Chipping Away at the Writer's Block

Progress a little slow, as you can see, because the Steves are busy doing other jobs around the house - there's a little bit of light waterproofing going on and some more noggins going in, but at the moment the main focus of the action is somewhere else.

Progress can also seem painfully slow when you're starting out on a writing project.  It can sometimes take weeks and months for you to warm up (loosen up?) enough to hit your stride, so the opening phase of the work can seem discouraging and disproportionately difficult.

Try and think of it in these terms -- it's not about the distance you cover, it's about depth you reach.  You'll get more satisfaction and achieve better results if you are writing down and down into the heart of yourself and your subject, rather than sprinting along the easy route over the surface. That's not to say you should deprive yourself of the glorious exhilaration of the sprint, but it's helpful to realise that just as much work is being done on those slow days of drudgery when your brain is in overdrive, but you can only squeeze out a few painful and stolid sentences.  Hitting the brick wall, the difficult stuff, is where you learn how to write at your best and the start of that process is learning to write through the dead days, even if this involves losing speed. Loss of velocity doesn't equate to loss of direction, so shouldn't result in a  loss of hope...

So keep grinding it out, keep writing, remember the challenging imbalance of the perspiration/inspiration equation.  The only way to shift the block is to keep chipping away at it.

Advice for Fiction Writers

A quick thought for a Friday afternoon with the whole weekend ample with promise ahead: leading on from yesterday's post about writing the first draft of the first chapter, the most important advice is...

...WRITE

Having denied yourself the pleasure all through the preparation period, just write. Don't be too precious about it -- my burgeoning shed is currently held up with noggins and single nails (thought noggin was something you drank?? Ed) and I'm pinning my hopes on the fact that the Steves will secure it properly once the position of the windows, doors etc is definitively finalised.

So, while the details are still being fleshed out inside your head, write.  You can always change things later.  You can scrap the lot and throw it in the bin.  For the time being, the most important thing is to splurge it all out.  Don't spend too much time re-reading what you've already written -- only glance back long enough to help yourself pick up the threads, then go charging onwards, ever onwards.  It's the only way you'll get momentum going.  It's also the best way I know to enter the world of your story, just as you hope the reader will one day too.

The Blank Page -- Writing the First Few Words

Although my shed is still mostly made up of holes, if you look closely you can see that some are door-shaped holes, and some are window-shaped holes and it's all starting to feel rather exciting...

In writing terms, you have probably done enough preparation -- become acquainted with your characters, drawn out a narrative thread, decided where your novel should be set -- to think about drafting the beginning, so that the thoughts that have been hurtling round the large hadron collider inside your head can at last start to be expressed in story terms.

So...the first draft of the first chapter.

You may as well jump right in,  as your lovingly-crafted opening words will almost certainly not be the opening words that you ultimately end up with.  You'll probably find that your first chapter proves to be a convenient place to start the narrative, rather than the point at which the narrative should begin-- you'll find out where that is later.

Although this is the your work, an expression of your creativity and imagination, there are some conventions that are worth observing, because they tend to launch the narrative with confidence and authority, essential elements in your writing if your audience is to commit serious amounts of time to reading what you've written.

• The first few pages are a lens through which the reader views the book as a whole -- they need to provide a sense of the geography of your story -- what genre it is written in and the kind of issues and challenges which are likely to face your protagonist. If you're writing an Aga saga you need to frame the story in cosy domesticity, if you are writing a thriller you need to convey breathless suspense and excitement - you get the picture.
• You need to introduce your heroine/hero.  Physical description won't do here, you need to show them in action, doing something typical.
• It shouldn't need stating, but somehow often does -- you have to hook the reader's attention.  You have to offer them something so tantalising and irresistible that they are willing give up hard-won, precious hours of time in order to devour great chunks of your matchless prose.

That should be enough to be going on with.  Keep thinking, start drafting.

Think About Setting Before Things Get Set

Four walls -- almost -- and a roof : the Steves are zipping ahead with the construction of my house-shaped shed.

Before we started working on building it, we did think quite a bit about location: no room in the house itself and the pitch of the roof was too shallow to squeeze anything into the loft, so it had to be the garden.  Once that was decided, we had to consider where (although you can see from the picture above that our options were limited). In the end we opted for the bottom lefthand corner because the ground slopes away there and we wanted the structure to be as unobtrusive as possible.

The reason I'm going into all of this in such yawning detail is that you have to make similar decisions about location when you are starting to write a novel or a story, and very often your first decision (if it hasn't already been dictated to you by your choice of subject matter) will dictate a lot of subsequent decisions.

Where you set the story can be massively significant.  Thomas Hardy is remembered as much for his recreation  of Wessex, and Emily Bronte for the wildness of the Yorkshire moors, as  for Bathsheba Everdene or Cathy. When you are making your choice, remember that it's not just a question of plonking your story down somewhere, you need to choose a location that can influence and interact with the action, not to mention the characters themselves.  The New York setting of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham defines how the story unfolds - you would be missing a trick if you didn't make sure that the location of your story made an important contribution to the book as a whole.

The novel I am working on the moment is set on a very, very small boat.  This yields some comic potential as the two main characters are living in extraordinary cramped conditions; it also exposes them to danger.  The boat, and the canal it sails down, are vital to the plot and provide a massive  hook for the story as a whole.  So while you are still in the decision-making process, before you have started to write properly, take some time to think about your setting -- it's an interesting and pliant ingredient to play with.

Playing the Line - Structuring the Narrative of Your Story

At this stage in the writing process, you are likely to have a number of bits and bobs coming together.  You may have captured a snapshot of them in your synopsis, but already your ideas, fluid and free, are moving on, changing shape and direction. When you have a mass of thoughts brimming in your head, it can be quite difficult to know what to do with them and where to start.

In my stretched-to-breaking-point shed-building analogy, it's a bit like the Steves piling up sheets of ply ready to start filling in the walls of my novel hovel. The sight of them stacked in what currently passes for our sitting room rather reminded me of giant post it notes, and it occurred to me that these might well come in handy for you at this stage in the construction of your story.

Try writing down a brief summary of all the scenes you have thought about so far on individual post-it notes, or index cards.  This will give you the opportunity to experiment with the running order -- moving a scene once you have written it can have complicated consequences later on in your narrative, so if you can pre-empt that from happening you will save yourself a lot of trouble further down the line.  Even beginning to think about the running order starts to move your planned story from the hypothetical to the actual -- it can be an enormously exciting moment. Try mapping out a logical storyline, then throw everything up in the air and try various different, more fractured versions to see which interests you most.

With the help of the post-its you will gradually get a sense of the narrative arc of your tale and once you've achieved that, you will be in a position to think about where on this arc your story should start.

Writing a Synopsis

You see?  There are just the beginnings, a glimmer, of the size and shape of my shed; an intimation of the height of the structure and the amount of space it will take up, as well as an impression of how it will sit in the garden, of its location.

It's a little bit like the synopsis of a story. A good synopsis will set out what the story is about, who the main characters are, what genre the book will fall into, and its target audience.  If you are contemplating writing one, you may want to sketch out the number of chapters (the struts holding up my walls) and summarise the major scenes in each one.  Even if you don't show the synopsis to anybody else, it will be a useful document for you to file away, because it provides a benchmark for your starting point; you can look back at it three months into your writing, six months, a year,and see how your ideas are developing, how your vision has changed.

So, if you have had ideas swimming around in your head for a few days now, try sketching out a synopsis yourself : notes on character (not just how they are at the outset, but how the action of the story will work upon them to bring about change); the skeleton of a plot.  It might help crystallise your thoughts a little and make you think who (other than yourself) you are writing for.

Later, much later, when you are ready to show your work to potential publishers, your synopsis will provide a useful hook to hang your submission on.

Displacment Activity - A Vital Tool for Writers

Well it isn't dawn, but the sky is so overcast, it could be...

...which means that rain has stopped play, but in writing terms this is a good thing, an excellent thing.  One of the commonest mistakes that new writers make its to charge in and start writing too quickly -- the literary equivalent of premature ejaculation. The trick is to contain your story inside your head until the pressure to tell it is so great you can't hold back.  During this time your subconscious will get to work, filling in all the interesting gaps.

There's a lot to be said for displacement activity, both for builders and for novelists, which is why we've got a rock star called Luke (check out Goan Dogs who recently appeared on Channel 4) pulling down our kitchen ceiling, while one of the Steves picks up his dog from hospital.

Life goes on, fantastically, leaving you time to think and plan and plot...

Thinking about the Foundations of Your Story

Dawn again, in the drizzle...

Even in the murkiness, you can see more clearly the shape of my house-shaped shed. The Steves have had to make a few adjustments, lowering the foundations so that the finished structure will be within height regulations - the literary equivalent is making sure that your story will work within the conventions you have chosen for it.  There's no point in setting out to write a thriller if there is no element of mystery in your plot. By checking things thoroughly at this stage, they have (fingers crossed) pre-empted problems later. 

There are endless debates about how much advanced planning you have to do as a writer: whether setting everything in stone (or concrete) restricts your inspiration or offers it valuable support, but my hunch is that it is helpful to have an idea of the direction you are heading in, at the very least.

In terms of creating your story, perhaps you should be jotting down a few notes (or simply thinking) about any characters which interest you (and why).  It might also be helpful to start letting a few ideas about their situation float to the surface. WHATEVER you do, DON'T start writing yet - just let everything ferment.

How to Build a Story from the Start

Dylan Thomas had his boathouse, Philip Pullman has a garden office, and very shortly I shall have a - shed.  When you're writing seriously and over an extended period of time, it helps to have a dedicated space to do it in if you can manage it, so we are squeezing a house-shaped shed into the bottom of our garden.

This is how it looked at dawn this morning.  You can just make out the concrete pile foundations and the lengths of string to show the outline. I thought it might be a handy metaphor for -- you've guessed it -- writing a story.  Here you have the beginnings of a base, an idea, if you like; there's also the faintest notion  of the shape it might take. There's a massive amount to do and it takes quite a leap of imagination to picture how it might look when it is finished - dispiritingly familiar to the starters of good stories.  However, our builders Steve and Steve don't mind the cold and are definitely up for the job.

So let me take you with me over the coming weeks.  Start thinking of an idea.  Let it churn around inside your head (cement mixer analogy coming on), put down a couple of markers, then let's get construction under way.

An Exercise in Autobiography

To a greater or lesser degree, most people draw upon their own experience of the world, when they are writing fiction.  No matter how much you refract and filter it, there's bound to be a few grains of your core thoughts and feelings lurking in your work, and it's not necessarily something to apologise for or to try and hide. You could even make a virtue out of it -- after all, it's the area where your work is likely to be strongest and most insightful.

In a bid to get a little bit more texture into the autobiographical aspects of your writing, to layer it so that it has depth and perspective, here's a little exercise to get your teeth into if you have time over the weekend.  Write a scene in which you introduce the person whom you think you are to the person you would like to be. Think carefully about when and where you set it as there may be significance to mine, and then  explore the affinities and seize on any  tension.  It may prove to be a slightly surreal experience, but it could just open up an interesting seam for you to exploit...

Structure -- Keep It Simple

Yesterday I was reflecting on the fact that overwritten prose is no substitute for truth in writing - it's a law which I think applies on the macro as well as the micro scale.  Just as an overblown phrase or paragraph can be used to compensate for a lack of clarity in thought, so a structure that is too tricksy can be used to disguise a fundamental weakness in the story you are telling.

You can tie yourself into complicated knots: say that you find it difficult to generate intimacy and intensity in the third person, so you switch to the first, then you find that you need more than one viewpoint in order to convey your plot, so you introduce several other first person narratives, then you find that it's all too confusing and consign half of what you've written to the back story because you're not sure what else to do with it.  By the time you've reached this point you've lost sight of your original vision and your book is in tatters. Your time would have been better spent addressing your original difficulty,  finding where the fault lines lie and testing them out, rather than over-elaborating everything to avoid the issue.

Description -- the Real Deal

Write for truth, not for effect -- it's a cardinal rule.  I read a phrase in someone's blog: water remembers you, and it struck such a hollow note, largely (I think) because it is inaccurate. Of all the elements, it seems to me that water is the least capable of remembering, because it's freeflowing and ever-changing.  Stone could conceivably retain an impression (I'm talking metaphorically here, of course) and fire could scorch something into your memory, but water?  Even with artistic license, it's too great a leap for me to take. and because it isn't accurate or plausible, it leaves me with the unavoidable impression that it's been written purely for effect, which immediately debases its value.  It's a kind of narcissism, and therefore to be avoided.

The best description springs from close observation, worked upon by imagination and intuition. Your goal when writing should be emotional and linguistic truth; by comparison, anything else is a kind of counterfeit, and who wants that?

How to Respond to Feedback

Having just received notes on a recent draft of my novel back from my agent, I would say this: take all praise with a pinch of salt, and any criticism very seriously indeed.

Onwards and upwards. new doors (or ancient ones) are always opening...

How Not to Write an Identikit Heroine

When I first started writing, a friend of mine told me that the prospect made her nervous.  "You'll put me in one of your books," she said uncertainly, "Won't you?"

But actually, in my experience, it doesn't work like that. In the Observer this weekend Barbara Ellen wrote an article about a survey which asked nine thousand women to make a celebrity-based composite of the Ultimate Woman.  The popular response mixed Keira Knightley's cheekbones with Kate Middleton's hair and Angelina Jolie's lips and the result was a spooky android - someone who looked as if she had had industrial grade silicon inserted in all the wrong places.

You can run the same risks in fiction.  If you borrow a bunch of characteristics from people that you know, apart from making them jittery and traducing various friendships, it's possible that you will end up with a character who is never more than the sum of their parts. In literary terms it can be a false economy, a shortcut to a two-dimensional heroine, rather than a living, breathing, fascinating and confounding one.  When you're writing, it's almost always better to go the long way round. Jot down everything you know about your protagonist, either in note form, or in little vignettes which show them in action - it's like the small talk which helps you to get to know someone you've just met: while you're chatting away, before you know it, something will catch your interest and you'll want to get to know them better.

Both as a writer and as a reader, I think it's more interesting to be given a fleeting glimpse of a character which then seeds itself in your imagination, rather than to be shown the equivalent of an identikit picture (even if she is the Ultimate Woman). Try to avoid transposing people into your stories, as that becomes a literal exercise rather than a literary one. Instead, explore the deep core of your own invention  - it's more mysterious and infinitely more satisfying.

If I Wrote More in the Conditional Tense.....

The New Year strikes me as being a conditional season.  It's full of aspirations (coupled with a dash of self-delusion): If I lost a stone, I would feel better about myself / If I gave up smoking, I would live until I'm ninety / If I tried harder at my writing, my book would be published - you know the kind of thing.

It got me thinking that the conditional is a particularly fragile tense; nothing is certain about it, there's an element of chance, combined with a little bit of endeavour, too.  It's freighted with longing: if only, if only.  It's a dreamy tense, an escapist tense.  It doesn't exist in the here and now, everything about it is hypothetical. It's a tense that subliminally demands -- well, why not,  what's stopping you?  and in the answer to that question lies a whole novel's worth of possibility.

Why not tap into your sense of yearning and try writing a story, or just a paragraph, in the conditional tense.  If I were prettier, he would still love me / If Nick Clegg hadn't handed David Cameron the keys to Number Ten / If...if...if...

Editing - The Ghost in the Draft

I turn sentences around.  That's my life.  I write a sentence and then I turn it around.  Then I look at it and I turn it around again.  Then I have lunch.  Then I come back in and write another sentence.  Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around.  Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around.  Then I lie down on my sofa and think.  Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

I thought I'd share Philip Roth's neat description of the writer's life with you.  It comes from his book The Ghost Writer (a must read, if you haven't already). Working at that level of detail would drive you mad in the end, but it gives you an idea of the hard graft involved in getting something right.  If I were to add a postscript to his perfect summary it would be, the next day I put it to one side and work on something different, because this can be an antidote to the obsessive compulsive tendencies of the writing life -- a breath of fresh air, a different perspective.

Roth's dry take on the author's existence is a bracing thought with which to start the New Year: it speaks of focus and dedication and a meticulousness that is essential if your work is to succeed. While trying not to get too bogged down in the detail, make sure you refine and refine and then refine again.

Your Starter for Ten (or Twelve, Actually)

A new year starting, a mass of writing  resolutions to live up to, a new door opening...

Here's a little exercise to give you some momentum now that 2012 is upon us. Take a random selection of five objects: on my desk at the moment I have a diary, a CD, a photograph of somebody acting dead, a letter from a friend I have lost touch with and the access card to my online bank account -- I think they provide a pretty interesting mix.  Spend a little time contemplating your objects to see if they suggest some kind of story to you.  As your ideas start to gel, draft out a rough plot, but don't start writing yet.

Now go back to your five objects and think again.  Imagine another situation/story, different from the first one you came up with, using different characters and different incidents.  Draft that out into a rough plot.

Finally (sorry if this is starting to sound like a recipe, the literary equivalent of put it in the oven at 175° for half an hour) graft your two stories together -- you might like to use one as the subplot and one as the main action, or alternatively decide to give them equal weight - but by knitting two strands up like this, you will devise  a narrative of greater complexity and interest.  When you are happy with the sequence of events, start writing....