Michael Collins

Archive for the ‘About writing’ Category

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

That cat looks tasty

It happens to all of us, except perhaps the incredibly gifted and prolific writers we hear about pumping out 5-10,000 words each day—you know the ones—who will sell you an eBook on how to write a novel in just one week. My best advice for you is to ignore all that hoopla and focus on yourself, your own abilities, and on writing at your own pace. And when that pace slows to zero and you hit the wall and end up struggling for hours, days, or weeks with a difficult concept, a glitch in your story line, a continuity problem, or a character in your plot who simply won’t behave, well, that’s all part of the writing process.

So, what are you going to do about it? Suffer silently and pace the floor, wringing your hands in anguished indecision? Eat everything in the house, including the cat? Bite your nails to bloody stumps? Drink yourself into mindless oblivion?

Hitting the wall is part of the process

Start with appreciating that hitting the wall from time to time is all part of the writing game, and if coming up with fantastic solutions around the bricks was easy, everyone would be doing it. I confess to having some pretty good ideas in the shower, and the only problem with that is trying to remember them when I’m sufficiently dry to jot a note. I’ve heard of waterproof note boards you can buy to solve this, but I only remember about them when I’m in the shower.

Going for a walk is the time-honoured aid to successful problem-solving. And, rather than going hell-for-leather in an effort to double up and shed those binge-eating kilos while you’re thinking, try a pleasantly-paced amble instead. There’s also nothing wrong with a bit of a chat to yourself. You’re a writer—you’re allowed to be a bit potty.

Stream of consciousness

How about trying stream of consciousness for a change? Whazzat then? Well, also known as automatism, it’s allowing your mind to run free of all the encumbrances of grammar or syntax or structured thought, and just hitting the keyboard with anything that comes into your head for, say, fifteen or twenty minutes. You don’t stop to contemplate anything you’ve written, you don’t even look at it (otherwise you’ll start correcting it, naturally), until you’ve run dry.

Is the idea new? Not at all. It was introduced by a philosopher and psychologist (told you we were potty), William James, in 1890 and has been used as a tool for interior monologue by writers such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.

Just write, write, write, as fast as you can.

Give it a go! Without thinking too much about your problem, sit down at your keyboard and begin with whatever’s on your mind. It’s almost as if you’re talking to a personal and very private diary, so you can be outspoken and perfectly honest. The important thing is to allow the words to flow, without thinking about them at all. It sounds hard, and it may be at first, but keep at it. It will become quite natural once you’ve overcome your own reticence. When you look back over what you’ve written, you’ll find nuggets of gold gleaming back at you and, more than likely, the way clean through your literary wall.

How do you work through your problems?

Final approach

You’re on the final approach—the countdown to the end—a moment you’ve been dreaming about for the last few months, or years maybe. You’ve crafted your book over countless hours, fashioned the characters, and perfectly assembled everything you want to say. And then …logjam.

In my own experience of writing and coaching both fiction and non-fiction, I’ve heard (and used) some interesting excuses—ahem, I mean reasons—why a book remains teetering on the edge of completion for what can amount to a painful amount of time.

Drawing the curtain on our play

It’s not really because our health’s a bit off right now, or we’ve had to care for someone, or been inordinately busy right at our book’s most critical moment. It sometimes goes a little deeper than that. The scary fact may be that, unconsciously, we don’t want to draw the curtain on our play.

Understandably, some writers have difficulty starting their books. In fiction we know that the first page is critical. It must have all the elements required to captivate the readers and draw them into our world as quickly as possible, but it must also capture an agent’s or publisher’s attention who hasn’t got the leisure time to allow a story to develop before they make a decision. Lots to think about?

Now you gallop over the line

But that pesky end game. You’ve almost done it, so what’s stopping you from galloping over the line? If you’ve never written a book before, it may be the biggest thing you’ve ever done in your life. How many hours has it taken from your personal time—probably thousands? Is anyone in your family suffering as you mooch about in your own little universe, mulling over character flaws?

We don’t just invest time in our book. We can make demands (sometimes unwittingly) on our loved ones, expend enormous quantities of emotional energy, and become so self-absorbed that nothing else is as important as ‘the book’. It’s no wonder that deep down we find it incredibly difficult to finish it and…yes…Let. It. Go.

Despite the arduous nature of book writing, if you love the writing process, you’ll begin to experience grief as the book spirals towards its end. You’ve conceived it, carried it, borne it, nurtured it lovingly, and now it’s about to be sent out into the big bad world. Naturally you’ll begin to feel a sense of loss.

Feeling a sense of loss

I’ve seen clients struggle through that final barrier and then fly to the finish line, and why not? The end is already written in their mind’s eye, and probably has been for a while. Suddenly the road becomes clear. Sniffling colds disappear, the dust settles on demands of domesticity, and all those self-imposed blocks dissolve.

Oh, what a bloody marvellous feeling! And don’t worry—it’s not really the end. By the time the editing, polishing, publishing and promoting processes are done, you’ll be truly over it. Then you can write another!

What’s your stumbling block or big excuse? What can you do to leap over it?

Another writing day

In the olden days—no guys, that’s not a mere twenty years ago, let’s say the mid 1800s—we can picture the writer, sitting at his or her desk, quill in hand, staring contemplatively out over some peaceful English rural scene. For the sake of romanticism, can we forget the more likely scenario of the starving, emaciated scribe, shivering in a windy garret?  Let’s stay with the positive image—the writer who is blessed with oodles of time, is free of distractions, and loaded to the gills with money. So what’s changed?

My book coaching clients never complain to me about how hard it is to write a book. We all know it is. For some, it’s the hardest thing they’ve done in their lives and, for them, the rewards are the greatest.

Small things that get in the way

For those who are struggling, we discuss the difficulties of writing and devise personalised strategies that remove some of the biggest, ugliest boulders, and then get down and dirty, roll our sleeves up, and shovel the rest out of the way. Fortunately we can all do this from the comfort of our favourite chair, and the nearest we’ll get to dirt is a few crumbs of toast or coffee spills.

But what writers do complain about is the loneliness, the isolation, the desolate feeling of having to live inside their own heads for long periods at a time. And it’s not necessarily happening for them during the time spent at their desks. The affliction can manifest at family dinners—the slow mechanical chewing of food, having coffee with a loved one—staring into one’s coffee cup with a faraway look, sitting in a movie, or, the biggie—lying awake in the middle of the night. In fact, living-in-the-book-syndrome can strike anywhere and anytime during the book writing process. So what can we do about it?

I'm on my own - for a long time

First, is it necessarily something we should stop? Of course not. It’s all part of the creative process. Having plots and ideas running constantly through our heads is the result of our unconscious and conscious minds doing the extraordinary work required to produce a really great book. But we do need to guard against reaching a point of obsession. That’s when our relationships can break down and our day jobs can suffer.

To start with, talk to people about your project—at least until their eyes begin to glaze over. Seriously, there’s always someone who wants to talk about writing—fellow writers, writers’ groups, bloggers (be one yourself and let it all hang out online), and you would be amazed at how many wonderful ideas your friends will help you with when you’re prepared to share. Yes, that means talking about the precious global conspiracy theory

What global conspiracy?

you’re writing about without assuming that someone’s going to steal it and run off to the nearest book agent. Believe me, that’s just not going to happen. And when you’re bombarded with great ideas, just make sure you acknowledge your friends and their help properly when your best-seller is published.

Sleepless nights can be tough, and not too many friends appreciate being called in the wee hours. Even long-suffering partners can get a bit tetchy when their beauty sleep is curtailed by a restless author’s busy brainwaves. Keep a notepad by your bedside to jot down some of those mind-bending thoughts so you can deal with them comfortably in the morning. Smartphones are great for that sort of thing too.

Sleepless nights can be tough

And here’s a great idea. This evolved from discussing suitable work areas with one of my clients—a busy mum. Home was too distracting—too much happening to focus properly, and her time was extremely limited. We decided on the local library as an ideal environment and found that it had an unforseen bonus. My client reported that she felt sufficiently closeted in her own space to do her writing without the feeling of being alone. Surrounded by strangers beavering away at their own projects, her creative juices were stimulated without the distraction of conversation or demands from her family. Give it a go!

So what has changed? Our romance writer is still at his desk, revelling in the luxury of time. Is that a clue? Perhaps we’ll go more into that in my next blog. What do you think?

Granny was a spy

‘I haven’t been educated about writing,’ she told me, ‘so how can I write a book?’

I was meeting a book coaching client for the first time and did she have a story to tell. Her life had been harrowing yet exciting, depths of grief and peaks of triumph. It was a story of ups and downs, a tortuous and bumpy road scattered with such hilarity and fortitude that her grandchildren would never look at her the same way again. Unbeknown to them, granny was a heroine.

My grandmother client didn’t look like a secret agent. It was hard to imagine her now frail body once huddled in the damp undergrowth, finger curled around a trigger, waiting to ambush a military motorcade. She described the process for laying out explosives in the hope of derailing a munitions train. ‘It’s all a matter of timing,’ she casually told me.

Derailing a munitions train

I won’t mention the passionate love affairs. I’m hoping she’ll do that. ‘We were living on our nerves and had nothing to lose,’ she tells me. ‘They were difficult times. We could be dead the next day, or tortured for information—our worst nightmare.’

Did I write the book for her? No, she did it herself. What she needed to know was how to start and where to go next. We talked about structure, direction and content, breaking things down to simple, manageable concepts. With clarity of purpose came relief and excitement. The project was suddenly achievable. Everything else flowed from her wonderful memory, filling the pages. And it didn’t matter about grammar at all. That’s for someone else to sort out.

What's your story?

When I mentioned this over a cup of coffee with Jane Teresa recently, I was surprised to learn the origin of the word education. I really should have known. It comes from the Latin Educare meaning to bring out that which is within.

What story do you have to tell?

You want it in blood?

I came across an interesting question the other day: Why write in ink when you can write in blood? And, while we’re about it, we can add to our discomfort about the dripping, body-warm, gore splattered nature of the question by suggesting that it opens a can or two of slimy, wriggly things, freshly gathered from a half-open grave.

Feeling a little nauseous? If you have a half-way decent mental-visual response to words, I’m not surprised. That was a load of gratuitous material designed to evoke disgust for some readers and a morbid fascination for others.

Scratches on my best cave wall.

We’ve written in blood since man first scraped the burnt end of a stick on a flat surface. Homer did it and the bible’s full of it, so it goes back a while. Before that, indigenous folk managed to portray some graphic examples of brain bashing and limb severing on their cave walls. Later on, Shakespeare reputedly made a grand living from a few well directed splashes of the big red, and Poe is regarded as the architect of modern horror.

So the art of making us squirm has been with us since the dawn of civilization and is still with us today in bucket loads. The bottom line is that, apart from writings of love and all its machinations, words that are crafted to horrify us are right up there in the popularity stakes—oh, talking of stakes, did I mention Vlad the Impaler (Dracula)? Now, the vampire game has certainly stood the test of time with releases of more new hot young vampires due in print and then onto the big screen later this year. We just can’t get enough of them, can we?

A hot young vampire

Of course words that churn our stomachs sell well. And, if publishers can see the bucks in a few pails of crushed bones and curdled blood, that’s what they’ll continue to slap out. Some of us actually enjoy writing that stuff.

From time to time, I relish writing to an extreme goal. It’s almost relaxing. And, for whatever arcane reason, I find it relatively easy to write in blood. I won’t go so far as to say it’s therapeutic but, well, you know …

It could be that my background in law enforcement has made me hardy to the visuals required to write in blood. I suspect that’s probably the case. Those experiences haven’t left me unaffected by, or impervious to, the realities of human suffering. And they certainly don’t make me inured to my own. For someone more than used to dealing with the gruesome results of violent crime, it’s quite embarrassing to be refused the opportunity to donate blood. I must be the only person I know who received a letter from the Red Cross asking me never to return.

For sale - crushed bones and curdled blood

There’s a story in there somewhere. Would you like me to blog it?


Friends?

I was having a cup of coffee with Jane Teresa the other day—a not infrequent pleasure—when, on my way back from a loo visit, someone stopped me to say, hello.

‘I was talking to a friend of yours last week …’ the conversation went. It was a propitious encounter. The person who waylaid me wanted to write a book and had heard that I did book coaching.

There was something about that encounter that kept nudging my mind over the next couple of days before it finally bubbled to the surface and I got it. The simple, everyday term, friend, had been flagged deep in my grey matter as something quite intriguing and requiring further consideration.

Facebook

What or who is a friend? Only ten years ago, it was simple. A friend was someone you knew rather well, probably someone you trusted, and a person you had known for a considerable time. You may have referred to them as a pal, buddy, chum, mate, or comrade. You may even have given them the most exalted title of best friend. For the next tier down in intimacy, you may have used the term acquaintance, associate, contact, or colleague. Everything was pretty well defined, wasn’t it? So what has changed?

The phenomenon of the 21st century is social networking—a method of expanding social and business contacts through connecting with others. Yes, social networking has been around since humans began to communicate, but the Internet has recently taken the game to an entirely new level. I’m playing it right now just writing this blog—but you know that. And then along came Facebook.

Facebook, so the legend goes, was originally designed for college students by Mark Zuckerberg in a fit of pique, and the rest, as we know, is recent history. Apart from all the arguments for and against, what is now an institution until the next best thing comes along is a very friendly place. There are 500 million active users with fifty percent of them logging on every single day. The average user has 130 friends. Aah, those friends.

Mark Zuckerberg

I have friends on Facebook I have never met and probably never will. I have friends on Facebook I don’t even communicate with except to like, tag or poke from time-to-time and, usually, not even that. So do I log on? Yup, every single day.

In a single stroke of his keyboard, Mark Zuckerberg destroyed the meaning of one of the English language’s oldest and most clearly understood words. We need to find a replacement. Any ideas?

A nice little swim

It’s that in-between time—the funny period that separates Christmas and New Year. I really enjoy these few brief days. Before Christmas it’s hectic. There’s simply too much to do and not enough time to either do it properly or, more importantly, enjoy doing it.

Now, timeframes and targets have been achieved, final drafts have been prepared, clients are happy, and there’s the opportunity to do the lawns and tend to the pool in the anticipation of the odd swim—when Brisbane’s worst coldest and wettest December on record comes to an end that is.

There’s also time and space for reflection. In the months before Christmas I was beginning to think hyperventilating was a normal method of breathing. I’m joking of course. Folk in our industry have to learn the basic disciplines of relaxation very early in their careers, or they’re likely to burst into flames every time the heat’s turned up.

It was pissing it down

All that aside, there was one moment in the week before Christmas when I lost the plot. It was raining. Actually it was pissing it down. And while it happened to be raining thus, I discovered a minute window of opportunity between a mass of assignments to scamper to the supermarket for some seriously needed supplies.

Jane Teresa has a silver car and I have a blue one. I was already soaked by the time I reached the drive to discover that her car was parked in front of mine, so what did I do? Of course, I took her car.

Keeping his head warm

Have you ever had your vehicle stolen? I did many years ago. There’s a feeling of disbelief when you look at the place where you left your motor and find that it isn’t there. I was only twenty when mine was flogged in London. At first I thought it had been towed, but in those days parking was easy peasy and I’d definitely left it in a good spot. Not safe as it turned out, but good.

So, I find myself on this rainy day, weighed down by a multitude of shopping bags, standing in the middle of the supermarket car park looking for the car. The water was hammering down so hard that the inside of my brolly was wet from ricocheting rain drops, my sandalled feet were slithering hopelessly in the deluge of water that poured across the bitumen, and my glasses were fogged up from leaving the insanely air-conditioned supermarket for the 100% humidity outside. Where was it?

‘Move it did they?’ cackled an old bat as she hit the remote, unlocking her nice, dry Mercedes.

Dropping my shopping in a nearby lake

For over fifteen minutes I cruised that carpark in the smashing rain and, believe me, it’s a big one. I mentally retraced my route in. I normally park in roughly the same place, probably further away from the entrance than most people because I can’t be bothered hovering close to the main doors in the hope that someone will conveniently vacate a spot. I prefer to drive slightly out of the way and convince myself that the walk does me good.

Eventually, I had to concede that the car had been pinched. Dropping my shopping in a nearby lake, I fished around in my pocket for my mobile, intending to ask Jane Teresa to come and pick me up. As my wet fingers fumbled around my soggy pocket they happened to brush against the car’s remote. CLUNK! I heard right next to me. At first I assumed that another shopper was scurrying towards their nice, dry car, but nobody was in sight. I looked at the car—it was Jane’s. For the entire time I’d been looking for my blue car and had, by my sorry calculations, walked past Jane’s around twenty times.

How sad is that?

Slowing down

It’s amazing what the mind will do when it’s in overload. Mine slowed me right down. What’s your story?

I couldn't put my finger on it

I had to laugh the other day. I was poof reading a section of a client’s book I’m writing when something niggled out of the page at me. I couldn’t put my finger on it straight away, but I was aware that I had been burning a little midnight oil and was on the lookout for any interesting little errors a tired brain can easily produce.

Sitting at my screen late at night is not usually my preferred working style. However, sometimes a client may request reasonable additional work to a manuscript at the last minute. Rather than derail the timetables of others: editors, page layout peeps, proof readers et cetera, this glitch in the schedule is best dealt with expediently, and the task naturally comes to me, the writer.

I know many of my colleagues prefer to tap away by the light of the silvery moon, starlight, or guttering candle. Oops, forget the guttering candle bit—that’s my creative mind kicking in—it’s more likely to be with a cup or three strong coffees hitting the gut. But, that’s what works best for them—quiet time—no phones, TVs, kids or other distractions. If I tried that on regular basis I’d have QWERTY permanently imprinted on my forehead.

By the light of a guttering candle

Oh, yes, my error. I did find it and, in the process, found another. They weren’t that dramatic, but they’d have made my editor’s day if they’d slipped through. I was writing some dialogue where a homosexual was being confronted and being accused of being a pouf. Yes, that’s the same pouf—an 18th century, women’s hairstyle, not the poof of my story. Then my eye caught the second gaffe. My gay hero was straining beneath the yolk of oppression, and I’m sure if he wasn’t careful about it, he’d have egg all over his face.

I felt quite pleased with myself. I’d avoided giving my editor something to laugh about and the opportunity to insist on my buying his coffee. But I still wasn’t satisfied, and in doing a little more research found that pouf, as well as poof, can actually be used as a derogatory term for a homosexual.

More than one way to trap an editor

Now, should I leave the pouf in place and attempt to trap my editor, upping the ante and tricking him into buying my coffee AND a large piece of chocolate cake? What do you think?

And did I get you on that proof reading pun in the intro?