A good sort of writer’s block

Goodness, these blog posts are now so infrequent that I am amazed to have any readers left at all!  But please do stick with me: my day job is taking most of my energy at the moment and any writing time I can carve out is being used on “Plank 7” rather than this blog, but rest assured that I am writing slowly and surely in the background.  With my plans to “retreat at home” over the summer, I am quietly confident of hitting my planned publication date of 3 December 2021 – so remember to buy “Plank 7” for everyone for Christmas!

My big news today is that I have discovered a marvellous writing tool.  When I am writing, I will often dart off to check facts – when did the term “big cheese” come into use? what sort of market was in Brick Lane in the 1820s? – and these lead me onto other websites, and before I know it I’ve spent an hour on vaguely related reading and not written a word.  I kid myself that it’s all helping, that I’m filling in the background so that I can write with more authority – but if I’m not actually writing, well, that’s just an excuse.  And then I read about browser blockers.  You can buy them with all sorts of bells and whistles, but there is also a perfectly adequate free one called LeechBlock (so called because it blocks those sites that leech your productive time).  You download an extension to your browser and then set the sites you want it to block, and for how long.  You can be ferocious (blocking everything by using *.com) or select your sites of greatest browsing weakness…. And when you tootle off to those sites during the blocked hours, you get a splash screen saying “The page you’re trying to access has been blocked by LeechBlock”.  I’ve been using it only for a couple of days, and my word count has shot up.  As always, of course, there’s no guarantee that what I’m writing is any good, but – my constant mantra – you can always edit something, but you can’t edit nothing.

The bard and the Mess

To an outsider – and certainly to me before I became a writer – publishing can seem a rather gentlemanly industry.  Surely what happens is that an elegant, erudite, well-read and softly-spoken chap in a tweed suit reads your work and then takes you for a quiet lunch in an oak-panelled bistro, promising to bring your oeuvre to the reading public to the mutual benefit of both writer and reader.  Of course it’s not like that at all, and publishing – like any other industry – is built (and depends) on profit.  And as such the decisions of publishers are sometimes enormously, bile-inducingly unfair.  In a fair world, well-written books would be published and lauded while self-promoting, celebrity-endorsed drivel would never see the light of day – but, as we were all told by our parents from the age of about three onwards, life is not fair.

Today I read that the Eton Mess – our current Prime Minister, whose name is not spoken in this house – was rather distracted at the start of the pandemic by his need to meet a publishing deadline.  Now, he has a former life as a journalist and has already published several books (mostly significantly discounted on Amazon, which gives me great pleasure), so I am not surprised that he is planning to write more.  But given that his previous books did not much trouble the bestseller charts, why has Hodder & Stoughton promised him an advance of £250,000 (with £98,000 already paid) for his proposed book about Shakespeare, “The Riddle of Genius”?

Industry insiders report that the Mess’s book about Winston Churchill sold about a quarter of a million copies – but that’s a book by a politician about a politician.  Are people who are interested in politics going to want to read about Shakespeare?  And are those who are interested in Shakespeare going to care what a politician thinks about him (particularly one not known for his close relationship with historical accuracy), when there are far better qualified Shakespeare scholars out there (presumably being given much less generous advances for their books)?  A cursory search suggests that publishers expect to keep about 10% of the cover price of a book – after paying the author, printer, distributor, bookshops, marketing costs and all the rest.  If “The Riddle of Genius” appears in hardback at £25 and paperback at £15, and is quickly discounted, they’re going to need to shift hundreds of thousands of copies just to break even.  From a commercial point of view, it seems a bad deal for everyone except the Mess himself.  Although you have to laud his interest in the subject: mistress Jennifer Arcuri confirms that he would recite passages from “Macbeth” as foreplay during their encounters.  I can only assume he chose “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly”.  If that doesn’t put you off your porridge, nothing will.

Picture this

Here I am, indulging in my weekly writing immersion.  I’m afraid my own plan of writing for thirty minutes a day came to nothing: I just can’t get into the right frame of mind at the start of the working day, with so many things to attend to.  So it’s back to the old pattern of thinking about Sam all week and then spending one day at the weekend in his company (whichever day the weather is worse, as we like a day out on the tandem as well).

And today I have a little tip for those of you writing historical fiction, particularly set in Europe (and perhaps America).  When I am describing a new character, I like to be able to visualise them.  And of course I need to make reference to what they are wearing – breeches or trousers, greatcoat or cutaway, bonnet or hat.  If you do searches on, for instance, “London men fashion 1828”, the results are plentiful – but they are all “fashion plates”, showing the very height of fashion.  It’s a bit like someone assuming that we in 2021 all dress like the models in recent issues of “Harper’s Bazaar” and “Vogue” magazines.  It’s hard to find pictures of real people in everyday outfits.  But what I do now is go to the website of the National Portrait Gallery and, in the search box, put the year I am looking for.  The results will be paintings, sketches and sculptures “issued” in that year, and although many of them will show people dressed in their finest (or wearing togas), there will be many others that show people in much more workaday outfits.  And it’s perfect for seeing hairstyles and whiskers.  I am about to describe a fellow called George Young, who ran a horse bazaar in London in 1828, and there are no portraits specifically of him.  Instead, my George will be a combination of a Methodist minister called John Stephens and the chemist John Hope – they look the right age, with a healthy lack of concern with fashion.  Just make sure you click on the details of the sitter you’ve chosen, to guard against modelling your character on a well-known eccentric!

I have a plan

Hard to believe it’s been more than a month since I last updated you on my (lack of) writing progress, but it is.  Oddly, I find that time during lockdown both seems endless and speeds by – most peculiar.  But I have finally grasped the nettle and set my writing deadlines for the remainder of this year.

Given that I am still working full-time (and seeing other people’s struggles to maintain an income during the pandemic, I am grateful to be doing so), I realised that it was unrealistic to plan to have “Plank 7” ready for publication in mid-October.  September is a busy month for me with my day job (people always want training in that month – I think it is the muscle memory of the new school year and an attendant determination to leap into new learning).  And counting backwards, as self-published authors must do, to allow for the linear tasks of beta reading, editing and cover design, there’s simply not enough time.  I have therefore reset my publication date to 3 December 2021 – which is my mother-in-law’s birthday (guess what she’ll be getting this year…) and just in time for the Christmas rush.  (When I published my first book, “Fatal Forgery”, I actually thought there would be a spike in orders before Christmas – it’s now simply a running joke in the family.)

One exciting development is that I have managed to reinstate my writing retreat.  No, I’m not planning my usual escape to Switzerland – the last thing I need is to have my trip covid-cancelled at the last minute, or to be stuck up a mountain if Switzerland locks down again.  My husband has just retired, and something he has wanted to do for ages is go on a long bike ride, camping in the wild.  Given my fondness for feather duvets and bubble baths, I’m not tempted by this “holiday” – and he has agreed to disappear on his own for three weeks in July.  So I will be retreating at home.  To do it properly, I will lock my office (in case the day job tries to interfere), set up my writing laptop on the dining table and turn off my phone from 0800 to 1700 (as I do in Switzerland), and fill the fridge with M&S ready meals.  To maintain the illusion, I make even take to greeting those I see on my post-lunch walk with a cheery “Bonjour”.

Project Bleurgh

To add to my seemingly endless list of things about which I should feel guilty, I have added “not writing regularly enough on my writing blog”.  I started it with one aim in mind: to describe the ups and downs of the processes of writing and self-publishing.  But since, well, you know what I’m talking about, things have ground almost to a halt.  I have good days – that weekend immersed in old newspapers was a corker – but the default setting seems to be “meh”.  I’ve been kicking myself about it, as the set-up is theoretically brilliant.  I can’t go anywhere or meet anyone (and have no children to home-school) so I have long stretches of time that I could fill with writing.  But I just can’t get myself going.  And – thankfully – it seems that I am not alone.

In her most recent newsletter to readers – which you can subscribe to here – the fabulous and perennially bouncy author Marian Keyes admitted to her own low mood: “And it’s been interesting (one way of looking at it 😉) how I (and I think lots of others) are coping: I’m no longer angry or hopeful or anything really, instead I seem to have managed to muffle most of my emotions and have selected a state of joyless low-level-depressed endurance as my default setting.”

I am a great fan of David Gaughran, who produces marvellous tutorials on self-publishing, and he too has been hit by the bleurghs: “More serious, is that I’ve been unable to read a novel for around a year.  I just can’t focus on it.  I can gobble up non-fiction, dry marketing posts, technical guides – it’s really bizarre.  But give me a good novel and I’ll struggle…. Definitely more concerning again is the effect this has had on my fiction writing.  I’m sure these two things are linked, but I’ve really been finding it difficult to make any progress on a number of overdue fiction projects.  The words are less of a flowing river and more of a dripping faucet.  They are coming… but… in… the… most… annoying… manner… possible.”

And perhaps the best description I have read of the whole sorry situation, which stifles creativity and makes us feel even more guilty about wasting time, was this piece by Alison Flood in the Guardian, called – perfectly – “Writer’s blockdown”.  In it, she pinpoints the heart of the problem: to write, particularly fiction, we need both internal mental space and external stimulation.  My mind buzzes with anxiety, like low-level tinnitus – it fills up every space, unless I distract myself with utterly mindless telly (I’m re-watching my “Dallas” DVDs – that’s how mindless I need to be).  And as for the external stimulation, well, what can I say?  I’ve been nowhere and seen no-one.  (Each day my biggest decision is: shall I do the boring walk or the tedious walk or the familiar walk or the quick walk?)  I meet no-one new and see nothing new – so external stimulation is a goner.

Dismal though that all is, I do take comfort from knowing that I am not alone and that many other writers are battling the same inertia.  But the schools have gone back today (I’m in the UK) and my husband is getting his jab next week (I’m a couple of years younger so won’t be far behind) and the daffodils are out, so I feel the stirrings of optimism.  And once I can move more freely and think about something other than a virus, “Plank 7” will be back on track.

The curse of the storyteller

There are many good things about being a writer.  You’re rarely lonely, for instance, as you can always have a chat with your characters (in your head – you don’t want to attract odd glances).  If the time and place in which you find yourself is not terribly welcoming or exciting or comforting (the UK in lockdown is none of these), you can simply select or invent a new time and place and spend time there instead.  And it’s an excellent mental workout, keeping track of plots and characters.  But I have recently discovered one significant downside of being a writer: it has made me extremely picky and critical when it comes to reading and watching other stories.

At the moment, in our house we are hooked on the drama “The Serpent”, about serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who drugged, robbed and murdered young backpackers in Asia in the 1970s.  (It has particular resonance, as I spent my teenage years in Asia in the 1970s – much of the setting and lifestyle and social comment is so familiar.)  It’s a complicated tale, with multiple victims, multiple locations and multiple timelines.  And last night my husband turned to me and said, “If you say one more time that the timing is out, or that a character couldn’t have known something because they weren’t in that scene, or that one fact has contradicted another, I’m turning off the telly”.

Reader, I had no idea that I had turned into a lean, mean, story-criticising machine.  But he was right: I had idly observed all of those things, and just in that one episode.  Now this doesn’t mean for one second that I wasn’t enjoying “The Serpent” (I cannot WAIT for tonight’s episode), or that it didn’t grip and convince me (I even spent five minutes “watching” from outside the room and calling “what’s happening now?” because the suspense was too great).  In truth, I am rather proud of myself: it must mean that my story-creating muscles are flexing and practising.  But for the sake of marital harmony, tonight I shall keep my comments to myself (even if it makes no sense that two Dutch characters would speak English to each other when alone, when two Thai characters speak their own language and are subtitled – unless it is to convey that one of them isn’t really Dutch, or that they want to be overheard and understood by a non-Dutch speaker, or the point is to demonstrate how fluent they are in English… oh goodness, I’m off again).

The puzzle of Plank

Today is a good day.  Not just because the Cheeto in Chief has finally left the White House (may he rot in Florida), but because for the first time in months – literally, months – I have felt properly “in the zone” while writing.

What I haven’t confessed to you is that last week I had a major wobble and considered reversing my decision to write “Plank 7” before embarking on my Cambridge series.  I re-read what I had written for “Gregory 1” and it’s not bad at all.  Perhaps, I reasoned, I needed a break from Sam and Martha.  Perhaps I was blocked because subconsciously I didn’t want to finish their series and say goodbye to them (although my husband has pointed out that I can always do “Young Sam and Martha” – if it’s good enough for Morse and Montalbano, it’s surely good enough for Plank).  Perhaps I needed a change of scenery, and relocating my writerly self from London to Cambridge might do the trick.  (Actually, as I’m under lockdown in Cambridge and it’s the only place I’ve seen for months, it’s rather more exciting to think about London.)  But it turns out that I was just being a bit feeble – as ever (and I can’t remember who said it) the key to writing is nothing more mysterious than applying the bottom to the chair and the hands to the keyboard/pen.

So, I am thrilled to report that Sam, Martha and I are back on track.  And this final instalment is even more of a mental workout than usual.  Not only do I have to figure out the plot (which, in true Sam style, is revealing and changing itself as we go along), but I also have to ensure that anything I write dovetails neatly with Sam’s adventures at the end of “Fatal Forgery”.  Although the majority of that book was set in 1824, you may remember that the final chapters jump ahead to September 1830 – and “Plank 7” is set in the autumn of 1829.  I didn’t know Sam very well when I was writing “Fatal Forgery”, and I am just hoping that I haven’t hamstrung him with any odd views or actions that I will now have to accommodate.  Still, it keeps the mental cogs whirring nicely.

Taking my own medicine

Some time ago I wrote a small non-fiction book titled “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  In it I shared the “squisdom” I had acquired over twenty-five years of working alone, and to augment it I post “Squisdom for today” twice or three times a week on Twitter and Facebook.  But in recent weeks I have not been happy at all at work – for obvious reasons – and over the weekend I realised that there were two bits of my own advice that might help.

Firstly, in the book I make much of the fact that we each have our own preferred working pattern.  I am an early bird – much more creative in the morning and then fit only for admin and filing by the end of the day, while my husband is pretty much the reverse.  And yet I have persisted for months now with doing my day job, well, during the day, and then turning to my fiction writing in the evening – when my brain has turned to mush.  As an experiment this week I am turning it upside-down: I do some writing first thing and then get on with my day job.  (I appreciate that it is a luxury for me to be able to decide when I do what, but that is one of the many benefits of being a Solo Squid – you can arrange your own working timetable.)

And secondly, we all know how off-putting it can be to tackle a large project, and in “The Solo Squid” I recommend breaking things down into digestible chunks – don’t say (as I have been saying…) “I must write this book”, but rather say “I must write for thirty minutes”.  Much more realistic, much more achievable, and much more satisfying – in that you can say every day “I wrote for thirty minutes”, whereas you cannot very often say “I wrote a book”.

So I am putting both bits of my own advice into practice: I am spending the first thirty minutes of every working day on my fiction writing.  So far so good – I’ve managed three days, and already I’ve written for ninety minutes more than I managed last week.

And now… looking up!

Just a quick post today, to share my happiness.  In my last post [I always picture a sombre bugler when I write that] I updated you on sales of my books, including my little business book – “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  And today I have received this lovely message via Goodreads (which I have linked to receive automatic sharing of my blog posts):

As one of the 16 who bought the Solo Squid e-book, please accept my thanks!  I felt I had a friend as I read it through what has been a tough year for my own business.  Your shared thoughts helped me work out whether I should give up on the business or keep going (I kept going and am now pretty busy).

Isn’t that just the loveliest thing?  I enjoyed writing the Squid, but to know that I actually helped someone to make important decisions is so exciting.  So if you’ve ever finished a book and found it has made a significant difference to you in some way, why not send the author a quick note?  I am grinning madly at mine, so I know how marvellous it is!

And if you’re now thinking that the Squid might be worth a look, here’s the link: http://mybook.to/solo_squid.  I also have a Squid Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TheSoloSquid ) and Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/TheSoloSquid ) – they feature the same information, but I try to upload a bit of “squisdom” two or three times a week.

Looking backwards and forwards

And here we are, staring into a whole new year – there can’t be many among us who are sad to see the back of 2020…  I know that my creativity took quite a knock; much as I admire all those who managed to use the endless weeks and months of lockdown to burrow into their projects, I have to admit that constant low-level anxiety and uncertainty took up most of my brain space.  As a result, I am now confronted by two stalled books – “Gregory 1” and “Plank 7” – and I am very much hoping that 2021 will be different.

Self-pity aside, I must gird my loins and look at my sales figures for the past year.  But despite Amazon reporting target-busting sales and (apparently) people turned to reading for comfort and escape, the boom has not quite hit my own titles!  In 2020, I sold 36 paperbacks across the six titles in the Sam series, and 185 e-books.  (But before you pat me on the back for those e-books, I must confess that 153 of those were downloaded for free during a promotion I ran in March/April.  So only 32 of the e-books brought in any money.)  And my little business book – “The Solo Squid” – sold 12 paperbacks and 16 e-books.

And so to money: with an average royalty of 90p per sale, my life as an author netted me about £86.40 in royalties in 2020.  Unfortunately, I also had to pay £200 for the cover for “The Solo Squid”, plus my memberships of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors (neither of which I would do without), so I’m actually about £350 in the red.  But as I don’t drink (yet…), smoke, or collect diamond jewellery or expensive cars, it’s a hobby I can afford.  And once I can reclaim some of this mis-used brain space, I can get back to enjoying it.  Happy new year to one and all!