Writing Process, Writing Life

Want to write fiction? Then commit yourself to the principle – if other people are going to make a profit from your writing, make sure you get paid for it. Don't, however, assume that you can make a living as a fiction writer. Few do. 

If you're determined to write fiction, then don't give up the day job … or find means to support your fiction by writing commercially – whether journalism, PR, advertising, etc.

Of course, newspapers do feature stories about the latest author to pen a million seller or to be offered a lucrative contract – think of "50 Shades of Grey" and the media frenzy it aroused. Publishers are constantly on the lookout for the next Unholy Grail – the next publishing phenomenon which will generate its own, self-sustaining publicity, which will become so highly talked about the publishers won't have to invest in advertising or PR to sell it, just sit back and watch the world chase after it. 

Such phenomena don't happen often.

• 184,000 different titles were published or re-issued in 2014 in the UK – there are more books published per head of population in the UK than anywhere else in the world.
• 200 million print books were sold here in 2012, earning about £1.5 billion, though sales are falling. Sales of ebooks continue to rise.
• The average print book, therefore, sells just over 1000 copies – if you're the author, and you're very, very lucky, you might get 10% of the cover price.
• Average income from a book is probably in the region of £500 … and you'll have to promote it yourself. And that's the average income … it will be heavily inflated by the top end writers, who will secure a major chunk of the sales total. Most writers won't earn £500.
• There are maybe 100,000 novels published in the English language each year (some are reissues of classics, etc.), maybe 40,000 from UK writers (I can't find accurate figures on that one).
• Maybe 250-300 of the UK novels will earn their author a 'living wage', though some, of course, will earn substantially more.
• Divide the earnings from the book by the number of hours invested in writing it (ignoring all the expenses incurred) - most writers would earn more working checkout for Tesco.
• Most fiction sinks without trace. There are garages, spare rooms and attics throughout the Celtic Isles where piles of remaindered books are stacked, mouldering.
• Although a handful of new writers make the breakthrough each year, the best sellers tend to be dominated by the existing 'premiership' authors (like James Patterson or Danielle Steel, etc.). 

If you want to write fiction, more particularly, if you want to earn money writing fiction, then know your 'genre', know your market. The top selling writers in the world write romance, thrillers, or teenage fantasy. They tend to follow a formula or have a hero who appears in a whole series of books. 

Romance writing runs from Mills & Boon to Danielle Steel (the biggest selling living writer - 800 million books sold, she writes glamorous relationship dramas). John Grisham (world's 10^th highest earner) writes legal thrillers, James Patterson (world's top earner) delivers thrillers, mainly involving his hero, Alex Cross, a psychologist. J.K.Rowling, the only non-American in the top ten (she's No.7), has the Harry Potter industry. 

There's no doubt about it, the top sellers make money – they work in an industry. They are criticised for producing product, not literature – and for catering to lazy readers by serving up a diet of action, sex, fantasy, and sometimes more sex, which can be read with ease and little danger of intellectual challenge. And they promote themselves ruthlessly. They understand the industry and how to produce and market commercial product – they don't write literature. 

Consider their writing habits – the top writers probably produce 1 or 2 books a year: Janet Evanovich, world No.6, writes thrillers, though she started with romance; she works 8 hours a day, and aims to produce 2 books a year. Nora Roberts, world No.9, has written 200 romances and 50 books of futuristic crime – she writes a book every 45 days, so produces 8 or 9 a year. It's a production line.

Only 20% of the fiction market is male – whether in the UK, USA or Canada, 80% of the readers of fiction are female! However, publishing is still a male dominated world – now there's a surprise. Books by men get the majority of reviews in the press – the majority of reviewers are male – and male writers even adopt female pseudonyms to write romantic fiction. 

So, genre. Know your genre – whether it's romance, horror, fantasy, crime, thrillers, science fiction, or whatever. It's a market. You want to produce art ... please do. I aim to write books which are intellectually credible, which have significance ... but I also want to sell the fuckers!

Know what is currently selling – it's what the publishers will be buying. Know why it's selling. Why do people like this? Why do people read this? Know what you like and why you like it. Know what you don't like and why you don't like it.

So, for instance, I love Tolkein – masterful story teller, creating a unique world. I like Orwell – not just "1984" and "Animal Farm", but "Down and Out in Paris and London", his description of life as a dosser in the 1930s – it's timeless, it resonates. I'll explore my reading tastes further in my website at some later stage. I love writing which leads you into the writer's world and makes you comfortable there. I love writing which explores emotion and values. 

I loathe "50 Shades" – rich man does what he wants to young woman and convinces her it's love! It's abusive – men fuck women over on a regular basis, don't celebrate the fact and pretend this is what women want … or that it's all men are capable of. When I write about sex, it's not about abuse and exploitation ... it's about tenderness and sharing and pleasure, and fear (of failure, of rejection, of giving too much and exposing yourself to hurt). 

Understand your genre. Create a world others can inhabit – whether it's a spacecraft, your vision of 17^th century Scotland, a world of wizards or zombies, life on a contemporary housing scheme, a police station, or doctor's surgery … make sure you know your world and the people in it. 

Make sure your readers can identify with the characters. Readers want to get to know characters, want to believe in them. Characters can … should be flawed. They make mistakes, they screw up, they get misled, have their own problems and fears. No reader is going to believe a little miss / mister perfect living in a perfect world ... not even a 3-year old. 

The world you write about is not perfect. Something's wrong, something needs to change. Woman wakes up in the morning, her handsome husband has already made breakfast and got her divine teenage children up for school, she has coffee, kisses her perfect family as he goes off for another day as rich, successful, devilishly handsome lawyer, and the kids head for school where they are head girl and captain / star player of the champion rugby team, leaving their mother to yet another lovely day with adorable friends, shopping, choosing a new set of drapes for the sitting room, lunch, tennis, and a return home to find the maid has cleaned the house from top to bottom and prepared meals for the family, etc. That is not a story. 

The maid wakes in the silence of her room. It will be two hours before anyone else stirs, she has laundry to sort and breakfasts to make. She huddles in her bed for a few minutes, savouring its brief security; she's in pain, she's tired, she's frightened. She's been accustomed to being raped by her employer, a successful lawyer, but last night he passed her on to his rugby-playing son … . You have the basis of a story - who is she, why is she trapped here, why is abuse by a rich man and his son not 'romantic', who are these people and how did they imprison her in this role? 

Keep asking yourself, "What makes a story?" Tension, conflict, suspense, uncertainty … not just sex and action. Your characters face problems, face difficulties … they struggle, there's never a case of "with one bound he was free" … no, if he's tied in knots, it's gonna take blood, sweat and tears to get out … and when he eventually does, it will be to discover he's landed himself in even deeper shit ... but, wait, there's a shovel over there, and when you're deep in shit, you can pray for a shovel. 

So know the world you're writing about – be it fantasy, futuristic, historical or contemporary. Write about what you know – which doesn't mean you actually have to have experience landing a spacecraft on another planet, don't have to have stood, shields locked together, in the front line of a Roman legion awaiting the impact of a barbarian charge, needn't necessarily have led another life as a magician in some fantasy world and magical dimension – but don't write about life in Los Angeles when you've lived in Kilmarnock all your life and have never been to the States. Use your imagination, but stay grounded. Make sure your imagination is credible, consistent ... and seductive.

Know your sub-genre. Are you trying to write Miss Marple or 'Prime Suspect'? There are different markets for crime, horror, science fiction, fantasy, romance, etc. Know where you stand within the genre, where you feel most comfortable. Don't be afraid to stretch your genre, or to mix them ... futuristic cops sell, science fiction romance sells.

Find your voice. Know why you want to write romance rather than literary fiction, why you want to write a war story and not a teenage comedy. Know why that genre excites you. Know how other writers write it ... don't copy, find a comfort zone where you are confident about your style.

Find a style of writing with which you're comfortable. Just because you can do joined up writing and once got an 'A' Level or Higher in English doesn't mean you can write something anyone else would choose to read.

Writing fiction, writing fiction that other people will want to read … will want to buy … is a skill. You have to serve your apprenticeship – you have to learn the tools of the trade … plot, characterisation, setting, etc. You have to understand words, how to use them to best effect. Think of a master carpenter – had to begin by learning how to use a hammer and chisel and saw, etc., and you can bet the first efforts were clumsy, and there was probably blood and bad language. You have to become confident with words, playful, able to use them to change emotion and action, able to create suspense or lead to climax, to bring tears or a smile. 

There's a theory that to become expert in any field, you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice. Learn your trade. Know how other writers introduce characters, launch plots and sub-plots, describe action or add atmosphere. Play with words … sit and watch the sea, or trees, or a field of corn, watch a busy road or a busy street … think of the emotions, consider how you'd describe them, look at the changes, how would you use them in a story? 

Consider every aspect of your life. How would you explain your actions, your emotions, the events of your life, the physical world you inhabit – how would you describe them in the written word, how would you write your world in a way others would want to read it? We're not talking Facebook one-liners here – "OMG just farted lol".

As an exercise in playfulness, start writing descriptions of your reality … or of your fantasies … sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll! Play with words and descriptions and actions and emotions.

Describe pain. What does laughter feel like? Write a paragraph about the feel of a sleeping bag. The smell of soap, the smell of sweat. What does great sex feel like - what does lousy sex feel like? Write a 10 word sentence which describes hunger. Pick a thousand emotions and experiences and events and objects and play with words, describing them, describing emotions and senses and dramatising their possibilities.

What do other writers have to say about these emotions and experiences? What can you learn from them? Consider the 'bad' writing as well as the 'good', and know how you differentiate the two.

Or think of a dozen things you've never done. I've never ridden a horse. What does it feel like? 'Interview' people who have done these things, ask them to explore their feelings, ask them to describe it. Can you absorb an understanding of the new? Now imagine you're piloting a spaceship, or you're aboard a pirate ship in the 17th century. 'Interview' your crewmates about the experience.

Play … get to enjoy … get to massage your confidence … get to the stage where you can be serious about writing, can approach scenes and characters with imagination and confidence. Play, and know that, from time to time, it's gonna hurt!

How would you describe your world, your life to your most intimate of friends? How would you let them into your world so they could understand it as throughly as you do?

Imagine meeting someone down the pub. Think of the people from whom you want to escape after five minutes! Think of the ones whose company you could enjoy all night! Your reader has to know your fictional world as intimately as a best friend. Your reader has to enjoy your company ... has to be absorbed in and monopolised by it for hours at a time.

Your perfect reader picks up your book at eight in the morning and finishes it late afternoon, early evening. Your perfect reader feels that this has been a memorable day, a day which has brought both entertainment and meaning into his (more likely her) life. Your perfect reader is the best friend who never wants to be parted from you and who looks forward to the next time you meet. 

Find a voice, one which will seduce a million perfect readers and have them begging for more. Find a voice which can share the intimacy of your novel promiscuously - part of the intimacy is in your readers' knowledge that they share you with others, that they have inherited a camaraderie of collusion in your world and love of its characters. They share a sense of exclusivity, of being part of a club. You write intimately for one reader, and one reader only ... it's just, ideally, there will be a lot of 'one readers'.

I write about Scotland, it's the environment I know. I don't write in Scots. If you want to sell to an English-speaking market world-wide, you need to write in English. You can allude to Scotland – simply using the word 'wee' can cement a Scots atmosphere. People worldwide will hear a Scots accent (and hopefully not that one from 'Star Trek') … people in Scotland will read Scots into it. But write English … and describe a Scottish environment and uniquely Scottish characters. Flavour, not vocabulary. And be honest ... don't pander - there are enough American writers churning out romantic bullshit about Scotland's past ... write honestly, and suddenly you have a unique and credible voice.

Find a voice. America – and, in particular, the demands of its film industry – is a major influence on publishing. I don't aim to sell to Hollywood … but I think in visuals. I can write a story about Ayrshire life … and the American film industry will transfer it to New Jersey or Rhode Island. Think in visuals as you write – visuals are the primary human sense (unless you treat language as a sense, which I do). If you want your story to transfer to the big screen or television, picture it as you write.

Feed the other senses – the smells, the sounds, the texture of your world. "Write for all the senses," is always good advice. Take your reader into your world. They have to be able to taste it. When a character farts, there has to be a reason for it … and the reader has to smell it, has to empathise with the emotional response to the event.

When you attempt to sell a story - be it a novel or a short story - you are first and foremost marketing it to one reader ... the editor or publisher who will buy it. And they get thousands of submissions.

A magazine editor or publisher might get 500-1000 manuscripts a month (whether paper or email), which get thrown on 'the slush pile'. They ALL have to be read. They don't have the resources to read 500 scripts, let alone 1,000. The guiidng principle in tackling the slush pile is to immediately get rid of those scripts which don't require reading.

Any story has to grab its reader right from the first sentence. You want to hook the reader with the first sentence, persuade them to read the first paragraph. You want the first paragraph to hook the reader, persuade them to read the first page. You want to hook the reader with the first page, persuade them to turn it and keep reading.

Any slush pile story which fails to hook its reader by the end of the first page ... maybe even first paragraph ... is doomed. Professional readers will look at your writing style and know in the first few sentences whether or not you can tell a story, whether or not you can sustain the reader's interest. Give them a manuscript which starts with glaring grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, sloppy punctuation, cliches and boredom - that's all the excuse needed to bin the manuscript virtually unread.

Even if your script is read to the end, doesn't mean you'll sell the story, but knowing your story has been read from start to finish is a positive. With luck you won't just get a standard rejection letter (sometimes you won't even get that), sometimes you get encouragement ... "enjoyed your story, couldn't use it" ... which means, send them more, and have a look at your story, tighten it, improve it, try it with someone else.

It's an apprenticeship in which you learn what works and what doesn't. Janet Evanovich talks of 10 years of rejections before she sold her first story. Most successful writers will tell similar stories. Walls papered with rejection letters before the first one sells. Persevere. Learn. Get to know your craft, put in those 10,000 hours of practice ... always write as if this one will definitely sell.

Writing is about confidence. You write alone. You become the only one to judge your writing - some days you think you've written some pretty good stuff, some days you wonder how you can dredge up so much drivel. The more you practice, the more confidence you develop, the better you'll learn to judge the quality of your work ... within reason. Every parent thinks s/he has a beautiful baby - I know mine were gorgeous, but, but, frankly, have you seen other people's?

Get to know your craft. That's the message from this lengthy blog. Familiarise yourself with the genre you love, understand what is currently selling and why - make your story saleable ... but different. Formula sells, but what really sells is the stand-out. Practice, get confident about understanding how characters appear on page, on how to handle setting and action. Play, experiment, adventure, have fun ... but learn.

So:

• don't ask family or friends to read your manuscript, don't ask their opionion on your writing, you can't trust it.
• write for a market.
• 'market', here, means those people who want to read what you've written.
• the gatekeeper to this market is an editor or publisher - they know what will sell, they know what their readers will buy ... you have to deliver a short story or novel which they will want to publish because they're confident that readers will want to read it.
• there are many potential markets - for science fiction, fantasy, crime, romance, children, young adults, etc., etc.; know which one you want to write for, get to know that market.
• write for a market (again) - don't write a science fiction story about Mars and try to sell it to a magazine which publishes crime fiction stories about New York private eyes.
• GET PROFESSIONAL!

And never ask a writer where they get their ideas from. If you want to be a writer, you'll have to cultivate a creative imagination. With a bit of luck, I might explore that next time.