Brewing the perfect novel

The draft is finished. 763,000 cups of tea later… the draft is finally finished.

And it’s a good thing I procrastinated over so many cups of tea, because now is the moment when all that ‘brewing’ experience pays off. Now I get to sit and wait, while my manuscript brews and my mind clears. Ready to transform this thing into a final work.

The Fragrant Leafsays brewing is simple and straightforward. (If only it was!) They even outline some simple steps to show how simple brewing is.

1. Start with fresh, cold good-tasting water - I have fresh, crisp good-sounding words. I must be on the right track.

2. Preheat the teapot - Hey, this story is positively smoking. It’s got action, it’s got pace, and characters that leap from the page. (Okay, so sometimes they have arthritic knees and it’s not so graceful. It’s still hot.)

3. Measure the appropriate amount of dry leaves - Dry leaves? Ah, yes. Those moments where we allow the reader to come up for air, and take a break from it all. I’m sure I’ve got an appropriate amount of those. 

4. Select the right water temperature - Still treading water in the shallow end of the writers’ pool. Time to dive in the deep end I think. 

5. Steep for the proper length of time - The crux of the whole brewing thing. Normally I’d let it steep for a month, but who can wait that long these days? Besides, I’m on a time budget here and I’m not getting any younger either. I’m thinking a week. One week. Seven days. And it’s liberating not to think about my novel every spare second. And it kind of leaves me lost at the same time. What did I think about before I started writing this thing? 

Never mind. A week it is. I haven’t looked at it since Friday, so that means tomorrow my week is up. Oh no, that went so fast. I can feel the tension rising already. 

Urgh! 

I think I’d better go make a cup of tea. 

Sash.

I’m chirping about… bird by bird

I’m reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird at the moment. I can’t chirp on about this book enough. I feel like Anne’s been inside my head – and no, I don’t mean she’s found out my head’s full of feathers.

It was first published in the 1990s, but for me it’s like finding the mother-lode. I’ve had this book recommended to me so many times, but never got around to buying it.

But once I started reading it, it was pretty hard to put down. Especially because she tells it like it is, and she tells it funny. And I can never resist funny. So what’s the ‘bird by bird’ thing about? In her words:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day…. he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

I can’t recommend it highly enough. Especially when it’s filled with encouraging things like this: “…it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug”.

Because don’t we unpublished writers always think that getting published is the pinnacle – when apparently the second book is even harder? At least with the first one, you can take your time, learn your craft, enjoy the process. There are no expectations, no deadlines.

Then again, I work better to deadline. And those kind of expectations I can live with

Elle

Has the tide turned against writer’s blogs?

I heard an interesting comment in a writer’s seminar yesterday from a very reputable source: Apparently, in the last year or so, the tide has turned against author’s blogs and websites – and some publishers are even encouraging writers to take down their blogs or websites.

The reasoning, we were told, is that it ’scratches the itch’ for information, i.e. it’s free so people might not buy your books. I can see why this might impact on non-fiction authors, but would it affect fiction writers?

Would publishers really be reluctant to work with blogging, web-savvy writers? And isn’t a blog or website the perfect place for published writers to market themselves and their work – and keep their readers engaged until their next novel comes out?

I’ve heard many unpublished writers have blogs to create a readership, which they then use as a selling point to publishers. Some just want to share the pleasure and pain of the writing process…

So… to blog or not to blog? That is the question. I’d be interested to hear thoughts from those of you who are published or unpublished – and who publish.

cheers

Elle