Tag Archives: national novel writing month

Your fears and mine

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You wake to see the shadow in the doorway. Unmoving, its silhouette breaks the illusion of safety. Your home no longer belongs to you. 

You shift position and realise the thing at the door was simply a trick of the light. The shadow of an object so mundane it makes you laugh (a jacket, a bag, something hung on the door handle).

You pull the covers back over your head and enjoy the warmth. Snuggled tight, you try to enjoy your silliness, to laugh off the fear. 

But the fear won’t go easily and the memory of that spector in your doorway plagues you. Hiding in the fringes of your vision and at the edge of your dreams. It will not be an easy night.

I’m writing a horror book and it’s given me a new found respect for R L Stine. Stine is the author of the infamous ‘Goosebumps’ series of children’s horror books (among many other titles) and he is very good at what he does.

There appears to be a tightrope to walk when writing horror for children. It wobbles between thrills and frights, and a true sense of horror. I walked the tightrope for the first eight chapters and then I fell in.

This new book is not for kids.

The difference became apparent when a main character takes in the reality of what they’ve done. That depth of responsibility, the reality of remorse somehow made things grow a lot more ‘adult’.

This made me wonder if there is a fundamental difference in what can terrify a child and an adult. We will overlap in the basic self-preservation fears, those that make us run from the monstrous (we all want to stay safe after all). However, do adults find a different kind of horror in recognising the monstrous in themselves?

Is the deep end of horror found in the place in our brain where our own monster lives? I’d love to hear what you think so please leave your own ideas in the comments section below.

As always, thanks for reading, all the best, John

Falling for the Villain

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438px-Villainc.svgNot long ago I had a twitter conversation with ‘Amber Medley‘ (a fellow NaNoWriMo writer). The basic idea was how to move forward in writing (tackling the dreaded writer’s block). I suggested a technique I use where I take a character out of the book and look at what they do in different settings.

Eventually the conversation moved on to how we draw believable characters, especially villains; viz. not writing a bad guy who just goes ‘Mwahahahah!’.

The interesting point that came up was the fact that the more human your bad guy gets, the easier it is to like him/her and, as a writer, you typically don’t feel you should like your villain.

I have a confession to make. Originally the primary villain of ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame‘ (the ‘Wishmaster’) was going to be the overarching bad guy for the series. The ‘Wishmaster’ was to follow Jack throughout the book series, building in malice and in his capacity for harm in natural stages until Jack would have no choice but to face up to him in a huge final showdown.

This sounds dangerously close to the story of another non-magical boy who discovers he can do magic and faces off against a deadly foe. You can imagine my relief then when, at some point in November 2014, I sat down with a cup of tea, started my writing for the night and, for the first time, was properly introduced to my ‘Wishmaster’. I had gotten him all wrong.

He was still just as dangerous, still as malicious, and cruel, but then I started to realise what had brought him there; a need to share his gifts with others and his discomfort at finding that others actually got by fine without his gifts. He had grown resentful of these people’s lack of gratitude and I suddenly understood who he was and the story he needed to need to tell me.

I still couldn’t let him take over my first book, and I still needed him to take a back seat for ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams‘ but I made him bide his time. I knew his story now and I knew where he was going to have to go. He would remain a frightful memory for Jack and his friends for a while. After all, their story was just beginning. However, I was sure to set aside space in ‘Jack Reusen and the Children of Fate’ and, to an extent, in ‘Thea’s Quest’ (Book 4).

I grew to care for my villain and in doing so I grew to enjoy what I was writing a lot more. It gained more depth and I found it easier to connect with all of the characters (even bit players).

During my twitter conversation the other day ‘Amber Medley‘ pointed out the fact that she was worried about growing to like her villain but if I hadn’t grown to like mine I don’t know if the books would have moved forward at the pace they did. Perhaps sometimes it pays to like the villain.

Write all day and you will realize 5 things about yourself that you never knew

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Rock_balancing_(Counter_Balance)NaNoWriMo is here again and some of you are probably tired of hearing about it. Trust me it’s tiring on the inside as well. This is my third National Novel Writing event and it marks the writing of my fifth book set in a world that started to take shape only a year ago.

In my last post I talked a about the new book and explained a little about the support that’s helped push me on to write so much in such a short space of time. To absolutely anyone who has bought Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame you have no idea how much it means to me, and for those of you who have picked up a copy of the sequel, consider yourselves responsible for the barrage of books that are about to erupt out into the world.

When you sell copies of your first book there’s always a little voice in the back of your mind that wonders if people are just being nice. When you start selling copies of the sequel it makes you wonder if maybe they really do like to read what you’ve written. Thank you for that.

Anyway, on with the five things I’ve learned through plunging myself into this surprisingly demanding eventy. Here are some things that my last two NaNoWriMos have taught me:

Resilience: When you skip a day of writing it’s easy to beat yourself up over it but this just wastes time and energy that you could use to make up for lost time the next day. The first NoNoWriMo opened up my eyes to the fact that blaming yourself for a slip is utterly pointless, it’s happened. You just need to get back at it.

Time management: This is essential for the completion of a task like NaNoWriMo. After a few slips you start to discover what caused the problem and the vast majority of the time it has a lot more to do with expecting too much of yourself in too small a time-frame. Just because you wrote 1000 words in an hour a few times don’t use that as your gauge for how long it will take you to write 1000 words. Some passages need careful thought, some need extensive research just to get a place or character name just the way you want it. This will take time, don’t short-change yourself on time. Set aside an hour and a half a day to begin with, if you struggle to meet your target word-count add more time, if you speed through with keys blazing you could save some time on editing by going back over it then and there. Be fluid in time allocation but be persistent in working.

Commitment: In the middle of November last year I started calling myself a writer and actually meaning it but I knew that I’d be talking nonsense if I couldn’t even finish my first book. It was like a promise I made every time I said ‘I’m a writer’. Builders build, bakers bake and writers write. It was suddenly that simple. If you’re writing now and want to finish what you started a good first step is to commit to the moniker, call yourself a writer and mean it.

Confidence: You start off cautious, then you get a few thousand words in and suddenly it’s time to tell the world. You write blog posts. You post updates on social media. You tell friends and family. Then you sit down and freak out because you feel like they’re all expecting more of you. To be honest they probably aren’t (this tallies up with the final thing on this list) but this doesn’t stop the fact that you’re writing, you’re really doing it. All of a sudden there’s a new part to your personality, and it feels pretty awesome.

Being humble: This one is hard, for all the celebration of being a ‘writer’ you still need to remember that despite all the hours of work you put in there’s a good chance that the passage that you wrote at 3am after a marathon 5000 word day probably isn’t your best work. When the month is over you’re going to have a lot of work to do, admit that, drop the ego, develop some humility, and make something that you can actually be proud of. At the end of the day, if you can’t admit the faults that you can see in your own work then deep down you’ll never be able to tell yourself that you’ve done your best.

I’ve mainly written this post with fellow NaNoWriMo participants in mind and I hope it helps a bit. As you go through this month you’ll need to dig deep and what you find there will surprise you, but trust me it is utterly, unequivocally worth it.

As always thanks for reading, please feel free to ask questions or pop down a comment in the comments section below. All the best, John

National Novel Writing Month update

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10,000 wordsJust a quick wee update to say that ‘Jack Reusen and the Children of Fate’ is now on its fifth chapter. I’m 10,000 words in and counting and the main characters are in for a shock. It’s a lot of fun writing this time round.

After two books it’s a quicker process getting the words down (my typing speed has gone up a lot), which means that action scenes feel more active and descriptive scenes seem more direct for me than they used to. I’m hoping that this makes an impact that people like.

When I was writing ‘Jack Reusen and the Fey Flame‘ I had no real expectations about what readers would think. With ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams‘ I was writing at a point when people had already read the first book, so (to an extent) I could imagine their reactions. The weird thing this time round is that I’m writing book three before I’ve really heard back on what people thought of book two.

In a lot of ways I’m winging it again and the pace I’m having to set to keep up with NaNoWriMo’s daily writing targets means that I’m getting less time to over-think things. Overall it’s an interesting experience, I just hope people enjoy the finished result.

(Wee update on printed copies of ‘Jack Reusen and the Spark of Dreams’, they’re being printed as we speak, based on past experience I’d expect copies to be with us sometime late on next week. Sorry for the delay, don’t forget you can pre-order a paperback, or buy a kindle edition right now by following this link.)

Write your book at a virtual writers camp

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camp_logo-290f133f1af2562198f3a75b662feb03In just a few days I, and thousands of others, will embark on the beginnings of a mindboggling cacophony of stories. July is the month for Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where you pledge a word goal and a genre and then look forward to the weirdly competitive edge that your writing has been missing.

I say ‘weirdly competitive’ because there’s no sole winner, and you find yourself routing for precisely the people who are doing better than you. In a slightly masochistic way, you’ll find yourself enjoying the successes of those who challenge you challenge you the most. As you push yourself to smash your daily recommended word count, there they are, always a couple of hundred words ahead, but without them you’ll drop back to a hundred and fifty words a day with an ‘at least it’s something’.

NaNoWriMo gives you results; do it right and you’ll finish the month with a solid, real, piece of work but it doesn’t work without a couple of ‘spotters’. Thank goodness it’s virtual, allowing you match your wits with people on other continents just as easily as you can with someone you can meet with for a coffee and a ‘word sprint’ (where you write as much as you can in a set period of time, basically racing each other). I already have a friend in the states set to join me on the adventure, and I welcome any other writers or would-be writers who fancy getting that book finished once and for all.

Please consider signing up, it’s a genuine rush watching that word count go up by significant leaps each day. It’s the movement that pushed me on to launch the Jack Reusen series, and absolutely anyone can do it. Sign up in readiness here, set your word count goal, pick your genre (by no means does it have to be a children’s book) and get cracking. Honestly, if you do it right you will have that first draft done by August.

If you fancy some support along the way, feel free to follow and chat to me on my personal Twitter account. I look forward to sharing the highs and lows of writing a book with whomever of you feels up to it. All the best, John