HOW TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT FEELING BAD.
This is for writers who wrestle with words. Those of us for whom scribing 2000-a-day is fantasy. Who regard rising at 4am to scribble by candlelight as unnatural. And think anyone who can read a book in less than a month is an alien.
If such expectations make you feel like you belong under a real writer's shoe, pull up a pew. And rejoice in your otherness. The fact that writing a book is going to take ten years rather than one needn't get you down when you're in the company of others. Who share your sure but steady approach.
Remember the hare and the tortoise? Well, forget winning any races because you won't. But that's not to say you can't be a literary superhero like Michael Crichton (20 years to pen Sphere) or James Joyce (17 years to produce Finnegan's Wake). Even the great J.K. took 17 years to put H.P. on the shelves.
So why do some of us agonise over every word? Sweat over every comma; or is it a semi-colon. Hit 'word count' and think it's a conspiracy. Is there something wrong with us? Probably. But that's the way we roll. And we've got to live with it.
How remiss of me. I should introduce myself. I'm a former investigations journo who's had everything from a gun to a samurai sword pulled on me, which is child's play compared to being an author.
I know. I know. Given what I used to do for a living, tens of thousands of words in print, writing books should be a doddle, right? Wrong. I'm convinced it makes it even harder. If that's possible.
It took me two years to unlearn five years' worth of journalism training. Creative and factual are opposites that don't attract. Horse before cart.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, and other cliches.
I hung up my reporter's pen twelve years ago to pursue a lifelong ambition to write books. Do I regret it? Miss the expense account, company car, and not living in an ivory tower with no one to talk to? Yes. And no.
The annoying fact is that I and countless other people write because we have to. Because we've got no choice. None. Which is why we to do it even though we never leave the slow lane. Or the house.
For the likes of us, words don't fly off the keyboard onto the page. They belly crawl. There's no Stephen King rat-a-tat-tat et voila three months later another mind-bending Carrie appears. In my case, it's a rat...rat...rat. Tat. Delete. Rewrite.
I wouldn't disagree if you said I'm my own worst enemy. After all, my first book, A Corroded Soul (published by The Book Guild, April 2023, since you ask) wasn't meant to be one. A book, that is.
It began as a stream of consciousness designed to make sense of my life after my mother's death; a vent to release fifty years of frustration and, yes, anger. We weren't close. To put it mildly.
But as all writers know, books, or the creation thereof, are the Devil's work. They assume a Frankenstein-esque life of their own while subsuming ours.
Characters rise from our twisted imaginations demanding they be given dialogue, back stories, and idiosyncrasies. Baby-like, each demand to be fed until our breasts are dry. They can't even wipe their own bum, for Christ's sake.
I digress. Which is probably why I'm Mr Plod not Speedy Gonzales. Now where was I? Oh, yes. I was shamelessly promoting my book, A Corroded Soul.
BOOKS ARE BASTARDS.
My stream of consciousness decided it wanted to be a novel four years after I'd started. It said it could be more creative, and was less likely to be sued, that way. And so, without telling me, it fictionalised scenes and characters. Monsters by any other name. Make me do this. Make me do that were constant tormentors, though 3am was their favourite witching hour.
A Corroded Soul: Childhood pulled another stunt, as well. There was me thinking I was nearing the end of my endeavours; 300-plus pages of cathartic release for my now novelised protagonist Daniel Connah; fifty years of hurt expunged. Mine and Daniel's mother, Muriel, finally laid to rest physically and figuratively. The not so dearly departed done and dusted. Ashes to ashes.
Then BOOM. Turns out, or so my book decreed, that Daniel and I weren't over Muriel. In fact, unbeknown to us, we'd been grieving our mother the whole time. It was a lesson learned. There's no right or wrong way to grieve however perverse your method might seem.
Without wanting to appear self-congratulatory, smug even, it occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, there are advantages to being a leisurely scribe. Because I wasn't alongside the sprinters ahead of me in the publishing process, I had time to adjust. To improve my book by implementing unforeseen changes in direction.
While some supertankers were in port unloading their cargo, I was tapping away like Van Gogh applying final transformative brush strokes. Or at least colouring in the right numbers.
The problem. Was that the book was now neither one thing nor the other. Hence the rewrite. Then another. Then an edit, or ten, until 125,000 words became 70,000. Which took five years. But at least I'd got there, right? Wrong.
Two more years disappeared seeking agent representation. You know the score. Two weeks crafting the perfect synopsis - should it be plot or narrative - followed by two more honing the query letter; story or motivation?
Next. Comes. Deafening silence. A 'some nice writing but it's not for us,' if you're lucky. You re-do your synopsis
and query letter. Or, in my case, you change the opus from past to present tense to give it immediacy. Which takes 36 months. Round and round you go on a ceaseless carousel. Until you get.
THE CALL.
"This is Jeremy from The Book Guild. We'd like to publish your manuscript." Cue heart rate accelerates to 200mph.
"Sorry. Did you say you like, as in you think it's good?"
"Yes."
"Will you marry me, Jeremy?"
Okay, so the BG isn't one of BIG five traditional publishers like HarperCollins or Penguin. It's pretty much the same submission process only you don't need an agent and you don't get an advance. What you do get, depending on your book's commercial potential, is a Partnership Deal.
I agreed to a 60/40 split in my favour which means the BG pay 60% of the publishing costs, including printing, cover design, and marketing and take 60% of the profits.
This leaves me liable for 40% of the publishing costs, which amounts to about £2000, and I retain 40% of the profits. This is much higher than the typical 5% royalty paid by a traditional publisher.
A sneaky benefit for tortoises like me is that a hybrid deal allows me to steal a march on traditionally published hares - march and hares, geddit? Please yourselves. This is because trad pubs generally take two years to get a book to market while a hybrid, for example, can do it in six months.
I told you it was sneaky but, hey, slow coaches need all the help they can get. Go down the self-publishing road and you can be on the bookshelves, or at least Amazon, at the click of a button; minus cover design, marketing help, and editing assistance.
Top Tip. If you go hybrid push for as good terms as you can get. I regret, for example, not asking the BG to include a manuscript proof-read at no additional cost. I'm currently making final amendments to A Corroded Soul second pass proofs, and, so far, I'm happy with the BG. This isn't always the case by the way, when I talk to Big Five published authors.
PLOTTER OR PANTSER?
I hear a clamour from the cheap seats. Why oh why Peter, do you not plot, plot, plot instead of fly by the seat of your nylon, friction generating pants? A little less brain boiling might improve your cosmic karma ergo more words on the page, fewer pencils thrown at the wall.
It's a hard one to dispute, especially when my daily output, on a good day, totals 500 of the beasts whose name I dare not mention except it begins with 'w'. But here's my get out clause. Honest Mum, I can't help it.
I've tried. God knows, I've tried. White boards, bits of paper that stick to my fingers but nothing else, a Dictaphone, and computer software that made my ears bleed. But it's no use. Why plod, plod, plod plot goes my mind when you could be penning Pulitzer-winning paragraphs about dead people reaching out from the grave? Or car chases with multiple pile ups?
No. A marathon runner I'll be. Gasping for finishing line air when everyone's gone home. Except for Jeremy.
QUESTION.
Are you a sports car or camper van? Let me know how long it took you to get published, and who with, and I'll figure out if there are any winners.
Thank you. And remember. Words are a gift from God. When they behave themselves.
Good luck.
Peter Woolrich.
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