Why writing books is a career like no other, and 9 takeaways for doing it

I’ve had an email from a high school student who’s writing an English assignment on careers he would like to follow. He said:

Would you answer a few questions about your job journey? I’m very interested in what you do.

His questions were fairly standard, and they made me realise how most creative careers are anything but. They’re unpredictable and weird. Here are my answers, and I’m really curious to see what other writers would say. If you’re game, do have a go in the comments.

What is your exact job title?

Author of fiction, creative non-fiction and writing craft books.

Though actually, I have several jobs.

I’m also an editor, producing books for publishers and individual authors, and magazines as well.

I’m a writing coach, teaching individual authors and also masterclasses.

I’m a ghostwriter, writing books for others.  

And I’m a story consultant, working on computer games and indie movies.

You were probably expecting just one title and I’ve given you five.

Multiple jobs are the norm.

Many authors also teach, edit, run publishing imprints, contribute to the wider literary ecosystem. So do other people in the creative arts. I know actors who coach executives to be influential in meetings and interviews, and teach doctors how to give bad news to cancer patients.

Or they might have other jobs that are entirely unconnected with writing. Again, that’s quite usual. Recently I’ve interviewed an author who is also a rocket scientist and another who is a sheep farmer.

Why is this necessary? Primarily for financial survival – for most of us, writing books is not enough to make a living.  

Also, this other work keeps you grounded. If you spend a lot of time in make-believe, you can lose touch with reality.

So if you’re considering this line of work, find a day job that will work while you inch towards your dream, or might help you get there. Look out for side hustles.

So here’s the first takeaway

Embrace diversification. It make your core art possible.

It will also make you a deeper human, more in touch with the world your readers live in.  

What types of work do you do on a daily basis?

It varies. Not all of it is writing, by any means.

Most books are a cycle – research and planning (not much writing), writing and editing (lots of writing), publishing (not much writing).

If I’m researching, I might lounge on a sofa reading and taking notes, which will look very leisurely, but is essential to create a credible book. If I’m planning, I’ll sit at a table with index cards, which will look like a children’s game, but it helps me find the best way to use story elements and information. Then the writing and editing are a lot of time at the computer, creating the text, checking things. Here’s my writing process in pictures and here’s Nail Your Novel, which will guide you through the lounging, gaming and other stuff.  

You have to love checking. There is more checking than you would believe. A wrong fact, an inconsistent description, a paragraph accidentally repeated can kick the reader out of the story. Other editors will usually be involved in this process, but it still creates a lot of work for you. After the book’s been checked to smithereens, there are other publishing tasks – formatting, writing copy for the back cover, proofing.

If I have a commission for another author or a publishing house, their deadlines take priority. Sometimes that’s a desperate rush – just before Christmas a publisher needed three books edited before the holidays. I shelved my plans and burned the midnight oil, but we all got everything done and were proud of the result.

Second takeaway

Although the main job description is writing, a lot of the work is not writing.

There’s another essential task that writers will do – networking. We’re constantly looking for ways to attract new readers to our books, so I write a blog and a newsletter. Writers network among each other too, to share opportunities and wisdom.

If a book is close to publication I do another kind of work – contacting reviewers, blogs, podcasts and radio shows that might be interested in featuring it. That’s time consuming and there’s a lot of silence – often you never get a reply, but you keep going. If a tree falls over in a wood and no one hears or sees it, it just lies there. You don’t want your book to be that tree. You keep going. 

Third takeaway

You can’t survive if you don’t network.

What requirements/previous experience are necessary for a job like yours?

Boundless reserves of self-motivation and discipline.

You’re not in an office, surrounded by people who are also hard at work, or waiting for you to finish something they need. You could decide, if a book is proving difficult, to give up.

Online forums can provide supportive company, like an office, but choose them carefully. There are loads of ways to drag yourself further into a funk if you dwell too much on the frustrations. And online, distractions are just a click away.  

So your writing and your books have to be a contract with yourself, a personal mission.

You might wonder about training. There are courses and qualifications, but not everybody does them. They make little difference to whether you get a book deal, though they might get you contacts. In that respect, doing a course is another form of networking.

And long before you ever think about taking a course, you’ll already be a writer.

You just find yourself writing, full stop. You also find yourself reading in a strangely alert way, dwelling on a sentence or a story twist, wondering why it electrifies your hairs, and the next time you write you will play with the words and place them more deliberately. Before you know it, words and stories are an instrument you are trying to master.

You might read craft books, go to classes, take a qualification, get feedback from a professional editor, and those are good because we all need to learn from other people. And there are definitely skills to learn. But most of the work is done by you, developing your awareness, practising on your own.

So here’s the fourth takeaway.

Writing is a temperament, a wish, a tuning of the mind to love language, and the shapes of stories, and the way words can enspell a reader, no pun intended (okay, maybe a little one).

Is it difficult to get a job in this field?

Yes and no.

Yes, difficult, because there aren’t many jobs writing books, especially fiction and creative non-fiction. There might be commissions, but you have to be already established.

But mostly you hack your own path. You become an author by writing a book, and seeing if you can get it published. Whether it is or not, you then see where that takes you.

The first book you write may not be the first book you publish. As I said above, there’s a lot to master.

Also, we haven’t talked about the luck of getting published and the option of self-publishing. Some people are lucky with publishing offers. Their work is exactly what a publishing house is looking for. Some get a deal for a later book after writing several.

Some self-publish. For that there’s no barrier to entry. You don’t have to pass any selection process. You just do it.

If that sounds easy-peasy, stop. Don’t ‘just do it’ unless you’ve had professional help. Remember I mentioned all the checking? Publishers, editors and experienced authors know what to check – and it’s stuff you never dreamed was important. You’ll also need help with the presentation – formatting, cover and sales blurbs – so that your book looks credible.

So although you can leapfrog the gatekeepers and start your author career completely on your own, don’t do it without help from experienced people.

Really important takeaway (number 5)

Take very good care of your reputation. Find out what the best people do and aim for that.          

If getting into this field is difficult, how did you manage to land your position? 

By trying the conventional routes, getting nowhere, and through that, finding the door.

I sent short stories to publishers and magazines, was told they were good but novels were more saleable. So I wrote a novel, and publishers and agents told me it was well written but too strange for the market. Meanwhile, I met various authors, all swimming in the same pool of luck/non-luck, married one of them (ultra-networking!), and got a chance at a ghostwriting job.

That was the door. A book came out, which I had made on my hard drive – my dream. More commissions came and I also discovered I was good at teaching other authors (another door). Then the self-publishing revolution took hold in the late 2000s and I was ready, with all the skills, to publish my own books and get good reviews for them.

Sixth takeaway

Expect a lot of false starts until something works, which will usually be unexpected.   

Do you like/love the work you do?

Writing books is a vocation. A way you’re born and the way you grapple with the world. The page is my easy place, where I think and play.

An example. I had an idea about a man who fell into a glacier and was still there 20 years later, while his friends got older. It kept bothering me. It was saying something deep and sad about the human condition, about memory, about the great mystery of lost youth and the grand enigma of death. I made it into a novel, Ever Rest. It took a lot of work, but that work was also a personal crusade, to puzzle out why it was so powerful.

Seventh takeaway

I think this work is a personal mission, which is probably love.  

Do you see yourself retiring from this job? Or is there another job you’d like to do next?

No.

Eighth takeaway

This is a way of life. I have to create. It’s how I fit into the universe.

Is there anything you wish someone had told you about this job before you decided to take it?

Not really. If they had, I wouldn’t have taken much notice. I was probably told all kinds of offputting things over the years, but I just kept going. 

Keep going – that’s the ninth takeaway.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

When to write poetry, when to write prose? Interview with poet and fictioneer Mike Maggio

What makes a poem a poem? How is it a different beast from richly written literary fiction? In prose, it seems, we can do most of what a poem can do, beyond just telling a story. Creative expression, profound thoughts, metaphors. We can even control how the text falls in the reader’s mind through our use of cadence and line breaks. What’s the distinguishing difference with a poem?

Mike Maggio is amply qualified to talk about this. He has several poetry collections (DeMOCKracy, Garden of Rain, Your Secret Is Safe With Me, Oranges From Palestine, and Let’s Call It Paradise, which won the Intranational Book Award for contemporary poetry). He was nominated as the 2020 Virginia Poet Laureate and he’s a judge in the Oregon Poetry Association’s annual contest. He also has three volumes of short stories –The Keepers, Sifting Through The Madness, Letters From Inside (I love that title). And two novellas – The Wizard And The White House, and The Appointment.

So, Mike, the overlap between fiction and poetry – and the boundaries?

I guess I could write a book on this but what you say fiction does is not far off from poetry: creative expression, profound thoughts, metaphors and line breaks. But poetry is very different from fiction. Line breaks, for example, can have a huge impact on the meaning and movement in a poem. 

I work in both forms and when I get an inspiration, I know immediately if it’s for a poem or a piece of fiction. Poetry tries to make the most use of language and, in a sense, a poet’s job is to renew the language: to use it in ways it’s never been used before.

Furthermore, fiction involves characters and plots. In poetry, there are no plots except in a narrative poem, but even then, the plot is not thoroughly developed.

Hmm. Character and plot are the novelist’s true environment, even though we might also use the devices of language. That could be the distinction.

I think we poets seek mood, but then that is true of fiction as well.

Perhaps the difference is how poets use language. Poetry relies on a sparsity of language and on, as a professor I had in college used to say, the use of language and metaphor that is richly ambiguous. It allows readers their own interpretations.

And novels are the opposite of sparse. A novel is vast; an ocean. A poem is a wineglass.

And, of course, poetry is meant to be read aloud: to be listened to. You can listen to a poem in a language that you do not understand and still enjoy the sounds and rhythms. You cannot say that of prose.

Is there a common thread in your work? What are your enduring themes and signatures?

I believe that throughout all of my work, there is one consistent voice. That voice is concerned with social and political justice. I have been a social activist all of my adult life, starting in my late teens with the ‘60s social revolution and the anti-war movement.

My novel The Wizard and the White House approaches these concerns through the use of satire. The Appointment and Letters from Inside are less satiric. The Appointment is more absurdist, in line with Kafka, one of my most important influences, along with Nikolai Gogol. The title story in Letters from Inside is more dystopian. And Let’s Call It Paradise examines American culture through the lens of consumerism and how that masks any concept of justice and equality.

There are many influences in my work but the main ones are Kafka and Gogol. The absurdist point of view is one that captivates me.

You have a novel, Woman In The Abbey, coming out from Vine Leaves Press next year. What’s the significance of the title?

One of my main literary interests is gothic literature: novels such as Melmoth the Wanderer, Dracula and The Master and Margarita. And so I set out, by chance really, to write one.

I was actually working on a different novel – one that deals with immigrants and acculturation, based on my own background as an Italian American – when I saw a clip on TV about a monastery which housed both nuns and priests in separate wings. In this most austere, reverent setting, all kinds of non-religious activities went on, and I was inspired to write Woman in the Abbey.

It’s a novel narrated by the devil and involves all kinds of evil. Like most gothic novels, there is a damsel in distress, but the purpose here is to expose the evil of violence against women. And in fact, there are two women in the abbey: the innocent damsel who gets lost in this haunted abbey and the evil nun who resides there. The title is meant to be ambiguous like Letters from Inside which can be interpreted in two ways (you’d have to read the story to understand). I will also say, as a side note, that, having gone to Catholic school, I believe I got out all my anger at the nuns in this book.

You collaborate with poets, novelists, musicians and artists. I wish I had time to ask you about all of these – but can you give me some highlights?   

A while back, I became the Northern Region VP for the Poetry Society of Virginia. So I organised a collaboration called Springtime in Winter which involved poets, composers, artists and student musicians. We had two composers, a number of artists who I paired up with the poets and five high-school musicians who were conducted by the high-school music teacher and who got to play this original music which was later recorded and put on a CD.  It was a wonderful mentoring experience.

Most recently, I travelled to Italy where I worked with four Neapolitans (a poet, a poet/actress, an actress/director and a cellist) for a bi-lingual production called La Guerra è Pace / La Guerra e Pace.  We performed it live and filmed it with a cell phone. The piece can be viewed on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8n3x-8-82c

Is/was anyone else in your family creative? How have you ended up on such a creative life path?

Neither of my parents finished high school. But they had faith in me to follow my path. My maternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant, had a music store in Brooklyn at one point. Why, I don’t know. Whether he played music, I don’t know. But there was a piano in their house when I was growing up which, I believe, inspired me later to study piano. I had an uncle, my aunt’s husband, also an immigrant, who would listen to operas on his phonograph every Saturday. He would sit there and cry because, as you know, operas are tragic. I had an aunt who was a poet and editor though I think this came after I started writing. I had another uncle who was a one-time musician. So I guess you could say creativity runs in the family. My brother became a church organist and my son now is a serious student of the cello at Cleveland Institute of Music.

But perhaps the most important influence were my Italian grandparents. I remember as a child sitting in a room with them and their friends and hearing nothing but Italian, which I did not understand. So what does a child do? He sits quietly and listens. And what does he hear? The music and contours of the language he does not understand since he cannot make out any literal sense.

I believe that that experience influenced me to become interested in language (I’ve studied French, Spanish and Arabic and am now studying Italian), linguistics (which I have a degree in) and ultimately poetry.

And now, here you are. A charming origin story. Thank you.

Find Mike on his website www.mikemaggio.net and Facebook.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

6 questions to transform a boring character in your novel or screenplay

On a podcast recently, scriptwriter Moira Buffini was asked this question. What do you do if a character is boring?

‘Cut them out,’ said Moira.

I don’t necessarily agree.

Sometimes cutting a character is the right decision. If the narrative is too crowded. Or your brain is. And all writers need to be bold about killing our darlings, whether they’re characters or plot turns or descriptions or anything else that drags the book down.

But what if a character can’t be axed? They might be vital, especially if your story is based on real life. Still, you find them boring, or beta readers tell you they are. What do you do?

Never ignore the yawn

If anything in the manuscript is boring you, it’ll bore the reader. So your boredom is, actually, a useful writer instinct.

Let’s look at this the other way around. As an editor, I can tell if a writer is interested in a character. Especially if they’re too interested and they give more love than the reader can endure – far too much dialogue, far too many scenes, far too much attention to their wondrous deeds. Although the reader might be rolling their eyes, the writer’s interest is undeniable. It gleams on the page.

In the same way, readers can feel when the author has little interest in a character.

Only connect

What’s missing is a sense of connection. With the writer’s favourite characters, there’s usually too much connection (and not enough critical detachment). With the boring character, there’s hardly any.

This is understandable. Some characters don’t come to us easily. We’re not as curious about them as we are about other characters. But to write them well, we have to be. And we could be.  

If you have a character who is boring you, and you need them in the story, have you given them enough of a chance?

A case study

I had this problem in Ever Rest. I had seven point-of-view characters, which is quite a handful, and I enjoyed some more than others. Of course I did. I’m human.

They weren’t boring me as such. The problem was more subtle. I thought I’d been even handed, but as I read their sections I realised something was missing. I wasn’t as engaged with them. They were an emptier experience to write.

What could I do to make them as rich, to me, as the others were?

I realised the problem. I was judging them, because they weren’t like the characters I was in tune with.

This wouldn’t do. After all, everyone is the hero of their own story. Especially in their own point of view.

I decided I’d better get out of their way. Listen without judgement. It seems to have worked, because readers tell me which character they felt most in tune with – and some are the guys I struggled to write with depth at first.

Here’s what I did.

How to listen without judgement – 6 big questions (and a lot of small ones)

1 What does the character do in downtime? I wrote extra scenes around the edges of the story. I wanted to know what it was like to live as them, to have their worries and agendas. If the only scenes you show are dictated by the main plot, you might be missing other snippets of their life where they’re more truly themselves, or where we see an interesting side to them. With one of my characters, I explored her relationship with her sister and uncovered a festering rivalry that cast a new light on her life choices.

You might find, to your surprise, that some of this exploratory work ends up in the book. If it helps you understand them, it might help the reader too.

2 What makes them feel life is good? What makes them feel capable? What restores them? Imagine them playing the drums well, or mending an antique watch or making sourdough bread. Is that their superpower, or something that other people might admire? What are their hopes for the future and why does that fulfil them? What makes them believe in it – or not? Do they think they’ve reached their full potential? Are they waiting for a big break – in love, in work, in their luck?

3 What’s the best thing that could happen to them? And the worst? Would they disagree about this? Do they know what’s good for them?

4 What makes them feel justified? If they’re mean or selfish, where does it come from? Could it come from a feeling of threat?

Threat is a really interesting ingredient. As an extreme example, people who’ve been through wars or lived on the streets might learn the world is not safe, and this can lead to difficult and antisocial behaviour – anything from a hot temper to vindictive acts and physical violence. At a less extreme level, a person might feel the need to protect themselves or another person, or their job, or their rights, or their home life. If the reason isn’t known, this behaviour might be resented or misunderstood by others. Including, sometimes, the author, who thinks they’re an ass.

5 Sure, some people are just mean and irredeemable. But could you explore below the surface? Again, why is it good to be them, even if they’re bad? Perhaps the behaviour has a payoff that puts something else right for them in a muddled human way, which could add richness.

6 Which people do they have around them? Who makes them feel good? Who makes them wary? Who makes them feel life is a battle? If they don’t have these, that’s a useful insight. They have no one who makes them feel good? That’s sad. They have no one who makes them feel threatened? That might be a blue touch paper waiting to be lit. Or a massive ego heading for a fall.

Give them a chance

So if you can’t cull the character, look for connection. And maybe give them a chance anyway. They might surprise you greatly and become your most interesting character of all.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

Reblog: keep in touch with your WIP when all is merry and chaotic

How to keep in touch with your book when your writing routine is disrupted

This book was brewing for 35 years – Melanie Brooks on the memoir that took her a lifetime to write

Melanie Brooks recently launched her memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all. It’s a book she desperately wanted to write but didn’t, for a long time, know how. The journey to find the book within her is in many ways as profound and changing as the journey in the book itself. I’ll let her introduce it in her own words.

The book is set in the early days of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and mid-90s. In 1985, my father, a prominent Canadian surgeon, suffered a heart attack at the age of 42. Eight months after open-heart surgery, it was discovered that the blood transfusion he received was contaminated, and he’d contracted HIV.

At the time, HIV was widely misunderstood and public perception was fuelled by fear, misinformation and stigma. Like most patients he knew or knew about, my father anticipated he’d be dead within months, and not wanting to subject our family to the ostracism that many HIV patients were facing in that cultural climate, he decided we’d keep his illness a secret. But he didn’t die within months. He lived for 10 more years.

So from the time I was 13 until I was 23, I carried the weight of Dad’s illness and its unknowns in silence. Then 20 years after his death, I unsealed the box that contained all that unspoken pain and grief to try to understand the experience and ask the question: what is the cost of silence?

Has A Hard Silence been brewing for a long time?

In many ways this book was brewing for close to 35 years. Even when I wasn’t allowed to speak about it, it was a story I desperately wanted to tell, and I think that’s because when we are suffering in silence, all we want is to be seen. But it was also a story I carried very close for many years, not really sure what was at its core. The year my father died (1995), he and my mother published a book they’d written about their experience. For a long time, that felt like the official story. It took a painful excavation of my own memories to uncover that my story of living the experience was not the story they’d written. I had my own story to tell.

What made you ready to write it?

I came to a place where I couldn’t move forward without looking back and figuring out what that story was, and that’s when I knew I needed to start writing. I enrolled in an MFA program in 2013 with the hope that a supportive environment and community would be the keys to helping me do that. I also (thankfully) started therapy around the same time.

Finding encouragement and wisdom from other writers who’d done this kind of work and processing the emotions that surface with an excellent therapist were vital to my process. There was nothing easy about it, and I had to write without knowing where I was headed to finally find out what I had to say. From initial writing to publication, it was a 10-year project.

In your Facebook pictures (sorry, I’m v nosy!) I spotted a cutting from the Boston Sunday Globe – a piece by you, titled ‘A daughter who couldn’t ask questions is now a mother who invites them’. Tell me more.

Like so many families, the norm in mine was not to talk about the tough stuff in an open and honest way. During that 10-year period of my father’s illness, my mom and dad were doing their best to keep life as normal as possible for my brothers and me. They had the best of intentions in circumstances that had no roadmap: to protect us as best they could from the risks and consequences of HIV. I think they hoped it would lessen the overall impact by not talking about it.

For me, it meant I was left to carry the weight of emotions too big to handle alone. I know that if I’d told my parents I was struggling and asked for help, they would have given it. But in the silence and secrecy, I didn’t see a clear path for doing so.

The essay in the Globe explores that piece of the story and shows how it informed my parenting of my children and how I’ve worked to change the narrative. I recognise that we need to extend the invitation to our kids again and again to talk to us about what’s going on in their lives in order for them to feel like there’s secure space for them to do so.

I notice you did a big tour of bookshops for the launch, and managed to lose your voice too! I admire your energy. Many writers are shy of meeting people, but I see picture after picture of you signing books, talking to fans. Did that come naturally or was it tricky for you too?

I’ve been an educator for almost 30 years, so speaking in public is something I’m very comfortable with. I love meeting new people, and I love hearing other people’s stories.

I’ve waited a long time for this book to be in the world, and I want to make the most of it. The opportunities I’ve had to be in front of audiences, speaking about this story have been a gift. More than ever, I finally feel like my true self because there isn’t the barrier of this unspoken story keeping me from connecting fully with others.

This is also a story that many people don’t really know. The early history of the AIDS epidemic has seeped from our collective memory, and there’s an entire generation that is unfamiliar with the events of that time. I’m grateful for my small chance to help others understand what it was like for my family and me, for other families like mine, and for the communities most impacted by this devastating disease. These stories should never be forgotten.

One bookstore had a window display with your book centre stage, and surrounded by other titles featuring the word silence. It was a lovely idea. How did you develop such great relationships with so many bookshops?

I was fortunate to visit many bookstores with my first book, Writing Hard Stories, when it was published in 2017, and because that’s a book that discusses aspects of A Hard Silence, many of those stores were eager to have me return. That store you mention, Left Bank Books in Belfast, Maine, is one with which I have a particularly close relationship. The mother of one of my dearest friends is a former owner, and the events co-ordinator is a graduate of the same MFA program I attended. They’ve been so supportive of my process and they put together a wonderful event for me.   

Let’s talk about Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma. It looks like a self-directed learning programme in trauma memoir… was it, perhaps, preparation for A Hard Silence?

It absolutely was preparation for A Hard Silence. It began during the third semester of my MFA program. We had to complete a critical project of our choosing that was separate from our creative thesis.

Mine started as a completely selfish endeavour. I’d been deeply struggling with the psychological toll of writing into the painful memories of my story, almost to the point of quitting, and I wanted to understand how other writers who’d completed memoirs with hard topics had coped. So I sent out emails to authors whose books I’d recently read thinking maybe I’d get a few responses and write an article.

But every author I approached not only agreed to talk to me, they invited me to visit their homes, over meals, walking dogs. I had 18 beautiful conversations about what it takes to write an honest memoir.

I recognized that I couldn’t reduce these visits and interviews to one or two quotes in an article, so I started writing them up as narrative profiles. As I did, I began to recognize that the wisdom these writers were sharing with me was wisdom other writers in this painful terrain could benefit from too. So it became a book.

And talking to these writers was exactly what I needed to keep going with A Hard Silence. I don’t think I would have been able to do it without them.

You teach a lot of writing disciplines. Professional writing at Northeastern University, narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University in Massachusetts, and creative writing at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire. How did you come to be teaching them?

I began my teaching career as a public school teacher, but when my son and daughter were born, I stopped teaching full-time. In that interim, I completed a master’s in teaching writing. When I decided to return to teaching, I needed a more flexible schedule, and my local community college was hiring adjunct English instructors. That’s where my college-level teaching started. The other university teaching opportunities have emerged from there and with the completion of my MFA and my first book, I am now able to teach at the MFA level.  

The work that most closely aligns with my memoir work is the teaching I do in the MFA program at Bay Path University. There, I’m guiding emerging writers through the process of unpacking their narratives of health, illness and trauma and shaping them into writing that is accessible to others.

I recently completed a certificate in narrative medicine at Columbia University, and I am more convinced than ever that stories of the lived experience of illness from patients, practitioners and caretakers are vital in our conversations about health and healthcare, so the opportunity to teach in this program feels important on many levels.

Although these forms of writing all have different and distinct purposes, where do you feel they overlap?

For20 years I taught creative writing at Nashua Community College, primarily a short stories class. So many of the tools we use in creative nonfiction—scene, dialogue, character, point of view, plot—are drawn from fiction and so much of fiction is drawn from personal experience, so the two genres speak to each other pretty intentionally. I loved providing a class that gave these students a chance to explore their creativity and find their voices on the page.

The classes I teach at Northeastern University are less creative and more business oriented, teaching writing skills to professionals either already in or about to enter the workplace. So many of the messages we send and receive on a daily basis depend on good communication, so I value the chance to help develop those skills in my students. This work helps me to stay current with the best practices in professional communication across many platforms. As writers, we have so many channels through which we have to communicate, so I am continuously gaining new insights and skills to apply to that communication.

Though the courses I teach are diverse, I am a firm believer that good writing is good writing, no matter the genre. We can all benefit from honing our skills in a variety of writing situations, and this work gives me the chance to do so regularly.   

Writing seems intrinsic to your nature. Has this always been so?

I haven’t always been a writer, but I have always been a reader. I loved books as a child, and that love has never deserted me. So even before I ever put pen to paper, I was learning the art of storytelling and finding comfort and companionship in words.

My interest in creative writing really developed in my last year of undergraduate studies when I took an advanced creative writing class with a professor who introduced me to wonderful writers and craft tools that enabled me to start exploring my thoughts and feelings on the page. I continued to write sporadically for the next 20 years—taking workshops when I could—but it wasn’t until I enrolled in the MFA program that I made the commitment to create a true writing life for myself.

Is anyone else in your family creative or are you an outlier?

Though no one else in my family of origin is a career writer, everyone has creative outlets. My father was a brilliant pianist and my mother is also musical, so my siblings and I all share the musical gene.

And as I mentioned earlier, my father and mother wrote and published a book together before his death, so writing was, for them, an outlet at times.

I have a brother who is very artistic, another with the same musical genius as my father, and another who has, at times, turned to poetry.

My dad was a physician— two of my brothers have followed in his footsteps—and the professional track was definitely what he emphasized for all of us. Creativity, though, had space in our childhoods as well.

What inspires you?

I am most inspired by other people’s stories. I love the chance to lean into my students’ work, to my friends’ writing, to new books on my shelves. Every time I pick up a new story, I learn something new about craft, reader engagement, storytelling, life.

I find inspiration in other creative outlets—music, baking fancy cookies. I’ve discovered that I need different, less high-stakes modes of expression to add fuel to my writing.

What do you do to unwind, shake off the cobwebs or get your feet back in the real world?

As a memoirist who writes hard things, it’s essential to find ways to step away from my writing desk to remind myself that I’m not still living the experience I’m writing about. I love spending time in nature—it grounds me in the beauty that is always around us if we take the time to pay attention, and it helps to remind me that even when everything feels bleak, I can always find something to be grateful for. A hike in the woods can go a long way in ‘shaking off the cobwebs’ as you put it. I have two Labradors, and they force me outside every day.

Exercise has always been a way I keep my mental health stable. I used to be a runner, but over the last few years I’ve been plagued with injuries, so I’ve had to give that up. But I’m finding other ways to keep active. I’ve fallen into the middle-aged cliche of loving pickleball.

My husband and I are obsessed with British television, particularly crime shows. The writing and acting are so good. We have a subscription to BritBox, and we always find something to immerse ourselves in.

Both of my children are university athletes and nothing makes me happier than having the chance to get up there to watch them play the sports they love.

Find Melanie on Twitter @MelanieJMBrooks, Facebook and on her website www.melaniebrooks.com. Find A Hard Silence here.

 There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

What makes a great story? Lessons from judging the Amazon Kindle Storyteller Award 2023

Holy allsorts, I’ve been judging this prestigious prize!

It’s an interesting assignment to read a bunch of books and not have to fix them. So I’m writing this post in celebration, to consider exactly what a good storyteller does.

Actually, you already know what a good storyteller does. They gobble your hours and insist you stay for one more scene, even if you’re past your bedtime or about to miss your Tube stop.

How are they doing that?

It’s all about details. These details.  

1 Keeping the pace

A story runs on change. There’s the change between beginning and end. And there are changes all the way through. That engine of change is how you keep a reader’s curiosity.

Sometimes these changes are small. Perhaps a whiff of tension at the end of a scene. Sometimes they’re massive wrenches that catapult the story into a new gear.

Readers know when the pace is right. Readers also know when it falters. Sometimes the writer rushes a key moment the reader would like to dwell on. More often, they take too long over something. The reader feels the text has somehow got stuck and lost their engagement. Common examples are visual description or conversations between characters – quite often they’re passages the writer likes, but aren’t nearly so meaningful to the reader.

Why aren’t they meaningful to the reader? It’s because of the pace that’s been established from the start. This pace of change – new twists of microtension, new big leaps.

The story establishes its own narrative rhythm and the reader expects you to keep it up.

Does this mean you need fast developments all the time? Not at all. Be slow and painstaking if that suits you, but establish it from the beginning. The problem is if you change this pace abruptly – by having aimless passages, for instance. Then the reader will feel you’ve lost control of the narrative purpose.

A good storyteller knows how they’re setting the reader’s expectations of change.  

2 Understanding what promises they make about tone, style and psychological connection

We’ve seen that the beginning sets a pace for the reader.

It also makes other promises – about the types of characters, types of dilemmas, the tone of the writing, the story’s curiosities. A good storyteller understands what promises they make with these early scenes.

I’ve seen many manuscripts that begin in one register and then change, in a way that feels inconsistent. So they’ll focus on a character’s psychological and emotional turmoil, then abandon those kinds of observations in later scenes. The reader who enjoyed that level of connection will feel frustrated. What happened to the book they were enjoying?

A good storyteller knows what promises they make with tone, style and psychological connection.

3 Knowing what details their particular reader will enjoy

A good storyteller knows the kinds of details and twists their readers appreciate.

This brings us to questions of genre.

Genres are all about emphasis. Crime has one kind of emphasis; cosy murder has another.

What about literary writing? That’s about emphasis too – literary writers will hit notes that resonate with the human experience, with questions as much as answers.

A good storyteller knows what their readers want.  

4 Knowing how they are directing the reader’s attention

A lot of storytelling is about making the reader notice things. Sometimes, this is in sneaky ways, so the reader doesn’t realise we’re planting seeds.

In this respect, storytelling is a magic trick. We show the reader a thing, they think they know why, but actually they don’t – until we bring it back to surprising and delighting effect.

5 Always playing fair with the reader

We hide things, we misdirect. But we always play fair. And we never overplay our authorly control.

The reader knows we can do anything we like. So we must do our best to make them forget this.

We must play fair.  

A good storyteller never contrives a plot event for the sake of narrative convenience. Coincidence is an obvious example – coincidences to start a story are great, coincidences later on can seem forced, especially if they provide a significant moment in the plot.

While many storytellers know to avoid coincidence, there are many smaller ways to commit this sin of unfair play. And they’re just as disruptive to the reader’s enjoyment.

Recently I was critiquing a manuscript where characters concealed important things from the reader in order to create suspense. A character noticed something that disturbed her, and then said, a few chapters later, ‘I hadn’t had time to think about it until now’.

It was unnatural for her to do this, for several reasons.

First, the author had established a close intimate connection between character and reader. If the character thought or felt a thing, they told the reader. So if they didn’t, the omission was obvious.

Second, it wasn’t believable. Consider any moment in your life when you had a shock or disturbing moment. What did you do? Did you say to yourself ‘I won’t have time to think about this now, I’ll think about it later?’ Of course you didn’t. It boiled over in your mind, whether you had time for it or not.

What happened in the writer’s head was this: it wasn’t convenient for the character to share these thoughts for story reasons. She tried to fudge it by saying ‘I didn’t have time to think about it until now’ but that doesn’t excuse her. It doesn’t make the reader believe it – and belief is everything in a story.

A good storyteller never does anything that seems unnatural and contrived, and particularly not if it’s transparently done for the sake of plot mechanics. A good storyteller always plays fair.

6 Knowing how to give back story and world information without being obvious

A storyteller needs to give a lot of information. About the world, the characters, what went on before the reader was let in. The clunky way is to make the characters puppets for the author’s explanations. The characters have conversations that are clearly just about the setup, and not plausibly about their dilemmas and problems in that world.

A good storyteller will slip this information in, in a way that isn’t obvious.

7 Creating characters who are distinct from each other

We’ve talked about belief in story events. Another important point is belief in the characters as people. Each is their own person and not a stereotype.

But some writers create their own stereotypes because they have a limited set of characters they can ‘do’. Nasty characters are nasty in the same kind of way. Nice characters are nice in the same kind of way.

This doesn’t ring true for the reader. They notice these similarities and it breaks the spell.

8 Knowing what storyworld elements must be established from the beginning

Here’s another vital function of the beginning. It sets up the rules of the world.

I’ve critiqued novels that seemed to be set in our ‘normal’ reality, with ‘normal’ rules, then, several chapters in, they introduce a paranormal or fantasy element.

This is very jarring. The reader has calibrated their understanding of what can happen, and especially how to think about the mysteries and questions of the story. But that’s all upended if they find the paranormal seems to operate in the world, or magic exists, where previously there was no hint. Obviously it’s fine to do this if the discovery is part of the characters’ journey, though it should still be foreshadowed in some way. But you definitely can’t spring it on the reader a few chapters in, as though you forgot to mention it.

If magic exists, if the paranormal exists, the reader should experience this from the start.

9 Being careful with facts and editing details

We’ve established that credibility is essential to good storytelling.

This principle continues to the smallest detail. A wrong detail can throw all your plot events into doubt. It’s always worth doing research. If you’re writing anything that’s not in your direct personal experience, check the hell out of it. Actually, check it even if you have done it because it’s surprising what we mis-assume. No, you can’t summit Mount Everest in February, and you don’t harvest carrots then either, at least in the northern hemisphere.

The internet is there for you. Look it up.

Someone in your readership will know the detail you didn’t check, and if you get it wrong, it spoils their trust in you.

If you’re not a detail person, a good editor can save your bacon. They are often general knowledge goldmines, and they know the kind of information you might blithely type without checking.  

A good storyteller checks everything so that silly errors don’t kick the reader out of the illusion.  

10 Convinces us the plot matters

A good storyteller will convince us that everything matters. A plot is about mess and trouble, so there must be reasons why the characters don’t just shrug and move on.

Often the author feels the situation matters, but hasn’t made the reader feel it too. Sometimes they need to go deeper into the characters’ histories and psychology. Perhaps they are their own worst enemy. Sometimes the writer needs to add external pressures – a time limit, or other people who might be affected.  

A great story makes us feel we’re seeing something that is important to the people who are embroiled in it, and that it causes them real difficulty, and they cannot avoid it. Make the reader feel all that.   

The bottom line: never break the spell

All readers know you made the story up. The job of the storyteller is to be so enthralling and persuasive that the reader entirely forgets this.

A story is a spell, and a good storyteller never breaks the spell.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

Your first pages – 4 more book openings critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @agentpete, author Jon Duffy and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where four manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was longtime Litopian and author Jon Duffy.

The format is simple. Four manuscripts, each with a short blurb. We hear the opening pages, then discuss how they’re working – exactly as agents and commissioning editors would consider a submission.

As you can see, there is oodles to learn from the chat room comments alone. The audience might not always know why something does or doesn’t work, but they know when they’re engaged, or confused, or eager to read more. Then your trusty hosts discuss the whys and hows.

On this show we talk about:

Blurbs – the information a reader needs from a blurb or sales summary. How long a blurb should be. How much of the plot you should describe.

The author’s biographical details – how important are they? Who takes notice of them? Do they matter to readers or are they more significant for literary agents and publishers?

Difficult names – if you’re using names that are historically accurate but difficult for 21st-century readers to process and distinguish, should you make them more accessible?

What gets a reader involved in a scene and the characters? A lot of it is down to the writing style. Here’s where you’ll hear an old chestnut of writing theory – show not tell.

Description versus story – how much scene-setting does a reader want at the start? Could some of it be left until later?

Titles – we always discuss the suitability of titles! Many of the titles were intriguing on first glance, but did they hit the right genre notes?

Opening scene – has the writer started with the right scene or is the reader primed to hope for another set of characters? What expectations has the blurb and title set up? Is the romantic lead a bit too stalkerish for the genre?

Vagueness versus detail – is the opening scene weighed down with commentary and would we prefer more straightforward action?

Find the full show here. And if you’ve got a manuscript you’d like critiqued, apply here.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

From critiquing to creating – literature professor Steven Belletto shares his transition to authorhood

Steven Belletto has a distinguished career as a professor of literature and the author of several critical works, and all the while he’s been brewing fiction of his own. His first novel is called For You I Would Make An Exception, and keeps the reader on their toes with a deft braiding of genre expectations.

I’ll let him explain.

It’s about a literature professor (no relation to me!) who one day gets an email from a 13-year-old girl in Kenya who claims to be his daughter. The first couple of chapters appear to be an academic satire in the Richard Russo Straight Man vein (it’s even set in Pennsylvania like that book). But in fact the first chapters are like a satire of those satires, which we know because the main character, Will, keeps insisting he’s not a character in a book. So it starts out seeming to be an academic satire with a cantankerous, put-upon narrator, then turns into something entirely different. I really appreciated the blurb by Brock Clarke because he calls the book ‘a Swiss Army knife of a novel’ in recognition of the way it breaks out and uses different genres as needed. In terms of plot, this girl asks Will with some urgency that he go out to Kenya to deal with a situation, and this becomes an existential crisis for him, even though he’s in his late 30s and should probably be more put together than he is. He does reluctantly go to Kenya with his girlfriend, but nothing, again, is really what it seems.

Why that title?

It comes from a Leonard Cohen lyric. The title reverses the formulation and transfers it from the context of romantic love (or probably lust) to another kind of love, and refers to the person or persons Will might begin to make exceptions for in his life.

Was this novel quite a gear change in style and form? Previously you’ve published literary criticism, short fiction and travel essays.

Since I was young, I’ve scribbled small notebook fictions for my own enjoyment. When I got older and decided to be around writing and literature full time, I went into literary criticism because I thought I might have a slightly better shot of supporting myself as a professor than as a novelist. I continued to dabble in fiction in college and graduate school, and once in a while I would publish things, but mainly I wrote for myself and focused on publishing criticism. Once tenure happened, I felt I had a bit more breathing room, so I turned to a novel that had been in the back of my mind, and wrote that in tandem with my academic work.

Your website says you wrote several more novels in the early 2000s.

Yes, those do exist, but fortunately they were never published.

Oh dear! But would we recognise the same Steven Belletto at the helm?

I hope you wouldn’t because they were practice efforts. I had been reading Richard Fariña and Thomas McGuane at the time I wrote the first one, and it was a mainly autobiographical account of trying to bring in some money as a door-to-door salesman (an experience I don’t recommend). One was a byzantine mess with all kinds of narrators, digressions and wacky sub-plots, thanks to Fran Ross, Sartor Resartus, RM Koster and Bouvard et Pécuchet. One was a noir romance set during the Second World War.

Even if you weren’t satisfied with the way those novels turned out, they must have come from a true place. Are there any general curiosities and preoccupations that are still in your work today?

Probably general curiosity itself is a fundamental preoccupation of my work, whether academic writing or fiction: both are creative inquiries, but they take different forms and obviously have different demands and conventions.

Always I’m interested in the nature of connections, links, correlated patterns, echoes and associations, and so a theme of For You I Would Make An Exception is connection: how is Will connected to this long-lost daughter? Can he be connected to her? What’s the connection between defunct steel mills in Pennsylvania and sponge iron mining in Bihar? A sententious professor in the US and a deep-water port in Lamu County, Kenya?

I’m interested in the kinds of connections that may not be immediately apparent, but are still findable, explorable. This is why I often return to WG Sebald’s writing, because he’s so good with that. I think there’s a kind of ethic in attuning yourself to connection, to interdependence—that, to me, leads to a fuller, more capacious sense of the real, and I try to reflect that in my fiction, if not my criticism.

As well as these serious questions, I see a strong streak of mischief in your work. I’m thinking of the ‘poem’ you submitted to an avant-garde literary journal, which was made of random words after a game of Scrabble and guised as a fictitious poet with a fictitious collection from a made-up publisher. Or, in believing this, have I fallen for a preposterous hoax myself?

That story absolutely is true.

This is going back some years, but a few friends and I were playing Scrabble one night, and somebody had the idea of writing down the words on the board and submitting the result to this literary journal whose motto was ‘beyond/sense’. We arranged the words basically at random, added some punctuation, and mailed it in under the name ‘Dunkirk’. To our complete surprise, the journal did publish the poem.

I probably wouldn’t do something like that now, but it’s the sort of literary experiment that strikes you as necessary when you’re in your early 20s—I think Horace de Vere Cole was 29 when he pulled the Dreadnought Hoax and Poe was 35 when he convinced The Sun that Monck Mason had ballooned across the Atlantic, so at least I got it out of my system early.  

But after all these years, the Dunkirk affair does have meaning for me because it is a snapshot of that night, a still-burning memory of those really brilliant friends with whom I’ve since lost touch.

An unexpected and very satisfying emotional coda. I like that immensely.

You have two volumes of your own literary criticism and several more you have edited. On your website you have pictures of rejection letters from noted literary journals. But you’re obviously also well published and respected. The Wiki page for the film Cabaret quotes you as an authority! Have you now found the places where you fit? Or is it as happenstance as ever?

The worlds of academic publishing and fiction publishing really are separate spheres. I’ve been publishing academic work for 20 years, and over that time, I’ve been able to establish myself in a couple of little sub-fields, and can find publishers willing to work with me.

When it comes to the fiction publishing sphere, I’m pretty much an outsider. I have some novelist and poet friends, but I don’t know anyone in that side of the publishing industry itself, except for those at Vine Leaves Press, and I came to know them while bringing For You I Would Make an Exception into print.

As for the rejection notices in the picture, they must be from 20-25 years ago, long before the advent of Submittable and all that, and were likely for various short stories I’ve since shelved. Over the last few years, as I was re-energized by writing that novel, I wrote another dozen or so stories that I think might be of interest to readers. Now I have a short story collection of never-before-seen work that I’m thinking of calling Pageant of the Masters after one of the stories inside.

You’ve travelled extensively and travel writing is another of your branches – including a piece about driving a rickshaw across India.

To me, coming from an academic background where I read a lot of Aimé Césaire and Walter Rodney, travel writing has always been a fraught and complicated enterprise. I’m conscious of the wildly uneven ability of people globally to move from one country to another, of the history of white people looking at non-white people, of the legacies of colonialism.

That said, I’ve always loved to travel, I feel it’s one of my great privileges and joys, but I always do keep these things in mind, and so for a long time I never really wrote about travel publicly.

But with that piece you’re referring to, that’s about a trip a friend and I took to India in 2010, during which we drove an auto-rickshaw from Kochi in Kerala way up to Bihar near Nepal, a distance of about 2700 kilometres. This took a little over two weeks of 10-hour driving days. Indian roads can be somewhat treacherous, and of course it’s a ridiculous thing to do on all kinds of levels. But for whatever reason we documented it, so I started to wonder if it was possible to write about such a trip in an ethical, sensitive way, or if such an undertaking would be just too tainted by the long history of Westerners ‘exploring’ elsewhere. That can be a paralysing question to ask, but I decided that I could tell my story, from my perspective, about traveling in parts of the world that I didn’t really understand, that I had no real purchase on, but had still experienced first hand, however limited that experience may have been—that’s why the piece is called Rickshawing for Dummies.

I actually think that can be a powerful perspective, the acknowledgement of partial knowledge, since we all go around in partial knowledge of the world, even in the places we supposedly know best. In For You I Would Make an Exception, Will travels to Kenya and then to India, and pointedly almost never understands what’s unfolding around him in terms of politics, cultural norms, how others see the world and what they care about—of course it’s no accident that these two regions were once jewels in the British colonial project, and the novel is very much haunted by that history.

Where did your career path come from? Were your family creative or literary? When you were a kid what did you think you might become?

I wonder that all the time. My family is not literary at all, so my career choices have always been a mystery to everyone, including me.

You’ve had a solid academic career. What do you teach?

I teach American literature at Lafayette College on the Delaware.

I’m interested in the contrast between academic study and creative work. When I studied literature, there was a view that each author’s work was perfect and deliberate. If there was a problem, for instance with pacing or self-indulgence, we weren’t to question it or suggest it might be a flaw in craft. But when we write our own creative work we have to be immensely self-critical, and we know our work may not be exactly as we’d like it to be. Indeed Evelyn Waugh, for instance, wrote to Graham Greene that he was appalled when he reread Brideshead Revisited after several decades, and he issued a revised version. So it seems the academic view of literature is almost the opposite of the writer’s view.

This is something I’ve thought a lot about. I get what you’re saying about how we’re often taught that capital-L Literature is ‘perfect and deliberate’—I don’t necessarily assume this when I’m reading or teaching, but in my classes I usually begin with the view that this author knows what they’re doing, so let’s try to figure out how and why the book is built in the way that it is.

Critical theory tells us that we can’t truly know an author’s intentions, but that we might be able to unravel what the text is or isn’t doing, so I try to teach my students to be attentive readers. I want them to appreciate and understand whatever book we’re reading, which is different from liking the book, and I’m always curious to hear their reactions, and what they identify as the strengths and weaknesses of a given book. Often we agree on this, but not always.

For me personally, I like to believe that whatever I’m writing, whether non-fiction or fiction, is deliberate—but I also recognize that it’s all so far from perfect as to be in a different country than perfection, and it is something of a sport to go back through my old writing and cringe, even as there might be a bright bit or two still gleaming.

I will say also that approaching a novel from the perspective of a fiction writer versus the perspective of a literature professor is totally different. When I’m selecting a novel for, say, a course on the contemporary American novel, there is no canon, there are thousands of choices, so I lean towards books that are doing something important in terms of cultural conversations, that are maybe innovative with form, that reflect ongoing course themes.

I also try to choose books that I think I can sell to my students, by which I mean that even if a book is difficult or a bit of a slog to get through, there should be some discernable pay-off for them. I always want my students to think it was worth their time to engage whatever book or idea we’re studying. But I also recognise that we all have different ideas about what makes a book worth our time.

Many or maybe most fiction readers (who are not being forced to read a book for class) are interested in characters and story, but these aspects are often secondary when I’m teaching a work. One of my favourite novels of the last 10 years or so is Teju Cole’s Open City, which was also a critical darling, at least here in the States. But if you go onto Goodreads, many of the reviewers are complaining that the novel is boring, that they don’t care about the main character, that not enough happens in terms of plot. That to me is a valid response because those readers are looking for something different in Open City than I am when I put it in my contemporary novel course or what critics are looking for when they compile annual best-of lists.

When I was writing For You I Would Make an Exception, I worked a lot on pacing and characterisation and my goal was for readers to want to keep reading to find out what happens. I don’t know if I succeeded, but my hope is that readers will find the book worth their time, however they define that.

What are you working on now?

I have a few non-fiction book projects going on, but the one I’m most excited about is a biography of the poet, painter and musician, Ted Joans. He is one of those under-sung but extremely important figures that deserves a lot more attention than he’s had—like too many black writers and artists, he has been victim of benign neglect, as he himself often said. My hope is that this book will do him some measure of justice and introduce more people to him and his work. I’m on track to finish the manuscript by next summer, and it should be published in early 2025 by Bloomsbury.

Where can readers find you?

In my books? For better or worse, I’m not on social media—but I respond to emails very promptly.

Steven also has a website and here’s where you find For You I Would Make An Exception.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

Could you draft a novel in a month? Here’s how to nail NaNoWriMo

This post was originally written for the Writers & Artists Yearbook blog. I included it in a Nanowrimo roundup post and got a note to tell me the link was dead. So here it is, live and kicking.

November is National Novel-Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. If you haven’t come across it before, it’s a worldwide cyber-event where writers tie themselves to their keyboards and aim to bash out 50,000 words before December. What makes it an event is that they cheer each other on through websites, blogs and forums. You can even join real-life local groups for writing blasts with other participants in your area.

Who does it?

Everybody. NaNoWriMo is great for first-time writers who need the push to get started. But established writers also use it to get a draft running. Novelist Sara Gruen began her New York Times #1 bestseller Water For Elephants one NaNoWriMo. Yes, what you start in NaNo can go on to great things – here’s a list of all the NaNo novels that have made it into print.

But 50,000 words in just 30 days – is that even possible? Ignore those boggling zeroes; it certainly is. I’ve never formally participated in NaNoWriMo because deadlines haven’t aligned. But I have ghostwritten several first drafts of 50,000 words in just 30 days – and this is how I did it. The key is to plan in advance.

Do your research

You don’t want to stop your output to do factual research. We all know how easy it is to amble off into Google and never return. Do your basic research early. If the novel is set in a special world (eg the circus or international espionage in the eighteenth century) read enough about it so that you can make the most of its story potential. Get a rudimentary knowledge of your geographical location so you can pluck scenes out of your head.

If you do need more research while you’re writing, consider if you can leave it until later. If the story doesn’t depend on those details you can edit them in at the revision stage. For instance, if you stage a scene in a historical building you hadn’t thought to research, insert a tag like [findout] and write the characters’ actions and dialogue as if you already knew.   

How much should you plan the story?

We all need different levels of planning. Some writers like a step-by-step map so they can settle back and perform the story on the page. Others want the joy of discovery while their fingers are flying.

However much detail you require, a good plan needs to tackle these fundamental questions.

1 Why is this story going to grab a reader?

All stories need to dangle a lure – an element of intrigue, the remarkable, the sense of something unstable, a disturbance. That could be:

• a literal outrage such as a murder
• a dilemma that puts a character in an impossible position
• an event that appears ordinary to you or me, but is a profound challenge in the character’s life.

Unless you are deliberately exploring the ‘anti-remarkable’, ask yourself what will make the reader curious from the start? Is there something exciting? Something weird? Something horrifying, unjust or wrong? Something comical? An event the readers will recognise as part of their own life struggle? This will probably be your way to connect with the story too.

2 What do the main characters want?

Why are your protagonists and antagonists compelled to take part in the story? Why couldn’t they just shrug and give up?

3 What is the first change that starts the story rolling?

Why does the story begin where it does? Is that the best beginning? Have you started too soon, in order to explain the set-up? Might you be better cutting those scenes and filling in the back story at natural moments further in? Or have you started too late and missed some moments the reader will enjoy?

4 How does the story escalate?

No matter how bad the situation looks from the start, it needs to get worse or the story will seem stuck. As the narrative goes on, the events and actions must matter more. The danger or consequences must deepen. The price of failure must rise. If you’re writing in conventional three-act structure, which movies follow, there will be definite points where the story shifts into new gears – these will be the quarter, half-way and three-quarter marks. But even if you aren’t, you need a point where the characters feel the worst has happened.

5 I never would have thought…

The story must take directions the reader wouldn’t have guessed – and even though they are surprising, they must still seem to play fair.

6 How does the quest change between start and finish?

Most stories start with the main characters wanting or needing something, but that goal can change. A character who begins the story searching for their lost dog might end up embroiled in a crusade against the fur trade. Or perhaps your characters end up wanting the opposite to the thing they desperately wanted at the start. Stories where the characters’ priorities shift are very powerful. Stories where they don’t can seem predictable.

7 In the end…

Your ending must be a resolution, although it doesn’t have to be positive and neatly tied. What does your ending resolve? How has the characters’ world changed? Can the story really go no further? Is anything left unresolved – and if it is, does that suit your needs?

Develop your characters  

It’s much easier to write characters when you’ve spent time getting into their skins.

Do you know a few trivialities about their daily lives? You might need a hobby for them to do in downtime, or a commitment that might put them in a particular location when a story event happens. Have a list of a few likely trivialities about your characters, and then when you need one you don’t have to stop the flow.

But if you don’t have time for that, write [findout] and come back to it in the revision.

It’s essential to know how the characters feel about each other in the story – because the best plot moments will grow from friction and alliances. Do you know who gets on with whom (or who would if they met)? Which characters would never understand each other? If you gave them all the same challenge, how would they show their different mettles? Which story events will really push someone’s buttons?

Find support

You don’t slog through NaNoWriMo on your own. That’s one of the beauties of it. You’ll find communities on the NaNoWriMo website, Twitter, and bloggers who will be displaying NaNo badges and blogging (if they have any mileage to spare). And here on the W&A website there will be a series of events to help you along.  

Remember it’s a first draft

If your draft is imperfect that doesn’t matter. All first drafts are rough (or worse), but you emerge with a manuscript you can hone and polish. If you’ve never completed a first draft before, NaNoWriMo is a great opportunity to build writing habits and experience.

And that, my friends, is why NaNoWriMo starts now. Prepare, prepare… then let your fingers fly.

Have you done NaNoWriMo? Do you have any tips? If it’s your first time, how are you preparing?

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

Self-editing lessons from Peter Jackson’s Get Back Beatles documentary

I’ve been watching Peter Jackson’s documentary about the Beatles album Get Back. It’s eight hours long, and quite repetitive, but I find it mesmerising and epic. It enshrines the miracle of creative work – start with nothing, mess about with it, seize on fragments and work them to smithereens, abandon them maybe, mess around a lot more, write something else, change your mind about a meaning, spend hours on tiny moments of timing or lyrics, get occasional divine inspiration (Let It Be seemed to stream from Paul’s fingers fully formed).

As I launch into the first edit of my new memoir collection, Turn Right At The Rainbow, I am living the Get Back method.

The messing about

The Beatles goof and joke, play silly versions, then flip to serious as a usable idea comes. This looks like faffing and frittering.

I faff and fritter too. I’ll work on a sequence or a paragraph or a line, then drift to YouTube or Facebook for a brain break. If I was doing a job in an office, everyone would be horrified. Roz, is that serious work?

It is. Often you need to look away, let it breathe (or be), then return and catch it by surprise.  

Remembering the joy

The Beatles sometimes noodle into a song by Dylan or Chuck Berry, guitars blazing, vocals roaring. Perhaps to find the vibe they’re grasping for? And also to feel the joy?

I get that. I keep books so I can take a brief trip into another author’s creation and voice. It reminds me. This is what it’s about. The joy – of playing musical instruments, of playing the instruments of a reader’s mind.

Bolstering confidence with past songs

The early stages of creative work can be worryingly random. Will this really become something worthwhile?

As the Beatles jam, they might slide into one of their old songs.

I recognise the feeling. We did it before. We can do it again.

I might take down one of my own books and read a few paragraphs at random. Not to bask in hubris, but to keep my confidence. Those books grew from a similar vast unknown.

Line by line

George sings some lyrics. John suggests changing a word to make it more weird. It doesn’t sound as good. Not all changes are improvements, but you have to try.

I write wild things, cut them in, take them out again.

John sings a sequence and Paul says, that line belongs at the end of the verse, not the beginning. John sings it in the new order. They decide to keep it, though it’s clear they’re not done and will revisit later.

I find I’m reordering lines or whole paragraphs. It makes a massive difference to the emphasis and flow. As one of my interviewees said recently on this blog, there’s a ‘click’, when you know where something belongs.  

On belonging

The song Get Back evolves. At first it was a protest song, parodying negative attitudes towards immigrants in Britain. Later we see the lyrics have become less specifically about immigration and more about a general state of human experience. The protest song was an embryo step.

Repeat until you make the miracle

Repeat until, miraculously, you’ve made something that is a whole world different from what you first imagined, and much more than you hoped, and everything sings.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.