How I write, and more importantly, how you can

So many people have been asking how I managed to write a book that I’m starting to wonder whether I should be feeling a little insulted. Yeah okay, so I produced something  that someone, in a moment of either extraordinary generosity or extraordinary folly, decided to publish. But me succeeding in releasing a book isn’t, like, one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse or anything. Or at least I hope it isn’t – WikiAnswers is worryingly inconclusive on the subject.

The question has been particularly popular with people who know me well, which is no surprise really – my most outstanding talent is generally agreed to be procrastination.  So I guess it is a bit of a surprise that someone who isn’t able to complete a tax return on time might have a bit of difficulty completing 70,000 words which, when read consecutively, make at least some degree of sense.

The reason people ask, of course, is that like running, singing and laughing at Peter André and Jordan, writing is one of those things that we’ve all done a bit of ourselves. I know for certain I haven’t got a Nobel Prize-winning theorem in me, or a shot at the Tour de France, but like most people who enjoy reading books, I’d always wondered about writing one.

Actually, the answer of how I did it is simple. I enrolled in a creative writing Masters at UTS, and did a bunch of courses, after which I’d written about 60,000 words. After all that work, it wasn’t that much more strenuous to polish it up into a first draft, which I sent to publishers.

But of course that’s not the answer people want to hear. I remember, because the question used to absolutely fascinate me way back in my B.N., or Before Novelist period. And yes, I know this sounds a bit patronising, but hell, I just wrote 70,000 words that some people, at least in my immediate family, have actually bought – I’ve a right to be slightly smug.

The answer people want to hear is the one that explains a great mystery – how on earth you actually discipline yourself to do all that writing. A Masters deadline helps, but it doesn’t explain how you actually do the assigments. The thought of writing all those words sounds to most people like a quirky variant of  waterboarding where your clothes stay dry. And even after I’d written the first 6000 words of my novel, for an assignment, the prospect of pushing it up to 70,000 seemed more painful a prospect than hammering rusty nails into the soles of one’s feet, or doing the publicity for Dick Cheney’s forthcoming autobiography.

But during my Masters, one of the things we learned us was how other people do it. Authors love nothing more than writing pieces explaining how they write, and we read dozens of them while I was studying. Every author has their own approach, which they insist is the definitive solution which all wannabe writers must adopt. And the hilarious thing is, every writer is utterly different. Some exhaustively plan their novels, and write full, detailed biographies for every character, while some let them flow spontaneously from their subconscious. Some rouse themselves at 4am each morning and perform callisthenics before settling in, while others burn the midnight oil. Some writers plough through all day, some stop when they’ve hit a specific target. There really is no secret.

To cite some famous examples, JK Rowling writes in an Edinburgh Starbucks, which isn’t something I could possibly recommend because it’s hard to concentrate when you’re gagging on terrible coffee. While Roald Dahl had a shed in his garden in which he would always have exactly six sharpened yellow pencils, which sounds more like a basis for diagnosing obsessive compulsive disorder than a surefire technique that should be adopted by other writers.

Every aspiring writer wants to know how they can actually make themselves do the work. The glib answer is that you have to have self-discipline. But frankly, I don’t. So I essentially tricked myself into writing the novel. See, I hate working, but I love cafés. Knowing this, I would take myself off to my favorite café, and sit there for an hour or two, having a coffee. I get bored easily, so to avoid the tedium of my own company, I’d pull out my laptop (with no internet or games on it – that’s essential!) and write. And once I actually started tapping away, I found it fairly easy to concentrate, and I wouldn’t let myself go home until I’d written 1000 words, and edited the last 1000 words I wrote. (I’m lucky to write fast, but if you set your own target at 250 words a day, that’ll still work.)

I also had an incentive scheme where once I’d finished, I gave myself a reward. Sometimes it was an arcade game if there was one near the café, sometimes a bit of browsing in a music store, and sometimes even a gelato. Yeah, it was really literary.

But the biggest reward was that, to my surprise, I really, really enjoyed doing the writing. It made me feel like, well, a real writer, like I’d always dreamed of being. Sometimes I’d work in a bookshop café, like the one at Kinokuniya or Berkelouw’s in Paddington, and imagine what it would be like to see my work on the shelves around me. In other words, I’d daydream – but it worked as an incentive.

So if you want to know how other writers do it, you’re actually asking the wrong question, in my opinion. What you need to ask yourself is how can you make yourself write. No-one else can answer that for you. For me, it took deadlines imposed by a university course that was so expensive that I simply wouldn’t let myself drop out – and most importantly, yielding to my own personality. That is, I ended up working with my flaws rather than trying to overcome them. I would love to get up at dawn and write every morning, right after I go to the gym for an hour and bake fresh crusty bread rolls for the homeless. But the fact is, I never will. So I made writing a pleasurable activity, and before I knew it, I’d written a whole book.

There is one downside to this. I’ve now carefully trained myself only to work in cafés – in any other environment, I will simply procrastinate. And to be honest, the café habit is getting expensive, and I’m doubtlessly eating way too much gelato. Still, at least I’ve found a way to make myself do the work. And as my friends will tell you, that’s something of a miracle. In all honesty, I can hardly believe I did it either. Perhaps it is one of the signs of the Apocalypse after all?

This post originally appeared on the Random House Australia blog.

Be careful what you wish for...

Okay, it’s time for me to eat some humble pie. Or perhaps humble Codral would be more appropriate. Because – oh, what fun I had last week with my jokey little piece on swine flu, and my little list about what I’d read if I was confined to my home with an illness. Oh how pleased with myself I felt.

Well, guess what happened? That’s right, I’ve spent the past three days stuck in bed with a cold. It’s not actually swine flu, apparently, because I don’t have an elevated temperature. And I’m not sure how to feel about that – on the one hand, I’m obviously pleased that I’m probably not going to die. On the other, if I’d been one of the first fatalities, it would have really helped with promoting my book.

There’s another thing I didn’t consider. Oh sure, I thought – it’d be fun to be stuck at home, unable to go out because of possible flu contamination, if you were actually well. But if you have most of the symptoms, as I do, you don’t exactly get to partake of a full intellectual diet while stuck at home. For one thing, I’ve got a headache and watery eyes. Which has meant that I haven’t been able to read a thing since I’ve had this cold. I’m certainly not up to tackling Infinite Jest, which is hard enough to follow when my brain’s functioning normally.

My activities have been severely restricted Other than lying in bed and feeling sorry for myself, I only did three things over the weekend. The first was watching The West Wing, and fantasizing about a world in which the politicians’ speeches are actually eloquent because they were written by Aaron Sorkin. Secondly, I spent about four hours hours playing a game called Flight Control on my phone, the point of which is to make aeroplanes land on three different runways without crashing into one another. And let’s just say we can all be thankful that I’m not an air traffic controller. My  landing skills are roughly equivalent to Mohamed Atta’s.

The other thing I did was go and see Star Trek on Friday night. Sure, I probably infected most of the cinema while I was there, but it was worth it – at least for me, since I’d already caught had the cold. I’ve never been much of a Trekkie – while I like Patrick Stewart as Picard, most of the series is way too cheesy for my tastes. It’s hard to take Captain Kirk’s preaching about tolerance for other species seriously when he’s a) devoting most of his energy to trying to suck in his gut and b) the supposed other species is clearly just a dude in a lame rubber mask.

It looked good, and the cast is young and spunky – especially, I thought, Uhura, who featured in her underwear in a scene so gratuitous it could have come  from Underbelly. And, as those who’ve seen it can attest, she’s apparently got a thing for nerds! Woman of my dreams. Anyway, the main reason the new Trek is wowing everyone, with an extraordinary 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, is because it has a great story.

It’s sad that a tight, well-constructed plot is so rare in mainstream cinema, but Hollywood thinks nothing of putting tens of millions of dollars into special effects and approximately zero into developing a story. Or worse still, I imagine, they get promising scripts rewritten by a committee, until they’re leached of any spark of originality and you get movies like Quantum Of Solace, which have a few impressive action set-pieces linked by a dour plot and dialogue consisting largely of clichés. James Bond has beaten SPECTRE and Smersh dozens of times, but he seems powerless to resist the evil cabal of Hollywood script doctors.

This is very different from the novel-writing process. Sure, you get feedback. My novel was sent to an external editor who wrote a very thorough report detailing its flaws. There were quite a few, and I had to rewrite it extensively – which, since it was my first attempt writing a novel, was hardly surprising. But the rewrites were still completed using my own words. Even the copy edits were only ever suggestions which I got to approve. So the novel, for better or worse, is very much my own work.

And I think that’s where Hollywood so often goes wrong. Though other writers were apparently involved in the overall shape of the plot, every word of the first four  seasons of The West Wing was written by Aaron Sorkin, and that’s probably why they are so extraordinary. Sure, this process can backfire, as we saw with his subsequent series Studio 60. Very few writers always deliver gold. But good writers often do, whereas, compelling stories are almost never delivered by committee.

Similarly, this delightful blog post has been written entirely by me. Any bit you liked is due entirely to my own brilliance. Its deficiencies, though, I will blame entirely on my cold. I realise it’s been a bit random (although hey, that’s the name of the blog…) but that’s just how my brain works when it isn’t feeling terribly well.

Alright, it’s time I returned to today’s primary activity, air traffic control. Those computer-generated planes aren’t going to land themselves. And seriously, I’d consider wearing one of those face masks, no matter how dorky it looks. You don’t want to catch whatever I’ve got.

This post originally appeared on the Random House Australia blog.

The Joy of Marketing

Marketing is a bit of a dirty word for writers. We like to think of ourselves as releasing our work into the world like a precious, special patch of flowers that discerning readers will bend over and pick, sniffing gently and appreciating each petal’s delicate beauty.

But that’s not how it works. It’s a struggle to get a book published, and a far harder struggle to get people to read it. The Australian publishing market is small and crowded, and it’s tough to break through and tell people you exist. For that, you need publicity, of course, and marketing.Why? Well, of course you want people to read your book because of your own hideous vanity because it will change their lives for the better. I personally believe that if the Israelis and Palestines could only get together and read Disco Boy, peace would break out faster in that war-torn region than my skin did when I was 16.

But of course, there’s the money. As much as I subscribe to the ideal that creativity is its own sweet reward, the truth is that I have a mortgage, and in the event I ever sort out my personal life, may  have other mouths to feed at some stage as well. So, in a bid to prolong how many years I can make some kind of a living from this writing thing, I want to actually move units.

When I was talking to the gurus at Random House about how to market my book, they were firmly of the view that these days, it’s all about social media. You know, web 2.0, interactivity and a whole lot of other buzzwords.  And above all, that means one thing: Facebook.

So, like the obedient first-time author I am, I set up a fan page for myself and invited my friends to join it, as awkward as it seems to have to ask your mates to become your “fans”. I even did something that I would usually go to considerable lengths to avoid, and put up a video of myself.

I guess the point is to set off a grassroots groundswell that makes geeks across the nation realise that they need my book in their lives as badly as they need sunlight and interaction with the opposite sex. (And I’m allowed to make that joke because hey, I’m one of them.) That hasn’t exactly happened yet – after a strong beginning, my fan army now numbers about 130 – but I’ll bet that it’s helping to sell books.

But there’s a problem with all this. Facebook has already proven a great way of getting in touch with my friends, and it seems to be quite a good way for me to reach members of the general public as well. Here’s the thing, though. All of this social media stuff is destroying my ability to concentrate.

I have developed a compulsion to check Facebook for the latest update on the minutiae of friends’ lives. For some inexplicable reason, I must constantly keep in touch with who’s getting married and having kids. And, just as prominently within Facebook’s hierarchy of information, I must constantly keep in touch with who had a nice lunch, or didn’t much like that Wolverine movie. Sure, it’s almost entirely a bottomless well of non-essential information, but because it’s about people I know and like, I can’t back away.

Mind you, I’ve always had a bit of an online addiction. To get the novel written in the first place, I kept having to take myself off to cafés without wireless access. But now, I’ve got Facebook on my phone. So there’s literally nowhere except underground bunkers and the Outback where I can’t check it. And this is starting to make me worry makes me worry that perhaps I’ll never actually get my second novel written. So Random House, by encouraging me to use Facebook to promote the first novel, may have also ensured there isn’t a second. Hmm, perhaps it was deliberate?

But there is a way forward. I can simply write my new novel a sentence at a time, via Facebook status updates. Here’s how it might work for the first lines of some classic novels.

Dominic Knight is Ishmael (Moby Dick)

Dominic Knight must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. (The Trial)

Dominic Knight, light of my life, fire of my loins (Lolita)

Dominic Knight died today (The Outsider)

Dominic Knight don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter (Huckleberry Finn)

Dominic Knight, it is a truth universally acknowledged, is a single man in possession of a good fortune who must be in want of a wife. (Pride & Prejudice)

Actually that last one’s true, at least according to many of my relatives. Well, except for the fortune bit. After all, I am trying to work as a writer.

Anyway, that’s enough blogging for now. I need to go and check Facebook.

This post originally appeared on the Random House Australia blog.

Stockpiling books for swine flu

The world has been panicking. As if the climate crisis, economic crisis and Spice Girls reunion tour weren’t keeping us sufficiently terrified, we now have to deal with swine flu. Experts warn that it could become a global ‘pandemic’, a term which I find bizarre because it reminds me of ‘pancake’ and ‘panforte’, making the prospect of a mass disease outbreak seem considerably less scary and considerably more delicious.Numerous Mexicans, and at least one American, have been killed by swine flu. And our own Kevin Rudd is advising us to stockpile two week’s worth of supplies as well as remembering to wash our hands – you know, like he got to do of Mick Keelty today.

All over the world, health authorities are getting tough. In Hong Kong, authorities locked hundreds of tourists in their hotel for seven days after a Mexican guest was discovered to have contracted the disease. Which sounds serious, except for one thing. As long as I wasn’t actually dying of swine flu, being forced to spend seven days relaxing in a hotel sounds pretty much a dream to me.

In fact, I’d love for our government to call on Australians to stay in their homes, like the Mexican authorities have just done, leaving only essential services in operation. It would be my idea of paradise, especially if “essential services” includes Pizza Hut.

Which reminds me – I don’t have enough food in my house for two meals, let alone two weeks. So before all hell breaks loose in our streets, with the dead rising from their graves and mindless zombies wandering around looking for fresh brains, I must remember to visit the supermarket.

So – we’re supposed to be stockpiling food and medicine in case things really start to go downhill. But in the event of a compulsory holiday, we also need to stockpile ways of entertaining ourselves. Over the past year or two, I’ve developed a massive pile of books I really should read, but haven’t quite gotten around to. Perhaps, if I’m forced to spend a week at home, I’ll finally be able to get through Infinite Jest? Well, maybe if I had a month. Or perhaps a year.

A major outbreak would be a wonderful opportunity to work my way through some of the recent releases piled up on my bedside table. I could read more than a fraction of A Fraction Of The Whole, and what better time to read the new novel by a former writing teacher of mine, Debra Adelaide, A Household Guide to Dying? Speaking of which, hasn’t that hit bookstores at the perfect time? Talk about viral marketing.

Okay, so I probably wouldn’t read such literary, high-minded books at all. I’d probably stick to the popular stuff  – you know, keep things light so I can keep my brain cells ready for when I need them for post-apocalyptical survival. I’d probably work my way through Exit Music, the last Ian Rankin, which I still haven’t gotten around to reading. And I haven’t yet re-read the last Harry Potter, and I’m hoping that when I get back to it, JK Rowling will somehow magically have changed the schmaltzy ending.

Now look, I’m not saying I want swine flu to cut a swathe through Australia the way it has through Mexico. I’m not pro-mass death, I’m just pro-mass holidays, that’s all. And I just think it’s a good idea to point out that if everything is shut down, it’d be a good idea to be prepared, and build up a supply of quality reading material.

On which note, welcome to the new Random House website, a perfect source of books to stockpile for the end of the world as we know it. Unfortunately I really can’t recommend my new novel, Disco Boy, but some of the other authors featured on here are pretty good.

In particular, browsing around the site, you’ll probably notice that there’s a new Dan Brown novel coming out soon. And while I haven’t read it yet, I’m pretty confident sure it’s going to reveal that swine flu is entirely the fault of the Freemasons.

NB - this post originally appeared on the Random House Australia blog

Blogging cameo

I'm doing the Random House author blog this week. Really fun writing about writing, I've never done it before.