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.
Breathing is a process that for, most of the time, takes place
automatically and unconsciously.
We become aware of our breathing at times of stress. It’s commonly
advised to “take a few deep breaths” when upset, to
help you calm down, to take time to reflect on what to do next and
not lose your temper.
This advice has been refined into a technique called Resonant
Breathing. It’s easy to do:
‘Take five breaths per minute, and keep it going as long as needed. This means each inhale will last six seconds, and each exhale six seconds. That’s it!’
It’s reckoned that this way of coherent breathing also reduces
symptoms of depression, by changing the messages that the brain
receives.
Controlling one’s breathing can also help you drop off to sleep. Known as the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise, it’s a simple way of influencing one’s physiology and thought processes to move into a state of relaxation:
Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight. This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.
I’d argue
that a certain amount of aggression is needed to grind away at the
more onerous tasks involved in writing, such as editing and
querying—even if it’s aimed at yourself in a restrained way. Wimps
don’t get published!
This article in New Republic makes for salutary reading. It shows how it’s not what you know, or what you write, but who you know that determines whether you get published. If you already have an ‘in’ to the publishing world, then your submission is more likely to be given serious consideration.
But escaping the slush pile might be down to the whims of unpaid interns: if you think that your three chapter writing sample, synopsis and query letter is scrutinised by a literary agent or editor, then think again.
Any novice writer starting out, soon realises that there’s so much
commitment needed to create a story that it’s going to mean
self-denial, humiliation and pain. More experienced writers accept
that they’ve grown a thick skin to withstand rejection and that
tremendous willpower is required to complete the tidying up of a
manuscript after The End is typed.
The term ‘masochism’ comes from a writer—Leopold von Sacher-Masoch— whose sexual proclivities included submission to powerful women.
BDSM has become mainstream in recent years, but masochism includes
more than painful sexual activity. The Cambridge English Dictionary
gives a definition of masochism as:
‘The enjoyment of an activity or situation that most people would find very unpleasant.’
It’s arguable, that to achieve success in any endeavour, an ability
to power through pain and denial is essential. Patience and
perseverance are needed to get published.
I feel unlike a writer this year, for although I started a novella as
therapy while I became a self-publicising blogger and social media
poster, I’ve been ploughed under by the repetitive mechanics of
promoting myself and my novels.
I started the year by transferring 44 titles from Smashwords and Amazon to a new digital publisher called Draft2Digital.
It took longer than I anticipated, as I had to take my ebooks off Smashwords and Amazon, then reformat the manuscripts to suit D2D’s requirements. It was tedious—the opposite of being creative—I disliked doing it but soldiered on.
In reactivating my Paul Pens blog, which I started in 2014, then neglected ignored in favour of writing, I’m using many of the threads I started on The Colony. Although I’m glad to have them as a resource, editing and updating what I wrote, including checking if hyperlinks still work, has taken me a month of 8-10 hour days. I’ve ended up with 400 posts, which sounds impressive, but I have no idea if anyone will read them or how it will contribute to my author platform. Like anything in writing, what I’ve done is speculative.
I was relieved to complete this nit-picking task, which didn’t feel like much of an achievement—more like I’d finally stopped scourging my back with a cat o’ nine tails!
Once my blog goes live, I’ll begin to tweet, post on Instagram, update the pins I’ve already made on Pinterest, post fresh material on my Facebook business page and offer to do guest posts for other bloggers. I’m going to try to enjoy these activities, and I reckon I will get something positive out of interacting with people who make comments, but I feel more like a business agent than an author. I’m having to force myself to do it—my Cornish Detective novels require publicising if they’re going to sell—it’s a form of advertising. Not only am I a part of show business, but I’m also a manufacturer and self-promoter and performer. Ta dah!
I’m brainwashing myself into staying positive—but not go so over
the top, that my blogging and social media activity becomes
sadistic—as if I’m inflicting myself on potential readers!
Actually, I’m also concerned that I’m getting off on the masochistic
side of writing and publishing…will I forget how to enjoy creating
new stories? I know that Rome wasn’t built in a day,
but I had no idea how many bricks were involved to build a writing
career.
All
of us, at some time or other, say to ourselves “Why am
I doing this?”
How do you cope with the insecurity and disappointment of writing?
Do friends and family worry about your dedication?
There’s a difference between fear and dread—it’s subtle—but, as writers, we should use dread to create an atmosphere of unease…a pervasive foreshadowing that coats our characters.
To me, dread implies fearful expectation, or anticipation, whereas fear is a response to a threat that’s appeared.
These days in Thriller and Crime writing and film adaptations, there’s too much instant gratification—BOOM!—big explosions, courtesy of CGI that the hero is immune to, calmly walking away from them, as if shock waves, heat and debris don’t exist. If our hero is injured, it’s usually a designer cut on his cheek, that won’t leave a scar. No one ever receives a wound that makes him weak and insecure and vulnerable…which could crank up the tension, rather than detract from their powers.
I’ve just finished reading Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst, in which she created a cumulative sense of dread from seemingly unconnected incidents, skilfully using all of the senses, including smell and touch.
Nice to come across a hardback book so well-designed with the use of colophons depicting reeds, ivy leaves, a magpie, carved devil heads, bulrushes and leafy vegetation to mark chapter and section breaks. I was delighted to see an eel slither onto the corner of page 165 out to make mischief. Good too, that there’s a red ribbon bookmark attached to the spine. Such features make a book feel special, that it’s worth the asking price.
The dread-full atmosphere of Wakenhyrst put me in mind of the Fantasy and Ghost stories penned by M.R. James in which he weaved a creepy atmosphere, where nothing was quite what it seemed to be, leading to a satisfying crescendo.
Several of these tales were adapted by the BBC, in a strand of short films under the banner A Ghost Story For Christmas. Shown from 1971-1978, with a one-off in 2005, they were eagerly anticipated by viewers and much-discussed afterwards.
I vividly recall several scenes, including one from the first shown, The Stalls of Barchester, based on M.R. James story TheStalls of Barchester Cathedral, in which a scholar is haunted by a ghostly cat, as he investigates the mysterious death of his predecessor. What made me jump, was a scene where the doomed protagonist is sitting in the darkened cathedral, with only a candle for illumination, nervous of an unseen cat yowling nearby, grasping the arm of his chair for reassurance—which suddenly turns from wood into black cat fur!
In my own writing, I try to create a sense of dread in my Cornish Detective series, sometimes by letting the reader know things that the coppers don’t, meaning they blunder into dangerous situations. Judging how well I’ve made the reader uneasy, is as tricky as deciding how funny a listener will find a joke I’m telling.
This heartfelt article describes what many of us know is involved in querying literary agents.
If you’re just starting out as a writer, yet to jump through an agent’s submission hoop, then what Glen Cadigan describes will give you a good idea of what to expect when you’ve completed your precious story.
I just received my 40th ‘No’ from 88 queries made in February, which brings my total of rejections up to 677 since 2013. I’m not upset by this, forging ahead with my plans to return to self-publishing, which, at the moment means adding posts to my Paul Pens blog in anticipation of it going live. To me, rejections are like flies splattering themselves on my windscreen as I drive onwards.
I found Glen Cadigan’s article via a link on the excellent Writers’ Services newsletter, which is worth subscribing to, that also featured an article from Jane Friedman who does a question and answer session with two literary agents, comparing and contrasting what they say with the reality that Glen Cadigan describes.
Before I started reading it, I predicted that both agents would stress the importance of good quality writing, which is what they always say, and that I’ve described here in an old post as the biggest fallacy about publishing.
The idea that your manuscript will rise to the top of the slush pile, glowing like an irresistible gold ingot because it’s well-written is nonsense. It certainly helps, for writing has to be coherent, at the very least, but from seeing what does get published to become best-selling, I reckon that it’s the concept of a story, something unusual, intriguing and exciting that can be marketed, which motivates agents and publishers to get behind a book.
Good fun, though, and if you love the artist’s inspiration—Studio Ghibli, who made My Neighbour, Totoro—then, you’ll be captivated by the idea of having a giant creature as a companion.
It may be good fun, but I wouldn’t want to clean out the cat’s litter tray!
This article was in the Curiosity.com newsletter today, about eggcorns—which are words or phrases that are misheard or wrongly remembered and regurgitated in a slightly different form—which then enters usage. This could be one way in which language evolves.
I’ve heard number 5) Bad wrap (bad rap) said as “bad rep”…as in bad reputation.
One phrase not on the list, that I don’t know which came first, isDull as ditchwateror Dull as dishwater.I grew up saying the former, but the washing-up option is more common nowadays.
Mishearing song lyrics or poetry leads to what are known as Mondegreens.
For a while, I thought that Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits was singing “Money for nothing and your cheques for free,” in their song Money For Nothing, rather than the actual lyric “your chicks for free.” Some listeners thought he was muttering “your chips for free.”
A close relative is a Malapropism, which can be humorous.
This article suggests that writing in longhand or by typewriter is a more stimulating method of creating a story than skating the surface of a soft-touch computer keyboard.
That there may be ‘hidden efficiency’ in pen, pencil and typewriter ribbon is intriguing. I agree that I remember information better if I’ve written it down, which is partly why I jot ideas onto scraps of card that are dotted around my laptop’s cooling cradle. I’ve got hundreds of documents stored in scores of folders on my desktop, which I’m sometimes glad to find while looking for something else, for I’d forgotten that I’d already done that bit of research!
I’ve written a few poems in longhand, but never anything in prose. I love relying on my laptop, which I also use to aid my concentration by playing music as I write. I even defy the common advice of not having an internet connection while I write, for sometimes it’s best for me to get a fact right at that moment, rather than doing it later when editing, as it will affect what I write next. I’m very focused, checking just that one fact and not wandering off to surf the web.
What about you?
Do you do everything on a computer?
Or by longhand or typewriter, afterwards producing a computer file?
One of the best-known televised games isCountdown, whose format has been sold worldwide:
Scrabble, with its many variants, has been around since 1938—rumours that it precipitated WW2 are probably untrue—but its interminable nature rivals Monopoly, which tries the patience. I’ve known several Scrabble bores who insisted on finishing the game, sitting up until the early hours of the morning. One had a gold-plated version whose glistening board and engraved letter tiles were difficult to read without tilting one’s head, making it tricky to remember which letters were in play.
Magnetic letter or word tiles to attach to fridge and freezer doors are a diverting way of having fun and leaving messages, though slamming the door is inadvisable, as stepping on a tile in bare feet is unpleasant, though not as painful as a Lego brick.
I’ve gone through phases of doing crosswords, never being addicted to them. I prefer puzzles based on general knowledge, as the satisfaction gained from working out cryptic clues escapes me. It’s been said, that doing crosswords is a good way of warding off dementia.
But a 2018 report in the British Medical Journal denied this was so.
I think that I’ll stick to my own word game, which is best played in bed as a way of hypnotising yourself or a partner to fall asleep. Using the alphabet, name a dog breed beginning with ‘A’ and so on—or a country or your favourite forename or a car or food…whatever you fancy. Take it in turns with a partner. You may well find that they and you go to sleep at the same letter each night.
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