Ten Books that Changed What I Write and How I Think

I read a lot, and I enjoy most of what I read, but sometimes a book hits me somewhere deep and sets up root in my gut. It’s getting rarer – I read most of the books listed here when I was a child, and at that impressionable age when fiction seems far more real than reality.

These aren’t just books that I love. These are books that have embedded themselves so far into my brain that I spend my waking moments trying to figure out why they work, how they work, and how I can do better. I want to recreate all these worlds, or at least the giddy excitement of those worlds, through my own novels. I want to keep those ideas alive forever.

In no particular order:

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Maybe it’s the obvious #1, but Neuromancer will always be dear to my heart. Even re-reading it today, when so many of the ideas seem quaint (inserting gig-sticks of data into slots behind your ear? Adorable!) Neuromancer is still a breathless, non-stop story where every page reveals a new and dangerous concept. Often imitated, never equalled.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash did everything Neuromancer did, but with a wry, knowing smile. Once again, every page was packed with brilliant ideas, but always with tongue firmly planted in cheek – and for that, it was somehow more believable. It was less about tech and more about the cultures that result from that tech, and I’ve always wished I could recreate that authenticity in my own work.

IT, by Stephen King

I saw it for the first time when I was eight years old, on a friend-of-my-parents bookshelf. The cover – a rotten, clawing hand reaching up from a storm-drain – fascinated and terrified me. I didn’t get my hands on a copy for another four years, eventually borrowing it from the school library and hiding it under my bed. It gave me nightmares for weeks. It taught me that horror isn’t about blood and guts – it’s about isolation, and the things you can’t quite see, and the feeling of your friends turning their back. It showed me that horror isn’t just a genre, but a necessary aspect of the human psyche. Since reading IT, I’ve tried to incorporate aspects of horror into all my work, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing miserably.

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein

It wasn’t the elves that won me over, or the songs, or the epic battles. It was the sense of distance and scale, and the realisation that you can’t just go on an adventure in your lunch break – the Fellowship wasn’t home in time for tea. They lost their lives to that journey. Discovering Middle Earth was beautiful and tragic at the same time, because I could see the destruction left behind wherever the Fellowship travelled. Also, Shelob scared the hell out of me.

Ubik, by Philip K Dick

I had no idea what was going on until the final page, and then I had even less of an idea, but I still loved it. Ubik took dreamscapes and made them tangible and dangerous. How Dick pulled it off, I have no idea.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

A terrifying murder mystery set in an abbey, lashed through with biblical mythology and suspicion and more villains than heroes? I don’t know whether this book is more historical fantasy or detective noir, but it was an exercise in terror and tension from beginning to end, and a beautiful lesson in both plotting and the art of the red herring.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I wrote like Cormac McCarthy for about a year straight after finishing this book, and it was a long time before I trusted in quotation marks. I’m still striving to emulate his starkness of prose and elegance of action.

The Stars my Destination, by Alfred Bester

Best anti-hero in literary history, period. The first novel that (for me, at least) combined space-opera concepts with a story driven entirely by one small, almost insignificant character. Exposition blended seamlessly with a balls-to-the-wall tale of revenge. From the moment I read this book, I knew I had to hurt my characters at every turn.

Feverdream, by Ray Bradbury

A short story about a teenager getting infected with a mystery space-virus that slowly takes over his body and mind? Pure nightmare fuel for little-boy-Ruz, but an incredible introduction to the concept of body-horror. My short story What You Bring Back, and much of Century of Sand, took their cues from this terrifying piece.

Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith

Finally, a novel about fingerless Russian women turning up in the snow. I don’t know why this book worked so well on me. Perhaps because the central mystery was, at its heart, about people with strange motivations more than any grand plot or twist. The world wasn’t changed by the investigation. No assassination was prevented. Just a small measure of justice in a troubled country. It wasn’t grand, but it was human, and all the more powerful for it.

Fill me in, guys! What books have sunk their claws into your brain? When you sit down to write, who are you wishing you could be? What scene are you wishing you could recreate?

Why Editing on Paper Beats Editing on Screen

I write my first drafts on the computer, but I edit on paper. Why? Because it’s better, that’s why.

No, but seriously, writing is editing and rewriting, and everyone needs to find a method of editing that works for them. As I’m approaching the end of my final draft of Century of Sand, I thought I’d take a bit of time to talk editing, and how I go about it.

First, I take a long break from my novel, so that I can return to it with fresh eyes. How long is long? For me, four to six months. That’s how long I need to forget everything that happens, to be able to read my first draft as if it were written by somebody else. Some people can do that within a few weeks – for me, half a year is best.

After that, I have a long sit-down with the book, re-read it quickly, and identify what was missing in the early draft. Reader feedback helps a lot with this – in Century of Sand, what all my test readers identified was a lack of character consistency, a lack of worldbuilding, and scenes that flew by much faster than they had right to.

So, I make a plan to fix it. I plan out a web of character development from the start of the book to the final page. I find points where the world is undernourished and fill it with detail, and then find ways to deliver that detail without resorting to exposition. I take a look at overall pacing, and find points where the chapters could be expanded or crushed down in order to inject more tension. Then, I print out a copy of the entire book and get scribbling.

As you can see, I scribble a lot. I cut a lot of text, mostly exposition and redundant phrasing. I try to pare everything down so it flows better. I find points where too many consonants grate on the ear, or where the rhythm of a sentence gets bogged down. I’m also trying to find points where things move too fast, marking them with ADD TENSION or similar, and little XXX marks where I need exposition but don’t have space on the page.

Why do I do this on paper instead of on the screen? There are a couple reasons. First, when I edit on screen I tend to only be able to work sentence-to-sentence. I can’t glance a page ahead and think, that paragraph would be so much better over there. I can barely think in terms of moving phrases a few paragraphs up or down. I can’t see that I’ve reused a term or expression twice or three times in the same five hundred word stretch.

Secondly, reading on paper will always feel different to reading on a screen. When working on my laptop, it’s easy to get distracted and tab away to Firefox, or MSN, or Facebook. When I return to the book, the pacing is lost. Working on paper ensures that I can at least feel out the pacing and structure page by page, instead of minute by minute.

Editing on paper allows you to be bold. Scratch that paragraph with a single wobbly line, and it’s gone. Delete it on screen, and there’s always the temptation to undo and slap it back into place, even though you know the piece would be stronger without it. Put simply, paper lets you kill your darlings. Editing digitally lets you resurrect them when they should have stayed dead.

So, once the page is scribbled to hell and I’m happy with the results, I retype with my notebook open beside me, making sure to edit in all those major changes I spoke about earlier, like character and world development. Sometimes the plot diverges so wildly that I scrap entire pages and chapters – that’s just the nature of the beast, I suppose. Other times, such as with the two scanned pages, I can keep the rough structure of what came before and just fill in the gaps.

I retype, and I proofread, and I retype, and at the end I have a shiny new draft. Then I send it out to friends, and prepare to get torn apart all over again.

So, that’s my process, but I’m still interested in how you folk go about editing. Paper or screen? Mass deletions or little tweaks?

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(Originally published in September 2011)

Daily Wordcounts, or, How to Lie to Yourself.

Part of being a serious writer is pumping out some serious words, day after day. You have to have the gumption to sit down in the morning and get a certain amount done regardless of outside distractions (like your university thesis, or… eating), and you need to do it every day of the week. I know some authors that work towards scene completions, or a page total, but most folk I chat to chase a word goal – 500 words a day, 1000, 2000, etcetera.

2000 words a day, every day, for two months, nets you a first draft of a novel. When you break it down like that it doesn’t seem so terrible. But some days you sit down to write and squeezing out even 500 words is an incredible trial. So, how do you do it?

I don’t know how everybody else manages it, but I do it by lying to myself.

See, I wake up and I open my word doc in progress and I look at the current wordcount. It says, for example, 21,562. That’s a lotta words! Not a novel, sure, but a fat bunch waiting to be added to. My goal for the day is 2000 fresh, delicious, plump-arse words. So I pick a point – any point at all – and begin with a small goal. A neat, clean 100.

Woah woah woah. Wait a minute, Ruz. You can’t just start on a shitty random number like 21,562! Make it round, first!

So I sigh, and I start writing, and when I hit 21,600 I relax a little and I say okay, now you start the 100. And I write. It comes pretty easy. I’m at 21,700. I say, lets set a new goal. Let’s work towards rounding that off a little more. Over the next hour, aim for 22,000.

That’s achievable. 300 words in an hour is about my usual rate. You might be thinking, dang, 300 words in an hour is piss-all. But if you apply that five or six times a day, you have a big chunk, and it doesn’t feel half so much like work, so 300 it is. I toil on, and on, and I finally hit my goal of 22,000. I get up, ready for a cup of tea.

Woah woah WOAH. Ruz! You’re in the middle of a paragraph! Sort that shit out before you make the tea!

So I hammer out a conclusion to the paragraph and leave the wordcount sitting at 22,036. Done. I make tea, come back. In my head, I’ve written 400 words so far today – the opening 100, and the 300 that got me to my tea. Time to aim for the big 500, that beautiful quarter-mark that’ll let you sleep well tonight even if you don’t go any further.

Woah woah WOAH WOAH. Stop right there! Round out that goddamn wordcount before you even start! It’s an eyesore!

So, I hit 22,100, and then I allow myself to aim for 22,200, which (in my head) marks the 500 word point. Except, of course, it isn’t. I convince myself I’ve only done a quarter of my daily total, when in truth I’ve already done a third.

There are a hundred little lies you can tell yourself to force out tiny pieces of extra. Like how I tell myself I can’t go piss with a paragraph unfinished, or that sandwiches taste better if the wordcount is rounded to the nearest 500. Or, if you’re an MSN chatter like me, don’t just turn the program off and assume it’ll force you into productivity. Use it. Make yourself write ten words between every reply. Just ten. Consider that over the course of a day, with three or so conversations going on MSN, you’ll have replied to different folk around 200-300 times. That’s a lotta words in the bank, boyo.

You’ll develop your own tactics, in time. All I know is that the method above has allowed me to write seven complete novel drafts over three years, while studying full-time and working to support myself. I make no claim to talent or quality, but those drafts are done. Because I’ve learned the value of getting ten words down at a time, and how important it is to always finish the paragraph before you piss.

Now, I’ve busted out 700 words and my morning coffee isn’t even done. Time to apply that to some real work. Ciao, and good luck. And if you have any of your own wordcount tips, please post them here. It’d be great to know all the tricks.

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Want more info on the discipline of writing? Check out my collection of articles!

Why 1000 Words a Day is Easy and Quick

I write, minimum, 1000 words a day. I’ve been doing this consistently for three and a half years now, throughout my university career, moving home three times, travelling cross country, while writing my thesis. I do it because, after so long, it’s become easy. I know all the tricks.

Let me teach you.

I write 1000 words because 1000 is divisible by ten. That’s the secret. I never wake up with the intention of writing 1000 words, but with the intention of writing 100 words. I can usually figure out what those 100 words will be while I’m taking my morning shower, and I get them down before breakfast. 100 words takes about five minutes, less if I know what I want to type before I start typing.

How much is 100 words? This post is already 129 words, if that helps you to visualise. It isn’t much.

Here’s the trick, though. First – I never stop in the middle of a sentence. So, if I do a wordcount on the section I just finished and it adds up to 98, too bad. Add another sentence.

Second – if the wordcount is over 100, it still only counts for 100.

Third – I don’t allow myself to think, Hurray, 100 words! I think, Hurray, one out of ten! And I make a little stroke on a piece of paper, so I don’t forget.

This is important. You have to trick your brain. Ten is much less than one thousand. Ten is achievable. Ten lots of five minutes is a pittance, while one thousand words is massive. If you think in terms of ten, you can find opportunities all through your day – on the bus to work, in the lunchbreak (sometimes twice!), the bus home, during the sports section of the nightly news, in between ad breaks while watching NCIS. You don’t have to give up your whole day. Just five minutes, ten times.

The best thing about this method? Since you will almost always be a sentence or two over the 100 word limit for each chunk, you’ll finish the day thinking you have 1000 words… but you’ll actually have anywhere between 1100 and 1300. Don’t think that makes a difference? That turns 30,000 words at the end of the month into almost 39,000. It lets you finish a novel draft in three months instead of four. Four books a year instead of three.

Five minutes, ten times. Try it. Don’t let yourself get tied to any one part of your story, or even any one story. Got an idea for any scene, in any book? Jump to it. Add 100 words. Make a cup of tea. Do it again.

And again.

And again.

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If you enjoyed this post, why not pick up my science fiction novella The Eighteen Revenges of Doctor Milan, which I wrote using this method?

Want more info on the discipline of writing? Check out my collection of articles!