On Writing

This blog is supposed to be a popular culture blog, but I thought I would break away from that momentarily to talk a bit about writing. Novels are popular culture anyway, or at least they are when I write them, although we might have to debate the precise meaning of "popular". Anyway I get a lot of e-mails asking me about how to write so I thought I'd post my reply here and then I can direct people to it when they contact me. That's if I don't change my mind about all my advice and look back at it and cringe, anyway.

The thing is, I don't really know much about writing novels as I've only written one, or one decent one, anyway - which is one more than most people alive on the planet, but far fewer than most novelists. And I'm writing the second one but it doesn't seem to have got significantly easier or blessed me with loads of extra wisdom. Susan Hill has recently started running an excellent, and free, creative writing course over on her blog and already at this early stage it contains far more good advice than I have in the whole of my head. Also, I have looked many creative writing books, and they all looked rubbish, except for Stephen King's On Writing which I recommend. Both Stephen King and Susan Hill have written a hell of a lot more books than I have so their advice is the good stuff.

However, I have picked up a few things along the way, so I will now give you my Top Ten Of Everything I Know About Writing A Novel That You Were Not Afraid To Ask.

1. It can take a really long time. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.
2. Don't get too hung up about getting the first draft right. There's actually nothing left from my first draft of Gods Behaving Badly in the final book, except for most of the characters (the gods obviously, but not the mortals), and the vague shape of the plot. Everything else has been changed. That's also true of the first, unpublished novel that I wrote - including the bit about getting rid of certain key characters. Unfortunately, though, you can't skip the first, imperfect draft, as you need to get it down in order to figure out what is actually going on in your head and how it's going to work on paper, and once it's down it makes it easier to play around with your ideas and get them right. But it's OK to just bung scenes down as placemarkers, like: I don't know how to write this properly, so I'll just write it badly so I know that a scene goes there where such-and-such a thing happens, and I can go back and do it well later. (Of course the annoying thing about this is eventually you do have to write that scene and you probably still can't do it well. I had a horrible bit of rewriting just before the novel was published where I finally had to go back and redo my 'placemarker' scenes. Weirdly, I have been told by more than one person that they were their favourite, I still think they are below par.)
3. You need to figure out your own routine. I would give writing in the morning a try, as many writers swear by it, including me, but it won't necessarily work for you. Something will work for you, though, so experiment a bit. You also need to know if you're a planner or not (I'm not, but I thought I was, which is one of the reasons the first book didn't work) - do you need to plot everything out in advance or can you just go with the flow? Do you need a minimum daily wordcount, do yu need to spend a certain amount of time at your desk? I personally don't hold with the time at your desk thing, but I do give myself wordcount goals, which change from novel to novel and from day to day. At the moment I give myself either a 500 word goal or a 1000 word goal, depending on how I feel when I start and how clear I am on what happens next. But a very good writer I know manages about 50 words, on a good day.
4. You will always have times when you think what you have written is rubbish and you have no idea what to do. Especially because a lot of the time you will be right. But a lot of the time you will just be fed up and bored and tired, and it's not a good idea to be writing in that state. You need to know how to tell the difference, and I find that if I leave what I'm doing for a few days (sometimes weeks, and on some very painful occasions months) I will know whether the problem is me or the work, and either way I will be able to solve the problem.
5. A lot of "writing" takes place when you are not writing. It's called thinking and it is underrated.
6. Be wary of telling people too much about what you are doing. It can be helpful, but it can also solidify things in your head that should be more fluid. I find that once I've talked about things it can be hard to make changes once I'm trying to write them. There's this strange thing where what's in your head and what you can describe through talking and what works written down are three different things and you don't want to start confusing them.
7. Be careful of what you read. There's research, and there's reading things that other people have written which are similar to what you want to do, and which are so good and well realised that they clog up your imagination and shut down your ability to think in other directions. Once I know what I'm writing about, I stop reading anything remotely similar unless I absolutely have to for research. So with Gods, I read a lot of original mythology, but nothing at all involving anything remotely similar to the idea of gods being in modern times. So if I wanted to write a crime novel, I would stop reading crime novels and I would probably avoid anything crime-related on film or TV either.
8. Persevere. Writing a novel is a real test of stamina. It's a good idea to write every day, so if the novel is not going well, try something else. A blog is useful.
9. Time carefully when to show people what you've written, and choose who you show your work to with equal care. I don't like to show anyone anything before I have completed a first draft draft, because the first draft is where I figure out exactly what I am trying to do, and I don't want anybody else's input at that stage. But once I have finished the first draft, I want to know if what I am trying to do actually translates to the reader, so that's when I let people have a look. And I don't necessarily pick my closest friends or family for this job, because they love me and think I'm great and will probably think the best of what I've done and say nice things. I choose people who I know give good constructive criticism and won't be afraid of hurting my feelings.
10. Don't wait until it's perfect before you submit it. It will never be perfect.

And I forgot the most important thing, so I will have to have a number 11 now. ENJOY YOURSELF!!! If you are a terrible, terrible writer, but you love writing, carry on. Just don't expect anyone to read what you're doing. But if you are a great writer but absolutely hate every moment of it, you might want to consider spending your time doing something that you like instead.