I have made a new contribution to my "Writing and Reading
For Pleasure" series on Mick Rooney's TIPM site for February 2017 as a reflective post on happenings in the last seven moths.
When I started writing this post last
Friday I should have been on the hospital operating table. A small procedure making
me either into a "new grumpy old man" or a frightening and fear filled start along a
road to becoming a "bionic man" but instead the x-ray machine to
progress the Asimov type procedure broke down. Totally unexpected, but it gave
me a few hours to write a TIPM post and do other things on my long to do list.
Fortunately I only have to wait another three weeks for them to try again.
I made my
usual annual trip to France
for two weeks at the end of June 2016 using the direct London Marseilles
Eurostar to Lyon. Then various time-consuming
local links to my remote destination. Despite being unwell while there, I had the
reassurance of my host plugging me into the local emergency services just in
case, which thankfully I did not need. I also managed to return home, albeit
with the stress of various connections and having to exit the Eurostar and reboard
at Lille for
security all thanks to Osama Bin Laden. Apart from the Lille experience I recommend the Eurostar
service and see it has been expanded from the twice a week service of last
year.
While in France I
surveyed the time I had available in my life and the various pressures. Since
2010 when I started writing essential activities, other than writing, had been
crowded out. These now needed attention so I took the decision to restrict
writing to a major push on self-editing my million words written between 2010
and 2014 and to drift my reading back to non-fiction. The casualties were
keeping an active web presence and checking web advice and posts which were
taking much scarce time at the expense of editing time.
I also took
sometime to filter all the advice I received and read about how to write since
2010. Reading some of my early stories I felt they were much fresher than more
recent writing. I decided in my efforts to improve my writing I might have been
squeezed into literary conformity by those giving advice. Many had not managed
to write best-selling books or receive consistently high reviews in their own
writing.
I have found
my self-editing and limited external edits on my writing long and painful. As
previously pointed out in earlier posts I am a learn by doing person. Being a
writer is not a short-term activity. While reading the splendid autobiography
of Sir Geoffrey de Havilland - Sky Fever
- I chuckled at his bravery in trying to fly his first own design and built
aircraft. When airborne he did not have enough time to learn how to exercise
control before crashing and destroying the aircraft. Fortunately he survived to
build and learn to control later aircraft by flying. He did not copy the designs of other pioneers
because he thought they were all feeling in the dark.
The main
character in my long story-books, Henry Cross, believes in time travel and
finds himself in much the same position as Sir Geoffrey. He has to learn how to
control time travel once his journeys back into the past and into the future
have started. Unlike the time travellers in H G Well's book Henry has managed
to return to "go" so far.
Stephen King
and many other authors I respect have a high regard for the craft of writing
short stories. Taking this as a foundation stone I have gone back to my
original approach of formatting my long story-books as collections of
interlinked short stories, each with the following structure.
Fundamentally
a good storyline, normally but not always with a beginning, middle and end. A
good hook at the beginning to keep readers wondering. A memorable moment or
moments, some titillation, a surprise and/ or a twist in the tail or both. A
theme of LOOKING and SEEING runs through my writing and I have ordered books on
the subject by the late John Berger to study and expand my own thoughts.
Both of the
professional editors who examined my writing in 2011 remarked about my writing
being "unusual". This could have been code for "rubbish"
but if so I ignored their advice and ploughed on. I spent much time from
November 2015 to May 2016 in composing a 5,000 word short story for a
competition. I had looked at past entries and thought I could do as well or
better. I did not get anywhere because I reflect the sifters of entries
probably did not recognise the merit of my unusual fiction. Later testing of the text with editing software gave a high rating, at least
the equivalent of recent and old speeches by our national leaders which I have also
tested for fun. The editing software is much franker than my professional
editors in describing less satisfactory text as "dreadful". I wish those
editors had given me such advice but perhaps it is easier to accept such a
comment from a machine than a human. Gary
one of my professional editors says most people, over 50%, stop reading books
because they get bored. As readers do not know what to expect from page to page
of my writing I hope I can hook them in.
Since last
June my decision to narrow my writing focus has borne fruit. I have at last
cracked the tense I wish to use deciding on "predominately active present".
This a means to move towards my hated mantra of "show not tell" in
producing active rather than passive descriptions of events. The changes have
been very time-consuming.
I have been
helped by two features of the AUTOCRIT computer editing old system that is - pointing
out passive text and overuse of words. The old system which processes text over
the Internet crashed recently and I feared it would stay down, but it is up
again. While AUTOCRIT was down I looked at other editing software packages. I
have been evaluating STYLE EDITOR and find it good to use with a direct link to
and from MSWord for editing. It would be even better if it included the over
used word facility found in AUTOCRIT. I wonder what editing software other
writers reading this post may use. Analysis of this post in draft signals an
easy read rating but poor style and fair active writing and flow ratings. I
will tune up before publishing. (My tune up now shows good text in style flow
and active writing.) Any comments on the result would useful.
When I was
writing towards a target of a million words an average daily writing target
provided good discipline and pressure to write. I have failed to find a similar
spur to completion in self-editing. This is because some sections of text are
easy to bring up to a standard while others take many attempts. I am happy with
my creativity expressed in the form and mix of my plotting with only a few matters
where I have forgotten the plot. I am very pleased I did the million draft
words in a continuous process rather than book by book. I amaze myself at some
of the stories I have forgotten I had written. In various places I left chapter
headings and notes for detailed writing later. A big mistake because I find I
am struggling to complete these, perhaps because whatever the reason I could
not originally is unchanged. I have not experienced writer's block in any other
matter.
Since June
2016 I have managed to self-edit and bring text up to near publishing standard for
over 300,000 words in my first long book trilogy. I have also found on my
computers all but a couple of over 100 free-standing short stores and made them
into another volume of nearly 100,000 words. The two lost stories are niggling
me as they must be somewhere. Despite my good intents my computer filing is not
as good as it needs to be for saving my writing. I am pleased my concentration
of effort has been worthwhile.
May I wish all
writers, readers and those considering publishing an interesting, enjoyable and
productive year in 2017. I will stop now as I have gone past my target word
count for the article. I have some more material to write a later post when I
am a new grumpy old man.
Douglas