Act Like A Shit And Turn Your Mistakes Into Art

January 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

With apologies to self-help gurus and management consultants everywhere, not all mistakes are learning opportunities.

Some mistakes just hurt. They hurt when you make them and they continue to hurt or to cause damage. Sometimes you simply make a mistake that has consequences that keep on showing up. Often in different ways and on different occasions. Usually when the last thing you want or need is for that particular mistake to be brought to the attention of the people you work for or the people you love.

If that’s a learning opportunity, the only real learning is how to feel regret, shame, and to get a grip on reciting “I wish I hadn’t done that”.

So, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, it goes.

On the other hand, if you are a writer, it’s possible to transmute those mistakes into something useful. Writers – and painters, and composers – work with their experiences to forge material, after all. (And I think it was Oscar Wilde who said “experience is the name we give to our mistakes”.) Cartoonists, too.

I mention cartoonists especially because it was a picture from Hugh MacLeod – one of his daily emails from gapingvoid.com – that set me off on this particular train of thought. The picture is not one of his best but in the accompanying text he talks of mistakes – ranging from failed relationships to addictions – and ends with the thought that:

I’m as guilty as anyone; I’ve made silly, random mistakes in spades. Luckily, I can draw a cartoon about it later…

There seems to me to be two dangers inherent in the belief that mistakes can be later used as ‘art’, for want of a better word:

  1. Justification and special pleading (after the mistake) – it’s easy to take a stance of ‘I can do what I like because I’m an artist’. This is the sort of thing I used to love reading in the biographies of the big drinking writers of the past. As I grew up, and as I saw it enacted in the behaviour of some of my friends, it became less attractive. And I’m ashamed to admit that I have been guilty of this.
  2. Carelessness (before the mistake) – if I sense that I can ‘make something’ out of any experience I inhabit, however painful to myself or others, then I might just be a little less rigorous in following my inner moral compass and so increase my risk taking. And when in you’re in the risk taking zone, it’s easy to think that if harm occurs, it will affect only you. It rarely does.

You can see that I’m leaning towards using the term mistake to cover a multitude of sins. And, regardless of your moral philosophy – or even faith – sins is what many mistakes turn out to be when other are harmed. At the same time, I’m trying not to come across as some sort of moral watchdog. What constitutes mistakes (or even sins) is very much for your own conscience to decide – and it is your sense of unease (dare I call it guilt?) which will most often tell you when you have transgressed against your own moral code.

The whole question of whether art derives from moral, immoral, or amoral places (or all three) is a discussion for another day.

And apologies to Hugh MacLeod for turning his possibly lighthearted line into the basis for a darker thought.

You can subscribe to Hugh’s daily cartoons (and accompanying thoughts on life and business) at the gapingvoid website.

Filed Under: Just Writing Tagged With: , ,

Lose Control Of Your Characters And Feel Proud

January 4, 2013 By 2 Comments

I’ve just read a really good piece on writing characters that come to life – and how we relate to such characters in the books we read, too – by Cory Doctorow in his latest column for Locus Online.

The wonderful feeling that arrives when characters you have created suddenly start ‘doing it for themselves’ is one of the joys of writing. It gives you all the pride of parents watching their children grow up and leave home but with none of the associated regrets and grief. There is no sense of loss.

In many cases, this is what you’ve been waiting for, after all. Now you can start living again.

When you start writing and the characters first inhabit the page, they tend to be sketchy and lacking in depth or whatever substance rocks your boat. As you work with them by giving them some words and let them interact with other characters or discover that they know, think, and feel things, they grow flesh. Slowly.

Finally, like some Doctor Frankenstein, you give them a final jolt of juice – and often the required voltage and duration are not something you can anticipate – and the character is suddenly animated and ready to walk on its own.

Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious when it happens. It can also take different forms. There are the times when you pick up a story that you’ve set aside to marinade for a few days or so and read it again and simply can’t remember writing some of the things a character says or does. This is when you check your prescription or wonder whether someone else in the house has the password to your Mac. You could swear that there have been changes between you closing the file last time and opening it this time.

At other times, you’re in the flow and writing and time is passing and you haven’t thought of sharpening a pencil (useful when writing on the Mac!) or getting yet another coffee when suddenly you sit back and realise the characters have done things you weren’t planning. “I didn’t see that coming,” you say. Which makes you feel a little weird, considering you’re the one driving the keys.

You take a swing back through the text and you spot where you lost control. And I use the term without negative connotations. In this case, losing control is good.

Let me know how or when you lose control in your writing. Does it happen more often when you’re ‘in the zone’?

And go read Cory’s piece. He’s always worth reading, whether as a novelist, blogger on BoingBoing, copyright theorist and activist, or commentator on technological trends.

I suspect that Cory Doctorow may actually be a writing co-operative based in downtown Toronto with contributing members spread across the globe, primarily in London and San Francisco. This is the only way I can account for the fact that he is so prolific across so many areas.

Then again, the truth is probably that he is a writer and that he does what writers do: he writes.

Filed Under: Just Writing Tagged With:

Look To Successful Writers But Find The Targets That Work For You

January 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In Sundays’s Observer, the subject of the Meet The Author profile/questionnaire was John Lanchester. (I’m looking forward to getting hold of the paperback version of Capital, which is published tomorrow but available today. That’s an affiliate link below, just so you know.)

As always with these authorial profiles, I’m interested to note the writing schedules and word count goals. When asked if he kept set hours for writing, this is what John Lanchester said:

No. Just try to get the writing done first in the morning……..I don’t do anything until I’ve got the day’s writing done. I have a word count for every day: 500 for fiction, 1,000 for non-fiction and journalism is 15,00. That’s a level I can sustain.

Lanchester’s 500 words of fiction puts him in the same train compartment as Graham Greene, who also stuck rigidly to the 500 words every day goal. When I first read about Greene’s daily limit I thought it was quite low and that these must be 500 words ready for publication. I know better now. In fact, earlier in the Observer piece, Lanchester explicitly states that “you just need to get through a first draft”.

What are your writing targets for this year?

I’m sticking with a 2,500 words a day target this year, which is broken down in the following way:

  • 500 words of fiction
  • 1,000 words of blogging (across WKW and my business blog)
  • 500 words of script work (for the TV series I’m working on with Anthony Barry)
  • 500 words of general self-indulgent goodness (a.k.a. ‘The daily purge’)

At this time of year it is so easy to give yourself unrealistic targets. I know; I’ve made that mistake far too many times. And the problem is that, when you don’t reach the set target, you decide to give up on any targets. After my year of writing in 2012, I know that 2,500 words a day across a variety of different writing topics is achievable. I also know that, should I miss that target one day (or even two days in a row) it doesn’t make me a loser or a weak-willed nobody. I just make sure I hit the target the following day.

John Lanchester appears to disagree with this approach. When asked what happens if he doesn’t reach his word count total on a day, he says:

I never fail to hit the target. Next stop: abyss. If I’ve missed the target one day, why ever again?

I suspect Mr Lanchester may be a strict parent.

But that’s the thing about writing; you need to find your own method of working in the same way that you must find your own voice. Look to successful writers for clues and learn from them but if something doesn’t work for you, drop it and try something else.

You can read the whole (quite short) Observer Lanchester piece online.

Filed Under: Just Writing, Writers Tagged With: , ,

A Wee Look Back – And A Look Ahead To 2013

January 1, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It has been a long silence on the blog. Apologies.

New Year’s Day seems to be a perfect moment to reignite the blogging habit – and to review the past year.

When I started WritersKeepWriting in January last year, my primary aim was to goad myself into regular writing – and by doing so show how a ‘failed’ writer could turn things around and get the words done. I may have fallen short of my most ambitious goals but in contrast to all the years the preceded 2012, 2012 itself has been a writing success. Here is the final scorecard:

  • Three volumes of short stories published for Kindle
  • Around 750,000 words written in the year
  • The first draft of a novel completed and ready for me to revise over the next few months
  • A total of 33 stories written during the year

As I say, compared to where I was at the end of 2011 (with nothing written), that is not half bad. I remember sitting down on the bed in my room in Valloire in the French Alps early last January and starting Fresh Snow and thinking about the new blog.

[A quick aside. My son (17) has just come into my study and asked if I have any ‘good books he might enjoy’. Although the two are not necessarily linked, he walked out with Catch 22, which I gave him because he has been getting interested in the Second World War lately. The subtext of this encounter is that he spoke to me at all and asked for a book. So the year is starting well on yet another front.]

After that message from our sponsor, I will continue. When I started Fresh Snow I had a sense that I was in last chance territory – and I don’t mean I was snow-bound. There have been many years that I have started writing in the first few days of January and by February I have wondered where all the impetus and good intentions had gone.

Last year was different. I wrote the story – I mean I actually finished the story – and I put it on the site and I started writing another one. And I got up every day and I wrote down some 1000 words of rubbish or whatever was in my mind – which is another way of saying ‘rubbish’ – and then used that spark to move onto something else. By March I was writing a lot of words a day – more words in a day than I used to write sometimes in a year.

What made 2012 so different? I think it was that sense of time running out. I had reached a fork in the woods and was determined this time to take the road less traveled. In other words, to do things differently.

It was time for me to make the choice to write rather than think or talk about writing.

This year I will get that novel out there.

And I also have some great plans for the year that include teaming up with a business associate to deliver some writing workshops and courses. I think 2013 is going to be even more exciting than 2012.

I hope the year ahead brings you what you’re seeking. Up and at ‘em!

Filed Under: Just Writing

My Third Volume Of Stories Is Now Available

November 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I have 70,000 words of the novel done and remain on schedule to complete the first draft by Christmas. Although I miss the buzz and rush of the weekly TAW stories, I think it was the right decision to stop when I did and redirect my focus towards the novel.

But the ghost of TAW lingers on and the third and final collection of the stories (number 21 to 30) is now available from an Amazon store near you. Just saying.

Here are the links you need to purchase your copies:

For a UK Kindle (or Kindle app)

For a US Kindle (or Kindle app)

I believe all three of the books are available via most other Amazon regions, too.

Three books? Yes. You can find mention of the other here.

If you read the book (or have read the others) please leave a review (or a few words, at least) on Amazon that tells those less brave what they may be letting themselves in for.

Filed Under: Fiction, Tale A Week (TAW) Tagged With: , ,
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