The Non-Secret of Novel Writing

BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD
Not telling secrets to writing bestselling fiction.
Because she's saying "there is no formula".
Though I do agree with her philosophy that "character is plot".
All the stuff I've ever tried to write follows that maxim.
I wish I could write. I've got a golden idea that I have been scribbling down. I just feel so incredibly low down and I know even if it does get finished I won't make two brass ha'pennies out of it. But I'm going to finish this thing if it kills me. It's an original idea (not "like such and such person's work" or "in the style of someone else".
Some of the worst advice to the would-be author came from somebody I would call a wannabe, a second-rater, a "me too". This person advised you to read other authors who are already publishing stuff similar to what you want to write. O and I just... akh. No.
Anyway I've got to go and write my story. I won't get any less miserable by not writing it...



PS Do you notice how her TV adaptations are so nicely produced? That's because Barbara is married to Bob Bradford, TV producer extraordinaire...

Whirlwindbrains...

I AM LOOKING INTO getting a laptop or notebook computer. Features features features. My head is in a whirlwind. Big or little; notebook/laptop. Which one? Why?... Can anybody give me advice?

As far as I can tell, I would probably do better with a little notebook. Bear in mind I live in VERY low security accommodation, so you need to be able to stash stuff inconspicuously. Also notebooks are far more portable. The only thing they don't have, as far as I can see, is a DVD drive. But if you want one of those, you can just plug one in, surely...?

The keyboard needs to be proper size because I slogged away for months at college learning proper touch typing, which you cannot do on minikeys.

I just had a go on an Inspiron netbook in a mobile phone shop and it was fine. I don't mind no numeric pad.

Is there any other advantage/disadvantage I need to bear in mind while making a choice of machine? I noticed the diddy ones have only 1GB RAM. Can't you get a booster put in for 3 or 4GBs like a laptop..?

O I don't know. Somebody help me, please!!




HAVE I FOUND the real life "giant hellhound", who "looks like a brown bear" Gwendolina dog? Here she is: a Tibetan Mastiff!
Nearest thing I've found to her (my fictional invention) so far:



Isn't she beautiful..!

Tubby trotterdonkey west highland terrier

I SAW THE BEAUTIFULLEST TUBBY TROTTERDONKEY WEST HIGHLAND TERRIER outside the methadone chemists' this morning. He was so cute (surely it has to be a "he" without bits to be that lardy in a little white dog ~ he was like a beer barrel sprouting Daz-white terrier fur!)... I just wanted to take him home. Why on earth I've become so pets-broody of late is beyond me. I am telling myself to be sensible and careful as I have every intention of publishing this bestseller, becoming FAR too rich to reside in the UK and fleeing to foreign shores as soon as possible (remember I've always had this dream ~ rich or not). I dream constantly of Paris and all things French. Monte Carlo and Switzerland are both "tax havens" and both French speaking... and it would be most inconvenient to bring pets there. Of course I have to FINISH the blinkin' thing first. But a boy can dream....
Apart from (exceedingly slowly) penning this novel, I am scheming original (and not too expensive) ways of promoting my book. I am not naive enough to believe that just because a first novel is as good as I can make it people will automatically flock to buy it. No! It needs push push PUSH ~ promote, promote PROMOTE!! And if my publishers won't do it (and I wouldn't count on them to, except in a gentlemanly publisher-like way, I shall have to take charge and bring my genius to the world's notice!
Except in teenage daydreams (but of course!) ~ I have never really wanted to be famous and certainly not a "celebrity". I would like to be a famous NAME, of course ~ like any successful writer. But tacky constantly "Hello" magazine-featured, desperate to dish the latest revelations of my boring life to a queasy public-type desperate celebrity...? No thanks. When I get old (or young, for that matter) I wish to be well known and popular enough to pack out theatres with my one-man show where I'll perch on a blue velvet armchair and proclaim philosophies on life, raconteur funny (true) stories everyone will assume are far more embroidered than they actually are, because my if I wrote my life in a book nobody would believe it (another thing I had against becoming a memoirist rather than novelist)... then I shall take questions from the audience for the last hour... and everyone shall go home in their multiple hundreds feeling that's an afternoon's wages well spent. And I shall be able to go out shopping at Harrods on the proceeds. So you see ~ far from being lettuce-limp and sappy as the nasty MAPLE SYRUP supposed I actually am brimming with ambitions. I simply refused to tell a Hitleress like HER any details at all. Bitch!
Anyway ding-dong the old cow is gone! And I'm so happy about it. I've an appointment with Maple's replacement tomorrow, so I'll let you know how things go...
The drug habit IS still going, I hope you realize. I just got bored posting about it. It just feels, increasingly as winter slowly, eventually drags to its long-eeeked out end... that a new and golden dawn is rising... I can feel it in my veins, my bones, my water. I can feel it. Heroin is nowhere near as exciting as it used to be (like an injection of life itself ~ how I adored it!) Now it only makes me feel dull and tired. And I only take it out of habit. The days off are often my better days now... which just about says everything... I only wish I could take the rest of my life off. That's what I intend to do, but getting to that point seems so incredibly hard... I don't know. I don't know. What can I do except push myself forward? What can I do? "It is what it is!" as Ivana Trump likes to say.

To any fans of Celebrity Big Brother out there (Channel 4, UK television, but you can see updates here) ~ I would say my personality is a cross between nervy Ivana and the laid-back to the point of irritating Jonas-Basshunter.


And that's all I can say for today... Cheerybye all!!


IN THE NEWS: SMITHSONIAN Institute, Washington DC, USA have, for a short time the Wittelsbach-Graff Blue Diamond, reputed to be an offcut of the same giant stone as the Hope Diamond which was stolen from the French Crown Jewels after the French Revolution and cut in two to disguise the theft... Curators have but a few days to perform necessary tests on the two 50 carat and 31 (formerly 35 but it had to be recut as some idiot dropped and chipped it ~ yes you CAN chip diamonds, they are ultra hard but BRITTLE... if science establishes the stones to be related that will be an age-old mystery solved...!

Taking Notes

THAT'S ALL I'VE BEEN DOING... all night... (somehow it feels real meaningful, staying up most of the night doing something ~~ dunno precisely why!) Making copious "notes" re this erstwhile book of mine. Or: put another way ~ huge sections of upcoming chapters written out in the wrong order ahead of time so I'm going to have to fiddle to fit them in. Annoying, but less annoying than not knowing what to say when the time comes to complete my "tome". I feel constipated with bestselling fiction. If I don't get it out of me, I'll die. I can't go on like this. Everything has to be finished, so everything can change. That's all I'm focusing on. Even Maple Syrup can see the change in me. She agrees that if you can't give up heroin you can never move forward. I'm preparing the place to move to when I am totally clean. Just bear in mind I was sick both mentally and physically for years before heroin addiction totally waylaid everything about me. In American terms, if my life is a car-crash, then I'm "totalled". And I've had enough of all this. Had enough and want out. And I'm NOT moving on into a blank void, not if I can possibly help it. All I ever wanted to do in life was be a writer of novels. I mean since childhood. Yes there have been other ambitions and distractions but in truth writing is all I really wanted to do. So I reason: if I can do that, I have my distraction from drugs already up and running. I've already noticed I write much better on methadone than heroin. I don't need to take the drug to write the lifestyle. I lost more than a decade "researching" that one... My unabridged flirtations with drugs now go back about eighteen years. That particular chapter of my life has run on far too long and needs bringing to closure ASAP.
And I don't know how to end this post, except by saying: and that's that!

Illustrated: coloured notes, as illustrated at Mouserunner.Com; the so-called Fleetwood Diary, as penned by Christian Fleetwood in 1964...

A Rivetting Read

I GOT A BOOK out the library and stayed up all night reading it. The author is a kind of friend of a friend of mine... hopefully soon to be Conservative MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire at the next General Election. I have watched her career with interest and wish her all the very best. Louise Bagshawe "the Judith Krantz de nos jours" Her novel Glitz: four ditzy heiresses get in trouble when their evil uncle cuts them off. The resulting fight with Thai prostitute Bai-Ling takes them into all manner of adventures ~~ how I love a good read about rich people who hate each other!

The plot reminds me of another British pop novel that had me rivetted: The Moneymakers by Harry Bingham ~ in that book the owner of a cement mixture (or something unexciting) empire dies and leaves his would-be heirs a challenge: whoever can make the most money in the space of something like five years inherits his £20 million fortune. There was a strong religious undertone in that one, e.g. the baddie's name was James Belial ~ Belial rang a bell... isn't it a demonic name? ... And when they met in a London bar named Apollyon ~ I knew for sure. Apollyon is the name of the Angel of the Abyss in Revelation ... very scary!

I just looked up Belial and it is indeed a demonic name... written up in the Bible as "the sons of the uncircumcized"... but a big character in traditional demonology (where I suspect my knowledge came from)... Wikipedia says Belial is a demonic name mentioned in II Corinthians 6:15 "can Christ and Belial agree?"... but I don't think that's where I know the name from... which is kind of spooky? I've read some weird books in my time... but where on earth would I first come across a name like that?

Well I did have a fascination in the "new age" (ie occultism and the "dark arts" for quite some years... and was drawn to read some quite eerie tomes in years past, that's all I can say on the matter...

Maybe I have sleep deprivation: it's too much cotton-rich socks, or my brains are frazzled... I'd better go and "retire" for now...!



PS Here's a photo of Louise Bagshawe: with looks like that (remember I said she was a friend of a friend ~ I've never met her ~ why on earth her publishers didn't make an inside-cover of that lovely face I've no idea...!

Illustrated: Louise Bagshawe's Glitz; Harry Bingham's The Moneymakers; Belial's mouth propped open in a demonic donkey-derby; The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic "as revealed by Israel Regardie"... which used to be my bedtime reading in one long-lost era... the beautiful Louise Bagshawe...

Clear Space

SEE, I'M GLAD my Mum came by now. My house now seems incredibly spacious and clear... Someone asked me why I couldn't just clear up anyway ~ but I'm never any good at that. I keep things clean for someone ~ and I'm afraid my own self isn't a good enough candidate!

So now I'm sat in a chair not really watching TV, because I'm telling my own torrid tale. I keep worrying it might sell less than 10,000,000 in the first year... what a horror that would be. But these are crosses we writers must bear.

Apart from that I've nothing else to say. My creative juices are flowing into fiction... Must dash ~ I have a funeral to describe!

Famous literary agents: Morton Janklow , Lynn Nesbit (Janklow & Nesbit, New York) Ed Victor, London ...

Novel

I'M BACK TO WRITING MY BOOK ~ again... with nothing to distract me. I told Mumzy and Branzie (my stepdad) they could read the finished product, just as soon as it's bashed out.

From a dismal start last night, when I felt no inspiration at all, I managed about 1500 words. I'm portraying a situation in decay, so each scene must be calibrated against a gradual deterioration, with movement forward as well as back, like a gradually withdrawing tide...

I'm trying to make my work (not just the prose, but its message) as far superior to the average pop fiction than I feel I can manage. You got to try. Surely if you only try and be "average" ~ that's all you'll achieve. I'm reaching for the stars! And I'm hoping my characters come across in 3D. A big pet hate of mine is wooden characterization!

Well, we'll see ...

I'm drawing up a shortlist of agents already. I have dillydallied for long enough. I have wasted enough of my life, so I haven't a moment to lose!


PS: George Orwell was well into making corrections... if you wanna see this page of 1984 close up, just clickonit... 1984 is one of my favourite books of all time. Why oh why British schools insist on teaching the far-less-exciting Animal Farm instead, I've absolutely no idea...

PS I read this interview with a published writer... very strange, she takes the diametrical opposite approach to the one I do. I love pop fiction but never feel unduly swayed by anyone else's scribblings... I can only be myself ~ thank God!

PPS I saw the movie QUILLS last night for the Nth time. Luvverly... though I always forget how horrible the ending is.... And isn't Michael Caine a bastard innit!!
PPPS note the decorator with triangular face-topiary played by True Blood/NYLon's Stephen Moyer ...



DOWN WITH LOVE
I also saw some of this, starring Ewan McGregor and Renee Zellwegger. It's crap!

Breakthrough

WELL I FINISHED my endlessly reupdated chapter one. Which still probably has rough bits, but it needs looking at by fresh eyes. Emailed it to someone I trust who is NOT an addict. No point just giving it to fellow addicts to read they'll probably think it's wonderful just because at last they're reading about fictional characters who live just like them. My book is written for someone stuck on a remote farm in New Zealand and someone riding the commuter train into Manhattan. I.e. normal people who are not addicts and not English. If my points come across to people like these, I've done my job.

I had a very good counselling session. I showed the counsellor the "MS" to my book, as we like to say in the trade ~~!(***if only!***)!! ~ yes and the manuscript is just as well punctuated as that.(!) My counsellor said I was a very powerful person. And spiritual. I said how do you know that and she said she can just tell ... And apart from that I don't know what to say.

Now it's back to that book and chapter two. This is where the rewriting starts in earnest as the old chapter two is just bluster and guff about my characters' past. No dialogue. No "scene" as such. It has to be totally redone. OK I'm outta here. Have a pleasant weekend, y'all!

PS do you like the picture: a blast-from-the-past Amstrad PCW wordie!

THE STRANGLERS ~ GOLDEN BROWN
Classic song about... guess what?

A Random Day

I COULDN'T SLEEP last night. So I randomly trawled my shelves and picked up a Marian Keyes novel ~ which is non-romance chicklit and I found it on the street by the way ~ a story about a literary agent and two novelists. Reading about book publishing wound me up so I was even less amenable to sleep.

But I did learn something about literary agents that should have twigged before. Basically they are essential in today's "market" ~ publishers don't even look at work by unknowns. That's the agents' job. Anyway I learned that fledglings at the agency don't even get a cut of the deals they negotiate ~ which seems most unfair. Only partners do. One of the agents who showed an interest last time was a director at his company. So I know who to approach first next time, don't I?

I also sat up drawing plans for my own book. I need to know where the story's going before I retell it. Telling the story I love ~ not knowing what to tell is torment. Hence this planning in advance.

Once I did get to sleep I couldn't wake up. I spent nearly the whole day sleeping. And now I feel like a dinosaur. And I'm depressed (for no apparent reason).

I have told myself that once my plans take off I'll have far less to be depressed about ~ which seems logical. I just hope it comes true.

On that note I must fly. I never seem to get two minutes on a computer before it's logging me off for lack of time... so I'll see yas tomorrow xx



PS A gust of wind last night hit me so strong I nearly got hurled backwards onto someone's roof!

PPS I saw a picture of Gwendolina in the paper today! She looks just like a bear named Finn who got shot for attacking a mentally ill man who climbed into its zoo enclosure... The horrible pictures are here ... Actually that brown bear oop top looks like Gwendolina too...

Ding Dong Not Merrily On Low

I KEEP THINKING of Andra, the lady who died and what a waste and how sad and poor cow. I feel guilty now. I feel shamed. I feel that my first reaction was callous. This is the thing. About FEELING. She and I both lived in the land of the unfeeling. So when something happens to any of us, it's hard to know what to feel. I feel sorry now.

NA say addicts are divided into thirds: one third do get clean; a third are killed by the drugs and the last third carry on using till they die. Even when the drugs aren't directly responsible they hardly extend life, do they ..?

I felt that I wanted to give a proper memorial and tribute to all those who died ~ the names, faces and lives behind the statistics and I suppose that's part of the reasoning behind my book. I chose to write fiction because paradoxically it's a better medium for telling truth than a living memoir can ever be. To write about real people in such detail would be a gross invasion of privacy. Hence the need for fiction.

I can't think of many good books about addiction, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting is in Scottish but it made a good film. Kate Holden's memoir In My Skin is as much about her career as a prostitute as about drugs but it is a well-written account of the confines of addiction. But neither of these delve far into the nittygritty of life and death. And I think someone should. Hence my book.

I took Sharon Osbourne's autobiography Extreme off the library shelf and found I couldn't stop reading. I don't know about elsewhere but the publishers in Britain are going crazy for celebrity memoirs ~ even when some of the "stars" in question are barely past their mid-20s, and what have they done? Love her or loathe her Sharon Osbourne has lived a fascinating life. She's been a rock manager and promoter. If it wasn't for her, Ozzy would probably be penniless. Reading her story, I realized I had more in common with her husband than I'd cared to admit previously and that the drugs I'd been taking have dulled me and disabled me and I don't need them anymore.

For the first time ever I thought to myself, "I don't need heroin," and felt a surge of excitement. That's a feeling I want to grab hold of ~ to feel good about not taking the drug.

I've already turned tables on just about every other substance. Not only do I not want them, but I'm glad they're out of my life.

When I can finally do that with heroin I'll know I've got some way towards getting this problem licked.

Wahay!!!

Quandry

I only had 15 mins to bash in the above without thought or pause but~
I DID EXACTLY WHAT WALTER MOSLEY SAID in his guide, having written my first draft three years ago. I had assumed it was rubbish because every time I opened a page my eye seemed to fall on something trite or stilted. The fact that it was in my own handwriting was also very offputting.

Then I forced myself actually to sit down and begin reading from chapter two. (Not chapter one because I spent so long hacking it about I know it by heart.) And was shocked. The prose was not bland. The characters sprang out. The dialogue was quite good. So my ideas of scrapping the whole thing and writing another draft in parallel without reference to the first goes out the window.

I'm not someone who believes in redoing anything for the sake of it. So I think what I'm going to have to do is just keep the good bits and weave in the new stuff around that. Gwendolina, the hellhound who lies in a corner chewing a baby doll's face and snarling, for example, features nowhere at all. So I gotta put her in. I said I wanted a horrible dog in my story so in she goes!

So onwards and upwards and all that. And I've got to rush again as the computer's faulted and I'm getting chucked off in three minutes.

Illustrated: Agatha Christie, who sold two billion books ~ one billion in English, yet died leaving about £170,000 ~ under £2,000,000 in today's money. That's bad business sense for you!