The Mislaid Art of Storytelling

It's July of 2019. If you're reading this blog, you can likely write creatively. You're probably thinking about writing a novel, or you're already writing one. At some point, some way down the line, at the back of your mind, you're probably thinking it might get published.

The chances of that are very high in the era of 2019. You have various options. The least likely is traditional publishing, although you will spend a disproportionate amount of time pursuing it.If you want your book available to a broad audience rather than ignored by a few, to own a real physical copy of your book, then indie is an option.Whether you are going traditional or indie, there is one crucial detail you will probably mislay along the way which is story, or rather good storytelling.

There are two types of book writers in my experience, and you can work out which you are by how you describe what you're doing. If you're writing a novel, congratulations, you are among the 99.8% of writers who can write, who have a great idea but are unable to give that idea to an audience, and by give I mean make it an entertaining story. Call it stubborn, ego, apathy, self-interest, insecurity or a lack of insight.

If you're a writer who believes you're telling a story and the only thing that matters is the wider audience, then you're very rare. It has to be said neither is more likely to be successful, but one is more likely to entertain an audience.So how do you become a storyteller over a novel writer? The first step is to realise what an audience expect from a story, in a nutshell, they want to know:

The world and timeframe, to be hooked by dynamic characters very quickly, to understand the story stakes and dramatic theme.What is the false goal the characters pursue during the extraordinary journey that has them fall in love and discover hidden qualities and even a few nasty traits? What forces them to take control in the middle of the story, what truth do they learn fighting increasing odds, in the face of despair and even death?

How do they use this uncertain truth to face the bad guys, and how does the conflict resolve? How does the theme punch you emotionally, have you thinking about the characters after the credits or the last page has turned?

If a story doesn't deliver all this, the audience instinctively knows something is missing without necessarily knowing what that something is. As a fully paid-up member of the audience, how will you know your novel is hitting the required marks as a storyteller, as an author?I thought you'd never ask.

If I tell you story requires structure you will roll your eyes. I know, right! You're creating art! You're not writing to a formula!

Let's consider whether you would buy from an artist who visibly doesn't understand the foundations of composition? Or from a musician who audibly doesn't understand the principles of rhythm?

The problem with novel writing is that our entry point is an ability to write well, we're well educated, the page to page works, it's misleading. Our broader perspective of story is built on a lifetime spent as a consumer. It's instinctive.

It should be no surprise to discover telling a good story is as challenging to master as fine art or good music. While a few take to it naturally, 99.8% of us will have to graft to gain insight.

Getting hold of the right material to learn from can be confusing, there are a lot of people ready to take your money, a whole bunch of books to buy. I would buy just two:

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat (great for the essential structure)

K.M. Weiland's Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story structure, plot and character development (the absolute reference for blending everything else).

Then understanding story structure and character arc is just the beginning, seeing it implemented across a broad scope of fiction is necessary to build our storytellers muscle memory, our point of reference.

These past few years, I've been doing just that, breaking down story to gain insight into how it's put together. The last year I've been figuring how best to breakdown a story as a video, to learn and share that knowledge. I think I'm getting there.

The first video is linked below: Monsters Inc. The breakdown is on YouTube. It's free. You're welcome.

Guarding your Manuscript against Computer Gremlins

A writing buddy recently lost half the book they're writing to a failing disk drive. That was over 20,000 hard to come by words gone in the time it takes to smack the palm of your hand hard against your forehead.

I'm always stunned when I find writers like my buddy invested huge amounts of time and energy in the creativity of planning, research, and writing their books, to find they spent no time looking into protecting that work from the myriad failures you should readily expect your laptop/PC/Mac to inflict on you. Especially when there's no need for the worst kind of failure to lose you more than a paragraph at most.

Computers are complex, consisting of thousands of small and fragile components. They are designed to last on average 3-4 years, manufactured at extremely low cost to be sold for very low margin. They're susceptible to damage by repeated fluctuations in heat, impact, wear and tear, contact with the environment. Or they will randomly fail because they really were cheap in the first place.

Compounding this is Microsoft's Word, which you're probably using to build your narrative, with the whole manuscript likely contained in one document. Word was designed for writing letters and reports. The bigger the Word document the increased risk you have of something nasty randomly happening.

Let's start with simple steps for minimising risk.

Separate Word Documents

Consider breaking your book into separate word documents which will reduce the size of the working file. If the current document is corrupted or lost at least the rest of the book is retained in these separate files. As a starting point consider breaking the book document into first half and second half, or first act, second act, third act. Separating each act into two documents would be my preference, leaving you with six documents in a finished manuscript.

Backup Copy

Turn on 'Always make a backup Copy' from Word Options, Advanced, Save.

This will make a full copy of your document every time you save. You will always have a pristine copy of the whole document to the point of the last save even if chaos leads you randomly down the rabbit hole after that save.

Autorecover Frequency

Autorecover saves the changes made to the document since the last save. A sudden failure in Word means you will lose up to 10 minutes of work with the default settings. You can change the frequency of these saves from Word, Options, Save, Autorecover. I would drop this down to the lowest level that works with your computer's ability to do this without interrupting your writing, starting at 1 minute.

Don't use Word

There are plenty of alternative and very reliable tools designed for building large text projects. I highly recommend Scrivener if you're in this writing lark for the long haul.

Protecting yourself from your laptop/PC/Mac

If the disk or computer holding your documents fails you have either lost everything or are in the hands of a very busy repair engineer invested in making things work, not protecting your data. Copying your documents from the computer daily, per session or even between saves is a great way to protect yourself against hardware failure.

Flash drive (and file copy)

USB flash drives are very cheap. A single 8Gb drive will hold more books than you could write in five lifetimes. Buy one. Buy two. One for daily copies of your project documents and another for weekly/monthly copies. Label them with a Sharpie. Keep them safe.You must never EVER use flash drives to actually edit the book files. You are far more likely to damage, break or simply lose a flash drive than you will your laptop or computer. That's why we only use flash drives as backup. For those worried about someone stealing your ideas from a lost drive many now come with reliable password protection.

Copying your files

Plug in your external drive and a few moments later it will be ready, often with on-screen notification. Browse to your book documents on the computer and copy them to the drive. You will need to know where your files are stored and how to copy. Both Windows and Macs use a Documents folder by default. You can also specify your own location to save files.

If you don't know where your documents are on the disk or how to copy, then you need to employ the same determination used for book research and planning into finding out. The Google search will go something like 'Copy files from my Mac/Windows Laptop/PC to external drive'. Better still befriend someone who can show you.

Online Backups

If you are open to using the internet for storing copies of your documents then Microsoft - OneDrive, Apple - iCloud, Google - Drive and my recommendation; Dropbox, all provide online services that will automatically copy your important documents to their servers the moment they are changed on your computer. The storage offered by these services for free is more than you will ever need for your books.

If Word fails you, simply roll-back to the last version automatically stored online. Even if your computer spontaneously combusts, not only the very latest versions but previous iterations of the documents (even ones deleted) will be waiting for you when you do log in.Online backups require you understand the basics of file structures. Setting up requires a tiny amount of knowledge. Your Google search will look something like 'Protecting my files using Onedrive/iCloud/Drive/Dropbox' Or call a technical friend if you're not sure.

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. Why risk all that work when a small amount of planning will give you peace of mind.

A Fond Farewell

I went to see Battle of Five Armies today. Life will never be the same.

In years past I have watched Jackson’s Tolkien movies at one minute past midnight on the day of their release, so I could watch them the first minute I could. On this final occasion I was in the cinema a whole thirteen hours later - an indication perhaps of the lessening hold this last trilogy has on me.

Nevertheless long before the credits rolled I had tears on my cheeks and plenty more in my eyes. Billy Boyd sang his song and I had to catch myself lest snot lay waste to my dwindling tissues. I was the last one in the cinema, lights up and bleary eyed as the last of the credits rolled. A lone VUE girl in her black shirt and trousers, baseball cap, brushed up popcorn and cartons and pop bottles. In some respects I was afraid to leave. Peter Jackson has shaped and driven so much of this creative mind, I was struggling to say goodbye. I know it is not goodbye of course but to Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth the journey is at an end.

It is now twelve years since Jackson and friends first lit a creative fire inside of me. In that time my writing adventure has been filled with journeys. From writing endless blogs after realising I had no words to paint fiction narratives. The marvel of joining a book club and realising there was a world of fiction outside commercial genres. Learning, learning learning. From World history, religion, psychology. Writing short narratives that evolved to short stories that became writing a book. The five year passion of Chasing Innocence and learning traditional and digital publishing on the way. Joining a writing group and the first meeting with my book clasped tight in hand. Through shared experiences these last three years with the writers of WordWatchers. Always easier in my own company I surprised myself and made a few friends along the way.

Mixing with writers offers endless opportunities for distraction, often following a common cause to better writing. It has helped me discover the type of writer I am. Significantly in these three years I have failed to finish a single book despite working on three.

The lack of completion has come largely with my ambitious goals for these projects - I had to further evolve as a writer to be able to write them. Recently I also realised I'm not finishing books because I'm a method actor of writers, all or nothing. Which doesn't work well with distractions.

As I sat in the cinema with the credits rolling it dawned on me it wasn’t only Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth that had come to pass. If I wanted to write these stories and bring life to the characters my time with WordWatchers had too.

It was a bitter sweet moment, realising a goodbye and in the same moment the excitement of an obvious path. I've a lot of treasured memories these last three years and friendships I hope will continue.

For now I bid you a fond farewell.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ir8rVl2Z4

Proof Reading - From Word to Mobi to Kindle

I'm currently busy writing a book that's been buzzing away in my head since February. I'm so far into writing the book my thoughts recently turned towards proof reading, which immediately reminded me of finishing my first book. It was in 2009 and the now ubiquitous Kindle was not even a rumour in the UK.

Back then I exported my book to PDF but reading it on the laptop screen was no different than reading it in a wordprocessor, so I printed it two pages per A4, bought a guillotine and binding machine and read my book in A5. The different medium really helped me see the narrative from a whole new perspective.

Fast forward five years and I recently cleaned out my study and found those A5 copies of Chasing Innocence. It was a shock, not so much that I still had them, but a reminder of the trouble I'd gone to, to proof read.  Nowadays I spend five minutes preparing the manuscript and then email it to my kindle for review five minutes later.

Proof reading on the Kindle is so much better. Not only is it always a thrill to see my writing so quickly available to read on a device but the annotation and bookmarking of the Kindle means I'm not left squinting at my undecipherable handwriting days after the proof read, or scratching my head trying to figure why I highlighted a whole paragraph in yellow.

Conversely it always surprises me how few of my writing buddies know how to get their manuscripts onto the Kindle. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool if I did a video on just that - getting your word manuscript onto the Kindle.

There are two videos. The first takes your manuscript and creates a Kindle ready file in three easy steps. The second shows you how to email the file to your Kindle.

I hope the videos are helpful:

1) Manuscript to Kindle

2) Email to your Kindle

The Painter's Apprentice nominated for RoNA

For the second year running, WordWatchers' very own, Charlotte Betts, has been shortlisted for Historical Romantic Novel by the Romantic Novelists Association . Having seen Charlotte win last year's award, with The Apothecary's Daughter, we were absolutely thrilled to hear of this year's nomination and have the collective fingers and toes firmly crossed and wish her all the best with The Painter's Apprentice.

The Fight Before Christmas - A Book For Our Time

 Chris McCormack's latest children's book, The Fight Before Christmas, is very much a book for our times. Firstly, at the time of writing this blog, that time is obviously Christmas; with just a few days to go before the big yuletide ho ho, and as a delightful take on Clement C. Moore's classic tale, the book ticks that box beautifully.But there's more to it than that.Embracing all that the digital world has to offer, Chris has constructed a book that reflects the potential that digital books have to be so much more than just an electronic version of their printed sibling and offer some interesting ideas for authors looking to bring new ideas to their work.While still delivering everything we'd want from a children's story - great characters, an engaging plot, and a timeless message that appeals to young and old - the iBook version utilises the digital medium to engage the reader in other ways too. Chris presents the reader with opportunities to click on the screen and learn more about the traditions of Christmas and also try to find hidden messages from the characters. And at the back of the book there's an interactive quiz to test how much you've been paying attention.And, of course, there's the audio version, where you can opt to have the story read to you (by me!). At one point, there's even a song (for which I engage the services of my daughter). And this is another interesting angle the book brings for cross-over, adding layers within a single medium and really showing what authors can do to bring their readers more completely into their world.To promote the book, Chris has been combining old school press with online marketing. A couple of weeks ago, the book was featured in our local newspaper, but online Chris has also pulled together a great promotional video, once again showing how authors can use readily-available tools to add a little cinema-glitz to their awareness campaigns. Take a look. And, if you're a writer considering how to bring your next work to the world, there are definitely a few ideas here worth considering.Merry Christmas from WordWatchers!   

What are you reading?

Character driven story

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The likely improbable

Destiny and time

Very often in social chit-chat with other writerly types the question comes around to books. When we’ve exhausted conversation on our own masterpieces I’ll usually ask what book the other writer is currently reading. To which the surprising and frequent answer is that they rarely read books while working on a project. Often these projects have lasted years.

‘Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.’
Stephen King, On Writing, 2000

Oddly the substance of the above quote is routinely refuted. I never debate, we are after all masters of our own destiny. This writer, the John Potter writer, seldom has less than three books on the go. Here is the most recent example of why.

Back in 2009 I had an idea for a book about a man whose wife was murdered and his unsuccessful attempts to track down her murderer. I wrote half of it between other projects through 2012.

Smart but different

The original title was The Man Who Would Right a Wrong (TMWWRAW) and focused around a simple man called Marcus. He was not stupid but a man who struggles with the world and people. When he can’t find his wife’s murderer he begins dreaming of her, and in the dreams she leads him towards her killer. I struggled to get a grip on his internal thoughts and voice though. What was his mindset? His kind of simple would be a long way from Forrest Gump but somewhere on the same dial. Rain Man was also another character I looked at. I couldn’t get traction.

By the middle of 2012 the story was out of control and had grown way beyond anything I actually wanted to write. It had become closer to an international and political thriller mess I couldn’t dig myself out of. The story came to a dead stop. TMWWRAW went on the back burner.

Chasing Innocence was published 2012 and I wrote a novella called Mahrie, published April 2013. June 2013 I properly started the sequel to Chasing Innocence and on we went. Always finding time around writing to read books and watch movies.

Truman

In July 2013 I watched Capote and was bewitched by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s incredibly nuanced performance. I was also very intrigued by Truman Capote as a character himself. As a consequence I read Capote’s highly acclaimed In Cold Blood, a non-fiction account of four brutal murders, which starts with a beautiful and visual description of a mid-Kansas rural landscape, the farms and the communities grown around them. The book traces the impact of the murders on the local and very close community, who all suspect each other of the murders. It also creates a detailed insight into the minds and lives of the men who actually committed the crimes, who were far from local. I have never read anything like it. Not one breath of sensationalism and you would have to go a long way to find that kind of honest insight into the mind and background of a psychotic murderer.

Feel good

In August I read 600 Hours of Edward, a captivating first person account of an Asperger’s sufferer attempting to deal with family, neighbours, life and the colours of his garage door.

Idly browsing my Kindle after finishing Edward I found and read Christopher Hitchens’ essay on George Orwell: Why Orwell Matters. A key theme was Orwell’s belief many of those in western politics who retained power after WWII had been busily working through the war to ensure they retained power in the event of a Fascist victory: Just who are the good guys?

All of which was feeding into my writing of the sequel to Chasing Innocence, called Hunting Demons, the lead male character of which is very much influenced by characters played by Mel Gibson, notably Gibson’s ‘Porter’ in Payback. Listening to the Payback audio commentary by Brian Helgeland, led me to Point Blank written by Richard Stark, the book Payback was based on. Richard Stark was the pen name of Donald Westlake, a very successful American literary author. Several of Westlake’s novels have been made into movies. Most famously Point Blank but also most recently an adaption headlined by Jason Statham. At the front of Westlake’s novels you will often find an endorsement by Elmore Leonard.

Character driven story

The writing of my sequel continued at pace during August while reading some of Elmore Leonard’s books, which I’d never done before. I read The Hunted, Raylan and 310 to Yuma, many other Elmore Leonard books await on my Kindle. His books consist of focused narratives built around a single story with few tangles. They are almost entirely driven by character and a simple premise. No wonder so many have been turned into movies when the structure and beats of his books resemble those of a movie.

The link between books written by Leonard and Westlake, so often turned into moving picture, led me to start breaking films made from books down into fifteen distinct beats found in both book and film.

Time and Destiny

Which led me via a random sequence of events, to deconstruct the beats from Tom Cruise’s recent Oblivion and to listen to the informative audio commentary by Cruise. A quick check on IMDB and I discovered he was currently working on a movie called, The Edge of Tomorrow, which I learned was based on a book titled, All You Need is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I read the book – a sublime Groundhog Day, see also Source Code, narrative charting a single day in the life of a rookie soldier, a day in which he dies in combat and is destined to relive over and over until he can acquire skills enough to survive the day. This was such a different, well structured story, full of real character and invention, I added the audio book to my Audible library and have so far listened to it about five times during various car journeys or zipping about with headphones while hoovering.

The likely improbable

In September a friend recommended I watch Stardust which I found to be a good concept ruined by filmmaking. The original book was written by Neil Gaiman and I doubted the disjointed story of the film came from his writing. On a flight to Cyprus in September, I read Stardust and realised the movie’s flaw was in trying to re-work Gaiman’s adult fairytale for a young audience. I was struck by how Gaiman’s writing made a world of implausibilities seem totally natural. In Cyprus I spent the week reading in the sun or in the shade beside the pool. Towards the end of the week I was escaping the wonderfully relentless heat, sat beneath an open veranda beside the children’s pool and the all inclusive bar. I think there might have been a cold Keo in a frosted glass on my table.

Amid all the splashing children and attentive mothers in the pool, was a man with his young blond haired boy. The man had a very happily wide grin on his face. It never left his face. He looked almost insanely happy as he weaved the boy backwards and forwards through the water. In complete contrast to the other bare limbed children his blond boy was clothed in a child’s version of a wetsuit, socks, armbands and legionnaires hat, complete with neck flap. He looked well protected and idolised. The mother was sat just off to the side, reading an iPad. She was attractive, a few levels more than the almost stupidly grinning man.

It occurred to me the man and his wife seemed familiar and then I realised – they were how I’d always imagined Marcus and his wife in TMWWRAW. Immediately after, out of nowhere, the random musings of my unconscious (non-conscious for the psychology buffs) came together and there it was – a solution to my dead in the water TMWWRAW problem a year after it was mothballed. I now knew the story needed to be focused around a simple, meaningless murder of the wife. A small story, nothing big and grand. The power would come from the characterisation and the loss and the need for closure. It would be a whydunit and the conclusion, as clear as anything in my head, would echo Orwell’s observations relayed by Hitchens – a theme of who are the good guys? I also had Marcus’s perspective nailed right there – a combination of my perceptions of this madly grinning and happy dad in the pool and what I’d learned reading about a man with Aspergers in 600 Hours of Edward. Pulling off the fact the murdered wife leads Marcus to her killers through dreams would be tough, I’d just have to study how Gaiman pulled off the improbable in Stardust, just as I would study Aspergers and read more Orwell.

Destiny and time

I also realised the TMWWRAW title needed to go and swapped it for The Handyman and in contrast to the whiz bang opening of TMWWRAW, this revised opening would have a clear and simple narrative and echo Capote’s open landscape of In Cold Blood, swapped for the rolling skyline of Devon in the summer, the narrative retaining some element of the journalistic in witness statements to build a sense of Marcus’s abilities. The opening would feature an outwardly innocent man (Marcus) and child playing with a kite. A family gunned down, Marcus desperately trying to save them. And we think we know why his family are dead, because of his past, immediately correlated from the deep recesses of my recollection to Andy Mcnab’s Last night Another Soldier…, which I’d read and reviewed three years before. The concept for duplicating Gaiman’s ability to make the improbable sound probable, went a little bit out of control as I daydreamed by the pool. The intriguing construct of All You Need Is Kill re-wired itself with a distant memory of a movie I’d watched at the cinema twenty three years before: Jacob’s Ladder – could this be a story with a twist on time and destiny at the end? Even the structure for a 55k word novella was in place, having spent so much time reading the books of Westlake and Leonard and breaking them down into the core beats of story. This would not be a novel with a wide and messy scope. It would be a novella, echoing those core story beats I had been studying. It was all there. In my mind’s eye Marcus was Tom Cruise, diminutive, silent and intense. Fast and deadly but mentally unable to resolve by himself who murdered his wife.

This all came together in about 90 seconds as I sat beside the pool in Cyprus, watching the happily grinning dad and his wet suited little boy. I might have welled up with the excitement of it all.

I quickly had two very different endings in mind, a crowd pleasing, no dry eye in the house version and a harder to pull off thought provoking ending that floated at the very border of my imagination and defied all attempts to reel it in.

Back home I was faced with a need to keep working on Hunting Demons and finish a 2nd edition edit of Chasing Innocence. I needed to park The Handyman for later and then I had a brainwave. I’d write it in November, NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. I’d do some planning in October in downtime, then put everything else on hold for November with the goal of writing and finishing The Handyman in one go. But how would I plan for such a condensed writing experience?

Early October I broke First Blood the movie down into the key story beats, which you can read here. Writing the trivia section of the post I got to wondering what the original book’s author was up to these days. Quite a lot it turns out. David Morrell is a very interesting and very accessible author who has written at length about the processes involved in writing First Blood and the subsequent movie adaptations of Rambo II and Rambo III. He has also written a book based on his writing career and methods that offers insight on a par with Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. Right in the middle of David Morrell’s book, amongst all the interesting detail, was one of the greatest pieces of writing advice I ever heard. I immediately put it into practise and started to plan for my NaNoWriMo.

I’ll be updating my progress through NaNoWriMo and when the dust has settled afterwards, I’ll let you know whether that planning advice by David Morrell was successful.

If you’re interested:

I just finished Fahrenheit 451 and the excellent companion study guide by Bradbury’s. I am listening again to David Morrell’s The Successful Novelist on Audible, conversationally and captivatingly read by Patrick Lawlor. I have also been listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s intriguing David and Goliath, also narrated by Gladwell. Next up on Audible is David Morrell’s Creepers.

On my kindle I’m currently reading Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, and Rambo and Me, The Story behind the Story by David Morrell. Next up is Land of Midnight Days, YA fiction by Katrina Jack and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday.

Seeking Inspirational People

A good friend once said how much he disliked the 'greyness' of corporate life, how empty everyone seemed.  I asked him how much of himself he took to work.  He thought a moment and shrugged. Fair point, he said.  This person, who was always at odds with 'corporate', has now moved on from a life spent running company websites to make award-winning short films. And yet, how grey was he to the co-workers he greeted each morning?I went on a business trip recently, meeting my colleague on the train at Wolverhampton as we headed north.  We'd not spent much time chatting before that (and probably won't again - at least, not through work.)  He was the techie pre-sales engineer and I was the product manager, coming together for a customer visit.  We got chatting.  He was into photography, and showed me his pictures.  His wife had the bug too, and I saw arty night shots of trees illuminated by the two of them as they ran around shining torches in the darkness, while a slow-release shutter rendered the couple invisible.  The photos were very good.  But even better was the picture it painted in my mind of love and life in action.Something got me thinking today.About all the inspirational people.  Not the ones on the big stages, but the ones who aren't really trying to lead anything other than a normal life.About a friend, now gone, who spent his days at home, naked and relaxed, pottering.  Brilliant and very much at one with who he was and how he expressed it.About the primary school teacher whose love of Simon & Garfunkel and the canals of England and Wales, through her methods and wonderful eccentricity, ignited in a ten-year old boy two passions that live on decades later.And about the friend who called today, to speak to my wife, but made the happy mistake of asking how I was, whose comments have left me that little bit more certain about things, and whose remark that she'd been listening to 'Let Her Go' by Passenger took me to the album on Spotify.  Genius.Does corporate need to be grey?  Do we need to strip the personality from our product messaging?  I've always struggled with this, and see no reason why it needs to be this way.And with this in mind, my penultimate shout out (in this unashamedly self-indulgent blog) goes to the copy-writer who I've got to know over the last year, whose battle with bland finally seems to be paying off, as the company he writes for finds a more 'human' voice - and in doing so, will perhaps inspire a few more people to look again at the products and services he's writing about.My last shout... to my wife and daughters, whose unflinching belief is a daily inspiration, adding wind to the sails as I work to justify their faith.The list is not exhaustive, and as I've written just these few I'm reminded of all the people I've not included in this short list.  Hopefully they know.  I guess the point is, be open enough to notice the incidental comments and happenings from which inspiration just might spring, and be bold enough to take a little more of yourself into everything you do.When I was at university, I learnt about a study once carried out on 'luck' by assessing two self-selected samples (unlucky people and lucky people).  Count the number of photos in this newspaper, they were told.  You'll get money once you're done.  And the faster you're done, the more money you'll get.  Three pages in, there was a piece of text that gave the number of photos and instructed people to stop immediately and collect their money.  Lucky people saw it.  Unlucky people didn't, as they stuck to their course and counted the photos, ignoring the text.That's all.Julian 

Reading Writers Annual Writers' Day

Earlier today, a small posse from WordWatchers made its way across to Sonning to participate in the 2013 Annual Writers' Day hosted by Reading Writers.  As part of a two-way, tit-for-tat barter, we were WordWatchers' response for Julie Cohen spending the evening with us back in March (when much fun was had, and many new 'people' were introduced to the group - like Stephen Alexander, for example).Today's response involved John Hoggard, John Potter and me presenting our thoughts on writers in the digital world - covering what this has meant for WordWatchers as a group and for the individual writers within it.Before we got down to business, though, the day kicked off with some literary limbering up, as teams collaborated for 20 minutes to produce a short story based on three pieces - a prop, a location and a character.  Entries were then read out - and if you want to enjoy (?) the WordWatchers effort, you'll find the whole thing at the end of this post.So, for our main event...I kicked things off by taking everyone through the evolution of the group, and how we'd gone from an inwardly focused bunch to a much more industry-aware group of established writers with a great mix of skills and a strong vision for how best to serve the needs of its members.Then, John Potter spoke about his experiences in producing Chasing Innocence, and how important it is to ensure that the words you've slaved over for months or years aren't let down by poor quality packaging.  He spoke about formatting for print and eBook, making sure it's able to stand head and shoulders alongside the traditionally published offerings with which it needs to compete for attention.  He also spoke about the many mistakes he'd made along the way, and how each production, from Chasing Innocence, to Mahrie (his novella) and Out of Time (the WordWatchers' anthology), have introduced new challenges and forced the learning of new skills to ensure the best possible product.John Hoggard then spoke about social marketing, and the need to make sure your high-quality, well packaged book has every chance to stand out in the market, and rise above the noise with some savvy online activity.  He spoke about Twitter, and the approach WordWatchers has taken in eschewing volume for quality, in terms of followers, and how the approach is paying off through some very rewarding online interactions.  And then Facebook, and just how much effort is involved in making the platform work.And there was cake.  Aside from the fine spread put on by our hosts, John H upheld the WordWatchers' tradition and provided a particularly wonderful (and gluten free) apple and cinnamon cake.It was a great opportunity to meet up and discuss writing in a lovely setting, and share in the vast array of experiences (and cake) that each writer brings to the table.And now, you know that short story collaboration you've been waiting for?  On reflection, in the spirit of 'what goes on tour stays on tour', perhaps it's best I don't share it.  What I will say is, it was a lot of fun... and certainly brought out some creativity.  After all, take a look at the prop we had (in the photo).  And that paper on its chest - that's our character (a 19th century body snatcher) and our location (an old convent with echoing corridors).We called it 'The Legend of the Hairy Nun' and it began like this:

Birds sang.  Last night’s moon hung in the bright morning sky like a misplaced reveller.  Morag Blair peered in through the leaded window of the recently abandoned convent.  A chill ran down her spine.

 Definitely not one to be taken too seriously.Well done Reading Writers on a great day.  I look forward to future collaborations.Julian

 

Potter's February in Writing

Right. It’s now 18:00 on the 5th of March, which means I have just an hour to do this blog and make myself beautiful for WordWatchers tonight. I could of course just go straight to cosmetics but it’s been a glorious month for the WordWatchers collective and I wanted to get this down, else I’ll just go off on some parallel vaguely related discourse tonight and, well, it doesn’t do, really.

Mahrie Kindle Cover

So apart from Charlotte being voted the best historical romance author in the world ever, or something very close, and John Hoggard’s heroics in social media, there is something I wanted to tell you. In fact a few things.

First, Mahrie is almost done. I finished the cover this month which I LOVE and I get editorial feedback from the group tonight. Then it’s two solid weeks to make alterations before it goes to the copy and proof editor. That process should take us to the end of March at which point Mahrie will be released, initially for free for a brief time. So keep your eyes peeled.

In trying to raise awareness for the Potter brand I thought I’d run a final KDP Select promotion for Chasing Innocence. I also wanted to try and up the number of reviews for the book, which I have found are more likely to be given when a book is given away for free. The promotion went extremely well and you can see in this video I created what the results were.

I have for the time being decided to shelf TMWWRWs as I've had to admit, after eight months of hard work, the main character isn't there for me yet. His (dead) wife is, but... It's heartbreaking because so much has been invested but I know when I do come back to Marcus Hangiman I will have written two other books, several novellas and hopefully been stewing his character development in the background all this time. We will see.Which means that Hunting Demons is well on it's way. Hooorah! Sarah Sawacki is back, she's not alone this time but she's got a whole lot of people making life difficult. Where Chasing Innocence was about Sarah protecting and surviving, Hunting Demons is about her evolution, her putting a foot in the ground and saying enough is enough. Facing down her demons. I'm so excited. The book starts in court as we briefly recount how we got to this moment in the series. I'm having SO much fun.It was always my intention to also write about Detective Boer's past and while we touch on this in Mahrie, I have another novella planned for the end of the year which focuses on Boer as the protagonist and excitingly (for me at least) shows as part of a bigger story, his POV in the Mahrie case, as opposed to hers.What else? Well the antagonist in Hunting Demons is particularly scary, So I can get some idea for what is acceptable in the particularly scary antagonist stakes I'm currently reading the first two novels in both Tess Gerritsen and Mo Hayder's Crime series. The first two novels because I'm also interested to see how they transition the key female character between book one and two.I also read the wonderfully literary but brilliant thriller writing of Helen Zahavi this last month. I loved Donna and the Fatman and would highly recommend you check her out. Especially if like me you have an interest in strong but put upon women coming to terms with particularly nasty men. Very much looking forward to Helen's Dirty Weekend.Time's running out. Now to put on my glad rags and get ravaged (editorially) by WordWatchers.Wish me luck, I'm going in. 

Debbie does a Book-Signing

I defy anyone to be immune to Debbie's contagious enthusiasm, and once again it was out in full force in Newbury town centre.  This time, she took over the children's section of Waterstones, with colouring-in, 'spot the difference' and a wonderful pile of books for signing, and even though it was a wet Sunday afternoon, she seemed to be doing a roaring trade. The book in question was the first of Debbie's series about Alonzo the adventurous and slightly magical chicken, in which we meet Molly the Mermaid and the Pesky Pirates.Proving that sometimes there's just no substitute for old-style social networking, Debbie did a great job engaging with children and adults throughout the afternoon, selling a fair few books as she went and having lots of fun. This is the first of a number of appearances for Debbie and her feathered friend, as she prepares to take Alonzo into several schools in the area.

What a Difference a Year Makes

What a year it's been for WordWatchers!  I've just been looking back at the December 2011 minutes to get a sense of what exactly we've achieved as a group in 2012, and it's fair to say we've been busy.Those December minutes show that we discussed our new, yet-to-be-launched website and the new Twitter account we'd just set up.  Now, nearly 3000 tweets and over 600 followers later, all very much thanks to the expert guiding hand of John Hoggard, and with a Facebook page as well, our online presence is evolving nicely.Clearly, though, an online presence for a writer's group is nothing if none of the writers are producing anything to tweet or blog about.  Again, looking at those December minutes brings it all back - what we were working on, how we were feeling about things, and indeed who was actually in the group...It seems amazing to look back at a list of attendees and not see the names of John Potter and Chris McCormack, who actually joined us in February and have been fantastic contributors ever since.  Their arrival coincided with (and definitely helped accelerate) a growing maturity within the group, as we increasingly embrace independent and digital publishing as a business choice rather than a last resort.Ginette succumbed to the pressures of setting up a new business and has taken a bit of a sabbatical.  Hopefully, 2013 will find a more obliging work-life balance.Since then, it's been fairly stable, with numerous approaches from people to join us - and in November we welcomed Colette, who pretty much fills the WordWatchers' ranks.  (You should be seeing Colette on the Authors' page shortly after the January meeting.)And what have all these WordWatchers been up to?At the end of last year, Charlotte was getting ready to welcome the paperback version of The Apothecary's Daughter, while desperately trying to finish The Painter's Apprentice and commence work on a new idea.  Today, both novels are out in the world, and Charlotte and her 17th century biscuits have been going down a storm all over the country.  And that new idea is already with the editor!Abbie managed to write another book too, and we all had the pleasure of reading it.  As ever, we provided our feedback, which was largely that Abbie had written something rather special.  At the time of writing, it's with her agent.  John Hoggard put in a huge effort, especially given a challenging year, to 'finish' Endless Possibilities, which he's currently editing.  He also got published in Fusion, the Sci-Fi anthology published by Fantastic Books and has been doing his usual great job raising awareness through his growing individual and group online presence.A year ago, WordWatchers barely knew anything about Debbie's amazing chicken, Alonzo.  Today, it's real, wonderfully illustrated, and available to buy.  Chris achieved similar success with Pong!, his delightful alien who likes to race, bringing him to life within the pages of a fully interactive iBook, complete with questions about space and an audio book option (voiced by me!).John Potter cracked on with his new novel, but continued to amaze us with his knowledge of all things Kindle-related, as Chasing Innocence climbed the crime charts and found itself a finalist in a Kindle crime novel competition.Everyone else was equally busy, working through and reworking existing novels or sifting through a world of ideas to settle on the one to take forward into 2013.  Me?  I managed to 'finish' The Stationary Half of Goodbye and have started sending it out to agents.And if all that wasn't enough, we produced our first anthology, Out of Time - published ready for Christmas and the January 2013 Writing Magazine competition.  Check out the 'Books' page for this and all the other wonderful WordWatchers creations.Katherine Webb, one of our glittering alumni, continued to see great commercial success, and it was lovely not only to see A Half Forgotten Song make it into paperback and into the charts, but to be able to include one of Katherine's stories in the anthology.It's certainly exciting times at WordWatchers.  Just take a look at the home page for a taste of what's going on.  As for what lies ahead in 2013, I won't jinx anything by making predictions, but it's fair to say that it's going to be another busy one.

Pong! On an iPad near you now!

WordWatcher Chris McCormack has produced a book guaranteed to delight children with its larger than life main character, Pong, who loves racing more than anything.  Illustrated beautifully by Naomi Lunn, the rhyming book tells the story of Pong's efforts to beat Jake, a boy from Earth with a talent for Maths.Initially available on the iPad, where it comes with voiceover (provided by WordWatchers' own Julian Dobbins) and educational interactive elements about space and the solar system, the book will soon be coming out in printed form.Pong! is available from iTunes for 99p.  

Summer Short Story Competition

It's that time of year again, when WordWatchers turns its attention to short stories.  Every six months, we compete in our own short story competition, submitting stories anonymously, voting in classic Eurovision style ('nil point' for your own story) and then attempting to guess who wrote what.  Given that some of us have been in the group for quite a while, you'd think we'd be able to spot each other's work... but that's not the case, especially with people often using the competition as a vehicle for literary experimentation.Previous competitions have chosen pictures, titles or themes, as you'd expect.  This time, it's the turn of 'song lyrics' - basically, choose a song, extract a few lines to inspire you, and write your story.Entries were submitted at the July meeting, and we're currently in voting mode, ready for the great reveal in September.Tune in again to see who won! 

Charlotte Betts in Writing Magazine

We're all very excited here at Wordwatchers - Charlotte's been featured in the 'New Author Profile' in the June edition of Writing Magazine, sharing with its readers her thoughts on "creating realistic worlds for the Restoration characters in her debut."  It's a lovely piece about Charlotte, her book, The Apothecary's Daughter, and how it all started.We're particularly pleased because Wordwatchers gets a plug: "Join a writing group.  I wouldn't be where I am today without Wordwatchers' support and encouragement."  Thanks Charlotte!