Simon Paul Woodward

Horror author

writing

Blog #3Support Derby County Football Club and as a result befriend a talented Film Director who will one day make a trailer for your book.

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“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one”

– Brian Clough

 

Stay with me on this one. I’m not being entirely flippant. One of my formative writing experiences was the editing, and collaborative writing, of a football fanzine. At the time, I’d moved to London with no clear idea of what I was going to do other than becoming an award-winning screenwriter (more on that in an upcoming post), make piles of cash and marry Uma Thurman. Okay, a clear delusion rather than a clear idea.

Instead I found myself experiencing a wide range of – often weird – temporary jobs and editing the short lived and much missed (by me) fanzine The Mutton Mutineer  with home city collaborators Stuart Horn and Phil Evans.  This was back in the days when Robert Maxwell owned the club and our outspoken criticism of his cack-handed regime led to us being banned from selling the Mutineer anywhere near the ground and precipitated the eventual collapse of the Maxwell empire (well, the first part is true).

I was introduced to the joys of fanzine writing, and more importantly the possibility of fanzine writing, by a young Mancunian by the name of Stan Griffin one of the collaborators on a Manchester United fanzine called The Shankill Skinhead (named for Norman Whiteside), which was a much more professional and long lived creation than the Mutineer.

While the Mutineer indulged in anarchic Maxwell baiting and cartoons made with chopped up newspaper photos of Nottingham Forest players, the Shankell Skinhead did journalism: with quotes and everything.

In retrospect, the quality of the Mutineer didn’t really matter, it was fun, well received by other fans, and most importantly opened my eyes to possibility of just creating something that other people might read and enjoy.

It was also the start of a great friendship and endless hours in pubs discussing books, films, screenplays and, of course, football.

When I launched my kids horror novel, ALL THE DEAD THINGS, Stan pulled together a crack team of collaborators (actors, cameraman, editor, composer, costume etc …)
and made an outstanding trailer. You can watch it here.

Of course, the flip side of following any football/cricket/rugby (delete as appropriate) club is that if you are an addictive personality type you can find your creativity crimped (or overwhelmed) by the ups and downs (predominantly downs in my case) of following your club. Supporting a  team is like popping pills that act directly on the ‘hope’ receptors in your brain.

You keep hoping, this time it’ll be different, this time they won’t screw it up! What?! They’ve screwed it up! Blame the owners! Let’s start a fanzine!

And why you should ignore this golden rule: supporting Derby County is not good for your emotional equilibrium.

NEXT TIME: #4 Don’t use criticism as a razor

Blog #2 Don’t be too English

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“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one”.

George Mikes

 

 

Now, I’m almost preaching to myself. I’m English and I’ve been unable to avoid absorbing many of the traits that Americans, Southern Europeans, Australians, Germans … well, pretty much everybody else … finds amusing and bemusing about about us.

Examples:

  • If there’s a requirement to queue, I’ll do so in an orderly manner for as long as required and then thank you for the privilege.
  • I once had a fight at school and apologised for getting the other boys uniform dirty.
  • If you come barging past me at a gig, I’ll step aside and apologise for callously assaulting your elbow with my rib cage.
  • If I arrive at a revolving door at the same time as somebody else, I’ll invite them to proceed before me.

The last example does conjure up the image of two Englishman arriving at a revolving door at the same time and becoming locked into a politeness-feedback-loop, both endlessly inviting the other to proceed, mirror images, neither able to break protocol, slowly growing old, frail and succumbing to the reaper as an endless procession of people swirl past the sad piles of bones and moth-eaten clothes.

Which brings me (politely) onto the subject of being pushy. As we discovered in the previous post, with 2.4 million Facebook posts per minute, the web is no place for shrinking violets (or the shy of any other hue).

If you want author alter ego to have any visibility, you must be prepared to talk about your book and, more importantly, you have to market it. If you’re proud of what you’ve written, it’s been well edited and has a compelling cover, then why should you be shy about inviting people to read it? That’s why you spent all those hours bent over a laptop.

This doesn’t mean you need to create social media presence that is the digital equivalent of the market trader standing on a bucket yelling out ‘Pound for the lot!!’ while holding up a huge bowl of tomatoes. It means you have to be targeted and work to find readers who will enjoy your work and with whom you can build up a long term relationship. It means you have to build relationships where you are offering real value, extra content, worthwhile freebies and recommendations for other authors’ books.

It means you have to find a way to avoid being the skeleton in the revolving door.

 

And you should ignore this golden rule: all rules in moderation. If you try to move too far away from your personality you’ll come across as fake. Readers will see through the mask and that’s alienating

NEXT: Support Derby County Football Club and as a result befriend a Talented Film Director who’ll make a wonderful promo for your book.

 

Added bonus: I recommend you read this article by the late, great Douglas Adams (creator of the uber English Arthur Dent) for an insight into the peculiarity of Englishness.

Blog #1 Don’t read this Post

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Golden Rule #1. Don’t Read this Post

“People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they are taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”
– Idries Shah – Reflections

Every single day, the web floods with  2.4 million Facebook posts per minute. With the optimal Post word count being (a disputed) 89 words, that gives us 213,600,000 words per minute, or a number of words per day so large my iPhone calculator has to render it in a formula I struggle to understand until I spin it to landscape and the calculator assumes its more brainy incarnation.

If only 0.5% of these posts relate to the craft of writing, that gives us (me and you, fellow writer) 3,075,840,000 words a day to read.

Even using the speed reading techniques reported by Tim Adams in The Observer last weekend, that’d rule out any chance I have of keeping up to date with Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, The Football League Show and Homeland, my dogs would leave due to a lack of walks and ear rubs (reporting me to the Retired Greyhound Trust) and bang goes any chance of writing my next novel.

It’s impossible for a writer to sift through such an unprecedented landslide of information. Where to start? With the helpful structural tips, the psychological insights and solid practical marketing advice? Or with the spurious opinion, SEO witchcraft and shameless plagiarism?

And if you can’t sift through everything, how do you know you’re getting to the good stuff, the stuff that will allow to write more compelling books and sell more of them?

How indeed?

The answer isn’t simple and evaded me in early days when I was planning to publish ALL THE DEAD THINGS on Amazon. I watched in paralysed horror as my Inbox and social media streams became sclerotic with words and I spent increasing amounts of time thinking about doing things (a new marketing idea! I must act on it! … as soon as I’ve acted on the earlier three hundred, I’ll be all over this like marzipan on a Christmas cake) but not actually doing them.

The answer for me turned out to brutal filtering. When I found a blogger (I use this in the widest sense to include those who use Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter as a ‘blog’) who imparted solid, valuable and actionable information, regularly, I remained subscribed. Those that didn’t meet these criteria I axed. My total number of subscriptions declined rapidly. No more wading through endless e-mails looking for a gem of a marketing idea. I found a group of bloggers who I thought I could learn from and stuck with them.

Reducing the flow meant I started to read more the chosen few properly, to explore their suggested links, to actually experiment with some of their ideas and tactics.

They’ve not made me into a best selling author overnight, but they allowed me to refocus on developing the craft of writing, and the science of indie publishing. Because of their solid ideas I actually feel like I might be able to find a way for my posts to be read among those 3,075,840,000 words.

These are my go to recommendations for indie authors (and thriller fans). They all offer useful free training videos as a sample of their offering:

Nick Stephenson: Author of the Leopold Blake thriller and guru of Your First 10K Readers.

Joanna Penn: Thriller writer (writing as J.F. Penn) and scribe behind The Creative Penn.

Mark Dawson: Author of the John Milton thrillers and high lord of the Facebook ad.

And why you should ignore golden rule #1: if you didn’t read this post, you wouldn’t know you shouldn’t read it.

Next time: Golden Rule #2 Don’t Be Too English.

 

Blog #0.5 – 99.5 Golden Rules for Writers (& why you should ignore them all) – Introduction

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“All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary—it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.”
– Somerset Maugham

It’s tough being a writer. Whether you’re just starting out, are a successful published author with a deadline arrowing towards you, or a scribe somewhere on the spectrum in between trying to convert rejections into offers.

There’s a landslide of good advice and thousands of writing and marketing gurus of variable quality on the web, all promising to help you overcome the trials and tribulations of this occasional pastime/hobby/profession/addiction/nightmare (delete as appropriate).

This blog – 99.5 Golden Rules for Writers (and why you should ignore them all) – is my unsolicited contribution to this logjam of opinion.

I’m sorry. You really don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. But if you do, I can promise it’ll be part writing guide, part autobiography (some of which may even be true) and self-therapy for my own writing addiction.

I’m not going to show you how to write a novel, or reveal a secret that will make you a sqiillionaire; I’ll leave that to more talented blogganauts. This is my five year mission to boldly stare where no one has stared before … deep into the uncharted space of my navel.

Writers may find the odd useful nugget hidden away amidst my wittering (or at least nod in recognition when they recognise their own trials). Non-writers may learn to pity us poor scribes a little more and count their blessings that they haven’t been afflicted by the need to pen a novel, play, poem or screenplay. They get to enjoy the sunshine and then gorge themselves on box sets without feeling incredibly guilty that they are WATCHING and not WRITING.

This blog will be popping up on my website, Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads each Friday so there really is no escaping it should you choose to engage.

I’ll be back next week with Golden Rule #1: Don’t Read this Post.

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”
– Sidney Sheldon

99.5 Golden Rules for Writers (& Why You Should Ignore Them All) – Introduction

by

“All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary—it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.”
– Somerset Maugham

It’s tough being a writer. Whether you’re just starting out, are a successful published author with a deadline arrowing towards you, or a scribe somewhere on the spectrum in between trying to convert rejections into offers.

There’s a landslide of good advice and thousands of writing and marketing gurus of variable quality on the web, all promising to help you overcome the trials and tribulations of this occasional pastime/hobby/profession/addiction/nightmare (delete as appropriate).

This blog – 99.5 Golden Rules for Writers (and why you should ignore them all) – is my unsolicited contribution to this logjam of opinion.

I’m sorry. You really don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. But if you do, I can promise it’ll be part writing guide, part autobiography (some of which may even be true) and self-therapy for my own writing addiction.

I’m not going to show you how to write a novel, or reveal a secret that will make you a sqiillionaire; I’ll leave that to more talented blogganauts. This is my five year mission to boldly stare where no one has stared before … deep into the uncharted space of my navel.

Writers may find the odd useful nugget hidden away amidst my wittering (or at least nod in recognition when they recognise their own trials). Non-writers may learn to pity us poor scribes a little more and count their blessings that they haven’t been afflicted by the need to pen a novel, play, poem or screenplay. They get to enjoy the sunshine and then gorge themselves on box sets without feeling incredibly guilty that they are WATCHING and not WRITING.

This blog will be popping up on my website, Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads each Friday so there really is no escaping it should you choose to engage.

I’ll be back next week with Golden Rule #1: Don’t Read this Post.

“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.”
– Sidney Sheldon