writing - Ina Disguise

Authors and ideas

October 13, 2017 No Comments

Authors and ideas

Am I the only person that finds images of shirtless men on the cover of a book a sure signal that I will never want to read anything by that author?

Am I the only person that finds stories of extra-marital affairs, alpha billionaires and taboo relationships depressing?

Am I the only person that could cheerfully never read anything involving warlocks or wizards?

All of the above seem to have brat packs of authors who roam my timeline in droves, until I eventually unfollow them all. I cannot be the only person that feels like this? They are very good at supporting one another, however, and I regularly see them gleefully exchanging reviews when they bring out another of their titles.

They even have this thing called a ‘cover reveal’ before releasing these works of brilliance.

I am, for the moment, also a member of ‘Writer’s Group’ on Facebook, a group so vicious that it appears to be a forum for mutual stabbing between chapters. Only today, I was attacked by a woman with a rather spurious grasp of reality challenging some comments I had made about book marketing on the grounds that I had apparently failed to take the Medieval period into account when talking about writing and marketing. My response was that her queries were about as relevant as asking how many pre-1960 paperbacks had survived until the present day. (It is also rather ironic that she picked someone with an advanced knowledge of Medieval history, particularly in relation to art for this ridiculous challenge)

Writers, as far as I can see from this and previous experience, are an odd bunch. The people who like to write copious amounts of trash like to give you advice in order to absorb you into a herd of equally miserable and unimaginative people, and the others tend to roam alone, seeking validation from the occasional lonely paragraph. I also see a lot of people trying to write before they have lived much of a life, which causes them no end of heartbreak when they hit a writer’s block.

There are many people who have a very limited life and write beautifully, but sometimes you need to grow into your ideas. My original book, now that I have taken it out and looked at it again, is a lofty challenge requiring precise organisation, and I feel I have a better grasp of what I am trying to achieve.

You could try to argue that I am benefiting from the distance of time. You could say that I now have more writing experience, but you would be incorrect about both of those things because that is not the reason I can easily let go of a chapter or two.

Because it had morphed from a health database to a holistic tome about obesity, to a massive state of the nation style commentary, it had some scattiness. I have now, looking over it again, pinpointed exactly what I wanted to do with it and where the weaknesses were.

The overarching theme of the last few years has been weakness. Weakness for food, weakness for emotion, weakness for not accepting the inevitable. Chopping out the dead wood makes my ideas stronger, makes my book and I more likely to succeed.

Chopping out the dead wood is never a pleasant process, in life or in writing. Focusing on what you really want, rather than what you actually need is also a most unpleasant process. In my present lonely state, it is not easy to shut everyone out, but in a creative sense, it is the only thing that makes sense. It is too important not to let my higher self take over whilst I have the luxury of time to make my vision happen.

Vision is a strange thing. When it is thwarted for a long time, it causes an almost physical pain. I cannot force this plant, because to make it grow it requires the attention of more than one gardener. What I can do is give it the best possible chance of thriving, and to do this I apparently have to be alone for the moment. I cannot tell you how this fills me with despair. Nevertheless, after several wasted years of self-abuse to avoid feeling anything, I now feel something. I look about ten years younger than I did last week just admitting it.

And yet, the answer is more seclusion, probably on a permanent basis.

creativity, motivation

Writing Development

May 14, 2017 No Comments

Writing Development

As someone who has always been told that I tell a good story, it is one of the few things that I am fairly confident about. I am wildly undisciplined, I rarely redraft before publishing, and as a result I have to go back and read things I have put out months and years later.

I have found, however, that the blog has been very helpful in building this confidence, and in forming a writing habit. Having said this, I took a look at Reality Check this evening, and was horrified that emotional topics put me in a frenzied panic which renders me almost unreadable. Mandatory Equality, on the other hand, is a fun read which took little time to make a complicated point.

I have not achieved very much over the last 4 years or so, apart from 11 books, 3 art collections and the beginnings of two computer games. I am very glad that I have not achieved very much.

Why? Having read Reality Check, a particularly personal story which is very patchy and a severely abbreviated history of the last twenty years of family life – I have stuck rather too closely to the ‘write what you know’ hypothesis and was too horrified to do the story justice. When I think about the ideas I have for the forthcoming Lucifer Ogilivie in comparison, I am having far more elegant and interesting ideas now BECAUSE I AM WILLING TO GIVE MYSELF THE TIME TO THINK IT THROUGH.

This is the problem for anyone embarking on a career of self expression. It takes time to take yourself seriously enough to determine a good direction to go in. Rushing it just ends up with a sub-standard product. Self expression requires self development, and that takes dedication and selfishness. Otherwise you might as well consign yourself to a lifetime of mediocrity.

So, if you want to write, first take yourself seriously enough to take your time over it. Edit at least once, and give yourself space to move on and then look back. Don’t market like mad too quickly, because chances are your next work will be a development on the last. As with artwork, your crap idea will develop with time into what you really should have done in the first place, so you need to be willing to make mistakes and admit to them.

This is harder than it sounds – and it takes failure to humble yourself to your craft. I read other self-published work all the time that will never get anywhere without an editor. Again, a matter of taking yourself seriously enough to put the time, work and possibly money into.

For example, I took a look at the art carpets available online – I am almost ready to go to market as a carpet maker after twenty years of making, and sometimes not making, but thinking about, carpets – this is because I know what direction my carpet paintings are to go in, because my idea was always to be the Tiffany, or the Faberge of carpet makers. Carpet making is my thing, but it is not so great that I want to be grafting away at putting hundreds out. Far better to perfect the art and put out ten good ones.

Several mainstream art sites that I looked at last night had people that should not have bothered marketing their carpets at all, in much the same way that many books being pumped out are not ready.

You do have to balance this, however with what you want to write – a writer that wants to market a product will have the capacity for increased volume of less intense work, such as David Wolfe. A writer trying to create a cult like following willing to pay for more expensive retreats, such as Gabriel Cousins will, however need to put more time and thought into creating an ethos. Likewise Jilly Cooper, who must write at a fearsome pace to put out work that badly constructed, needs less preparation than Chekhov.

So, to conclude – to write well, decide who you are and then write badly. As Aristotle says, if you wish to acquire a virtue, first pretend to have it, and eventually you will.

creativity

Writing Update

July 30, 2016 36 Comments

Writing Update

Sadly, I was unable to attend the March for Indy today in Glasgow, as I was taking care of mother and entertaining Twisty. I hear seven thousand or so people attended, which is pleasing, and that everyone had a good time networking and hoping for a forthcoming yes result.

Wonders will never cease, I have actually started work on Lucifer Ogilvie. I had vaguely decided on an inquisition into conservative policy in the form of a charming story. Then I researched Boris a bit more attentively and found that I would have to make some serious decisions along this route. So now I think we will cling a tad harder to the meandering world of Boris, with our inquisition taking a more entertaining second place. I have come up with some policy solutions to the current predicament, but as this seems to be turning into an epic task, this will certainly not be immediate.

Best Adventure Ever will probably emerge shortly after this, although I am working on both. Fool’s Mandala will be ready in around a month, going by current thoughtful progress. It is the first actual carpet I have made for a long time, and since it is a Wolfe product, it will be the usual blaze of colour.

Going by the response to the music playlists (see below) I created on Youtube, Boris is around twenty times more popular than Wolfe. I am not sure if there are hundreds of commuters building up their happiness bar before going to work, or whether it is just curiosity as to the tone of my work this time, but it is certainly educational. I have no art visuals on Boris as yet, beyond the cover of Lucifer Ogilvie, but from the level of writing, I can say with some confidence that there will be significantly more finesse with Boris related work. My head is somewhat buzzing with the juicier writing project, balancing the needs of the muse with the narrative requirement etc. My work, as always, targets one person, and entertains everybody else. Time will tell what my hands tell me to do this time.

Hopefully I will have more news shortly. In the meantime – busy, busy, busy.