A while ago (summer of 2018), I started a non-fiction project titled Simple Ways to Write, Publish, Market a Debut Novel (+ Intimate Testimonials from Published Authors).
Because of various things going on in my life (working on several fiction books, health issues, turning my newest release — Whispers and Other Strange Stories — in audio book format, now available on Amazon, iTunes and Audible),
this particular non-fiction book is taking me longer to publish.
I have, therefore, decided to release extracts from my project here, on my website. In case something happens to me before I manage to publish the book, I want to make sure I'm sharing these awesome letters with you.
These extracts are from Part 4 of the Simple Ways book, titled Intimate Love Letters: From Published Authors to Aspiring Authors. They contain, as the name suggests, letters I have gathered from authors about their journey to, through, and after publication. These are the questions I have asked them to specifically write to me (and you) about:
How was the experience of writing your first / debut novel? What is some (brief) advice you would give to aspiring novelists now?
What are the essential things to do, and others to avoid, to make a good start as a writer and aspiring author?
How has writing the first novel influenced writing your second one, and/or your writing career in general?
What did you learn the most from this author journey you’ve been on so far?
What lessons have you learned about life from reading?
What book changed your life that you would also give to a friend’s child on their 18th birthday?
What would you tell your 16-year-old self if you could go back in time ‘disguised’ as a stranger?
What is one thing that always makes you smile?
‘The thing’ of your choice can be tangible or intangible and doesn’t have to be writing related. Can also be a pet, person, book, movie, poem, memory, etc. If you’d like to mention more than one ‘thing’, please do.
I will be releasing their 'letters' one by one, every week or so, in the order they got back to me.
I hope you enjoy them and find them useful. I love reading them and think are most enlightening, especially to aspiring authors, but also to seasoned ones. It is always great to learn from others.
This next letter is from Charles Harris.
Charles Harris is the best-selling author of The Breaking of Liam Glass — a noir thriller about fake news and tabloid journalism which has featured in Amazon’s best-seller lists both in the UK and USA, and was nominated for the Wishing Shelf book award for fiction.
He is also an award-winning writer-director for cinema and TV and a martial arts black belt. His non-fiction books have also been successful, with Complete Screenwriting Course regularly featuring in Amazon’s top 3 for screenwriting. He co-founded the first screenwriters workshop in the world — London Screenwriters’ Workshop — now Euroscript — and lives in London with his wife and two cats. His latest book is a collection of off-beat short stories, The Cupboard.
You can follow him at http://www.charles-harris.co.uk, which is full of articles on all aspects of writing and developing a writing career, as well as free e-books and downloadable templates, or on twitter.
—
Dear Crina,
Inevitably, as I write this “Love letter” to an aspiring author, I find that I am writing in part to myself. To a very large degree, a writer writes so that he or she can understand.
What’s the point of writing down what you already know? There’s nothing more dreary. There are too many books where the novelist knows too much. They die on the page. There is no curiosity — no fun.
Aspiring writers are told to write what they know. Well-meant advice, I’m sure, but there are also too many dangerous people out in the world today who think they know. Wars are started by people who think they know. And ended by people who realise that they don’t.
I advise you to write what you don’t know — or at least what you don’t think you know when you start. To write is to dig, to uncover, to discover, to go somewhere.
My first successful screenplay (in that someone paid me money for it) was a thriller set in a weapons factory, with murdered software developers, an ex-SAS veteran and a conflicted psychopath. Not exactly my own life, which more usually involves walking in the park, sitting in my study and feeding the cats. Of course, I researched. That was fifty percent of the fun. The other fifty percent was diving into the unknown with these diverse, energetic, mixed-up characters and just seeing what they got up to.
My recent novel, my first, noir thriller The Breaking of Liam Glass, tells a twisted story of desperate journalists, devious police, confused politicians and a riot. More interesting people to meet and learn about. By the end, I felt I knew their world as well as I knew my own — maybe better.
At the heart of a novel, there needs to be a world that you want to spend a large chunk of the next part of your life with. If you do, then we — the readers — will too.
And not just a world, but also a character. Which leads to the second piece of advice I wish I’d known when I was your age: find somebody who fascinates you so much that you can’t stop thinking about them.
That character can be real or invented or (most likely) a mixture of the two. They don’t have to be nice or even likable, but must be filled with energy. They must have strengths as well as weaknesses, have things they want to achieve and deep contradictions inside that will keep you coming back to find out more.
In Liam Glass, the central character is a desperate journalist, his career and marriage on the rocks, who stumbles across the biggest scoop of his career. However, to sell it, he must first tell a small lie. And that leads to a second, and then a third… Until he’s on the run from the police and in danger of losing everything.
But every story teaches you how to write it. You just have to be humble and brave enough to shut up and listen. Liam Glass taught me to let go and let the story happen. It also taught me to be honest. A strange thing, when writing fiction, but Picasso said it first, “Art is a lie that speaks the truth.”
There’s no substitute for writing, making mistakes, writing more, making more mistakes. Learn to write fast and without thought and judgement. Trying to be clever will block you. Write fast first drafts and slow down for the second.
Then there’s reading. Most writers don’t read enough. Why is Dan Brown not Dickens (and vice versa)? What can I learn from Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Louise Doughty…?
Along the way, hundreds of books have changed my life. One big change came from reading Cathedral, a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. He made ordinary life seem so interesting, and writing about it so easy, that I couldn’t wait to start writing one of my own. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as he made it seem. But that book unlocked a door for me — and from that came the first short story I ever sold, which was shortlisted for a prize.
Having said that, I wish I could put my hand on my heart and say that I have learned anything important about life from reading. I have, however, learned a great number of unimportant things: how to fly a plane when being attacked by Nazi spies; how to look cool in a casino; how to solve a murder; how to fail to solve a murder; how to be a child, a parent and a grandparent; and how not to; how to meditate; and a bit about how to write.
One day, perhaps, all of these will be of use to me. And if one thing makes me smile, it’s that we get so serious about it all. And it really isn’t serious at all.
And that, in a world that is full of dangerously serious people who think they know everything, might actually turn out to be important after all.
With very best wishes,
Charles Harris