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.
Mona Ombogo
RainStorm
YA Fantasy/New Adult Fantasy
The biers were carrying his brother home, where he would live forever. They had called him Xzuma Xabunge, son of Zwaze, heir to the throne; his life in the Greater Lands had been for twenty-six seasons, and now the Great Waters reclaimed him. On the shore, shoulder to shoulder, a line of twenty-six warriors of the Royal tToza guard stood with flaming arrows ready to send off the mortal body that had housed Xzuma’s spirit, for his spirit would need it no more.
Xakuna stood a few feet in front of the tToza guard, his father the king was on his right, the Chief Commander of the tToza, Qyarri, on his left. Like everyone else gathered to witness the final rites of his brother, they were waiting for him to send the first arrow. It burned now, attached to his bow, aimed at the skies. Tradition dictated that they set the bier carrying Xzuma’s body aflame before it passed the tenth oak tree that lined the riverbed. It was at the ninth. If they waited much longer, their targets would not hit the mark.
“Xakuna,” his father quietly said.
Xakuna swallowed. He was struggling, he couldn’t get himself to set Xzuma’s body aflame. He hadn’t mourned him, hadn’t accepted that his big brother was truly gone. But when he saw Qyarri, the Commander of the tToza guard stringing an arrow and lighting it, Xakuna knew his time was up. Qyarri would take his place to ensure Xzuma’s body didn’t pass the last post without the flame igniting, but it would forever be said that he, Xakuna failed to send his brother off with grace.
He took a deep breath and shot. His arrow curved gracefully into the starlit skies, landing with precision at the center of Xzuma’s heart.
Carol Lupton
Misconception
Detective-led, speculative noir
A faint, metallic click … or was it?
Detective Cooper-Clark listens, breathing lightly. Disembodied noise drifts from a distant pleasure dome, mixing with the soft, rhythmic swoosh of the overhead trans. A desolate shriek from a night bird rents the heavy sky.
He squints into the darkness, sure he’s not mistaken. The suspects are grouped around what is almost certainly another victim. One seems to be standing guard; if she’s heard anything, she’s not reacting. He fingers his sticky collar and listens again.
Another click. And another. No doubt this time. He signals the men back into the shadow of the wall and flattens himself between them. Skin of their teeth. A brilliant beam of light turns the scene into a grisly shadow play: the silhouettes of the attackers ducking and diving as they scatter in different directions, chased by a volley of baton-wielding bodies; the fleeing shapes roughly felled and dragged off-stage as a dark, lumpen mass is removed from the scene. Then the lights swerve away and the night reforms.
Stewards! He glares at the purple and sliver insignia on the departing vehicle and spits hard at the parched earth, heart racing. Typical Stews: no warning; no liaison. Weeks of careful work lost in a flash – literally. All that time; all that effort. And so close. That’s what he hates most about the armed police of the Life Program – no professional standards or discipline. Just hired thugs, trussed up like armadillos, throwing their weight around. Not answerable to anyone – apart from their Gencom bosses. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. Needs to keep it together; do him no good to lose it in front of the Uniforms.
Dear harry et al,
I added my entry a couple of days ago, but now can’t see it anywhere, so I’m adding it again – sorry if you get it twice, but it’s possible I did something wrong the first time around… sigh…
The Depths of Deception – thriller – Jackie Kowalczyk
“Thank you.” Was that the sort of information you thanked someone for? Stuart Finlay hung up, gently pressing the button to disconnect, and placing the phone back into his jeans with a forced calmness. Fuck. He didn’t feel very fucking calm.
Rebecca Adams would have been fifteen years old next month. She’d been killed the day before Fin had been hired and found yesterday by a passing motorist with a full bladder. There was nothing Fin could have done to save her, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. She’d come from a nice family, a nice home. He’d never met her but, by all accounts, she’d been a nice girl. He’d known this one wouldn’t end well. A girl like that, with a family like that, didn’t just run away.
Fin had told the parents to trust the police. Their resources outmatched him in every way possible. The parents hired him anyway. He got a lot of missing persons cases that way. The grief tore at them. They needed to know they’re doing everything possible.
Rebecca had been kept alive for two weeks before they dumped her body, fly-tipping style. After a barely audible call from the father, Fin called the officer in charge.
She’d been raped. Fin had asked. He didn’t need to know, but the thought was in his head before he could stop it. Once it was there, he’d hoped the officer would just deny his suspicions, but the short pause given before the affirmation confirmed Fin’s fears without the officer even needing to say the word. ‘Repeatedly’ was the word he’d used.
Fourteen fucking years old. That was just sick.
(Good luck to everyone – Jackie K)
Gill Lee
Relationship / thriller
Self/ murder
Shona was chopping onions and carrots, waiting for the others to come in and say ‘Smells good, what’s for dinner?’ when the floor she stood on slid and tilted and her life changed for ever. The T.V was on in the corner and she had been glancing at it from time to time as she cooked. Afterwards, in the months and years to come, she would wonder how different her life might have been if she had listened to the radio instead.
She had the curry recipe in her head and her fingers worked quickly and efficiently. She chopped and fried, added spices and bay leaves and lowered the heat so the onions would caramelise rather than burn. She had half an hour to herself, half an hour to cook and think about very little, half an hour to fill the kitchen and adjoining living room with steam and the smell of being thought about and cared for.
The newsreader’s voice droned above the sputtering of onions on the hob. Then there was movement, a shift from the newsroom to outdoors, a wide grey sky looking over a stretch of water. She stared in guilty fascination at the divers attaching ropes to a fender.
She imagined the chill of water, the swim through darkness unsure what you would touch, relieved when you felt the rounded hardness of a bonnet, the smoothness of a window or wing mirror. Somewhere she had read that if the water was cold enough, you could bleed half to death without even noticing you were cut, if you slashed yourself on metal, say, or became entangled in an old length of barbed wire. Turning back to the stove, she turned the heat low under the pan, tasted the sauce and added some salt.
Helen Wilkinson
STAINED
Children’s Historical Fiction
1483
Richard stared down into the eyes of the great white bear and jumped from the battlements. He plummeted past the white stone walls, down and down towards the black water of the Thames. Roars filled the air; the roar of the wind, the roar of the bear. Screams filled the air; a boy’s scream, a king’s scream. Extinguishing all sound, the river pulled him towards its bed. Blackness. Nothingness.
A breath’s eternity later Richard’s head burst back out of the water. The brisk dawn air slapped his face. Treading water in a frenzy of cold and shock the young prince looked around and found that he was near the bank. Then he felt a hot fishy breeze on the back of his neck. The polar bear was right behind him, his black eyes gleaming.
‘Hello Thor. You don’t mind me swimming here do you?’ Richard reached out to tickle the bear’s chin but it ducked under the water with a growl.
‘Ungrateful beast. I wouldn’t have let you out if I’d known you’d be so disagreeable.’
Richard turned and began to paddle towards the bank. His arms felt heavy. He wished he hadn’t insisted on taking Perkin’s smartest jacket. At the time he had thought that if he had to obey his brother’s orders and swap clothes with a page boy then at least he would take the best bit of the uniform, but he cared nothing for the gold embroidery and cream brocade now that it was dragging him under. Now his vanity was going to drown him.
Suddenly a great force came at Richard from under the water. Alarmed he spun round and saw a flash of wet white fur.
E.J. Murray – Earthbeat – Science Fiction Novel:
Long, long ago, Raiji looked out upon Her universe and it was good. The stars and planets moved in their orbits. Galaxies whirled and spun. All was ordered and precise.
But She was alone.
So Raiji took the desert sand and the winter rain and the red light of the sun and created the velyr in Her image. Bipedal and two-handed, with twelve clever fingers were they made. Male and female did Raiji create, and She ordered that they reproduce to share her Joy. And She saw that it was good.
*
For many thousands of years, the velyr lived in harmony with their world. Connected via the computer-driven Net, each unit knew its place and how it fit into the great machinery that was the home planet. There was no conflict, no war, for who would war against their own extended body? The artificial intelligence oversaw the society, ensuring that the world ran smoothly.
And then came the Great Plague.
No one knew where the disease came from, or why. They knew only that there was no cure, no treatment. Velyr afflicted became unfit for the Net, unable to return to the peaceful Mind they once enjoyed. They claimed no longer to be units in the great One, but individuals with the right to decide their own fates. And as these units touched others, the plague spread. In vain, the AI tried to cure the afflicted units, tried to halt the spread of the disease, tried to isolate those afflicted.
It was no use.
Lew Burja
Deadly Gospel
Thriller
Whenever Mike Broad was due to set out on an assignment that he had marked as potentially dangerous, he arranged with Hu Li or to give him his popular name, Hugh, for a special training session in Tai Chi martial art. Hugh was the high-grade Tai Chi master who had introduced Mike to the esoteric martial art. Prior to leaving the Marines, Mike had tried a number of martial arts. Having been demobbed, and discovering a Tai Chi club on his doorstep, when he first went to London, he had decided to investigate. Hugh had given him a personal taster that had left tough-guy Mike flat on his back.
From that time onwards it had been Tai Chi all the way. He had become a fanatic and was now a senior teacher.
‘Hi, Mike, so where have you been these last two weeks?’
‘Chasing employment.’
‘No kidding. I thought you had an inexhaustible supply of the readies?’
‘It finally ran out. Anyway, I got the job and my employer has suggested I may encounter some unpleasantness.’
‘Then you need the hard self-defence stuff.’
Mike nodded.
‘You were doing well here. Grand Master Chan Li is impressed. You could be number four here, after him, me and Lin.’
‘That’s great Hugh, but I’ve got this job to do. I’ll be back.’
‘I understand. By the way Lin’s joining us. When she heard you were leaving, she told me she had to be given the chance to give you a final beating, to make sure we were not spoiling you.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ growled Mike. ‘She needs taking down a peg or three.’
Sheena King
Acropolis Tales: The Gull and The Landfill Jewels
magical realism/adventure (upper middle grade fiction)
Chapter 35: The Master of Illusions
‘Crete,’ sighed Ross, the following afternoon, as he delved back into his research. ‘A perfect stop-off point on the way to —’
‘I was expecting you earlier.’
The gull staggered backwards, eyes popping. The map had spoken to him. Rebuked him for delaying his travels.
‘Well, I . . . I haven’t found the treasure yet,’ he stammered, teetering on the edge of the table. ‘I’ve still . . .’
And then he stopped, abashed by his own foolishness. He wasn’t being tongue-lashed by the island of Crete; the map hadn’t uttered a word. The voice had come from under the table. And it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar – or of this world.
‘Gary?’
‘Keep your voice low and your eyes on the map.’
The gull was shocked into obedience.
‘Have you come from the golden fields?’ he whispered.
‘No, just the city centre.’
The disembodied voice was no longer coming from the island of Crete; it was rapidly heading south.
‘What are you doing here?’ said the gull, directing his question at the shores of Egypt.
‘I had a promise to keep.’
So Gary did remember; he can’t have drunk from that river after all. But . . .
‘I passed with flying colours, by the way.’
‘Passed what?’
‘My final assignment.’
Ross felt a pang of pity for the liquidated slug; his spying feats would be of little use in the great beyond. He wondered if Gary knew he was dead.
‘And what was that?’ he asked, showing a polite interest.
‘To fake a death.’
The gull gasped.
‘Whose death?’ he squawked, addressing the Congo.
‘My own.’
‘You faked your own death?’
‘Yes, with a little help from a friend. We hoodwinked them all – even the professors. No one’s ever done that before.’
‘We?’
Claerwen Howie
Shadowed Lives
Literary Fiction Novel
1985
Holding a mug of coffee, Laura Dawson trudged across the brittle, tawny grass: a mockery of a lawn. She sat on her favourite garden bench and looked around as she sipped her coffee. The summer thunderstorms had not arrived. The severe drought continued its relentless grip over Grahamstown and huge areas of the Eastern Cape. Many plants looked burnt with a blow-torch.
Going inside, she decided to sort out her desk. At the bottom of one drawer she found one small newspaper cutting. Her heart lurched as she read it. Long-banished memories rose in her like an unstoppable wave of nausea.
The police are investigating the disappearance of a Queenstown woman who went missing while on holiday at Mazeppa Bay for Easter.
Daily Representative, 17 April 1968
Late afternoon
‘Jeez,’ said Brian, putting his golf bag down in the hall. ‘It’s shushu out there.’
Laura nodded. ‘Today threatened to be a scorcher. Despite it being mid-April!’
They sat outside on the garden bench. Laura listened as Brian talked about bunkers avoided, drives that reached far down fairways (surely a misnomer in the current conditions), chips that landed brilliantly, putts missed but, in one case, holed unexpectedly from a distance.
‘You said you had a good round. This all sounds as if things were tricky.’
‘Highlight of my week.’
In the pause that followed Laura wondered if she could pinpoint a highlight in her week. Days passed in a grey, monotonous blur. Even the undeniable tensions swirling around everyone’s lives – both here and in South Africa – seemed distant. Removed from everyday life. As if she were looking down the wrong end of a telescope.
J Brydon
A Life Denied
Literary Fiction
I watch the dry golden leaves dance along the ground, enticed by the musical notes of the wind, blowing gently through old rusted railings and large ornate gates. It’s more than fifty years since I first stood here. I hug myself against the biting late autumn wind. Distant painful memories encircle me.
Back then I was a naïve young woman, about to enter a world of promise and excitement beyond which my imagination held no boundaries. I’d approached this place with such anticipation and delight I could barely stop myself from shrieking as the gates swung open to receive me. Ahead, the grand building sat proudly, beckoning its visitors to enter the realms of its vast interior where lay its innermost secrets. A stout middle-aged woman with greying hair, clothed in a stiff tweed skirt and sensible shoes, greeted me. She led me through the solid wooden doors into the entrance hall.
“Mrs. Haversham, I presume. Do come in and meet the rest of the team.”
“Doctor Haversham,” I corrected.
“Of course, forgive me. We’re not accustomed to a lady doctor in our midst, one tends to forget not all female staff are merely nurses or secretaries,” the woman replied rather coldly.
I hastened my step to keep up with her, shoes squeaking on the marble floor. She reminded me of a small rodent, scurrying across the ground in search of food. She escorted me along a wide corridor leading off the main hallway. The walls were painted white, the air filled with a faint smell of antiseptic.