The long walk and the short one

Before we get to walks long or short, I have news:

FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE

Coming to the Festival of Writing in London on 13/14 June? Then remember we are now open for Friday Night Live submissions. That competition can be career-altering for the winner, and has been so ever since we first launched it fifteen years ago. We also have two bursary opportunities for All Access Passes, so if you’re interested in exploring those, please go for it. And if you’ve not yet booked your ticket – well, you dullard, you dolt, you clown, you clot, what do you think you’re waiting for?

SCAM ALERT

Also, just be aware that I’ve had this message from Al Campbell, a web-savvy self-publisher. He tells me that there has been a “rise of scammers sending self-published authors very well constructed (AI) based emails with very positive reviews of their books, offering paid-for promotion. In the past 3 weeks I have had offers for coverage on two major radio stations in the UK (including Classic FM), a proposal from a named and actual editorial director at a well-respected US platform called Shelf Awareness, and sundry other offers. Having checked these out directly with the stations, and spoken via email to the editorial director of Shelf Awareness,  they have all been scams.”

Those scams may be extremely plausible with accurate scans of the signatures of real decision-makers. So, please, always check these things out with care. If it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

OK, walks.

Sinclair Lewis (the American novelist, who went on to collect a Nobel Prize), was advised, at an early point in his career, that ‘The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.’

That is: the only walk you ought to be doing each day is from your kitchen to your office, mug in hand, ready to bash at that keyboard for as many hours as your real work / annoying spouse / yet-more-irritating kids / broken cars / needy mothers / unmown lawns allow you to do.

There’s truth in all that, yes.

Novels don’t write themselves. They also don’t edit themselves, title themselves, or market themselves to agents. I’ve never actually counted how long it takes to write a novel, but we’re well into hundreds of hours. Perhaps if you count all the editing / submitting / marketing / working with agents and publishing work, then the average novel clocks in at well over a thousand hours of hard graft.

So: seat of pants / seat of chair – a good basic rule to apply often.

But often, even very often, isn’t quite the same as always.

In my last email, I spoke about the disaster that happens when a writer applying the ‘seat of pants / seat of chair’ rule too obediently charges off into chapter two, before properly finding the voice that will sustain the book and make it stand out from the crowd.

That’s one version of the risk – but really, you can create huge issues for yourself whenever you prioritise building word-count over checking for problems.

• Would your villain be better as a woman or as a man?
• Have you foreshadowed your themes early enough in the novel?
• Is there a proper coherence or resonance between your A-story and your B-story?
• Does your basic concept still feel like it works now that you’re 20,000 words into the novel?

And so on. There are a million questions like this which might arise as you work, and which can’t best be answered while staring at a computer screen.

So that’s when it’s time for your long walk. Ideally, you do that properly. You book a little retreat cottage somewhere. You turn your phone off, or at least ignore it. You go on long walks with the wind on your face. And you allow your mind to drift widely and loosely over your story.

If you find yourself encountering a niggle – an awkwardness, a sense of something not fitting – you need to attend to that thought. Be open to other possibilities, to what seem like radical changes.

If you are too close to the novel – if it’s literally open in front of you – those thoughts are always at the back of the queue for attention. If you’re too obsessed by building word-count, you’ll tend to neglect the little voices of caution or concern.

So, yes, let the short walk from the kitchen to your laptop be your main walk. The one you do almost daily. The one that gets you to that thousand hours.

But give yourself space for the wind-on-you-face walk too. The ‘what if I …?’ type thoughts. Open a door to possibility and see if inspiration happens to wander in, carrying flowers.

And there endeth the lesson. Tis a (mercifully) short one today.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Present tense

A quirky little challenge that comes from a couple of things I’ve read this past week. And the issue is this: are you writing in the right tense, and if you are, are you writing well or badly in that tense?

So, the task this week is either:

Take 150-200 words of your text and swap into past tense (if you now write in the present) or vice versa. Which works best? Are you happy with your choice?

Or:

If you’re writing in the present tense and you’re worried that your prose feels a bit artificial – a bit writer-y – then give us a chunk that you’re worried about.

Either way, as ever, we want title / genre and any context please.

That will help others navigate a big old forum with speed. When you’re ready, you can post your work here.

Til soon.

Harry