MOVING A WRITER'S OFFICE AROUND. PART ONE.

After considering the number of books I've read this year, I faced the truth. My shelves have reached the final gasp. I almost considered that truth in the last library update blog post.
   But no.
   I stared at a space behind this computer, here in my library. That space is the same size as a tall thin bookshelf I have over in my office. And there is a very good reason for not having used that space.
   Power. Electricity. Not to go all Fenella Fielding on you, but, OH, SOCKET.
   My eyes flick right. There's the open storage shelf. With access through to the wall and the other source of power. So if I shift all my cables from the left to the right, I can block off that bookshelf-sized space with, gasp, a bookshelf...
   To do so, I must clamber around in the loft looking for a TV cable that must be guided another few feet down through the ceiling.
   The more I get into this, the longer it takes. I keep developing plans within schemes inside riddles wrapped in mysteries and so on.
   Pattering.
   I find myself in that loft as a rainstorm comes on. Everything sounds louder. The wind seems ten times stronger. I smell the dusty wooden atmosphere and feel cheered as each move I make brings another skelf to the party.
   Then I start to wonder just how Scottish a skelf is.
   Very.
   A splinter or fragment of wood. Like a tiny spear, driving into the fleshiest part of your hand. As you clamber from joist to joist, hoping not to fall through the loft into a hard surface on another level of the house.
   There's a lot of head-bumping. And to-ing. Followed by fro-ing. Eventually, I fix that cable. Then I return to the first floor - what an American would call the second floor - and I tidy all the cables I can find.
   After that, I switch machines on to ensure they still work. They don't. I discover I didn't really need a particular cable. The box that goes with the redundant cable is removed from the nest of wires.
   Finally, machines work. I tidy those cables. And then. Only then. I wrestle the bookcase from office to library.
   My work is done. (Ha!)
   I start to think of the space I now have in the office. Freeing that space opens so many possibilities. I can buy a new bookcase, and then I won't be on a knife-edge when it comes to adding next year's supply of books to the shelves.
   My last order of books this year was definitely my last order of books this year. Typing this, I remember one book's arrival was delayed. I'll have room for it. Just.
   What next? I spent the late evening moving the office around. In my mind. Then I started shifting things around. Temporary fix. I feel a skelf in my left hand, as I type.

THE INEVITABLE NIGERIAN BANK FRAUD POST.

Time for a word about lost photos, mentioned in that last blog post. A message, thrown out as a digital bottle into a digital sea. E-mail me.
   Response?
   A very kind man from Nigeria sent me an e-mail I didn't open. Instead, I noted the very kind man's name and Googled the shit out of him.
   That's how I know he's from Nigeria. Or, at least, he says he's from Nigeria. I'm guessing he's a he, too. Let's suppose there's a human lurking somewhere behind the bot.
   We can't be sure.
   I was amused when my search threw up a blog post by a guy asking WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE? The very kind man from Nigeria made that list...
   Alongside a bunch of robots who had, at one time or another, offered me untold sums of wealth from Nigerian banks...
   Little blue pills to aid the treatment of erectile dysfunction...
   The opporchancity to meet in an unnamed city in an unnamed country for presumably indescribable unfilmed casual sex...
   And enough penis-extensions to carry any man's modified member around the moon and back.
   That's not quite what Archimedes had in mind, when making his point about the fulcrum. Let us draw a veil upon that scene.
   I don't receive much by way of fraudulent e-mail. The first time I received that crap, it came through a trusted source. Damn those trusted sources.
   For a very short while, I received blog comments stored backstage. The blog wouldn't allow thinly-obscured adverts to appear as comments. I checked these curiosities...
   Mostly, after being praised generically for my wit, wisdom, incisive views, and the ability to transmute lead to gold, I was offered the chance to buy headphones.
   Headphones. Cock-extensions. Untold riches, salted away in Nigerian legal hell. Warnings, instructing me to confirm receipt of that parcel.
   What fucking parcel/concert tickets?
   Ignore ignore ignore.
   I increased blocking levels, and the tide fell. Today, I'm left with the odd droplet. An out-of-place globule. Remnant of Sani Abacha's time in power.
   The number 419 refers to that section of Nigeria's criminal code appertaining to advance fee fraud.
   I like the word appertaining.
   So. Here's the Nigerian scam. Supreme Dictator for Life Reichsmarschall Sani Abacha, Victoria Hot Cross Bun and Coffee Bar, died leaving a shitload of cash in a dodgy bank.
   I can't touch the stuff. Details, details. Blah, blah, codswallop, blah. But you, MY FRIEND, complete stranger that you are, could just about access the funds.
   All you have to do is turn up with the right paperwork and a bright smile on your face, and we, ME OLD CHINA, will live in the lap of luxury.
   There's a catch. To access the £MILLIONS, you'll have to stump up the processing fee. Payable to, er, me. We're looking at a guaranteed million payday. You front the £10,000 fee, and I'll be generous enough to split the FORTUNE fifty-fifty on release.
   It's not strictly above-board, so, shush, don't tell anyone else. More in the pot for us, eh...
   And so on, with variations and ever-increasing demands.
   Sani Abacha died in 1998. I'll probably receive half a dozen e-mails a year, concerning his missing billions. Offering to return photos I found inside a book - that's what triggered the latest fraudulent message, when I sacrificed my e-mail address to the prowling autobots.
   My offer, to return missing photos, is genuine. Though there's more chance of coming away rich from participating in a 419 scheme, Mr Abacha, than there is of finding anyone connected to the little old lady in my previous blog post.
  

LOST PHOTOS.

When I opened a book that came into my possession by a roundabout way, I found two photos inside. In an attempt to return these photos, I'll post a cropped image here.
   Some identifying information is written on the rear of each photo. There's a fair amount of identifying information in the full version of the picture below.
   Not enough to hand the photos back.
   So here's a snippet. A lady, pictured with someone else. If you are the someone else, and want the photos, all you have to do is e-mail rll3@hotmail.co.uk with enough identifying information of your own.
   If you can prove you are that other person, I'll send the photos through the post. Here's the lady, cropped and airbrushed...

 

 

It is worth adding that I've thrown this story out on the Twitter a few times, as a digital message in a bottle - I didn't rely solely on the blog to reach friends or relatives of the mystery woman.

AN AUTHOR'S LIBRARY. UPDATE.

After spending weeks plugging my work on this blog, I changed plans. The idea was to publish again immediately after I stopped doing the weekly plugs.
   But I felt I wasn't reading enough. And I wanted to leave more time after writing stuff, too. I like to shove the story away somewhere and return to it.
   Was I reading enough? My plan was to read at least a book a week in 2013. As I type this, I've read more than a book a week. Dozens of books read. How did I do, clearing shelves?
   I didn't do well at all.
   Turn to the right. There's a bookcase with three shelves on it. I'd already finished one shelf as the year started. The bottom shelf had three unread books on it. Those, I finished.
   The middle shelf gained and lost titles as books came into the house. Some new volumes just won't fit, and have to be shuffled around.
   How is that middle shelf doing now? There are seven unread volumes on there. An increase. Let's get technical. I cleared one shelf this year, even though I read more than a book a week.
   Why does that feel like defeat?
   At my current rate, I should clear three whole shelves in a year. I cleared one - and only had to read three books on that shelf to do so. Easy.
   I stare forward and right to another bookcase. The top shelf is almost untouched. I whittled the middle shelf down to five weighty tomes. After a bout of reorganisation, the lower shelf gained unread titles. Now down to three.
   Back, way back, in the corner. Right. I've filled the empty half-shelf. Over in the office, I've pretty much filled that odd empty shelf at the bottom of a rack. Not quite a bookcase.
   Why leave the bottom shelf empty for so long? Weigh the thing down from the bottom! Ach. Things just worked out that way. I am running out of space again. Soon, I'll reorganise. Somehow.
   What changed? Anything? Yes. Recently I decided to put that well-worn chant into effect. You know the one. No more books. For now. I know I must clear shelves before I can go on.
   Saturation-point. How many times have I reached that? Surpassed it? Many. And then comes the reorganisation. Somehow, that always worked in the past. Build up the way. Squeeze shelves in. Creak.
   Squeeze more shelves in, up the way.
   My office has a bookshelf directly in front of another bookshelf. I can't go on like that. Though I probably will.
   (Print copies of photos, and the negative rolls, lie there. Those analogue photos have all since been digitised. Had to keep the physical copies somewhere.)
   Readers need not write. They are readers. Writers, however, must read. I feel I must read more. Then I can publish again. Space solutions? Embrace the Kindle. Cast aside these lovely hardback tomes...
   Mm.
   I wonder what they weigh.
   Anyway. I always feel that, if I have to, I can hold back publication. That's why there's no publishing news this week. How many books will I have read by year's end? Not enough. Never enough.
   How many more shelves will I clear this year? Not one shelf, I'm guessing. I should tackle the issue systematically. But there's no fun in that. Reading must be enjoyable.
   When I say clear shelves, I mean clear shelves of unread books. The shelves stay stacked. Part-problem, part-delight.

WRITING FICTION. THE KNIFE TEST.

Does a work of fiction pass the knife test?
   What is this test?
   Watch a movie. Read a book. Do what you must to reach the conclusion of a story. At the end of the tale, does a male character (hero) fight a male character (villain) for possession of a female character? (The female character may possess heroic or villainous traits.)
   Clarification. No knife need feature in the fight. Some kind of weapon is waved around. One character waves his around. Another character waves his around. The more skilful dick-waving character claims the female.
   Further clarification. The female character need not explicitly be referred to as the girl.

*

"Grab the girl."
   "Girl? I'm 25!" (Says 35-year-old actress pretending she's 30, portraying 25-year-old with the mental age of an actual girl if we go by the lines she's handed in the script.)

*

So. Does the story pass the knife test? If no story-ending dick-waving contest occurs, the test is passed.

Variations? They are legion. The male hero may fight the male villain to convert the female villain to the path of righteousness, and so on.
   All three characters could easily be female. Or male. Robots. Asexual sentient slime creatures. Particles of dust. Three characters meet, and there's a fight. Two characters limp away. The story ends.

Yes, I grew tired watching movies featuring two guys having a knife-fight in the rain over a woman referred to as the girl. A younger guy and an older guy. The older more-experienced guy usually croaks it when he runs out of puff.
   I know I haven't actually seen that movie. It just feels that way.
   Advice? Subvert the knife test at every turn.

Other entries. See also WRITING FICTION. THE WOMAN TEST. For more in that line, try WRITING FICTION. THE CHAPTER TEST. And for a piece on conduct, rather than typing, there's WRITING FICTION. THE CREEPY SEXIST DICK AUTHOR TEST.

INSANITY.

Time has gone by so quickly. I'm meant to have another story out after plugging all products. We'll see. Buying a new computer and having the internet installed - those things slowed me.
   On the positive side, I found publishing easier with direct internet access. So I published everything again, removing arcane formatting issues. (Mostly related to blurb.)
   Here's a plug for INSANITY. That leaves a plug for MIRA E. next week and maybe something new out there the week after.

 

“Get out of hand, and we cut the air. Try to entangle your neck in the cord, and we cut the air. Attempt to smash the glass – impossibility – and we cut the air. Try to force the hatch open – impossibility – and we cut the air. You’ll be knocked out and removed for evaluation once in a little while. Try not to lie your way out of therapy. This is for your own good and the safety of others. If you vomit, we’ll flush you out and suck the debris away. So that’s no avenue for an escape-attempt. Thumbs are twitching. Slide her in, Burt. Don’t want her beating you up. That would be an embarrassment.”

*

Dark hair wafted in the underwater equivalent of a breeze. The current. Caused by? Machines keeping the water fresh, he supposed. She twirled and moved, sleeping, nearer the glass. Dark hair swept back from her face. He kept expecting her eyes to pop open, but those stayed shut.

*

“They begged her to stop digging. The aliens. Her shift-mates were murdering the baby aliens, and a whole species was at risk.”

   “She ever show an interest in ecology before that?”

   “No. The workforce doesn’t have to be dolphin-friendly up here.”

*

Left floating in the psych-tank, her life is over. Declared violently insane, she can do little but widen her eyes in response to her surroundings. She wants out. Escaping from the tank is the start of an impossible journey. Do it. Emerge from the tank.

   All you need do then is escape from the asylum. Reach the train. Take that to the main hub. A journey of an hour. Transfer, undetected, to the train through the accommodation blocks. Head for the space shuttle landing area. Another train journey of an hour. Hang around for the monthly shuttle. Board.

   Travel from moon to planet. Three days. Remain undetected in all that time.

   Piece of cake. Except for that tricky part about killing Dr Bell and everyone on Dr Bell’s side.

   46,000 words, plus notes.

SELF-PUBLISHING ON AMAZON KINDLE.

Every time I publish my work on the Amazon site, I receive an e-mail telling me I've done so. Those publication messages go into a folder marked Amazon KDP, dated by year.
   Today, updating three files, I decided to see how many times I published this year. So I checked the e-mail folder.
   More than 50 times.
   How many products do I have out there on Amazon right now?
   Nine.
   What's with all the publishing, then? Am I doing something wrong? No. I'm doing something right. Looking at the work. Deciding on changes.
   Recently, I saw that I could add italic or bold text to my Amazon product descriptions. I blogged about that. CLICK HERE.
   All I had to do was add some code and ignore a big red warning not to use that code.
   With nine products out, I tested the water a few times. Satisfied, I updated all nine items. As I type this, Amazon doesn't have a separate method of updating or revising blurb. You have to publish the whole book just to update or correct blurb.
   To update descriptions for nine products, I published a dozen times. Within the past week, I decided copyright information should be uniform across the stories. Was it, though?
   I thought yes, and then I thought better.
   Checking, I saw that there were tiny differences drifting into each book as I published. So I made the effort to bring in more consistency. This didn't alter any of the books - the plots remained the same.
   I merely made sure the copyright sections were uniform. In doing that, I tidied a few invisible inconsistencies. These are things readers can't see. Behind the curtain, I see those things in a Word file. Readers are looking at the Kindle file. Difference.

The one-line gap I just introduced - that can be rendered at least two ways in a Word file. Transformed to Kindle format, there are pros and cons to the use of each method.

   To avoid formatting glitches, I made sure all my copyright sections fell into line. Once I removed inconsistency, I published nine times.
   Today, I made this change to a book...

    Inside Amazon's book factory, I previewed all my published books as a matter of routine. Doesn't matter that I'd previewed them before. I previewed again. The previewer was updated, and set to Kindle Fire...

   I saw a flare of blue along the left side of the image above. Thinking I'd missed something in creating the graphic, I went to the original image and cropped the left side.
   Preparing the book for publication, I found cropping the image made no difference once previewed. I didn't have an elegant solution. Back to the digital drawing-board I went. I decided to enlarge the white border around the image, to see if the same blue problem flared up.
   The last time I used the software, I'd selected black. When the border grew, it automatically filled in black. The question arose. Will I still see blue flaring away now that there's a solid border? Only one way to find out.
   I dropped the image into the story, created the Kindle file, and previewed the whole thing inside Amazon's book factory. Now I had my elegant solution. There was no blue flare.

   INSANITY was new to the Kindle this year. Did I publish and let the story go? Yes. Did I publish again? Yes. I spotted the tiniest glitch in the cover. Fixed that. I altered the story's blurb. Brought the copyright notice into line with all the other products. And I added the black border shown in the map above.
   How much of this would a reader notice? Change to the cover? No. Slight alteration in copyright layout? No. Difference to the book's blurb? Yes. Black border added to the map image? Yes.
   If you are self-publishing on Amazon, or anywhere, don't just be a writer. Look at your work, periodically, as a publisher.
   In 2012, I had fifteen e-mails from Amazon telling me I'd published.
   My first year as a self-publisher started in December 2011. One product. Deadline? The 12th of December. I published that day. And the next. The product description came out screwy - something you can only see when the book goes live.
   I've asked Amazon to introduce a previewer for product description. If you plan to self-publish, or have self-published through Amazon, ask them too. Once enough writers ask, Amazon will take action. I don't mind the cycle-time for putting a book through the Amazon's system - but I do mind the cycle-time being the same for altering blurb.
   Before the year ended, I published a third time. Product description again.
   So. Planning on self-publishing? Publish. Check the work. Publish again. Update that blurb. Create consistency across volumes, as a publisher must. Nail those awkward invisible formatting glitches. You know they'll only cause trouble later. Examine the covers. Consider your options.
   Publish more than once - you aren't doing anything wrong. (I must leave aside the topic of altering the story once published. That's not for me. Write the story. Cut loose of it. Deal with production issues, yes. But don't rewrite your plots under the same titles and covers.)
   I'm waiting on two e-mails telling me another two books are live with the latest alterations. Final point? Once you publish, your work should cycle through within four to five hours. Chances are, you'll see your work on Amazon long before the congratulatory e-mail reaches you.

*

Update. INSANITY no longer has that map inside the book. I lowered the book's data cost by hyperlinking to a dedicated map page here on this blog.

MONET'S SAMURAI PAINTING.

Mrs Monet posed for this image. In recreating the man in blue, I learned a lot about flattening the drawing. My version of the character is distorted to take account of the elimination of detail.

   That removal of detail is in line with the plot of the story, JAPANESE MONSTERS. Coming to an Amazon near you soon.
   Though Wataru starts as Samurai he soon finds events stripping him of that status, and he wanders Japan much as waves move aimlessly.

VAMPIRES.

Still plugging my work on a weekly basis until I run out of items to plug. Then I should publish JAPANESE MONSTERS. With illustrations. Actually, why not throw in a sample here...



   That image is after Monet. The character depicted is Wataru the Wave-Man. More on him later. For now, here is the weekly plug for a book you can check out on Amazon...

FICTION FACTORY. Welcome to my mini-self-publishing imprint for short stories running around 30,000 words. These stories are not collected or bundled with other tales. If you buy WITCHES, you won’t suffer disappointment in later life by finding WITCHES reheated for a collection called TALES TO IMPRESS PALAEONTOLOGISTS. Be thankful for that small mercy.

VAMPIRES.

Crashing parties used to amuse Vance. He hurled himself into a world of no commitments. When the synthetic blonde offered more of the same, guided by brusque phone texts, he didn’t see the harm in another meaningless fling.

“Rule 1. If I text and you are busy, that’s fine. The rule runs in both directions. No pestering.”

He was okay with that.

“Rule 2. We never attend social functions. I don’t do weddings, though I will crash parties.”

Suited him, just fine.

“Rule 3. No gifts.”

Saved money.

“Five rules. Rule 4. If we see each other with strangers, no questions. No introductions to family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, serial killers…”

Vance had no problem with the fifth rule. He thought his problems began next day.

There, in red lipstick, she’d left a mirror message.

WIPE THIS OFF. STICK TO THE RULES. SEE YOURSELF OUT.

The bar? Reasonable. Didn’t try too hard to be trendy. He knew no one here – not on a Wednesday night. Vance watered at the venue on the odd weekend. Open the door on a world without strings. In.

Scene. The jet minx in front of him shook hailstones from her bobbed coiffure. Melting pellets bounced off his heavy coat. By contrast, she appeared to be wearing a black plastic bag for no protection from the night.

He eyed her tight black jeans. Painted on. Sheathed legs stopped at bare ankles and shiny stab-me black shoes. Hang about…

37,000 words, plus notes.

 

KAREN WOODWARD'S INTERVIEW WITH A CURMUDGEON.

This featured on a dedicated page, but I decided to move it into the blog archive.

Posted by RLL for REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. © RLL, 2011.

Canadian writer Karen Woodward (pictured left), thought it would be a great idea to interview me. Wild horses dragged me to tame horses. Tame horses carried me to room 102. Room 101 was taken. Shining her spotlight on the face of the innocent dupe I’d hired to impersonate me, Karen began the interrogation…

KAREN WOODWARD: Please tell me a bit about your book.

RLL: Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords is my commentary on a disease-raddled, drug-addled, country known for its prominent blade culture. That country is a thinly-disguised Scotland. Drugs are plentiful. Violence is everywhere. Justice is in short supply. Lives are cheap. Alliances and allegiances are even cheaper. I try to ensure that my overly-optimistic view of the nation doesn’t get in the way of a rattling good story.

   My approach was to squash the sorcery element of the standard sword and sorcery tale, placing science in its stead. Not a new notion. On top of that, the war fought out in the book’s pages was a Cold War. The icing on the literary cake was always this idea that old heroes, from legendary tales, would pass through the modern stuff. Old heroes, and old villains.

   The strangeness of the mixture makes for a decidedly odd cake. That’s the beauty of self-publishing electronically. Every type of story is up for grabs. As author-publisher, the e-book writer can tackle a setting that might have limited appeal in a diminishing paper marketplace. So what. Appeal to that limit electronically, then publish the next story. Build a following. Or build several different followings. It’s all on the table, and it’s all to play for.

   Is Neon Gods a series? Not in the conventional sense. It’s not a story about quests. I make this quite clear in my notes at the end. A second book would run in the same timeframe as the first, featuring some of the first novel’s characters in scenes witnessed from alternative viewpoints.

   However, publishing a series is not my immediate plan. I have a small stack of unpublished novels and short stories sitting there, and I am formatting those for the Kindle before I return to the series. That doesn’t mean neglecting the story.

   I’ve written more of book three than of book two, as I must keep a deathly grip on continuity. Yes, I could simply introduce unreliable narrators and leave the audience to sift through inconsistent debris. But I’m in this game to do the job properly.

   The novel is an Amazon Kindle e-book. It was important to list story structure at the start, in a series of chapter links. A new thing for me. I want readers to see that the story ends with chapter 32. The book ends with the section ABOUT THIS BOOK.

   It’s a warning to wannabe e-authors. If you end the story halfway through the overall page-count, and pad the rest of your book with articles and off-cuts, have the decency to warn readers of this. Aim for transparency. Don’t just dump that on readers as they hit the next page. Bad form. (My story takes up 95% of the publication.)

   This peeve dates from all the research I did for a novel on comic books. Comic book readers judge the story by the thickness of the magazine. A sawn-off adventure featuring the main character doesn’t go down well if an unannounced back-up strip rears its head at the turn of a page. What happened to the hero? Who is this third-rate banana, drawn by a filler artist we’ve never heard of?

   Bluntly, authors depend on the kindness of stranglers. If I generate a vast audience, I know that’s a vast audience I’ll never meet. Is it possible to respect all these unknown and unknowable people? At the basic level, in applying professional standards to the work.

   I am reluctant to discuss the plot in an interview. Always leave ’em hungry.

KAREN WOODWARD: What is the best writing advice you ever received?

RLL: From the pen of C.S. Lewis. Read your work aloud. I must add that I do this in the voices of the characters I create. If they sound different as I’m typing, they will be different in the eyes and minds of my readers. Well, so I like to think.

   One of the best ideas I ever absorbed from a writer came from Hans Andersen. He’d travel with rope, so that he could escape from a strange house in the event of a fire in the middle of the night. I’ve only used the escape rope once, thus far. That’s another story.

   I’ll amplify on your original question, and give you the worst writing advice I ever received. This happened in school, no surprise, and was uttered by an English teacher. Again, hardly a shocker. “Never use and or but at the start of a sentence. It’s okay to do that in real life, but never in an exam.” The advice was seared into my mind, for all the wrong reasons.

   Indicating that exams had no bearing on real life, as far as that teacher felt. A skewed view. Hardly the meaning she was attempting to convey. There is nothing wrong in using and or but at the start of a sentence. Avoid overuse, to keep your style from being nauseatingly repetitive. I live in a part of the world in which it is grammatically acceptable to place but at the end of a sentence. That’s just the way local grammar developed, but.

KAREN WOODWARD: I understand that you have written for many years, although you have just begun self-publishing. What advice would you give to a new writer?

RLL: You mean a writer of fiction. Writing non-fiction lies in the same solar system, though is one planet over – with its own local conditions. Some of this doubtless applies to non-fiction too. For new writers, the advice is obvious. Read. Discover what you like, and what you don’t like. Learn from both types of writing. I learned as much from crappy books as I learned from excellent ones. (Sometimes I think I learned more…)

   Cut loose of the stuff you like reading. Be influenced by it, but don’t become it. Cut loose of the stuff you don’t like reading. Avoid spending your writing time hating that material. You have better things to do with your days. And tastes change, over time, in any case.

   Learn beyond writing itself. If you look for inspiration in non-written material, whether painted or sculpted, then that’s a good thing. Have interests and pursuits outwith literature. Apply every piece of experience to your writing. Good or ill.

   Read copyright law.

   Enjoy what you do, though understand that some of your best material might end up being written while in a foul old mood, with the odds stacked against you, your back to the fiery wall, and time running out.

   Be prepared to recycle ideas that fall apart. There’s no call to print a story, rip it up, and throw it away. (Unless it’s truly beyond saving. Even then, I’d think twice. And twice more.) I have stuff to get back to. Fragments. Snippets. Remnants. The ruins of stories. New writers should keep hold of everything. One rainy day, that neglected computer file will be dusted down…

   Put the hours in. I know I’m always banging on about that. If stories really wrote themselves, I’d be in the Bahamas right now as this interview saw to itself. That takes me back to reading. Consider the size of a book you liked…

   Calculate the number of words. Discover your typing speed. Work out how many hours you’d have to spend, to come up with a similar-sized book – based on typing alone. Now think about the number of hours you can spend a day, typing.

   You’ll see how many weeks it’ll take to work through a story similar in length to the one you enjoyed reading. I’ve made that sound like a mechanical process. Well, it is. Discipline is a cliché to writers. Often spoken of reverently, without further explanation.

   Get into the numbers. Develop a sense of scale. Set a goal, in words. How many? Do the basic arithmetic. If you want to write 100,000 words at 1,000 a day, every single day, you’ll spend 100 days marching to the last page. Not counting research, editing, medical emergencies, and all the other stuff life throws your way. If you type 10,000 words a day, it won’t take you 100 days. Doing the same job in just over a week is no crime.

   Discipline is all about the numbers. Nothing to do with quality, or art, or the creative muse. Discipline has no handy shortcut. I feel inclined to say the same to old writers, just in case you think I’m blaming youth for being young.

   If you want to be a writer, write. Stop wanting. Be. (No, kiddies, I’m not a little green alien living in a swamp.) A writer is always on the job. Even asleep. Wake, write the dream down. Type it up. Stuck in a queue? Observe. Play the game of faces, as you shop. That guy’s a rocket scientist. She’s a spy. He’s the stranger, come to town with a grudge.

   On the matter of self-publishing, learn, learn, learn. It doesn’t matter that I have written for many years. I still have much to learn. As a self-publisher, I have no one else to blame for my mistakes. I have learned so much about how to take my manuscript from its original state to the Kindle version.

   That’s not just relating to file format. Typing codes. Altering layouts. No. I had to rethink certain elements of storytelling. Some characters and symbols are unsupported in Kindle. Always worth checking. Here’s a shocker. The spacing of lines in a manuscript is no longer relevant. In Kindle, the reader determines the size of the font.

   Was there an upshot, on seeing this? Yes. In The Olden Times™, by Guttering Candlelight®, authors would insert news stories in a smaller font or single spacing. I have fond memories of doing this on a manual typewriter. (That is, of course, a lie. The only fond memory I have of the typewriter is ditching it. Excuse me while I relive that scene. Ah, nostalgia.) This use of mixed spacing has fallen by the wayside. There are semi-clever ways to resurrect it for Kindle, but I realise I don’t really have to. Kindle isn’t standing still. Characters and other features that are unsupported today are sure to be supported tomorrow.

   To publish an e-book, I had to learn how to read an e-book. I’m just scratching the surface. Much to do. Early days. I am prepared to experiment. There is a plan, and it’s flexible enough to allow for change. Inflexibility has its uses, if you are an iron bar. Learn. Stay flexible. Keep moving, even if you are moving into greater danger. Try to recognise greater danger, and avoid it.

   My blogs, and end-of-novel notes, contain these musings in another form, so I’ll try to avoid too much repetition here. Write for yourself. Recognise that writing for profit is for profit. It’s a business, and you are an entrepreneur. Oh, and read copyright law.

   I could have listed lots of don’t advice instead of do. Again, I’ll flip your question around. What shouldn’t new writers do? Don’t…follow my advice slavishly. I’m just starting out in this self-publishing lark, so I’m in no better-constructed a canoe than anyone else floating down the Amazon.

   Don’t…work in isolation. I made a list just now, of organisations I contacted in the run-up to publication. Either I contacted them directly, or made use of their resources. Some were contacted several times.

   Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. (Different departments.) Intellectual Property Office. British Library. Library of Congress. (I filled in a survey!) Other libraries of record, worldwide. Various banking organisations. Countless blogs. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing’s help hit-squad. The American Embassy. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Forums. Social Networking sites. Amazon’s shopping site. That was one of the most important places. It’s the shop I’ll be displaying my wares in, after all.

   There’s no one-stop shop for information – no, not even the web. Some stuff could only come through the post. I wasn’t shocked by that, but the young persons in the audience might be. What did all these organisations have in common? Me. I thought to ask questions.

   Don’t…think you are indestructible, simply because you are young. Old enough to make money from stories? Then you are old enough to plan the securing of your literary legacy. Almost all forms of © extend for a long, though limited, period after your death, permitting your inheritors to benefit from the sweat of your brow. Determine who those inheritors will be. MAKE A WILL.

   (There is one famous exception in the history of © law, extending the control of a property well beyond the death of the creator into near-endless time. The exception will never apply in your case. For you aren’t Sir J.M. Barrie, and you didn’t write Peter Pan.)

   Don’t…run with hot soup. Okay, it never did me any harm. That’s no guarantee of safety.

KAREN WOODWARD: What is the most important thing you have learned about writing?

RLL: This one stumped me. Do I give the answer that will astonish people, or the answer that will truly astonish people? In reading my work to small audiences, I rapidly determined that I didn’t care what people thought of my writing. I don’t care if you like my work, or if you don’t like my work. Opinions, good, bad, or indifferent, are all matters of taste. Not fact. Does that mean I am uncaring? You may have an opinion on that.

   Okay, the other answer. This is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. It was done on a daily basis for many years, and I never saw injury once. I’d go from kitchen to office, returning to my writing with a bowl of hot soup. Eager to race to the latest piece of scribble, I’d run upstairs. No reason for it. Extraordinarily dangerous. Foolish, beyond belief. The only meal I ever ran with. One day I stopped at the top of the stairs and had a double-realisation. I just ran upstairs with hot soup to hand. And I’ve been doing that for years without injury.

   I resolved never to run with hot soup again. Writing isn’t worth getting yourself injured for. This leads me to caution writers against Deep-Vein Thrombosis. Take health-related breaks from the chair. Empty your bladder. Check on the weather outside. Stretch your legs. Don’t run with scissors, or hot soup. No, it isn’t okay to run with scissors and hot soup…

   The most important thing in using language is to convey your meaning. As a duplicitous species, occasionally it becomes useful to conceal or cloud meaning. Survival sometimes depends as much on clouding meaning as conveying it. That view applies to writing fiction, especially fiction dealing with suspense. I still don’t care if you like or hate my work. Did I learn anything else that’s important? Yes. Copyright law.

KAREN WOODWARD: What was the most difficult challenge you faced when putting your book together?

RLL: Probably doing this interview. Publicity, in other words. I was just going to put the book out there once I’d jumped all the legal hurdles. Then I had a vague notion that I needed a business contact. I decided the contact should be recently-published on Kindle. Someone who could describe the process I was about to go through. An author who didn’t have a paper publisher calling the shots in the background. Someone who’d walked down the electronic path just before me.

   Digging into an article on paper publishers, I noted someone had made a comment. It took another, much later, look at that person’s comment to realise she was a blogger with a deep interest in publishing. Karen Woodward.

   As soon as I saw that you were an author who’d just published an e-book, I rushed…to vacillate for a week, on whether or not you were the business contact I was thinking of looking for. That contact led to your atomic-bomb-sized hints on the matter of blogging and other forms of shameless self-publicity. This interview. Someone wants to interview me? A sane person wants an interview?!

   I’ll say this of advertising. No one knows what works, what doesn’t. I’ve seen great adverts that told wonderful stories. Did I buy the advertised product? Hell, I couldn’t even remember the advertised product. People find their way to products whether advertising works or not. Galling, if anyone reading this works in advertising. Maybe a few of you are nodding, even so.

   For some wonderful reason, people feel the need to absorb stories. Writers cater to the needs of those people on an industrial scale. How do readers and writers connect? I’ve seen novels advertised on television, and never once thought to buy a single novel advertised in that way. And I’m a READER.

   Based on that wholly biased experience, I wouldn’t advertise a book on television. (True, with shallow pockets it’s unlikely to happen anyway.) What does that leave? As hinted to me, Twitter. Which acts as a signpost on my country road, pointing the tourists to GOOD EATS.

   Twitter is there to drive traffic to my blog, and my blog is meant to funnel the punters into the Olde Amazon Gifte Shoppe. At that point, rampant bestseller-ism is allegedly but a mouse-click away. Unless they really do introduce that head-nodding technology that does away with the mouse.

   Flip the question around. Look at the low hurdles I vaulted. What was easiest about putting the book together? Writing it. The more you write, the more you write. When I wrote the book, with a view to having it published in paper, I created a prototype cover. Going into self-publishing, the least of my worries was coming up with a cover – that had been done.

   I’ve always been interested in cover design. Probably from my days spent haunting libraries looking at truly atrocious covers. I read some great books that had covers which were memorable for all the wrong reasons.

   Maybe my covers will be viewed that way – but I come back to one of the central points of self-publishing. I’m the one who makes the mistakes. Experiment. Learn from mistakes. Continue to experiment. Learn some more. That approach was easy for me.

   Would-be authors might not see things that way. It’s worth emphasising. The least of my obstacles lay in being prepared to put the work out there myself. If you think of that as an obstacle, remember this. What’s the worst they can say of you? That writer. Lives in a fantasy world.

INTERVIEW WITH A CURMUDGEON © Karen Woodward and RLL, 2011. All rights reserved. The interview is collected in the forthcoming INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS by RLL, and appears on Karen Woodward’s blog.