Death by Recession

Words : 10,000

% of First Draft : 8%

It's been a pretty harsh four months since I last posted. My company is no more and the other half has been made redundant, so things aren't looking to great chez moi these days.

Meanwhile MPs are lining their pockets and claiming for 5p carrier bags and packets of dog food. Yes guys it's allowable under the rules, but where are you morals? As for Gordon Brown, he must be rueing the day that he decided not to take advantage of the Brown Bounce last year and call an election. Now we are all just waiting for this fag end governement to crawl pathetically to the end of its term. Right now I suspect I am not alone in thinking that ANYTHING other than Labour is better.

On another note the European elections are coming up, and I think that most of the parties are fairly pants, although the UKIP one tickled my interest. It seems that they've changed their stance and acknowledged that Economic Union is necessary, but instead want to withdraw from Political Union with the EU. In essence this seems to indicate that they might tear up some of those completely useless laws that have engulfed us over the last 10 years, so freeing up business etc. I think they will probably get my vote, at least as an ex business person.

Luckily this enforced inactivity on my part means that I have sucessfully completed an outline and am now writing my book. Yay!

I'm finding the writing process quite interesting. I don't write linearly, although I have an outline. Instead I write the scenes in any order, thus creating fragments that I aim to string together later. Quite how it will all turn out, who knows!

Offering up a sacrifice

Outline 3 : 20% Done.

I've decided to offer up a pitch to the BookEnds agency, as they are offering to skim a few over Christmas. Let's hope I don't get selected for the "This Sucks" category :-)

On other news I've only managed to to move forward a little with the outline I'm currently working on. I'm spending a lot of time sorting out Christmas chores, getting food, presents etc. I don't think I will be working on it much over the holiday period.

Christmas is coming !

Outline : Split into 3 different ones.
New Target : Outline 3
Progress : 15%

Hooray for Christmas!

What with the credit crunch it's not felt particularly festive this year, but finally in the week before Christmas all those lights and decorations are finally having an effect!

Personally I do find it a bit of a trial putting them up, even though they look great when you've finished. There's something about touching tinsel that makes my skin crawl ( static electricity? )

This year I've decided not to buy 15 times my own body weight in food, or every kind of liquor under the sun ( last year the cupboards were heaving. )

I was reading a few blogs yesterday ( hey, why write when you can procrastinate ! ) and I noticed one Editor's Assistant screaming in frustration about the query letters she was getting. Strangely, as she was ripping through the 500 queries in the pile there were a number that had the words " ... or did she?"

It made me think a bit about the query process, which is a pleasure I aim to explore late next year. It made me speculate that the odds of capturing an agent or stimulating their palate are probably astronomical. Still, this is why we throw ourselves like lemmings at the slush pile, in the hope that at least one agent will take an interest.

On an equally wry note I started reading some posts by a writer called J A Konrath, and he had some very 'challenging' statistics regarding the odds of success in publishing. From what I can remember, the odds of achieving a bestseller slot are something like 336,000 to 1.

I did smile when I read that, as I am in this for the long run, and realistically I don't think I will be able to contemplate giving up the day job until I've managed to write ( and naturally sell ) 5 - 10 books. Writers often dream about sitting at home in a lounge robe taking phone calls about sequels and movie deals, but I think that is probably the reality for very few writers.

What I did find interesting ( JA Konrath has a pdf book called "A Newbie guide to Publishing" ) is the amount of self promotion he undertook to launch his books. I admire that amount of commitment to a project and I think that there are many things that can be learnt from his experiences. After all, as a new writer you are very green in industry terms, so any friendly information is gratefully received and carefully analysed.

So, how is the outline going?

Hmmm....

There are actually 3 different projects emerging here, which was a surprise as I sat down shuffling plot notes and characters. I have decided to, despite the fact that Outline 1 has some neat plot and characters and dialogue, put it aside as it contains elements of the paranormal and magic. Dear HP has skewed / drowned the market to the extent that readers aren't as sold on that kind of thing right now. Also, I'm not sure if it counts as YA or Adult, or which way I should push it.

Outline 2 looks like a quirky humour book, but I'm not sure that the conflict 'has legs' as they say. I'm not convinced that it's viable without a lot more work, so I shall shelve that for a while.

Outline 3. This really interests me. I've only got about 20% of it, barely 6 - 8 chapters, and I'm not sure why anyone is doing anything, but it has an undeniable feeling of pace. The central characters immediately had depth and a back history. However, it was the genre that came as a surprise. It may actually be a genre fusion, and one that I have not seen in the market. It's taking some real thought to move forward on this, but the prospect is quite appealing.

Outlining Process

Outline : 30% Done

It's very nostalgic going through all my old notes, and also quite interesting.

I think that I've seen a theme emerging, in terms of scenes that seem to dovetail and have the same characters within them. What I do find is that the vague idea that I had for my story has already been fleshed out by my subconscious note taking over the last 2 - 3 years. No such thing as a title at the current time, but in this industry, if I ever get all the way through ( finish manuscript, get agent, get editor etc ) the title that I thought would be most appropriate would probably not make it to the cover. A small sacrifice for the opportunity to share the story with other people, wouldn't you say?

The other thing that I noticed as I put together a sequence of events and characters is that the story actually starts about 20% further in than I thought. Quite whether that means that I will have to invent more plot or whether it will arise naturally in the writing process I don't know, but we shall see.

I've been reading on several blogs and news sites ( see this ) about the change in returns policy for Borders over in America ( and perhaps worldwide? ). I also notice that someone else has commented that here in the UK at least one publisher has a no returns policy on back list books, which seems fair. As much as we'd all like to shift oodles of books in year one, it would only be fair to acknowledge that book selling chains and stores are taking a huge risk on new and previously unpublished authors ( unless your a celeb, in which case they're still not going to earn out that eye-watering advance ). So it seems that the UK publisher ( Hachette ) may have arrived at a happy medium. On the other hand it might mean that if you ( or me ) as the first time author fail miserably, there could be even less scope for relaunch or break out. I shall watch with interest.

Outline! Outline!

Perhaps it's unusual, but I am one of those people who likes to write an outline before diving into writing the actual novel. I suppose it's because I want to know where it's going, how it develops, and what the actual conclusion is before I start writing. From a technical point of view I think it helps my own process when discreetly slipping the gun on the mantelpiece for later.

On another note, I was watching the news this morning.

Crikey!

The most depressing for several weeks. I don't know about the rest of you but I was SO sick of watching nothing but economic doom that I more or less came out of the other side thinking - "So what, you've front loaded the news for so long with this negative torrent of utter misery that I'm now feeling inoculated against it."

Well bad news, it's worn off ! Now I'm wondering what Gordon Browns 1 Trillion pound debt means for me, as well as the country. Apparently (!) we will end up with 3 million unemployed. When you consider that the reality for a country with c. 60 million people is that only around 30 - 35 million actually work, out of 22 million households, then that adds up to 10% unemployment. I've got potential interest from 2 freelance projects, but in this current environment will I prove successful? I need to stop thinking!

So, today I am going to start my outline for a project that I've been mulling over for about 6 months. I am surrounded by enough pieces of paper to fill 2 A4 Arch Lever files, and I've set myself the target of writing a reasonably comprehensive outline by the end of the month.

I don't know about you, but I've always found the process of writing really exciting ( more so considering the news... ) Sometimes I am close to hysteria with excitement at the possibility of diving into my own little world.

I like to write my notes and outline sketches on paper, I find it aids the 'creative process' for me.

So, I shall report back in due course and let you know how the outline went.

The Audacity of Hope

Well, here we are then.

Like so many of us out there, I am embarking on something that I have dreamed of all my life.

I have thought about being a published author for more than half my life.

But it's hard. So many have tried and failed, there are so many that have not even managed to finish a book, let alone get an agent. In short the number of hugely disappointed wannabe authors greatly outnumbers those who are published.

I haven't even started my book yet. Well, technically I haven't started this book. I've got any number of Projects that have been started and then dropped 1 or more chapters in. Some because I didn't like the way the characters turned out, some because I wanted to curl up and scream at the poverty of talent I displayed. Some because life got in the way and I lost the thread.

So this blog is my encouragement to myself to write, and write often until I finish and revise and revise some more, and eventually try and interest an agent.

So, this is my committment to you, the wider and anonymous world, to share the trials and tribulations of trying to write, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, the dream that I've had for 20+ years can be shared with, and by, more people.