Writing – Page 6 – My Little Notepad

Influences

As a writer, I think your journey starts right back at the very beginning when you first string letters together and realise they make words. In other words, when you begin to read. Throughout my life I’ve loved reading and rereading and I’ve been influenced to different degrees by the various authors that I’ve read. It’s not that I try to emulate their work (although I sometimes do) or that I want to write in that genre (although I sometimes do!) but that I learn something from each of them. That could be how they write dialogue, the kind of characters they create, the settings and atmospheres they evoke or just a lightness of touch that says so much in so few words and makes me think “Wow, that was good. How do I do that?”

Here’s my personal top eight influences, in no particular order. What are yours?

Jane Austen – Whatever you think about romantic novels, and hers are among the very best, there’s no denying that Jane Austen was a master at writing about concerns both peculiar to her time and universal. She’s also the queen of quick, witty prose and sharp observations; and her characters are memorable and human, with weaknesses and frailties that we can relate to. I bow in awe.
Georgette Heyer – Fabulous, evocative and detailed portrayals of Regency life, and by gum she can write a funny scene that has me laughing my socks off every time I read it. This is the kind of historical I want to write – a good story, a happy ending and funny, sympathetic characters that are both hindered and helped by the Society in which they live.
Eva Ibbotson – I love every one of her books that I’ve read. They appeal to adults and young adults and the language is really beautiful.
Edith Nesbit – One of my completely favourite childhood authors. I loved her storylines, the mix of magic and everyday life. I think the Psammead is one of the best magical creatures ever, I would love to come up with something like that. She taught me that magic and fantasy interweave with our world to produce the most wonderful stories. And who doesn’t cry at the end of The Railway Children?
Dr Seuss – the wacky and wonderful words he comes up with and the brilliant, often convoluted rhyming. A staple of my childhood, who I’m introducing to my kids. He teaches you to play with language and though I’m not as brave as he is in just making words up, I’d love to be. There are no rules with Dr Seuss but through him you learn about rhyme and rhythm and poetry. It’s wonderful.
Lord Tennyson – If only for The Lady of Shalott. My mum read this to me when I was tiny and apparently I loved it and would listen to it over and over. Up until a couple of years ago this disappeared completely from my life then I started re-reading it. I’m fairly convinced it’s responsible in some subliminal way for my love of historical romantic heroines, or as I used to call them, “Ladies in long dresses’.
C S Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia are among my favourite books of all time, never mind childhood. Again, it’s the mix of fantasy and real life – throwing ordinary children into magical situations that I would love to try and do really well. Until then, I can totally lose myself in his land. Apparently Tolkien disliked the Narnia stories because Lewis had a real hodge-podge of fantasy elements, throwing in creatures and stories from a huge variety of mythic traditions instead of painstakingly creating a world with its own rules and creatures. I, on the other hand, really like this about Lewis’ work. If ever there was a clear example of how allowing yourself to be influence by your reading can produce amazing results, Lewis is it. He’s also a brilliant Christian writer – Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Four Loves, The Problem of Pain and The Great Divorce are wonderful books.
Terry Pratchett – So prolific! I love a book that makes me laugh out loud and his do, time and again. I also have to say, although I prefer his earlier work, I am hugely inspired by how he has dealt with his illness and found a way to work around it to keep writing.

There are so many more. I take a little away from every book I read – for better or worse! And one day, maybe someone will have me on a similar list of their own.

Good Reads on Goodreads

I’ve recently been digging a little deeper into Goodreads. I’ve been signed up for ages but, like when I first joined Twitter, I’m not making anywhere best use of it. Superficially, you add which books you’re reading or have read and do a little review of them. All well and good, and handy for dipping in and out of if you want an opinion on a specific book. This might be all you ever want, and that’s fair enough. Plenty of people use it, making it a pretty good resource for that kind of thing.

What I am discovering though is that, again like Twitter, the more you use it the more you get out of it. This works both as a reader and a writer. As a reader, if you start making connections and seeing what people are reading, you get introduced to some cracking reads. Authors and genres you might not have tried before but are much more likely to do so on a recommendation from a friend. Most books, especially the Big Deals, have reviews up and you can comment on these. The comment streams often turn into debates which are actually fascinating and make you really want to read the book. In my opinion, if a book gets so many people worked up in completely opposite ways, it’s worth a second look. I found that recently with Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins. If a book you love doesn’t have a discussion going, start one.

Another feature for readers is the ‘explore’ menu which offers lists and suggestions for reading. There are thousands of books listed in the recommendations, sorted either into lists such as ‘Best Historical Fiction’ or even ‘The Worst Books of All Time’, so you can have a dig around and find what suits you. If you don’t like their suggestions, then take part and vote or put a book forward.

As a writer, it’s a whole other ball game. My little foray into self-e-publishing (I need to think of a better term for that. Independent feels far too grandiose) has gone right to my head and I’ve gone and updated my website, facebook page, and created a Goodreads author page. I think this could be a really useful feature, especially if I continue down the route of self-publishing more and more work. It keeps all my work together, it allows people to comment on my work and for me to see those comments as well as get notified when someone comments. I can get ‘fans’ who follow my activity on Goodreads (useful for when I’m a literary megastar). I can list giveaways of the book, have my blog posts fed through onto the page and link through onto the book page on Amazon. I can even make ebooks available to preview and purchase direct from Goodreads. People feed their reviews onto Twitter and Facebook, so it doesn’t take much imagination to see how a little bit of good feedback here could go a very long way.

I genuinely think that as Goodreads takes off, and more and more join and interact with it, it will become immensely useful and a valuable part of every writer’s marketing kit.

Fog, Flitting and Fermenting

One of the advantages to not being a mainstream published author yet is that I have no expectations to meet except those I put on myself. No deadlines, no commissioned work, no genre I’m expected to write in or series I need to complete. I can experiment and dip in and out of work as I feel fit. I can wait for the Muse to descend.

Except that being a naturally disorganised person, this tends to leave me fumbling around blindly rather than flowing freely as I’d like to imagine. I flit from one idea to another and when I go through a patch (as I am at the minute) where I have several ideas jostling for attention I panic and let a sort of fog cover the mess in my head. That way I can have the satisfaction of knowing I do have lots of ideas but not actually the mess they’re creating by fighting amongst themselves. Oh, and it means I get virtually no decent writing done. Simply because I’m flitting around the edges of the fog and not getting stuck in.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, as I said I have no external expectations to meet. The only person I’m letting down is myself really. But then every now and then I feel irritated with myself and my lack of progress. I’ll either feel confident in my work, a surge of belief in myself that I really can do this if I just stop faffing around and get on, or I feel completely intimidated by my lovely writerly friends who really are getting on with it and having much-deserved success. When that happens I tell myself I can’t be a real writer because if I was I’d be, y’know, writing. What I really need to do is clear the fog.

I had one of those sessions this morning. As simple as getting a notebook and writing down everything that’s bubbling away in my head, then sorting it into current projects, projects to be shelved for now, and projects that are fermenting. I love the fermenting process. It’s how I distinguish between a flash of genius that actually can’t go anywhere and something that I could really do something with. I get the idea, write a quick note to get it down before I forget, and mentally file it. Then as different sparks appear over the few weeks I write those down too and hopefully I get enough to start thinking about characters and plot. I usually start with a character, and maybe a setting then the plot starts to appear. Then I leave the whole thing, don’t touch it as I have other things to work on but as it’s not ‘put away’ it continues to tick away in the background. I’ve got one fermenting at the minute that I love.

The really funny thing? The fermenting idea is always The One. The one I’m going to finish, adore and get a six-figure advance for. You never know.

A is for Author…

It’s April 1st! If you read my post the other day, All About April, you’ll know that I’m taking part in the April A – Z Challenge. And if you didn’t, well, you do now.

And to kick off the month, welcome to my ebook launch!

I know it’s a tenuous link, but hey, it’s my blog. I get to make and break the rules. 😉

Some Life Somewhere is now available to buy from Amazon Kindle and Smashwords (other formats, inc US Kindle) and it’s also listed on Goodreads but looking rather lonely without reviews (just sayin’…)

The book is a series of short stories told as dialogues, exploring some of the Big Questions of life, death, and the tricky bits in-between.

To celebrate I’m giving away a copy of the book in your preferred format. If you want to enter (and why wouldn’t you? ahem…) leave a comment on this post or on my facebook page (with a ‘Like’!) answering the following question and on Sunday night (3rd April) I’ll draw one answer out of the hat:

What would your ideal alternative life be?

Have you answered? Excellent, here’s a virtual glass of champagne, and cheers!

Some Life, Somewhere

I love the idea of chapbooks. Those small, cheap pamphlet-type books that are produced purely because the writer just wanted to get their work out there. Because they felt they had something important to say, or they wanted to express themselves through poetry or prose, or to record some part of their family’s history or values. Those writers very bravely put their work out for people to read without thinking (much!) of the bigger picture, of getting an agent or a publisher or what happens if people don’t like it.

There’s a whole lot of discussion at the minute around e-publishing and self-publishing and should you hold out for a deal or do you do it for the money or the recognition, or do you just want to say something. I think, personally, and I doubt I’m very original here, that this is the age of the ebook, and it’s the perfect medium for a chapbook. People have short time spans available in the pressures of the modern world – even people who don’t ‘work’ like me but care full time for children or other loved ones. At the same time the explosion of the kindle, smartphone and ever-cheaper ereaders means that there’s huge potential for buying cheap publications and carrying them round easily for those moments when you do have some precious leisure time to read. I know, for example, that there’s a massive market for iPhone reading apps, whether it’s the classics, the kindle app or iBooks; I’ve had my own little bit of success with Ether Books who produce specifically for the iPhone (branching into other smartphone operating systems later in the year – hint hint) and who published my short story a couple of weeks ago. Without knowing the specific numbers involved, I know it’s been popular because my story has been in the Bestseller list since it was published (ok, bragging over now).

That small success has given me a much-needed boost. Family upheaval lately has meant that my writing has very much taken a back seat and I’ve lost direction. The email from Ether gave me a proper kick up the behind and I’ve taken up my pen again. Well, pencil, actually, since I’ve rediscovered a love for working through ideas with pencil and notebook. That, combined with that admiration for chapbook writers I mentioned above, has led me to a little project of my own.

I proudly present my own e-chapbook, Some Life Somewhere. It’s a collection of seven short stories told through dialogue, and touching on the big questions – life, death and the tricky bits inbetween. I’ll be publishing it on kindle and through smashwords later this week, and I’ll put a link to the Amazon listing on here and my website and facebook page. My very talented husband has done my cover and I love it. I’m really excited about the whole thing -even if only my mum reads it, it’s me taking a big brave step and it’s what I need to do to pick my feet up and run along my own path as a writer.