Well There It Was, Merry Christmas

            Well Christmas is now officially over, the mosh pits of the Boxing Day sales have opened and the New Year is just around the corner.  I hope you enjoyed Christmas, and you got what wanted, remember in the immortal words of Greg Lake, the Christmas we get, we deserve.  I enjoyed Christmas, cooked a turkey that’s still feeding us, drank, but slowly enough not to get drunk, and I got some fabulous presents, including a Scratch Map of the UK, which sounds weird, but given that I’m also a geocacher, gives me the chance to scratch off each of the counties as I cache in them.  Yeah, okay, I get that that’s a limited realm of interest, but it interests me.

            So since I last blogged, it seems my Muse has returned.  WooHoo!

            Over Christmas I have managed to finish the edit of Solution, a crime novel, and I’ve done a read/edit of a shorter romance novel which I still haven’t settled on a name for, also last night, I went to bed at 11:30 and after reading a couple of chapters of Siege by Simon Kernick, I finished Chapter 1 of the next new book I’m writing, another romance, the plot of which has been an idea kicking around in my head for some time with nothing to do.  Also, today I woke up with inspiration for another short story.  All evidence that my Muse has found her way back to me.

            The short is another competition piece, 1500 words themed on hot chocolate.  I’ve been trying to think what to do for this for a couple of weeks now, but this morning and idea came to me while I was still in bed and I quickly drew together the rest of the story.  On getting up and I went to the laptop and wrote the story, was 1512 words, so not too much agro to get back to word count. This story is romantic rather than criminal, those seem to be the two genres I skip between, nothing else seems to work, well that’s not entirely true, I have been known to work with horror occasionally, but not for some time now.

            Am going to spend some time tomorrow going through the various writing magazines and on-line sites to see if I can put together a timetable for what competitions are coming up, and do what I can to maybe win one or two this year.

            Well that’s it for now, will write again soon.

Muse Missing

MUSE MISSING

            Not the band, obviously, this is a blog, not a headline.

            No, my muse has gone missing.  I haven’t done anything new in days.  I have edited part of my next book, improvements I think, but not got anything new.  I’ve blogged before about two new characters, Mac and Mc, by the way not sure I’ve mentioned that before.  Well last week I wrote another short with them, and again it worked well, so well in fact that I think it’s better than the one I originally wrote for the short story competition that brought Mac and Mc into life.  That’s now led to me questioning how good the first story is and whether or not it’s worth entering in the competition at all.

            Oh, self doubt thou art the bane of my life!

            A couple of days ago – now wait – it was last Saturday (Thursday today) I finished The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin.  I’m not the greatest Rankin fan, though there is a whole bookshelf in this house dedicated to his books, those books belong to my husband who is a Rebus fan.  I’ve given Rebus a go, but just can’t get into that series.    The Malcolm Fox books, however, I enjoy a lot.  I’m not giving anything away to say that I’ve brought my hubby Standing In Another Mans Grave for Christmas. Original idea was to surprise him, but we were in town a couple of weeks ago and he said he was going to buy it, so I had to tell him it was already hidden and ready for him for Christmas.  This book features both Rebus and Fox so it should be an interesting read, and I get second dibs on the book.

            What’s a bit of a coincidence is that since then I’ve started reading Siege by Simon Kernick, I’m only a few pages in, but the story includes a character named Fox.  I’ve also got a book by Zoe Sharp, Killer Instinct which is the first of her Charlie Fox series. And that’s before I mentioned Fox Mulder and Fantastic Mr Fox.  Doubtless there are other wilily foxes out there, but these are the one’s I’ve come across.

            You might wonder what any of this has to do with a missing muse, I did when I started writing this, well I’ll get to that.  But since I started writing, I’ve done a search on the names of the muses and what they are supposed to inspire, and I was rather surprised to see that there is no muse for literature, though there are two for poetry, Calliope and Euterpe, one for comedy, Thalia and one for tragedy Melpomene, so maybe writers have many muses.  By the way, I’ve checked several sites and they’re all slightly different and I’m no classics student, so forgive me if my interpretation differs from yours.

            But for now let us assume that either one of the muses, or a collection there of, are inspiring the writers of the world, does this explain the frequency of similar names or themes?  No, not really, it’s just part of the law of very large numbers, but that’s rather boring and scientific, so for the moment I’m going back to the fanciful.

            So my muse is missing, after all the centuries she’s been doing the job, she deserves a break, right?  Probably needs to catch up on some beauty sleep, though if the myths are to be believed, beauty isn’t a problem for any of them.  Oh well, that’s my rambling over, let’s hope the muses sleep well and awake refreshed ready to spread inspiration to us all.

            Night night then.

Write Here

            I read a couple of the letters in Writers Forum #134 today, talking about where people write; coffee shops and libraries featured heavily.

            At Crimefest earlier this year I attended a number of the panels and the topic of where writers write was a subject that was mentioned several times, sheds were talked about a lot in those discussions.

            All of this got me wondering "where do I write?"  Well I pretty much write anywhere and everywhere.  I have written both in coffee shops and in libraries, and I’ve enjoyed the different situations needed at those different times.  I can see the attraction of both locations.  I’ve never written in a shed, because I don’t have one and when I did have a shed, I was my husband’s province and full of tools, gardening stuff and bikes.  No room for writing.  Also, I feel the cold very easily so I don’t think sheds are for me.

            I’ve been known to write at my desk in the kitchen, my desk at work, lunchtimes only of course, laying in bead, soaking in the bath, sitting on a train, as a passenger in a car.  I’m often inspired while driving, but can’t really stop to write while controlling one ton of potentially lethal self propelled metal, not overly safe that option.

            I have, however, written in the driver’s seat while waiting to collect kids/husband/friends/colleagues, whatever.  Even while in the waiting room at the doctors, more impressively, I’ve even written in the dentists waiting room, but that was more to take my mind of the horror to what was coming.

            My favourite spot though, and where most of my writing is done, is curled up on the sofa in the living room, usually with the TV on for background noise.   But mostly, where I write matters less to met than that I actually get to do some writing.  

Fiction in a Flash

            A few weeks ago I came across a flash fiction competition.  A whole story in 500 words.

            500 words!  For a beginning, a middle and an end.  Since I write mostly crime fiction that means Commit – Investigate – Solve.

            Yeah right.

            Figuring that it couldn’t be done, I put the idea aside to look for something else.  The something else was a short story competition.    In writing that story I created two new characters that work for short bursts.  Don’t really know why, this is remarkable for me, usually getting under 5000 words a challenge.  

            I decided to write how these two met, and managed it in 752 words.  Then I wondered if I could use this as an exercise to see if I could get it down to 500 words.  So I got out my red pen and started cutting.

            Out went one unnecessary support character. Out went a bit, but importantly not all, of the socialising between my two leads.  I had to get rid of a tell or two turning them into shows, which didn’t help the word count, but helped me figure out what to keep and what not to.  Some conclusions had to be jumped to but I still had to provide the evidence for them.  I got economic with my vocabulary and finally got it down to 500 words.  Yay!

            Then the scary bit. I gave it to my husband to critique.  I know lots of spouses get used in this way and mine is particularly useful for pointing out things like

             -    You can’t spell (really can’t)

             -    That sentence doesn’t make sense (grammar errors)

             -    How did that happen? (logic gaps)

So he pointed out things like two sentences had to be rewritten because I'd forgotten to show the reader how the characters got to that point.  So changes were made and the painful word count regained.

Then came the really scary part - I sent it to my sister to critique.  I know, she’s my big sister – how harsh is she going to be?  VERY!

This woman publicly stated on FB that she wanted to hate my writing.  She was actually really useful because she told me where the story grated for her - mostly the conclusion jumping - and that told me what I had to make better.  So I did.

Another rewrite, another edit to get to the word count, but I got there and I thank to both my 'editors' for their contributions.

Then I read it again.

Then I re-read it.  Didn’t find any more amendments I wanted, so I sent it off to the competition.

That night in bed, I suddenly remembered the perfect word I’d been looking for, but settled for something less.

The moral, if there is one, is: nothing is impossible (unless you don’t try).

Oh, and if you have time, always leave a piece overnight then read it again before sending it off.

Bye for now.

PS – Guess how many words (including these)

Introduction

This is a new blog about my experience as a writer. It’s a personal point of view, so feel free to disagree, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.  Each blog will be short, so I’m not going to take up too much of your time, and more importantly, what I write will be honest.

            I’ve blogged before, but it didn’t last long and I know why.   I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the blog, it didn’t inspire me and had no focus.  All of which is very unlike this blog, where I know what I want to talk about and why – real life writing experiences because I’ve felt alone in my writing for too long, so I’m hoping this helps other writers know they aren’t as alone as the usually solo activity of writing can leave you feeling.  

            So here’s the deal, I got made redundant earlier this year, I’m working again now, but when I was ‘between roles’ I made a decision, I am going to leave work at the office and go after my life-long ambition of becoming a published author.

            I’ve been on the route of agent submissions for the last twenty years and have a file full of rejections to prove it.  That’s still something I keep in mind and I make submissions when I think there might be some value in it, but I’m also considering, and sometimes acting on, other routes. 

            For Christmas this year, my husband has brought me a subscription to Writing Magazine and the first issue, Jan 2013, arrived yesterday.  In the letters page, the star letter really hit home to me.  The letter sender talks about problems with self published books on e-readers, and how they never seem to have had enough editing and / or proof reading. 

            Why did this hit with me?  Simple, one of the “other routes” I’ve chosen is self-publishing for e-readers.  The worst thing is, I know a number of people who have brought the book, and now I know how much better it could have been.  Mind, it’s not that bad, I have had two 4 star reviews from people who have been good enough to shell out their hard earned money to buy my book and read it.    The book, by the way, is Foreshadows and while I know it could have been better, I’m still really proud that it’s out there.  It’s worth a read if you like British crime fiction.

            I’ve got three other novels written, but not yet ready for publication, two crime fiction and one romance, though even that has a criminal element.  As you might have figured out by now, I work mostly in crime fiction, I’m just more comfortable there than other genres.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to pitch to an agent, it went okay, the agent did say I can write, but that I was telling rather than showing, so while I didn’t get signed, I got some really useful feedback, most of it much more specific than show don’t tell.  This is something I’m working on, both in re-writes of my novels and in my short stories. 

At the moment I am concentrating more on short stories, practicing showing.  I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve been producing, not all publishable, but fun to write.  I’ve also decided to start entering more writing competitions.  Forcing myself to the chore of meeting the criteria for one competition, after much hair pulling, I was inspired to create two new characters.  These are characters I feel surprisingly comfortable with, like they’ve been in my head for years rather than a couple of weeks, and what’s more, they’ve inspired me with a number of new story lines.

            Well, that’s it for now, I’ll blog again soon, and hope you enjoy.