Forget Starting Edits. How The Hell Do You STOP?

Morning /afternoon all.

My series for Writers & Artists is at an end, save the last Q&A post that's being put together behind the scenes. It's been brilliant, to be honest - especially the comments and conversation with other readers and writers. The post on editing got a lot of attention, predictably (I think it's an area people are wary of without even starting out first) - but it also raised a question I hadn't addressed.

When do you stop editing?

A first draft is rough (Hemingway said it was 'shit', I hear). You tinker / chisel / polish / apply whatever metaphor you wish, and it gets better. Finally, complete story, and instant fame and riches are yours. Congrats!*

*there will be no instant fame or riches.

So the question is, when is a story done? And I mean done done, so that it's ready to be read. Writers always want to play more. I guess in that way we can be like the deranged puppy with the toy that no, doesn't want to let go and yes, would much rather keep playing and keeping you awake for ever and ever, hooray.

To fall back on another of my betters, Neil Gaiman has said before that books aren't so much done as let go and put out in public, but he can always edit / improve them more. If art is ongoing and evolves with interaction, books could be forever re-released with changes. Actually, with ebooks, this is entirely feasible, though it raises more legal and ethical issues because of, you know, publishers being able to delete and edit any item people have bought without their permission (yes, they could. No, they won't.)

So, editing. As I write I tend not to edit either small or big things. Even typos get left behind if the story's chugging along. That all comes later, the correcting and the fixing.

But this is about stopping - about knowing when changes you make are going to start hurting the book.

Let's have some bullet points. Everyone loves a good bullet point.

Stop Editing Your Book When...

1. You start adding in new twists and plot arcs on the spur of the moment. The repercussions down the line mean you're basically starting back at square one.
2. You spend more than about thirty seconds agonizing over a single semi-colon. Punctuation has concrete rules. It's not hard. If you're indecisive it's because you're over thinking. Stop.
3. Read your dialogue out loud. Is it natural, or have you edited it so much that it's either brisk and abrupt or long winded? Stop, and let characters breathe as well as speak.
4. And, as with the above, have you got so caught up worrying about sense that you've forced in too much info as a precaution? Readers aren't stupid and they can probably work a lot more out than you realise - and all without you adding more and more hints and clues 'for clarity'. Reign it in, professor.
5. You rewrite the same sentence over, and over, and over. Is it broken? Cut it. What you leave out is just as important as what you leave in. Stop beating the dead horse and thinking editing can fix a fatally bad bit of writing.

It can be a fine line, for sure, but tinkering rather than improving can strip a story of all the individuality and artistry that makes up your voice. Maybe that's another good point - if you're editing out the parts that make it yours, either because you're trying to be someone else or because you're scared it won't 'fit the market', stop. Be bold and be yourself even if that means damning grammar rules.

Good. What do you think? When does editing become a hindrance to good writing?

In which Hemingway and Heroes and Thoughts

I watched The Words last week. It's a decent film, and it all gets a bit meta. Story of a story of a story (of a story) kind of thing, but it had, at its heart a writer trying to be someone else. He was a struggling writer, I suppose, and he was slowly trying to become un-struggling, but what struck me - more than the pretty good representation of how publishing works, or the twists, or the layers of the film - was how much the writer had chosen to define his career through other writers.

A lot of the film is based in 1920s Paris and, like Midnight in Paris, hearkens back to the glory, the loss, and the artistic explosion of the "Lost Generation" of artists, writers and generally funky people who lived there at that time. And for writers, both in-film and in real life, the master and hero of that city and that time was Ernest Hemingway.

I'd never read any Hemingway before. I know, I know - and me, a writer. So, yesterday I read The Sun Also Rises, and today I worked on The Old Man and the Sea. This isn't about what I thought of his work, though.

All writers have heroes - people they wish they could have met, could have learned from. We steal our style and our inspiration with absolutely no shame because that is how it's always been. People write books because they read books, and no course in writing, no tutorials or degree or classes will ever teach you more than just reading other books and seeing how they work. And in The Words, of course, our writer protagonist has a dream - to be a Great Writer. Not good. Not OK.

Great

He wants, in fact, to be Hemingway. He idolizes the work and life of other writers and it's that idolization, rather than admiration, which seems to paralyze him.

There's probably a warning there.

Who do writers look up to? Let them read those books and take joy in the words. Share them, preach about them, and copy them.

As long as you also remember to be yourself. The books you write have to, in the end, be for you, to be something you enjoy, and to be your own work. Copying someone else just makes a weird hybrid book that's not Great or Memorably Bad. It's just ... meh.

Writers love writers, and love reading their books - but when it comes to writing our own, I think it's important to make sure we leave off on aping, and get right down to creating, creating, creating.

Creating's where the magic happens. Go. Write. Make worlds.

Enjoy it

Wednesday's Inspiring Book - Artemis Fowl

Morning, crew.

Again, it's been a while since I did one of these, but there's no time like the present. On occasional Wednesdays, I've been going through and singing the praises of not just good books, but books that were instrumental (and inspirational) in making me want to be a writer. It's fun to look back and remember just what it was about certain books that made me think, or taught me something, or stayed with me and helped push and nudge me along the path to where I am now - my own book coming out next year.

Today's book - Artemis Fowl

This is one of those books where, yes, the cover caught my attention. I bought it from WH Smith in Harborne, Birmingham, and I bought it of my own volition with my own money - something still quite new to me back them. Eoin Colfer wasn't a name I knew but the blurb, promising both magic, faeries, and Die Hard-style explosions, knew what it was doing. The story's fantastic - and it started an entire trend of modern, tech'd up magical creatures that went strong for a couple of years. Artemis Fowl was the leader, though, and there have since been seven sequels charting the protagonist's adventures and battles with the various hidden creatures of the world. The writing is engaging but not patronizing, and the character himself - a somewhat smarmy, self-assured but essentially flawed boy - was brilliant because all young boys (and girls?) are pretty much smarmy, self-assured and exceptionally flawed. 

Artemis Fowl was also one of the first books I read that broke the fourth wall (or the... second... page?) with interactive 'features'. Along the bottom of every page, a simple code, translatable if you used the key Artemis himself revealed earlier in the book, spelled out a hidden message. Simple, not difficult to crack, but for a kid, and for one new to books, it was spectacular that beyond just the story the book could offer more - breaking down, a tiny bit, the barrier between the fiction and my life. That's something kids' books strives to do, and it worked.

So, for that, and for the sheer goodness and awesome-ness of the cover, the story, and the characters, Artemis Fowl is today's inspiring book.

Read it? Like it? Let me know.

What Are My Dreams, And What Will They Be?

People have dreams. Some are loud and in-your-face about it. Some are quiet and secretive. Both of these are fine - but all people have dreams. Whether they believe in them, shun them, chase them, or deny them is a different matter - and an individual person's life is made up of a web of webs, an eternal circle of interconnecting people, places, events, and thoughts that make them unique and their situation special.

That's why you can't judge someone else's dreams or what they're doing about them without accepting that you're probably wrong anyway and you aren't seeing the big picture.

Sure, no man's an island, but that doesn't mean we're not, in the end, the sole inhabitant of that island who really, truly knows what's what.

For a long time I've only had two main goals. I wanted to travel - in particular, to Japan - and I wanted to become an author. I wanted a book, for children, that I'd written, to be out there in shops with my name on it.

And now that's happening - though there's still so much to do - and I lived in Japan for three and a half years, and the thought strikes me: I should make some new goals.

Not because I'm done with my old ones at all. Travel never ends, and there are many, many places I have not been to. As for the book, it's one book, and it's more than a year away, and there are more books and more stories to tell.

But I'm a firm believer in having impossible things as your goals in life, because impossible things make you strive a lot more.

There's a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic that I really like:





It's a nice idea - the constantly reaching out and defining and changing who we are. So while I want to build upon being a writer, an author, and I want to move around the world, I also want to have goals which are secret and hidden because the seem so off the wall loony and ridiculous that if I share them, people will just shake their heads and smile. Then, bit by bit, I can work on them, and explore more of time and space - which, really, is what people do.

Travelling and writing are my ongoing dreams, but I feel excited right now because I'm settling on my future dreams. What do I want out of life - what do I want to have done, in ten - twenty - fifty years' time and be able to look back and remember this time right now, when it seemed so far away?

These are my thoughts right now, when everything is changing and so many things seem possible.

My goals, they are a-changing.

AW April Blog Chain - April Fools

A meaningful milestone for me, this post - April 2012 was the first chain story I took part in. A year's gone by, and stories have happened - like Dead Bunnies, Daniel, The End of the World, or The Storyteller's Jig, soon to be out there for all to see. Lots of other things have - some bad, most good. What more can you want, in reality?

The prompt for April 2013 is April Fools. Check out the other guys' stories below, and be sure to comment and appreciate them all.

[Edited: I made this post in advance, ready to hit the post when my turn came. This morning  however, news broke that one of my writing buddies, Kelsey Macke, had signed not just a book deal, but a book deal with a tie-in album to be recorded by her and her husband. Massive congratulations to Kelsey! We've never actually met - yet - but we were on submission together, blog together, and now our books are gonna be published not too far apart, in Fall 2014. She broke the news on her vlog - go watch it here and keep your eyes out for this rising star. Good! And now, the story...]

April Fools

I thought it was an April Fools,' she said, and she rested her elbows on the table.

The man looked at her and said nothing. The tape recorder made small clicks and whirs, and it had hummed at the beginning, she thought, though maybe it still did, and she just couldn't hear it any more.

She had a paper cup of water. She took a sip, wetting her tongue.

Paper, she thought. How can it hold water? She almost asked them. When she looked up and saw their faces she stopped.

'You heard the call,' she said. 'I just didn't think –'

Now one of them spoke. He was the older one. He had grey stubble on his chin and grey eyes, flecked, she thought, with green. His accent was harsher, from the North.

'There are standards,' he said.

'I know.'

'Every call gets logged and reported.'

'You think so?' she said. He raised his eyebrows. The young man spoke up.

'They don't?'

London, she thought. Native. And he's - what - mid twenties? A boy.

'Listen,' she said. 'You know it as well as me, so don't pretend to be so naive. Plenty of the calls are jokes, get treated as jokes, and get forgotten.'

'This wasn't a joke,' said the first man.

She sighed. 'No,' she said.

'And now we have a problem.'

'I do, you mean.'

It was the younger one who replied, and that surprised her.

'Sherlock Holmes,' he said. 'You know the name?'

She frowned and let her mind wander. Holmes? She did. How did she? Where had she heard that? Then it came to her. She frowned more.

'That ... private detective guy? He's been on the tele a bit.'

'Think he prefers "consulting detective"' said the younger one, and he actually smiled.

'He's quite good,' he added. 'We keep it quiet but honestly, he's better than most of us.'

The older man didn't stop him, didn't even frown, which was odd, she thought. He flicked his eyes to his colleague and then looked back at her. No one spoke. The machine clicked. Well, she thought. At least that's all on tape. At least they won't want to leak it to the press now.

'The call,' said the older man again.

'Look,' she said. She felt emboldened. She felt a sudden rush - a wave - of hope.

'Do you know how many 999 calls I answer in one shift? It changes, of course. If I'm on for three hours, say, no break, I can take well over twenty. Thirty, maybe. And on big days - Christmas, New Years, April 1 - more. Always more. And some are just pricks thinking it's fun. Some are people who needs help. And I've never gotten the two confused before.'

'Until now.'

'That isn't helpful.'

The paper has to be waxed, she thought. That's how the water stays in. It can't be healthy, can it? Drinking wax. She pulled a face.

'Sherlock Holmes,' she said. 'Why do I need to know him?'

'Ah,' said the older.

'Hm,' said the younger.

She waited. For a moment, she had the power. Let them wait, she thought. People talk if you leave a gap to fill. It's basic, that. It's easy and primitive. Leave a silence big enough and people will always jump in to it.

'It was him who made the call.'

'A detective?'

'It wasn't a joke you see.'

'He said they had swords,' she said.

'Yes.'

'He said the Czar’s' Jewel was in the open.'

'Yes.'

'It's 2013. There hasn't been a Czar for 96 years.'

They stared. Then, '96? Really?'

'The Revolution of 1917,' she said. She was good at history. She was good at a lot of things.

'He said Victoria - Queen Victoria - was wrong about the jade.'

'Ah. Yes,' said the younger man. 'You see-'

'There was more.’

'We have head the recording -'

'He said the Dandy Club knew. The Dandy Club. And that if the red haired man took three sugars - three, not two - in his tea, then he would be murdered.'

They didn't say anything.

'So yes, I thought it was a joke.'

‘We understand,’ said the older man.

‘And you say it wasn't?’

‘No.’

‘It all meant something.’

‘As far as is understood, yes.’

She had to ask, then. They weren't going to tell her if she didn't.

‘Is he dead, then? Holmes? Because I didn't send a car round?’

They shifted in their seats and looked uncomfortable. Good, she thought. At least this isn't a witch hunt.

‘Well?’

‘We don’t know, truth be told,’ said the younger man again. ‘The problem is that he might be – in which case the police have lost something truly amazing. And if he isn't – well, then he’s going to be annoyed that you slowed things down a bit.

She scoffed. ‘Annoyed at me?’

‘It … wouldn't be the first time.’

She leaned forward. ‘Fist time for what?’

‘People get caught in the cross fire,’ said the older man again. ‘There’s always … collateral, when good and bad go up against each other.’

‘I have no idea what you’re trying to say,’ she said. ‘And I’m tired and confused and I might get angry.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Tell me what you want to tell me.’

‘If Holmes is alive, you’re probably fired. If he’s dead, you’re probably fired.’

She felt the shock in her stomach, like a freezing nausea, an icy ache. The men looked away. The tape whirred. Waxed paper, she thought. We can make waxed paper, and the Czar’s jewel is in the open, and I could lose my job.

‘This Holmes,’ she said, voice steady, eyes fixed. ‘He sounds like a child. He sounds like a boy.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the older man. ‘But he’s not one we can mess with.’

‘There are official procedures for this,’ she said.

‘And there are ways around them.’

‘You can’t just fire me and make me be quiet and –‘

‘We can,’ said the man, and he said it with a suddenly cold, tired voice.

The tape player clicked, and they were silent.

‘I thought it was an April Fools,’ she said, and the words sounded childish, and almost like a joke themselves.

They fidgeted, coughed, and had nothing more to say.

*************

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