kills A Nudist? totally perfect, but to what end? Will it sell any more copies? Striving for perfection will hold me back. I’ve four other novels to narrate, as well as novellas and short stories.
The same applies to other tasks to do with writing—editing, formatting, designing book covers, self-publishing and querying literary agents. There’s an awful lot of repetition involved in being an author, isn’t there?
Have you ever reached a point where you’ve decided that what you’ve done is as good as it gets and it’s time to move on?
What was that task?
There are so many aspects of writing to consider, that it’s hard to think about them all while writing. That’s what editing is for.
But, last night reading in bed, I was brought up short by how C. J. Box ended his chapters. Over the years, I’ve read about a dozen of his Joe Pickett series. His game warden usually gets drawn into investigating crimes that are more complicated than they first appear. His home life mimics that of the author: married with three daughters. As I’m finding, writing my Cornish Detective series, it’s crucial to give the protagonist a personal life, otherwise, he’ll come across as robotic and unfeeling. Also, surveys show that most crime readers are mature females, so it’s wise to include emotions to do with family, friends and partners.
I’ve gotten into a habit of how to end chapters. I don’t know if it’s something I noticed from my reading thousands of crime novels, or whether I saw it as a piece of writing advice, but I tend to have a final sentence that poses a question or which indicates my main character’s mindset. My chapter endings look backwards to what’s happened and forward to possibilities. Thus, from the first Cornish Detective story, Who Kills A Nudist?, (which I’m getting a sore throat narrating), my first four chapters end:
* She watched him through her lens for a few more moments. He was so still, perhaps asleep. Then a gull landed and walked over to his face, pecking at his eyes. She grabbed her phone and dialled 999.
* He needed to question the witness who’d found the body, an American lady waiting with Mary in her car. Calling a constable over to stand watch on the tent, Neil gave the vic one last look. Who kills a nudist?
* Concentrate Neil, there might be a murder to solve. He’d learn more from CC’s examination of the corpse. Dying on a beach, powerless against the mighty sea felt primitive. Nature reduced us to fragile specks.
* Looking back at the blank staring windows of an empty house, Neil experienced a moment of sorrow. Their victim ought to be at home, repairing the bikes he donated to others, not stretched out cold on a mortuary slab.
In C. J. Box’s Stone Cold, he sometimes just ends a chapter, as in these examples, including in mid-conversation:
* He squinted and rubbed his chin.
* “Just get done and hurry home”, she said. “I’m worried what I might learn from Mrs Young, and you may need to get to Laramie in a hurry.”
* “You gonna tell me what the problem is?”
“No,” he said, turning away.
* Sheridan reached over and pressed PLAY on the Pandora window. Chris LeDoux again, with “Hooked on an 8 Second Ride.”
“That’s Mr Templeton out checking his final cutting of the year,” Latta said. Joe noted the tone of admiration in his voice.
It’s made me wonder if I’ve been overthinking things (yet again)
How do you end chapters?
I’m currently enjoying reading Ray Celestin’s The Axeman’s Jazz. Set in 1919, what’s noticeable, is that everyone in it smokes! It adds to the realism but feels odd, somehow. Smoking has been outlawed and is disapproved of these days, but back then tobacco was marketed as sophisticated and as a health aid.
I’ve never smoked, not one cigarette, partly because several senior members of my family died of lung cancer. As a result, I tend to forget to include smoking in my stories. I’ve just started writing the third story in my Art Palmer series, set in 1867, two years after the American Civil War ended. Smoking was common then, indeed Art is making for his sister’s tobacco plantation, but he doesn’t smoke. Not because he dislikes it, but more because the smell of smoke alerts the enemy to his whereabouts. The war may be over, but danger lurks.
Smoking in fiction is tied to some characters. Just think of Sherlock Holmes puffing on a pipe. He gauged thinking about investigations by his smoking—in The Red-Handed League, he says to Dr Watson:
“It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”
Quite what variety of baccy Gandalf tokes down on with his pipe-weed still causes speculation.
The Caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland favours a hookah to inspire his pithy observations on life.
Hardboiled private-eyes of a certain era are always puffing away. Hard not to think of Humphrey Bogart playing Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe without a cigarette in his mouth.
We shouldn’t forget chewing tobacco. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books feature Blackheart and Jolly Sailor brands. And, what about the addictive tomacco in The Simpsons?
It’s not all fun…spitting chaw can say a lot about a character, such as Josey Wales:
Smoking can be used to show aspects of a character: their addictive nature, an attempt at sophistication or trying to fit in with a crowd, a means of staving off hunger, an aid to meditating and, as the old excuse goes, giving them ‘something to do with their hands.’
Do any of your characters smoke or chew tobacco?
Browsing the internet this morning, I came across the work of the Spanish self-taught street photographer Joan Colom.
In a portfolio of shots he took at a market, I saw a photograph that made me gasp in recognition, as it depicts how I’m feeling about my writing career at the moment.
It’s always amused me that the word career also means to stagger about…which certainly describes my erratic work history!
Although it’s joyful for me to be immersed in creating a new story, other aspects of writing can be repetitive and mundane. Self-publishing entails self-promotion, and how do I balance that with querying literary agents? I’m currently learning how to narrate and record and edit my voice, so I can add audiobooks versions of my crime novel series to Amazon KDP. But, I should really be adding posts to this writing blog Paul Pens and articles to my Cornish Detective website.
https://thecornishdetective.cloudaccess.host/
And, what about my presence on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram?
There are only so many hours in the day, so I sometimes feel like this market worker manoeuvring his inadequate trolley stacked with crates and trying not to drop any. Do you ever feel overwhelmed?
Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstances too – bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you’ve no longer been bested by the events.
Louise Glück
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Gl%C3%BCck
In science there is a dictum: don’t add an experiment to an experiment. Don’t make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.
Ben Bova
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bova
Every story I create creates me. I write to create myself.
Octavia E. Butler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler
