On his entertaining blog, Abominations, fellow scribe Marc Schuster writes about a letter he once received from Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. “The reality of a career,” wrote Palahniuk, discussing various literary matters, “is that you’ll always be writing a Next Book.”
Very true.
Even when I’m trying to make a deadline and am up to my neck in a manuscript, I’m pondering what the next book will be. There’s always that fear the ideas will stop coming. As I write non-fiction books, it’s probably easier for me to stumble across story ideas than someone who writes fiction—but there’s always that worry in the back of my mind that I’ve drained the well dry.
Add to that the anxiety experienced by every journeyman author: Will I find a publisher who wants to release whatever I do next? I’ve had a pretty good run, thus far. Penguin published my first two books in the States and will be publishing my sixth book in October. I’ve had three mainstream publishers in the UK release my work. But none of that’s a guarantee that another publisher will take on my work in the future. I think scoring a bestseller probably seals that deal.
By the way . . . Marc’s latest book, available for pre-order, is called The Grievers.
Last Friday, my first night in London, I met my book editor for drinks and dinner at the Goat Tavern, a 300-year-old pub on Kensington High Street. It was our first face-to-face encounter. We worked together a couple of years ago on Dark City, my history of infamous crimes in wartime London. Said editor, Mark Beynon, is also an author. His most recent work is London’s Curse: Murder, Black Magic, and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End, which implicates occultist Aleister Crowley in a series of murders that shocked London following the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
It looks as though Mark and I may be working on another book together for publisher The History Press. Details have yet to be ironed out, and I’m still researching the tentative subject matter at hand . . . so we’ll see how things proceed. In other books news, Penguin will soon have the finished cover design for Human Game (scheduled for an October release) ready. Once they send it my way, I’ll post it here!
Last Sunday afternoon, I went to Paddington Station and caught a train north to visit family. Before my departure, I walked into the station’s Starbucks and ordered a latte. The young guy behind the register was of Eastern European descent and had a very thick accent. I must have also been hard to understand because it took me two tries to convey what I wanted to drink. He eventually picked up a paper cup and a pen and said something to me. Again, there was a communication breakdown. I could only assume he was asking me my name so he could write it on the cup, as they do in Starbucks here in the States. I said, “Simon.” He offered me nothing but a blank stare, so I proceeded to spell my name for him. He dully scribbled it on the side of the cup, looked at me, and said, “Why do you tell me your name?”
I felt the blood rush to my face. “I have no idea,” I said. “I thought that’s what you were asking me.”
“I wasn’t,” he replied—without offering any explanation as to what he had actually said to me.
When the barista (also Eastern European) was handed my cup to make the latte, she asked the cashier, “What is ‘Simon’?”
“I don’t know,” the cashier shrugged, pointing a finger at me. “He keeps telling me his name.”
By now, I just wanted to make a hasty retreat with my latte in hand. Mercifully, the barista got busy making my drink. When done, she thrust it in my direction and said, “This is yours.”
Last night, while reading Hemingway: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers, I came to what I consider the best part in any literary biography: a breakdown of the subject’s writing process. Even if reading the biography of an author I don’t necessarily enjoy, I’m always fascinated by the way they work and the approach they take when hunkering down with a manuscript. Last week, I posted Ian Fleming’s advice on writing. Here, according to Meyers, is Hemingway’s strategy:
Study the best literary models.
Master your subject through experience and reading.
Work in disciplined isolation.
Begin early in the morning and concentrate for several hours each day.
Begin by reading everything you have written from the start or, if engaged on a long book, from the last chapter.
Write slowly and deliberately.
Stop writing when things are going well and you know what will happen next so that you have sufficient momentum to continue the next day.
Do not discuss the material while writing about it.
Do not think about writing when you are finished for the day but allow your subconscious mind to ponder it.
Work continuously on a project once you start it.
Keep a record of your daily progress.
Make a list of titles after you have completed the work.
An interesting list, to be sure. The one thing that struck me was his advice to stop writing when things are going well to ensure you have something to write about the next time you’re at your desk. I’ve done this from the beginning, and it serves me very well. Working in “disciplined isolation,” however, is not something I can do. With a 10-month-old baby in the house, I have to change my fair share of diapers!
As for not discussing the work in progress . . . that’s a rule I break all the time. I tend to obsess on a story once I get going on it. If I’m stuck, I complain bitterly to my wife. If things are going really well, then I’m more than happy to blather on about it. I also never read a manuscript I’m working on until I’m completely done with the first draft. I think reading what you’re putting down on paper as you go along is a terrible idea. Personally, I’m guaranteed to fall into the trap of early editing and start rewriting everything before I have the rough draft done. That, for me, is the kiss of death.
I don’t write early in the morning but late at night when the house is dark and quiet. I’ll write for several hours if I can—but if the words aren’t flowing, I won’t force it. Admittedly, I don’t write slowly or deliberately. If the idea is fully formed in my head, I frantically pound the keys to get it down on paper before it vanishes into the ether. My revisions are slow and deliberate, but my first draft is a race to get the story out.
According to Meyers, “It often took Hemingway all morning to write a single perfect paragraph.”
Watching TV last night, I saw a commercial for the latest book churned out by the James Patterson factory. My general rule is to chat only about authors I like and not badmouth those I don’t—but Patterson drives me crazy (my apologies to the impressive number of Patterson fans out there). I tried reading Kiss the Girls several years ago when the Morgan Freeman movie hit theaters but just couldn’t get through it. The writing was pedestrian and the one-page chapters distracting. That aside, it’s not his writing that bothers me . . . it’s his approach to writing.
Those of us who write do so because we love the act itself. It’s wonderful to see your thoughts take shape on a page, and it’s an amazing feeling to finish a story and hold in your hands a completed manuscript. While I have yet to score a bestseller and certainly can’t afford to write books fulltime, I dream of the day—if it ever arrives—when I can devote myself fully to the profession. Of course, I want to make enough money doing it to sustain myself and my family, but my passion for writing is the primary motivator.
So, what does this have to do with James Patterson?
I don’t consider him a true writer. He’s more of an idea factory who leaves the writing to others. You’ll notice on most of his recent efforts, it’s his name and that of another author’s on the cover. He’s certainly not the only guy doing this these days. Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler are two others who come to mind—but Patterson seems to have taken it to a whole other level. In 2009, the Hatchette Book Group announced it had signed a deal that would see Patterson bang out 17 books through 2012 . . . that’s 17 books in three years. According to his website, Patterson already has four books due out this year: one in March, two in May, and one in July (he already released one earlier this month). Last year, he put out nine. Some may consider Stephen King a factory (personally, I’m a fan), but at least the man writes his own books.
I can only assume at this point in his career, Patterson doesn’t care about any sort of artistic integrity or quality control. He merely wants a paycheck. My feeling is that if you want to write books, then write books—don’t contract someone else out to do it. The publisher is also to blame here, as it obviously doesn’t care what’s slapped between two covers. You can’t churn out nine books in a year from one author and expect to deliver a quality product.
Ultimately, it’s the fans who are cheated.
My rant is over. I don’t know—maybe I’m just being overly critical.
I love reading biographies of my favorite authors. Among the few books I’m reading concurrently (it’s a terrible habit) is Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett, first published in 1995. If your exposure to Bond is limited to the movies, I highly suggest you check out Fleming’s novels. The only similarity between the books and the films are the titles and the names of characters. Fleming’s stories are far grittier than what you see on the silver screen. The writing is also superb.
Fleming wrote all fourteen Bond novels at his Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye. Here, as described by Lycett, is his writing routine:
Ian had finally decided to launch into the novel which had been rattling around in his head for so long. He was not a man to tackle such projects half-heartedly. Every morning after a swim on the reef, he breakfasted with Ann in the garden. When he had finished his scrambled eggs and Blue Mountain coffee, he kissed her and made his way across the small veranda into the main living-room. He shut the big doors, closed the jalousies, and opened his big roll-top desk. For three hours, he pounded the keys of his twenty-year-old Imperial portable typewriter. At noon he emerged from the cool of his retreat and stood blinking in the heat of the day. After lunch, he slept for an hour or so, and then, around five, he returned to his desk to look over what he had typed earlier in the day. When he had made his corrections, he placed his manuscript in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. Ian was a man of routine, and that writing regimen, now established, continued for the next dozen years, whenever he was at Goldeneye.
The book would eventually become Casino Royale. It’s interesting to note that Fleming edited the manuscript as he went along. I’ve tried doing this but find it to be the kiss of death, as I end up scrapping everything I’ve done. I generally try to get the whole thing down on paper before I take the red pen to it.
Fleming, needless to say, took his writing very seriously. Here is some advice he sent to a friend, who was struggling with a manuscript. It’s great and probably pertinent to every writer:
You will be constantly depressed by the progress of the opus and feel it is all nonsense and that nobody will be interested. Those are the moments when you must all the more obstinately stick to your schedule and do your daily stint . . . Never mind about the brilliant phrase or the golden word, once the typescript is there you can fiddle, correct and embellish as much as you please. So don’t be depressed if the first draft seems a bit raw, all first drafts do. Try and remember the weather and smells and sensations and pile in every kind of contemporary detail. Don’t let anyone see the manuscript until you are very well on with it and above all don’t let anything interfere with your routine. Don’t worry about what you put in, it can always be cut out on re-reading; it’s the total recall that matters.
If you nurture dreams of becoming a published author, you may envision martini lunches with your agent and large-scale advances that allow you to quit your day job. Such fantasies are not uncommon. Before Penguin published my first book in 2005, I harbored such illusions. Now, with six books released through major publishers in the United States and Britain, I still work a “day job” to pay the bills.
While I haven’t given up the idea of being a full-time writer, experience has taught me that those who can actually afford to work solely on their writing are the exception in this trade. Don’t get me wrong, seeing your book in print is a wonderful thing–but you should keep your expectations in check. I recently came across this article, which ran in Salon several years back. It’s pretty grim reading for anyone who hopes to make their living as a scribe–but it’s also a good cautionary tale.
I’m heading to the UK next month to take part in a TV show called “Murder Casebook,” which profiles infamous crimes. I’ll be interviewed regarding the Blackout Ripper, a serial killer who stalked the blacked-out streets of wartime London in 1942. I wrote about the case in two books, IN THE DARK (published in the UK as THE BLACKOUT MURDERS) and DARK CITY. Here’s a clip from a recent episode.
As I try to get back into the swing of blogging (and maintain the necessary discipline), I’ll also be experimenting with various designs—so please forgive me if I keep changing the appearance of the blog. I’m pretty happy with the current design, but we’ll see how long that lasts.
The past year has been spent working on the manuscript to my upcoming book, HUMAN GAME. If you’re a fan of the movie THE GREAT ESCAPE, you know how the film ends. For those of you not familiar with this Steve McQueen classic, here’s a brief synopsis: In Stalag Luft III, a prison camp for Allied airmen deep in the heart of Germany, a group of inmates decide to orchestrate the breakout of 250 prisoners. Each escapee is equipped with fake travel documents, German money, rations, identity cards, civilian clothing, compasses, etc.
The men built three tunnels, codenamed “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” To avoid the camp’s underground microphones, vertical shafts to each tunnel were dug 30 feet down before horizontal digging commenced. Construction of the tunnels continued around the clock and required the requisitioning of nearly 1,219 knifes, 582 forks, 408 spoons, 246 water cans, 1,699 blankets, 192 bed covers, 161 pillow cases, 1,212 pillows, 655 straw mattresses, thirty-four chairs, the frames of 90 bunk beds, 3,424 towels, ten single tables, fifty-two twenty-man tables, more than 1,200 bed bolsters, nearly 1,400 beaded battens, seventy-six benches, 1,000 feet of electrical wiring and 600 feet of rope. Four thousand bed boards were used to shore-up the tunnels. Lights wired into the camp’s electrical supply provided illumination underground; air pumps made of discarded kitbags, empty powdered-milk tins, wood-framing, wire mesh and tar paper supplied fresh air to those doing the digging.
Let’s jump ahead in our narrative a bit . . . The escape took place on the night of March 24/25, 1944. In the event, only seventy-six airmen got away before a guard discovered the exit to Harry—the tunnel ultimately used in the escape. Three of those seventy-six made it safely back to England; the others were recaptured. Fifty were handed over the Gestapo, taken to desolate killing fields throughout Germany, and gunned down.
The movie ends with the execution of the fifty. HUMAN GAME picks up immediately thereafter and details the Royal Air Force’s hunt for the Gestapo gunmen. It took three years of researching and writing to complete, and is based primarily on the official records kept by the RAF’s Special Investigating Branch, which handled the investigation. The Caliber imprint of Penguin will release the book in October. I’ll post more details as they become available.
In the meantime, here’s a trailer to THE GREAT ESCAPE—one of the greatest movies of all time!
Humility is showing up for a book signing and finding only two of twenty seats occupied. This, I’m afraid to say, has happened to me on more than one occasion—and repetitiveness does not ease the pain. It is, however, a reality of being a struggling author. As I slug away on my current manuscript, I’m debating whether I’ll submit myself to this kind of humiliation again.
Some years back, I did a book signing in which the only people who showed up were two high school students for an English class project. Because their assignment required them to take notes, they asked if I’d read an excerpt. This I did . . . while one of them loudly slapped their gum. Needless to say, they left without purchasing a copy.
On the plus side, they at least stayed awake. At another even some years later, as I sat talking with a small group of readers, a homeless guy entered the store, took a seat in the back row and promptly fell asleep.
Not as bad as talking to mostly empty seats—but still painful—is sitting at a table in a bookstore, surrounded by stacks of your books, waiting for someone to approach and buy a copy. I found myself in this situation last summer. One guy approached the table, picked up a book, flipped through its pages and asked me, “Did you write this?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling.
“What’s it about?” he asked.
I gave him an abbreviated plot synopsis, after which he asked me how long it took to write and countless other questions. For almost 45 minutes he grilled me on every aspect of the book before saying, “Well, I don’t have any money—but it sounds neat.”
I try to remain positive in such situations. After all, someone is taking the time to ask me about something I’ve written—but one can only take so much.
I recently went on Google to read about other authors who have endured similar experiences. By chance, I stumbled across this brilliant video by mystery writer Parnell Hall.
Well, DARK CITY’s release has been pushed back to November 9. There was an apparent printing delay. The publisher is planning a media blitz the first week of November, so hopefully the book will generate a bit of good press.
In the meantime, I continue banging away on my current manuscript and making good progress. I’m trying to complete a 90,000-word first draft by March. Right now, I’m closing in on the 35,000-word mark. I’d like to have 45,000 words done by Thanksgiving. My wife is pregnant with our first child (it’s a boy!) and is due in March, so I’m hoping to have a draft completed by the time the little man arrives on the scene.
I’m happy so far with the way the book is turning out. The story is strong and the characters compelling—granted, my opinion is biased. Interestingly enough, the National Geographic Channel aired a documentary the other night on the very topic I’m writing about. After five books, I’ve grown accustomed to being a non-bestselling author, but I hold out hope one of them will someday take off! Perhaps this will be the one? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I’ve been reading a pretty good book. THE INDIFFERENT STARS ABOVE by Daniel James Brown details the tragedy of the Donner Party. The subject matter is utterly compelling—what those poor people went through is staggering. My one complaint with the book is the author’s tendency to derail stirring scenes with a load of filler. Why, in the midst of reading about emigrant travel across the Great Plains, do we suddenly need a history on 1840s birth control? Another gut-wrenching scene, in which the emigrants are forced to eat the flesh of their dead companions on Christmas, is sidetracked by a dissertation on the holidays in 1800s America. There are several other instances like this that really grate the nerves—but, overall, the book is definitely worth reading.
Other books on my bedside table waiting to be read include three biographies: one on Clint Eastwood titled AMERICAN REBEL and another on Hunter S. Thompson, OUTLAW JOURNALIST. The final one is STORYTELLER, an authorized biography of Roald Dahl, which I’m hoping to get to before the holidays begin.
I’m also hoping to become more disciplined and start updating this blog on a regular basis!
My parents slipped a copy of Stephen King’s Misery into my hands when I was thirteen. I tore through it in a matter of days and decided shortly thereafter I wanted to be a writer. Taking it upon myself to read King’s other books, I thought—early on—that I’d want to pen ... Continue reading »
