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Well, I try my best

To be just like I am,

But everybody wants you

To be just like them.

Bob Dylan 1941– Maggie’s Farm (song, 1965)

This chapter covers:

-motivations for writing books

-the importance of persistence

-taking advice

-developing distinctiveness as a writer

-plotting and characterisation: Stephen King v. Iain Banks

-adverbs: Stephen King v. George Orwell

-rules of grammar

-introverts’ and extraverts’ leanings towards reading and writing different types of books

-Write Great Fiction

-arguments for preferring self-publishing over being published

-Vernon Coleman: a role model for self-publishers

-marketable writers

-Tom McNab and Flanagan’s Run

I’m a Bob Dylan fan, but if you’re not one yourself you may be relieved to learn that there are only two Bob Dylan quotations in this book, and you’ve now read both of them. Let’s consider the motivations that lay behind writing.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer. The first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; and the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.

Quentin Crisp 1908–99 English writer: The Naked Civil Servant (1968)

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton 1834–1902 British historian

These two quotations capture my prime motivations for writing. But I have two more. Firstly, I find writing very fulfilling and I increasingly resent anything that takes me away from reading and writing. As a happily divorced man who has taken early retirement and whose children have left home, I have plenty of free time in which to read, write, and self-publish. Joy.

I suspect that writers who claim to hate the writing process – and there are many of them, some of the finest writers included – are extraverts. The solitude that is such an important part of the writing process must be hell for them. But that solitude can be heaven for introverts, especially in the modern era with the availability through the internet of so much information at no cost.

The second motivation occurred to me after a friend, the author Andrew Heslop, made an insightful comment about my travelogue Two Men in a Car. He said that in 100 years’ time someone would read it and laugh at the exploits and attitudes of two wildly different men on holiday in France. This, he pointed out, was more than could be said for the innovative fork lift truck buying strategy I’d devised for Exel Logistics in the 1990s, which was no doubt superseded years ago. He’d hit upon a motivation which hadn’t occurred to me previously, but I think it had been in me all the same. I was writing with an eye on posterity.

Andrew is a published author himself – Kogan Page published his bestseller How to Value and Sell Your Business – and I am hoping to publish a book of his short stories one day. He could be the next Somerset Maugham. His story about nuns playing football is possibly my favourite. Or maybe the reminiscences of the wartime fighter pilot with whom he had worked as a young man. The book will surely become another international bestseller for LPS publishing.

I recommend you spend time honestly working out your motivation(s) in writing books. Dogged persistence is one of the factors behind the success stories of many successful writers: read Joanna Trollope’s article (Appendix 7) if you have any doubts on the matter. What if she’d given up writing books after her tenth commercially unsuccessful book in 20 years? We should never have heard of her. Are you prepared to be that persistent? Can you afford to be? What are you prepared to sacrifice?

If your prime motivation is to write commercially successful books you might like to read Chapter 3. If you’re like me, you might prefer instead to focus on writing about what you’re interested in – even if you’re not very knowledgeable about the topic of the proposed book at the outset – and hope for commercial success too. If you’re intellectually curious the journey of discovery will in itself prove rewarding, regardless of whether or not the book sells well.

Of course you can combine the motivation of selling lots of books with the motivation of writing about something you’re interested in. I did exactly that when selecting the topic for this book. I knew more and more writers were self-publishing, but many books on the topic were hopelessly out-of-date, particularly with respect to book production options, and some of the books were downright poor. I also suspected that many writers were using vanity publishers because they simply weren’t aware that true self-publishing had become a highly viable option.

I also wanted to better understand a number of aspects of self-publishing that I hadn’t explored before, such as ebooks. I thought I could present some perspectives on writing with the objective of informing and inspiring the reader, not of terrifying him – all served up with a dash of humour that you’d struggle to find in the existing books on the subject of self-publishing.

The Marriage Delusion was the result of my lengthy exploration to better understand my unhappiness in my two marriages. As a twice divorced third generation divorcee I knew a thing or two about marriage and unhappiness. I read numerous books in the ‘how to improve your marriage’ genre but none explained my own unhappy experiences of marriage.

After reading many books on relationships, psychology, religion and more besides I finally understood the factors that were making me unhappy. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the realisation that they were factors I shared with most married and divorced people. This led me to write the book which has received strong positive reviews from readers – both male and female – and testimonials from psychologists and bestselling writers Oliver James and Professor Alan Carr.

After his well-publicised marital difficulties I mailed a complimentary copy of The Marriage Delusion to Tiger Woods, who was then playing in the British Open golf tournament at St Andrews. The poor man looked like he could do with a copy.

We move on to the tricky area of taking advice as a writer and as a self-publisher. As a writer every piece of advice you take on board – including advice on grammar – will inevitably make you less distinctive, especially if you’re taking heed of the same advice as other writers, such as that in Stephen King’s On Writing. How on earth can you develop distinctiveness as a writer if your brain is full of rules dictating to you all the time?

Among my favourite quotations on advice are the following:

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

GK Chesterton 1874–1936 English essayist, novelist, and poet

I once complained to my father that I didn’t seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad’s advice? ‘Margo, don’t be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep.’

Margo Kaufman American writer

My advice is to read books giving advice on the craft of writing, with a view to you supplying the art when you settle down to the task of writing your books. I have yet to embark on my first work of fiction, possibly because I’m not a big reader of fiction and I always have plans to write more non-fiction books. I read the four books in the Write Great Fiction series which gave me plenty of insights into the craft of writing fiction, but few about the art. And that is surely how it should be if you’re going to bring your own creative spark to writing fiction – or non-fiction, come to that.

If I ever write fiction I want my first or second books to be as good as my favourite work of fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four, thereby winning the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. I do like to set the bar high when it comes to intellectual challenges. I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager, I read it in my thirties, and I read it two years ago at the age of 51. That was in 2009, in the 13th year of a dire left-wing administration then led by Gordon Brown and the dismal ‘Mad Hattie’ Harman. The book explained to me why so many people in the United Kingdom were so unhappy with the administration. The parallels between the book and the administration were uncanny.

We sometimes forget that ‘rules’ on writing, including grammar, are man-made and not handed down from on high. I tend to fully agree (rather than agree fully) with Raymond Chandler’s perspective on one matter in particular, which he related in a letter to his publisher:

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

letter to Edward Weeks, 18 January 1947

I greatly admire Raymond Chandler’s books. He wrote one of my favourite sentences in modern (post Twain) American literature:

It was a blonde, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

Farewell, My Lovely (1940)

I wish I’d written that. Along with many of the Mark Twain lines in Appendix 1.

Aspiring writers are often given the advice to ‘write about what you know’. I think the advice is terrible, especially when it comes from writers. The sentiment reflects the idea that people don’t have the necessary authority to write about subjects they’re not familiar with. I shudder to think how many authors have abandoned promising book projects in the light of such advice.

Most fiction – most good fiction, at least – wouldn’t pass the test. A number of genres wouldn’t exist, including science fiction and much of the fantasy genre. Does JK Rowling write about ‘what she knows’? No. 16 years after bashing out the first Harry Potter book on an old manual typewriter, she’s now worth over £600 million.

Much non-fiction, for that matter, isn’t written by writers about ‘what they know’. It’s created by writers seeking to understand complex subjects in the absence of satisfactory books; writers seeking to shed light on topics about which they – and hopefully their target readers – wish to learn more.

Because you’ve bought this book it’s likely that you’ve read books giving advice on writing. I’ve read a number of them myself, and I am often surprised at how prescriptive they are. The underlying premises of most of these books seem to be:

1.I’m a successful writer.

2.I’m presenting the principles behind my writing.

3.If you adopt these principles, you’ll be a successful writer too.

On the basis that nobody ever became a millionaire after reading books with titles such as How to Become a Millionaire, let’s challenge this model. Let’s start with Stephen King, possibly the world’s best-selling fiction writer, and his book On Writing, published in 2000. In June 1999 King was hit by a van while he was walking along the shoulder of a country road in Maine. Six operations were required to save his life and return him to a semblance of physical normality. When he returned to writing it was to write On Writing. 11 years after publication the book remains a bestseller in its genre, and with good reason. But you won’t be able to write like Stephen King after reading the book. The best you’ll be able to do is imitate him by obeying some or all of his guidance, which is a different thing altogether. And you won’t enjoy writing that way.

Iain Banks is one of my favourite British authors, and his approach to writing couldn’t be more different that Stephen King’s. Let’s start with plotting. Stephen King claims not to know the ending of his books before embarking on the writing, and he has an interesting rationale for adopting this approach. If he doesn’t know how the book is going to end – while he’s writing it – then nor can his readers. I suspect it also makes the writing process far more interesting for him. Iain Banks takes a completely different approach and spends a great deal of time on detailed plotting through to the end, before the bulk writing commences. Neither approach is right or wrong. They’re simply approaches which suit these individual writers. They also differ on the matter of characterisation. Stephen King’s success is often attributed to his skilled characterisation, while Iain Banks goes in for relatively little characterisation.

There’s a good reason for being selective about taking advice on writing. Let’s say that you slavishly follow Stephen King’s advice. You’ll then be in the company of all the writers who are doing likewise. How many? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? Who knows? But I can see from the sales ranking of On Writing on Amazon that it’s still selling well, ten years after publication. Why would you want to compete head on with even 1,000 writers writing under the same guidance? What satisfaction could there possibly be in that?

I imagine many of those writers have written numerous books in the style of Stephen King and are puzzled by their lack of success. You could probably spot them by their haunted expressions. I’d rather be distinctive and enjoy the writing process. That way, even if my books don’t sell, I’d at least have enjoyed writing them.

Amid much advice King tells us that ‘the adverb is not your friend’, and continues:

Adverbs . . . are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in –ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. [Author’s note: ironically, and rather sadly, the timid writer – after reading King’s advice – will thereafter cease to use adverbs.] With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is the voice of little boys wearing shoepolish moustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he / she isn’t expressing himself / herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.

King proceeds to back his thesis with examples of dialogue where the adverbs add little or nothing. But could it be that King is simply not adept at using adverbs, and is therefore disinclined to use them? He advocates having the spoken words explain the emotion or emotions that the speaker is feeling. Well, at least in the country I live in – England – people often don’t put their emotions into the words they employ. Life can be altogether more pleasant as a result. An English writer will naturally use adverbs to convey the emotions associated with the spoken word.

It’s time to bring in one of my favourite authors of his generation, George Orwell. Let’s look at a few unrelated lines picked off random pages of his 1949 masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four.

‘The past is more important,’ agreed O’Brien gravely.

Winston looked up at him. ‘In the place where there is no darkness?’ he said hesitantly.

‘These things happen,’ he began vaguely.

‘Smith?’ said the woman. ‘Thass funny. My name’s Smith too. Why,’ she added sentimentally, ‘I might be your mother!’

It’s a good thing Orwell didn’t take heed of anyone’s views on adverbs associated with dialogue. In a bookstore the other day I chanced upon How to Write a Blockbuster, a book written by Helen Corner and Lee Weatherly. My wild hunch is that Lee Weatherly is of the female persuasion, given the books published under the name. Anyway, they give the same advice as Stephen King on adverbs. Marvellous. The book’s readers won’t be writing dialogue like I shall. I plan to use plenty of adverbs in my first work of fiction.

Flick quickly through any Stephen King and George Orwell books and one major difference will strike you at once: the former have a great deal more dialogue. You read 12 pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four before you come to the first line of dialogue.

Let’s move on to the formal rules of grammar and punctuation. It’s inexcusable to have more than a very few ‘unintended’ mistakes in your books with respect to grammar and punctuation, and a good copy-editor / proofreader will help you avoid them (and spelling mistakes, too). But consider the following section of a book first published in 2006. The book is surely a proofreader’s worst nightmare.

The falling snow curtained them about. There was no way to see anything at either side of the road. He was coughing again and the boy was shivering, the two of them side by side under the sheet of plastic, pushing the grocery cart through the snow. Finally he stopped. The boy was shaking uncontrollably.

We have to stop, he said.

It’s really cold.

I know.

Where are we?

Where are we?

Yes.

I dont know.

If we were going to die would you tell me?

I dont know. We’re not going to die.

If a child wrote that he’d be told off. But it’s an extract from Cormac McCathy’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Road. He’s widely considered one of the greatest fiction writers of his generation, and his ten previous books include the remarkable No Country for Old Men. If you’re writing fiction take your lead from McCarthy and choose the extent to which you follow the ‘rules’. Never forget the immortal advice about lesser people: Illegitimi non carborundum.

Writers of guides to writing fiction frequently distinguish between ‘literary’ novels and ‘commercial’ novels, the latter being what they generally seek to help you with. In his excellent Plot and Structure (2004) James Scott Bell differentiates between two types of novel:

The difference between a literary and a commercial plot is a matter of feel and emphasis. A literary plot often is more leisurely in its pace. Literary fiction is usually more about the inner life of a character than it is about the fast-paced action. A commercial plot, on the other hand, is mostly about action, things happening to the characters from the outside.

Of course these are simplifications. There can be both literary and commercial elements in a book. Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan reads like a literary novel – what happens inside the first-person narrator is primary – while moving ahead like a commercial crime novel.

The strength of Stephen King’s commercial plots is his characterisations. He always seems to be writing about real people, and not merely players for his high-concept concoctions.

Literary fiction is much more comfortable with ambiguities. The endings may be downers or leave the reader wondering. We don’t know what’s going to happen to Holden at the end of The Catcher in the Rye, and that’s part of the power of the book.

While researching for The Marriage Delusion I read many books on psychology in general, and the personality trait of extraversion in particular, as manifested in introversion and extraversion. While the proportions of introverts and extraverts in the population are consistent in societies around the world – a little over 50% of men are predominantly introvert, a little over 50% of women predominantly extravert – most societies have cultural preferences for either introversion or extraversion. An American psychology professor told me he considered Australia to be the country with the strongest cultural preference for extraversion, closely followed by the United States. Britain has a mild cultural preference for extraversion, while Scandinavian countries and Japan have strong cultural preferences for introversion.

I’ve read most of George Orwell’s literary novels and none of Stephen King’s commercial ones. It seems obvious to me that introverts will more naturally be drawn to reading literary novels while extraverts will be drawn to reading commercial novels. If this thesis is correct, I think it follows that introverts will more naturally be inclined to write literary novels and extraverts commercial novels. I suppose a case may be made that a writer is more likely to enjoy good sales – and as a self-publisher enjoy a good income as a result – by writing commercial rather than literary novels. But I, for one, would rather spend my time writing literary novels, assuming of course that I turn out to have any aptitude for doing so.

James Scott Bell’s book is one in a series of books titled Write Great Fiction, the others being Ron Rozelle’s Description and Setting, Nancy Kress’s Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint, and Gloria Kempton’s Dialogue. I’ve read all four books and plan to do so again before starting on my novel, being careful to reject any advice that doesn’t accord with how my mind works.

Why might you consider self-publishing rather than going down the traditional route of seeking an agent to represent you to major publishers? The most obvious reasons are: