Friday Reading Round-Up

So what are we all reading?

I’ll kick off by saying that I’m thoroughly enjoying ‘Sister’ by Rosamund Lupton, and as a total contrast I’m also reading Luisa Plaja’s latest Young Adult book, ‘Kiss, Date, Love, Hate’ which is making me grin with girlish delight.

Gillian

I'm reading ‘Half Blood Blues’ by Esi Edugyan which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011 -   I'm ploughing my way through the entire shortlist!

 

Helen

I'm reading ‘Weaveworld’ by Clive Barker to my kids. We've decide to keep reading aloud en famille, even though they're twelve. So we've moved on to the books on our shelves that my husband and I have enjoyed and which are (vaguely) appropriate...

 

Caroline R

I'm reading ‘Crusade Against Drink in Victorian England’ by Lilian Lewis Shiman. I just looked on Amazon to check the author's name and discovered that the book is listed in the category 'The Crusades'!

Caroline G

I’m reading ‘The Book of Human Skin’ by Michele Lovric, which is strange and very good. I thought it was going to be a bit heavy going when I started but am gripped now.

Fionnuala

I’m reading the local planning laws because the f*****rs are refusing our planning application! I’m also reading ‘Dead Good’ by DA Cooper - a YA book by an up and coming author - very much enjoying it!

 

Susie
I will lower the tone: I'm reading Alexander McCall Smith's 'A Confederacy of Friends', together with Jane Wenham-Jones' 'Wanna Be A Writer We've Heard Of?' (hah!). I've also been reading my novel through before it goes for typesetting.

 

Rod

I am reading ‘The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy’. Edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby.

If any of you have read/are reading any of the above, we’d love to hear your thoughts (we’d also LOVE to know what you’re reading right now too –  we’re a nosy bunch!) Happy weekend, Strictly Followers! :)

The slushpile

I’m very chuffed to be able to introduce Nicola Morgan onto this great blog to talk about her new ebook, Write a Great Synopsis: An Expert Guide. Hopefully it will help readers here as much as it’s helped me!

Hello, Strictly Writing readers and thanks for hosting me on the Write a Great Synopsis (WAGS) blog tour.

I have always liked writing synopses and I hadn’t realised what a problem writers had with them until so many people started angsting about it. Many of the questions I get are about how to write this thing that seems to me to be the simplest part of a writer’s work. So, that’s what Write a Great Synopsis is about. I aim to solve the problems and make the task simple and stressfree.

The WAGS blog tour consists of a mix of interviews and extracts. It’s an extract that I thought I’d offer you today. And there’s a competition, too – with prizes of synopsis critiques!

One of the crucial things that writers find most difficult is knowing what to leave out of a synopsis. My extract below consists of two analogies that help you visualise the answer to this.

(Reproduced from Write a Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide)

The synopsis as a journey
Here is a way of thinking that I find useful. Imagine your synopsis as a journey. This is what we need to know:
1. Who is on the journey and why?
2. What is the intended destination and why?
3. What terrible thing will happen if they don’t reach their destination and who or what is trying to stop them?
4. What happens to knock the travellers off course?
5. What characteristics and tools do they use to get back on course?
6. What is their actual destination and who survives and with what injuries?

Here’s what we do NOT need to know:
1. The detours they took along the way.
2. The weather.
3. What they had for their picnic.
4. What they said to each other.
5. What the scenery was like.
6. The route in order.
7. The people they met on the journey, unless one of them is an axe-murderer or someone equally useful.

The synopsis as a healthy human
This is my other analogy. If your synopsis were a human, in order to see that the human is alive and strong we would need to see the healthy glow of the skin and that it is supported by a strong skeleton. We don’t actually see the skeleton, but we know it’s all there. We don’t need to see that the organs are all present and working – that’s obvious from the healthy glow of the skin and the light shining from the eyes. We do need to see the feet: the end of the story. A synopsis without an end is like a human without feet.
(Extract ends)

Analogies never present the whole picture but they are often a good start, offering a visual element to boost understanding of the rest of the argument. Write a Great Synopsis covers everything about synopsis-writing, clearly and reassuringly. At the end of it I believe you truly will say to yourself, “Don’t panic – it’s only a synopsis!” That is my aim.

All commenters below (by Feb 15th) will be entered into the Big WAGS Competition, with chances to win a critique of your synopsis by the Crabbit Old Bat herself! One comment per person on each blog – though you can add to your chances by commenting on the other posts on the tour. Details of all stops on the tour will appear on Help! I Need a Publisher! as they go out.

Thank you for listening and I do hope I can help you write a great synopsis! For details about the book, including buying options, go here.

Let's actually write something today

This won't take long to read.

Here's a little exercise I did with a friend the other day and it worked out just lufferly. Phone a writing buddy and agree what you are going to do today. All of your main activities for the day. Not too many, mind. The important thing is to commit to each of them and then agree that you will speak again at the end of the day. For example, I will: 1. Clean the fridge 2. Go and buy Daniel's birthday present 3. Write a first draft of that short story 4. Go to gym

When I did this exercise recently I achieved all of the agreed tasks before lunch. I think the important thing is to set some realistic tasks and encourage your buddy to do the same.

Okay, this is for real. Monday 30 January 2012. I will: 1. Check in with my business partner after my holiday. 2. Make arrangements or book time to do amendments on the marketing project. 3. Go through my poems and choose a batch to submit to mags. 4. Go to gym.

Have to go now . . .

Friday's watching round-up

Okay so we've talked about what we're reading and writing. Here's what the Strictlies are watching on telly.

 Do let us know what you're hooked on right now...

Susie

All I'm watching these days is terrible reality shows and Location Location, because I'm looking for a place to buy.  Comfort telly.

Gillian 
I'm Watching masterchef and Too Fat For Fifteen on Watch HD.

Helen 
Well I've been watching Sherlock which was as close to sublime as anything I can think of. Also Masterchef. The PHD atomic physisist rocks!!!

Debs

Watching? Mainly a blank computer screen, but Birdsong and Snog, Marry, Avoid recently (shameful) Put me down for Sherlock please as well, I'm asking for him in a boxed set for my birthday - I am SHERLOCKED! 
Caroline 

Still feeling bereaved at The Killing II  ending and also The Slap, which was an Australian drama based on the best selling book by Christopher Tsiolkas. One of the best bits of television I've seen in years. So now I'm mainly glued to Masterchef! Does anyone else ever get a bit emotional at Masterchef?

Seeing our writing as others see it

O wad some power the giftie us

To see oursels as ithers see us

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion

I feel a bit sorry for the woman in Robert Burns's poem 'To a Louse.' There she is, minding her own business in church, and not only does she have a headlouse viewing her as nothing more than his next meal, but there happens to be a poetic genius around to immortalise her decision to wear a nice hat. Still, I suppose nits and poets can happen to anyone. They like clean hair, apparently.

Wouldn't it be useful to be able to see our writing as others see it? Such an ability would have saved me a lot of angst over the years. I could check at a glance whether my work made sense; whether it was cringeworthy; whether a naff simile was actually original to fresh eyes; whether I used semi-colons when commas would do. The clarity would enable me not only to avoid the blunders, but perhaps to stop mucking about with the good bits too.

Heaven forbid that this ability should be innate, however. It would have to have kicked in when I was at least 25 and had been round the writer's block a few times, because if I had possessed such a talent during my teens, I would probably never have written another word. Awareness of our own failings might be an admirable state, but I reserve the right for my teenage self to churn out as much woeful adjective-filled tut as possible, and to be pleased with herself for having done so. If you can't have a few foolish notions when you're 16, when can you?

When I wonder what it would be like to view my writing from another reader's point of view, my first instinct is to want to spot any technical failings. On a practical level I do try to make my writing look as unlike my own as possible, by changing the typeface or converting the file to PDF. (Turning things into PDFs immediately makes them look better for some reason – maybe I should try this for my face!)

Technical details, however, are not what I'd really like to know about how other people view my fiction. I don't ask readers what they think of my book because I firmly believe it's none of my business. They have every right to like it or not like it – and if they reckon it's lousy, there's not much I can do about it anyway. But out of pure nosiness, the thing I'd find fascinating is to know exactly how people picture my characters and settings. It would be amazing to see photographic images of someone else's perception – how different would the characters be from the way I see them? Would they be clear or indistinct? Would they look like people the reader knows, or would they be purely imaginary? Would they change the images I hold in my own mind and make me see my work in a new light?

If you could see your writing as others see it – what's the first thing you'd want to know?  

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A Re-Kindled Spirit

Crikey.  Who'd have thought. Not me that's for sure.

My daughter summed up my biggest fear when I told her I'd spent the best part of three days and four nights on both the Picnik and Kindle Direct sites designing the cover and formatting and re-formatting and loading and deleting and uploading and re-uploading and ... well, you get the drift... she said I was scared of the 'Pity Purchases'.  And I was.  So, so scared of them.  Because I've done it myself.  I have writer  friends who've published books - proper paper books with print on them and everything.. I know! ... and  because they're friends and I've known them years (some for over a decade) when they announce they have a new book out, what's the first thing I do?
Okay, second then... the first is always to check my green-levels, lay a metaphorical damp flannel on my seething, jealousy-consumed parts and calm down.  Secondly I fly a reply straight back telling them the news is 'fantastic' (which it is, of course it IS) and that I shall be purchasing said new publication as quick as you like.
Which for me, defeats the point.  Because I almost never read them.  In fact sometimes I don't even get round to buying them. *shameface* And it's not because I don't like said writer friend, it's just that what they write just isn't my kind of 'read'.  And if I bought every book written by every 'virtual friend then my shelves would be full to bursting with guilt-edged paperbacks.
So it was with great trepidation that I finally decided I'd self-publish my first teenage book.
My decision was 'helped along by a number of things, namely:

• a particularly big Birthday looming
• the encouragement and unfailing support of my beloved daughter, to whom the book is dedicated (although she hasn't read it... I rest my case...)
• the fact that the characters in this book deserve to be met.  They spent nearly two years with two separate agents, underwent three re-writes (at one agent's suggestions) and three different endings only to be shown the nice but still painful door marked 'Rejection'.
• I loved designing the cover so much I wanted the world to see it.
• a particularly Big Birthday .. wait, have I already said that?
• The pressure of precisely Zero. - i.e. no Agent or Publisher to impress, no sales figures to worry about, no shonky marketing to panic over, no angsting over ranking and certainly no deadline over when/what book #2 will be because I've got that covered.

And actually it makes me sad to think that these 39 chapters would just be languishing idle in a dead file somewhere on the home pc and in the folder which sits beside me in my little room if I didn't set it 'free'.

When I finally pressed 'publish' on the Amazon site, I had a cup of tea and caught up with Sherlock.  The only people I 'announced' it to was my daughter, my husband and a writerly friend.  One texted me back with a 'whoop! one passed me a biscuit and Fi accidentally sent me her credit card details when she bought a copy* (thanks, our new TV is smashing!)
So, I give you 'Dead Good' (originally born 'Double History' and recently renamed) Also meet D A Cooper.  She was me, once. She is still only half me.  I'm actually a D.J. but a writer friend said the initials suggested more music than words.

It's here but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES is this to be 'pity-purchased' - I will be justifiably insulted if this happens and I WILL hunt you down (I'm sure I'd work out how and who and where.... so don't even TRY it :).  I want this book to travel the good old-fashioned route to it's 'target' readership which is teenage/young adult based with a handsome ghost bias.
So, phew.  Does this mean I don't get to die unpublished?  Does it count? I'm still not entirely sure but I am very glad it has the chance of being read by whoever stumbles across it and I'm even looking forward to it getting some wobbly reviews.  Any kind of feedback other than 'not for us, thanks' is going to be much better received, I guarantee.

By llama deciding

I find anagrams quite fascinating – there are so many possibilities with each word. It's a time wasting exercise and I wonder about the intellectual capabilities of these websites which can jiggle letters so efficiently. They are so much quicker and smarter than the best contestants on Countdown. But rather than spend hours using my own brain, I decided to visit an anagram generator site to see what goods it would bring forth. Just for fun, of course. But it can get addictive! I typed my name first – I was ‘llama deciding’ then I moved on to a few of my favourite books. ‘The Secret History’ became ‘The Erotic Shyster’ and ‘Darkmans’ became ‘Mad Ranks’. I keyed in ‘The Dissident’ and the generator came up with ‘This Destined’. I then tried ‘Let The Great World Spin’ and it spat out ‘Shrewd Tolerant Piglet.’
Some are random and amusing, raising a giggle or two. I tried my own book – ‘Damning Ants’ it stated. Even if your book title is short, it guarantees a response as the generator will deal with seven to thirty characters. Poor William Shakespeare states ‘I Am A Weakish Speller’ while Julian Barnes is ‘Banal Injures’ and JM Coetzee is ‘Jeez Comet.’

Here is a fun list -

Great Expectations – ‘Castigate On Expert’

Wuthering Heights – ‘Win Thuggish Three’

The Satanic Verses – ‘Scares The Natives’

Cecilia Ahern – ‘A Chancier Lie’

The Sisters Brothers – ‘Birth Or The Stresses’

Pigeon English – ‘In Sleeping Hog’

The Sense Of An Ending – ‘An Eighteen Fondness’

Hunter S Thompson – ‘Shorten On Thumps’

AS Byatt – ‘Batty As’

Margaret Atwood – ‘Dear Warm To Goat’

Are there any books or authors the generator can’t handle? We could have hours of fun with this – try inputting your agent or publisher. See what comes up…..