The writing high

By PD Martin

My last blog was on my love-hate relationship with writing. However, I did mention that at the moment I’m in the love stage of writing. In fact, I’d say I’m on a writing high. Do you know what I mean?

For published authors it’s that feeling of: “This is the one. The breakthrough novel that will get me from being a mid-list author to a best seller.”

And for unpublished authors it’s more like: “This is the one. The novel that will get me an agent and/or publishing deal.”

Sound familiar?

I guess for me at the moment, it’s kind of both of those things. Having tried the ebook route last year, I’ve decided I’d like to go back to the traditional agent and publisher option, at least for some of my projects. And this one I’m working on at the moment is one that could probably be quite successful as an ebook (young adult, pre-apocalyptic) but I also hope it would catch the attention of an agent and then a publisher.

But I’m wary. Wary of that writing high. It’s the most amazing feeling. Kind of like you’re invincible. Like you’ve got this pooled energy of positive butterflies in your stomach whenever you write or think about your novel. You want to dance around, punch the air. You want to celebrate. But then the logical part of you knows that there’s nothing to actually celebrate yet. Sure, there’s the fact that you’ve written (or are writing) a novel that you believe in, that you’re enjoying writing and that you think will keep readers turning the page long after their scheduled bed time. And don’t get me wrong, that is something to celebrate…sort of.

You see, being a pragmatist, and having been around the block a few times, I know I have to temper that feeling a little. First off, it’s naïve and egotistical to think that a book you’ve written is a guaranteed, sure-fire best seller. Partly because writing is a roller coaster. One minute you love the words on the page and think it’s the best thing ever…the next you’re wondering how you could have thought that such a pile of drivel was actually any good. Know the feeling?

It’s also partly because I know this business is also about luck. Obviously you start with a quality manuscript, yes. But that manuscript needs to land on the right person’s desk at the right time. It needs to have the ‘right’ cover art, it needs to be promoted in some way and, somehow, word of mouth needs to start. This is still the big unknown. I’ve had people in my publishing houses with 20+ years of experience tell me they (meaning the person and publishers in general) still don’t know why one book takes off and another of equal or better ‘quality’ doesn’t. That kind of sucks. But it seems it’s the truth. And we’ve all been trying to crack social media for that word of mouth surge, but if I’m honest I’m still clueless about that, too. Well, not clueless but my efforts in the ebook sphere haven’t resulted in a top 10 or even top 100 book. Sure, I do the obvious — get people to review my books, put up stuff about it on Facebook and Twitter and email my website subscribers but I’m not sure how to take it to the next level.

Anyway, I’m off topic. Back to the high. I mentioned that sometimes that high is also naivety. As a writing teacher, I see that a lot and it’s a fine balance. Someone in your class says they’ve quit their day job to finish their book and then sell it. You want to inspire them, keep them positive, but I think it’s important to counter some of that naivety. They’re on the writing high…great. But it would be negligent of me to at least not mention what the average book deal is worth in $ and how many first-time manuscripts actually get published. Of course, I also mention the writers who have had amazing success with their first novels (JK Rowling comes to mind). Like I said, I want to inspire them, too.

So, I’m about 90% through my first draft of this YA book and I already know what I have to refine in the edit. But I’m still incredibly excited. I want to live that high. Embrace it. And I know I have a tendency to be a glass-is-half-empty person so I don’t want my rational mind to bring me down too much. But I must also remember I’ve been in this place before. Last year I finished my first mainstream drama that focused on motherhood while also touching on some much more difficult issues of fertility, sexual assault and abortion. I was sure I had a winner. And despite some very positive feedback from test readers my first round of about 15 agents all passed. I stopped sending it out and paid a very experienced editor for a structural edit. I’ve yet to action those edits because I’m too caught up in my current story. And I hope that when I fix the problems I can go out to my next tier of agents and have more success. But my point is, when I was writing that I was sure it was The One.

 And now I’m sure this one is The One. So, I’m excited, I’m loving the writing and I’m enjoying that writing high. It’s inspiring me, driving me forward. But I’m also scared. What if I’m wrong?

GOOD VS. EVIL, POST-ELECTION EDITION

by Gar Anthony Haywood

By the time you read this (I hope), someone will have won the U.S. Presidential election and someone will have lost it.

To most Americans, the election was a battle between two men with fundamentally different ideas about the role government should play in our everyday lives.  For others, it was something much greater, a virtual war between the Powers of Darkness and the Agents of Light over the very soul of this nation.    If you think I'm exaggerating, you haven't been reading some of the Facebook "discussions" I have been over the last several months.

Because it's easier to get people to the polls by convincing them their vote could make the difference between putting the Son of Satan in the White House and a decent, God-fearing human being, the political arena is an ideal setting for this kind of silly, provocative oversimplification.  But politicians are not the only ones who like to describe every human conflict as one pitting Good against Evil.

We crime writers have a tendency to reduce things to those very same extremes.

Of course, we do it for the sake of high drama, not election results.  In the interests of maximizing the stakes in a thriller, for instance, we often go in for villains who are simply heartless monsters, rather than complex people with conflicting motives.  Conversely, our protagonists are soldiers of righteousness, angels with dirty faces who have no doubts, whatsoever, about the virtue of their cause.  God is on one side and the Devil is on the other, and there's no way to mistake which is which.

Gray areas are okay for literary fiction, the reasoning goes, but readers of mysteries and thrillers only have eyes for black and white, the better to root for the latter as they hungrily turn pages.

I can't view the world that way, no matter how popular such fiction is.  Just as I know Barack Obama is not a freedom-hating Muslim and Mitt Romney is not a Scrooge-like robot with contempt for all poor people, I also know that real "good guys" and "bad guys" come in all stripes and colors, and that their needs and motivations cannot always be described in a single line.  I keep this thought in mind whenever I enter my polling booth and whenever I sit down to write.  Nobody in this world wears horns and a barbed tail, nor walks with a halo consistently overhead.

The shorthand of Good versus Evil might win (and lose) elections, and it might sell a boatload of crime novels, but it's just not for me.

Sorry.

Lost in translation

By PD Martin

About a year ago I came up with an idea for a new novel. It was the kind of idea that kept eating at me, kept calling to me “Write me”. I knew it was an idea I’d get to sooner rather than later, that it would ‘jump the queue’ in terms of the projects I had planned. This is the order I’m supposed to be doing things in:

1. Books 2 & 3 in my Guardian and Wanderer series (Pippa Dee)
2. Book 2 in my new “RB and The Committee series” (as a follow-on to Hell’s Fury)
3. Another mainstream drama project (I was hoping to have an agent and a sale by now for my first mainstream drama novel, but alas it hasn’t happened yet).

Then, and only then, would I move onto this ‘new’ idea, something that’s completely different again to what I’ve been writing. It’s a post-apocalyptic YA thriller/action adventure.  I know…I’m all over the shop.

However, when I was in bed at night, I’d literally think about scenes from this book. I’d see and hear them in my head, compose the sentences and dialogue. I had the character down — a tough 18 year old who’d been imprisoned since she was 10 because she was a ‘danger to society’. But I didn’t write any of these scenes down. I trusted my subconscious and conscious to let the idea brew, to fully form. But now, I’m not so sure…

I’ve finally answered the call of this book and put all of my 1-3 points above on hold. After a little bit of initial but essential research, I started writing last Thursday. In fact, it’s the first thing I’ve written since we collected Liam in Korea a few weeks ago. And I am also aware that my writing stints are going to be an hour here, an hour there, and then one full day (Thursdays).

Now here’s the problem. The book isn’t coming out at all like it’s been in my head for the past year or so. The main character, instead of being a kick-ass bad-ass chick with a major attitude problem, is turning out to be a young woman who wants redemption for ‘her kind’, who wants to prove she can do more than only destroy society. But I just don’t know. Is the book lost in translation or is this how it is meant to be, how it always would have turned out even if I’d answered its call twelve months ago, or even six months ago? It’s not that I’m not happy with what I’ve written so far and I am only 5,000 words in so it’s hard to tell. But still, why is it so different to what I’d envisaged?

So, Murderati…for those of you who write, has this ever happened to you? Found a book comes out incredibly different on the page to what it was in your head? And for the readers, do you ever get the feeling a book is different to what perhaps the author first thought?

And finally, any thoughts on whether I should go with the flow, what’s coming out on the page, or ditch my 5,000 words and start again trying to be true to the original vision. 

IT'S (NOT) ALL IN THE BOX

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Three weeks ago, the family and I moved into a new home.  We'd been renting a place in Alhambra until we could find a house both within our budget and big enough to accommodate our ever-expanding need for space, and we finally lucked into a four-bedroom, single-story mid-century number in Glassell Park that fits the bill.  It was a great blessing.  The new joint needs a lot of work, God knows, and most of the heavy lifting has already been done, but there's still a hell of a lot of sweat equity left to invest to make it our "home" --- starting with unpacking all these @!*#%!*@ boxes we've vacuum-packed our lives into.  Boxes just like this one:

If you've ever made a similar move yourself, you know what I'm talking about.  First you spend weeks stuffing and taping everything you own into cartons three sizes too small, and then you spend weeks yanking it all out again in a different place, always thinking along the way:

"What the hell is this?"

"So that's where that damn thing went!"

"Why in the world do I own one of these?"

"I've got absolutely no use for this, and I probably never will --- but as soon as I toss it, I'll find a use for it, so I'd better hold onto it."

You learn a lot about yourself as you take this item-by-item inventory of your earthly existence, and one of the most fascinating is all the things you've accumulated not with the intent of using it in this life --- the one you're actually living --- but in the life you hope to have someday.  Clothes you plan to fit into; brochures for exotic cars you intend to own; toys you're going to play with just as soon as you're making enough money to slow down a little.  Some of this stuff is as new as the day you acquired it; it comes in packages that have never been opened, inside plastic bags that are still sealed air-tight.

These possessions are pieces of a dream you can't let go of.  Giving them away or selling them off at your next yard sale would be a form of surrender, an admission that time has run out on the future you've always thought would be yours.

So when the time comes to change addresses, you stick these things in a box, rather than leave them behind, and then you find a place for them in your new home --- the closet, the garage, the attic --- when the box gets opened again.  If it gets opened again.

Some things go into boxes that stay sealed forever.

Of course, as I'm a writer, most of my moving boxes are filled with ideas.  Fragments of stories yet to be written, dogeared notebooks brimming with single-line plot synopses and half-formed character profiles.  Throw this stuff away?  Are you nuts?  There's a bestseller in there somewhere, I know there is, and one day I'm going to find it.

Ultimately, for all our mindless attachment to them, it's not the things inside the boxes that really count.  It's the things we can't box up: the people we love, the memories of good times past, the hope that tomorrow will only bring more of the same.

As I write this, late at night in my new office upstairs, I see boxes all around me; numbered and labeled, every one filled with odd bits and pieces of this poor man's treasure.  But what I value most isn't in any of these boxes, nor anywhere here in this room.  They're downstairs, occupying three different beds in three different bedrooms.

And that's what makes this home.

GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL (AS IF)

by Gar Anthony Haywood

As I write this blog post, I'm wondering how in the hell I'm going to find a way to post it in time for Wednesday.  Because, you see, I'm on vacation this week, and nothing ever comes easy for me when I go on vacation.

Vacations are supposed to be fun.  An opportunity to put work behind you and do nothing but relax and enjoy yourself for a while.  Travel, eat well, and take afternoon naps by the pool.  Catch up on your reading, maybe even try a few absurdly dangerous things you'd never try otherwise (hang-gliding, cliff diving, etc.).  Laugh and play, and love with renewed vigor, and forget what it was about your chosen profession that had you longing for a vacation in the first place.

The idea is to find your professional "off" switch and activate it, then fill the void only with things that make you smile.  For most people, shutting down their work lives can be as simple as turning off their cell phone and leaving it off.  Disconnect him from his Macbook and smart phone and an accountant becomes just another joe, his head no longer swimming with numbers to crunch.  Drop an attending ER physician on a beach in Maui for a week and see how much time he spends worrying about gunshot wounds and head trauma.  Because the work these people do is only as portable as they choose to make it, they can get on a plane and leave it behind them, whenever the need arises.

Not so the professional writer.

The writer's lot is reminiscent of that old saying: "Wherever I go, there I am."  Your work --- and all the things about it that make you crazy --- is in your head, twenty-four-seven, and you can no more leave it at home with the family dog when you go on vacation than your left foot (assuming you have a left foot).  The writer has no "off" switch, other than sleep, and sometimes even that doesn't work.  So a writer's vacation is, at best, a series of momentary diversions from the stresses that are always with him.  There is no complete escape.  You can run, but you can't hide.

This summer, the family and I are doing a week in Aspen, Colorado, and as you can see, a person looking for heaven on earth could do worse.  This place is gorgeous.  The weather's lovely, the air fresh and clean (if a little thin) and the scenery is right out of a nature lover's dream.

So why am I having to work so hard to be happy?

The answer's complicated, but it all boils down to money.  Paradise is paradise no matter how you slice it, but when you're doing it on the cheap, it's a little less so.  The wife and I aren't here with the kids counting pennies, exactly, but we are keeping an eye on where every precious dollar goes, so corners are definitely being cut.  Most of the time, this is a painless process, since this is the story of our lives back home, after all.  We're used to making compromises.  But when you're on vacation, surrounded by people who would appear to have vast fortunes to spend fulfilling their every desire (and that of their children), it's hard doing without.

Especially when you hold yourself personally responsible.

That writer's brain you can't turn off during vacation is constantly thinking about all kinds of things, but one of its most maddening preoccupations is career assessment.  The dreams we hold for ourselves professionally do not feature us questioning our every purchasing decision during the two weeks out of every year we set aside to forget our troubles and live a little.  Rather, these dreams have us playing on vacation with reckless abandon, unfettered by the budgetary constraints we are ordinarily bound by.

A compact for the rental car?  To hell with that, give me the SUV!

The Westin or the Holiday Inn?  The Westin!

Sirloin steak or tacos?  Puh-lease, we'll have the steak!

Still, limited discretionary funds or no, I'm having a wonderful, blessed time here in Colorado with a woman and two children I love very deeply.  I can't give them the vacation they deserve, but I can give them a husband and father who will never stop trying to do so.  To writers without a six-figure book deal or Hollywood option money rolling in by the truckload, the cup can always appear to be half-empty, especially when they're trying to take a break from the grind of writing to relax for a while.

But my cup is most definitely better than half-full, and I know it.

(Oh, by the way: I managed to find a connection to the Internet in time to post this Wednesday morning, so things are definitely looking up!)

Questions for the Class: How well do you fare on vacation?  Are you able to shut everything out and enjoy yourself, or . . . ?