| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.9.232.89 |
So what's the next novel called, and what should we expect (in an appetite-whetting, sound-bite way)? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.17.9 |
It's The Kind Folk, and it has been a real bastard to write. Suffice it to say it's supernatural. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.9.232.89 |
Brill. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.128.232 |
D'oh - I thought that said 'Kindle' Folk. Phew! People forget and take for granted just how hard it is to write novels. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 94.197.127.19 |
I dunno. It feels strange to think Ramsey finds it hard to write sometimes. I always imagined the writing came easily to him. Probably because the books are so complete and so wonderfully formed. But then easy reading is hard writing, as someone said. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.102 |
Well, thanks, Mark! But you're reading the rewrite, remember. The first draft is where most of my cursing and moaning and pacing takes place. The first section of Midnight Sun, for instance, was a bastard. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.102 |
I actually included the first pages of the first draft of "Down There" in the afterword to the Samhain edition of Dark Companions to show folk what I mean. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 94.197.127.195 |
I remember reading the additional sections of The Claw that were included at the back of the Warner paperback and thinking if that's the supposedly rubbish early draft stuff then the writing must have come wonderfully easily. Midnight Sun is as close I've ever read to a perfect horror novel, so in my opinion at least I'd say that hard work paid off, Ramsey. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.71 |
What about Needing Ghosts, Ramsey? Was that a struggle or did it write itself? I confess I found the first couple of pages hard to get through, but once the novella (or longish short story) began to speak to me in its odd dream language, I was drawn in and practically forgot I was reading a book. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
'Needing Ghosts' is the closest peek we have had to date inside the psyche of Ramsey Campbell, the man and the artist in one, that I have experienced. I believe he wrote it instinctively, without much regard for conventional structure, and, as such, it may well be his masterpiece. The purest piece of prose the man has ever written. Time will tell... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.29.167 |
It was amazingly fluent once I got past the opening. From the scene at the bus terminal onwards it virtually wrote itself. It was like dreaming onto the page every morning, and I wish I could recapture whatever I did! But maybe it was a unique experience for me. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
Funny how that happens. I wrote a novel last year in 27 days. It took me 6 months to write a novella straight after it. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.253.46 |
Which was the better piece, Gary? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
I'm fond of both, mate. (Which is not to say the novel - my computer game thingie - won't take a lot of work to get right. All this refers to first drafting.) I do find writing at novel length easier, tho. It's less unforgiving. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.254.186 |
Jeffrey Archer does 14 drafts, or so he reckons, before he's finished. A cynic might say, 'Imagine how bad the first one must be.' But I wouldn't, of course. I first drafted an 89,000-word effort in two blocks of three weeks last year, but I was waylaid from the writing and suffered a lost three months in the middle. So is that a 6-week first draft or an 18-week first draft? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
My erratic writing habits are entirely to do with the demands of my job, alas. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 94.197.127.166 |
I blame my life. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.254.83 |
Though it would of course be harder to write with no life at all. Unless you are or were or maybe one day will be Virginia Andrews perhaps. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.71 |
About fifteen years ago I wrote an unpublished novel which was nominated for a (then) major literary prize - I was the fourth of six nominees out of 133 participants, so that was encouraging. This was right after the company where I worked folded, so I had lots of free time. I would get up at 8 or 9, my goal was 1,000 words per diem. If I didn't get them, well, there were days when I did 1,700 or more. The point is you need to develop a routine, have a plan and stick to it and I couldn't have done it while I was still working in that damned office. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.40.254.212 |
When Elmore Leonard worked in an office he just got up earlier to write. He said it took him about 6 months to actually use the extra hour to write, rather than sit drinking coffee. Well done on the competition, H. I have always fared monumentally awfully at such things. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.71 |
My hat is off to Leonard, but in my case that wouldn't have worked. Sometimes I needed an entire morning to get two or three paragraphs sorted - which must sound awful to the pros out there. 1,000 words may not sound like much, but believe me after ten months or so one's manuscript begins to look like a sizeable tome. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
Depends on a lot of things, actually: what work you do; whether you "take it home with you"; dispositional characteristics - eg, OCD-types find it hard to divide attention; age; enthusiasm; contractual commitments; and more. Some days I start paid work at seven, just to get through my workload by five. I'm paid by the job and not by the hour. That is reality. One day I'll be free of this but not without making sacrifices now. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
>>>He said it took him about 6 months to actually use the extra hour to write, rather than sit drinking coffee. I find this fanciful. What job did he do? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
>>>A year before he graduated, he got a job as a copy writer with Campbell-Ewald Advertising agency, a position he kept for several years and wrote on the side. Hmm. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
He was 25 at the time. When I was in my early 30s, I could do it. It's harder now. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.71 |
I never took the actual work home with me, but there were types at the office who were far worse than the Gervais character in "The Office", and the impact of their daily antics invariably stuck with one. "The Office" is not satire, believe me. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.18.174.156 |
Try putting up with it for 27 years, Hubert... no laughing matter. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
Grinds you down. Try adding Kafkaesque commssioners like the Coalition to the mix. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.71 |
Lots of alcoholists where I worked. Some of them were so far gone they couldn't hold their pen properly or feel a cigarette burning through their fingers. As a matter of course I was highly suspect, being a non-drinker and all that. |