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Human Edits
Author Insights
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Ideas are at the heart of my writing,
as I would imagine that they are with most writers.
Most of my mental activity as a writer is focused not just on getting ideas,
which come and pass with the regularity of clouds in the sky...
but in getting the right idea.
I'm constantly searching for ‘unique’.
A great, unique idea provides me with so much more,
so it's worth spending time on getting the right one.
My profile for an idea is very specific:
1. It has to be an idea that really hooks me.
If it hooks me, surely it will hook many prospective readers?
2. It has to be unique in several ways.
Ideally to fit a perceived gap in the market.
A book setting that hasn't been used before.
A standout main character who intrigues, fascinates and attracts the empathy of the reader.
A crime that will be unusual or unwritten about before.
3. It must be an idea that I'm passionate about.
An idea that fuels me up, so that I can't wait to open my laptop every day to mine and exploit it.
An idea that's going to get me up to around 160,000 words.
Yes, I write 'big books! '
Such ideas are rare.
Not only rare for me to discover...
but rare in writing in general.
They are the single nugget of gold to be found in the vast and barren field.
But, it's worth the effort attempting to find them
and hopefully succeeding in that endeavor.
It's worth the effort...
and the pain!
Once I have a good idea, it's as if a switch has been shifted to the 'on' position in my head.
A switch that I won't, can't, and don't want to switch to the 'off' position until the manuscript has been completed and the 20 to 30 stage editing process seen to its conclusion.
From now on, it dominates my life!
When I'm watching TV,
I'm not really watching it...
I'm thinking about plot details, character arcs, setting,
for my manuscript.
When I'm in a supermarket shopping...
I'm there physically, but not mentally...
My mind is a thousand miles away from the delicatessen counter, in a piss-smelling alley in Shanghai
or hovering over a ripped corpse on a dark river's broken banks.
I hold a deep level of guilt about not being present in each minute of my life.
Not being in the 'here and now. '
However, I've realized that for me,
it's the only way that I can create in the intense way that I do.
I'm never ever far from my mobile phone to make voice notes,
or a pad and pen to write down barely legible musings.
I've found that sentences and whole paragraphs come to me in their entirety. Ready and polished for the manuscript.
I'm very lucky in that way.
Maybe it's a dyslexic thing?
As a chronic dyslexic, I learned long ago that my brain is wired up differently.
An inescapable reality that is a double-edged sword.
Good and bad.
Pleasure and pain.
I've also found that I can write at any time and in any situation.
My debut novel was written during the daily train commute into London.
My second novel was written while in the throes of a divorce.
A screenplay was written in hospital
pre and post a heart triple bypass operation.
I'm lucky in that way.
in regard to my writing...
but not so lucky with the heart issues!
I start a novel with no planning at all, except for a little research.
Research is a funny one...
I might create pages of research,
but will only use a single fact from that forest of information.
And often it's a small sapling of a fact rather than a mighty Redwood.
With research, it's the small things that matter.
That little fact,
that minute truth that is 'smoke and mirrors' to a reader, making them believe that they're in safe hands and that you know it all...
when you really don't!
The other thing about research is that it is not really about mere facts.
It's about, as a writer,
immersing yourself in the culture that you're writing about.
Letting yourself wallow in it!
I find that with so much thinking,
and sentences, paragraphs rehearsed in my head...
And along with scant notes that I have made,
that it just needs suturing together.
Suturing in a 'Frankenstein' like manner.
Making sure that the feet, the hands and the head are in the right anatomical locations.
I have what I would imagine
is a rather odd way of writing.
I can write the first eight chapters or so
almost without taking a breath.
It just happens.
As if the spring of an old clock has been wound up and wound up...
and is now simply being allowed to unwind in a slow delivery of its well-rehearsed promise.
I will then write the very last chapter of the manuscript.
I have christened this method,
‘Bookending’
after the bookends that are sometimes used to hold books in order on a shelf.
So, I have my start, in which I've set myself a series of complex problems...
and I have my final chapter where these are resolved.
Hopefully to the satisfaction of the reader who has invested their time,
patience and £19.99 in my rather large tome.
Now the hard part, at least for me!
I now have to solve the problems that I've set in my opening chapters, in a satisfying, believable, empathic, highly entertaining and readable fashion that results in the solutions welding themselves into the ending that I've already written.
Not an easy job!
Now I'm in a very uncomfortable 'No-man's-land.'
I'm flying completely blind!
So.... lots more thinking as I walk around supermarkets.
Lots more stress headaches as I let the images from TV films pass aimlessly through my eyes while my inner eye wanders around foreign lands.
Slowly, little islands begin to form in the stream.
The need to put in a chapter that takes the narrative in that direction.
A half a chapter that will flesh out a character's strange motivations and machinations.
Another chapter to set a scene. Create a tension.
A device to glue a relationship together.
As someone who naturally writes in a 'show don't tell' fashion
and who loves the 'zooming-in' impact that you can only get from writing in Third Person 'Point of View' and suddenly switching to a character's internal dialogue
this is tough terrain to negotiate.
The hardest and most changing part of creating my manuscript.
One that I find can cause me actual physical pain.
Squirming around on my seat like a worm on a hot plate.
My writing method now turns to the pack of blank postcards that I've bought.
Their thin white blank cardboard surface, causing me torture and
ecstasy, in equal measures.
Each small card now represents a proposed chapter
in no specific order.
Each card carrying a small list of bullet points.
Disembodied sentences.
Un-anchored quotes and lyrics.
A thought.
A feeling.
A reminder of the kind of 'vibe' and emotional dynamic that I wish to convey in this chapter.
And most importantly, a start to the chapter and an ending.
Both containing a hook, to keep
the reader doing what they hopefully do... read and keep reading!
I then have my outlines for my chapters.
Cards that I can easily swap around on a tabletop
as I look for the important rhythm and pace that I want to endow my Crime
Thriller with.
Not so much repeated action that the reader is worn out by it all!
And not vast deserts of reflection and description, the impact of which forces the reader into a coma!
This is where I add, with no bias at all...
Oh for a VocaTales in those good old bad days!
It would have saved me a lot of pressure headaches and a very healthy budget for packets of Paracetamol!
To get all of that 'stuff' out of my head and into a safe,
organized, intuitive, reliable and creative place!
Wow!
Only when ready, will I go to my laptop.
When I say ready, I mean exactly this:
that in a fusion of thought and my chapter notes on a postcard,
I know exactly what it is that I want and need to say.
How the chapter will start.
How it will end.
What happens in the chapter.
The actions.
The settings.
What my characters are going to do and not do.
Here are three important self-imposed rules that I developed quite early in my writing career.
They were borne from need...
if I really wanted to create anything of literary note.
Firstly, I never go to write on my Laptop without exactly knowing what it is that I want to write and accomplish while I'm there.
Secondly, I set no time limit.
I write until it's done.
Thirdly, I never edit as I go along.
I just write, and write, and write!
Why not edit as I go along?
It's quite simple really, at least for me.
I compare editing as you go along to driving your car at speed down
a motorway.
If you only drove solely by looking in the rear-view mirror of your car,
we know what would happen,
don't we?
You'd crash and burn!
It's the same with writing.
If you're constantly reviewing what you've just written.
Constantly looking backwards,
again you'll just crash and burn.
My evidence for this?
As a writing coach and mentor who works with would-be authors around the world, I can tell you,
hand on heart...
that by far, editing as you go along is the single most common reason why writers abandon their manuscripts and give up!
Just tell your story.
You've got plenty of time after you've completed the first draft of your manuscript, to do your editing.
To fill those plot holes.
To resurrect that character that you'd forgotten about on page 67.
To correct those spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Etc.,
Etc.,
Etc.
As I've gotten older,
retaining my concentration levels has become a necessity.
So when I'm in the 'Writing Zone, '
I don't do anything that will possibly disturb it.
Because it's a very special commodity.
I need total silence.
I don't eat or drink.
I don't stop until I've done what I set out to do.
I've mentioned the 'Writing Zone.'
SO… what exactly is it?
Fact or fiction?
Well, it's definitely fact.
I know because I've been there many times.
I guess that it's like being a champion ice skater who knows and has rehearsed their Olympic routine many, many times.
The 'Writing Zone' for me is when writing becomes effortless.
You glide through it
with all possibilities at your fingertips.
Your concentration levels are extremely high and untethered.
It's a great place to be.
But how do you get there?
After all, it's not on any train or bus routes...
Wish that it was!
In my mind, it's a crucial cocktail of things...
And I'm not talking alcohol and slices of pineapple here!
It's knowing what writing skills you have in your toolbox.
It's knowing your strengths and your weaknesses.
It's writing without fear or boundaries.
It's about belief...
belief in yourself and your ability to write and to write very well.
Above all... and I take this great tip and essential internal dialogue that you need to incorporate into your own writing life,
from the great writer,
Kurt Vonnegut, as demonstrated in his marvelous novel,
'Breakfast of Champions.'
And that is: when you feel a bit lost in your manuscript...
circling around in a Cul-de-sac...
don't know what to do!
Just remember that you are your idea's architect...
Its narrative's inventor...
And you are your characters' God.
You created it all, and you can change, cut, add, alter anything that you want or
need to.
You have total control!
This powerful realization can get you out of any perceived literary mess that you feel that you're in!
So, enjoy the journey...
Getting there is as important and as exhilarating as reaching the destination.
Don't forget that!