Linking a book together

Steph is in recovery after two punishing weeks of link trawling. So it’s my turn. Actually, I notice we’ve done nothing but links in recent weeks. I won’t bother to trot out the excuses. It’s enough to say there are plans afoot. Oh yes.

In the meantime let’s write a book.

Last week I asked Cheryl Ossola for a first line. Actually for her first line. She sensibly demurred, but in compensation this week she provided a bucket load of first lines from published works. Probably one of those will do. I’ll just put quotes around it and have a character read it aloud from a novel he’s picked up. Postmodernism innit?

Maybe we should step back and cover some basics first. At Hey, There’s a Dead Guy in the Living Room Jeffrey Cohen offered a tough orientation for writing newbies. Item number one? ‘Don’t write a lousy book.’ Quite.

Hey, you’re looking a bit slouchy out there. While it’s going, you might take some advice from Brian Yansky, whose letter to his younger self featured on Anna Staniszewski’s blog. I particularly liked his injunction to give up pursuing that vague literary ideal and write what you love. It’s possible that the older Brian is suffering somewhat with his back, though, since his principal instruction is to “SIT UP STAIGHT”. You heard the man.

Maybe we should aim for the literary heights anyway. After all, it seems you can still stoop to some low tricks. Literary fiction writers aren’t above teasing the reader with hooks and cliffhangers as The Literary Lab‘s Scott G.F.Bailey pointed out.

We’re wasting time here. We should get writing. Of course, we need a bit of structure first. Larry Brooks kicked off my week with a beat sheet template. I do like to wind up my seat-of-the-pants co-contributor, so here’s a quote from the post

Everything from that point forward — the actual writing and revising of the manuscript — is pure, blissful upside, rather than a random search for your story.

(It’s like lighting the blue touch paper and standing well back. Ooooh, pretty.) Then, in collaboration with Rachel Savage, Larry went one better and presented a diagram that represents his thoughts on structure. As a tent.</div>

OK so with our sturdy poles of structure erected we’d better pull some scenes into place. Janice Hardy suggested approaches to building a scene around a protagonist this week.

Wait! Characters! I need better characters. Mine are just a tad insubstantial. So luckily Anna Staniszewski weighed in with three tricks to help flesh out characters. Don’t forget to try a questionnaire too, though.</p>

We should plant some surprises along the way. At Superhero Nation B Mac suggested some tricks to help hide a villain in plain sight.

With the manuscript half done, it’s time to pour a glass of something and daydream about making it. I wish I was overrated. Failing that, maybe I could be underrated with a small but devoted fanbase.

Reality check. We’ve got to get published first. Applying Nathan Bransford’s entertaining list of writing maladies to our manuscript should be more than enough to bring us right back down to earth. Time for some revision.

Well, that was easy. One finished book. We’ve still got to get it published, of course. At The Kill Zone, Kathryn Lilley posted ten submission no-nos. 

Our plot is pretty twisty. I’m wondering if we got some of those story structure tent poles in the wrong place. How do we go about pitching such an involved plot so that it doesn’t sound like a page from the Old Testament? I’m sorry.. hang on, back up.. Who begat whom? The answer from Edittorrent? Don’t try. Pitch beyond plot. 

Kerching! Sold! But there’s still the waiting to be endured. In The Millions this week Rosecrans Baldwin published his diary of the agonizing hiatus between acceptance and publication.

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Well that was a productive week. Maybe I can relax with some general reading now.</p>

I’ve never quite forgiven Howard Jacobson for a disappointing column he wrote in the Independent about cyclists. (Such tired arguments tossed so casually at such a comparatively inoffensive bunch. Meanwhile car culture rampages on). Still, the Guardian featured a nice profile of the great comic writer. 

I’m probably one of the very few Science Fiction lovers who have not yet made it out to see Inception. So, for fear of spoilers, I did not read A D Jameson’s Seventeen ways of Criticizing Inception at Big Other. Jameson clearly didn’t like the movie in all sorts of ways (seventeen maybe). I love a bad review, though, so I hope you don’t mind if I park this baby here for later enjoyment? Thanks.</p>

In the Observer Robert McCrum interviewed Don DeLillo.

I’m currently reading Wolf Hall, so I was drawn to Paul Kincaid’s post on the use of the word ‘he’ in Hilary Mantel’s masterful work. 

I say ‘reading’. In fact I’m listening to it. I’m having it read to me it as I run, and (endlessly it seems) re-construct flatpack furniture. I will be immersed in it soon as I walk the corridors and concourses of airports (assuming they don’t get closed down on the very weekend I plan to travel — thank you, ironic sky being).</p>

Is it real reading, though? Sometimes it feels a bit like cheating. For about a minute.. and then I shrug, and hit play.