Why?

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good night. Wherever you are and whenever you get this, happy New Year – and I hope it’s going to be a cracking good one for us all.

Just one question in today’s email.

Why?

Let’s just say you achieve your dream. You write a book. You get it published (or you publish it yourself). And – the gold at the end of the rainbow, the fairy on your Christmas tree – is simply this: that you get readers.

Think for a moment how rare that achievement is. I mean: in the whole of your life ever, have you had the chance to talk at someone non-stop for four or five hours? And done so with that person’s freely given consent?

Of course, you haven’t. I haven’t. But I have written a lot of books and I have had a lot of readers and I have – often, often, often – been granted the opportunity to dominate someone’s attention for hours and hours.

And, sure, when you watch a film on TV, that film earns your attention for a couple of hours. A big TV series may hold your attention for much more, in aggregate. But those things – films, TV shows – are made by dozens, and probably hundreds, of different hands. A novel is more intensely personal. It’s like a powerline connecting your brain to the reader’s. There’s not a word or a comma in the book that you yourself haven’t chosen.

How rare that is! How precious!

One thought that arises immediately is you need to justify your remarkable status. If someone is disposed to grant you all that time, you have to honour their decision. That means showing gratitude. Respect. Appreciation.

As an author, you can’t show those things in a normal way – you can’t say thanks, or send flowers – so you have to show those things in an authorial way: by putting the reader’s interests first, always.

Does that sentence have two surplus words? Kill the words.

Is that joke funny enough? If not, improve it or delete it.

Is that scene intense enough? Is that page of flashback needed? Does that character feel lifelike? Again and again, you need to be asking questions whose purpose is to deliver the most perfect reading experience you can.

It’s only natural, when you’ve been working a long time, to debate the necessity of shaving two words from what is essentially a perfectly functional sentence. How much will that act of love and duty actually improve things? The only realistic answer: terribly little.

But …

You. The reader. Five hours in their head.

That’s such a unique and precious relationship, you need to add every terribly little drop of goodness you can. Collect up a lot of such drops, and your manuscript will visibly improve. You’ll feel it. Your reader will too.

But I haven’t yet got to the purpose of this email. The WHY.

So let’s say that a reader allows you five hours in which your voice, alone, will occupy their head and their thoughts.

You’ve honoured that permission by making your manuscript the very best you can make it. You’ve shaved those words, you’ve cut those jokes.

But, in the end, why? What are you going to do with that time? What do you want from it?

It’s OK to say that you want money. That’s a valid answer, or part of one anyway.

If you self-publish an e-book priced at $4.99, your time in someone’s head will be worth $3.50. If you publish traditionally, your per-book income will be a lot less than that, but still not nothing. If you work hard, it’s fair to be paid.

So, yes, in part, the answer to that question of why has to do with getting paid. Nowt wrong with that.

But still: why?

I know you’re a serious sort. If getting paid was all you wanted, you’d find better ways of doing it than writing books. So if you tell me, “Sir, I want to earn an honest crust from my books and that is all,” then I’d say, “Pshaw!”

I’d say, “Piffle!”

I’d say – to your face and in public hearing – “Flapdoodle, hogwash, bunkum, poppycock and every sort of wallop you can think of, including plaice, haddock, eel and cod.”

You want to show off a bit? That’s OK.

You want appreciation? Why not. Most readers won’t write to tell you that they’ve enjoyed a book, but some will and silent appreciation is valuable too. Again, that’s a perfectly good reason for writing.

But don’t you also want to put your finger on someone’s soul and change it, just an itsy little bit? Don’t you want your reader to rise from reading your most excellent book a slightly altered person?

I think you do. I think you should.

So: how do you want to alter that person?

Over the Christmas holiday, I watched a bit of telly. I’m fond of an action movie now and again, but I do notice that plenty of them just make me feel slightly icky afterwards. A good guy has some reason to go after bad guys. He kills lots of them. Then there’s a one-to-one shootout with the top bad guy himself. The hero wins. He kisses the girl. End of movie.

But very often, it all just feels like violence. Violent people chasing around after violent people. My soul feels a bit nastier, a bit dirtier, for the experience. The world’s got a little bit worse, not a little bit better.

It doesn’t have to be like that and it’s not about the violence. Over the Christmas break, I watched The English, a non-standard Western, starring the predictably good Emily Blunt and the quite excellent Chaske Spencer.

The series is violent. Almost too violent for me – I almost stopped watching.

But –

The series was rich in humanity and love for its characters. I ended up moved and uplifted. I felt, ever so slightly, like a better human being than I’d been before watching.

And isn’t that the effect you want too? Isn’t that, in fact, close to being the very centre of why you write?

I think it is for me. I think it should be for you. For all of us.

We get five hours, alone, in someone’s head. Let’s use that time for good.

Til soon.

Harry

PS: Though, you know what, the Wild West genuinely was pretty wild.

In Victorian England, the homicide rate only once rose above 2 per 100,000 people. Mostly, the rate hovered at around 1.5, before dropping even further in the last two years of the century. In mid-nineteenth century California, by contrast, homicide rates averaged maybe 65 per 100,000 and, in Los Angeles, were closer to 200. So, yup, at least there’s some real historical veracity behind the killing. Jack the Ripper’s London was a whole lot safer.

PPS: We sent out an email earlier this week telling y’all about the spring release of our Ultimate Novel Writing Course. The response was enormous. We’ve had (in total, including over Christmas) well over 500 prospectus downloads and we’ve already had an excellent number of strong applications. So – whoop-de-boop. This is a really excellent course. We keep tweaking it to make it better. The aim, quite simply, is to help you write and edit a novel in a year. We’ll also teach you the ropes on publishing and author-led marketing. A huge proportion of past students have had full manuscript requests from agents following the course. We hope it’ll do the same for you.

More details here. And, yes, places are limited, so neither dilly nor dally.

PPPS: Hmm. The first email I send out in January normally has a New Year’s resolution up and at em quality to it. Not quite sure that this one passes muster. But yes: up and at em. Action this day. Let’s DO this thing.