Going Freelance... And Being A Better Writer

Wee car selfie - don't worry, I was parked!

So for those that don't follow me on Facebook or Instagram (and why not? I suggest you click the Facebook link above and find me) you won't know that I am currently 'in transition'. No, I'm not in the process of moving house, changing body or anything else of an elaborately complex and stressful nature - but I am crossing over from Chef to full time freelance writer... and that's a level of discomfort I always hoped to avoid.

Why? Why would I give up full time, paying work to sit behind a laptop all day and hope for clients? I genuinely don't know. But since I made the decision the nightmares have stopped... so that means it must be the good thing to do, right?

My lovely friend Kirsty Anderson, Illustrator

On a more serious note... I think sometimes in life you need to take the pay cut just to be happy in your own skin. I've always been the kind of person who values my free time above my work time; but the funny thing about writing is that I just can't see it as work. I can literally hear the other writers gasp at that statement - so before you lose any more breath let me explain myself...

I have spent the last three years of my life (Edelweiss was released in 2016, so we are probably closer to 4 years) waking up, going to work, coming home after a long shift and writing up to five thousand words, then going to sleep again. For all this time writing has been what I did in my free time. It was a hobby (albeit one that I was committed to). It was work, yes; but it was work for me.

The upshot of this is that I invested my time and skill into something that I wanted to do for myself. At no point did I start making money from it and, to be honest, I've sunk more into the books than I have made back. This blog I write entirely for free. My short stories - even though they are published - were all written for free, sent off without payment and published with a nod to exposure or a contributor's copy. But what I am going to say next is going to blow your mind... Writing isn't a profession where you can jump straight on in at the top.

If I were to start in a kitchen tomorrow I would be a dishwasher. I might have 20 years of kitchen experience but I don't have a piece of paper that says I can cook. Double this up with being a woman and I'd likely spend triple or even quadruple the time on dishes than a man with a qualification would. And before the anti-feminists get involved I'd like to point out that my record in this position is 10 years, despite being overly qualified for the position and having to watch less qualified people with no paperwork be promoted over my head. I then moved to a new job and was offered a managerial position within three months... but this isn't an equality post. It's about how to be a better writer.

How To Start Being A Writer

So, going with my kitchen example above... why would I accept a new job in a kitchen and expect to be the head chef straight away? Why would I take a job in a store and expect to have managerial responsibilities from day one, having never worked retail before? I wouldn't - of course I wouldn't! So why are there so many people out there who say they don't want to be writers because the pay sucks? Of course it sucks. You're unpublished, you have a name nobody knows and, quite frankly, no matter how many literature degrees you have nobody cares.

Until you have put the time in, until you have started at the bottom and done the free work, until you have edited till 4 in the morning for a project unlikely to ever make you money - you're not a writer. In the same way as you wouldn't step out of catering school and expect a head chef position you shouldn't step out of lit school and expect a book deal. And you're lucky, because you are finding this out now! I had to learn the hard way!

The best piece of advice I was ever given was to write every day (that's Chris Breechen from Writing About Writing, if you don't follow him then start). I started doing this three years ago now and I have a portfolio of work that would put the British Government to shame because of it. I don't want to appear boastful either because I make/have made/consistently fall foul to the same mistakes every other writer makes... but I keep writing. I keep submitting. I keep trying.

Getting Rejected

I have had about five times the rejections that I have had publications made. It might even be higher than that. The chances of you writing a short story and having it instantly published are slim to none - never mind an actual full length book. For every anthology posted on the likes of Horror Tree (another fantastic resource) the editors receive over two hundred submissions. Given that your average anthology is about 12 stories long; you can see how slim your chances are. Worse, anthology work is almost exclusively unpaid, although the Indie industry is on its way up.

So if you manage to get that story published then you are off to a fantastic start. If not? Don't panic, you are in the same boat as the other 88%. That doesn't make you a bad writer, it just means that your story didn't fit. Put it on the back burner, pull it out for another anthology, tidy it up a bit and send it away somewhere else. My record is five submissions to different anthologies before Fangs And Broken Bones accepted "The Spice of Life". At the moment, I have a short story out on it's 10th trip that I absolutely adore and can't understand why nobody wants it... that's just the way the industry works.

My point is that getting rejected should be your default expectation. That way, when something does get accepted, you can celebrate and simultaneously worry that it isn't good enough over a bottle of wine. Keep in mind that the difference between a successful writer and an unsuccessful one is no more than stubbornness. Write every day, get rejected once a week, and after about a year you will start to see improvements.

So all that's left for me to do is apologise to the rock lovers for a blog post about writing and not geology, and stress the point that not giving up is paramount to success in this industry. I am moving forward into freelance writing with the intention of writing a hell of a lot of web content because it actually does make a little money. Wish me luck because I'm going to need it.

One thing is for sure though: kitchens across Scotland will be a lot safer without me in them... although maybe not quite so tidy.

Writing Your Novel: Avoiding Procrastination

procrastination

/prə(ʊ)ˌkrastɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/

noun

noun: procrastination; plural noun: procrastinations

                                             the action of delaying or postponing something.

"your first tip is to avoid procrastination"

So none of you probably need the dictionary definition but by happy coincidence your first tip is to stop procrastinating. Today I wanted to tell you the story about how I used to be a procrastinator, until the Universe intervened and kicked my ass into submission. 

Procrastination doesn't just apply to the writing your novel part - it's about the whole process.

I wrote my first novel (that's Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one) by hand and mostly sitting in the
bathroom of my University dorm. It was the only place in the building you could smoke without the warden catching you and I didn't have a laptop back then. Just to give you some idea of the timescale I went to Uni back in 2008 and I didn't publish until 2016. That's not to say I was sitting on my hands the whole time, but it ought to give you an impression of how long it took me to build my confidence up enough to even send the damn thing away.

The thing is, you see, that I wrote it easily enough. I wrote it over and over again because I lost pages.The procrastination didn't kick in until it was written. What did I do with it next? In the end it lived in a drawer for a few years while I dealt with some weird life stuff. I forgot about it for a while, then I remembered and bought a new laptop to type it up on.

The new laptop was brilliant. I went through every piece of paper I had ever written and typed it onto digital format. Up until then I had always been a pen and paper writer. I'm going to go ahead and say that this was a major turning point for me. With a laptop over a desktop you can just punch notes in that you never lose - and I've lost a lot of work in my time.

Anyway, I had finished typing Edelweiss up and saved it on to disk, gone through my bucket of notes and got most of it done. I couldn't decide what to do next so I powered on and wrote Valerian as well. I worked my way through the third novel while I was there - all of this without actually doing anything with the novel. Then Windows 10 happened in 2015(?) and I used a temporary profile one night to work in. The next morning all my work was gone. Absolutely all of it. Every poem, every story, every note - and the manuscripts.

I tried everything. I reverted my settings, I had my techy cousin look at it, I called Windows... it didn't matter and I never got it back. At 30 years old and with all the work I had ever written destroyed I had two options: give up or start again. Now let's be clear about this, I felt like someone had died. I was absolutely gutted. Many of those notes that I typed I had thrown the originals for away and loads of it was just lost forever. To this day I still think about the loss of some of those pieces. Old scripts from University, shorts from when I was still learning the trade... stuff that was more valuable for the memories than the actual content.Argh. Give up and go home or start again. Judging by the fact you are reading this now you can probably imagine what I chose.

I started writing again, I rewrote the whole damn thing. This time I wrote the intro and sent it to a bunch of literary agents whose names I had looked up online. I didn't manage to secure one, although some really positive feedback came through from one agent who had read it, really liked it and couldn't get behind it because it was too dark. After it was completed, edited and formatted to the best of my ability (which, at the time, wasn't much. It's better now, I promise) and decided to self publish through Amazon.

During that time period I wrote like a demon. I decided to self publish after sending short stories out and having a few published by other people. I figured that if other people thought my work was good enough that they could make money from it - then why wasn't I? OK so it's not much money but the alternative was literally sitting in a drawer gathering dust for nearly ten years... so what did I have to lose?

Self-Publishing is Losing the Stigma

There are thousand other authors out there with the same story as me. Not only that, but publishing contracts are getting worse and worse. I have witnessed people advertise for ghostwriters for fifty dollars... I have seen 'contracts' for books valued at $500. I have seen people pay half a cent a word for literary genius and I can promise you - publishers are not all they are cracked up to be. The rates some of them want you to work for equate to pennies per hour.

Basically what I am saying is give it a go. Send your manuscript out to the big fish and see if they

bite, If you don't you'll never know. This whole business is a sea of rejection but the important thing to remember is that your work won't fit everywhere. It's not going to be right for some people no matter how good it is. So there isn't any point in letting the rejection get to you. Keep sending, keep submitting, keep writing. You will be successful as long as you don't give up. If the big fish don't want it then self publish and start working on the next one.

Procrastination is a terrible thing. Don't let it eat your work, don't let it put you down and certainly don't give in to it. The Indie Author industry is huge and growing, and there are some of us who believe it is the new way of writing. Jump in with both feet and move on to the next novel...take it from someone who learned the hard way.

Writing a Novel: Planning

Writing a novel is easy (said nobody. Ever.). You sit at the computer and you tear your hair out for about a year - but let's face it, anything up to a lifetime - until you have battered out your masterpiece. It sounds easy in theory and that's why every month, at least one person approaches me and starts a conversation with "I've been meaning to write this book..."

Consider instead that the real reason they haven't written it yet is because it's Goddamned difficult. And, to be honest, it's understandable that not everyone goes through with it. It's one of those dreams that sounds great in theory until it comes to doing the actual work... Anyway, as usual I am getting sidetracked.

I put together this little blog because when I first started novel writing/short story writing I had no idea what do with formatting, no idea how to edit and no idea what was expected of me... well all you lucky people have me so you won't be as lost.

Back to Basics: Novel Planning

OK So forget punctuation, grammar and sentence structure for now. Kill it in the fire. At the moment what we want to look at is overall structure - as if you are starting from complete scratch.

Character V's Plot

This is an ages old argument in the script writing business. What drives your story? Character or plot? The answer is that it doesn't actually matter that much except to you. By appreciating what kind of writer you are you can better learn to play to your own strengths. Personally I am one of those weirdos who writes short's based on plot and novels based on character. I feel that a solid plot can carry a short better than a full length piece and vice versa - but t doesn't need to be that way for you.

You might have an idea for a brilliant character whose skin you want to move inside and whose personality you want to steal. In this case you are a charact3er writer. Start with your imagined friend and envision them in different situations until such times as you hit across an idea that you love. Next develop a beginning, middle and an end of your story then start writing. As a character writer you must not change your characters to fit your plot - and you have to be wary of this as you work.

If you are a plot writer then break the story down into as many sections as possible. Start with a beginning, a middle and an end and break the story down into plot points that you want to reach at particular times. Once you have the story pinned down develop some nice rounded characters to fit in...Always make your characters super interesting and believable. If you are a plot writer then keep constant check on if your characters are real or not.

Spider Diagrams

Make no mistake: Spider Diagrams are the aspiring author's best friend. Write your first plot point in a bubble and surround it with other bubbles that might go alongside it. It works with character too and is a great development tool. You might write your characters name and pick a load of traits they have, then pick a few bad habits, a few good habits, cherished childhood memories - you get the idea.

What If..? 

This is one I learned at University. You start with a vague notion and then you keep asking yourself what if? even if it doesn't make sense. This is a great method for blitzing through ideas when you are stuck linking one plot point to another. For example....

"What if I wrote about a blue man living on Mars; what if that blue man had a space puppy named Dooobaloo? What if the dog bit him one day and, because it is a space puppy, now he is somehow pregnant? What if he shoots the puppy because he is so upset? What if that leaves him all alone in space and without anybody... doesn't that reflect the overarching premise of humanity?"

You follow?

Charting it out...

This is a great trick for when you have to make up a story in an afternoon with no prompting. It is also my favourite trick for building new plots for shorts. You take a sheet of A4 and you separate it into columns .Next, you give each column a title. I might use "Character", "Antagonist" (that's 'bad guy'), "Situation", "Revelation", "Outcome". Similarly if I need more details I will add more columns. Anyway, next go down each column and fill in up to ten different answers for each heading.

Ergo under "Character" I have 5 rows and they look like this:

1970's party girl
London Policeman
Chef de Partie
Suicidal Salesman
Drunkard Bar Owner

And then we move on to the next rows:

Character                                      Antagonist                           Situation

1970's party girl                          Angry clown                          High-end Restaurant
London Policeman                     embarrassing Uncle               summer school
Chef de Partie                             Big Ben                                 Earthquake
Suicidal Salesman                      that nice guy from work        Train Crash
Drunkard Bar Owner                  Santa Claus                            Stranded on a Desert Island

And now all you need to do is mix and match the rows... so we could have a suicidal salesman who is being hounded by Santa Claus while trying to sell the latest high trend kids toy to young children at Summer school... OK, they don't always make sense, but it's fun, fast and gets you out of a fix.

Format

Always format before you start writing. When it comes to short stories follow the Shunn format like everyone else does or your manuscript won't be read. When it comes to your book take a new page for every new chapter, file -> new page-> first page style for the first few pages you don't want to be numbered and pick what size you want your book to be to set the page size. 6" x 9" is normal nowadays.

And that's about all from me today, back to the daily grind of article writing. I hope I have managed to help at least one of you on your story telling journey. Good luck out there, it's tough... but it's totally worth it when you can look someone in the eye and say "Me? I'm a writer."...

Writing Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one.

So the time has come for the obligatory "this is how I wrote my first book" blog post. I apologise in advance to those who show up for the funny stuff, I'll try to make sure it isn't a dry read.

The Final Cover Image, courtesy of Craig Anderson Photography

Edelweiss started as a character: Dr Abigail Jones (who was never a real Doctor, just a healer in disguise). This was a character I developed to play in a Live Action Role Play and was probably the first character that I went to bed and dreamed about. She was very real to me. To this day I have other Larpers to thank for some of the characters... Rufus Frank, who you meet in Valerian, Captain Charles Echan, Mister Talphibious and Asa Lupine were all based on real people; Talphibious and Frank only loosely.

The setting is completely different to the LARP world I played, albeit with similarities. The original Abigail Jones was a member of the Temple of Shadows (ironically the good guys) so her path was never going to be easy. The story developed with her as a starting point but, as she was only a girl, I needed a caretaker who was loyal and who could remind her of where she came from when her ideas got too big for her boots. Stephen Lawrence was born as Paul Thomas Damas, a name I changed in later drafts for reasons that won't become clear until you read the second and third books.

My main protagonist was always going to be a dual threat of Catherine and the mystery murderer we meet in the prologue.What I didn't expect was for those two characters to take on their own stories throughout the series. It has been just as interesting for me to find out what they have been up to as it is for the reader. The trouble with writing character-driven stories is that sometimes they change the plot for themselves because of their attitudes and abilities. Abigail is particularly hard to write because she is always off doing her own thing. She needs a big group around her so that she can be constantly reigned back in. Usually for her own good. If she didn't have Stephen she would have marched straight from Beeton to Estora and got herself killed in chapter 2. So.

An alternative image, courtesy of Craig Anderson Photography

People often ask how I go about the process of writing and it is very simple. I sit down at a blank screen and I tell the stories that I would like to read. There isn't enough dark, nearly-horror-but-not-quite fantasy out there. When I have come across it (mentioning no names) I have found it a little flowery and hard to read in places. I think my style is very simple but I believe that simple can be more shocking at times. I guess all writing is subjective and it just comes down to what you like.

As for planning well, I started with the prologue as a back story for Abigail and just couldn't stop telling the story. I had to get her out of there so I did. Then I had to get her to Ronton Bay, so I did. After that things just kind of took care of themselves. I knew at some point Asa would come into play and that later she would get to the root of the problem - but in terms of planning that was about it. What I will say is that I worked on Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one for eight years before I put it into a real format and edited out the parts I didn't like. In the future I will post about some of these, though it will contain spoilers, so not yet...

There's no better feeling than holding the hard copy!

So during that eight years I hand wrote it, re-wrote it, typed it up, lost it to a computer error, typed it up again and then decided to commit myself and publish. Stories constantly evolve and change and even now, two and a half books later, I still have a hazy memory of what went into the final cut and what I left out. I spend a huge amount of editing time checking back on old details to make sure I have people's eye colour just right, or their back stories on point... I did keep a compendium of all the details but it changed so much between drafts it became useless.



Writing a book is time consuming, it is hard, it is confusing and it takes a lot of imagination. Then when you do produce work you imagine it isn't good enough to be read by anyone and that you should probably take it down. Nevertheless we persist, because stories need to be told and that's just how it is.

And now I have Edelweiss. Go check it out. At the very least it will give you a glimpse into my world.

Editing because I realised I didn't put a link to the book in so here we are: you can buy a copy of Edelweiss; Dark Science, part one (in either paperback or E-book) by following this link.

So you want to be a writer?

Let's cover something not-so-horror-focused as last time. Let's talk about what it is actually like to work in the industry. I want to troubleshoot a few common misconceptions about what it is I do all day... but let's start from the very beginning.

The very first thing you need to know is that Writer's pay Sucks (<--- notice the capital 'S').

If you happen to be J K Rowling or Stephen King you might be able to pick and choose your rates - but the rest of us seriously struggle to get the rent paid just like everyone else.

Consider this: one single book takes maybe 200 hours to write... and then we place it on Amazon for £5.99 and hope that those who feel sorry for us will buy it. Times that by five or six and take away all of your free time and you are starting to get an idea of what it takes to do this job. And I do mean All of your free time.

Making it (erm...one day)

You need to keep the day job; something menial that lets you dream up new characters based on angry customers or the robot-people who answer the phone to you on a daily basis. When you come home from your day job you have a 3K minimum word limit to break even at the end of the month - but that's only if you are lucky enough to have an editor or be part of a writing team. You can always freelance for clients but it's hard work and it seriously eats into your writing time.

If you want to write your novel you need to do it at the end of the day or in the morning, on top of all that other work, running a household and anything else you do with your life. FYI writer's don't have many hobbies... we can only really afford one at a time.

Editing in a motorhome, on holiday

If this is the life path you choose then be prepared to forego that social life. You will rarely go out - and when you do you are desperate to get home to see what your characters get up to next; or to finish that article about 'best hotel locations in Dubai' (which you couldn't care less about really but which helps buy the electric). Eventually your friends will forget you. They'll stop inviting you out because they know the only way to see you is to drop by your house.

Let's be honest about this: being a writer pays terribly, takes up all of your time, increases loneliness and isolation and basically has you living inside your head the whole time. Then someone tells you that you need an 'online presence' and you just about explode...

Still want to be a Writer?

So, with all that in mind, if you still want to do it or if, like most of us, you just can't stop, then you should probably hit the subscribe button. I get approached about once a fortnight and asked for help and advice on how to become a writer - which I have no problem giving. But when someone takes up your vital writing time because they are more curious than serious it gets a little annoying after a while. Have pity and don't waste your pet writer's time, they have a crapload of work to get through.

If you want to be serious then keep an eye out. In the future I'll be talking about how you go about building that ridiculous online presence mentioned above, how to find work, how to self publish your own stuff and why certain types of 'exposure' are a con. I hope to help you navigate the pitfalls a little, help you stay motivated and maybe give you a glimpse into an industry that is fast becoming bigger than I can keep up with.

I'll also be doing horror stories because, you know... it's me.

This is how Kai tells me to stop for the night

Starting Out...Again

Hello, my name's Katriona and I am a compulsive writer.

Creepy accidental photo of me

It has taken me many years to admit and accept this fact, but now that I have done so I am in the process of changing my life. Strangely, this blog isn't going to be about changing your life by following steps, or making money online, or any of the other useless stuff you scroll through absently on a Sunday afternoon. I'm not really sure what it's going to be about...but I'm dang sure it's going to be fun to find out.

I write, I work in kitchens, I am based in Scotland, I love dogs. I pan for gold in the summer and in the winter I hide in my house and write high fantasy novels with a hideous horror twist. I love Pratchett, King, Rothfuss and Igulden and grew up with R.L. Stine, Bernard Cromwell and Anne Rice as my chosen favourites. Adversely if I can make it funny then I will, which usually leads to strange and opposing reactions.

I write articles for people in my non-existent free time, guest edit now and again and am in the process of setting up as a freelancer so watch this space for that. I also have a rock collection that has overspilled the windowsill and extended out into the garden; so as well as creepy photo's, creepy stories, dark humour and interesting titbits you can also expect more than a few interesting rock experiments. My next task will be to use vinegar to dissolve away some mineral and see if we have crystals inside... so again, if that interests you watch this space.

Laura found a Fairy looking out from the clouds

I might talk a little about Scottish Gold, Scottish Folk Legends, Freelance Writing and the history and lay of the land I live in. We Scots are nothing if we are not vital. We like to soak up our surroundings and reflect them: which is probably why the rest of the world thinks we are wild and tough. We're not so bad. Your average Scot likes a cuddle as much as the next person, they just don't like to admit it.

I run a "Something Creepy" daily post on Facebook so if you like your photo's freaky - or if you have anything to add to the picture pile - check it out here. If you want to visit the webpage and help a girl out then you can follow this link. I am on Twitter and Instagram too but I am a bit too busy to keep up with them all. If anyone wants to volunteer as an unpaid intern to manage it all for me feel free to message me... If you want a taste of things to come you can visit my old blog, here.

Amanda's abandoned glove under her hotel room bed

I'm often on the lookout for Editors, Beta-Readers, Publishing Companies, Anthology/competition entry news, photographers and artists to help out with my novels. I make a pittance and pay as much as I can but I can't always promise a great fee. What I do promise is that the fee will grow as I do, and that if you do good collaborative work then I am very loyal. If you want to chat collaboration give me a message and let's talk. No time wasters though... I have been stung before.

So I've started the ball rolling by posting a couple of fan pics from the FB page. If you like your tales twisted and your thoughts quirky then click that follow button. I'll be doing weekly updates from now on. I will also leave you with wise words stolen from Maria Sherman, my hat goes off to you for nailing the entire industry in one fell swoop...