Why other writers are NOT the enemy....

I'd like to think that I don't often create blog posts out of some reactionary impulse, but I guess I should own up to the fact that this one was sparked directly by the article at this link. Why? Because I disagree.

There is a huge misconception that one author's success somehow damages another's potential. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth and all it takes is a simple exercise in maths to bash this myth to smithereens.

After a bit of prowling around on google, I came up with the following output averages for a few better known writers: Isaac Asimov wrote 1700 words per day on average. Hemingway wrote 500 a day. Stephen King writes 10 pages a day. It took J K Rowling five years to complete the first Harry Potter book. Amanda Hocking writes between 5000 to 8000 words per day. Terry Pratchett wrote Dodger in 9 months. Lee Child works at a rate of between 600 and 2500, stating that the most he ever did in a single day was 4000. In fact, the fastest writer I've ever heard of, was Michael Moorcock, who allegedly finished off a trilogy in nine days, working at a rate of 15,000 words a day.

Now let's look at the consumption rate of readers, particularly those who would class themselves as word addicts. I can shed a little light on their habits, having been one myself for many years. A serious reader used to be someone who chose a handbag, based on whether you could fit at least one or possibly more books inside. A serious reader's absolute worst nightmare is being stuck on a two hour train journey without something to read, because they have become addicted to taking mini holidays from the physical reality, whenever they can get away with it. I'm fairly slow, though. Here are a few claims from readers, also taken off the internet. One person states that she read the whole Twilight series in half a week. Another person claims to read a 600 word book in 3-4 hours. Yet another reader claims to have read the last four Harry Potter books in a few hours, on the day they came out. A somewhat slower reader claims to read 2-3 books or around 400 pages in a week.

My point, as is often stated in independent writer circles, is that no single author, even an inhumanly prolific one, can write fast enough to satisfy the appetite of one serious reader. This is why we need each other. We all grow in the same forest. We are all part of the same eco-system. If one writer encourages more people to read, we ALL benefit. Writers are not in competition with each other.

Even if the so-called Big Five publishers are restricting their output to the surest bets, there are so many other paths to follow. It has been argued, that small presses in fact have more to offer, as far as individual development of writers. And, every day more and more established writers are beginning to dabble in self-publishing, raising its profile and respectability. Towards the end of last year, Amazon announced that over 150 of their KDP authors sold more than 100,000 copies.

So, keep reading. Keep writing. And stay inspired.

(Link to my smashwords page)

The Gold Standard

Pink Floyd. 1971. Live in Pompeii. In my opinion, this band, at this stage of their career, is about as close as you will get to a 'gold standard' of progressive rock music. In any of their filmed live performances of the period, their absorption in what they do is absolute and one hundred percent. There are no attempts to connect with the audience. In fact, for 'Live in Pompeii', there is no audience (except for a few village kids, who allegedly hid out of sight). The band became their music. In one performance, you would see Dave Gilmour stepping up to Roger Waters mid-performance to re-tune his bass guitar. In another, Roger Waters adjusts his phrasing to cover the instance of Nick Mason dropping a drumstick. Everything they do is a playful exploration of shaping sound. Elements such as shredding speed or vocal range do not even come up. Those are cheap tricks for lesser bands to employ. If the music calls for a specific note at a specific time, one of the band members will find some way of bringing it in - and it hardly matters which one of them it is, or how he did it...



There's a couple of things that's been on my mind for the past few months with regards to creative expression:

- reading up (for a writing assignment) about the Renaissance, a time when some of the world's most amazing constructions sometimes took generations to complete.
- listening to Neil Gaiman comparing the early part of his career to 'sending out messages in bottles and hoping some of them would come back'
- my own withdrawal from participation in a certain popular social network - for reasons I won't go into right now.

And again and again, it seems to bring me back to thoughts about audiences and the creative process...

A good creative artist becomes the work and disappears into it. Speaking about my own craft now, telling a good story is less about using clever words and sentences and more about making the walls of the existing world vanish. The best writer is the one who becomes invisible within the first three sentences of the story. That would be my personal 'gold standard' and to me, the only way to achieve this, is to forget that there is an audience.

My drabble: Birds of a feather

"Hey!" she said.

Her words reverberated through the emptiness of the apartment. What was there? Mattress. Kettle. A souring carton of milk. Some drying stems of lavender on the window sill.

"I love this T-shirt. Can I borrow it?"

'Love' took a distinct slot in the meaning chain of her vocabulary. Love meant want and want was never a passive word with her.

Everything cool I owned was either borrowed or stolen, but facing the pure onslaught of her 'love', I suddenly understood why magpies built their nests high in the branches.

Was this how magpies mated? I shrugged. "Whatever."

(this story was specifically created as a writing exercise for a meeting with the Adamastor Writer's Guild, on the subject of drabbles, which are, for those who don't know, a story that is exactly 100 words long. You can check out Cat Hellisen's drabble  for the same meeting here. )

The ownership of stories

Last sunday I began to write a fable about vultures. Literally, I sat down and began with the words "once upon a time", writing them in a tiny A6 sized exercize book that said Croxley on the outside cover. In another reality, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to the voice of my deceased twin soul telling a tale that began "once upon a time". The words flow easily, without hesitation. Although he takes breaks, there is no scratching out, no re-arrangement for the physical me that is taking dictation. The story 'happens' to me. It is not the first to to come in this way and won't be the last. Some stories come to me as movies or in snapshots and impressions, rather than physical words, but often the sentences surprise me. For me, writing has really become a form of listening...

Since his physical life ended more than two years ago, and since the stories will be sent out in my name, I suppose I should call them mine, but they feel like gifts...

Before he died, my twin soul created in much the same way as I do now.. and it occurs to me that perhaps its only on this side of the grave that we feel any need to go: mine. mine. mine. That is only the itching of our egos. In truth the stories belong to all of us. We ARE them and they are us.

One day they will bear another name, another mask, another disguise...

Writer's Resource - A history of violence

Writers and aspirant writers are often advised to 'write what they know'. This could however become a little problematic, when a detailed and hands-on study of the subject matter could land you in a lot of trouble. I am talking, of course, about violence, which features with alaming frequency in literature, movies and television, but (thankfully, perhaps) not so much in the average author's life. While writers can organize access to cops, medical professionals, etc, who may become useful resources in terms of modern violence, the finer points of more archaic ways of separating human beings from their mortal remains can be a little harder to obtain. One place to look would be this website I discovered by chance. There are various articles dealing with specific historical forms of violence, as well as links to book resources that go into more depth. While the content is far from complete, and in some cases, very brief, it still makes a good starting point for authors.

And like I said, don't practice this at home...