2009 TW3

Looking back at this year and writing about how I fared, whether I hit my goals or not, and all I have to offer are excuses. Though they are good ones. A serious bout of illness for both me and the missus, albeit not overlapping, punched a huge hole in the year. As a result I didn't get close to hitting that target of writing nine stories in 2009. Instead, I managed 4. I have another ready to edit and if I can get it done before the end of the year I'll improve on that so it's not an utter write off.

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On the upside I did manage to get a lot of stories accepted and published this year. Five. Far more than ever before. On the downside most of those were written/edited in 2008 and early 2009. Following the same logic I can expect a lull as I get more stories written, edited and sent out. Fingers crossed that the success I have had will breed more.

I also feel better about writing than I have for a long time. I've had two ideas for strong stories clamouring for attention and wanting to be written. Both feel like they will be pretty easy to turn around. That's not happened for a while, a long while. So that's good.

I shouldn't forget that despite taking months off to heal I still beat my record on submissions. Some of that is because e-zines turn stories around far quicker than those that accept posted submissions. But also I've been diligent about sending them out and logging who had what. It does mean I'm close to hitting 150 rejections but that goes with the territory. I've made my peace with that. Generally, I feel good about this. It's just a matter of getting on with it - as ever.

Psycho smell

Schizophrenics have a goatish smell, if Hannibal Lecter (via Thomas Harris in

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The Silence of the Lambs) is to be believed. The claim that the sweat of schizophrenics is laced with trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid always intrigued me and it is a pity that it turns out not to be true. This paper declares "there is no relationship between TMHA and schizophrenia". Which seems pretty definitive.

There are other studies which suggest that volatile organic compounds can be used to diagnose the condition. It turns out that some of them do have distinctive odours:Image via Wikipedia

• trichlorofluoromethane - sweet smell
• pentane - petrolish
• dichloromethane - sweet smell
• trichloroethene - sweet smell
• benzene - sweet smell
• 2,2-dimethylbutane - tarry, hospital smell
• tetrachloroethene - sweet smell

I can see a pattern there. Though I guess there are caveats as schizophrenia, I think, is a broadly based condition and hard to definitively diagnose.

But that got me thinking about other odours and what they might reveal if they can be smelled. And it turns out that there are lots of them. Lots of conditions and diseases have very characteristic odours.

For instance, the smell of decomposing apples (again, a sweet smell) is associated with diabetic acidosis and that can strike diabetics if they have low blood sugar. Others too such as typhoid giving rise to a smell of brown bread or liver failure a "fetor hepaticus" (aka breath of the dead) which again is a sweet smell.

There are also research projects to develop electronic noses that can spot the characteristics odours of many diseases - particularly cancer. The thinking is that cancerous cells produce different waste products than normal cells and those can be detected - the key chemicals appear to be ethane, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde.

Fantastic. My current work in progress revolves around smell and having those to call on will help emphasise the strangeness of the central character. Ooh, not just smell either, when she kisses someone will she get a blast of what they are feeling.

Drive, he said

You never know what you need to know until you get started on a story. Knowing it is essential too if you are to establish the right tone, setting and give a story the details that give

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it enough of an air of versimilitude.

Without details then stories have a habit of vanishing in a "something happened, someone did something, a thing happened in response and then something else happened. The End" kind of fog.

I have a feeling that the story I have just started working on is going to involve a lot of research for those salient details. Some of it is easy to find, such as the history of the US secret service, the number of US presidents that have been successfully assassinated (4) and there have been about 90 attempts to assassinate presidents. Richard Paul Pavlick threatened JFK in 1960.

Trickier though are the lifestyle questions. In particular, what make of car did federal agents drive in the 1950s and 60s? I thought it might be a Packard of some kind but they all look too old. I did an image search and thought I had found the perfect one, a Packard coupe Opera, but it turned out to be from 1925 and was seen in the TinTin stories. So, not that one then.

It's proving hard to find out. Maybe a Plymouth. It was one of the bigger car makers, had an eye for style and it has to be said that the Special De Luxe Coupe and f-door sedan h

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ave the look I'm aiming for even if they are not exactly the right ones.

Ooh, this site has lots of good pictures that might help. It might even be a five-window Dodge, thgouh that did come out a bit early for the purposes of the story. What I have in my mind is a great sweeping rear of a car and the snub nose front. It'll has to have four doors too if the opening scene is going to work.

It occurred to me that it was probably Ford that had the US government contract back then to supply cars so I had a look on the same site and came across the standard coupe. There's no doubt that the Ford's have that distinctive snout on them. So maybe that's what I need to use. The Ford Coupe or the Super Deluxe. Most of them look like they only have two doors though, which could be a problem. Only a minor one, the MC could get in the front. The coupe has it. Thank you internet for sorting that problem.

Words, words, words

I paraphrased the first line of Neuromancer for a story I'm working on and, when I looked it up to ensure I'd got it right, I got a surprise. I thought it read: "The sky o

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ver the port..." but it actually is: "The sky above the port..." I was knocked out by that. Using 'above' makes a reader, unknowingly, think about places with roofs. The sky is over everything but a roof is above you. I guess it also makes people think about 2D scenes too - simulations and virtual spaces being one of the subjects of the story. It also made me think how carefully the word was chosen.

I thought more about while reading some Dennis Lehane and Michael Chabon too. Both write very dense texts - if that makes any sense. The words seem thick on the page and the sentences are flooded with details. This is from "Mystic River".

"Sean sat up on the old red bar stool and fingered the inside of the thick black vise, felt the oil and sawdust mixed in there..."

In that fragment what catches my eye is "sat up" which he uses rather than just sat. Sean is being told off by his father and it is reminiscient of parents telling kids to sit up straight. But also there is an echo in it that reminds the reader Sean is still a kid. Sitting up rather than just sitting, sprawling or any other way he could be on the stool. Then for the other elements in the scene both get two qualifiers - "old red" and "thick black".

The effect is more apparent in Michael Chabon who revels in detailed description. This from "House Hunting"

"The profusion of hats on the hatstand - three berets in the colors of sherberts, a tweedy homburg, a new-looking Stetson with a snakeskin band, several billed golf caps..."

Admittedly this is done to a different end in a story about a couple finding their place but there is a lot of detail there. Leaving aside the many different ways it uses to describe headgear, it made me think about how I use words. The story I am working on at the moment is just close to the end of its first draft. I'm going back now and adding in the bits I feel to be missing. Doubtless I'll oversteer but a lot of that will be caught when I turn it over to OWW and get so

Cover of The Yiddish Policemen's Union

me other eyes on it. There's no doubt though that my prose does look a bit thin in comparison to Lehane and Chabon. Though too much of the fatty adjectival froth and a story can get hard to read. Yeah, that's right. Make yourself feel better by belittling the best-selling authors.

There is a point there, though. The Dennis Lehane book does suffer towards the end because it is so dense and layered and detailed. Sometimes I just wanted him to get on with the story and action rather that launch yet another detour into the history of the Plains and the Flats. Even towards the end when the story was winding up he couldn't stop.

The only story I've read of Michael Chabon's where it really worked well was the Yiddish Policemen's Union which was full of brilliant descriptions rather than just scene dressing. No way to belittle that, just sit at its feet and be impressed.

This way please

Planning again. Because that's where I am with my current story. I feel like I'm rediscovering how to do this after those few months off though the one constant has been my dithering over whether to just sit down and write or do the planning thing so I know in which dir

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ection the words should point. The missus keeps saying that I am very quiet at the moment, more so than usual, and that's because I'm processing all the ways the current story can play out.

Re-reading, for the umpteenth time, Stephen King's On Writing I was struck by his belief that a story is a found object. A fossil, he says, that has to be uncovered piece by piece. For him plotting and planning are jackhammers that destroy the fine detail at the expense of the gross structure. Far better, for him, is to set the situation up and then work/write through it. Those are far finer tools that can preserve the eyelashes and scales. An idea of the ending is needed but he has little sense of what he will uncover on the way. Often, he says, he is surprised by how the characters act/react in the situation. I suspect he is being a bit disingenuous and that some of this is down to his vast experience and native talent. For others, such as Tobias Buckell, the same is likely to be true.

For myself I don't find it that easy to just turn it over to Trev and let him drive. Last year I did and it produced some great stuff. Certainly judging by sales and reader reaction I'm doing better but it took time to get in to that mindset. I've got to get it back, if I can, and I think the rest will follow.

Take the story I'm working on right now. Thinking about the setting has got me enthused about it and I know how it will, kind of, fall out. I am split between doing the planning and letting it all flow leaving me in a tricky neither/nor limbo when I do a bit of both. The stories that is producing do not have that breezy feel some of the others have though the story itself is fine. Or so I think.

What Mr S does think about is character. Annie Wilkes, for instance, he first describes as having an "absence of hiatus". No, I don't know either. And that's not something I've been doing a lot of. Partly because this latest story is kind of about me and a lost friend and I know those folks well enough to wing it.

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I guess part of my reluctance to hand it to Trev is because I do not want to get in to a situation where whatever success I have is based on a method resistant to understanding, change and improvement. And that brings me to another of Mr King's beliefs; that talent is a finite quantity. Whatever you have, that's all you get. If you don't have it then you'll only ever be a hack. If you have some you can improve via technique but if you are talented then lucky you. I have no idea where I fit on that scale and my lack of confidence makes me eye the hack end more than the other. It's not for me to say. What I have realised is that that perception of talent will not be universal. For every person that likes a story there will be as many, probably more, that are utterly indifferent. As many will hate it as love it. Now there's a recipe for misery if ever I heard one.

Another one bites the dust

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I'm going to abandon the story I've been writing for the last couple of weeks. The decision will dent my chances of hitting my target for the number of stories I want to write this year. But I can live with that.

I learned to my cost with a previous story that it is not a good idea to take a break while in the middle of writing. This time that derailed me again but, looking to the positive, it stopped me persevering with a tale that now looks unworkable.

It's all part of learning how I go about writing which, if I'm honest, it is a pretty chaotic process.

That may not be a bad thing. I've read a lot of books about how to do the writing thing and the advice they offer is very different. It has struck me that what all those authors of those books are laying out is how they go about writing.

There's no single process that everyone should follow to success - though there are tricks of the trade that are worth knowing.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is important to discover how you work rather than do what works for others. Though it might be worth trying what they say if only to eliminate what doesn't work and get a sense of all the ways it can be done.

However, it might be just success that convinces me I've found my way to work. The last two stories I've written have felt a lot better than almost anything I've done and I wrote both of them in a pretty chaotic way. Instead of working it all out and sticking to that plan I'm setting off and adjusting as I go along.

Other writers have said that you never get the trick of writing a novel. While writing one you only discover how to write that novel. There might be something of that for the different way people approach short stories. As always though I'm wary of routine. Feeling like I'm on top of a subject is usually the moment when I faceplant and show the world what an arse I am. And as I am often heard to declare: I'm not disorganised, I'm spontaneous.

By contrast, many of the other stories have been pretty mechanical and I was getting a bit tired of going through those motions just to turn out a story that wasn't great. And didn't enthuse me. I needed a change because I could see that writing was going to be a grind if I kept up with that method. And this is supposed to be fun, right?

Which brings me to the story I've abandoned. One of the many tricks that is supposed to turn those ideas into workable stories is find out who has most to lose in the cast of characters you have assembled and then make all the action revolve around them.

I did that and the story sucked. All the life in it, and my enthusiasm for it,

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died on its arse. In working out what should happen the original impetus drained away. I ended up with a story that had no tension or conflict in it and was for far away from my original conceit that it felt like someone else's work. So, I gave up on it. Which is a pity because I've spent a long time trying to put it together. Like, months.

The story I have picked to get working on has instantly enthused me and got me thinking about how it can all work out. During my commute this morning I got it into a pretty good shape and know what is going to happen. All I need to do now is pick the main character and get on with it.