How To Start Writing A Book

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've posted in times past on how to write a book. I've posted about how to edit a book - and most certainly how to publish a book, as well as my own booky journey. And I've posted a lot about book marketing. I've probably posted about how to murder a publisher, too.

But I've never talked about how you actually start a book. You know, how you sort of decide you want to do it then knuckle down and actually get on with it. That moment when you realise, 'Here I am. I'm actually doing this. I'm writing a book!' is something else. But how do you, you know, get there?

And so @dollz87 on Twitter made a good point today. It's all very well talking about this here Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2016 'How to get your book published' session wot I'm taking part in, but how DO you stop talking about writing a book and actually start writing a book?

For myself, I had a couple of false starts. I most certainly had not the faintest idea of what writing a book entails. It's probably lucky I didn't, because I'd probably have found something more destructive and less intelligent to do instead. My first book 'Space' started with me writing a scene set outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris. I had a character, René the Horse, in mind. I wrote about 1,500 words and then the file sat on my Toshiba T1600 (showing my age, but it was one flash puppy of a PC to own back in those days) for years as it rotted in my brother in law's attic. It's still there, for all I know...

When I eventually decided to write a book, I sort of had René in mind, but I had to get from the start of a book over to him in Paris. I dreamed up the idea of an auto-manifesting chicken and started writing...

The chicken appeared on the kitchen worktop with a percussive ‘pop’, interrupting Ben Jonson’s rummage in the fridge for something to eat before afternoon surgery. There was little on offer: stale bread, no butter and a pot of slightly mouldy jam. Scanning the kitchen for the source of the noise, Ben found himself looking at a particularly magnificent roasted chicken on a ceramic dish. It was occupying a space that had previously contained neither chicken nor dish.

A soft hissing sound fizzled into silence. The chicken was plump, still warm and its rich, savoury fragrance filled the air. Ben’s mouth pricked with saliva. He’d eaten nothing since yesterday lunchtime and now he was looking at a glistening, freshly roasted chicken. 

Licking his lips, partly from animal lust and partly from apprehension, Ben scanned the room. Just a kitchen. He looked up. Just a kitchen ceiling. 

The disconnect overwhelmed Ben’s response to sudden bounty. He felt like a laboratory mouse: If you press this button, food appears. His mind raced, grasping for explanations like a lunatic reaching for butterflies. This was wrong. The chicken had failed to follow due process. Chickens are born in hatcheries, raised in farms. De-beaked, plucked, dipped, shocked, slashed, racked, packed and stacked, bagged, bought, stored, stuffed, cooked and scoffed. They know their place, do chickens: they’re food. Except he hadn’t bought this chicken, and he hadn’t cooked this chicken. This was new chicken. Inexplicable chicken. Chicken á la quiz. He reached across to the oven and opened the door. It was cold.

You can buy 'Space' here for 99p. It still makes me laugh, I must confess.

And so I was away. 100,000 words later, I leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction and decided I deserved a Martini. Space was written and I could now unleash my genius on literary London. The rest, as they say, was pants.

But how do you START? I've got news for you. It's really easy. Here's my $1mn super secret writer's tip: just start. Get it down on paper, at least the first few pages. Start writing. Now begin to think about what it is you're building here. Ideally, sketch out the big idea and then break it down into chapters, building your big idea in an outline. Don't stop writing while you're doing this, keep the momentum going. Don't put off writing to do planning, but write as you plan. The further ahead you plan, the better, but don't stop writing, whatever you do.

Start by writing down your opening scene. Don't sweat this too much, it'll likely never make it to the final cut, but make a start. Finish whatever you write in that first session and have a think about where you want to take it next. Start again with the next session and read over what you wrote before, then take up the quill again and write more. Repeat.

Scope out a 'writing time' for yourself. For me, it's first thing in the morning before the office wakens (I spend half an hour thinking in the car and then an hour writing. I'll write in the evenings as well when I can. Morning me leaves notes for evening me. I write on Fridays, too. I'm married to a teacher, so she spends Fridays planning. We're happy enough, both beavering away in our study.). You're looking at giving yourself a daily 1,000 words to write. You don't have to DO this, but have it as a target. 400 well written and considered words that resolve a problem are better than 1,000 sketchy ones that leave you with a problem later on, believe me. But if you end the week 7,000 words to the wise, give yourself a massive pat on the back.

Don't tweet, don't let yourself get distracted. Switch the Internet off. Just concentrate on that story, the big picture one, the scenes you're building and the story you want to tell. Think about things when you're not writing, dream up characters and their backgrounds, their stories and their lives. Steal quirks from people. Keep writing. Every day. Even a few words. Keep writing. Keep writing.

And you'll do it. Trust me, you'll do it. Don't bother with NaNoWriMo type deadlines, that's a sure-fire route to a rubbish book and a huge editing job (an editor friend dreads the end of NaNoWriMo because he knows what sort of MSs are going to start dropping on him). Stick to your 1,000 words a day as best you can and just plug away at it.

Believe me. The second you've started, you're on the way to finishing. By the fourth or fifth second you're committed. A couple of minutes in, you're carving your way to success. A few days in and you're a writer, writing. Don't worry too much about all that show don't tell sort of stuff (maybe have a read of this here handy post), or even worrying about POV and other writing techniques for now (there's time for that later), but focus on telling your story.

Once you've given those first few days to it, you're on the way to redemption. It's just like giving up smoking, but in reverse. And that's how I did it: I gave up smoking and my novel became my new obsession.

Just remember the golden rule: start now. Seriously. Right now. Close this window and open Word, take a deep breath and just write something. There. You've started. You can worry about the rest later. If you need a shoulder to cry on, it's @alexandermcnabb. But NOT in your writing time, hear me?

Good luck!

The Dunning Kruger Effect and Writing Books

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What with one thing and another last week, traffic to Dubai's most inane blog went through the roof so this week I'm going to start off with the greatest traffic killer known to man - writing about writing. Whenever I post about writing, whole swathes of people just shrug their shoulders and wander off as if they'd been promised a lifetime's supply of peanut flavoured jelly beans and been offered a night out with Tony Blair instead.

Writer pal Bren MacDibble turned me on to the Dunning Kruger effect a couple of weeks ago and it delighted me so much, it's been buzzing around my little head ever since. It's really quite cool and it has provided me a convenient explanation for quite why work on Beirut, my third proper attempt at writing a publishable book, has been such an up and down experience. On good days, I'm filled with a sense of euphoria at how the book is coming together, truly a work with a mind and life of its own. On bad days, I can't bring myself to look at it, halting, half-hearted attempts at writing blocked by self-doubt and worry.

JG Ballard, a hero, used to write 1,000 words a day. I can remember thinking, when I started this odd obsession with writing, what a namby pamby wordrate that was. Nowadays I'll be lucky to match it. I know where I'm going, but find building the path there is taking much more time than it used to. I'm taking a lot more time to pick the stones, make sure the surface is prepared and then place them properly, as it were.

That's because of the Dunning Kruger effect, said wise old Dibs. And I suspect she's right. The Dunning Kruger Effect is a recognised psychological state whereby the unskilled are convinced of their brilliance, while the skilled are plunged into self doubt: the incompetent rate their ability more greatly than the competent.

I remember quite clearly (and with a shudder) setting out to write Space, my first attempt, and churning out 100k words of very funny but incredibly badly written book in a couple of months. There we go, I thought. pop that off to an agent or two and Robert's yer father's brother. To my shock, rejection slips started to arrive. Respected wordsmith Jason Pettus of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography took a look at the MS, the consequent howl of pain and outrage still echoes in my memory. The book was rejected by over 100 agents, far from the literary world swooning at my feet as I had confidently expected. Eight years later, I recognise that it's actually uneditable and it's been consigned to the Bottom Drawer of Perpetual Darkness.

[Update. I have since edited it and put it up on Amazon simply because it made me laugh so much. Its first review reads, 'this book is not funny'!!!]

If I look back at draft one of book two, Olives, I'm inclined to the Pettus Reaction. Draft one was written in four weeks and I find it too painful to read it. It's like reading the poems you wrote when you were thirteen. The current draft of Olives is the result of a massive amount of learning, rewriting and editing and I am pleased with it. It's attracted some full read requests but no bites - but I know it's a quantum leap from the quality of writing of Space. Olives is also a serious book with a Middle Eastern setting - it has defined the areaof interest and genre I have settled into writing and is, in fact, the prequel to Beirut.

Beirut is about 75% complete and has taken seven months to get there. I'd like to think it's because of the Dunning Kruger effect. I suppose we'll see, won't we?

Writing

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I'm going to start blogging more about writing. I'm sorry about that for some of you, to whom it will possibly be irrelevant bibble, but I guess this blog was always about what interested and amused me and I've actually been missing out on quite a large chunk of what I'm made up of by not doing more about the old nasty book habit.

The hardest thing I find about writing fiction is not the plotlines or characterisation or any of the other technical gumpf that goes into it. And it's not the 100,000 words or so that some people seem to find a challenge. I always reckon if you're counting words, you're missing the point, like the many people I see talking about NaNoWriMo* getting all breathless with comments like "Up to 12,000 words now! If only I could crack off another 2,000 today!"

Believe me, I know how easy it is to churn out words and then find that all you've done is filled pages with words. Filling pages with words is a doddle. The trick is which words.

The hardest thing for me about writing books is getting my head back into reality. There I am in a South London cemetery, the smell of wet leaf-mould in my nostrils and the wet grass soaking the legs of my trousers and someone pops up and wants to talk about the price of cabbages or the weather. Or I'm in a dingy hotel room with a prostitute and someone is beeping me to move over for them.

It's not just a problem that happens when 're typing, either, the whole barrier that separates fantasy and reality gets thinner as you spend more and more of your waking time living the odd lives of your characters, poring over their situations and experiencing the smells, sights and sounds that surround them.

I suppose you'd have to own to the possibility that you might not come back one day. But being dragged back to reality when you're writing, even in your head, is always like being woken in the middle of great dream.

And by the way, no, truth is stranger than fiction... It's always a bump to come back.


* November is Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a book, if you were ever going to do it, now being the time to do it. I recommend writing books as a leisure activity. It improves the digestion.

How To Write A Book

This, believe it or not, was my Christmas gift from 
The Niece From Hell - a 'starter pack' of book napkins!.

You have to bear in mind the advice below comes from a self-published author who's just started out and will likely never sell more than a couple of hundred books, not Jeffrey Deaver, okay? You are, of course, more than welcome to buy my book and decide for yourself whether to listen to me.

Pal Abdulla Al Suwaidi (@Aabo0 to you) asked me on Twitter to share the resources I used developing my book, Olives - A Violent Romance. To that end, the below.

In terms of actual literature on writing books, there are hundreds of books on how to write a book. It's notable that few of them are written by successful authors of anything other than books on how to write books and many carry mendacious subtitles such as 'How To Get Published'. I think you've more chance of being published by wearing a duck on your head and standing naked outside Blackstone's than you have by reading these books. Books on writing will only take you so far - the rest of the process is as arcane and mystifying as the famous Nebulising Nonentity of Nether Thragulon Nine.

I own two books about writing, foisted upon me by an insistent and exasperated Phillipa Fioretti as we worked together on an early edit of Olives. Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. Both are books I am very glad I bought. Other than those, I suppose I've read a load of articles and stuff online but most of my learning has come from working with writer friends on my manuscript or theirs - there are writer's websites such as Harper Collins' Authonomy or Litopia which let you post up your manuscript and allow others to 'crit' it. The upside of this is you get lots of advice and input, the downside is there can be a lot of backbiting, competitive 'backing' where, for instance authonomy, the site is based on competing and it can be hard to know if the advice comes from a seasoned pro or a complete dufus.

Should you join a writers' group? I have found (as I acknowledge in Olives) the company of writer friends utterly invaluable, but I stress they are friends - people whose company I sought and enjoy. I have never belonged to a writers' group as such and look on them with mild horror. But don't 'go it alone' for pity's sake. I did that for over five years and now fervently wish I hadn't wasted so much time.

I follow a number of blogs, but these are more focused on publishing rather than writing. However, I'd recommend:

The Passive Voice - mostly posts from other people's blogs, but his selections are usually thought-provoking and his observations often add value, too. And, of course, he's finding other writers worth following for you.

The Shatzkin Files - Consultant Mike Shatzkin was one of the early voices that 'got' digital and he remains a must-read commentator on publishing.

The Bookseller - The trade journal of publishing. I find this great for following the industry and occasionally  useful for 'reality checking' some of the more strident neologist voices.

Pub Rants - A useful agent's blog. Kristin is one of the very few agents who I follow.

Writer Beware - A good early warning system for scams and scammers. As self publishing grows, so will the marketing scams that promise to market your book etc.

Mad Genius Club - A bunch of writers writing about writing, always worth a visit.

The Independent Publishing Magazine - Does what it says on the cover.

Obviously, if anyone else has any smart ideas on writer/author/publishing blogs to follow, feel free to chuck 'em in the comments.

As for the rest of it, here are some of my learnings so you don't have to smack your head against the same brick walls I did.

How to write a book

So, you've set up all these blogs in your reader and popped off to Amazon to buy those books. You've got a nice, sharp pencil and a piece of paper ready. Now you can start writing your book. Step back from that keyboard, I was serious about the pencil and paper.

1) A Novel Form
What kind of book are you intending to write? Be clear with yourself, categorise it from day one. Chic-lit for the over 30s European housewife? A thriller for early 20-something professionals? Tighten it as much as possible and try to imagine your audience. Is it a large audience? What kind of books is it buying? Where is it buying them? Is your genre of choice one you read a lot in? Which authors do you admire/enjoy the most? Are they selling well? How will you be different to them, yet occupy the same space on the shelf? (One writer solved this problem by using a pseudonym that placed him next to his 'target author' on bookshelves!)

These questions all seem far removed from the beautiful process of creating literature and they indeed are. But if you want your beautiful literature to get published, you'd better start thinking commercially from the get-go. Publishers don't buy beauty any more, they buy books they think they can sell in the mainstream. If you're in it for the beauty and to hell with the consequences, then you're self-publishing and you're as well to understand that before you press a single key.

Now to use that piece of paper (some people use whiteboards or big charts, I happen to use paper). Presumably you've got an idea of the basic plot of the book. Now you can Google 'narrative curve' and came back to this after you've spent a couple of days reading all the advice out there. I start out by putting the events in my book in little clumps of text and linking them with arrows, so each clump is a little like a scene. Each scene, then, takes your character forwards on the journey of your book (the journey can, of course, take place on an armchair), by moving the character or by moving other characters and situations that influence or impact your character. The arrows let you move to the next scene and connect scenes. Force yourself to do this through the whole book to the end (the temptation is to do about half and then decide to resolve the rest when you get to it). It doesn't have to be totally granular - it can be a very 'broad brush' approach, but you want to have an idea of what you're setting out to do. Ideally, the whole thing can also be colour-coded to belong to the beginning, middle and end, which takes you back to the narrative curve stuff.

2) Start writing
Now you can start putting your scenes on paper, knowing where they belong in the full picture. In fact, books are ideally structured in scenes, each scene having an objective to it that moves the story forward. Each scene belongs in a place, so be careful to let your reader know where he or she is. Each scene has a single point of view, that is the events are witnessed through one character. If you start using two or more POVs, you'll confuse the reader. This is where you Google "point of view" and come back to this article in a couple of weeks when you've exhausted yourself with the endless debate writers love to have about POV.

How much should you write? I'd aim for 1,000 words a day, but if you're doing 500 that's fine. The keyboard has arguably done us some dis-favours here as it makes it all to easy to dash ahead like a charging rhino, which is hardly the stuff of considered prose. Writers who worked long-hand did a great deal less editing, I suspect, than we do today.

3) Consider these things.
What person will you write your book in? There are arguments for first person and arguments for third person. Come back when you've done Googlin' - I wrote Olives in the first person, but my other books are all written in the third person. The first person demands that you really get behind one character and I created something of a rod for my back by choosing to narrate my story through a character who isn't intended to be necessarily likeable or admirable, in fact other characters elicit your sympathies and admiration. I personally think it's worked, but I'm biased. And it was a hell of a lot of work to do. Third person would have been simpler and easier all round. Having said that, there is some really smashing literature out there written in the first person and a cherry-pick of the very finest I'd suggest would include Camus' The Stranger, Fowles' The Magus and Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. If you're going to write in the first person, I'd recommend some movement of green paper over to Jeff Bezos' account.

Who is your main character? No, I mean really who? One of the things that makes JRR Tolkein's work so fabulous is that he created his world before he populated it, even down to defining its history, folk-lore, culture and languages. What are your character's personality and quirks, background and situation? How will your character be changed by the story you're telling? How will other characters interact with your main characer - and who are they? All of this is "characterisation" and, yes, you should Google it right now and come back to this article in a few days when you've defined your characters and fleshed out their lives so you feel you know them. They can develop as you're writing, of course - but you're best having thought them through first so you can have them react to situations realistically and in a way we believe and can empathise with.

4) As you write...
Think about where you are in each scene and how it is best experienced through your character's POV. What are the sights and sounds? The smells? The feelings? Close your eyes and  breathe it in, live it. And now put it down on paper. Use one word where ten will do, but pick the word that really nails it. Don't kill yourself being a 'rivet man' and detailing the scene to the point where we all start haemorrhaging , just set it up in a few well chosen words and then make it come alive for us by referencing it through your characters' senses. Don't forget touch - a cold key in the pocket, a warm baby. You might like to Google "writing style" here and come back in a couple of months or so.

Language is the only tool you've got, in the same way as voice is the only tool you have during a phone call. That means you have to use it to create pictures, draw the reader in and build a sense of reality. Strangely, less is more - a few well chosen words is all you need because we will fill in the gaps for you. But do avoid cliché and don't use two verbs where one will do. In fact, one writer friend is a passionate killer of adverbs and she's right almost all of the time. Consider your choice of words. If Simon gets up and walks from the room leaving Helen behind is Simon being as interesting or engaging as if he pushes back the chair irritably and strides out of the room, brushing past Helen? Be careful not to let yourself get too 'purple' here, it's a balancing act.

Focus on your characters' emotional responses, but do try and avoid telling us what those responses, those feelings and reactions are. We're better off you showing us what they are in the way the characters react. Here's another Google moment, the idea of "showing not telling". See you in a few days.

5) Hammer away
 Keep hammering away at it, building your scenes and helping your characters live the lives you've given them in your mind. Keep to the straight and narrow, don't forget we're going to have to read this, so your amusing, if self-indulgent invention of Granny Smith who is a totally great character but actually matters not one jot is something you might like to reconsider spending time on given you're almost certainly going to dump her when you get around to the edit. Do bear in mind many books suffer from a 'soggy middle', something you should avoid if you've planned well but can also avoid by bearing this particular bear trap in mind. One day, probably in about 80-100 days depending on your genre and story, you're going to sit back and experience a remarkable moment of satisfaction.

Now the doubt can creep in from the dark corners and gnaw at you. Is it any good? Did it all work? Will anyone read it? Is it just a pile of self-indulgent tripe?

Welcome to my world. And good luck to you.

Book Post: Music And Books

Cover of Object 47

Finishing Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy has been something of an event for me. The way it went at the end, words tumbling onto the page at a tremendous rate because I knew precisely where I was going, was great fun. And the journey there was accompanied by Rammstein and Arvo Pärt - as strange a combination as you'd ever want. I defy you to listen to Pärt's 'Fur Alina' without feeling a sense of desolation, loss, beauty and peace.

Music has always had a critical relationship to writing books for me. Tunes have influenced the tone of my writing and the type of thing I'm writing has influenced the music I listen to. I think about what I'm writing when I drive to work in the mornings, a half hour of solitary pondering that usually defines the scene I'm about to commit to type. The music on the CD player or iPod can really influence the way that goes.

Similarly, some music has had a totally seminal effect on the book I'm working on. I always had it in mind to add the 'soundtrack' of each book to the end bit but never got around to it. Here, for what it's worth, are those lists.

SPACE
It's so long since I wrote Space now, I forget much of the soundtrack, but I do recall listening to a lot of early Wire - anyone out there remember the amazing Another The Letter? Later on, I found myself editing Space listening to Object 47, which had the perfect feel for the book for me.

OLIVES - A VIOLENT ROMANCE
Olives was actually written as the result of a piece of music - I've told the tale many times, but I went to sleep one night listening to George Winston's February Sea, which had me thinking about a girl dancing in the rain (the central scene in the book) and woke up with a book in my head. I listened to a lot of George Winston while I was writing and subsequently editing Olives. Brian Eno was also a major listen, particularly the stunning 'Music for Airports', but also this amazing little thing, take a listen and see if it doesn't make you want to cry - Bone Bomb. I was also enjoying Lebanese east/west fusion act Blend at the time, although it looks like they're defuncted now. This amazing piece of music by Secret Garden informed the ending of Olives - it's actually a mother's song to a child, but I always think of it as the voice of a lost lover.

BEIRUT - AN EXPLOSIVE THRILLER
Secret Garden, appropriately, ended Olives and started Beirut - I always thought if Beirut got made into a film I'd like the title sequence to be a film of the waves as if approaching Beirut by helicopter, then flying over the city and through its streets as it woke up in the morning. The music would be this piece and the title would reveal at around  2:40. Then we move on to more sensible stuff, particularly Kasabian with the first scene in Beirut very much written listening to this (Lynch and Palmer walk out of the villa and this tune is playing as they drive up the track to the Saida Road). There was a bit of Guy Manoukian going on, as well, some Oumeima and a lot of Beirut Biloma. 

SHEMLAN - A DEADLY TRAGEDY
An awful lot of Foo Fighters, oddly enough. And then the esoterica. A lot of Silence, a huge influence on the book, as was Jorgestrada. I picked up a recording of singing from Estonian Orthodox Churches which I listened to a lot with enjoyment. Jason Hartmoor's first awakening in the book takes place with that playing in the backgrond as he looks out at the beach at Newgale. Oddly enough, that music is a huge influence on composer Arvo Pärt, whose De Profundis was also a biggie during writing. And then there was a load of Ulrich Schnauss and tons of Sigur Ros. To finish, we depended on Professor Kliq, Rammstein, Sasha and the Chemical Brothers. Seriously. And then the last few pages were very much down to Mr Pärt.

So. Now you know...

Writing Inspirations: I Stole This From Roba

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I first met Jordanian blogger, trouble maker and Converse-loving spectacle rack Roba Al-Assi at the inaugural ArabNet Beirut. She's a sweetie. She was never to know that I am a habitual thief and stealer of people and souls.

Like wot I said, I'm doing a series of workshoppy talky things at the Canadian University in Dubai on the subject of writing, editing and publishing books. That, along with the WIP, has Mr Head pretty solidly in Bookland. And the writing workshop had me yowling manically at my audience of mildly concerned-looking students about writing scenes as if you're there: the feeling of a cold key in your pocket, the smell of summer barasti, the crackle of logs on a fire. That kind of thing.

Which took me right back to 2010, when I was writing Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and stumbled across a post on Roba's mighty blog, And Far Away. It was to become the soundtrack to the whole scene between Nathalie and Maalouf in the Casino du Liban. The post is linked here for your viewing pleasure. Roba's blog, incidentally, rarely fails to charm and delight.

The idea was basically to get you to open three tabs on your browser with three links. One here, the second one here and this here one here. I'm a simple bear, the whole thing delighted me and I had it playing as I started tapping out the characters that would form the words that would become my characters. It was still playing as I smacked the last full stop of the scene and shoved back my chair with a happy sigh.

Incidentally, it was also Roba who introduced me to Bar O Metre, the packed (and engagingly skanky) student bar on the margins of AUB which I didn't hesitate to steal for the scene where Lynch nabs the evil 'Spike'.

But it was the soundtrack thing that got me. I've posted before about how music is such an influence for me when I'm writing. And right now I'm doing an awful lot of Afro Celt Sound System and The Frames. For what it's worth...

Words

Image by thismanslife via Flickr

I started the week posting about writing so I'll end the week doing the same.Goodbye traffic.

When I first started writing books, the Dunning-Kruger effect in full force, I was firmly of the view that my undeniable skill would make me millions. After all, Dan Brown and JK Rowling and all that lot make millions, don't they? The big sexy numbers are here.

A little further down the path, I have come to recognise that this view of writing being the road to limitless wealth is not only highly unlikely, it is insane. Most writers don't make very much money at all. In fact, I'd be better off writing for UAE quality newspaper The National as a freelance than I would be writing books.

Here's the maths.

The vast majority of books will not sell more than 5,000 copies, while a 5,000 copy sale would make you a bestseller in Canada. 98% of books published sell less than 500 copies, by the way. And there are something like 500,000 books published in a given year. A bestseller in Australia is 10,000 books.

But that's just too depressing. As a rule of thumb, let's say 35,000 copies is a reasonable bestselling success. And we'll assume the royalty rate is 8%, which is also a reasonable number.

So, 8% royalty on 35,000 sales. AT £7.99, that's £22,372. Sound neat? If you have written (and you likely will have) a 100,000 word novel, that pays you a cool 19p per word. It would have been 22p a word, but you gotta give your agent 15%.

NUJ (National Union of Journalists to you) freelance rates for a smaller consumer magazine are 37p a word. The National, famously a good freelance gig, coughs up 55p a word for freelances .

Using the same assumptions, if your book sold a smashing 100,000 copies, like Miranda Dickinson's Fairy Tale of New York did, at the book's RRP of £6.99, you be looking at a nice cheque from the publisher for £55,920. Pretty cool for a few months' work, no? Now pay your agent and the taxman and you're looking at something nearer £30,000.

You'd still be looking at having earned less than writing for The National: 46p a word once the agent's been fed.

*sigh*

First Fictions

Richard Pierce-Saunderson's first published novel, Dead Men, which charts the last days of 'Scott of the Antarctic' is being published by Duckworth. As I'm doing a panel session at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature focusing on how authors found their route to publication, I thought it would be interesting to explore Richard's story and look at how he took 'Dead Men' all the way to the hallowed shelves of your local bookshop.

So, you’re off on a blog tour of the world. Why stop over in the Middle East?
 You’ve got a different circle of readers to me. I want to extend my reach, so to speak. And then you sent me an article about the UK Ambassador to Lebanon hosting a dinner to commemorate the centenary of Scott getting to the South Pole, which contained a reference to Maxime Chaya from Lebanon, who’s retraced Scott’s footsteps to the Pole, or some of them anyway. And given Dead Men is about Scott’s last days, I found the connection too much to pass by!

What do you mean some of them?
No-one’s ever completed that journey from Scott’s base at Cape Evans to the South Pole and back on foot. That’s about 1,800 miles.

Oh.
Quite


So. First fictions. Let's start where we met, on the Authonomy writers’ web site back in late 2007. Tell me why you ended up there in the first place.
My wife found it for me, actually. The Guardian reported in September that it had come out of beta, and that it was open to the public. It was pitched as a chance to get your work in front of Harper Collins editors, and a place where writers might expect to improve their skills. So I joined, with a book I’d written some years before, called Bee Bones. I didn’t really expect much, to be honest. And for someone who’d been banging on the locked doors of the publishing industry for years it seemed like a last throw of the dice, before chucking in the writing lark and focusing on day job and family for the last years of my life.

Did it teach you anything?
It did, actually, and not just about writing.

Explain.
You know, writers are odd people. They’re desperate to share their words, to get them printed on someone else’s paper at someone else’s expense (and for their gain), but when it comes to marketing themselves, they’re actually clueless. What I learned then, in 2008, is that if we want something, we have to go for it.

What we called shameless plugging, back on Authonomy...
Exactly that. The community there was fairly light-hearted, as I recall it, and you and Simon Forward and I used to play these silly games where we’d try to plug our books in a subversive sort of way, rather than spamming people to come and read them. It meant we devised all sorts of subtle (and mostly humourous) strategies which might drive readers to our books. The thinking needed for those stratagems has stood me in good stead, I think. And it stopped me from packing in writing, stopped me from giving up, because it made me feel like I did have somethinig to say. I don’t know if you feel the same way.

Well, Olives has been published.
There you are then. Part of not giving up was also to grow a thick skin, and to be able to deal with criticism.

Just ignore it, you mean?
No, no, the opposite, in fact. It’s when we’ve not yet developed thick skins as writers that we tend to ignore any criticism of our writing, and skim over advice that could actually make us better writers. Personally, I tend to find that it’s the writers who deflect criticism or call it invalid who are those who are producing sub-standard work. Developing a thick skin means taking all criticism seriously, but learning not to take it personally, and to understand that writing is very subjective.

You’d not learned that before then?
No, I hadn't! Anyway, within the first couple of weeks of being on there, I’d asked for, and got, a long review from an American guy, which basically recommended that I scrap Bee Bones because the plot was faulty, and because it was totally unbelievable.

That must have been a bit of a blow.
In one way, yes. In another, no. He made some valid points about how the book might have been differently structured, which I think I used when I rewrote it. But after about half a day’s grieving, I decided that his core criticism was just his opinion, that the book could stand, and so I left it up there. I’ve still got a copy of that review somewhere.

Do you think it informed your subsequent writing? Because Bee Bones hasn’t been published, has it?
It did inform what I’ve done since. And no, Bee Bones hasn’t been published – yet. There are two versions of it now. But, and this is perhaps the most important point, that book was actually the key to Dead Men getting published.

How so?
I sent Bee Bones to Peter Buckman, the guy who agented Slumdog Millionaire, after Harper Collins had reviewed the book on Authonomy and turned it down (it got to Number one at the end of October 2008, as you know).

I know, I was in the Top Five with you the same month.
I thought I’d let you get that one in. But not with Olives.

No, it was a funny book called Space. Still unpublished, too. Anyway, we digress.
Right, Peter read the first three chapters of Bee Bones and an extended synopsis, but didn’t take it on. He said it was a good book, but too midlist (ie no chance of selling really, really well). I asked him if I could send him my next book when I finished it and he said yes. I had, in the meantime, started Dead Men after coming back from the Antarctic, and after getting lots of encouragement to write another book from my friends on Authonomy. So, when I’d finished the book after 6 months (and some helpful comments from people), I sent it to Peter. Two 3-hour phone calls, five weeks, and a massive edit (from 113k words down to 85k) later, he asked me if I’d sign for him.

It’s taken four years to get it published?
That’s the thing, though. Everyone thinks you’ve made it as soon as you get an agent, because that part is ball-breakingly difficult, but I had to wake up and smell the coffee, because getting an agent’s only the start. Peter made a massive effort to sell the book to mainstream publishers, but nearly all of them, without exception, quoted the market place as being too difficult to try to sell a new author into with such a complex book. Some of the feedback we had included “A few years ago I may well have offered, but it’s so inhospitable out there in the markeplace”, and “It’s an impressive and really quite brave novel; an ambitious and complex novel.” But still nothing, until the lovely independent Duckworth came along and took it on at the end of summer last year. To an extent that extended selling process was more depressing and discouraging than being constantly knocked back by agents, and one that led me, on more than one occasion, talking to Peter about self-publishing.

But you didn’t go that route?
Peter persuaded me to be patient. Also, I have self-published poetry, and in all honesty I’m just too lazy to do all the marketing gruntwork self-publishing involves.

So Duckworth are doing all the hard work for you?
They have arranged some events for me, and I’ve arranged others. But my mind-set’s different now. I just hate doing admin stuff, and to have someone who points me in the right direction is really helpful, because I’m one of the most disorganised blokes in the world. Now that we’ve got events set up, I’m desperate to do more, and not too lazy to catch trains from one end of the country to another. In fact, if any airline wants to sponsor me to tour the US and Australia and New Zealand, I’d gladly do that, too.

You’re obviously bonkers, and still on that shameless plugging trip.
Now that a third party’s put time and money into editing, typesetting and printing my book (and converting it into Kindle and Kobo format), I suppose I am.

So, what next?
The Kindle version of Dead Men is already available, although I am trying to encourage people to use their local bookshops instead. The physical book comes out on 15th March, although there’s a rumour that the Natural History Museum in London might be putting it on their shelves in the week starting 5th March. I just hope it sells lots of copies.

So, many congratulations are in order. Have you bought your celebratory copy of Olives yet?
Erm...

Here's a link to 'First Fictions' at the LitFest, which you can still buy tickets for at the amazing, knock-down price of Dhs65 and which even includes a seat!

And this here is your very own link to Richard's debut novel, Dead Men, which you can pre-order from Amazon or snap up on Kindle.

And here, last but by no means least, is a link for Richard to buy Olives ... >;0)

In Conversation With Mohsin Hamid

Cover of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I'll have to be honest here: I was dreading meeting Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid. I had read his second novel, the Booker-nominated The Reluctant Fundamentalist, with enormous enjoyment.

Given the man behind the book was a Princeton-educated management consultant (a species for which I have an instant aversion), I couldn't quite imagine what I was walking into when I agreed to host his appearance at the Sharjah International Book Fair, but it was probably something around a bi-cultural jerk in a suit with an affected proto-American drawl and a superiority complex.

Quite why I ever thought that was the case is beyond me, but then I was the bloke prepared to batter the world's most pleasant literary agent on stage with a tyre lever, so I've got form in the 'getting these things horribly wrong' stakes.

Mohsin Hamid turned out, of course, to be charming, affable, witty and passionate - a sparkling intelligence with an abiding curiosity. The accent was more British than anything else, a product of Pakistan's school system. We quickly agreed on how we would structure our chat and took to the two chairs on stage. We ran through Mohsin's motivations in writing, his first book, Moth Smoke, which he had taken seven years to complete and which gained him near-instant prominence before The Reluctant Fundamentalist cemented his reputation as a startlingly original writer who creates strong voices that subtly direct us to ask ourselves difficult questions we might otherwise conveniently avoid.

We talked about using 'voices' in writing and how Mohsin had consistently made life difficult for himself by choosing unusual voices and structures in his writing - about the influence of living in London, the US and Lahore and always writing about the place you weren't in, secularism and Lahore's underground scene and about how you watch your book being turned into a Hollywood movie. The time flew.

Mohsin read from the opening of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and I got something of a shock. I'd seen that voice as a sing-song Pakistani accent but Mohsin cleared that up as completely as he'd confounded my mean-minded expectation of him: from reduced circumstances, our man has a slightly old-school colonial Englishness to him. He's not jabbering, his voice is measured and reflects the reassurance he constantly offers his clearly nervous dinner guest. Given the entire book is a monologue, that voice cleverly modulated between the present day conversation and the reminiscence of a tragic love affair, the revelation was not inconsiderable. As Mohsin pointed out, everyone puts something of themselves into reading a well-written book and thereby changes it and as a consequence takes away something different, too.

We also talked about Mohsin's new book, How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia and how he struggled with the book's format before he came about the idea of writing it in the second person in the style of a self-help book. We timed out - the room was needed for the next gig and we had to cut questions from the audience short all too quickly. I blame the sloppy moderator myself.

If you missed it, you missed a highly entertaining hour listening to a charming, interesting and self-deprecating man whose work is as remarkable as it is readable. So sucks to you.

I would argue SIBF hasn't done enough to promote the author events taking place there - but if you missed Mohsin, you can still catch up with another Pakistani writer from the 'Lahore scene' on Saturday as I try and mess up the launch of Bilal Tanweer's The Scatter Here is Too Great. We'll be doing a fireside chat (minus the fireside, clearly), a reading and generally celebrating the release of this new novel by Random House.

That's November 16th, 7:15-8:15pm, the Book Forum at Sharjah Exhibition Centre in Al Nahda. There's no excuse not to come from Dubai, the traffic's fine on a Saturday evening.

How Social Media Taught Me How To Write

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I picked up a parcel from Sharjah post office yesterday containing a jar of homemade chutney. We had some with a slice of cheese on toast last night. It was delicious.

It had been sent to me by Australian author HélèneYoung after I came in as a runner up in a frivolous competition held in a guest post on on Hélène's blog by writer pal Phillipa Fioretti. (Did I mention that Phillipa's first book, 'The Book of Love' publishes on the 1st April? Yes? Oh, okay then) I confess I had not seriously expected to ever see a jar of home-made chutney arriving from 'down under', let alone one sent by a Bombardier pilot and novelist, but then that's the power of social media for you - the power to globalise chutney.

I met Phillipa on Harper Collins' authonomy, where I had put a lump of my first book with the hope of finding someone who'd want to publish it. One of the fascinating side effects of authonomy was to drive a huge focus on editing work, with writers encouraged to critique each others' work and sharing views, information and approaches to writing on the site's lively forums.
I started writing books because I had reasoned I could write well. I had written millions of words in a 22-year career in media and communications, from articles, news stories, interviews and reviews through to market research reports, speeches and white papers - I'd churned out all sorts of things for all sorts of people, from CEOs to Kings. Why not write a book?

I quickly learned that Space, my first book, was as funny as I thought it was. It was popular on authonomy and hit 'The Editor's Desk', voted there by the community of writers that made authonomy snap, crackle and pop. I also learned that it was very, very badly written - although I didn't know it at the time. I remember Jason Pettus of the Chigaco Centre for Literature and Photography being particularly horrified at the way Space was put together. It broke most of the 'rules' of bookish writing - to the point where I have now retired it as uneditable.

I had a second book up my sleeves, a serious book about Jordan called Olives, that I also put on authonomy - although this time around I was just after 'crits' for the work. The frenetic effort it took to get the first book to the top of the slush pile was exhausting - and the proffered 'crit' from a Harper Collins editor was hardly value that returned the effort. 

The crits on Olives started to make me think more deeply about how it was written and I started to make some big changes and a series of wide-ranging edits to the book. Phillipa worked with me on a big edit and made me go and buy some books on editing and writing (I had hitherto vehemently resisted doing that but Pip bullied me), and Heather Jacobs, another of the little band of writers I've stayed in almost daily touch with since authonomy, did a painstaking line edit of the book. Heather taught me I use 'that' too much, the latest in a series of lessons that has completely transformed the way I approach writing.

I haven't met a single person since I started all this. It's all been online. I have canvassed agents in the UK, had feedback on my work from hundreds of people from around the world and profited enormously from having broken my pre-authonomy 'I'm not telling anyone I write these things' approach and have made friends online with a number of smart, talented writers whose daily doses of input, support and general silliness have been invaluable. There are writers everywhere in my online life now - on Twitter, on Facebook and the blog, too. It's nice to have them there, because I know they understand.

If it hadn't been for authonomy, I'd have learned nothing. I probably would have given up and gone back to the day job. Now I'm on book number three and 'shopping' Olives in the meantime.
>
I wouldn't have got a jar of Australian chutney, either...

Sorry, folks, this week's mostly going to be about books (Which usually sends readership plummeting, but hey ho!) - you can blame the Emirates Airline International Literary  Festival - in particular, don't forget the social media and publishing session on Friday! There's a Twitvite and FaceBook event page, BTW.

Birdkill, Space And Starting Writing

'What started you writing?' It's a question I've come to dread. I want to print out the answer on a sheet of A4 and have it ready to hand it over to the journalist asking that most lazy of questions to put to a writer. It's like when you get married and want to punch the 50th person who asks you what married life's like. And then I feel guilty, because someone asking you questions is a good thing. The alternative, nobody asking you questions, isn't so good for book promotion, capisce?

I love the story of Prince Philip, returning from an overseas trip, who is accosted by a cub journalist who somehow has made his way to the front of the scrum and attracted his attention.
'Prince Philip sir! Prince Philip sir!' Our hero has a recorder held out.
The bushy-browed figure leans down towards his tormentor. 'Yes?'
Our man is rather like a dog chasing a car, in that now he has his prize, he doesn't quite know what to do with it. He gathers himself manfully. 'H-How was your flight, sir?'
Philip smiles. 'Have you ever flown yourself, young man?'
Our man is puzzled. 'Yes, sir. Many times.'
'Well, it was just like that.' Says Philip, turning on his heel and moving on.

I didn't have an idea what I was going to write, really, only that I had a vague notion of spoofing those international thrillers where our man is chased across Europe by a shadowy cabal of evil wrong-doers, saves humanity and gets the girl. The book would be amusing, only because I am easily bored and essentially shallow and so thought myself incapable of writing something literary and nuanced. According to my Amazon reviews for the resulting novel, Space, I'm also incapable of writing a funny book.

And yet it still makes me laugh when I read it today. It's often irredeemably silly, it makes a number of errors I have since learned to spot and remove from my writing and it makes the, in conventional publishing terms, fundamental error of not taking itself - or its reader - too seriously. And yet there's a sort of cry of 'Yahoooooo' about it, think small boy kicking autumn leaves and you're half-way there. The book has energy, ambition and a delightful way of killing off cherished characters that I must admit I have rather retained.

There are a number of high points that still tickle me pink. The police interview with a suburban housewife who has lost the ten inch 'thing' from her bedroom drawer, sold to her by the gorgeous and pneumatic sex worker Kylie - who is without a single brain cell to bother her - still cracks me up (remember I'm fundamentally weak-minded). There's the divorced copper with a perspiration problem and the poor middle-class doctor who is the unwilling victim of 99% of the book's set-ups. The angriest policeman in England is quite fun, counterpointed by Ivan Litvanoff, a particularly evil Russian spy. His encounter with Nigel, a camp MI5 safe-house housekeeper with a Prince Albert, ends with a most satisfying gag. A particular high for me was black leather cat-suited CIA operative Neon Womb, who has a 'moment' every time she kills. She was my female side coming out. Oh, and I'm forgetting the house-cleaning spy from Vientiane, the vengeful Véronique. Not to mention former French resistance fighter René the Horse, the character who featured in the short story that was my first attempt to write a book. He had to have a place in Space, and so he does. Oh! And grumpy handbag-wielding galleon Mrs Bartholdy...

Oh, gosh. There's quite a lot in there, really. It's amazing what you can do with 100,000 words when you put your mind to it...

Anyway, I'm rambling. Space is free on Amazon.com from noon today for the next five days. So if you want a free copy (saving you £0.99, cheapskate) or want to let a friend know they can get a copy, fill your boots. I'm not claiming the book's perfect or representative of my later, more serious work, right? But you can let me know how it went for you by leaving a review and I won't mind at all. Even if you don't think it's funny...

Book Post: Of Writers And Storytellers

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was struck during the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature by the difference between writers and storytellers. The two aren't necessarily the same thing, you see. You can be a good writer and a bad storyteller and also a bad writer and a great storyteller. I moderated an enjoyable session with Deon Meyer and Simon Kernick and, reading their books in the run-up to the event, I was surprised at the difference in their styles of storytelling. Meyer's a writer, Kernick's not. He's a storyteller - and he wastes shockingly little time getting you from A to B. Not for Simon long lovingly chosen passages of descriptive prose or even careful word choices: in one scene two cars collide 'with a bang'. Characters aren't plagued by existential angst in the early hours (more Meyer's style: as I told him during our session, his Seven Days is crammed so full of skin-crawling addiction it actually had me wanting to smoke again).

It doesn't detract from the enjoyment of a Simon Kernick thriller - you get what you pay for, a hectic pell-mell dash through the twists and turns of the roller-coaster. And so Dan Brown, Lee Childs and others - storytellers who give enjoyment to millions, but who aren't, well, you know... literary. I do get bored with writers slagging off authors like these. They're selling millions and you're not which makes them right and you wrong.

I was mulling it all as I immersed myself in the finalists of the Canadian University in Dubai's short story writing contest last week (they were mad and misguided enough to invite me to be a judge). Writing hundred word shorts is a horror of a thing: that's so few words you're really forced to come right up against pretty much every word choice - more like poetry than prose. All of them were storytellers, but the writing contained all the mistakes so beloved of the Word Nazis. A few examples for your listening pleasure:

She screamed with her mouth.
She was hardly going to do it with her shoulder, was she? I've seen this used as an example time and again in articles by editors, but had never actually encountered it 'in the wild' before. Similarly, "He grabbed the door handle with his hand".

Suddenly there was an explosion
Have you ever seen a slow explosion?

She cast her eyes across the room
Boing boing went those bouncing eyeballs...

Turning, he opened the door
Using a strange Dervish-like whirling technique? Dangling participles often amuse: "Driving home, he cooked supper" - you can see the bloke, steering wheel in one hand, frying pan in the other.

Louella is a short woman, but as she’s your sister, I’m sure you know this…
When exposition gets clunky, it tends to get really clunky. Having characters who know something be told it always grates.

He was cruelly deceived by her.
Our old friend the passive voice. By all means use it, but know you're using it. She deceived him cruelly is not infrequently the way to go.

He walked carelessly along the corridor. 
Adverbs. Despite knowing this very well, my editors will still tell you I use too many of them. I'm by no means alone - it's the first symptom of lazy writing and we all do it. The trick is spotting it in the edit and getting rid. It's a word choice thing. He sauntered along the corridor.

He looked down and saw the snake coiled on the path in front of him. He knew it was ready to strike. 
Filters - we're in his point of view, so when he saw a snake (presumably not in mid-flight) we can assume he's looking down. And, again in his POV, we know what he knows. So this becomes "Coiled in front of him, the snake blocked his path, ready to strike" and we have a much clearer immediacy.

He saw the flares illuminate
Again, in his POV we know he sees the flares. And illuminating is sort of what flares do, no?

What happened next made her scream in terror.
Editor Robb calls these 'announcements' - it's very lazy indeed and almost invariably sets us up for an anti-climax. Also, screaming in terror is awful.

He creeps up to the door and puts his ear against it, listening for movement
You might be plagued by the image of a man holding an ear to the door at arm's length, but we can lose the creeping and assume movement to the door, listening gingerly perhaps as we can also assume he's not listening for a symphony orchestra.

All of these things (and the many more examples there are out there of poor style and grammar) are there to keep food on editors' tables. But they're about the process of writing, not the skill of storytelling. If that makes sense.

Anyway, I'm in no position to be holier-than-thou about this kind of thing. Reading the printed version of the short story I wrote for Time Out Dubai to run during the LitFest, and of course not before, I caught a repetition of the word 'little' in the second para. There's nothing seeing like your stupid errors in hard print to bring out the Homer Simpson 'Doh'.

It's almost as annoying as finding they've unilaterally removed - for some reason best known to themselves - the word 'God' from the piece, thereby mangling a carefully chosen sentence.

A Dubai Writer's Workshop - Book Writing, Editing And Publishing

The Brand Spanking New Bookshop at Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)

STOP PRESS

Last session tonight - 28th October - at 6.30pm sharp! So far it's been busy but there have generally been enough seats/tabletops to go around. Tonight (more below) is about how to find a publisher or, alternatively, do it yourself!

So you think you might have a book in you and you want to let it out, a little like the icky scene in Alien. You know, that one. A book is born! Pop! Squelch!

Well, I might be able to help. Then again I might be of absolutely no use at all. It's one of those gambles you have to take in life.

On Tuesday 14th, 21st and 28th October 2014 respectively, from 6.30pm until 8.30pm, I'll be running a series of workshops at Bookshop - the funky new book sales outlet in DIFC from those lovely (if perhaps just a little potty) people at BrownBook.

We did a vaguely similar series of workshops at Archive early last year at which people appeared to have fun, but then they were maybe just being polite... And if you miss this lot, you can pay good money to come along to the writing and publishing workshop I'll be holding at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature next year.

But these ones are... shhh... free!

How to Write a Book

Tuesday 14th October
Bookshop Dubai (DIFC) 6.30pm

I've written blog posts on this very topic if you want to mug up or just avoid having to spend two hours glued to a seat with me screaming abuse at you. At the actual workshop, we're going to look at the history, nature and purpose of narrative, and then delve into what makes people write books, how you can save time by thinking through some key stuff beforehand, structures of narrative and why you need to mull six honest serving men before you ever tap a key. Then we'll be lurching into how to structure your book and tell your story in the most compelling and exciting way. We'll look at nasty stuff like POV and characterisation before we zoom into writing techniques to help you make the most out of your story, including stuff like crafting dialogue and building brilliant exposition that flies rather than plods. If you survive that lot, you might make it on to...

How to Edit a Book

Tuesday 21st October
Bookshop Dubai (DIFC) 6.30pm

Editing is a vital skill for any writer, not least because the less work your editor has to do on correcting your sloppy manuscript, the more quality of thought and deed you'll get from the edit. Trust me. We'll be looking at the power of words, at the importance of word choice in various situations and then getting all down and dirty with different types of edit, from the big picture right the way down to the line edit, where all those commas are left quailing in the dark corner of a dank cellar as you wave a shotgun at them. We'll review techniques for creating a synopsis and a book blurb before wandering around the (huge) range of common writing errors you can purge from your work before anyone else gets a chance to see 'em. And then it's on to...

How to Publish a Book

Tuesday 28th October
Bookshop Dubai (DIFC) 6.30pm

We're going to take a look at your two most likely routes to publication: traditional publishing (finding an agent and a publisher who want to invest in your work) and self publishing (finding an audience who might want to buy and read your book). We'll look at how to prepare your manuscript for both eventualities, the process of publishing - from how to construct query letters through to how to find your audience online. We'll look at appointing an editor, getting an ISBN, printing, creating ebooks and all sorts of other stuff, including online book sales platforms and how you can promote yourself as an author - whether you're traditionally published or self published.

Who the hell am I to be doing this?

Nobody, really. I'm a publishing, digital media and communications consultant by day. By night, I'm the self-published author of three Middle East-based spy thriller novels: Olives - A Violent Romance which caused quite a controversial kerfuffle; Beirut - An Explosive Thriller which landed me a literary agent in London whom I finally dumped and Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, a novel I'm deeply proud of, but which has so far left the bestseller lists untroubled. I'm currently working on my fourth serious novel, A Simple Irish Farmer. Like I say, yer takes yer risks...


If you'd like to come along - or have a friend who's interested in writing and thinks they might just have a book in them, there's no money or registration or anything involved - but if you'd like a seat, I'd suggest you RSVP by leaving a comment on the blog, hitting me up on Twitter (@alexandermcnabb), facebook (/alexandermcnabb), using the contact form on alexandermcnabb.com or emailing me at alexander@alexandermcnabb.com. I'm sort of easilyreachable...

For location and so on, you can hit up Bookshop here.

I'm also at the excellent ExpatWoman Family Fair on November 8th AND co-hosting a 'Literary Lunch' at Dubai World Trade Centre on the same day. I am clearly in the process of cloning myself...

Tata for now!

So You've Finished Writing A Book...

This is one of those comfortable, traffic-destroying book posts. It comes to you mainly because I'm not writing any more. I posted a while back that I'd finished writing (which got pretty intense towards the end) and now I'm about done with the book. It's had a couple of editing runs, a few tweaks here and there and it's in the hands of a group of people whose opinions on such things I value - my 'beta readers'.

Once I get their feedback, it's time to shop it around. Once about ten agents have all rejected it, I'll self publish as usual.

I've written the synopsis. It's always hard to pick yourself up having finished a book and draft a synopsis, but it helps when you're editing to have a 'big picture' view of the book's contents, because you can map what's happening on the page to where we're supposed to be going in our little journey to save/destroy the world, depending on what mood we're in.

I've written a blurb, too, although I'm going to have to play around with that for a while, because I'm not entirely sure what I've done is the way to go. This has been my 'difficult' fifth book, but I want to position it right, not least because it has potential for controversy.

Other than that, it all feels a little strange. You've suddenly got time on your hands and Mr Head isn't up in the clouds thinking about situations and people who don't, well, exist - yet whom you have given reality. It's a bit like waking up in a strange bed - a moment of 'where the hell am I?'

I put a book project aside to write A Simple Irish Farmer (which a friend who's 'big' in publishing says is a crap title. She's kindly offered to come up with a better one, which is nice. I can't say I've been very good at titles, tell the truth. Olives has me competing with (and losing to) Crespo on Amazon, Beirut and Shemlan are hardly inspired, either, so now I'm going to take some time and advice on getting this one right) and now I'm going back to it. I'm  not going to rush, but take some time to enjoy the peace and quiet.

But I can't help myself. I'm away writing once again...

Submitting Your Novel To Agents

Submission
Going down, down, dragging her own
Submission
I can't tell you what I found
The Sex Pistols

Calm down, now. This is a book writing post, not a music one.

Submitting to literary agents is all part and parcel of the wonderful world of writing books. Having received something like 250 rejections, I think I've got quite good at it over the years. The process is obviously of interest to a great many people in the UAE, certainly judging by Luigi Bonomi's two sell-out sessions on getting an agent at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, as well as the audience questions during our 'First Fictions' panel session.

In fact, I'm still getting questions from people, so here's a potted guide. The usual caveats - I'm just giving my own views here and I'm not necessarily the best person in the world to give advice to anyone about anything, but here it is anyway.

What agents ask for

• The first 50 pages of your book printed single sided in Times 12 point, double spaced with a 0.5cm paragraph indent, not hardbound (ie slide bound or even held together with an elastic band). Each page should include the page number and the title of the novel and name of the author.
• A synopsis, no more than two pages
• A covering letter
• An SAE

What Internet savvy agents ask for

• An email with a query, synopsis and first ten pages in the body of the email, no attachments.

or

• An email with the first three chapters and synopsis as attachments.

I would generally approach any agent via email first and had actively started avoiding 'postal submisions only' agents by the time I signed with my agent.

What you need
A novel
A synopsis
A blurb
A query letter
An SAE
An international postal coupon
An Internet connection
A thick skin and a good dollop of self belief

A novel
Ideally, you should have a whole novel. Some people tell me Luigi suggested you might like to write just the first three chaps and submit to see how it goes, but I can't see that working. If an agent comes back in response to your 'partial' and asks for a 'full' you're just going to muff it by trying to write a book in a couple of weeks. Getting those 'first three' chapters into top condition requires, IMHO, the experience and editing knowledge you'll gain from writing a book.

You need around about the first fifty pages of your novel, ideally ending somewhere sensible, so if that takes 46 or 52 pages, never mind. Check them for stupid mistakes, read them out loud as if you're giving a reading to a book club and correct the text. Print it out and go through it with a red pen. Ideally, upload it to a Kindle and edit it again. Then leave it for a few days and edit it on screen. It.must.contain.no.error.

A synopsis
Distil your novel down to a few pages, then print it out. Tell that story from scratch, doing your best to make it compelling, colourful and yet true to the movement of the plot. Do not lace it with 'in character' dialogue or phrases, keep it a straightforward piece of storytelling that clearly shows the KEY elements of your plot and story as a readable, flowing document. Now cut it. You should end up with it cut down to two pages.

A blurb
Imagine you're writing the dust jacket of your book. Write it up just like that, to focus on the key 'hooks' your book has to offer. Make the language compelling. Again, read it out. Imagine it as tweets - cut out any word you don't need in there. Make it elegant. Make me, the reader, want it.

A query letter
Agents like you to play it straight and don't award marks for individuality, humour or in-character stunts. There are lots of examples of query letters on the interwebs, but the best approach is to get straight in there with a two-paragraph (max)description of your book, (Olives is a stranger abroad story set in Jordan, where journalist Paul Stokes falls love as he finds himself caught up in a series of explosions that seem linked to him) followed by a short description the target market for the book, a bit about who you are (which ideally is in some way relevant to the topic/content of your book) and a signoff. You're looking at a page, max a page and a half.


An SAE
Increasingly, agents are taking email submissions which saves a load of wasted time, paper and money. It'll cost you about dhs60 to send a wodge of 50 pages of novel and an international reply paid coupon (together with an envelope addressed to yourself which will eventually contain the photocopied rejection slip) so it's no small beer once you get above ten agents. So I would definitely query agents that take email submissions first.

Which agents to approach?
You can go through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook for agents - try and do it intelligently and find people who represent books similar in theme, genre or essence to yours. Here's a useful free listing, but it's a wee bit out of date now and I'd buy into the W&A thing, honestly.

Look at their websites
Agents will ALWAYS have submission guidelines on their websites and you should follow these. Don't waste time and energy putting together a package that doesn't meet the guidelines of each agent, because they'll just bin submissions that don't comply. Don't forget, agents get anything up to fifty brown envelopes full of hope every single day.

Use white envelopes.

If an agent's guidelines seem unusually onerous or ridiculous move on. Don't kill yourself jumping through hoops, there are plenty other agents in the sea.

Many agents will respond to a well-written query by email (use your blurb as the core of this) and many will accept an online submission from the UAE based on that query - do try this before posting off packages, each 'yes' you win will save you the price of a copy of Olives to gift a member of your grateful family.

Don't follow up
It can take three months for an agent to respond to a submission package. Do NOT phone them to chase your submission. They don't know who the hell you are, you're just another parcel on the great big pile in reception. Your rejection will come in time, don't worry.

When you get rejected
If you get a rejection with any feedback in it, count your lucky stars. This marks you as unusual and you should take it as a huge positive sign. Take the feedback on board and resubmit - including to the agent who gave you the feedback. Don't be in a hurry to do this, take your time - and make sure you've really taken that feedback to heart.

When you get a 'full' request
A full read means an agent has enough interest in your work to spend time and/or money on your work - they'll likely have 'readers' who charge a fee to read work and give an editorial report on it. This report will not be shared with you, although you might get a couple of lines of final feedback with the 'no'.

However, you might also get a 'yes'. This is, believe me, a very good moment. Savour it, roll it around in your mouth, then swallow gratefully. It's not the end of the process, your agent's got to find a publisher and that's a whole new ballgame. But you're pretty much through the gate and standing, blinking, in the inner keep...