I had a very big birthday two weeks ago, the sort of birthday
that makes you reassess a lot of things. And by a lot of things, I mean money. Reassessing money obviously leads to reassessing
the writing career.
The average income from writing of an author in Britain is
less than £4000, so that’s not really a lot. Fortunately I’m way above that,
and the recent royalty cheque was very nice thank you very much. There’s a
deadline for the next book, the hardback of the previous one and the
paperback of the hardback before that are doing quite well. The new contract
has tightened up the times, so I’m now doing two books every eighteen months which I
can do while treating patients. But I can’t do when treating patients and
running the business. The plotting of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery is
nothing compared to the receptionist holiday/cover timetable.
There was a question on Facebook recently from somebody and it said,
‘I want to be a writer, can someone advise me what I could write?’. I don’t
even know where to begin with that statement. So I won’t bother.
On the birthday cards for the significant birthday there were a few notes about how I could have walked away and left the writers group and
gone on to better things, but I didn't and that was a good thing. I think that idea needs a bit more analysis. When
I joined the writers group as a unpublished writer, the council paid for a writer in residence. Now, the council won’t even give us a cupboard to work in. I think I’m the most published
fiction writer in the group and Brian, who has guest blogged about his bookshop, is the most
published non fiction writer. But everybody brings something to the table. We
read six pages of our work and the rest of us pull it to shreds. I know I've developed an editorial eye, the American in the group yesterday referenced Encyclopedia Brown in his story yesterday. I tested that with the Bratislava test, it failed (The
Bratislava test is a test of universal reference such as "Houston we have a
problem" compared to "you’ve been Tangoed").
We’ve a script writer in the group and I think timing is the interesting issue there, screen time is not the same as page time. It might seem like a
long lead up before anybody speaks, but in reality it's visual information –
much quicker than information on the page. We have a military vet who's very
good at weapons, but still struggles with the concept of the words on the page
not meaning what he wants them to mean – actually I think we all do that! There’s a self published romantic author who writes for the pleasure of
writing. I suspect her characters are her friends and she enjoys their company.
They wear designer clothes and fabulous shoes and are usually in a state of
emotional turmoil. Her writing is excellent but doesn’t quite want to give
control away to become commercial writer in a commercial market. They are a motley
crew of writers, some who listen very carefully to any criticism and others who
just argue back. But even those arguments help to test your own theories about
what you’re doing and what you’re writing.
I’m not sure the people who said 'it's marvellous that you
still attend this group' actually get what’s going on. There’s an energy, a
creative energy, that burns between us, a cross fertilization of ideas. There’s
discussion on technical points and challenges, there’s computer ludites like me
and people that know technical experts that know everything about computers. We test dialogue, ideas spring out from nowhere, writer's block is discussed and the writer is jump started. It's a very fertile ground for writing full stop. And, while I tend to be disciplined about writing, there's always an extra push to get something done for the Thursday night.
I’m not a short story writer, but I thought I’d try one for
the Nashville anthology. I thought it was very funny. The rest of us thought it
was very funny. The American was stoney faced as he had no idea what was going
on. Back to the drawing board I guess. My short story failed the Bratislava
test!
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