How Writers Write is a monthly series of guest posts where established writers invite you into their workspaces, reveal their work habits and share their experience.
I first met Tricia Sullivan on a panel at Loncon 3. A fascinating panelist and excellent writer, here she gives an insight to the creative process…
How would you describe yourself?
I’ve been a science fiction novelist for twenty years. More recently I’m an astrophysics student and mother of three, and I work part-time doing other bits and pieces.
Where do you write?
Right now I’m standing in the hall window at my laptop. Behind me is a wall with two big flip charts covered with the multi-coloured scribbles that pass for structural work on my new SF novel This is the Sea, which is midway through its first draft. The laptop lives here when I’m working on the Plot Wall.
I had a much bigger and more complicated Plot Wall for Occupy Me. With three flip charts studded with multi-coloured post-its, a corkboard covered in index cards, and about seventeen different colours, it was a thing of madness. I took a photo of it to show a workshop of young writers just how many unseen gears and levers there may be lurking behind the sentences of a novel. But I’ve lost it. The new Plot Wall is not as funky (yet).
But do you actually write standing in a hallway?
No, but I do most of my thinking on my feet, away from the computer. I guess it’s a bit of a cliché by now that many writers, especially novelists, are keen walkers. I also run, but I find that if I’m going at any sort of speed at all I can’t really think about anything except, you know, not dying. Walking is much better for thinking.
I go out in all weathers, for as long as time permits. I’m lucky to live in a beautiful, rural area.
I like to take in the detail of my surroundings. I’m fascinated with the way the shape and the meaning of a thing can change depending on scale and perspective. I like to look at things that are very small from very, very close up and imagine what it would be like if they were gigantic in relation to me. Science fiction is well-known for painting on the broadest of possible canvases. The thing is, though, there is ‘plenty of room at the bottom’, too .
One of really big ideas in Occupy Me came from looking closely at the structure of wood and seeing termite holes. It sparked something. I was all like Mike Myers going, ‘Yo, let’s have Space Termites! And dude, they can time-travel!’ (kidding)(sort of).
Yes, but what about actually putting words down?
Oh, words. I do most of my drafting on a laptop in our sitting room, in the beanbags or on the rocking chair, which is no longer used for nursing babies but if you want to sit there you have to depose the cat. The beanbags look kind of like Jabba the Hut, don’t they? They’re super-comfy.
What about process?
I keep lots of notebooks, of course. I start the serious writing in Word and keep a ‘daily work’ file for every writing session because I skip all over the place—I never write a first draft in linear order. It’s a giant pain, but it’s my way.
At some point I put all this mess into Scrivener in the form of scenes. I arrange these and then add to them and cut lots and add and cut lots more. I may colour-code plot strands a bit because I like the illusion of control this gives me. I’ll work and cut and rework and rearrange a few more times in between stints at the Plot Wall and jags of crying and sending whining e-mails to my writer friends. Very occasionally there’s Drink. Chocolate figures prominently in my methods.
I use headphones and specific music for each book, both to drown out household noise and to kick the brain into gear. Occupy Me was mainly written to Heavy Horses, Steve Roach’s Dream Tracker, and All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun by Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser. So far This is the Sea is being written to the eponymous Waterboys album and Enya.
Upcoming work?
Occupy Me is out 21 January from Gollancz. It’s designed to break your brain and rebuild it in fun ways. I also have a story in Improbable Botany, which is a new anthology celebrating the tenth anniversary of Wayward Plants, a very cool urban green project based in London.
Last week I headed into Manchester to do some writing, as I often do on Wednesdays. An hour in a coffee shop to go through my notes and get my ideas in order, and then off to the library for four or five hours of writing, free of the distractions presented by music and the internet.
All pretty routine, with one exception. I was going to a meeting that evening, so I was wearing a suit. The full works: shirt, tie, jacket, trousers, dress shoes. Nothing unusual. I wear a suit for the day job. I felt perfectly at ease.
Until I began updating my swearword list.
You haven’t got a swearword list? I started one when I wrote COSMOPOLITAN PREDATORS – a list of the different swearwords used by the inhabitants of Eunomia, the asteroid world where the action takes place. It made sense to me that an international community would have a cosmopolitan collection of swearwords. My swearword list contains the word, its meaning and its language of origin. I found it so useful I’ve been keeping it updated for the novel I’m currently writing.
It’s fun using swearwords from different languages, but not, I discovered, when wearing a suit.
Sitting in a cafe in a shirt and tie, copying down lists of rude words, I suddenly felt a little bit childish. Not just a little bit. I felt like there must be better ways to spend my time. I found that I was turning my laptop so that people couldn’t read the screen, that I was checking that no one was watching me.
Thinking about it, this shouldn’t have been surprising. My writing has always been affected by my environment. If not, I wouldn’t carry a notebook with me in order to capture live emotions. But even so, I didn’t realise that environment extended to what I was wearing.
Apparently it does.
So if you find yourself in a coffee shop in Manchester, and you notice a man in a suit blushing as he types away, come over and say hello. Just don’t take offence if I close the laptop first.
The images looked fine whilst I was editing the page, but when previewed they appeared rotated.
Searching online showed this to be a known problem, all to do with EXIF data. You can read more about EXIF data by following this link to How-To Geek
The WordPress problem seems to be that the images are recorded with one orientation and then displayed with the rotation stored in the EXIF data added to them.
The easiest way I’ve found to get the images displaying properly is to first strip the EXIF data and then to rotate them appropriately before uploading. There are instructions on the How-To Geek link above on how to strip EXIF data in Windows.
It’s a lot simpler in Ubuntu or similar.
First, install exiftool
sudo aptitude install exiftool
Exiftool allows you to look at the EXIF data in an image as follows
exiftool someImage.jpg
We want the data stripped. Copy your images to a directory (I just copy them to my pristine desktop) and then run the following command
How Writers Write is monthly series of guest posts where established writers invite you into their workspaces, reveal their work habits and share their experience.
I was introduced to Mike Cobley at the first ever convention I went to, in Glasgow in 2000. A great conversationalist, it’s always interesting to hear his thoughts…
What do you use to write?
It all begins with seeds of ideas, notions, and images, and sometimes the seeds need to be planted and left to put down questing roots and extrude sprigs of possibility…for a time. Or sometimes not. Notes and idea fragments get scribbled in notebooks, a kind of ur-narrative mulch out of which jump-off points for the story emerge – or sometimes I’ll have the opening scene firmly in mind, even before most of the rest of the plot, which is what happened with Shadowkings, that moment with Byrnak and Keren by the campfire in the lee of ancient ruins – that was clearly in mind right from the start.
Eventually the plot will start to firm up, with the larger overview becoming clear before the lower level details – and all the time I’m working on A4 lined paper pads (graduating from small notebooks and the occasional hastily grabbed envelope on which a neat idea can be captured before it flits away) The outline will go through several stages, usually ending up in one long continuous page made up from several A4 pages taped together, and sometimes with additional material tacked or stapled to the side. Of course, editors would much rather have something a bit more formal so at some point all this has to be boiled down to The Synopsis, and committed to computer file. The Synopsis is always the handy anchor, but the organic, handwritten version usually has all the messy details and side thoughts.
By then I’ve usually begun the first draft, which I write in long-hand – yes, on lined A4 pad paper. I used to use quite narrow feint lined paper but I switched to the wider feint when I started to need more room for corrections etc. In the early stage I would have had the opening chapters typed in and printed out, and at some point – perhaps at the halfway mark or later – I might start typing up to try and cut down the typing up required at the end. But then I’ll be on the approach to the finale and all my efforts are devoted to that. There have been times when I hardly typed out any of the MS so that when I finished the draft, I was faced with the mountainous task of typing it all up (usually about 140K words – uh huh).
I write on my PC, using Word for Windows – I’ve seen recommendations by other writers for sophisticated packages which can acommodate all kinds of subnotes and indexing etc, but usually they are the kind of lucky writers who can create straight onto the keyboard, which for them is a natural, near transparent word conduit. Not so for me. In 1998 I started working in a call centre, full time as a directory enquiry operator; at that point I had actually been making myself create straight onto the keyboard, but after I’d been at the call centre for a while I found that the last thing I wanted to do after 8 hours banging out numbers on a keyboard at work was to come home and sit down to try and be creative….at a keyboard. I finally packed in the call centre work in 2004, but found my longhand working habit fairly ingrained by then. I can do revision on the screen, but the origination process finds it to be a barrier of sorts so guess I’m a paper-scratcher till I die!
When do I write?
I’m quite a slow writer, aiming at 400+ words a day minimum, so I have to put in the hourse every day. Usually up in the morning, along with my partner who heads off to her work, and the next coupla hours is a steady scaling of the mountain of wakefulness till I hit roughly 11.30am when the not-writing guilt starts to kick in. I pick up the thread of where I’d reached the previous evening, do any spot-revisions that seem obvious, and press on – with tea/coffee breaks – till about 4.30pm when I go to get the evening meal together. Then I put in another stint in the evening, about 6.30 to 9pm, then gather in the study for cigars and brandy…. sorry, in the downstairs lounge for some episodes of current TV faves.
Where do I write?
Amid a rambunctious mess of books, cds and dvds! I have two desks now – one has the computer (the wordsmith workstation or, alternatively, the Gateway to Procrastination Hell). Recently as September the local council decided that our house was next up for a full rewiring, which entailed us having to pack all the books and cds and dvds crowding the shelves and storing them in a container I had to hire to park outside the front of the house – it was that or use a town-centre facility, meaning countless car journeys and all the attached aggravation. Anyway, the rewiring took place without too much obvious destruction, but it turned the house into a purgatory of dust, fine dust which hung in the air for days afterwards, ultimately kicking off a hellish sequence of sinus-related allergies and coughs. Dont want to tell you more than you need to know, but it was only by mid-December when my health crawled back to something like it was back in early September. Fun times, it wasn’t.
Er….yes, I have 2 desks 😉 the computer-tasked one and another a full stride and a half away against the other wall, flanked by book cases, burdened by the same, the place where the serious longhand drafts are created, conjured up from the dazed aether of my mind (cue swirly-delic music). I like the general room lighting to be a bit dim, a bit low, and to have a lamp focussed on the work in progress. For as long as I have been writing, I’ve always lived in close proximity to other people, whether it was in bedsits or flatsharing, or in this house with other family members doing their thang, so music has always been a necessary element of the writing process. In fact, it has always been a necessary element of my life in general, a comfort in times of bleakness, an energising roar of joy (usually while at gigs), a soothing background to relaxing moments, or even a complimentary aural texture to whatever I’m working on. Oh, and a barrier to the sounds that other make, as well, natch. Some music has been directly inspirational, some less than I thought would be – and in fact, I have been at gigs, drenched in the wall of sound coming off the stage, when some unforeseen combination of lyrics and visuals unites in the shadows of the backbrain and presents some fragment of plot or scene….and suddenly I’m fumbling for my pen and notepad and madly scribbling….
Plans, Notes and Style
In the pre-plot stage I’m usually imagining details of background, history, society, conflict, whatever technical level or types of technology the story requires. And often I find that much of that gets left behind, either discarded or distilled to whatever function they may serve for the story. I stick to the notion that having a wealth of imagined background detail is better than having too little. Nothing gets thrown out at any stage, not until the final edited and corrected proof has been reached – then I tend to more lose track of various notes and ancillary scraps, which my agent thinks I should hold onto.
As for style – in the early years, I was more adventurous about POV and tense etc. 1st, second and third person narratives have appeared in my short stories, while my novels have been in the third person, with the boundaries between viewpoint characters clearly delineated – I know that some writers have a kind of floating omniscient viewpoint, usually from a godlike narrator, which dips in and out of this or that character. This is a technique I’m wary of attempting, probably because I’ve seen it done messily and have no wish to risk inflicting similar unformed narrative monsters on any reader….but then…..until I actually take a swing at it I wont know if I can manage the technique or not. Hmmm.
Back to style – in the short story period, mainly up to 2001, my writing style was a bit more purple than it is now, which I insist is no bad thing – I admire writers who put in the effort to actually describe worlds and environments which are their own creation, rather than Alien World 9B wheeled up from the back lot. Now, some readers find an abundance of description a barrier, as if the plot is being clogged or dragged down by treacly adjectives, which I can understand – nowadays, I try to choose the telling details rather than a boxful, but also include what William Gibson called ‘the gratuitous move’, something not necessary to plot or character or background, but something necessary to the writer’s actual enjoyment.
Drafts and redrafts
Working in long hand, I feel I’ve got a more organic connection to the words as they issue forth from my pen (a black Bic pen, medium ball tip) – not to say that keyboarders dont feel the same, its just my own personal conceit. I tend to correct as I work, so my first draft is really more like a draft and a half. Then there’s typing up stage, which allows a further opportunity to correct as I go (and always I find myself grappling with sentences and/or paragraphs which seem baffling, leaving me wondering what was in my head when I originally wrote them). The first typed draft counts as V 1.0 (the longhand draft was, of course, the beta), and subsequent drafts I name up, V 2.0/3.0 etc. V 1.0 goes to my editor, and possibly to a couple of close trusted readers if they have time available in their schedules to give it the eyeball. And the impressions, good and bad, come back and once I come to terms with sometimes unexpected problems, I get down to the first revisions. Rinse and repeat, though only with my editor and proofreader.
What’s Hot Off The Press & What’s Taking Shape On The Drawing Board:
Well, my newest brain-baby, Ancestral Machines, has just ventured forth, courtesy of Orbit UK (& US), published in various formats between Jan 12-14th, and there is a discernible thrill this time round as this is my first hardback. Feels like a kinda quiet graduation and, damn, it is a fine object to behold! Ancestral Machines is a stand-alone novel set in the universe of the Humanity’s Fire trilogy, featuring an ancient and mobile artificial solar system, a smuggler captain and his crew of rascals and vagabonds, and a nonstop series of deranged events and thrilling heriocs. Is this really your homage to Firefly? some people have said (after hearing me say that it’s a bit of a homage to Firefly) to which I can only state, ‘You could very well say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment’ (wink wink).
Next up, that nonstop barrel of laughs known as Dealing With The Tax Return. But in parallel with that, finishing the submission material for a follow-on book starring my smuggler captain & crew, set again in the HFire universe – I have a working title but I’m keeping it to myself just now, but rest assured that it will be stuffed full of assorted grotesqueries and demented derring-do. Also, I have a coupla short stories that need attending to, and the possibility of maybe, perhaps doing a steampunk novella…or even a couple, if I can get a handle on writing at that length.
A few years ago I was travelling back to Manchester by train. I couldn’t help overhearing the phone conversation of the person sitting opposite me. He was an aspiring actor, travelling back from an audition in London, and he was recounting the experience so loudly the whole carriage couldn’t help but overhear.
He was a interesting character; it quickly become obvious that every setback in his life was someone else’s fault, that the main thing holding him back was people’s inability to see his natural talent.
So I started to take notes: I’ve written elsewhere about how important I think it is to capture conversation live. In those days I used to write notes in the back of the paperback I was reading, and that’s what I did…
… until the aspiring actor noticed what I was doing, and took offence. He’d read my words upside down.
Which is a roundabout introduction to the real reason I learned shorthand: so I could quickly take notes without other people knowing what I was doing.
Perhaps it is. I don’t use shorthand as much as I used to, I now mainly capture notes straight to Evernote on my phone (although I wish there was an app that understood Teeline).
But I don’t regret learning shorthand. It still comes in useful occasionally, capturing conversations, getting ideas down fast, and giving me something to do in boring meetings.
This Christmas I took the plunge and began learning the button accordion. As I spent quite a frustrating time on the internet trying to find a suitable tutorial I thought I’d share my experience here in case other learners find it useful.
I should point out that I can already play the piano accordion, so my advice may not be suitable for a complete beginner to the instrument.
In the absence of a teacher, the quickest way to learn a new instrument is with a suitable tutorial. Looking around online two books were mentioned
Methode d’Accordeon Vol1 by Maugain Manu
and the HOHNER FERRERO MEDARD – METHODE D’ACCORDEON CHROMATIQUE COMPLETE Educational books Accordion
(Click on the images to be taken to Amazon)
Both books are only available in French. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem to someone who can already read music as the fingering is clear. If you can’t read music, you’ll need another book to explain note lengths and values.
I ordered both books. As the Methode d’Accordeon Vol1 by Maugain Manu was the first to arrive that’s the one I’ve mainly been learning from. It’s the more modern of the two books, and proceeds at a slower pace. If you can afford both books, buy them. Otherwise, If you’ve never played the accordion before the Maugain Manu is the one for you as it takes its time introducing the left hand. If you are already a confident piano accordion player and just want to learn the fingering of the right hand then the Ferrero Medard book may be more to your taste.
I’ve been learning for a week now and everything I’d read appears to be true… the button accordion does appear a more natural way to play. It’s not that great a step up from the piano keyboard, particularly given that my left hand is already used to using buttons, albeit in a stradella layout. I do have a tendency to get lost with the right hand still, and it’s difficult at the moment to play by ear, but that’s improving as I learn the scales (and there are only three fingerings to learn for the major scales… ).
Sadly, the button accordion is going to have to go back in its case for a few days whilst I practice for a gig on the piano accordion, but I’m already looking forward to getting it back out again…
How Writers Write launched in 2015. It was intended to be a series of guest posts where established writers invited you into their workspaces, revealed their work habits and shared their experience. It ended up taking on a life of its own, generating traffic and comments from around the world.
This year has seen contributions from
Keith Brooke
Neil Williamson
Ruth EJ Booth
Jaine Fenn
Stephen Palmer
Jacey Bedford
Ian Creasey
Alma Alexander
Juliet E McKenna
One thing that I think we’ve all learned is this: everyone writes in their own way. Saying that, there are number of things we have in common. Writers may have different ways of keeping notes, of planning out stories and redrafting, but they all do those things. Budding writers take note!
How Writers Write will continue next year featuring, amongst others, the following very talented writers: Mike Cobley, Tricia Sullivan, Martin Griffin, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Chris Beckett, Eric Brown and Ian Whates
I’ve already seen some of the new contributions: they are as varied and fascinating as those we’ve already had.
For the moment, though: thank you to all the writers who contributed, and thank you to everyone who has followed this blog this year.
I’m pretty sure the title of this post is the first time I’ve written the word Chutzpah. That last sentence was probably the second.
It’s not a word that I think I’ve ever used in everyday conversation, either. But I’m using it now because I’ve just experienced what I think is an excellent example of that quality.
By the way, if you’re a regular reader of my stuff, you may have realised that I like to protect people’s anonymity. For reasons that will very quickly become clear, I can’t do this in this post…
Yesterday I received a LinkedIn invitation from a Senior Project Manager called Tony Ballantyne. Now, I’ve made contact with another Tony Ballantyne in the past – the Historian Tony Ballantyne who I’m occasionally mistaken for – so I thought… why not?, and I accepted.
This morning I received an email from the other Tony Ballantyne explaining that he was moving to Australia, and asking if I’d like to buy his personalised car number plates. Maybe I should have been annoyed, but I had to admire his cheek. And thinking about it, isn’t that an inspired use of social networking? It’s not like he was trying this trick on just anyone.
Anyway, I’m not interested in personalised plates, so I wished him good luck on his move and that was that. If the other Tony is reading this blog post – think of it as more free advertising.
And if anyone else is thinking of contacting me in this way, don’t bother. It’s only amusing when it’s original.
, has just ventured forth, courtesy of Orbit UK (& US), published in various formats between Jan 12-14th, and there is a discernible thrill this time round as this is my first hardback. Feels like a kinda quiet graduation and, damn, it is a fine object to behold! 
Tony Ballantyne 