The TableRappers book series is planned to have short story collections spread amongst the full novels – every third book, in fact. These collections will be derived from Keynes’ (the primary protagonist) case files covering his adventures both before Persistent Spirit and after. 

More than simply short stories, these will colour back story and weave both existing and new plots, new characters, and answer some questions about Keynes’ past – and pose a few more!

Weaving webs

What has become increasingly obvious is the growing complexity of the various long term story threads weaving their way around my central characters, and in particular the need to keep everything properly organised. 

I already have the odd email here and there pointing out inconsistencies in the writing – something I love receiving because it clearly demontrates that people are engaged enough in the work to notice! But as the audience for these stories grows, it will become ever more important to keep track of everything.

Where is the solution?

Right now, I don’t have one. 

Yesterday I purchased a pack of Extra large Moleskine Cahiers for the very purpose of trying to pull all these initial story ideas and setups into a single location. Why Moleskines specifically? Well, if you have to ask…

The problem is rather more complex than simply making notes about possible future short stories. Any exchange between two characters with a clear back story, can be a potential short story at some point in the future. Each of these have to be remembered, tracked, and interwoven with the growing tangle of character timeline stories. Sounds daunting? Absolutely!

What excites me about this challenge is the end result of a plausible world in which the interrelations of characters is multi-dimensional which, if I manage to handle the storytelling well enough, will bolster plausibility and most importantly, help the reader to be more involved in what I am trying to create.

I’m 110,000 words complete in the second draft and a flaw has occurred to me within the pacing and structure of the story. The cause is simple and unsurprising: in my week-on-week working to create segmented 20 minute (about 3,500 words) audio book episodes, I have instinctively structured the story around those small segments.

This has created a rather odd story flow when all the pirces are joined into a single, continuous whole.

I knew some work would need doing

There was no doubt from the start that there would be a further re-work before I would feel comfortable tagging this book as finished, but the amount of restructuring as a result of serialization has surprised me; yet is not at all daunting.

My whole attitude to the writing process has evolved over the past year. At the start, I wanted to finish as quickly as possible, racing through sections to keep pace not only with the weekly audio episode schedule, but also my self-imposed notion of hos long I could continue to work on this. The thought of running more than a year on this single project did not sit comfortably.

Now, so far into the book with such a huge effort investment into it, the idea of a large amount of effort still to exert offers no concerns at all. Now, my attitude is if it needs doing, it must be done.

Deciding when it’s finished

A creative work is never truly finished, in my opinion. One must get it to an acceptable point of release, then let it out into the big wide world and move onto the next project.

The changes to Persistent Spirit will dramatically improve the pacing of the middle story. Right now it really does feel as if it has been created in small chunks. The story starts to accelerate, then there’s a cliffhanger point, then it builds once more to another cliffhanger. The rhythm of the text, to me, seems very contrived and is reflected by the flow of events through which the characters travel.

If it takes another year to get it to the right place ready for publication, then so be it (I don’t feel it will take that long, I should add). These novels are never going to be Pulitzer or Booker nominations, but they have to be “right”, at least in my mind.

For the first few years as an aspiring stand-up comic, one must tread the rocky paths of the open spots. These are the 5 minute – or if you are lucky 10 – slots that most smaller comedy clubs make available to new comics honing their techniques.

The open spot routine goes as follows:

• Travel for 2-3 hours to the venue
• Hang around for 1-2 hours waiting for your spot
• Spend 5 minutes in front of a disinterested audience who paid to see ‘real’ comics
• Hope the club promoter saw enough promise in you to give you another spot in a few months
• Go home and re-consider any gags that did not generate a laugh

That may seem rather cynical view, but that is the process when reduced down to its core. It is genuinely much more fun that it sounds, however. These open spots are best handled by packing them with quick-fire gags and quips; fire stuff into the mic, then get the heck off. I found the minimal audience interaction very uninspiring.

So I moved into running a couple of (very) small clubs and acting as compere. The compere spends several time slots working with that night’s audience, warming them up, cooling them down, and generally creating each appropriate segue from the previous to the next act. Most importantly, there is an evolving relationship over the period of the show.

I’m getting to the point, thank you for hanging in there…

I experience a similar problem in the difference between writing a short story compared to writing a novel. But this is not centred around the act of concise writing.

I want to get to know them

Stories are about people – at least I believe mine are, regardless of their respective settings. There’s little more satisfying than learning about the characters one places into a story, understanding their nuances, discovering their quirks, ’seeing’ them play out their lives.

The short story simply does not have the space or the time for such luxuries and that is where my challenge lies. These are interesting, nay fascinating people (they must be as I am including them in my story!).

The dead end of death

This problem is particularly acute in a series of short stories I am writing and planning which will form a collection entitled “Six Deaths” – the title is something of a giveaway – and as you might guess, each character has but a brief sojourn within the pages. And there lies my personal challenge when writing shorts: I want to know these individuals, get under their skins, understand who they really are before… well, let’s just say before they up and leave.

I find writing short stories about the characters that inhabit Edwardian London in the TableRappers book(s), so very much easier and satisfying because I know them such that I do not feel I am missing out on learning about them as individuals.

It feels so utterly disrespectful to create a character for the sake of merely a few thousand words. Perhaps I just need to grow some thicker skin and be a little more ruthless with my characters. Hmm… Six Deaths, how more ruthless can one be..?

The day-to-day demands of working in the UK but with colleagues based in San Francisco, presents challenges to available time. With work heating up for me at around the time it should be winding down each day (early evening), and the potential for it to extend well past a sensible bedtime, the only controlled and contained time span to write appears first thing in the morning. But there’s a problem… I cannot write in the mornings!

I was lucky enough to have time for a lunch with the entertainingly cranky John Dvorak while in San Francisco a few weeks ago. We chatted about writing. He, like nearly all the writers with whom he is acquainted, writes better in the mornings “before all the crap of the day has taken hold”.

I, on the other hand, rarely find the juices flowing until darkness has set in and there’s a distinct chance that the day is not going to throw me another twelve curve balls. There’s a psychological security in that knowledge, you see.

Before it becomes a full-time prospect

It’s my first novel. Like any fledgling writer, the chance of earning a living wage from such projects is marginally better than winning the National Lottery. Four of five books under my belt and there’s a chance of that dream, but for now writing must find its place amongst everything else.

So how on earth do I switch into becoming a morning writer?
I am one of those slow-wakers: up to an hour of numb-brain, zombie-shuffle during which breakfast, some BBC news, and the necessary ablutions seem to occur without any real effort or conscious intent. Eventually, there I am at my desk tip-tapping my login ready for the morning’s mundane tasks. Creative writing is far from my mind.

When it’s dark and the work day is done, my mind comes alive, creatively. Characters speak up and scenes play themselves out so that I have to type twice as fast to keep up. When all the gears are properly lubricated, 800-1000 quite acceptable words in an evening session is not unheard of. In the morning, I am lucky to find a coherent sentence any more creative than an email or a blog post.

I do not believe in insurmountable obstacles, and have discovered way to dramatically increase the chances of triggering creativity when it becomes necessary. Although a method for morning writing still eludes me, I’m looking forward to solving this particular problem.

It’s not the writing itself that keeps me chained to the keyboard night after night, but the result of that effort.

The second draft of Persistent Spirit is now over 72,000 words, and the most recent audiobook episode (Chapter 18) was painful beyond measure. Each sentence had to be teased out, then re-worked, then trashed and re-written, then sliced up and transformed into two episodes – and it’s not as yet in a finished state for print. Sometimes the words just flow, but that is all too rare, and brief.

I suspect most of us have a romantic picture of the writer. Holed-up in their chosen rural location, conjuring people, places, and events from thin air and rolling around in the financial fruits of their labours. While I suspect there are a handful who can boast something along those lines, the vast majority have to eek out precious hours of writing time amongst their busy lives while retaining the day job to survive. Friends are almost forgotten. Family is neglected. Cinema releases whiz by and invites to social gatherings grind to a halt on the expectation that you’ll not be attending. Oh, and the writing itself – the act of stringing sentences together to tell a story – is damn hard work.

I am unable as yet to fully comprehend what it is that drives me to continue Persistent Spirit – and plan the next handful of Table Rappers books. It may be the manifestation of pure thought, ideas about locations, characters, and events that were so intangible several years ago, and are now not only solidifying, but being shared with others. That, for me, might be the key. I love the characters, and if anyone else had written and published TableRappers, I would likely be a fan of the books. I have a passion and a joy for what I am developing, and I want to share that with as many people as possible. If that truly is my core motivation, then the next few years are promising to be a very satisfying time.

Tags: author, pain, Writing

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