The Problem With Carrots

Blog Off

2009-08-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have moved over to another site for blogging.

For new posts, please go to:

I Hate Books - Official!

2009-08-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

I spent the day on the beach yesterday, building sandcastles, eating chips (with sand in) and trying to finish reading Let The Right One In. About fifty pages from the end of this 500 page novel, I mentioned to my wife, 'I think I've just realised, I don't like this book.'

She looked at me as though I was stupid. 'It's taken you that long?'

'It seemed okay at first.'

Then she said, 'You don't like any books you read.'

'Yes I do!'

'No, you don't. Every time you finish a book you say it was rubbish. Name the last book you really, thoroughly enjoyed.'

I had to think. I mean, I really had to think. I came up with Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro, but I read that about three years ago. Then I mentioned Making History by Stephen Fry. That was twelve years ago.

'So, in twelve years, of all the books you've read, you've only enjoyed two.'

I shrugged. 'I'm picky.'

'That's your problem. You read because you think you should, rather than reading because you want to.'

I was a bit zonked by this. I know that I over analyse books as I'm reading, or I have high expectations and get annoyed when the book doesn't measure up but I never realised how few books I actually enjoy. Even looking at the books I've included in this blog, over on the right there, as books I've read recently. Only three stand out as really good: Walking on Glass, Bog Child and Black Rabbit Summer.

So yesterday I decided to read something totally out of my comfort zone. I actually picked this book up by chance, read the first page and got hooked by the voice of the narrator. It's something I never thought I'd want to read. It's The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. And so far, yes, I'm enjoying it. It's 209 pages long; if my wife is right, I'll get to page 180 and think, 'What a load of...'

Stats Update

2009-07-22T03:22:00.001-07:00

Stats are pretty poor for the last few months. I started out this year with some pretty good intentions but things got in the way. I still keep my daily stats and monthly totals. So far, they're not very impressive: (note that these figure are for new fiction only, and don't include editing, which is a pretty lame excuse, but here we go...)

Jan: 17,795
Feb: 11,500
March: 1,800 (oh dear - editing Shingle)
April: 6,000 (a little better, but still low)
May: 0 - nothing - ziltch (I blame my laptop breaking!!!)
June: 4,300 (no excuse)

Actually, I do have a bit of an excuse for June. With two manuscripts out there I wanted to rest for a bit and decide what to do next. I've been toying with ideas for adult fiction for a while, probably because I read a lot of adult fiction and my first novel, The Devil's Prayer, kind of hovers between YA and Adult.

However, to give me a break from the moody subjects of DP and Shingle, I started something earlier in the year based on a sketch. Morbello is about a thief who kidnaps a human kid in order to sell him to clear his debts. He just doesn't count that the kid is just as sly and as clever as he is.

What's nice about this project is that I have absolutely no idea where it is going. With Shingle I spent weeks on plot alone. Writing without a clue is uncharted territory for me and so far, quite surprising and fun.

I'm hoping this will improve my stats for July. Over the past four days I've averaged 1,000 words per day. If I keep it up, even though we're in the middle of the month, I might hit my monthly target for the first time since January.

School's Out

2009-07-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

I always thought of that Alice Cooper song as an anthem for freedom, but today I've seen the other side of the coin.

It's been a double-whammy of a sad day. On one hand, I had to go my son's leavers' assembly and say goodbye to his teachers. Then I had to go to back to work - at another school - and say goodbye to the year six pupils that I have worked with for the past year.

It's strange really, because I originally approached the school, offering to help out because I thought it might help me write better fiction for children. I soon got hooked though, and now I think it's fair to say the school is more important than writing.

Not much more to add to this, just that I'm going to miss a lot of those kids, and I know my son is going to really, really miss his old school.

Bit of a Change

2009-07-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm closing my website down some time in the next few weeks. The blog will still run, so if you are reading this through the website, try opening it in a new window and bookmark the address. Having a website is fun, but I rarely update it, and I don't really think it helps or hinders submissions to publishers. If an editor likes a manuscript, it will go to the next stage, if the editor doesn't, then all the bells and whistles in the world won't make much difference.

Unless your name is Katie Price. :o)

Going Back to My Roots

2009-04-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

Back in December 1986, I had a pretty good idea, just by its size and weight, what the first Christmas present was that I reached for. It was Stephen King's IT.I wasn't a very good reader when I was a kid (I was sixteen that year), so a monstrous 912 page hardback was pretty unnerving. It took me a long, long time to get through, but at the time I thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read. And now, twenty-two years later I can still remember those characters well. Following a discussion on Writewords, along with the occasional (daily !) mention of killer clowns from one of the kids at school, I decided to dig out that old tome. The top was dusty and the pages have yellowed with time, but there's something magical about holding the actual book that meant so much to me all those years ago. Somehow, reading a new copy just wouldn't be the same. Here's a pic...

I wonder how long it will take me this time.

February Stats

2009-03-01T01:43:00.000-08:00

This has been a bad month. 11,500 words. Way below my target.

My main excuse is my lap top, which keeps freezing up, making it impossible to write on the thing. I've wasted far too much time cleaning it up, scanning for spyware and viruses and deleting all the rubbish I never use. Still no good. The only solution is to write late at night on the family computer. But the main reason for my lack of output is redrafting Shingle. That stands at around 33,000 words at the moment and I have a handful of scenes to put in. I've got another few weeks to play before sending it on to Sarah.

So that's it. Nothing much more to add other than my plans to burn the midnight oil through March and see if I can hit a word count I'm proud of.

SHINGLE

2009-02-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

Just completed the first draft of "Shingle" - a teen crime thriller. It's been an interesting project so far because I wrote the original story about two years ago. It wasn't much good so I put it aside for a year or so then decided to take the basic elements and start over. With this second version I tried a new approach, spending about four weeks on plot alone. By the end of that time I thought I had the whole thing watertight - I worked it over and over to make sure the mechanics of the story worked well.

But you can only go to a certain degree of detail in an overview, and once I hit those final chapters I found the story didn't want to fit the mould I'd spent so long creating. The smaller details went against the grain, making my original idea unrealistic. To force it would be wrong, so I went with the flow to see where it would go.

I'm really pleased with the final result. It feels more natural, and proved that too much time spent plotting is really time wasted.

This very tacky photo was taken when I wrote the original version - did you spot the blue fingers? Ugh!

January Stats

2009-02-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

I hit my target! Quite surprised because I had a few non-writing days in the back end of the month. Going back to the original plan, if I wrote a minimum of 500 words per day, every day, that would amount to 15,500. My actual turn out was 17,800 of new material. I'm hoping to beat that next month.

Shingle stands at 25,000 words. I'm on the home straight now, and I'm getting keyed up for The Dealer's Dog, which I hope to make a start on by the end of Feb.

No more short stories in the post - maybe later this month.

All Work and No Play

2009-01-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't murdered anyone, but Jack was right with his page after page after page of repetition. All work and no play drives you mad.

I did pretty well on the 500 words per day thing, even managing to break the 1,000 mark several times, but found that the need to write something was taking over the need to write good stuff. On the whole, the experiment paid off and I've got some great, unexpected results, but some days, you just can't make the time, or your brain feels fried. Besides, I'm concentrating on completing Shingle (currently at 24,000 words) and that requires time to sit and reflect, weigh up all my notes, imagine and project. So sitting down at 11pm thinking, "gotta write something NOW" doesn't really work. At least, not taken day by day.

So I've turned the gas down a touch. However, I am still keeping track, so I'll end up with an end of January total (currently 17,400 words) and can try to beat that in Feb, then in March and so on... do it that way.

Better to do that, and take the odd a day off, than go down the Shining route.

BTW: Love that movie. Still the second best horror film of all time.

So Far, So Good!

2009-01-14T14:18:00.001-08:00

Half way through the month and I've managed to keep to the goals I set out at the start of the year. That doesn't sound much of an acheivement, but to find time to sit down and write a minimum of 500 words per day, every day, soon becomes a real challenge. It's also addictive, and facing the end of the day without having hit my mark makes me feel a bit uneasy. That's probably why the last week of writing has been completed late at night. I'm not going to moan about family life and stuff because the alternative it to get up early in the morning. The answer is simple: if you need to do the work, you find the time.

Anyway, I've got to say that I am feeling the benefits, even after 20 days. I've got three short stories on editors' desks and I've churned out nearly 15,000 words of new work since Boxing Day. I've got loads of stuff for new projects, several short stories and one YA novel. Right now, I'm back on Shingle and it feels good - like I'm over a hill and being dragged by the throat towards the end - great to feel I'm back on track with this, because I really love the story. I'm almost at the halfway point and currently, it stands at 18,000 words; I'm aiming for 45k first draft, unedited. That's the hard part - pushing ahead without editing is tough - it's so tempting to go back and fiddle - but that's the whole point of this experiment, to focus on new writing instead of getting bogged down in editing.

Just needed to get something down to help me keep to these goals. I'm writing this watching Most Haunted Live, and Stuart has just had a right old drama. Great stuff.

BTW - todays mark was 1000 words, during the first half hour of Most Haunted. Sometimes the words just flow!

Starting the New Year Running

2008-12-31T08:16:00.000-08:00

I've tried to gear up before the New Year begins. For the past week I've managed a minimum of 500 words (edited) per day. The result was a 1,800 short story which went into the mail this afternoon. That's the first short story I've sent out in over two years. I've written quite a few over those two years, just never bothered to polish them enough to send out. In fact, targeting magazines is something I've never really pushed myelf on, so another goal I'm setting for the new year is to finish, polish and post a story each week. That's going to be tough; it means writing for markets, rather than finding markets for my favoured writing. It's also on top of work commitments, family commitments and writing novel #2 (15,000 words into that BTW). But what the hell, it'll be fun.

I'm making Saturday my deadline for getting something in the post. I actually posted two stories this week, but I'm counting it as one, as only one is new fiction.

It'll be interesting to see if a) I can keep to the plan and b) if this tactic of machine-gun submissions actually works. I'll post any successes as they happen.

One final point to add here. The story I've just sent out - I had no preconceptions of that before I set out writing. I had no idea where it was going. It was totally a case of sitting down, typing and seeing what came out.

How To Eat An Elephant

2008-12-18T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've decided to set out some solid working goals for the New Year. I normally set goals anyway when I'm working on a particular project - making sure to sit down for an hour or so every day and get some work done. What I don't do is take the same approach when I don't have something to work on. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? I mean, if you've got no ideas, why bother opening the laptop?

The answer: because by sitting down and writing any old crap, your mind kicks into gear, ideas form, link, and stories are born. That's exactly how my story Back to the Angel was written. There was no idea or concept before I started writing. So I know the technique works, but I've let things slipped over the past few months by concentrating on revisions and rewrites instead of the fun stuff.

Anyway, I've got things back in gear since being directed to the blog of Dean Wesley Smith. He promotes this same technique that many professional writers use. Basically, it's a numbers game: knocking out a certain amount of words on a regular basis to get through a first draft in as short a time as possible - regardless if you know what you're writing or not!

Example: It takes me about twenty minutes to knock out 500 words (accunting for corrections, backtracking etc). So, if I do just that, and no more, every day, then it will take six months to turn out 90,000 words (your average novel). If I do 1000 words per day, it'll take only three months. That doesn't mean I'll have a finished novel at the end of that time, but it does mean I'll have a draft that I can work on.

There are, however, days when other things get in the way, and I want a goal I can either achieve, or beat, on a regular basis. So I'm going for 5000 words per week. This allows for a comfortable 500 words per night during the week and a bit more work when I have more time at weekends.

So this takes us back to the title. How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time! The novel is an elephant; an impossible task when you try to plan it in one go. But if you approach it a bite at a time, suddenly it's not so scary.

Pumpkinhead

2008-10-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Whooohoooo. Halloween is here again. Time to cut up a pumpkin, dress up and scare the hell out of the neighbours. Off to a party tonight - going as a Goth, so a bit of a nostalgia trip going on there, but the main reason is I'm too tight to buy a decent costume. Here's a pick of Cameron holding this year's pumpkin.

And here's a pic of me Jack and Cameron off to the party. Sad thing is... fifteen years ago, I looked like that for real.

The Waiting Game

2008-10-29T10:31:00.001-07:00

Probably the worst, most frustrating, yet most exciting time for an author is the submission stage. The Devil's Prayer is finally polished and ready to go. All I can do is sit back, bite my nails and try to find something else to occupy my time. Two things come to mind: TV and XBOX 360. What I really need is space - time to think - some activity that lets my mind go blank to allow new ideas to spark up and play. There's a great big country park nearby. I think I'll go for a walk.

But not right now. I've just bought Rainbow Six Vegas for my console and Most Haunted is on from 8 till midnight. Besides... it's dark.

Gearing Up

2008-10-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

I've spent the summer going over a final rewrite of The Devil's Prayer. It should be going out to mainstream publishers soon, so to coincide with that, I've revamped my website.

If you've come here directly, go to www.colinmulhern.co.uk.

Lucky Me

2008-08-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

My big task for yesterday was to go out and hunt for a four leaf clover. Whenever I pass a clump I tend to look down, just in case, but I've only ever found one that way. This time, I thought I'd take a more scientific approach and concentrate on a single patch and go through it on hands and knees. My garden is full of the stuff at the moment, so why not make use of it. Well, I never managed to find a four leaf clover. Instead, I found the even rarer FIVE leaf clover. When I started taking photos of it, my wife told me I'd reached a new low in boring. I'm not bothered, I think my little clover is class. Here's the pics:

usually the fourth leaf is smaller, but they're all pretty equal apart from the fifth in the centre, which is teeny.

The back view - you can't see the fifth leaf, but you can see the way the four split.

A Search for Inspiration

2008-06-02T03:34:00.000-07:00

Now that college work is out of the way (well, mostly) I thought it was time to clear my mind and search for some inspiration, something to fire up a creative mind. A camping trip! Now I like to think I’m quite impulsive, but that only goes as far as the basic idea. From there, it took me about two hours to sort out all the stuff and pack the car, by which time the kids had been sitting there, all belted up, for best part of forty minutes.

Finally, we got there and half pitched the tent. Work stopped at the increasingly ripe smell of summer dog shit. Rather than move the pitch, I decided to do something about it. I located the offending splat and, after careful considerations of the options available, decided to destroy it with boiling water. The result of this lunatic approach was well cooked, steaming dog shit, and smelling much, much worse than before.

I moved pitch.

The kids were starving by time I’d got the tent up, so no time to start the barbeque - besides, that was for later anyway. For now, we had soup. What could be simpler. I had a camping stove, pans... but no tin opener. Not to worry - I had the camper’s best friend: a penknife! And what comes on every camping penknife..?

Well you tell me, because the device that appeared to be a can opener had clearly been designed by some sadist who despises all campers and had has made it his - successful - mission in life to make our lives a misery by designing a blade almost perfectly inept at opening cans. Ten minutes later, with soup splatters over my t-shirt and jeans and a cut across the back of my thumb, I’d managed to wrench open a gap large enough to shake the contents through. Then I had to go through the whole operation with the second can. In future, if I forget a proper can opener, ie one designed to open cans and not get itself wedged in them, I think I’ll just drive over the thing in my car and scrape up what I can from the road.

And after all of that, and burning my thumb from trying to pick up the pan without the special “gripper” handle (that doesn’t work either), the kids didn’t even like the soup, so it was time to stoke up the barbeque anyway. So as I set it up I took the time to have a beer and soak up some sun. The summer was finally here! Clear blue sky, not a hint of a breeze and a blistering hot sun. Down at the park, the kids were enjoying the weather with their tops off, skin frying in the heat... Oh, hell. I’d forgotten sun-cream. Back in the car, off to ASDA, back to the site, sun-cream everywhere, kids happy, dad happy. Sit, drink beer, get out a sketch pad and do a bit of drawing. I even had a mini watercolour set to paint. The results aren’t wonderful, so I won’t put them up here, but it was good fun to relax and do a spot of painting. I didn’t do any reading, and although I had some writing notes with me, I didn’t do a lot of planning either, but I did manage something creative.

Later on, as the sun began to go down and I realised I’d forgotten anything warm to wear, I went to the clubhouse. This comfortable little watering hole has a pool table, a few bandits and a jukebox, and the sounds of The Beatles’ Ticket To Ride welcomed me inside. This was followed by Europe’s Final Countdown - a nineties beat-mix version, and then back to Ticket to Ride. At first I figured there was probably a Beatles fan in the room. Nothing wrong with that. Except it was once again followed by Europe, and it soon became clear that there were only two working songs on the dukebox. By ten o’clock I thought I was going insane, just as the Bingo started. I could see the kids behind me, still playing in the park with a whole load of other kids, so my choices were to go back to the tent and be cold, listen to other people play bingo, or have a go and see what all the fuss was about.

It was great! I won the first line. Five quid. Ding Dang Doo!

Spend the rest of the night taking long-exposure photos. Here's one.

My New Shadow

2008-05-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve always wanted to buy a black kitten and call him Poe. I first heard the story, The Black Cat when I was about ten years old. We listed to it in class, on a cassette player. Ever since then I’ve had this daft idea that if I ever get a black cat, I’d call it Poe.

We came very close to buying a kitten yesterday afternoon (at an extortionate price), but I couldn’t help feeling a little sad because although it was a very bonny little kitten, it was black and white, not just black – so the name wouldn’t really work.

So we came home without it. I went outside to read in the sun. Paula went upstairs on the computer. Five minutes later she was downstairs, saying she’d found a black cat for sale on the internet, and only half a mile away. Next thing I know, this tiny ball of charcoal fluff is padding about our front room, just waiting for a name.

So this was it! My moment. I’ve waited 29 years for this opportunity. I picked her up and in a clear, commanding voice to all in our house I announced my perfect choice of name.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ came the reply. ‘The kids can name her.’

So she’s called Jasmine instead.

Pulling at the Reins

2008-05-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

Despite what I said in that last post, saying that writing “is what I do”, I haven’t really done a lot of it in the past few days. Well, not really creative writing. I banged out 1,500 words of college work (defining Special Needs and support) this afternoon and I managed 500 words of utter drivel late on Saturday night.

But, on the positive side, I’ve got a fairly good idea of where I’m going from this point on. Rather than diving in, like I usually do, going hell for leather to get the words out, I’m letting this one steep in the back of mind for a month or so, hoping the not-so-good ideas drift away and the good stuff settles.

The more I think about it, the more I want to get started. It’s more of an effort not writing than it is just getting on with it.

The Problem with Carrots

2008-05-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

What sort of title is that? Basically, it’s all about motivation. Think about the carrot and the stick – motivating people either by reward or punishment. The carrot is: “do it right and you’ll get this; do it wrong and you won’t” while the stick is: “do it right or else...”

In writing (for those who want to make it a career) there is no real “stick.” It’s very rare for an agent to receive a submission, consider the material below standard and pay you a visit with a baseball bat for wasting their time. So generally speaking, writers are motivated by the potential reward. There are four main rewards in writing:

the glory of having your name in print
seeing your book, on sale, in a shop
a big pot of money
fame

When I was younger, I think I spent more time dwelling on these things than I did writing. I’ve been writing for over twenty years and so far have had one short story published by a magazine – for which I didn’t get paid, and a selection included in a local anthology – for which I also didn’t get paid.

Of course, I live in hope, and in recent years have moved on from writing as a hobby to taking a more professional approach: writing with a target audience in mind, researching the competition, and finding an agent that I believe in and trust. However, it is only since I changed tactics that I realised that the last two rewards are not very likely (generally speaking, the advances and sales for new authors are quite small) and if a manuscript is accepted by a publisher, it could take a further eighteen months to it being printed. The problem with carrots, for the writer, is that the rewards are so far in the future that you might as well forget them. The hard work comes first, the rewards... well, I've got this idea that if I work hard enough, for long enough, I might see them some time.

So now things are little more in perspective, why do I still write? Why put in all of the work planning out a novel, spending months writing it, more months redrafting and rewriting, leaving it to mature for another three months, then redraft again when the rewards aren't definite, and may never compensate for the hours spent working.

Why?

Because I like it. That’s why. Take all the carrots away and I'll still write.