April 2008 Archives

Yes, it has been a few days since my last post. A combination of tight deadlines, a long weekend of girlfriend goodness and a home computer that decided it didn't like me any more, meant trying to craft posts was becoming a frustrating experience.

Last night, I had hours of fun wiping the smug hard drive and reimaging my computer from scratch. Now it runs like Britney from a courthouse. It's suddenly a pleasure to use again.

But it does mean The Sunday Scribbler was noticeably absent last weekend. Don't fret, my eager little scribeophiles. Next Sunday sees the fantastic Alan Moore in the spotlight as I look at some of the best comic scripts ever produced. Expect freakiness.

Meanwhile, here are a few notes and bits of housekeeping.

Working as a copywriter may not be as glamorous as some other writing jobs, but to anyone serious about working with words, the difference is irrelevant. If I enjoyed tinkering with engines on the weekend, landing a job as a bus mechanic would be just as exciting as working on Ferraris.

The professional writer should not be precious about the medium he chooses. Instead, he should be ready to seize almost any opportunity to advance the twin goals of income and exposure.

I have met many people in my time who expressed a wish to write. Often this wish is restricted – ‘I want to write comics’ - ‘I want to write for Doctor Who’ - ‘One day I will write a novel’. And so on.

The professional writer is less likely to care for such specific goals and will have a broader motivation – ‘I want to write!’

There are limitations, of course. There are certain jobs I wouldn’t take out of principle. But I would never restrict myself to a particular writing goal and ignore anything else.

As a writer you will know, one of the favourite fantasy plots of a writer is a character’s told you’ve got three months to live – which is what I was told – and who would you kill? (I) call my cancer, the main one, the pancreas one, I call it Rupert, so I can get close to it. Because the man, Murdoch, is the one who, if I had the time – in fact I’ve got too much writing to do and I haven’t got the energy – but I would shoot the bugger if I could.

Dennis Potter in interview with Melvyn Bragg

Television has always fought for legitimacy as a medium. As it grew into a mass cultural phenomenon, it was unpopular to talk about television in artistic terms. It was considered more of a bastard child to theatre rather than a serious rival. But some writers were to define television as a modern theatre of the masses, bringing a new form of drama to a wider audience, elevating the television script to the level of artform.

Think your writing speaks for itself?

Think what you wear, the layout of your portfolio and how you speak doesn’t affect the decisions made by people with cheque books?

Think formatting and layout are minor details that cramp creativity?

If you answered yes to the above three questions, you’re not alone, but you’ll also never achieve your goal of being a professional writer.

Let’s get rid of one myth straight away.

Never Judge a Book By Its Cover? Balderdash!

It may be a lovely sentiment, but it is completely false. Human psychology is built on our perceptions of the world around us. We make assumptions and judgments based on the slightest impressions we receive, and are quite comfortable making important decisions based on this little information.

You know you’re getting old when your childhood hero is younger than you. 

Yes, that was the revelation I was hit with this week when I discovered that David Tennant, the current actor to play Doctor Who, is only 37. For the first time, the hero I have loyally followed since I was three, turns out to be my junior.

Who doesn't love a contest?

If you are a blogger, the mother of all contests is starting up right now over at Datmoney. With a first prize offering reviews on a pile of high-traffic blogs, if you win, it could be the equivalent of going hot on Digg or being #1 on Google. A flood of traffic to your blog. And traffic means conversions. Whether you are looking for click through on your ads or subscribers for your content, traffic is the lifeblood of any blog.

Can your server cope?

The good thing about this competition is that it encourages networking and link-backs. Jay from Datmoney hasn't just picked any blogs to promote with this contest - he's picked strong blogs. Technorati recognised, traffic fuelled, Alexa proven, pagerank heavy blogs.

”Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, ‘You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass.’ Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.”

Notes From a Small Island

Ten years ago, a close friend of mine was working in a bookshop. Understandably, a lot of our conversation turned to recent books and who was worth reading. One recommendation he was very keen to get across to me was for a small paperback called “Tales From a Small Island”. Being, like myself, an English ex-pat living in Australia, the book was a revelation of nostalgia.

To be a professional writer, there has to be a customer – someone willing to pay for your carefully crafted words. If you have a boss, a magazine editor or an advertising client, they are all customers paying you for a service. In all situations, writing for a customer is a completely different scenario to writing for yourself.

I currently work as a copywriter, producing wonderful words, premium prose and titanic text for webpages and online marketing campaigns. Every day sees me writing for a different client. Yesterday I wrote about crane certification. Today I was immersed in medical skin treatments. Tomorrow I could be constructing paragraphs on incense, or pool fencing, or website design, or limo hire, or… you get the idea. I am a professional writer, and as such, the customer is my lord and master.

If the idea of someone else directing your creative endeavours scares the pants off you, then I’m sorry but maybe professional writing isn’t for you. Whether you write movies, comics, novels, magazine articles or the witty text on the back of beer mats, someone else is in control, someone else has the power to exert influence over your talent.

The first in this new series of weekly writer profiles goes to someone I have followed for well over twenty years but remains unknown to many of you. This should be rectified.

Paul Cornell first came to my attention with a piece of short Doctor Who fan fiction in the fanzine Frontier Worlds. Unlike virtually all fan fiction, Cornell’s story (the title of which is lost in my fog of a memory), mixed reality with fantasy in a unique way. Unlike anything else I had read – and I read almost anything in print that contained the two words ‘doctor’ and ‘who’ in those days – this short tale packed a melancholy punch that betrayed a writer who knew how to write from the gut.

Well, if that title got you reading, you probably already have an opinion on the winner. I know I'm inviting a ton of backslaps as well as twice as much hate mail for suggesting this.

But, as Series Four of Doctor Who premieres in the UK tonight, I thought it only right to devote today's post to...

The Final Indisputable Reason Why Doctor Who is Better Than Star Trek

Writers Watch Doctor Who - Computer Programmers Watch Star Trek

Resorting to wild generalisations? Moi? Well, let's look at the evidence.

There are a number of writers that go giddy of the good Doctor. Neil Gaiman recently talked about his excitement at having lunch with Who writer Steven Moffatt.

Introduction

I love writing for a living. From 9 to 5 every day, I get to tap keys and receive money in the bank for my trouble. It is a concept I thought would never happen. And it never would have happened if I didn’t work hard at things other than my writing.

Many amateur writers fail in their bid for a paycheck by not considering what factors separate the professional from the dreamer. There is a great deal more to professional writing than harnessing creative inspiration and spending hours crafting a work of beauty.

This series on ‘The Professional Writer’ aims to discuss some of the aspects often overlooked by amateurs. Rather than covering grammar and stylistic issues, the series assumes you already have these skills and the appropriate talent and creativity. These five articles aim to fill in the gaps between writing skill and professional success.

How do you present yourself? What is your time worth? How do people become exposed to your talent? There are many issues a professional writer has to consider and address every day.