The Difficult Second Act

I've been thinking about second acts this week, prompted by Ben Affleck's comments at the Bafta Awards on winning the Best Film award for Argo:

This is a second act for me - you've given me that and I'm so grateful and proud. I want to dedicate this to anyone that's trying to get their second act because you can do it.

Affleck was referencing the oft-quoted line from F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby), who said "There are no second acts in American Lives." A prodigious alcoholic, Fitzgerald famously failed to reach his own second act, dying at the age of 44. Affleck, still only 40, has however managed to navigate a transition from actor to award-winning director. Even more remarkable is the fact that ten years ago, he hit a career low-point and became the most derided man in Hollywood, winning two Golden Raspberry awards for his performance with Jennifer Lopez in Gigli.

While Affleck is a talented director, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by his resurgence. He's still a handsome man and has the advantage of being able to cast himself for free in the lead role of his films. He also no doubt has a huge address book that allows him to call upon Hollywood contacts the rest of us can only dream of. Plus, there's nothing the self-mythologising film industry likes better than a comeback story – it's the American Dream writ large.

So where does that leave the rest of us, who are also working on our own second acts? Perhaps you got a job straight out of school or decided to stay at home and bring up some kids. And these were the things that defined you, until you got the itch to start writing. And if you're the kind of person who's persistent enough to keep writing over a period of years, that gradually begins to define you instead. Once you're passionate and committed to an activity, it's only natural you want to make that your primary career. But most of us aren't as well-groomed, well-paid or well-connected as Ben Affleck. Which is a problem when trying to get that second act off the ground.

I look forward to the forthcoming SCBWI Professional Series session on Making a Living as a Writer for tips on how to make the transition to full-time author. But I also have to step back and wonder whether the idea of life having distinct acts isn't rather outdated in our age of rapid change and portfolio careers. Perhaps there isn't just one story running through our lives, but several, and we are at different stages in each simultaneously. This also fits in with the major preoccupation of our modern world, which is trying to juggle the various aspects of our lives to achieve the fabled "work-life balance".

Writers have always been tempted to frame life in the terms of a story – "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," was the version that some bloke from Stratford-upon-Avon came up with. There may be few second acts in American lives, but perhaps in the UK, every scene we appear in is a chance to grow and do something new.

Nick.

Ask Agony Author

This week marks the introduction of a new column on the blog. In Ask Agony Author, I'll be inviting writers to tell me about their embarrassing problems and then using my years of experience and wisdom to ridicule and abuse them guide them to a solution. So, without further ado, let's...

Dear Agony Author,

You may know me as the creator of the bestselling children's franchise Artichoke Foul, a series I memorably pitched as "Die Hard with vegetables." My Foul series has brought me fame and riches, but it has also left me with an terrible yearning that I cannot seem to shake. Agony Author, I have an awful secret – I want to write books for adults.

I know this seems wrong, and I tried to disguise my intentions to avoid a backlash from my loyal fans. By starting off with a tribute to my late hero Douggie Adnams, I hoped to pass off my sequel to The Hairy Bikers' Guide to the Galaxy as the book that Douggie never wrote.

However, once I had set foot in the filthy world of fiction for adults, it became like a depraved virus, eating away at my self-control and self-respect. Since then, I've come out of the closet with a full-blown adults' crime novel called Unplugged and even sunk to writing about that clapped-out Saturday night time-traveller Dr Whoa!

Every time I see my adults' books on the shelf, I'm overcome by feelings of guilt and shame. I just know that my children's writer friends are laughing at me behind my back. Tell me, Agony Author, is it ever OK to write for adults?

Yours self-disgustedly,
Owen Cauliflower

Agony Author Replies,

Thank you Owen, for your painfully honest letter. It took a lot of guts to write to me, especially since I was one of the people laughing behind your back. The emotions you describe are natural and understandable. Many people feel ashamed to admit that they even read books for adults, and that is why popular series like Fifty Shades of Grey are available with special children's style covers for reading on the tube.

With the advent of the e-reader, many more people may find themselves able to secretly read books for adults, though it isn't clear whether they should be allowed. It has long been a well-known fact that anyone can write an adults' book and get it published, such is the lack of discernment amongst adult readers. Commuters in particular seem happy to read any old rubbish provided there is a sadistic murder every ten pages or a fatuous plotline about female empowerment through expensive shoes. Literary connoisseurs, accustomed to the fast-moving and innovative narratives in children's literature, are often appalled by the indulgent, navel-gazing tosh that constitutes most grown-up fiction. These books may win literary prizes, but I'm sure you could feel an equal amount of pride by winning the "County Wexford Best-Kept Wheelie Bin" competition. If nothing else, it would give you a handy place to shelve your adults' novels.

All of these unarguable facts might not help you, Owen, but I wanted to make sure you were fully aware of the cesspit of mediocrity you're stepping into. Rather than try to make you feel better about your choices, I'd like to emphasise that it's not too late to step back from the edge. Adult book readers, who have the mental capabilities of a guppy, will quickly forget you, while children's book readers have long memories and are fiercely loyal to their favourite authors.

Short of becoming Doctor Whoa!, you won't be able to persuade Douggie Adnams to write another book. You can, however, bring your own career back from the dead.

Yours tough-lovingly,
Nick.

Escaping from Reality

I've often heard authors say that writing is their escape from reality, even to the extent that some consider it an indulgent pleasure. Frankly, I'm a bit jealous of people that can look at it that way - as regular readers will know, it doesn't generally work out that way for me. In fact, I've often found writing more of a punishment than a pleasure. It was therefore with interest that I read Matt Haig's recent post, in which he describes how he escaped the destructive power of his depression through writing.

For my own part, though, I found it very hard to write my way out of depression – it was like being in a deep, slippery pit and what I really needed was a ladder, not words. It wasn't until I was in recovery that I found the compulsion to write again – before that it had (like everything else) seemed a supremely pointless activity. Never say never, though, and it was in the spirit of experimentation that I tried using writing to escape from reality when I was sat in the dentist's chair yesterday. Of course, I couldn't physically write, or even talk, but that couldn't stop me thinking about a story could it?

I'll answer that question in a minute, but for context it's worth talking about what a good writing week I've had. My current book is moving along nicely and I've found the technique of alternating writing and drawing storyboards to be immensely helpful in getting over writer's block. This week I also wrote a short story, for the first time in four years! It was a great experience that made me wonder why I didn't write them more often; it was such a buzz to finish something in a single day and, even better, the person I wrote it for really liked the end result.

So, back to the chair. My dentist has assured me that I won't need an anaesthetic and I'm gripping the armrests as he drills into my molar. I know that my expectation of pain is probably far worse than the actuality, so I try to focus on something else. Another short story idea pops into my head and, for long seconds, I lose myself in possibility. Then I'm jolted back to reality by the dentist asking if I'm OK. Perhaps my lack of frantic squirming has made him worry that I've passed out. I attempt a small noise of assent and he goes back to his work while I return to mine. Later, he takes a photo of my drilled-out tooth and shows it to me, but sadly my mouth is too full of various probes and bits of metal to make a suitably sarcastic comment.

By the end of the appointment, I've sifted through ideas and mentally composed a few bits of prose. The act of writing has made a difficult situation easier, and in my small way I've begun to see what Sally Poyton was getting at in her quietly devastating follow up to Matt Haig's post. Maybe all I actually need to do is simply give myself permission to enter the fugue state where stories are made, regardless of the situation I find myself in?

Anyway, I'll keep experimenting, though I'm not due back at the dentist now for another six months. Perhaps I can find a less painful situation to escape from. Maybe one involving cake?

Nick.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Never let it be said that I don't try to give you something different every Friday. I'm going to kick this week's post off with a bit of 1960s Situationist philosophy on the nature of consumerism, so pay attention at the back:

Wherever abundant consumption is established, one particular opposition is always at the forefront: the antagonism between youth and adults. But real adults — people who are masters of their own lives — are in fact nowhere to be found. And a youthful transformation of what exists is in no way characteristic of those who are now young; it is present solely in the economic system, in the dynamism of capitalism. It is things that rule and that are young, vying with each other and constantly replacing each other.

That particular quote is taken from The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, published in 1967. It probably loses something in translation from the French, but I was really engaged by his ideas about the consumer society, especially that last sentence. In some ways, we take for granted the idea that newer is better, that young people are the true dictators of what is cool in this world, and the rest of us just hang around, smelling a bit mouldy and generally getting in the way of progress.

In Debord's view, the perceived conflict between old and young is simply a marketing gimmick, a way of driving consumption by convincing us that buying into the "new" is far preferable to sticking with the "old" things we already own. Nowhere is this dynamic more in evidence than in the technology market. Every day brings a hail of new product announcements: e-readers, smartphones, tablets, laptops, tablets that transform into laptops, smartphones that make candyfloss (ok, I made that one up). Each new technological advancement makes the printed book seem increasingly old-fashioned, as we find more and more ways to deliver content electronically.

But is this progress illusory? Are we really gaining from the move to digital, or just transitioning for the sake of it, because the new technology seems to offer us a more convenient way of accessing content? Yes and no. Digital does offer a lot of opportunities, new ways of publishing that make it easier to access and interact with the written word. Digital also offers a wealth of feedback that wasn't previously feasible – it's now possible to see how quickly people read books, which sections they reread, even which page makes them abandon the book and never return. But all this doesn't stop the printed book being a very effective (and attractive) delivery method in its own right – not better or worse than digital, just different.

Guy Debord's ideas are striking in others ways, not least that they are still so pertinent, over 45 years since they were written. Perhaps in that time, the nature of consumer society hasn't changed that much, because it still seems that the teenager rules much of popular culture. How many times have you heard people complaining that books, films or technology are predominantly targeted towards teenagers and young adults, rather than the majority of the population? You only have to look at how many YA books are being read by adults (84% according to a recent survey) or notice that the 12A has become the go-to certification for blockbuster movies. There is a worrying trend too, in the US, towards commissioning YA novels from younger and younger writers, many of them barely out of their teens. Some of them are very good (Divergent by Veronica Roth springs to mind), but many others feel more like youth-driven marketing gimmicks.

Will Debord's predictions continue to be proved right? Perhaps change is coming - as the consumer society looks increasingly shaky, it can no longer rely on younger people to set the trends and do all of the spending (especially when they can't get a job). In the publishing arena, the apocalyptic predictions for the death of the book are yet to be fulfilled, and the decline in print sales has slowed. Rather than the old ways being swept aside to allow for the new, it seems as if print and electronic products may coexist in the marketplace, each serving a different purpose. Indeed, it may be e-readers that are swept aside, as more and more people choose to use multifunctional tablet devices to read their e-books. The competition between the things, it seems, will continue as long as we have money in our pockets.

Nick.

Going Global

I was pondering a post on story franchises yesterday, when, as luck would have it, a link to this article was posted on the SCBWI British Isles Facebook group. In it, Eric Huang from Penguin Children's (who I interviewed for the SCBWI Transmedia panel last November) talks about globalised story brands and his vision for the future of publishing. This is a topic that Eric touched on during our panel and Eric is a passionate defender of the place of publishing in a cross-platform world. As he says at the end of the article:

We [publishers] were the first storytelling industry and I feel that I am not going to let our sister industries be the ones that survive because I think we are the master storytellers.

Eric's approach to ensuring this survival is for Penguin to take on the role of brand curation for authors and other creators. In this model, the publisher becomes the guardian of the story world and is able to control how that story, its characters and settings are exploited across media. Not coincidentally, it also means that Penguin will control all of the rights to that property and will have a guaranteed slice of the revenue if it's a success. This kind of strategy finds the publisher putting a foot firmly into the world of the agent, who would normally seek to manage publishing and other rights for their clients. But then, if you look at how many agents are publishing books directly these days, perhaps it is just another example of traditional roles becoming blurred.

In the movie world, global consolidation has long been the norm. Movies are immensely expensive to both make and to market, which makes a worldwide business approach essential. Click the image below to see a huge infographic at Empire Online about who owns which movie franchise:

Franchises and global brands are now seen as being essential to the movie business, to the extent that it's much easier to adapt your ideas into a reboot of an existing property, than it is to strike out with a truly original idea. And that gets to the crux of the problem, because the vision of the future that Eric and others are promoting sounds terribly sterile. There aren't many creative people outside of advertising who get up in the morning and think: "I know, what I really want to achieve today is to create a globally recognised brand." But the paradox is that most of the major story brands in the world today were started by just one person. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, The Simpsons, James Bond, The Muppets – the list goes on.

Large companies are rarely a good environment for the kind of original thinking that's needed to birth a franchise. But once that initial concept has been successfully launched, corporations are much better placed than individuals to take a story world and turn it into a long-term money-maker. They might also ruin it in the process, but the good news is that corporations like Disney are becoming much more adept at running story businesses without running them into the ground. There's even a chance that the new Star Wars movies might invigorate the franchise, rather than taking it still further from where it started. Here's hoping, anyway.

Nick.

Finding the Fun

Last month, I wrote the following on this blog:

I do wish writing could be more fun for me – I lost much of the joy during my own rush to publication and subsequent depression a couple of years back, and I'm still struggling to find it again.

This is a subject that I've been thinking about a lot recently, especially with the change of year and the change of habits that implies.  And it seems like I'm not the only one with this problem. Everywhere I look, I see articles encouraging writers to be playful or find the fun in what they do. It makes me wonder if these tough times have brought on an epidemic of joylessness.

However, just as you can't cure depression by telling someone to "cheer up," so you can't make writing fun for someone by telling them that it should be. In fact, such advice can have the opposite effect by making someone (i.e. me) feel guilty that they're not enjoying it! Part of my motivation for presenting the Museum of Me was to turn the clock back to a time when I was having fun, simply creating for the hell of it.

But is "fun" even the right word? It's a term that encompasses the lighter parts of the process but not the darkness or the emotional catharsis that writing can bring. Perhaps satisfaction is a better way to look at it: I want to be more satisfied by the process of writing.

It's not that I lack a writing routine. Every day I sit down at lunchtime with a pad or my netbook, but then I invariably freeze up. By the end of an hour, I will have a hundred or so words, but it will also feel like I've had to winkle each one out with a sharp implement. This happens pretty much every day except Thursday, when suddenly the words start flowing. Except they're not flowing into my book, but into this blog.

I'm driven to wonder what makes it so much easier for me to write a blog post than it does to write a novel. Is it the immediacy of the format, or the clearly defined length and schedule? Is it that I get to talk about something completely different every week with no need to get myself back into the world of a novel? It's been a weird thing for me to realise that I'm probably much more defined nowadays by my blog output than by my children's writing.

There was a great blog post this week on Finding Your Voice. It's aimed at illustrators, but a lot of the advice can be easily adapted for writers. The author suggests making a list of the things you like drawing, so you can include some of these to personalise your own work.  I was inspired by the article to start a list of the elements I enjoy putting in a story. Here's what I have so far:

• Bad puns
• Alliteration
• Slapstick
• Jokes about Star Wars (these seem to creep in without me noticing)
• Bizarre action scenes
• Social comedy
• Tonal shifts (eg. from comedy to danger)
• Mental health issues
• Subversive behaviour
• Made up technology

Interestingly, pretty much all of these things feature in my work-in-progress, which leads me to wonder how much this list is influenced by what I'm doing right now. Clearly, I need to dig a little deeper and keep adding stuff, but it did make me feel that – however hard the process is – I'm on the right track with this book.

I'll report back in a few months on my progress at putting the satisfaction back into my writing life. I'm going to keep adding to that list of thing I like and also try to apply what I enjoy about blogging to the novel writing process. I will try new techniques as well, like writing in different places or dictating the story instead of typing it. Here's hoping that I can make 2013 the year that I start writing books purely for my own enjoyment again.

Nick.

Eight Rules for Better Action Writing

Wait a minute, is it 2013 already?

I'm very pleased to say that my first article of the year is a guest post about writing action scenes for Lorrie Porter on her excellent This Craft Called Writing blog.

You can find the post right here.

Nick.