Chris McCormack's latest children's book, The Fight Before Christmas, is very much a book for our times. Firstly, at the time of writing this blog, that time is obviously Christmas; with just a few days to go before the big yuletide ho ho, and as a delightful take on Clement C. Moore's classic tale, the book ticks that box beautifully.But there's more to it than that.Embracing all that the digital world has to offer, Chris has constructed a book that reflects the potential that digital books have to be so much more than just an electronic version of their printed sibling and offer some interesting ideas for authors looking to bring new ideas to their work.While still delivering everything we'd want from a children's story - great characters, an engaging plot, and a timeless message that appeals to young and old - the iBook version utilises the digital medium to engage the reader in other ways too. Chris presents the reader with opportunities to click on the screen and learn more about the traditions of Christmas and also try to find hidden messages from the characters. And at the back of the book there's an interactive quiz to test how much you've been paying attention.And, of course, there's the audio version, where you can opt to have the story read to you (by me!). At one point, there's even a song (for which I engage the services of my daughter). And this is another interesting angle the book brings for cross-over, adding layers within a single medium and really showing what authors can do to bring their readers more completely into their world.To promote the book, Chris has been combining old school press with online marketing. A couple of weeks ago, the book was featured in our local newspaper, but online Chris has also pulled together a great promotional video, once again showing how authors can use readily-available tools to add a little cinema-glitz to their awareness campaigns. Take a look. And, if you're a writer considering how to bring your next work to the world, there are definitely a few ideas here worth considering.Merry Christmas from WordWatchers!
Making Time To Write
Charlotte Betts blogs about making time to write (no matter what).Because one of Charlotte's tips is learning to delegate, this link is brought to you by WordWatchers member, JohnH...To read the blog in full, click here: Writer's Tips 1: Making Time.
Dead Ends and Secret Doorways
It's been a tough few weeks for my novel and me. We hit a bit of a rough patch, as we ground our way through a mid-point crisis. It's not been helped by some back story elements that needed adding, causing me to go routing through existing (and no doubt perfectly balanced and happy in their own skin) chapters. And as exciting as they might be (and I actually think they are - which helps) it's not made for good momentum.
So, I've been languishing around the 50,000 word mark and losing faith.
Last night, though, I felt we'd turned a corner. I was feeling better about the whole thing. The back story pieces were in and making friends with the rest of the gang. It felt like we were getting along again.
And then it went and did this.
I say 'it', because it certainly wasn't me. I admit, I was there, I might even have been holding the smoking gun… but I would never have written...
'To Billy, should he outlive me, I leave my <insert something interesting here – collection of books or magazines maybe?>. He’ll understand why.’
Clearly, it's someone, my main character, reading a will. And clearly he's just read that one of the other characters has been left something of significance - something personal from their mutual past that will not be immediately obvious to the protagonist, the reader… or, indeed, the writer.I sat there looking at it, wondering what on earth this was telling me. And then I sent an email out to the group, explaining enough of the context and asking for suggestions (silly or sane) as to what this item might be. And they were great. I got suggestions that immediately helped me understand what the novel had meant by it, what the item might actually be, and where it fitted into the various plot threads.
So, it seems we're still okay, the novel and me, and I wasn't being shown down some dark, dead-end alleyway to be bumped off so it could run off to the city to be a high concept thriller beneath someone else's pen, but instead was showing me a secluded doorway to a private garden I'd not seen before.
The moral of the tale - trust in your instincts, and trust in the group, no matter how much you feel the answer can only come from you. A little sharing goes a long, long way.
A Blagger’s Guide to Schmoozing
I am organising the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Conference Party. It’s a great opportunity for unpublished and published authors and illustrators to mingle with editors, agents, publicists and art directors.I recently stumbled across this blog, which I wrote after attending last year’s SCBWI Undiscovered Voices party, but I never did anything with it. Good timing, I thought. So here it is!When I attended a glitzy publishing party in London, I was faced with a room full of agents and editors – all masters in the art of schmoozing. Oh God, thought I, how am I going to get through this? They’ll sense my fear! Pounce on it faster than the next Harry Potter.If you’re an aspiring writer, you’ll probably find it beneficial, at some point, to venture out of your writing cave and try to engage with the real world. I’m talking mingling, networking, chatting, business carding, and other scary words that end in ‘ing’. Yes, I too loathe to be dragged from my writing cave. I struggle to interact with real people rather than characters. I have to remember that talking to myself is only acceptable in the inner sanctum of the cave. But needs must.Here are my top tips for how to blag your way through such an ordeal:
- Don’t booze and schmooze. By all means, have one (or two … or possibly three) to calm your nerves, but don’t get carried away. I’m thinking that vomiting on the shoes of an editorial director, or bursting into tears in front of an agent who’s rejected you isn’t the best way forward.
- You will enjoy yourself. It’s mandatory. Smile, and make eye contact with people, even if they walk right past you.
- Find some kind of tenuous link to your schmoozee (the person you wish to schmooze). If you sent them a manuscript when you were fifteen (as I did) and received a personal response, go and thank them! If you read and enjoyed something they edited/agented(?!)/wrote, tell them. If your second cousin’s wife’s brother-in-law lives in the same village, mention it. But don’t take this too far – we don’t want to stray into stalker territory.
- Have a good exit strategy if you end up talking to someone for too long, or if your eyes are straying to other people you want to talk to. Try ‘I need some more water’, or ‘I’m just going to find the loo’, or ‘I must go and catch up with such-and-such’.
- Most folks who work in publishing are absolutely lovely, but there will always be exceptions. I was once quite coldly rejected to my face by an agent. Don’t be discouraged if someone is rude to you. You are worth talking to, damnit. Just find someone who will listen.
- Have a pitch ready. Fairly obvious, you might say. But it needs to be succinct. A sentence or two. The longer it is, the more likely you are to mess it up/stumble over bits/forget key plot points.
- Find someone who knows everyone, and strike up a conversation. Often, people will gravitate towards them, and if you stand there like a lemon for a few seconds, you’re sure to be introduced.
- Don’t regret who you didn’t talk to. Focus on the small victories and feel proud of who you did talk to. (I should definitely practice what I preach with this one!)
- Don’t be tempted to cluster in the corner with your friends like nervous sheep. Move around the room. If you’re not looking for someone specific, pretend you are, until you notice someone you want to talk to.
- If a couple of people are deep in conversation and you want to butt in, do it! Just go in with ‘Sorry to interrupt’ and no-one will think you’re rude.
All of the above can be applied to any number of writing events – author signings, writers’ conferences or parties. Remember, you’re not the only writer who feels nervous about putting themselves out there. And even if it doesn’t lead to anything, it’s intensely rewarding to conquer that inner hermit who’s adamant that you’re better off staying in your cave.Good luck – happy schmoozing!Follow Abbie on Twitter: @abbietheauthor
The Writing Elite
This weekend I was in Manchester. To be precise, I was in a Premier Inn, just the other side of the Airport Perimeter Fence. Why was I there? Well, to meet up with a bunch of people I had mostly never met before...
That might sound a bit odd, but we were united by a single cause - the computer game Elite. Yes, a computer game released in the 1980s brought a bunch of guys (mainly) in their 40s (mainly) from all over the country to a very wet and windy Manchester.
Most of our stories were the same, that we had, by whatever means, discovered an amazing computer game called Elite. We had read the novella, The Dark Wheel, written by the late, great Robert Holdstock, we read the Flight Manual, also, in part, written by Robert Holdstock... and, as we flew around this 3D procedurally generated universe, trading and fighting, we took what Robert had written and filled in the gaps that those early 8-bit computers just couldn't supply visually.Me and my friends, who also had the game, started to swap stories, of great battles against impossible odds, or lucky trades that netted a large profit, of harrowing escapes from Witchspace and fruitless searches for the legendary (and it turns out mythical) Generation Ships. In a time before the Internet these stories were swapped in the playground, either as complex narratives using our hands to describe how we outmanoeuvred the police vipers, or as pencilled notes with key details about which planets to fly from and to and what to trade.The only diary I have ever kept was my Elite Pilot Diary. Here, in a modified exercise book, I kept notes of my trades and my battles. Later, for my own amusement, but occasionally to share with my friends, I wrote them up as stories. Eventually, this storytelling grew to monstrous proportions and, for a GCSE English Assignment, I handed in 39 sides of narrow feint A4, hand-written story. Indeed, nothing less than a sequel to The Dark Wheel.
Due to an annoying quirk of the exam system, no copy could be made and I never saw that assignment, and therefore story, ever again. Twenty-six years later that still pisses me off.After Elite came Frontier and more powerful computers to run on it and as much as I tried, I didn't like Frontier, it was more Simulation than game and considerably less fun and I stopped writing about the Elite Universe for a long time.
Then, back in 2006 I discovered Oolite and, as I have said elsewhere, I got my writing mojo back and found a game that captured the magic of the original game (but with amazing new graphics) and my desire to write about it came back. I wrote two novellas set in the Oolite universe which eventually ended up in the Anthology Alien Items, edit by my friend and fellow writer/contributor Drew Wagar. Of course has gone on to great things and is currently writing Elite: Reclamation, an official novel for the forthcoming Elite: Dangerous computer game... (which will be published, along with three other books, by Fantastic Books Publishing) Elite: Dangerous was the reason we were in Manchester, Elite: Dangerous, the Kickstarter campaign kicked off a year ago this week, Elite: Dangerous the common hope, dream and aspirations of a group of 40-somethings. That's what got us into a conference room in a hotel in Manchester.At the meeting, a regular event known as the Lave Radio Conclave took place. I took part in that event. During the hour long discussion I could hear how passionate I was about writing, about how much I loved writing about Elite (and basically for myself) and how much I still do. It was a good feeling.I've written a few Elite themed drabbles and submitted them into the weekly drabble competition on the Elite Frontier Forums. I've got an idea for another short story set in the Elite Universe and I feel the need to start writing in-game content again. This time however, I'm trying to do this while also finishing my other projects. This is not, this time, a distraction technique, or the next new shiny thing. It's a desire to do more. I like having that feeling again!For those in the know... "Write on Commander!"
WordWatchers at Reading Writers
WordWatchers (at least a subset - Julian, Abbie and me) had a wonderful evening with Reading Writers (@ReadingWriters) last night.We (as a group), had been invited, to judge and critique their most recent competition. We were honoured and readily agreed. It was only on the way to Reading that the trio had what could be best described as an "Oh..." moment.This is moment was because in WordWatchers critiques have been described as "being mauled by velvet claws" and we weren't sure how our 'style' of critiquing would go down.It was very interesting for us to see how another group works, especially given how much larger Reading Writers as a group is compared to WordWatchers (our continued meeting in our own sitting rooms, is both our strength, but from a size, point-of-view, our Achilles Heel).The evening, however, seemed to go brilliantly (it certainly did for us) and we're very grateful to have been included.Highlights included Miranda who had to hand her story over to Eileen to read because she was reduced to tears by her own prose (as she read it so well with such comic timing that it was a delight to listen to, despite her protests to the contrary), and also, Josh, whose story had him adlibbing the odd swear-word as he squirmed beneath the gaze of the 20 people in the room as he read out his tale of an excitable mouse going on holiday - complete with actions. It was hilarious, despite (or because of?) Josh's obvious discomfort.We certainly hope to work more closely with Reading Writers and we hope our critiquing has not scared them off - we do it because we want everybody who has a dream to write - to get better. We genuinely loved being part of the process and it was a wonderful opportunity to see so many different styles of writing and we really did get a lot out of it.We had a lovely time in the pub afterwards with Julian and Josh (Reading Writers 'voice' on Twitter) talking about children's stories and Abbie and Julie Cohen talking about... well, I would blush if I told you...Finally, congrats to the winners, but thank you to all the participants for allowing us to be part of your competition. John
What are you reading?
Character driven story
AllYouNeedIsKillCover-thumb-300xauto-34952
The likely improbable
Destiny and time
Very often in social chit-chat with other writerly types the question comes around to books. When we’ve exhausted conversation on our own masterpieces I’ll usually ask what book the other writer is currently reading. To which the surprising and frequent answer is that they rarely read books while working on a project. Often these projects have lasted years.
‘Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.’
Stephen King, On Writing, 2000
Oddly the substance of the above quote is routinely refuted. I never debate, we are after all masters of our own destiny. This writer, the John Potter writer, seldom has less than three books on the go. Here is the most recent example of why.
Back in 2009 I had an idea for a book about a man whose wife was murdered and his unsuccessful attempts to track down her murderer. I wrote half of it between other projects through 2012.
Smart but different
The original title was The Man Who Would Right a Wrong (TMWWRAW) and focused around a simple man called Marcus. He was not stupid but a man who struggles with the world and people. When he can’t find his wife’s murderer he begins dreaming of her, and in the dreams she leads him towards her killer. I struggled to get a grip on his internal thoughts and voice though. What was his mindset? His kind of simple would be a long way from Forrest Gump but somewhere on the same dial. Rain Man was also another character I looked at. I couldn’t get traction.
By the middle of 2012 the story was out of control and had grown way beyond anything I actually wanted to write. It had become closer to an international and political thriller mess I couldn’t dig myself out of. The story came to a dead stop. TMWWRAW went on the back burner.
Chasing Innocence was published 2012 and I wrote a novella called Mahrie, published April 2013. June 2013 I properly started the sequel to Chasing Innocence and on we went. Always finding time around writing to read books and watch movies.
Truman
In July 2013 I watched Capote and was bewitched by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s incredibly nuanced performance. I was also very intrigued by Truman Capote as a character himself. As a consequence I read Capote’s highly acclaimed In Cold Blood, a non-fiction account of four brutal murders, which starts with a beautiful and visual description of a mid-Kansas rural landscape, the farms and the communities grown around them. The book traces the impact of the murders on the local and very close community, who all suspect each other of the murders. It also creates a detailed insight into the minds and lives of the men who actually committed the crimes, who were far from local. I have never read anything like it. Not one breath of sensationalism and you would have to go a long way to find that kind of honest insight into the mind and background of a psychotic murderer.
Feel good
In August I read 600 Hours of Edward, a captivating first person account of an Asperger’s sufferer attempting to deal with family, neighbours, life and the colours of his garage door.
Idly browsing my Kindle after finishing Edward I found and read Christopher Hitchens’ essay on George Orwell: Why Orwell Matters. A key theme was Orwell’s belief many of those in western politics who retained power after WWII had been busily working through the war to ensure they retained power in the event of a Fascist victory: Just who are the good guys?
All of which was feeding into my writing of the sequel to Chasing Innocence, called Hunting Demons, the lead male character of which is very much influenced by characters played by Mel Gibson, notably Gibson’s ‘Porter’ in Payback. Listening to the Payback audio commentary by Brian Helgeland, led me to Point Blank written by Richard Stark, the book Payback was based on. Richard Stark was the pen name of Donald Westlake, a very successful American literary author. Several of Westlake’s novels have been made into movies. Most famously Point Blank but also most recently an adaption headlined by Jason Statham. At the front of Westlake’s novels you will often find an endorsement by Elmore Leonard.
Character driven story
The writing of my sequel continued at pace during August while reading some of Elmore Leonard’s books, which I’d never done before. I read The Hunted, Raylan and 310 to Yuma, many other Elmore Leonard books await on my Kindle. His books consist of focused narratives built around a single story with few tangles. They are almost entirely driven by character and a simple premise. No wonder so many have been turned into movies when the structure and beats of his books resemble those of a movie.
The link between books written by Leonard and Westlake, so often turned into moving picture, led me to start breaking films made from books down into fifteen distinct beats found in both book and film.
Time and Destiny
Which led me via a random sequence of events, to deconstruct the beats from Tom Cruise’s recent Oblivion and to listen to the informative audio commentary by Cruise. A quick check on IMDB and I discovered he was currently working on a movie called, The Edge of Tomorrow, which I learned was based on a book titled, All You Need is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I read the book – a sublime Groundhog Day, see also Source Code, narrative charting a single day in the life of a rookie soldier, a day in which he dies in combat and is destined to relive over and over until he can acquire skills enough to survive the day. This was such a different, well structured story, full of real character and invention, I added the audio book to my Audible library and have so far listened to it about five times during various car journeys or zipping about with headphones while hoovering.
The likely improbable
In September a friend recommended I watch Stardust which I found to be a good concept ruined by filmmaking. The original book was written by Neil Gaiman and I doubted the disjointed story of the film came from his writing. On a flight to Cyprus in September, I read Stardust and realised the movie’s flaw was in trying to re-work Gaiman’s adult fairytale for a young audience. I was struck by how Gaiman’s writing made a world of implausibilities seem totally natural. In Cyprus I spent the week reading in the sun or in the shade beside the pool. Towards the end of the week I was escaping the wonderfully relentless heat, sat beneath an open veranda beside the children’s pool and the all inclusive bar. I think there might have been a cold Keo in a frosted glass on my table.
Amid all the splashing children and attentive mothers in the pool, was a man with his young blond haired boy. The man had a very happily wide grin on his face. It never left his face. He looked almost insanely happy as he weaved the boy backwards and forwards through the water. In complete contrast to the other bare limbed children his blond boy was clothed in a child’s version of a wetsuit, socks, armbands and legionnaires hat, complete with neck flap. He looked well protected and idolised. The mother was sat just off to the side, reading an iPad. She was attractive, a few levels more than the almost stupidly grinning man.
It occurred to me the man and his wife seemed familiar and then I realised – they were how I’d always imagined Marcus and his wife in TMWWRAW. Immediately after, out of nowhere, the random musings of my unconscious (non-conscious for the psychology buffs) came together and there it was – a solution to my dead in the water TMWWRAW problem a year after it was mothballed. I now knew the story needed to be focused around a simple, meaningless murder of the wife. A small story, nothing big and grand. The power would come from the characterisation and the loss and the need for closure. It would be a whydunit and the conclusion, as clear as anything in my head, would echo Orwell’s observations relayed by Hitchens – a theme of who are the good guys? I also had Marcus’s perspective nailed right there – a combination of my perceptions of this madly grinning and happy dad in the pool and what I’d learned reading about a man with Aspergers in 600 Hours of Edward. Pulling off the fact the murdered wife leads Marcus to her killers through dreams would be tough, I’d just have to study how Gaiman pulled off the improbable in Stardust, just as I would study Aspergers and read more Orwell.
Destiny and time
I also realised the TMWWRAW title needed to go and swapped it for The Handyman and in contrast to the whiz bang opening of TMWWRAW, this revised opening would have a clear and simple narrative and echo Capote’s open landscape of In Cold Blood, swapped for the rolling skyline of Devon in the summer, the narrative retaining some element of the journalistic in witness statements to build a sense of Marcus’s abilities. The opening would feature an outwardly innocent man (Marcus) and child playing with a kite. A family gunned down, Marcus desperately trying to save them. And we think we know why his family are dead, because of his past, immediately correlated from the deep recesses of my recollection to Andy Mcnab’s Last night Another Soldier…, which I’d read and reviewed three years before. The concept for duplicating Gaiman’s ability to make the improbable sound probable, went a little bit out of control as I daydreamed by the pool. The intriguing construct of All You Need Is Kill re-wired itself with a distant memory of a movie I’d watched at the cinema twenty three years before: Jacob’s Ladder – could this be a story with a twist on time and destiny at the end? Even the structure for a 55k word novella was in place, having spent so much time reading the books of Westlake and Leonard and breaking them down into the core beats of story. This would not be a novel with a wide and messy scope. It would be a novella, echoing those core story beats I had been studying. It was all there. In my mind’s eye Marcus was Tom Cruise, diminutive, silent and intense. Fast and deadly but mentally unable to resolve by himself who murdered his wife.
This all came together in about 90 seconds as I sat beside the pool in Cyprus, watching the happily grinning dad and his wet suited little boy. I might have welled up with the excitement of it all.
I quickly had two very different endings in mind, a crowd pleasing, no dry eye in the house version and a harder to pull off thought provoking ending that floated at the very border of my imagination and defied all attempts to reel it in.
Back home I was faced with a need to keep working on Hunting Demons and finish a 2nd edition edit of Chasing Innocence. I needed to park The Handyman for later and then I had a brainwave. I’d write it in November, NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. I’d do some planning in October in downtime, then put everything else on hold for November with the goal of writing and finishing The Handyman in one go. But how would I plan for such a condensed writing experience?
Early October I broke First Blood the movie down into the key story beats, which you can read here. Writing the trivia section of the post I got to wondering what the original book’s author was up to these days. Quite a lot it turns out. David Morrell is a very interesting and very accessible author who has written at length about the processes involved in writing First Blood and the subsequent movie adaptations of Rambo II and Rambo III. He has also written a book based on his writing career and methods that offers insight on a par with Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. Right in the middle of David Morrell’s book, amongst all the interesting detail, was one of the greatest pieces of writing advice I ever heard. I immediately put it into practise and started to plan for my NaNoWriMo.
I’ll be updating my progress through NaNoWriMo and when the dust has settled afterwards, I’ll let you know whether that planning advice by David Morrell was successful.
If you’re interested:
I just finished Fahrenheit 451 and the excellent companion study guide by Bradbury’s. I am listening again to David Morrell’s The Successful Novelist on Audible, conversationally and captivatingly read by Patrick Lawlor. I have also been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s intriguing David and Goliath, also narrated by Gladwell. Next up on Audible is David Morrell’s Creepers.
On my kindle I’m currently reading Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, and Rambo and Me, The Story behind the Story by David Morrell. Next up is Land of Midnight Days, YA fiction by Katrina Jack and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday.
Really, Really Short Stories - An update
When I discovered the Flash Lit Fiction Hashtag #FLF13 on Twitter, it was the 14th of September and I knew I would only have eleven days to throw in a few Tweets into the mix.Well, in the end, I managed, in between, writing lectures and general family stuff, to write sixteen of these little 140 character stories. I didn't plan on writing so many, but there were so many other inspirational tweeted stories that I just kept writing them.
To my surprise, on the night of the 26th, one of my Tweeted stories was short-listed and in a short two-hour window of frenetic voting, I managed to rally enough support to garner 25% of the votes and finished 2nd. So thank-you to everybody who rallied to my cause and thank-you to everybody who said so many nice things about my Tweeted stories in the run up to the short-listing and after the results were announced.Special mention to Tom Briars who actually won the competition with a fantastic entry, which can be found here (along with the other short-listed Tweets/stories).[Ignore the fact that the Poll might say I've won, it was still taking votes after the competition actually closed.]**I would also like to add that the feedback to my most recent appearance on Paragraph Planet has provoked the most positive response I've ever had. It's an interesting little story, not just in content, but in its history. It started life, about twenty years ago, as a short story that got a bit out of hand. Over the years as I revisited it, it grew in size and complexity until I realised I'd painted myself into a corner with the plot (the danger of rewriting over a long time, even for a short-story/novella) and I didn't have the skill, imagination or will to fix it. So, like many of my projects in my 20s it got quietly pushed into the electronic graveyard of the archive on my hard drive.
The 75-worder that appeared on Paragraph Planet is therefore the blurb on the back of a book which doesn't actually exist. Yet. And I say yet because I think, when I've cleared the decks of my other projects, I may take the essence of this story and start it again. I think I'm a skilled enough writer now to keep the plot tight and in check, it may not even reach novella size, but I would like to see what I can turn it into now, after it and I have matured over the last 15 years or so since I pretended I'd never started it...
Really, really short fiction
Anybody who has read even one of my blogs, read my Tweetfeed or is familiar with WordWatchers output on Facebook (where I am responsible for most of our output) will be aware of my love of short fiction, specifically, the golden nuggets found on Paragraph Planet.Well, I promised myself I would submit one story to Paragraph Planet everyday and, apart from a few days when I was completely out of Internet connectivity when on holiday, I have managed this feat, each day, as promised, since July 4th. However, it's been a tough month, four very gruelling weeks of teaching at work (Cranfield University) and there has been ill health in the family too. So, I haven't actually managed to write a 75-word everyday for about two weeks (most days, but not every day). Fortunately, I have a buffer, a surplus of stories (now somewhat reduced), that I have managed to draw upon, to keep up my output to Paragraph Planet up.To that end, it's been a while since I had a story up on the site, but I've got another, going up on Wednesday 25th, so I'm just about managing one a month. Each notification is still immensely pleasing to receive. (it's also one of my favourite 75-worders, it's based on a short story that I never finished, so it's nice to extract something from a stalled piece of work, that would otherwise never see the light of day)Although I've not managed to write even 75-words every day, I have managed to contribute to Flash Lit Fiction '13, part of the annual Brighton Digital Festival, via Twitter. It's been great fun. By the time you have put #FLF13 in the Tweet, you're left with a measly 133 characters to create a story with the theme of "Soul". If I thought editing a 75-word story was hard work, editing a story in a Tweet can leave you gnashing your teeth over a comma you really think should be there.I've written horrible stories, humorous tales, melancholy anecdotes and (hopefully) thought-provoking twisters. There's only a few days left (Midnight of the 25th), but I recommend you give it a go.Catch up soon.
I had a dream. When I woke up the world had changed.
I questioned one of my dreams, just over a year ago.I’d already spent many years being published by newspapers and magazines and being read by newspaper and website subscribers but that didn’t quite fill the hole. I wanted to write a book.So I wrote a children’s picture book. The hole remained. Writing without readers is like chips without ketchup. I needed to get the words turned into a book. Books were the secret sauce.But then the questions started. Was my ambition to be read or to be ‘published’? - where ‘published’ meant validated by someone in the book industry. Should I wait in the hope of getting picked by an ever shrinking and increasingly busy publishing industry? Or do I back myself, ship something and try to find readers myself? Should I be trying to get a book made or an eBook?Despite the loaded questions, the choice wasn’t that easy. I realised that the core reason I wrote was not for the validation of an experienced industry veteran (which would be sweet, it’s true) but for readers (their validation is even sweeter). Then I thought I could publish something and get feedback from readers more quickly than I could get feedback from a publisher or agent, and that was it - my path was set.I set up my own mini publishing company, Batmack Books, and started learning the ropes with my own book PONG! as the guinea pig.Taking this route was also due to my impatience. I’m not the sort of person who could spend a year sending out letters to agents and publishers. I tried a few but lost all drive to continue within a few months. It seemed such a lottery.The second reason for going down this route was my job, and the philosophy I bring to it and learnings I take from it. My job is all about digital opportunities and digital strategy. I deal with digital innovation and digital disruption. I like it. I believe it’s important to ship your work, learn, adapt, iterate and ship some more. Learn by doing. I take this approach at work, so why not with my writing. Ship something, learn, adapt and ship something better next time.I still equate traditional publishers with print books, and believe many publishers still focus on print. I’ve been part of the media industry and newspaper journalists have been through this already. When I started in the industry, being part of a big media organisation meant kudos, and being a print journalist meant respect. Bloggers and digital journalists were largely dismissed - they were outside the club. That was until they were recruited to turn things around as the industry played catch up with quicker moving digital operations like the Huffington Post. A ‘digital native’ now runs Johnston Press the largest regional newspaper group in the country.Newspapers know that print is just one of the mediums - neither the least important nor the most important.And as for the kudos of print book publishing? I see authors clinging to paperbacks, as newspaper journalists clung to print and I worry that we are investing too much in a format. Is a kindle bestseller any less important than a hardback or paperback bestseller?What is a paperback but an information delivery system that has been usurped? Yes, it has cultural significance, it has nostalgia on its side, and there’s a tactile quality that hits certain buttons - but, as a delivery system for ideas, nine times out of ten, digital is better.Don’t get me wrong, I love print and publish my own stuff in print, as well as digital. I even sell some copies but it’s not my primary focus.I do well on iBooks and I’ve been lucky enough to be promoted by Apple several times, and on Kindle Fire I’m ticking over. For the cut they take, I’m not sure a publisher could do a significantly better job on digital sales than I can do myself - unless they were prepared to shell out some proper marketing money.And besides, I enjoy too much of the digital publishing process and digital business to give it up. Cover design, font choice, layout tools, sales reports, pricing strategies, what works and what doesn’t in the fast evolving landscape of digital publishing. This knowledge is too important to my next steps, and too much fun, to hand over to someone else. The knowledge I gain crosses over to my day job and vice versa.I can be flexible with my books and promotions. I can experiment and react, and I can publish other people’s books if I believe they’ll work well in digital formats. I can test Facebook promotions versus Google ads and monitor the impact of PR.But my print books sell slowly - I don’t know how to get into bookshops. I probably sell 50 iBooks for every print book. And for children’s picture books, bookshops are still important. This is the part of traditional publishing I can’t reproduce - the distribution to bricks and mortar stores.Which got me thinking - if a traditional publisher knocked on my door would I jump at the chance of being signed and being ‘accepted into the club’?The truth is it would be flattering and lovely but now I’d be asking what exactly they’d bring to the party. Marketing? Distribution?I’d probably give up the print rights but they’d have to be offering something pretty special for me to part with the digital rights.But how important are print rights?Paperbacks are part of a declining ecosystem. Stories are more widespread than ever, but paper and bookshops are in retreat, replaced by movies, eBooks and online shopping.Bookshops open coffee areas, or branch into stationery as they try to shore up revenues but the tide is against them. They can’t compete with eBooks and the wide choice offered by online shopping.I love libraries but again it’s no accident that they now run so many events, stock DVDs and music CDs, and have banks of computers. Diversification beyond paper books is necessary to survive.Since I started questioning, my dream has evolved. I want to be read by more people (lots more!) but I no longer care so much about the format or what companies or tools help me succeed. I also now know that I quite like producing books (or eBooks) not just writing them. End to end, for better or worse.I’ve shipped PONG! in print on Amazon, on Kindle, Google's Play Store and Apple's iBooks, and helped WordWatchers produce an anthology. In doing both I learned stuff and my next picture book, due out in October, has benefited.There are pros and cons in DIY, of course, but checking in on your dreams every once in a while and seeing if they’ve changed or if the world has changed around them - well that’s something I’d definitely recommend.
When does it stop being Procrastination?
I have been writing my novel, "Endless Possibilities" (EP), it would seem, forever. I was easily distracted during the writing process by side projects such as John Chapman's, Jonnie Rocket where I ran the website and Twitterfeeds under the guise of Doctor Avatar for a while and then there was the various short story competitions and other projects that I fired up to keep myself busy. Busy not finishing the novel that is...But, actually, I did finish EP and so began the even more traumatic and apparently long-winded process of editing the first draft. I have found that it is even easier to be distracted during the editing process than the writing process.My major distraction has been, as you will have gathered from many of my earlier blogs, Paragraph Planet. I have used writing these little 75-word stories to justify so many things...They have improved my ability to capture the essence of an idea incredibly quickly and succinctly - like a skilled artist capturing a hasty pencil sketch to be used later to form the basis of a much grander painting.They have taught me how to make every word count, that there is a skill to using contractions, especially in dialogue that can completely change the way somebody sounds inside the reader's head. They have taught me how to avoid repetition or to use repetition to create a rhythm within the words.They have taught me that sometimes, one-word sentences are OK. True.They have taught me that I can write, at least in very small doses, not just the Science Fiction and Fantasy that I cut my teeth on, but drama, comedy, horror, tragedy and RomCom (to name but a few). Neil Gaiman said during his talk to RS Literature back in June that the world thought he was just a comic book writer. What they didn't realise was that the comic is just the medium used to tell the story and that his stories crossed all genres, that he could in fact write in any genre he chose. I am no Neil Gaiman, but I'm not as two-dimensional as I once thought!They have taught me how to edit and edit quickly. I've been sharing a lot of my 75-worders with the rest of WordWatchers via email. They only take a few seconds to read and quite often I'll get a quick one liner back saying "I liked it, but..." and that "but..." has been incredibly useful. I've tweaked sentences, rearranged words, changed POV, changed past tense to present tense, even rewrote entire paragraphs where only the underlying idea has survived the editorial process and not one word of the original paragraph remains. Endless Possibilities is already benefiting from this.They have taught me to make writing a habit. I managed this during the final days of writing EP because I was getting up at 5AM to write for an hour every morning. When you get up that early you do write something because otherwise you're very angry at yourself for not writing and missing out on an hour's sleep! So, I write at least one 75-word Paragraph a day and so I cannot wheedle my way out of this self enforced commitment, after I have sent them to WordWatchers for a sanity check I then submit them to Paragraph Planet. Richard at Paragraph Planet will presume that I have either lost Internet connectivity or have died if he does not find a Paragraph from me waiting in his inbox. Except for a few days when during my week long family holiday at the end of July I have submitted at least one story to Paragraph Planet every day since July 4th. (Occasionally I fall asleep before Midnight and have to submit two the next day, just to make it right)So, am I using my 75-word stories to distract me from editing Endless Possibilities? The truth is, I definitely was, but I'm not any more. WordWatchers as a group are currently helping me down select 92 paragraphs (which I had already down selected from 120) to the 75 I want to put into my first book. Not only that, but I have teamed up with a fantastic illustrator, Helen Withington, who is doing amazing things with some of my 75-word stories.So, while WordWatchers helps me turn 90+ random paragraphs into a genuine collection of 75 and Helen brings a selection of them to life with her amazing illustrations I'm already planning and writing the content for book 2. Why? Because, to put it simply, I want you to read my stuff. Not only do I want you to read my stuff, I want you to enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. A novel is a big thing, a big commitment, I would be asking you, as a reader, to take a chance on me having read nothing more than my tweet feeds, my blogs and a few short stories that are floating around the Internet. So, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to ask for an hour of your time, I'm going to ask you to read 75 tiny little stories, that will each take up a minute of your life, so that if you didn't like it, you don't feel like I've stolen anything from you...I'm going to hope that you will love every single story. Hope? Yes. Expect? No. I will be delighted if you find a connection with half of them. I will love you forever if even two or three trigger something in you that makes you think that I am worthy of future investment or persuade you to mention my work to other people who trust your opinion.So, there will be a book 2 of 75-word stories and, because writers love a trilogy, the inevitable book 3. At some point during this process I may ask you to make that time and emotional investment in Endless Possibilities and I hope we will know each other well enough by then that you will know what you're letting yourself in for.So, I finish by sharing one of Helen's illustrations with you (and the Christmas themed 75-worder that inspired it). I am so glad I let Helen have a free rein at which paragraphs she chose to illustrate and in what style because I would never have picked either the paragraph nor the interpretation.Helen can be found on Twitter as @HelenWithington and on her website: Here.
As ever, thank-you for your time.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.
Alonzo and Molly the Mermaid
I have been within the welcoming bosom of WordWatchers for just over a year now, and my goodness, what a year it has been.When I joined I had delusions of grandeur of having a book published, but never in my wildest dreams, did I believe it would become a reality.My story is this.....I have a nephew called William, and a couple of years ago he asked me for a bedtime story. 'Not a problem.' I replied.'Which book would you like me to read?''No, no. I want you to make one up.' was his reply.And that, ladies and gentleman, was how Alonzo the chicken was born.I made up a story about a magic super-hero chicken called Alonzo, and quite frankly, I thought the story really wasn't any good. William, however, thought it was fabulous!'Tell me another Aunty Debbie. He was great!'The pressure was on.I was was overwhelmed by the realisation that William thought my story was good, even though he may have been slightly biased. The next day at work I asked my team what kind of adventure Alonzo should have next. 'Underwater' was the response.And that was how Alonzo and Molly the Mermaid was born.After going to a couple of WordWatchers meetings, and feeling completely and utterly overawed by the talent in the group, I took a 'brave tablet' and asked them to critique my book. This they did, and in their words, 'they tore it apart with velvet-clad claws and loving words'.Thank goodness for their honesty as my book is all the better for it.Through the people in the group I found my illustrator, Monika Filipina Trzpil. She is amazing, and I am truly blessed in meeting her.We talked via email, and then finally met up in a coffe shop in Trafalgar Square. It was just like a blind date!! I didn't know what she looked like, and visa versa! After a great couple of hours, she agreed to illustrate my, what was going to become a book. This was a surreal moment. Me? A book? With proper illustrations? Really?What she said next blew me away. ' Why don't you contact a small publishing company called Digital Leaf? I think they would love Alonzo. Give them a call.'So I did. One year on, and not only did I call them, but they had enough confidence in me and Alonzo to publish our first book In December 2012. I was, and quite honestly still am, staggered.After 6 months, not only has Alonzo and Molly the Mermaid been downloaded (albeit free), 1500 times in Australia in January, but wehave sold over 500 books and 140 of those were in the US. Alonzo is truly global! Whatever is next? Well apart from school visits and book signings, book two, Alonzo and the Meteorite will be released 1st October 2013.Who'd have thought it? I never dreamed this could become a reality, but it has. If it can happen to me, it could happen to you.Never say never.
Debbie signs another book
Debbie signs another book
Debbie
Eulogy - Guest Post by Thomas Haynes
We are very pleased to introduce this guest post from Thomas Haynes, who is a frequent attendee of the monthly WordWatchers social at the Lock Stock and Barrel and also a member of : Newbury Writers. He is first and foremost an ecologist, botanist and nature conservationist, loves music, model-making, writing and photography.Thomas on Twitter
I have a confession: Last night I killed someone. I knew I was going to do it. Today, the moment has played over and over in my mind and I thought I would share it.Writing my story 'Memories of Arma' has been difficult over the past few weeks, trying to rekindle the rapid flow from last summer. This year has felt less fluid, more mechanical, until last night.My deceased character was developed to support my plot line. He was first introduced in a flashback chapter as a background character. For some reason, when it came to develop my ‘plot-explaining’ character I called upon this background person to serve the purpose. I fleshed out his history. He went from 'random background scientist' to a leading neurologist, responsible for significant breakthroughs in his field. His research interests led him to make some very, very bad decisions. He has a difficult relationship with a young girl. He has spent the later part of his life trying to redeem himself from past mistakes. I even wrote a flashback of his time studying for his PhD, and there are at least two more flashbacks where he will play an important role in the future.But now he is gone.I was unsure how I was going to write the death scene, but I think that the characters were writing my story last night. I didn't really play a part in its creation; I was just some kind of medium. His final scene concluded with not one, but two deaths and I sat typing with tears in my eyes. Spotify played-out a song called 'Last Night' by Foals and the moment was fixed forever.This memorable experience has made me wonder about these characters we create and how they suffer the slow progress of their writer, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, they will live and die their way and sometimes it hits you hard.I will look forward to revisiting him in the two flashback chapters I am yet to write. R.I.P.
How I feel right now!
I'm not sure this is a blog, but more an observation. After two solid weeks of creating at least one 75-word paragraph a day for my book my brain has suddenly found a creative vein not previously tapped. I'm seeing stories everywhere. The simplest, most normal moments suddenly take on a fantastical, sad, happy, gruesome spin and demand to be written down. Capturing them in a 75-word paragraph is like trapping a fly in tree resin, eventually it solidifies as amber, a moment encapsulated forever.Some of these stories will never be more than what they are now, a self-contained tale, locked into their 75-word format, but others, well, I see characters, ideas, scenes that I want to explore in much greater detail...I've had to leave a notebook and pen in the bathroom because most of my stories come to me while I clean my teeth, or at least, ideas which have been there, but intangible, corner-of-the-eye things suddenly come into focus. I scribble while I brush and then in the morning type up my scrawl.Sometimes, I go to bed, lay there for a bit, then get up, get the notebook and then go downstairs and write it up there-and-then.My fellow WordWatchers have been great during this period too - I share most of my paragraphs with them - their immediate feedback is invaluable and very precious. They're finding the paragraphs I have intended to be funny, to be funny. I have found that it's easy to be grim, sad and terrible in such a concise format. If anything the 75-word format encourages it - nothing brings a 75-worder to a convenient close like a sudden demise. However, trying to be funny, trying to set-up a scene so that you can deliver a funny line, twist or situation is surprisingly tricky, but I seem to be getting there. When the book comes out, hopefully you will think so too.Tonight, I created the picture below, it's how I feel right now, so that's my smiling face in the picture.
Thank you Doug
Not many people will have heard of Doug Engelbart, even though his recent demise means he was on the news quite a bit over the last few days. However, any writer who has used a PC to capture their words, is likely to have used a package such as Word, Open Office, Libre Office or the equivalent has a lot to thank Doug for.Doug invented the mouse.Doesn't sound like much really does it, but think for a moment, about how intuitive that little device under your palm is. Move the mouse, move the pointer on the screen. Click an icon to select a function, click on a piece of text to jump to it. Highlighting, dragging and dropping... All (most) achievable by remembering a host of multi-key keyboard shortcuts but nothing quite so nice, or as simple, as the interaction you get with a mouse.I started writing on a computer when I got my Commodore 64 back in 1983, I even invested in a proper WYSIWYG Word Processor called GeoWrite which ran under GEOS (effectively a replacement OS for the C64) - but it used the cursor keys to move around and a host of function keys to select, erm... functions. It wasn't until 1989 when I got my Commodore Amiga A500 which came with a mouse and I had yet another investment in a Word Processor called Wordsworth. Wordsworth had fully embraced that potential interaction between words and writer. All the things we now take for granted were there, the icons, the drop down menus, left click to do one thing, right click to do something else. It was a revelation.When I got my first laptop - a HP Omnibook (800CT) it came with a funny little mouse on a stalk that popped out of the side of the machine - it's still possibly the best mouse I have ever used.Now of course, writing this blog on my little Asus Netbook, it has, like pretty much all (non-Touch) portable devices a touchpad and while it's OK, it finds ways to screw me up in ways a mouse never did. I don't think I ever worried about my mouse suddenly doing something odd with the position of the pointer, or misinterpreting a single click as a double. Convenient though the touchpad is I'd still rather be using a mouse.Although we're being dragged into the era of the touch screen, the tablets, phablets (or is it Tones?) the layout of a writer's interaction with the application that collects, collates and structures their words still has a lasting legacy, a tip of the hat, to that initial mouse driven interaction with the computer.Thank-you Doug.