Author: Angeline Trevena

Writing so often feels like a solitary endeavour – holed up in your office, door closed to any interruptions (except for offerings of coffee and biscuits of course), head down and immersed in a world only you know about. It can be very lonely being a writer.

But it doesn’t need to be such a cloistered existence, and the internet has revolutionised your opportunities to connect with other writers.

I am the member of a writing critique group on Google+. It’s an exclusive group made up of 10 very talented writers, who are tirelessly eager to help, advise, and encourage one another, despite the fact that they are all busily chasing their own writing careers.

One very important element for having a successful writing group is trust. When you put any writing out to publication, out to public scrutiny, it’s a big risk, and it can be terrifying. You’re not just sending words out to be dissected, it’s your blood, sweat and tears. Your heart. Your soul. But to show others your first draft, your incomplete stories, full of mistakes and plot holes, and actively ask for criticism: you need a thick skin. And you need to trust your writing group.

There’s a talent to critiquing others’ work. It’s knowing the difference between giving criticism and being critical. It’s not enough to say “I don’t like this”, or “this doesn’t work for me”. Why don’t you like it? How can it be improved?

It can be hard to listen to what people have to say about your writing, and you’re not going to agree with everything they suggest. It takes experience and a little stubbornness to be able to choose between the advice you’ll follow, and the advice you’ll ignore. But you do need to consider it all. I’ve often dismissed advice, only to realise it was right a few more drafts along.

Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realising that its Mother was right about everything.

There will always be things you can’t pick up on yourself. You’re too close to the project – you know what it is that you meant to say. As the writer, you know a lot more than your readers. You know all the things you choose not to include, and your brain makes leaps and connections that your reader simply doesn’t have the insight to make. I once sent a beta reader a third draft of a story, only for her to point out that my characters magically teleported from the bedroom to the kitchen. In three drafts, I hadn’t noticed that.

I know for a fact that my Google+ group has improved my writing. I have little doubt that they have helped me to get published. I, in turn, hope that I have helped to improve their work.

But the true value of a writing group, is its role as a support structure. Whether you lean on those struts every week, at every stage of your story, or if you just check in when you feel lost and need to know you’re on the right path, it’s nice to know there are people there who understand, who empathise, and will be brutally honest when you need them to be.

As long as you give as much as you take, a writing group, even when it’s made up of people you’ve never met, living on the other side of the globe, a writing group is a writer’s very best friend. (That and my cat. Who has taken to perching on my shoulder whenever I write.)

Some time back I started on the story I’m currently writing. I wrote about the call for submissions in my previous post ‘For Love or Money’. The call was for zombie apocalypse stories; looking at the different outcomes for those who were prepared for it, versus those who weren’t. It filled me with ideas, and I just had to write for it.

The original deadline was August 1st, and I found myself so busy with that thing we know as ‘real life’ (totally overrated in my opinion!), that the end of July approached without me having even hit the halfway mark. And then the deadline was pushed back by a whole month. That was just the break I needed, and left me absolutely convinced that this anthology and I were meant to be together.

My story, on the other hand, has other ideas.

It was always going to be a very gross story; focussing on people’s bodily functions, their eating habits; all those physical things we like to pretend don’t happen to us. Because that’s what zombies are – they’re the part of us we like to bury (literally!). They’re the insatiable hunger, the inhumane hunter, the uncivilised instinctive part of us. The animal part. The part that doesn’t understand societal norms and values. The part that doesn’t care about rules, or being polite. The part that will rip your best friend’s head off and drink the blood that spurts from their neck. Oh yes; it was always going to be gross.

As I’m writing this post, I’m taking a break from a late night writing session. I’m taking a break because I need to get into a nicer headspace for a while. Because this story is getting under my skin in a way that, while brilliant, also makes me horribly uneasy.

I guess everyone has their line. The line they won’t cross. The subjects they simply will not write about. Tonight, I have written up to that line. I didn’t cross it; I wasn’t able to. I did, however, teeter worryingly on the edge of it. I looked straight down into the abyss of words I am unable to commit to paper, and it scared me. I got to that point and discovered that if I continued I would either throw up on my keyboard or burst into tears.

I’ve never had such a strong reaction to my writing before. I’ve scared myself, sure. I’ve scared myself so much I was only able to write during daylight hours. But I’ve never stood so close to the line. And the funny thing about that line? You don’t even know that it exists until your find your toes touching it.

So I’ve taken this story right to the edge. It has become a far scarier, more feral beast than I had intended. It swears, it oozes, and it pisses in the street. It is not a good fit for the anthology I’m writing for. In fact, it’s not a good fit for most markets. This is going to have to find a very particular kind of home. I have no doubt that I will find the right place for it, but this anthology is not it.

Our stories don’t always end up where we expect them to. I’ve just had an acception for a fae story I wrote. A story I wrote for a different anthology that it was rejected from. So you see; never give up on a story. Tweak it, improve it, submit it elsewhere. Every story has a home, it just might need to knock on a few different doors first. Just because it doesn’t fit one anthology doesn’t mean it’s no good.

My werewolf story that I wrote about in my post ‘Writing Wolves’ was rejected. I’m upset of course, but I haven’t lost hope. It’s a good story, but I think it needs a little more clarity. I tried to do something really different with the werewolf genre, and unfamiliar ideas can be hard to portray clearly in just a few thousand words. But I know that it will find a home one day. I just need to keep trying.

On the evening of Friday 14th June, I met Neil Gaiman.

I’m a relatively new recruit to the Gaiman fanbase – I loved the Coraline and Stardust movies, but it was some time before I realised he was behind them. Of course, I had heard his name over and over, even followed him on Twitter and Tumblr, but hadn’t read any of his books. So I bought myself a copy of Stardust, following it up with Neverwhere. And now I have an advance copy of his brand new novel; The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I have it before its release date, and I have it signed by the man himself.

Gaiman will admit himself that he is not the greatest writer technically. In my limted experience of his work, I have found this to be true. He doesn’t always quite nail it when it comes to syntax or word choice. He certainly doesn’t own the language artistry of writers like Barbara Kingsolver. But his stories supercede all of that. While his writing may not be completely on point, he keeps his readers turning pages, and keeps them coming back book after book after book.

And I’ve often had this debate with other writers. What’s more important? Good writing style, or good stories? I think that, inevitably, some of this comes down to where you are in your writing career. If you’re trying to make a name for yourself, you’ll be expected to accomplish both. But, as we all know, making it in the writing world also relies on a large dollop of luck – your writing landing on the exact right desk at the exact right time.

Neil Gaiman kicked off his tour for The Ocean at the End of the Lane in Bath, UK. In front of a packed auditorium of over 1,000 people, he was interviewed by Jake Kerridge from The Telegraph, before taking questions from the audience. He read two excerpts from the book, both a perfect demonstration of his skill to discover wit in the darkest places; showing his readers the humour in the horror.

His writing is heavily influenced by his love of folklore and mythology, and it’s always evident. His stories feel like they’ve grown into the book over centuries, like they’ve always been there. There’s a relaxed familiarity to his style, like conversing with an old friend or a favourite Uncle. And he said of this book that he “wanted to make it feel like a story you always knew.”

Based on an event from his childhood, an event that he didn’t learn of until he was an adult, the book looks at how children view the horrors of life, and the way in which adults try to shield them from it. And viewing a story through the eyes of a young boy allows Gaiman to dismiss all the trappings of adulthood – the cynicism, the presumptions, the need to feel in control. He said that “kids have a much clearer view of the darkness than adults do. Kids lie to themselves less.”

Although he doesn’t classify this particular book as horror, it is certainly a genre he sits comfortably in. He said that horror writers tend to be the happiest people he knows; forever laughing and joking. While it appears to be completely at odds with the contents of their fiction, he explains this by pointing out that “people who write horror get to pull the things out of their head and put them on the page, and let them destroy opther people’s lives.” Writing as the ultimate form of therapy.

In a show of absolute, and truly admirable repect for his fans, Mr Gaiman signed books into the small hours of the morning, determined that no one would miss out on the chance to meet him. An absolute gentleman, and a total inspiration.

Werewolves are a horror staple, and have been around in folklore since the Middle Ages. They’re also a bit of a horror cliche.

From uncontrolled transformations under the full moon, to organised packs utilizing modern technology, they’ve adopted a few different guises over the years. But we’re still fascinated.

Maybe our love of werewolves comes from a desire to keep in touch with our animal instincts, a wish to break free from the expectations of human society. Or perhaps by a fear and revulsion of losing control, losing our sense of civilization and evolution.

My current work in progress is a werewolf story. I’ve never written werewolves before, and when I saw the call for submissions here on Horror Tree, I really fancied giving it a go.

I’ve gone for something very modern; urban fantasy. I’m always interested in how the fantastical gels with reality, and I’ve enjoyed reading urban fantasy over the years. There are always two ways to approach this – that humans live alongside these creatures, but are completely unawares (a la Underworld), or they are openly living alongside them (a la True Blood). Personally, I find the first option a much more fun prospect for writing. It also allows for elements of alternate history to sneak in there; attributing real life events to fantastical causes.

I have done a few things that I haven’t seen done elsewhere, but forgive me if I keep those under my hat right now. One thing I did have a little bit of a struggle with is dealing with the wolves talking while in animal form.

Through my story, the wolves spend a large proportion of their time as wolves, so I couldn’t have them silent the whole time. I also couldn’t have them transforming every time they needed to speak. Using a wolf language would mean me writing translations constantly, or if I just covered this in the speech tags it would simply add words without adding impact. What about using telepathy? Same issue again. But, somehow, just making the wolves speak like humans felt uncomfortable. It felt like a children’s story with talking animals, not the gritty horror angle I’m aiming for.

It was a conversation on Twitter with a writer friend that solved the problem for me. She didn’t really know how she helped, but what she said sparked an idea. The wolves do speak like humans, I don’t think there was ever a way to avoid that, but in my speech tags I point out that the words feel awkward and clumsy in their animal mouths. It only needs saying a few times, so it doesn’t use up too many words, and it doesn’t interrupt the flow of the speech.

I’m having great fun writing werewolves, and I think there’s still a lot of scope in the idea, a lot of things that haven’t been done before. It’s an idea I intend to return to in the future, perhaps even with the same characters. This story feels like it has more potential than the 9,000 word limit.

In my last post I was racing against a deadline. I can tell you that I did finish the story, submitting it just 20 minutes before submissions closed. I can also tell you that it was rejected.

I was really disappointed. I had been proud of it; it had given me several nightmares over the last few days, really got under my skin. I posted some self-pitying Tweets, moaned about it on Google+, wrote a blog post, and asked my friends to tell me how amazing I am. It all helped.

The rejection email had been one of the most polite and friendly ones I’ve ever received (so I couldn’t even feel angry at them). And I’m quite confident that I wasn’t rejected because my story was rubbish. They received well over 100 submissions for an anthology with just 14 spaces.

This doesn’t mean the end for my story. I’ll look it over, send it out for beta reading, and submit it elsewhere. It’s a good story, it’s a scary story, and I’m sure it will find a home somewhere.

I’ll admit, it shook my confidence. The thought of giving up writing altogether did pass through my head. But only for a second. Surviving a rejection is all about throwing yourself back into it.

I was already part way through a new story, so I focused all of my attention on it. I wrote like crazy, edited over and over after feedback from several beta readers, and polished it to within an inch of its life. This story excited me. It largely wrote itself; my fingers an enthusiastic blur over my keyboard. I love the characters, I love the plot, I love the twists. Not only that, but I submitted it a whole 10 days before the deadline. That’s not like me at all.

I’m currently waiting for 4 responses from submissions. Waiting is tough. It gives you time to get paranoid, start worrying, lose faith in your writing. I have to keep myself busy to stop from checking my email every 2 minutes. So I’m already onto my next piece.

This one is a real story worm. It’s niggling away at the back of my head, refusing to come up to the surface just yet. I hope it hurries up; I’ve been tugging at its tail, but it’s still being stubborn. Yesterday I went for a walk, hoping to find some inspiration. I spent the time nosing at the houses around me and not thinking about my story at all.

Luckily though, I’ve got a huge pile of dirty dishes in my kitchen. My ideas never fail to come out while I’m up to my elbows in washing up bubbles.