All posts by Paul

I am a self-employed writer, which means I’m working for an idiot who doesn’t pay me enough – but the holidays are great. I’m ex many occupations, from the respectable ‘career-ladder’ to disreputable “somebody’s- got-to-do-it”. All a good way of seeing someone else’s point-of-view. Best job, apart from writing, was dispatch-riding on a motorcycle in the 70s, though I’ve also enjoyed teaching, librarianship, counselling and helping to run a community-centre. Sometimes I’ve looked respectable in a suit, other times a bit more wild and woolly (though still stylish) as a biker. It’s strange how differently people treat you, depending on what you’re wearing. A suit means I’m sometimes addressed as ‘sir’, but in motorcycle leathers I’m always referred to as ‘mate.’ The worst job that I’ve done ? You really don’t want to know, but it was in a processed food manufacturer’s factory – put me off bacon, sausages and quiches for a long time, and made me look at pet food in a new way. I’m very glad that I don’t have any pictures. I’ve been writing since I was eight, when I penned a story about a desert island and attempted to compile a dictionary – as Clarissa does in my short story ‘The Moon Is Out Tonight’. I’ve written for magazines under a variety of pen-names, ghost-written a couple of biographies and had a column in a local newspaper. I used to concentrate on non-fiction of an informative, how-to instructional nature, as I’m a firm believer in the dissemination of knowledge to enable people to do things for themselves. Knowledge is power, and in these troubled times of economic downturn and increased intrusion into our lives by government agencies, its vital to know how to get through. My fictional stories also show people coping and finding ways to survive. I’m based in a Celtic nation, the county of Cornwall or Kernow. I’ve been here for twenty years, and have lived all over the country, as well as abroad in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and the U.S.A.
Querying

Worms! Rejection & the Writer

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I completed my fifth Cornish Detective novel at the end of 2018. Overall, I’m happy with the progress of my series, and though I queried 88 agents in February, I think it’s more likely that I’ll return to self-publishing for the launch of the first story this summer.

I had my 32nd rejection email this morning. What rather unsettles me about these, is that they often come with a signature of someone I didn’t submit to. I spend ages researching who is the best agent at an agency to query, as we’re advised to do by publishing industry experts—apparently, 85% of queries are immediately rejected as they are sent to the wrong agent. To do that, and then hear back from someone whose name doesn’t even appear on their website, makes me think that some work-experience flunky has been ordered to chuck out the last 1,000 submissions with a form letter.


It doesn’t put me off—just makes me feel even more jaundiced about the so-called expertise of literary agents. It’s hard not to get cynical when I look at the marketing side of selling books. Thanks to the huge success of three novels with the word ‘girl’ in the title—Gone Girl, Girl On A Train and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo—there’s been a whole slew of crime novels that have ‘girl’ on the cover. Perhaps I should alter one of mine to ‘Girly Girl Has Girl On Girl Action at the Gorilla Grill’, (I’m going for the animal lover and foodie fans too!)

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Never mind. I keep reminding myself of novelist and screenwriter William Goldman‘s observation, that: 

“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and if you’re lucky, an educated one.”


I’ll just keep on plugging away while treating rejections from agents like the worms of the nursery rhyme.

Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I’ll go eat worms.
Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.

I’ll cut their heads off
suck their guts out
and throw their skins away
Surprising how us girls can eat
worms three times a day
That’s how we get our wiggles.

Talking of verse, it’s even harder to place poetry with a publisher. It’s worth remembering Don Marquis‘ advice, whatever genre you’re querying:

“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.”

Marquis made a number of pertinent observations about the process of writing and publishing, including this pithy favourite—which though it’s about poetry applies very well to what happens when you query literary agents with your prose!
Image result for maquis Publishing a volume of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

How do you cope with rejection?

Writing

Is Writing an Addiction?

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I have my own experience of addiction, having been an alcoholic for 27 years. It took suffering a minor stroke in 1995, to make me see the error of my ways. It’s said that an addict has to reach rock bottom before they wise-up, and watching four alcoholics die in surrounding hospital beds the day I was admitted certainly helped me to straighten up and fly right.

I kicked booze out of my life, and haven’t come close to falling off the waggon. I don’t miss it at all, and it’s 24 years since I imbibed alcohol.

I’ve never been tempted by any other addictions—tobacco, drugs, gambling or overindulging in food or sex.

All the same, I notice that I get a real high out of writing. There’s something about creating a story that stimulates the reward system in my brain. I derive great pleasure from the act of writing, coming alive while doing so and feeling happier than I do in other day-to-day activities.

I don’t feel the same way about editing, which feels like a tedious form of going cold turkey. As for querying literary agents, that might be a version of religious supplication—petitioning the Gatekeeper Lords with the prayers of my submission!

Do any of you get high from writing?

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Writing

Describing Words—Adjective Generator

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If you’re fumbling for the right word to describe a noun, then this useful tool could be just what you need:

Describing Words – Find Adjectives to Describe Things

I put in ‘Author’—it came up with many describing words, including ‘French homosexual’ (!), ‘ambiguous royal’ (?) and ‘often dull’ (never!).

Then I saw ‘blasphemous and bloody minded’—that’s me!

Put together by Joseph Rocca, check out his eerie word counter and analyser called Count Wordsworth.

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Writing

POV—A useful guide to Third Person.

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I found this guide to writing in the third person omniscient and third person limited interesting and useful:

How to Write From Third Person Omniscient and Third Person Limited Viewpoints

I write in third person limited, including multiple points-of-view.

The omniscient viewpoint is said to be dated, but one author who always uses it is John Irving. He flips between third person limited and third person omniscient, which can be delightful and also a bit distracting, as he’ll suddenly appear on your shoulder whispering in your ear that he knows something that’s going to happen to the protagonist before they do—or you as the reader do—and can you work out what I mean, you slowcoach?!

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Literary Agents, Querying

Querying across ‘The Pond.’

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Some of us are currently in the wearisome process of querying literary agents and publishers with open submission windows.

I recently emailed queries to 88 agencies, and have my eye of a few others who’ve been closed for submissions to clear their slush pile. I only approached British agents in this tranche of submissions, but when I chased after 160 agents in 2015, I included 20 in the U.S.A. They were all agencies who already handled well-established and newly published British authors, and who said they welcomed approaches from foreign writers.

Their response rate was better (more polite!) than British agencies—quicker too, with 18 of them rejecting my query within two months. The most rapid rejection came within 10 minutes, from an agent in New York who must be insomniac as it was 3:00 a.m. there. It made me think that I’d lobbed a dead rat over a neighbour’s hedge, and he’d immediately flung it back my way! 

Do any of you submit across The Pond?

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Writing

How to Write a Bestseller (according to Dan Brown)

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If you want to be a best-selling novelist, emulate Dan Brown.

He admits that “I throw out about 10 pages for every one that I keep.” I’m not surprised…why not the tenth page too?

If you’re unfamiliar with Brown’s writing style, have a look at this review of his latest book Origin.

His success proves my theory that books are like food. More people eat junk food than eat healthily. Dan Brown’s writing is the equivalent of junk food, hence his popularity.

Writing

The Long & Winding Road

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Writing may be joyful, but making a living from your words is a long, hard slog.

I returned to creative writing in 2013, since when I’ve self-published 45 titles as ebooks, written a dozen unpublished short stories and novellas and five crime novels. I’m glad that I didn’t upload my first Cornish Detective novel in 2015, as it would have disappeared like a fart in a tornado! Self-publishing is great, because it allows anyone to become a published author…the trouble is, millions do.

I’ve just endured the malarkey of querying literary agents and will be moving on to promoting myself by social media posting and blogging. This feels like dodging between the wrong ends of telescopes, to peer up the lenses to see if, far, far away someone is looking down the other end examining me… maybe showing an interest in my writing.

No one said it would be easy. That I’m a stubborn oaf might finally be playing in my favour, after 60 years of banging my head against a brick wall! My métier is being rejected by literary agents without being disheartened. My hide is as thick as a rhinoceros.

It’s good to have armour and a positive attitude, for looking at the careers of famous authors shows what a struggle they endured. Steven Pressfield is the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and historical novels. His The War of Art and other books on writing are inspirational, especially when your creative spirit is flagging.

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Steven Pressfield spent 27 years writing before achieving success, working minimum wage jobs, wandering aimlessly from state to state, couch surfing and sleeping in his car.

Author, literary agent and writing guru Noah Lukeman warns that it may take ten years before a writer gets anywhere. Lots of famous authors persevered for years until their first book was published.

Whenever I feel weary, I remember this advice from Danish journalist Jacob Riis:

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

This week, a cartoon popped up in my Quora feed, that reminded me of why I’m glad to be a writer, as it helps me to live in the moment.

As Franz Kafka said: “So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time beginning.“

I know there are miles to go before I sleep with the contented thought that I’m successful as an author, but the long and winding road still beckons me.

How about you?

Where are you headed? Towards a traditional publishing contract or self-publishing?

How long have you been on the writing road?

What success have you had, so far?

“So does stepping off a cliff: make sure you’re facing in the right direction before beginning” – Paul Whybrow

Reading

Life-Changing Books

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There are moments in life when we chance upon a song, poem, film or book that chimes with something within us. Pithy quotes resonate—we remember them—they influence how we act. I’ve been collecting quotes, anecdotes, aphorisms and poems for twenty years, which I refer to for inspiration.

Sometimes a book, poem or song lyric can be life-changing. It might make us see things in a different way, or confirm what we were already thinking—an ego-boosting fillip that proves we’re not alone in the world. How what we read affects what we write is hard to say, but as Pam Allyn of the International Literacy Agency said: “Reading Is Like Breathing In; Writing Is Like Breathing Out.”

I grew up in the 1950s-1960s, a time of great social change with the rise of consumerism and the building of so-called New Towns within commuting distance of London; these were designed to take the capital’s population overflow housing them in modern developments to replace WW2 bomb damaged buildings. My hometown of Stevenage, Hertfordshire went from being a sleepy 6,000 in population, when I was born, to have tens of thousands of residents

I was a real lover of nature, so adored The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame, which taught me some early lessons about conservation, how small is beautiful, loyalty and opposing property developers. It was galling to realise that I lived in a town that had expanded onto green spaces. The idyllic quality of life which Mole and Ratty sought in The Wind In The Willows eventually led me, after much wandering, to move to Cornwall.

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My attitude towards opposing the destruction of the environment was cemented by reading Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.

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I learned about the dark side of war by reading Lord Russell of Liverpool’s books on Nazi and Japanese war crimes. The Scourge of the Swastika and The Knights of Bushido were harrowing reading matter for 10-year-old me, but they were formative in making me realise that fascism has to be opposed.

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Image result for The Scourge of the Swastika and The Knights of Bushido

On a lighter note, a few years ago, a friend introduced me to the writing of Pema Chödrön. I’ve long had an interest in philosophy and her Buddhist beliefs chimed with what I’d been wondering about, particularly what she says about ‘attachment’ which hooks a person into a long-standing cycle of negative thinking. ‘Start Where You Are’ are ideal watchwords for any writer embarking on the telling of a story.

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I love poetry and recall being struck by the chilling forthrightness of Philip Larkin’s This Be The Verse when I first read it as a teenager. It started me thinking that I shouldn’t have children…and I never have.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

More recently, I was delighted by the honest and sensual verse of Sharon Olds.

She writes fearlessly about ageing, including making love. Her frankness and good humour affected my poetry and prose. Hard to dislike somebody who writes a poem called Celibate’s Ode To Balls.

Stag's Leap by Sharon Olds

Writing by Peter Cox, literary agent, author and founder of Litopia, with its writers’ forum The Colony, made me reconsider what I was eating. I read You Don’t Need Meat which opened my eyes to a lot of issues I’d been ignoring about the food industry. I eat a lot more pulses, grains, fruit and vegetables these days. I could have done without the nightmare I had after reading the book, in which I was pursued through a forest by giant pork chops spitting applesauce at me! I’d rather not think about the Freudian aspects of that… I certainly woke more terrified than turned on.

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It’s not just the books we read, but also the books we write that change our lives. Returning to creative writing in 2013 transformed my self-belief and I’m more optimistic about life. Whether my words will ever change a reader’s life remains to be seen.

What books do you remember as influential from your childhood?

Has a book ever changed how you think about something?

What have you read recently that blew your mind?

Has being a writer changed your life?

Writing

What Wouldn’t You Write?

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My chosen writing genre is Crime fiction. It’s the second most popular genre, after Romance/Erotica, so seemed to be a sensible choice for me as an unknown writer. I’ve read a lot of crime novels and true crime stories, so knew what I wanted to do with my novels.

Danish-Norwegian novelist Aksel Sandemose said “The only things worth writing about are love and murder.” A bold statement, but if you think about it, most great novels tackle these things. Even if a story is classified as fitting the History genre, such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall the plot is full of passion and grisly death.

I originally intended to write a novel that would be highfalutin Literature, but then read that Literature is the hardest style of book to sell, so I migrated to genre writing. I think it’s easier to be taken seriously with your heavyweight manuscript if you’ve already infiltrated the literary establishment by attending conferences, writing courses and winning a short story competition or two.

Apart from my crime novels, I’ve also written short stories and novellas, poetry and song lyrics. I’m halfway through a series of four novellas about an American Civil War veteran. Writing Historical fiction needs even more research than my contemporary crime stories, which has made me wary of doing more. Mind you, I well understand why crime novelists set their stories in olden days, where the most advanced technology is a magnifying glass, as it avoids the complicated nightmare of CCTV, Social Media, DNA, smartphones, surveillance by governments, computers etc.

I’m similarly wary of writing Science Fiction, as it strains my scientific knowledge. I wrote one novella which was set on Mars, and in the three months it took to complete, the Mars Exploration Rover kept on making discoveries forcing me to amend my plot. But, I was pleased in a cosmic way, when a fictional detail about dust devils I’d put in proved to be true!

Fantasy fiction intimidates me, probably for the very reasons that those of you who write it love it. That is the building of worlds, with all of the complexity involved. I have trouble enough understanding the world I’m on, to want to construct a different one.

I’ve just introduced romance to my Cornish Detective series, which will be a challenge to integrate into the next story. I’m looking forward to it, as my protagonist’s new love interest is as much a thorn as a rose, with a shady past that he doesn’t know about.

All the same, I can’t imagine myself writing a conventional Romance. Nor would I tackle Erotica, though each of my crime novels includes an unusual sexual incident (I’m trying to get a bad reputation!). I’m not prudish about sex, but it’s a crowded market.

I’ve had a few ghostly experiences, which I incorporated into a novella, but writing at length about a friendly or hostile ghost doesn’t appeal. I’m more scared of terrors in real life, so have never been intimidated by Horror stories. That’s not to say I wouldn’t write one, as it’s a real challenge to create a mood that ratchets up the tension, before throwing the reader into a situation where they’re afraid to turn the next page.

I’d never write Religious/Inspirational fiction, though I hope that my readers find the occasional uplifting and thought-provoking passage in my crime stories. With religion, I cleave to what the Dalai Lama said:

I’ve written about sixty poems for children, aged 5-10, which I enjoyed doing and that my young readers liked. I may pen a story but am intimidated by the craft of writing for young readers. The simpler a story becomes the more complicated the repercussions; it would be a great responsibility for me to communicate messages about life to children.

Writing funny fiction that would be classified in the Humour genre is more appealing. I prefer situational humour to slapstick on the page. I loved reading Patrick deWitt’s French Exit which brought a wry smile to my face, with its absurdist and rather dark plot. Humour is so subjective, but I’d like to have a go at amusing readers.

There can be resistance from readers loyal to what you normally write, should you attempt to shift genres, which is when pen names emerge. I previously posted about being trapped by genre, but some successful authors hop around between genres.

There’s only so much time to write, so it’s wise to play to one’s strengths.

Writing is a brilliant way of getting to know yourself, finding out what you really believe. It’s pieces of you that you’re putting down on the page.

What wouldn’t you write?