Month: June 2017

Bespoke children’s book written by Piers Torday – starring your child!

Wonderful idea from a terrific author…

Authors for Grenfell Tower: An Online Auction

Piers Torday by James Betts 2017.png

ITEM: A book written to order about your children in the adventure of their choice.

DETAILS: Piers will interview your child/children and write a bespoke story starring them as the main characters in the fictional world of their choosing.

BIO: Piers Torday is the bestselling author of The Last Wild Trilogy (Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize) and There May Be A Castle.

WHO CAN BID: The greater the bid, the longer the story, £1 per word. Minimum bid is £500. Interviews outside London and the UK will be conducted via Skype. The finished story will be published on my website and the successful bidder will also receive a signed and bound copy. I reserve the right to publish it in magazines, online etc, to secure further funds for the appeal. If the successful bid is over £10,000, I will attempt to secure publication, with all profits going to the British Red…

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Ever felt worthless as a writer? You’re not alone.

Up till Tuesday night this week, I was invincible.

I had spent the weekend polishing a TV spec script that was going to be my calling card. It was, without a doubt, the best thing I had ever written. I had spent maybe a year and bit slowly bringing it to life, researching the historical background, building the characters and the world, and it had already been through two beta-readers, who had given me excellent notes and were very positive, and it was ready to go out.

But I wanted one more opinion before I did that, just to be sure, and so I sent it to another writer friend for his opinion.

His notes were like a punch to the gut.

He found problems with the protagonist, the tone, the antagonists, and the ending.

And the worst thing is, he was right.

This is where my old friend self-doubt made an appearance. How could I have been so blind to the script’s flaws? Worse still, how could I have been so supremely confident that it was ready, when it clearly wasn’t even close? I’ve been doing this for long enough that I should know this, surely? I really did not know if I had the judgement to continue with writing. If I couldn’t see my own flaws, then how could I even possibly think about a career as a writer? I was useless. Hopeless. Worthless.

The notes arrived via email late at night, and I barely slept after that, constantly turning dead-end rewrite ideas over in my head.

By the morning, however, almost all of that doubt had gone. I had formulated some ideas for a rewrite and this time it was going to be awesome.

I’m hoping that this sequence of events is familiar to other writers.

I’ve gone through various incarnations of it ever since I started writing at school. I spoke about this on the podcast recently, noting that coping with tough feedback can be a bit like going through the stages of grief. Not to denigrate the overwhelming intensity of losing a loved one, but we writers can be melodramatic, and it cannot be denied that the similarities are pretty remarkable:

First comes denial: They’re wrong! How dare they misinterpret my genius!

Then anger: Fuck ’em!  Look at these shitty notes: he contradicts himself three times, so why should I listen to him?

Bargaining: Maybe I should email them, pointing out the stuff they missed, which will help them see just how brilliant the story really is?

Depression: I’m utterly worthless, a total fraud and I should never put pen to paper ever again.

Acceptance: Ah, y’know what? Maybe they had a point? Let’s get to work.

Earlier that evening I had been messaging a writer friend who was going through the same thing, and I think that’s possibly what exacerbated things this time for me. I was telling my friend to keep his chin-up, you’ll get through this, you’ve been published, people love your books, you’re awesome… And all the while I was thinking how lucky I was to have put those days behind me.

What a doofus I was.

It never goes away.

I think good writers are able to hold conflicting thoughts in their heads. It’s the only way you can have characters with opposing views convincingly have at each other on the page. The trouble with this skill is you can be all too empathetic when people criticise your work. My inclination is to immediately agree with them; yeah, you’re right, it’s crap isn’t it?

I looked back at the notes that my friend had sent me. There was so much positive stuff in there. He loved the pace, the characters (mostly), the period, the maguffin, he said it was huge fun, unusual and really visual. Why was I only seeing this now? My eyes had somehow glazed over this and chose to focus on the shit.

I’m not posting this for ‘Aw, hun’ hugs, I just want other writers to know that if you’re going through this rollercoaster, you’re not alone.

And once you start to recognise the stages, it becomes easier to manage them, move through them more rapidly, find yourself working on solutions, and thanking your lucky stars that someone cared enough to help you make your work better.

So here I go with another rewrite. And this time, it really will be the dog’s bollocks.

 

 

Hope this wasn’t too depressing. Normal service will resume shortly. But if you think you know a writer/creative who might benefit from this post, then please do share… or give them a hug… or tea and biscuits usually does the job!

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Looking Back At The Bestseller Experiment Episode 2 – Sam Eades & Juliet Ewers

At the time of writing, we’re up to episode 36 of the Bestseller Experiment podcast and, as we get close to finishing the first draft of our book, I thought it would be interesting to go back and listen to those early episodes, and give you, dear reader, a little peek behind the curtain.

We still didn’t have any big names lined-up, and this was another one we recorded at the end of August, long before our launch. But, I’d heard precious few editors interviewed in writers’ podcasts and we thought we could offer some value with two of the best, and little did we know what a cracking episode it would be. Have a listen here.

Sam and Juliet came properly prepared with copious notes and, as we recorded it at the tail end of a colleague’s farewell drinks in the office, they were both very relaxed thanks to the power of beer.

My favourite bit comes 23m 30s in, where I flippantly announce the end of the podcast. We had to make it clear to listeners that we weren’t cynically trying to custom-build a bestseller. I’d been tipped off that a book called The Bestseller Code was coming soon, and already it was getting a bad buzz in the industry. We wanted to avoid comparisons with any kind of bestseller-by-numbers approach. It’s a criticism that we still get, and understandably, considering what we decided to call the show, but I didn’t want this to be a nuts and bolts, insert tab A into slot B operation. If my name is going on the cover of a book, it’s going to be as good as I can make it.

A few thoughts listening back…

  • The sound at Hachette still had too much reverb.
  • We still had no clue what we were going to write
  • I say ‘prevaricating’ when I mean ‘procrastinating’… It’s lucky I don’t intend to make a career out of this words malarkey, eh?
  • I do a very weird pause at the 39:37 mark. I simply ran out of things to say.
  • I still haven’t spoken to Juliet about her time working in recording studios, and I see her every day…
  • We still haven’t got Ian Rankin on the podcast (but we’re working on it).
  • There are no twins or unreliable narrators in our novel, but there is some sex. It’s excruciating.
  • We have the first mention of Into The Woods by John Yorke!
  • I keep banging on about ‘voice’… Something I still bring up with annoying regularity.
  • Our biggest takeaway: we were NOT going to write GONE GIRL.
  • Juliet mentions using everyday language to help make a book more accessible to readers. Not quite the same as Mr. D’s Grade 3 obsession, but duly noted.
  • That fear of it all falling apart was still very real…
  • Question of the week was another fake one!

Our most important lesson from this episode was Juliet’s declaration that if you don’t love what you’re writing, then why would anyone else? And writing what you read was another important note for us. As Mr. D reads a lot of narrative non-fiction, and I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, I thought it would be impossible to find something that we were both fans of, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. We certainly weren’t up for giving Sam her sweeping romance novel, but her idea of happiness as a theme definitely resonated with us, and influenced what we finally decided to write. I’m also really interested in making an emotional connection through writing. I can do excitement and comedy, but I’ve yet to make anybody cry, and that’s my high bar for writing now. I get weepy when I watch movies and read books, so can I dig deep and do that with my own writing?

Still haven’t read Gone Girl.

There’s a transcript of the interview in our free ebook. Get your copy here.

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