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.
Anne Simonet
Unfinished Business
Upmarket contemporary women’s fiction
***************************************************
“What are you saying Harvey?”
“Give ‘em what they want.” A devilish smile spread across his face. “Or what they thinkthey want.”
“I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”
He shrugged. “Our demographic is kids, the young people. We got seventeen-year-old boys sittin’ in the dark waiting, hoping Kikki Parks will take off her shirt. Fourteen-year-old girls tearfully praying that Jake Banks will one day unbutton theirblouses. They want sex. And it’s our job, no, your job to give it to them.”
Cass’s stomach clenched; it sickened her to think of where he was going with this. She had to find a workaround. “We have a contract in place that specifically–”
“Forget about contracts!” he roared.
“Harvey! She’s a child!” Cass snapped.
“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”
“It’s a tween movie. We won’t get the rating.”
“Let me worry about ratings, kid.”
“You’ll be sued. The mother is evil. She will not let this go.”
Rosen laughed. “She don’t have a chance against me. I’m fine. It’s you that’s in trouble. You’re the producer. Now start fuckin’ actin’ like it. Turn up the heat out here.”
“You expect me to ask the mother?”
“I ain’t askin’ little girl,” he said.
“I won’t do it, Harvey.”
“Give me a film I can sell, Noble.”
Slits of colorless iris stared from beneath his pulpy brow. His enormous head pivoted slowly as he opened his window slightly—a sign the ‘discussion’ was over.
The film business is not about morals or art. It’s about the bottom line. Rosen made hit movies, had a track record. Behind him stood a legion of lawyers, limitless leverage and absolute power over every aspect of the All Star product. This was not the hill to die on.
She sighed and reached for the door.
Eva Hnizdo
“Why didn’t they leave?” novel family saga
Dear Otto,
I must write this down. It is my fault so many of the family died, they could have left. Do you remember how in 1938, everybody was talking about emigration?
I told everybody that there had always been antisemitism, and our family had coped, that we would cope this time, too. Remember?
“We should stay together,” I told you.
“Our family had lived in Prague for almost six centuries. the Czechs are not antisemitic, neither are the Prague Germans.”
I remember the lunch; the cook made roast goose, but nobody paid any attention to the food, everybody was arguing. Hans kept talking about his brother’s influence at the American embassy in Prague. In 1946, when Irma found out that her parents and her brother were dead, she shouted at me that I killed them. She immediately apologised, but Otto, she was right.
You all listened to me, you were good, loving, and obedient children.
We lost all property, and half of the family died. It was me, not just the Nazis who were responsible.
I was devastated in Theresienstadt. How did everybody suffer! Your poor brothers and Helena. If it weren’t for me, most of us could have been safe in America. I stopped it, it was awful when so few of them came back.
I want to die. Outliving your children and grandchildren is unbearable.
Do you understand why I was pushing you to emigrate in 1948 when the communists came to power? You didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want you to make the same mistake again. Staying till it’s too late.
.Otto, stop worrying about me. I am ready to die soon. Magda is expecting a baby, a new member of the family.I don’t deserve to be forgiven.
Your mother
Lee Darkin-Miller
It’s All About Teddy
Comic Thriller
—————————————————
The man’s body I’d left here two days ago, lying lifeless on the kitchen floor, had mysteriously disappeared from the flat, and as the shock wave of confusion continued to settle, I found myself perched on a pouffe, in front of the TV, sucking my way through a bowl of egg noodles. I’d seen the programme before. It was called Bovis Investigates, and this episode found our local, silver-haired super-sleuth, probing the illegal food trade.
A persistent fist, hammering the front door, jarred me from my stupor. I looked over, and waited.
The thumping stopped.
I sucked up the final noodle, and turned my attention back to the TV. Bovis was dodging a thin plastic-bag of illegal meat, and as I snorted a laugh, I noticed a folded piece of paper being pushed beneath the door. I placed the bowl on the floor, and went over to investigate. My back cracked like a handful of twigs. Fuck a monkey! I grabbed the paper, and inspected it. The name Teddy was scrawled in pencil, and even though that wasn’t my name, I prised the note open, and read its insides: The Broken Barnacle. Nine PM. Order something hot, hot, hot. I miss you. Kiss. I grumped at the sentiment, and pulled a bottle of prescribed pills from my pocket. I threw a few in my mouth and, rubbing my back, shuffled back to my seat.
The Broken Barnacle was a pub in town. I’d never ventured inside, but I’d passed it on the way to my doctor. My doctor’s name is Keith. He’s the one who’d prescribed the pills for my back, claiming I wasn’t getting the recommended daily dose of body nutrients.
I scrunched my arse deep into the pouffe, and read the note again. I had no idea what I’d find at the pub, but it was my only lead.
Lisa Endersby
The spaces between us
Literary/Magical Realism
Any one of the East Nar village men sired Adelaide Skipper’s baby under a frigid night-sky, the moon sitting high and pale in its muted blanket of stars.
Nine months’ and eleven days later the baby crowned beneath the stiff tented shelter of her skirt. No moon or stars hanging above; the sky was blue and clear. Coming down to her knees against the bare hedgerow she could hear the voices of the crabbed gang-workers dragging their quarry sideways, feeling the steady rhythm of their hands plunging into the earth with the planting of each seed.
Rain began to fall to meet the heat rising from her body, shrouding her in a fine mist. New skin fell. Slipping down on to dry ground, passing lightly through bloodied thighs; apart yet still bound as the purple cord spread its lifeline and mottled the earth burgundy, sweetening the air. As the cloud moved, earthy warm skin turned slippery cold grey. Left waiting, wanting as time passed by.
A metallic scent flared as sun warmed earth. Adelaide Skipper returned to her knees and released a red silken ribbon from underneath the waist-band of her golden-beet skirt. Running it softly through worn earth-ridden fingertips, bringing it to her lips, before binding to hold fast around tiny ankles. Scooping the raw cool body into her arms, she wrapped it in an empty potato sack kept close those last weeks. Attending quickly, she lowered her pebble-laden mud-heavied sack into the swiftly dug cradle where autumn rain had softened bloodied earth.
‘Girl forgive me. I will return for you.’
Adelaide Skipper touched her fingers to her mouth, teeth working free the soil bedded beneath her nails. She savoured the dirt on her tongue and, as she swallowed each small grain, the surrounding air was once again sweet.
J. a. Neame.
A Lost Dream.
YA: Fiction
Carrie’s observation staring at the argument hasn’t gone unnoticed by one of the girls, who seems to have the loudest mouth, her voice can be heard above the others and Carrie has taken it as axiomatic that the girl is approaching her; The girl is shouting in Carrie’s direction bustling her way passed others, – “Wot ya fukin lukin at, bitch?” For the first time in Carrie’s life, she feels extreme fear; her heart pounds against her chest, and she can’t control the trembling in her body. She can’t look away; her body is frozen like she is playing the game of ‘statues.’ Her mind can’t concentrate on what she should do but she is saved in the nik of time before any confrontation can take place; Beth calls to Carrie to come; Robert wants to enter the toyshop for that wanted Spiderman costume and the sound of Beth’s voice comforts Carrie to race towards her Mother.
Nothing much escapes Beth’s attention when it comes to her children; Beth can tell something is bothering Carrie, she is trembling, she can’t be shivering it isn’t cold outside.
Beth understands her daughter’s anguish and she describes the moment as an ‘unfortunate and untimely argument,’ Carrie had aroused discomfiture by observing that groups disagreement, – “Sometimes people need to relieve their anger with a language other than the queen’s English and such occasions are sometimes best left for the recipient to solve.” Beth is experienced in social conventions although the bad language isn’t something she agrees to, – “There are other ways of solving a dispute other than swearing.”
Carrie and her family haven’t time to witness the outcome of the argument; Robert impatiently wants to try on that Spiderman costume and that means being away from the view of the doorway.
Sirens and flashing blue lights entice Carrie to the toyshop window. The group has fled but one young man is laid on the ground in a foetal position holding his hands to his stomach.
Chris Cutler
The woman who could not be loved
Historical fiction
A sparrow hawk soared above the foothills of the Pyrenees, jesses flicking in its slipstream. Below, the Garonne snaked its way from Aragon. Fed by glaciers it entered the Languedoc by a narrow defile and down into the rich fertile plains below. By the time it reached Toulouse it was broad enough to provide the ancient mediaeval town a trade route to the sea. The falconer held his arm aloft, proffering a morsel of rabbit to tempt the bird back to his heavily gloved wrist. The bird refused and instead swooped towards the monastery gardens. The Dominicans relied on more that God to protect them. The hawk settled on the window ledge of the fortified tower. It fixed me with an eye as penetrating and cold as that of my inquisitor.
“Do you believe in transubstantiation?” For the benefit of the scribe he spoke in Latin, condescendingly repeating the question in Occitan. Sitting carelessly on the carved oak chair he had no need to augment his authority by standing. He was tall and broad shouldered. His heavy cloak caused him to sweat even though the room was cold. I trembled as I knelt before him. Only a thin linen shift lay between my naked skin and his cold stare. I have little more than fifteen summers. I guess that Galand has seen thrice this. Even so in his stare I detect more than the coldness of the priest. My breasts are swollen. In the chillness my nipples protrude. They leak. Darkness spreads in the linen that covers them. My daughter must be fed. The leaking has not escaped the notice of Jean Galand. Nothing escapes him.
Beverly Wray
Acropolis Tales
The Gull and the Landfill Jewels
Magical Realism / Adventure (upper middle grade)
Chapter 89: Word from the Pluton
As if out of nowhere, a splendid, golden-eyed hawk swooped into the parlour and alighted on the back of a chair. Heads started to turn on the surrounding tables, but the waiter was taking an order, oblivious to the feathered intruders.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Cax,’ said the messenger, extracting a scroll from a large, feathery pouch. ‘Here’s the latest from the boss. Do you have the ruby ready for me to take back?’
Goony shook cornet crumbs off his cravat.
‘Not yet, Gerald,’ he said. ‘My client’s reconsidering. Besides, I’ve been way too busy.’
Ross felt a sharp stab of guilt. He’d been so wrapped up in his own concerns that he hadn’t spared a thought for Goony and how his life had been disrupted. The magpie hadn’t set foot in his office since he arrived on the island and now he was going to get into trouble with Chiggy.
‘He’s spent the last eight days caring for me,’ the bird blurted out. ‘Twenty-four seven. If it wasn’t for Goony, I’d —’
‘Let’s see what Chiggy’s got to say,’ the magpie cut in. ‘Would you do the honours, Gerald?’
CRAAAAACK!
The hawk shattered the wax seal with one snap of his huge, curved beak. Ross winced. Pictured Gerald on the hunt – seizing, plucking, ripping . . .
‘Thank you, Gerald. Now, would you care for any refreshments before you head back?’
The hawk extended his razor-sharp talons.
‘No, thank you, Mr Cax,’ he said, eyeing the sugary leftovers with disdain. ‘I’ll grab myself a rabbit.’
Ross stared at Gerald’s muscly legs and mighty wings, a disturbing thought occurring to him: would he need to be equally fit to survive the journey back to Athens? Is that what Doctor Koraki . . .
K.T. Jayne
Just Breathe
Psychological thriller/ domestic noir (opening page):
Gravel pops under the tyres as they roll to a standstill. The engine cuts. It makes her flinch. The blindfold covers her ears; her shallow in-out breaths whisper between them.
‘Can I take this off now?’
‘Sure.’
She pulls her senses free. It’s dark outside, but for a pink glowing halo around a huddle of silhouettes in the near distance.
‘Better get masked up,’ he says, handing her a red, resin half-face that looks like an exotic bird crossed with a plague doctor.
She slips it on. It blinkers her vision; overstates the round of her cheeks. It makes her feel closed in, like when her skin used to swell up as a kid and her face felt full and smothering. A band of tension wrings her midsection. She looks down. Red shoes. Pointy red shoes and fishnet legs. Black fishnet legs.
‘Let’s go,’ he says. His mouth curls beneath his disguise. ‘Relax, it’ll be fun.’ He slips a cable around her neck, threading the ends through a loop.
Black fishnet legs. Swinging out of the car. Shoes on gravel. Red shoes.
Just breathe.
A threadbare fox drags its hind leg across their path. Its slack jaw hangs open, tongue wilting over its canines. It starts and stares as they approach. They eye each other, he with his snout, they with theirs. Then it limps into the night, keening like a strangled baby.
She shivers, teetering towards the bristling body of semi-naked revelers that are drawn towards the neon.
It’s underground. Oh shit, it’s underground.
The heels of her stilettos catch on scabs of tarmac. She wobbles. He catches her elbow.
‘OK?’ His voice is muffled, like John Merrick. Or Joseph. That was his real name. He doesn’t look like Joseph Merrick though. Underneath his black beak he’s quite normal.
Emma Rooney, ‘BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR’, women’s fiction.
Ebony is the last one of my family – my immediate family, I mean. I know Odette and Kasia and all the rest of them are ‘family’, too, but they’re not – what I mean is, they don’t remember, they have no personal memories of me and my life from that whole glorious and wonderful and happy period. They were not part of it all. They only joined so much later on; they only know me as a grandmother. They know nothing about me as a mother, as a wife, as a friend, as a young woman. Those sides of me are just photos and video clips to them.
The severing of the last physical thread connecting me to the woman I was in the period before they were all born is imminent. Ebony does not have long left.
She has decreed that something has to change, that I can’t carry on existing merely as some sort of ‘ancient matriarchal relic’ – her words, not mine. She’s insistent that I need to create a new identity as a woman in my own right. It’s not as though the same idea has not occurred to me, too, during the last fifty or so years. Of course it has. I’m not immune to the allure of having all that again. Sometimes I think about it, and the longing for it makes me want to weep.
But I am ever mindful of the cost: at some point down that road, there will be more ‘outliving’. I wonder if I am really willing to add yet another inevitable goodbye to the tally. Because that’s what it will mean for me, won’t it? This is at the heart of it. I stay alone, for fear of being left alone.
“If I’m by myself, nobody else can say goodbye.”
Steve W. (Wechselblatt), WORSE THAN MURDER, paranormal mystery
Her eyes didn’t even flicker, and for a moment I wondered if she were still alive. I couldn’t look away. Where was he taking her?
My focus narrowed to her eyes. Wide and emerald- green. They drew me closer and closer. I passed into the blond girl’s body, felt her fear, pain, and uncertainty. My legs ached from being yanked. My head bumped along the carpet. A rug burn seared my scalp. I inhaled the reek of urine, sharp and acrid.
At the elevator, the man stopped. He fumbled behind him for the elevator button and dropped the girl’s legs. She moaned, a weak sound, almost a whisper. But then panic locked her throat –and mine – choking off the air
A ding, and the doors slid open. He pulled her into the elevator. Her head barely cleared the threshold before he stepped back, turned, stopped and stared back at the girl– and somehow I was sure he was staring at me. His eyes were razor sharp, cunning and cold.
Trembling, I struggled out of the girl.
He vanished.
On the dingy carpeted floor of the elevator, the girl stirred.
I hovered above her. This was the price I paid for my gift, watching tragedy unfold.
She blinked twice. Wide eyes took in the open door, the empty hall.
I watched her realize the doors were going to close.
She bent her knees and pushed herself onto her elbow, then one hand at a time, until she sat. With her hand on the floor, the She pivoted toward the side of the elevator, using it to brace her as she pushed to her feet. The wood wainscoting slid down her spine, rubbing over each vertebra