Nick Bryan

Writing About Writing

Writing Environment II – Coffee Shop Cliché Man

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The Talking Toys Are My Friends

Not even nine months ago, I did this post about my writing environment. Looking back on it now, I seem to have ditched my desk to live the writer-in-coffee-shop cliché. Damn.

But why can’t I work at home anymore? Where did it all go wrong? Isn’t my home-made photo adorable? And how long can one man sit in a coffee shop before the staff punch him?

Coffee House Rules

Turns out, quite a while. However, being there on your own does mean embarrassing things like taking your laptop computer to the toilet with you. Still, at least that I can write down any brilliant ideas that come to me on the crapper – usually, they just slip away.

Bogs aside, most coffee shop staff seem tolerant as long as it isn’t busy and you buy at least one drink every couple of hours. Admittedly, I’ve stuck to suburban branches so far, so never really had a problem with tables running out.

Still, as a man with a constant ongoing money problem, I could live without paying a few quid in caffeine fees every time I want to do some proper writing. So, why did this happen?

Obey The Murmur

In that other post, I said this: “Environment is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether I’m huddled in my pit or a nice clean branch of Pret, I will work if I’m in the mood.”

Obviously, that hasn’t entirely worked out for me. At home, I can manage the occasional TV review, but for proper concentration, I’ve started meandering, procrastinating, generally annoying myself.

I have found this website called Coffitivity, which generates ambient coffee shop noise to encourage work. Honestly, I’m cynical, just because it sounds ridiculous, but with the aid of this background murmur, I’ve produced this blog post quickly enough. So, is this the answer? Do you have an answer? What drives us from our homes?

Plugging Stuff On Twitter – ENTER THE VORTEX

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SPAM SPAM SPAMMITY SPAM

I’d already worried for a while about how much to plug my various writing endeavours on various social networks. Mostly Twitter, but others too. Recently, though, I started doing Hobson& Choi on Jukepop, and I’m telling you, I love doing it. Wanted to do something serialised ever since my comic-loving yoof.

But Jukepop operates on a competitive vote-up system, so to succeed, I need people to go vote for me. And I already felt I was pestering people to read my work quite a lot, so… is this too much? How much is too much? Is this much of a muchness?

Let’s blog about it.

The Life-Span Of The Lesser-Spotted Blog Post

There are a lot of aspiring/self-published writers on Twitter trying to get their work out there, and if you enter that community, follow a few people, you find yourself deluged with links and promo hyperbole. It’s hard to argue with the goal, but when everyone’s doing it, how do you stand out?

I tell myself at least I’m generally plugging new material – I don’t usually push work for longer than a day or two, and TV reviews I only mention once – rather than flogging the same thing repeatedly, but ultimately, it’s still a lot of links. I can’t pretend I’m on that much higher a plane here.

Ultimately, I gotta cross my fingers and pray my followers care – maybe dial it down if the audience figures slide toiletward. But by the same token, there’s only so much I can push things to the same few people, thus why I just mention things a few times to account for time zones, then drop them.

Don’t Miss The Toilet!

After all, I also have idle life updates and toilet jokes, and I’d hate people to miss out due to unfollowing. Yes, it’s my work which I’m genuinely passionate about, but for the same reason, I don’t want it to become background noise either. And there must be places online actually intended as locations to push your flash fiction/serial fiction/TV reviews, rather than just chucking them out into the general Twitter vortex and hoping they “go viral”.

Especially if I’m looking for people to not just idly click the links, but actually invest enough to vote, maybe it’s time for a little targeted marketing. What I really need is some kind of Social Media Marketing Guru to tell me about this – anyone know where I could find one?

(Or, indeed, any thoughts on the issues raised above, shout out in the comments. How much plugging is too much? Is there such a thing? Has anyone had a relative disown them due to excessive flogging of their writing?)

(Creative Commmons spam photo by Arnold Gatilao on Flickr, by the by. Okay, enough bracketed epilogues.)

How To Review Stuff

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Come on, this post was at least a 7...

As a brief scan of this blog will reveal, I write a lot of reviews. It has now reached the stage where I can formulate a review of a TV show (or other things, but often TV) in a very short space of time.

So, since it’s something I have been asked for advice on, I figured the art of reviewing warrants a blog post. How do I assess stuff? Is there a technique, or do I just splurge?

And yes, some of this will be specific to reviewing TV shows, as that is my area.

How much synopsis?

This is fundamental, and the main thing that annoys me when I read some online reviews: do we need an epic, blow-by-blow description of the entire story? Isn’t that what Wikipedia’s for? If your article is headed “recap”, fair enough, but if your “review” is a painstaking description of the story, with a few words of opinion at the end, that seems bad form.

Of course, do mention plot points when you have an opinion to give about them, but synopsis without opinion is like a sheep with no wool or meat – cold and unappetising. (Or something.)

How much spoiler?

Spoiler use, however, is more personal preference. For TV reviews, especially episodes which aren’t the very first, I tend to write for an audience who have already seen it. So, yes, full spoilers in effect, complete with a warning.

On the other hand, for books or films, the audience might be reading your review for purchasing recommendations. So I avoid spoilers, especially last-third ending spoilers, and when I do give them, they’re clearly labelled or really vague.

But to be honest, there’s not a “right” answer here. Still, worth thinking about before ploughing ahead gleefully.

How much moaning?

How negative to go is another big question, and I could easily do a whole post on this alone. One day, I still might. But in general: there is a lot of negativity on the internet, because, hell, it’s easy to be snide. I try not to review things I know I’ll hate, because I don’t think the rage of someone who would never have liked the show in the first place is useful.

Case in point: over the last few years, various internet people tried to cover The X Factor. We mostly did this, to be honest, because others were doing it and seemed to be getting attention. Many of these faded away, and the ones that did well and thrived were write-ups like Stuart Heritage’s Guardian pieces which, yes, were glib and jokey, but still genuinely enjoyed X Factor when it was getting things right.

Hence why me writing about The X Factor was pointless, but I let myself give often-negative reviews to Sky1’s Sinbad, because although it wasn’t a great show, it was in my wheelhouse – family-aimed fantasy drama, yes, I’ve reviewed that. I truly wanted Sinbad to be good, I’m always happy for decent shows in that genre, and I made sure to acknowledge when it had a strong week.

In short, decent reviewing should come from a place of wanting to be positive. Grumpy, well-known reviewin’ misanthropes like Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation and Charlie Brooker may overplay minor annoyances for comic effect, but they also tell you emphatically when they’ve found something they like, and that’s a major reason they have credibility.

There are other things I could write about, like structuring your reviews (try to structure by point, storyline or theme, as opposed to banging through in story order), but I’ve covered my main issues, really. And now you too could become a well known reviewer of TV shows online! (We’re looking for people on The Digital Fix TV site if you want to have a go. Email me. Self-service ends.)

As ever, add your own advice below, or tell me I’m talking complete arse. And obviously, like all my reviews, the above is just my personal opinion. Now, I’m off to review Black Mirror.

Take Three! – How Many Manuscript Restarts Is Too Many?

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GOOD BETTER BEST NEVER LET IT REST

I am currently taking my third swing at the same novel idea. This one started as a short story during 2011, before I promoted it to novel status for NaNo 2012.And now, having written 25,000 words back then, I’m rewriting most of it yet again.

Three starts on the same story. My impatient younger self would’ve told me to give up and try something else by now. Does he have a point?

I’ve isolated three factors to blame for this third restart – oh yes, synchronicity. Let’s list them.

Editing – Almost Not Boring

Despite often struggling with editing, I’ve found it weirdly satisfying to usher this story into its better form. It helps that I’m not scrapping the previous version entirely (although I’m rewriting or refocusing almost all the text), thus avoiding blank page terror.

Of course, I could have forged on and written the newer version from where I’d reached, without bothering to change the beginning, if not for the second factor…

Sequence – Almost Not Necessary

I’m told learning to love editing is a big maturing step for a writer, and I’m getting there. For my next trick, I’d like to learn to write out of sequence. Currently, writing the last 75% of a draft whilst the first quarter contradicts it seems totally alien to me.I mean, why bother? I’m going to make so many changes, most stretching back to the start, so if I don’t sit down and edit those early scenes, I won’t know what to reference and will probably end up re-re-rewriting the later parts. I know a few writers who work out of order, and maybe one day I’ll understand them.

The Matrix – Can You Relate To A Spoon?

Finally, the influence of that Scarlett Thomas writing manual I reviewed a few weeks back. She had a lot to say about planning and structure, and it did get me thinking. I filled in the matrix she provided, mostly out of curiosity, and it did give me some new ideas. (If you’re curious, you can download it from her website here. Whether it’ll be much use without the context of the book, I’m not sure.)

In fact, even though I wasn’t entirely agreeing with her focus on “writing what you know”, it sums up many of the changes I’ve made. Making the lead character more relatable, grounding the whole thing more, hopefully holding my interest more.

So, all of those things happened, and now I’m on my third restart of the same novel. Will there be a fourth? Should there be a fourth? At what point do you give up? How many times have you restarted your projects? Did you do it for any of the same reasons? Am I trapped in an eternal loop? Thoughts welcome.

Turning Writing Into A Game – When Do I Win?

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I will settle for the kettle.If you enjoy the nausea-inducing November writing challenge of NaNoWriMo, maybe you’ve found yourself wanting to find other ways to turn writing into a game. Myself and a friend, both living in the Nunhead region of London at the time, once attempted a second 50k writing challenge in the month of March, under the name “NunheadWriMo”.

You may laugh, but it kinda works with the abbreviation. Without a forum to motivate us, we pushed each other by exchanging trash talk on MSN. For those of you without a kindhearted friend to hurl verbal abuse, though, how can you keep “winning” at writing?

Well, if a daily target and willpower aren’t enough, here are some other incentive schemes.

Camp NaNoWriMo – If It Ain’t Broke, Start It Up Again

Sensing an appetite for NonNovNaNo, the NaNoWriMo people have started Camp NaNoWriMo, where you can link up with other like-minded people to support each other through a 50k push outside of November.

There’s also some hut-based system that I don’t really understand, because they love that camping metaphor. Hopefully next feature is a campfire to burn unwanted writing. But anyway, 1667 a day is quite a lot, so let’s check out less masochistic targets.

750words.com – When 500 Is Too Little, But 1000 Is Too Much

The idea here is that you do 750 words a day, come rain or shine, and the website at 750words.com keeps track of them for you. This is based on a similar exercise called “Morning Pages” where you churn out a few pages of typing every morning, simply to get the writing muscles working.

So your 750 words could be journal dream-writey stuff, or they could be the mid-length building blocks of your novel. Personally, I have to do a thousand a day before I can relax, but 750 is pleasantly unintimidating, I can see the appeal.

Word Count Game – I Can’t Help It, I Have To Beat My Friends

If you want both the doable word counts of 750words and the satisfying friend-killing of NaNo, I’ve recently started playing a word count game with my writing accomplices Alastair and Claire. The aim here is to reward consistency as much as word counts –do at least 250 words a day, and you get daily points for your unbroken run of productive days (1 on your first day, 2 on your second, etc), plus points each day for words written (250 words = 1 points, 500 words = 2 points, 1000 words = 3 points, 2000 words = 4 points).

So producing intermittent huge amounts actually gets you less points than building up a long chain of days. It’s an interesting game, and 250 is definitely an achievable amount – it’s pretty small, in fact – I have to stop myself from clocking out after doing it. Still, this is the method I’m currently using to make myself write – the prospect of “beating” my two friends. (Currently boosting my points for said game by writing about it, and winning by 12 points as of this post, so feeling good.)

If you want to join this game, there’s a spreadsheet obtainable here. We’ve made our own copy and shared it between the three of us, rather than joining the communal pile-on. You may wish to do the same with your friends.

Has turning your writing into a game worked for you? Is there another scheme that has proven useful? Or does this kinda stuff cheapen the artform somehow? Thoughts welcome.

NaNoWriMo 2012: The Halfway Point

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You may remember my blog post of a fortnight ago, where I unveiled my plans for NaNoWriMo 2012. Well, I’ve done some writing today, so have time to post a midway update. As I slap this up on the blog, at nearly-midnight on the fifteenth, NaNo is exactly halfway over.

So, how am I doing? How are you doing? How are our friends and families doing?

Quality Over Quantity – The Reality

As I said in the previous entry, I’ve been promising myself I’d slow my NaNo pace, accept a lower word count in exchange for a more considered plot, better prose and, y’know, actual themes and shit. Most previous years, I have made this vow and failed, allowing myself to be caught up in the competitive rush to 50K, and “won”.

Well readers, I’m proud to announce this sickening run of success and achievement is definitely over now. Unless I completely lock myself indoors for the remainder of the month, I’m not going to hit fifty thousand. But I am fairly pleased with what I’ve written so far, a mere fifteen thousand.

As the properly NaNo-brained of you already know, that is a fair way below the proper midway target of twenty-five thousand. But the writing itself doesn’t suck, I’m pleased. Still hoping to finish the first major segment of my novel, too.

How To Fail Gloriously

So, have I learnt anything, aside from accepting non-success?

To be honest, my main lesson was one I’d suspected from the start: for me at least, planning is key. I’m trying to produce something with themes, threads and an interesting plot, mostly to avoid having to ram them in later. These do not tend to appear by themselves.

Not that making it up as you go along, then going back and editing heavily once you’ve worked out what the book’s actually about, isn’t a valid approach – it’s just I’m a little tired of having to rewrite NaNo novels basically from scratch before I can read them without wanting to cry in a bin.

Maybe finishing that Creative Writing MA has left me with a new sense of quality control, who knows. Or I just spent enough time sobbing in skips whilst finishing my thesis. One or the other. (I got a merit in the MA, by the way. Which means graduation! Party time.)

Anyway, based on boring multiplication, I should finish out the month at around thirty thousand. Check back in early December to see whether I got anywhere near it.