How to avoid the 50-page Burn-out.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of people over the course of the years, all of whom had one thing in common. OK, two – they were all frustrated and they all classed themselves as ‘aspiring’ writer. Why aspiring? I would ask. Those of you who read my occasional blogs know that my position on this is either you write or you don’t. I think it was the Bengali philosopher and poet Rabindranath Tagore who said “You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

Palmeira, Galicia, Spain - a first step

Their confusion with my posture is that they confuse ‘aspiring writer’ with ‘published writer’ or ‘famous author’. Hey, wake up! While they’ve be lamenting their lack of writing success, the World has moved on. This is a different paradigm. Many of the ‘traditional’ obstacles in ‘Traditional Publishing’ have ‘traditioned’ themselves out of the game.

But wait; this is not yet another rant against the Old Way of publishing. No, today I want to provide you with a tip. Before I expound on this, remember my often-quoted martial art Master’s words: “use what is useful, throw away the rest.” So if what I’m going to tell you helps, then go for it; if not, then you’ve lost nothing by reading this blog other than a few minutes.

The above mentioned ‘aspirers’ usually have great ideas for a novel, sit down at their keyboards and peck away furiously as they race to force their creativity onto the page before the well runs dry. But then, about the 50-page mark usually, the tale they are writing just fizzles out.

Writers’ Block, they say! It happens to all of us, they say. But this isn’t writers’ block, my friends. It’s something far more insidious. I call it the 50-page Burn-out.

Hello, my name is Eric and I have always had the 50-page Burn-out.

What! you say. You write 90,000 word thrillers. That’s one hell of a lot more than 50 pages!

Yes, I respond, but I found the answer.

Over my strange and rather unconventional life I’ve done quite a lot of training in survival techniques and put much of it into practice. One basic technique for survival in any environment is that you need to have your priorities clear at all times. Is it shelter, fire, water, food etc.? But from a psychological standpoint you always need to have an objective! Always! And just getting through the day isn’t it. That gets you ‘aspiring’.

The objective is a medium to long-term goal that you need to make steps toward every single day, whilst you are ‘surviving’ (or writing). The survival tricks then have a context and a purpose.

Back to my ‘aspiring’ friends. How do I usually respond when they manifest their 50-day fizzle? I usually ask them one simple question: how does your tale end? I’m not looking for a generic answer either. I want to know if they could write the final chapter NOW. Okay, it will be a draft, and will almost certainly evolve, change, mutate as the preceding pages are produced. But that’s not the point. Are they just going to make a primitive home in the jungle, somewhere to stay until the water runs out and they die? Or… is the plan to find a way out of the dense vegetation, venomous snakes, crocodiles, wild pigs and whatever and back to ‘civilization’?

This is how I write my 90,000 word thrillers: I start at the end!

The King of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is often referred to, by me, as the World’s first computer programmer. Why? Do you remember his advice to Alice when she was asked to testify in the trial scene? “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” While this may be great advice for a witness, and a computer programmer, it is useless for most writers: it will lead to the 50-page Burn-out as sure as Hatters are mad! (Note: the mad hatters are an historical fact – they used lead-based glue in the manufacture of their headwear and this resulted in poisoning which produced their occupational hazard – so if you’ve stuck with this blog up to here, you’ve learnt two new things! Don’t say I don’t give value for money!)

Alright, so you now have an ending. Should you now do a Cheshire Cat and start disappearing at the tail to end with just an incorporeal smile? My answer is yes and no.

Once I can write the ending, I figure out the beginning (forget the feline form in between for the moment). I write thrillers and I firmly believe these should start more with a bang than a whimper. They need to grab the attention of a potential reader whilst raising questions, creating intrigue and laying hooks so they will keep reading. That gives me the broad parameters for the start. The content must always have something to do with the main storyline; otherwise you are cheating your readers. Okay, it may not be evident initially – for the novel I’m working on now, ‘the CULL’, many who have read its opening chapters have commented that the first chapter is written using a style and tone that contrasts sharply with the following chapters, which are more fast-paced; it’s almost as if the first chapter came from a different book. Why did I do this? The opening chapter is about the main story line – exclusively. In the following chapters there are no other references to that story line because we shift to follow what happens to one of the protagonists, but not the one featured, albeit very briefly, at the start, and her first bloody encounter with the novel’s prime antagonist. (I should have yelled SPOILER WARNING – I’ve just given away one of the novel’s early secrets). I wanted to make the first chapter the ‘Intrigue’ chapter – Who the hell is this? What’s going on here? Who’s that under the bed and why? Plus, I couldn’t resist including a ‘Wink’ (my name for the hidden secrets in my novels) right on the first page this time. [What’s the Wink about? Sorry, you’ll have to wait to read the explanation on my web when the novel’s published. (More intrigue!).] To highlight this brief opening, it’s a little more than half a page on my word processor screen, I used a marked style/tone change so the reader won’t forget it. But if all you are reading is an extract, it does look strange, that I will admit. So, put yourself out of your misery and buy the novel when it’s published in December.

But the important issue is that I had the opening clear, shortly after having the way it’s all going to end equally defined.

Now you have a start and a finish. Filling in the middle depends on your genre, your story arcs, your tale structure, the message you want to convey. But the good news is, as though by magical artifice, the 50-page Burn-out problem has disappeared. You are no longer surviving from day to day but now you have a clear objective: write that last scene or a version of it, at least.

It’s a simple trick, as most good tips are. It works for me and has done so for many years. I’ve applied this trick not just to my fictional output, but to the innumerable presentations, seminars, articles etc. that I’ve written in the last thirty-five years.

So as Tagore says, don’t aspire to cross the sea, imagine what you’ll do on the other side and stick your foot firmly in the water!

More tips on my website.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

Hell, I'm a Writer! ...for all aspiring writers out there.

I’ve wanted to write fiction for as long as I can remember. I actually started over forty years ago with a novel (thankfully buried) and a couple of hundred short stories. Then life intervened and I found my writing oriented more towards technical papers and magazine/newspaper articles. No, my fictional aspirations were not completely abandoned – I started (note the word) well over a dozen novels, whose premature deaths after a hundred pages or so only served to make me even more frustrated. What was I doing wrong?

It took me a while to figure it out.

I certainly had the time.

My job kept me continually travelling, seemingly between international airports and sterile hotel rooms around the world, and this provided me with huge doses of ‘dead time’ that I could devote to writing. Yet it didn’t happen because usually I’d use the airport/flight time to prepare for meetings and the hotel time to crash and recharge batteries after 16 hour plus days and time-zone differences. What about the weekends, you may ask. Well, often I was returning from ‘somewhere on a different time-zone’ on Saturdays, and Sundays I was teaching free martial arts classes to a bunch of kids in the morning, leaving me only with the afternoon for family – with inevitable consequences.

I had the ideas.

Not only do I have an extremely fertile mind for generating storylines, I have also been formally trained in an inordinate number of sophisticated problem-solving techniques by some of the best – and still use many of these tricks to plot my novels today.

I had the motivation.

It’s in my blood; I can’t really describe it any other way. When I completed my new novel in 2006, it was like having discovered the Holy Grail – I felt liberated, soaring at dizzying heights only meant for eagles.

Yet, before then, I wasn’t writing.   

Why?

I realised much of the cause was subtle, insidious procrastination, also known as FEAR. I have always excelled at my job, being able to consistently come up with out-of-the-box solutions for my clients’ problems usually under considerable pressure, and at my martial arts, achieving fourteen high-grade black belts in different disciplines. Yet writing eluded me. Was it because I was afraid I wouldn’t make the grade?

Never one to back down before a challenge (and, boy, has this got me into trouble over the years!) I turned the problem on its head. Not, ‘why can’t I write?’, but ‘what’s stopping me from writing?’ 

At first glance, the same question, yet there’s a fine difference in the wording which programs the mind to answer differently.

I quickly realised that, really, the answer was… NOTHING!

Next step? Address my fears.

Not good enough? Then become better! How does a writer do this? There are only two ways: learn technique from others, and WRITE!

I live in a country where it seems you can only be considered an author if you write essays or dense, introspective ‘literary’ fiction (preferably about the Spanish Civil War). Screw ‘em! Ignore the critics – as I remarked to a friend recently, envy isn’t always green; it’s often black and white! I don’t care what they think, and labels have only ever served to slow down progress. I wanted to write to entertain! Nothing more. I wanted my novels to be chosen by people looking for a dose of evasion in airports and hotels while away on business, or lying on a beach somewhere when vacation time comes around. At a pinch, even for a long train journey! A simple-enough objective, but one I wanted to do well.

I have a life philosophy based upon three simple premises: one which I developed and use as a basis for my martial art lessons (learn the mechanics – internalise them [i.e. adapt them to yourself] – and forget them [they become you]); one which a martial arts GrandMaster told me: ‘use what is useful, and throw the rest away’; and finally: never go to bed without having learnt something new. These in turn are all tempered by ‘Don’t take yourself too seriously!’

So I applied this in earnest to my writing.

I didn’t try to write. No, that’s a BIG MISTAKE. Trying implies you are allowing for failure. 

Don’t try, just Write. Write for yourself not an imaginary following of millions of fans. I’ve had a very complex life, full of strange, even dangerous, always ‘interesting’, events which now fuel my tales. Writing about that stuff, even though it’s hidden behind a cloak of deliberate obfuscation, is FUN! Not only is it cheaper than a Psychiatrist, it makes me feel good every time I finish a writing session. I decided to get ‘hooked’ on that feeling -  a mixture of satisfaction and pride; of accomplishment and triumph over whatever obstacles the day presented.

My biggest discovery was that there is no such thing as an Aspiring Writer.

Either you are or you’re not a writer. It’s all in the (your) mind.

So, to those ‘aspiring’ writers out there, and anyone else who might be thinking about taking the plunge, I say the following:

Do it!

Do it TODAY!       

‘Aspiring’ ain’t going to get it done, bro!

                                                Have FUN, above all else!

The Chinese have a saying, half curse, half blessing: 'May you live in interesting times!'

These are 'Interesting Times!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

A Dream Realised

When CERN Director General Rolf Heuer announced last Wednesday morning “We have discovered a new particle; a boson; most probably a Higgs boson”, many people worldwide stifled a yawn. Yes it was yet another undecipherable scientific discovery that the layman could not appreciate.

Yet amongst the international audience a single figure was moved to tears.

Caught on the cameras of the global news agencies, this white-haired gentleman removed his glasses and wiped away the liquid evidence of unbound emotion. He was probably feeling a mixture of joy, sadness, validation and pride.

The joy is understandable; something he predicted in 1964, that subatomic particles gain mass by way of a then undiscovered field or particle, since called the Higgs Boson, has been proven. And what’s more, it’s been proven during his lifetime. Peter Ware Higgs is now 83, and the joy of July 4^th will remain with him for the rest of his life.

Sadness? Nobody but Higgs understands the sacrifices that have been made over the years as a result of his theory. These were personal and professional, all felt deeply by this physicist.

Validation? Science and scientists can be very closed-minded. If it can’t be repeated and measured, it doesn’t exist. This is a tenet that rules their lives. Some, however, dream. Even when bigger names in the Theoretical Physics world, such as Stephen Hawking, decried his theories, he stood by his guns. It cost him dearly in his personal life; professionally he was on the fringe.

Everything changed on Wednesday.

Paul Padley, a particle physicist at Rice University, said “the reason why we care about it, is if the Higgs boson doesn’t exist, then we have absolutely no physical understanding of why we exist. You can’t explain the universe.”

The confirmation of Peter Higgs theory has been likened to the discovery of DNA.  Yet in one fundamental aspect it isn’t. DNA was first isolated by the Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in 1869, yet it was James D. Watson and Francis Crick who produced, in 1953, what is now accepted as the first correct double-helix model of DNA structure and received a Nobel Prize for their work.

Here we have a man, working against the dominant thought in his field; fighting to make his theories heard; clamouring against many voices raised in opposition; and above all, willing to forfeit a normal life to expand Humanity’s knowledge.

Peter Higgs is a proud man today and deservedly so.

Yet in his unassuming manner, he comments only the following: “It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime.”

How will this discovery change the way we live our lives? Only the immediate future will answer that. Yet one thing is certain; change there will be, and in ways we cannot imagine today.

For Peter Higgs, recognition should be the next step. A Knighthood; a Nobel Prize; public acclaim. Write to your MPs, the Nobel Committee, your newspapers; tweet and blog all you can. Although the acknowledgment of a Nobel pales in comparison to the cost in his personal life, let’s join forces to ensure his dream is rewarded.

"Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so." - Belva Davis, journalist.




Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

Pride

No, I’m not going to write about a bunch of large felines – I just like big cats.

No, I’m going to address the other more important meaning of that word, unless you are a lion that is.

It’s one of those words that have lost their meaning.

Not in the same way that FaceWeb degraded the meaning of the word ‘Friend’ to such a degree, when it’s used in its original context, we have to add qualifying statements. (Curiously though, when we use it in the FaceWeb sense of an anonymous someone who clicked a button on an Internet page, no such clarifying comments are needed – what a sad World we’ve made!).

No. ‘Pride’, as a word, suffers from Bad Press.

Even more curiously, the bad-mouthing starts with the dictionary definition.

Take up any dictionary, electronic or paper. Look up ‘Pride’. You will encounter three basic definitions. The last, probably, unless it’s a dictionary written for big cats, will state its use for a gang of lions. It’s the other two that are interesting.

The first will be something like “something such as an achievement or possession that somebody feels especially pleased and satisfied with.” Nothing wrong with that, right? Pride is something everyone feels at some point in their life – such as when you finish writing your first novel, or father a child, or learn how to fly a plane. So it’s a good thing, a pleasant, if transient, experience. Hey, Life can’t be all black, white and greys.

Keep reading…

...“a haughty attitude shown by somebody who believes, often unjustifiably, that he or she is better than others”

What?

Yes, we’ve done it again – used a word in the English language that means both good and not so good aspects of a person. Worse! We’ve laid out the ground for ambiguity!

“Surely, any ambiguous use of this word is cleared up by the context in which it is used?” you might ask.

Unfortunately not.

“Pride goes before a fall!”

Whatever your beliefs, I’m sure you’ve heard that one. It’s in the Bible, they’ll tell you. Er, not quite; it’s actually a mis-quote. The Bible states "Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall." (Proverbs 16:18). Still the essence of pride being a bad thing is clearly there.

Thomas Jefferson said “Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.” Same use; not a good thing.

How about the old Jewish saying “Pride is the mask of one's own faults.” Once again, bad news.

So what happened to the “sense of achievement that you are especially pleased with”?

Well, look around – we are doing are best to scrub it from our actions (note the last word – it’s important).

We, in the Western World, are in a terrible state, of our own making, everywhere. We could try to help ourselves by ‘going that extra mile’ and doing things better – I’m not an American, so don’t ask me about Republicans and Democrats, but when Obama used the “Yes, We Can” slogan in his electoral campaign, I felt good. Could this mean we are trying to give our best, not just to our ‘friends’ but to complete strangers through our daily, if anonymous, interactions? Is the laudable definition of the word making a comeback?

If you go to my web page www.ericjgates.com, and scroll down to the bottom of the page, over on the left you’ll see a blue box with text that says I’m a Proud Member of the Indie Writer's Network (http://indiewritenet.com). Is that a bad thing? Am I about to fall from grace? No! I'm just pleased to have found a group of like-minded individuals who, for the most part, are making the effort to help one another as writers. Check out my previous post about the Network here:  http://my-thrillers.blogspot.com.es/2012/02/long-and-winding-road.html

Look over to the right, on my web’s Home page and you’ll see an animated link for SiteGround (http://www.siteground.com/). I pay them, not the other way around, for allowing me to put that on my web! Why? I pay them to host my site, and that’s my way of thanking them for the outstanding service they provide. Outstanding? Surely they are just doing their job?

Let me tell you briefly about how I came to be hosted at a web-provider in a different continent from where I live. I am, probably, a difficult client for any computer-based business. Why? Look at my Bio: I was writing Operating Systems for some of the World’s largest and most complex computers over forty years ago. I see Information Technology only as a tool – I’m not obsessed by it, as so many today. I am, however, fully aware of its limitations and possibilities. ‘Blame it on the computer’ is an excuse I will not tolerate when people screw up. Computers are dumb (Hell, they only work with 2 values - zero and one -  and will continue to do so until Quantum Computing is a reality). That makes me dangerous to an Internet service provider, like the German one I used before. I wanted to use my web to do certain well-defined tasks, which I knew it would be capable of doing. That pushed their envelope, and they didn’t respond well. I dumped them.

I spent a short while looking around, and, almost by chance, came across a small outfit who had been running for a few years and seemed to care about their customers, according to several testimonials I found on other people’s blogs. This wasn’t the ‘care’ that new companies show – you know, the we’ll-do-everything-possible-to-make-you-a-happy-client care that evaporates as soon as they grow a little. No, this was, and IS, the we’re-with-you-on-your-journey care, the we-go-that-extra-mile care.

(At this juncture, I’m reminded of an old UK TV series, “The Prisoner” and its famous phrase “I am not a number!”)

I decided to try them out, asking for something, hidden pages that were a prize for the diligent site visitor, that I knew was technically possible, yet unclear how to implement using the tools they provided. In less than 12 hours, the Hidden Treasure I wanted to create was a reality. That’s service! That’s Pride!

Hey, but this is the 21^st Century – we are all self-interested s-o-b’s. So why bother?

That’s just it. Having Pride in what you do is not some altruistic New-Age meme. It’s not another smile that goes no further than the lips in the tradition of “Have a Good Day”. No, Pride will give you a momentary flutter in your heart; a real sensation of feeling good. Priceless, real emotion.

So let’s fight to recover the original meaning of the word.

Let’s find ways to be proud of what we do. They don’t have to be big things. Just something that leaves us with a smile on our faces in the knowledge that we have achieved something through our effort that will make someone else happier.

Let’s form our own Pride and change the World, one PROUD act at a time!

 Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

Review the Reviewer – a Writer’s (and Reader’s) guide to Book Reviews

As writers, we are all aware of the changes happening in the publishing industry. These changes are, for the most part, very positive: never before, in the history of the ‘printed’ word, have so many books by so many new authors been available so easily to so many readers. This exponential explosion is a good thing in that it promotes evolution: in the way we read; the way we write; in how we communicate ideas; in how literature, of all types and genres, evolve. Never have there been so few obstacles to trying out something bold and new – it’s an opportunity to rival, perhaps even surpass, the Renaissance period.

However, whilst authors are beavering away getting their tales out to their new audiences, there are other events happening on the periphery of this new publishing paradigm that should not be ignored.

One of these is book reviews, or more precisely, book reviewers.

Now, at this point, you might be mistaken for thinking I’m about to embark upon a rant against book reviewers – you would be wrong. If you keep reading, you will understand why I, as a novelist, feel that book reviewers need to adopt a somewhat different posture from what is rapidly becoming the norm, before they lose their credibility.

First, I intend to use the word ‘novel’ as a generic substitute to simplify the following, when referring to any piece of fiction from poetry to full-length blockbusters. I choose to do this for two reasons: one, it’s the medium I’m most familiar with, and two, its complex construction possibilities allow mention of distinct aspects in a coherent whole.

Just as the number of people writing and publishing their work in electronic format has grown exponentially in the last few years, so have the number of self-proclaimed reviewers. Sounds a bit harsh, I know, but bear with me; I am not berating all reviewers at all, just a minority that are growing and are tainting the waters for those who take the task seriously.

For a writer to produce a novel, they have to come up with the theme; develop it into an interesting story with a beginning, middle and end; populate it with intriguing characters that the reader can root for or hate; create believable, coherent backdrops against which events and the characters can do their thing; then… craft this into a form the readers will enjoy (or to put it in Kurt Vonnegut’s words – “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”)

The key word in the above is ‘craft’.

As all writers know, irrespective of their experience, writing is a constant apprenticeship. You just don’t sit down at the keyboard and paste words together – if that were the case, for some time now, novels would be written by computer software, probably employed by the big publishing houses.

Crafting involves the constant polishing and learning of a myriad of skills which all live under the global banner of ‘writing techniques’. Only very rarely, almost never, do you encounter a writer with a natural gift for their art, from the first day they pen their first word, such that publishable prose is produced seemingly without effort. The rest of us have to work at it… hard, constantly, dedicatedly, ever seeking to improve; practice, practice, then… more practice – slowly we improve. It takes time; years usually, not just to produce a single novel, but to improve our skill set.

In contrast, and please remember I’m not talking about all of you book reviewers out there, in the ‘new’ e-book reviewer era, labelling yourself a reviewer, setting up a web and proffering your opinions on others’ labours can take as much as… five minutes! That’s just not right!

Please note my use of ‘opinions’ instead of ‘review’ in the previous paragraph – it’s important as you will see.

Reviewers need to develop a ‘professional’ approach.

Do I mean you need to get paid for your reviews? No, but if you’re good enough to receive financial reward, good on you. It shows you’re probably trying to do it seriously.

Do I mean you need to have studied Creative Writing or English Lit? No again. These, and other learning sources, should have provided you with tools in your toolbox, but, if you only ever use a hammer… And there are other ways to reach the same knowledge levels.

No. Professional reviewing is an attitude of mind and discipline, and above all, honesty.

STOP!

Let’s take a step back for a moment and ask a couple of basic questions before continuing: What should a review be all about? Who is a book review aimed at?

The last question first: there are two, yes two, clear targets, each with their own needs.

The first of these, and for ‘un-professional’ reviewers often the only destination, are the potential readers. People want info about their future literary purchases. Yes, there are those who only populate their virtual shelves with the top twenty best-sellers, or giveaways, without any other criteria, but these are the minority. When I, as a reader, encounter a novel from an unknown (to me) author, I’d like to know if it’s worth investing my time or not (remember Vonnegut). If the opinions of other readers, on the book’s web page perhaps, or in blogs or review sites indicate that it might be interesting, I’m more inclined to give it a try, even if its subject matter isn’t initially to my liking.

That’s where surprises come from – I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve reluctantly started to read a book, because nothing else was available where I was, only to discover an author whose work I would then follow faithfully for years, or a tale so original and intriguing, it impacted the way I think about the World. I still remember Isak Dinesen’s (Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke’s pen name) ‘Out of Africa’, plucked off a dusty shelf in a house in Nairobi many years before Streep and Redford turned the tale into a two-hour romance on the screen, solely because it was the rainy season; the heavens having opened that morning depositing a dense downpour that defied any attempt to leave the house. Two paragraphs later, I was transported, in time, although the place was much closer. In a respite the next day, I drove to Karen’s farm in the Ngong Hills; the novel having given me ‘new eyes’ and many questions. That was thirty-five years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. That’s the impact a surprise can have.

The reviewer might have said “a collection of anecdotal incidents; a jumble of characters; a rambling memoir without a clear direction. Bad women’s fiction.”

Perhaps, if I had the misfortune to read that beforehand, the thin volume would have remained on the shelf as the home of the bright green spider I disinterred, rather than enrich my appreciation for that marvellous country.

That’s one target; the obvious one.

The other is… the Author.

The instant gratification mode imposed by Internet book selling often conditions the reader into buying a book, downloading it, reading it, then forgetting about it with no time added to pen a few words about what they thought of the novel, or even tick a box on an evaluation chart. And it’s in this vacuum that many e-book ‘reviewers’ have emerged.

When a writer receives a review of their work, their first reaction should be “thank you, person x, for taking the time and making the effort to let me know what you think of my novel” rather than “is it a good or bad review?” Bad reviews, if written professionally, can be extremely useful to a writer, because they can draw attention to aspects of their writing technique or even the tale itself, that the intimate proximity of preceding months prevented the author from assessing objectively. Good reviews are often not that useful.

Yes, I confess, when I read a reader review of an extract from my Work In Progress, ‘the CULL’, last week, I had a fleeting moment of gratification. But, words aside, I quickly set about ‘investigating’ the author of those comments. Fortunately the review was on a review site where some information about the reviewers is available; so basic demographic details, gleaned from the reviewer’s profile info and perusing their own submitted extracts, provided me with much more interesting insights than their kind words.

The novel is my take on vampires. I have deliberately gone hard-line thriller on the subject; nary a shadow of romantic overtone. My reader audience, at least in my mind, will probably not be fans of the “Twilight” saga, or “True Blood” et al. There are no mythical morphing beasts either; just genetics, DNA, uncompromising real scientific facts, bound together with screwed-up characters and a particularly callous serial killer. Shaken vigorously; not stirred. So the demographic information from this review, added to that obtained from several other recent reviews, is helping me draw a picture of what kind of reader is really enjoying the way I’ve treated the subject, and who isn’t and why. Fangs very much to you all.

That’s an example of how a writer should use reviews.

However, keep in mind the reviewers on this type of site are, for the most part, and without any slight intended, amateur reviewers. Most are fellow writers who have taken the time to read the extracts published and provide structured feedback.

Now I’ve introduced another word; ‘structured’. What do I mean by that? Well that speaks to the first question, which to save you pounding on the cursor key was ‘What should a review be all about?’

A ‘professional’ review should, first and foremost, be unbiased; untainted by personal preference. Or put more clearly, if you, as a reviewer, live and breathe Chick Lit for example, don’t decry something that obviously isn’t just for that reason. At least be honest about your bias: of the over 100 reviews received prior to publication for my last novel, ‘Full Disclosure’, some of the most useful ones started with phrases similar to this: “I wouldn’t normally read fiction in this genre but…” That’s honesty. To continue with my fictional analogy, don’t pretend you’re reviewing objectively when anyone can see you always give ‘good’ reviews to Chick Lit and crappy comments to everything else. Nobody is forcing you to do the review, but at least be honest and open about it. Give me, and the potential readers, value, not just a soapbox opinion.

Then, write about the novel in a structured manner: talk about its themes and ideas; its originality; its settings and characters; the dialogue; the novel’s pace, rhythm and flow; the narrative voice; and of course its plot, and any of the many other aspects of the writing process that you feel of note in this particular instance. Of course you don’t have to reproduce a checklist; but what transposes an opinion into a professional review is the overt use of reference to writing techniques. Look up several ‘professional’ reviews in respectable journals (such as the New York Times literary supplements, The Sunday Times etc.) and you’ll quickly see what distinguishes a hack from a professional reviewer

An (almost) final word: there’s nothing worse than an un-professional reviewer with an agenda! For example, someone who is trying to become the e-book equivalent of Hedda Hopper (if you’re less than 70 years old, Google the name), by instilling FEAR into all and every authors’ work that comes through your hands – that may have given people unwarranted power back then, but today it is too easy to see the overall game plan. And never shotgun-blast copies of your reviews to any and every website you can find; it will show you for what you are; someone craving attention by attacking others, rather than a would-be serious professional.

So, as a final message to all writers and readers out there, I say the following:

Read reviews, please.

Good ones, bad ones; it doesn’t matter.

Read more than one if available.

Check out the reviewers (even Googling their names will tell you more than you think).

Review the review, and its author, in context.

Then…

Make up your own mind. Surprises may await discovery.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

BIG GIVEAWAY with ulterior motives

Not had much time for blogging, or almost anything else, this month. Finally, after intense work, the latest novel, Full Disclosure, is launched.

Well not quite. 

Officially it doesn't launch until May 1st, but to push it in the right direction, I decided to embark on an unprecedented 3-DAY Giveaway, not just for the latest novel, but for 2012 as well.

By visiting my web LINK HERE you will be taken to a page where direct links to Amazon's Kindle Store can be found, to make locating and downloading both books for FREE just that much easier.

Now I'm pushing ahead with the next one, the CULL; over eight chapters already written and more waiting to escape from the melting pot. That one is about Vampires - not the teenage sort, but the real ones! (No I'm not talking about Vlad Tepes either).

I have to confess I have ulterior motives for the giveaway: it's my modest way of helping certain people who have to go far from their families, for extended periods, to do their jobs, for paltry salaries and under great personal risk - the members of the ARMED FORCES. I've contacted all the Army, Air Force and Navy people I know to spread the word, and there is still time (the giveaway's last day is April 30th) if you know of any military personnel who would like free books for their Kindles.

Keep Safe.

Eric at www.ericjgates.com

New trailer for Full Disclosure

As the launch nears for 'Full Disclosure', all sorts of good things are happening. One of these is a new cover design for the novel, including not just new graphics, but extracts from several of the reader reviews the novel has received.

Of course this meant having to re-do the book trailer http://bit.ly/HjpkVR

You Tube really need to re-think their policy about replacing existing videos - if you need to sign-in, thus proving you are the owner, why can't you change your video? It just seems so stupid and a waste of time to have to kill the old video, upload a new one, then change ALL the references to the new one on your web, blog, and a million other places.

I thought computers were supposed to make things easier. Maybe this is how people fight back!

Still hope you like the new cover and the new book trailer.

Launch end of this month for the novel, with a HUGE GIVEAWAY - go to my web for details.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com 

Writing Rules - Should I follow?

All my writing life I have come across Rules. Of late, however, the prevalence of these, and worse, people happily quoting them as though they were The Only Way To Write, has become a bane.

Let’s get a few things clear, especially for newbie writers out there who may be inadvertently lured in by these snippets of writing wisdom.

  

Writing Rules are usually written by successful writers; often quoted out of context; offer no guarantees whatever (thank God!); and can easily lead a writer astray. You may be mistaken for thinking that if you follow Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing Fiction (merely an example; one of many) you will go on to enjoy the success that venerable author enjoyed. You would be wrong.

My rejection of Writing Rules is based upon the following: writing is a living creative art and, as with every other living art, it evolves over time. What was guaranteed Best-seller material in the 19^th Century, will bomb today if written in the same way. What was popular in the 1970’s, will be labelled as pulp fiction by today’s readers. To try to clarify this, I’ll use as an example of how this evolution happens and can be seen in a single popular-selling ‘franchise’, the James Bond books. Now these may not be your favourite genre, but bear with me.

The initial novels, written by Ian Fleming, were outstanding for their day. They were short (by today’s standards), action-packed tales of mayhem, set in a black and white world of loyalties and allegiances, delivered in a stark manner, liberally peppered with gratuitous violence and sex almost unknown in mainstream literature of the period.

When these finished in 1966, Kingsley Amis, under the pseudonym Robert Markham briefly took over for a single Bond outing, which whilst Bond fans devoured the novel as a continuance of the much-loved character, didn’t take off – writing styles had changes and Amis was still in the Fleming-mould.

Then the late John Gardner took over in the early 1980’s, bringing a more up-to-date vision of the iconic spy. The world had progressed, and his Bond reflected this. His particular style of writing also brought a fresh wind to the saga. If you read his novels, it’s easy to detect the evolution they experienced as World events forever changed the backdrop for the tales. Also Gardner’s style, honed in the tongue-in-cheek Boysie Oakes novels, themselves a Bond spoof, tuned in with reader preferences. In all, Gardner produced fifteen Bond novels, the last in 1996.

In ’97 Raymond Benson took up the baton, bringing his own style to the saga. He was slammed initially because he is an American author, although his novels enjoyed some success. His writing style is very different from Gardner’s, and light-years from Fleming’s. Times have changed as well. Dramatically. Benson stopped writing the Bond books in 2002, and has since produced several novels featuring characters of his own creation.

In 2005 British author Charlie Higson penned a series of Bond books aimed at younger audiences. These books travelled back in time, featuring Bond while at school in Eton. Whilst set in an earlier time period to Fleming’s original novels, many were linked in with video games, and their style was very different from previous offerings.

Finally, to bring us up-to-date, Sebastian Faulks, another British author, more renowned for period pieces such as “Charlotte Gray” and considered more a literary author, celebrated Fleming’s centenary by writing another Bond novel. In it he expertly captures Fleming’s style of writing, tempering it with just enough modern veneer so as not to alienate readers unfamiliar with Fleming’s originals.

I might seem to be rambling here, and probably am, but my point is that since the earliest of Fleming’s novels to Faulks’ latest, both the way writers perform their art and readers' expectations and preferences have evolved substantially. Each of the aforementioned authors brought their own evolution as writers to the task of producing James Bond novels. What's important is that each of the writers evolved in a distinct manner, within the constraints and context of their own lives. If Ian Fleming were to have produced a set of writing rules whilst penning the original best-sellers in 1953 onward, and Faulks’ try to apply them today, I believe the series would not have endured.

So are any writing rules worth following?

Yes. What? you may ask. Haven’t you just said they are suspect?

To answer this apparent contradiction, I will share a piece of wisdom one of my Martial Art Sensei’s told me many years ago: “Use what is useful; throw the rest away.”

Writers, over time, develop their own style. They should nurture this, exposing it to different influences (through reading other’s works and being aware of how changing times brings changing demands from readers), and allow it to mature naturally into something that is, above all else, part of their trademark.

So, what advice/rules to use? Whatever works for you and what you want to write. Going back to my earlier example; Vonnegut’s fifth rule, “Start as close to the end as possible”, doesn’t work for the majority of thrillers, suspense novels, mysteries, etc. the reading public enjoy today.

Finally, and to definitively put nails into my own coffin, what are my own rules?

1.       Write almost every day; convert it into something you need to do, not something you have to do.

2.       Write with emotion and energy; it’s contagious, and through your words, your pace 

and flow, you will infect your readers.

3.       Nurture your words; they are the key to developing your style.

4.       Never try to emulate someone else’s style; original is born not copied.

5.       Read, every day, different genres, different authors; evolve.

6.       Read your work out loud; it will help you be more critical of yourself and evolve more effectively.

7.       If your writing bores you, it will bore your readers.

8.       Write only for one person; yourself.

9. Last rule: There are no rules!  (sounds a bit ‘Fight Club’ doesn’t it?).

  Looking forward to reading your comments.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com 

New trailer

Finally, I've finished the new trailer for '2012'. It's shorter than the last one; a brief but enigmatic 25 seconds. But it gets the job done. I've used Windows Movie Maker for this, as I did for the 'Full Disclosure' trailer a few weeks ago.

I've started writing 'the CULL' today also. Penned the opening chapter; short, punchy, stormy - laying the way for the mayhem to come.

Thinking about doing a trailer for 'the CULL' already. I know it won't be out until the end of the year, if all goes well, but I'm on a roll now, and as they say, there's no time like the present.

Check out the new '2012' trailer here: http://bit.ly/yr3Dl3
Tell me what you think, please.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com       go look at the new Home page on my web, also - it's been a busy week!

91,000

91,000 words! 500,000 characters! I’ve just written the last full stop on the latest novel.

It’s a happy moment; it’s a sad moment.

Happy, because I’ve run the race I set out on, so many months ago.

Sad, because I won’t be putting my covert, psychopathic Assassin and the affable Chief of Police through any more adventures in the short term.

When you write novels, whatever genre, you get close to the characters you create with every page filled. You are in their minds, and they in yours. Through them, you live out so many actions that, if you had performed them yourself, you would be badly injured or maybe even dead. Yet they live on, to fight another day.

Ahead; weeks of re-writes, drafting and crafting.

Then… my Writer’s Lament comes to mind.

But I have my prize!

The first words of the next one are penned. New, strange, interesting characters are waiting to emerge, in this case, to populate our worst nightmares!



Watch for 'Full Disclosure' on Amazon in May


Eric @ www.ericjgates.com