When the toad 'Work' squats on your life a little too hard by Sheena Wilkinson

Like most writers, I have a lot of different jobs to balance -- the ones that pay the bills, the ones that maybe don't pay that many bills but feel right, and of course, the endless, endless admin.

When I'm really busy, in those minutes before sleep when I'd rather be thinking about my characters and my story, my brain offers me such delights as, Did you book that flight? Did you send those poems to that organisation so the students will have them for your workshop next week? Did you renew your professional Zoom?

And, regularly about the tenth of each month, Did you write your ABBA post...?

Even when I clear my diary of workshops or live events, which I always do when a deadline looms, it's still hard to escape the admin: Did they pay me for that event last month? (Come to think of it, no, they didn't. Something else to check...)

novel progress halted by Covid at the end of July 

This weekend I have written 6999 words so far, and I plan to write as many more as I need to finish the first draft of my novel by tonight. It has to be tonight, because I'm off to Mallorca in the morning. This will be only the second 'beach' holiday I've had in my 55 years of life and after writing a first draft (almost) in three months, with a few weeks off for Covid and a busy conference in London, I feel very ready for kindle, beach and possibly not much else. 

crazy weekend!

I'm sharing this for several reasons. One, I spend a lot of time teaching students about the process of writing, and how important it is to find the time for it. Two, this is literally all I can think of to write about in a weekend that's mostly been about hurtling to the end of a very very messy first draft. Of course I could go on holiday with the draft unfinished -- but how much more I'll enjoy it if I don't. 

Back to the desk -- not that I ever left it! 

In Praise of Panic - Catherine Butler

In last month’s piece for ABBA I attempted to persuade you that “Atropos too is a weaver” – by which I meant that we must be prepared at last to let our long-mulled-over books go into the world, and bid them a warm farewell (being careful though to hide our tears) before turning back into the empty mansions of our minds, where the only sounds now are those of echoing expectation, and the slow, steady hiss of a post-flush cistern.

I might have added that Atropos has a counterpart. She is the tenth Muse, whose name is Panica. Panica deals with the obstetric side of book-rearing and is especially handy with the Caesarian knife. Many’s the writer who has called out to Panica to bring their books to term, just as Roman matrons were wont to call on Lucina. Indeed, I know of several who build panic explicitly into their professional schedule, aware that without the adrenaline rush of a looming deadline (and nothing looms better except Clotho herself) they will be unable to wean themselves from the tube-fed opiates of the Internet (that plentiful source of gas and air), and finally deliver a full-length novel. Then, imagine the excitement in the delivery room:

“Is it for boys or girls?”

 “What does it weigh? 60,000 words? What a bonny manuscript!”

“Well, as long as it has healthy sales, that’s all that matters.”

Hmm. How far can we push this laboured metaphor? Have I dilated upon it sufficiently? It’s an old one, at any rate, and especially popular (as has more than once been observed) with male poets. Four hundred years ago, Sir Philip Sidney expressed his difficulty in writing a sonnet by complaining that he was “Great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes”. Fifteen hundred years before that Horace (drawing in turn on Aesop) talked of writers in similar terms:

Don’t start like the old writer of epic cycles:

‘Of Priam’s fate I’ll sing, and the greatest of Wars.’

What could he produce to match his opening promise?

Mountains will labour: what’s born? A ridiculous mouse!

Is there an element of over-compensation here? I have heard at least two writers-who-were-also-mothers scoff slightly at this way of describing writing. “You should try giving birth for real, then you’d know the difference!” was the burden of their song. Personally I am not in a position to comment on the accuracy of the comparison (perhaps you are?), but I need not shrink from praising Panica, the Muse of deadlines, who has thrown so many writers a vital lifeline.

Indeed, this small but perfectly-formed post was largely written at her dictation.

Why writing novels is a bit like running in the rain – Lari Don

I run. Not often enough, or fast enough, or far enough, but I do run occasionally. Running gives me useful time to think about stories, as well as making me feel better about the hours I spend sitting on my bottom at the keyboard.

But there is another connection between running and writing. Motivating myself to get up and go out for a run is quite similar to motivating myself to write.

No-one makes me run. I don’t enter races. I don’t have an immediate goal for my running. I’m not answerable to anyone else for running. I don’t have to tell anyone I’m going out for a run, or prove afterwards that I did run. No-one is checking that I’m running. If I decided not to bother going for a run, no-one would know. And if I decided during a run that I just couldn’t be bothered running any more, and sat down in the middle of the path and sang a little song instead (or simply walked home at a comfortable pace, nibbling chocolate bars on the way) no-one would know, no-one would care and no-one would be able to criticise.

Except me. I’d know, and I’d feel guilty.

All of which is remarkably similar to writing a novel.

Novels take a VERY LONG TIME to write. The deadlines start off ridiculously far away. And if I didn’t sit down and get on with it, if I chose to sit about singing, nibbling chocolate, or even going out for a run rather than writing, no-one would know or notice, until it was far too late.

Except me. I’d know, and I’d feel guilty.

So, even though I don’t run as often and as far and as fast I should, I still do it.

And, even though I suspect I don’t sit down and write as often or as fast as I should, I still do it. Even months or years before the deadline, I do it. Regularly, steadily, and moving the story forward all the time.

Why? How do we motivate ourselves to get our writing shoes on and keep pacing through the story, without the urgency of an immediate deadline or an editor at our shoulder?

Is that why so many writers like to tell the world how many words they’ve written each day on Facebook or Twitter? Because otherwise, there is no-one but ourselves to push, encourage, cajole and motivate? Because otherwise, writing a novel is like going out for a run in the rain, in the dark, with no finish line in sight?

I don’t share word counts or small writing victories on social media. I tend to keep that part of my writing fairly quiet and private. But then, I like to run on my own. I don’t like to run in a group. And actually, I’ve always enjoyed running in the rain.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
Lari’s website 
Lari’s own blog 
Lari on Twitter 
Lari on Facebook 
Lari on Tumblr

How long does it take to write a book?

How long does it take to write a book?

One of the most-frequently asked questions at school visits is, How long does it take to write a book? Or, How long does it take you to write a book?

My standard answer is that it depends on the book and the circumstances.

When kids ask this they probably imagine that the time taken means the time from when you write the first word until you write the last word – they don’t think about editing, the time taken between edits, the time spent planning and thinking and working out character and story problems. And of course, the time when you don’t seem to be writing but are actually very much involved in the making of your book.

Then of course there is the time spent post-submission – kids wouldn’t really understand the to-ing and fro-ing with editors, etc. Even an adult friend recently said that she didn’t see why editing should take me much time, as ‘your spelling and grammar must be pretty perfect by now, surely?’

So – the answer can get quite complicated and I usually cheat and say about a year. In fact none of my books has taken exactly a year, but kids like concrete answers.

And for once, next time I’m asked, I can give a very concrete answer. Here is a timeline for you.

Thurs 5 Feb; 12.00 – my usual publisher emails me: they want a book which involves the Easter Rising of 1916. By the end of April. (A short book will do.)

Thurs 5 Feb; 12.01 – I think, Gosh! That’s impossible. That's crazy. 

Thurs 5 Feb; 12.02 – I think, Gosh! I could do that.

Thurs 5 Feb; 12.03 – I email back. Yes.

Thurs 5 Feb; 12.10 – I think, Gosh! What have I agreed to?

first thoughts 

Rest of February – I do a great deal of research about the Easter Rising. Luckily I know a good bit about the period and about the First World War, which is very much its context, but I hadn’t studied the Rising itself since O level history in 1985. I swither between excitement – historical fiction is one of my favourite genres, and so far I’ve only written historical short stories – and terror. The Easter Rising remains a very emotive and divisive issue in the Irish psyche, and my approach, from a Northern point of view, is unusual.

research 

more research 

March – I can’t get started until the 10^th, as I am teaching at Arvon the first week. I have to do a few other pesky living-earning distractions, too. But as far as possible, I clear the decks. I write the book. At least one thousand words a day. (I wrote about that in last month’s post, ‘Twig by Twig’). I still have to research as I go, which isn’t ideal, but then again, if you waited until you were ‘ready’, you would never write anything. Not having that option was very galvanising.

Saturday 11 April – I have a first draft. It is Very Bad. It doesn’t have a proper ending, and there is a great big hole in the story.

I have a belated half-term/Easter holiday/ recuperation period. I am very negative about what I have written. I am so tired I have lost my critical faculties.

Monday 20 April – I start the second draft. I realise the story was better than I thought. (Either that or the critical faculty loss is more serious than I thought.)

Thursday 30 April – ON TIME – I submit the MS. The fourth draft.

one story; three months; many drafts 

Friday 1 May – I collapse.

Monday 4 May – I get some notes back. (If I had to work VERY hard for this book, my editors both deserve praise too; no bank holidays for them either!) They love it – hooray! But of course it needs another revision. As always their comments are helpful and illuminating. (Even though we always SAY we’d like our editors to say, ‘It’s amazing; don’t change a syllable!’, I know my books have all benefited from fresh, wise eyes at this stage.)

Thursday 7 May – I send in the new draft. They love it. By now I love it too.

Saturday 9 May – I get my copy edits.

Monday 11 May – I send in my copy edits.

That’s it. Three months, more or less, from crazy suggestion to copy-edit. That’s how long it took to write this book.

Would I recommend it? Not necessarily. These weren’t the easiest three months of my life. But I accepted the challenge to create something I never would have considered off my own bat. And now that the crazy time is over – bar the proofing, cover decisions, etc, and I can look forward to publication in September, giving me, for the first time ever, two books out in one year, I am so very glad I was crazy enough to say YES.

Twig by Twig

 My desk is near the window. I would probably get a lot more done if it weren’t, especially at this time of year. And right now I have such a deadline that I shouldn’t be looking anywhere but at the screen.

I have a garden. It’s not a particularly nice garden because I’m better with words than with plants. Mostly, since I stopped being a cat owner, my garden seems to be a bird feeding station.

I love watching birds. Recently I’ve been watching them gather the materials for their nests. Carrying maybe one twig at a time. One very large twig, often longer than the bird itself. In their tiny beaks. It takes them ages to lift it, and even longer to fly with it to where they want to go. It must be, for us, like hawking a huge tree trunk round in our teeth.

When I see a tiny sparrow with a twig I wish I could build the nest for it. The task looks impossible. It looks even harder than the book I am struggling with right now, the one that seemed like a good idea when I signed the contract, and now seems impossible to get done in the tiny amount of time left. Much easier to look out at the birds. How are they going to get enough twigs?  How are they going to know what to do with them? How are they going to be able to put them all together and make a nest and then lay their eggs?

It exhausts me to think about it and there is so much that can go wrong.

When I first moved to this small village in County Down, a pair of housemartins built their odd, mud-hutlike nest in the apex of the side gable of the house. They were charming, if a little bit annoying – noisy beggars, and I was forever cleaning their poo off the roof of the car. But I loved seeing them wheel around and hearing the tiny squeaks of their chicks.

Their nest was a preposterous thing – a sort of mud coconut-shell affair clinging upside down, held on by hope. Then one day I found it smashed on the driveway, the dead chicks spilt over the gravel. The parent birds wheeled and wheeled in shrill distress. I could do nothing. It was unbearable.

A few days later I saw them with bits of mud in their beaks. They rebuilt. They raised another brood of chicks. They, or their descendants, return every year. Their upside-down mud hut clings on. 

I still haven’t finished this book and I don’t quite know how it is going to end. I’ve been asked to write about the Easter Rising of 1916, and right now it feels too big for me, and much too scary. And I should be working on it right now, instead of looking at birds flying round with twigs in their beaks.

I don’t know how they do it. I wish I had the instinct for this story that they have for their collecting, and carrying and flying and building and rebuilding. But I will do it. Twig by twig.

The Best-Laid Plans, or Down, Characters, Down!

I’ve always been a planner; the idea of starting a novel and ‘seeing where the story took me’ was anathema to me. After all, I was the writer; I was in charge.

Despite this, my last novel, Still Falling, out in February 2015, was a mettlesome beast, running to nine drafts before I and my editor were happy. But I’d begun it without a contract, shelved it for nine months to write a commission (Too Many Ponies), and besides, the subject matter took me into darker psychological places than I’d ever gone before – so maybe it was natural that it shouldn’t bend to my will as easily as previous books.

the best-laid plans

The work-in-progress, Street Song, would be completely different. Because my agent wanted a full outline for this year’s London Book Fair, I’d thought through the story and knew exactly where it would go. It was a simpler story than Still Falling and for once I hadn’t had to struggle with the main female character – I’ve always found boys easier to write – as she’s very like me as an eighteen-year-old.

I’d promised the couple of interested publishers that the novel would be ready by the end of the year. Challenging, but not impossible. I set a tight schedule – 80,000 words in three months, July to September. I knew I’d over-write – I always do in a first draft; but I told myself I wouldn’t over-write much this time, because of my great outline. By 30^th September the first draft would be done; I could fit in something else in October, and get back to it with plenty of time to redraft.

What could possibly go wrong?

On the first page the male protagonist, Cal, announced he was a recovering addict. Unexpected, but it went well with the story, so that was OK. In fact, it made some of his later choices much easier to justify. I don’t tend to get fanciful about the creative process, but it really was as if I hadn’t made that fact up; it was part of the character’s history that he hadn’t been able to tell me until I actually let him speak.

As for Toni, my female MC – what a cow. If I really was as smug as that as an eighteen-year-old, it’s a wonder I had any friends. Her epiphany is meant to be the moment she realises that she doesn’t want to go to Oxford; it was her mum’s dream rather than hers. When I found Cal telling her that it was her dream, she was just scared of failure, I was annoyed at his cheek. I was the writer; he was simply a not-very-perceptive boy (and a made-up one): who was he to tell Toni what she was thinking when even I hadn’t known that?

But he was right.

Listen, guys -- I'm kind of in charge here...

my low-tech approach to word count

As July moved into August, and September loomed, the word count grew. At first it was all about hitting those magical targets. Then, on a week’s retreat to finish the draft, just before the climax, another unexpected thing happened. A minor character, meant to be just a random girl in a bar, turned out to be something more. She needed to be rescued by Cal. He won’t be up to the task, I thought: and anyway, I hadn’t planned this. Maybe I should just delete her? After all, I was now at 85,000 and no end in sight. But you know what? She was right too. I’d underestimated Cal, and in fact the ending (when I get there) will be improved by his actions.

It’s all just a bit… inconvenient. My characters are behaving like – well, like people.

And now my meticulously-planned 80,000 word draft is a huge messy long thing well over 100,000 (I’ve stopped checking). I’m two weeks late in starting my next project for which the deadline is – well, it’s too scary to type here but SOON.

have stopped checking the scary word count

But you know what? Every surprise, though tiresome, has made for a better story in the end. Like an unexpected but essentially welcome visitor. She might throw your routines out, and need a bit of looking after, but it’s so much fun to have her in the house.

And if the book has outstayed its welcome in my carefully-worked-out life, well, maybe that’s taught me something important about the creative process too.

Though I do need to finish it TODAY.