Blog

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” This is a marvellous way to sum up my writing style.

Any good story of course needs all the ingredients of challenges, uncertainties, change; and although a novel should be written so that the reader wants to know what is ultimately going to happen, I am not writing a whodunit or a crime story. I write general fiction which means, to me, that it is just as much about what happens along the way – more so – than it is for where my characters end up.

This is of course true of any genre, but if you aren’t trying to hide a secret or open up the ‘big reveal’ at the end, then I think it is even more important for my style of writing to ensure that ‘the journey matters.’

That said, in the words of Jodi Picoult, “This isn’t just social commentary. This is also about writing good page-turners. I want people to keep reading.”

Absolutely. First and foremost, it’s a story. It has to be. If it isn’t a good story, then it’s not for me.

I heard an interview with David Baddiel recently, where he talked about “how he wrote”; he said (and I am paraphrasing): I sit down at my computer, look at the internet for a bit, realise I should do some writing, do some writing, reward myself by looking at the internet again… Of course, he did then explain about his actual approach, but his account resonated with me. Clearly, real writers waste lots of time too looking at Twitter and Wikipedia…

This is how I wrote The Kosher Delhi:

When I wasn’t looking at the internet, I tended to write as follows: On a morning, I would write a few pages of the novel and change it a bit as I go along; personally, I do believe in improving some aspects of it as I write. But, if I realised that there were words I needed to change later, or there was something I still needed to amend/improve/insert, then I sometimes highlighted such words/sections in yellow (using the software’s Text Highlight tool) and moved on. The following day, I reviewed what I wrote the day before, made further changes to that and then started writing new pages for that day. That also helped remind me where I was, what I needed to write next. And repeat. All that I did directly on my PC/laptop.

Partly through necessity of life and partly because I can’t write and write for weeks at a time, I did sometimes stop and leave the MS alone for a while. When I did that, I found it very helpful when I returned to it some weeks later and I reviewed great swathes of it again. When I did that, I printed out what I wanted to review and wrote on it using a pen; I found I could see the book far more clearly that way, in terms of what was good, what needed changing etc. I even printed the novel in ‘book fold’ style and put a couple of staples in the fold, so that I was reading it in A5 size, turning pages over “like a real book” – that seemed to really work for me. That said, I have also sent my book to my Kindle and added notes to it on that, before updating the master MS back on my PC.

As for whether I am a “pantser or plotter” (a classic phrase people writing books these days use), I am somewhere inbetween. But I definitely err on the panster side. As the Kosher Delhi progressed, I did have a single Word document with all the character and plot information in it, including the core of what I still needed to write/incorporate and what needed changing. And I had supporting documents such as ‘The Characters Ages’ year by year in a spreadsheet. But a lot of the plot was only in my head. I can’t imagine ever plotting everything out before I start a novel, although I do think a lot about the overall structure before commencing (or, at least, I think I do…) I also use Mind Mapping when I am first considering a plot/novel; I have written a separate post about that.

In terms of software, I used a combination of Microsoft Word and Google Docs. I did like using Google Docs because I could access it anywhere from any computer (even offline on my Chromebook), and I could easily download copies for version control. But ultimately, I found I needed to ‘finish’ the documents in Word so I could print them, format them slightly more easily, just have little bit more control. And my editor used Word for track changes.

I should finish this post with a huge caveat: this was just what I found worked for me! For this one novel. There is no right or wrong (as far as I know) and I have still only written one (unproven) book. So if you do something differently then that’s completely fine.

Soon after I started writing The Kosher Delhi, I gave my partner the first few chapters and asked for her feedback. She came back the next day after reading it on the train home and said, ‘Now I don’t want you to get upset, but this might be a difficult conversation…’ She then reeled off a series of points and thoughts about the book which she didn’t think were realistic, didn’t work, or where she got bored. I sat there, listened (very) politely and had to admit to myself that she was right on every account (well, nearly every point). It was sobering but unbelievably helpful. Oh, and she did also say what she liked!

When I look back now at what I consequently changed, I am sure that if I had presented that original version to my publisher, they would never have progressed their interest.

It was the same with my other early readers. (I hesitate to call them beta readers; from my software development background, I think of ‘beta testing’ as testing software which has at least had a fair amount of internal review already – so I think some of my early readers were pre-beta…) Every single one of them gave me useful feedback, made me think, and more often than not, I changed something. Not always – there are inevitably aspects where as an author you have to believe that what you have written is correct; but often. For example, if one reader gives one specific piece of feedback, that doesn’t automatically mean you need to change a point (although you can do), but, for me, as soon as two or three people commented on the same issues, well, clearly I should pay attention to that.

I did receive one person’s feedback where their comment was so blindingly obvious that I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it when I wrote it! But that’s one of the benefits of getting early readers – you can’t always see the wood for the trees; you’re too close to the plot/characters to see something doesn’t work. It may sound like the opposite should be true, but I found that it was possible to want to write a particular thing so much that I couldn’t see it didn’t work.

I was also very specific on what I asked my readers to comment on: I asked them to tell me ‘Did my book make you want to know what happened next?’ and ‘Did you manage to forget it was me (i.e. your friend/brother) reading it?’ And of course, please do tell me what you did/didn’t like if you can do – although I found that those two simple questions usually meant my reader told me their likes/dislikes anyway.

I should also add that although I have concentrated above on the criticism I received from readers, I was fortunate that all of them also said how much they enjoyed it! Which meant that even if they questioned aspects of the novel, it still made me feel fantastic that someone did like my writing!