I have loved werewolves since I first discovered them as an eight year old reading Daniel Farson's "Beaver Book of Horror", the bible of my childhood years.
There was something so visceral and real about them, the fact that in the right circumstances YOU could inadvertently become one. Ghosts? Well, you had to die to become one of those. Vampires? There was something aloof and arrogant about their kind. But werewolves? They were monstrous, terrible, but pitifully human and flawed too.
They stalked my nightmares, but always in a good way. Thirty years later, I put them into a best selling horror book. I owe them a lot.
The werewolf has a rich and long history. The earliest recorded mention I can find of them is from Herodotus, the 'father of history', in the 5th century BC where he wrote, "Each Neurian changes himself, once in the year, into the form of a wolf,
and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes
his former shape."
Werewolves litter old texts and historical events since the first age of modern man, the transformation of a person into a slavering beast wild with the passion for blood. Ancient Rome bulges like a well fed belly with stories of individuals turning into wolves and running riot. We've long had a close relationship with this most feared and admired of hunter. I suppose we can see so much of ourselves in the wolf's terrible yet lonesome existence, their cunning, team work and rage. After all, what other sound causes us to both shudder with fear and sorrow quite like the howl of a wolf?
Our admiration and respect for the wolf is perhaps why so many stories exist of feral children being raised by wolves. Forget Tarzan, even today, there are stories of children being found in the wilds of Russia, India and Africa with their fellow packs of wolves.
We share much with this most feared of hunters. Perhaps it was seeing too much of ourselves in their bestial ways, the monstrous side of man, that led to rumours of the Catholic church casting down sinners to live forever as werewolves, controlled always by the passing of the moon, during the 15th and 16th centuries, when the inquisition was at its height?
Monsters we are lest monsters we become.
Monday, 24 August 2015
Saturday, 22 August 2015
How much money does a single book sale make an author?
This is the second part to my blog (semi-rant) about the state of the novel marketplace. To read my opening salvo, go here.
In this part, I dissect just how much a single book sale makes for the majority of published authors and set right people's perceptions as to how much money writers are (not) raking in.
This is not a blog bemoaning how little I make for each book I sell. Whilst, of course, I would like to earn more for each book I sell, I actually feel for a sensibly priced book (see earlier blog), the return I get per book is about right. I might have written the novel, but there's been a lot of work from others which has gone into its final realisation which needs to be recognised and paid for, plus the whole design, manufacture, distribution and management of the book - and bookshops desperately need to make money to keep going too.
I was encouraged to write this blog entry, not just because I feel strongly about the whole subject of the health of the book industry, but on a taxi ride home the other night, the driver was amazed to hear what I make from each book sale. I was surprised he would think I should be making more.
And perhaps he's not alone?
Every published author will have their own specific agreed percentages for the different formats of books they are published in; hardback tend to pay a little better, mass market paperback the worst to begin with, but your percentages go up as you sell more so mass market paperback can end up being your big money spinner (if perhaps without the 'big').
To make the maths easier for this illustration, averaging out across all the different formats and sales volumes, I get, roughly, 10% on each book sale. That's pretty much the standard for authors from my research and those I've spoken too.
So The Damned, in its posh deluxe paper back version retails for £12.99. Therefore, for every copy sold, I get £1.29.
From out of this you need to deduct your agent's fees, the standard being 15%. Agents are essential and I don't begrudge them their fee for a moment. Without my wonderful agent LAW, I would never have got published and The Damned would not have been as polished and effective as I think/hope it is. They've supported me every step of the way. They've earned their 15%, and probably more.
So we're down to £1.10 per book.
Then we have tax of 10% to pay - that necessary evil. Perhaps there should be tax concessions on things which benefit and contribute to the colour and spirit of a nation? Anyway, after all that we're down to 99p a book. One pound a book (and on a premium priced book, too).
Rates tend to be better on ebooks, due to reduced costs in distribution and production, so you're looking at about the same amount earned for each ebook sold.
But as you can see, I need to sell a lot of copies in order to make a decent living.
Just to reiterate, this is, for once, not a moan. I think what I receive for each book sale is probably about right, considering all the hard work and investment that goes into a book beyond simply writing the thing. And I never looked to get published to become rich or famous. I wanted to leave something behind, a legacy, and that is what I have done and hope to continue to do. This blog entry is purely about setting people's perceptions right about how much each book makes, or doesn't make, for a writer.
One thing I will leave you with is next time you um and ah about buying that paperback, the price of two regular coffees, or that Kindle version, the price of a single posh tea, just buy it. It'll give you longer enjoyment than those drinks and will contribute to the writer's meagre income.
In this part, I dissect just how much a single book sale makes for the majority of published authors and set right people's perceptions as to how much money writers are (not) raking in.
This is not a blog bemoaning how little I make for each book I sell. Whilst, of course, I would like to earn more for each book I sell, I actually feel for a sensibly priced book (see earlier blog), the return I get per book is about right. I might have written the novel, but there's been a lot of work from others which has gone into its final realisation which needs to be recognised and paid for, plus the whole design, manufacture, distribution and management of the book - and bookshops desperately need to make money to keep going too.
I was encouraged to write this blog entry, not just because I feel strongly about the whole subject of the health of the book industry, but on a taxi ride home the other night, the driver was amazed to hear what I make from each book sale. I was surprised he would think I should be making more.
And perhaps he's not alone?
Every published author will have their own specific agreed percentages for the different formats of books they are published in; hardback tend to pay a little better, mass market paperback the worst to begin with, but your percentages go up as you sell more so mass market paperback can end up being your big money spinner (if perhaps without the 'big').
To make the maths easier for this illustration, averaging out across all the different formats and sales volumes, I get, roughly, 10% on each book sale. That's pretty much the standard for authors from my research and those I've spoken too.
So The Damned, in its posh deluxe paper back version retails for £12.99. Therefore, for every copy sold, I get £1.29.
From out of this you need to deduct your agent's fees, the standard being 15%. Agents are essential and I don't begrudge them their fee for a moment. Without my wonderful agent LAW, I would never have got published and The Damned would not have been as polished and effective as I think/hope it is. They've supported me every step of the way. They've earned their 15%, and probably more.
So we're down to £1.10 per book.
Then we have tax of 10% to pay - that necessary evil. Perhaps there should be tax concessions on things which benefit and contribute to the colour and spirit of a nation? Anyway, after all that we're down to 99p a book. One pound a book (and on a premium priced book, too).
Rates tend to be better on ebooks, due to reduced costs in distribution and production, so you're looking at about the same amount earned for each ebook sold.
But as you can see, I need to sell a lot of copies in order to make a decent living.
Just to reiterate, this is, for once, not a moan. I think what I receive for each book sale is probably about right, considering all the hard work and investment that goes into a book beyond simply writing the thing. And I never looked to get published to become rich or famous. I wanted to leave something behind, a legacy, and that is what I have done and hope to continue to do. This blog entry is purely about setting people's perceptions right about how much each book makes, or doesn't make, for a writer.
One thing I will leave you with is next time you um and ah about buying that paperback, the price of two regular coffees, or that Kindle version, the price of a single posh tea, just buy it. It'll give you longer enjoyment than those drinks and will contribute to the writer's meagre income.
Friday, 21 August 2015
The novel, a flourishing industry dying on its feet.
People's reaction when they find out I've been published is usually one of initial surprise, then admiration, and then promptly they announce that I must be loaded.
If only this was the case!
If I was Frederick Foresyth, J.K Rowling or Stephen King, all exceptions to the rule, perhaps I would be. However, the sad truth is that 90% of authors don't make enough money to rely on writing alone. The average yearly income of an author is just £10,500.
The problem is caused by a combination of things.
Firstly, the literary market is an over-saturated market. There are between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published in the US alone every year. According to Alison Flood of the Guardian, UK publishers released more than 20 new titles every hour over the course of 2014.
Basically, you cannot move for books and every book is fighting for your attention and your precious pounds. However, it's those with the biggest names which naturally tend to be able to push ahead of the queue and into the eye-line and shopping baskets of the general public, leaving the rest of us debutants and lesser literary mortals to rely on good fortune and the occasional glowing recommendation to push people our way.
The fact that the big names have such an advantage when it comes to standing out from the crowd can be seen in how many copies the average book sells. A miserly 250 in its lifetime! Just look at what J.K Rowling's alter-ego sold when she wrote secretly as Robert Galbraith, before her identity was revealed.
In a crowded market place, all shoppers are buying off the same one stall.
Secondly, people aren't reading novels in the volumes that they used to. You'll notice I say, 'novels'. People are reading more than ever, but they are reading online articles, social media, magazines, comics, how to guides and non-fiction, with more gusto than ever. It's novels they are not reading nearly so much. Gone are the days of sitting down with a book on a night. There are too many distractions, primarily digital, getting in the way of sticking one's nose in a good book for hours on end. Reading is limited to holiday reading and one chapter a night before light's out. And for a book with 100 chapters (like my debut), that's four months reading to get through before you move onto the next book!
Thirdly, and finally, the rise of the cheap bookshop is killing the market and reducing down the royalty percentages paid to writers. I include Amazon in here, particularly for the self-published author. It's a scenario I liken to the milk market for the diary farmer. Consumers are naturally drawn to the cheapest prices, so they are ignoring the established high street bookshops and shopping at the cheap online stores and the £1 book shops. I understand why people do this. The problem is when you reduce down the price of something, the person at the end of the chain suffers. When book prices are squeezed down to the absolute minimum, something has to give and usually it's the author's royalty payment.
The industry has uncanny similarities to the English football leagues. The big rich teams, the Chelseas and the Man Uniteds, are packing out full stadia week in week out. Stephen King releases a novel and sells a million overnight. The lower league teams, who play football with spirit and determination, they can barely break even with gate receipts. The debut author releases his spirited novel and sells 250 copies.
But, for all that, if you've gone in to writing to get rich and famous you're in it for the wrong reasons and you will be horridly disappointed. I wrote my books, and continue to write my books, because I feel I have something to say that other people might like to hear. I write for the sheer pleasure of it, although the last novel tested this severely!
Writing is not, nor should it ever be, about the material gain, but about what your book says and offers to people. If you write from the heart believing in what you have to say, you'll write interesting books. If you write with the sole purpose of making a mint, you'll end up with awful books.
It just seems to me that the rewards should be fair for the immense amount of time and effort novelists put into writing books. But then again what in life is ever fair? With people buying fewer books, and when they do primarily buying from the the same well known big selling names, combined with the fact that book prices are being squeezed so when you do get a sale your royalty payment is ludicrously small, the flourishing industry of the novel is dying on its feet.
If only this was the case!
If I was Frederick Foresyth, J.K Rowling or Stephen King, all exceptions to the rule, perhaps I would be. However, the sad truth is that 90% of authors don't make enough money to rely on writing alone. The average yearly income of an author is just £10,500.
The problem is caused by a combination of things.
Firstly, the literary market is an over-saturated market. There are between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published in the US alone every year. According to Alison Flood of the Guardian, UK publishers released more than 20 new titles every hour over the course of 2014.
Basically, you cannot move for books and every book is fighting for your attention and your precious pounds. However, it's those with the biggest names which naturally tend to be able to push ahead of the queue and into the eye-line and shopping baskets of the general public, leaving the rest of us debutants and lesser literary mortals to rely on good fortune and the occasional glowing recommendation to push people our way.
The fact that the big names have such an advantage when it comes to standing out from the crowd can be seen in how many copies the average book sells. A miserly 250 in its lifetime! Just look at what J.K Rowling's alter-ego sold when she wrote secretly as Robert Galbraith, before her identity was revealed.
In a crowded market place, all shoppers are buying off the same one stall.
Secondly, people aren't reading novels in the volumes that they used to. You'll notice I say, 'novels'. People are reading more than ever, but they are reading online articles, social media, magazines, comics, how to guides and non-fiction, with more gusto than ever. It's novels they are not reading nearly so much. Gone are the days of sitting down with a book on a night. There are too many distractions, primarily digital, getting in the way of sticking one's nose in a good book for hours on end. Reading is limited to holiday reading and one chapter a night before light's out. And for a book with 100 chapters (like my debut), that's four months reading to get through before you move onto the next book!
Thirdly, and finally, the rise of the cheap bookshop is killing the market and reducing down the royalty percentages paid to writers. I include Amazon in here, particularly for the self-published author. It's a scenario I liken to the milk market for the diary farmer. Consumers are naturally drawn to the cheapest prices, so they are ignoring the established high street bookshops and shopping at the cheap online stores and the £1 book shops. I understand why people do this. The problem is when you reduce down the price of something, the person at the end of the chain suffers. When book prices are squeezed down to the absolute minimum, something has to give and usually it's the author's royalty payment.
The industry has uncanny similarities to the English football leagues. The big rich teams, the Chelseas and the Man Uniteds, are packing out full stadia week in week out. Stephen King releases a novel and sells a million overnight. The lower league teams, who play football with spirit and determination, they can barely break even with gate receipts. The debut author releases his spirited novel and sells 250 copies.
But, for all that, if you've gone in to writing to get rich and famous you're in it for the wrong reasons and you will be horridly disappointed. I wrote my books, and continue to write my books, because I feel I have something to say that other people might like to hear. I write for the sheer pleasure of it, although the last novel tested this severely!
Writing is not, nor should it ever be, about the material gain, but about what your book says and offers to people. If you write from the heart believing in what you have to say, you'll write interesting books. If you write with the sole purpose of making a mint, you'll end up with awful books.
It just seems to me that the rewards should be fair for the immense amount of time and effort novelists put into writing books. But then again what in life is ever fair? With people buying fewer books, and when they do primarily buying from the the same well known big selling names, combined with the fact that book prices are being squeezed so when you do get a sale your royalty payment is ludicrously small, the flourishing industry of the novel is dying on its feet.
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
Writer's burn out, and how to avoid it
Writing the second book of The Darkest Hand trilogy very nearly killed me. I am not kidding. Chest pains. Sleeplessness. An inability to focus or concentrate. Uncontrollable coughing fits leading to vomiting. Sudden urges to crawl under my desk and curl up foetal style. Moments of terror, panic and feelings of worthlessness.
You get the idea...
I had burnt out. Writing had become a joyless exercise, a job, when writing to me had always been a joy. After all, like most writers I wrote, first and foremost, because it brought me such pleasure. Now it just exhausted me.
Utterly.
My brain was mush. I had no good ideas. My prose, amongst other things, was flaccid. My scenes were workmanlike rather than radical. My descriptions and hooks were repetitious. I used the same literary tricks time and time again.
I needed a break from the endless tap of the keyboard, the (mis)firing of the imagination and crunching of my tongue in the corner of my mouth - something I have finally managed to (sort of) have.
We all need a break from time to time. We're like cars, burning around the track at a hundred miles an hour. If you don't occasionally get into the pits, you will break. My problem is that I've never really stopped in the last 13 years. Something in my working life always needs sorting, tweaking, 'only five minutes will get that job off my desk', 'that's been hanging around for so long I won't be able to sleep until I get it done'.
I've been taught a lesson this year that all of us need to stop, just now and then.
The stop doesn't always need to be for long. Sometimes all it takes is something inspirational to lift the haze of fog, tighten the heart chambers and tickle the creative parts of the brain. A book, a film, a magazine article, a chance meeting, a night out, one too many bottles of wine, a headline is sometimes enough to lift you from the malaise and recharge the batteries.
But that said, nothing I think beats time away from the manuscripts and the blank screens, a change of scene and routine, a physical move to break the cycle which burn out so loves and feeds upon.
I have to keep reminding myself that I should see these breaks not as time away from writing, but as a chance to recharge, reinvigorate, flourish and grow, in order to come back more inspired and driven than ever.
I get my agent's feedback and edits to The Fallen, book two of the Darkest Hand, tomorrow. The break is then officially over. Hopefully I've done enough to give my pen and my mind a bit more edge, compared to the charred one burn out had blunted all those months ago.
You get the idea...
I had burnt out. Writing had become a joyless exercise, a job, when writing to me had always been a joy. After all, like most writers I wrote, first and foremost, because it brought me such pleasure. Now it just exhausted me.
Utterly.
My brain was mush. I had no good ideas. My prose, amongst other things, was flaccid. My scenes were workmanlike rather than radical. My descriptions and hooks were repetitious. I used the same literary tricks time and time again.
I needed a break from the endless tap of the keyboard, the (mis)firing of the imagination and crunching of my tongue in the corner of my mouth - something I have finally managed to (sort of) have.
We all need a break from time to time. We're like cars, burning around the track at a hundred miles an hour. If you don't occasionally get into the pits, you will break. My problem is that I've never really stopped in the last 13 years. Something in my working life always needs sorting, tweaking, 'only five minutes will get that job off my desk', 'that's been hanging around for so long I won't be able to sleep until I get it done'.
I've been taught a lesson this year that all of us need to stop, just now and then.
The stop doesn't always need to be for long. Sometimes all it takes is something inspirational to lift the haze of fog, tighten the heart chambers and tickle the creative parts of the brain. A book, a film, a magazine article, a chance meeting, a night out, one too many bottles of wine, a headline is sometimes enough to lift you from the malaise and recharge the batteries.
But that said, nothing I think beats time away from the manuscripts and the blank screens, a change of scene and routine, a physical move to break the cycle which burn out so loves and feeds upon.
I have to keep reminding myself that I should see these breaks not as time away from writing, but as a chance to recharge, reinvigorate, flourish and grow, in order to come back more inspired and driven than ever.
I get my agent's feedback and edits to The Fallen, book two of the Darkest Hand, tomorrow. The break is then officially over. Hopefully I've done enough to give my pen and my mind a bit more edge, compared to the charred one burn out had blunted all those months ago.
Sunday, 9 August 2015
Writing a novel is like mountaineering. Don't forget your crampons.
(This is an amended and expanded copy of my August newsletter, which can be found here.)
It ended with a low moan of relief, rather than a shout of joy and a hurling of papers in the air.
Yes, I have done it. A complete draft of the second book in The Darkest Trilogy has been written! (I never thought I'd see the day - and if you've been following my monthly reports on my web sites, I suspect neither did you!)
I've been working on it for eleven months, pretty much every day. And it feels like it. What a job it's been!
Finishing a novel - or at least a draft for your agent to read, tear apart and hand back to you with 'Must try harder' written across the top - is a peculiar experience. Whilst you have moments of euphoria and joy, occasional tightening of the guts and that rare but delightful sensation when something emboldening trickles out of your brain and floods into your heart as you write, writing a novel is a slog. A long hard slog, much like climbing a mountain.
Everyday you set off, your eye always on the summit, but your focus on the next camp ahead. You have good days when you make tremendous progress, almost sauntering along and you have terrible days, when you get blown off the mountain and have to haul your way back onto the path. (Let me tell you, when my software corrupted and mashed my entire, non-backed-up manuscript, into a ball of chopped and busted words, that was an avalanche which hit me that day on the mountainside! Backing up your work - there's a blog entry coming about this one!)
And if and when you get to the very top, you look about about yourself exhausted, admiring the view and think, "Crikey, that was a long way! What next?", too tired to really contemplate doing anything.
Only, of course, in my analogy, I am more at camp halfway up the mountain, rather than at the summit, because from here I get my agent's edits back, rework the manuscript accordingly, go back to the agent with another draft, then off to the publisher (hopefully), then more edits, and then … then I start on book three!
But we're not thinking about that at the moment. At the moment, as I write this, I am thinking about cold beer, behaving badly, reintroducing myself into my family again. Being a normal human being for the first time in nearly a year.
To write a novel, I think it's important to not look too far ahead of yourself. If you stand at the foot of a mountain and look up at its lofty heights, most likely you'll think, 'bugger this for a game of soldiers' and go off and do something less taxing. Look to writing that first chapter, then the next, then the next section, then the one after that. Then halfway. Then the penultimate quarter. Then the exciting conclusion.
By breaking down into manageable chunks, the whole thing feels so much more achievable. Writing 2,000 words is a 'challenge' but perfectly doable. Writing 120,000 words is 'impossible'. So think small and grow big.
To write a novel you need to gird your loins and apply yourself. Hard. It takes stamina, determination, courage, selfishness. A year of your life. Are you willing to dedicate a year of your life to a project? Because that is how long it'll take, once you've written it (several times), edited it, edited it again, gone back and written it, polished it, shown it to friends and proofreaders. You'll notice I say 'are you willing to dedicate a year', not 'are you able to.' Everyone is able. It's just whether or not you're willing to be selfish enough to lock yourself away and write write write and not lose heart or interest.
Nothing makes you questions yourself, your abilities, your confidence and your sanity like a novel. You'll have days when you think you're a genius and lot more days where you think you're an imbecile. There's no way around this. You just have to keep going, keep trying to believe in yourself, what you're saying and striving for the finishing line. One useful technique is to keep reminding yourself that 'no one will ever read your first draft except you.' This removes a lot of pressure knowing this. You can write much more fluidly, openly and honestly when you tell yourself this. By doing so, the demons crawl back into their holes, the doubts evaporate and the words seem to flow much better. And flowing words tend to mean flowing prose which tends to mean stronger writing.
But novels are hard work. That's why it feels such an achievement to complete one. I've written three now, including The Fallen which is the name of my latest, and with each one I am learning a little bit more about myself, about writing, about pace, characters, and hopefully improving each time as well.
Writing novels comes at a cost, to health (both mental and physical health), materially and with those around you. On my Facebook account, I tried to succinctly capture what writing this latest book cost me. It pretty much sums it up.
"So 11 months, 7 rewrites and false starts, four bumper black ink cartridges, 2 printers, 2,220 sheets of A4, 2 chairs, least a hundred more grey hairs, chest pains, bags under my eyes, a stoop, tears, self-harming, a pitiful weekend away in Weymouth, 128 2 litre bottles of sparkling water, crates of beer and wine, whiskey and whisky, sleepless nights too many to number, writing sessions at 3am, writing sessions at midnight, more coffee than the annual output of Brazil, more tea than all of Sri Lanka produced in the noughties, an ink pen, a sharpie pen, my nails, my sanity, my children's holidays and birthdays, nights too many without my wife, and a million plus words condensed down to 104,000, I have finally submitted a draft of The Fallen to my literary agent."
As my friend and fellow author Russell Mardell said, "Why do we keep doing it? It's either an addiction, therapy, stupidity or masochism. Likely all of them." And I think he's right.
But right now I'm off to the funny farm, with a beer in my hand.
It ended with a low moan of relief, rather than a shout of joy and a hurling of papers in the air.
Yes, I have done it. A complete draft of the second book in The Darkest Trilogy has been written! (I never thought I'd see the day - and if you've been following my monthly reports on my web sites, I suspect neither did you!)
I've been working on it for eleven months, pretty much every day. And it feels like it. What a job it's been!
Finishing a novel - or at least a draft for your agent to read, tear apart and hand back to you with 'Must try harder' written across the top - is a peculiar experience. Whilst you have moments of euphoria and joy, occasional tightening of the guts and that rare but delightful sensation when something emboldening trickles out of your brain and floods into your heart as you write, writing a novel is a slog. A long hard slog, much like climbing a mountain.
Everyday you set off, your eye always on the summit, but your focus on the next camp ahead. You have good days when you make tremendous progress, almost sauntering along and you have terrible days, when you get blown off the mountain and have to haul your way back onto the path. (Let me tell you, when my software corrupted and mashed my entire, non-backed-up manuscript, into a ball of chopped and busted words, that was an avalanche which hit me that day on the mountainside! Backing up your work - there's a blog entry coming about this one!)
And if and when you get to the very top, you look about about yourself exhausted, admiring the view and think, "Crikey, that was a long way! What next?", too tired to really contemplate doing anything.
Only, of course, in my analogy, I am more at camp halfway up the mountain, rather than at the summit, because from here I get my agent's edits back, rework the manuscript accordingly, go back to the agent with another draft, then off to the publisher (hopefully), then more edits, and then … then I start on book three!
But we're not thinking about that at the moment. At the moment, as I write this, I am thinking about cold beer, behaving badly, reintroducing myself into my family again. Being a normal human being for the first time in nearly a year.
To write a novel, I think it's important to not look too far ahead of yourself. If you stand at the foot of a mountain and look up at its lofty heights, most likely you'll think, 'bugger this for a game of soldiers' and go off and do something less taxing. Look to writing that first chapter, then the next, then the next section, then the one after that. Then halfway. Then the penultimate quarter. Then the exciting conclusion.
By breaking down into manageable chunks, the whole thing feels so much more achievable. Writing 2,000 words is a 'challenge' but perfectly doable. Writing 120,000 words is 'impossible'. So think small and grow big.
To write a novel you need to gird your loins and apply yourself. Hard. It takes stamina, determination, courage, selfishness. A year of your life. Are you willing to dedicate a year of your life to a project? Because that is how long it'll take, once you've written it (several times), edited it, edited it again, gone back and written it, polished it, shown it to friends and proofreaders. You'll notice I say 'are you willing to dedicate a year', not 'are you able to.' Everyone is able. It's just whether or not you're willing to be selfish enough to lock yourself away and write write write and not lose heart or interest.
Nothing makes you questions yourself, your abilities, your confidence and your sanity like a novel. You'll have days when you think you're a genius and lot more days where you think you're an imbecile. There's no way around this. You just have to keep going, keep trying to believe in yourself, what you're saying and striving for the finishing line. One useful technique is to keep reminding yourself that 'no one will ever read your first draft except you.' This removes a lot of pressure knowing this. You can write much more fluidly, openly and honestly when you tell yourself this. By doing so, the demons crawl back into their holes, the doubts evaporate and the words seem to flow much better. And flowing words tend to mean flowing prose which tends to mean stronger writing.
But novels are hard work. That's why it feels such an achievement to complete one. I've written three now, including The Fallen which is the name of my latest, and with each one I am learning a little bit more about myself, about writing, about pace, characters, and hopefully improving each time as well.
Writing novels comes at a cost, to health (both mental and physical health), materially and with those around you. On my Facebook account, I tried to succinctly capture what writing this latest book cost me. It pretty much sums it up.
"So 11 months, 7 rewrites and false starts, four bumper black ink cartridges, 2 printers, 2,220 sheets of A4, 2 chairs, least a hundred more grey hairs, chest pains, bags under my eyes, a stoop, tears, self-harming, a pitiful weekend away in Weymouth, 128 2 litre bottles of sparkling water, crates of beer and wine, whiskey and whisky, sleepless nights too many to number, writing sessions at 3am, writing sessions at midnight, more coffee than the annual output of Brazil, more tea than all of Sri Lanka produced in the noughties, an ink pen, a sharpie pen, my nails, my sanity, my children's holidays and birthdays, nights too many without my wife, and a million plus words condensed down to 104,000, I have finally submitted a draft of The Fallen to my literary agent."
As my friend and fellow author Russell Mardell said, "Why do we keep doing it? It's either an addiction, therapy, stupidity or masochism. Likely all of them." And I think he's right.
But right now I'm off to the funny farm, with a beer in my hand.
Wednesday, 29 July 2015
All about Literary Agents Part 2. How to get an agent
So this is the second post regarding Literary Agents, my first being why you need one and now this, how to get one.
Start off by getting yourself a copy of the Writers' & Artists' yearbook. Go through and highlight all the agencies who handle your genre. Do not approach an agency who don't touch your genre. It'll be a waste of time for everyone involved and three months longer you need to wait to get on the agency ladder.
Once you've drawn up a list of agencies, go through the list again and circle those who represent authors you adore and/or that you feel are representative of your style of writing.
Armed with this narrowed down list, check out their web sites and make sure that they are accepting submissions. If they are, make sure you understand their submission process. Some only accept by post, others might accept by email.
Make sure your typesetting is exactly as requested. Agents are busy people. They put in place rules specifically to make their hectic lives a little easier. If you break any of their submission rules, they will not bother with your submission or give it the time it deserves.
When it comes to your manuscript, yes get it as good as you can, but just polish the chapters they request in their submission rules. Don't bother polishing the entire thing because a) it might be a dead duck and you'll be wasting your time on something which never will quack and b) your manuscript will almost certainly change from the one you put under your agent's nose once they get involved with it. The agent wants to see from your manuscript if you can write, write with purpose, conviction and panache. And if your story idea contains something different.
Which leads me to the most controversial part of my advice.
Spend as long on your synopsis as you do your submitted manuscript. Your synopsis has to shimmer, startle, shine, surprise and excite. Agents get a lot of submissions every single day. They need to quickly see if your manuscript has got what it takes to lift above the masses and fly off the shelves. They'll do this by reading your synopsis first. If your synopsis is old hat, flat, or just plain boring, you've had it.
I'll let you into a secret. My agent rejected my submission on first approach but gave me a second crack of the nut because of the strength of my synopsis. What I'd failed to do was write what was documented in my synopsis (I know, go figure). His advice was to go away and rewrite what was in my synopsis and, when I had done that, go back to them. I did and the rest, as they say, is history. If my synopsis had been weak, I suspect I'd never have had a second chance.
So armed with your killer unique novel, perfectly encapsulated in a short startling synopsis and your opening three chapters, get sending.
I only ever sent to two agencies. The first rejected me because they didn't touch the genre of my work (I know, do as I say, not as I do) and the second accepted me second time around, so I never approached lots of agents simultaneously. This meant I never had to do the long dispiriting search for an agent. There's one camp who say send to all and sundry and go with the first, or the best, offer to come back to you. There's another who say out of courtesy approach one agency at a time, otherwise it'll cause conflicts and complications down the line when several sign you up at once.
I'll leave that one up to you to decide how you want to go about things.
Good luck and when you find your agent, I hope it's a match made in literary heaven. If it is, between you and your agent, nothing can get in your way.
For information, my agency is LAW in London. They are a very busy agency but they are accepting submissions. They are also fantastic.
Start off by getting yourself a copy of the Writers' & Artists' yearbook. Go through and highlight all the agencies who handle your genre. Do not approach an agency who don't touch your genre. It'll be a waste of time for everyone involved and three months longer you need to wait to get on the agency ladder.
Once you've drawn up a list of agencies, go through the list again and circle those who represent authors you adore and/or that you feel are representative of your style of writing.
Armed with this narrowed down list, check out their web sites and make sure that they are accepting submissions. If they are, make sure you understand their submission process. Some only accept by post, others might accept by email.
Make sure your typesetting is exactly as requested. Agents are busy people. They put in place rules specifically to make their hectic lives a little easier. If you break any of their submission rules, they will not bother with your submission or give it the time it deserves.
When it comes to your manuscript, yes get it as good as you can, but just polish the chapters they request in their submission rules. Don't bother polishing the entire thing because a) it might be a dead duck and you'll be wasting your time on something which never will quack and b) your manuscript will almost certainly change from the one you put under your agent's nose once they get involved with it. The agent wants to see from your manuscript if you can write, write with purpose, conviction and panache. And if your story idea contains something different.
Which leads me to the most controversial part of my advice.
Spend as long on your synopsis as you do your submitted manuscript. Your synopsis has to shimmer, startle, shine, surprise and excite. Agents get a lot of submissions every single day. They need to quickly see if your manuscript has got what it takes to lift above the masses and fly off the shelves. They'll do this by reading your synopsis first. If your synopsis is old hat, flat, or just plain boring, you've had it.
I'll let you into a secret. My agent rejected my submission on first approach but gave me a second crack of the nut because of the strength of my synopsis. What I'd failed to do was write what was documented in my synopsis (I know, go figure). His advice was to go away and rewrite what was in my synopsis and, when I had done that, go back to them. I did and the rest, as they say, is history. If my synopsis had been weak, I suspect I'd never have had a second chance.
So armed with your killer unique novel, perfectly encapsulated in a short startling synopsis and your opening three chapters, get sending.
I only ever sent to two agencies. The first rejected me because they didn't touch the genre of my work (I know, do as I say, not as I do) and the second accepted me second time around, so I never approached lots of agents simultaneously. This meant I never had to do the long dispiriting search for an agent. There's one camp who say send to all and sundry and go with the first, or the best, offer to come back to you. There's another who say out of courtesy approach one agency at a time, otherwise it'll cause conflicts and complications down the line when several sign you up at once.
I'll leave that one up to you to decide how you want to go about things.
Good luck and when you find your agent, I hope it's a match made in literary heaven. If it is, between you and your agent, nothing can get in your way.
For information, my agency is LAW in London. They are a very busy agency but they are accepting submissions. They are also fantastic.
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
All about Literary Agents Part 1. Why you need an agent.
I write this blog entry from a position of ignorance, which is often how I like to live my life. I was lucky enough to get my literary agent very quickly and I struck gold when I did (I know I'm bound to say that, but in this case it is true). As a result, I don't have a huge list of hints and tips to impart regarding the long road traveled to finding an agent and how to keep positive and enthusiastic as to do so. However, I did attract the second agency I approached, as it turned out, so I suppose there is something in that to share.
The bottom line is that if you want to become a published author in the traditional sense of having a publisher publish your own work on your behalf, you will need to get an agent. Publishers very occasionally announce they are taking open submissions directly from writers, but the usual state of affairs is that they will only accept those submitted by a literary agent. The reason is simple. The agent will (on the whole) have filtered out the dross.
Publishers are busy, understaffed, overwhelmed places. They simply don't have the resources to read and review every single submission from every single source. So literary agencies will give them the assurance that what they are being made to read is probably worth reading.
So, primarily, your agent will get your work published. This is, of course, the most important aspect of their work for the author at the beginning, but it's certainly not the only one and, once you're secured with a publisher, your agent becomes an essential part of your armoury - your right hand man.
It's hard enough to write a book, let alone understand all the legal ramifications behind the contracts which go with it. The agent will, on your behalf, fight for the best deal they can for you, including the size of your advance, your royalties, when you'll be paid and the size of your deal in terms of the number of books you have to write for the publisher.
When you first win the publishing deal, you tend to slip into a dimwitted ether sniffing manner. Nothing quite makes sense anymore, everything sounds wonderful and any deadline is achievable with your all conquering pen and imagination. Agents will help agree exactly what's required of you and make sure that what you put your name to is fair you, as well as the publisher.
Once all the nasty paperwork is done, your agent will often become your own editor. I say 'often' because I've heard of agents who do not get involved with this side of things. I hope you get an agent who rolls their sleeves up and does help with editing because writing books is a lonely business and having someone who is, in many ways, your number one fan but without the sycophantic leanings, is such a godsend. My agent is my own editor and will review, correct and comment on everything I send them - and I send them a lot, much of which never sees the light of day! They are the safety net before you send further work to your publisher and you will hopefully come to appreciate their input immensely. I certainly do.
Agents will also look out for other deals for you and your work; foreign rights, audio books, TV deals, film deals. After all, selling your work is how they make their money - usually 15%. They know who's who in the market. They know them well enough to pick up the phone and talk to them candidly about your work, or go out for a beer with them and insist that they sign you up. They are your sales team, your editorial team and your baton twirling, pom pom waving team, rolled into one.
Trust me - you need an agent, if only to keep you sane down this long lonely road all writers travel.
So, now you know why you need an agent, how do you go about getting one? I'll discuss this in my next blog entry.
By the way, my agent is LAW and if you've got a book in you, they're well worth contacting.
The bottom line is that if you want to become a published author in the traditional sense of having a publisher publish your own work on your behalf, you will need to get an agent. Publishers very occasionally announce they are taking open submissions directly from writers, but the usual state of affairs is that they will only accept those submitted by a literary agent. The reason is simple. The agent will (on the whole) have filtered out the dross.
Publishers are busy, understaffed, overwhelmed places. They simply don't have the resources to read and review every single submission from every single source. So literary agencies will give them the assurance that what they are being made to read is probably worth reading.
So, primarily, your agent will get your work published. This is, of course, the most important aspect of their work for the author at the beginning, but it's certainly not the only one and, once you're secured with a publisher, your agent becomes an essential part of your armoury - your right hand man.
It's hard enough to write a book, let alone understand all the legal ramifications behind the contracts which go with it. The agent will, on your behalf, fight for the best deal they can for you, including the size of your advance, your royalties, when you'll be paid and the size of your deal in terms of the number of books you have to write for the publisher.
When you first win the publishing deal, you tend to slip into a dimwitted ether sniffing manner. Nothing quite makes sense anymore, everything sounds wonderful and any deadline is achievable with your all conquering pen and imagination. Agents will help agree exactly what's required of you and make sure that what you put your name to is fair you, as well as the publisher.
Once all the nasty paperwork is done, your agent will often become your own editor. I say 'often' because I've heard of agents who do not get involved with this side of things. I hope you get an agent who rolls their sleeves up and does help with editing because writing books is a lonely business and having someone who is, in many ways, your number one fan but without the sycophantic leanings, is such a godsend. My agent is my own editor and will review, correct and comment on everything I send them - and I send them a lot, much of which never sees the light of day! They are the safety net before you send further work to your publisher and you will hopefully come to appreciate their input immensely. I certainly do.
Agents will also look out for other deals for you and your work; foreign rights, audio books, TV deals, film deals. After all, selling your work is how they make their money - usually 15%. They know who's who in the market. They know them well enough to pick up the phone and talk to them candidly about your work, or go out for a beer with them and insist that they sign you up. They are your sales team, your editorial team and your baton twirling, pom pom waving team, rolled into one.
Trust me - you need an agent, if only to keep you sane down this long lonely road all writers travel.
So, now you know why you need an agent, how do you go about getting one? I'll discuss this in my next blog entry.
By the way, my agent is LAW and if you've got a book in you, they're well worth contacting.
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