CHRISTINA HOPKINSON

Hello,


Another guest blog and I'm really very excited about this one. For those of you who don't know Christina Hopkinson (where have you been living?)she is the author of the bestselling novel, The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs. Her second novel, Just Like Proper Grown-ups, also just came out in paperback. So if you have an ounce of sense, you'll finish reading this blog and then get both books right away. I read The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs a while ago and I absolutely loved it. It's smart, hilarious, thought-provoking and a real page-turner. As well as writing two wonderful and bestselling novels, she has also written for The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Sunday Times to name a few. And now she is writing for me! I am honoured and proud to introduce Christina Hopkinson.

The lovely Christina Hopkinson

I always find it very self-regarding when those working in advertising refer to themselves as ‘creatives’ (a bit like those on TV who call themselves ‘the talent’). I’m loathe to describe what I do as a creative process. The way I go about my work seems to be far away from any fanciful ideas of muses, inspiration and flurries of frenzied activity. 

My first rule of work is to try to avoid the Internet. Whole days, weeks, can be swallowed up in the rabbit hole of property websites and others even more shameful to mention (does anyone come out well on examination of their browser history? To waste time shilly-shallying around the more trivial depths of the net fills me with both self-loathing and a more general depression. If I can’t avoid the temptations of the web to write a book, then what makes me think that readers should do the same to read one? 

There is are various versions of ‘internet blocking productivity software’ to download to close off access to the Internet but I find a visit to the British Library (luckily only ten minutes’ bike ride away) acts as one giant Freedom program. The wi-fi there is like a patient in intensive care, flickering in and out of consciousness with the overall prognosis as fatal. I can check email on my phone, but I can’t lose myself in hours of non-productive searching for a hypothetical Suffolk cottage to buy with my hypothetical millions. 

Routine is another great aid to creativity. See, could there be a more dull and uncreative word than routine? (The answer is yes, by the way, and I’ll probably be using quite a few of them in this blog, glamorous words like organisation, application, discipline). Again external factors aid me in this in that I have three children, eight and under, who go to school between the hours of 8.55am and 3.15pm. It means if have a very defined working day and one which is ideally tailored to writing. Others may be able to produce great words for 12 hours a day, but my creativity, such as I have it, is spent after three or four. The thinking and the percolating and the marinading of ideas can go on all through the day and night, while I’m stacking the dishwasher or playing cards with my children, but the actual writing needs far fewer hours. 

There are other ways in which I’m more like a production-line worker than a romantic artist. I set myself a word count of anywhere between 1,000 or 2,000 words a day. OK, more like 1,000. Much of these thousand words may turn out to be unusable, a fact that I’m conscious of as I type them. But without words written, there are no words to eschew and I’m convinced that even a few terrible pages are better than none. 

I have a friend, Wendy Jones, who writes great bundles of words and pages, which she carries physically and mentally in a chaotic yet intelligent way and occasionally throws up in the air and re-stitches, never knowing quite where the book is taking her. I’m much more like a project manager, in that I plan meticulously. I know when I start the book where, more or less, it’s going to end, even if I take some scenic diversions along the way. I know roughly how many words I’m going to write to get to each plot point and how it’s going to arc. I do diagrams, a bit like a child’s number line, in which arrows, numbers and word counts pile up and which I cling to in the dark days between 30,000 and 70,000 words. 

If these scribbled diagrams fail to give me succour, then I have other talismanic documents to turn to - the character descriptions, the point-by-point plot summary, the overview. I also try to have a, horrible phrase this, ‘mission statement’ to go back to. It’s very easy to get depressed when you work alone and to keep asking yourself, what’s the point? My one line about the question I’m aiming to answer in the novel staves off any overwhelming feelings of pointlessness (about the book at least...). 

The sports journalist Matthew Syed is very good on the tricks and tics of tennis players, the way they bounce the ball the same number of times before serving or use the towel when not sweating, saying that ‘Wimbledon is less a tennis competition than a giant OCD convention’. I’m not an athlete or a champion, but I think that any career/job/vocation/hobby that requires a large amount of self-discipline and motivation probably also thrives on habits that trick the mind into believing that it’s worth continuing. 

Whether it’s moleskin notebooks, a favourite cafe or a complicated way with post-its, sometimes it’s the ways into prompting creativity that are our most creative production of all.

Her second novel Just Like Proper Grown-ups out now in Paperback
Click HERE to see in Amazon store

Her brilliant debut novel The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs
Click HERE to see in Amazon store


To find out more about Christina Hopkinson please visit her website at http://www.christinahopkinson.com/

ON COMEDY

Hello,


Apart from being a writer of comedy, I'm also an avid comedy fan. I love comedy. It's basically the only thing I watch on television. I also love to watch and read what other comedians say about writing comedy. It fascinates me. It's what I've always wanted to do and probably the only thing I'll ever want to do.

I watched a Ricky Gervais interview recently and he was talking about writing comedy. If you know me, you'll know I'm a huge Gervais fan. The Office is probably my favourite television show of all time and I'm currently watching Derek, which is just wonderful. What I love about his work is the characters. And it got me thinking about my own work and how I see writing comedy and so here I am, writing a blog about it. For you.

I think the most important thing to remember when writing comedy, whether it's a novel or a screenplay, is that you aren't writing jokes. When I was writing This Thirtysomething Life, I knew it was going to be a humourous look at one man's bumbling journey on the road to adulthood, but I didn't go into it thinking, this is going to be bloody hilarious. I just wrote a book about a man who, try as he might, couldn't quite grow up until finally he becomes a father and he feels for the first time like a proper adult. It became funny as I wrote it, but only because of the characters and the situations they found themselves in.

When I'm writing my books, I never think of the audience. The thing I probably admire most about Ricky Gervais is his attitude. In the documentary, he said that he doesn't care if people like his work or not. He isn't bothered by negative reviews because the only thing he wants to do is make work that he's proud of. If people like it, great, if they don't, that isn't his problem. I think this is definitely something that most writers can identify with. We all get bad reviews and meet some literally horrendous people online who just seem to want to destroy us for some reason. It can hurt, but it shouldn't. I don't write for good reviews or to be liked, I write what I want to write for me.

It needs to have pathos. All the best comedy whether it's on television or in books has pathos. The characters need to go through something, they have to suffer and then hopefully come out of it all the better. Going back to my earlier point, you can't just tell jokes. It has to have real depth and it has to say something. In my novel, Harry, is struggling to come to terms with becoming a father. This is a very real fear that I think a lot of men go through.

I'm so proud of This Thirtysomething Life and I think it's hilarious and heart-warming and a really sweet story about love, marriage and growing up. I get a lot of wonderful reviews, but also a lot of bad ones too. Only the other day I got a review that said, 'Boring, sorry, example text.."In the kitchen. Eating toast." seriously?' This made me laugh so much. One of the things I love about the book is that it's so mundane. I left in all the details about his life that other writers may have taken out. I love that Harry describes in great detail the food he eats, the cocktails he drinks, the constant weather updates. These are important to him and are a part of what makes the story unique and I think funny. This reviewer obviously didn't get it and it's fine. I didn't write it for them.

Lastly, as I'm going on a bit, what makes good comedy? It's the question that comes up again and again. What makes people laugh? Well, as I've discovered, it's a pretty pointless thing to even contemplate. We all laugh at different things. Some people love Monty Python, including me, and think their work was ground-breaking and avant-garde, while others just don't get it. Some people love The Office, while some people think it's boring and dull. Comedy, like love, is very much in the eye of the beholder. I write what I think is funny and I hope there are enough people in the world who agree with me. It's literally that simple and that difficult. The only important thing is doing something you're really proud of and after that, it's really out of your hands.




So it's goodnight from me and it's goodnight from him,



Hugs,

Jon X


Ps.Here is the Ricky Gervais interview

STUART AYRIS

Hello,

Another guest blog and this time it's author Stuart Ayris. I met Stuart online and we've kept in touch and helped each other with various things. I think of everyone I've met through my writing, Stuart is the most genuine and humble. He's written a series of novels and one of them, 'Tollesbury Time Forever', was the 2012 winner of the IBB Best Overall Book Award and Best Psychological Fiction Award. So without further ado, here is the wonderful Stuart Ayris talking about his writing and what inspires him.

 

Stuart Ayris

How I write and what inspires me

I guess it’s best to start with what inspires me because without that I wouldn’t write anything. Saying that, inspiration is a big old word which implies some sort of grand achievement, some monumental work of art. I just put one word after the other, often words that I make up, wake up the next morning and invariably smile at what I have written – having forgotten usually that I had written anything at all.

My writing starts I think from the middle of my mind and often when I am well away from any means of writing it down. Then when I get home I’ll turn that sentence into a paragraph perhaps and just keep going for as long as things feel right. I am of the firm belief that writing is a natural process that requires as little interference from the conscious mind as possible. If you force it, it will appear strained. If you think too much it won’t come at all. I try and write about five hundred words a day. Sometimes I’ll manage ten, other times a thousand. And I can go a week or so without writing a single word before plunging into a three thousand word all night session.

In terms of the practicalities of writing, I have two able assistants who are, in my opinion, much maligned – cheap wine and insomnia. I must confess to not having had a sober word pass through me and onto the page in the last five years. I like the quietness of the Tollesbury night and the letting go that occurs as the wine flows. Thinking is magical and writing is magical. There is nothing more magical though than a Tollesbury black sky white star night and nothing more beautiful to me than the process of bringing to the surface something that has been created deep on down in the big soul universe.

I don’t believe I ever have or ever will write anything unique – all I have managed to do is to find a process that enables me to recall to the front of my mind something that has already come into being. I just write it down is all.

With regard to the structure of my books, I always write the final line, then the first paragraph. I then just fill in the part in-between. I have no idea where it is going until I’m about halfway in and then I work my way towards that last line. The only editing I do is to go through a couple of times to make sure different scenes and characters link together. I do a basic spell check but Microsoft Word tends to confuse my made up words for words that aren’t real. So if you don’t mind, I shall end this little post with a copy of an email I received from KDP Amazon:

Hello from Amazon KDP!

The book “The Bird That Nobody Sees” you recently submitted to KDP has possible spelling errors in your converted file. Consider correcting these and resubmitting.

Note: If you need to fix any of these potential typos, please do so in your digital manuscript and then upload the corrected file. We also recommend running spell-check if you have not done so. Learn more.

Here are the errors we recommend you address by correcting your manuscript:

......Fuckle

......blang

......chinkety

......darknight imagebright

......doomphed

......hootly dootly

......dossy

......morphined up

......rambledown

......stiggering

......thoughtdreams

......toppermost

......wowest

You have chosen to ignore these possible errors.

Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing

Cheers!!!

Stu

TWENTYSOMETHING, HAPPY ENDINGS AND SERBIA

Hello,


It's been a busy old week. This Twentysomething Life was released on Thursday. A big thank you to everyone who downloaded it. I hope you enjoyed it. I've had some lovely reviews and comments on Facebook and Twitter. It really makes my day so thank you.

In other news, I got the first look at the cover for my next novel, Happy Endings. I can't share it yet, but it looks fantastic. I can't wait for it to be released. I do, of course, have to finish it first. It's almost done. It's looking really good though and I'm super happy with it. My editor and agent have done wonders, making it a million times better than my original first draft.

I have some wonderfully exciting news! I sold rights to This Thirtysomething Life to Serbia! This means it will be translated into Serbian and they will design a beautiful new Serbian cover. I can't wait to see the book. When you start writing, you never imagine you'll see your book in another language...especially Serbian!

Lastly, I'm due to get the first paperback copies of This Thirtysomething Life in the mail this week. I can't begin to explain how excited I am to see my book in all its new book loveliness. I'm already planning on taking it to my local bookshop and popping it on the shelf, just to see how it looks. Don't judge me.

Until next time,

Hugs,

Jon X

THIS TWENTYSOMETHING LIFE

I promised you a surprise and here it is. This Twentysomething Life (A sort-of prequel to 'This Thirtysomething Life')! 

This is a short (ish) story I wrote after talking to my editor at Hodder. We agreed it would be really fun to write something about Harry and Emily before This Thirtysomething Life. I knocked around a few ideas, but this one seemed like the most obvious and the most exciting. We meet Harry and Emily two weeks before their wedding and, of course, it's full of typical Harry moments, more Granddad, the stag do and lots of other heartwarming and hilarious moments all leading up to the big day. And the best thing is that it's completely FREE!

From THURSDAY MARCH 7TH you can download this for nothing from Amazon.co.uk. It's my present to all the wonderful, lovely and beautiful people who bought and loved This Thirtysomething Life. I really enjoyed writing this little one-off special and I hope you enjoy reading it too.  

Before I hand you over to the official blurb, I must thank my editor Harriet and my agent Ariella for helping me with this and making another little dream of mine a reality. Also, a big cheers to the designer, who did such a sterling job with the cover with very little time. Okay, here it is, the blurb.






A brilliantly funny, heartwarming short story: essential reading for all fans of This Thirtysomething Life and the perfect introduction to Harry and Emily for newcomers.

Before Harry and Emily were thirtysomethings on the cusp of parenthood, they were twentysomethings on the brink of marriage. Set during the build up to their wedding, this is the story of why Harry started a diary and how – in typical Harry fashion – he almost didn’t make it down the aisle.

Just as hilarious and heartwarming as This Thirtysomething Life, this short story is told with unflinching honesty and laugh-out-loud accuracy and gives an insight into just-about-to-be-married madness in all its messy, human, uplifting, feel-good glory. Though you may never look at your father-in-law in quite the same way again . . . 

I hope you all love this.

Hugs,

Jon X