Guest author Christine Stovell: Recurring Writemares

Christine Stovell jokes that her journey to publication has taken her from chocolate to Choc Lit. Winning a tin of chocolate in a national essay competition at primary school inspired her to become a writer but losing her dad to cancer made her realise that if she was ever going to get a novel published she had to put her writing first.  Her first novel, Turning the Tide, published by independent publisher Choc Lit, is a Kindle bestseller in the UK.  Her second Choc Lit novel, Move Over Darling is an October 2012 release.



Hello again!  Thank you, Liane, for inviting me back and to all of you for allowing me to be your guest at Novel Spaces.  October 31st, Liane reminded me.  Halloween. But rather than talk about the supernatural, I’m inviting you to share some of your worst ‘writemares’, the fears that keep you awake at four in the morning. Or maybe you’ve conquered your night ‘write terrors’ and can share the secret.  As a small thank you for having me back I’m giving away a copy of my second novel, Move Over Darling, which came out this month and is published by Choc Lit.  All you have to do is leave a comment and I’ll pick a name at random next Wednesday, 7 November. To set the ball rolling, here are few writerly worries that scare me when they go bump in the night.

The Ghostly Whisper

‘Hey Chris,’ the Inner Critic whispers, shaking me awake, ‘that novel you’re writing?  It’s rubbish – I’d stop now if I was you because you really don’t want anyone else to read it.  Delete it now before anyone sees!’ To think I thought that, having overcome the dreaded Second Book Syndrome, writing Novel 3 would somehow be easy, but I’m back in the same scary dark place looking for a glimmer of light.

The Ghastly Apparition 
Absolutely the best bit about writing for me is when a reader tells me they’ve enjoyed one of my novels. It’s not about my ego, it’s the sheer joy of connecting with another person.  The not-so-great bit is having someone tell me how much they hate my work.  One particularly well-crafted dissection of my first novel left me tearful and trembling… although I had to smile at the person who added a comment to the effect, ‘I agree.  This is a terrible book,’ or similar.  (I can’t quite face going back to check!).  That’s fine, I hope the dissatisfied readers find something more to their taste, but, just as experience has taught me I’m easily spooked by scary movies and should avoid them, I’ve now discovered the same probably applies to scary reviews.

The Dead End
Uh-oh! These characters are going nowhere! I’ve forced them into a situation because I thought it would make life easier for me and now they’re dying of boredom and I may not be able to resuscitate them. This one’s a problem of my own making – usually because I don’t know my characters well enough so I’m moving them around like bits of plastic and that’s how they’ve started behaving. Having to retrace my footsteps can leave me in a cold sweat, but sometimes the only way to make progress is to go back.

The Unknown
With my second novel, I’ve had to leave the safe, familiar comfort of my desk to venture out to promote my book. I’ve experienced live radio for the first time, as a guest on Roy Noble’s Show on BBC Wales, I’ve been interviewed for local press and I’ve written an article making the case for romance in a national magazine. Believe me, I’m flattered to be asked and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to talk about what I do – but it has caused me a few sleepless nights fretting about all of these events in advance.

The One About Being Naked in Public

Two weeks ago, Move Over Darling did something extraordinary, racing up the Amazon co.uk charts and settling – for a heady moment – at #2 in the Movers and Shakers chart and at #3 in Women Writers & Fiction. I was very tickled to see my title with its bright cover and Doris Day references resting between two editions of Fifty Shade of Grey. Then I remembered the old saying about the higher you climb the pole, the more of your backside you reveal! I felt better, mind you, when a friend observed that she couldn’t help feeling that E. L. James had shown a lot more of her backside than I had writing FSOG!

Well, that’s my top five writemares, although there are many more, but what about you? Do writing worries keep you awake? The first name out the hat gets a copy of Move Over Darling, so you can put on the light and read instead.

The truth, the whole truth and ONLY the truth

A few weeks ago, Dayton wrote about Research and the importance of this task in a writer's work. I've been immersed in some research myself recently. In fact, I have read so much about snakes for my new children's book 'Sea Scapes' that I was really not surprised to find that one had materialized in my garage last week.

I do a lot of my research on the internet. It is convenient and it can be comprehensive, however, I was interested to realise how completely unreliable internet sources can be. Try to find out whether or not snakes can see in colour and you will find a plethora of experts contradicting each other and even more amateurs commenting although they know nothing concrete on the topic.

Today's writers rely quite a bit on the internet as they research topics to make their characters and scenes authentic. However, we have to be extremely careful about where we get our information. Do a search on the internet and Wikipedia is sure to be in the top ten results on your search page. It is true that this source contains a great amount of information, and it is true that much of it is accurate but consider the description the site proclaims--"the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"--and you will understand the need to be cautious. The information is provided by volunteers and the site relies on the users to point out errors. The views are often biased and can be inaccurate.

For my snake research I had to do things the old-fashioned way. I headed out to my local library to get the information that I needed. What sources do you rely on when researching for a book? 

Cold Case Murder

In conducting research for my archaeological mystery American Caliphate, I spent five summers investigating a pyramid complex on Peru’s north coast.  I’ve written of these excavations before, but I left a few details out. 

Some grisly murders took place here. 

The culture that built the pyramids is called Moche.  They were a warrior culture, profoundly violent, yet at the same time, their pottery betrays an unexpected sensuality. 

Archaeologists are the detectives of prehistory.  We investigate the past, and in the case of the Moche, our investigations often enough turned up evidence of violent crimes.  One day we were excavating a platform off the back of one of the pyramids, and we came across a skeleton lying partly under a wall.

Yup, that’s a mud-brick wall dating to about 500 A.D. that’s on top of the skeleton.  And here’s me getting down into the pit to work on the excavations.

Here’s a close-up.  I was a little concerned when I saw the teeth in the eye socket, but it turns out one of the excavators put them there for safe keeping, so they wouldn’t get lost.  And that was a relief. 

And there’s the leg, just sticking out of the wall.

Then we brought him to the lab and started running some diagnostics. 

He was a young man in his mid- to late twenties with perfect teeth.  A thorough examination of his bones revealed hardly any wear and tear.  He was a noble; someone who had enjoyed a life of luxury – up till a point.  Up until the moment someone stood him on the edge of a ledge and smacked him in the back with a sword.

Those are the marks the sword made on his ribs. The blow drove him over a ledge.  Exactly how he died, whether from the fall or from further injuries, we can’t know.  But immediately thereafter, for reasons not yet understood, a wall was built over him.

Are we going to solve the case?  Will the killer be brought to justice?  I doubt it.  This murder was committed more than 1500 years ago.  No, our killer got away with it.  The tools that archaeologists can bring to bear on the violence of antiquity are blunt.  There’s only so much we can resolve.

But the tools that a mystery writer can bring to bear on the violence of antiquity are robust.  I’m never going to forget that man who got smacked with a sword, then buried under a wall.  He’ll turn up in my stories here and there.  That’s basically how I built my story for American Caliphate, by letting the clues lead me to a place the scientist part of me couldn’t answer, but the writer part of me could run with.  

The definition of success

While watching the local newscast, I heard a reporter introduce a prominent doctor as a successful surgeon, before proceeding to recite a long list of his achievements.  I turned to my husband and asked sarcastically, “So if another surgeon doesn’t accomplish all that he has, does that make him an unsuccessful surgeon?” 

 My husband shrugged nonchalantly and responded, “I guess it depends on how you define success.”

I smiled.

When I first decided to publish my stories, my idea of success was getting a traditional publisher to publish my story.  At that time, I was not thinking about self-publishing and (now shamefacedly) like many authors a few years back, I didn’t think of self-publishing as being successful.  But now that I have gotten my work published, and spent three years without another in print, my idea of success has changed.

What makes a successful author?  Is a successful author a prolific author?  I can think of one Pulitzer Prize winning author who only published one book.  Harper Lee is by any measure a successful author.  Not only did she win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, but her book, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, is considered an American classic and is assigned reading for English Literature in most middle and/or high school classes.  Yet Harper Lee is not prolific.

Is a successful author a rich author?  Well in that case the successful authors are few and far between.

Is a successful author on the NY Times bestseller list?  That is one measure of success.  But does that mean any author who is not on the NY Times bestseller list is unsuccessful?

Is a successful author published by a traditional big publishing house?  I’ve seen many successful authors who have self-published, even some producing bestsellers.  I’ve seen huge publishing houses publish books that tank.

What I’ve concluded is that what defines a successful author is dependent on the definition of success.  And that definition is not only subjective, but is also dynamic.  The definition of success as a writer is constantly changing for me.

What do you define as success for an author?

A writing space of her own...

Liane's post about proper attire for writers got me thinking about proper writing spaces, after all, I've got the attire down pat and have never worn sequins and sandals in my life, but what about the places where we write?  For a couple years now, I've written at a mahogany table set up in the living room.  The table faces one of the windows.  As you can see from the picture below, it's a pretty orderly space - everything is, basically, just so.  My pen mug is always on my right and the glass paperweight always on the left.

Below is the view through the jalousies - a couple trees to the left, a road in front and, beyond that, the ferry terminal.  The sun is usually just as bright as it appears in the picture so I mostly keep the jalousies closed.

I've learned to shut out the noise from the street as I write, the beeps as people hail each other from passing cars, the snorting of heavy-duty trucks and the roar of muffer-less scooters.  Thankfully, the horns of the inter-island ferries and the loud blare from the occasional cruise ship are not an every-day thing.  But this is far from ideal for me.

Ideal for me would be a vine-covered wooden shed, set apart from the main house, in a country which cared about such things as noise pollution and actually took steps to curb it.  All I'd want to see from my shed, when I looked up from my keyboard would be the flowering shrubs in my garden.  In this shed, all my books would be stacked from floor to ceiling.  A comfortable chaise for naps and reading bouts would be the only piece of furniture other than my desk, chair and cabinet.  Oh, and moving from the shed to the kitchen would require more than the ten steps it now takes which would do wonders for my waistline!

So, what about you?  What would your ideal writing space look like?

Dress code for writers

Johnny Depp in Secret Window

Try to picture a writer at work and what comes to mind? I'm willing to bet it's something like Johnny Depp's character in Secret Window—wearing a garment so ancient and ratty he could push his fist through the holes and still have room to spare.

I'm here to tell you that writers do not dress like that for work: we discard the robes when the holes are big enough for us to poke two fingers through.

Not long ago, the issue of attire came up among Novel Spaces members. Several of the females confessed that we—cough—they pretty much lived in jeans and sandals and avoided events and places that required anything more complicated. Certain male members, on the other hand, appeared to think that 'formal' and 'business casual' meant they had to wear pants. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn was that male writers, um, hang around pant-less much of the time.

Ratty bathrobes, no pants, jeans, sandals, and event avoidance? We decided an intervention was needed. After much intelligent discussion we arrived at a sensible dress code for writers. Since there is no way to enforce any kind of code in the privacy of people's homes, we stuck to public appearances—the ones we can't come up with creative reasons to weasel out of.

The Novel Spaces sartorial code

• No sequins and fisherman's sandals worn together (both sexes)
• No bare shoulders (both sexes)
• No cleavage (anyone who has)
• No mini anything (women)
• No Armani dinner jackets over Speedos (men)
• No jeans and sandals—no sandals! (both sexes)
• No topless ensembles (both sexes)
• Kilts, to replace the dreaded pants (men)

The code was proposed, ratified and adopted by all. Writers, be guided accordingly.

—Liane Spicer

Nothing Rhymes with Poetry

I dislike poetry.

I was never able to avoid poetry growing up, much as I tried. From junior high school through my first run at college every English or Lit course had an obligatory poetry element. Pretty much against my will many of those required poems have stuck with me, not so much as influencing forces but as bits and pieces of rhyming detritus lodged in unused nooks and crannies of my frontal lobe (of which there are legion); Frost with his horse in the snowy wood, Sandburg with his cat-footed fog, Kipling keeping his wits - all the standards are in there somewhere. And of course I can recite what every teenager thinks is the heaviest piece of writing they've ever seen, the single most quoted (and practically inescapable) poem in the English language, William Butler Yeats's The Second Coming. Fragments of that poem are everywhere.

Actually, I think I should specify I dislike reading poetry. Listening to it is fine; Shakespeare's plays, the lyrics of any song, all of these are poetry. Even some ad jingles, Lord help us. They are composed of words chosen for sound and imagery that have been carefully set in a structured cadence and rhythm to create a desired effect. (And cadence is not rhythm. If a poem's in iambic pentameter, iambic is the rhythm and pentameter is the cadence.) Even blank verse – a complete mess on the page as the poet tries to use white spaces and oddly positioned words to imply grammar and relationship – sounds good when read aloud by someone who gets what the poem is about.

I think my dislike of words scattered across the page is a function of my dyslexia; b, q, d, and p are the same letter to me, identical if presented without positional clues. I spent so much time learning to figure out what I was looking at growing up that I can sight-read a find-a-word puzzle. Really. You think a word like "disenfranchise" is hard to read when spelled backwards in an ascending diagonal? That's how it looks to me half the time anyway. Being able to read upside down as quickly as I read right side up was a real boon as a classroom teacher. (Doesn't work for reading in mirrors.)

After three point five paragraphs devoted to my dislike of poetry it should come as no surprise that I have favorite poems and poets or that I have had one (count 'em, one) poem published in my lifetime. It was written during my Bohemian period, the year I took off between high school and college. It was chosen by a regional literary quarterly that paid in copies and disappeared without a ripple three and a half decades ago. In other words it was not a professional sale, but at the time I was impressed with myself.

Something times One is said
to equal Something.

In math that
is called
Proof
of Identity.

I need someOne
to times with.

Pretty much adolescent angst on a stick, I know, but I hadn't yet turned twenty and was still mistaking doubt for depth and hormones for passion. An astute student of the late Beat period may notice the work shows influence of one of the first poets I 'discovered' on my own: Richard Brautigan. (Actually, you'd have to be a very generous student with intuitive skills bordering on the clairvoyant.) For those unfamiliar with his work, I recommend you start with his novel Trout Fishing in America and/or his collection of poems The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. One of my favorites is the title poem from the collection, here in its entirety:

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.

I know some, like my brother who teaches English at a real university, dismiss most of Brautigan's work as word play. I'm going to come back to that idea in a moment, but first one more poet: Billy Collins. A former USofA Poet Laureate, Collins does atypical things with words. I don't think I'll ever get tired of his delightful Tension, for example. In fact, I think you should go read that now. I’ll wait.

"Tension" looks a lot like word play, doesn't it? But yet it's still with you, and will stick with you; just like "The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster." And they'll stick with you in part because, as I said of poems earlier, they are composed of words carefully chosen, balanced, and positioned to evoke a desired effect. This effect is amplified when the choice, balance, and position are unexpected.

The myth of the dreamy-eyed poet is as stereotypically erroneous as the myth of the starving writer. Writers and poets are craftsmen (mostly because I can't bring myself to use "craftspeople" and I can't think of a gender-neutral equivalent) who work at mastering the tools of their trade then use those tools to the best of their ability. And you know what? Poets are more disciplined than writers. They use fewer words to greater effect. For this reason alone every writer should study poetry. Listen to poetry if you have as much trouble reading it as I do. Go to a poetry jam – where poets face off, building on each other's words to create a new whole, the verbal analog of jazz musicians letting loose collaboratively when the mere hearers are gone, creating what won't be repeated. Study why poetry works, the nuts and bolts and wordplay that make verse memorable. Because, while you as a writer probably never have to be as spare and structured as a poet, knowing how to use the poet's tools will make your own work stronger.