So here we are, almost the end of September, and I am trying not to put the central heating on, as last year I spent my meagre heating allowance at least 20 time over. The price of oil is supposed to be lower than at any time over the past few years, yet I spend every penny I earn on keeping warm enough to earn the money to spend on keeping warm.
Paradoxical world.
As writers, we are often asked (well, I am) how the creative process of writing a book happens. What I think people desperately want to hear is the apocryphal Enid Blyton response on the lines of: I just wander into my little writing place, and suddenly, all sorts of lovely characters and plots tiptoe through the mental bluebells straight into my mind fully formed, and all I have to do is write them down and hey presto! a book appears. In other words, writing is easy and you, interested interlocutor, could easily do it too.
Sorry, it doesn't work like that. At least not for this little duck. In another of these paradoxes, I find that creativity only occurs when disciplinary structures are applied. Rigorously. In other words, I have to make myself sit at the keyboard, regularly, and write. I can fantasize about the book all I want, imagine the amazing prose that I will write when I get round to it, but until my rear end and the chair are brought into contact, and remain in contact for long periods of time, nothing creative happens.
Sure, there are moments, and flashes of inspiration, when one stares at the screen, and wonders whether the Writing Fairy has just made a house call, but on the whole, these episodes only tend to emerge out of a period of just slogging away at the writing process. And I should know, having just topped 70 thousand words of the next Victorian novel, purely by dint of making myself sit down at the eMac every day and write it.
An article in the Guardian recently lifted the lid on how to be a successful author. No secret, sadly. A lot of labour and a bit of luck. Heavy on the former. As Wm Blake remarked: Without contraries is no progression. Ain't that the truth!
Ma'am, I'm afeared you will cost me money. Will have to discuss with the cat if I could use his food budget?
ReplyDeleteAnd now, rear(your word not mine!) to the chair and write (not an order, a friendly reminder, so to say
I saw those Guardian articles about being a successful author - and they all seemed to agree that just getting on with it is the only way!
ReplyDeletepeople still believe it is a money tree..I feel honour bound to disabuse them!
DeleteThere is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. —Ernest Hemingway
ReplyDelete...and drop ginger cake crumbs down your keyboard which then jams, panicking you into believing you have a computer virus (true story)
DeleteHome made or bought? and if home made recipe available? The cake not the keyboard! would be more than interested. Have a recipe for a courgette-apple-jam in exchange
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Deletehttp://carolhedges.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/a-nasty-virus.html
DeleteGreat, may send you a police squad. Perhaps they will get a proper answer (unnecessary violence explicitly permitted). I don't care about snails. The cake!
DeleteEven just writing my blog posts involves me in a great deal of effort. I can only imagine what it must be like to try to write an entire novel! If there are people who can do it almost without trying, well good for them, but I'm certain they must be in the minority.
ReplyDeleteI know plenty who write 2/3 books a year. Dunno how they do that! I can manage one..at a stretch.
DeleteAnd you are amazingly disciplined too. I love the way you produce a book a year. I am struggling to get on with one I've started and finish one I've nearly completed. I start writing and go to sleep. Must get on!
ReplyDeleteVal, I barely scratch the surface when it comes to being prolific..and Markus: Marks and Spencer Sticky ginger cake..recommended
ReplyDeleteMuchas gracias Señora and bugger. Hope they have it in the English supermarket in Waterloo
DeleteI absolutely agree, Carol. Walking the dog might help me if I get stuck (solve a problem or see how a scene might conclude) but the hard graft has to be done first. It's the same with my magazine stories.
ReplyDeleteI know...any writing takes time to write, then polish. It isn't like stacking shelves at Sainsburys...and it pays a lot less!
DeleteReceived an email with one of your replies to one of the posts. Can't find it here but: "people still believe it is a money tree..I feel honour bound to disabuse them!" I slightly differ. There are people on this planet for whom it it is a money tree. They can write whatever they want and it sells like, for using something (south) German, 'warme Semmeln'.J.K.Rowling, Stephen King, Dan Brown. For them it works this way. And if one of the so-called celebrities hires a ghost writer and publishes the senseless stuff under his or her name. It sells too. For the "standard" writer I guess you are right. Can't judge, don't know your bank account (and I don't want to know it)
ReplyDeleteIt is .. but the percentage for whom it is is sooo tiny. People believe they too can earn squillions. What they fail to realise is that these BIG writers have canny publicity people backing them (Rowling was ignored until she got an agent who was able to 'sell' her as a product). It encourages some people to see writing as a kind of lottery: If I write this sort of book,I'll make a fortune as they did. They don't.
DeleteIt is an industry. Trying to sell an 'easy' way to get rich. There are so many websites about writing and to sell they "have to" market. The apparently only way is 'how to write the next best seller'. Works with books, with courses 'how to with best selling author xxx' in general I've never heard the name of the best selling author before.
ReplyDeleteIt's sheer hard work and I don't understand those who disillusion themselves otherwise. Though, I do appreciate that all hard work is underestimated to some degree by the human mind as a coping mechanism. Helps us to get started. Thanks for your post.
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