Michael Collins

Archive for the ‘About writing’ Category

Without fear

Yes, it’s that time of the year when we might make some resolutions: this year I will write without fear—fear of rejection, fear of going public, fear that my innermost thoughts and dark psyche are being exposed. I shall write bravely, setting aside time to write—for myself—come what may.

Brave words, but what the hell has a specific time of the year got to do with what we should be doing right now anyway? A few wise words from Karen Nixon’s new blog got me thinking. She talked about our propensity for wanting to leave the old year’s pain and difficulties behind and make a fresh start in the new, and she made the valuable point not to wipe the slate clean, but to take all we’ve learnt, moving forward with the benefit of hindsight.

Take the New Year by storm!

Well, here’s some hindsight. A writer doesn’t look forward to a point in time when the stars and moons are in perfect alignment to do his or her thing. A writer does it now. Now, I say. And, yes, as you take the New Year by storm, may the mistakes you have made in the blundering universe of writing be your reckless, charging stead.

To the breach!

(500) Days of Summer

Looking through an array of Christmas cards yesterday, I was struck by the complete lack of imagination of the wording inside them. Has it always been like this, I wondered. For the last few decades I’ve gone for blank cards because the generic wording never seemed to fit—for me anyway. And now the words all seem very much the same.

In the 2009 movie, (500) Days of Summer, a romantic comedy about a woman, Summer, who doesn’t believe in true love, and the young man, Tom, who falls for her, Tom is employed by a greetings card company to write the sentiments inside the products. I was fascinated. Do jobs like this still exist? I also really felt for him when his depression resulted in a departmental transfer—from greetings to condolences. But, more importantly, where are his cards?

How often have you received a card from someone you haven’t seen or heard from since last year, and seen something like, ‘lots of love from Aunty Flo and Uncle Bill’? And that’s it. No news. Not a scrap. Flo’s husband, Uncle Bill, may be recovering from a triple bypass following a massive heart attack, and Flo herself celebrating the year she climbed Kilimanjaro (aged 89, and probably precipitating Bill’s condition), but all you get is ‘lots of love’. Oh, and, ‘wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’, because that was already printed there.

Let’s make our words really matter.

Just to continue the light-hearted theme of the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, and grinding to its climactic conclusion (see, it’s contagious), the winner of this year’s award goes to David Guterson, best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars.

His novel, Ed King, brings the Sophoclean tragedy Oedipus Rex (note the pun) from the distant past into late 20th century Seattle.

In one scene the main character “massaged, kneaded, stretched, rubbed, pinched, flicked, feathered, licked, kissed, and gently bit her shoulders”, but the clincher for the gong was “Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap.” And I love the end of that scene: “Then they rinsed, dried, dressed, and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.” Well, after all that you’d need to, wouldn’t you?

Read me

What is it about reading a sign? You’ve seen it plenty of times—someone drops litter beside a fully signed-up trash can, dogs and their human slaves roam unfettered on a dogs-on-leashes only beach, we skip across the road when the sign says, DON’T, and junk mail appears in the letterbox, despite the sign that asks otherwise.

Do we not see signs, or are we ignoring them? Why isn’t the message getting through?

Maybe our message just isn’t strong enough, poorly worded, or too obscure. Perhaps what we want to say is drowned by the clutter of our lives, or perhaps we aren’t reading words any more and just want to look at the pictures.

How has reading changed for you?

The winner of this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction is about to be announced.

Last year, for passages in his book, For the Shape of Her, Rowan Somerville won the 18th Bad Sex in Fiction award. When he courageously attended the awards dinner in St James Square in November, he said, “There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the nation, I thank you.”

Two questions immediately spring to my mind (I know, I know, you want to read the pieces of bad sex writing that clinched the award for Somerville—just hang on!): one, did he sit down with the express purpose of writing the most unsettling descriptions of sex that he could? And two, what did it do for his book sales? Read on and then tell me what you think.

His description of sex: “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”

And his take on a woman’s pubic hair: “Desert vegetation following an underground stream.”

While his protagonist: “Unbuttoned the front of her shirt and pulled it to the side so that her breast was uncovered, her nipple poking out, upturned like the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing the night. He took it between his lips and sucked the salt from her.”

Outstanding!

You can’t be much of a writer if you’re not a reader. And you should have read sufficient of your genre if you intend to become good at it. It’s a bit pointless writing historical romances when you only read sci-fi, don’t you think?

You want me to read what?

But what else should you be reading? I’d go nuts if I had to stick to one particular genre. My tastes range from literary fiction to chick lit, and all points in between, although I draw a line at speculative fiction—I just can’t see it.

There have been numerous theories flung around about what writers should read. For example, one insisted that reading a trashy novel would be seriously detrimental to a literary fiction writer’s work. We now know that to be nonsense. Literary fiction writers read the news just like the rest of us.

So, what do you read? Is it connected in any way to what you write?

Critics

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. ~ John Osborne

Things are about to warm up around here. Shorter, sharper blogs, delivered with far more frequency. Not that we’ll lose all the thinky posts—they’ll still be there, and we’ll have a few more from time to time.

For starters, I’d like to mention Lionel Shriver’s gut-pulling novel, So Much For That. If you’ve felt reluctant about putting your weight behind your words when you write—pulling your punches—take new heart and dive into this superb example of how people really are and what makes them that way. Shriver writes with furious energy about people, as sad, disillusioned and utterly unlovable, and yet …

Get into it!

As boring as bat poo

There are bios and there are kick-arse accounts of someone’s life. So, what makes a bum-kicking bio good to read? Is it the story—what happened to the subject—born in a concentration camp, survived three global conflicts, and married a prince? Or is it because we need to know about the private life of some celebrity—their struggle with alcohol, depression, self-esteem—and their rise to fame? What drives us to read on?

Maybe it’s the way the account is written. The mundane becomes dramatic, the sad becomes funny. Perhaps we empathise with the subject. But a book has got to grab us from the very start, so we’re hanging on to every word and turning those pages. No matter what happens later in your book, if the first pages haven’t got it, well, you know! So what’s the secret to writing a page turning start?

Sad and funny

Here are two examples of bios—the opening chapters. Tell me which one grabs you.

Example 1

I was really, really tired. It had been a long day, and I’d been up since before dawn. The last thing I needed was to be standing in a semi-deserted outdoor ice rink watching my son struggle to stay on his feet as the pervading cold crept through my bones. I wanted to be home, in front of a roaring log fire, a glass of mulled wine at the ready, anticipating a delicious meal cooked by my eldest daughter.

Oops, now that's interesting

Example 2

Breath buffeted viciously from my lungs, I tumbled through the air. One moment I’d been bemoaning my tiredness and half-frozen extremities, and in the next I was airborne, all thoughts of my eldest daughter’s delicious home cooked meal and that glass of mulled wine bashed from my mind when my head hit the unyielding surface of a semi-deserted outdoor ice rink. I’d been up since dawn and the last thing I needed was blood on my tux.

Yes, it’s the same book, but you know that. Agreed, the first example sets the scene rather well and the author will eventually get round to the accident. But when did you start yawning? In the second example questions are posed. What happened? Where? Why is he wearing a tux? We need to turn those pages and read on to find out what’s going down.

A normal well-balanced character

Sounds like fiction? Well, yes, when writing non-fiction there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t employ the same writing tactics as a good fiction author to make your story more compelling—still true, but more compelling. Mixing the timeline, bridging the chapters, developing interesting characters—just to name a few of the professional tactics available.

I recently talked with an author about sitting in a doctor’s surgery waiting for an appointment. Most of us know the interminable grind of the situation. Is there anything fascinating about the experience? You would think not. However, with a little gentle probing it transpired that my author’s waiting-for-the-doctor-thoughts always fixated on the myriad of germs swarming around the waiting room, scuttling over the chairs, and writhing across the floor towards her shoes. Yuk! I just hope I forget all that before I have to see the doc. And so do you. But what a scene!

Suddenly I feel better

Writing your bio doesn’t have to be one linear time scale step after the other and as boring as bat poo. It can be written as an adventure (the way life is) and still be absolutely true—whatever happened.

Having free rein

No, it’s not the last book I’ll ever write. And, in my line of work, it certainly isn’t the first. That’s what I do—write books for other authors, or coach people to write their own.

Recently I’ve been ghost writing a lot of fiction, which I especially enjoy when I have free rein within the basic story lines, allowing my creative mind to run amok and have a ball.

All fired up and ready for more fun, I decided it was time to write another novel of my own. There is a sub-plot to this, where my wife, Jane Teresa, and a good friend, Viv, conspired (my take on it) to make this happen. I like to tell people that the reason I chose to write the book was to get those two off my back, but of course that’s just the cream on a good story—hmm, or is it?

Just like real life

I decided that if I was to thoroughly enjoy writing this novel, it had to be about manipulation, foul deeds, love (and sex, naturally), conspiracies, and teams of goodies and baddies all finding extraordinary ways to help or harm each other. In other words, a pacy, easy read thriller, laced with red herrings and surprises—just like real life.

It started off well. I had a quick 8,000 word entrée, and then it all went slightly pear-shaped. The problem? I’m a seat of my pants writer when I’m in it for thrills. That means I allow the story to unfold as I write, with the characters dictating where it goes. Like many writers, given free rein I have absolutely no idea how the plot will evolve because I don’t have one in my head to start with. So I found myself suddenly confronted by phalanx after phalanx of complex, multi-faceted scenarios and the storyline possibilities were becoming enormous. What to do?

This is when you need to talk it over. Not with anyone. You should choose your friend or co-conspirator carefully. It should be a person who is empathetic to your endeavours, yet prepared to be completely honest. They should know they’re in for the long haul, and be ready to read and reread your manuscript until they never want to see it again. I’m not talking about your beta readers here. They come along later—nice and fresh—ready to pick the holes (and there will be whoppers) in your continuity and point out all the silly words and typos.

I was fortunate to have Euan, my stepson, offer his time. After he read the first 8,000 words we had a thirty minute brainstorming session, looking at many potential storylines and coming up with something very vague but which allowed the work to move on. It was going somewhere. I wasn’t sure where—but definitely somewhere.

It meant a complete rewrite.

I was pretty pleased with myself when I handed him 40,000 words a few weeks later. I was almost half-way through. But, meeting for coffee a few days after he’d had time to read it, I wasn’t thrilled with his verdict. Not initially. ‘There’s no suspense. You’re giving away all the secrets far too early,’ he told me. That morning Jane Teresa had also thrown my thoughts into a quandary when she told me that the story really needed a more emotive sub-plot. Hmm, what now?

It meant a complete rewrite. Terrible? Not at all. Within hours the unconscious mind was bubbling through, supplying the necessary inspiration to forge on. The solutions would have been there all along, quietly cooking in the darker recesses of my mind. And the unconscious mind never fails to astonish me. I wonder why the hell I’ve introduced a particular character at a certain point in the story and then, bingo! Twenty thousand words later I need a person exactly like that.

Let your unconscious mind help you out.

Many writers, past and present, have been inspired by the people around them. It may be a friend, or family, an editor, ghostwriter, or book coach. Who is supporting you, and giving you the opportunity to explore your ideas? Are they empathetic or critical? Do they know where you’re coming from and can they help you find where you’re going? Will they help you succeed?

Would you like to read a short extract from The Last Book?

Click through to extract