I’ve just realised that in previous posts I often talk about these huge leaps I am taking: I started off in February last year with a leap of faith and finished my last blog talking about great leaps into the unknown. Apart from making it sound like I’m some moon-bound superhuman lolloping all over the place, it’s not true. Writing isn’t about great leaps (at least, not for me…) it’s more about small steps. At the time they seem like momentous occasions but in hindsight it’s just another couple of feet down the road that will (hopefully) one day lead to publication.
That said, some days those baby steps seem more significant than others. So last week I stood in my local print shop and watched as two copies of Bloodie Bones rolled off the presses (I didn’t want to do it at home as I thought it might shake my poor printer to smithereens) and then packaged them up and sent them on their merry way through the postal system. (Now that’s an expensive business… someone explain to me how the Royal Mail are losing money hand over fist when they charge that much?)
It would be a lie if I said I didn’t feel any emotion - here’s two years of my life (well, if you exclude the sleeping, eating, going to work, watching telly, reading etc….) rolling out of a machine. It’s tangible proof that I have been sitting in the corner rocking to myself. Well, not all the time.
So they’re gone, and I suppose I should feel relieved, and part of me does. But perhaps more than that I realise I now need to worry about what happens when the damned things come back. What if they don’t like it? What if they hate it? What if they say perfectly healthy trees were unfairly put to death for this?
I am sure I could put the time before I get the feedback to good use, sitting in a corner rocking perchance? As it is I’m trying not to think about it and instead I’m typing up the novel I wrote just before I started edited Bloodie Bones (from the bad old days when I wrote everything out longhand… boy am I regretting hanging onto that trick for so long!) and finishing off a huge backlog of short stories that are nearly all *almost there*. So as usual there’s lots to be going on with.
But those two copies of Bloodie Bones are out there… and one day they’ll come back home.
…and now the end is near, and so I face, the final curtain… Or something like that.
Well, I’ve managed a year under the mentoring scheme (Or should that be that the mentoring scheme has managed a year with me?) and I’ve had the final session returned to me by Miranda. I thought this was an opportune moment to look at what happens next: Find an agent. Get a multi-million pound publishing deal. See the book published. Tour the United States on a Harley to promote “Bloodie Bones”. Attend The Booker prize awards and look shocked and yet grateful when they announce my name. Sit on the couch with Richard and Judy to discuss what my life was like “back in the day” when I was a struggling writing trying to hold down a job and write a book…
Erm. No.
So the last stage of the mentoring scheme is that the whole book will be read by a different reader from TLC who will provide a full editorial assessment of Bloodie Bones. I’ve started discussions with TLC as I’m looking for a reader who has some familiarity with the genre - I think that’s a plus, don’t you? That said, I’m not holding my breath on that so at the same time, through Writing East Midlands (and if you’ve been paying attention you’ll remember that they sponsored me on the mentoring scheme) I’ve been in contact with a published horror author and we’ve agreed a fee for him (now that narrows it down, eh!) to read through Bloodie Bones and give me feedback.
At the same time I now have half an eye (oh well, let’s be honest, I may even be committing a whole eye to this, but just the one, mind you…) on what happens next. I’m hoping to go on a one day course called “Selling your first novel” (it seems relevant!) and when I have finished the next (last?) draft of Bloodie Bones I will start to research agents and publishers.
You remember that list of “writing tasks” I set out in my last post? Well I’m going to try to make some inroads into those (I made the mistake of putting them on my phone as a “to do list” so now they haunt me every day as I watch the deadlines roll past). I’m starting to think about the next “large” piece I’m going to write and because it’s set at this time of year but I won’t be able to put pen to paper on that project for another six+ weeks I’ve been taken photographs of the place where it’s going to be set: all skeletal trees and moody shadows now but the spring buds will have ruined the atmosphere by May.
And lastly. I’ve been looking at my online profile. From now on all my “adult” oriented horror fiction will be published under the name Richard Farren Barber and I’ve been redesigning my website to reflect the mean and indeed moody nature of the work.
So that’s where I am. On the cusp of another great leap into the unknown
This is what I have on my writing plate at the moment:
Editing Bloodie Bones
Editing the following short stories: Sweets, Inside/out, Tag, The Watching Post, The Heart Stone, Retreat, SkyDogs, The Ballad of Pete Fanshaw
Submitting stories for publication
Finishing the short story I’m currently writing
Writing my section of the short story I’m collaborating on with Stuart
Typing up ‘The Ancestors’ [my last novel, until last August I used to write long hand and then had to type everything up afterwards]
Building a new website
Writing blog entries
Writing a review of my experience on the mentoring scheme for Writing East Midlands (well, they did fund it!)
Researching potential agents and publishers
Reading
Outlining my next novel [tentative title: The Lost]
So, a fair amount.
One of the hardest things I find is having to keep all these plates spinning. I focus on editing Bloodie Bones and look up to find six months has passed, or I take a week out to edit a few short stories and at the end of the week they’re still in my ‘to be edited’ pile (although a little better than before)
Some of these are more pressing than others (for example, I don’t have to start work on ‘The Lost’ or type up ‘The Ancestors’, in fact it’s more about trying to hold those back)
All of this has to be achieved within the finite time I can grab for writing (although if I wanted to get morose we all have a finite time) and so one of the trickiest challenges is to balance the conflicting demands.
One of the things I’ve had to force myself to do is be more realistic about what I can achieve, and more disciplined. There’s no point sweating over a website if there’s nothing to put on it, and no real benefit to start on another short story if I still have all the others to edit.
I can’t profess to having the answer, or being anything close to good at prioritising my writing life, but hopefully I’m improving. Some things help: I’m trying to set myself targets and reminders to make sure I submit to publishers, and I now have a phone which allows me to type up story ideas and blog entries on the go (no more scraps of paper littering the house). I think with so many of these things it’s about being aware of what I need to work on.
With session 6 on its way to Miranda I thought I’d take a moment out to consider another favourite topic. It’s a tough gig, this writing game. You labour on a novel for years and, at least for me, I’m the back of my mind is the evil little voice saying ‘what’s the point? A handful of agents might read the first page, some of them might even read all three chapters, but is anyone ever going to see more than that?’ There are days when I think what I’ve written is fantastic, that it’s going to set the horror genre alight. There are as many days when I think it’s terrible and I should throw the whole thing in the bin. I suspect an objective truth is somewhere between those two extremes.
So, how do you keep going? How do I keep going? Short stories help, and they come with the added benefit that they usually supply a double high: you get the rush when you receive a positive response to a submission and learn it’s been accepted, and then a second bite of the cherry when you actually hold the magazine in your hand. I had a good 2010… partly due to steadfast submissions last year before I started editing Bloodie Bones in earnest, but I’ve also picked up a few more acceptances later.
That keeps me going to a point, and certainly helps when things look bleak. But even short stories come at a cost: there are always more rejections than acceptances. I suppose the main thing that keeps me writing is that I have to write. If someone told me I would never have my book published and advised me to give up, would I take their advice? (Harlan Ellison take note). I couldn’t. I may wind up thoroughly disturbed but I wouldn’t be able to stop writing.
So, with that in mind, I suppose all I can do at this stage is pick up my pen and carry on, as Stephen King once said, there are always more stories…
I couldn’t get Miranda Hart or Jools Holland, and I know it’s a bit late, but I thought it was worth doing a quick spin over 2010.
For me the highlight was probably the World Horror Convention. As well as meeting everyone who’s anyone in the world of horror (Well, almost everyone…) I had the opportunity to read the first two chapters of “Bloodie Bones” to a captive audience.
Hot on the heels of that is probably my year’s experience on the TLC mentoring scheme. Over the last twelve months I’ve worked closely with Miranda and as a process it’s been educational and rewarding and there are many lessons I will take through to future projects.
Editing “Bloodie Bones” has been much longer and more convoluted than I had anticipated. Perhaps in part because it was such an old novel (I wrote it about ten years ago) and I’ve grown as a writer in the meantime I have essentially had to rewrite it completely.
I was shortlisted for the Brit Writers Awards, which at the time seemed like a momentus achievement (I’m less sure of that now…). Also, during the year I started my mailing list and two blogs (one for myself and one for Writing East Midlands) and then there have been the publications (drum roll please…)
Race – published in Morpheus Tales IX
Visiting - Published in Midnight Echo
An affair to remember - published in the Derby Evening Telegraph
Murden’s Hollow - published in the House of Horror
Christmas Spirits - published in the Derby Evening Telegraph
with another 5 short stories accepted and in the pipeline for 2011. It is the best performance I’ve managed in a year to date.
So what happens next? My plans for 2011 are straightforward: finish editing “Bloodie Bones” in the first three months of the year and then try to get representation on the back of it. I have the outlines for the next two novels lined up (I just need to settle on which one to write first) and aim to beat my record of 5 short stories published in a year set in 2010.
I’m working on a revamp of the website which should be finished soon, which will also bring about a resolution to the current identity crisis. And that’s about it.
I was going to write this about the selection for my next session (session 5 of 6) and then I realised I’ve written about that before, in fact it feels like I’ve written too often about the angst of what to cover. I started thinking instead about why it seems so important.
For me, perhaps the greatest lesson I’ll take from the mentoring scheme so far is how to assess my own writing. I’m coming to terms with the idea that the elements of the story I most enjoy at the writing stage aren’t necessarily the best. In fact, it’s probably the case that these are the most dangerous because if I like a passage I’m less likely to be objective when it comes to editing it, so it’s exactly these sections that are most likely to escape my red pen.
There’s an adage in writing ( it seems to be full of them! ) that says ‘kill your babies’ and I think this is exactly what it’s warning about. Your babies are the work you’re closest to, which makes it so much harder to see them when they aren’t right. Or maybe I can see them, I just hate to lose them.
All of this is probably a long way around identifying that when I’m choosing what to send to Miranda for each session what I’m actually doing is trying to work out which of my babies to send to the slaughter, and that just selecting them is a tacit acknowledgement that I have already recognised their fate.
I tend to be “research-lite” but one of the key pieces of feedback I’ve received from Miranda has been in respect of the need to make the location real. At this point I’m now regretting setting the novel in Yorkshire (where I don’t live) and partly in the Medieval ages (where I have never lived!).
The subject of research is an interesting one - I tend to avoid research because of the tendency to feel, once I’ve spent all that time learning about something I’m going to make sure I get my money’s worth in the story I’m writing… in which case the research leads the narrative rather than the characters. Now I think this is an excellent reason but it is not without its risks. One potential downside is that I’m busy writing away and when it comes to the end of the piece I can identify the assumptions I’ve made and check them and correct what I’ve got wrong - which is fine unless the assumption I’ve made is so core to the plot that I find without my assumption I’ve got a gaping bus-driving-through-the-middle sized hole in it.
The other reason I tend to leave my research until the end of the novel (or short story) is that this allows me to be very strategic. By the end of writing I have a good idea what I need to know… I’m not (for example) learning everything about the middle ages so I can use if if I need to. Instead I know I need to understand how English was spoken in Medieval England in the Yorkshire area; Methods of transport in Medieval times (How long it would take to get from town to town and how people would get large objects between the population centres); and lots more, but a very precise list. I’m sitting here typing this with a pile of Medieval England books at my elbow but I least I don’t now feel I’m revising for a test.
So in some ways it’s interesting, but not in the least surprising now someone has pointed it out to me, that I need to spend some time making my location breathe, and the way to do that.. plough through those books.
This may seem like an odd subject for a blog.. but bear with me!
I’ve recently been reading (in a Cemetery Dance article) about the need to establish your identity as a writer, in particular the need to have a name which can be recognised by your readers. For example, if I were to write a story under the pen name Stephen King there’s a possibility that an editor might assume that they were corresponding with that Stephen King. Likewise a reader seeing the name might reasonably assume it is that Stephen King.
So as an author I have a duty, and a requirement, to be able to differentiate myself from any other Richard Barber who might be out there… At least my name isn’t John Smith eh? That said, I’m not out of the woods yet.. because there is a “Richard Barber” who is already at large in the publishing world. He is a historian who specialises in Medieval history. (That does add an extra wrinkle as part of Bloodie Bones is set in Medieval times and another novel I’ve written concerns itself with the Arthurian Legends)
Given this do I need to adopt a pen name? I could add an initial in the middle (like Iain Banks/Iain M Banks, Tim Lebbon/TJ Lebbon or Michael Marshall Smith/Michael Marshall/MM Smith) but I don’t have a middle name. Maybe I could just pick an initial at random? Z is probably unlikely to come up with many duplicates!
But this raises another issue. I already have a body of work out there in the world and whilst I’m not challenging Stephen King for recognition just yet there is an issue in that they are published under my name. Do I just abandon all those stories? Do I try to create a link between the “old Richard Barber” and the “new Richard Z Barber”?
Maybe this would be the perfect moment to invent the time machine and go back and retrospectively select a “unique” name at the beginning of my publishing career and stick with that. (Things I would do differently if I started my writing career again.. oh, there’s a whole blog’s worth of stuff on that alone!) Fortunately, this is the opportune moment to consider this because on Saturday I’ll be attending the “Industry Day” that is part of the mentoring scheme. Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to determine what I should do going forward and allow me to come back next week and answer the question with a sound claim: This is who I am!
I finished draft 4 of “Bloodie Bones” in August and left it to rest for a while. This allowed me to get on with a few other projects (short stories screaming to be written and a short children’s novel) but more importantly it allowed me to put some distance between me and the work.. and that has paid dividends.
It’s worth considering that there are some passages in Bloodie Bones that I’ve probably read 20 times by now (notably the first three chapters as I was preparing to read them at the World Horror Convention) so you would imagine they would be solid. Right? Wrong!
In the second paragraph of the first chapter I had a gate walking down the lane… instead of a person walking through the gate and then down the lane. Easily done and I should have picked it up much earlier than I did… but having the space to “forget” the novel and come to it afresh offered me a chance to read it in a way I haven’t been able to do previously. Thankfully, there aren’t too many examples of walking gates (they’re not part of the plot… in this novel at least!) but it has allowed me to read the novel as a single “piece”, pick up on where I need to fix plot issues or pacing problems, and tighten the text.
Next steps? Session 4 has gone off to Miranda this week. At the moment I’m focusing on the final 20,000 words in the book (they seem kinda important…) and then in October I’m attending an “Industry Day” held by TLC for their mentees.
My action plan is to have another couple of drafts of Bloodie Bones completed in October/Novel so that I’m ready to start casting my net for agents/publishers just in time for those all important Christmas parties.
And… in case you’re wondering about the gap between postings on this blog of late following my not-too-recent declaration to post weekly… whilst I was on holiday I managed to fracture my collar bone so my movements have been somewhat curtailed!
I started on the mentoring scheme in January so I thought now would be an opportune time to review the first six months.
So what have I achieved so far? This year I’ve had short stories published in Morpheus Tales and Midnight Echo, and I’ve had another two short stories accepted for publication in other magazines. I read the first two chapters of ‘Bloodie Bones’ at the World Horror Convention in Brighton, was short listed for the Brit Writers awards 2010, and I had an agent interested in representing me (although that didn’t come to fruition in the end).
During the first six months I’ve submitted three sessions to Miranda and I’ve done two drafts/re-writes of Bloodie Bones. The re-writes have been substantial (I’d say 50% + is entirely new and the rest has been heavily edited) and within that I’ve got a new start and a completely different ending.
As I’ve just finished draft 4 of the novel I’m leaving it aside for a few weeks to try and get some distance from it, before starting on draft 5. I know I’ve still got substantial work to do to bring it up to scratch but, especially with the new-improved (non-bio?) ending I’m happier that there is now a coherent structure and narrative to the novel.
So for the next few weeks I’m focussing on a bundle of short stories I’ve been itching to write for the past few months (How is it that when you’re engulfed in one project a hundred other story ideas come flooding out?). I’m also trying to “train” myself to write directly onto the PC - historically I’ve written long hand and then had to type everything up. I think if I can write directly to the keyboard without losing anything it will give me a lot more writing time instead of just mindless copy-typing. I started with a short story I’m collaborating on with a fellow author and I’m now trying it for a couple of my own short stories.
Then at the beginning of September, with a lot more of my short story “babies” out looking for a home, it’s back to the novel and mentoring with Miranda. I’m planning to take the final 20,000 words of the novel as the subject for the next two sessions and also look at covering letters and a synopsis, so that by November Bloodie Bones should be in a position to go out to agents/publishers.
