Author Archives: Tony Ballantyne

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.

The series started with Keith Brooke.  last time featured Neil Williamson.  This month it’s BSFA Award winner Ruth Booth’s turn…

How would you describe yourself? 

Well, I’m an award-winning fiction writer and a poet, usually of speculative sort. From time to time, I’m a critic/reviewer – of music (alternative) and, recently, books too.

But writing isn’t all I do. I’m a live gig photographer. I sing, I’m told, though I need a new outlet for it. I’m teaching myself to play the ukulele, since a piano’s out of reach right now. There’s more besides. So how would I describe myself? Not nearly busy enough, quite frankly.

What do you use to write? 

Right now I’m typing this in Word, on my old refurb’d 17” laptop – and this is a rare case of typing up before I’ve made any handwritten notes. Mostly, ideas start out on paper first – I’m not sure what it is, but I find I think more clearly when I handwrite, rather than typing straight onto a screen. Nearly all my review/opinion pieces start life on paper – git big swirling threads of thought running all over my A4 notepad (in the margins and everything!), clauses knotted in gaps between the lines of ten-year-old’s scrawl, later trimmed and woven into something more coherent for the screen. Fiction, it depends on the project, but you can guarantee at some point, I’ll hit that sticky wall*, and I’ll have to handwrite myself free of it.

There are at least two notebooks on the go at any one time – the little one for when I’m out and about (which also doubles for my to-do lists), and the A4 workbook for general Work-Things-Out projects. I’ve learned that where I have a notebook FOR ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY, that’s a guarantee I’ll never use it. So fiction tends to vie for space with public lecture notes, review plans, career stuff, poetry and geometric doodles of stars and weird spiky things. It’s hell to archive, but it works for me.

On my laptop, I generally work in Word, with occasional bits and pieces in Notepad if I’m experimenting with a section of something. Poetry is nearly always written in Notepad first. Aside from that, there’s the memo function on my phone, a netbook in my parents’ study, but… honestly? I’ve been known to write notes on bar receipts if I’ve nothing else to hand.

When do you write?

On an ideal week, I’ll have two hours writing time a day. Times vary. Generally it’s a free hour before work, and at least one after, but I run or cycle three to four times a week, so that shifts it up to the evening. It’s not that I can’t necessarily do both first thing – oddly, I can usually solve a story problem within the first ten to fifteen minutes of a run. Still, the aim’s for two sit down hours a day every day – more, if I can manage it, on a weekend. That’s 16 – 18 hours a week, if I’m lucky.

Where do you write? 

Most days I’ll pick one of three or four places to write. There are two cafés in town with mains power where I get most of the grunt work done – one for morning jaunts, one for evenings. When I’m at home, I like to use The Library at the back of the house, which is just a quiet and cosy space to work in. There’s also the box study with my lovely giant table and big flatscreen monitor, but I prefer that for non-fiction and photo editing work.

My main consideration is where’s going to have the right kind of quiet at any one time – and these days I need my comfort tea if I’m going to get some proper work done. The extent to which music’s a distraction or white noise really depends on the tunes. There are a handful of go-to bands/composers I use when the café soundtrack’s not doing the trick. More important is how I think of where I’m working – it can’t be somewhere for playing games or watching TV. If it’s not a neutral space – if it’s not somewhere where any distractions or background noise can be dismissed as not-for-me – then forget it. Work’s not going to happen.

How do you write?

Word counts don’t work as well for me as time limits do. I’ve been using the Pomidoro method in the last few months (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, in two hour bursts). It’s worked particularly well with this found documents story I’m working on, constructed from a series of archival pieces and audio transcripts. This way, I’ve a set period to focus on one bit, with no temptation to polish each one until I’m sick of it.

As for planning or pantsing, it’s really a question of what I’m working on. With criticism, I like to have a clear idea of my argument before I write it up, but fiction’s not so prescribed. There’s always a notebook beside me as I type – that’s more for working things out in my head than writing to plan. Unless the word count’s particularly tight, plotting’s usually something that comes along after the first draft, to work out what’s missing, where an extra beat might be needed, that sort of thing. Not so much planning, then, as restructuring.

A caveat: Since I’ve mostly written short stories so far, this might all change once I start working on novel length fiction. On the other hand, the longest thing I’ve worked on so far just poured out of me one day and didn’t stop until 18,000 words later, so we’ll see.

Questions of style. First Person, Third person, present tense, past?

Most of the time I’m writing in third person limited or first person, past or present tense – but that’s not to say I won’t one day come across a story that demands to be done in, say, second person omniscient. I’ve got to confess, I had to really think about this question, which may suggest I’m not that conscious of making those choices, at least beyond the extent to which they come with the story. Trite as it sounds, generally, there’s a voice that leads – and I follow that.

How many redrafts? – How many readers? – How easy is it to let go?

Redrafting’s a tricky thing to put a number on. Occasionally, it’s taken a complete draft of an entirely different story to get to the crux of what I find interesting about it – so the finished result ends up quite different to what I first imagined.

Easier to pinpoint is how many rounds of readers a story gets – and if all goes well, that’s generally two. Sadly, I don’t have the advantage of being part of a writers group, but I’m lucky to have a number of writer friends, who I can rely on within reason.

I’ve not been writing that long, so knowing when to let go is a discipline I’m still developing. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve two contradictory impulses when editing. The first is riddled with perfectionist zeal – but if I’ve worked on something too long, the other goes “OUT THE F**KIN WINDOW” and promptly chucks it in a huff (aka The Defenestration of Blargh method). I’m slowly working the both of them out of my system, not least for my own sanity. You’re always going to see the flaws in a finished story. But, arguably, if you did reach some mythic, mist-shrouded pinnacle of artistic perfection, wouldn’t that be a reason to stop?

What are you working on at the moment?

Let’s see… There’s the story about mining and music that’s told through a collection of audio transcripts and archival documents. There’s one about robots and rose gardens and what we leave behind. There’s another about what happens to the fictional worlds we create as children. That’s just for starters.

Recently, I’ve been writing more stories set around where I grew up in the North-East England – such as ‘Good Boy’, in January’s Far Horizons. Poetry’s been the biggest creative surprise of the last six months, which started as a whim, and grew a will of its own. Whether any of this will make it to print, we’ll see, but it’s been immense fun exploring a new way to write.

In the meantime, Fox Spirit’s Fox Pockets: The Evil Genius Guide will include a story of mine about a rather unusual college graduation. There’s also another project that I’m really excited about, one that’s quite different from anything I’ve been involved in before… but I can’t talk about that right now.

In short – everything up in the air and all to play for. Then, I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s why writing keeps me hooked.

• Am pretty sure the writing wall is covered in treacle. Certainly feels like you’re wading through that on the tricky days, anyhow.

More Information

Ruth Booth’s website: http://www.ruthbooth.com/

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.

The series started last month with Keith Brooke.  This month it’s BSFA award nominee Neil WIlliamson’s turn…

How would you describe yourself?

I’m not fond of trying to describe myself. Other people are usually so much better at it, even (especially) when they don’t agree. I’m a writer and a musician. If pushed to define musician I’d go with piano player, cabaret performer and songwriter. If pushed to define writer I’d tend towards fantasist, but with plenty of science fiction and a little supernatural horror on the side, as well as a stubborn streak of what we used to call slipstream back in the day. I like having the whole genre paintbox to play with.

What do you use to write?

A pocket notebook for notes on the go. And my trusty wee Asus netbook for the actual writing. On the netbook it’s Word for short stories and Scrivener for novels. Word has always caught a lot of flak, but it does the job perfectly well. Scrivener I like for long works, but I only use a certain amount of its features because the netbook’s screen is tiny.
Short stories are written into a pre-formatted template, with any story notes kept in the same file until the end. Novels, obviously being larger, require a bunch of different files: character notes, plot outlines, timelines, snagging lists of bits that need to be added at some point but not right now. These can be in Scrivener or separate doc files, text files, spreadsheets, emails, whatever’s at hand.

For later on in the process, I’m still a fan of the print-out-and-scribble school of editing. Scrawled margin notes, emphatically scored out paragraphs, whooshy connecting lines. It’s all so much more colourful and dramatic than Word or Scrivener editing tools. Additionally, though, it allows me to second guess the changes I was so confident of a few days ago before I commit to them.

Recently, I went even more hands on by resorting to printing out all of my plot points and cutting them up and physically rearranging them in front of me. What can I say, you go with what works, don’t you?

When do you write?

I have a regime that fits my writing in around my day job, home life and other creative pursuits. I had to establish one because there are so many things going on that nothing would get done otherwise. So, on weekdays I leave early and write for an hour before going into the office. Then at lunchtime I pop out and steal another hour. That adds up to ten hours a week. Weekday evenings I usually do not write: when I’ve not got a gig or a rehearsal, I usually don’t have the mental energy for it anyway, and I actually enjoy spending time with my bidey-in too. On Saturdays and Sundays, though, I try to spend three to four hours getting a good chunk of work done. So most weeks I’m doing 20-25 hours of writing. Which I don’t think is too bad.

Where do you write?

The weekday session take place in one of the many popular chain coffee establishments. These places seem to be purpose built for writers. Chair, table, power, wifi, selection of beverages, occasional moral support from interested serving staff. What else do you need? Somewhat obtusely, it’s my habit to drink copious amounts of tea in these sessions. This is for two very important reasons: it takes far less time for baristas to prepare which means more time for writing…and I fricking love tea.

The weekend sessions can be in a variety of local places. There are a few good cafes in our community, and there’s one in particular in which I’ve become part of the furniture. To change it up, I occasionally opt for the craft beer pub across the road instead, because…hell, craft beer? I got into the habit of using outside venues because our upstairs neighbours used to be pretty noisy, but we’ve new neighbours now, so I’ve recently “moved back in” as it were. I still find it easier to write outside of the house though, partially because the café environment is what I’m used to. It’s the office, it’s where the work gets done. And it doesn’t have a TV.

I am prone to distraction, though, so one vital ingredient is isolation music. I’ve got a Spotify playlist consisting mostly of film soundtracks that does the job very nicely.

How do you write?

This is something I don’t often really think about or analyse to be honest. With short stories, I have ideas, and note them down and when I have enough notes I…just go for it. That sounds insultingly simple, doesn’t it? Partly that’s because I’ve been a short story writer for many years, and have got used to creating on that scale, so the process is something that just happens now.

Novel writing is relatively new to me (I’m finishing my second one right now), and the process is similar except that for novels there are more notes. Many more notes. One of the things I found interesting (both frustratingly and rewardingly so) about writing The Moon King was that the deeper I got into writing the novel, the more ideas about the way the world worked suggested themselves. I went through several iterations where the plot changed quite substantially because I’d written myself deep enough to understand more about the world and the characters. I kept snagging lists of notes of stuff I needed to go back and change on the next draft. Sometimes these were tiny changes, sometime they were big. It seems like an inefficient approach, but the point is that I couldn’t have sat down and thought it all out in one go. I needed to write the place, to live there with the characters to discover these things. So far Queen Of Clouds has been the same. The longer I spend in it, the deeper I go, the richer the world gets, and the more times I have to go back and ripple it all through the story…sometimes changing the story itself pretty substantively. Hopefully it makes for a better book at the end, but it’s a slow process. Who knows, maybe I’ll get better at it once I’ve been writing novels as long as I have short stories.

In terms of drafting and redrafting, I used to be an inveterate polisher. Every word, line, paragraph had to be at least good before I could move on. Now I just don’t have time for that. Getting the story down is much more important. If I can’t think of the right adjective I’ll throw three in that are roughly in the ballpark and sort it later. I’m not sure about a detail or a character name or a piece of action, I’ll leave a gap and write myself a wee note to fix it in the next draft.

I don’t work to a daily word count, but I do give myself deadlines. That seems to work pretty well.

Questions of style. First Person, Third person, present tense, past?

Whatever suits the story. I’ve used all of those in the past (and why did you leave out second person?). I personally tend to avoid omniscient viewpoint. It can be done brilliantly, but also very badly, and I’ve no great facility with it, so I leave it well alone.

How many redrafts? – How many readers? – How easy is it to let go?

Redrafts – depends on the story. Some stories are pretty much good to go right away. Others never quite feel right and I can tinker with them for years before finding a way to make them work. I mentioned that novel writing, for me, seems to be a process of discovery through redrafting, but I’ve not done enough of those to know whether it takes two, or five or ten drafts before a book is generally right.

Readers – I’m very fortunate to be a member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, an excellent and longstanding peer critique group. I’ve also got some wonderful writer friends who I drag into service from time to time, but try not to abuse their generosity.

Letting go – I’m a pretty honest appraiser of my own work. I know when, even if it’s not perfect, it’s at least good enough to do the job I want it to. And I know when, even if people enjoy it, it’s still lacking something. I’m honestly not a perfectionist, but my internal quality controller has high standards.

What are you working on at the moment?

The second novel, Queen Of Clouds, is finally in the finishing stages. I’ve done all I can with it. Mined all I can from its depths. I’m just lining the words up for hopefully the last time (for now) and then we’ll see what my agent makes of it. And after that we’ll have a chat about what’s next on the novel front. I’ve an idea for a series of short adventure fantasies that I’d like to get into, but we’ll see.

Other than that, I’ve got a near future science fiction novella about surveillance states part-completed and a whole load of ideas for short stories. One of the things I’d like to do this year is go back and try my hand at horror again. I made my first sale to Black Static magazine recently with a supernatural tale called The Secret Language Of Stamps, and I’ve got a few more darkish ideas in production too.

That’s the thing about being a writer. You’re never short of ideas.

More Information

Neil Williamson’s Website: http://www.neilwilliamson.org.uk