Blood, Sweat and Ink: The Pleasure and Pain of Writing a Novel

By Hayley Sherman

All novels are amazing at the point of conception and it is Hayley Sherman’s job to make sure that they make it to the last word in the same condition. She has worked with hundreds of authors around the world to bash their novels into shape and help pursue the dream of publication. She has seen the good, the bad and those books that are only ever destined to prop up the wonky desk in the author’s study. Her mission is to give writers confidence in themselves and their output as well as boosting skills and working towards creating a unique writing identity.

In Blood, Sweat and Ink, Hayley condenses her years of experience into a guide for new authors, including examples, quotes and more than 40 exercises to help you create great fiction. Beginning at that amazing point of conception, Hayley will coach you through all of the big subjects involved in novel writing, from mental preparation and generating ideas, to learning the craft of structuring and bringing a three-dimensional world to life, right through to the re-drafting process and editing your work to perfection.

Where there is great fiction there is originality. By contrast, the short-comings of mediocre fiction can be seen again and again, endlessly repeated across genres and styles. This book also takes an in-depth look at these short-comings so that you have no excuse to include them in your novel.

Writing a novel is a long, lone and often arduous task, which requires steely nerves, consistent confidence, dedication, blood, sweat and ink. If you’re taking this journey, make this book your companion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hayley Sherman
• Release date: Oct 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301924080

Hayley Sherman

Hayley Sherman was born in Ipswich in 1977 with a desire to move to Brighton, which she achieved in 2004. She now wants to live on a narrowboat and slosh about in little canals writing strange and unusual fiction. She has been writing since she was old enough to chew a crayon and divides her time between darkness and light.  Hayley works with other writers of all genres (fiction and non-fiction) to enhance the quality and clarity of their vision as an editor and creative writing consultant. Visit www.whoosh-editing.com for more info.

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Blood, Sweat and Ink: The Pleasure and Pain of Writing a Novel

By Hayley Sherman

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Hayley Sherman

http://www.hayley-sherman.co.uk

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other Titles by Hayley Sherman

Non-Fiction

Ditch the Publisher: 40 Indie Authors on Their Unique Self-Publishing Journeys (Ed.)

A Novel in a Haystack: Ebook Marketing for Self-publishing Authors

Fiction

Diazepam for Sale

The Applauding Coat Factory

The New Short Story Annual 2013 (Ed.)

Creative and Editorial Support

http://www.whoosh-editing.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

One: Getting Started

Two: Generating Ideas

Three: Character

Four: Language

Five: Dialogue

Six: Point of View

Seven: Putting it all Together

Eight: The Dots and Dashes

Nine: Editing

Ten: Wrapping it up

Also Available…

Introduction

Welcome to Blood, Sweat and Ink.

As I sit down to begin this project I can’t help feeling excitement. I’m excited to write it; pulling together all of the experience I have and pinning it to the page is both a new challenge and an experience I know I will enjoy. I’m also excited for you, because you are about to embark on the wonderful process of creating a novel; you’re about to delve into your imagination and wade around for the treasure. It may be that you have been there before or you are making this journey for the first time. Either way, I’m here to guide you, advise you and remind you of what a powerful experience writing can be.

I have worked with hundreds of people like you at various stages of the journey to publication and I have enjoyed every minute of it. Whether I am mentoring, critiquing, editing or rewriting, there is something intrinsically exciting about having access to fresh talent and playing a role it its development. My working mission is to give writers confidence in themselves and their output as well as boosting skills and working towards creating a unique writing identity. My role in this allows me to spend my days reading great books – it’s a hard old life!

The advantage for you is that I have witnessed just about every single mistake that a writer can make. Equally, I have experienced the accomplished triumph of outstanding craftsmanship (both through my work with pre-published writers and as an editor for a range of publishers) and have had the privilege of dissecting the mechanics. This ebook is a combination of both of these experiences merged into a guide that’s designed to give you the best possible chance of completing a novel that’s worthy of your talent.

To give you an indication of what you can expect in this book, I will be using a combination of examples and exercises to highlight key areas of learning, which will begin with the mental preparation required to take on the task. Writing a novel is a long, lone and often arduous task, which requires steely nerves, consistent confidence, dedication, blood, sweat and ink. We will explore all of the mental equipment that you can pack before you undertake the journey to give you the best possible chance of reaching your destination.

From there, we will explore the origins of ideas and how you can generate them. We will explore behaviour that supports the brain’s organic formulation of ideas in your subconscious and move on to tried and tested exercises to really get your grey matter glowing.

The remainder of the book will give you a guided tour of the mechanics of creating mind-blowing fiction. We will begin by homing in on your characters and exploring the methods involved in elevating your population into a three-dimensional, believable cast. Once you have real-life characters in place that your readers really believe in, we will explore the vast subject of language. It goes without saying that a mastery of language is a prerequisite for a fiction writer and I would imagine that your grasp and appreciation of language is already at a high level. Our tour of language will focus on honing that ability, avoiding the landmines that many new writers wander into and equipping you with the skills to write description that leaps off the page.

If all that wasn’t enough, we will then look at how character and language combine in the creation of convincing dialogue. Dialogue is notoriously difficult to master, but I have assembled a list of the top ten mistakes made by new writers so that there is absolutely no excuse for you not to be able to bring your characters to life with convincing speech.

With all of the essential elements in place, we will then move onto the construction of your masterpiece: how to put it all together. We will explore structure, narrative, plotting and viewpoint so that you are absolutely confident from the first moment you put pen to paper.

Taking a brief detour into punctuation and grammar, we will end up discussing the redrafting process: the exciting finale to the act of writing a novel that polishes your masterpiece to perfection.

My overall aim is to give you the tools that you need to fulfil your potential as a writer, so that you can not only write a novel, but progress and go on to produce a body of work that your readers cherish. That’s definitely something to get excited about and I sincerely hope that that is how you are feeling too. Writing a book should provoke excitement and wonder at the potential inside of you, but I know that it can also bring out all of the fear and insecurity of laying yourself bare, because that is exactly what you are agreeing to do when you pick up a pen or open your laptop. Anything less would be cheating your readers. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but it’s worth it to find your own truths and inject them into the world, to discover your unique voice and know that it is speaking to people, not to mention seeing your book on Amazon for the first time or reading emails from your fans. There are endless delights to balance the blood, sweat and tears, so let’s get started…

Hayley Sherman

http://www.whoosh-editing.com

Chapter One

Getting Started

Before You Pick up a Pen

Let’s start at the beginning and ask who writes book? Obviously, writers write books, but who are these people – this elite band of creatives who fill the shelves at Waterstones, who fill our memories with stories dreamt up in their imaginations? Well, it’s the man who lives down the road from you that you sometimes see scurrying out of Starbucks with a notepad in his hand; the lollypop lady at your children’s primary school; it’s that waiter who looks a little too intellectual to be serving you linguine. More importantly, it’s you.

I’m not suggesting for one second that just anyone can pick up a pen and enjoy a successful writing career (although the beauty of writing is that anyone can pick up a pen and write), but there isn’t a mystical, underground pen somewhere housing the elite – they walk among us and they’re pretty normal, everyday people (well, most of them are).

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Karl Kraus

I had to laugh when J.K. Rowling became successful and was met with media reactions of, ‘She came from nowhere.’ Are other writers grown in some kind of literary farm and nurtured to success? Are they generated in a test tube and programmed to write? Not in my experience, and I’ve worked with lots of them. Writers are simply people that write. The successful ones are those who do it well.

The good news for you is that however humble your writing background, you have a shot at getting there. You have as much chance as anyone else and if you are prepared to put in the practise, learning and discipline then you’re going to be great.

Who Writes Books?

I think I’ve clearly conveyed that there are as many different types of writers as there are books selling (and not selling) on Amazon. But what traits – if any – link these people? Their ability to write goes without saying, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Exercise 1

Take some time to ask yourself the following questions:

Are you observant?

Do ideas keep you awake at night?

Do you have amazing curiosity?

Do you have the dedication to spend years on the same project?

Could you do this without financial incentive?

Do you like people?

Do you have something to say that you have never seen in print?

Are you a strong communicator?