In full dither mode, as I avoid studying helpful articles about self-promotion, querying and Amazon, I’ve been re-reading short stories and novellas that I wrote in 2013 and 2014.
I haven’t looked at them for three years since I uploaded freshly edited versions with new covers onto Amazon and Smashwords. It’s been an enjoyable experience, like catching up with friends I haven’t seen for a while.
My writer’s eye also spotted preoccupations, recurring themes in my stories, that I wasn’t totally aware of while creating them. I edited out a load of wordy garbage, which I missed in 2015. It’s satisfying and embarrassing to strike out twenty-four words and say what I meant in just five words!
One tricksy dilemma that I wrestled with back then, still bothers me a bit…the use of there’s and there’re. It’s discussed in this thread on the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange website.
As one contributor says, strictly speaking, there’s, for there is, shouldn’t be used when referring to a plural, yet in everyday conversation people commonly say it. They also make an elision of there are dropping the letter a and turning it into there’re—but somehow that word looks wrong in print!
I previously pondered the pain of contractions in an old post and the tussle between being grammatically correct and making our characters sound believable continues. I’ve found there’re used in only a few novels that I read this year, usually recently published crime stories. In my own writing, I’ve sometimes used there’re in speech, especially if the speaker expresses themselves colloquially. I wouldn’t use it in the narrative where I’m describing a series of events.
It’s a neurotic writer quandary to have, but what do you think?
Are there any contractions that bother you?
Eek! I’m adding to the existing confusion over their, there and they’re…
I’ve been pondering the use of contractions in how I write conversation. I recently spent five weeks editing my five completed novels, adding quite a few contractions to make how my characters talk sound more natural.
We all run words together in conversation—you’ve, she’s, hadn’t, I’ve—and not doing so, by pronouncing each word separately can make what’s said sound formal and the speaker stiff and pedantic. In formal business writing, scientific papers and for legal matters, contractions are not used.
When reading, some contractions are easily processed by the brain, but writing them down can look clumsy. People commonly say there’re, but to my eyes, in print, it looks a bit odd and pronouncing it (even mentally in my reading voice) sounds like a small dog growling!
Contractions have altered through the centuries, and I commonly use an archaic example—’tis—which isitandis combined, as Cornish people regularly say it. When I lived in Atlanta, most people said y’all instead ofyou all.
Expressing colloquialisms too closely can look clumsy, words such as she’d’ve, shouldn’t’ve and mightn’t’ve. Such contractions might ease the flow of conversation, but in writing they become obstructive.
How do you handle contractions? I wonder how tightly edited they are, by editors at a literary agency or publisher—being added or taken away….
Authors are, for the most part, nice people. Anyone who likes books is surely someone you could get on with…but, what if they only liked one author or one genre?
I once met the friend of a friend, an elderly gentleman who was obsessed with the books and life of Stephen King. He showed me his temple to the author, which had once been his dining room, but now held thousands of hardbacks and paperbacks, including foreign editions, on shelving on every wall…as well as a unit mounted to the back of the door! The only furniture was a buttoned brown leather Chesterfield chair occupying the centre of the room, with a coffee table alongside for him to rest his book and sherry glass on. He didn’t read any other authors, considering them inferior. I dare say, he could have won Mastermind with Stephen King as his specialist subject, but his devotion was peculiar.
Writers can be snooty about strange things, including how they learned to be writers. For an unpublished author, one route to success appears to be attending a creative writing course, for we see stirring stories of students being snapped up my literary agents, getting a publisher and winning a literary prize. Certainly, one of the best ways of getting anywhere is talking face to face with influential folk in the book world. Attending a degree course or a residential workshop, might validate your own writing, teach you useful techniques and give you confidence, but would you end up writing in the same way as every other attendee? This is a criticism that has been levelled at such courses.
I admit I feel a bit jaded when I read the fluff for the latest hotshot debut author, to see that she graduated from the University of East Anglia Creative Writing course with an M.A., where she was taught by Margaret Atwood who introduced her to her literary agent. It’s easy to end up feeling shut out….But, am I being a hard-done-by snob or are they with their elitist smugness?
Literary snobbery is pervasive, even if it’s not admitted to. Some male readers won’t touch books written by women, and it’s easy to see how divisive things get when looking at book reviews. In 2013, The London Review of Books published 72 reviews of books written by women compared to 245 written by males. The New Yorker came in at 253/555 which is better, but the Times Literary Supplement fared poorly with 903 male writers and 313 female. The TLS employs far more male reviewers than female, despite the fact that 80% of fiction is bought and read by women. Asked about the discrepancy, TLS editor Peter Stothard said he was “only interested in getting the best reviews ofthe most important books” continuing “while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the TLS.”
While we’re on snobbery in book reviews in newspapers, what about self-published books? They never get reviewed by the mainstream press. In the last year, I can only recall one example of a self-published book being mentioned, and that was only because it had been snapped up and heavily promoted by Penguin Random House.
It’s sometimes said that female writers receive lower book advances than male writers, but things look fairly even in a survey done by Jane Friedman, so perhaps market forces are eradicating the snobbery shown by book reviewers:
What about snobbery among book readers? Some people stick to one genre; fans of Romance are particularly loyal, which is one reason why it’s the best-selling genre. I’ve known Science Fiction readers who look down on normal fiction. Some despise genre writing, only tackling highfalutin literature. I once had a girlfriend who only read heavyweight novels that had won literary prizes, as if that would improve her intellect.
When looking for readers of my first Cornish Detective novel, I deliberately asked two acquaintances to offer their thoughts, as they normally read Chick-Lit and Travelogues and I intended to market my Crime novels to a mass audience. Both of these women are unafraid of expressing opinions, making them better than choosing friends or relatives who might fear upsetting me. I asked them why they didn’t read crime stories, and they answered, “I didn’t think I’d like them”…which is snobbery based on ignorance. They enjoyed my novel, offering useful thoughts on how it could be improved.
With my own reading, about half of it is in my chosen writing genre of Crime and half of all of the books I read are written by women. I rarely read pure Romance stories, though I like novels with a love story as part of the plot. I forced myself to read a James Patterson co-written Romance in the Bookshot series, which might just be the most masochistic act I’ve inflicted on myself this year! Sacking the Quarterback made me feel ill like I’d injected saccharine into a vein! A ten-year-old could write better.
I don’t often read Speculative, Fantasy or Science-fiction, not because I’m snobby about them, more because my brain’s too feeble for the leap needed to immerse myself in those worlds. Most of the Historical fiction I read has a criminal component, such as the Matthew Shardlake series by C. J. Sansom.
I’m unsure exactly why, but I avoid detective novels set from Victorian times to the 1970s; I think it’s because they predate technological and forensic developments, seeming like an easy option to me. It’s not, as historical facts need to be researched.
In what I write, I’ve tackled most genres, except for Romance, though I penned a couple of novellas with a romantic element and many love poems and song lyrics. I like to think that my crime writing has a literary quality but that might be me having delusions of grandeur!
Author Caroline O’Donoghue makes some good points about chick lit haters, in this article. Her ire is also directed at the covers that publishers use to market this genre, something I had a go at in an old post.
My local library recently reorganised the layout of their shelving units, introducing a couple of free-standing carousels. From 20′ away, it was obvious to me what sort of paperbacks were displayed on them, as one was dark in colour with shadowy figures and guns—the Crime books, while the other was all pink and pastel blue with twinkling silver highlights for Romance.
The thing, is these are established colour schemes, a visual shorthand of what genre of writing a book fits into, so it would be foolish to buck the trend.
O’Donoghue complains that Chick-Lit books don’t get discussed in mainstream media book pages, and she’s done something about it, by starting her own podcast. She’s got a point, as with British newspaper book reviews, I can only think of the Daily Mail which has a section devoted to Chick Lit.
Most newspaper book review sites have a separate section for Crime and Thrillers, but sly snobbery is rife when it comes to giving literary awards to these genres. Just as it’s rare for a comedy film to win an Oscar, so best-selling Crime novels are overlooked for writing prizes. It was a small miracle that in 2018 for the first time a graphic novel was nominated for the Man Booker Prize.
It’s really reverse snobbery, isn’t it? If a genre is popular, selling millions of units, then it’s looked down upon by critics and committees of judges.
Are you a snob about the books you read?
Are there some genres you’d never write or read?
Do you think some genres are easier to write than others…such as children’s books, bodice-ripper romances, Westerns, Graphic Novels or Erotica?
Apparently, the first word that I spoke wasn’t Mummy or Daddy but Book.This doesn’t mean to say that I think I was a born writer, though as I’ve always got my head in a book I might well be a born reader.
Come to think of it, I wish I’d been a born editor!
It’s intriguing to trace where talent comes from: some is a natural gift and though skills can be learnt, if someone doesn’t have an instinctive feel for the craft it’s going to show.
People I’ve known who achieved proficiency quickly included an above-the-knee amputee who took to turning wood on a lathe like she was born to make bowls. One of the keenest pool players in Liskeard, Cornwall was a ten-year-old boy who’d been handed a cue at the age of five, and standing on a chair to reach the baize playing surface proceeded to sink balls into pockets. Adult players avoided him, for fear of an embarrassing defeat.
Having a love for what you’re doing helps.
Think of the artists you like to seeinterviewed about what they do, be they writers, painters, actors or musicians—those with enthusiasm shine out—and they’re not always massively successful commercially. It’s easy to tell when someone is just going through the motions creatively…and I’m including those who are rolling in money from their shtick.
Raymond Chandler is admired for his terse writing style. He’s been called a born writer, but he admitted that he slogged long and hard to make his prose readable while conveying the essence of what he was trying to get across. Robert McCrum makes some good points about the craft of writing in this articleabout Chandler.
Elena Ferranterecently pitched into this debate about natural talent versus training. I like what she says about not wasting one’s writing abilities. She also acknowledges that success is often down to luck:
“Talent is insufficient: if it’s not cultivated, it ends up, in the best cases, inventing the wheel, only to discover that this has been done already. Those who feel they have an artistic vocation have an obligation not to squander it by being content with what pours from their heart.“
There’s a story told about a sensei of Kendo, the bamboo sword fighting martial art from Japan. After defeating a much younger opponent, one of his students congratulated his master on a perfect fight. The sensei responded by saying that his technique had been flawed, but that was why he’d been studying Kendo for fifty years, and that he would never want to achieve perfection…the reason he fought was for the love of his art.
I’ve felt the same way about things I’ve loved doing, including motorcycling, cooking, boxing and writing. I’ve been known to turn around and retake a corner on a motorcycle, to get a more fluid line through the bend. In rewriting prose and poetry, it might mean that many versions of the work exist, eventually reaching a point where it’s the best I can do. It’s never going to be perfect, but that’s OK.
Such striving for improvement doesn’t feel natural; as Raymond Chandler showed it’s a job that needs hard work. Albert Einstein said:
“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”
I get a thrill out of reading something where I think the author really nailed it, and if it can be made to sound simple, almost as a throwaway line, it has more impact. I wrote down a few great observations from James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux:
*“Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death.”
*“The only argument you ever win is the one you don’t have.”
*“Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death.”
*“The only argument you ever win is the one you don’t have.”
I don’t suppose that such pithiness came easy to Burke, for in offering some writing tips, he noted:
“Robert Frost once said a poet must be committed to a lover’s quarrel with the world. He had it right. If a person writes for money or success, he will probably have neither. If he writes for the love of his art and the world and humanity, money and success will find him down the line. In the meantime, he must work every day at his craft, either at his desk or in his mind and sometimes in his sleep. It’s a lonely pursuit, one without shortcuts.”
Apparently, from worldwide surveys asking people what their worst fault is, procrastination is said to be the thing they most regret. We all have a tendency to put off until tomorrow (or maybe the day after) what we don’t want to do today.
I once had a girlfriend who gently pointed out my laggardness by buying me a coffee mug with the saying printed on it: “What the wise do in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”
As authors, we’re commonly advised to avoid procrastination, to manage our time better and to get on with things…aiming for a daily word count by staying away from the temptation of the internet. Striving to perfect our skills, it’s easy to become neurotic.
I’m laid back in my approach to life and to writing. I did go a bit berserk when I returned to creative writing in 2013, after a long lay off, but churning out 5,000 words daily was counterproductive as it took ages editing out the crap.
At the moment, I’m at a crossroads (which I’m trying not to see as an impasse), for I’ve completed my fifth novel and am torn between querying and returning to self-publishing. Fretting a bit that it was a delaying tactic, I re-read my novels at the start of 2019. My justification for doing so was that I wanted to know them inside out, so I can sell them effectively.
Then, this morning I spent 90 minutes following up on links posted on a Cornish Witch’s website. Was that a waste of time, I wondered…probably not, as I found useful information for a novella I’ve started featuring a benign hedge witch. I’ve touched on white witches in my novels, as well as black magick and Druidry, but intend to explore how folklore and superstition motivate criminals. Worse still, I found the witchy site via the excellent Cornish Bird blog—which I recommend to anyone interested in the county or if you’re contemplating starting your own blog.
My point is, there’s more to being an author than just writing words. Investigating blogs is research, reading email newsletters about publishing might help me out, posting on my writers’ forum the Colony is reassuring and reading novels borrowed from the library is a free way of broadening my understanding of how storytelling works. Even thinking about writing is writing!
Some anonymous wag once said: “Procrastination— A hardening of the oughteries” But I don’t feel that I ought to be doing anything else if I’m not writing, for I’m always ‘one’ having ideas about what needs editing and planning unwritten stories.
I certainly miss creating fresh pages, but I need to recharge my batteries while learning how to be a blogger and turning myself into a supplicant worthy of the attention of literary agents. I did a word count of all of the stories and poems I’ve written in the last five years, coming up with 1,300,000. If I’d put that many miles on a car engine, it would have needed regular maintenance and might benefit from time off resting in the garage.
How do you handle the sin of prevarication?
Do you feel guilty if you don’t hit a daily word count?
Or, are you relaxed…in touch with your muse and ready to respond, writing when you’re inspired?
I’ve just finished reading a well-reviewed crime novel called Palm Beach, Finland by Antti Tuomainen. It’s the first book by him I’ve tried and I enjoyed it, though it’s less a crime caper and more of an offbeat tale of eccentric losers muddling through life in a holiday resort. It’s laced with dark Scandinavian humour, which took me a while to adjust to, though the silliness of what was happening carried me along.
I was glad to see that the author had written a short afterword, explaining his thinking on how he’d tackled the writing of his latest novel, which apparently is much lighter in tone than his previous work. I think that he may have done so, to pacify his fans who might have been expecting violent thrills.
Henning Mankell‘s An Event In Autumn, a Kurt Wallander thriller includes a 14-page afterword, in which the author reflects on how he came to start writing novels about a Swedish detective.
An afterword can be an effective way of communicating with readers, letting them into your world, making them a part of the process and fostering loyalty. In a way, they act like a self-interview, similar to how sports competitors, film stars and musicians talk about what they’ve just done.
Various features can appear after The End is typed in a work of fiction, including a taster of the next book in a series via the gripping first chapter, a list of thanks by the author to friends, family and publishing staff, and an afterword.
Epilogues are also called postscripts, but they’re different to an afterword, for they’re part of the story, a tidying-up of what happened after the main thrust of the story ended. I felt compelled to write an epilogue to my first Cornish Detective novel, as there were so many bodies lying around and my protagonist detective was in such a fragile mental state that I couldn’t just abandon him! EMOJI I have a feeling that the epilogue will be the first thing to be excised by a professional editor….
I’ve also written what could become afterwords to the stories in my series, though I penned them partly as an exercise to provide material for interviews, cover blurb and marketing bumph. They also served to cleanse my palate, as it were, as I sometimes found that I’d written about themes I hadn’t considered when I started out. As American playwright Edward Albee said: “I write to find out what I’m talking about.”
An afterword is a comment by the author, or even someone else, discussing aspects of the story. The same thing can be said of the difference between a prologue and a forward.
No doubt, publishers’ attitudes towards afterwords vary, and I have a feeling that they’d only allow them if the author had an existing track record of good sales with loyal fans. If you’re self-publishing and have interacted with your readers via social media, then an afterword continues this relationship.
Have any of you written afterwords?
Do you appreciate them in a book you’re reading?
Or, do you think they’re a waste of time…too self-indulgent and an unnecessary tearing down of the fourth wall?
I’ve previously commented about the risk of a writer being trapped by the genre in which they achieve success, but I was wondering how much what we write reflects our characters. We might not look like our books, but do they represent what we believe and dream about?
Recently, I’ve been re-reading my five Cornish Detective novels, partly to assess the effect of weeks of editing, as well as to bolster my confidence that they’re worth publishing. I’ve completed another round of querying, so know my ‘product’ inside out.
I’ve tackled various crimes in my stories, including murder, kidnapping, human trafficking, burglary, arson, slavery, prostitution, theft, forgery, drug running, gun running and illegal distillation of alcohol. Researching these things means I’m now equipped to become a master criminal! The most surprising fact was that cannibalism isn’t against the law in the U.K.
True crime and fictional crime stories have long been sources of entertainment, dating right back to the mid-16th-century in the UK, when literacy rates improved and printing became more efficient. Tales of crime appeared in affordable pamphlet form, often with a moral message.
Nowadays, with my own writing, I could easily self-publish my books online to a potentially large audience of readers…provided I cracked the dreaded marketing needed to make them aware they exist. How much of a moral message my stories contain is hard for me to judge. It’s inevitable that part of me is reflected in the thoughts and actions of my characters…both the goodies and the baddies!
It’s long been said, that ‘You are what you eat‘ so I wondered if ‘You are what you write.’ The Chinese have a proverb that says “见文如见人” which literally means “Reading the document is the same as seeing the author.” One’s personal characteristics seep into the language we use.
Crime novelist P.D. James said: “What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.” That’s what my main character seeks to achieve in the criminal investigations he runs. Ultimately, he’s after peace of mind—which is something that I seek. Happiness is all very well, but it’s transient; long-term contentment is better.
Does the genre you write in allow you to express who you are?
What messages about society do you try to get across?
After editing my fifth Cornish Detective novel, followed by making a monkey of myself by returning to querying and self-promotion, I’ve been staying sane by writing a novella about 21st-century rural witches. To assist future writing efforts, I’ve been working my way through published crime authors’ series, trying to read them in order, to see how they tackle the story arcs of their characters.
After noticing that some of these series have run to a dozen or more titles, I had the rather chastening thought that I’m constructing a trap for myself. I’ve written science fiction, historical and ghost stories, as well as poetry, song lyrics and flash fiction, but should I ever achieve success with my crime novels, I’ll end up pigeon-holed. Hence, why writers invent pen names.
Some authors achieve success with one particular character, with the rest of their work unheard of. A good example of this is Georges Simenon, famous for 104 Maigret crime novels and short stories, but he wrote a total of almost 500 novels in his lifetime. All in all, he was a very busy boy, as in 1977 he claimed that he’d made love to 10,000 women in the 61 years since his 13th birthday!
It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed of literary fame … to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
It helps to get real…it’s easy to become precious about writing. A book is a consumer item. As with any form of art, some titles are revered, becoming that overused cliché Classics. Others are disposable consumer items, as memorable as a microwavable ready meal.
Some writers achieve great popularity and then disappear forever. The bestseller lists of the past fifty years are, with a few lively exceptions, a sombre graveyard of dead books.
I’m an avid reader, visiting my local library once a week, as well as buying paperbacks at the nearby charity shop. I get through three novels every week. Sometimes, I go online to peruse my borrowing history to find who wrote a book I enjoyed, to see if they’ve written any more since. What shocks me, is how many of them I’ve forgotten reading, unable to recall much, if anything, of the plot. It makes me realise how books are ephemeral.
So, why am I writing? The clever (and honest) answer is because I can’t not write: the stories are in me and they’ve got to come out—like lava from a volcano.
To my great surprise, I’ve written in what I hope is a commercial way, creating stories that lend themselves to being adapted into a television series. I’m reassured that there’s a precedent for my Cornish Detective series, as W. J. Burley wrote twenty-two Inspector Wycliffe stories set in the county and adapted for television in the 1990s…still shown ad nauseam on Freeview. I’ve rarely been motivated by making money in my careering work life, but I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.
I’m not looking for immortality from my novels, though if they do get turned into a television drama, my Inspector Kettle might be annoying viewers for decades!
A friend recently commented to me, that she admires my determination in continuing to write. I am, by nature, a determined person—sometimes to the point of foolish stubbornness—which I prefer to view as being tenacious or stoical.
I just get on with the job, until it’s done, and this includes writing, editing and trying to sell a novel. I have faith in my work. Being British, with a stiff upper lip (above a loose, flabby chin!) I’m also modest, but all the same, I wondered how much my ego was driving me to succeed.
I’m not after fame from my books, and, as a way of making money writing novels is an absurd proposition, so what is driving me on? I’m still enthusiastic, after completing the fifth of my crime novels, but will I be as joyful and driven by the time I begin the tenth in a few years time?
‘Sheer egoism… Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.’ They say that one should‘Starve the ego to feed the soul’,but I have to remain a bit of an egomaniac to keep writing—and what I write satisfies my soul too.
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 systemin 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!
