Writing Goals and Resolutions - March Update

Here we go with March's update on my writing goals for 2009, and my general New Year resolutions.

Writing Goals

• Write every day, aiming for a minimum of two pages each day.
  The start of March saw me lacking in motivation, and feeling pretty low. I don't think I wrote at all at the start. Things looked to be picking up, but the past few days have seen me sink back down to where I was at the start of the month. Still, I have at least managed to participate in some [Fiction] Fridays.
  
• Compile an electronic anthology of my best short stories from 2008.
  Still procrastinating over the editing. Not very impressive.
  
• Launch the Chinese Whispers anthology.
  Final writer is recruited, we're locking down the rules of the project and editing the story that will kick the anthology off!
  
• Enter six writing contests.
  One entered. If Script Frenzy counts, then that is my second (starting tomorrow!). I have two lined up for June.
  
• Complete two manuscripts to a publishable standard.
  Ongoing.
  
• Participate in, and complete, NaNoWriMo 2009.
  7 months to go.

New Year Resolutions

• Read at least one book per month.
  Books read this month - The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, Stardust by Neil Gaiman, 1984 by George Orwell.
  
• Get my 5k time down to 18 minutes.
  Currently 22 minutes. Have had a bad wheezing cough that I'm struggling to shift, and I'm sure that's hampering things.
  
• Run the BUPA London 10,000 in 45 minutes.
  First a foot injury, then a back injury. My running training has taken a knock. I'll definitely do the 10K, but my confidence about the time is slipping. Two months to go.
  
• Take part in a half-marathon in late summer.
  Not going to happen at this rate. I think I'll aim for autumn this year. The National Park Service might do their half marathons again. I think I've indicated to another runner that I'm going to do two half-marathons a week apart!
  
• Take part in a full-marathon at the end of the year.
  See above. Does it count if you do one half one week, the second half another?

Scary Christmas From Write Anything - 14 December 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on December 14, 2008. The original text can be found here. Another little skip forward in time here - last week was the post from 30 November. The next article, from 7 December, was itself a repost from this blog, so we move now to an unseasonable Christmas query! Alas, the story mentioned at the end was never recorded - my websites went down in the run up to Christmas, and by the time access was restored, the season had passed. Next year...

Scary Christmas

Christmas is the season of goodwill to all, a time for merriment, joy, peace and... horror?

I think that perhaps it is a British tradition, but spine-tingling terror is as much a part of Christmas as Christmas pudding, carols from King's College Chapel and the Queen's speech.

M R James, a historian at King's College, Cambridge, is now most well known for his tales of terror and the supernatural. His initially penned his stories for the entertainment of friends and students. At King's, he started a tradition of writing a ghost story to be read, after the carol service and dinner in hall. Retiring to his rooms in the college, he would read that year's story to the assembled group, huddled together in the candlelight.

James's ghost stories were published and well received, and amongst those who admired and were influenced by his work are HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Stephen King.

From the select milieu of Cambridge, James's stories have been brought to a wider audience. In the 1970s, the BBC broadcast annually A Ghost Story for Christmas, over half of which were based on stories by James. BBC Radio has also frequently returned to James at Christmas, broadcasting readings of his stories in 1986, 2000, 2005 and 2006. The 2000 readings were by Christopher Lee, who also read a selection of Edgar Allan Poe stories over the Christmas season in 2004.

It seems that the Gothic goes hand in hand with the festive, a tradition I am trying to continue. Last year I wrote and podcasted a Christmas story about a demon haunting a church. This year I have another Christmas story, featuring some of the same characters – rather than a demon haunting a church, this story involves a Lovecraftian Elder God returning just in time for the festive season.

Mistletoe, holly, and eldritch horror – isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Tags: Write Anything Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Fiction Friday - 27 March 2009 Product recall

This Week's Theme: Setting: An office building - A secondary character says: “Look, somebody has got to make a decision.” Your main character offers a solution.

---

"I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job..."

"You are, you bloody are. Look, there's nothing wrong with the toy, the toy is flawless. The toy is a frikkin' work of genius."

The vice president of marketing for Funco Toy Corp glanced down at the piles of complaint letters on her desk. Key phrases leapt out at her, and she shuddered. How in the hell had they let this leave the factory and hit the toy stores?

"Karl, in ten years with this company, I have never seen so many complaints about any toy. I mean..." she picked up the top few sheets. "Complaints. Two class action lawsuits. Police reports. A Federal summons to testify before Congress. Congress Karl. How do we manage to ship a toy that gets us hauled up in front of the Senate?"

Karl rolled his eyes. "Oh don't exaggerate Sandra, so some soccer moms got a little prissy and kicked up a stink..."

"Prissy? Prissy??? I think 17 deaths and 159 injuries is a little more than being prissy!"

"Obviously these kids weren't using the toy properly."

The VP slammed her fist down on the table. "The toys stabbed them!"

"Well it is called Mr Stabby!" He pointed to the flow chart on the wall. "Mr Stabby, the Happy Homicidal Hobo. Performs realistic 'happy happy stabby stabby' dance (batteries required)."

"I don't even want to think what marketing were on when they came up with that..." Sandra shook her head. "We have to withdraw this toy."

"No we don't, you're denying thousands of children the chance to play with a truly awesome toy."

"Awesome toy? It's causing untold havoc and mayhem!"

"I admit there may be a few minor defects..."

"Minor? I have a report here that says that two Mr Stabby dolls wiped out an entire unit of marines in London! The British have just declared war on this company Karl. This is more than just a defective product. It needs to be recalled."

"It's probably just a slight tweak of the settings, we don't need to recall them all..."

"Look, somebody has got to make a decision. And I'm making the decision. Mr Stabby is getting recalled before anything else awful happens."

"May we make a suggestion?" The voice was shrill, rising and falling in tone. Karl and Sandra both turned in the direction the voice had come from. Karl's jaw hung slack. There in the doorway, standing at just over a foot tall, were a dozen or more dolls, grinning. "Nobody is recalling us."

In unison they moved forward. "Who wants to join in the happy happy stabby stabby dance?" Dozens of gleaming blades were produced in unison, and with light, shuffling steps, the Mr Stabby's attacked.

Playing in the sandbox...

Part of the changes over at Write Anything are new writer biographies, and a rather snazzy little sign off box at the end of each of our posts, which is going to be a lot of fun to play about with.

My artist bio is:

Paul is a Scottish writer living in west London and wondering if the city will ever let him leave. He is a reformed lawyer who found writing gothic fantasy less disturbing than the esoteric and arcane mysteries of contract law. He has far more websites than should be healthy for any sane human being, so you should probably start with Once Upon a Time in the West of London.

And the sign off bit at the bottom is here - I can't recreate it on here (it is generated by the CSS stylesheet I think) so here's a picture - I can edit the text in the box:



[Fiction] Friday entry coming up soon.

There's no such thing as bad publicity? From Write Anything - 30 November 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on November 30, 2008. The original text can be found here. I've skipped forward a few weeks now, as the entries for 16 November was purely NaNoWriMo related, and I had the week off on 23 November!

There's no such thing as bad publicity?

They say that all publicity is good publicity. But is it? Or can attempts to increase your publicity cause you to lose face? Consider the recent example of Welsh poet Patrick Jones.

Jones' collection of poems, Darkness is Where the Stars Are, was due to be launched in the Cardiff branch of Waterstones (a British bookseller). The launch however was cancelled after a Christian activist group called for a boycott. It was reported that Christian Voice deemed the book "obscene and blasphemous" and called on Waterstones to remove the books. Although Waterstones refused to remove the book from sale, it did cancel the event, forcing Mr Jones to launch his book in the street outside.

And with that, Mr Jones came to the attention of the national news, a lone voice being bullied by a pressure group who wanted to silence free speech and prevent others from having access to his ideas. The liberal in me bristled at this oppressive behaviour. Religions, like all beliefs, are essentially ideas. Objectively, each is as relevant as the next if you do not share them, and in our society none should be silenced, or exempt from challenge.

Of course, this was not the whole story...

With the publicity came that flipside of attention – scrutiny. Journalists dug a little deeper, and discovered something quite interesting. This did not appear to be a spontaneous campaign by a pressure group, but what appears to be a deliberate attempt by Mr Jones to provoke just such a reaction for the purposes of publicity.

Mr Jones had e-mailed samples of his poems not only to Christian Voice, but to other Christian groups, Muslim groups, and Combat 18 (for those unaware of the latter, they are a violent, far right racist group – the "18" refers to the position in the alphabet of Adolf Hitler's initials). The contents of the poems were challenging to the beliefs of these groups.

Mr Jones claims that he "sent a few poems to many different organisations on 2 November and [...] said 'Please find a few poems. I would appreciate your feedback'," and that his aim was "that maybe they would come out and have a debate."

More cynically, I would suggest he hoped that his poems would prove controversial to these groups for different reasons, resulting in them calling for a boycott of his book and protesting against it, with all the publicity that would follow. Given the extreme reputations of some of the groups, it was prudent of Waterstones to cancel the event in order to preserve their customers' safety. Mr Jones should actually be glad that the relatively benign Christian Voice were the ones who protested, rather than the violent Combat 18.

So, in a free society, ideas may be expressed, challenging other ideas. We are free to voice them, and equally free to challenge them, so long as challenge does not lead to repression. But there is a difference between seeking debate, and actively seeking aggressive confrontation. Mr Jones showed scant regard for the safety of those who might have attended the launch, and his actions have resulted in me moving from a position of strong support of him, to having a very poor view of his actions in his bid for publicity.

Is all publicity ultimately good? Or do you think that actively seeking controversy is a risky tactic than can backfire. Would you trust an author who courted controversy in order to gain publicity?

Tags: Write Anything Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Good days and bad days...

Been an up and down week...

THE BAD

• The Landlord's agents came and cleared the cellars of all belongings. So my new Christmas tree, several items of furniture and sundry items we were going to sell have been stolen removed and disposed of without warning.
  
• The Scottish rugby team's performance over the whole Six Nations tournament, and especially today. We played like a team that deserves to be second or third, we ought to have beaten France, England, and possibly we could have taken the Welsh. But we make mistakes like a team that ought to lose, and so we do. Rugby 101 Scotland - STOP KNOCKING ON.
  
• Still sick. Still haven't got rid of this cough, and at times it seems like it's getting worse.
  
• Needed to get my spine x-rayed at the start of the week. Back problems have come back.

THE GOOD

• The Landlord's agents came and cleared the cellars of ALL belongings. This includes the original furnishings and fixtures that were in the flat. Like the curtains, curtain rails, bathroom cabinets etc. All of which were clearly marked as property of the Landlord. I would have rescued them from the rubbish tip last night, but they were under piles of rubbish and asbestos, so didn't want to risk it in the dark and without protection. By the time I was able to this morning, it had been cleared away. Plus I couldn't be bothered since they'd already taken all my property (suspiciously missing from the pile of rubbish). So long as we don't get charged for them when we leave, then I don't particularly care...
  
• The Irish were well deserved winners of the Grand Slam, and it was a tight end - the Welsh came within a few yards of spoiling the party.
  
• ... OK, I can't spin th cough into a positive.
  
• Now I've had the x-ray, I'm a step closer to getting my physio referral.
  
• Sugarland on Monday ROCKED!!!

But the BEST thing has to have been today's realisation that in Russia, I am the number one hit for "how do I summon a demon?"

The fact that someone was looking for that, and that I (well, The Long Watch) am the number one hit, totally made my day.

Fiction Friday - 20 March 2009 Mud sticks

This Week's Theme: A priest is attacked for being a paedophile. He is innocent of the crime, but guilty of something far worse.

---

Mud sticks. It is a universal phenomenon. Accusation is proof.

And the cleaner you are, the more readily it sticks to you. An insinuation here, a rumour there, and before you know it your stained character becomes your defining hallmark.

Lack of evidence is immaterial. Complete exoneration is irrelevant. Once you have been labelled, you will carry that to your grave.

It was a lesson Father Donnelly had learned the hard way. Through swollen eyes, he could just about make out the shape of his assailant. But he knew the voice. Mulholland, yes, it was David's father. Brian Mulholland. A bullish man, thick neck, shorn head, strong arms - he had spent time inside for assault.

Mulholland's fist slammed into the priest's nose, and he started to choke, unable to breathe. He knew it was broken, and was glad the shock had numbed him. He could taste the blood as it oozed from his mangled nose, across his lips.

"This is what we did to your kind in the joint. You sick bastard." Mulholland spat, then landed a straight jab to Donnelly's jaw. A few teeth gave way and came loose. The priest spat them out onto the floor, in a pool of scarlet liquid.

Donnelly leaned back into the chair, his hands bound tight behind him, and tried to calm his breathing. He was used to the beatings now. It always ended in violence. At first, he'd be the popular new guy. He would be asked to lead the youth groups, coach the sports teams, lead the scout troop. Then, the rumours would catch up with him again. About why he had left his last parish. Do you realise he's changed his name? There's a reason he is so interested in the children...

Then some deadbeat dad would attempt to make up for a decade of lousy parenting with ten minutes of pounding on the pervert. And Donnelly would leave quietly, change his name once more, and join a new parish.

Mulholland lit a cigarette, and took a few drags from it, resting from his exertions. Casually, he grabbed Donelly's hand, lit the flame, and held the priest's hand over it. Donnelly began to writhe and twitch as his skin began to blister.

"You come across a sick dog, you put him down. And you are one sick dog."

Donnelly whispered "I didn't even touch your boy."

"It would only be a matter of time. I know all about your sort."

Donnelly began to laugh, bruised lips twisting into a parody of a smile, the few bloodied teeth still in place forming a harrowing grin.

"You think this is funny motherfucker?" screamed Mulholland. "You think touching kids is a joke?"

Donnelly stopped laughing. "I didn't touch your boy, are any other kid in this parish. Or any parish." He began to wretch, a trickle of blood and bile sliding down his chin. "These rumours are a good way of keeping me from settling anywhere. Keep forcing me out, never in one place long enough to recruit my army."

Mulholland stepped forward into his swing, but found his fist stopping short. Donnelly stared straight at him, his eyes darkening. "Most are content with giving me a hiding and running me out of town. And for the sake of a quiet life, I accept that. But you..."

He strained briefly against his restraints, snapping them.

"You wanted more. You wouldn't be content with beating me, you want to kill me." He grabbed Mulholland's hand, and squeezed. The bones ground against each other, then shattered. Mulholland dropped to his knees in pain, as Donnelly stood.

"As you now realise, that is easier said than done. And now you know that, I really can't simply ignore you." He grasped Mulholland's upper arm, placed his knee against the elbow, and slowly began to push.

"I'm certain the rumours must come from somewhere on high. They can't challenge me directly, so they use thugs like you, easily manipulated by lies and prejudice." With a loud crunch the elbow bent backwards at an unnatural angle, and Mulholland began to scream.

"A pity Mulholland. That's just the kind of person I'm looking for. I could have used you, but now you are simply a liability." He grasped him by the throat and began to tighten his grip, choking the scream into silence. "I'll let everyone know I found you. Probably some old prison acquaintances bore you a grudge."

Mulholland tried to struggle, but was weakening fast, unable to breath. Darkness started to cloud the edge of his vision, but he could clearly see the cuts on Donnelly's face begin to close over, the jaw reset, teeth regrow.

"Wh-what are you" he whimpered, his arm hanging limp by his side. Donnelly leaned in close, and whispered one word into Mulholland's ear. The colour drained from his face, shortly before the life left his body.

Coming up next...

Fiction Friday post coming soon - should be a good one. Lots of blood.

I think I've found my tenth man for the anthology, so we'll hopefully get some progress on that.

And finally... I really want to get away from where I am now. I'm not as happy coasting along as I thought. Time to do some Very Big Thoughts whilst back in Scotland with my family in April.

Fiction Friday - 13 March 2009 Voodoo

A little late this week, but never mind!

This Week's Theme: During his third night out of town, a travelling businessman discovers a voodoo doll in his hotel room.

---

Hands shaking, he fumbled with the lid of the aspirin bottle, spilling dozens of the tiny white pills onto the faded beige carpet. "Dammit" he whispered, scooping them back up. He force a handful into his mouth and washed them back with the contents of a miniature from the mini-bar. Might as well, the company was picking up the tab for this one, seems a shame to let an expense account go idle. He breathed deeply, the trembling subsiding, but still keenly aware of the throbbing in his head.

Third damn night in a row. It had started with a headache, spreading across his temples, but manageable with a cold compress and a few painkillers. Then down into his shoulders, and now his right arm. "Getting old" he muttered, starting on his second Jack of the night.

He hated these week-long conferences. Always in some god-awful carbon copy conference centre in some dying town away from anything of interest. Why couldn't they go to New York, Chicago, LA? Somewhere fun, somewhere with life. But always, always it was a town just off the interstate, in a purpose built motel/conference centre. Somewhere cheap, and the wrong kind of seedy. Still, it gave him time to be himself, away from the family and all that entails.

He opened the dresser drawer, looking for a clean shirt for the evening. His gold ring rattled in the drawer as it fell out of the small velvet pouch he kept it in. Carefully, he put it back in place, and piled some clothes on top of it for safe-keeping. Wouldn't do to return home without that baby, but a liability tonight. He chuckled to himself, then winced as the headache announced that it wasn't finished with him yet.

He took another two aspirin, wondering how many he could have in a day. He would definitely need to see the doctor about this when he got home.

He splashed on some cologne, and checked his reflection in the mirror. Still a good-looking man, in spite of the flecks of grey at his temples. Good-looking enough for the bored women that hang out at the bars in this kind of town. Failing that, there were always other conference goers like him, their minds dulled with the banality of sales figures and the cheap and plentiful alcohol on a company tab. And if he struck out there, as he had last night, company was never more than one phone call and a few Franklin's away.

"God dammit!" he hissed, as his arm began to burn, a stabbing hot pain through the whole limb. He shook his arm, feeling the pain subside. Maybe tonight he'd just stay in and watch the game, maybe order some pizza. He looked at himself in the mirror again, a deep frown from the pain staring back at him. Then he stiffened. That hadn't been there this morning, he was sure.

He spun around, and glanced at the foot of the bed. There was something sticking out from underneath it. It had definitely not been there this morning, because that's where his shoes had been. Cautiously, he picked it up, straw and twine, crudely fashioned into a vaguely human shape. Sticking out of it, were three pins. One in the head, labelled Monday. One in the neck, labelled Tuesday. The third in the arm, labelled Wednesday. Wrapped around it's waist, if it could be said to have such a thing, was a ribbon, that held a small scroll. The scroll had his name on it.

His hands began to shake again as he took the scroll out, and unrolled it. The handwriting was neat, and he was very familiar with it. He had seen it every day for over ten years, in notes on the fridge, chequebook stubs, and notes slipped in with his briefcase.

It simply said "I know. Thursday is the heart. Goodbye".

1-12-52-365 From Write Anything - 9 November 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on November 09, 2008. The original text can be found here. This was my first anniversary article on Write Anything. And it is only just shy of a year since I started reposting my articles from there to here!

1-12-52-365

Happy first anniversary... It has been a year since I started as a Write Anything writer (my first article was on 11 November 2007) and fifty articles on (only two weeks holiday taken!) we've come full circle. So what have been the highs and lows of writing these each week?

As far as lows go, there have been a number of "awake in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning and still haven't written anything" moments, possibly far more than I would like. There has even been one "four o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, still nothing written, and Karen is having to send an e-mail to see if I'm OK" moment!

But the highs far outweigh these. For instance, I have a deadline to write something every week. That gets me writing regularly, and more than that, it makes me think about writing far more critically than I might on, for instance, my own blog. I find myself paying far more attention to new stories and online snippets to do with writing than I might otherwise.

It also gave me a platform to speak to a ready-made community of writers who would engage in critical discussion about writing, more than I would have found on my own with my own blog. In fact, I've picked up one or two regular readers on my own blog who found me through Write Anything, which is always a bonus.

Over the past year I feel that I've become a stronger writer, and I attribute that to not just having this weekly column, but through interaction with the community that has built up around this site. So I'm grateful to everyone at Write Anything for allowing me this opportunity, and to you the readers for coming back each week. I hope this year will prove to be even better than last year – at least in terms of my time-keeping, if nothing else!

Tags: Write Anything Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Who is The Mysterious Gifted Jedi?

My superhero alter ego, apparently...

When danger threatens the citizens of Alpha City, one man alone can save them. He walks the thin line between the light side and the dark side, striking from the shadows with his Justice Sabre. Evildoers, beware his mysterious gift, for he is...

... The Mysterious Gifted Jedi

Generated by the endlessly entertaining Hero Factory, which lets you select the gender, hair colour, skin colour, eye, nose, facial hair, costume, colour scheme, accessories etc of your super heroic personality. An excellent distraction when you should be doing something else, as Tina Hunter (aka Lasered Jones) can testify to first hand.

Incidentally, Tina has just had two of her stories published in the anthology Seven Deadly Sins, available from Absolute XPress Publishing, and from April 18th on Amazon too, so go check them out.

Thoughts at 90 miles an hour From Write Anything - 2 November 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on November 02, 2008. The original text can be found here. Of course, I can look back on this post and appreciate the irony in it, as much of what I said about NaNoWriMo quickly became redundant. Within two weeks, I had abandoned the challenge, as Big Scary Real Life&trade got in the way.

Thoughts at 90 miles an hour

This is a little grab-bag of thoughts put together whilst driving home from a friend's party tonight - and don't worry, I'm not the one driving!

Halloween has been and gone for another year. It was always one of my favourite festivities when I was growing up, and not only because we were allowed to dress up in costume, and got more chocolate in one night than our parents normally allowed us in a year. Everyone seemed to make such a big effort. Maybe this is because I was a kid, and my world was composed of other kids taking part in Halloween. But on television there always seemed to be celebrations of the supernatural and spooky, and for a child unwittingly developing a nascent gothic streak, this was heaven.

As I grew older, cynicism took hold, people seemed to care less, took part less. Society seemed less prepared to embrace the praeternatural (perhaps due to the success of The X-Files, Buffy et al normalising them?) and Halloween became a non-event. Except this year. For the first time since I was at university, I dressed up and went to a Halloween party. And as a writer, I took literary inspiration, appearing as the eponymous lead from Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

Perhaps a tradition worth keeping? Because now, Hallowe'en is the last hurrah before October segues into November, and from now on November means National Novel Writing Month. This is my second year of participating, and no doubt you will hear more about it over the next four Sundays. If you are not taking part in NaNo this year, I can only apologise. November might be a little obsessive...

For this year's novel, I'm working on the sequel to last year's story. In addition to taking part in NaNo, I am serialising last year's work, posting a short chapter of around 2000 words (depending on convenient breaks in the story) each day. If you want to check out last year's story, then please visit The Long Watch: Apocatastasis and subscribe.

Some of this year's participants plan to post their daily output to a blog. Although I do intend to post the odd snippet (for Creative Carnivals and the like), the main body will stay under wraps. This is not because I think there is anything wrong with doing it (far from it), but mainly because I'm serialising the previous story, so I don't want to ruin it for anyone by posting something from the second that might be considered a spoiler!

What I can tell you however, is the first line of the second book:

"Why is that... thing... still here?"

The identities of the speaker and the thing referred to I shall leave to your imagination!

On top of taking part in NaNoWriMo and serialising a book, I also have my full-time job, a plethora of home improvements to carry out, Christmas shopping to begin, and a social life that may or may not be put on hold this month. I can only admire the dedication of those US based writers who also have the Thanksgiving Day holiday to contend with during the second half of NaNoWriMo.

Still, although November is a busy month, this should not be anything out of the usual for writers. "I should be writing" is a mantra that is worth repeating - we should always be this busy, not just for one month a year. This time around, I intend to keep going.

Tags: Write Anything Sunday Writer Paul Anderson

Question for the ladies

A couple of nights back I was doing my usual thing - hanging around the internet with my instant messenger programs open and available, like some kind of chat tart (I have status indicators underneath my picture, as you may or may not have noticed - if they are flashing and available, click to chat. I think it works...)

Anyway, as sometimes happens, a random person contacted me through Skype (Skype appears to have replaced Yahoo as the random chat initiator of choice these days). They had seen my profile, checked out the website and decided I sounded like an interesting person to chat to, so we spent about an hour talking about writing and why I had left the law.

But she made an interesting observation, and one that I would quite like to have more insight into. Having had a look at the kind of things I write, and the synopses of my assorted works in progress, she asked if I was targetting a male audience in particular, as my writing seemed very masculine in subject matter and style.

I'm not (at least not consciously) targetting any particular audience. Gender, age group, country - none of these are really considerations. Obviously I'm targetting English speakers, and given the levels of violence and swearing, mature readers are preferred, but beyond that, I'm not actively pursuing any one group.

However, and this is where the "question for the ladies" part comes into it...

My "fanbase", such as it is, is overwhelmingly female. The vast majority of comments I get are from women. My known and identified readership is female. The random people who turn up on instant messenger to say they have just been reading the site and like my writing are female.

So is there something about what I'm writing that particularly attracts women readers? Is it the case that women are generally readers whereas men aren't, and so statistically the majority of readers will always be women? Are women just generally more communicative, and I have just as many male readers who are simply silent? Has publishing got it wrong, and women don't like chick-lit, they want blood, gore, disturbing scenarios and the supernatural?

Ladies (and the silent gentlemen) - I'd appreciate your thoughts on this subject...

NaNoWriMo Workshop - Setting From Write Anything - 19 October 08

This is adapted from an article that appeared on the Write Anything website on October 19, 2008. The original text can be found here. This was an article I wrote for the NaNoWriMo prep week we held on Write Anything. I tackled the subject of setting within a story. Hope you find it relevant and useful!

NaNoWriMo Workshop - Setting

Ave, November, scriptori te salutant!

NaNoWriMo is upon us again, and whether you are taking part for the first time, or the tenth time, then October is the prep month for November's activities.

Over the next week we will be looking at the elements that you have to consider when creating your story. We won't tell you how to write your story - these are considerations that only you as author can address - but we will help you to think through the elements of a story as you begin to create your own unique tale. Today, we're going to look at setting.

Setting is unavoidable. All stories take place somewhere, even if that somewhere is ambiguous and undefined - it is still somewhere that must be considered. Setting can be the driving force of your story (a story "about" a place) or it can be merely the background that the plot takes place in. I'm going to take you through some very basic points to consider about different types of setting, and the pros and cons of each.

GEOGRAPHIC SETTING

This is the first thing people think of when they think of "setting". The actual location that a story takes place in.

Real locations

A real location is somewhere that actually exists, from a building in a city, to a country, to a planet. Set your story on Mars, and it is still set in a "real" place, as much as if you set it in Manhattan.

Pros - little to no imagination required. If you don't know the place well you can research it on the internet.

Cons - can be constraining. Characters have to obey the geography of the area (for example, if your characters are walking down Broadway in New York, they can only turn down the streets that actually come off Broadway).

Fictional locations

These are places purely of the imagination - other worlds, galaxies, universes, like Narnia or Earthsea.

Pros - the only limit is your imagination. Your world can be or do anything you want it to. It might be inconvenient for you if in a real world location there is a mountain in the road - in a fictional location, you can move that mountain anywhere you want!

Cons - world building. Yes, this can be fun. But if you create your own world, then you are responsible for moulding a believable reality. You have to be conscious of every detail. How many moons does the planet have, how many continents, what are the political structures of the countries like, what is the environment like, what are the histories of the cultures etc. Things you need not consider for a real location, you have to create from scratch for a fictional world.

Mixed locations

Mixed locations are ones that combine elements from both fictional and real locations. They can lean more towards the real (Gotham City, a fictional location in a real country), or more towards the fictional (London in Neverwhere, a real city made fantastical).

Pros - you get the best of both worlds. By setting in a real world, you don't need to worry about world building, but by fictionalising the exact setting, you are free from constraints of physical reality.

Cons - getting the mixture right can be trial and error. Make a real location too fantastical, but not enough to count as fictional, and people may get put off. Make a fictional location not real enough, and people simply won't believe it is part of the real world, and further attempts to mix them will be jarring.

TEMPORAL SETTING

That's just a fancy name for when your story takes place. A great consideration for stories set in real locations, but something worth keeping in mind for fictional locations.

The past

Whether it is five years ago or five hundred years ago, anything that has all ready happened is set in the past.

Pros - the advantage of writing about the past, as with writing about real places, is that it is concrete. It has happened, it can be researched and verified. You can make use of events as staging points in your story, perhaps even the major plot points.

Cons - you need to know about the time period you are writing about. You character cannot drive down a street if cars haven't been invented and that street hasn't been built. Things have to happen in the order they did happen in, and have the outcomes that actually happened (unless you are writing an alternative history story). Most importantly, your characters cannot have knowledge of events that from their perspective have not happened. When writing about the past, you have to be careful you get it right, because there are any number of history enthusiasts out there just waiting to tell you when you get it wrong.

The present

I take a fairly relaxed view about the present. Anything within two or three years of the date you are writing can be construed as "the present" because of how long publishing takes. From first draft to bookshelf, a book can take two years, so writing in the present can be the past on publication, and the present on publication was the future when written. So you've got a bit of leeway when writing about "the present day".

Pros - the most obvious is immediacy. Everyone experiences the present at the same time. Writing about now can give you a vibrancy and urgency. It is also familiar, and needs very little research, because we all experience it.

Cons - you hamper the ability to use the omniscient narrator. If you don't know the future, neither does the narrator. And while we're on the subject of the future, avoid making predictions and assumptions about the future when writing the present. Your writing will be very dated and distracting if you make the wrong assumptions. You don't want to be lumbered with the literary equivalent of a Dewey beats Truman moment.

The future

Possibly one of the most difficult periods to write about, the future is that which has not yet happened - and therein lies the advantage and disadvantage...

Pros - much like writing about fictional locations, the future is a flight of the imagination. You can make up new countries (who knows if they will come into existence), change the geography of the planet (landslides, earthquakes, even war can change environments), have new types of animals, aliens, robots, anything you'd like.

Cons - the closer to the present your future is, the more conservative you have to be with your flights of fantasy. I can say with confidence that it is unrealistic to have robots indistinguishable from humans walking around in a story set in 2010. I can't make that same statement about a story set in 2100. If you want to make bold predictions, set your story thousands of years in the future, when it is unlikely you will be proven wrong. Otherwise, be ready with good grace to have your story appreciated ironically in 2050 ("Ha, they thought we'd be travelling at lightspeed by now, but they still watch television on a physical screen!").

This is a whistlestop look at only some of the points you have to consider about setting. I haven't even touched on issues of environment, politics, arts, culture and science (all things you have to consider when world-building if opting for fictional settings). But it is enough to get you started when you are thinking about where and when your story is set.

Tags: Write Anything Sunday Writer Paul Anderson