Ignoring Stephen King

A week or so ago I decided to ignore Stephen King's advice - no, not the bit about adverbs, she typed defiantly, but the bit about leaving your first draft for a month before looking at it.

I know it makes sense, and I intended to turn my energies to The Ash Grove but that was delayed for various reasons, and I'd had some feedback on The Malice of Fairies that I wanted to deal with.  So at the end of last week I plunged into the printed copy, going through it and making notes, trying to switch one or two scenes, and making notes on what I wanted to write.

As usual, I noticed a number of things: the sections I knew had been pure slog "I - am - writing this - be-cause- I -have - to..." scenes, generally needed more work than the "pure inspiration scenes" many of which came out perfectly formed and needing virtually no editing.   This was gratifying.    Slightly worryingly I felt the book fitted together, and though Anna said she didn't want to stop reading, I thought it both rounded the story since we saw how Deirdre had changed, and also left the possibility for a future book.

Today I wrote and edited and proof read all day and finished the second draft.  I am happy to change things, if necessary, and to take professional advice, but otherwise, it's largely agent ready. And I feel happy and successful, the repeat of the sensation I had when I completed the first draft, the feeling that this is good, and enjoying the idyll before I start submitting it, and getting back rejection letters!   I submitted it to a "new" agent yesterday, one I've never submitted to before.  Exciting!  But I should also submit to the rave rejectors of the past.   Once I have flung in a few submissions I can sit and cower with misery - or get on with The Ash Grove.  

Useful advice

I realise this sort of blog would be of great interest if one had an immense loyal readership, fans even, but I do not (yet?).   What most writing blogs do is provide useful advice about the writing industry,on this I have fallen down terribly.

I suppose I could offer writing advice a la Stephen King, but why should anyone take the advice of an unpublished novelist?  What do I know?  I have read some writing advice books, but ultimately it's "apply appallingly spreading bottom to a chair by a laptop and stay there until novel is complete.  If stuck, go for a walk.".

I couldn't tell anyone how to write - although I have a few useful tips about how not to write.   Then again, all these would simply be a reflection of my own literary taste.  Well organised self-promoting writers invite other writers to write guest blogs on how to write - and leave all the heavy lifting to them.

Most of the advice on other writing blogs is fairly repetitive - a regurgitation of creative writing classes I guess, but still useful to people like me who have have not actually "learned" how to create realistic characters, or to heighten a sense of tension/emotion/fear - but have been vaguely struggling in that direction through trial and turgid error.

I think that while this blog does not provide useful advice as such, it does show what an appallingly lengthy process it is to get oneself established as an author - and how lucky one has to be.  Writing well (see Dan Brown, passim., is a very small part of it).  There are ups and downs and near misses and rave rejections, and still one does not get published.  I think TMoF will - but I doubt if the known agents will necessarily snap it up.

The Ash Grove - some quandries

I paid a very high powered Irish editor to read and comment on the Ash Grove (she'd laugh if she read that I think).  She was far less critical than I expected, but did make some very valid points about the story and how it ends.   She wasn't keen on it being part of a series, but when I'd explained my grand scheme for it, she seemed mollified, but wanted to feel it would be a stand alone novel with its own characters that could be read on its own.   Which I would of course make it.  My model is  Pat Barker's Regeneration but I don't pretend to her level of research and insight and I doubt I could achieve anything quite as brilliant as that.

The joy is that G liked it - she liked the writing and found the characters fascinating - which was wonderful, because I was worried about some of those characters - a bit too formal I wondered....but I think it's good, because they gradually unbutton a bit during the book...and will do even more in the next one, if I ever need to write it.

She made several practical suggestions which I agree with - but I am going to find it hard to decide on a new title... I may go back to calling it Conscience again.  I do like The Ash Grove  - because I understand the play on ash, as the tree - but also the ashes from burning, of something lost, of the destruction of war...but we will see... G is thinking of a less literate and more hard of thinking audience than I am, and no doubt she is right.  Let's face it - would I rather write a bestseller or a great literary novel - Anna Karenina or Princess Daisy?  Can you do both? Could I ever do either?  I expect everyone dreams of writing a bestseller, but probably the best one could expect is a solid slog through a series of popular, commercial fiction.  In the late 20thC have there been literary novels which were best sellers?  I have a long pause and I think - Captain Corelli?  Not great literary exactly;  Unbearable Lightness? was it a best seller?  Given the opportunity, would I rather write a novel that is being read in 50 years time or one that brings £50,000 or more...Can you do both?  And isn't it all just a blip of the market in some way...the luck of the draw - appearing in the right season, in the right mode, with the right cover even?

Perhaps I could keep the title The Ash Grove  if I used a line from a poem like Ash on a young man's sleeve, is all the ash the roses leave - then readers would understand the play on the word, the song itself is about lost love etc.  Perhaps I could have that as the epigraph?  I'll have to think about a lot of things, probably for quite a while, which is why I am going to deal with TMoF first..

Post scriptum omne animal triste est...

The writing has reached the unpleasant point where the euphoria of having finished the first draft has finished, and while feeling pleasantly undaunted by the prospect of revising and re-writing - one begins to wonder what will happen if it meets the same enthusiastic lack of interest the other works have experienced, if it will ever get published, and all the fond hopes that one had had on completion of the work seem to be nothing but egotistical fantasy.  But this time I did feel I was beginning to get the hang of it all, the writing lark I mean.  It is far from being a work of "extraordinary genius" - it may be more commercial than literary - although I hope it has enough resonances to last a little longer than some of the books I've read recently. 

 I was introduced to the concept of "alterity" last night - or rather the word for it - I was aware of the idea, I just don't know what the current academic/theoretical names for things are.  Anyway, in literature it was described as being "magical realism lite" - which I rather liked.  I would hesitate to describe The Malice of Fairies as magical realism exactly. M has always snorted that there is too much "magical" stuff in my other works.  This is monstrously unfair - I wish it were so. 

The above is copied from the other blog... and since then, I have had a rave review from a very kind friend who "couldn't put it down"... this is the first person to read it all, and since she has an English degree I will take her compliment reasonably seriously.  She thought the end needed more jeopardy.  She's right.  I think I may betray the conventional wisdom about leaving a first draft fallow for a bit - and just re-write it now, "while the humour is on me" as Tara said earlier.