I'm taking a week or so off - except for the scribbling of notes, which just happens by itself - so there probably won't be much activity here before the new year. I will check for comments when I get the chance.

If this blog allowed me to post festive pictures, I would. It doesn't, so instead I'll just wish everyone a Happy Yule/Christmas/Hanukkah/(insert name of midwinter festival here).

I’ve recently been thinking about the books I’ve read this year, with a view to writing short reviews for the BSFA. My memory isn’t what it once was, and I don’t always remember much about certain books – hence registering for LibraryThing and GoodReads. When I started to think about why this might be I realised that one of the main things that stops a book staying with me is flat pacing.

Obviously I need to care about the characters and believe in the story they’re living through, but pacing is one of my personal obsessions. I‘m the same with music and films. Give me build-ups and breakdowns, give me syncopation and surprises – provided those surprises aren’t shocks; pacing needs to have internal logic and consistency. In short, rhythm.

For a me a book/film/song which is total fast-hardcore-action-madness is as boring as a worthy piece in which sod-all actually happens. The joy is in the contrast, in knowing that if it seems slow right now that just means the fast bits are going to make me smile when we get to them; and if it’s hammering on at a crazy pace, I like to know that I’ll get the chance to stop and take stock before the end, even if only in a short epilogue or coda.

I’m not quite sure what this says about my character, but I’d be interested to know if other people are as concerned as I am about pacing.

The final element that held up my writing career was critiquing – or rather the lack of it.

I didn’t receive any useful critiques until I was in my thirties. If I’d found an experienced writer willing to give honest feedback – as opposed to the occasional long-suffering friend who’d usually say the story was ‘quite good’ – then I might have realised that I had issues earlier. However, the experience related below put me off the whole idea of critting for some years.

Whilst at college, an acquaintance wrote an SF novel and submitted it to a publisher, who politely turned it down. I was impressed at her achievement and sad for her rejection and so I offered to have a read and make comments. Though it was a damn sight better than I could have done, I thought I understood why the story had been rejected. When I next saw her I started to say ‘I think I know what the publishers meant—’ but she cut me off, and walked away. She never spoke to me again. I believe she still writes, and hopefully enjoys it, but as far as I know she has yet to be professionally published. 

And therein lies the first lesson of critiquing: you are not the story. We put our hearts and souls into our writing, so naturally it hurts to realise it’s not the work of genius we assumed. But the critique is about the work, not you. It isn’t (or shouldn’t be) meant to belittle you through your work. If you’re sure – rightly or wrongly – that a critique is about you, not your writing, then it’s probably going to be of very little use, and you should feel free to ignore it.

It was about ten years after this unpleasant experience that I received my first critique, at the end of One Step Beyond. I cried; not with rage or frustration or self-pity but with embarrassment. I’d had a week to see the error of my ways and the critters were entirely right. If anything, they were too gentle on me. How could I have been producing crap like this for so long?

I’ve now been getting, and delivering, crits for over a decade. I’ve learnt that when critiquing someone you don’t know, you should start with the positive points, so hopefully I won’t make any more enemies over it, though consenting semi-pros get few concessions from me, as various Milford veterans will attest.

There are many professional writers with more talent and experience than I who don’t need to get everything they write critted. However I would never submit anything that hadn’t been read critically by at least a couple of my peers. (That includes already accepted novels; my editor’s job is to improve something that’s already of a professional standard; my job is to make sure what she sees is the best I can produce.)

And that’s the second lesson: no matter how good you believe something is, it can almost certainly be improved. It might just be tinkering, say a bit of repetition that could be cut without loss or the odd phrase that needs sharpening. On the other hand it might be a sodding great plot hole you’ve failed to spot. We all write to our obsessions, and they can blind us.

There’s a lot that could be said about what constitutes a ‘good’ crit, but I’ve already gone on for long enough so I’ll just say that the essential qualities for me when I’m on the receiving end are honesty and thoroughness. When I get a critique I hope that the critter has read carefully and thoughtfully. If some part of the story doesn’t work, I want him/her to be honest and tell me, and ideally to say what the problem might be. Suggestions for improvement are always welcomed; I’m at liberty to ignore them. If something did work, it's good to have that pointed out too, as then I'll probably try and keep that phrase/descriptive passage/scene/plot twist in during future revisions. However, 'It's very nice,' will not help anyone improve.

In summary: honest criticism – ideally from other writers in your genre who’ll understand what you’re getting at – will help you improve. Trust me on this.

It seems obvious, but if you want to write and get paid for it, you need to learn the craft. Sadly, in my youthful ignorance and arrogance, I assumed that enthusiasm and natural aptitude would suffice. (It’s a position I could probably have justified more easily if I had practised more, but I already ‘fessed up to that mistake.)

In my defence, a couple of small early successes – winning a poetry contest judged by Roald Dahl when I was 13, getting a short story published in (what claimed to be) a professional magazine when I was 19 – plus top marks in English, and some encouraging story rejections, gave me an unrealistic idea of my abilities. However, even if I really had been in possession of noticeable talent, I needed to learn the rules: character viewpoint, plot progression, narrative structure and all that jazz, along with the skiffy special, infodumping and how not to do it.

Some of these rules and conventions are quite arbitrary, or even counter-intuitive, and are a matter of fashion: what was acceptable 50 years ago looks dated now; today’s top prose will look odd – probably long and cumbersome – in 50 years’ time. But that doesn’t change the fact that if you expect an editor to read past the first line, you have to demonstrate that you know the accepted rules as they are here and now, even if you subsequently break them.

I did browse a few ‘how to’ books in my twenties but they weren’t genre-specific ones, and it all looked like such hard work. And besides, I had games to write and run.

The One Step Beyond SF writers workshop gave me a much needed kick up the arse. By the end of that amazing week I knew (some of) what I’d been doing wrong, and resolved to actually make the effort to learn to do it right.

After OSB, I signed up to a creative writing evening class. I was, inevitably, the only SF writer in the class, but that in itself was good training, bringing home that the genre I love is a minority one, and often misunderstood. When the class wrote pieces for a local radio competition with an SF theme I saw how the tropes and ideas I had digested, accepted then discarded as outmoded were presented as fresh and original by people who didn’t read SF ('...and their names were Adam and Eve' '... but actually, he was an android' etc). I’m sure that if the competition had been for romance or detective fiction I’d have been the one trolling out the clichés.

I then went back to those ‘how to’ books, this time specifically the ones slanted to what I wanted to write. The two I would recommend most highly are Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Ursula le Guin’s Steering the Craft; the latter should stand any writer, in any genre, in good stead. I haven’t read a ‘how to’ book for a few years now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ever read another one. I’m still learning the craft; I hope I always will be.

Next time: does my plot look crap in this?

The copy-edits of Guardians of Paradise are now back with my editor and first draft has commenced on Bringer of Light.

Thinking about how I start novels got me thinking about how I came to write them for a living. Or rather, why it took me so long to become a professional writer. That put me in confessional mood, so I thought I’d get out some dirty linen and give it a good airing, by way of a warning to others.

I've always told stories. My first recorded attempt was immortalised on a C60 tape (remember those?) and consisted of me, aged five and a half, relating a lost Star Trek episode revolving around (if I remember rightly) a giant fire extinguisher. The die was cast.

Unfortunately, I went about becoming a professional teller – or rather writer, as that works better for me – of stories in entirely the wrong way. Looking back, I realise that I made three major mistakes.

The first was not actually writing. Or rather, not writing enough. This partly came from a grotesque vanity: why should I bother to write stuff no one wants to read? The answer to that is, of course, because every writer needs to write (approximately) a million words of unreadable crap before they come up with something good enough that people might pay to read it.

I did actively look for excuses to write: when I was 13 my history teacher said we could write up the Glencoe massacre as a story. It took me the whole weekend, and I got an A minus. (The minus might have been because it was rather long.)  At college, I edited the SF Soc’s magazine; and wrote most of it, badly. I even committed that cringe-worthy classic, the story about fantasy characters not realising that – gasp – they are actually characters in somebody else’s game. Worse, I submitted this travesty to White Dwarf, thus getting my first story rejection.

Ah yes, gaming. The thing was, writing stories for potential publication required me to polish my prose then spend money on postage, wait for ages, and all for what? Rejection. Writing games allowed me to indulge in sloppy prose whilst giving me a guaranteed audience who provided instant gratification (for my megalomania … bwah ha ha). And I was getting my friends to help me tell my stories. Everyone wins!

I don’t regret the time and effort I put into writing and running table-top and free-form role-playing games throughout my twenties. I had fun, and I did learn a few lessons about plotting, and about just how much shit you can heap upon your hapless characters before they rebel. But I’m pretty sure that if I’d devoted myself to writing fiction, as opposed to playing it, I would have started getting paid for my stories a lot sooner.

Next time: the other two mistakes.

Thanks all for the suggestions for a new name and masthead; people kept coming up with more which made the decision harder but I think I’m going to go for ‘Tales from the Garret’, though I’m going to see if I can’t also use cDave’s suggestion based on one of my earlier posts of ‘Only another 500 words until chocolate’.

I’ll try and turn comments on for future posts, assuming I remember (if I don’t feel free to nag me), but I’ll be moderating them to filter spam (of which there hasn’t actually been any so far, which is good). As I don’t check my email all that often (too busy writing, ok?) comments may take a while to appear.

Coming soon: some actual content for you to comment on. (I had plans, but I also had a deadline)

Thank you to those who've emailed thoughts about the name change. More observant readers will notice I've done sod all about it yet. I'm still thinking, OK? On the matter of comments I plan to open posts up where I have something to say that people might fancy discussing, as opposed to just announcements and pontifications. It's borderline whether this post qualifies, but I'm going to give it a try anyway, though with moderation switched on so I can check the spam-to-message ratio. That'll also give anyone who fancies it a last chance to suggest names for this blog.

As expected, my attempt to keep my word-count up during November was derailed by the copy-edits for Guardians of Paradise. I had planned to start setting word-count targets for Bringer of Light from December the 1st, as I've found that's the best way to get through the painful first draft stage. However, all I have so far are disordered notes. Lots of disordered notes. The novel feels, if I may use a slightly scatological image, like it's still building, and isn't ready to burst forth yet. 

In some ways that's for the best; the pitch I sold it on is rather ambitious, and turning those 200 words of drama! angst! and weirdness! into a 100,000 novel is likely to be quite a challenge. I should probably try and practice 'plotting the Powers way', and do detailed outlines, not to mention full research, before I launch in. However, if my previous performance is anything to go by I'll just keep accumulating, and occasionally sorting, those notes until I'm fairly sure where to start the story and then as soon as my subconscious delivers up an opening line, I'll be off.