Skip to main content

Blank page panic

I know some people consider me a grumpy old man, and I'd be the first to confess that (having reached a certain age) grumpiness does come fairly easily to me. But for all its hazards, pitfalls and lack of cash, I love the writing life. There are few things more satisfying than seeing your book on the shelf in a shop, and thinking 'I did that.' Or getting a nice email from someone who has read one of your books and got something out of it.

I even enjoy some of the more grump-generating aspects of the whole process of being an author. Many don't like proof reading, but I get a small buzz out of fine tuning the book... and by the time we reach the proofs stage I've almost forgotten what's in there, so it's a nice surprise when it's really quite readable.

But there are two stages of the process I dislike. One is writing proposals. This is primarily because they are such hard work. You have to put in some research, some writing skills, all the effort involved in writing a book, but in a more concentrated fashion to craft a little jewel... only for it to be rejected more than half the time. It is truly soul destroying.

The second of these stages is the one I'm at right now. The one where you sit down with a totally empty word processor file and start to create something. Where to begin? How can I turn this blank page into 90,000 words? Luckily, one advantage of the proposal is that it acts a template. You can, in fairly brainless fashion, put in the chapter titles and a quick outline of each chapter. Even better, if you start each chapter with a quote, you can spend an idle hour finding suitable quotations to head up each chapter.

Then it's into serious prevarication time. Let's do some more research now. Let's investigate illustrations, because they can take a long, long time for permissions to come through. Let's do almost anything rather than type those first words. Eventually, though, you have to give in. Your brain and notes are full of research. At least one of the chapters is beginning to mentally take shape. You sit down at the keyboard. And begin.

It's easy to forget, when peering out of an aircraft window...

And all of a sudden you are wondering what all the fuss was about. It's easy, this writing game, isn't it?
Labels:

Comments

  1. cromercrox23 August 2010 at 11:15

    Writing proposals. Ugh! I hate it! The agony of crafting a 10,000-word document is much more intense than that engendered by writing the whole book, probably because it's concentrated in a smaller space. It can take me up to twice as long to create an acceptable proposal (pulling teeth) as to write a first draft (pure enjuoyment). The problem with a proposal is you have to get the flow of ideas just right, because if you don't, tiny gaps and flaws in the argument produce gaping holes in the first draft. Rather like inflationary cosmology.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp
117 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense
6 comments
Read more