What's more important: Integrity or making a living as a writer?
I have a new character in my thriller - his first name is Erasmus.
There is something about that name ..... I love it and all of the connotations that come with it. And to me, it is spot on for a detective.
The best known Erasmus, was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1466 – 1536, a Dutch humanist and theologian, whose portrait was painted by both Holbein, as below, and Durer, but there was also Erasmus Darwin and other luminaries. 
Sourced Quotes from Erasmus of Rotterdam-
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Un-sourced Quotes
Got to love that.
*she has to frame those stories into a format and tell them the best way she can
*she has studied the market and recognised the framework of crime fiction tropes which seem to be common to the bestselling work by popular authors - but they may not be in the style she writes in.
*she want to be a contracted, working, professional author. She also wants to express her personal voice.
*she knows that literary agents and publishers run a business to make money and to do that they need to sell consumers something they need and want/ or will want.
Came across these words of wisdom from Ian Fleming written in 1962.
And still spot on. I especially like his advice not to look back on the work from day to day unless you want to horrify yourself.
The amazing thing? These books were typed on a type-writer!
I think it was Earnest Hemingway who used to type using only half the page because he knew he would hate it all and cut most of his work later and rewrite. And then there was the hard work of page nos and formatting.
How soon we forget what it was like before cut and paste and Microsoft Word! And what about Spellcheck? Manual typing made you work harder.
Enjoy. the extract. Go here for the full piece : http://pjparrish.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-to-write-thriller.html
HOW TO WRITE A THRILLER By Ian Fleming [ selected extracts]
People often ask me, “How do you manage to think of that? What an extraordinary (or sometimes extraordinarily dirty) mind you must have.”
I certainly have got vivid powers of imagination, but I don’t think there is anything very odd about that.
We are all fed fairy stories and adventure stories and ghost stories for the first 20 years of our lives, and the only difference between me and perhaps you is that my imagination earns me money. But, to revert to my first book, Casino Royale, there are strong incidents in the book which are all based on fact. I extracted themf rom my wartime memories of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, dolled them up, attached a hero, a villain and a heroine, and there was the book....
We thus come to the final and supreme hurdle in the writing of a thriller.
You must know thrilling things before you can write about them.
Imagination alone isn’t enough, but stories you hear from friends or read in the papers can be built up by a fertile imagination and a certain amount of research and documentation into incidents that will also ring true in fiction.
Having assimilated all this encouraging advice, your heart will nevertheless quail at the physical effort involved in writing even a thriller.
I warmly sympathise with you. I too, am lazy. My heart sinks when I contemplate the two or three hundred virgin sheets of foolscap I have to besmirch with more or less well chosen words in order to produce a 60,000 word book.
One of the essentials is to create a vacuum in my life which can only be satisfactorily filled by some form of creative work - whether it be writing, painting, sculpting, composing or just building a boat - I was about to get married - a prospect which filled me with terror and mental fidget.
To give my hands something to do, and as an antibody to my qualms about the marriage state after 43 years as a bachelor, I decided one day to damned well sit down and write a book.
The therapy was successful. And while I still do a certain amount of writing in the midst of my London Life, it is on my annual visits to Jamaica that all my books have been written.
But, failing a hideaway such as I possess, I can recommend hotel bedrooms as far removed from your usual “life” as possible. Your anonymity in these drab surroundings and your lack of friends and distractions will create a vacuum which should force you into a writing mood and, if your pocket is shallow, into a mood which will also make you write fast and with application.
I do it all on thetypewriter, using six fingers. The act of typing is far less exhausting than the act of writing, and you end up with a more or less clean manuscript The next essential is to keep strictly to a routine.
I write for about three hours in the morning - from about 9:30 till 12:30 and I do another hour’s work between six and seven in the evening. At the end of this I reward myself by numbering the pages and putting them away in a spring-back folder. The whole of this four hours of daily work is devoted to writing narrative.
I never correct anything and I never go back to what I have written, except to the foot of the last page to see where I have got to.
If you once look back, you are lost.
How could you have written this drivel?
How could you have used “terrible” six times on one page? And so forth.
If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain.
By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.
I don’t even pause from writing to choose the right word or to verify spelling or a fact. All this can be done when your book is finished.
When my book is completed I spend about a week going through it and correcting the most glaring errors and rewriting passages. I then have it properly typed with chapter headings and all the rest of the trimmings. I then go through it again, have the worst pages retyped and send it off to my publisher....
Then the book is published and you start getting letters from people saying that Vent Vert is made by Balmain and not by Dior, that the Orient Express has vacuum and not hydraulic brakes, and that you have mousseline sauce and not Bearnaise with asparagus.
Such mistakes are really nobody’s fault except the author’s, and they make him blush furiously when he sees them in print. But the majority of the public does not mind them or, worse, does not even notice them, and it is a dig at the author’s vanity to realise how quickly the reader’s eye skips across the words which it has taken him so many months to try to arrange in the right sequence.
But what, after all these labours, are the rewards of writing and, in my case, of writing thrillers?
First of all, they are financial. You don’t make a great deal of money from royalties and translation rights and so forth and, unless you are very industrious and successful, you could only just about live on these profits, but if you sell the serial rights and the film rights, you do very well. Above all, being a successful writer is a good life. You don’t have to work at it all the time and you carry your office around in your head. And you are far more aware of the world aroundyou.
Writing makes you more alive to your surroundings and, since the main ingredient of living, though you might not think so to look at most human beings, is to be alive, this is quite a worthwhile by-product of writing.
Billie Mernit - author of 'Writing the Romantic Comedy' and blogger extraordinaire, also teaches screenwriting.
His blog today http://www.livingromcom.typepad.com/ is linked to a course he is running with guest of honour Nick Kazan -
'Perseverance was a theme in our discourse: working sometimes for years on a story to get it right, with the particular kind of stubborn will-power that's central to the modern storyteller's craft and career survival.
Simultaneously what struck me as a through-line in our conversation, surfacing in different contexts as we discussed how a story takes shape and develops on the page, was how much of the screenwriter's method is intuitive.
When he starts to write a scene, Nick favors literally closing his eyes and letting the images flow.
"Just watch what happens in the scene, don't try to force it," he said, "then write down what you see.
Then close your eyes again.
You're tickling the unconscious... If you let the movie happen, let the characters speak, then what you get is more visual and cinematic."
And we talked about how film operates like a dream.'
I have heard romance authors speaking about how they work in a similar way.
Maybe it is something I should try for myself? Give the girls in the basement something to work on during the night? Could be...
What's playing on my YouTube right now? Guys from Roswell to Toxic. [Yes, I know, I have no time to watch TV shows like Roswell.]
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KqDFWKCeYHs&feature=PlayList&p=CB2A008B473B9A92&index=8
CJ Lyons is a new Medical Thriller Writer to me, and there are some interesting articles on her website http://cjlyons.net/articles.shtml .
One in particular struck home - in 'Birth of a Book' she writes;
' You already know what kind of book you wrote and what kind of books you want to write. Now you need to consolidate that into a brand.
A brand is a subliminal promise to your readers—that any book written under this
author's name will promise this type of emotional experience.
For example.... every book I write has a theme central to my life: they're all about
making a difference, trying to change the world. For me, once I realized this fact, the tagline came easily: No One is Immune to Danger
Note that is an emotional concept, not a promise of specifics.'
This is a familiar concept to writers of Romantic Fiction, and most authors have a form of Tagline on their websites and promotional material.
But this article did make me consider one aspect which was new to me.
In ALL of the books I have ever written. Ever. Was there one common theme?
Was there one common element which was important to me and central to my life?
One common Tagline which has been there for the last 10 years and will see me through the next?
Well, working that one out should keep me busy for a while.
Second Item - I am thrilled to have been presented with a Blog award by both Liz Fenwick and Debs - thank you so much ladies. It makes me feel that this is not only a fine form of procrastination. http://www.lizfenwick.blogspot.com/,
http://debcarrs-daydreams.blogspot.com/.
What's Playing on my YouTube today? Power Wake-up Music. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1260qaj1Hc8&feature=PlayList&p=5505018970D42764&index=8&playnext=4&playnext_from=PL
Totally scary. I admit it. Better for the story and for the reader, but oh boy, does it hurt. THIS IS GOOD STUFF I AM CUTTING OUT HERE!!
Yes, I have kept it in another file, but now, all I have to do is weave all of the plot and character details from the cut chapters into the remaining text. Seamlessly.
Sigh.
Shoulders back, head high. Beaker of tea at the ready.
I am going in. And I may be some time.
No YouTube this morning. Listening to Harpsichord music on BBC Radio 3.
