Black Notes from a Dark Building

Location, Location, Location

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:44:00 +0000

Disused mill, Southwold

Sometimes, no matter how much you'd like to render faithfully a real-life location in your story, some plot gremlin might instead force you to decide that it's not a good idea. This happened to me during the writing of Loss of Separation. Initially, the novel was to be set in Southwold, Suffolk. It still is, and people who know the village will recognise the place, but I've changed its name to Southwick. The reasons for this are twofold. First, the residents of Southwold, unlikely as they are to see a copy of LoS, let alone buy one, might not take kindly to my describing their home as a place where 'people come to die'. Second, I don't want the tourist board to start haranguing me because potential visitiors have been put off by the child deaths and rape. Third, I wanted to write a scene in a cave. There are no caves in Southwold. But in Southwick there's a doozy called Bryning's Pit.

Of course, as a writer – and as a writer of fantastic fiction – I possess a special licence to write what I like about wherever I like. In London Revenant, for example, an earthquake destroys the city and a bunch of people spend time trying to find hidden parts of the capital, insane hotspots that don't exist on the A-Z. I didn't worry too much about offending the stout occupants of the metropolis. If you've seen off the Luftwaffe and pooh-poohed the terrorists, a horror writer putting a crack through your back garden isn't going to cause any problems. But for authenticity's sake, there needs to be some consistency.

I think, as long as you treat the venue for your story with the same care as you would a character (and in the best stories, the location can sometimes be so strongly depicted that it becomes another character), readers don't mind – maybe don't even know – that your village or town or city is a complete fabrication.

Listened to: Moon, OST

Between books

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:47:00 +0000

I rewrote Loss of Separation, altering certain things that just didn't chime well with me at all once I'd turned in a first draft. One character became more important, another won herself a new chapter. Other stuff, minor stuff. I handed in that revised draft on January 5th. I'm expecting proofs back from Solaris today. A quick read through and the book will go into production. Copies hit the shops in March. There's quick for you. Now comes a recharging period. I have a couple of short stories to complete this month and then I'm going to have a break. But at some point soon I want to start work on a new novel.

I have ideas for lots of projects, but nailing which one is right to do next is the trick. I have a sequel to Blonde on a Stick that I'd like to get started on, and a new horror novel connected to previous stories The Owl and Rain. I also have a book in me about growing up in Warrington in the 1970s under the shadow of a serial killer. I'd like to write a short, weird YA novel. I'd like to write a biiiig, weird YA novel. There are other ideas, sketchy, unformed, but compelling, to me at least. I have titles for them all. Some of them will be pseudonymous (no... I'm not telling you). They'll have their day.

It's my intention to try to update this blog a little more regularly than usual. So please do drop if you have a moment. Thanks for your continuing support. And best wishes for 2011.

The End

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:28:00 +0000

I finished Loss of Separation in room 332 of the Novotel, Liverpool, on the afternoon of Friday, 29th October. Well, I say 'finished', but now the real work begins. There are lots of XXXXXXs and instances of [insert more here], not to mention the sections that I know need to be fixed, the characters who have not enjoyed enough screen time (or had too much), problems with timelines and inconsistencies in the plot. I've come to the conclusion that novel writing is not so much about telling stories as solving problems.

I wish there was an app for that...

The total word count (pre-edits), for anybody interested in these things, is around 85,000.

Listened to: Rain Tree Crow

Final chapter

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:38:00 +0000

1512 words

Listened to: The Heroes Symphony, Philip Glass

Nearly there

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 18:26:00 +0000

2176 words

Listened to: Exorcising Ghosts by Japan

Three days

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 18:46:00 +0000

651 words

1325 words

1065 words

That's all for now... move along. More tomorrow.

Listened to: Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile (Right)

Applying the brakes

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:12:00 +0000

1026 words

I'm into the last 10-15,000 words of this novel. I can feel the shape of the book; I understand its length now. I reckon I've got another 40-60 pages or so before it's finished. I've hit the climactic final stretch. The third act. The resolution pages. So why is my character taking time out to think about tender moments with his girlfriend? What is he doing? There's a crime or two to be unearthed, a tragedy to be averted (or not), a number of inevitable deaths... so why is he wasting precious time fannying around with memories? More importantly, why am I fannying around?

One of the subjects of the classes I occasionally run is to do with pace. It's important to trim your narrative of any fat that's likely to fur your story's arteries, clog things up, slow it down. We all know that. We all recognise it in the books we've read, the films we've seen; we apply it naturally to the stories we tell at the coffee point at work... But here, because of the nature of the novel, and, more importantly, the nature of the man who is telling the story, I have to allow him time to come to terms with certain events that inspire his behaviour. He's damaged. He's physically wrecked. He's mentally wrecked. He's addicted to analgesics. He can't think straight, never mind walk straight. The narrative is his, so it has to be like him: tortuous, unreliable, unhurried.

It's a risk I'm taking, perhaps, but I have to go with it until I've finished. Then I'll let the novel rest for a week or two and return to it, see if I've made an unholy error of judgment...

Listened to: Ghosts I-IV, by Nine Inch Nails

Sgool

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 10:41:00 +0000

1018 words.

I found a piece of paper recently. It was something my son, Ripley (6) wrote, or is in the process of writing. I don't think it's finished. Or it might be. You can't really tell with kids. Anyway, I won't tell you what was on it because I want to use it in the novel I'm planning for next year.

What I will mention is the spelling. Children are taught to spell using phonics these days, whereas I grew up using the ITA system (another phonetically based system, albeit with additional symbols to represent certain sounds). The modern method helps children to blend sounds without worrying too much about the correct letters. Which means that the spelling is diabolical, but cute at the same time. Ripley, for a while, thought his brother's name was Efun, because that's how it sounded to his ears. And he used to go through a phase of writing and illustrating booklets starring Marvel superheroes, or Indiana Jones, or Star Wars characters, in which the protagonists went around 'fartin bad gaz' (fighting bad guys).

An early idea for the title of next year's novel was Nice House, but I wanted to feed it through Ripley's internal spelling machine first. Which turned it into Nys Hows. I kind of like that, but it isn't immediately obvious what it means. So I'll be using that as a part title instead, if only to placate Rippers, who now expects to see his words somewhere in the finished manuscript...

Listened to: Sex, by The Necks

Cold tea

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:12:00 +0000

1095 words.

A slow day... but engrossing. I can tell it's going well if I forget about the hot drink I made.

Listened to: Event Horizon OST, by Michael Kamen and Orbital.

Photographic interlude

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Three studies of misery at the van Gogh museum...

Novel territory

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:43:00 +0000

698 words

I hit the 70,000 word mark today. It has tended to be the magic number for me, the word count I aimed for when writing my first novel, ID, at the age of 20 (a novel that will never be released from the darkest pits of my archive folders), and just managed to stagger over before completion. For me, 70K means I've hit novel territory. I made book-length. Which is arrant nonsense, of course*, but psychologically, for me, it ticks every box. Once I hit 70K, I tend to relax a bit, catch my second wind, and ease on through to the finish.

Writer and editor Peter Crowther, in a panel at Fantasycon, recently explained how he carves up these categories. For him, up to 10K is a short story; 10-20K is a long short story, or 'novelette'; 20-40K is a novella; 40-60K is a short novel and 60K+ is a novel. These are good yardsticks to keep in mind, but it's best to play fast and loose with them. A lot of writers, especially novice writers, get hung up on word counts (I still do, as evidenced by this blog post). Seventy thousand words is a psychological – and, let's face it, physical – barrier to work towards. The argument that 'it's as long as it is' doesn't quite cut it when you're trying to write a novel, especially one you want to see hit the shelves. Publishers and readers generally like to see some bang for their buck.

What do you think? Do you have your little word counter clicking along as you type? Do you, like Graham Greene, obsessively count the words by hand? Or do you ignore the numbers and simply work until you feel it's finished? I'd be interested to hear from you.

* Look at the novels of Gwendoline Riley, for example. Her first, brilliant, novel, Cold Water, is 25,000 words long, give or take. A novella, really, if you were being strict. Is it a novel, though, in terms of theme and substance and gravitas? Well, that's a different argument...

Masks

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:09:00 +0000

523 words.

There's a character in Loss of Separation who wears a mask. He's meant to be threatening. So, what to go with? It took a long time to decide upon the kind of mask because there have been some pretty big shadows cast by mask wearers, particularly in cinema history, although I've read a few novels in which they play quite a part, if only symbolically (I'm thinking, predominantly, of The Dead Zone).

Jason and Michael, of course. And the dead Presidents in Point Break. The opening sequence of From Russia with Love. More recently, the clown masks littered across the first ten minutes of The Dark Knight. All good masks. As are the hyper-real masks that you'll find in many instances of commedia dell'arte. But for my inspiration I turned to the film Eyes Wide Shut. I love the film (I'm a big Kubrick fan) and there's something about its cold, highly-stylised Venetian masks that I thought would work for me.

There's the threat of a mask causing unintended humour, however, so I'm going to test the novel on a select few before I go ahead... especially as I've given mine a strange twist.

Books in the post

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:09:00 +0000

2129 words.

A little bird tells me I might be getting a Kindle for Christmas, which is great (I'm one of those gadget boys, I'm afraid...). I'll use it quite a lot. Especially while on holiday. Books take up too much packing space, which is at a premium when you consider we've got three rapidly-growing boys to contend with. But I won't allow my head to be turned by technology too much. I love books. I love to have them on my shelves, in my study. I love to browse when I've got an idle moment. I like to pick one out and flick through it to a favoured passage, or chance upon a random insert (a photograph, a train ticket, a note from a friend). I love the covers and the smell. I also love to receive books through the post. Just today, my contributor's copies of The End of the Line arrived. I always get a little spike of excitement opening a parcel like that. Waiting for a download doesn't have anything like the same impact. As long as digital doesn't replace paper and ink, I'll be happy to juggle all media.

Short and sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:51:00 +0000

597 words.

Apologies for the brevity of my last few posts. I was tending to think more about what to write in the blog than what should go on the page... but I don't want to completely stop posting while I try to get this book finished. Word counts and the occasional comment will appear. Nobody has to read it (if you do drop by, thank you very much), but it's helpful for me.

So anyway, shed problem sorted. Now on to the next bit.

Listened to: Bach, Goldberg Variations

Tricky situation

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:24:00 +0000

1077 words

Possibly not a good idea finishing today's shift worrying about how best to break into a toolshed...

3.39 to Nottingham

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:22:00 +0000

509 words (17.09.10)

Managed to get some writing down in my notebook on the train between Manchester and Nottingham. Other deadlines and commitments have stalled me, but I'm (ahem) back on track...

A New Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:16:00 +0000

1616 words.

Paul's been hogging the show since day one. He's in every single scene and every single scene is being written from his point of view. Well, not any more. There's a new character, with a new voice, and she's going to be making the odd appearance throughout the story. There's always a little wobble when such a decision is made. It might disrupt the feel of the novel (Blonde on a Stick was rejected by one major publisher who didn't like the sudden injection of a new voice half way through the novel). But I think such risks can pay off, if you get the voice right, and if the story isn't affected in any deleterious way. And this needs to happen, for plot reasons and pay-off reasons.

I remember the shock I had reading The Insult by the superb novelist Rupert Thomson. The first 250 pages are narrated by Martin Blom, who, after being shot in the head, is told he will be blind for life. It's an amazing narrative, very compelling. Towards the end of part one, his sight returns, but with a twist: he can only see at night. The second part starts with a different narrator. A different story, too, albeit one that overlaps with Martin's... a serious WTF moment. It works, but there's a slight tinge of disappointment that a character you've grown with, whose voice you've trusted and been entertained by, has suddenly departed, never to return.

With Blonde, I knew there was going to be a similar wrench. I warn against such moments when I run writers' classes. You get jolted out of the story, out of that zone; you become aware that you a reading a story constructed by a writer. It can be damaging. There's the danger of losing your audience. But sometimes you have to run with your instincts. There was no way I could write the stories of Joel Sorrell and the Four-Year-Old as parallel narratives: that would have been even more of a distraction because the Four-Year-Old's story is presented as a series of flashbacks and current events. So I had to separate the two halves of Joel's narrative with an interlude devoted entirely to the Four-Year-Old's rise. I liked it. My agent liked it. Maxim Jakubwoski (bless him) at John Blake liked it, but some editors didn't.

You have to write for yourself first, don't you?

Listened to: Symphony no. 3, by Henryk Górecki

Friday the 13th

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:53:00 +0000

1565 words.

Today I bypassed the 60,000 word mark. Not an unlucky day for me. So far...

I first saw Friday the 13th in a mental institute when I was about 12 years old. I wasn't a patient...

My best friend, Naeem, lived in a house nearby; his father was a doctor who worked at Winwick Hospital, a Victorian mental asylum (the largest in Europe), in the days before Care in the Community. I used to visit him a lot during the summer. We would play cricket on the cricket pitches, or tennis on adjoining courts, or go fishing in one of the gravel pits on the hospital outskirts, or climb through the window of the lodge house to play snooker on a full-size table.

Once a week we would sit in the main hall and watch a film projected on to a white screen. With about fifty heavily-sedated patients. I watched a fair few horror movies and tense thrillers on that screen, and in that company. I remember watching Still of the Night there, and Jaws and Friday the 13th. And then the lights would come up and it would be like being on the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Happy times, good memories... believe it or not.

Winwick Hospital Tower was a landmark that I would search for whenever I was coming home. It was a beautiful structure, but it, like the hospital, was doomed once community care was introduced. The entire complex was razed in the late 1990s. Housing replaced it.

My affection for Winwick Hospital meant that I was bound to write about it at some point, and I did, twice, in Decay Inevitable and Blonde on a Stick (its name changed to Slow Heath and Summerhead, respectively).

Listened to: The Ghost & Mrs Muir OST, by Bernard Herrmann... beautiful.

Nitty gritty

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:12:00 +0000

1087 words.

Not a dedicated writing day, but I managed to hit 800 words in an hour this morning before taking over munchkin duties. I might have written more, but I was in a gnarly, knotty section that was research heavy. What colour are Qantas cabin crew uniforms at the moment? How much runway does a fully laden 747-400 need in order to take off? And while we're at it, what speed does the beast need to be pumping at in order to leave the ground? How big is the wing? Etc... Stuff that, probably, your average punter couldn't give a flying felch about, but it kind of matters to me.

Is there such a thing as the researchless novel?

Listened to: The Esbjörn Svensson Trio.

Controlled Flight into Terrain

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:59:00 +0000

1109 words.

It came a little easier today... possibly because I was writing about my fear of flying, or rather, my fear of the pilots losing all control of an aircraft at 36,000 feet and going into an irretrievable spin...

Listening to: Possibly the worst free CD given away by a newspaper in the history of the world. Ever. Free and Single, volume 2, courtesy of The Independent. Starring Mel C, Nick Heyward and tons of other shite.

Third trimester

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 09:33:00 +0000

733 words.

Another slog. Which is odd, because I know where this chapter has to go. Maybe I've got end-of-novel nerves. Everything is set up for the climax, and now it's a matter of getting Paul to where he needs to be. Maybe I'm looking ahead too much and should try to get back to the present. It's difficult, though, when you know you've turned the final bend and it's all about closure from here on in.

This book deals partly with pregnancy, and I've just realised that I've written it (or rather, it will have been written) in three chunks, much like the twelve-week periods that govern the major changes in physiology concerning both mother and baby. I kind of like the poetry of that (although I'd much rather have got the thing done in one big, er, push). My notes tell me that I wrote the first 20,000 words at the beginning of the year before hitting a wall. I managed to get going again in March, eventually, thanks to Graham Joyce's idea of blogging about each day's work. And now my navel has popped and the foetal head is descending into my pelvic cavity, as it were.

At least delivery, although probably just as messy, won't be anywhere near as painful...

Listening to: Eyes Wide Shut OST, (Various artists)

Pulling teeth

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:07:00 +0000

1037 words.

See you on 01.08.10… hmmm. I’m only four days late. An overdue short story and arrangements for a book signing got in the way. Honest. But this first chunk of the last third of the novel… it was very hard to get that thousand words written today. I've been easily distracted of late (although still managing to get a chunk of words down here and there) so I needed something to help me focus. I decided to try out a little anxiety-eliminating method called the Pomodoro Technique.

Basically you choose a task you need to get done, like, oh I don't know, WRITING A NOVEL, set a timer for 25 minutes and get on with it. You're rewarded at the end with a five-minute break before the next 'Pomodoro' begins. After four of these 25-minute chunks, you get to enjoy a longer break. And that's it. It's pretty simple (well, I say 'simple' but there's a book and various social networking sites and probably a help group too), and strangely effective. I do intend to jettison my little clicking timer once I'm comfortably back inside Paul Roan's world. I'm ruled too much by the clock as it is.

Listened to: Inception OST, by Hans Zimmer
Reading: Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill

Home Straight

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:03:00 +0000

I’ve decided to devote August to the novel again, in one final push to get it finished. If I manage to write The End on or around the 31 August, that will give me two months in which to get feedback from test readers and work on a second draft and a polish before I have to deliver the book at the end of October.

A couple of things got in the way of writing the novel during June and July. Mainly holidays, short story deadlines, public readings, and fretting over Blonde on a Stick (which is to published imminently). But there was also a problem with notes. Until recently, I’d (rather foolishly) been an advocate of ‘one notebook per project’. But this never worked out, mainly because I’d sometimes have an idea and have to write it down in a different notebook because I couldn’t remember where I’d put the relevant one. Cue madness.

So from now on, it’s one notebook for everything, until it’s filled. As I mentioned elsewhere, I use a hardback Moleskine notebook, the kind that has ruled lines and an elastic closure. I number the pages (which gets me quickly past that tricky ‘how can I bear to deface its pristine loveliness’ stage) and mark on the side the date when I started using it. And now I take it everywhere. All ideas go in there. Also, if I see a picture I like, or an article in a newspaper, I’ll paste it in or store it in the back wallet for processing later. They’re not cheap, but they last me a long time (I write small… two lines of text to one line of rules paper) and I need something that isn’t going to fall apart after six months in my back pocket.

But a lot of information destined for Loss of Separation (should that be Loss of Preparation?) has been gathered from various sources and is now safely collected in a folder. I’ve just been through it, assessing, discarding, and tucking new sections into the novel’s outline onscreen. I’ve got the novel pretty much nailed now, in terms of plotting. Here’s a screen grab of the corkboard in Scrivener, to show you what I’m working from.

The orange index cards are completed chapters. The purple cards are ‘action required’ notes appertaining to the chapters to their left. Blue squares are chapters waiting to be written. The green card at the end is the ‘key’ that explains the whole book, the thing I need to keep focused on. It might not mean much to you, but sorting out those notes has helped to open up the novel to me in a way that wasn't happening before. Those colours represent a new balance, a more streamlined and ordered story, and an avenue of escape towards closure (well, that's what I'm hoping).

Writing this novel has given me a bit of a wake-up call in terms of planning ahead. I thought (erroneously) that because this story had been on my mind for a decade, it would write itself. Wrong. This has been the most recalcitrant piece of work to be sweated out of me since the day I picked up a pencil and started tracing ‘a’s across one of Miss Foster's handwriting sheets. I love the idea, the characters, the setting… but I’ve hated writing it. It’s been like chewing gravel. Much of that is down to my preparation. The next book is going to be planned so beautifully it could be exhibited in an art gallery…

So if you have a couple of minutes each day, please drop by to keep me company. As before, I’ll be posting word counts, progress reports, tips and tricks… moans… anything that occurs to me about the writing process while I’m trying to put this novel to bed. Feel free to send me comments and questions.

See you on 01.08.10…

Day Forty-Four... Chess

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:24:00 +0000

641 words.

When I was seven, I taught myself how to play chess. There was something about the board and the pieces... if I'd known the word at that age, I might have described it as fetishistic. I just liked setting everything up and the way that, after just a few familiar opening moves, you could be into a game like none you'd ever played before. I was so desperate for opposition that I taught my dad to play. And then I entered school tournaments and won quite a few of them. But I didn't keep it up. Nobody was into it at sixth form, and by the time I got to Bristol, I had other things on my mind, such as beer, girls and writing.

When I moved to London in 1994 and found work that paid better than anything I'd earned before, my head was turned by the beautiful chess sets being sold at the London Chess Centre on Euston Road (recently relocated to Baker Street after 18 years). I bought a breathtakingly expensive weighted wooden set and I'm using it to teach Ethan, my seven-year-old son, how to play.

However, these days, I play most of my games online. There are a number of places to play free chess with people from all over the world. Red Hot Pawn is my favourite. I keep it running in the background and nip in every now and then if I've hit the wall with whatever I'm writing. I find something that takes a long time to play (while I was writing The Unblemished in France it was this) helps to subtly unlock the congested bit of my brain that needs to be concentrating on who is doing what to whom and why and how best can I describe that using the medium of words...

If you play chess, and you decide to try out RHP, come and find me and challenge me to a game. I'm Salavaria...

Listened to: Aether by The Necks

Day Forty-Three... Back again

noreply@blogger.com (Conrad) — Fri, 21 May 2010 17:59:00 +0000

349 words

Short story written and delivered, I can return to Loss for a while, before I go on holiday on the 24th. Ideally, I'll get to write each evening after the munchkins have climbed the wooden mountain to Bedfordshire, but there's every chance I'll be asleep by then too. I hope to add to the novel while I'm away.

Listened to: The Tired Sounds of... Stars of the Lid