Where is my mind?
 
See, I don’t know about you, but I feel like I used to be able to focus on one thing for hours on end, without my thoughts snaking off to other stuff.

Okay, maybe not hours on end, but at least for ten goddamn minutes.

One preoccupation shared by my novels Ghoster and The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is this: what has the internet done to our brains? I love the online world and yet I also fear its power. I fear its ability to warp, reshape or downright damage our puny human grey matter. I fear its potential to make dopamine slaves of us all.

During the mid-to-late Nineties, I was living in London and had a fun Saturday routine. This routine, as you may be able to tell, probably developed when I was ‘in-between girlfriends’.

I would get on the tube to East Ham, then head to the marvellous Who Shop there. I would buy a couple of back issues of Doctor Who Magazine, and possibly some other stuff, usually including a VHS tape, then head off to some café or other for lunch. And over lunch, I would read those magazines from cover to cover, with few or no distractions going on in my head.

Happily, The Who Shop still exists! I must return, for a heady dose of nostalgia. This week, though, I did recreate some of my old routine. It wasn’t a Saturday and I wasn’t in East Ham, but I am ‘between girlfriends’, so at least something remained constant. While visiting Brighton’s wonderful indoor retro market Snooper’s Paradise, I found a whole load of back issues of Doctor Who Magazine for £1 each. And I thought, “Ah, let’s try the whole Who Shop/lunch thing of yesteryear! How many issues will I need for lunch?”

Seeing as DWM was a slimmer mag back then, I bought two, picking issues with Cybermen on the cover, because I love Cybermen. Issues 97 and 98, for the curious. Then I headed a few doors along to the lovely vegetarian café Wai Kika Moo Kau, ordered an all-day breakfast and settled down to read Issue 97.

Here a timeline of how that went:

PAGE 3
This is the Contents page. I actually switch off my phone. Oh yes indeed, that’s how seriously I’m taking this leap back through time. I also manage to resist the ingrained urge to press my forefinger down on the page to click where it says Turn To Page 26. So far, so good.

P4-5
Letters page. One letter, from Jeffrey in North Carolina, is all about the evolution of the Cybermen and mentions their home planets Mondas and Telos. My brain pipes up with, “Hey, those look a bit like Monday and Tuesday, don’t they? Maybe there’s a days-of-the-week joke in that – ooh, maybe one you could tell on Twitter dot com!” So I stop reading and mentally go to work on the gag, while absent-mindedly sipping my tea. And now I’m switching my phone back on. I’m heading over to Twitter to post the joke. Pray for me.

P6-13
Truth be told, these pages aren’t incredibly gripping, but in any case I’d hardly know, because I’m switching back to Twitter to (a) see if anyone found the Hilarious Cybermen Planet Joke hilarious; and (b) adding a second pun-based joke-tweet to the mix, just for good measure. Sweet Jesus. ”BLOCKED AND REPORTED,” my fellow DWM writer Benjamin Cook tweets at me, and he’s almost certainly within his rights.

P14
This is the On Target page, all about the Target Books range. Cor, nice. I’m into this. As I start to read, I realise I should switch my phone off and keep it off. However, my brunch hasn’t arrived yet and I want to take a photo of it. I have no photos of any of the ‘Who Shop lunches’ I ate in the mid-to-late Nineties and yet this photo inexplicably feels important. So the phone stays on.

P16-17
I literally miss an entire piece about the making of Revenge Of The Cybermen, because now I’m thinking about this piece I could write for this newsletter. “Ah yes,” I muse, “I could turn my lack of focus into the main article for this Sunday’s newsletter!” This does, at least, mean that I’m no longer concerned about what to write for the newsletter, but once again it also means I’m not reading this damn magazine properly.

P20-23
A Q&A with Colin Baker. Brunch arrives and so I take the photo for this piece that my brain is now somewhat preoccupied with dreaming up. Suddenly I’m aware that I should try and remember the process of reading the magazine and the distractions that struck me. So instead of simply enjoying my lunch and reading a magazine, I’m now the star of my own documentary. A Tinder notification certainly does nothing to improve my focus.

P26-29
An interview with Who director Michael Briant. I’m annoyed with myself by this point, and so turn the phone off again. Finally, I am eating a nice lunch while reading a magazine. Why does this somehow feel like an achievement? I still find it hard to fully focus, though, because I’ve had quite a testing week on a personal level. Twenty years ago, it’s arguable that I probably had fewer distracting issues to think about and also less work stuff, because I was ‘just’ a rock journalist. Oh, for those simpler days. Still, I do read this Briant interview in full and to the end. It’s a good one, because the man helmed great stories like Robots Of Death.

P35-38
Another relatively in-depth piece about whether Doctor Who is unsuitable for children. Right up my alley! And I do read this… while being slightly distracted by the time, because I need to be back home working in about half an hour.

And that’s the end of the magazine. Turns out I didn’t need two issues after all, thanks to all the online dicking around. So I switch the phone back on, obviously, and cycle through the loop of email, text, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and, yes, Tinder, before paying my bill and heading home.

Yeah, that was pretty far removed from my simple experience of the mid-to-late Nineties, back when I had a phone that may not even have been capable of text messages! Back in those days, the odd phone call might have interrupted my reading, but that would have been about it.

So, here’s the real question. Which version of the ‘Who Shop magazine café’ experience was better? I feel like I enjoyed it more back then… but did I really? As Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner once said, the memory cheats. Perhaps I felt lonely in that café in 1997. Disconnected from the world. While I do have a memory of overall contentment, I can’t remember for sure.

Social media certainly means never having to be alone – and there is a real, undeniable pleasure in being able to share what you’re doing with others, whether in a jokey tweet or an article for a newsletter. But there should also be pleasure in simply doing stuff for yourself, by yourself, only for yourself. If a tree falls in the forest… do you really have to tweet a picture or video of that event, in order to fully appreciate it? Me, I’d probably be happy to have not been crushed by a falling tree… but you can bet I’d probably write about the experience here, or perhaps make a YouTube video about the whole affair on a new channel called Jason Arnopp’s Terrifying Near-Death Experiences.

My novels may come across as damning indictments of social media and the online world in general, but really they’re explorations. Scary question marks. Cries for help, even.

Where are we going with all this hyper-connectivity – and wherever that place may be, will it be better than the place we came from?

Are we happier now? If not, then how exactly do we feel these days?

Where are our minds?

My novel Ghoster, which deals with some of these thoughts in a scary fictional way, is out now. 

My newsletter subscribers had this article sent to their inboxes two weeks ago. Consider joining them for a fortnightly dose of early news and thoughts on writing and creativity. You might also like to take a look at my Patreon, where supporters receive all manner of perks.

To ensure that we all start on the same page with this, let me explain the difference between the proofreading process and, say, the copy-editing process.

The copy-editor reads your novel and makes a whole bunch of suggestions. Sometimes these are ways in which a sentence might flow more smoothly, be clearer in meaning or just be downright better. Other times, the copy-editor might identify a logic problem to ask you about. A potential plot-hole, in other words.

Just like the rest of the edit process, copy editing is awesome. Copy editors are horribly unsung, given that they can make you look like a better writer than you actually are. Crucially, they’re a fresh pair of eyes, bringing a fresh take to a book which you and your editor have both read several times by then.

I still remember a sentence in my first Orbit Books novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, which my copy-editor improved so much by suggesting the use of the word “solicit”. I think it was Jack saying he would solicit the combat magician Sherilyn Chastain’s views on something. Whatever it was, that suggestion made the sentence flow like a dream. And I TOOK ALL THE CREDIT, MWAH-HAH-HAHHHH

When you get your manuscript back, full of the copy-editors’ suggestions, you go through the whole thing and say yes or no to each of them. Yes, you do have that power of veto, but it’s one to wield wisely and carefully. Why? Because it cannot be overstated how much the copy-editor offers a fresh perspective on your project. For instance, if something wasn’t clear to them about your book, on a macro or micro level, then chances are it really could do with clarification.

During the copy edit, you’re not just responding to the copy-editor’s suggestions and questions – you’re reading through the whole thing again. At this stage, you’re still able to get hands-on with the Word file and make pretty much all the changes you want. And this, it’s important to note, is your last chance to carry out any serious surgery the book needs to undergo.

So that’s the copy edit. What’s the proofread, then? This is the final stage of production – for you, the author, at least. Different production editors no doubt go about this differently, but in the cases of my new novel Ghoster and 2016's The Last Days Of Jack Sparks, I was sent the type-set novel through the post, across about 450 A4 pages. It’s a glorious moment, when you get to see your novel laid out on the pages, just as it will look in the finished version. Or at least, close to how it will look, because this is your final chance to make changes.

You read through the whole thing (again) and mark up any issues you find. The difference this time, is that you’re looking for micro rather than macro. Typos, small plot-holes, things like that. You no longer have the Word file to tamper with. Instead, you’ll be communicating a list of changes you’d like to your production editor – and this list needs to be as brief as humanly possible. In fact, if the proposed changes are “excessive”, then they may incur financial charges! And these may well be passed on from the publisher to you.

Yeah. This doesn’t get talked about much, does it, eh? But the bottom line is: the proofreading stage should never be thought of as this huge, all-encompassing safety net, and your production editor should not be thought of as someone who’s going to be willing or able to make hundreds of corrections to the manuscript on your behalf. Even if they’re as super-cool as Orbit’s managing editor Joanna Kramer, who has overseen the production of Ghoster and The Last Days Of Jack Sparks.

The thing is, we’re authors, which means we’re rarely 100 per cent happy with our work. Certainly not our writing, anyway. So with Ghoster, for instance, I saw various sentences during the proofing stage that I wanted to try and ‘perfect’. In the end, though, I had to accept that most of these sentences were actually fine. I chose instead to prioritise anything that was an actual mistake, as opposed to my endless quest for a perfect sentence. Besides, there’s always the danger that last-minute changes will cause you to, for instance, use a word which has already been overused elsewhere in the text. In fact, some last-minute changes run the risk of tipping over the whole apple cart. One careless eleventh-hour 'correction' could actually screw the plot, so tread lightly.

Once you reach a certain point with a novel, you just have to accept that it’s done.

And as of Thursday morning, when I hit Send on an email to Joanna with the list of proof amendments attached, Ghoster is done.

Come October 24, if you are of a mind to do so, you’ll get to read the novel and spot any typos we missed. Just, please, for the love of God, don’t tell me about any of them.

Here’s Ghoster at Amazon. Pre-orderliness is next to godliness. 

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada

P.S. Subscribers to my fortnightly newsletter The Necronoppicon received this article direct to their inboxes, two weeks ago. Consider joining us here. 

For some months, I've been working on my second novel for Orbit Books. It's going great now, thanks for asking, but in the early days the book hurled some alarming curveballs right at my face, because that's what books do.

Smoke grenades led me staggering down blind alleys of narrative. Characters who had once seemed integral to the story, actually needed to be winched clean out of the manuscript forever, taking many thousands of words with them. Ideas that had once seemed great in my head, actually weren't so great and it turned out there were far better ways to do this. Cue more thinking, more planning, more gnashing of teeth, more demons dancing around my head shrieking, "You can't do this writing thing! You're an idiot!"

Chances are, if you write then you've experienced similar issues, regardless of your experience level. Every new project feels like it requires a brand new skillset.

And you know why that is? It's because you're conjuring up something out of absolutely nothing, out of the clear blue sky. And that's incredibly difficult. If we writers are all gifted at one thing, though, it's forgetting that it's always hard. Oh yeah, we're great at blaming ourselves until we remember how hard it always is.

As I quacked on Twitter recently...

There are positive sides, however, to accepting just how brain-meltingly tricky writing should be. More positive sides than negative, I'm saying.

​First of all, what's the alternative: labouring under the delusion that writing's a breeze? That's a surefire way to churn out complacent and under-cooked work. Whereas if you know how hard writing is, you know how high you need to aim. As a result, you're much more likely to turn a realistic and unblinking eye to your work and see its flaws and problems, hopefully before non-editorial readers get a chance to point them out in an excruciating Amazon-based smackdown.

I certainly never thought writing fiction was easy, but I suspect there was a time, many years ago, when I reckoned it was easier than I do now. I multi-tasked more and was probably more productive in terms of the number of projects I took on. But looking back, perhaps I wasn't aiming quite as high as I thought I was. These days, I hope I genuinely aim to write something properly great. I may very well fail, and that's for the reader to decide. But I know I devoted more back-breaking work to my novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks than I'd ever put into anything before. Because in a world that effectively offers endless alternative channels of entertainment, why should we expect readers to commit to a book that's anything less than great? Anything less than next level, even, in some respect or other? These thoughts are as terrifying as they are true.

Regardless of whether we succeed in our lofty aims, acknowledging the size of the challenge and facing up to it, that's half the battle. And I think that's why writing perversely seems to get tougher, the more experience you gain: you realise how insanely perilous this mountain you pig-headedly keep attempting to climb really is.

You come to realise exactly what writing takes. What it really takes. Especially when you're operating on a landscape liberally studded with geniuses.

So. If you often feel like writing is tougher than wading through a swamp in concrete boots, and the sheer difficulty of it all regularly inflicts a terrible paralysis upon your very soul, then congratulations: you're so one of us. Because the vast majority of writers feel exactly the same way. Here's to tipping your head back, gazing up at the mountain's peak and feeling the fear, then digging the first crampon in anyway. (And of course, if you find writing a breeze, then I'm delighted for you and you're still one of us. Just a bit weird.)

We'll end with the words of one of those aforementioned geniuses. One who, in this great quote, references two other geniuses.

Steven Moffat: "There isn’t one single script when I’m not, at some point, sick-makingly terrified of my inability to write it. I mean, it’s just hard! I asked Russell T Davies, 'Do you ever wanna stick your head out the window and shout that you don’t know what you're doing?' And he said, 'Oh God, every day.' He then mentioned it several times, saying how Cardiff Bay was echoing to his cries!"

"And every time I make a script work," Steven continues, "it feels like luck. I don’t think that feeling ever goes away. It really is that hard, and that’s what it’s supposed to be like. The sheer amount of thinking you have to do, to make this work! When I read scripts that are bad, it’s often because they’re just lazy. The writer hasn’t thought things through in the way that I would. There was a quote from John Cleese, around the time he was ruling the world with Fawlty Towers: 'If I’m any good at writing comedy, it’s because I know how hard it’s supposed to be.' And that’s it. It’s shockingly difficult and emotionally upsetting!” 

My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is out now. This week, it appeared on Amazon's Rising Stars list of promising debut novels for 2016. Take a look!

In January, I'll finally release a non-fiction book I've been working on for three years.  Titled 101 Writing Fears And How To Deal With Them, it aims to erase unhelpful fear from your writing life.

Around 2012, I asked Twitter folk for their biggest writing-related fears.  Even given that writers are famously prone to a dose of the terrors, I was still taken back by how many fears people shared with me, publicly or otherwise.  As you might have gathered, there were about 101 of them, and I set out to address each in the book.  When it came to areas where I didn't personally have enough experience or knowledge, I quizzed other people who did.

So here's Fear # 10 from the book...

“I’m dyslexic and several people have told me that means I can’t write.”

Obviously, I have no idea who these people are, but can assure you that they’re far more idiotic than they believe dyslexic folk to be.  Wow.  What a stupid thing to say.

Now, it would be ideal to start off by defining dyslexia, but it turns out that dyslexics are dyslexic in different ways.  There is no single, accepted definition of dyslexia.  Researchers use different definitions, as do the people who design the tests to screen for and diagnose dyslexia, although most agree there’s a phonological element: in other words, people’s awareness of the ‘sound structure’ of spoken words.

So dyslexia is basically an ‘umbrella’ term. There isn't even field-wide agreement on what the key areas of ‘dyslexic deficit’ are. Some people have short term memory issues, some have visual deficits (e.g. seeing words moving around or the letters in the wrong order), but equally some people describe this ‘letters in the wrong order’ business as part of a sequencing, rather than visual, deficit. In other words, even the professionals don't agree at a fundamental level about what dyslexia is.  As the British Dyslexia Association says, “Dyslexia is best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and there are no clear cut-off points”.

Here are just some of the many successful writers who I believe are or were dyslexic: Agatha Christie, Hans Christian Andersen, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, A-Team creator Stephen Cannell, F Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, novelist John Corrigan, fantasy author Terry Goodkind, award-winning poet Philip Schultz, mystery novelist Elizabeth Daniels Squire, poet William Butler Yeats... the list could take up this whole page, just like the lists of successful autistic writers and those with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Writer Clive Frayne has worked as an award-winning copywriter, as a movie/TV scriptwriter, freelance journalist and Scriptmag.com columnist.  “Not bad for a lad who can't spell ‘rhythm’, no matter how many times he tries to learn it!” he says.  “I only really figured out that I was dyslexic after I'd been working as a writer for 15 years.  It should have been more obvious, really, because my brother, my mother and my niece are all profoundly dyslexic. Me, I've got a much milder version of it, which means that despite writing everyday for more years than I care to mention, I still can't spell ‘desperately’ without having at least three or four runs at it. I also have the annoying habit of substituting one word for another.
All of which wouldn't be so bad if my dyslexia didn't make proof reading for errors a nightmare. In all of the time that I've been a writer, I don't think I've ever managed to submit a document without at least a couple of typos in it. Darn it.”

Author David Southwell has written many popular books on conspiracy theories and organised crime, as well as scripting various comics.  He pulls no punches when outlining his thoughts on dyslexia: “The condition is a problem whether you choose to write or not. It is neurological and until we reach a sci-fi future where alongside the jet packs, there’s also a nanite pill to tackle it, it going to be part of your life. You never overcome dyslexia. You outsmart it, outmanoeuvre it, but it is always there. As an author, words are my life and my living, but my dyslexia also makes them my battleground.

“The really good news,” he adds, “is that dyslexia has no impact on the strength of your imagination. On your ability to think of stories, create characters. To build whole worlds in your mind. Dyslexia does not rob you of core qualities that make you a writer such as a passion to tell stories, to use them to connect the amazing creations of your mind’s eye with others.”

“Your abilities to tell a story, understand a narrative, create relatable characters, and your abilities to format a sentence or be a great speller are completely unrelated,” asserts Mike Garley, the comics writer and editor behind the likes of Dead Roots and The Kill Screen.  “You just need a bit of self-awareness. I’ve never actually had any negativity about dyslexia. I think dyslexia is surprisingly common - including undiagnosed - and it’s not really a thing anymore. You and your ability to tell a story is what people are interested in.”

Clive Frayne even believes dyslexia has proven to be a distinct advantage when it comes to his written dialogue. “When I was in school, I always struggled with written work. I was bright, though, so I learned to pay much more attention to what people were saying. This has really worked for me as a writer. The fact that I had to learn language largely by listening to people, has meant that I developed a really good ear for the way people speak, as opposed to formal grammatical structures, which I have always struggled with. My writing has always had a conversational style and I've always felt that sensibility came from my odd relationship with language. Funnily enough, it’s a really useful trait if you want to write for radio or film. Actually, I'd argue that writing with its own unique voice is pretty much always a more interesting read than a dry, grammatically correct piece of prose.”

Technology is also at hand to help writers.  “I use Final Draft,” says Mike, “which ‘speaks’ your script to you, which is great for spotting mistakes.  I also have some trusted colleagues who kindly look over bits and pieces for me.”

“About seven years ago,” says Clive, “when I finally figured out what was happening, that I was dyslexic, I made a real effort to iron out the worst excesses of it, and discovered that I'd learnt how to spell specific words by the shape they make on the keyboard. I’m so glad I learnt to touch type! This means that on a keyboard my spelling is about 90% better than when I pick up a pen. If I use a word often enough the shape and rhythm it makes on the keyboard is how I know how to write it. Ask me to spell the same word and I'm lost, ask me to type it and I'm fine.

“The truth of the matter,” he goes on, “is I don't find writing that difficult. Yes, I substitute words, yes, I often have to have five or six goes at spelling quite basic words... but I'm used to that. And, I compensate by being able to type pretty quickly. The real struggle for me is proof reading documents. Proof reading is a bitch. I don't think I've ever sent out a document without typos in it, and I obsessively read and re-read documents over and over again. What I have discovered is that I can spot errors when a page is printed out, that I miss when I'm reading from the screen. But even reading and correcting stuff six or seven times, then printing it out, re-reading it another six or seven times, still won't let me catch all the errors... maddening.”

The consensus, then, is that dyslexia will provide additional challenges for you as a writer, but is categorically not an impassable barrier between you and a career.

“Dyslexia will make writing professionally harder because it makes reading harder and to be a good a writer you need to read a lot,” says David Southwell.  “Dyslexia will also make the actual translating of your imagination into text harder as it makes writing harder. Words mean very specific things and 'hard' in this case does not mean 'impossible'. There are a range of strategies to adopt to tackle the problems it causes, from collaboration to the medium you choose to work in, but dyslexia should not stop you from being a writer.”

“Basically,” concludes Clive, “I don't think that dyslexia is the worst condition a creative writer can suffer from. It may seriously hinder your chances of being either an English Teacher or a pedant, but it shouldn't get in the way of creative writing. That's because, in my opinion, great writing is really about expressing interesting ideas and a fascination with telling stories. The skills you need to do that have very little to do with either spelling or the niceties ― a bugger of a word to spell ― of grammar. That's not to say that you don't need a feel for language, or even a love of writing. But, those aren't dyslexic issues.”

So. The next time someone insists that you can’t be a writer with dyslexia, ask them to read this.  Provided they can read, of course...

Thanks very much indeed to Clive Frayne, David Southwell and Mike Garley, for their tremendous help with this segment of the book.

As well as addressing every dread under the sun,  101 Writing Fears And How To Deal With Them features Q&As about fear with various writers, including Graham Linehan, Lisa Jewell, Toby Whithouse, Sarah Pinborough and Neil Cross.  All things considered, this thing will tie in very nicely with any writer's New Year's resolutions.

If you'd like to pre-order the ebook, you can do so for £2.99, which is half the planned price, for a limited time.  Order easily via PayPal and when the book is released I'll whisk it to your PayPal-registered email address in a handy triple-pack of ePub, Kindle and PDF formats.  If you're a book blogger and would like a review copy, drop me a line.  Good day to YOU.

Some writers think about their careers and advancement in a rather curious way.

It can be comforting for the writer in his or her ascendancy to think of career advancement as largely luck-related.  That it's a matter of writing novel after novel - or script after script - and firing them into a machine full of other National Lottery balls, which may one day be picked out.

This view is, at best, complacent and at worst, dangerous - at least for the writer who holds it.  One thing's for sure: if it really is at all useful to think of a writing career as a lottery, then you are squarely in control of the odds.  There is nothing random here.  When entering a scriptwriting competition, for instance, it can be tempting to find out how many other people are going for it too.  That, however, is the Devil whispering in your ear, reinforcing that whole idea of luck being a big part of this.  If you've sweated blood over the bulletproof script, it shouldn't matter whether there are one or one million other contestants.

People like to talk about the aspects of competitions which seem to make the process more arbitrary - the judges having a bad day, or just not 'getting' you, etc - but I say forget that stuff.  It doesn't help.  You're just either pre-emptively armouring yourself for a potential failure, or trying to salve wounds which were almost certainly your fault.  Let rejection hurt, but take responsibility for it as you heal, learn and strengthen.  Take the time for a reality check if necessary.  Whatever it takes to ensure that your next project is a decisive step forward.  Never succumb to that deeply weird Writer Quirk which compels you to sling imperfect or even half-finished work into a competition "just to get something in".  God knows, I've done it myself over the years and have come to think of it as supremely self-defeating.

Many years ago, I saw an 'aspiring' writer publicly contact a Doctor Who writer on Twitter, asking if he'd like to collaborate.  When Doctor Who Scribe, not impolitely or unreasonably, asked why he would want to do that, the aspiring writer replied that Doctor Who Scribe had been so lucky with his career and it'd be good to give something back, quack quack quack... frankly, I stopped listening after "been so lucky with your career".  Uh, no.  Doctor Who Scribe hadn't been lucky - he'd worked incredibly hard to get where he was, over many, many years.  It felt so insulting and demeaning to what DWS had achieved.  That rather ignorant attitude summed up a blind alley of thought which we must avoid at all costs.

Look, don't get me wrong: of course there's an element of luck involved with building a career.  When it comes to launching projects, for instance, the stars can seemingly align or scatter on a whim.  Some doors of opportunity open or close depending on trends and taste.  No doubt about it.  What I'm saying is that it would be a massive mistake to overestimate luck's contribution - or to start talking about how ultimately your fate is in others' hands.  Go down that rabbit hole and, before you know where you are, you'll be whining about the whole "It's not what you know, it's who you know" thing.  And oh sweet lord, that's definitely a whole other blog post.  In short, yes, contacts are really important.  Make them.  You must.  But it's increasingly untenable to complain about being shut out of some imagined 'system' by 'The Man', in a world when you can make direct contact with the vast majority of the TV and film industries via Twitter.

We all have to take responsibility for our careers.  The only armour we need should be our work, as opposed to insidious denial and excuses.  We must write to win.  We must toil away at the furnace until we come away with something amazing. 

Your script, your novel, whatever it is, should be the ultimate representation of you.  Your unique brilliance, which no-one else in the world can possibly have.  Your creative DNA, all swabbed up in a PDF.  Even when compared to a winning Lottery ticket, that's priceless.

Ah yes, hello!  There you are.  I'm the latest guest on James Moran's irregular (highly irregular, in fact) online series Writers On Their Writing Process.  James and I descended upon a mate's Brighton home, so that he could quiz me about how I write.

James, in case you bizarrely don't know, is a writer and director, whose remarkable writing credits include Doctor Who, Torchwood, Spooks, Severance, Tower Block and Cockneys Vs Zombies, while his directorial credits include Crazy For You and Ghosting.  He runs legendary writing blog The Pen Is Mightier Than The Spork.  He is also a renowned Satanic High Priest and collects burnt tambourines from all over the world, which he keeps in his fridge.

Technical issues mean the audio on this video is less than perfect, but if you pump up the volume and/or wear headphones, you'll be fine. 

While James was in Brighton, we also had a proper hoot filming the pledge video for my forthcoming Patreon page.  Starting soon, I'm going to release new, free books on a regular basis - and you can choose to back me with a recurring pledge-per-story if you choose, for which you'll receive added perks.  To get the details on this up-front, see this handy Free Books page and/or sign up to my mailing list.

Back to the video at hand.  Me and James, babbling about the writing process!  Enjoy.

Okay, so in Part One of this post, my agent Oli Munson offered his thoughts on determining whether an author is a safe pair of hands, when reading their work.  In this part, I’ll give you my own views.  What makes me shut a book on page two?  What makes me keep my eyeballs glued to the pages, all the way to the end? 

To sum it up: what makes me place my wholehearted confidence in a writer and commit to their book, despite life being short?  And how can we writers inspire that confidence in others?

For me, the number one thing when determining, consciously or otherwise, whether a writer is going to take me all the way (so to speak) is a strong sense of authority. 

Which is a fairly nebulous thing to pin down.  And yet I must. 

We can take as read, the fact that a writer needs to be able to string a sentence together – many thousands of them, in fact – and please you with their descriptive imagery, turns of phrase, ear for dialogue and general all-round linguistic competence.  These things are obviously a big deal, but in themselves they won’t convince us to sign up for the long-haul of a written story.  So let’s set them aside and dig deeper.

A writer’s authority shows in the way they choose to feed you the story, piece by piece.  They feed you each tasty morsel in a way which always leaves you hungry for the next.  This, they achieve by raising questions in your brain as quickly as possible – ideally during the book’s opening line or paragraph.

If you reach the end of the first page with no questions or curiosity in your head, your faith in the writer’s authority wanes.  Sure, they might have gone to great pains to describe the weather, not to mention the amazing landscape above which that weather is taking place, but who cares?  I’m all for a little scene-setting and a little mood, but questions are key.

Yes, the writer may well have devoted considerable effort to vividly describing their lead character waking up in the morning, yawning, brushing their teeth and then going about their normal daily routine.  But then my only question is, “When’s the story going to kick in?”

Here’s a useful exercise: imagine reading the first few pages of your story to a group of story lovers, then asking, “Any questions?”  Would those queries come thick and fast, or would you just see a whole bunch of blank faces, mentally searching for something to ask, apart from, “When will STUFF HAPPEN?”?

Often, a writer will demonstrate their safe hands by throwing you directly into the middle or even the end of the story, right at the start.  It’s dizzying and thrilling, but never confusing in a bad way.  You immediately get the sense of something crucial happening here.  Of depth waiting to be plundered.  As if this whole story already exists, like Stephen King’s On Writing analogy of a huge half-buried fossil, and you’re being flung against a small portion of it like some bamboozled lab rat.  You know there are multiple holes in your understanding and, by Christ, you want them filled.  You also know, by the teasing way the writer feeds you stuff, that they will be filled.  All you have to do is read on.

A writer demonstrates their safe hands by leaving gaps in your knowledge, while slyly conveying that those gaps are supposed to be there.  It’s a complicit nudge-nudge, wink-wink situation, as the writer effectively tells you, “You know how I just casually mentioned Mr Richter’s vast collection of terrible things, along with his unfortunate death?  That’s the first time I’ve mentioned him, but you’ll find out more later, oh yes.  Here, let me sink this big iron hook into your soft grey brain meats and gently tug…”

(Yes, I too now quite want to know more about the late Mr Richter’s vast collection of terrible things.  *Makes note*)

The writer’s authority also manifests itself in their ability to create characters which you believe actually exist.  The writer sheds light on these characters overwhelmingly through their actions.  While one of prose fiction’s unique selling points is being able to spend time squarely inside characters’ heads, we don’t want to loiter in there unduly.  Otherwise, we might find ourselves floating in an infinite expanse of nothingness, while listening to a disembodied voice express thoughts.  So a safe pair of hands introduces people doing things which are motivated by who they are.  These things get the story rolling, dovetailing as invisibly as possible with the grinding machinations of plot.

Right now, I’m reading and loving Claire North’s latest novel Touch (Orbit), which asserts its authority from Page One.  Crediting you with intelligence, it plonks you at the scene of a shooting in a train station, then feeds you the story, piece by tiny piece.  As the narrator tries to distance themselves from a gunman, we’re forced to work out what’s going on, often by trying to decipher things which don’t make immediate sense. 

In the fast-paced pages of Touch which follow, it becomes apparent that this character has a unique power, but this is not laid out for us on a boring old silver platter.  We have to work for that information by reading on.  And read on we do, because we immediately want to know so much more about this character.  How long they’ve had this power, for instance.  How they discovered they had it.  What they’ve been through to get here.  The events which led up to the train station shooting.  Are they an alien?  The questions tumble out and fall over each other, from Page One onwards.  Even if I hadn’t already read Claire’s masterfully mind-boggling debut The Fifteen Lives Of Harry August (Orbit), I would have known I was in very safe hands.

For me, it all boils down to a writer’s choices, in those first pages especially.  Those choices speak volumes about a writer and how much faith you should place in them.

Safe hands will almost nonchalantly handing you pieces of something much larger and utterly compelling.  The author will often talk to you as if assuming you already have the big picture, while slyly and knowingly neglecting to offer more than tantalising glimpses of it.

It’s very much about a narrator striding confidently ahead while you scurry in their wake, desperate to catch up.  Hungrily devouring the pieces of narrative they sporadically toss back over their shoulder.

So how you achieve that, as a writer?  How do you become that safe pair of hands and convince the reader, up front, that everything’s going to be great? 

For starters, you work hard on your big picture, regardless of whether that work takes place mainly up front during endless outlines, or you wing it from the very beginning and up retro-fitting like crazy, rewriting that first chapter over and over to reflect where the story ended up going. 

You examine that big picture of yours, then you think hard about which piece to break off first and hand to the reader. 

You think about what matters.  About what this story really is.  
Then you think about what will constantly motivate the reader to follow in your wake, while you stride confidently on, leaving that trail of appetising story-chunks behind you.

For the next 349 pages (or 89 script pages) you may be the all-powerful god of this world you created, but you’re also a considerate one.  Because you never, ever take the reader’s attention for granted, in this world crammed full with ten billion other things for them to do. 

When describing your world, you focus on salient points, rather than the whole shebang.  Instead of slavishly listing the contents of every room, or a step-by-step account of trivial actions, you hone it down to what matters.

And you never stop raising those questions.  You never stop sinking those hooks into their brain.  Or making those intriguing, oh-so-real characters reveal themselves through action.  Or unveiling the rock-solid architecture of your story, one sexy beam at a time.

Ideally, too, you’ll also create the impression that this story is about something.  Regardless of whether the theme only ever manifests itself almost subliminally, or it’s all up in yo’ face, this book has meaning, dammit.  And that meaning should somehow radiate from your book from the very beginning, like the words which run throughout a stick of Blackpool rock.

All in all, without wanting to stretch that God analogy to breaking point: in order to inspire unshakeable faith, you must leave clear irrefutable evidence of design behind you, as opposed to a whole flabby bunch of meandering chaos.

Sounds like quite a lot of work?

Damn right.

For most of us, it will be a lifetime’s worth.

Now, over to you.  What do you look in an author’s work, to convince you to keep reading?  And/or conversely, what makes you shut their book, vowing never to return?  Let me know in Comments.

See Claire North's Touch at Amazon UK | Amazon US

So.  I had this idea for a post about how, as a writer, to come across as a safe pair of hands.  How to communicate, as quickly and clearly as possible, the following message to your reader, like a subliminal mantra intoned from beneath the actual text: "Don't worry, it's going to be all right.  You can trust me to tell you this story. You're going to love it, you lucky lucky reader, you."

It's easier said than done.  I know I often close a book forever, as early as page two, because I haven't been filled with the confidence I need, in order to dedicate myself to ingesting a marathon tale.  These hands just don't feel safe and I want out.   

When planning this post, I remembered discussing this very topic with my agent Oli Munson when we first met in November 2013, before he represented me.  Of the Safe Pair Of Hands feeling, he said, "That's the difference between the writers I represent and the writers I don't represent".  So I dropped him a line the other day and asked for a quote on his thoughts on what constitutes A Safe Pair Of Hands.  What does he look for in a submission?

Not being a man to do things by halves, Oli sent me back more than just one quote.  He wrote a whole piece and wrote it so well, sharing so much of his outlook as an agent and a reader, that I don't want to chop it up.  So I'll run it in its entirety now, then return at a later date in a second post to add my own thoughts, from a writer's perspective.  Take it away, Oli...

"One of the reasons I love being an agent is because, quite frankly, I can represent whoever and whatever I choose. I don’t have to do anything by committee: that’s unfortunately the modern-day editor’s lot in life.  If I think I can sell a book I’m passionate about, I’ll give it a go.  All I have to lose is time and reputation whereas of course publishers have more immediate financial concerns to worry about.
 
"Firstly, I’d say it’s a real accomplishment for anyone to start and finish a novel.  It requires dedication, perseverance and most of all a real passion for the art.  You can’t start out doing it for money.  Writers write because they have to let the stories out. That’s fundamental.  And then we get to the tricky bit.  Will people want to read what I’ve written?  Some people may not care at all if anyone reads what they’ve written.  The act of writing is enough in itself.  But if you take the time to approach agents for representation, it’s fair to say you would like to find a readership for your work.
 
"Taste is such a subjective thing.  I would say that I know within the first five pages of receiving a submission whether or not it’s for me.  You can tell rather quickly whether an author can actually write, whether they can craft sentences and draw a reader into a story.  I’d say that’s not subjective.  That’s pretty universal.  The next consideration is whether they writing has me turning the pages.  I operate on the more commercial side so that ability to hook a reader and drag them through 350 pages is crucial.  And that’s a combination of well-paced writing, compelling characters and an intriguing plot.  I’ve turned down books where the actual storytelling aspect falls flat although the writing is of a high standard.  And I’ve turned down books because I’ve just not seen the commercial potential in the story itself.  That’s when the subjectivity really comes into it.  I never begrudge anyone any success and if another agent sees something in those books that I’ve missed, hats off to that author and agent.
 
"Sometimes the whole crap shoot aspect of what works and doesn’t work can drive all of us up the wall but in another sense it’s that random element that keeps it interesting.  So far this year I’ve sold new books by authors writing psychological suspense, historical crime, police procedural, sci-fi and horror.  All wonderful books with one thing in common – I didn’t want to put them down. Hopefully the wider reading public will feel the same."

Oli is at AM Heath Ltd. He is currently open to submissions in Crime, Suspense, Speculative Fiction and Non-Fiction.

And here's How To Be A Safe Pair Of Hands: Part Two, in which I share my own thoughts on what keeps us reading to the very end of a book...

One of the many mistakes made by new writers and indeed some not-so-new writers, is showing their work to people too soon.

That initial urge to share your work ASAP is only natural.  Until other people absorb your stuff into their brains, it exists in a vacuum.  Might as well not exist.  If a script sits on a hard-drive with no-one around to read it, does it make a difference?  No.  Only to you, at this point in time, unless you have an agent or editor badgering you to finish it, or at least waiting for it.

Hand in hand with that drive to show people, comes the feeling that whatever you write in that vast, gaping, intimidatingly blank Word or Final Draft file will be read.  Sometimes, that feeling can bring about a terrible paralysis.  You're standing on the brink of a huge vortex of possibility.  Worst of all, there's the sense that This Is It.  No more talking: it's time to do.  Time to prove yourself to the world.  Again.

Me, I love the first draft.  I love that open road, beckoning you to burn rubber along it.  Most of all, though, I love the fact that no-one will ever read this shit.

This is because the first draft you hand to Important People should never be the actual first draft.  Crucially, it should be the first draft you've decided to show them.  Personal first-draft, public first-draft.  Very different beasts.

With that in mind, I like to call my first salvo Draft Zero.  For one thing, it sounds cool.  Zero-anything is cool besides, off the top of my head, Size Zero.  Zero tolerance, Patient Zero, the Zero Room, Zero Mostel, allowing absolutely Zero to stop you finishing this script or novel.

For another thing, the concept of Draft Zero helps cement the idea in your head that this draft is your own personal sandpit.  Sure, you're taking it seriously and making every effort to construct a strong skeletal structure to which you'll eventually graft muscle, organs and finally beautifully flawless skin, Hellraiser-style.  But at the same time, you have absolute carte blanche to fuck it up.  You can't win unless you're not afraid to lose.  Forget all external pressure and fuel yourself with internal pressure: the burning desire to write this story before you die of anticip-p-p-pation. 

Launch yourself into that sandpit and write like the seven winds.  Momentum is everything.  Never look back.  Pretend you're being chased by a shark which devours words (an image which reminds me to strongly recommend Steven Hall's extraordinarily vivid and imaginative novel The Raw Shark Texts).  Some writers continually stop, survey what they've written, then go back to fix it.  If that method works for you, great, but I can't do that.  Momentum, momentum, momentum.  When I realise I've messed up, or that things will need to be fixed later, I make Running Notes, then just keep writing.

When you reach the end of that fun, breathless marathon, what you have is Draft Zero.  And it's yours.  All yours.  A template for future greatness.

You'll go back to rewrite it again and again, restructuring, ironing out the many flaws, de-clunking that often laughable dialogue, shifting or destroying wonky plot-points, starting to introduce or strengthen those lurking themes.  And at the end of that process, that's when you emerge triumphant from your steaming, churning brain-factory with The Actual First Draft.

Draft Zero is your own personal, very private first-born.  Enjoy the vacuum in which it resides.  In space, no-one can hear you scream that it hasn't turned out quite how you expected.

My novel The Last Days Of Jack Sparks is currently half price in the UK Kindle store, at a mere £1.99 for a limited time! My novelette Auto Rewind is also new to Kindle this week