The perfect writer's room

It's time for another post.

It's all back to work after a nice relaxing holiday and unsurprisingly writing is still as difficult as ever. I'm still plugging away at Part Three and though I'm about 75% of the way through it's still taking its bloody time. Hopefully I'll be done by end of February.

As I'm sure most people do at the beginning of the year, when you have to start getting up early again , I've been thinking about where I'd rather be. Understand that I do enjoy my day job, hell I love my day job, but still in 5, 10, 15 years time where do I want to be when I'm a massive writer? (Massive sales wise, I plan on keeping in shape)

I don't know when New England became a writer's haven in people's minds (or is that just me?). Maybe it started with Stephen King who writes often about writers and / or Maine. Maybe it was before that. Maybe it's been used so many times that you can't help but picture the ideal that these books, TV shows and games (Alan Wake has a beautiful setting) portray; life imitating art imitating life, perhaps.

Now understand I've never been to New England but what I picture is probably far from reality. I see a place with mountains and trees. The weather behaves, there's hot weather in summer and suitably cold weather in winter and it Snows On Christmas Day By Law. There's all the amenities you could want while at the same time you can have all the peace and quiet you need to write too. The water is clear, everyone's friendly and your house is nice and big and you have your own writing office.

Ah, the office. A desk of course, with a space for the laptop, a space to scribble on paper and space for a printer for inbetween. There's bookshelves, a sofa, a seat and a window with a view. And maybe even a window seat (I'm all about sitting). And room to pace, of course, I'm a pacer (when I'm not sitting, or keeping in shape). Oh, and a skylight for those rainy days when you need to feel glad that while everyone else is out going to work, you are a writer and you don't have to go out unless you want to. Bliss.

In the end, it appears I'm talking about Stephen King's house. If you're reading this, Stephen, give it to me.

Anyway, as part of my new thing, books what I have read.

This month I have read (in no particular order):

Entangled By Cat Clarke - a friend of mine who has written a very entertaining book. I found it enjoyable hampered only by the fact that I'm not and never have been a teenage girl. This meant I can't tell the difference between normal teenage girldom and being a right bitch.

Mr. Shivers - also very enjoyable, some great scenes and a gripping premise but went on just a little too long. That aside, I look forward to reading more of him.

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece - a brilliant debut novel. Very moving and has some great descriptions and is all round a great book. The author is 28, damn her!

and

I'm currently reading Catch-22 which so far is strange and at the moment doesn't really have a story. Hmmmm....

Anyway, that's it from me.

Thanks for reading.

It's Alchemy I Tell You!

Hello, everyone.

Not much to blog this week.

The first draft of Part Three continues to go well. By my estimates (based on how I've been doing so far) the 33,000 I wrote last month with the added material will end up closer to 66,000, which is nice. Every time I start something new, I worry it won't be long enough, that I don't have enough material, yadda, yadda, yadda, but, wouldn't you know it, there it all is when I get down to writing it. Current WC is about 41,000.

Short stories are all with magazines at the moment, which is good. Should probably think about getting round to writing a couple more this year. Hmmmm.....

In my spare time, I managed to read five books last month, most of them proof copies of titles not yet published. Here's the list below:

The Passage by Justin Cronin
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
Return to the Lost World by Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow
Jordan Stryker: Bionic Agent by Malcolm Rose

And I recently finished Alien Storm by A.G. Taylor, the sequel to Meteorite Strike which is currently a nominee for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize 2010, both of which I have quite enjoyed.

Next up is A Clash of Kings, the next in the series after A Game of Thrones.

This is the first I've read any George R. R. Martin and if there wasn't a TV series on the way I probably never would have done. I'm glad I did though, Martin manages to draw you in and make you care for a character almost immediately in a way that I can only describe as alchemy (i.e. I have no idea how he does it and so it must be magic.) I have no idea if I can do it, but then maybe that's something a reader decides and I don't. Anyway, I highly recommend them.

Also, currently playing Mass Effect 2, which has a couple of characters that are so much fun to interact with it should be criminal. Mordin and Jack, I'm looking at you.

Right, that's enough stalling. Back to writing.

Thanks for reading.

Why is there so much vampire porn?

I'm getting later and later in writing these.

This week I've been having fun writing Outlined in Chalk, the sequel to last year's Of the Father. I can't say there was anything I really liked about the story itself but writing it was fun. The characters aren't right, the scenes aren't right. It all needs a lot of work, basically, but that's a worry for another time. Going to go back now and start redrafting / editing Old Factory Awards next week. Should be fun.

Other than that not much is going on. I'm a little annoyed at Amazon. I like to look through their Presellers lists especially Fiction, SF&F and Children's Books but SF&F is always so full of Manga, character stuff (Star Wats, Star Trek, Warhammer 40K etc) and vampire / werewolf erotica with names like Deep Blood and Dark Awakening that I rarely see anything I like. *Sigh* If that's what people like to buy, I guess...

Oh, well.

Thanks for reading.

Learning by Degrees?

Just had a very awkward converstaion/argument in the pub.

The beauty of being an unpublished writer is that until you actually are published everyone feels qualified to tell you how to do it. And even when you are published I doubt that'll change much.

It's like people who assume they're good at music because they have loads of CDs or can boom out advice at the football players on television even though they themselves are fat, drunk people who have never really left their armchair in twelve years.

As you can see, the argument has riled me a little. But that doesn't mean I didn't listen to their points of view. They're comments have given me pause for thought and made me rethink my position on writing. Sometimes when this happens I rethink my standpoint, in this case I just came back to the same conclusion I had before but thought of all the things I should have said at the time (always the way).

The girls' stance (baring in mind that they have never read anything I've written) was that to be a good writer you need to learn philosophy and psychology, possibly even to a degree level. One so you can broach interesting issues, the other so you can understand what makes people tick and write how they would react.

When asked to name famous author's that have done this names were few and far between. No, that's being too diplomatic, one name came up: Jostein Gaarder who wrote Sophie's World subtitled A Novel about the History of Philosophy. I'm not sure if they knew that that was the subtitle or just hadn't considered it.

The stance I take is this: learning about these things don't make you good at writing novels, they just make you good at writing about psychology or philosophy. Yes, I imagine that learning psychology would make you better at understanding psychology. But how much do you really need to know to write a good story, make deep, interesting characters? If a character is punched around the face do I need to crack open a basic text book on psychology to find out how they would react? Or would they hit back, run away, cry or do any of a million things depending on the context, who hit them, who that person is etc?

Of course psychology and philosophy will make you better, perhaps, at writing some things, but I suspect they'll only really make you better at psychology and philosophy. Should I also study biology to have a better idea of how a frog hops or a sheep bleats? Or shall I just say what I just said knowing full well that the reader will know what I mean when I say 'the frog hopped'.

There's no doubt that research needs to be done on subjects to create a good novel, to make them live and breath but research is secondary to writing. Research is a tool, not an end in itself. When I'm writing about someone who is psychologically disturbed I'll do the research (hell, I have done. RWBW had someone suffering Munchausen Syndrome and I did my research). When I'm writing from the point of view of a philosopher I'll look into philosophy. At some point I'll have to look at farming techniques for my novel.

The point I think I have to make in the end is that you write the books you want to read. Gaarder (I'm reading here) contributed to textbooks on philosophy before he went near fiction. In the end he wrote a book he wanted to read and he did it well. Good for him.

Now, I'm going to write a book I want to read. It won't be about psychology or philosophy, it'll be about what I'm interested in: people and hopefully all that they entail, lovely, wondrous creatures that they are.

Thanks for reading.