If literary characters had representation...

The freezing drizzle fell heavy on the fine balance for my morning run in the mountain. A warm bowl of porridge was so much closer, so much… warmer. My laptop sprung into life without any such reservations and pinged Facebook updates at me, the weather, breakfast cereals and the internet were now joining forces against me. I didn’t stand a chance. I shut down the distractions and went to perk some coffee. Scrivener took me to the cliffhanger where I had left my characters dangling. Waiting saviour, solace or slaughter but I had none. The cursor blinked and blinked. My heart began to sync with it but no word, no letter came.

finally my characters huffed and stomped off to their trailers, chiding me over their shoulders as they left me alone, “Call us when you got something interesting to do.”

It’s a good job literary characters don’t have representation. Their trailers cost me a few keystrokes but the rewrites were endless. I made the mistake of giving a protagonist a shrink once and he’s still harping on about improving relations with his mother.

“Yeah! I’m going to update my facebook status.” My fragile, sympathetic heroine spat. I’m glad I don’t give her many lines, she’s an awful actress. Everyone knew she was going back to his trailer.

The cursor is still winking.

The bit parts start getting shifty.

I look at them and they look back at me. I could build you into a love interest, an evil nemesis, a cyber-borne virus.

“Ok, great! But get on with it. We took a day off Lidls for this. It may be minimum wage but it’s a living wage.”

The other mumbles something about a double shift at Nando’s.

This isn’t the first time I’ve hit a wall. You know what it’s like. What’s that face for? You know what ‘The Block’ feels like, hanging in the air above a huge abyss just knowing that falling would be preferable to hanging. I grit my teeth and began larruping the keyboard but the closest to a word I can get is q-w-e-r-t-I.

I’ve had this before. I got past it. I revisited an old post to benefit from past wisdom.

Fuck! Even I’m goading myself from the past. All I need now is for my late Grandma to call me and point out what a useless hack I am. She was published long before me and deserved it more. She lived through a world war, I barely made it through a consumer spending slump.

It’s simple, all I need to do is write, that’s what my past self tells me.

Inspired by my bullying self, I roll up my sleeves and resolve to write. Write anything and see where it takes me. I get back to scrivener just in time to see the bus leave, taking my remaining material off to a double shift at Nando’s.

Sod this for a game of soldiers! I’m going to lounge on the sofa and watch Stewart Lee slag off rich people with a cup of herbal tea…

…and a bacon sandwich.

The 3 Rs - Reading, Writing and Running

I previously wrote about what it takes to be a professional writer. Now I’d like to talk about how it feels. What follows is a metaphor, a big one but I think it will make sense to many of you.

I read, I write and I run. Running is something that I began some years ago and now it is an integral part of my life. Before I started running, I always said that I wouldn't even run for the bus, which is a metaphor on its own, but very true.

[METAPHOR]

22k of Blair Witch Horror

Running is hard, the hardest part of running, irrespective of distance is before I start. Making that decision to finish my coffee, stop reading and slip into my sweats is the tough part. There are always so many reasons not to, an article relevant to what I’m writing, the wife needing an ear to bend, social media, the rain. There are so many reasons not to and only ever one to do it.

But once I’m out the door it doesn't get any easier. Any of you who run distances will know, the first 2k is the worst. It’s when your body is truly awakening and your lungs resist the effort, colluding with your mind to find credible arguments for turning back and trying again later.

Once you've found your stride it does get decidedly easier, one step leads to another and the miles begin to flow (yes, I know I mix my metric and imperial distances, I’m British! Another metaphor, maybe?) After around 4k continuing becomes easier than stopping.

Now a personal message; I run trail. It makes running much more difficult, my routes take me into the mountain where I live, up steep loose tracks where six-minute kms are hard to achieve, fording streams, climbing rocks, risking sprains and wild animals. But that is how I like it. I find peace in the mountain, far from the madding crowd and traffic. The same goes for my writing; I don’t do romance or vampires. I do satire and sometimes it’s cold and sometimes so hot my sweat glands begin to pant. The challenge does not abate, each corner brings a call to push harder and I try to tell myself that at the brow of the next hill is a rolling decline. But as any trail runner will point out running downhill can be a s perilous as a climb, the impact on joints and the concentration to stay upright is exhausting.

If masochism is your game forget 50 shades of Grey, you can add another factor to trail running;

Barefoot running;
Brains and feet in harmony

barefoot. I began running (metaphor alert!) in cheap supermarket shoes. They had thin soles and I felt every stone and crevice, my nipple also get very sore (nothing to do with the metaphor but I had to tell someone) as a result I learned to use my foot to absorb the impact then I discovered that this was an entire philosophy; barefoot and minimalist running. I spent a bit of money on a pair of barefoot shoes (yes, an oxymoron) but they are like your most comfy socks with a little protection from the harshest surfaces. Many runners swear by shoes that do all the work, impact absorption, arch support and traction so that their feet become passive and, in my view, lazy.

Running has taught me so much about perseverance, setting and achieving goals and focusing on the brow of the hill. The euphoria I feel when I've pulled off a half marathon off-road or cut my time down is unbeatable.

[/METAPHOR]

We love writing but sometimes it doesn’t love us back, get used to it and take what you can from the experience. You may never earn a living from it or win any competitions but taking part is the only way to be sure of that.



Be sure to share and comment below or maybe you have your own writer's metaphor.

All you need to make you a Writer

So, you're a writer?

Ok, so you’re a writer, eh? I want you to write something, could be a scene or a description, your choice. I’ll wait, I’m not going anywhere.

Super, now read it. Done? Great, now I want you to delete it. Yes, delete it!

So, you don’t want to, eh? How about leaving it on your hard drive somewhere or send it to me. I’ll read it and delete it.

Now we’ve ascertained what you want. You want to write and you want people to read what you write and you want it to be more than just me.

For the next demonstration I’ll allow you to use your imagination, but it might be fun to do it for real. Again, I’ll wait. Go down to your local burger joint, stroll in and flip some burgers. Do it for as long as you enjoy it, then walk out. Alternatively, you can walk into and an accountant’s office, sit down and do some really tough sums. Now ask the owners of the accountants office or burger joint for some pay. What did they say? How rude! Ok, now do that from time to time, a couple of times a week, even a little more. Now ask for some wages. Maybe a little less rude but still no money, eh?

So, you write but you are no more a writer than a burger flipper or an accountant until you employ a work ethic. There will be no paydays until you start clocking on and becoming productive. Your writing is a hobby and that’s great but we already decided that you want to be read and by more than just me. That’s only going to happen if you get readers and that takes work.

Turn off the TV and social networks. Do accountants and burger-flippers have them as part of their day? Nor should you.

Set goals, keep to them. 1000 words a day is a good start, not as easy as it sounds but you will be able to fit it in with your day job.

With that goal you will be able to finish your first draught in less than six months.

Learn proper use of grammar. This is the tool of your trade. Read Strunk and White’s Elements of style, it’s a great first step to improving you’re(sic) use of punctuation and much more. Then go back and edit your work.

Read. Read fiction of varied genres but do not ignore the craft of journalists. A good article will drive you to the end and that is what you want your story to do. Some of the best authors were once journalists, George Orwell, Martin Amis and Graham Greene to name a few.

If you really want to be a professional writer, you need to adopt a professional approach. Being a professional means learning your job, learning the business, putting in the hours and producing the goods. It is (almost) that simple.

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Writer's block... Are you buying it?

There are as many reasons for writer's block as there are writers but at the heart of it is often one simple fact... you don't buy it!

Are you buying it?

Writer’s block is so ubiquitous that it’s a cliché. Non-writers know about it, films have been made about it but we live it. We know how crushing it can be to watch the cursor blink, mocking us in our ineptitude, like a rabbit in the headlights. Everyone has some advice on how to deal with it and sometimes I feel like more has been penned on the subject than chain-smoking detectives. 

The fact is that there are a myriad of reasons for it, as individual as you are. It may be distractions, the kids screaming, Facebook, a tense moment in the book you are reading or piles. This is easy, disconnect, go to a haven, be it your private space or an anonymous café, apply cream and write. What I want to address is when you just can’t get your characters onto the next page, when you just aren't buying it. 

I was sat there recently, goaded by the cursor when I decided to take a break to regroup and battle on. I took myself onto the veranda for a smoke and started cruising goodreads looking for the next good thing to read. Instead of checking out the reviews, which is as helpful as it is baffling, I started with the back cover summaries. After two or three I got really hooked by one in particular David Wong's "John dies at the end. It didn't try to tell me anything, it spoke to me, it invited me in without summarising and I bought it. It made me think about my work and made me think about why I had seized; I didn't buy it. I had lost my connection with the story and the characters, characters I had loved and loathed. And if I didn't buy it why should you. I began to compose a pitch for my story, I tried to summarise it, I tried to describe it; I still wasn't buying it. Then I started selling it to myself inviting myself into the story and introducing myself to the characters not as written protagonists but as people as friends who were having a shitty time of it, friends like you. I am now back into it throwing them back into conflicts with each other then taunting them with saviour. My block has gone because I am buying it again and so will you.

There are so many reasons for seizure but confidence and involvement are at the root of many of them. Get beyond the page and stand shoulder to shoulder with your people and make their case for existence then get back into the frey. If you don’t buy the ride then no-one else will. 

Now, get back to it and write something you buy. Post a pitch in the comments, if you like.

      

Next time: How to find your way when your story has left you in the dark without a candle.

                       

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Note: The image above was borrowed from the anti-human trafficking campaign Traffick 911. Please lets not forget that slavery is unacceptable, irrelevant of where the person is taken from.