I've been reading a lot of blog posts lately by aspiring authors clearly disillusioned with the current state of the publishing market and daunted by the ( admittedly ) tremendous odds against achieving a traditional publishing deal.
Some have questioned whether it's worth approaching agents any more; others whether it's worth trying to complete with X millions of other titles, digital or traditional. Many show hints that they may abandon the chase as they don't relish maintaining a strong on-line presence to help advertise their novels and feel that their chances of success, in any published medium, are hopeless.
While it is very true that breaking through these days is extremely tough; that the publishing industry is going through immense change; that the ability of aspiring authors to self-publish via Amazon has changed the game, and that it may seem impossible to gain the attenion of a major publishing house, people were saying the same thing 30 years ago. It's just that the reasons for everything being so tough were different to those of today. It's ALWAYS been hard to break through.
No author, agent or publisher can predict the "next big thing". If they could we'd all be rich and famous. Except we wouldn't, because we'd all be doing it and the next big thing would therefore no longer be unique. The only way to stand out, to agents and to publishers, is to write the best book that you can. It may be galling when terrible novels like the Shades of Grey trilogy achieve such incredible success, but it should be noted that the author ignored the publishing industry and simply wrote what she wanted to. She self published, did well, got a traditional deal and the rest is history.
The moral of this story is not that self-publishing will propel you to global fame and fortune. For every E. L. James there are probably 100,000 self-published authors who have sold not a single copy of their treasured tomes. The moral is that you should write what you want to write about. Pick something about which you are passionate, that makes you feel that you cannot wait to put the story down on paper. If you want to buy self-help books on writing, go ahead. Attend conferences and speak to industry professionals, read other novels similar to your hoped-for best seller. But above all be passionate and excited about EVERY project you start because if you're not excited about it, believe me, that luke-warm enthusiasm is what will end up on the page and in front of an agent in months, or years, to come. Why take half-measures? Pick a subject that fills you with a great spark of excitement and your novel will be all the more vivid and colourful for it. THAT is what publishers and agents are looking for.
I recently read several Tweets by my literary agent, Luigi Bonomi Associates, ( paraphrased ) : "I'm reading a manuscript that is so good I want to live in this book: and they call this work!"
That author, whoever they are, probably just got through as you are hoping to and as I once did. It happens. If it didn't, there wouldn't be a publishing industry.
Stick with it.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Global Warming: the big deception.
Very occasionally I have posted here about the on-going confusion over mean global temperatures and the arguments on either side of the divide. These posts often get more comments than those on my books, which says something about how people view this most contentious of issues.
Recently I posted a comment on a fellow writer's blog ( The Scribbling Sea Serpent ) that mentioned my point-of-view on this, and got a response from a suitably anonymous person who clearly knew nothing about science, decrying my "denier" cult and blabbering on about the scientific consensus on global warming.
Today, across much of the media, it has been revealed that the rise in global mean temperatures over the last two decades has been: nothing. Data corrections via the Met Office and others have meant that all previous scaremongering predictions have not only failed to materialise, but have now been revised down. Our planet is indeed warming, but the slowing trend observed completely flies in the face of the endlessly repeated mantra that Carbon Dioxide output, which is still rising, is driving temperature change. It isn't. No matter which way the data is observed, human activity cannot be the principle driving force behind our planet's warming trend.
Millions of people have continuously ranted about the scientific "concensus", and all they've achieved is to reveal how little they know about science. There is never a "concensus" in science: there was once a concensus that the sun must be made of coal, its heat derived from gravitational collapse. Close, but no cigar. If our brightest minds had simply relied on "concensus" back then, we wouldn't have learned very much about our world today.
Science is all about the data, about continually revising that data and ignoring our own bias. The latest data crushes the decades of scaremongering by people like Al Gore and the IPCC. Should we sit back and relax? No, of course not. Climate change is real, and something's definitely happening. But next time you hear somebody say that they know all about the scientific concensus, just ignore them. Data is all that matters, and all proper scientific theories are subject to new data that can bring them down if their predictions can be found experimentally invalid. Anthropogenic global-warming is a scientific theory that has been found invalid. I can only hope that the political world, instead of worrying about the fall out from admitting such a catalogue of error, will allow research to move on and root out the real cause of our changing climate, or simply prove that observed temperature changes are within normal global parameters....
Of course, further data could reveal new information that reverses these new discoveries: however, the latest models suggest that warming has peaked, for want of a better description, and that the trend represents a cycle of rising and falling temperatures. Perhaps the latest rise has been influenced by human activity, but not enough to alter the cycle itself? Who knows. Only time, and better data, will tell us. Saying that there is a "concensus", or that the science is "settled", will never tell us anything.
For those who would like a more detailed write-up of why climate science has revealed the lack of anthropogenic warming, from a qualified scientist, then please read the following link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/a-climate-of-scepticism/#more-77781
The recent news reports are easily found on Google etc.
Recently I posted a comment on a fellow writer's blog ( The Scribbling Sea Serpent ) that mentioned my point-of-view on this, and got a response from a suitably anonymous person who clearly knew nothing about science, decrying my "denier" cult and blabbering on about the scientific consensus on global warming.
Today, across much of the media, it has been revealed that the rise in global mean temperatures over the last two decades has been: nothing. Data corrections via the Met Office and others have meant that all previous scaremongering predictions have not only failed to materialise, but have now been revised down. Our planet is indeed warming, but the slowing trend observed completely flies in the face of the endlessly repeated mantra that Carbon Dioxide output, which is still rising, is driving temperature change. It isn't. No matter which way the data is observed, human activity cannot be the principle driving force behind our planet's warming trend.
Millions of people have continuously ranted about the scientific "concensus", and all they've achieved is to reveal how little they know about science. There is never a "concensus" in science: there was once a concensus that the sun must be made of coal, its heat derived from gravitational collapse. Close, but no cigar. If our brightest minds had simply relied on "concensus" back then, we wouldn't have learned very much about our world today.
Science is all about the data, about continually revising that data and ignoring our own bias. The latest data crushes the decades of scaremongering by people like Al Gore and the IPCC. Should we sit back and relax? No, of course not. Climate change is real, and something's definitely happening. But next time you hear somebody say that they know all about the scientific concensus, just ignore them. Data is all that matters, and all proper scientific theories are subject to new data that can bring them down if their predictions can be found experimentally invalid. Anthropogenic global-warming is a scientific theory that has been found invalid. I can only hope that the political world, instead of worrying about the fall out from admitting such a catalogue of error, will allow research to move on and root out the real cause of our changing climate, or simply prove that observed temperature changes are within normal global parameters....
Of course, further data could reveal new information that reverses these new discoveries: however, the latest models suggest that warming has peaked, for want of a better description, and that the trend represents a cycle of rising and falling temperatures. Perhaps the latest rise has been influenced by human activity, but not enough to alter the cycle itself? Who knows. Only time, and better data, will tell us. Saying that there is a "concensus", or that the science is "settled", will never tell us anything.
For those who would like a more detailed write-up of why climate science has revealed the lack of anthropogenic warming, from a qualified scientist, then please read the following link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/a-climate-of-scepticism/#more-77781
The recent news reports are easily found on Google etc.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Dean Crawford Books Facebook page.
For anybody who would like to continue seeing regular updates, I have a Facebook Fan Page which has been running for a while. All interesting bits of info and updates will be posted there, rather than on this blog;
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dean-Crawford-Books/227989043878445
Feel free to "Like" the page if you want to. The more likes I get, the more interesting stuff I can do on the page!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dean-Crawford-Books/227989043878445
Feel free to "Like" the page if you want to. The more likes I get, the more interesting stuff I can do on the page!
Monday, January 07, 2013
IMMORTAL launch in USA & Canada
For readers in the USA and Canada, the hardback of "Immortal" launches tomorrow, January 8th. It's already had favourable reviews from Publisher's Weekly and industry bloggers. Below is the great cover design by Touchstone USA.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Moving on.
I started this blog in 2006, just as I was beginning work on a novel ( my fifth ) called Genesis. This novel, after three major re-writes and a new title, Covenant, gained me representation by a powerful London literary agent named Luigi Bonomi and was the subject of a fierce trade-auction between several major publishing houses.
Since then life has become rather busier. I became a father, which is a remarkably time-consuming but hugely rewarding experience. Covenant was a Sunday Times paperback bestseller, as was the sequel Immortal, which was recently featured as Starbuck's Book of the Week and achieved the highest day-one redemptions in the history of the chain's promotion. Apocalypse, the third book in the series, is also currently selling well and two more Ethan Warner thrillers are to be published in 2013.
The huge effort that goes into writing two or three major novels each year only leaves me a little time to devote to digital media. So at the end of 2012, six years after starting this blog and seventeen years after I began writing, I'm now so busy that I am unable to maintain every account that I began so long ago. I started this blog to record my hoped-for journey from aspiring author to published writer, and amazingly I succeeded and achieved the purpose of these pages. Therefore this will be my last "regular" blog here.
I will occasionally post as new books are launched, however I firmly believe that writing success is not to be found through Facebook, Twitter, Blogger or anything else. It's to be found by consistently writing great books, and that is where I want to focus my attention because it is readers who will decide who succeeds and who fails.
If you're a fan, keep reading. If you're an aspiring author, keep writing and dreaming because I am living proof that, sometimes, it happens to you.
D.C.
Since then life has become rather busier. I became a father, which is a remarkably time-consuming but hugely rewarding experience. Covenant was a Sunday Times paperback bestseller, as was the sequel Immortal, which was recently featured as Starbuck's Book of the Week and achieved the highest day-one redemptions in the history of the chain's promotion. Apocalypse, the third book in the series, is also currently selling well and two more Ethan Warner thrillers are to be published in 2013.
The huge effort that goes into writing two or three major novels each year only leaves me a little time to devote to digital media. So at the end of 2012, six years after starting this blog and seventeen years after I began writing, I'm now so busy that I am unable to maintain every account that I began so long ago. I started this blog to record my hoped-for journey from aspiring author to published writer, and amazingly I succeeded and achieved the purpose of these pages. Therefore this will be my last "regular" blog here.
I will occasionally post as new books are launched, however I firmly believe that writing success is not to be found through Facebook, Twitter, Blogger or anything else. It's to be found by consistently writing great books, and that is where I want to focus my attention because it is readers who will decide who succeeds and who fails.
If you're a fan, keep reading. If you're an aspiring author, keep writing and dreaming because I am living proof that, sometimes, it happens to you.
D.C.
Writing a novel diary: Part 6
It's almost finished!
The final task for me is the line edit. This is the final read-through of the novel, ideally done after leaving it alone for at least a month. I originally did not believe that I would be able to do this due to a looming delivery deadline, but a glance at the contract revealed that I actually had four more weeks than I'd thought. This break away from the manuscript is as an essential task as the edit itself. No matter how good I may ( or may not ) become at writing, I always miss things or make mistakes when trying to perform a final read-through and edit the moment I finish the structural editing. Like most people, I just can't help but skim lines with which I've become over-familiar, or not think deeply enough about dialogue that already seems to "do the job". A month spent working on something else is not time wasted, and allows me to read the novel with fresher eyes.
So, simple tip: Forget about your novel for a month before attempting the final edit.
For this job I sit at my desk, coffee at the ready and with a series of Post-It notes for each character's personalities attached to the desk in front of me. I also have a paper and pen in case any major errors in plot or narrative should appear. Then, I read the novel. Simple as that. I try to enjoy it while just keeping an eye open for any dialogue that sounds out of character; prose that could be shortened or polished a little; actions that maybe seem designed to push the plot rather than portray character, and so on. And of course I look out for typos and grammatical mistakes.
Generally, this final task takes me about a week or so as I make little adjustments. Virtually every page gets something done, even if it's just a simple word swap. Incidentally, this is the time that I use to look out for opportunities for descriptive passages, the chance to take a basic portrayal of a scene and make it something special. Eg, early in Apocalypse I described a "set of towering cumulonimbus soaring above the horizon glowing in the light of the setting sun." After my line edit this became: "...the sun was sinking between towering cumulonimbus clouds that soared like angel's wings.." Simple, but effective.
The line edit usually shaves a couple of thousand words off the novel as contractions and better use of words reduce excessive narrative and dialogue becomes smoother, sharper and more dynamic. When I reach the end of the edit, I'll save the completed novel in at least three different places for safe keeping and then send it to my agent and editor. And that's it.
Except that finishing the novel is only the beginning. Two or three months later my editor will send me her own general edit, where she will begin to help me shape the novel into an even tighter product. This edit takes several weeks to work through, and is followed a few weeks later by her line-edit, which takes a few weeks more. Then there's the copy-edit a month or two after that, and then the page-proofs before the novel goes to print, usually a couple of months before publication.
And then the whole process is done again for the novel's publication in the USA.
This is how modern novels are created and the editorial process ( after the author has delivered their manuscript ) is much the same for all authors writing for mainstream publishers. If being a novelist is your plan for the future, then perhaps the best final piece of advice I could give is to become a great self-editor and willingly accept all constructive criticism, because editing a novel ready for the crowded market takes far longer than writing the novel itself.
This is the final part of my writing diary, as all the stages after this have been detailed in prior posts concerning the publication of earlier novels. I hope that it has been of help to any aspiring authors reading my blog, and if it helps any of you achieve publication then it will have been worth it.
And you owe me a drink.
The final task for me is the line edit. This is the final read-through of the novel, ideally done after leaving it alone for at least a month. I originally did not believe that I would be able to do this due to a looming delivery deadline, but a glance at the contract revealed that I actually had four more weeks than I'd thought. This break away from the manuscript is as an essential task as the edit itself. No matter how good I may ( or may not ) become at writing, I always miss things or make mistakes when trying to perform a final read-through and edit the moment I finish the structural editing. Like most people, I just can't help but skim lines with which I've become over-familiar, or not think deeply enough about dialogue that already seems to "do the job". A month spent working on something else is not time wasted, and allows me to read the novel with fresher eyes.
So, simple tip: Forget about your novel for a month before attempting the final edit.
For this job I sit at my desk, coffee at the ready and with a series of Post-It notes for each character's personalities attached to the desk in front of me. I also have a paper and pen in case any major errors in plot or narrative should appear. Then, I read the novel. Simple as that. I try to enjoy it while just keeping an eye open for any dialogue that sounds out of character; prose that could be shortened or polished a little; actions that maybe seem designed to push the plot rather than portray character, and so on. And of course I look out for typos and grammatical mistakes.
Generally, this final task takes me about a week or so as I make little adjustments. Virtually every page gets something done, even if it's just a simple word swap. Incidentally, this is the time that I use to look out for opportunities for descriptive passages, the chance to take a basic portrayal of a scene and make it something special. Eg, early in Apocalypse I described a "set of towering cumulonimbus soaring above the horizon glowing in the light of the setting sun." After my line edit this became: "...the sun was sinking between towering cumulonimbus clouds that soared like angel's wings.." Simple, but effective.
The line edit usually shaves a couple of thousand words off the novel as contractions and better use of words reduce excessive narrative and dialogue becomes smoother, sharper and more dynamic. When I reach the end of the edit, I'll save the completed novel in at least three different places for safe keeping and then send it to my agent and editor. And that's it.
Except that finishing the novel is only the beginning. Two or three months later my editor will send me her own general edit, where she will begin to help me shape the novel into an even tighter product. This edit takes several weeks to work through, and is followed a few weeks later by her line-edit, which takes a few weeks more. Then there's the copy-edit a month or two after that, and then the page-proofs before the novel goes to print, usually a couple of months before publication.
And then the whole process is done again for the novel's publication in the USA.
This is how modern novels are created and the editorial process ( after the author has delivered their manuscript ) is much the same for all authors writing for mainstream publishers. If being a novelist is your plan for the future, then perhaps the best final piece of advice I could give is to become a great self-editor and willingly accept all constructive criticism, because editing a novel ready for the crowded market takes far longer than writing the novel itself.
This is the final part of my writing diary, as all the stages after this have been detailed in prior posts concerning the publication of earlier novels. I hope that it has been of help to any aspiring authors reading my blog, and if it helps any of you achieve publication then it will have been worth it.
And you owe me a drink.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
"Immortal" USA Goodreads "give-away"!
For all fans of my books in the USA, Goodreads and Touchstone USA are running a "give-away" for the next few weeks on the Goodreads site.
It's free to enter, and the prize is a bound galley of Immortal. There are only 18 copies available so if you're looking forward to the sequel to Covenant, sign up before they're gone!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13547523-immortal
It's free to enter, and the prize is a bound galley of Immortal. There are only 18 copies available so if you're looking forward to the sequel to Covenant, sign up before they're gone!
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13547523-immortal
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Writing a novel diary: Part 5
So, it's done!
Actually, I finished the first draft of the fifth Ethan Warner book a week ago, but have been so busy that I haven't had the chance to write this installment of the diary. The UK launch of Book 3, the USA and Canada launch of Book 1 and the various promotions have kept me occupied.
The finished first draft came in at just over 90,000 words, which is a little shorter than most of my previous titles. However, this is a great thing because it allows for expansion rather than the more usual effort of trying to bring the word count down. Editing with one eye on length is much harder to do.
Over the past five weeks it has taken to produce this first draft, I have used pretty much emptied my bag of tricks to maintain a steady rate of wrtiting, largely due to having a twenty-month old daughter running around at the same time. Much as I hate it, I have to close my office door to her and get on with my work while my other half looks after her. As you can imagine, small children are noisy, so I usually don headphones and play music as I work, often soundtracks to movies that set a tone which matches the novel I'm working on. For this novel, I listened to a lot of James Newton Howard's scores for movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, the Lady in the Water and Unbreakable: no prizes for guessing that the novel is a chiller.
For me, music really helps me lose myself in the story - although after a while I turn it off when dealing with more complex scenes. It's not something that works for every writer, but I've always had what's been described as a 'visual' writing style and the mental imagery conjured by music helps me a great deal.
I set myself a writing goal of at least 3,000 words per day. The months of pre-planning and plotting allow me to write at this pace, knowing that the basic storyline is set and I've always got information available to me for the next scene. I never get writer's block. I do however get writer's pain-in-the-shoulder-and-achy-eyes syndrome, so I stop every hour or so and walk about a bit / have a cup of tea to break the cycle. When in full flow I can write over a thousand words per hour, but usually I'm a bit slower than that. Writing from 9am to about 4pm each weekday gives me enough time to produce my daily word count and lets me have the weekend off.
In the case of this book, during the writing process I produced about eight A4 pages of notes 'on the fly' describing different possible plot outcomes, character changes, missed opportunities for tension and conflict in scenes and relationships and other general ideas that appear like flashes of light as I'm writing. These are all now collated for the next stage of writing: the first edit.
( NOTE: Ideally, I would now leave the novel alone for a month before looking at it again. However, with the delivery deadline being December 31st 2012 there is no luxury of a break: this has to be handed in first thing in the New Year so I'm diving straight back into the work. )
Before the first edit, I go through my notes and re-write them in order to match the plot of the story, checking details and thinking about how it all comes together with what's already been written. Further margin notes and reminders are made, usually in red ink to help them stand out, and what is essentially a full-edit is the result. I then start from the beginning of the novel, adding in the new changes, altering existing scenes to match new ideas, adding / altering or removing characters as required and also doing a general edit for typos and bad grammar. I don't spend too much time on the prose as this has it's own edit pass later. For now I'm concentrating on structure, making sure that I've got all the scenes that the story requires, have removed all the ones that it doesn't and that the whole thing hangs together well and makes logical sense to the reader.
This process takes at least two weeks and I'm currently half-way through it, drawing lines through each of my notes as I go along. This pragmatic, logical approach allows me to keep improving individual scenes while also keeping an eye on the novel as a whole. As soon as this task is complete I'll switch immediately to the next edit: my line edit, which is the polishing of the novel from front to back in terms of narrative, prose, dialogue, character and pace. I'll cover a few interesting tricks and tips for that process in the next post.
Actually, I finished the first draft of the fifth Ethan Warner book a week ago, but have been so busy that I haven't had the chance to write this installment of the diary. The UK launch of Book 3, the USA and Canada launch of Book 1 and the various promotions have kept me occupied.
The finished first draft came in at just over 90,000 words, which is a little shorter than most of my previous titles. However, this is a great thing because it allows for expansion rather than the more usual effort of trying to bring the word count down. Editing with one eye on length is much harder to do.
Over the past five weeks it has taken to produce this first draft, I have used pretty much emptied my bag of tricks to maintain a steady rate of wrtiting, largely due to having a twenty-month old daughter running around at the same time. Much as I hate it, I have to close my office door to her and get on with my work while my other half looks after her. As you can imagine, small children are noisy, so I usually don headphones and play music as I work, often soundtracks to movies that set a tone which matches the novel I'm working on. For this novel, I listened to a lot of James Newton Howard's scores for movies like The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, the Lady in the Water and Unbreakable: no prizes for guessing that the novel is a chiller.
For me, music really helps me lose myself in the story - although after a while I turn it off when dealing with more complex scenes. It's not something that works for every writer, but I've always had what's been described as a 'visual' writing style and the mental imagery conjured by music helps me a great deal.
I set myself a writing goal of at least 3,000 words per day. The months of pre-planning and plotting allow me to write at this pace, knowing that the basic storyline is set and I've always got information available to me for the next scene. I never get writer's block. I do however get writer's pain-in-the-shoulder-and-achy-eyes syndrome, so I stop every hour or so and walk about a bit / have a cup of tea to break the cycle. When in full flow I can write over a thousand words per hour, but usually I'm a bit slower than that. Writing from 9am to about 4pm each weekday gives me enough time to produce my daily word count and lets me have the weekend off.
In the case of this book, during the writing process I produced about eight A4 pages of notes 'on the fly' describing different possible plot outcomes, character changes, missed opportunities for tension and conflict in scenes and relationships and other general ideas that appear like flashes of light as I'm writing. These are all now collated for the next stage of writing: the first edit.
( NOTE: Ideally, I would now leave the novel alone for a month before looking at it again. However, with the delivery deadline being December 31st 2012 there is no luxury of a break: this has to be handed in first thing in the New Year so I'm diving straight back into the work. )
Before the first edit, I go through my notes and re-write them in order to match the plot of the story, checking details and thinking about how it all comes together with what's already been written. Further margin notes and reminders are made, usually in red ink to help them stand out, and what is essentially a full-edit is the result. I then start from the beginning of the novel, adding in the new changes, altering existing scenes to match new ideas, adding / altering or removing characters as required and also doing a general edit for typos and bad grammar. I don't spend too much time on the prose as this has it's own edit pass later. For now I'm concentrating on structure, making sure that I've got all the scenes that the story requires, have removed all the ones that it doesn't and that the whole thing hangs together well and makes logical sense to the reader.
This process takes at least two weeks and I'm currently half-way through it, drawing lines through each of my notes as I go along. This pragmatic, logical approach allows me to keep improving individual scenes while also keeping an eye on the novel as a whole. As soon as this task is complete I'll switch immediately to the next edit: my line edit, which is the polishing of the novel from front to back in terms of narrative, prose, dialogue, character and pace. I'll cover a few interesting tricks and tips for that process in the next post.
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