Of abseiling and avoidance
Oh my fine fat furry friends, this time last week, I was stuck. The door to my Shed of Ideas was jammed and I couldn’t lay my hands on a crowbar, or even a flat-bladed screwdriver and a dab of oil.
And this week? The door has been flying open in the wind. There are ideas – dusty but beautiful – lying all over the floor, spilling off the shelves, getting tangled up in twine and squashing the seedlings.
There is enough stuff here that I already know what I want to tell you next week and maybe even the week after that.
But, for now, one little bit of housekeeping:
Because Covid is a pest and because lockdowns are boring
AND
Because we got lovely feedback on my live self-editing webinar a few weeks back (one that was open to JW members only)
AND
Because we love each and every one of you, not just the wise souls who pay us money,
AND
Because self-editing is the only sure and certain pathway to a book as beautiful as you want it to be,
WE THEREFORE DECIDED
To offer a live self-editing webinar to everyone.
*** For free ***
You just have to pitch up.
It is on 19 November at 19.00 GMT
What we’re going to do is take chunks of YOUR work (see the PSes for more about that) and edit it live on screen. I’ll show you exactly how I would change the text, if it were my own piece of work, and I’ll talk you through my thought process as I do it.
You lot, meanwhile, can use the live chat to pour scorn on everything I do, offer suggestions of your own and generally participate.
The webinar page is here. Remember that although the event is free, you do have to register, because otherwise the system doesn’t know who to admit. Registration is sweet and simple. You’ll get emails telling you exactly what to do. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. More details in the PSes if you need it.
Right-ho.
The Shed of Ideas.
Last week, I told you that you don’t have to be good at everything. That’s true if you only think about marketing. That’s true if you think about writing. It’s most certainly true if you consider yourself as an author in the round.
That was – to judge from the responses I got – a useful, bracing, encouraging message. It permits you to be a bit shit at certain things and still to feel OK about yourself. It matters more that you have genuine dazzle in one or two respects, than that you can handle every aspect of an author’s craft with real competence.
OK. Good. But even knowing this, it’s still easy for us to get stuck.
In my Life Before Kids, I used to do a bit of mountaineering, and I remember one time in the Alps where my buddy and I were descending a mountain. The ascent had been a bit more scary and painful than we’d expected and we were tired and very much wanting to get down to somewhere warm and with hot food.
We were following a ridge that we thought would take us all the way down to the valley, only then – our nice little ridge turned into a 250-foot cliff. There was no way we were going to down-climb that, so we had to abseil off, belaying halfway on a crappy little ledge that wasn’t built to Switzerland’s normal excellent standards.
I’m not scared of abseiling in general, but I do remember being afraid this time. I was cold and tired. I knew that cold, tired descents is where most climbing accidents occur. There was just something about that long, wet drop which I still don’t like to think about. I remember tying a knot at the bottom of the rope to make sure that I couldn’t just abseil accidentally off the end. That’s not something I normally do, but I was scared of my own dulled reflexes.
Anyway. It all turned out fine. The crappy little ledge halfway down already had a bit of climbing tat fixed to the rock, so we hadn’t been the only climbers to have chosen the wrong way down. We got down to the valley. Got warm. Got fed.
But – that fear.
That’s something we all know, isn’t it?
We’re 60,000 words into a manuscript. We know the start of the story, because it’s written. We sort of know the ending (because the thought of it has been keeping us going for that long middle-of-book slog.) Only then, we hit an unexpected plot obstacle. A wet 250-foot cliff that faces north and whose granite has a tendency to come away in your hands.
The fear halts us.
And, OK, your plot obstacle may come earlier in your book, or later. And the metaphor you might choose to describe it might be different from this one. But this I bet is true:
You avoid contact with the obstacle because you’re afraid of it.
Instead of tackling the problem directly, you engage in any kind of displacement activity. You re-edit the stuff you’ve already written. You follow idiots on Twitter. You walk the dog. You hoover the floor. You (ahem) waste your time reading this email.
But you need to tackle the problem directly. You need to take that rope off your back and throw it down that dirty, wet cliff and do what needs to be done.
In plainer language, you just need to write. Don’t know what the next chapter is going to be? You don’t have to know. Write the next sentence. Any sentence. Just get it down. Then write the next sentence.
The trick is to force your character into motion. Force yourself into motion. Yes, it’s possible that a chapter you write in this way is rubbish, but even the act of writing a rubbish chapter will show you the way need to go.
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
That’s a Picasso quote that one of you sent me a few weeks back.
And damn the man – he’s right. With plotting problems more than anything else, m’lady Muse will only solve your problems if you put a shift in.
Here’s another thing: it may not be fun.
Abseiling down that cliff was not fun. It did a job and delivered an outcome. (The blessed, blessed valley floor!)
We mostly think of inspiration as joyous, but that thought can be a blocking one in its own right. Sometimes, the right thing just isn’t going to be entertaining as well.
So, if you are facing a problem that you don’t know how to fix, just say to yourself:
- This isn’t going to be fun
- I don’t have an answer
- The chapter I write now may be rubbish and have to be deleted
- But in doing these awkward and unpleasant things, I get myself closer to the valley floor and the full joy and happiness of writing my lovely denouement.
- What’s more, the gifts of invention and understanding will only return to me if I get stuck in. If I move my character and story along.
- The best solutions are always specific, which means they mostly come when you are working at very specific issues. (Not, “where should the book go next?” but “What paragraph follows this one?”)
And heck. My self-editing style means I edit as I go. I hate leaving crappy chapters in my book and want to scrape them free of barnacles before I proceed. But that’s me.
If you want, just write your bad chapter – your wet, dark, dirty abseil chapter – and move on. Leave it. Finish the book.
When you come back to that place as you edit, you come to it from a place where you know everything else about your story. Exactly what happens and when and how and why. And if the chapter still feels wrong, it’ll be a hundred times easier to fix, because you know so much more and because that sense of fear will have left you. Worst case scenario? You have a couple of dodgy chapters in an otherwise good book.
And so what? We’ve all written a dodgy chapter or two.
We’re not perfect and don’t have to be.
PS: That self-editing webinar:
PPPS: Yes, I know. Most of our webinars are still just for members. Upcoming for you lovely JW members:
Lovely member humans, can go and look at your webinar page here. Non-members can see what they’re missing here.
Name: Joseph Bates
Title: The Witches of Kimball
Genre: Supernatural/Thriller
Sample:
it’s a pretty gruesome scene inside, and we need you to identify the deceased if you can.” “We believe that it is your Grandfather but we cannot be sure.”
Feeling like I had entered a horrible dream, I followed him inside. The kitchen was just as I remembered it. A shaft of sunlight coming from the window by the sink crossed the room and highlighted the table with Grandpas coat and work gloves across the back of the chair.
His work boots were near the door, and his pipe was lying in the ashtray. There was a vague burnt odor in the air and my fingers brushing against the coat felt a slight coating of oil or grease as they touched the fabric.
A feeling of foreboding, almost palpably evil came over me as I followed the detective into the living room.
The corner opposite to the doorway was blackened and charred almost up to the ceiling. The rocking chair in that corner was blackened and the back of the chair was burnt away, Horrified, I noticed that all that remained of the person who had been sitting in the chair was a pair of legs.
The remains started at the knees, leaning against the burnt seat of the rocking chair and extending downwards to the feet. The legs were still clad in blue jeans and the feet wore a pair of brown slippers that I realized with a shock looked like the ones that I had given my Grandfather last Christmas.
Turning around, I stumbled through the kitchen, out the door into the yard. Bending over I gave up the lunch I had eaten an hour ago.
Name: Mark de Jong
Title: No Fixed Abode
Genre: Mystery
Andrew was 14 when he won his first debating tournament. His competition had left the stage in tears. In that moment, as he surveyed the cheering crowd, Andrew felt alive. He was hooked.
Five years later, he ran for student president. He won again, and by a wide margin too. Despite having few real friends, nobody had disliked him enough to not vote for him. But it wasn’t long before he resigned. It turned out student president was all title, no power. And he wasn’t there to work. He was there to govern.
Following high school, he studied political science and joined the youth wing of a smaller party that prided itself on being just a little radical. He attended rallies, knocked on doors and wrote many contentious letters to newspaper editors under a variety of names. In short, he paid his dues. Why the party had chosen to promote someone else over him was an ‘oversight that will come back to haunt you’. At least that is what he had hissed to the bewildered party secretary as he stormed out of the office.
After failing to get enough support to start his own party (pundits noted that he lacked both experience and ideas), Andrew cut his teeth as a real estate agent. And he was good at it. He earned a reputation as someone who could sell anything, no matter how leaky it was, and, after a couple of decades in the profession, he found himself sitting comfortably in the highest tax bracket. Some well-timed investments in the stock market (a tip from a friend of a friend barely counted as insider trading) earned him the right to say that his net worth was in the top 2% of New Zealanders; a statistic he checked at least once a year on an online calculator he had found.
Name: Alex Bowers
Title: Table for One / Tuesday at Richie’s (undecided)
Genre: Family Saga / Literary Fiction
Sample:
Grace smirked. ‘I think you can do better than that.’
‘How do you mean?’
Her eyes darted across his face, reading him in, playing. ‘Ask me something more interesting. Ask me something you really want to ask.’
Oh, he liked her. He liked her a lot. ‘You telling me we’re not playing by the rules?’
A delicate yet un-innocent giggle. ‘Some rules apply. Not all.’
Thomas appeared confused in all the right ways. I’d seen him with many girls over the years – some who’d made enough of an impression to warrant a second date, most who hadn’t – but this here was a woman. A woman, I hasten to add, who clearly had much to offer and, perhaps most importantly, wasn’t prepared to play all her cards at once. Shadows cast themselves across her elegant light-brown skin, an air of mystery oozing from her like a long unopened jewelry box. Her hair, darkest black, curly and captivatingly unkempt, fell just above the shoulders, framing her bewitchingly. Thomas had noticed it, too – all of it – and I could tell, even from where I was sitting, that his mind was racing.
He took a sip of wine – rich, indulgent. This was all a game… and it was his turn. ‘All right,’ he said, leaning back into a half-stretch, ‘I take it you ain’t gonna tell me which rules?’
‘Find out.’
A mighty quick turnaround. Well-played indeed. Leaning forward again in his chair, staring back into those mischievous eyes, he said: ‘Why tonight?’
Grace knew exactly what he meant. I could tell. He could tell.
Thomas continued: ‘It’s – shall we say – an unusual way to start a new year.’
‘I like unusual, don’t you?’
Name: Rebecca Ritchie
Title: The Box of Time
Genre: YA
She fell. Her neck bent uncomfortably, grass pushing between her eyelids and up her nose. The smell was sweet and fresh. But that was all there was. Her body was a dead weight and her brain too. Deep darkness was sinking into the centre of her skull and pulling everything in after it. A cool black pool was growing in the depths of her mind, with soft waves that lapped gently and pulled her in, tempting her to just float in its darkness.
The shouts of Mr Grieve and the other pupils buffeted off her last thread of consciousness. Not one of her muscles would move. She didn’t want them to. She just wanted to float.
The voices were close now. Her limbs suddenly lightened and she was eased over. Mr Grieve was close. His breath against her ear. Gentle words and the sound of sirens.
Were
they there? She had to see. She had to fight the darkness.
Her
eyes flickered as a dazzling light flicked on and off with them. The sun was rising. She squinted. Mr Grieve was next to her. But where were the others? She was sure she had brought them back. She had to have done. She had felt it in her bones.
‘Eleanor it’s ok. We’ve got you. The ambulance is almost here,’ he sat back on his haunches to peer toward the gates. Both his arms went up in a wave toward the corner of the field. Eleanor didn’t care about the ambulance. All that mattered was that in that moment he moved backward, and she could see past him. Her eyes squinted in the bright light long enough for her to see them. Four forms on the ground next to her, gently moving and twisting as they came back to consciousness.
Christine Jordan
MisPer
Psychological Thriller
PROLOGUE
I check behind me. No-one.
The path leading to the car park is narrow and dimly lit. The bushes on either side dense and shadowy. The broken street lamp doesn’t help. There’s a smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation and a whiff of methane from the landfill site. My boots crunch on the hard frosted ground. I quicken my step, searching the undergrowth in case anyone jumps out at me. The car park ahead looks empty. Three cars remain. Everyone else has gone home to safety.
I hear a noise. A dull thud, then a screech. I stop and listen, twirling in every direction to check who’s there. I can’t see anyone. Must have been a fox I tell myself. There are plenty of urban foxes in Gloucester.
I never wanted to go to this damn conference at Shire Hall. The timing was all wrong, but my line manager had insisted. ‘It will enhance your skill base,’ she had said. I had grunted at her like a peevish teenager and sloped off. And now, because I agreed to go, I find myself in a dark, isolated car park and there is a killer on the loose. I say killer but nobody really knows. They just disappeared. Three women in the last year. Three missing persons.
I don’t want to be the fourth.
I carry on. There is something on the path ahead of me. A shopping bag. Apples and potatoes scattered on the floor as if someone has discarded them in a hurry. I run. I can see my car. My car keys are in my hand, gripped like a weapon, just in case. At least I don’t have to waste time scrabbling around in my voluminous bag to find them. My heart is thudding, not from exertion but terror.
Name: Simon Amey
Title: Home-schooling Masterclass
Genre: Non-fiction
The schools are closing. It’s March 2020, and COVID 19 is in the peak of its first wave in the UK. In an unprecedented move, the nation’s schools shut their doors to all but the children of essential workers. Pupils are sent home to learn what they can there.
There’s collective anxiety, distress, bemusement and uncertainty. And, for me, excitement. This was the moment I felt I’d been born for.
You see, I’m a wannabe teacher. Back in school, I got top marks in English language, English literature, and Maths. And physics, chemistry and biology. Also, French, German, geography, business studies, and design and technology. Also philosophy and psychology at degree level. And some more physics, also at degree level. At Oxford.
I was that kid in class – the one everyone asked what they got on the test. I loved it all, equations, essays, words, chemicals. Not plants, so much. And don’t ask me to put up a shelf or fix a fence. But when it comes to school, I loved it then, and it’s stayed with me now. I could finally pass all that on to my kids, for their own good, because circumstances had forced it. Not really because I wanted to, or anything…
So I stocked a cupboard with mechanical pencils, bought a twelve-pack of blank exercise books and worked out how to fit lessons around my full-time job.
It turned out I learnt more than my kids over the next few months. I had grand ideas, and I tried them all. Some worked spectacularly, and some completely failed. I switched around the weekends, let the kids pick lessons, used scaffolding, social embedding, partial reinforcement… All kinds of tips and tricks. Many worked, some didn’t, but I can share them all with you.
Name: SJ Clarke
Title: Ace of Riots
Genre: YA
Cali looked in the mirror. In the reflection, a man got dressed. He perched on the edge of the unmade bed and buttoned his shirt. Not traditional Al Arbani clothes. A trader then, maybe. She’d already forgotten his name. He’d been nervous, embarrassed. Probably married. Cali tucked a loose braid behind her ear and checked her make-up.
In the mirror, the man put his shoes on. Cali sighed, not wanting to leave the relative peace of the room just yet. She adjusted her crop top, the material a shock of pink against her dark skin. Fake, stuck-on gems caught the light. And something else. A flash of scarlet at the window. She turned too late and it was gone.
“What was your name again love?”
Cali jumped. He stood behind her, awkward.
“Sayani,” she said.
He pressed a crumpled bill into her hands. It was warm, sweaty.
“I’ll ask for you again Sayani.”
The door clicked closed behind him. Cali opened her hand. Ten adons. A nice tip if there were any chance in hell she’d get to keep it. She tucked it into her top, just in case, and began to make the bed. Bedsprings squeaked through the thin wooden walls. She adjusted the pashmina that she’d draped over the bedside lamp. It cast the room cool blue, somehow lessening the effect of the stifling heat.
Above her, the ceiling fan whirred. A hanging goat foetus blew gently in the displaced air. It, along with the various other amulets placed around the room, was meant to fend off the Devil’s influence. Cali looked at the decrepit thing and snorted.
“Good job,” she said.
The snake that bites its tail
Bob Farrand
Psychological thriller
Lucy walks into the sitting room and looks kindly at her husband. He is slowly disappearing into the darkness they both knew would submerge him but there are still good days, days when he smiles and his memory is almost perfect. Days he seems eager to spend with her and the youngest of the grandchildren.
Today has been that sort of day. Following a trip to the local farm shop, they enjoyed a quiet lunch at home, fresh bread, his two favourite cheeses and a glass each of good Bordeaux. It looks as if he polished off the rest of the bottle while she was out.
She sits in the chair alongside him and leans in close. His breathing sounds weak, barely audible. She glances at the small table to his right and an icy chill rips down her spine on seeing empty foil strips of paracetamol. She then notices a half-empty bottle of Armagnac flat on the carpet beside his chair.
An envelope propped against the round porcelain base of a table lamp is addressed in her husband’s large but still quite ordered handwriting to ‘My darling Lucy.’
The ambulance is reassuringly quick reaching the village, its flashing light casting iridescent blue across Robin’s alabaster complexion as it pulls up outside the living room window.
The paramedics are lightning fast. Lucy watches through hot tears as they check her husband’s airways, place an oxygen mask over his tranquil face, raise his shirtsleeve to insert a hypodermic needle into papery skin and strap on a blood pressure monitor. He is breathing, albeit faintly and she hears one of them report over the radio his pulse is below 30. She thinks that might be serious.
Name: Nancy DeWitte Condon
Title: Paddle For Water
Genre: Travel Adventure Memoir
Excerpt:
“You want to portage over that?” I look in the direction Tom’s paddle is pointing and am incredulous. We are bobbing along in our canoe, navigating the lively waves of the Pacific Ocean, looking for an opening in the jetty that separates us from the Columbia River. Tom points to a spot, not unlike any other, where waves crash and spray showers jagged boulders.
“There’s no other way,” Tom yells over the drone of the wind. I am dubious about this decision, but he’s the more seasoned canoeist, and I have faith in his abilities. I direct the boat to where he indicated and bring her alongside. “We’ll have to make this fast so the boat doesn’t get beat up,” he yells as he gingerly exits the pitching boat and finds some secure footing. “I’ll hold her away, and you untie the gear and toss it to me.” I do something like that, slinking along, staying low, attempting to maintain my balance, shoving the heavy packs to within his reach, and tossing him the smaller ones. It is a frantic operation, but all the gear gets lodged behind one rock or another on this hill of quarried boulders.
“Now we’ve got to haul the boat over to the other side,” Tom hollers. The empty boat is now frolicking madly with no ballast. I slink astern, find a good foothold on the jetty, and quickly shift my weight from tossing canoe to solid rock. I shove her stern outward as Tom lifts her bow, pulling the canoe up the rocky ridge while I hoist the boat as each thwart files past me until I grasp her stern handhold. Then I join his pace and step lively, carrying my end of the canoe up, over, and down the jetty ridge where we settle her in the more docile water of the Columbia River.