A writer's look at the writing industry and the Internet.

Another year past,
another solar orbit.
Time flies, doesn’t it?

My birthday sure came around quickly this year. It seems only a week or two ago that I was digging my driveway out of the snow so that I could head off to Christmas Day festivities, a month or so before that it was Easter, and then a few weeks prior to that it was my previous birthday. Tempus does indeed fugit…

In your pre-teens time takes an eternity, often measured by the arrivals of birthdays, summer holidays, Easter and Christmas. Then you hit your teens and things are then measured (at least where I grew up) by notable birthdays — 13 (teenager!), 15/16 (age of consent), 17 (driving licence) and 18 (drinking age). Aside from the round numbers of 20 and 25, and the more traditional and now meaningless “coming of age” 21st birthday, in your twenties you notice that these events start to speed up. I’m now officially in my “late thirties” and they’re getting even faster. But there’s hope once you get into your forties, fifties and beyond. No, wait… I got that wrong. There isn’t. It just gets faster still, so I’m told.

But it’s not all bad. Growing old is a privilege that most of humanity doesn’t get — even in this day and age. I also like to reflect that those who have achieved mighty things had exactly the same hours in each of their days as I have in mine. If anything, we have more leisure time available than any of the generations who have gone before us. Most of us get Saturday off for a start, saying nothing of not having to forage for food or shelter, and living twice as long with better quality lives than people even a century ago. And while it’s a far cry from the futuristic computer utopia we were promised in the 1970s — that computers would reduce our working days to 4 hours or less with the same productivity and pay — the reality is that we’re required to get more done in the same amount of time simply because we can.

The plus side to this is that we can achieve more in each of those days than ever before — the trick is to make what you’re doing meaningful, if and where you can. And that’s exactly why I’m writing and working on building a career as a writer.

While exactly how I achieve that is still slightly nebulous (to use classic British understatement), I am working on creating a short story each week and submitting it to publishers, building my technical skills as a writer (not that you’d see it in this long and winding, self-indulgent ramble of a post), testing out how social networking can complement my activities, building a network of contacts and going to conferences. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating journey that I’ve just begun, and I’m enjoying all of it.

I received an excellent birthday present from the Open University last night: the results of the writing course I’ve recently completed. It’s a result with which I’m extremely pleased, and the tutor’s marking and personal comments are extremely encouraging. The tutor is also encouraging me to turn the piece I wrote for the assessment into a full book, so I suppose that’s high praise? She’s also encouraging me to take the next level creative writing course, which is the natural progression of this creative writing stream. It’s a year-long course costing over £600 and will require 600 hours of study (around 19 hours per week), so it’s not something I’m going to do without serious consideration. But I am serious considering it, and have until late Summer to decide.

Following my own advice on the power of the writing group, I made contact with a local writing group a few weeks ago and began chatting with the secretary, Josh.

The group are called Reading Writers, based in Reading, Berkshire (it’s not meant to be a play on words).

Josh seemed a nice chap and we discussed things ranging from all my queries about the group — including if they were a specific genre group, a literary ‘knitting circle,’ consisted of members with a broad range of levels and types of experience, published and unpublished writers, hold competitions and perform critiques and other challenges to help you progress as a writer — to ideas about publishing, writing tools and software, and other general banter. The whole email experience made the group feel accessible and worthwhile, and I thought I’d share my own experience in case it’s useful to others.

I ended up being the first arrival after the chairperson and secretary, so it was a good chance to introduce myself to them while we set up the tables and chairs. Twenty minutes later the room was full and the meeting began. Tonight’s topic was the Submission Pack and was led by two of the group’s published authors, one primarily a writer of poetry and the other of commercial women’s fiction (chick lit, I think).

The tutorial was run by a combination of lecturing, giving handouts, and individual and group exercises (yes, one of the tutors was a teacher until recently). I don’t think I’m giving out confidential or copyrighted information here (please let me know if I am), and I’m doing so to give you an example of what a writing group can be like.

The Submission Pack — the collection of documents required when submitting work to editors and agents — consists of the following information:

• Autobiography. Roughly half a printed page about you, not your story. Think of it as a job application.
• Synopsis. Roughly one printed page, based around the three-act structure (or similar), including the resolution and ending. It will be read by editors and agents, not your audience.
• Blurb. Not normally written by the author, though sometimes it is requested. Regardless of this, it is an invaluable exercise should an agent ever ask you, “So what’s your story about?” Doing this before you start speaking with editors and agents will provide you with the ‘elevator pitch.’ Condensing it down to a single sentence will provide you with the classic ‘strapline’ or ‘logline.’ Or you can try making something up on the spot when asked. Good luck with that.

The autobiography was approached by getting us to brainstorm and individually list:

• Publishing history. It’s surprising what you can put down, even if you don’t have your name in a magazine or on a novel yet, including any writing prizes and awards.
• Writing qualifications. This including memberships to any writing or reading groups, online communities, and courses taken.
• Unique selling points (USP). Anything that is specific and unique (or rare) to you, not your work. This can include particular skills (e.g. you were once a demonstration parachutist), experience (e.g. you once flew a Cessna to Marrakech and back) or facts about your life (e.g. your family escaped attempted genocide in another country, you have a disability)
• Other relevant information. Anything relevant to your bio that isn’t covered above.

The synopsis was approached by one of the tutors providing us with a synopsis from one of her recent novels and having us go through it, with the aid of a handout that showed the three-act structure and what is expected of a synopsis, and to identify each act. It showed us that a 100,000 word novel with multiple background plots, story arcs, points of view and other complex structures can be condensed into a single printed page that provides an introduction, an explanation of each act as it applies to the main character or characters.

Once we’d done that, we were asked to work in groups of three to write a synopsis of the classic Cinderella fairy tale. I found this initially difficult as I’ve not read, seen or heard that story in its entirety since I was a child but, after a few minutes quite a bit of it came back to me. In reflection, what I found most notable was that the bits I remembered first were the important parts of the three-act structure (rather than the details of what people said, etc): the problem definition and setup, the event that starts it all, high and low points, the darkest (rug-pulling) moment, climax and resolution. That was enough to bullet-point the exercise, and from there it was straightforward.

The blurb was approached by providing examples from popular current books:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Look at the Product Description section for each of these books on Amazon (links provided) — that’s the blurb. In each case, it is a single paragraph that provides a broad overview of the story without going into detail or ruining the ending, but getting you interested. The idea is to hook the potential reader.

From there we were provided a handout containing two groups of straplines and one group of book titles. The first group were actual novel or film straplines that most of us recognised, the second were similar to the first but were written by one of the tutors and we got some of them, and for the last group we were asked to spent 2-3 minutes writing our own straplines. I found writing the straplines quite challenging, and I think it may have been because I tend to write a lot and then edit down to a manageable size; the cost of that is time.

After the meeting had finished around two-thirds of the group went to the pub next door for drinks, so it was great to sit down with a pint and chat with people from all walks of life, and different generations, all with the common interest of writing. Each person wanted to know what I wrote and what I thought of this and that, and was equally passionate about sharing their writing styles and thoughts. Around the table were writers of chick lit, Regency period historical fiction, erotica, hard science fiction, fantasy, poetry, romance, etc. Fascinating.

So that was my experience at my first writing group. I have to say that it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in some time, and I can’t recommend the experience enough to other people. If you’re a writer and are not a member of a writing group, you’re doing both yourself and a writing group somewhere a disservice.