December was a destructive month. It’s not as though work was so punishing that I was unable to function. Just easy to fall into bad habits and routines of not writing. With this new resolve I’ve been talking about, I’ve found my way back into the story I was writing about six weeks ago and am adopting a plan suggested by a friend who attended the Clarion writing workshop. Well, not so much a plan, just a simple and achievable word count target per day. 250 words a day. Every day. And okay I’ve only been going for four days so there’s ample opportunity to fall off the wagon, but it works, with some determination.

In a good mood, 250 can be knocked out in a matter of minutes. In a bad, tired, scrape-your-face-off mood it can take longer, and the words are not always the right words, but they’re words. And if I have the inclination, more than 250 can happen, but it’s remarkable how just knocking out those 250 a day brings the story right back into focus and it all becomes regular again. Like a good daily dose of word fibre.

This resolve is contagious.

I’ve neglected this blog, and my writing, for the last six weeks or so. It seems to be a cycle I’ve been getting into this last year – bursts of activity, followed by slumps of inactivity caused by all manner of self-absorbed nonsense and lazy excuses. December is a perfect month for lazy excuses, crammed full as it is with hard work, head colds and the occasional social engagement. But then I read other writer’s blogs explaining how terrible a year they’ve had and yet they carry on writing, with regularity, and don’t complain about it.

I won’t make resolutions this year, they have a singular finality about them that makes them fragile (i.e. they are easily broken). Instead I need to have resolve, in its simplest meaning of having determination in everything I do writing-wise. Determination to finish stories that I begin writing; determination to then revise those stories/novellas/novels to the best possible draft and submit them; determination to read, for fun, research, inspiration; determination to write a novel and have it published. These are not resolutions. There are no absolutes here. I just need to have the resolve to do what I need to do at the time that it needs doing, rather than putting it off, and staring at it, and worrying about it, because I have to remember one thing.

I love writing. I love reading great writing. It gives me a thrill to get lost in a story, both creating and reading it. And I know I can do it. And isn’t that half the battle?

But this is not what I’m here to talk about. I swear there is more advice for writers out there than there is actual writing. I admit to reading some of it, and Twitter in particular has introduced me to the thick soup of bloggers and writers and random people giving advice, tips, helpful quotes etc. So much that it becomes a bit wearing. Most of it is just repeating the same stuff over and over again. Some of it is supremely entertaining and helpful, but I can see how the new writer – eager to learn and soaking up the professional advice on offer – could become utterly bogged down and not know which way to turn. Knowing which advice to heed and which not to is the hard part. Some say take what works best for you, which is probably good advice, but it’s too easy to become blind to what you really need, or to what your writing really needs. Heck, there is even advice out there about how you should choose what advice to heed. (I’m tempted to write some advice about which advice-heeding advice you should listen to).

For example, I thought for a long time I could get by without planning out stories too much, and then once they were written giving them a couple of drafts and a polish then sending them on their merry way. I realise now that that I can’t get away with that (well not every time, sometimes it works, but for the most part… no). Planning helps me immensely – even on short stories. Striking a balance between planning and winging it is tough. At some point you have to stop with the notes and just write it. The momentum that comes with the act of writing seems to open up ideas as you go.

Writer, Joe Lansdale has recently been passing on his wisdom about the craft on his facebook page. I liked what he said about routine, in terms of always trying to write at the same time, almost as a way of conditioning your mind and body to be in the mood for writing at that time every day. I know some people who write when they can, due to work and life pressures, and I’m kind of one of them, although I do appear to have developed my own routine without consciously attempting to. It generally involves a couple of hours of prevarication, eating, making cups of tea, watching another episode of How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory, and then just when it’s time that I should really be going to bed if I feasibly want to be awake and functional the next day, my brain decides it’s time to write. It’s a routine. An inappropriate routine, but a routine nonetheless. If I had my whole day to myself, I’d like to think a new routine would develop, but my brain has always been at it’s most creative in those hours when it should be switching off and going to sleep. Perhaps that experience of being on the edge of unconsciousness induces a waking dream state where I can access my subconscious as easily as dipping my fingers into an unending bowl of popcorn… or… maybe its just panic that I haven’t written anything yet and I really ought to.

I should go and find a blog giving me some advice on this matter…

With all of the day’s burning issues, such as dead dictators adorning our newstands next to the fashion magazines and crossword puzzle books, the main thing that troubled me this week was the news of my local fish and chip shop closing down. After 36 years of a family business, L’Aquila Bianca will no more serve its delicious fish and chips – an unhealthy comfort to me on many a Saturday night after work. You often had to wait for the fish to be fried, but I like that as it meant it was always freshly cooked, instead of sitting limply in a warmer for a couple of hours before falling into soggy pieces in your chip paper. No, L’Aquila Bianca fish was always crisply battered, hot and tasty, and the chips generously portioned, fat and fluffy – never greasy.

It all makes me marvel at what a particularly British institution the Fish and Chip shop is, and just how major a feature they are in any given community. Not that there’s a dearth of fish and chip shops in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. Another two reside within easy walking distance, and I’ve used them once or twice, but L’Aquila Bianca was always the one. It’s absence on a colourful and unique high street full of independent shops will be keenly felt, all the more so as I hear it’s likely to be replaced with a Dominos pizza (which will impact on the other local takeaways, such as the excellent Anima on Henderson Row who make superb pizzas). I fear that one day the high street will succumb entirely to chain stores and multiples and some essential character of the area will be utterly and irrevocably lost.

Although chip shops are in many ways a bit of a joke to tourists due to their ‘deep-fry anything and eat it’ appearance, they’ve been a part of this country for many many years (despite being run almost exclusively, it seems, by Italians) and I grew up eating out of them. From the small simple chippys of my childhood in Glasgow, to the ‘salt and sauce’ establishments of Edinburgh where I live now, it’s hard-wired into my taste buds that the smell of vinegar and sizzling oil make me ravenously hungry. 

L’Aquila Bianca has only played a small part in my life, as I’ve lived in this area for four years now, but the significance of another small, local, family-run business that took pride in it what it did (winning awards in its heyday) closing down is great and undeniable.

That said, I’ve found myself in the dark, nether place after finishing writing a new short story where I’m not doing any actual writing, but am instead flying back and forth between writing notes for the novel and picking at the crumbs of short story ideas to see which one might be the tastiest. It’s not wise to spend too long in this nether place, otherwise the writing doldrums are not very far away (a place I know the landscape of all too well).

Good then that I have finally found a way forward on ‘The Last Photograph’, an idea I’ve been playing with for a while now. I’ve had the first 300 words or so for some time, but they were never quite right; never enticing enough to lead me anywhere. After chopping them up, sliding them around and stepping to the side to look at it all from a fresh angle, it is now a story I can write, and I pushed that 300 up to 450 last night. 450 that I’m happy to run with. And I’m just one more pass away from a final draft of ‘Closer to Death’, which means a 6th story into the submission queue.

Submissions have been slow and uninspiring, with four out of the five at 100 days or more. All the more reason to keep working on revisions and throw as many as possible out there.

I should be able to start the novel very soon, though. Into the stage of fleshing out characters and scenes at the moment; working out plot problems and researching stuff that needs researched – you know, the usual stuff, human decomposition, butcher’s shops, local Christian bookshops, Fife.

There are four ideas for novels that I have, all at differing stages of progress; all fighting for attention like the unruly brats that they are, but the one that has truly grabbed me by the face is the oldest one of the lot, and it’s not just the unnatural heatwave melting my brains.

Current working title is ‘The Death and Life of Harrison Brodie‘. I conceived the original idea about twenty-two years ago, right about the time I decided to sit down at my Olivetti typewriter and have a go at writing a novel, with little preparation. First novel I ever tried to write was a dreadful piece of comedy Science Fiction, blagged from a 2000AD ‘Future Shock’ comic story about customs officers working in a spaceport. I thought the concept of a xenophobic customs officer to be quite funny, but my execution of the story in the style of Terry Pratchett meets Douglas Adams was at best ill-advised.

At the time, I also scribbled down several ideas, all of which were for novels at the time. I hadn’t even considered the concept of short stories yet. Out of those ideas I have written one short story, which is currently on its 12th submission and has received encouraging personal rejections from places such as Asimovs and Interzone. And then I also came up with an idea for a novel involving a ghost (of sorts…), the walking dead (well, kind of…) and a butcher’s shop. After all this time it has jumped to the fore and begged to be written. I have my two main characters fully sketched out, and two nights ago I wrote a full plot synopsis in three acts. So that means, beginning, middle, end. That and many pages of notes mean this is now top contender for being written. Heck, I even have the first 200 words.

Lack of a fully fleshed out plot has been the sticking point for the other contenders so far, or characters that haven’t gone from being a name with an idea attached to becoming a real individual that I can visualise and hear and actually imagine having a life beyond the confines of the story.

I will be writing a novel before the end of the year!

Static sounds the way I imagine the universe would sound if you could listen to it. A billion tiny voices all crying out for attention, but each one has dwindled to a whisper. The distant hiss of life across light years, every one craving the recognition of the other. None of them hears. It’s the loneliest sound.

And then earlier this year I wrote an Edinburgh-set horror piece called ‘Listen to the Static’, a 6000 word short story, but it’s a structurally impaired patient in need of serious rearranging. Anyway, all of this leads me to discussing an exciting new project. Borrowing the title of that short story, and some of the themes of that paragraph from my oft-rejected short story I have a new idea for a novel, which is currently usurping The Drover as prime contender for being written.

It’s nice to be excited about a big idea that has huge scope beyond being just a short story. Tonight my main character has a name, as do at least two other characters. And I’m already forming the voice in my head. In fact, I even wrote some actual words tonight to test out the voice and what I intended to be a short sentence or two became 100 words in a heartbeat. Dare I pin down the genre? If I say the words Paranormal Fantasy then my gut churns. I hate pinning the genre-tail on the story-donkey. I could simply call it horror. It has ghosts, and I fully intend to contribute to your nightmares as far as possible. Lets just call it words for the moment, and even make the bold step of starting a regular progress report, including word count and related stuff.

LISTEN TO THE STATIC – PROGRESS REPORT

Words today – 100

Words total – 100

Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left of you.” – Simon and Garfunkel

On a day when someone very close to me is bringing a long chapter of their life to an end, I’ve been looking back over the stories I’ve written, and found a few common themes that I seem to play with constantly. But one in particular stands out – the impermanence of memories.

Perhaps it’s because I’m inherently a nostalgic person and enjoy the self-inflicted melancholy that comes with looking through childhood photos and/or recalling past times that are now long ago. Perhaps it’s down to a fascination with the way memories are processed and stored and how that affects one’s relationship with time (I have several unwritten story ideas about the perception of personal time). But I think it’s mainly to do with how memories are obliterated by time and we automatically fill the gaps, creating new, altered or even false memories; colouring the memories with emotions that have changed over the years, and so mutating those memories into new things, partly-fictionalised, self-edited.

The sorting process that goes on – namely, dreams – stirs everything up, dredging up old remembrances long buried. It opens up old files; removes the bookends so we can see what is contained within, however old and dusty, but the act of looking (in a quantum theoretical way) changes what you are seeing, because you are always looking with new eyes, with a new perspective coloured by the intervening time since you last looked.

This ‘bookending’ of time is a way I’ve often looked at specific eras in time, like holidays, school, university, particular places I’ve lived. These days I’m so much more aware of that bookending taking place as that era draws to a close. I’m sure this is not a new observation, but I wonder if the modern world’s obsession with seeing time in snapshots and storing it in files and albums doesn’t contribute to this process, and would the ordering and perception of memories have been any different before the advent of photography?

All of which leads me to my current story idea, “The Last Photograph”. It’s an idea I’ve been playing with for a couple of months, and even have a page of writing that I battered out in a sudden fit one night in July. As I thought of it, it occurred to me that I’m always writing about memories, or the lack of them, or the misinterpretation of them, or their slippery, dubious nature. Philip K Dick used that theme a lot, to wonderfully surreal and terrifying effect, and I can’t deny it has a huge bearing on what I’m writing, but it’s only now when I look back that I realise how (even without consciously applying it) that theme emerges from pretty much everything I write.

Now, as one huge era of time for that person close to me ends and is filed away, shrinking and seeming small as it slots into the past, a new one opens up and I stand on the beach looking out at it with expectation.

Photographs can bring back a feeling, but only ever capture such a tiny sliver of a moment, like a frozen skin peeled off and preserved. Any attempt to preserve a memory changes it, whether it be a photo, or writing it down (in which case the writer immediately colours it with their own perception and effectively fictionalises/dramatises it), or capturing it on video (which causes the people in the video to behave differently if they are aware of being filmed, or if they are unaware it accentuates the feeling of it being someone else’s perception of the moment).

This is the particular obsession of a writer, using those moments in collage to create fiction; stirring them around and combining them in much the way we do when dreaming. Was it William Gibson who called it ‘dreaming in public’? And dreams are something I can talk about at great length.

The writing mojo does seem to be back – using the three-point plan I mentioned a few days ago. I’ve revised ‘Down the Back of Donald’s Couch’ to a final state and submitted it a couple of days ago. Now on to ‘Closer to Death’, which feels like one of my stronger efforts, and I have high hopes for it. That’s the revision material, but I have also finished ‘Farm Boy, City Girl, What do you Remember?’ – a weird SF story, which is still too confusing for its own good, but its drafted at about 6000 words.

While writing that I was working up another one to start, and I’m already 1800 words into it. This one is the sort of story I’ve wanted to write for a while – using some dream imagery once again in a story inspired by Eastern European literature – Russian in particular. Current title is “Today Mikhail Walks On His Own Two Feet”. Should be a short-ish one, and I’m probably about halfway through, so I need to promote one of my ideas to working status to keep the production line flowing.

No news on the submission front. Apart from the very recent submission, I have four stories out, with the youngest being 66 days old, and the oldest, 369 days. I may hopefully have some publication news at the end of this month, with a thing in the pipeline that’s been there for close to a year, but it’s getting near the allotted date and I still haven’t heard anything.

Since I started writing this post, the wind has dropped, I’ve consumed three jam doughnuts and a cup of tea. Time to proceed with some writing!