As any writer who does events in schools will tell you, one of the most common questions we get asked is “Where do your ideas come from?”. There are as many answers to that question as there are writers in the world, but I thought I’d share the story of where my most recent idea came from. I can’t tell you the idea itself yet, because I plan writing this one some day. What I can tell you is that just the very thought of it made me laugh out loud, which is a good sign, I reckon.

Anyway, how it came about…

I was walking the dog. What, didn’t I mention? We have a dog now. Long story. I was walking her along a woodland path in the middle of nowhere. In terms of finding ideas, this is always a good place to start. Sitting at a desk forcing ideas to come can be a difficult, fruitless exercise, so if you’re looking for inspiration I suggest you get outside, or visit somewhere you don’t normally go. Museums and art galleries can be great places to find ideas. Often they’re hiding behind the exhibits, or camouflaged against the paintings, but they’re there if you look hard enough.

But back to my idea. There I was, strolling along the path, the dog running on ahead somewhere. I wasn’t actively looking for an idea. I wasn’t really do anything except walking. But then I saw it – a large shape swooping above me. I ducked instinctively. I made a noise a bit like “Woooawargh!” which I’m grateful no-one else was around to hear. I looked up and realised that what had startled me was just a canopy of leaves moving in the breeze.

I was still ducked down low when I felt the idea creep in. It came slowly at first, as if tentatively feeling its way into my head. If you’ve read any of my INVISIBLE FIENDS books you might remember the tingling Kyle feels at the base of his skull and across his scalp when he uses his abilities. I based that feeling on how I feel when a new idea comes to me. It’s a physical feeling, an electric buzzing through my brain that I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to.

That’s what happened yesterday. Once the tingling started it quickly grew, bringing the idea in with it. “Wow!” I thought. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if that had been a <TOP SECRET WORD>?” I thought. And it would have been amazin. Although I’d probably now be dead.

I kept walking, and with every step the idea got bigger. What if this happened? What if that happened? Before I knew it I had the general concept worked out, but I didn’t have any idea of a story because I didn’t yet have any characters, and characters are what make stories happen.

A few hundred yards later, I came across this:

Dare you enter the Forest of Implausible Fractions?

I have absolutely no idea what the numbers on that tree represent. I don’t really care. That was enough to steer me in the direction of the next part of my idea. My characters would be school kids. More than that, they would be school kids who really weren’t very good at fractions. I mean, who ever heard of thirteen quarters?

I kept walking and this new idea jumbled around with the original one. My brain felt like it was vibrating now. I had a spring in my step and butterflies were throwing a party in my stomach. I can’t speak for other writers, but when a new idea grabs me I get a real adrenaline rush – one I can only liken to those first few moments on a rollercoaster, as the cars clank up and up and up towards the top of the first hill.

My characters developer further. They weren’t just poor at fractions, they were failing at all their school work. They became a group of badly behaved teens who were about to be expelled from their inner city school. A setting like the one I was in would be completely alien to them, and I could already hear them complaining and arguing as they trudged through the darkening woods. The characters we coming alive in my head, although I didn’t even know their names.

An hour later I got home from the walk. It took another hour to scribble down all the different parts of my story idea, and as I wrote down what I’d come up with new ideas started to force their way in, too. I now have several pages of notes which include a rough plot outline, five character biographies, some ideas for specific scenes and even some lines of dialogue.

Had I sat at home that morning and told myself to come up with an idea then those notebook pages would likely still be empty. That’s because it’s easier to find ideas than to create them from thin air. I found my latest idea lurking in the woods. Where will you find yours?

A big thanks to the fantastic Lari Don who inspired this post by talking about where her own ideas come from. You can read Lari’s post here, and if you haven’t checked out her books yet I highly recommend that you get your finger out.

Tomorrow (5th of January) is the official publication day for the penultimate Invisible Fiends book The Beast. I’ve decided against doing blog tours of any of that stuff for this book and will instead be posting a lot of content here on the blog that you’ll hopefully find interesting.

I’m going to start by talking about the evolution of the character of the Beast, and in doing so talk about the evolution of the Invisible Fiends series as a whole. My hope is it will not only reveal a bit about this book, but about my writing process in general.

Still, before we get to that, let’s take a look at the official blurb for the book:

Kyle is having trouble with the neighbours. They’ve turned into black-eyed, flesh-eating zombies. Now would be a good time to leave town but out there, on the snow covered streets, something far worse is lurking.

There is a beast in the shadows and the only way for Kyle to fight it is to use his powers. But every time Kyle uses them, he weakens the barrier between this world, and the terrifying, world of the Darkest Corners. If the barrier breaks there will be more killers on the streets.

And here’s the front cover to give you an idea of what the Beast itself looks like:

Quite the charmer, eh? This is the Beast’s first appearance in the Invisible Fiends series, but that wasn’t always going to be the case. In the first draft of Mr Mumbles (then called “Imaginary Friends Reunited”, or “Project IFR” to long time blog readers) there was a character with the same name who looked just as monstrous as the creature above.

That Beast arrived somewhere near the end of the book. Below you’ll find an extract taken from that first draft which shows the Beast’s first appearance. Before you read that, though, I should set the scene…

The first draft of the book that would eventually become Mr Mumbles was written over a period of about a year. I was working full time and juggling a young family (not literally, that would be dangerous and probably illegal) and dreaming that one day I might be able to call myself a writer.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the book was short. Way too short for the age group, in fact, as just under 20,000 words. The finished final draft would be 44,000 words long, but that wouldn’t happen until about a year down the line, and the full details of that process will be a story for another day.

Not only was it short, it was a bit naff in places, too. Don’t get me wrong, it had plenty of strong points, but there were a fair few clunkers of ideas in there, too. The biggest of all the duffers was the ideas that the imaginary friends could be hurt by “factual” things. Because they were imaginary – or fictional – anything containing factual information was like Kryptonite to them. At one point in the story Kyle fashioned himself a shield using pages from a dictionary, while swiping at Mr Mumbles with a rolled up world map. As you’ll see in the extract below, he also used his birth certificate to somewhat devastating effect.

And I think the point I’m trying to make – if there is one – is that it’s OK to write some naff bits in your book. As I always say, a first draft doesn’t have to be right, it has to be written. I’ve spoken about that in a bit more detail in this post (warning: contains sandwiches). The first draft of Mr Mumbles was far from perfect. It took another year to get it as close to perfect as I was able to get it, and then the time came for me to leave it alone and move on to book 2.

With unlimited time I would almost certainly have edited and tinkered forever more, but I had to leave it be and let it stand on its own two feet and do you know what? I’m damn proud of it. I’m proud of the nightmares it has given people. I’m proud of the emails I’ve received from parents and teachers telling me ol’ Mumbles turned a previously reluctant reader on to the joy of books. I’m also proud I gave one kid a raging phobia of hats and, presumably, people who wear them.

The final draft of Mr Mumbles was many times stronger than the draft the extract comes from. I like to think that’s because I improved as a writer while working on it, and I hope I’ve continued to improve since then. As I say in my workshops, writing is exactly like anything else in this world – the more you do it, the better you get. If you’ve pitched a book recently and had a rejection, don’t be disheartened. Understand that it means you’re one step closer to being published. The next book you write will be better. The one after that, better still. If you truly want it, you won’t give up – you’ll never give up – and all the practice will pay off in the end.

Anyway, The Beast, then. Um… it’s a big monster thing and it sort of always ways, so I don’t suppose it has really evolved at all. Apologies for the vastly misleading blog title. It was in the first draft, I took it out, but realised it would lend itself to a story much later in the series. So that’s what I did. Did I mention it’s out tomorrow?

Here’s that extract I promised. Enjoy.

Extract from Invisible Fiends: Mr Mumbles – draft 1

In a recent survey on Twitter a lot of my followers said they’d like me to post more writing advice here on the blog. The following blog post, then, is aimed primarily at those readers who are interested in becoming authors themselves, but a lot of it can be applied to anyone so don’t go clicking away just because you don’t feel there’s a blockbuster inside you waiting to burst out.

In case you missed the news, we’ve just started a brand new year. The whole world has now made the jump over to 2012, the year in which the Mayan people hinted that the very world itself would come to some sort of spectacular end. What better time, then, to set yourself some writing goals? It’s New Year, a fresh start and a time for making resolutions. Also, if the Apocalypse really is imminent, if you don’t get that book written now then you never will.

I’ve made lots of New Year’s Resolutions in my time, and I don’t recall sticking to a single one. What I have stuck to, though, is the goals I’ve set myself. You may not think so, but there’s a big difference between the two. A resolution is a vague promise to yourself: “I’ll get fitter this year” or “I’ll learn a new language” or “I’ll write a great novel”. Resolutions are abstract things that float like butterflies, always just a little out of reach.

Goals, on the other hand, are solid. Goals don’t mess about. Goals are specific, quantifiable things. “I will train to run a 10k race in March” – that’s a goal. “I’ll write a first draft of a novel by 1st of June” – that’s a goal, too. Where a resolution is open to interpretation, a goal isn’t. It’s precise and detailed, and it has a deadline. This helps focus your mind, and a focused mind is much more likely to see a task through to completion.

Goals can sometimes seem overwhelming, though. Writing a first draft of a novel within a few months is a scary thought for many people, which is where Micro Goals come in. Look at your larger goal and break it down. Let’s say you’re setting yourself six months to get your book written, and let’s say you expect the book to come in at around 60,000 words. That’s an easy calculation – 60,000 over 6 months is 10,000 words a month.

That might sound a lot, but it really isn’t. It’s around 2,500 words a week – a little over 350 words a day. I bet everyone can find the time to write 350 words a day. If you can’t squeeze in 350 words a day then maybe now isn’t the right time for you to consider writing a novel. Or maybe you just need to juggle your priorities a bit. I’ve spoken to people who tell me they would love to write a book but don’t have the time. They watch Eastenders, though. They post lots of stuff on Facebook, too. If they cut back on those could they write 350 words in a day? I’m almost positive. Six months later, they’d have written a book.

When you’ve come up with your personal goals, write them down and look at them often. Keep reminding yourself of what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. Record your progress towards the goal, too. The closer you get towards your goal the more encouraged you’ll feel by your own progress. The more encouraged you are, the easier progress becomes. It’s a win-win.

So, to recap:

1. Set yourself a precise goal with a realistic deadline and write it down.
2. If necessary, break the goal down into smaller “Micro Goals” – a daily/weekly word count is a good start.
3. Look at your written goal regularly so it stays fresh in your mind.
4. Record your progress towards you goal. You could also consider rewarding yourself for reaching certain milestones – whatever it takes to keep you motivated and working towards your overall goal.

I’ve set some goals for myself this year. I’ve got seven in total, but some of them are top secret. I’ll share one with you, though. It’s the first one on my list.

I will write a first draft of “Recomposed” by 13th February.

“Recomposed”, in case you’re wondering, is a completely new idea I’ve had which no-one is paying me to write. It’s the first thing I’ll have written since Mr Mumbles that wasn’t contracted to a publisher in advance, and I’ll talk some more about it in future blog posts.

So that’s one of mine. How about you? What are some of your writing goals for 2012?

Oh, I almost forgot. HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you, and lang may yer lum reek.

Last week, I was asked on Twitter how I first got published. I promised I’d write a post about it the very next day and I did, but… um… a big dog ate it and ran away.

So, for @LaraNoJutsu and anyone else who might be interested, here (more or less) is how I got into writing for a living…

It all started back in 1987, when I was in my fifth year of primary school. We were doing a class project on Roald Dahl, and I suddenly realised that ‘author’ was an actual job that people did. Prior to that, I’d assumed books just magically appeared in libraries and bookshops, fully written and illustrated.

I’d been writing stories since I could safely hold a pencil without stabbing myself in the face, and I knew then that I wanted to be an author like Dahl.

Fast forward to 1996. I still wanted to be a writer, only now I wanted to write movies. I’d kept writing all through primary school and all through secondary school, and I was reasonably confident I had a bit of a knack for it. I wrote a screenplay called CURSE OF THE BOG WOMEN, which was almost immediately picked up by a producer in New York.

I then wrote another script, MAKING A KILLING, which was almost immediately picked up by a production company in Newcastle. “This is easy,” I thought, only for both scripts to utterly fail to go into production. I have the rights to both of them now, if anyone’s interested. They’re dead good. Honest.

Anyway, I kept hammering away for a few years, but never got any further. I went through a number of real jobs, wrote for the internet and magazines, and gradually started to forget about that moment in 1987 when my whole life had suddenly laid itself out in front of me.

I was 30 when the desire to be an author became too powerful to ignore any longer. Tommy Donbavand, who I’d known for a number of years, had started writing some of the TOO GHOUL FOR SCHOOL books for Egmont, and had heard they might be looking for new writers to work for their 2HEADS imprint.

2HEADS produced ‘consumer-led’ fiction – essentially ideas assembled by committee after much discussion with kids in the books’ target age ranges. Once the plots and characters were in place, they needed writers to join the dots. They were only looking for published authors to work on the books, but I got in touch with them and convinced them to let me write a sample chapter as a sort of audition piece.

They liked the sample, and I was made head writer on the BEASTLY! series of books, which you can read a little bit more about on this post, from back in 2008.

From BEASTLY! I moved on to write the BEN 10 books for Egmont, as well as a number of other projects. I learned a lot working for the editors on these books, and I used what I learned to write my own horror novel – IMAGINARY FRIENDS REUNITED, which would later come to be known as INVISIBLE FIENDS: MR MUMBLES.

Being utterly disorganised and useless when it comes to putting things in envelopes and sending them to publishers, I knew I really needed to get an agent. I managed to get Kathryn Ross of Fraser Ross Associates to read my manuscript and, after a lunch meeting in Glasgow on the day I wrote the first post on this site, I signed with them.

It was all pretty much plain sailing after that, really. I bashed the manuscript around a bit, Kathryn sent it to a couple of publishers, and HarperCollins quite quickly came back with an offer. And that was that.

I don’t have a lot of tales of rejection, because I never really got rejected. This was more down to the fact that I never used to get round to sending manuscripts off, though. I’m sure that, if I had done, I’d have a stack of rejection letters now.

So, that’s it. It’s not really an exciting story. I had to cut out the bits with the alligator wrestling and the dragon for the sake of space. They’d have really spiced it up a bit, but maybe I’ll talk about those another day.

Or, you know, maybe I won’t.

Since starting this blog back in February 2008 I’ve tried to at least occasionally write something that readers might find vaguely useful. I haven’t often succeeded, but I’ve tried, at least. Surely that counts for something?

Anyway, now that I’m doing more and more author events, I find myself being asked to share writing advice and tips, which I’m always happy to do. Because time is usually quite limited, though, I rarely have time to talk for very long on the subject, and I end up referring people to this here website.

I’ve realised, though, that the useful content gets lost in amongst all the rubbish about water pistols, soup, and Sylvester & Tweety, so I thought I’d collate the writing tips here in one post to make them easier to find. So, for those of you interested in becoming an author yourself, you might find some of the posts below useful.

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 1

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 2

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 3

Writing Lesson #1

Writing Lesson #2

3 Tips for Writing Horror

The Idea Fairy

Although my knowledge of anything that might prove useful in the real world is sorely limited (how to fix cars, how to administer first aid, how to cook anything that isn’t toast, etc, etc), one thing I do know a bit about is writing.  That’s why I’m allowed to do books an’ that.

As such, I’ve been asked to run a series of evening classes at my local college, where I’ll be teaching everything from creating rounded, memorable characters, to writing a killer query letter and synopsis.  It should be interesting, not least of all for me, as I try to put words to all those little writing tricks I now do instinctively.  Classes start in August, so if you happen to live near Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland, contact Lochaber College for more details.

You might also have noticed a new option has appeared in the menu up above this post somewhere.  I am now offering a manuscript critique service, where – for a fee – I will provide editorial feedback on novels-in-progress.

I should probably point something out here.  If you have leaky pipes and call a plumber, would you be happy if he told you everything was fine, and left you with water running down your walls?  Or if the house was burning down, would you be content for the fire brigade to turn up, compliment you on your curtains, then zoom off again with their lights blaring?

Probably not.  So, likewise, if you employ someone to give critical feedback on your manuscript, expect just that.  Don’t anticipate a glowing review which fails to find fault with a single word you’ve written.  Positive feedback is nice, but it’s not helpful.  I’ve lost count of the number of times people have taken offence at me pointing out even a minor issue with their work, despite the fact I always make a point of highlighting the positives first.

So, if you’re the type of person who is looking for reassurance of your own brilliance, please don’t bother getting in touch.  If, however, you’re someone who has a story to tell and would like a little help making it as good as it can possibly be, then I’d love to hear from you.

Go check out the Manuscript Critique page and get in touch.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything constructive about the process of writing, so we’re probably overdue for a writing tip or two.  But tough luck, I’m not giving you one.  Instead, I want to talk about what I’m working on at the minute, and why I’ve barely managed to write 1000 words over the past two days.

Although it’s still a while until the first INVISIBLE FIENDS book comes out (eight months and counting, folks!), I’m currently working my way through book three, having more of less finished book 2 already.  Now, while each book is a self-contained story which anyone can pick up and read without first having read the books before it, there is a larger story arc which spans all six books.  The finale of this story arc is foreshadowed in a prologue at the beginning of each book, so by about page four of book one readers will have some idea of where the series is going to take them.

Usually I rattle out about 1500 words a day as an absolute minimum.  The reason I’ve been struggling over the last couple of days is because book three is an important ‘chapter’ in the larger story arc.  In fact, the point in the story I’m at now is a major turning point.  It ties up some plot strands from the first two books, sets in motion some events that won’t pay off until books four, five and six, and – more importantly – turns my protagonist’s whole world upside down.

On top of that, it introduces the villain of the story, kills off a major character, and brings a whole new level of darkness to the series.

That’s why I’ve been checking email, reading the news and making a cup of tea every five minutes – because I’m scared of getting such an important bit wrong.  If I screw this chapter up it could potentially ruin the rest of the series.  Seriously, it’s that significant.  I have literally been too terrified of messing up to write any significant number of words.

And then I remember some advice I gave in a previous post on writing tips: It doesn’t matter if the first draft is right, it only matters that it’s written.

I’m going to keep that in mind when I sit back at the computer tomorrow.  There’s a very good chance the chapter won’t be perfect when I finish it, but it doesn’t have to be.  Not yet.  That can come in the next draft, or the one after, or the one after that.  All that matters right now is getting the words – any vaguely appropriate words  – down on the page.  The rest I can sort out later.

In the last two blog posts we’ve looked at tips 1-8, so logically let us now conclude with tips 9-12.  Then I can get back to writing any old guff about wasps or whatever on here, instead of trying to seem all clever an’ that.

9.  Experience beats research
The internet is great.  In fact, I can honestly say that I would seriously struggle to readjust to a world without the internet.  I’d probably go quite, quite mad with grief, and never quite get over that gnawing sense of loss.

That said, there’s more to life than the internet, and while Google and the like are very useful tools for checking facts and figures, they don’t come close to being able to replace actual real life experience.

Take, for example, the third book of the INVISIBLE FIENDS series, which I’m currently working on.  There’s a mobile phone mast in it, and it plays a (vaguely) important role in the story.  I’ve read lots about mobile phone masts (technically known as ‘base units’) over the past few weeks and have studied lots of pictures.  I know what kind of heights they range from, what they actually do, and even have a vague idea of how they’re put together.

I learned all this via a few searches in Google, and I thought I was as clued up as I needed to be.  Until, that is, I decided to make the two-mile hike up a hill to my closest mobile phone base unit.  Suddenly the facts and figures I had learned seemed less important, replaced as they were by just a general feel of the size and scale of the thing.

Yes, the research was useful – I could guess what some of the bits of equipment jutting out from the mast were – but it wasn’t really until I was right up close to the base unit that it solidified properly in my mind.

Research can often give you a detached, abstract view of whatever you’re reading up on.  If you have a chance to go and see what you’re researching first hand, jump at it.  It’ll only help make your descriptions more believable.

10.  Think about sequels
When you’re coming up with a story idea, it’s often useful to consider whether it could lead to a sequel or a series.  This is especially true when you’re writing children’s fiction, where series’ are rapidly becoming the norm.

I’m not suggesting you write a sequel – in fact, I’d advice you never to write a sequel unless a publisher has bought your first book and asked for more – but it’s worth mentioning in your query letters to publishers or agents if you think your manuscript could turn out to be the first of many books featuring the same characters.

Not only does it make the publisher/agent aware that follow-ups are possible, but it also shows you are thinking long-term about your career.  A one-hit wonder isn’t much good to a publisher.  They need to know you will consistently turn in work, and mentioning sequel potential is one way of doing this.

11.  The Query Letter
This leads on nicely from the last tip.  Query letters are something of an art, and one I’ve luckily never really had to master.  They are probably the most important weapon in your writer’s arsenal, though, and there are some pitfalls you should do your utmost to avoid:

• Don’t try to be funny. Even if you are genuinely amusing.  Even if your book is a side-splitting comedy, never, ever try to be funny in a query letter.  The letter is your professional calling card.  You (hopefully) wouldn’t turn up for a business meeting wearing a red nose and clown’s shoes, so don’t attempt the literary equivalent.
• Don’t big yourself or your manuscript up too much. Yes, you’re allowed to believe your book will be the most explosive blockbuster in the history of publishing, but don’t tell the publisher that.  All they’ll hear is those dreaded “amateur” alarm bells again, and if they do bother to read your manuscript they’ll already be very cynical about it.
• Don’t address a publisher or agent as “You Great Big Love Lummox”. It’s just not acceptable.
• Don’t say how much your friends enjoyed it. Your friends are your friends for a reason.  They like you.  That means they’re not impartial, so dropping the fact into the letter isn’t going to help your case any.
• Don’t threaten to kill yourself if they turn you down. Seriously.  I know of an agent it happened to.  It’s unlikely to help your professional career.

Basically, a query letter should be short and to the point.  It should introduce the concept of the book, briefly introduce yourself and any major writing achievements you have (previously published works, competitions won, etc) and then it should invite the publisher/agent to request the manuscript.  It should normally be accompanied by a detailed synopsis and the first three chapters, but that’s all down to the publisher’s guidelines, so refer to those before sending anything.

I know I mentioned referring to possible sequels in the tip above, but be sure not to dwell on this at the query letter stage.  You’re selling the first manuscript, not potential future ones.  Just slip in that further installments are possible, and leave it at that.

12.  Never give up
Even when you wake in the night soaked with sweat, full of self-doubt, don’t quit.  People will tell you you’re never going to make it.  Often they’ll believe they’re saying it for your own good, and they probably are, but don’t listen.  You’ll sometimes have days when you panic that you’re throwing your life away chasing a silly dream.  Pick up a pen and write about the feeling until it goes away.

This is the most important tip of all.  I can’t tell you you’re going to make it as a writer – no-one can tell you that – but I can tell you that if you give up you definitely will not.  The book you are writing now may not be published, but the next one will be better.  I don’t know if that one will be published, but if you don’t write it you’ll never know, either.

Keep trying.  Keep learning.  Keep writing.  You’ll get there.

In the last post, we looked at four tips that could help you on your way to writing professionally.  I should have mentioned at the beginning that when I saw “writing professionally” I mean becoming a published writer of fiction.  A lot of the tips will apply to other forms of writing – articles, non-fiction, screenplays, etc – but wannabe novelists are who the article is really aimed at.

Anyway, here are tips 5-8.

5.  Comfortable is not always good
If man was comfortable in the freezing cold, he probably wouldn’t have bothered discovering fire.  If he was comfortable carrying heavy weights over long distances, he wouldn’t have invented the wheel.

Likewise, I used to write nothing but comedy stories.  It was what I considered myself to be good at and, yes, I was comfortable with it.  It wasn’t until I pushed myself out of that comfort zone and tried something else – namely horror – that I achieved any kind of success.

Yes, the old adage is “write what you know”, and for a first novel that’s not necessarily a bad idea.  But try taking a different angle on it.  I took something fairly harmless – the concept of childhood imaginary friends – and turned it into something terrifying and horrific.  You can always find unique ways of looking at things you know about.  It just takes a bit of effort and a small leap of faith.

Don’t be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone – in fact, make a point of doing so – and your writing will be given a fresh energy.

6.  Think Big, Medium and Small
I’ve mentioned before how I need to set myself targets to achieve anything.  Many other authors I know work in the same way – they set themselves a realistic target each day, and they work until they reach it.  Whether they do it consciously or not, I bet most writers of novels or other lengthy pieces of work do something similar.

When I first started writing, I had the usual dreams and flights of fancy.  I pictured my name on the bestseller list.  I saw myself signing copies of my books, winning the Booker Prize, being Time Magazine Man of the Year…

OK, I may have got a little carried away with that last one.

But the point is, I thought about what it would be like to be a world renowned, bestselling author.  I probably thought about it too much, actually, without really doing a lot to try to make the dream a reality.

What I should have done was used these dreams as my Big Goal.  I could then have worked out my Medium Goal.  Obviously to become a besteselling author I would have to write a fantastic novel, and have it published.  So my Medium Goal would be to complete a full length manuscript.  It may not be the manuscript to be picked up by a publisher, but I would complete the Medium Goal over and over again until one book was published.

That would have led to my Small Goal, where I would break down the amount of work involved in writing a novel into smaller, more manageable chunks.  That’s where the daily targets come in.  Writing just 500 words a day of a 70,000 word novel would mean the first draft would be done in less than 5 months.  So by setting my Small Goal as “write 500 words today”, and then achieving that goal 140 times, I’d reach my Medium Goal.  Achieve my Medium Goal a few times, and my Big Goal would be much closer to being within reach.

Whether you call them Big, Medium and Small Goals, or Master, Long Term and Short Term goals, or whatever other name you come up with, visualising what you ultimately want to achieve, then breaking it down into stages makes the whole process much easier and less daunting.

Wow, that was a lengthy tip.  Let’s follow it up with a quick one.

7.  Always carry a pen
Because you never know when you might need to write something down.  Carrying paper of some kind wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.   Actually, this is a good tip regardless of whether you want to be a writer or not.

8.  Even gods have to learn to let go
As a writer, you get to create worlds, conjour people from thin air and essentially do whatever you like to all of them.  You can grant people the ability to fly, you can make animals talk, you can inflict pain and suffering, or you can create the perfect Utopia.  All this you can do with the stroke of a pen.  As a writer, you are the God of your own blank page.

And just like other gods, when you create these living beings, you grant them their free will.  This often means that despite all your best efforts, they will not do what you want them to do.

You’ve spent 10,000 words making Marjorie a full rounded, 3 dimensional character who positively sparkles on the page.  Your plot requires her to climb down a rickety old ladder into an abandoned mine shaft.  Only problem is, Marjorie doesn’t do rickety old ladders, and she certainly doesn’t do abandoned mine shafts.

You see, the problem with characters is that the good ones tend to evolve before your eyes.  You have a pretty good idea of what they’re like before you start writing, but by the time you’re any distance into your novel, they’ve taken on a life of their own.  This is great news – solid characters are the most important part of your story – but it can also mean forcing them to fit your plot contradicts the person they’ve become.

There is nothing that will put a publisher off more than a character in your story suddenly acting completely out of character.  Well, maybe a bit of sick on the front of your manuscript would be more off-putting, but not much.  Have characters behaving erratically for no reason, and you can kiss goodbye to your chances of the story being published.

If you’re lucky enough for your character to come to life on the page, then be prepared to adapt your story to fit them.  Let them loose and see where they take you – the adventure they lead you on may be more interesting than the one you came up with originally.

That’s it for now, the next (and final) four tips will be coming soon.

During a recent school visit, I was asked what you need to do to become a writer. Because we were about to run out of time, the only advice I was able to give was “practice”.

But of course there’s more to becoming a professional writer than just writing a lot. I may not have had time to go into detail during the school visit, but I can afford to expand a bit more now that the threat of the bell ringing isn’t hanging over my head.

So here, just for you, are twelve tips that will help improve your chances of writing professionally. Well, I say “twelve” but I actually mean “four”, as I’m breaking the article into three easily digestible chunks.

1. Write Lots
Yes, yes, I mentioned this one already, but it’s probably the most important tip of all. If you do something over and over again, you will get better at it. That’s just a fact, that is. Whether it be cooking, karate, singing or dwarf-hurling, the more you do it, the better you’ll get.

Writing is exactly the same. Write every day. It doesn’t matter what you write, just write it. It could be a short story or a poem, a diary or a recipe for jam flavoured hotdogs. The subject doesn’t matter. Getting into the writing habit is what’s important.

If you find all this writing a chore, or make excuses not to do it, then a job as an author is not for you. Trust me.

2. Develop a new way of reading
I don’t mean start reading backwards or anything, I just mean start changing the way you look at stories. Don’t just read a book, analyse it. Notice how the author uses words. Pay attention to the rhythm of the sentences. Observe how the characters are put together. Get under the bonnet and find out what makes the book work (or not).

Don’t take this to mean you should become detached and stop enjoying books – far from it. Allow yourself to become immersed in the story and experience every emotion of it fully, but try not to just be carried along by it. See if you can figure out exactly how the author made you happy or sad, or why one story was heart-poundingly exciting, while another bored you to tears. Once you know how other authors do it, you’ll be well on the way to figuring out how you can do the same things in your writing.

3. Learn when not to listen
In secondary school I told my English teachers that I wanted to be an author when I left school. Aside from one, they all told me not to be so silly. I should get a proper job, they said, and put aside any dreams of writing books.

I could have done what they suggested. I could have said “Yeah, fair point,” and went on to become … I don’t know. Something else. An embittered English teacher, maybe. But I didn’t. I heard what they said, I considered it, and then I ignored it.

And that’s what a writer needs to do on a near-daily basis. People will constantly try to give you advice. Friends, family, editors, agents, even total strangers – they will all chip in their opinions regularly. Some of them are paid to do it, others aren’t.

There will be many times when that advice helps transform an averagely good story into something spectacular. I am not for one second suggesting you ignore ALL advice you are given.  Do that and you’ll never become a working professional.  Lots of advice is very worthwhile

But those setting out to become writers often have a tendency to take on board every bit of criticism, and to try to please everybody. Believe me, you’ll never please everybody, so don’t waste your time trying.

People have opinions. Those opinions are not necessarily correct, or “better” than yours. Always be willing to listen to feedback, but if you don’t agree with it or can’t see its merit, don’t be afraid to ignore it.

4.  Become you own best critic
Notice I said “best” there, and not “worst”.  Someone who is their own worst critic is constantly negative about their own work.  How often have you had a writer friend ask you to read something they’ve written, only for them to hand it over with a sheepish “It’s not very good”?  How often have you done it yourself?  I know I used to.

If you honestly and genuinely think something you’ve written is rubbish, then rework it until you have confidence in it.  If you don’t believe in your work, then nor will anyone else.

If you’re just trying to set expectations low, in the hope of receiving positive feedback, you’re doing yourself an injustice.  How many books do you see on the shelves with “This is a load of old tosh” as the marketing tagline?  None.  Publishers wouldn’t dream of underselling or deliberately playing down a book’s quality, so why should you?

Someone who is their own best critic is able to look at their work with complete detachment, as if reading the manuscript of a complete stranger.  They can spot every flaw, every missed opportunity, and every pacing problem, and – more importantly – they can come up with ways to fix them.