“Stag At Bay”
(So called as I was supposed to do a landscape, but turned up to the wrong class)
“River Deep, Mountain High”
“Love On The Rocks”
Untitled
(though “Wolfie Smith” is currently a forerunner)
All paintings are oil on canvas, from 1 day painting courses
I heard a story once about Gary “Take That” Barlow that said that he would, on occasions, just sit down with a guitar and a mike and record whatever came into his head for up to 8 hours a day.
Bjork, meanwhile, apparently walks along sandy beaches all day just singing to herself into a tape recorder.
Whilst most of us don’t have the time in our lives to muck about all day on the beach just recording our every thought in the hope that one in a thousand of them turns out to be useful – there is a certain amount to be said about just getting on with the actual business of writing and not worrying too much about the end result until you actually HAVE an end result.
For instance: I first heard about Nanowrimo nearly 12 months before I first tried it in 2009, but allowed myself to be convinced on that occasion that I wouldn’t possibly have time to do it, nor produce anything meaningful at the end.
However, when I suddenly found myself with a month to spare and nothing much to do with it in November 2009 I decided to have a go, and the results were rather surprising.
Firstly – my writing had got into something of a rut: every time I got a good idea it would get bogged down in re-writes. I would find that I was unhappy with the way the story was going and attempt to go back to the start, making improvements – the result being that I never made any actual progress with the story. Committing to writing 50,000 words in a month meant that I had to keep going – to write through the problems.
The resulting story – The Benefit – did two important things for me. Firstly it made me realise that I could write through the problems – going with my imagination. The buzz of writing to a deadline and a specific word count meant that I kept on going when otherwise I might have turned back, and also forced me to be more inventive when I did run into problems.
Secondly it re-kindled my love of writing. Telling a story had become something of a hard road somewhere along the way – the fact of always knowing that very little was going to happen with the finished result, always assuming there WAS a finished result. Writing just for the pleasure of writing re-awakened my love for it and I have no doubt that The Darkening Wall would never have been completed if it were not for Nanowrimo.
When I came to do it again in 2011 I started from a slight disadvantage. With The Benefit I had a definite idea of what the story was, where it was going, who the main characters were and how they felt about the situation – this time around there was nothing quite so focused. The result, Descent, was nowhere near as good as the previous year and, in all honesty, I struggled a lot more.
Aside from having less idea of the plot I also had a lot less time and, on several occasions, I had to spend several weekends in November writing for hours just to keep up to the daily word count. It was a lot harder work than the previous year – but I am still glad that I did it – and even have an idea for what I want to do this year.
In the mean time The Darkening Wall, the novel that never would have been written without taking part in 2009 is now ready for publication and The Benefit (the 2009 entry) only needs a small amount of re-writing and extension to bring that to print.
So I guess the message from this post is that when you reach an obstacle in your story – keep writing through it. Set yourself a target to reach and keep going towards it. Afterwards, when you have the bones of the story, you can go back and fill in the gaps.
Stopping as you go and getting bogged down in obstacles doesn’t help anyone, certainly not you.
With the publication of The Darkening Wall growing ever closer and a separate wordpress page now available for comments specific to the book I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about the themes of the book here
For those of you wanting to find out more about dates and details of the book follow the link here
There are two central themes to the book: which can briefly be categorized as consequences and evolution
Consequences
All of the characters in the book are overshadowed by the actions taken over twenty years. The future that lies before them now is ordained, driven by these actions and it is this generation that will have to face the consequences of those decisions.
This was something that I was very keen to focus on as a central theme of the book: how sometimes we have to carry on with the future that has been given to us, and about how we face up to the challenges that this gives us. Throughout the book I hope that we also see that each of the decisions that the characters take also have consequences of their own. Someone once asked me “if you could act for one day without consequence, what would you do?” and I replied that there are always consequences, if only to yourself – so the best that you can do in life is to be true to what you believe and to try and do as little damage as you can along the way
Evolution
The tag line for The Darkening Wall is “Why do we build walls?”. This is a question that is asked several times through the book. This, for me, reflects the need of each of the characters to grow as we follow them. They all face challenges and it is their character and their upbringing that denotes how they respond.
But equally they cannot remain the same people that we knew at the start: each person goes on a journey, both physical and emotional that changes them. The question “why do we build walls” is both a physical question – asking the characters to think about the nature of the Darkening Wall, but also an emotional one – do we need objects so that we will learn how to overcome them?
For me the ark of The Darkening Wall is a story not only of exploration of the world in which we find the characters, but also a re-evaluation of that world. What happens when we bury our heads in the sand and refuse to accept the future? It’s also, at its heart, an adventure story – using the basics of the fantasy novel, without being too bound by its conventions.
Equally – for every lesson that the characters have learned along the way I feel that I have grown as a writer: I’m thinking about stories in different ways to when I began the novel and feel far more confident in my ability. I’m very pleased with the end result and now feel able to go back and look at some of the other ideas sitting out there, waiting to be written.
I honestly thought when I did the second draft of The Darkening Wall that I’d caught all of the little errors.
I went through the whole novel on my computer, reading it through, correcting and in some cases entirely altering to make sure that all the little character glitches had been removed: but I guess that there’s no alternative for the printed word because when I arranged to get a free draft copy printed I found all sorts of things that both myself, and spellchecker, had missed.
Anyone thinking of self publishing would be wise to take a look at Lulu whose easy to download and edit templates have made getting The Darkening Wall into print a relatively simple affair (if you ignore the 3-6 years it took to write, re-write and then re-write again). Not that it was always this easy: when I first looked into it some years ago there was a minimum print number of a few hundred, but now you can print as you go.
But I diverge from my original point: it was only when they sent me what was effectively a free draft copy that these errors occurred.
Some were some minor plot alterations that I had missed when revising a few of the characters, but on the whole I was very pleased with the standard of the writing.
Aside, that is, from a few glaring errors.
This included some amusing typos – a sentence reading “She kept her boy tense”, when she should have kept her “body” tense – and, best of all, “they wee alone in the street now”, instead of “were” – typos that drastically changed the nature of the sentence.
One thing I did notice as I went was how often I had used unnecessary words and, much like Richard III, how fond I was of the “now” speech
The wind was changing now
She could see the sun rising now
He was now aware that he was over-using the word now
There is a school of writing with which I can’t entirely agree – that states that if you have a choice between a weak word and a strong word you should always use the strong one – IE a weak description or phrase weakens the whole.
I can see the point in this, but for me writing is more about the general feel of the piece. As a musician I’m more interested in the rhythm of writing. Throwing in a clever, obscure word for effect can actually serve to jar your reader out of the writing: far better I always think to try and maintain a “voice” that sounds natural and, well, rhythmic.
But even so there are certain things that a writer needs to be careful of, and I must admit to having committed a few of these sins:
Using the same word several times in the same few paragraphs
If you over-use a word in short succession it can cause your reader to have a sense of Deja Vu and can sound like these are the only ones that you know. I’m not talking about linking words here, but if you are describing several actions around the same thing try and think of different ways to describe it to avoid repetition
Try and avoid unnecessary words
Much like my obsession with the word “now” – before I finally go to print (and to kindle), an event that is only a few weeks away, I will be doing a search of every use of the word “now” and replacing almost all of them
No writer truly enjoys the process of re-writing and editing – you’ve spent however long creating your masterpiece and the last thing you want to do is go back through it all with a toothpick to gouge out all the pieces of tartar that are gumming up the works, but it is a necessary pain if one wants to avoid the dentures of the bargain bin.
So my advice to anyone who is thinking of writing a novel is that once you think you’ve finished:
Print it out and read it through – reading through it on a computer screen can lead to missing mistakes – don’t be afraid to print it out and make notes on the page
Engage the help of a friend – find someone that you know will be constructive and give useful help (IE not just moan about every missing piece of punctuation)
Be honest and objective with yourself – try and distance yourself from the piece and ask: if I was reading this for the first time – would this piece stand out?
Take your time – rushing through a read through will only mean that you miss easy errors. Once it’s out in the real world it’s probably too late to do anything more about them, so nip them in the bud. You’ve spent this long on the book – a few more weeks won’t hurt, will they?
There’s a bit in Die Hard 4.0 that really irritates the hell out of me.
Not that the rest of the film isn’t daft – it’s the fourth in a series of action films and as we all know the action > feasibility ratio is directly affected by the amount of Roman numerals after a film’s title: so in a film where the hero defeats free-running bad guys, fights a jet fighter in a truck and still has time to listen to Bachman Turner Overdrive it seems a little unfair to go picking plot holes – but there’s still that bit that annoys me.
Right at the end, when he’s in the room with Computer Geek, Lame Bad Guy 4 and Stereotypical Teenage Daughter there’s that bit where Lame Bad Guy 4 has a gun pressed against Bruce’s shouder and Bruce shoots through his own body in order to kill the baddie.
Now the reality here is one of the following:
* He will pass out from the shock and most likely bleed to death
* Bruce’s arm should be blown off by the force of the impact
* Assuming he keeps the arm he will sever something important and be unable to ever use his arm again.
As it is he’s able to walk himself to the ambulance and spare a few moments to criticize his daughter’s taste in men and, yes, listen to some more Bachman Turner Overdrive.
The same, or something similar, can be said of the current series of The Mentalist. As those of you who have watched it will be aware this is enjoyable hocum based around the exploits of the morally ambiguous Patrick Jane as he manipulates people to find the murderer and uncover the true identity of the man who killed his family: Red John.
At the end of the last series Patrick faced a man that he believed to be Red John and shot him. Dead. In the middle of a crowded shopping mall with all the witnesses you could wish for to the effect that it was a cold blooded murder.
And yet in the new series Patrick had a single episode of trial: where despite all of the last paragraph he got away scot free and the series has more or less continued exactly as it was before.
Which is where the point of this post comes in. This kind of writing annoys me tremendously. You have put your characters in a situation where they have to act in a certain way: this action pre-determined by everything you have previously said and done with their character – and from that action there should be consequences.
If someone is shot then it should hurt: they will probably be out of action in the story for some time. If someone has killed someone else then there should be emotional and physical consequences to that action: maybe they will have a break down, perhaps they will go to jail.
To put your characters into that situation and then turn away as if nothing has happened: that’s just lazy.
Every action that we take in our lives has a consequence, and the same should be true in our writing.
Consequences are the underlying theme of The Darkening Wall, the final draft of which is nearly complete now. The idea of the story is that some actions took place nearly twenty years ago that have left our characters in a certain situation: they are facing the consequences of actions taken by their forbears – but within that the characters themselves still have to make their own choices.
My main character starts off in the story as a rather privileged and sheltered individual – her world is changed forever by the journey that she takes. If, at the end of all that, there was any suggestion in the story that she could return to the person that she had been then I think that would be selling the reader short.
So when you write: don’t be afraid to ask what the consequences of the actions might be. By facing those consequences and dealing with them you may create a more believable and enjoyable story.
No matter how you try and keep your story on track there will often come that moment where you reach a junction in the path from A to B where suddenly the road less traveled is looking more interesting than the one you had intended to follow – or the path that you were about to follow suddenly seems full of twists that necessitate going back and forth ad infinitum.
This happened to me during the very first draft of The Darkening Wall to such an extent where I almost had to entirely abandon the story.
I had reached a point where my main character, Maya: the First Daughter of the Emperor, was out in the wilderness facing danger. Somehow I needed her to get back to court so that she could establish that her mother, the Empress, had been poisoned and that her Empire was under threat, and yet still continue with her quest.
This was causing some major plot delays: all the going back and forth was slowing the book down. Both paths of the plot had to be followed: but what to do?
The answer was simple in the end: and it was already there in the story. It had always been my intention to have a sub-plot of the murder of the chief advisor at court and his replacement by his son, Lu.
It took me some months to work out how, but eventually it dawned on me that by developing this character more deeply I could follow both paths simultaneously: Maya could remain out in the wilderness seeking the cure for the illness (news of which would surely reach her anyway) and Lu could remain at court investigating the murder of his father and acting as a resistance to the attempts to overthrow the Empress.
It is, of course, difficult to completely balance a book if you introduce too many new characters: a reader may become frustrated or confused if too many sub-plots are going on, but equally if the story is laid out clearly then they can easily accept two, or even three, main characters whose stories intertwine amidst each other.
This is probably something I picked up from reading Ian Rankin detective novels. In most of the Rebus stories there are two or three different paths of plot at any time: in some of the books these diverge and become entirely seperate story lines that only appeared to be interlinked, whilst in others we find that seemingly disparate happenings are part of the same events.
By allowing yourself to split the story between two or more protagonists you also have the chance to allow your reader to see more of the world that you have created.
Splitting The Darkening Wall in this way allowed me to develop several back stories and to provide a richer texture to the world I was trying to create.
Equally the question any writer should be asking themselves about their character is: what do they learn? If you or I were to experience any of the things in a movie, or a book, we would certainly come out the other end a different person than we started: and so should your characters. Some will chose to close their minds to the lessons they are given, but if that is the case then there should be some character reason why this would be, but most will be different people to the ones that you started with: and this journey is of equal merit to the overall journey of your novel.
Simple: write an album.
For those of you who have never tried taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the idea is simple: start on the 1st of November and write 50,000 words by the 30th. Any subject, any theme: it really doesn’t matter. It may be that what you write in that month is the worst piece of junk that you have ever conceived: full of two dimensional characters and plot holes the size of Kentucky, but that really isn’t the point. Most of your efforts will, indeed, sit unloved on a computer and may never come to light, or even be read by anyone.
So why do it? Why commit yourself to a month long slog only to produce something that is…well that isn’t exactly Shakespeare: not even on a really bad day?
Firstly: ask any writer and they will tell you that there are several problems around writing: the first of which is that left alone with nothing else to do a writer will always find something else to do other than write unless they are already only able to see their deadlines very distantly in the rear view mirror. This is not because writer’s don’t enjoy the process, nor is it because writing is particularly hard: but mainly because we are, as a species, very easily distracted and often fatigued from other things.
Anyone who has ever joined a Gym will be familiar with this: we have every intention of keeping to three times a week, but somehow life, and work, gets in the way. The imposition of a deadline of 50,000 words in a month gives you something to aim for. That deadline will keep you going when you really think that you just can’t go on.
Lesson One: Always turn up to write. Inspiration may not be there, but you should be.
Secondly: every writer will be familiar with the following. Your story goes from Points A to B in that story there might be several characters and five or six significant events that need to happen for you to get from A to B – only problem being that half way through you find that you’re suddenly really interested in Minor Character B and are spending so much time with he or she that your plot is careering wildly off course.
What usually happens here is that the writer is forced to pause their story and drastically re-think – endlessly returning to the start of the story and never getting any further as more and more plot holes and problems occur from your new fascination with someone who was originally a bit part character.
However, when writing to a deadline you don’t have time to go back to the start and become stuck in the usual ever decreasing circle that can only lead to implosion. You have to go on, and this forces you to think in ways that you might not usually have done. It is in these moments of drastic improvisation that we allow our minds to free themselves: and in those few seconds where we free ourselves of limitations we become capable of anything.
Lesson Two: Don’t be afraid to go with the flow. Maybe the new path was the right path all along
Thirdly: it is inevitable that what you end up with at the end of the month is hardly going to be Pulitzer Prize winning. Ian Fleming may well have been capable of knocking out a new James Bond novel in the two weeks he spent on holiday each year, but it’s extremely doubtful that you will. What this means is that if you go back and look at your novel some months later you will notice that perhaps your characters are not as deep as they can be, or that the plot is over simple or hackneyed. Recognize these and ask yourself: what could I do better next time?
Lesson Three: Accept your weaknesses. Improve those that you can and learn to make those that can’t improve work in your favour.
So: why follow a month of writing a novel with a month of trying to write an album. Simple: because having stretched your mind to new lengths it is only right to stretch it sideways as well. Many professional musicians spend up to twelve hours a day just singing into a microphone in the hope of finding a single gem.
Indeed, there are even workshops of 12 hours where a group of writers will sit down together and try and write 12 songs with no break – and it is said, again, that by the end of it you will be writing in ways you had never deemed possible at the start.
Yes, the songs may not be the best you have ever written, OK they may not sell a million copies: but the important thing is that you’ve got the cogs of your imagination all greased and ready to roll.
Good news: The Darkening Wall is currently at Draft and will be available on Amazon.co.uk and kindle soon.
