The transition from short stories and blogs, to writing a book is a big one. A journey that will be littered with mistakes and hard lessons learned. Two lessons for me were key.
The first step in creating a book, other than desire, is an idea. Eventually one day we find ourselves stood in a high street, or as I recently read of John Grisham - stood outside a court, and a sequence of events initiate the equivalent of a creative big bang and suddenly the concept for the first book has lit up our imagination. If you are anything like me this will probably be followed by a lot of daydreaming and planning and a lot more daydreaming. Sometime later we struggle writing the first chapter and endlessly re-write it, then we move onto the second chapter and endlessly re-write that. To break the tedium we go back and re-write the first. This cycle will probably be repeated, certainly it was for me. I realised something was wrong. I calculated it would take seven years to write my book.
The first thing I was doing wrong - darling
I am not sure why this is, and I am not sure if this is a UK thing or whether cultures across the world tend to be as literary pretentious as us English speaking natives. But suddenly with a whole book as a stage I unconsciously realised an opportunity to go all literary. No sooner had I strung together a few pages of story, I came over all Nabokov with a sprinkle of Fitzgerald.
Which is not so wrong in itself, I suppose. I'm not sure where it comes from. I have spent time on writing sites and it is often the same. Just as soon as anyone realises their potential they're off, emulating the greats of literature. I guess psychologists would have an explanation, that we are imprinting known quality into our style. Except the reality is most of us don't have a literary background. We haven't spent a lifetime juggling words, their sounds and experimenting how to play them viscerally through the readers mind. Which means apart from the odd flourish, what we write in this style is generally very hard to read for anyone but ourselves.
The harsh truth, even if we were endowed with literary prowess, is this genre of fiction is on the wane. A large number of modern minds are not tuned into the kind of fiction that requires struggling through beautiful, halting prose, with no clue for what's going on, to reap the rewards of a human or cultural observation dazzlingly made somewhere near the end. Most people, and I count myself in that large number, want a book to entertain and intrigue. They want a journey and your words must simply be a conduit to great characters and riveting story. As I researched the difference between literary and commercial fiction, I discovered thriller/crime novels accounted for over half the fiction books sold anywhere, across all the genres. I kind of knew this, these were the kind of books I wanted to write, so why wasn't I?
The other thing I was doing wrong - who would read it?
The next realisation came almost immediately after. I had cut out the literary pretentions but I was still editing the hell out of each chapter. It dawned on me I was not writing the kind of thriller novel I thought I was writing, because I was so focused on creating the story - I had not given a single thought to who would read it. With no audience in mind and focusing only on the story, I was now writing in the style of the book I was reading at the time. Which was why I was doing so much editing. I would finish a book and that book would be imprinted on my mind and I'd edit through the chapters making them reflect that style. And then I'd read another book.
It was a real rookie error. A story isn't just in its creation, it has to be pitched. The best way to explain the realisation, I think, is to imagine telling a horror story to children around a camp fire, and then the same story to a group of adults. Do you tell the same story and detail in the same way to children and adults? Of course you don't. The story is angled and pitched to the audience you are telling it to.
These were epiphany moments for me. Realising the purpose of my writing was to tell the story, not to be an art unto itself, and to have in my mind exactly who I was writing for, changed the whole destination of the book. In my mind now, I was writing thriller fiction for men and women. I had a story specifically chosen for both genders, the audience would be over 25 and probably under 50. They would be reading on trains while commuting or on buses. They might have packed the book for a holiday and be reading on the plane or on sunny balconies, or on the beach or in the evening while drinking something cold. I wanted them to be so enthralled by the story's pace and the characters, they would not want to stop. That they would trot down to the beach each morning looking forward to reading more, or getting home from a commute and putting the book on the bedside table and enjoying that guilty pleasure of reading into the night. These are the things for me that define a good book. It became my mission statement.
That was two years ago. The first book they say takes the longest time and that will surely be the case. It was a very steep learning curve, from which there are many more stories for other days. Two years should be less than one for the second and I am a third of the way into it. Very soon you will be able to read the first book - Chasing Innocence, and decide for yourself, what I got right and what I got wrong.
The first step in creating a book, other than desire, is an idea. Eventually one day we find ourselves stood in a high street, or as I recently read of John Grisham - stood outside a court, and a sequence of events initiate the equivalent of a creative big bang and suddenly the concept for the first book has lit up our imagination. If you are anything like me this will probably be followed by a lot of daydreaming and planning and a lot more daydreaming. Sometime later we struggle writing the first chapter and endlessly re-write it, then we move onto the second chapter and endlessly re-write that. To break the tedium we go back and re-write the first. This cycle will probably be repeated, certainly it was for me. I realised something was wrong. I calculated it would take seven years to write my book.
The first thing I was doing wrong - darling
I am not sure why this is, and I am not sure if this is a UK thing or whether cultures across the world tend to be as literary pretentious as us English speaking natives. But suddenly with a whole book as a stage I unconsciously realised an opportunity to go all literary. No sooner had I strung together a few pages of story, I came over all Nabokov with a sprinkle of Fitzgerald.
Which is not so wrong in itself, I suppose. I'm not sure where it comes from. I have spent time on writing sites and it is often the same. Just as soon as anyone realises their potential they're off, emulating the greats of literature. I guess psychologists would have an explanation, that we are imprinting known quality into our style. Except the reality is most of us don't have a literary background. We haven't spent a lifetime juggling words, their sounds and experimenting how to play them viscerally through the readers mind. Which means apart from the odd flourish, what we write in this style is generally very hard to read for anyone but ourselves.
The harsh truth, even if we were endowed with literary prowess, is this genre of fiction is on the wane. A large number of modern minds are not tuned into the kind of fiction that requires struggling through beautiful, halting prose, with no clue for what's going on, to reap the rewards of a human or cultural observation dazzlingly made somewhere near the end. Most people, and I count myself in that large number, want a book to entertain and intrigue. They want a journey and your words must simply be a conduit to great characters and riveting story. As I researched the difference between literary and commercial fiction, I discovered thriller/crime novels accounted for over half the fiction books sold anywhere, across all the genres. I kind of knew this, these were the kind of books I wanted to write, so why wasn't I?
The other thing I was doing wrong - who would read it?
The next realisation came almost immediately after. I had cut out the literary pretentions but I was still editing the hell out of each chapter. It dawned on me I was not writing the kind of thriller novel I thought I was writing, because I was so focused on creating the story - I had not given a single thought to who would read it. With no audience in mind and focusing only on the story, I was now writing in the style of the book I was reading at the time. Which was why I was doing so much editing. I would finish a book and that book would be imprinted on my mind and I'd edit through the chapters making them reflect that style. And then I'd read another book.
It was a real rookie error. A story isn't just in its creation, it has to be pitched. The best way to explain the realisation, I think, is to imagine telling a horror story to children around a camp fire, and then the same story to a group of adults. Do you tell the same story and detail in the same way to children and adults? Of course you don't. The story is angled and pitched to the audience you are telling it to.
These were epiphany moments for me. Realising the purpose of my writing was to tell the story, not to be an art unto itself, and to have in my mind exactly who I was writing for, changed the whole destination of the book. In my mind now, I was writing thriller fiction for men and women. I had a story specifically chosen for both genders, the audience would be over 25 and probably under 50. They would be reading on trains while commuting or on buses. They might have packed the book for a holiday and be reading on the plane or on sunny balconies, or on the beach or in the evening while drinking something cold. I wanted them to be so enthralled by the story's pace and the characters, they would not want to stop. That they would trot down to the beach each morning looking forward to reading more, or getting home from a commute and putting the book on the bedside table and enjoying that guilty pleasure of reading into the night. These are the things for me that define a good book. It became my mission statement.
That was two years ago. The first book they say takes the longest time and that will surely be the case. It was a very steep learning curve, from which there are many more stories for other days. Two years should be less than one for the second and I am a third of the way into it. Very soon you will be able to read the first book - Chasing Innocence, and decide for yourself, what I got right and what I got wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment