What’s your hidden mantra?
Here’s a thought:
You will, consciously or unconsciously, have a philosophy of writing, a set of assumptions or beliefs that underpins everything you do. But what is that philosophy? And is it helping you? Or (more probably) does it partly help you and partly block you?
I had that thought because I’ve definitely had a philosophy that has partly helped and partly hindered. My first novel (The Money Makers) was a playful, enjoyable, highly commercial romp. I started the book while still working full time in the finance industry and, before I’d been in finance, I’d studied economics and philosophy at Oxford.
I came to writing fiction deeply aware that all my recent training – Oxford and finance – was deeply unhelpful when it came to writing popular fiction. I needed to chuck out the long sentences, the jargon, the fancy words. I needed to bring in tight, clear, physical, compelling writing.
So I developed the habit of checking my prose for readability – literally checking my readability score for each chapter. The metric I used was the Flesch-Kincaid score which looks at sentence length and complexity of vocabulary, then gives you readability measure in terms of what high school grade would be capable of reading read what you’ve just written. I aimed for a score in the 6-7 range, meaning that kids of 11-12 would in theory be able to read the book. In practice, of course, it was an adult novel, but beach reads ought to be nice, easy, fast reads, so that’s what I aimed for.
In practice, I probably overdid it, but my theory was sound. I managed to erase my past training and sprung into print as a fully formed commercial writer.
I developed some other ideas too. One was an absolute horror of boring the reader. I wanted something on every page to prick the reader’s interest. That might be a plot movement. It might be some snappy dialogue, or a joke, or anything else – but I wanted to sustain the reader’s interest from very first page to the very last.
As a result, I also became relentless at tightening my prose. A nine-word sentence that could equally well be a seven-word sentence struck me as baggy and weak.
Many of those habits stuck with me. I’ve become a much better writer over the years, but I still have that horror of being boring. And it’s mostly worked out for me: my books have sold for decent amounts and my readers have enjoyed reading them. That’s a win, right?
Except that even healthy habits can become limiting. What if I took the risk of a few slower or less vibrant pages, in the hope of gaining some deeper reward? Gone Girl, for example – which is a commercial novel in my genre – took those kind of risks, and the risks paid off massively, not just literarily but commercially as well. You could say exactly the same about The Talented Mr Ripley. You could say the same, in fact, about Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I’m not saying I could have written those masterpieces under any circumstances, but my “gotta be interesting at all times” credo meant I was never even in the game.
Other things too. I used to believe that I had to write / think / edit my way into fluency. I sometimes had an eight-hour writing day and often enough, four hours in, I’d thought plenty, and tinkered with some of my previous prose, and tried out two or three approaches for the next chapter … but not actually got any meaningful new text down on the page. I thought that this three- or four-hour approach march was just the way my creativity came.
Then, along came the kids. I never had an eight-hour writing day again. If I even managed five or six hours, in bursts, over the course of a day, that was a highly unusual day. So out went my arid approach march. I just got more productive.
Another example: I used to think I wrote old-school adventure fiction. (Plenty of excitement, but not much violence.) Then that career dwindled, because my book sales didn’t keep pace with my advances. So I undid my previous belief about what I could write, and turned to non-fiction. But I’m a fiction writer at heart, so I came back to fiction again but in a markedly different genre and written in a markedly different style.
And all this makes me wonder: what beliefs or methods do you have that help you and simultaneously block you? Here are some possibilities:
- “I can only write in genre X”. I bet that’s not true. I don’t think that’s true of any really passionate writer.
- “I have to get this book agented before I can start another.” Maybe. But what if this isn’t going to be your breakthrough book? At a certain point, you have to ditch the project and start another.
- “I would never self-publish: it’s beneath me.” Right. Mark Dawson was published by Macmillan, who sold very few books. Now he self-publishes and he’s sold millions and is one of the highest-earning authors on the planet. But sure. Of course, you wouldn’t want that outcome. Think how awful it would be.
- “I have to write the kind of prose that my university workshop group would admire.” Right. Except those guys aren’t the ones handing out contracts, are they?
- “I have to write Great Literary Art. I wouldn’t stoop to anything less.” But debut literary novels need to sell. If you aren’t thinking commercially (as well as artistically) your Great Literary Novel is likely to entertain the contents of your bottom drawer and nothing else. That box of pencils and those day-glo Post-It notes will love it, though.
- “I like books from the 1930s / 50s / 70s / 80s and I want to write like that.” People sometimes think that because (let’s say) Agatha Christie was and is a huge bestseller, they could write a book like that and do as well. But of course they can’t. If people want a Golden Age crime novel, they’ll turn to Christie or one of her peers. If people want contemporary fiction, they’ll buy something recently published. By all means, write Golden Age crime fiction with a contemporary twist, (The Seven Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle being an obvious example.) But bring something of the now into anything you write.
- “I need to write with hand-turned pencils in a badgerskin notebook in only my favourite café and only in the morning and only if they’re playing Chopin on the music system.” Yeah, right. You aren’t actually going to write anything then, are you?
Those are some commonly held, and unhelpful beliefs, but I’d be genuinely interested to know what ideas you have that may or may not be helpful … or, better still, which are both helpful and unhelpful, useful and limiting.
So tell me. Or – better still – tell each other on Townhouse. These beliefs are really fruitful if they stimulate. They’re destructive if they restrict. And they’re not static. Something that was helpful last year might be holding you back this year … and quite likely, you haven’t yet noticed.
So notice.
Here endeth this epistle. Oh yes, and they’re charging us by the word for PSes this week, damn their eyes.
My background as a Fleet Street reporter was fabulous training to write punchy sentences, and distilling complex ideas into plain English.
That serves me great in fiction.
That and to write quickly to deadline and not be precious about my words; most of it got subbed to death.
Not be precious: that’s a very useful mantra. My background in finance did help there – I was completely used to writing a presentation, then having a million other people tear it apart, then rewrite it from the ground up. Good training
I’ve always been trying to write something that the English degree that no longer exists in the now heavily restructured University I graduated 16 years ago would be excited to put on their reading list. I keep having to ask myself “Why?” in order to stop myself.
That same degree had Ulysses on the reading list, which came with experiences of people breaking down and crying, throwing it across the room, and even hitting it with sticks. Why would I wanted to write anything that bright young minds are *forced* to read and study? 😂
Absolutely! I agree with that
I think I just want it to be good. I wanted the satisfaction of doing it and have lived the process. But as it’s gone on, I feel it’s OK so I’d really like to try and get it published too.
I always enjoy your pieces Harry , I have been struggling with believing anyone would like to read my novel apart from me! I guess that makes my hidden mantra trying to believe in myself? My novel centres around miscarriage, based on personal experiences, the agents i submitted to rejected on the basis of too much editing needed (I tried!) but I wonder how much was that they were scared of the subject. Maybe it was just that bad! I take pride in the fact that I got 70k words down in some semblance of a plot and that keeps me going. So I have started a new story, at some point I will look at self publishing but I’ve just had my rainbow baby so not a lot of time right now to do anything, but I’m trying. One fingered typing whilst feeding/holding her is quite entertaining. 😊
I was faced with the same problem as Harry — how to change style. In my case, decades of legal cases and organisational issue papers, followed by international governance consultancy. Example — a 100 page proposal for the Terms of Reference for a study on lobbying of procurement in the health sector in Bosnia.
So I read and read and read. For me, the breakthrough was to consciously copy Lee Child’s Reacher stories. Slicing and dicing. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. (See, I’m doing it here.) It was a step too far, of course, but It helped immensely.
Had the same problem with changing from factual legal writing to telling a story. What worked for me was a writing group where I had to read out my stuff weekly and listening to feedback and how others did it. Keeping it short and sweet worked best and adding the odd, sensory detail.
But nothing helped one of the members – an ex-GP – who, when writing short stories used to include loads of medical jargon as if writing a report to a consultant: eg instead of ‘he hit his head on the kerb when he fell and looked worryingly pale as I called the ambulance’ he’d go on about ‘subdural haematomas,’ despite everyone telling him to think about ordinary readers. He eventually paid someone to publish the book
The book of your GP colleague sounds like a marketing failure rather than a writing failure. There are probably lots of student medics, people interested in medicine and so forth who wanted exactly that sort of book. I was once a physiotherapist and I too felt immediately interested when I heard of a novel with accurate medical terms. Given an ability to get the right market your GP should do well.
You may be right, Georgina, but what I meant to convey was that he hadn’t tuned into writing non-medical texts and so failed to interest his chosen audience (of general readers of short stories) because of that. There’s a time and place for using the correct terms without bamboozling the general reader. For example, if I have abdominal pain, I don’t want to be condescended to by a doctor talking about my ‘sore tummy’ or if my husband has fallen and has a haematoma, I want that straight. Lots of non-medical people know what it means. But, as a lawyer who wants to be read, if I’m writing a story about a cottage, I would say ‘Jim bought it last year when he retired’, not ‘the freehold was conveyed to him during Hilary Term…’
I love to read Adam Kay and Joanna Cannon because they write about serious medical subjects using straightforward constructions with no unnecessary medical jargon – they touch the reader by including us. (Have you seen Adam Kay’s kid’s book about the body? – that’s a great read for any age.) And the Secret Barrister is very effective in showing us his anger with the mess that politicians have made of the legal system using simple, direct words and no ‘legalese’.
Sadly, my friend is probably no longer writing, he was in his seventies and failing then and later had a serious illness.
My ‘help/hindrance’ is probably the character of my protagonists. In four novels, despite name changes and other superficialities, I guess you’d recognise him. He’s ironic, sardonic and his fingers are pretty much on the pulse. He wins through. I like him a lot (and I think he likes me!) but do the two of us need a break?
Alan
I have two mantras:
1st – Write with Purpose
2nd – Always write with Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity and Humanity
I have one mantra – make it matter. That means to the characters in the novel, to whoever reads it and most especially, to me when I’m writing it. I want readers to see and feel something slipped to them in a slim envelope. I’m not published yet, though I had a pretty impressive rejection last week after four months of waiting. Guess I’ll have to keep trying.
A pretty impressive rejection is good news on the road to acceptance. Definitely keep trying 👍
Was it your Derbyshire – I hope I’ve remembered the right county – detective?