Getting started: what's stopping you?

You know you want to write a book. You have a notebook full of scribblings and 4am insomnia ideas that could just work. You even possess that fabled hour every weekday to write, and the knowledge that if you actually used your daily hour, you'd have written an entire book by the end of this year. And a book might get you a pulisher, and a movie deal, and, and, and.

So what's stopping you?

Truth number 1: Writing is scary.
Yes, uh-huh. You actually have to put words down, and some of them might be crap. A lot of them. Maybe even all of them. The author's ego is delicate. Thoughts of being a writer who writes crappy words causes intense pain. My advice is that it's better to write something than nothing. 'Something' you can at least work with - say, edit it, polish it, give it a nip and tuck or even a whole makeover; 'nothing', however, will remain nothing.  

Truth number 2: Writing is hard work.
I've just finished reading a novel by one of my favourite authors – On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks – and a wry passage on the process of writing fiction rang true.

' … From what he could gather from novelists' own diaries and letters, the urge that was common to them all was a need to improve on the thin texture of life as they saw it; by ordering themes and events into an artistically pleasing whole, they hoped to give to existence a pattern, a richness and a value that in actuality it lacked. If after reading such a novel you looked again at life – its unplotted emergencies, narrative non sequiturs and pitiful lack of significance – in the light of literature, it might seem to glow with a little of that borrowed lustre; it might seem after all to be charged with some transcendent value.
These poor writers depicted themselves engaged in this heavy task: from people they knew or met, they gathered characteristics for their imaginary humans; from conversations, they pulled out thoughts that could be developed into themes; houses they had visited were relocated and refurnished; other writers were absorbed, assimilated for what they could unwittingly donate; from some less recognizable source the power of pure invention was mobilized, while over it all the artistic intelligence shaped an entity that would thrillingly exceed the sum even of these rich parts.
To Charlie it looked like very hard work. …’
  

Writing is the best sort of work, if you ask me. A week ago I started writing my new interactive novel, The Last Book in the World (um, hopefully not), and every time I sit down to write – in that precious hour before I fetch my daughter from daycare – I feel anew the rush of creating a whole world, of having the freedom to write what what I like. But it’s still work. I always have to force myself a little to sit and write (after all, it’s not compulsory, not like freelance journalism deadline) but I find it’s always worth the effort because of the way it makes me feel: mischievous, empowered, mysterious, interesting, interested, alive.

The trick to getting started? Start anywhere – at the end, at the beginning, somewhere in the middle, or with a key scene that keeps squatting in your mental space. Go, go, go! Sorry to have to remind you, but one day you’ll be dead and you won’t be able to write. Nope, not at all. So sit at your PC every day. Make it a habit. And start writing anywhere.

Write the novel of your dreams with The Peacock Book Project: www.peacockproject.net

How to write for magazines

Why not earn some extra cash by writing magazine articles? Catriona Ross, freelance journalist and author of Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, shows you how.

A recession is an opportunity to explore creative new ways to boost your income. If you’ve always enjoyed writing, moonlighting as a freelance writer for magazines is a relatively easy, low-risk, fun option. Here’s why you should try it: firstly, you don’t need any specific training to become a writer. No competency tests, entrance exams or professional qualifications are required to get your name (or byline, as it’s called) into a magazine. If you don’t have two years’ experience in a newsroom, or a first-class degree in English, or even a school-leaving certificate, nobody minds. All you need is the ability to sniff out good story ideas, pitch them to the right publications in an appropriate way, and write professionally. And these are skills you can learn right now.

Secondly, there’s plenty of work available, as magazines are big business, even in the darkest times. Online magazine store www.themagazineboy.com lists over 1,300 US titles; www.onlinenewsagent.co.uk lists a whopping 3,000 UK titles. Some magazines rely completely on freelancers to fill their features pages, while others use freelancers for just a couple of stories per issue. In my experience, the average mainstream magazine buys up to 10 articles from freelance writers every issue. This is excellent news for you, the writer: magazines need you.

THE 6 THINGS YOU NEED TO BE A WRITER

1. A notebook and pen;
2. A computer;
3. Something to say
4. and a desire to say it;
5. An hour and a half per day to write;
6. A place to write, preferably with a door you can close.

HOW TO FIND ARTICLE IDEAS

Carry a notebook. As a freelancer writer, you need to come up with fresh story ideas – and your greatest ally is your notebook. Whenever you hear, see, smell, touch, taste, feel, or do something that makes you think, ‘Hmm, now that’s interesting,’ whip out your notebook and write it down, otherwise you’ll forget it. Trust me, you won’t remember that brilliant insight in a few hours’ time when you’re back home at your desk. Write it down immediately – that quote, book title or place name – and you’ll be able to build a whole feature article around it.

Mine your personal experiences. Especially when starting out as a freelance writer, it’s handy to draw on your stock of personal stories, as these articles don’t require much research. Which aspects of your life would you like to write about? What unusual experiences have you had? Maybe you’re renovating a farmhouse and could write a tongue-in-cheek column about the experience for an architectural magazine. Or you learnt to ride a bicycle at age 21, and want to share the agony and ecstasy of taking your first cycling holiday. Or you’ve been a poker pro since the age of nine, and can write a handful of articles on the subject, from how-to pieces to humour. Or you’d like to tell others how you finally kicked your sugar addiction, and how your new my-body-is-a-temple attitude has boosted your well-being. 

Trawl the press weekly for ideas. Cut out magazine articles and news snippets you find intriguing, plus any articles that make you think, ‘I wish I’d written that’.

Get onto the mailing lists of publicity companies. Public relations companies exist to promote the people, products, events, businesses and organisations on their books. If there’s even a slim chance that you, a writer, might be able to offer them editorial coverage, they’ll happily bombard you with informative press releases, invitations to swanky launches of new restaurants and galleries, contact details of interesting people, and hot tip-offs.

Offer to tell people’s stories. Everyone has a story, from the interesting to the gasp-worthy. When friends, family or strangers share the tale of, say, their amazingly amicable divorce, or the revelation that hit them while being robbed by two young gangsters, or their recovery from an eating disorder, or their fraught adoption of a Russian baby, or how they successfully negotiated a raise at work, gently ask (at an appropriate time, perhaps later) whether they’d like to share their story with others in the form of a feature article. Offer to interview them at a convenient time. Consider rounding out the story by adding expert comment and possibly a couple of other case studies to highlight aspects of the theme. Then pitch your article idea to a magazine. Simple.

HOW TO APPROACH MAGAZINE EDITORS

Having worked as both a features editor and freelance writer, I feel this is the most practical, preferable sequence of events:

Step 1: Email your story pitch (article idea) to the commissioning editor or features editor of the magazine. This should be a one-paragraph summary of your idea, written in a compelling way. If you have photos to accompany your story, send a couple of samples, but no more. First impressions count, especially in emails, so make sure you spell the name of the commissioning editor correctly when emailing your pitch to him or her. Phone the magazine’s switchboard and the receptionist will usually happily supply the relevant name and email address.

Step 2: Ideally, the editor accepts your pitch and commissions you – in other words, asks you to write the article outlined by you in your email.

Step 3: Email back, accepting the commission. Now is the time to bring up the question of pay rates. The editor might have included a word rate in his or her email to you. If not, simply write ‘My rate is RX per word.’ Try not to get into arguments over your payment rate, especially if you’re offered something lower than you were expecting. Negotiate diplomatically, but keep things friendly and professional if you’re hoping to build a relationship with the editor. Inexperienced writers are often offered a lower rate (from R2 a word) while experienced writers earn from R3 per word upwards. In the US, pay rates range wildly, from 14c a word up to $3 a word, with the average at $1 a word. In the UK, mainstream consumer magazines pay between £375 and £500 per 1000 words.

What if you’ve sent out story pitches but nobody’s responded? After a week or two, follow up on the article ideas you emailed. Simply resend your pitch or phone up, and say in a friendly way, ‘Hi, I’m just wondering if you’re interested in this story.’ Don’t take their silence personally. Don’t threaten, plead or whine: editors are frantically busy at all times. You may need to jog their memories, but never stalk them. If you get no response after two more tries, send your pitch to another magazine.

HOW TO WRITE A GREAT MAGAZINE FEATURE

Magazine editors want punchy, well-written, quick-to-read stories that convey relevant information to their readers with clarity and ease. Flair, individuality and a dash of humour – where appropriate, of course – are appreciated too.

First, soak up the magazine’s style. Read through recent issues to gain a solid sense of the appropriate tone and style of writing. What’s the profile of the typical reader? What’s the magazine’s voice? And what’s the right tone for a story like yours? (Within the same magazine, a humorous column will differ in tone from a serious investigative piece.)

Always write in good, proper, grammatical, standard English. Email- and chatroom-speak (writing everything in lower case, sans punctuation; using abbreviations like ‘rofl’, ‘imho’ and ‘lol’) and text messaging abbreviations such as ‘c u l8er’ and ‘2nite’ aren’t acceptable.

A magazine article needs three key components:

1. a seductive introduction that lures readers in and promises lots more where that came from;
2. a body that’s fleshy, fascinating and satisfying – and keeps them interested right to the last paragraph;
3. an ending that leaves them with something to think about.

Remember to…

·          Keep your writing clear, crisp and direct. Avoid long, convoluted sentences and words which might make you sound erudite but whose meaning you aren’t 100% sure of. Don’t preach, and don’t try to impress anyone. Calmly put your ego aside, and try to communicate the story as succinctly as possible.

·          Cut or rewrite any waffle. This includes 1) any boring sections, 2) anything that impedes the flow of the piece (don’t devote too much space to tangents or minor points; if they’re truly interesting, consider a sidebar instead), and 3) information that adds nothing to your story.

·          Get a second opinion. Ask a trusted friend or colleague (preferably a writer) to read through your work and point out any problem areas that require rewriting.  

·          Back up your statements with information from reliable sources. This might include statistics published by recognised authorities, results of reputable scientific studies, and quotes from eminent specialists in the field.

·          Credit all sources. When you present information you haven’t thought up yourself, you need to credit the source, whether it’s a book, newspaper, another magazine, a movie, a study or report, an organization, company or person.

·          Pepper your story with spicy anecdotes, interesting quotes, and relevant facts and examples.

·          Kill all clichés. Sure, we beat around the bush, can’t believe our eyes, never say never, wear rose-tinted spectacles, take leaps of faith or avoid them like the plague – but a good magazine journalist never resorts to clichés.

For more helpful advice, plus tips from magazine editors and successful freelance writers, read my book Writing for Magazines: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know. Good luck, and get writing! 

What reminds you of your heritage?

A friend and I were talking recently about the importance of heritage - and, specifically, small visual reminders around the home that bring to mind one's ancestors. After all, our unique combination of genetic material is inherited from a vast family tree stretching back to the beginnings of humankind. Each one of our ancestors who survived to reproduce and pass on DNA to us lived a life - a full life of pleasures, pain, heartbreak, loves, losses and moments of transformation. We have our ancestors to thank for our bodies, talents and temperaments, and it's good to be able to nod to an old family photograph or other tangible reminder of this amid the bustle of daily life.

My father lives overseas, and every time he visits South Africa, he brings me a reminder of some of the people who gave rise to me: perhaps a small pepper canister from somebody's kitchen a century ago, or a letter written in copperplate, or a black-and-white photograph with a name and dates written on the back. One such offering hangs in our passage in the farmhouse: a pencil drawing of a bouquet of flowers from 1887 by my paternal great-grandmother, whose nickname 'Nina' lives on in my little daughter today.

Most recently, I was thrilled to discover that my great-grandfather, the Scottish novelist and poet Neil Munro, has been digitised! Yup, his famous Highland murder mystery, The New Road, first published in 1914 by Blackwoods and included in The List's 100 Greatest Scottish Books of All Time, is now available as an ebook from Merchiston Publishing. See http://newroadmunro.wordpress.com/ for details. Thanks, Neil, for the words - and may they live on in those of us who've inherited your writer genes.

What is your soul's theme tune?

I adore music. It's why, when devising The Peacock Book Project , I couldn't help slipping in a theme song for each chapter and adding links to songs that reflect the mood of a particular scene - all of which add up to a personalised soundtrack for my novel. The Peacock Book Project may be an interactive creative writing programme, but it features sound and imagery too. Because it can. Because free technology makes it possible.

Maybe you're like me. Maybe particular songs speak to you at particular times. Over the years, I've realised there's one piece of music that could possibly called be the theme tune to my soul. What I mean by this is that its vibrations touch me on every level, every time. The energy it emits corresponds so exactly to something buried inside me that whenever I hear it, I forget the stresses, screw-ups, traumas and difficulties of life, and reconnect with the pure energy from which we're all originally made. Seriously, within two minutes of listening to the 11-minute first movement (moderato) of Rachmaninov's piano concerto No. 2 in C minor, opus 18, I am changed.

The movement begins with dark, deep, rich chords that build and swell. Unashamedly passionate, outragiously opulent, the sounds thrill and rejuvenate me. Somehow, Rachaminov's harmonies and lyrical themes inject me with the frequencies of freedom, power, infinite possibility, happiness. Recently, I've been listening to the moderato at night, lying on the floor of our sitting room, spread-eagled on the Persian carpet, while the old floorboards creak with the music's vibrations and my one-year-old daughter climbs all over me. It's as if the cells of my body are thirsty and need to drink in the sound. This is therapy of the quickest, most pleasurable kind. Not bad for 11 minutes at home alone - and all I needed to do was press 'play'.

What, I wonder, is your soul's theme tune? Feel free to share it on the the Peacock Book Project's Facebook page. And look out for the Rachmaninov in Chapter 5, appearing next month...  

Author Marina Lewycka on sudden fame, the seriousness of comedy, and her new novel, Various Pets Alive and Dead

This interview with the best-selling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian originally appeared in the Sunday Times Lifestyle section, 24 June 2012.

When she appears on my Skype screen, Marina Lewycka is lying in bed. ‘Excuse my hair; I’ve just been for a swim,’ she says with a sheepish look.

Lewycka (pronounced ‘Lewiska’) not only conducts interviews from her bed at home in Sheffield whenever possible, but writes her novels there too, on a laptop. ‘It’s comfy and cosy in bed, and you can shut yourself off. It’s much nicer to sit back and have cups of tea at your side and a hot water bottle under your knees than to sit at a desk. I could spend six hours a day in bed, but it does get a bit hard on the body,’ confesses the writer, now in her mid-sixties.

Dismantling the webcam, she takes my eyes on a quick tour of her bedroom, past an antique mirrored cupboard and a shelf stuffed with books to the window, where I peer down a few storeys of red-brick house to her spring garden, momentarily lit by a pale English sun.

The tale of Marina Lewycka’s late-in-life literary fame has become legend. ‘Until my mid-fifties, I was really a housewife who stayed at home,’ she says with self-deprecation. ‘But I’d always wanted to be a writer. I’d tried writing Mills and Boons, and had a go at thrillers. In fact, I’d written two complete novels, in longhand, and got very dispirited.’ A part-time lecturer at her local polytechnic, she was approaching retirement and was invited to take any course offered by the institution gratis. She chose a creative writing course, ‘and that,’ she says, ‘led to my breakthrough.’

Among the external examiners was literary agent Bill Hamilton of A.M. Heath in London, who, after reading her manuscript, signed her up. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian was published in 2005 and sold over a million copies in the UK alone. The hit comedy about two sisters whose widowed father, a former engineer writing a history of tractors in Ukranian, marries a much younger Ukrainian immigrant, was followed by Two Caravans in 2007, We Are All Made of Glue in 2009, and Various Pets Alive and Dead last month.

Success flipped Lewycka’s life around. She describes not only the fulfilment in attaining her dream – of ‘having always really known I was supposed to be a writer, having worked for it terribly hard for so long, and then it all happened at once’ – but the downside: ‘When something is no longer a dream, it becomes a day job. I’m 65 and I’ve never worked so hard in my life! My friends are retired, and I wish I could relax, like them.’ But for the next few months, following the launch of her new novel, she’ll be giving talks and interviews, doing readings and book signings at the Scarborough Literary Festival, the London Book Fair and other events. ‘Then it will all calm down, and the story that’s at the back of my head will come out – I hope.’

Lewycka’s first literary effort was a poem written at the age of four. Born in a German refugee camp, dark-haired Marina was a year old when she and her Ukranian parents moved to England. Her father, who worked for International Harvester tractors in Doncaster, ‘considered himself a poet, and was actually quite good,’ she recalls. ‘My mother was one of the great story-tellers. She’d tell me about life back home in Ukraine – what people did in the winter, the names of their pet animals.’

The author remembers a stimulating, multi-cultural household filled with her parents’ friends from France, Germany and elsewhere, partly thanks to a warm, embracing mother who liked to invite interesting people home and feed them cake. Lewycka, however, was uncomfortably conscious of her own foreignness throughout childhood. ‘I grew up in the habit of seeing myself on the outside of things. It’s not nice for a little kid, but for a writer it’s nice to be on the sidelines, watching.’

Early feelings of exclusion may explain her empathy for those marginalized by society – the immigrants, refugees and elderly figures who appear in all her novels. Always full-blooded, quirky and indomitable, these characters offer more than mere entertainment value by humanising the people one might unconsciously regard as ‘other’.

Their presence reflects too the years Lewycka spent writing handbooks for Age Concern, Britain’s support organisation for the aged, and Mencap, the charity for people with learning disabilities. ‘I’d interview families for the handbooks and write about them in the first person. I still had dreams of telling their stories in novels one day,’ she says.

‘When I started writing Various Pets Alive and Dead, a Down’s Syndrome boy I knew popped up in my mind. He was so enthusiastic, so full of life, and could do anything he wanted, such as go off to the Special Olympics.’ This case study inspired the character of Oolie-Anna, a lusty, loud young woman with Down’s Syndrome who is desperate to leave home and live in her own flat, while her adoptive mother, ageing hippy Doro, struggles to let go.

The novel illustrates actual situations Lewycka encountered during her work with Mencap. Children with Down’s Syndrome live longer nowadays than they used to, and, as Lewycka points out, ‘What happens to them when their parents grow old or die? One needs to plan for the possibility of their outliving their parents.’ In Various Pets, a perky social worker finds Oolie-Anna a job and irritates Doro with such platitudes as, ‘But in the long term it’ll be better for everybody if Oolie-Anna can spread her wings and learn to fly’.

Various Pets Alive and Dead is a characteristic blend of farce, wit, pathos and social awareness. ‘I’m actually a very serious person, but I’m not good at writing serious things. They come out with a light touch,’ explains the author, a fan of British comedy classics including Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. ‘You think comedy isn’t serious but with comedy you can say such a lot that serious can’t. Comedy can expose the depths of the human soul; funny is what we are when we least intend to be.’

            A wry exploration of modern values, the new novel moves between three narrators: Doro; her son Serge, who’s pretending to finish his maths PhD at Cambridge while secretly raking in money as a City trader in London (a position that would horrify his anti-capitalist parents); and her daughter Clara, a primary school teacher. ‘I’m a bossy sort, like Clara,’ Lewycka laughs. ‘Actually, there’s a bit of me in all my characters.’

The storyline involves two present-day locations, flashbacks to Doro and Marcus’s lentil-infused commune in the 1960s, loads of backstory to inform the present-day plot, plus various pets. ‘It was very complicated to write,’ Lewycka admits, ‘as the backstory and real world had to dovetail together. If I changed one tiny thing, I had to go through the whole novel and change a whole lot of others.’ Yet she clearly thrives on complexity: Two Caravans featured nine interlinked narrative voices, including a dog.

Having taught media studies at Sheffield Hallam University for twelve years, Lewycka acknowledges the rewards of teaching but adds, ‘There are some really, really awful students and you wish you could flog them. There are departmental meetings, and days when you just don’t feel like doing the marking…’

Since retiring from teaching in December, Lewycka has more time for writing in bed. Her daughter and granddaughter live in New Zealand, and her partner, a historian, is based in London. ‘He and I go between the two cities,’ she says. ‘It’s nice to have gaps.’ Her next novel, the second of a two-book deal, will probably be set in Derbyshire, feature a child as its protagonist, and involve animals.

Though something of a celebrity in Sheffield, she remains resolutely down to earth. ‘The good thing about being an author is that, on the whole, you’re pretty invisible. That picture of me on the dust jacket of my new book was taken some time ago, so when I go out looking like a bag lady, as I so often do, I’m not recognised,’ she says with satisfaction. In her spare time Lewycka indulges in low-key, very English pursuits: gardening, swimming, baking cakes, taking a friend’s dog for walks in the surrounding Peak District.

It’s unlikely that Marina Lewycka will ever be accused of taking herself too seriously. As she wrote two years ago, ‘I’ve been a “successful” writer for almost five years now, but I never forget that I was an unsuccessful writer for more than fifty. It helps to keep things in perspective.’

(It's never too late to write a novel. Join The Peacock Project's online creative writing programme at http://www.peacockproject.net/, and get started today!)

How to write a bestseller: tips from 5 top authors

Some time ago, I asked five notable South African writers to share their advice on writing a bestselling novel. Their answers show that it’s all about hard work, humility and perseverance.  

‘I don’t think it is possible to set out to write a hit. Readers are smart: they can tell a con at fifty paces,’ said Margie Orford, author of the internationally bestselling Clare Hart crime series. ‘So, feel with your body, write with your heart, edit with your head. Write about what you know, but if you don’t know something then go it find out. Remember this: It takes a very long time to become an overnight success, so work harder than you ever thought possible. Then work some more. Don’t give up. Don’t complain. Just do it again. And then again. And if it’s not working? That thing about killing your darlings is true: if a chapter doesn’t fit, then cut it out, step over the blood and move on.’

John van de Ruit, author of the Spud series, said, ‘Forget about writing a bestselling novel. There is no magic formula for making your book reach people, and I would think that if world domination is your single-minded aim, you are setting yourself up to fail. Rather attempt to write the greatest book you can. Concentrate on the fundamentals of character, plotting, dramatic action, rhythm and subtext, and let the numbers take care of themselves. Don’t be precious about your words, nor marvel at your own ability. Remove ego from your writing, and remember you are a servant to your characters and the invisible presence with the power to captivate.’

‘Write your truth as you see it,’ advised Sindiwe Magona, whose novel Beauty’s Gift Beauty’s Gift was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. ‘Share the feelings that moved you to write about the subject. Submit yourself to the dream as it unfolds through you; with any luck, you shall be as surprised as your readers at what is revealed in the process.’

‘I wish I knew the secret,’ said Lauren Liebenberg, the former investment banker whose first novel, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam, was short-listed for the Orange Prize for New Writers, ‘but this much I do know: you’ve got to take a sober look at every word you’ve written and ask yourself what would make your reader care enough to turn the next page. And the thing that jumps out and grabs readers by the throat is raw, gritty honesty; it’s what brings characters to life and what binds readers to them.’

‘I subscribe to Bessie Head’s words on writing Maru: “…I also wanted the novel to be so beautiful and so magical that I, as the writer, would long to read and re-read it,” said Kgebetli Moele, author of the award-winning debut novel Room 207, and The Book of the Dead. ‘If any section of the writing gets dull, I rewrite or delete, because if the writer cannot read it, how can he or she expect others to read it? There are a dozen good tales I left at the side of the road because they had turned dull and I could not un-dull them.’