MONDAY

Sharing secrets.

Goodreads emailed saying they are stopping their standard advertising package.  I’m not sure how effective it is anyway – perhaps that’s why it’s going?  Nowadays, people universally want a deeper level of ‘engagement’, and that clearly includes with the books they read.  Goodreads are using ‘Kindle Notes & Highlights’, permitting annotation of passages of your work to share insights.  It’s meant to offer readers a greater understanding of your creative process.  Will give it a go, and see whether it works for me.  The longer I do this funny ol’ job, the more convinced I become that you can’t squeeze your square peg into every round hole.  You have to pick the advertising mediums that work best for your style, and maximise their potential.

Here are my answers from a Goodreads Ask The Author Q&A I did way back in 2017, about how I approach the job of writing:

GR: How do you get inspired to write? 

ANNIE: If you wait for inspiration, you’ll never write anything.  You just have to sit down and do it – the good stuff flows in by and by…  View everything you see and hear as possible material.  I love the fact that all of us are a little bit good and a little bit bad – that’s the richness of life and human behaviour…and that’s what I write about.

GR: What are you currently working on [2017]? 

ANNIE: I have two books on the go at the moment.  One is a romance with a twist, set in the Wild West of the USA [First Sight].  The other is the sequel to ‘Miss Taken Identity’ [Miss Direction].

GR: What’s your advice for aspiring writers? 

ANNIE: Write.  Write a bit more.  Write a bit more than that.  Be thick-skinned about rejection and proud of praise.  Don’t submit anything until it’s finished, and is as good as you believe it can be.  Don’t give up.

GR: What’s the best thing about being a writer? 

ANNIE: Wherever you are, whatever’s happening, you can always go somewhere else in your imagination.  Right now [2017], I’m in rainy England, but my thoughts are caught halfway between the two books I’m working on at the moment.  I have one foot in the Caribbean and the other in the Wild West!

GR: How do you deal with writer’s block? 

ANNIE: Sit down and write.  There’s no other way.

TUESDAY

Still hiding.

I wrote another plot outline of Miss Calculation last week and was so convinced I’d finally nailed it.  I put it aside and deliberately didn’t look at it for a few days, sure when I returned to it I would be able to use it as my guide, sit down, and get writing.  That’s what I’m really missing at the moment – just spinning a good yarn without constraint or pressure.

Read this latest outline today…and it’s not right.  It’s not there.  It doesn’t flow.  It’s not rounded, not COMPLETE.  It starts well, the middle picks up pace…but the end…the end…

I tried not to let this fresh failure get to me.  Instead, I sat and wrote the two opening chapters of the first draft of the book.  I felt good about them.  They poured out of me, and demonstrated how desperate I am to actually write a story, instead of nitpicking over a plot structure I can’t pin down no matter how much I agonise over it.  It doesn’t help that I’m so full of cold I can’t sleep.  I’m hot, then cold, my body hurts, and I can’t get comfortable no matter where I sit or lie.  Some of that is the virus I’m fighting…but most of it is mental anguish.  WHY can’t I do this?  My voice is just a whistling croak in the back of my burning throat, so I can’t even give myself a good talking-to about it.  Walked the dog in the pouring rain, big drips plopping off the brim of my hat, nose running, body like lead; even schlepping unenthusiastically through the mud in increasingly-saturated jeans preferable to having to sit in the same room as my barely-begun manuscript.  I have no idea how to get through this, and it’s scaring me rigid.

WEDNESDAY

Every cloud.

The upside of my current creative paralysis is my (no doubt temporary) metamorphosis into a Domestic Goddess.  This week, I’ve made a fish pie, a shepherd’s pie, and a carrot cake.  The washing basket is completely empty.  The kitchen’s tidy.  I’ve cut the hedge, mowed the grass, and defrosted the fridge-freezer.  Thought that last would be a quick job, but it took all morning.  My fault; haven’t done it for five years.  I think it might have been less work to defrost K2.

Following that, I either had to knock the entire house down and rebuild it from scratch, or actually do some real work.  Forced myself to look at the bloody Miss Calculation outline YET AGAIN.  I’m really starting to hate it now.  I’ve NEVER struggled like this to plot a book before.  Usually, it’s a doddle.  Given all the frantic displacement activity, it’s clearly got to the point where I will do almost anything (short of hoovering) to avoid having to grapple mentally with it.  My lack of progress is humiliating; hell, it’s frightening.  I write all first drafts longhand, so I kept screwing up and rewriting, shuffling and crossing out.  In the end, I got so confused I broke with tradition and put it straight on the computer, making twisting and turning the plot a much simpler ‘cut and paste’ exercise.  I have started the first draft, but I don’t want to get too far in without a coherent plot to write to…and I still can’t FINISH the thing properly.  It’s the final book in a complex trilogy.  It’s been building to this point – the explanation of everything.  When it’s over, it’s got to feel like it; closure for my readers, my characters, and me.  If I can just nail the prominent plot hooks, I can get on and write with confidence, knowing for sure where I’m heading.  I want a satisfying ending but, right now, I can’t see how to make one.  Art imitating life?

THURSDAY

Stop the world and get off.

Still full of snot, and coughing like a consumptive.  It’s obviously affecting how I’m viewing my world at the moment.  Am queen of anxious pessimism.  Need to snap out of it or I’ll never get anywhere.  If you believe you’re beaten; you are.

Sat down after lunch to briefly check score of Solheim Cup – the Ryder Cup of women’s golf.  Two hours later, I was still planted on the sofa, sunshine pouring through the open French doors into the living room.  It’s hot for an English September – 27˚C – and I’m enjoying this Indian Summer we’re having. Maybe sitting still and staring gormlessly at the telly was just what I needed?  I’m not a golfer, but if it’s on tv, I do tend to get sucked in a bit.  I really want to see the person hit the little ball into the hole.  It feels ‘tidy’.  Does that make me barmy?  Snooker gets me in the same way.  ‘I’ll just see if he pots this ball.  I’ll just see if he pots the next one…’  Matchplay golf is even worse, because every individual hole is a mini game in itself.  The Solheim turned out to be compelling viewing.  The title-holding Americans looked as if they had it in the bag, right up until the final putt of the last match on the 18th green, where the most-senior member of the European team (at an ‘ancient’ 38), plopped the ball right into the centre of the cup without a flicker, and gave the underdogs their fairytale victory.  Choked me up a bit…but I haven’t been sleeping.  Turned out she was a wild-card pick who’d come out of semi-retirement especially to play.  Just goes to show, if you want something sorted with aplomb, get an old bird to do it.

FRIDAY

What’s with the chair?

Have definitely needed cheering up this week, so thought I’d share a little bit of unashamed, out-and-out, feel-good ‘lurrrrve’: First Sight.

This excerpt features members of the behind-the-scenes tv crew, explaining the significance of The Chair:

 

Rachel: It rapidly became the cutest thing on television.  Hard-bitten old critics were gushing over it in reviews.  Vasquez and I were surreptitiously clearing a space on the shelf in the office for our Emmy.

Diana: Regardless of what happened later on, I think we can all take a little credit for bringing together two people who did genuinely fall in love with one another.  In that respect, I believe the show was an unqualified success.

Rachel: Absolutely!  I mean, do you remember the stuff with the chair?

Diana: Oh, so sweet!

Rachel: Everett had these two huge wing-back chairs in front of the fire, but they only ever really used one.

Diana: They used to curl up in it together and just gaze at one another as if they truly couldn’t believe what was happening to them.

Rachel: It was superb tv because it was so wonderful to edit – from the sublime to the ridiculous.  We’d cut between the three couples – Monica and Bill having this very grown-up, pleasant, and paint-dryingly dull conversation over dinner, Regis and Sylvie screaming and throwing plates, and Everett and Hope curled up in their chair together, lost in one another, with just the crackling of the fire…it was super-cute.

Diana: Reportedly, sales of that style of wing-back chair soared over that Christmas, didn’t they?

Rachel: Yeah, we should’ve had merchandising rights on those!  What about the t-shirts? 

Diana: I still have one!

Rachel: So do I!  Some enterprising soul – again, to my lasting regret, nothing to do with the show – made up t-shirts printed with a big armchair, a cushion on it in the shape of a heart, and the legend ‘I love you like Everett loves Hope’.

Diana: And everyone knew what it meant!

Rachel: I should’ve considered merchandising, but I never realised how big a phenomenon they would become.  Before long, two thirds of each transmission were devoted to the McCann’s, with the other two couples crammed into the remaining third.  It was essentially the Everett and Hope show. Social media was alight with it.  Shortly after, these Blog links started to persistently appear on my twitter feed.  I was dimly aware that Hope was doing some kind of internet diary, but there was so much else happening, I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Suddenly, I realised half my social feed was full of people name-checking and sharing this adorable Blog...and it was Hope’s!  There she was, setting the world alight on the page as well as on the screen, and she was capturing thousands more subscribers every week.  My ‘phone starting ringing, and the offers began to flood in.  It presented me with the kind of incredible problem you normally only dream of – that of being too successful.  Everyone wanted a slice of Hope, and they could only get to her through me.  The issue I had was, if I told her what was happening, it would straightaway undermine the integrity of the show…and I couldn’t do that.  The show was my baby.  It was my original idea, and it had been three years of my life in the planning…but I was also starting to understand that the whole thing was spiralling out of my control.  I had a decision to make that would affect a lot of lives, and not necessarily for the better. 

www.annieholder.com/first-sight/

Annie Holder writes pacey thrillers, twist-filled crime novels, and unconventional romances – set all over the world.

You can find out more about her books at www.annieholder.com, and follow her on Instagram www.instagram.com/alhwriter/