HomeOvercoming writer's block and writing a first novel- by Chris Saxty
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Overcoming writer's block and writing a first novel- by Chris Saxty
by Saxty Mon Jul 18, 2011 9:25 am
Hello, this is Chris Saxty, treasurer of the Leicester University Creative Collective. I am starting a blog about my attempts to write a novel. Hopefully it should help new writers avoid some common pitfalls, inspire some creativity and open some discussion about difficult areas of writing in general. Maybe this blog might hold some laughs for the more experienced of you out there. A philosophy of the Creative Collective is that everybody is welcome, and everyone has something creative inside of them. I am currently undertaking a degree in Mathematics, so I may not be the best qualified to write a novel, but it’s always been a pipe dream of mine to have a book published with my name on it, that I can show to my family and friends. I even have a scenario in my head whereby I return to my Secondary School, show the book to my English teacher and tell them that without them, I might not have been inspired to write it.
I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly great writer, but I think this is common. If I was the most talented writer in the world, I would probably still be insecure. So to anybody out there who wants to write but doesn’t feel they are good enough, go for it! But I digress. Here is a little background on some things I’ve attempted to write so far. I have written a poem or two, but am not nearly as interested in poetry as I am in prose, so will probably limit my blog to just short stories and novels.
• What the F***?- A short comedy story (about 30 pages) about two friends living on a council estate, whose mundane lives are interrupted by a posh, rich man who doesn’t know where he is. They offer to help him get back to where he came from and solve the mystery, should he pay them enough money. They have to walk all the way, as public transport in England will take them months, and the only one with a car is a woman who they meet and they won’t let her drive. Crazy adventures befall them on the journey.
• Francis- A novel in diary form about a man who is bored of life and decides on a date to kill himself. Before he dies though, he wants to experience things he hasn’t experienced before. He uses the diary to chronicle these events, and try to explain his feelings and motives along the way. So far I have written about 30 pages and the ending, and it’s nowhere near finished.
• Various openings and plot outlines for things like:
Lost and Found- In heaven, there are multiple Gods who used to be humans. They take shifts to watch over the world, and make sure everything is okay. Intervention is a rarity but sometimes happens (lots of paperwork). When bored on their shifts, they watch humans. One of these Gods takes an interest in two people, Adam and Tanya, who were best friends before going to separate universities and don’t speak to each other. They meet on a chance encounter after university, and their lives fall apart.
Leave me Alone- An autistic child, unable to understand people, enjoy the company of others and is oblivious to the disintegration of his parents’ relationship. He is forced to see a psychiatrist and begins to be happier, through the help of professionals and also his peers. An emotional story with a hopeful message.
Untitled- A couple (Amy and Jack) are on their honeymoon in Paris when dozens of people jump off the Eiffel Tower. More mass suicides are breaking out in various prominent locations. Jack is a manual labourer who failed an arts degree because he lost interest. Until now he hasn’t really been curious or interested in anything, and becomes obsessed with the happenings, and tries to dig deeper. Rightfully, his wife is worried.
An interested collection. The comedy, What the F*** was written years ago, and as I look back upon it now, it’s cringeworthy.
“Mark was born to an extremely poor family. He was given as much love and care as his parents could provide, but this was hardly sufficient as his father was a raging alcoholic and his mother an incompetent, sorry excuse for a human being. Their neglect increased further when Mark turned 16, as they both died, crushed by a bus shelter, and it is a well known fact that dead people don’t make particularly proficient parents. Mark wasn’t too pleased about the death of his parents (not a lot of people are), but when he realised he wouldn’t have to suffer constant mental and physical abuse anymore, be beaten up by his dad, and be fed dog food by his mother, he stopped mourning pretty quickly. Plus, he could stay up as late as he wanted.”
The humour is...well,
“When he had finished, Jess wore an amused and wondrous expression on her face (much to the dismay of Mark, who rather thought she shouldn’t be wearing anything at all).”
I’d also been reading a lot of Douglas Adams at the time, so my interpretation of a good writing style was just parentheses. Parentheses everywhere. Excessive f-bombs were also rampant, and I won’t even start on the fart jokes. But you know what? It’s terrible now, but at the time, I would have been happy to read a book like that. Slapstick humour, fart jokes, sexual innuendos and a sarcastic, politically biased narrator would have kept my immature sixteen year old brain happy. If I could write something now that I know I’d enjoy reading myself, I’d be quite proud. At the time, I thought it would be a full length novel, but I simply ran out of ideas and it became a short story.
As for the other stories that I’ve attempted to begin, although I do have a fleeting interest still for “Lost and Found” and “Leave me Alone”, the ones I truly have any excitement about are “Francis” and the as yet untitled story of Jack and Amy.
The Amy and Jack story was something I began recently. I had a a dream that I remembered when waking up for a 10am lecture. I can’t remember what it was now, but it inspired the plot outline of my story. After thinking about it for hours, even scribbling a couple of notes for the story down in one of my lectures, when I was finally free, I sat at a library computer and typed up two pages of just plot, detailing the entire vents of my planned story. I then wrote the first two pages of the story and was happy with it. I don’t normally have that kind of inspiration, and as such I am very excited about that particular story.
“Francis” has comparatively been a hard slog. I have been writing bits of it on and off for over a year now, and I feel like I’ve got a lot more to get through. A while ago I had an idea for a story about a group of friends at Sixth Form, focusing a lot on the relationships between individuals and group dynamics, rife with bitching, backstabbings and bullying all being considered regular, friendly behaviour-- based heavily on my own experiences at school. My idea was that one of the members of the group would commit suicide, and the story would focus on how the group changes, the solace they take in each other, and in a bittersweet fashion, the way they come together and improve as people later on, almost as if the suicide was a godsend. Whilst I found a lot of problems getting this story off the ground, it did lead me to think a lot about writing about suicide in different ways. It’s a taboo subject, and in most art forms is treated as bleak, depressing, emotional and tragic. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but what if somebody were to kill themselves out of sheer boredom? What if it were spoken of in a matter of fact, almost routine fashion? This is where the idea for “Francis” was born.
“Francis” is still my main project and realistically, the only thing at the moment that I can hope to turn into something publishable and enjoyable to read. Therefore I will be referring to and quoting from it for the majority of this blog, as opposed to my other pieces. Most of the ideas I have had great difficulty becoming more than some ideas and an opening, and have great gaps in the middle of the plot where I have no idea what will happen. The Jack and Amy story has a possibility for continuation, but the plot is overly complex and ambitious, and I will probably only start writing it properly should I hit a dead end with (or finish!) Francis. Well this brings me nicely along to my first of many....Writer’s Block!
Writer’s Block #1- Overthinking/overcomplication
Okay, I’ve never written anything of novel length. My writing experience is limited to A level English, and I would probably have difficult writing the most basic of stories in full length form. I struggle over basic things like dialogue and finding the right adjective sometimes. And what are my first few attempts at writing? My main project is in diary form, which adds so many more complexities to the writing process. I have to keep switching tenses because he’s writing about the past, but if he’s thinking something while writing then that’s in the present. Sometimes I want to report back full conversations he has with people, but how is my character supposed to remember each and every thing that somebody says? My character is prone to mood swings and bouts of extreme anger, do I really have the ability to change the writing style in accordance to this?
I don’t want to give away too much about the Jack and Amy story, but it involves big conspiracies, underground organisations, and tons of stuff about paradise in the afterlife. The story about group dynamics in a school situation? Well that would have to almost surely involve pages of conversation in a near-transcript style in order to convey everything I wanted. Even with what was originally supposed to be a pretty basic rom-com, I complicated it by shoving bits about heaven and multiple deities in there. The comedy, I have to say, was a relatively simple plot outline. However, I still made the writer an actual character in the story, who has to run away when the characters in the story find out and vow revenge. There might have been a few plotholes in that one.
Wouldn’t it be easier for me to write something simple, then I might have some success? Most children scribble a few suns with happy faces on before designing buildings and making ice sculptures. A problem I have when writing is that I want every sentence to be a masterpiece, when I know that isn’t possible. I was talking to a friend about analysing literature at GCSE level, and he believed that most of the subject is coming up with lots of conjectures about the meaning of a word or sentence that the author didn’t intend. I used to think this, but I told him that since doing more writing of my own, I have actually started thinking about deeper meanings of my work a lot. Here is an extract from “Francis”
“But I couldn’t simply leave. This place would have had no impact on me, nothing to remember. So I had some fun, I trashed the room- revenge for the rude landlady. Not in a frenzied rage or a drunken stupor, but discreetly and meticulously. I played some music at a moderate volume and allowed it to dictate my movements. I pulled the coat hangers off the rail in the wardrobe and put them on the windowsill. Taking hold of the curtains, I lifted my feet from the floor and allowed my weight to drag them down, then folded them over the wardrobe rail. Turning, I surveyed the room for my next step. Stripped the mattress, and dragged it across the room and placed it partially in the shower. The sheets- now in the toilet. After a futile attempt to lift the bed to a ninety degree angle to the floor, I consoled myself with turning it upside down and moving it across the room. I popped down to the corner shop like a genuine local, turning the chest of drawers to face the wall before I left. Upon my return, I strategically scattered dozens of miniscule crumbs of Blue Stilton. Now I’m assessing the final, and most important part of my plan. I need to relieve myself. What’s the greatest damage impact? I could infect the sheets in the toilet, stain the wood of the wardrobe, saturate the fibres in the carpet. I’m going now, a solution has dawned on me, my journey to London is booked and I long for the false show of gratitude the Landlady will be forced to put on as I tip her a couple of quid, unaware of the carnage to befall her.”
Francis designs computer algorithms for a living, so is naturally meticulous and formulaic in what he does. This changes when he is angry and upset, but this is probably not one of those times. This is reflected by “meticulously” and “discreetly”. The word “pulled as opposed to “wrenched” or “snatched” implies a slower pace to the proceedings, and “placed”, “folded” and the relatively short length of the sentences suggests a more careful, thought-out process. This is all stuff that I thought about when writing that people probably pick up on, but I often try and get some more subtle stuff in there too.
“stripped” is sexual in its connotations, so is supposed to imply that he derives great pleasure from what he is doing. The informal word choice of “popped”, followed by “like a genuine local” should serve as a reminder of his constant and futile attempts to become like everybody else. Another thing that I had in mind is that he is later shown to be a slightly unreliable narrator, prone to white lies and over dramatisation. He isn’t portrayed as angry here, but is he? The fact that he does not reveal where he relieved himself, when in fact at other times my character might have been quite proud of his choice of location, might appear a little strange to the reader. I believe this leads to some ambiguity regarding his true feelings when trashing the room.
Was any of that evident when reading it? I’m sure that most of it wasn’t put across as well as I intended. I apologise if this comes across as an arrogant “look how clever I am when I write stuff” blog, but I think a flaw I have is that I fill my stories with tons of bullocks between the lines that isn’t important and people won’t pick up on. I can intend to convey lots of messages, but putting so many in all the time surely can’t be too healthy, especially for an inexperienced writer such as myself. Furthermore, I write about things I don’t know, I make my characters travel and am not satisfied with my plots unless they contain convoluted twists and turns. Do you overcomplicate your stories with useless extended metaphors that people probably don’t notice?
As i’m sure that many others have trouble with trying to write complicated stories as a novice writer, so maybe I should talk about some solutions.
1) Simplify it. Suck it up and think of a way to make your story simpler, or think of a new one. Employing this strategy will enable you to build up writing skills slowly over time and probably maximise your chances of ending with sort kind of finished product. It may also leave room for more, as you can always add more to a simple storyline as you go along. Perhaps as I have done, you can leave aside your more complicated ideas for a later date, when you have more experience?
I sort of tried simplification with Lost and Found. Originally meant to be a basic rom-com, it didn’t have any of that stuff about lots of Gods in heaven that I added later. You know what happened? I got bored. I wanted to be writing a novel, but felt I didn’t have enough going on in my story to even last 10 pages. While my experience with that was negative, I do attempt to simplify things in small doses. While Francis travels a lot, I have kept a lot of the locations quite vague to avoid having to research and thoroughly describe all the places he visits. In summary, whilst simplifying your story completely may not be the best course of action, keeping things a little vague can enable you to focus on other things in the writing, and perhaps go back and flesh things out later on.
2) Just bloody write. This is an extension of simplification. I think about how a sentence sounds, whether I repeat a word too much, where my story is going, whether I’m ripping off whatever the last book I read was, whether I’m even mildly competent at writing...it goes on. However, stopping most thought processes and just writing things down is a lot harder than it sounds. Sometimes though, after a long period of thinking about what to write without getting anywhere, I tell myself to just write whatever comes into my head for the next section. So far, I have always been pleased with the results afterwards, but I think the reason I end up satisfied with the quality of my gibberish is the amount of thought that went into it beforehand. Yes, writing takes thought, but if you’re really stuck because you’re over thinking everything, just sit down and write some stuff down- you might be surprised.
3) Think about it. This is your dream. You’ve thought of a story that you’re truly excited about, you’ve spent ages thinking about characters, description, how everybody will love you when you finally become a published author, yet you can’t be bothered to go and google a couple of place names? Oh heaven forbid a character has a job?! You might have to get off your fat arse and go and get one, to find out what being a member of society is like, you horrible, lazy disgrace to mankind. I hope you die a gruesome and embarrassing death in front of EVERYBODY.
Well that’s what the voice inside my head tells me anyway. He can be mean sometimes, but he has a point. No, you don’t have to take a degree in quantum physics because your character is a scientist, but little things certainly can help. In one of my stories, people jump off the Eiffel Tower. I googled to see where they might land, jump from etc. There’s a part in Francis where he has a Guinness for the first time in a while, so I did my research and had one myself. Mmmmmm...research. Of course it helps if you have prior experience with things you’re writing about- for example, a lot of my main characters have maths related occupations, and maths is something I can write about in detail. Little things like this can help, and often doesn’t require too much effort.
The way I see it, there’s no proper conclusion here. I’m sure everyone uses different methods to deal with complicated storylines and devices. I think all you can do when stuck is try lots of different things. Maybe leave it for a while (though I find that leads to the story not being changed for months). Well, that just about wraps things up for this entry. It turned out a hell of a lot longer than I intended, so for my sake and yours, I’ll keep the next one more simple. Join me next time for Writer’s Block #2- Inspiration/putting pen to paper
Here’s a little something extra- a light-hearted, non-writing related thing for the blog to tone down the seriousness. Us writers need our energy, right? I stumbled across this website recently: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=20 (351 ways to enjoy toast). I’ve decided to try out a few of these recipes and try some of my own. As I have no other medium aside from Facebook, I shall write up the results of my experiments here. Enjoy!
Chris’s toast experiments #1
Toast, topped with peanut butter, cheese and onion then melted in the microwave.
Verdict- Failure. Ever since the advent of squeezey marmite, the infinitely more difficult application of peanut butter had rendered it redundant among my palette. Thus, our beloved crunchy peanut butter was months out of date. I was forced to abandon this project in favour of another for the time being.
Chris’s toast experiments #2
Toasted white bread, covered in margarine with a light sprinkling of sugar and Lea and Perrins.
Verdict- Looked slightly disgusting if I’m honest. It’s pretty difficult to ruin buttered toast, so at least it should be better than out of date peanut butter. It tasted okay, but something wasn’t quite right. I think perhaps neither added ingredient was a bad idea, but the two together probably didn’t work so well. At some point in the future I will have to try one without the other. It’s also worth trying it with real butter instead of Clover. Or perhaps microwaving it to caramelise the sugar. So many possibilities! Anyway, I enjoyed it, but would not try again. 3/10.
I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly great writer, but I think this is common. If I was the most talented writer in the world, I would probably still be insecure. So to anybody out there who wants to write but doesn’t feel they are good enough, go for it! But I digress. Here is a little background on some things I’ve attempted to write so far. I have written a poem or two, but am not nearly as interested in poetry as I am in prose, so will probably limit my blog to just short stories and novels.
• What the F***?- A short comedy story (about 30 pages) about two friends living on a council estate, whose mundane lives are interrupted by a posh, rich man who doesn’t know where he is. They offer to help him get back to where he came from and solve the mystery, should he pay them enough money. They have to walk all the way, as public transport in England will take them months, and the only one with a car is a woman who they meet and they won’t let her drive. Crazy adventures befall them on the journey.
• Francis- A novel in diary form about a man who is bored of life and decides on a date to kill himself. Before he dies though, he wants to experience things he hasn’t experienced before. He uses the diary to chronicle these events, and try to explain his feelings and motives along the way. So far I have written about 30 pages and the ending, and it’s nowhere near finished.
• Various openings and plot outlines for things like:
Lost and Found- In heaven, there are multiple Gods who used to be humans. They take shifts to watch over the world, and make sure everything is okay. Intervention is a rarity but sometimes happens (lots of paperwork). When bored on their shifts, they watch humans. One of these Gods takes an interest in two people, Adam and Tanya, who were best friends before going to separate universities and don’t speak to each other. They meet on a chance encounter after university, and their lives fall apart.
Leave me Alone- An autistic child, unable to understand people, enjoy the company of others and is oblivious to the disintegration of his parents’ relationship. He is forced to see a psychiatrist and begins to be happier, through the help of professionals and also his peers. An emotional story with a hopeful message.
Untitled- A couple (Amy and Jack) are on their honeymoon in Paris when dozens of people jump off the Eiffel Tower. More mass suicides are breaking out in various prominent locations. Jack is a manual labourer who failed an arts degree because he lost interest. Until now he hasn’t really been curious or interested in anything, and becomes obsessed with the happenings, and tries to dig deeper. Rightfully, his wife is worried.
An interested collection. The comedy, What the F*** was written years ago, and as I look back upon it now, it’s cringeworthy.
“Mark was born to an extremely poor family. He was given as much love and care as his parents could provide, but this was hardly sufficient as his father was a raging alcoholic and his mother an incompetent, sorry excuse for a human being. Their neglect increased further when Mark turned 16, as they both died, crushed by a bus shelter, and it is a well known fact that dead people don’t make particularly proficient parents. Mark wasn’t too pleased about the death of his parents (not a lot of people are), but when he realised he wouldn’t have to suffer constant mental and physical abuse anymore, be beaten up by his dad, and be fed dog food by his mother, he stopped mourning pretty quickly. Plus, he could stay up as late as he wanted.”
The humour is...well,
“When he had finished, Jess wore an amused and wondrous expression on her face (much to the dismay of Mark, who rather thought she shouldn’t be wearing anything at all).”
I’d also been reading a lot of Douglas Adams at the time, so my interpretation of a good writing style was just parentheses. Parentheses everywhere. Excessive f-bombs were also rampant, and I won’t even start on the fart jokes. But you know what? It’s terrible now, but at the time, I would have been happy to read a book like that. Slapstick humour, fart jokes, sexual innuendos and a sarcastic, politically biased narrator would have kept my immature sixteen year old brain happy. If I could write something now that I know I’d enjoy reading myself, I’d be quite proud. At the time, I thought it would be a full length novel, but I simply ran out of ideas and it became a short story.
As for the other stories that I’ve attempted to begin, although I do have a fleeting interest still for “Lost and Found” and “Leave me Alone”, the ones I truly have any excitement about are “Francis” and the as yet untitled story of Jack and Amy.
The Amy and Jack story was something I began recently. I had a a dream that I remembered when waking up for a 10am lecture. I can’t remember what it was now, but it inspired the plot outline of my story. After thinking about it for hours, even scribbling a couple of notes for the story down in one of my lectures, when I was finally free, I sat at a library computer and typed up two pages of just plot, detailing the entire vents of my planned story. I then wrote the first two pages of the story and was happy with it. I don’t normally have that kind of inspiration, and as such I am very excited about that particular story.
“Francis” has comparatively been a hard slog. I have been writing bits of it on and off for over a year now, and I feel like I’ve got a lot more to get through. A while ago I had an idea for a story about a group of friends at Sixth Form, focusing a lot on the relationships between individuals and group dynamics, rife with bitching, backstabbings and bullying all being considered regular, friendly behaviour-- based heavily on my own experiences at school. My idea was that one of the members of the group would commit suicide, and the story would focus on how the group changes, the solace they take in each other, and in a bittersweet fashion, the way they come together and improve as people later on, almost as if the suicide was a godsend. Whilst I found a lot of problems getting this story off the ground, it did lead me to think a lot about writing about suicide in different ways. It’s a taboo subject, and in most art forms is treated as bleak, depressing, emotional and tragic. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but what if somebody were to kill themselves out of sheer boredom? What if it were spoken of in a matter of fact, almost routine fashion? This is where the idea for “Francis” was born.
“Francis” is still my main project and realistically, the only thing at the moment that I can hope to turn into something publishable and enjoyable to read. Therefore I will be referring to and quoting from it for the majority of this blog, as opposed to my other pieces. Most of the ideas I have had great difficulty becoming more than some ideas and an opening, and have great gaps in the middle of the plot where I have no idea what will happen. The Jack and Amy story has a possibility for continuation, but the plot is overly complex and ambitious, and I will probably only start writing it properly should I hit a dead end with (or finish!) Francis. Well this brings me nicely along to my first of many....Writer’s Block!
Writer’s Block #1- Overthinking/overcomplication
Okay, I’ve never written anything of novel length. My writing experience is limited to A level English, and I would probably have difficult writing the most basic of stories in full length form. I struggle over basic things like dialogue and finding the right adjective sometimes. And what are my first few attempts at writing? My main project is in diary form, which adds so many more complexities to the writing process. I have to keep switching tenses because he’s writing about the past, but if he’s thinking something while writing then that’s in the present. Sometimes I want to report back full conversations he has with people, but how is my character supposed to remember each and every thing that somebody says? My character is prone to mood swings and bouts of extreme anger, do I really have the ability to change the writing style in accordance to this?
I don’t want to give away too much about the Jack and Amy story, but it involves big conspiracies, underground organisations, and tons of stuff about paradise in the afterlife. The story about group dynamics in a school situation? Well that would have to almost surely involve pages of conversation in a near-transcript style in order to convey everything I wanted. Even with what was originally supposed to be a pretty basic rom-com, I complicated it by shoving bits about heaven and multiple deities in there. The comedy, I have to say, was a relatively simple plot outline. However, I still made the writer an actual character in the story, who has to run away when the characters in the story find out and vow revenge. There might have been a few plotholes in that one.
Wouldn’t it be easier for me to write something simple, then I might have some success? Most children scribble a few suns with happy faces on before designing buildings and making ice sculptures. A problem I have when writing is that I want every sentence to be a masterpiece, when I know that isn’t possible. I was talking to a friend about analysing literature at GCSE level, and he believed that most of the subject is coming up with lots of conjectures about the meaning of a word or sentence that the author didn’t intend. I used to think this, but I told him that since doing more writing of my own, I have actually started thinking about deeper meanings of my work a lot. Here is an extract from “Francis”
“But I couldn’t simply leave. This place would have had no impact on me, nothing to remember. So I had some fun, I trashed the room- revenge for the rude landlady. Not in a frenzied rage or a drunken stupor, but discreetly and meticulously. I played some music at a moderate volume and allowed it to dictate my movements. I pulled the coat hangers off the rail in the wardrobe and put them on the windowsill. Taking hold of the curtains, I lifted my feet from the floor and allowed my weight to drag them down, then folded them over the wardrobe rail. Turning, I surveyed the room for my next step. Stripped the mattress, and dragged it across the room and placed it partially in the shower. The sheets- now in the toilet. After a futile attempt to lift the bed to a ninety degree angle to the floor, I consoled myself with turning it upside down and moving it across the room. I popped down to the corner shop like a genuine local, turning the chest of drawers to face the wall before I left. Upon my return, I strategically scattered dozens of miniscule crumbs of Blue Stilton. Now I’m assessing the final, and most important part of my plan. I need to relieve myself. What’s the greatest damage impact? I could infect the sheets in the toilet, stain the wood of the wardrobe, saturate the fibres in the carpet. I’m going now, a solution has dawned on me, my journey to London is booked and I long for the false show of gratitude the Landlady will be forced to put on as I tip her a couple of quid, unaware of the carnage to befall her.”
Francis designs computer algorithms for a living, so is naturally meticulous and formulaic in what he does. This changes when he is angry and upset, but this is probably not one of those times. This is reflected by “meticulously” and “discreetly”. The word “pulled as opposed to “wrenched” or “snatched” implies a slower pace to the proceedings, and “placed”, “folded” and the relatively short length of the sentences suggests a more careful, thought-out process. This is all stuff that I thought about when writing that people probably pick up on, but I often try and get some more subtle stuff in there too.
“stripped” is sexual in its connotations, so is supposed to imply that he derives great pleasure from what he is doing. The informal word choice of “popped”, followed by “like a genuine local” should serve as a reminder of his constant and futile attempts to become like everybody else. Another thing that I had in mind is that he is later shown to be a slightly unreliable narrator, prone to white lies and over dramatisation. He isn’t portrayed as angry here, but is he? The fact that he does not reveal where he relieved himself, when in fact at other times my character might have been quite proud of his choice of location, might appear a little strange to the reader. I believe this leads to some ambiguity regarding his true feelings when trashing the room.
Was any of that evident when reading it? I’m sure that most of it wasn’t put across as well as I intended. I apologise if this comes across as an arrogant “look how clever I am when I write stuff” blog, but I think a flaw I have is that I fill my stories with tons of bullocks between the lines that isn’t important and people won’t pick up on. I can intend to convey lots of messages, but putting so many in all the time surely can’t be too healthy, especially for an inexperienced writer such as myself. Furthermore, I write about things I don’t know, I make my characters travel and am not satisfied with my plots unless they contain convoluted twists and turns. Do you overcomplicate your stories with useless extended metaphors that people probably don’t notice?
As i’m sure that many others have trouble with trying to write complicated stories as a novice writer, so maybe I should talk about some solutions.
1) Simplify it. Suck it up and think of a way to make your story simpler, or think of a new one. Employing this strategy will enable you to build up writing skills slowly over time and probably maximise your chances of ending with sort kind of finished product. It may also leave room for more, as you can always add more to a simple storyline as you go along. Perhaps as I have done, you can leave aside your more complicated ideas for a later date, when you have more experience?
I sort of tried simplification with Lost and Found. Originally meant to be a basic rom-com, it didn’t have any of that stuff about lots of Gods in heaven that I added later. You know what happened? I got bored. I wanted to be writing a novel, but felt I didn’t have enough going on in my story to even last 10 pages. While my experience with that was negative, I do attempt to simplify things in small doses. While Francis travels a lot, I have kept a lot of the locations quite vague to avoid having to research and thoroughly describe all the places he visits. In summary, whilst simplifying your story completely may not be the best course of action, keeping things a little vague can enable you to focus on other things in the writing, and perhaps go back and flesh things out later on.
2) Just bloody write. This is an extension of simplification. I think about how a sentence sounds, whether I repeat a word too much, where my story is going, whether I’m ripping off whatever the last book I read was, whether I’m even mildly competent at writing...it goes on. However, stopping most thought processes and just writing things down is a lot harder than it sounds. Sometimes though, after a long period of thinking about what to write without getting anywhere, I tell myself to just write whatever comes into my head for the next section. So far, I have always been pleased with the results afterwards, but I think the reason I end up satisfied with the quality of my gibberish is the amount of thought that went into it beforehand. Yes, writing takes thought, but if you’re really stuck because you’re over thinking everything, just sit down and write some stuff down- you might be surprised.
3) Think about it. This is your dream. You’ve thought of a story that you’re truly excited about, you’ve spent ages thinking about characters, description, how everybody will love you when you finally become a published author, yet you can’t be bothered to go and google a couple of place names? Oh heaven forbid a character has a job?! You might have to get off your fat arse and go and get one, to find out what being a member of society is like, you horrible, lazy disgrace to mankind. I hope you die a gruesome and embarrassing death in front of EVERYBODY.
Well that’s what the voice inside my head tells me anyway. He can be mean sometimes, but he has a point. No, you don’t have to take a degree in quantum physics because your character is a scientist, but little things certainly can help. In one of my stories, people jump off the Eiffel Tower. I googled to see where they might land, jump from etc. There’s a part in Francis where he has a Guinness for the first time in a while, so I did my research and had one myself. Mmmmmm...research. Of course it helps if you have prior experience with things you’re writing about- for example, a lot of my main characters have maths related occupations, and maths is something I can write about in detail. Little things like this can help, and often doesn’t require too much effort.
The way I see it, there’s no proper conclusion here. I’m sure everyone uses different methods to deal with complicated storylines and devices. I think all you can do when stuck is try lots of different things. Maybe leave it for a while (though I find that leads to the story not being changed for months). Well, that just about wraps things up for this entry. It turned out a hell of a lot longer than I intended, so for my sake and yours, I’ll keep the next one more simple. Join me next time for Writer’s Block #2- Inspiration/putting pen to paper
Here’s a little something extra- a light-hearted, non-writing related thing for the blog to tone down the seriousness. Us writers need our energy, right? I stumbled across this website recently: http://www.mrbreakfast.com/article.asp?articleid=20 (351 ways to enjoy toast). I’ve decided to try out a few of these recipes and try some of my own. As I have no other medium aside from Facebook, I shall write up the results of my experiments here. Enjoy!
Chris’s toast experiments #1
Toast, topped with peanut butter, cheese and onion then melted in the microwave.
Verdict- Failure. Ever since the advent of squeezey marmite, the infinitely more difficult application of peanut butter had rendered it redundant among my palette. Thus, our beloved crunchy peanut butter was months out of date. I was forced to abandon this project in favour of another for the time being.
Chris’s toast experiments #2
Toasted white bread, covered in margarine with a light sprinkling of sugar and Lea and Perrins.
Verdict- Looked slightly disgusting if I’m honest. It’s pretty difficult to ruin buttered toast, so at least it should be better than out of date peanut butter. It tasted okay, but something wasn’t quite right. I think perhaps neither added ingredient was a bad idea, but the two together probably didn’t work so well. At some point in the future I will have to try one without the other. It’s also worth trying it with real butter instead of Clover. Or perhaps microwaving it to caramelise the sugar. So many possibilities! Anyway, I enjoyed it, but would not try again. 3/10.
Last edited by Saxty on Mon Jul 18, 2011 9:36 am; edited 1 time in total
Saxty- Posts : 2
Join date : 2011-06-14
Age : 32
Re: Overcoming writer's block and writing a first novel- by Chris Saxty
by Saxty Mon Jul 18, 2011 9:33 am
Chris here. I would normally talk a little bit about any writing I’ve done recently, but it’s actually quite relevant to the writer’s block topic, so I’m just going to launch straight into it. Hopefully I won’t ramble as much as the last post.
Writer’s block #2- Inspiration/putting pen to paper.
Inspiration and putting pen to paper may seem like completely different topics and so a bit adventurous to include both in one blog post, but I don’t plan to cover the limitless ways in which different writers may gain inspiration and the ability and self-confidence to actually sit down and write. We’d be here forever if I tried. Instead, I wish to relay to you a few methods that personally helps with these two obstacles when I write.
When I think of becoming a professional author, one of the positive things I think of is the ability to write at any time I want, for however long I want. I could get drunk and party one night and not have to worry about being late for work the next day- hell, I could take the day off! I could take breaks whenever I wanted, and if I woke up in the middle of the night, my brain bursting forth with ideas, I could simply sit at my computer and write. This is all well and good, but sometimes the freedom associated with writing can be a massive hindrance. There’s no boss breathing down my neck, no time limits, no sense of urgency. You think you have control over work hours, but you don’t. Inspiration comes at random times, and when I have had lots of free time, I can’t think of anything to write. But when I have lectures, or exams to revise for, I’m brimming with ideas that “if only I had free time to write down!” which disappear when I finally have the opportunity.
For me, there is little tangible goal when I write. Sure, there’s the finished product at the end of the rainbow, but what good does writing a particular paragraph or line do? So I sit there, and suddenly my room needs tidying, or there are bands out there that I haven’t discovered yet that are of the utmost importance. I have a 9-5 job this summer, and I can go there, work hard and never find myself searching for motivation. The main reason? Approximately eight pounds an hour. With writing, there are few short term rewards, only the seemingly unattainable goal at the end of the tunnel. A commonly cited counter-measure to this problem is rewarding oneself. That’s never worked for me. I don’t know about you, but if I want a cake and decide that I can have it once I’ve written 1000 words, I’m eating that damn cake whether I write 1000 words or not.
Sure, writing is an art. We might have our flashes of inspiration, one or two coffee-fuelled late nights pouring out ideas when the urge takes hold, but this is not a sustainable way to write a novel. These flashes of inspiration come with the initial idea and it’s development, so after the first few pages it can often fizzle out. A novel takes hard work, and I think I need to think of it as a job as well as an art. Being a Maths student, I like to quantify things. This section may be long-winded, so feel free to skim.
Mathsy bit
In the last two days, I wrote 700 words. I wrote for about one hour a day. I’m often a lot faster, but I’m sure the hours spent writing nothing and/or deleting things evens this out.
Words per hour: 400
Minimum length for a book to be classed as a novel according to Wikipedia: 40,000. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is 187,000. As demand has been increasing for shorter novels, let us assume that I am aiming for a word count of approximately 70,000 as a finished product.
Total value of a finished, published book
Royalties
Royalties from the book itself: Bear in mind this is a series of guesses and approximations based on unofficial internet sources (there is no way to really calculate this accurately, due to large amounts of unpopular writers and JK Rowling). A writer probably earns about £0.80 per book sold (this merely comes from what a few self-proclaimed authors have said in forums, but this figure does seem to be standard).
“”The average book in America sells about 500 copies” (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006).” Other sources have cited much higher averages. Alternatively, we could look at a sample of first-time novel advances. An advance is simply money given to the author up front, no matter how well the books sell. It is only when the royalties from sales increase past this amount that the author is paid any more.
“The range is from $0-$40,000 for an advance on a first novel.
The median advance is $5000.
The median figure is a better indicator of what most people consider ‘typical.’ Mathematical average for first time advances was $6424.
Adjusted for inflation, as the figures range in year from advances given in 1970 to this year, the median advance is ~$6000.”
Therefore, the calculated value from royalties is somewhere between 500*0.7=£350 and $5000 (using today’s conversion rates, let’s call it £3000). That’s a huge disparity. Both of these statistics are skewed for many reasons:
Outliers (individual data that is very large or very small) is the main reason. JK Rowling has sold millions of copies, and there are many books that have sold about 50 copies to family and friends. As I cannot find the main article of publisher’s weekly, I am unsure as to whether the average is skewed by this or not. Note that for the advance survey, a median is used which reduces the effect of outliers.
Also due to not having the article available, I am unsure as to whether 500 copies refer to lifetime sales or sales in the first year. It is very likely to be lifetime sales however.
The average book? Non-fiction, fiction, niche market, small publishing house, long, short? Again, finding the actual article would be nice.
With regards to the advance survey, it was entirely voluntary. Those who choose to take part are still reading blogs about writing, and might be more likely to be successful. False claims are unlikely (what motive?) but possible. Also, people with very low advances are likely to have rejected them and thus not deemed eligible for the survey.
The sample size for the survey is quite small. This increases variance.
The survey was for science fiction and fantasy genre writers, for which the market is very different and the average length longer, thus the advances given are likely to be bigger.
As results for the survey are likely to be skewed upwards and results for the Publisher’s Weekly report skewed downwards, it is logical to assume that value earned from royalties is somewhere between our values of £500 and £3000. Let’s call it £2000.
An increase in net worth of future publications
89 of the 108 in the survey were asked if they had sold further books, and what the advance for their latest was.
“The range was from $0-$600,000 for an advance on their latest novel.
The median advance for the multiply published is $12,500.”
We can thus determine that advances increase as more and more books are released.
Pride
Look everybody! I’ve written a book! Wouldn’t it be nice to show your friends and family a published book? What monetary value would you attribute to that?
Fame
For some, this is a negative factor. However, if your book is a success, many good things come with that. Advertising, blogging, writing articles, interviews...things with your name attached will rise in popularity. If you wanted to raise money for charity, just ask for donations on your website. Your book would have to be very popular, however, for this to have a significant effect.
Experience/confidence
You will know how to write a book, and also know that somebody thought it good enough to be worth publishing.
Film rights
Small chance, but lots of money.
To assign a monetary value to these things is impossible, but what would you pay to have something that you’re proud of published and selling moderately well, bearing in mind that anything else you write will get more recognition, amongst all the other factors above? Obviously it’s all relevant to your income. I can’t afford £200 now, but in several years time that might change. For the sake of calculations, let us assign a value of £2000 to all factors that are not royalties as part of our overall worth of the finished product. That brings us to £4000 total.
Okay, so 70,000 words at 400 words an hour, that’s 175 hours! 4000 divided by 175 equals... 53.3333 pounds an hour! Now that, my friends, is an exceptional rate of pay. We’re not quite done yet however. I have trawled through the internet, trying to find a good percentage of books that get published out of the ones that get submitted to a publishing house, but to no avail. If anybody can give me some idea of this, that would be very interesting. I assume it’s low. 2%?
Let us assume though, that we have good covering letters, good grammar, spelling, and an actual completed manuscript with some thought put into characters and plot. This should put us on top of the dredges at the bottom of the pile. I also assume that we would apply to many, many publishing houses. With these parameters in mind, I believe the actual success rate for a completed novel for publication is actually something like 40%. Again, this is a guess and only for the purposes of this blog. 40% of 53.3333...that’s 21.3333. Subtract hours spent editing and thinking of ideas, and we can round it down to £20.
Mathsy bit over
£20. Obviously, this figure is bollocks. Not only are my calculations all approximate, but writing leaves us with a large possibility of earning nothing for our troubles, the figure of £20 affected greatly by the small possibility of writing something popular. But the point is that we are working towards a goal that has financial value. Next time, when you write, think of yourself as being paid £20 an hour to do it. Focus on churning something out rather than nitpicking and doubting your talents. Just shut up and do your job.
Writing is a balance of creativity and hard work. Most people I’ve spoken to have had some sort of idea or inspiration to write in the past, but haven’t had the drive to continue when the inspiration ran dry. I believe nearly everybody has the ability to write a novel in them, what sets people apart is the ability to sit down and do it. According to Wikipedia:
“[Stephen] King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met.”
He also states in his article: “Everything you need to know about writing successfully: in ten minutes.”
“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”
He seems to be very financially orientated in his work. His statements are extreme, and the literary merit of his novels is often debated, but the point still stands that many successful writers are strict in their quotas and schedules- much like a day job. I have to some extent covered this in my previous post, but the main thing that helps me to write is to sit down, imagine I’m being paid £20 an hour to write a specified number of words, and begin writing down my next few ideas with little regard for details or quality. As I write, I can fill in details and changes where I see fit. No ideas at the time? Just write anything, and either I actually start to like it, or the reasons why turning the plot in that direction is a bad idea make me think of something better. In some cases, I have ideas for future points but little idea regarding what to do for the very next section.
I prefer to write in order, with the only exception being that I don’t mind writing the very end first as my ideas tend to start with the beginning and end, but sometimes it’s best to disregard this and just write a later section. I often find that thinking about how the story progresses into that section makes me want to go back and write my new ideas for the part I previously had trouble with. In addition to all this, you may wish to devise a set time or schedule that you adhere to. This would probably help me in a lot of ways, especially once my body got used to a particular time as “writing time”, but now I will have revision and work, I’m prepared to sacrifice that extra productivity for more freedom.
I’m not trying to suggest that these techniques will work for everybody’s problems with writing. I have other forms of writer’s block too. Recently, I have been able to put my fingers to the keyboard, but keep noticing myself repeating words and ideas, generally enjoying my work less and not being as happy with the results of my efforts. To combat this, I carried a notebook around with me to write ideas that came to me, made a conscious effort to think of ideas and stories when bored or waiting for a train, and shock horror- read a book. The amount of books I’ve read has decreased dramatically since coming to university, so I thought that might re-install my love for writing. It’s always a worry that reading a book while writing can influence you too much, but I don’t feel that it has done so consciously. I chose a black comedy, as Francis is also a black comedy, in an attempt to draw some inspiration, but the two styles, plots, characters etc were so drastically different and I soon drifted into just enjoying the book rather than searching for ideas. These techniques have helped me to function as a writer outside of my room and my writing seems to have a little more variety and sentiment now.
Strangely, my conclusion is very similar to that of the previous post. Again, the best thing I can suggest is to try something different. Fell that your mind is a fanciful soul that, while full of wonderful ideas, cannot be confined to the medium of pen and paper or keyboards? Then lock yourself in your room and get those hands to work! Are you able to write words, but sensing repetition, sluggishness or boredom in your writing? Then take a break, go for a walk, take a notebook round with you, draw some pretty pictures, read a book, anything that lets your mind wander just a little bit. Then go lock yourself in your room again.
Well that’s it for this one, I hope it’s helped and if you have any suggestions for overcoming writer’s block yourself, then please feel free to suggest them. My techniques don’t always work (otherwise I’d have finished by now!) so any help is welcomed. Apologies, for this post has been more complicated than I thought it would be again. Join me soon for Writer’s block #3- Character Development or if I’m feeling really lazy, Writer’s block #3- To Thesaurus or not to Thesaurus?
And now for the most important, crucial section of the post:
Chris’s toast experiments #3
Toasted white bread, covered in grated mature cheddar cheese and crumbled up Doritos (Chilli Heatwave flavour). Microwaved to melt the cheese.
Verdict- My favourite sort of crisp, and my favourite sort of food- cheese. What could go wrong? I’d already tried this before without the bread, and enjoy it as a healthy snack. The truth is, this was actually a disappointment. The crunchiness of the Doritos did not work as well in the cheese as I thought, and the overall piece was a little dry. It looked okay, but I think a big problem with these as an ingredient is that a lot of the flavour is stored in the powder the crisps are coated with. When eating them individually, these wonderful bursts of flavour can be licked off with ruthless abandon. The smaller surface area of the crisp and the thick layer of cheese reduce this lickability to zero. Thus, the flavour is reduced significantly and the end result is a cheese toastie with a strange texture. Worth noting that I increased cheese proportion to reduce dryness- perhaps Dorito flavour would be brought out with less cheese. 6/10, expected better.
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/10/05/author-advance-survey-version-20/ Link to novelist advance study amongst other interesting articles and stories (focused on science fiction).
http://oldsite.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74- Stephen King’s article on writing successfully.
Writer’s block #2- Inspiration/putting pen to paper.
Inspiration and putting pen to paper may seem like completely different topics and so a bit adventurous to include both in one blog post, but I don’t plan to cover the limitless ways in which different writers may gain inspiration and the ability and self-confidence to actually sit down and write. We’d be here forever if I tried. Instead, I wish to relay to you a few methods that personally helps with these two obstacles when I write.
When I think of becoming a professional author, one of the positive things I think of is the ability to write at any time I want, for however long I want. I could get drunk and party one night and not have to worry about being late for work the next day- hell, I could take the day off! I could take breaks whenever I wanted, and if I woke up in the middle of the night, my brain bursting forth with ideas, I could simply sit at my computer and write. This is all well and good, but sometimes the freedom associated with writing can be a massive hindrance. There’s no boss breathing down my neck, no time limits, no sense of urgency. You think you have control over work hours, but you don’t. Inspiration comes at random times, and when I have had lots of free time, I can’t think of anything to write. But when I have lectures, or exams to revise for, I’m brimming with ideas that “if only I had free time to write down!” which disappear when I finally have the opportunity.
For me, there is little tangible goal when I write. Sure, there’s the finished product at the end of the rainbow, but what good does writing a particular paragraph or line do? So I sit there, and suddenly my room needs tidying, or there are bands out there that I haven’t discovered yet that are of the utmost importance. I have a 9-5 job this summer, and I can go there, work hard and never find myself searching for motivation. The main reason? Approximately eight pounds an hour. With writing, there are few short term rewards, only the seemingly unattainable goal at the end of the tunnel. A commonly cited counter-measure to this problem is rewarding oneself. That’s never worked for me. I don’t know about you, but if I want a cake and decide that I can have it once I’ve written 1000 words, I’m eating that damn cake whether I write 1000 words or not.
Sure, writing is an art. We might have our flashes of inspiration, one or two coffee-fuelled late nights pouring out ideas when the urge takes hold, but this is not a sustainable way to write a novel. These flashes of inspiration come with the initial idea and it’s development, so after the first few pages it can often fizzle out. A novel takes hard work, and I think I need to think of it as a job as well as an art. Being a Maths student, I like to quantify things. This section may be long-winded, so feel free to skim.
Mathsy bit
In the last two days, I wrote 700 words. I wrote for about one hour a day. I’m often a lot faster, but I’m sure the hours spent writing nothing and/or deleting things evens this out.
Words per hour: 400
Minimum length for a book to be classed as a novel according to Wikipedia: 40,000. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is 187,000. As demand has been increasing for shorter novels, let us assume that I am aiming for a word count of approximately 70,000 as a finished product.
Total value of a finished, published book
Royalties
Royalties from the book itself: Bear in mind this is a series of guesses and approximations based on unofficial internet sources (there is no way to really calculate this accurately, due to large amounts of unpopular writers and JK Rowling). A writer probably earns about £0.80 per book sold (this merely comes from what a few self-proclaimed authors have said in forums, but this figure does seem to be standard).
“”The average book in America sells about 500 copies” (Publishers Weekly, July 17, 2006).” Other sources have cited much higher averages. Alternatively, we could look at a sample of first-time novel advances. An advance is simply money given to the author up front, no matter how well the books sell. It is only when the royalties from sales increase past this amount that the author is paid any more.
“The range is from $0-$40,000 for an advance on a first novel.
The median advance is $5000.
The median figure is a better indicator of what most people consider ‘typical.’ Mathematical average for first time advances was $6424.
Adjusted for inflation, as the figures range in year from advances given in 1970 to this year, the median advance is ~$6000.”
Therefore, the calculated value from royalties is somewhere between 500*0.7=£350 and $5000 (using today’s conversion rates, let’s call it £3000). That’s a huge disparity. Both of these statistics are skewed for many reasons:
Outliers (individual data that is very large or very small) is the main reason. JK Rowling has sold millions of copies, and there are many books that have sold about 50 copies to family and friends. As I cannot find the main article of publisher’s weekly, I am unsure as to whether the average is skewed by this or not. Note that for the advance survey, a median is used which reduces the effect of outliers.
Also due to not having the article available, I am unsure as to whether 500 copies refer to lifetime sales or sales in the first year. It is very likely to be lifetime sales however.
The average book? Non-fiction, fiction, niche market, small publishing house, long, short? Again, finding the actual article would be nice.
With regards to the advance survey, it was entirely voluntary. Those who choose to take part are still reading blogs about writing, and might be more likely to be successful. False claims are unlikely (what motive?) but possible. Also, people with very low advances are likely to have rejected them and thus not deemed eligible for the survey.
The sample size for the survey is quite small. This increases variance.
The survey was for science fiction and fantasy genre writers, for which the market is very different and the average length longer, thus the advances given are likely to be bigger.
As results for the survey are likely to be skewed upwards and results for the Publisher’s Weekly report skewed downwards, it is logical to assume that value earned from royalties is somewhere between our values of £500 and £3000. Let’s call it £2000.
An increase in net worth of future publications
89 of the 108 in the survey were asked if they had sold further books, and what the advance for their latest was.
“The range was from $0-$600,000 for an advance on their latest novel.
The median advance for the multiply published is $12,500.”
We can thus determine that advances increase as more and more books are released.
Pride
Look everybody! I’ve written a book! Wouldn’t it be nice to show your friends and family a published book? What monetary value would you attribute to that?
Fame
For some, this is a negative factor. However, if your book is a success, many good things come with that. Advertising, blogging, writing articles, interviews...things with your name attached will rise in popularity. If you wanted to raise money for charity, just ask for donations on your website. Your book would have to be very popular, however, for this to have a significant effect.
Experience/confidence
You will know how to write a book, and also know that somebody thought it good enough to be worth publishing.
Film rights
Small chance, but lots of money.
To assign a monetary value to these things is impossible, but what would you pay to have something that you’re proud of published and selling moderately well, bearing in mind that anything else you write will get more recognition, amongst all the other factors above? Obviously it’s all relevant to your income. I can’t afford £200 now, but in several years time that might change. For the sake of calculations, let us assign a value of £2000 to all factors that are not royalties as part of our overall worth of the finished product. That brings us to £4000 total.
Okay, so 70,000 words at 400 words an hour, that’s 175 hours! 4000 divided by 175 equals... 53.3333 pounds an hour! Now that, my friends, is an exceptional rate of pay. We’re not quite done yet however. I have trawled through the internet, trying to find a good percentage of books that get published out of the ones that get submitted to a publishing house, but to no avail. If anybody can give me some idea of this, that would be very interesting. I assume it’s low. 2%?
Let us assume though, that we have good covering letters, good grammar, spelling, and an actual completed manuscript with some thought put into characters and plot. This should put us on top of the dredges at the bottom of the pile. I also assume that we would apply to many, many publishing houses. With these parameters in mind, I believe the actual success rate for a completed novel for publication is actually something like 40%. Again, this is a guess and only for the purposes of this blog. 40% of 53.3333...that’s 21.3333. Subtract hours spent editing and thinking of ideas, and we can round it down to £20.
Mathsy bit over
£20. Obviously, this figure is bollocks. Not only are my calculations all approximate, but writing leaves us with a large possibility of earning nothing for our troubles, the figure of £20 affected greatly by the small possibility of writing something popular. But the point is that we are working towards a goal that has financial value. Next time, when you write, think of yourself as being paid £20 an hour to do it. Focus on churning something out rather than nitpicking and doubting your talents. Just shut up and do your job.
Writing is a balance of creativity and hard work. Most people I’ve spoken to have had some sort of idea or inspiration to write in the past, but haven’t had the drive to continue when the inspiration ran dry. I believe nearly everybody has the ability to write a novel in them, what sets people apart is the ability to sit down and do it. According to Wikipedia:
“[Stephen] King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met.”
He also states in his article: “Everything you need to know about writing successfully: in ten minutes.”
“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”
He seems to be very financially orientated in his work. His statements are extreme, and the literary merit of his novels is often debated, but the point still stands that many successful writers are strict in their quotas and schedules- much like a day job. I have to some extent covered this in my previous post, but the main thing that helps me to write is to sit down, imagine I’m being paid £20 an hour to write a specified number of words, and begin writing down my next few ideas with little regard for details or quality. As I write, I can fill in details and changes where I see fit. No ideas at the time? Just write anything, and either I actually start to like it, or the reasons why turning the plot in that direction is a bad idea make me think of something better. In some cases, I have ideas for future points but little idea regarding what to do for the very next section.
I prefer to write in order, with the only exception being that I don’t mind writing the very end first as my ideas tend to start with the beginning and end, but sometimes it’s best to disregard this and just write a later section. I often find that thinking about how the story progresses into that section makes me want to go back and write my new ideas for the part I previously had trouble with. In addition to all this, you may wish to devise a set time or schedule that you adhere to. This would probably help me in a lot of ways, especially once my body got used to a particular time as “writing time”, but now I will have revision and work, I’m prepared to sacrifice that extra productivity for more freedom.
I’m not trying to suggest that these techniques will work for everybody’s problems with writing. I have other forms of writer’s block too. Recently, I have been able to put my fingers to the keyboard, but keep noticing myself repeating words and ideas, generally enjoying my work less and not being as happy with the results of my efforts. To combat this, I carried a notebook around with me to write ideas that came to me, made a conscious effort to think of ideas and stories when bored or waiting for a train, and shock horror- read a book. The amount of books I’ve read has decreased dramatically since coming to university, so I thought that might re-install my love for writing. It’s always a worry that reading a book while writing can influence you too much, but I don’t feel that it has done so consciously. I chose a black comedy, as Francis is also a black comedy, in an attempt to draw some inspiration, but the two styles, plots, characters etc were so drastically different and I soon drifted into just enjoying the book rather than searching for ideas. These techniques have helped me to function as a writer outside of my room and my writing seems to have a little more variety and sentiment now.
Strangely, my conclusion is very similar to that of the previous post. Again, the best thing I can suggest is to try something different. Fell that your mind is a fanciful soul that, while full of wonderful ideas, cannot be confined to the medium of pen and paper or keyboards? Then lock yourself in your room and get those hands to work! Are you able to write words, but sensing repetition, sluggishness or boredom in your writing? Then take a break, go for a walk, take a notebook round with you, draw some pretty pictures, read a book, anything that lets your mind wander just a little bit. Then go lock yourself in your room again.
Well that’s it for this one, I hope it’s helped and if you have any suggestions for overcoming writer’s block yourself, then please feel free to suggest them. My techniques don’t always work (otherwise I’d have finished by now!) so any help is welcomed. Apologies, for this post has been more complicated than I thought it would be again. Join me soon for Writer’s block #3- Character Development or if I’m feeling really lazy, Writer’s block #3- To Thesaurus or not to Thesaurus?
And now for the most important, crucial section of the post:
Chris’s toast experiments #3
Toasted white bread, covered in grated mature cheddar cheese and crumbled up Doritos (Chilli Heatwave flavour). Microwaved to melt the cheese.
Verdict- My favourite sort of crisp, and my favourite sort of food- cheese. What could go wrong? I’d already tried this before without the bread, and enjoy it as a healthy snack. The truth is, this was actually a disappointment. The crunchiness of the Doritos did not work as well in the cheese as I thought, and the overall piece was a little dry. It looked okay, but I think a big problem with these as an ingredient is that a lot of the flavour is stored in the powder the crisps are coated with. When eating them individually, these wonderful bursts of flavour can be licked off with ruthless abandon. The smaller surface area of the crisp and the thick layer of cheese reduce this lickability to zero. Thus, the flavour is reduced significantly and the end result is a cheese toastie with a strange texture. Worth noting that I increased cheese proportion to reduce dryness- perhaps Dorito flavour would be brought out with less cheese. 6/10, expected better.
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/10/05/author-advance-survey-version-20/ Link to novelist advance study amongst other interesting articles and stories (focused on science fiction).
http://oldsite.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/312/74- Stephen King’s article on writing successfully.
Saxty- Posts : 2
Join date : 2011-06-14
Age : 32
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