Overcoming procrastination

In the last tip I talked about methods of helping you finish what you start; this time it’s how to finish what you start within a reasonable time. Procrastination is the problem: the tendency to put things off. Why do we do it? Because writing is hard work. Also, with fiction in particular, you have to deal with the fear that the magic (for want of a better word) will disappear. I’ve sometimes looked back on Ulterior, examined the breakdown of the story, marvelled at the way some of plot strands came together in unexpected ways, marvelled at some of the prose I came out with, and I’ve thought, Where the heck did all this come from! With fiction, the writer relys solely on his imagination. And there is a tendency to fear that it’s going to dry up. The usual reaction is to put off the writing and not face the stress caused by this fear. And if your house is anything like mine, there are plenty of things sitting around that are only too happy to accommodate you. Load up Internet Explorer instead of Microsoft Word; spend three hours surfing eBay. Or sit in front of the telly and vegetate.

It’s probably a bad idea to have the internet on the same computer that you do your writing on, but often it’s unavoidable. In fact, it’s sometimes quite useful to be able to look up a quick spelling at Dictionary.com or do a quick bit of research on Google. I tried something maverick a few months ago: I bought an ancient Commodore Amiga 1200 computer to use as a word processor. But I found that I missed being able to port my documents quickly between computers using my pen drive. I’m afraid there’s no solution except good old-fashioned discipline: setting a regular period of time aside exclusively for writing.

There’s another major distraction I’ve fallen victim to in recent months. When I come home from work, my usual routine is to make the dinner, then eat it in the living room whilst watching an episode of something on DVD. By the time the hour is over, my brain is so abuzz that it’s almost impossible to sit down at my computer and focus on writing. TV seems to provide exactly the wrong kind of stimulation. But I’m so attached to my dinner-time routine that I’m loathe to break it. An idea might be to go out for a walk afterwards and let myself daydream about the content of my writing, easing myself into the right frame of mind.

Something I’m thinking about doing when I move house is having a creativity room, a place without distractions, where the only things in sight are items conducive to creativity. Like my computer, digital piano, desk, sketch pad, etc. And the golden rule is, when you enter, you do something constructive, whether it’s drawing a sketch, composing a tune, writing a short story, editing a film, or whatever. And if you’re not going to do something constructive, you don’t enter.

Resurrecting an old Saul’s Pupils DVD sleeve

Saul’s Pupils was originally released as a two-disc DVD set, with a cover designed by Simon “Spartacus” Fleming. When Philip Topping (who runs Eclipse Creative) created a new edition of the DVD, he designed a new cover to match, which we’ve been using for the past couple of years.

I decided to shake the dust off Simon’s old cover and give people the choice of printing whichever design is their favourite. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done, because Simon’s sleeve features the words “TWO DISC SET” splashed across the front and a different list of extras on the back. All I had to work with was a JPEG source, which meant that the text was locked into the picture; I couldn’t edit it, move it, or remove it. However, I managed to fix these problems by spending a couple of hours with Photoshop’s “Clone Stamp” tool. This is an excellent feature for hiding cracks in old photos, or for removing unwanted lamp-posts from the front of buildings, or for transplanting someone’s head onto somebody else’s shoulders (depending on your mood).

Moving house - Part II

No sooner have I expressed my concerns over securing the house I’m hoping to buy than it’s done. Just like that. I had to go £5,000 above the asking price, but what’s five grand when properties are gaining ten every year? It’s hard to believe I bought my present house for £70,000 just under three years ago, and now it’s valued at £115,000. That is shocking. I guess it can’t go on like this forever, or nobody’s going to be able to buy anything.

I am so looking forward to getting back to my old neighbourhood. It has been a tough and lonely three years where I am at the moment, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. If I hadn’t got onto the property ladder when I did, I wouldn’t be in a position to buy the house I’m buying today.

Moving house

I have finally gotten the courage to put my home on the market. I’ve been trying to move since last summer, but invariably I got outbid. This time I decided to put my own house on the market, without having a place to go, in the hope that somewhere suitable will turn up. In other words, use a little faith, for once. Here’s the listing.

The main problem with where I live at present is that it’s in the neighbourhood of the school where I work. That means there are about five hundred or so kids who know me in the area. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my job, and I love working with kids. But when you’re outdoors, on their turf, things are different. You get the friendly ones, who’ll say hello, and that’s great. Then you get the shy ones who don’t know how to react when they see you outside; they’re OK. But one of the worst reactions is a kind of snobbery, where the kid pretends you don’t exist. That one is beaten only by the kid who shouts obscenities at you from across the street (and of course it’s always from across the street). Thankfully that’s only happened once. The conclusion to this is that you can’t help tensing up a little when you leave your house. I hate feeling that way. And besides, I miss my old neighbourhood; I miss being within walking distance of my friends; I miss all the old routes I used to run and cycle.

Well, I am currently bidding on a property. We’ll see what happens. God willing, it will work out.

How to finish what you start

Short stories are easy to complete, because they require a commitment of time that spans a mere couple of days. But writing a novel is a real test of your dedication. Sometimes there are good reasons to stop writing a novel, such as when you realise the story’s not quite good enough, or when you hit a brick wall in the story that you can’t break through. In these cases, the author is to blame for his lack of planning. He had a vague idea in mind and a good first scene, so he jumped right in and started writing, full of enthusiasm. 10,000 words later, it’s clear the story’s going nowhere, and there’s often nothing he can do to fix it. I’ve been there, and I’ve learned my lesson from it: Quit flogging a dead horse. And next time, plan, plan, plan, before you write a single word of prose. So, there is a time when it’s right to quit, and there’s a way to avoid being caught in that trap.

That said, there are other reasons why we leave reams of half finished work in our wake. Fatigue is a major factor. I started my latest novel with great gusto during my summer holidays, but when I got back to my day-job, I felt too tired to write in the evenings. That said, if I’d still been as enthusiastic about the story as I was in the beginning, the fatigue wouldn’t have mattered. But you can’t depend on that excited feeling carrying you through the entire slog of the novel-writing process. When it wanes, it doesn’t mean you’ve realised your story is awful; it’s just life. And it happens in all walks of life, from getting a job, to buying a car, to starting a marriage. Excitement does not last; it is a transitory state that fades when you grow accustomed to something.

There is a simple way to avoid quitting in this circumstance: Stop treating writing as a pleasure and start looking at it like school homework. I said it was simple, but I didn’t say it was easy. Make rules for yourself, such as setting a time each day that you devote to writing, regardless of how you feel. Or make a commitment to write something every day, no matter how much or how little it turns out to be. The sprinter and the snail both make it the finish line, regardless of their speed; the key is to keep moving. I have to admit, though, that I am bad at taking my own advice - which is why my latest novel took six months (and it was a short novel). Discipline is a hard thing to muster when it’s for something you don’t have to do. We drag ourselves out of bed every Monday morning to go to work, because we have to; we do the dishes and the laundry, because we have to. But as for writing a novel, in most cases this is not our career; it is a glorified hobby, and none of us have to write. How then do you discipline yourself to get the job done? I have found that the larger my manuscript grows, the more important it becomes to me to finish it. In other words, the hundreds of hours of work invested can be a big motivator in making sure it doesn’t turn into the biggest waste of my time and energy. Fear may seem like a distateful motivator, but if it works, use it.

Another hindrance to finishing a large work of fiction is that you can always put it off, and there are no consequences in doing so. If you take a break today, you can always go back to it tomorrow. But before you know it, a year has drifted past, and you’ve made very little progress. What you need is a deadline. Andrew Harrison (my film-making partner) is good at giving me deadlines. He books the date for the film premiere while I’m still composing the soundtrack, and then I have to work my butt off to get everything done in time. But I don’t resent it one bit. A deadline is the kick in the nether regions that we all need to get moving; it is the magic ingredient that turns us into workaholics. But we independent writers usually don’t have deadlines. And even if we made up an artificial deadline, I don’t think it would do much good; we’re still only accountable to ourselves.

Here’s a funky idea for you that scares the hell out of me (i’ve never done this, and I’m not sure I recommend it). How about picking someone who’s not too close to you, but someone you trust? Tell him you will send him your novel, chapter by chapter, as you write it. Instruct him to file the chapters away somewhere safe, because you are going to delete them from your computer. And you will faithfully do so. You are going to entrust him, and him alone, with the safety of your sacred scroll. Before you begin writing, you are going to say to him, “If I don’t hand you the final chapter by [insert date here], then you are to delete the entire novel. Even if I beg and weep and scream for you to give it to me, you will delete it. You will only give it back to me if/when I complete it within the specified time.” (Now you know why I said “someone who’s not too close to you.”) Or if that’s too harsh a penalty, how about you have to pay him money to return the manuscript to you, if you fail to complete it in time? It sounds crazy, but if I could find the right person to share this mutual responsibility with, I’d be tempted to try this approach.

Chionophobia finished!

In one final burst of activity over the past few days, I’ve finished the first draft of Chionophobia. It turned out two thousand words longer than expected, and I’ve got a few earlier bits to amend, which should bring it up to 38,000. I’m glad the story pushed itself beyond what I expected, because 35,000 was uncomfortably short for a novel.

As for what prompted this sudden burst of activity, I can put that down to Adrian Andrews, who runs The League of Freemen, the official user group for the sci-fi TV series The Tripods. Adrian and I got talking about my partially written Tripods novella The Freedom Triangle (see my post dated 14 August 2005 for more on this). Derivative fiction is a copyright nightmare, but Adrian has some good contacts and seemed to think it might be possible to get permission to publish. He asked me to prioritise getting the thing into written form. I was enthused about this, but I’d put so much effort into Chionophobia that I couldn’t bear to put it on the back-burner. The only option was to get it done. Voila!

I’m estimating a release for this book around September 2006. That might seem like an unnecessarily long gap, but it’s important to put a great deal of work into the editing stage of a book’s creation.

Time travellers and zombies

I’ve been dabbling in a little short story writing lately. I shook the dust off my last written story, Calling All Time Travellers, and gave it a fine-tune (I can hardly believe it’s been two years since I wrote this one). My friend Earl gave it the red pen treatment, and as a result a lot of necessary amendments have been brought to light, which is great. Earl and I have been learning the finer points of grammar in recent months, which should do our writing skills a world of good (his mum just shakes her head when she’s sitting in on our conversations).

It’s been many years since I submitted stories to magazines. Might have a go with this time travel story. Maybe even approach a big mag, like Interzone. I’ve also written the first 600 words of a new story - one with zombies in it. Should have it finished in a short while. Haven’t thought of a name yet. And no, I haven’t forgotten about the novel.

I’d probably get more writing done if I moved the laptop off the living room floor and onto a table in one of the other rooms. I’ve allowed it to take permanent residence beside by projector, for the purpose of watching downloaded TV programmes. And when I do think about moving it to another room, where I can type in a normal posture, I’ve usually kept the heating off in the rest of the house. You see, I’m hoping to move house later this year, and I’m trying to see this winter through with what little oil I’ve got left in the tank. Why spend a hundred quid on a refill, when I’m probably going to be gone? … Yes, you’re right, I’m mean. But only to myself.