Mine's bigger than yours

I think it starts when we're, what? Four? And in a sandpit with our new toys determined to show everyone around us that our stuff is way cooler. And if our stuff just visibly isn't cooler - at least, we don't think it is - then we suffer pangs of anxiety, insecurity and the certainty that life just means nothing.

And years on... well, not much has changed, has it? We constantly compare ourselves to other people. Mrs Perfect Mother's baby never cries. Mr Debut Novelist got given a seven-figure advance on his first book. Those reviews are better, my book just isn't up to scratch, she's prettier, my toes are wonkier (and they are, too. I swear my littlest toes are misshapen.)

I've found it's pretty much unavoidable. I'm always going to compare myself to other people. But I've learned not to find myself so lacking. I've learned to judge myself by my own standards and not worry too much about the rest.

So how do you cope? What do you do when you start comparing myself to someone else?

Totally bitten off more than I can chew

I have an absurd amount of stuff to do this week, and I feel frighteningly scarily hugely slightly overwhelmed by it. I have to 

1. pack in all my revision for my final-year exams, both of which are next week. That means reading and re-reading about six books, watching a movie, and making detailed notes about all of them.

2. finish the first three chapters of TEA WITH DEATH, DESIRE AND RAGE if I want to stick to the target I've given myself.

3. write an article about ten movie adaptations that totally trample on the books they were adapted from. And right now, I can only think of one. One. To add insult to injury, writing this article was my idea and I said I'd get it done this week. Why? Why? And why can't I think of more than one movie adaption that veers wildly off the spirit of the book? Any ideas?

4. do my laundry. Which, in all fairness, is merrily spinning about the washing machine as we speak. So, that's pretty much done.

5. blog. Because I've promised myself I will try to write a post at least once a day. But if I seem a tad frenzied, a little panicked by the thought of two enormous exams looming ahead of me, and very, very boring, you'll know why.


I'm sending out a plea: movie adaptations that don't stay true to the spirit of the book? Suggestions? Please?


Also, the poll in the sidebar ends late Thursday evening, so if you haven't voted yet, please do!

List Day: 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Want to Be a Writer

Let's count this down, shall we?

5. Insomnia 
 I put this low on the list because I'm sure many writers escape it. Sadly, if you're like me and you can't sleep for all the ideas, conversations, anxieties and 'will that agent or editor like the book?' questions running through your head, this is a nuisance. My dears, start investing in some kind of sleep-maker. 

4. Your non-writer friends think you're insane

and can you blame them? Let's see: if someone you knew suddenly jerked their heads up during lunch, muttered frantically under their breath, and cried 'yes! I get it now!' at top volume, would you want to commit them? When they run off in the middle of a concert because 'they've just got the best idea', do you feel indulgent and tolerant, or do you want to clout them on the head? Oh, yes. Writers = crazy, in the eyes of the non-writer friends and family who have to put up with these foibles, eccentricities, and frequent periods of immense anti-socialness. 

3. It's a lifestyle, not just a job
Some people do the 9-to-5. Most of those people may love their jobs. Others may hate it. Some may see it as a way to pay bills until they can do what they really love. Either way, many, many, many of them get to come home at the end of the day, shake off their work, and unwind. Writers carry their work around everywhere. It's in our heads. We can't escape it. 

2. Rejection
If you've been reading this blog at least a couple days, you'll know I got a rejection the day before yesterday. Believe me, I'm not bitter. If I was, I wouldn't still be trying and trust me, I'm still trying. But rejection stings nevertheless. It's a pain in the behind to work very hard on a project, fall madly in love with it, nervously put it out there, and then be told it's not good enough. Ouch. And unlike the majority (but not all) of jobs/hobbies, writing comes with an awful lot of rejection. Frequently.  

1. Two words: Crow's. Feet.


It begs the question, doesn't it? Why do it? Well, I guess it boils down to this: if, in spite of all those things, you still want to write and, moreover, you still have to write, then, readers, you are a writer.

Anatomy of a Night Out vs. Editing a Novel

It occurred to me this afternoon, for no reason whatsoever, that my 'getting ready' process for a night out is actually very similar to my process for editing a novel. So, I thought, why not write about it? To anyone to whom either of these processes is familiar, I hope it gives you a laugh, and to anyone to whom they aren't, I hope it's amusing and enlightening anyway.

Imagine your bedroom is your manuscript. Your wardrobe is each individual chapter, your clothes represent each scene element, and your dressing table is the prose you layer your plot, characters and setting with.

Step One: Clothes and Re-Drafting

Every time you choose a new outfit, or discard one skirt in favour of another, or choose to wear jeans instead of a dress, you're rewriting a scene. So when you choose your outfit, you're picking a chapter to work on. Then you decide you don't like the blue denim skirt, so why not try the black tulip one instead? What's really happening, of course, is the fact that you don't like that your two characters kiss in this scene, it doesn't feel natural. So you wear the black tulip skirt, and you heighten the tension in the scene, building up anticipation for the kiss that will come later. When you decide the dress isn't working and you have to wear jeans instead, you're tearing the scene apart. It simply wasn't working, so you're going to have your protagonist go to London in this chapter instead.

You might go through six or seven different outfits in one evening, before settling on one that feels right. Similarly, you might change a scene six or seven times before it works the way you want it to. You really have to be brutal to get the best results. (Sorry if this is difficult for male readers to identify with.) You wouldn't want to go out if your shoes were uncomfortable, would you? In much the same way, I find I can't rest easy if I know I've left a chapter less than I could have made it.


Repeat this process for every single night out, and every single scene, and every single chapter.

Step Two: Make Up and Prose 

This is where you make your face look prettier, and your manuscript read nicer.


You apply some sort of base. This can be moisturiser, toner or some kind of expensive make-up base if you're an 'expensive make-up base' kind of girl. Your base is your re-drafted manuscript, where every scene works and every chapter seems just right... except for the actual, technical writing of it.


Then comes the foundation, the bronzer/blusher, the lipstick, the eyeliner. These are all the things that enhance your features, highlight the best parts of your face. These are the things that enhance your manuscript, highlight the best parts of your characters and plot. But be warned: too much lipstick/lip gloss and you look like a clown, too much foundation and you start to look chalky, too much eyeliner and the first droplet of rain will destroy you. 

Keep the metaphors, similes and beautiful imagery to places where it works. Don't overdo any of it. Less is more. No one wants to go out with gloopy red lips and no one can wade through a manuscript bogged down with far too many gloopy red metaphors. If you're going to work with bold lips, keep eye makeup to a minimum and vice versa. I try to avoid using similes, metaphor and imagery in the same sentence. Too much.


Dot on a bit of concealer to hide the flaws, and leave behind a smooth finish. The natural look works best. There are elements of every story that a writer will look at and think oh, dear. For me, it's my action sequences. I hate writing action because I'm bad at it, I don't particularly enjoy it, and it never gets my pulse racing like great character scenes do. I'll bet every writer feels they have a weak spot, and ninety-nine per cent of the time, you have to use the weak bits too. Very few fantasy novels can work without an action sequence somewhere in the midst of it, and I write a lot of fantasy. So, what do I do? How do I hide the little flaws on my face, the bits of my manuscript I don't like?


Solution: you do the best you can. You dot on the concealer, gently, carefully. You camouflage your weak spots with what you feel are your strongest. If I have an action sequence, I sandwich it between character scenes I absolutely love, or bits of dialogue I can't wait to write. The strong will enhance the weak and, sometimes, you might discover that what you think you're bad at isn't so bad at all. [Steve insists my action scenes aren't as bad as I think they are. Maybe I'm good at camouflage?]


Step Three: Hair and the Final Polish

When you do your hair, you might have to work at it a few times to get it just right. Whether you're keeping it simple or going for an elaborate 'do, it needs a little bit of work. So does that final polish of the manuscript, the final details that make it sparkle. Does your title work? Have you got your chapters numbered correctly? Have you straightened your layers but forgotten to straighten that sneaky little fringe? Do your characters' eye colours stay consistent throughout the story?


This is what I do last. My hair, and the nitty-gritty. I give the manuscript a final look to make sure every detail and technical glitch has been fixed. Sometimes I miss a typo here and there. You can't help that. You'll never get every single hair in place. I think that's okay.




So, what do you think? Amusing? Enlightening? Am I stretching the analogy a bit too far?

List Day

With my unfinished dissertation hanging over my head and Half at a standstill, I thought I'd go the easy, relaxing route with a blog post today. Lists. Three, to be precise. Great books that I think everyone should read or at least give a go; some of the best and most original story ideas I've ever heard of; and a list of some of my favourite fictional characters. I hope the first list, at least, gives people some fantastic stuff to dig into. I absolutely love having new, lovely things to discover, so I hope you do too.

Books

1. Daphne du Maurier, Frenchman's Creek
2. Daphne du Maurier, The King's General 
3. Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades 
4. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
5. Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
6. Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
7. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
8. Gail Carriger, Soulless
9. Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
10. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Ideas

1. Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. Literary detectives who can wander in and out of fiction at will, and change classic stories. Brilliant, brilliant concept.
2. The Time Traveler's Wife. The time traveller concept has been done innumerable times, but this is one of those situations where the execution of the idea is the cleverer concept than the idea itself. There's a certain spark and magic about the way Niffenegger uses involuntary time travel and two perspectives to tell an emotional story.
3. The Graveyard Book. This owes an awful lot to The Jungle Book, but I think the idea of a little boy growing up in a graveyard and being raised by the dead and undead, is a fantastic one.
4. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Multiple worlds, armoured bears who believe their armour is their soul, and, above all, daemons. Daemons are a physical manifestation of a person's soul, and they take animal form and have personalities and voices. When you have a daemon, you're never alone. They have to be one of the loveliest and most gut-wrenching concepts in fiction. Who doesn't want one?
5. Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle. A burn victim receives a visit from a woman who claims she knew him in their past lives, and then proceeds to tell mesmerizing stories about love. Great idea.

Characters

1. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights
2. Silas from The Graveyard Book
3. Owen Hunt from Grey's Anatomy
4. David Tennant's incarnation of the Doctor from Doctor Who
5. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter
6. Phedre from the Kushiel's Legacy series of novels
7. Artemis Fowl from Artemis Fowl
8. Ty from Stolen - a worrying one, considering he's a kidnapper
9. Just about every character from These Old Shades, with special mention for Rupert Alastair and Anthony Merivale
10. Honor Harris from The King's General

Anybody agree or disagree? Any lists of your own?

Snapshot of a university day

As I write this, I'm sitting in the Learning Zone, a new building designed so that students at Lancaster University can study, work, talk, eat and hang about, all twenty four hours a day. One end of it is covered with long, large windows, looking out into Alex Square, the centre and hub of the university. In the interest of putting off doing my work (I've written about 700 words of yet another dissertation chapter and think I can take a break), I thought I'd describe what I see and offer a snapshot of university life.

Across from me sits Lindsey, friend, flatmate, fellow student, slightly insane and not a little bit dopey either. She's more engrossed in her phone than in her work and occasionally looks up to offer me yet another update re. her job, her manager and the rota. I listen with one ear. Around us are various other erstwhile students, some diligently working, others sprawled out on the sofas with their iPods plugged firmly into their ears. Today, the windows are closed, so it's quite warm in here. So warm, in fact, that I've taken my hoody off. Gasp. In England, too.

Outside, in the Square, which is actually more of a very long rectangle surrounded by shops, banks, passageways and trees, it's still light, though the sun has vanished. Very English. Two girls sit on the steps, smoking. Two boys appear to be enjoying a couple of milkshakes. I'm tempted to ask them where they got theirs, because I tried getting a Diggles milkshake not fifteen minutes ago and was told they were closed. A girl dressed, apparently, for the Antarctic is passing by, her hood so dense it could probably shelter Lindsey, me and the rest of the Learning Zone, were we to feel the chill. Someone's getting money out at the cash machine. A group of first-years are laughing over sandwiches. I can tell they're first-years because only first-years wear skimpy clothes in the cold and laugh that loudly. Trust me. The rest of us have too much work to indulge ourselves. (Okay, I confess to mild sarcasm.)

As early as it is, I can give you a snapshot of the Square tonight, or on an average university night. Girls in short, pretty dresses and coats totter on high heels, already drunk, to get the bus or a taxi. Boys make sure they look steady and reliable, to prove they are men and can hold their drink. Occasionally, someone will try to climb a tree and break an arm. The buses will take them into town, where they'll dance for hours at Cuba or the Sugarhouse or one of the other clubs, and they'll drink till they're silly. I do this frequently, so I know.

Yes, that's university life. Work, drink, dance, play. Work some more. Work whilst nursing a hangover, whilst suffering stomach cramps, whilst being sick, whilst contemplating tomorrow's night out. Then go out. Then work some more. That's the final-year student's life, anyway.

Steve is driving up to see me tomorrow. Am very, very excited about that.