Don't Attack The Customer

by Matt Lynn

I’m not one of those writers who worries about digital books, the decline of the local bookshop, or the closure of libraries. We are story-tellers, and there has always been a demand for stories, and an enthusiastic audience for them. How they are delivered – round a campfire, on a printed page, or on an electronic screen – doesn’t make much difference.

What does worry me is that the publishing industry might repeat some of the mistakes of the music business.

In The Bookseller today, Richard Mollet, the chief executive of the Publishers Association, is demanding that the Internet Service Providers should be clamping down on piracy.

This is the wrong route.

With my other hat as a business journalist on I’ve written a lot about the decline of the big music labels. What they got wrong was trying to sue their main customers – the music fans who download music. But a business can’t constantly be treating its customers like criminals. It doesn’t make any sense.

Interestingly, the music business is in pretty good shape. Total spending on music, when you add up CD sales, licensing fees, downloads and live performance earnings, has been going up over the last few years. It’s just the old music labels that have been struggling – largely because they couldn’t figure out how to deal with a changed market.

I hope the publishers don’t end up going down the same road.

The story-telling business is in good shape, even if the delivery changes. But attacking our customers is not the right way to respond.

The Pathetic Fallacy

by Leigh Russell,

When I was a student (a very long time ago) I remember learning about the Pathetic Fallacy in literature, where natural events reflect human experience. It seemed to involve a lot of bad weather: Lear, a former king, naked in the tempest; storms at times of emotional turmoil in Thomas Hardy.

I was thinking about the pathetic fallacy while driving into work this morning in ominous weather. I don’t enjoy driving in the best of conditions and at this time of year I always start to feel a little nervous. What if the roads are icy and my car skids...?

This kind of anxiety may be pathetic in a different way, but being a worrier probably feeds into my writing and I wonder if a tendency for Shakespeare’s “horrible imaginings” goes with the territory of being a crime writer. Readers often ask how I think up plots for my crime novels and the answer is simple; I start with a ‘What if...?’ question, imagining a worst case scenario.
Let’s say you work in an office. One evening you are the last person to leave. As you are going to bed you recall leaving your mobile phone on your desk at work, so you go in early next morning to arrive before any of your colleagues. Entering the office you discover a dead woman sprawled on the floor. Only a few people have keys to your office, and no one admits to knowing the murder victim.

This raises a number of questions. Who is the unknown victim? Why was she killed? You were last out at the end of the day and first in next morning - does suspicion fall on you? How do the police find the killer? If you write answers to the many questions raised by the body in the office, a basic crime thriller will virtually write itself.

Of course it’s not that simple. It takes a certain type of imagination to develop a starting point like this into a plausible novel with intriguing plot twists and convincing characters, and this requires a lot of thought. So life as an author can be hard work. Following the writing itself comes the need for promotion, and success has imposed increasing demands on my time until there are times when I watch my life slipping out of control, like a car on an icy road...

As for the road ahead, if anyone had predicted sixteen months ago that I would have two bestsellers to my name by now, one of them shortlisted for a CWA Dagger Award, I would have laughed. So I’m taking my journey as an author one day at a time. Who knows what the future holds?

At least my car didn’t skid this morning - although if there was any ice on the road I wouldn’t have seen it through the dense fog up ahead...

Leigh Russell is the author of the Geraldine Steel series
http://www.noexit.co.uk/authorpages/leigh_russell.php
CUT SHORT (2009)
ROAD CLOSED (2010)
DEAD END (2011)

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

By Richard Jay Parker

A crisis of confidence is something most writers are familiar with. Projects - that we pour hours of time into, burn oil over and ponder even when we should be focussed on the more practical demands of life - can sometimes have a sneaky knack of appearing worthless in the wrong light.

Light is the operative word here as it's usually a certain time of day that it happens. It's like that moment when too much sunshine pours into a room and makes everything look a bit tired and in need of a spring clean.

Everyone has their low ebb moment not only during the course of creating an entire project but every day of that process. It obviously depends what your writing timetable is. I usually experience mine at about three in the afternoon. At that point, everything I've written looks a bit tired and in need of a spring clean - or a delete button.

Even though I don't want to, it's at this point that I take a break. As most writers know, there aren't ever enough hours in the day to achieve everything you want and taking yourself away from a project seems like time wasted. But it's worth it because nothing constructive can be achieved when you've stopped seeing the words for the trees.

I usually re-examine everything first thing in the morning - my best time - and often find my reservations aren't as harshly felt as my tired mind convinced me they were.

It doesn't always work. Often the work does need a kick in the pants but at least I have some new reserves of energy to do it.

So, at three today, I think I'll go for a walk and think of something besides my plot and characters. Yeah, right.

Win Richard's book by coming up with the name of a Christmas serial killer at: http://www.richardjayparker.com/ (Bottom Of Home Page)

Celebrating Ourselves...

by Matt Lynn

It was National Freelancer’s Day yesterday, although not very surprisingly I missed it. Indeed, I suspect that all the freelancers out there missed it: partly because they are always very, very busy with other stuff; and partly because, by definition, we all work by ourselves, so we aren’t around other freelancers, who might remind us to celebrate.

Still, the Telegraph had an interesting survey to mark the occasion. It found that freelancers were on the whole happier than people who had jobs. Not very surprising, really. If you consider that most jobs consist of some idiot shouting at you all morning, then getting a terrible, over-priced sandwich that tastes like mouldy cardboard, with some bloke you’re only friends with because he happens to sit next to you, and then spending the afternoon in a crushingly dull meeting, it is surprising that us freelancers aren’t even further in the lead.

Its ten years now since I had a job in an office, so I’ve spent a decade now sitting around at home writing stuff. It takes a lot of discipline, of course. You have to get up in the morning and crack on with your work. You need to set yourself targets and deadlines.

And it has it ups and downs. But when you hit a down it is worth remembering that you are a lot happier than you would be in an office.

In fact next year I might even celebrate National Freelancers Day – possibly with a plate of foie gras and a glass of Bordeaux at my desk.

When Do I Give Up?

By Richard Jay Parker

I can't claim any credit for this week's topic. I found an interesting forum asking agents as well as writers how many negative responses it would take before they give up on a project.

Have a look HERE

The immediate answer is, of course, never.

There are many stories about writers having their material rejected myriad times before it gets published and is a major hit. Frederick Forsyth's DAY OF THE JACKAL is the classic example of this. It was rejected fifty thousand times before it was published. OK - I may be exaggerating. Fifty is the official figure.

Then there's the tragic story about one of my favourite books A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES which John Kennedy Toole's mother managed to get published after he took his life. His suicide was in part due to his failure to get it into print.

As far as I'm concerned, if a writer feels absolutely passionate about a project they should continue to submit and hope it finds that agent or publisher who feels the same way and wants to champion it.

Belief in your own talent in the face of rejection is one of the most difficult things a writer has to deal with.

But this gruelling process has to be tempered by a big dose of realism. Having slaved over and polished a cherished manuscript for so long it's easy to get obsessed by a piece of work. If a writer receives constructive rejections then taking the comments on board is a step past the 'standing on a rock howling into the wind' stage.

It's a commericial world out there and, although you should never compromise your goals as a writer, it's always good to familiarise yourself with the territory your work will have to traverse. Research is a good way to fill those days when you're waiting for responses.

More importantly, it's vital to always be writing because that next project may well supplant the last one.

It brings us back to that concept of nothing we write ever being a waste of time. If we didn't pen the last project then we would never have used that experience to lay the foundation for the one we might have success with.

Win a copy of Richard's book at http://www.richardjayparker.com/ (foot of home page)

Advice For Budding Thriller Writers

by Matt Lynn

I’m still really enjoying the round-table discussions hosted over at the International Thriller Writers website. This week, they are discussing the one piece of advice you would give budding thriller writers.

So what would my advice be?

First, learn about structure. Thrillers are very mechanical. They need great engineering. They are a bit like cars in that respect. They can look beautiful, but if they don’t work properly, then what’s the point (unless it’s a Jag, of course, in which case we’ll overlook the fact it doesn’t work).

So the most important thing you need to do is learn about structure and pace and plot. For my money, the best way to do that is to take an early Frederick Forsyth novel, and go through it again and again until you have learned absolutely what he is doing. Then do it for yourself. It’s a bit like taking a BMW apart, then re-assembling. If you do that enough times, you will figure out how to make a car. Same with a thriller.

Next, get with the times. Thrillers are stories of events. They reflect the world around them. So don’t write an old-fashioned Cold War spy thriller. Think about private military corporations (my subject). Or financial conspiracies. Or Iran. Or piracy. But make it something now and fresh we haven’t read about before.

Okay, that’s two pieces of advice – but both valuable.

Co-Incidences in Fiction...

by Leigh Russell

On the spur of the moment we once went to visit a public gardens that turned out to be closed. Having travelled so far, we decided to drive on to the nearest town. As we drew level with a sign welcoming us to Milton Keynes, my mobile rang. My daughter was calling because she was bored waiting for a train in... Milton Keynes. I can’t recall the purpose of her visit, but like ours it was an unprecedented trip to Milton Keynes and neither of us had known of the other’s visit beforehand. It was fluke that we chanced to be there at the same time, and discovered we were there together before either of us left.

I could tell you a few more coincidences that have happened to me - although one is so strange that I wouldn’t relate it here for fear of being dismissed as an advocate of impossible supernatural events. It really was that unlikely.I’m not alone in this. Most people can recall at least one astonishing coincidence they have experienced. How often do we introduce anecdotes with the words, ‘You’ll never believe what happened!’ But of course we do believe the story that follows, because it’s true.

So how is it that real life can throw up such coincidences with impunity when my editor warned me early on to avoid coincidences in my writing because ‘Readers don’t like them’?When writing my crime thrillers I try to make them believable, researching small details to create a convincing illusion so my readers ‘buy into’ the world of my book. I’m pleased to come across epithets like ‘plausible’ and ‘authentic’ when reviewers comment on my fictional forensic science. (It should be authentic. My advisers range from an experience medical practitioner to a professor of forensic medicine, and even the human remains department of the Natural History Museum!)

And I spend time working out how my detective can come across an essential piece of evidence without any unlikely coincidences which my readers might find unbelievable.So it annoys me intensely that real life can be completely absurd and ridiculously far-fetched when we authors can’t take similar liberties. It’s just not fair!