I’ve been involved in a discussion on LinkedIn, concerning the marketing value of Twitter. Many of the professional marketers in the discussion seem hung-up on the number of followers they have, with one boasting that he has 700 followers, yet only follows 15 people himself. Others are seemingly prepared to dismiss Twitter altogether because they have too many spam followers, and have not thought to block them.

Continue reading “Twitter For Business”

The following article appears in the new issue of Focus, the BSFA’s magazine for writers:

What I Learned From My First Book Launch
By Gareth L Powell

Elastic Press published my first short story collection, The Last Reef, in August 2008. Now, a year and a half later, I’m looking back at the process of releasing the book, and the lessons it taught me.
Continue reading “What I Learned From My First Book Launch”

The following article appears in the new issue of Focus, the BSFA’s magazine for writers:

How To Write A Press Release
By Gareth L Powell

If you’re serious about selling the books you write, then sooner or later you’re going to have to get some press coverage. Maybe you need to attract people to a book signing you’re holding in Waterstones; maybe you’ve just signed a big publishing deal; or maybe you’re releasing your self-published novel. Whatever your reason, the humble press release is still one of the best ways of attracting an editor’s attention.

Continue reading “How To Write A Press Release”

All our myths are attempts to address three questions:

1. Where did we come from?
2. How do we behave now we’re here?
3. Where are we going?

Science fiction concerns itself mainly with the third question (and you could argue that the other two are the purview of religion and mainstream literature, respectively). Bearing all this in mind, here are seven things I’ve learned about writing:

1. Some days, writing is like scrabbling around in a dark pool looking for pretty stones.
2. If you want people to read your story, write about people.
3. You will be remembered for what you write, not what you fail to write.
4. If a reader has to put your book down and use a dictionary to look up the meaning of the clever word you’ve used, they may not come back.
5. Stuck for inspiration? Stop thinking about it. Have a bath. Go for a walk. Clean the car. Distract yourself and inspiration will strike.
6. Want to be a more productive writer? Give up caffiene and quit smoking. Seriously. Both are counter-productive distractions.
7. The only thing more terrifying than beginning to write, is not to write at all.

“The impulse to create beauty is rather rare in literary men… Far ahead of it comes the yearning to make money. And after the yearning to make money comes the yearning to make a noise.”

- HL Mencken

One of the questions people often ask me is: “Where do you find the time to write?” When they ask this, I often think that what they really mean is: “Why can’t I find enough time to write?”

From personal experience, I know how difficult it can be to find the time and energy to be creative, especially if you have a full time day job, a mortgage to pay, and a family to look after, and I won’t pretend I have all the answers. But there are strategies you can use to increase the time you have available for writing. The three strategies listed below have worked for me, or for other writers I know personally:

Continue reading “3 Ways Of Finding More Time To Write”

I have a number of reference books on the art of writing. Some are better than others, and some I dip into almost every day.

Take The Elements Of Style for example.  So far I’d have to say it’s been the most useful book I’ve found in terms of day-to-day writing.

First published in 1935 and since revised and updated, this handy pocket-sized book is a first rate field guide to punctuation, grammar, and sentence construction.

It has been criticised in some areas for its championing of the active voice over the passive, but this is a minor quibble, and I’ve personally found it an excellent reference for basic things, such as the correct punctuation of dialogue and the difference between commonly confused words, such as “alternate” and “alternative”.

If you want to find out why this little book has been praised and recommended by generations of authors and professional copywriters, you can pick it up relatively cheaply on Amazon.

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

These rules appeared in the 1947 essay “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction” by Robert A. Heinlein and I agree with all of them save for number three. I tend to find my first drafts fairly ragged. The magic happens in the rewrites. I would hate to send a first draft out to market. But, based on my own experience, I think we can interpret this rule as:

“When a professional editor tells you to change a story, do so.”

After all, the editor probably has a far greater understanding of what sells in his particular market. Don’t be precious. If they ask you to change something, they almost certainly have a very good reason for the request.

I get lots of story ideas. They occur to me while I’m daydreaming in the shower or sitting on the bus. But few of them ever make it onto the page. They just don’t fire my imagination. The stories I actually write tend to start life as little more than a character sketch and a vague notion of setting, and the rest falls into place as I write. To take a story from my collection as an example, when I started writing “Flotsam” all I had was the name of the main character (Toby Milan) and an image of a container ship converted to house climate refugees. The remainder of the story flowed from there.

I’m not one of those writers who meticulously plan their stories in advance – although having said that, I did produce a three thousand word outline for the novel I’m working on at the moment, but that’s very much the exception to the rule.

I have a file in my office, full of ideas for great stories I’d like to write someday but can’t. The raw idea isn’t enough, and inspiration is a slippery thing. You can’t plan it, and it often hits you in the most unexpected ways. You can’t force it – at least, I can’t. I’m in awe of writers who sit down and say things like: “Today I will write a story about alienation”. I can’t do that. My stories start with something small, like a first line or a character’s name, and build from there. When I start writing, I often don’t know what the finished story’s going to be about. I have to hack away at it to discover its shape. Sometimes the theme that emerges will be one I’ve touched on before, other times it will be something entirely new.

It’s always fun to set stories in your hometown, because you can use locations you know intimately and that familiarity can add an extra authenticity to your writing. You don’t have to imagine a setting because you can visit it and walk around in it. You can see the stage on which your characters will play out their scenes.

However, doing so can also cause problems. You can fall into the trap of assuming too much knowledge on behalf of your readers. If you set a story against a local landmark and they’ve never visited it, they might not get the significance you assume it’s bringing to your story. They might miss the details you take for granted. In your mind’s eye, you might be constructing the most dramatic scene you’ve ever imagined – but if the reader doesn’t know enough about the locale to picture it in their own mind, if you’re not describing it properly, all your hard work will be wasted. You have to take a step back and ensure you’re being fair to them, that you’re avoiding in-jokes and describing the scene the same way you would if you were describing one on Mars or Jupiter, and not letting your familiarity with the scene blind you to the reader’s needs.

On the other hand, it can be just as difficult to set stories in exotic or imaginary locales. You still have the same duty to describe the scene vividly, whether it’s Buenos Aires, Tokyo or the dark side of Moon.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about the SF genre is the way it can transport you to some other time or place and fire your imagination so you feel you’ve been there and experienced something above and beyond your everyday routine. What you have to do as a writer is make sure you treat your local environment the same way – because it may well be exotic and mysterious to some of your readers.

For instance, I recently co-wrote a short story with another writer, set in Paris, a city I’ve visited only twice in my life, but one in which the other writer has lived for many years. While she felt at home writing about the streets and boulevards, I had to use Google Earth to obtain detailed aerial photographs of the locations and routes we were using in the story, to give me the insight I needed to produce credible descriptions of the scenery the characters found themselves passing through.