Last night I braved a downpour so severe I could barely make out my own headlights on the road ahead to make my way towards a modern building in an esteemed seat of learning, and found myself sitting in a classroom for the first time in over a decade. I was surprised to see that even in such surroundings as the starkly modern physics building of the University of York that they still resort to chalkboards. It was oddly comforting to be in such an austere high ceilinged room, reminiscent of all those lecture halls I failed to attend when I was at university proper.

I was back in the academic world for the first class of my creative writing evening class, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages but which only got decided on a whim a week ago. I’ve mentioned before that the more seriously I take my writing the more I realise how lacking I am in certain areas. Due to an idiotic decision to take English Literature at A level rather than English Language (actually I should have done both and dropped stupid Media Studies) I really have very little technical understanding of the fundamentals of writing, beyond that which I have picked up through trial and error or osmosis over the years. So here I am, back to school, trying to be better.

The class itself was great fun, and got me really quite excited. The module is very much introductory, but I’ll be learning about poetry, scriptwriting and prose, and getting a better grasp of the fundamentals. The group seemed a good mix, from a clearly very talented 18 year old with a keen eye for poetry, a shy girl with a lovely turn of phrase, a novice starting out on his journey, a few people who seem to be regulars of the creative writing courses and the old lady whose polite manner hides a burning political anger. The first session saw us introduced to ‘Fast Writing’ where we’re given a riff (think of a place and imagine yourself there) and then given five minutes to write as much as you can. For some reason my mind went straight to sweeping up the bar of Certificate 18 after the drunk metalheads had vacated and when we all read them out my piece seemed well received, which was nice. There was some lively debate on the nature of creativity and overall I left with a tangible sense of excitement about the whole thing.

As well as taking the step back into education, last week saw the first Demon Pigeon staff meeting in nearly a year, sparked by the impending renewal of the domain name. Seems we’re all really keen to pick it up again, who knows how long it will last but I did my first proper review in ages this week (which you can read here) and have a rather silly but good idea for an article next week so it seems it’s all systems go on that front as well. I’m making a real effort to find a few nights a week to sit down at the laptop rather than the telly, and the writing seems to be flowing really well. Tonight it is back to the novel, and I think I’m going to try and get some work done on sorting the plot.

On an unrelated matter, the picture you see at the top of this post is a rather lovely word cloud of all the ‘tags’ (ie genres) that I have listened to over the past few years over on my last.fm profile. For those of you who don’t know, last.fm is essentially a service which logs all the music you listen to and then makes recommendations based on your tastes, with the added bonus that stupidly geeky people such as myself can pore over the logs and lists and get lost in the detail. But I thought this was a really nice visual, and is a nice accurate description of my tastes. The more bands I listen to in a particular genre the larger it is, and it’s no real surprise to see the domination certain genres have achieved, even if it does rather put pay to the idea that I have a varied and eclectic music taste. Oh well, I can live with that. If you’re on last.fm why not add me as your friend!

I’ve been feeling a little blue the last few days, not really sure why. Well that’s not true, I know exactly why. Having been feeling pretty well chuffed with my second draft of the first three chapters the feedback I’ve had from a few different sources it seems the redraft doesn’t work nearly as well as the first draft did, which is a little bit frustrating given that I worked bloody hard on it. Now I’m at a bit of a loss as to whether I should just cut my losses on that draft and go back to the first draft, which was in itself not without issues. The whole thing has me feeling a bit exhausted.

Writing is hard. I am only now beginning to realise just how much I was only ever dipping my toe in the water, all those long years where I was only really tinkering around the edges. The first thing I ever wrote that had nothing to do with school or essays or anything was a short story called Granny Farming in the UK, a title I lifted from a Carter USM song, back when I was about fifteen. It was written over a month or so on school notepads with blue biro. It had a beginning, middle and end. It was a pretty good first effort, and cemented the idea in my mind that this was what I wanted to do with my life. But the truth is that I’ve never really put that same effort in since. I’ve continued to write fairly consistently since then, but I’ve rarely, if ever, put that level of effort in. Most of my ideas fizzled out, and I have folders and folders of first chapters, half screenplays, sometimes only opening monologues. Every few years I knocked out a Nanowrimo novel, which was never really any good. I still harboured the same idea though, that one day I was going to be a writer. Blood On The Motorway itself is actually an idea on its fourth or fifth go around, starting off as a road novel, then becoming a zombie tale, then a vague idea of an investigation into the death of youth culture, and now, finally, an apocalypse tale.

I still only really have the first third of the novel written in even bare first draft terms, and I don’t yet have any cohesive plot, let alone an end point to drive towards. If I’m honest I’ve only really begun to take the whole thing seriously in the last year or so. I like the world I’m creating, but now I’m riddled with doubts. It is this self doubt, not writers block, which afflicts me the most, and is the biggest obstacle to moving forward. Last night I sat down at the PC and couldn’t bring myself to even open up my writing folder.

Getting feedback is great, and I’m glad that I’ve finally (and somewhat belatedly) made the move to improving what I’m doing. It is the only way to get better, but it doesn’t make it easy, to find out exactly what is wrong with what you are doing. I have faith in myself, in my characters, and in my story, but I have a very fragile ego at times, and I need to get a thicker skin if I’m ever actually going to make it.

The other thing I’ve realised as a result of the feedback that I’ve gotten is that ‘winging it’ in terms of plot is really not going to work. It is all well and good getting a vicarious thrill by experiencing the plot as you write, but it terms of developing this into something really good, I need to be able to have my lot in place to drive the story forward. It is something I’ve been stubbornly avoiding, mostly due to the fact that I don’t have a clue where the end point to the story is, and partly because this story was for the longest time going to be serialised. But I need to do it now.

The whole thing feels rather daunting. Reading back through this blog post shows me exactly how far I have to go, how little I’ve really achieved, save for a few chapters that still need significant work. I cannot let this get me down too much though, and I know that in a few days I’ll feel far more positive about the whole thing. But right now it feels like an impossible task. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to justify that blog title by watching the majestic Inglorious Basterds and pretend that I’m doing it to dialogue tips.

But anyway, it probably doesn’t matter to you that I’ve been absent, but away I have been nonetheless, so it seems prudent that I fill you all in on the goings on in my fantastically exciting and interesting life. I finally finished my redraft of the first three chapters of Blood On The Motorway last week, and since then I have been suffering a little bit of writing fatigue, as well as doing actual life stuff like joining a gym and trying to sell all of my worldly possessions in order to buy a shiny new laptop. Surprisingly enough my first gym session didn’t end up with me sobbing with anguish as I devolved into a puddle onto the floor of the chain outlet mega gym, and the attempt to hawk all my stupidly obscure cds went quite well.

Car boot sales are, it turns out, quite good fun, so long as you remember to take your sun cream with you as you prepare to stand facing a blaring hot ball of fire for five straight hours. Unfortunately I forgot to do that, and I’m now coloured a malevolent and unsightly tinge of lobster. Still funds were raised, and after one more car boot and I may even be able to purchase a shiny new way of retreating from the real world by the end of the next week.

As for the writing, the redraft went quite well I think, I’ve had a bit of feedback from the lovely Ms Park, and tomorrow I aim to take it to writing group to see what they make of it. I am currently a little fatigued by the whole thing, and once I have these three chapters polished I may give it another week before I start to polish the next three, but slowly I feel like I am getting there. I’m starting to see why people say writing a novel is hard. Writing a novel is actually quite easy. Writing something that you can be proud of showing to other people is bloody difficult, quite tiring, and more than a little frustrating. Who knew?

Anyway I will try not to leave it so long next time, not least because I don’t have far to go on the aforementioned 30 day song challenge, and the next choice is a song to play at my funeral, which is, let’s face it, my kind of area

Physically retyping your allows you to catch so much more than you would by tinkering. A redraft should in fact be just that. So, now that I’ve got my first three chapters in a place I’m pretty happy with, and armed with the very helpful feedback I got on Monday, it’s time to knuckle down. These first 10,000 words aren’t going to rewrite themselves. It would be bloody lovely if they would though, stupid lazy words, sitting there doing nothing while I do all the work. One small problem though.

The first line.

It’s dreadful. This was one of the things that was pointed out to me at writing group, although it was something I had been aware of. When I first came to start writing this I couldn’t nail the first line, no matter how hard I tried, so I put a holding line in its place, thinking that I would come back to it. You don’t want to sit there with a head full of stuff to write and just stare at a blank screen because you can’t think of a killer opening. So, much better to just start, then come back to it later. That was a couple of years ago now, and I just kind of forgot about it, what with it being there already. But as soon as it was pointed out to me on Monday night it was like a thunderbolt. Oh god, I never did sort that out, did I?

Now you might be sat there thinking I am being overly critical, but I am not. This is how my novel opens, the line which is supposed to draw the reader in instantly, the hook and the bait, all in one.

‘The day began like any other, full of tedium.’

Now, leaving aside the fact that it is probably not the best idea to put the word ‘tedium’ in your reader’s head right from the get go, and ignoring the fact that the language itself is about as inspiring as a self help book written by a Radio 1 DJ, the worst thing about this line is that it is almost immediately contradicted. In the first sentence it is the beginning of the day, in the second paragraph dark is approaching. Not exactly the impression you want to give the reader, that you’re not even paying attention yourself.

So it has to go, and I don’t want to replace it with another ‘holding’ first line, so I want to get it right. This means I cannot get on with the redraft until I do. So why can I not come up with anything that works even remotely?

Perhaps I am setting my heights too high. My favourite ever opening line also happens to be from my favourite ever book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas;

‘We were somewhere around Barstow, in the middle of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.’

It is pretty much perfect. Not only is it beautifully constructed, it puts you right into the action, lets you know exactly where you are, and is both exciting and a little bit scary. Marvellous stuff. Now my novel opens up in a room in a house with only one character, so I can’t really open up with a no-frills adrenaline line, but still, I need to do much better. I’ve read that it is important to get some motion in your opening line, but that’s about all I have to go on. So for now, I sit again, staring at a blank screen, waiting for inspiration.

I still have a cold, by the way. I know you were all really worried. I am making it through though, just about. I’ll be brave, just for you.

Anyway, I have a cold, did I mention that? By my reckoning this is the fifth cold I’ve been subjected to this year. This hardly seems fair to me, but apparently these things are not governed by any kind of karmic delivery system. Which in a way is a good thing, given that I don’t believe in karma, and such a system of illness delivery would force me to re-evaluate that. On the other hand, such a system would lead to a massive karmic retribution being delivered to all of the BBC’s Glastonbury presenters, on the grounds of being bloody awful. If I were in charge of this new system Fearne Cotton would get Lauren Laverne’s share of bad karma, because Lauren is lovely and because The Fearne deserves it. I hate Fearne Cotton. Maybe I should start a twitter campaign to give her a cold. A really bad one.

Yesterday me and my cold, my cold and I, we took into town on the bus and went to a writing group. Not the one I’m trying to set up, but one I had found out about on Twitter whilst in the process of stumbling about in the dark setting my own group up. This group are strictly invitation only, having been together for a number of years. I was a rather nervous and cold filled wreck utterly bereft of experience in these matters. Not necessarily a good combination, but I had an absolute blast, met some rather lovely people, and spent a glorious few hours in the company of likeminded individuals who all managed to stay away from the clichés I was half expecting them to adhere to. These preconceptions may have only existed in my head, but my fears were of either well intentioned elderly types who like to write poetry about the flowers in their gardens, or unjustifiably self satisfied genre writers who believe their dreadful writing to be superior to all other written word and wish to regale the world with their own worlds.

What I found instead was a group of engaged and clearly talented folk who were generally interested in giving constructive criticism and positive feedback. They all seem to have the same fondness for genre as myself and (I think) still have all their own teeth. It turned out myself and one other writer had brought stuff to critique (I had the first three chapters of BOTM and my cheesecake story) so I was plunged straight into the hell of sitting there and trying to engage in normal conversation whilst out of the corner of your eye watching as someone else reads your stuff, trying really hard to read their reactions whilst not being rude to the person you are talking to. All with a cold. Did I mention I have a cold?

The feedback I got was all really good, and in fact has had the required effect of making me really keen to get going again, and everyone who read BOTM (must find better acronym) seemed to want to know what happens next. I got told what I already knew, which was that my opening line is dreadful. All good stuff. Already I’m really looking forward to next week, and I hope I can get to read some of the stuff they have written, as I get the impression I would like it a lot.

Quite where this leaves the writing group I am trying to set up is unclear. Of the six other members I have cajoled into joining, two felt like they were helping me out more than particularly interested, three have never replied to any of my messages since joining, leaving only one other person who actually seemed really keen on the idea. Seeing as this new group meets weekly, I’m not sure if I can really muster the energy to try and set up a whole new group if it’s not going to be top of the list of priorities for everyone. I think I will leave it a few weeks and see where everyone sees it going.

Now, I must away to go and spread cold germs around a big Tesco, because I am generous like that.

Did I mention I have a cold?

If I’m truthful, it’s also because I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get published. It’s always been the aim, really, see my book on the shelf at my local book emporium, but I suppose I’ve been slightly clouded by my blogging into thinking to hell with trying that, put it out yourself and pray people get interested.

The creation of the novel has been painfully slow however, and the 1000 word post format I’ve been trying to stick to has been rather constrictive and led me to writing very episodically. Then a few weeks back, I looked at it in the first time in a while and had to admit to myself that, nope, I don’t really like what I’ve written. It was this decision that spurred me into the creation of the writing club (getting there now, seven members!)

While setting said writing club up I’ve been looking around for things that might be vaguely interesting to try and kick start things, and I came across the Unbound Press Best Novel Award. 20 quid entry and you send them the first 10,000 words of your novel. Hmmm, interesting, I thought. What if I restructured Blood… in a more traditional sense, and see what the first 10,000 words look like. So I spent an afternoon doing nothing more than splitting up bits and pieces, shuffling things around, and came to just short of 10,000 words, which quite nicely fell into three chapters. I read it through and suddenly got really excited about it again. I let Ellen read it and she seemed quite keen too. Since then I’ve been polishing up, and today I have printed it all out and going to do a final redraft over the next week or so, and then send it off.

Once I had made this decision to restructure, however, suddenly I stopped thinking of it as a web idea, and started thinking of it as a novel again, and on a whim I started looking at what writers do when they want to start getting published. Conventional wisdom is that you get an agent. So I looked into that. Seems most agents are happy to accept submissions, all they are looking for is a synopsis and the first three chapters. Hey, that’s pretty much what I have!

So I’m going to dip my toes into the murky world of trying to get actually published, for the first time in my life. Looking at it now it seems absurd that it has taken me this long, really. But the way I look at it I’ve never actually gotten as far as having something worth sending before. Now, for the first time, I think that I actually do.

Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware that I’m not about to get a book deal. If Hunter S Thompson got over a hundred rejection letters before finally getting a book out (and not even the book he was trying to sell) then I am sure I will be able to wallpaper my front room in standard rejection letters in no time at all. But it is a first step, and after two decades declaring my intention to be ‘a writer’ it feels pretty good.

I had firstly expected that when I put the clarion call out through Facebook and Twitter that the response would be a floodgate of people, all wanting to be a part of my new literary equivalent of a biker gang. So far I’ve had three people, and that’s despite badgering and hectoring at every given opportunity. This is to be expected of course. I can abuse my social networks as much as I like but most of the people I am friends with online are not from York, or are not interested in writing at all. Fine.

But even when you take the three people I’ve persuaded, and then added myself as a mighty fourth point, enabling us to form up like a creative Voltron, the question is, what to do next? My first thought was to set up a Facebook Group as a kind of central hub, at least while we get all set up, and for day to day communications. I like the idea of havin, say, monthly physical meetings, but then letting people be as proactive or inactive as they choose by having an online space to keep the juices flowing until the next meet. But pretty much as soon as i set the group up, I hit a snag, with one of the four not being a Facebook person. Perfectly legitimate of course, and they are on Twitter, but Twitter doesn’t really allow for anything more than short messages rather than meetups and document and idea sharing. Escpecially when you factor in that to reference the three names of the other members in a message eats up nearly half the message itself. Add a few more members and even if they are all on Twitter it would be unworkable.

So there’s the question of how best to organise ourselves. Next up is the question of when to organise ourselves. I think it is probably a good idea if we have a meet up to discuss how we want it to work before we plunge into hard and fast arrangements for the future, but planning a time that is good for just four people is nigh on impossible, in fact the best we’ve come up with is the middle of next month. This is probably a good thing in terms of giving us time to organise and arrange how we want to set it all up, but I do worry slightly that my enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of others for the whole thing might be running on empty by then. As I mentioned before this is my first time of doing this sort of thing and I’m a little apprehensive about it all, but I imagine that apprehension might grow and become a bit offputting.

So then we come to location. I had thought that the lovely main York Library might be a nice spot to congregate in, place of learning and literature and all that, and on Sunday we were going there anyway so I thought I’d scope out the possibility. Of course the queue to speak to any of the harassed looking library staff was so long that by the time I got to the front I felt bad for them and let them give me the polite brush-off, agreeing to took online. I always feel bad for harassed customer service staff, primarily because I was one for so long, but it makes it hard to get what you want from them somehow.

So today I looked online as directed and was rather taken aback to find that even for one of the smaller rooms in the library you are looking at £25. Per hour. PER HOUR! So that’ll be £50 a time. Not really in my budget right now, so I guess we’ll be looking at quiet pubs or ones that’ll let us use back rooms and whatnot, so at least I’ll be able to have a pint. So that is how things stand currently.

I still think it’ll be worth it in the long run, and I hope that we can get a few more people involved. The more I think about the idea the more I think it could be something really special, especially if we approach it as more of a cross between a support group and a collective, where we support each other in any way we can to get our membership noticed. We have a group editor in the shape of my good friend Jennie, who is looking to get into that sort of thing. Also, she’s just started her blog back up again, which is damn fine news.

In my mind I really want to broaden it out from just fiction writers, maybe get a few people involved who are creative in other areas, so we can try and make publications that are  a bit less run of the mill than your average ‘short story compendium’ that yo normally get from writing groups. So again, if you are interested in writing, be it blogging, fiction, journalism or poetry or anything else, and you are in York, please get in touch.

Anyway, I’m having one of those moments of inspiration at the moment, and somewhat of a moment of clarity. I’m getting quite happy with my writing, both here on the blog, and the occasional piece for Demon Pigeon, but my fiction writing just doesn’t cut it. It’s meandering and cumbersome and one dimensional and lacking all of the things I like about my other writing. Put simply, it aint much cop.

I’ve thought this before, and I know what I need to do. First of all, I need to be a better writer. When it comes to writing fiction I know there’s a hell of a lot I don’t do, bad habits I hate, and things I need to do better if I have any hope of being anything other than a hack fiction writer. I want to write something I can be proud of, not something I avoid opening so I don’t have to feel bad. So, step one, courses.

Step two is to get myself out there a bit more. I create little areas for my writing where, let’s face it, not many people are going to see it. I never send articles out, and the sum total of fiction writing I’ve let other people see is two very short pieces. I’ve often thought about joining a writers group but find the idea a little intimidating. A few months ago I looked into whether there are any groups in York I could join, but all my emails went unanswered, and again today I had the thought and came up relatively empty handed. So I’ve had a thought. I’m going to start my own writers group.

Given that I’ve never actually attended a writing group this could prove to be interesting, but in another regard it means I can try and create something that suits what I want to get out of it. First of all I don’t think it should be exclusively for people interested in writing, be it journalism or poetry, fiction, or even just bloggers. Second of all I would hope it would be a place where we can not only challenge each other, but also support each other in terms of networking, and trying to get each other noticed and eventually published. I envision a strong online presence as well, I really like what the guys who do Do Some Damage have achieved in terms of building a community and pushing each other.

Anyway, just an idea at the moment, but if anyone out there has any experience of writing groups has any thoughts on what they think, or what does or doesn’t work in their experience, or would be interested in joining, I’d really like to know.

No more weekend posts, unless I actually have the time and inclination to put one up. My weekends are just too busy, and now that we are heading into the sunnier times it is going to be highly unlikely that I will find the time, let alone the will, to sit down and blog on a weekend evening. That is the plan, five blog posts a week. Sorted.

Except almost instantly I am looking at ‘the plan’ and seeing a major flaw in its general planniness. My good friend Will, who nearly became a blogger but then never actually did, has just lent me the father fabulous complete BluRay box set of Battlestar Galactica. The show so utterly designed for my tastes that I might as well break down in tears right now and surrender to the gods of writing (atheist humanist gods obviously) that I am not worthy to stand up in the face of such a procrastination provider. Five whole series of what has been described in some quarters as the equal of The Wire in quality of writing, acting production etc, except set in space with an apocalyptic end of humanity quality to it. I saw the first series a few years ago and meant to get the rest of it but then it fell by the wayside. Now there is a shiny tin in my lounge that threatens to consume all my spare time over the coming months, leaving my fragile enthusiasm for this writing hobby of mine as utterly destroyed as the Cylons left the twelve colonies of Cobalt.

In the meantime I have a stack of albums to review for Demon Pigeon, and Jonic has shown me a rough outline of Blood on the Motorway that was very exciting and reminded me on just how much work is needed before I actually let people see it with their eyes and brains, lest I be mocked eternally and find my fiction career in tatters before it is actually begun. So here’s the New Deal, and let’s hope that in terms of success it is more of a Roosevelt New Deal than a Blair New Deal (geeky political in-joke alert) in terms of its effectiveness. To whit; I have to write something every weekday, although it’s not going to always be here that said writing is done. Once that is done I am free to watch Edward J Elmos and his craggy visage to my heart’s content.

There are times, and this is definitely one of them, where I really question what the hell I am doing with this blog, and all my other ‘projects’ and writing. It is a struggle for every writer, I imagine, trying to find hope that what you are doing, be it pouring out my head on here, or trying to write a novel, or reviewing music. This is not in any way a plea for validation, far from it, but since I know at my core that I am unlikely to ever find any kind of career at this, let alone find my name staring back at me in paperback form in the WH Smiths of my local train station, it is sometimes bloody hard to find the motivation to sit at this keyboard and type words.

Stupid words. Sometimes it seems less a writing exercise and more a product of my own misplaced vanity, and I feel small and useless and trite, a deluded fool wasting his life chasing a dream that is too big for him. Tonight is one of those times.

Perhaps I need to step back from the blog for a week or so, get the creative juices going again, recharge my batteries again. Or maybe I should plough on through, hope that tomorrow is a better day. Right now I’m too bloody mind shattered to make that decision, but if I’m not here tomorrow then you’ll know why.