Project January: A Sequel About Writing

By Louise Truscott

More about writing – a sequel to Project December and another guide for writers and those thinking about writing to getting started... again, developing characters and plot, the writing process, editing and what to do when the book is finished. Inside you’ll find:
•The A to Z of writing
•How to write a book without even trying
•Writing worlds
•How to get to know your characters better
•Why you should never mess with a writer
•What to do when you’re a bad writer with a good story
•Cheating your way to better editing
•Same same but different: ebooks and pbooks
•Developing a website for your book
•How readers choose what to read
...and much, much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Louise Truscott
• Release date: Mar 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780994512161

Louise Truscott

Louise Truscott was born, brought up and still lives in Melbourne, Australia. She tried not being a writer and editor, then tried being a corporate writer and editor, but she’s only truly happy writing and editing when she chooses what to write and what to edit. With a blog called Single White Female Writer, there are lots of hints in the name about who she is. She published Enemies Closer, her debut novel, under the name LE Truscott in 2012. Project December: A Book About Writing, her second book, was initially published in 2015 and Project January: A Sequel About Writing was published in 2017. Black Spot, her upcoming novel, was shortlisted for the 2016 Text Prize.

Book preview

Almost as soon as I finished writing Project December: A Book About Writing, I knew I was going to follow it up with a sequel. I told myself a year was a reasonable interval between books and that since the first one had only taken six months to write, I had a little bit of time up my sleeve. I took some time off, wrote 30,000 words of a novel I’ve been trying to finish for the last four years (still not finished) and then started to gear up to yet again write about writing.

Of course, as with all the best laid plans, life was about to get in the way. I landed a six-week writing job, then another, did a semester of intensive tutoring for a university student and last but not least received – and accepted – an offer to extensively rewrite and edit an autobiography. Suddenly, it was November and I barely had half of Project January: A Sequel About Writing written. I hadn’t even had a chance to do my traditional Project October month of intensive writing.

When I sat down and thought about it, I decided there was no way I would be able to meet the publication date I had set for myself. So instead of aiming for an early 2017 release for Project January, I would move it back a year to early 2018. After all, nobody ever produced a great book by rushing to meet an arbitrary deadline. But, in the meantime, I would continue writing chapters here and there.

I wrote one chapter. One turned into two. Two chapters turned into ten. Ten turned into twenty-five. And so it continued. Before I knew it, in less than two months, the first draft was finished and it only took one month more for the text to be finalised. How, I asked myself, did that happen? How, when I was so sure it would never happen in that time frame?

It all came down to this: I psyched myself into writing a book.

Normally, we psych ourselves out of doing things but by simply removing the deadline that had been putting so much pressure on me and making me doubt myself, I removed the psychological barrier that was holding me back. And although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, there was still a little voice in the back of my mind urging me on. My conscious said it couldn’t be done so my subconscious was determined to prove me wrong. (It’s complex being me but that’s another story.)

One of the chapters in Project January (How to write a book without even trying) was inspired by the writing of Project December and some of the elements in that chapter were used again to complete this book. The equivalent chapter in the next one (assuming there is a next one – maybe in early 2018 – but why would I put a deadline on it when I now know that not having deadlines makes me write so much faster, despite that still yet-to-be-finished novel?) would have to be called, How to psych yourself into writing a book. Although I’m not sure exactly what all the steps are. I guess I’ve got a year (or more) to figure it out.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this second instalment.

Happy reading and happy writing!

Part 1 – Getting started… again

Project January

If you’ve read my previous book, Project December, then you’ll know Project October is about intensive writing, Project November is about editing and revision, and Project December is about getting your book published. And, of course, I hope it makes sense that Project January is about starting all over again. (If you haven’t read Project December, read it before you go any further with Project January. There’s a lot of good writing advice in it, if I do say so myself. Would you read the sequel first in any other series of books?)

The pride and relief at finishing and finally publishing a book is wonderful. But the realisation that all that hard work, all the blood, sweat and tears that it took, all the back and forth, all of the begging for beta readers, all the doubt and belief and doubt again, the realisation that all of it simply rewinds to deposit you back at the beginning again can be hard.

Some people only want to write one book, only have one book in them. If that’s you and you’re okay with it, great. For the rest us who don’t want to be one-book wonders, we’re confronted with an entirely different set of problems from when we began writing our first books. So here are a few things to consider to help get you back on track to another Project October, Project November and Project December.

It probably won’t be the same process

How could it be when you’ve learned so much from writing the first book? My first novel took nearly four years to write and my second novel only took six months. And my third novel has so far taken more than four years and remains unfinished, although agonisingly close to completion.

Even if the basic writing process is the same, you won’t be the same person. Your life will be different from one book to the next. Your responsibilities will be different. Something will be different. So it’s important not to judge yourself based on a comparison of accomplishments, of attaining the numerous small goals that add up to a whole book. Each book will be its own adventure.

It doesn’t have to be a sequel

I wrote about this in Project December but within a week of publishing my debut novel, Enemies Closer, people had read it and contacted me to ask when the sequel would be coming out. It had taken eight years from conception to publication so it was going to take a little longer than one week for another. And now four years after it was published, the sequel to Enemies Closer remains unfinished. I’ve written four other books instead.

Because I didn’t and still don’t know what the story of the sequel is. I had set up a group of characters and given some of them mysterious pasts that would be well worth exploring but even I couldn’t figure out what the details of those mysterious pasts were and how they could fit into another action adventure story.

There’s nothing less inspiring than trying to write something for which the inspiration refuses to come. And your readers will feel much the same reading it as you felt writing it if the passion isn’t there.

It doesn’t have to be the same genre

When I wrote Enemies Closer, I didn’t specifically want to be an action adventure writer. What I wanted was to prove that women could be more than kidnapping targets and bikini-clad bimbos in that very male-dominated genre. And when it came time to write my next novel, I didn’t specifically want to be a literary crime author. It was just that the story I wanted to write pushed me in that direction. And when a friend suggested I should write for a young adult audience to take advantage of the appetite in that market, I thought why not?

There are plenty of writers who write the same genre and the same universe and the same character in book after book and there are plenty of readers who are glad of it. But I tend to get bored. I like switching things up every now and then and it usually coincides with the end of one book and the start of another. (Thank goodness; I’d be screwed if it happened before I finished writing the book.)

If you’re determined to explore a different genre, particularly if it’s one that the readership you’ve built up from your previous book won’t necessarily appreciate, then make sure you do it well. It might not be their cup of tea but at least they’ll be able to appreciate it objectively.

It doesn’t even have to be a novel

Despite writing and trying to write four other novels (with varying levels of success) since I published my first book, my second published work ended up being not fiction but non-fiction. Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans. And my second book was what happened while I was busy writing a blog and various other novels.

Memoirs are big business these days. Essays do a reasonable trade, too, if your topics, your perspective and your writing style are interesting enough. And, of course, people are always shelling out for how-to guides, even if the only reason they’re wealthy is because of the number of how-to guides they’ve been able to sell. Project December, the second book I referred to above, was obviously one of those how-to guides on writing, editing and publishing.

Don’t feel obligated. Write whatever you want. And be prepared to go wherever it leads you.

Avoid the Bruce Willis problem

John McClane (played by Bruce Willis): How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?

Die Hard 2

If you want people to read and enjoy your second book, it can’t (or, more accurately, it shouldn’t) be the same shit happening to the same guy twice. Bruce Willis can get away with it because he’s Bruce Willis and because he self-deprecatingly acknowledges that he is living the Bruce Willis problem. But for the rest of us, if we want to read a story in which the same shit happens to the same guy twice, we can just read the first book again.

Any attempt to simply recreate the first book, regardless of how many small details differ, will likely suffer because you’ll be bored writing it and readers will comment that it seems awfully and boringly familiar.

Avoid the Hugh Howey problem

In the same vein, you shouldn’t simply write your second book in order to be different from your first. After the success of Wool, Shift and Dust, Hugh Howey did a very large U-turn and wrote The Shell Collector, which I can only describe as dystopian environmental science fiction romance. (Perhaps he was experiencing a problem I’ve heard publishers speak of – writers forced into publishing a book that isn’t good or isn’t ready simply to meet deadlines. Most of us aren’t unlucky enough – or lucky enough, depending on your perspective – to have this problem.) I don’t know whether he did it deliberately to distance himself from his previous works but it was a strange choice. Not because it was so different from his successful trilogy but because it was different and it was not good.

∞

The second time around – regardless of what it is you are attempting to do – is universally acknowledged to be difficult. The second book, the second album, the second movie, the second year playing football. It’s often because the first effort has been so well received and the pressure of expectations can impact us detrimentally. But if you can remember that you write for yourself first and foremost and not get pressured into doing anything before you are good and ready to (as well as keeping all the above points in mind), then you’ll be well on your way to avoiding the second-book blues.

The importance of writing

Anyone who knows me personally knows that my political leanings are left of centre. Not extremely left but left enough for my father to express his disapproval when I tweeted congratulations to a famous Australian gay couple who had flown to New Zealand to get married after that country’s marriage equality laws were passed. (Before I continue, please be assured that this chapter is about writing and not politics.)

So when Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election and I couldn’t take watching the coverage anymore (which took less than two days), I picked my jaw up off the floor and did what all left-leaning writing fans would do: I put Disc One of Season One of The West Wing in my DVD player and began binge watching it again (for about the hundredth time). As well as being able to pretend I was living in an alternative reality, I could yet again immerse myself in and appreciate what is essentially a master class in writing.

As I write this, I’m up to Season Three in which Democratic President Bartlet has announced his intention to run for a second term and the Republicans are on the verge of nominating Governor Robert Ritchie to run against him. When Governor Ritchie attacks affirmative action, President Bartlet has the opportunity to respond but chooses not to, prompting this exchange with Communications Director Toby Ziegler.

Toby Ziegler: I was a telemarketer for about a week. I can’t remember what we were selling but you worked off a script. Hi. Good evening. My name is… And Toby Ziegler was okay for New York but once I got into other time zones I needed a name that wasn’t gonna bother anybody.

President Josiah Bartlet: Toby, if you have something to say, please say it.

Toby Ziegler: Ritchie’s good for all time zones.

President Josiah Bartlet: My family signed the Declaration of Independence. You think I’ve got an ethnicity problem?

Toby Ziegler: The line isn’t between light skin and dark skin.

President Josiah Bartlet: Yeah?

Toby Ziegler: It’s between educated and masculine. Or eastern academic elite and plain spoken.

President Josiah Bartlet: It’s always been like that.

Toby Ziegler: Yeah but a funny thing happened when the White House got demystified. The impression was left that anybody could do it.

President Josiah Bartlet: You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.

Toby Ziegler: It’s one thing that Ritchie came out for the Pennsylvania referendum today but the manner in which he articulated it… His presence… The clear sign he wasn’t personally engaged with the facts…

President Josiah Bartlet: Toby—

Toby Ziegler: His staff was cringing, I promise you. And we let it go.

The Two Bartlets, Episode 13, Season Three of The West Wing

This episode aired in January 2002 meaning it was written in 2001. And even though it all happened fifteen years ago, it struck me how relevant it was to what has happened. How now President Donald Trump could easily be substituted for the fictional Governor Robert Ritchie. How Aaron Sorkin and his writing team had anticipated the situation the US and the world now finds itself in. A battle between feminine and masculine, between smart and ignorant, between the elite and the common man (although anyone who thinks Donald Trump is part of the 99% instead of the 1% should really think again).

And I had a realisation, one that I really should have had long before now, about the importance of writing. Why, I hear you asking, has it taken me so long? Why would someone who has spent the last twenty-five years writing doubt the importance of the very thing they do day in, day out?

It says more about me than I would like – because I don’t doubt the importance of writing, just the importance of my writing. I’m not a philosopher or an influencer or one of the great minds of the twenty-first century. I write action adventure, young adult and crime fiction as well as non-fiction about writing and editing and the occasional article about employment. I suspect I will outlive by a long period of time the importance of anything I end up writing during my lifetime.

When I finished my master’s degree in writing with a high distinction average, I had the option of continuing my studies by undertaking a PhD. At least one of my classmates did. I chose not to because I didn’t think writing was something that PhDs should be awarded for. Chemistry, biology, medicine, physics, psychology, yes but writing, no.

In 2016, my little sister finished and submitted her PhD on psychological insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetes sufferers to become the first person in our family ever to be eligible to use the title Dr. That could have been me. Any thesis I could have written wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive and useful as hers is but I could have done it if I’d had the confidence, if I’d had the belief in the importance of what I was doing. But I didn’t.

Writing doesn’t have to be important but it can be. I know that now. What I do could be important. What I write could be important. What you write could be important and I suspect you’re more likely to write something important than I ever am. (What can I say? Old habits die hard.) Why is it important? Because writing is the way we explode the bomb to explore the consequences without anyone having to die and without having to destroy anything and without having to pay for it (both in economic and historic terms).

Regardless of what it is we do, whether it’s writing or something else, it could be important. We have to be able to recognise that within ourselves, within whatever it is we are doing. Perhaps most importantly of all because if we weren’t doing these things, if I wasn’t writing, it would feel like something was missing.

I’ll give the last word to Kalinda Vazquez and Jane Espenson, who wrote the following dialogue about the character of the Author who writes the fairytales the television show Once Upon a Time is based on and became trapped in his own book. They say it much more succinctly and beautifully than I have:

August Booth: There have been many authors throughout time. It’s a job, not a person, and the one trapped in here was just the last tasked with the great responsibility. To record, to witness the greatest stories of all time and record them for posterity. The job has gone back eons: from the man who watched shadows dance across cave walls and developed an entire philosophy, to playwrights who tell tales of poetry, to a man named Walt. Many have had this sacred job. Great women and men who took on the responsibility with the gravity that it deserved.

Best Laid Plans, Episode 17, Season Four of Once Upon a Time

The five types of writing

These days it’s on everybody’s bucket list – to write a book. But regardless of whether that bucket list item is a novel, non-fiction or memoir, the world needs more than just book writers. Content is a vast industry in itself and despite the resistance to paying for it, it is continuing to grow.

There are actually five different types of writing, all requiring vastly different skill sets. So if your heart is set on it, it’s worth considering where your talents and your best chance of getting read lie.

Corporate/professional

If you want to be a writer and you want to make the big money, corporate and professional writing is where it will most likely happen (if you’re any good, of course). Corporates have the ability to pay and often the willingness if that writing helps them achieve their business goals, which tend to fall into the following categories:

Establishing them in their field (marketing)

Establishing them as experts in their field (thought leadership, sometimes also known as research and development)

Contributing to the bottom line (business)

While corporates might know everything there is to know about running a business, including marketing and thought leadership, they generally don’t have great writing skills so conveying that knowledge is where they need help. Writing is one of those things that everyone thinks – erroneously – that they can do because they passed high school English. Disabusing them of that notion is difficult in a corporate setting because of the number and size of the egos that will be encountered.

Business people tend to use business-speak (which drives everybody crazy, especially since it’s often indecipherable gibberish) and quite a lot of the time they won’t know or be willing to acknowledge that they need help. So it takes a very particular type of person to be able to work in this environment and steer the writing in the direction of quality and sense. But if you can hack it and you’re willing to write about things that you wouldn’t give two hoots about if you weren’t being paid, then there is a lot of demand.

Academic

Generally, you need to be an academic with funding in order to undertake research and then indulge in academic writing to reveal the results so you can’t simply decide one day that you want to give it a go and expect to be doing it quickly. But if you have an area of special interest and you want to contribute to the expansion of knowledge on the subject, then academia might be the best direction for you to head in. Universities provide the structure, support, independence and money necessary to enable this kind of discovery. Corporates sometimes provide the support and money but they usually have agendas so independence can be more questionable.

According to Google Scholar, my little sister is the co-author of seventy-four academic papers in addition to the 100,000-word PhD thesis she submitted in 2016. That’s a lot of writing. And it’s a lot of writing about important things. There isn’t much money in academic writing in itself but you’ll get to do a lot of it and as long as you are able to support your discoveries with well-designed and well-executed research, it can set you up as a sought after expert, which in turn leads to more research, more results and more writing. It’s a self-fulfilling writing career.

Journalistic

Once upon a time, journalism was an honourable profession. In more recent times, it has become a game of speed and celebrity involvement instead of accuracy and historical importance. It has also become a profession completely lacking in job security. But for some people who want to write for a living, it’s something they’ve dreamed of since they learned how to write and despite everything, they can’t imagine heading in any other career direction.

Journalism requires an inquisitive nature, an aptitude for forming and retaining a lot of contacts, the ability to remain impartial about issues that divide people and countries, and then there’s also that all-important ability to write. It requires a lot more than that but if you want to know it all, there are university courses for that.

Journalists write news (a strict reporting of what is happening) and feature articles (still strict reporting but with an emotional undercurrent as a means of steering the news) and undertake longer investigations (to reveal the news that isn’t obvious and that politicians and churches and large conglomerates would prefer remained unknown) if whoever they work for supports that kind of in-depth journalism but they don’t write opinion pieces. If you want to write opinion pieces, then you become a commentator and insert yourself into the story. It sometimes looks like journalism but it isn’t.

You might end up writing filler pieces like A week’s worth of healthy dinner recipes, Where do you go when you die? or Australia’s most awesome office and you might end up becoming the story yourself (because life happens to journalists, too) but if you keep writing, you never know where it will get you in the long run. Maybe it will be in a position to help return journalism to its ethical, honourable place. Or perhaps you’ll have to settle for a satisfying writing career.

Technical

Anyone who has ever received flat pack furniture from China will know that there is a genuine art to technical writing, especially if the flat pack is ever to become anything more than flat. It requires logic, it requires accuracy, it requires the ability to write a process from beginning to end without missing a step lest the completed flat pack furniture from China end up looking less like furniture and more like abstract art.

Procedural writing also falls under the technical category. As well as being