What's the Big Idea?

"Where do you get your ideas from?" is one of the more difficult questions for a writer to answer. "They float into my head on a wave of magical inspiration," isn't a particularly satisfying response, and neither is "I stole them all from Stephenie Meyer."

We all have our own rituals and thought processes for idea generation. Some will brainstorm, others will take a keen interest in dental health because they know the best ideas come when brushing their teeth. For my part, I've recently discovered a talent for literally forcing ideas out, a way of worrying over my lack of inspiration until the right concept drops from my brain. In addition to being a positive application of my neuroticism, this technique has given me two great ideas - the concept behind my work-in-progress (or work-almost-finished as I like to call it) and a shiny new idea for my next novel.

So is a writer simply an ideas factory? An industrial process that hoovers up inspiration from other real and fictional worlds, filters it through the experience of a lifetime and produces a string of book-shaped sausages? I'm sure we could all point to authors whose work appears to have been produced under those production line conditions, carefully controlled and packaged in a protective atmosphere. These are the authors who rarely surprise, but always satisfy - you know what you're going to get from their books and that's precisely the reason you pick one up. Other writers have a more wayward and capricious approach - sometimes genius, sometimes "what were they thinking?" Is there room in the market for both? Perhaps the key is not being so wayward that you alienate your readers entirely.

One of the worst things for an author is finding out that another writer has had the same idea as you. Which happened to me this very week. Worse than that, the writer who I now discover I share ideas with, is a friend. The central concepts of our novels are very different, but there is a key plot mechanic that we've both - quite independently - come up with. How could this have happened? We share work a lot, so the fact that neither of us had read the particular drafts of these particular books was unexpected. At least we can't accuse each other of plagiarism, but nonetheless, the experience has made me very uncomfortable. Perhaps I can't see the wood for the trees here and am focusing on a couple of similarities when a hundred things are very different. But if I've discovered these ideas in a friend's book, what are the chances of my other ideas coalescing in the mind of a writer I've never met? There are quite a few of them out there, after all.

Nicola Morgan had this situation happen to her at the worst possible time - just as her first novel was about to be published. Her blog post is well worth reading and I found it quite comforting - just because someone else has the same idea as you, it doesn't mean the end of your book.

Every writer wants to believe that they are one-of-a-kind (a unique and beautiful snowflake as Tyler Durden would say). They want to believe that their hard-won ideas are original and provocative, streets ahead of the mindless formula pap that colonises our cinema screens and bestseller lists. But somehow, it doesn't always seem to work out that way. Part of the problem is that we share a lot of the same inputs - news is global and inescapable, a single film can reach billions, a group of writers will share the same books through word of mouth. The pool of inspiration, when you look at it this way, is quite small. Is it any surprise that genres suddenly pop up, or that two writers find themselves coming to the same conclusion independently?

I could spend an entire blog post talking gloomily about the impending collapse of our culture, about how we seem to be recycling ideas more and more aggressively, remaking proven properties rather than taking a chance on the new and unique. But I think I have a part to play in breaking that cycle, by encouraging younger readers to step away from the obvious and inspiring them to build a whole new culture from the ground up.

Now there's an idea for a novel…

Nick.

I Must Be Mistaken

I think I scared a few people last week with my neurotic perfectionism. I think one of them was me. So this week, I'd like to tell you why you shouldn't listen to a word I say and must immediately run off and make as many mistakes as you can. I give you my reasons:

1. What do I know? Seriously, I haven't even got a book on the shelves yet. Why are you even still reading this?


2. You appear to still be reading this. I like your style - you won't be pushed around by anyone. I bet if I told you to do something, you'd go out and do the total opposite.


3. Under no circumstances, transfer £50,000 into my bank account.


4. Also, do not give me a multi-book publishing deal, a new brain or a lifetime's supply of cake.


5. You probably don't believe me, anyway. Every year, millions of couples have their first baby. Millions of friends try to tell said couples how said babies will change/ruin their lives and said couples completely ignore them. This is a basic evolutionary trick, because if people understood how impossibly difficult it is to bring a baby into the world, no-one would ever have children. Exactly the same principle applies to writing a first novel – everyone thinks it will be easy for them, because they are "special."


6. This blog post was going to be about something completely different. But that clearly would have been a mistake. It was also, at one point, entitled "Serendipitydoodah" – you can draw your own conclusions about that.


7. Remember, no-one can tell you how to write. They will try, oh yes they will, My Pretty. But all they can ever tell you is how they write. Only you can find the method, circumstances and subject matter that suit you. I was recently praised at a crit group for coming up with a new book idea that was "Very Nick." This is only because I have spent a lot of time in the past writing stories that were "Patently not Nick." Once you exclude all of the things you should never have attempted, only the good stuff is left.


8. It's why CTRL-Z was invented. See, I just pressed it and deleted something really funny. That'll teach you.


9. You're unlikely to make the same mistake twice. Unless you are very stupid. You're not very stupid, are you? You could always try reading more slowly if you're having trouble keeping up.


10. Wait a minute, people have more than one child, don't they? Isn't that making the same mistake twice? This doesn't count because their lives are already wrecked. It's like fitting an extra person in the lifeboat.


11. No-one ever learnt a thing from getting everything right. Except how to be smug. 90% of the candidates on The Apprentice claim that they have never failed at anything.
    
    1. They are lying.
    2. This is why they are so utterly useless.


12. Art must take risks, or it is not art. Profound, huh?


13. What do you mean, "huh?" I've gone right off you now.


14. There's always a second draft And a third and fourth and seventeenth. They're only words. They are expendable.


15. Every mistake makes your writing better. For instance, I've decided that this blog post has been one big mistake from start to finish.

Nick.

P.S. I'm still waiting on that cake. Whenever you're ready.

The Pursuit of Excellence

There's a generally accepted theory that no-one can be good at everything - we all have our strengths and weaknesses. But this idea is problematic for children's fiction writers in today's competitive market, because we have to achieve excellence - or near excellence - in so many categories: voice, concept, plot, character, description, action, dialogue etc. It's no wonder that it takes so long to get published - I myself have been writing children's fiction for nearly ten years and I'm only now starting to hit the required standard in most of the categories. I took a certain relish in reporting my long apprenticeship to my Oxford crit group, but I have to admit that if anyone had told me it would take this long ten years ago, you'd be reading someone else's blog right now.

The drive for excellence is a great thing for the reader and we are constantly told that a "golden age of children's publishing is upon us." To a certain extent, this competition is good for the writer too, because there is no room to be lazy unless you have a strong brand or mega franchise to rely on. But it's a tough, tough world to break into and you not only need to be excellent at the categories I listed above, but also to have excellent drive and persistence. Forget trying to come straight out of education and have a career in fiction writing – to do this you need to be either unusually lucky or unusually talented. And most of us, sadly, are neither.

I'm sure we can all, right now, summon up the names of half a dozen books that are distinctly less than excellent. Mostly, they will be titles with big deals and marketing spend behind them. These are the books we like to talk woefully about on message boards:

"I couldn't even finish it – can you believe it's selling so well?"

"I should give up trying to write something good and just churn out one of these Twilight/Hunger Games/Harry Potter rip-offs."

Which is great in theory, but harder when thousands of other people are doing exactly that. The law of averages says that some of them will get past the gatekeepers. Again, I fear that the law of averages doesn't have a lot of room for little old me.

They say that all you need is one person to say "yes" to your book to get it published. This is a wonderful, empowering statement that is as fictional as your manuscript. True, you do need an editor to love your book, because they are the ones who will champion it around the organisation. But few editors have control of acquisitions, so you also need their boss to love it and the people from sales & marketing and the booksellers and everyone else who will be involved in the journey from screen to shelf (or screen to screen in the case of e-books). It's very hard to influence the acquisitions process once the manuscript leaves your hands (believe me, I've tried), so your best chance for success lies in the manuscript itself.

Thus, I give you my one-step guide to publishing success: write a book so excellent that no-one could possibly say no to it. And while you're at it, why not build a better mousetrap and be the first person on Mars? Half measures are for losers ;-)

Nick.

Rereadability

Over a year ago, I wrote a post called Unputdownability, which considered how to write a compulsively readable children’s novel. Lots of people seem to have got rather good at this in the meantime, and I often see comments on Amazon from young readers discussing how quickly they raced through a book. I remember leaving my own eleven-year-old daughter a copy of Skulduggery Pleasant at 8am on a school day and returning at 6pm to find that she’d read the whole thing!

But, as much as I want to write the unputdownable novel, I do feel a pang of sadness at the idea that my book might be tossed away so quickly. With children’s authors averaging one novel a year, that’s a long time to wait before my next one comes out. Will a young reader even remember my name once that new book makes it to the marketplace? It’s true that this problem becomes lessened as a writer’s career progresses – if I love the new Marcus Sedgwick novel, for instance, he has a ten-year back catalogue for me to peruse. But for a debut author, it’s tough to make a reputation that will stick.

Looking back over the comments on that earlier post, I saw one mentioning rereadability, which I thought was an excellent way to keep your work alive in the reader’s mind. Imagine if, in that year, a teenager reread your book four or five times? Then they would certainly remember you. But then I hit a deeper problem – what makes a book rereadable? Is it just the fact that it was readable in the first place? So I don’t claim to have any answers on this one – consider what follows as discussion points rather than hard-and-fast rules.

• Brevity - A short book is going to be quicker to read, and reread. Certainly, when I’m selecting a book or a film from my shelf, I’m always drawn to the shorter ones. But is that only a time-poor adult problem? My daughter has just reread Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the third time in six months!


• Being Either Really Memorable or Totally Forgettable - I’m certainly more likely to reread a book if I remember bits from it I really liked. Memorable characters, dialogue and scenes draw me in a second time. Paradoxically, though, I’m also likely to reread a book if I don’t remember anything about it – that’s like experiencing the whole thing anew. Sadly, in the latter case, I may get halfway through and remember why I put it down the first time.


• Clever Plot Construction - Much is made of films like The Sixth Sense and Inception, of which the posters will say: “You just have to see it a second time!” By having a massive twist or a mind-bendingly complex plot, such films ensure that patrons will buy another ticket so they can explore what they missed on the first viewing. Of course, you can do this with books too, but I think it’s a harder trick to pull off. Readers are very adept at flicking back and forth through a book, picking out those little clues that you thought were so carefully buried. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t books with an amazing twist at the end that makes you see the whole story in a different light. Please feel free to suggest some in the comments.


• The Feelgood Factor - Books that make you laugh or feel good are definitely going to promote rereadability. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of days when I feel like something weighty, but a comedy will always hit the spot, regardless of whether I’m feeling up or down. Again, this is maybe an adult thing – teenagers seem to have an endless appetite for darkness and death at the moment.


• A Terrific Ending - I can’t stress how important it is to end a book well, especially when you consider rereadability. No-one is going to wade through the whole thing again if the resolution isn’t rewarding. I wonder, for instance, how many people read The Knife of Never Letting Go when it first came out, and then didn’t look at it again until Patrick Ness had finished the trilogy?

Ok, there’s your starter for ten. Is there a formula for rereadability? Or is it simply a case of writing a completely brilliant book in the first place? Your comments, please.

Nick.

Confidence Trick

I have nothing at all to say this week.

Nick.


That's the blog I want to write every time I sit down at my laptop on a Friday morning. The one that lets me read Metro, or suck down a cappuccino or stare out the train window. The one that frees me from the tyranny of the blank page and sticks two fingers up at the reader. Look at me! It's Friday and I don't care!

Except somehow I'm writing a blog post about how I don't want to write a blog post. Because writing something, anything at all, is a victory over that tiny voice at the back of my head that tells me I'm worthless. The voice that was taunting me all yesterday, stopping me from writing the book that could one day be published. It's taunting me even now, reminding me of how no-one commented on my blog the other week – as if that really means anything.

Writing is the ultimate victory of confidence over reason. It isn't reasonable to spend your day living in imaginary worlds full of invented people. It isn't reasonable to think you'll get published when more talented people than you have failed. It isn't reasonable to think that you'll sell any books in a crowded marketplace or get nominated for awards or even win one. A lot of people drop out of the race when they realise how far the odds are stacked against them. But isn't it amazing how many people stay in the game?

I could spend a hundred blog posts speculating on why people choose to write. Some will claim they do it for love, or to satisfy a burning urge to share their stories with the world. Many, I suspect myself included, do it to gain approval (I blame the parents!). Whatever their reason, these writers manage - for hours at a time - to quiet those voices and push forwards. First drafts often seem to exist as a way of managing imperfection, a parole agreement that allows you to get away with all the bad writing and glaring inconsistencies with the promise that you'll fix it in the edit. In many ways, writing successfully is a trick, a way of telling your mind that what you're doing isn't important, but knowing somewhere deep down that it's utterly vital.

The game changes up when you win a competition, get an agent or find a publisher. Now you feel the weight of genuine expectation on you, whether real or imagined. Simply writing any old crap is not an option anymore – you really have to deliver. This achievement can be empowering, a confidence boost that helps to temper your more "artistic" impulses and guides your work closer to the market. But I've also seen the genuine anguish of writers who have been signed to an agent for a while, but not yet sold a book – the unspoken fear that they will get dumped and be further back than when they started.

So that's where I am right now. Maybe I need to stop writing this and get back to that tricky chapter full of exposition that I've been avoiding. Perhaps this wasn't the best blog post in the world ever, but I have – in just over an hour – made something out of nothing. And that bit of alchemy is a trick worth celebrating, I'd say. Now where's my cappuccino?

Nick.

Keeping Busy

I was chatting to another author at the SCBWI Buyers Party the other night and commiserating about their workload. In response, they expressed surprise that I managed to fit in everything I was doing. And after thinking about it, I was surprised too. Can I really have been out four nights this week? Do I really have two SCBWI crit group meetings in the same seven day period? How have I somehow managed to write 5,000 words, re-plot the third act of my book and go to work every day? Not to mention fitting in writing a blog post.

For me, like many others, writing is a part-time job. At least, it feels like a job, even if the work I'm doing is with the promise of payment rather than an actual wage. I have a demanding day job to supply that, as well as all the meetings I can eat. And then there's my SCBWI work and social events to fit in, plus a wife and children who demand my attendance on a regular basis. And not just my physical attendance, either, they need me to switch off all of the other stuff in my brain and actually, like, pay attention.

Keeping busy does have its benefits in that you can avoid what mindfulness experts call "the ruminating mind," the part of your brain that chews over what you've done and said and haven't done, making problems where there weren't any to start with. As long as you are in the moment, dealing with stuff, there's no room to worry - that's the theory, at least. And I am nothing if not a worrier!

But there's a hitch here - the ruminating mind is actually essential to being a writer. The same thought processes that lead you to worry about what will happen if you forget to lock the back door, also allow you to imagine a post-apocalyptic future colonised entirely by telepathic ducks. Therefore, it's not surprising that so many writers are neurotic, or that they fight that by overloading themselves like a Buckaroo mule.

Perhaps the more you do, the more you can do. Certainly, all the hours I've spent on trains this week have allowed me to write those 5,000 words. But I still feel bad about not doing more. Why didn't I finish the book last week? What happens if I don't finish it next week? My agent is accommodating my ever-changing deadline for this novel with good grace, but at some point I will have to deliver an actual first draft. Perhaps I'm just in the middle of some very elaborate avoidance behaviour...

I set high standards for my work, and I know I'm not the only one. But those standards often tip into the category of unreachable. And unachievable goals, as any motivational expert will tell you, are not a strategy for happiness. If only I had time in my schedule to think up some better ones ;-)

Nick.

Small is Beautiful

I'm excited to report that my first proper author interview is published today, in Wyvern Magazine. I've known the team behind Wyvern Publications for a while, and they asked me some great questions, to which I've tried to find great answers. In case you're not totally wild about me (is that possible?), there are several more interviews, articles and original fiction in the 50 page June edition, which costs a mere £2.

*Promotional section ends. Mostly.*

I say mostly, because I thought this was a perfect opportunity to talk about small presses like Wyvern and the great work they do in the fiction market. As you know, the publishing industry is becoming increasingly polarised, with big publishers looking for books that will have big sales and self-publishers flooding into the market via the e-book. The midlist - those books with a definite, but not mass appeal - is being squeezed out. Some of this midlist will move to the larger independent publishers, but these are also suffering from the increased costs and lower profit margins affecting the whole book trade. Independents can take more risks than the majors, but not that many.

So that brings us to the small press. Employing a tiny staff, often on a part-time basis, they aren't able to publish many books each year. In fact, many have grown out of self-publishing, in a desire to achieve more than the fleeting pleasure of seeing your name on the cover of a paperback. These companies aren't run for profit or fame, but mostly for love. More than that, a small press can develop a vision and identity, taking the founder's author brand and expanding it into an editorial strategy that attracts likeminded contributors. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that small presses put out substandard books that couldn't find a home elsewhere - with so few releases each year, their commitment to quality has to be just as high as other publishers.

Where small fiction presses like Wyvern and Bridge House excel, is in the promotion of forms long ignored in our novel-obsessed society: short stories, plays and poetry. They give a platform for developing writers and illustrators. They allow us to read delightful books that were too far off-trend for other publishers to consider. Sometimes they publish work that was actually too on-trend to get noticed in a crowded market (Wyvern have a vampire anthology called Fangtales that comes out later this year). Small presses, with their not-for-profit slant, are also a perfect place to publish charity books.

Some of you might be detecting a whiff of hypocrisy here. If I love small presses so much, why haven't I offered my work to be published by one? Well, my mealy-mouthed answer is to say that things are different for me - I have an agent and I'm also dealing in mass-market concepts that are aimed above the midlist. I happen to think that a traditional form of publishing will be the one that serves my work and intended audience best. And in case you don't believe me, I listened to Nicola Morgan saying a very similar thing in a talk at Foyles last night. But as to how my career progresses once I've built up a readership? I guess we'll talk again once that's happened.

To conclude, I think Wyvern Publications is a smart operation with real charm. You can read a lot more about where they came from and what kind of books they publish in Head Editor Holly Stacey's interview with Tall Tales and Short Stories.

Nick.