The Write Stuff
With our first baby due to drop at the end of this week, you might think this a slightly odd time to be resurrecting this long-dormant blog, and you'd be right. But as many parents will know, if you're sensible and organised types you'll be fully prepared for your little bundle of "joy" to arrive from around 37 weeks into the pregnancy. And if, as is likely, your firstborn is a lazy sod who has no intention of turning up early, you will enter a curious limbo state, twiddling your thumbs until the point when your previously-peaceful existence is shattered forever.
My preparations for said lifestyle change have included finishing my novel and submitting it for the consideration of literary agents. It's impossible to write that sentence without sounding like a pretentious berk, and I suspect the only thing worse than calling yourself a novelist is when that novel remains entirely unpublished. The problem was, a germ of a story involving a near-miss plane crash came to me on our honeymoon, inspired by a horrendous propeller-plane ride into Orlando, and stubbornly refused to leave my thought. Ideas for characters and backstories then grew and grew to the point where I knew I had to turn it all into a full-blown book or else look back in 20 years' time and think "what if?".
Nearly two and a half years later, after an awful lot of procrastination which could not all be blamed on the vagaries of "The Muse", the impending arrival of the baby Gould provided the catalyst for the first draft's completion. I categorically did not want this stage dragging on until such point after the birth when my brain felt awake enough to indulge in some creativity again.
Then came a crossroads - how on earth do I get myself published? In days of yore the options were quite simple - either get a publisher or literary agent to sign you up, or spend a great deal of money and print the thing yourself. Now though, modern technology allows authors to make an e-book available for sale quickly and at minimal cost.
What to do? Left to my own devices, I would absolutely have uploaded the book onto the Kindle store, sent a few mass emails to friends and relatives guilt-tripping them into buying it, and that would have been that. It was my wife who persuaded me to try the traditional option, pointing out that there is always a chance that one agent or publisher out there might enjoy my work sufficiently to go into bat for me, and one is all it needs.
So the past two weeks have seen me furiously scrambling to submit my synopsis and sample text of varying lengths to as many suitable agents as I could find in the estimable Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. And in theory I had nothing to worry about by doing this - the magic of email eliminates the cost of paper, envelopes and stamps from the submission process, and the self-publishing option is always available if no agency is interested in taking me on.
But, boy is the fear of rejection strong! And this is a central issue with my writing, because it hasn't only been lack of motivation that's staunched my creativity at times. As a possessor of low-self esteem and crippling paranoia that everybody is out to criticize me in some way, the act of putting my completed work out there for judgment is akin to removing all my clothes and lying in the middle of a main road. Sure, there might be a few people who'd think I'm making a profound artistic statement, but everyone else would dismiss me as utterly barmy.
The very act of creating art implies a certain arrogance, not to mention referring to it as such. The wannabe-published writer acts on an ego-driven assumption that his work is somehow worthy of being added to the towering pile of cultural entertainment on offer, because it's better or different to what's already out there. And this does not fit in with my general personality at all. Sure, on some level I know I can write to a reasonable standard, but I'm somebody who gets genuinely sad and envious when I'm really enjoying a book because I know I could never write something that good. So although I don't think my unborn novel is terrible per se, I still view my submissions to agents as somehow dishonest, like a market trader selling knock-off Kelvin Klein fragrances.
My wife would say that the above paragraph is nonsense, that I could achieve far more if only I believed in myself, and I admit there's some truth in that. There are people out there making a name, if not a living, for themselves from their writing who are by no means great artists and would admit that themselves. But confidence gives you a platform to sell yourself, to enroll onto courses and join writers' groups where you can hone your skills as well as network and schmooze. In short, a window into a new world. My writing career so far has been more like a dungeon from whence I produce the odd piece and perfunctorily release it into the world with little or no fanfare. It would surely take one hell of a talent to land a publishing deal from such a nondescript background.
Tradition dictates that I spend the remainder of this piece focusing on the positives:
(1) After countless hours in front of MS Word on computers and tablets, I've finally produced a completed novel. Whatever its quality, I'm proud to have started such a complicated project and seen it through to completion. Not everyone can say the same.
(2) I deliberately (perhaps naively) set out to write exactly what I wanted to, not something that fits into a genre-based straitjacket. Agents and publishers are ultimately in this game to make money, which is not meant as a slight. I could quite easily have set out to write a high-concept thriller like the majority of bestselling fiction seems to be these days and had a significantly higher chance of being signed. I didn't, which also makes me strangely proud of myself. (Up to a point.)
(3) The submissions process, particularly reading the many advice articles in the Yearbook, has made me realize that it's good just to write stuff, and it's not a crime to publicize it. Not everyone will like what you write, and that's okay. But the more you write, the easier it becomes.
I'm going to try not to let a smelly, wailing baby stop me from doing something I enjoy. So watch out for my forthcoming novel, probably appearing later this year in a Kindle store near you (other e-readers are available, but Amazon are a market-cornering monolith so whatcha gonna do). And be prepared for far more regular reviews, travelogues and general ramblings on here as the year goes on. Don't say I didn't warn all five of you.
My preparations for said lifestyle change have included finishing my novel and submitting it for the consideration of literary agents. It's impossible to write that sentence without sounding like a pretentious berk, and I suspect the only thing worse than calling yourself a novelist is when that novel remains entirely unpublished. The problem was, a germ of a story involving a near-miss plane crash came to me on our honeymoon, inspired by a horrendous propeller-plane ride into Orlando, and stubbornly refused to leave my thought. Ideas for characters and backstories then grew and grew to the point where I knew I had to turn it all into a full-blown book or else look back in 20 years' time and think "what if?".
Nearly two and a half years later, after an awful lot of procrastination which could not all be blamed on the vagaries of "The Muse", the impending arrival of the baby Gould provided the catalyst for the first draft's completion. I categorically did not want this stage dragging on until such point after the birth when my brain felt awake enough to indulge in some creativity again.
Then came a crossroads - how on earth do I get myself published? In days of yore the options were quite simple - either get a publisher or literary agent to sign you up, or spend a great deal of money and print the thing yourself. Now though, modern technology allows authors to make an e-book available for sale quickly and at minimal cost.
What to do? Left to my own devices, I would absolutely have uploaded the book onto the Kindle store, sent a few mass emails to friends and relatives guilt-tripping them into buying it, and that would have been that. It was my wife who persuaded me to try the traditional option, pointing out that there is always a chance that one agent or publisher out there might enjoy my work sufficiently to go into bat for me, and one is all it needs.
So the past two weeks have seen me furiously scrambling to submit my synopsis and sample text of varying lengths to as many suitable agents as I could find in the estimable Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. And in theory I had nothing to worry about by doing this - the magic of email eliminates the cost of paper, envelopes and stamps from the submission process, and the self-publishing option is always available if no agency is interested in taking me on.
But, boy is the fear of rejection strong! And this is a central issue with my writing, because it hasn't only been lack of motivation that's staunched my creativity at times. As a possessor of low-self esteem and crippling paranoia that everybody is out to criticize me in some way, the act of putting my completed work out there for judgment is akin to removing all my clothes and lying in the middle of a main road. Sure, there might be a few people who'd think I'm making a profound artistic statement, but everyone else would dismiss me as utterly barmy.
The very act of creating art implies a certain arrogance, not to mention referring to it as such. The wannabe-published writer acts on an ego-driven assumption that his work is somehow worthy of being added to the towering pile of cultural entertainment on offer, because it's better or different to what's already out there. And this does not fit in with my general personality at all. Sure, on some level I know I can write to a reasonable standard, but I'm somebody who gets genuinely sad and envious when I'm really enjoying a book because I know I could never write something that good. So although I don't think my unborn novel is terrible per se, I still view my submissions to agents as somehow dishonest, like a market trader selling knock-off Kelvin Klein fragrances.
My wife would say that the above paragraph is nonsense, that I could achieve far more if only I believed in myself, and I admit there's some truth in that. There are people out there making a name, if not a living, for themselves from their writing who are by no means great artists and would admit that themselves. But confidence gives you a platform to sell yourself, to enroll onto courses and join writers' groups where you can hone your skills as well as network and schmooze. In short, a window into a new world. My writing career so far has been more like a dungeon from whence I produce the odd piece and perfunctorily release it into the world with little or no fanfare. It would surely take one hell of a talent to land a publishing deal from such a nondescript background.
Tradition dictates that I spend the remainder of this piece focusing on the positives:
(1) After countless hours in front of MS Word on computers and tablets, I've finally produced a completed novel. Whatever its quality, I'm proud to have started such a complicated project and seen it through to completion. Not everyone can say the same.
(2) I deliberately (perhaps naively) set out to write exactly what I wanted to, not something that fits into a genre-based straitjacket. Agents and publishers are ultimately in this game to make money, which is not meant as a slight. I could quite easily have set out to write a high-concept thriller like the majority of bestselling fiction seems to be these days and had a significantly higher chance of being signed. I didn't, which also makes me strangely proud of myself. (Up to a point.)
(3) The submissions process, particularly reading the many advice articles in the Yearbook, has made me realize that it's good just to write stuff, and it's not a crime to publicize it. Not everyone will like what you write, and that's okay. But the more you write, the easier it becomes.
I'm going to try not to let a smelly, wailing baby stop me from doing something I enjoy. So watch out for my forthcoming novel, probably appearing later this year in a Kindle store near you (other e-readers are available, but Amazon are a market-cornering monolith so whatcha gonna do). And be prepared for far more regular reviews, travelogues and general ramblings on here as the year goes on. Don't say I didn't warn all five of you.
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