Lonely editing writer seeks affirmation

Editing is a bitch. It sucks. It goes from heart breaking to heart filling in moments, from ‘wow, did I really write this?’ to ‘shit, did I really write this?’ And it’s a huge job. A mountain of paper, endless words strung together, mostly in the wrong order, so much to think about, so much going on. It’s so much bigger than I realised.

Writing is fun, the creativity, the from the heart, free-flowing and inspirational tapping of keys. Writing is fast, it moves, it develops. Editing is slow. It’s defined by the scratch of the pencil, the scratch of the head, the notes to self to ‘move here’, the ‘delete this’, the lines crossing things out, the scribbles to add things in.

The bad is disheartening (‘is there even any point?), the good is heart-filling (‘maybe I can do this after all’), the great is the best feeling ever (‘I can do it; I have done it’).

I’m editing now. It's a lonely job. Sometimes it hurts really bad but there's no one to share that with. Sometimes it's totally joyous but no-one understand why, at 6am, you are so happy and awake and alive. Currently I'm on page 83 of 254. I probably need to lose about 25,000 words in the process. I definitely need to make it better. I have to keep on going. I have to be brave. I have to use my head. I can do it.

Sometimes I just need to convince myself of things.
Sometimes I just need a ‘you’re doing alright’.
Sometimes I just need to know that it’s going okay.
That’s part of the universal condition: we experience things the same way and that is comforting to me.
Sometimes I just need to write and not edit.

Changes

Since my last post I’ve moved house and started a new job. That’s quite a big change for someone like me who needs some kind of routine to get by. The new flat is great and the new job is going really well, so that’s all good. The writing, however, hasn’t been such a smooth transition and it’s the fiction side of things which has stopped.

It’s the routine, you see. I used to get up at 5.30 and write for two hours but I just haven’t got back into the habit yet. And I need to get back into that habit. I miss it. I do need it. I’m reading about writing, which always inspires me. I’m feeling creative and full of energy again. I’m in the writing mood.

Now it’s just deciding what to write. I’ve lost some love for the project I was working on and it’s frustrating. I might pick it up again as I haven’t touched it for three weeks, I might not. I’ve got my first manuscript printed out and ready for editing, so I might do that. We’ll see.

The new writing routine begins.

Blackberry Crumble

On Friday I wiped my Blackberry. I’m an idiot. It left me wracked with stress and fear and panic for two hours as I tried to at least get it working again, which required reloading the default programme. The good news is that I managed to salvage most things but I had to go back to a complete box-fresh start. I lost all texts and emails stored on the phone and all recent contacts. Not too big a deal in the grand scheme, just super-stressful and unwanted.

The phone wiped because I supposedly got the password wrong 10 times. I didn’t get it wrong but the stupid thing didn’t accept it. On the final attempt it had a warning along the lines of ‘If you get this one wrong then you are an idiot and for security reasons I will wipe your precious phone of EVERYTHING’.

That’s when I thought I knew what the password was, a different one to what I had been trying. Will it really wipe my phone? I thought. What if this is the right password after all? I was told the risks, I considered the risks, but I still went ahead and tapped in those four numbers. Those four incorrect numbers. The rest is a blur. All I remember is the phone screen going white and the words ‘wiping data’. I freaked out.

The point is this: I knew the possible risk but I did it anyway. Why did I do it? What part of me thought it would be worth the risk? In retrospect it seems completely foolish but deep down there is this devilish side to the whole thing which was poking me and saying, ‘go on, try it, that won’t really happen, go on, just try it’. I didn’t think it would really wipe my phone and I guess that devilish side of me wanted to test the technology.

Technology 1 – 0 Mark (Final Score)

The interesting lesson learned: I acknowledged the risk but did it anyway. People do stupid things because they think it won’t actually happen. In fiction this is a good trait to be aware of, I think.

One of those days

Sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

Today is one of those days.

I’m sick of staring at a white screen, the cursor blinking sarcastically, impatiently.

The real fear is this: there’s nothing left to write.

The real hope is this: there’s everything left to write.

Tomorrow will be better.

Motivation

It’s a strange thing. It’s a very unique thing. And we all want something different from it, emotionally, psychologically. In its entire form I want to succeed for a number of self-gratifying reasons: fame, fortune, recognition, respect, being remembered, self-worth. But none of that motivates me truly and deeply.

When I think about succeeding in my goals it’s pride that motivates me. I want to see something that I have entirely created and I want to see people buying it and enjoying it. It may only be this thing on a shelf but that thing is a window into my heart that is made with love and dedication and pride.

Pride is an important thing to me - being proud and making others proud. I’ve read both Stephen King and Kurt Vonnegut talk about writing for one person and writing to please just them. I have three but they can be taken as one. I write to please them and to make them proud, to give them back something for all the love which they have given to me.

And do you know how this pride ultimately manifests itself in my motivation imagination? It’s in one simple thing: the dedication in my first book. It’s the thing I dream about writing, the thing which gets me through hours of writing a week and months of editing, it's the thing which makes my heart thump in my chest. When I get to write it then I know that I will have achieved what I want to achieve. When the people I want to read it get to open that cover and read it then I will be the proudest person in the world. That’s what motivates me.

Blake Snyder

Some words are truly inspiring and they make you see everything in a technicolour brilliance that is so clearly obvious yet so hidden from your own vision of it. It takes their words to make you see it. It takes their insight, their experience, their special vision. It comes when you read a sentence and you get the ‘why didn’t I think of that…’ or the ‘oh yeah!’

I’ve read quite a few writing books. John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story is a favourite, Stephen King’s On Writing is excellent, as is Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. But the one which first did it for me was Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! (and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies). It’s clear, simple, precise, funny, easy to read and full of ‘oh yeah’ moments. It’s a screenwriting guide really, but it works just the same for novels. It’s about the ‘beats’, about different character types, acts; about working out what’s wrong with the thing and how to change it; and about promoting the story, getting a great logline and selling the thing. The first pieces of fiction which I wrote were screenplays and it was this book that inspired me the most and it continues to do so as I try to write novels.

I just found out that Blake Snyder died yesterday. It’s such sad news. I have both his books on my desk now and I know there was a third one in the writing. He was - and is - an inspiration, a guiding light. You can’t teach someone to be a good writer, but you can guide them in what good stories are by showing them how good stories are constructed. That is what he taught me.

Working Title: Wild One. Update 1

Long time between posts. This is bad form already.

Here’s the news: I’ve started on novel two, it has a working title of Wild One. I’m 12,000 words in after six or seven days, or something like that. It’s going ok. Ok, not brilliant. There are a few scenes which I love already; there are a few scenes which feel more laboured. The good scenes are the ones that I knew all about, the ones I dreamt about writing, the ones I saw so brilliantly in my mind’s eye. The less-good ones are the passages between. The plan: carry on and don’t stop, keep writing until The End and then go back and fix things. That’s the easiest way for me or I get stuck; I need forward momentum in my writing.

My favourite part so far is meeting an important minor character. I imagined her walking across a field of barley with the warm sun setting behind her. I still picture her like this now; it’s a flash of a moment, nothing more, and it’s the one defining image that I have of her, which I had from when I first scribbled about her in my notebook. It was fun to sit down and actually write her into the story and bring her out into life.

I even managed to write something which made me cry. That’s the first time this has happened to me. I don’t know where it came from but as I was writing it it felt so real that it really affected me. I hope it affects others in the same way.

The story is set in a brewery and as a massive beer geek I’m trying to tone down on the beer stuff and make it more about the people, the place, the sensory feel of everything, the real story and heart of the thing. It’s making me thirsty though, so thirsty that I’ve spent way too much on bottles recently for ‘research purposes’. Whoever says research is a chore is writing about the wrong kind of thing.

And this is me

I won’t jump straight in. I’ll ease myself into this new project with some introductions, and all that, because I think it’s important. It’s like the first page of a book, before the story begins but beyond the fancy cover and raised typeface saying A book by.... This first post, like the first page, will last forever (the blog’s ‘forever’) as a reminder of what this thing started out as. And this thing is, amongst other things: my place to write about anything and everything; it’s for fiction and nonfiction, pertinent stuff and irreverent stuff and serious things and stupid things; it’s where I can escape to, a place to forget whatever I’m doing and scribble anything else; it’s something very personal; a diary; a launch pad; a therapist’s chez-longue; a helter-skelter into my brain and a raunchy ride with my psyche.

It also comes as I am about to start writing my second novel (always start the story at a moment of great change and upheaval, show the hero’s flaws, make him human, make him want something truly important, make him get it after a torrid struggle…). I started the first one in January 2009 and I finished the first draft in April 2009. Then I went through and polished it all, sorted out tense and tone and characters and took it from sloppy splurge to structured story. Then I hit save in June 2009 and hid it away to give myself some objective distance from it. Since then I’ve been planning story two and that’s pretty much ready to go now, so I’ll start that with the aim of finishing the first draft in November. Then I’ll jump back to the first one… I hope that this blog will also serve as somewhere that I can write about the problems of writing, the mood swings, the moments of deepest darkest despair and those glorious, giddy highs where everything is just perfect. Maybe I’ll even work through character ideas and motivations and all that stuff too, I don’t know yet, let’s not make plans too soon; consider this the first page of my journal that will be filled with the ‘everything else’.

That should probably do it for now. Except to tell you about my beer and food blog at Pencil&Spoon (it’s beer with my pencil and my spoon, you see). It’s just me drinking and getting drunk and writing about it. It’s good fun really. Although the real purpose goes a little further, I hope… It’s for me to describe the sensations of the senses; to relate people and place with mood and feelings; to see how drink makes us feel on a deeper level than just a bit silly. It looks like a beer blog but scratch around and I hope you’ll see that it’s a bit more than that. I try to have fun, on occasions I try to write in a way that no one else writes about beer and I try to make people thirsty and hungry.

And this is me. I don’t entirely know what to expect of this but I hope you like the way I order the words on my page.