The Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog

One of the most irritating pieces of advice I’ve come across in all these “how to write a book” books and author interviews is to ignore the first novel you write.

It’s hard enough to make the jump from short story to novella and then full-length novel, so like many first time writers I swallowed as much advice as I could from people I thought knew better, who were further down that rocky path to publication than I was. I could go on all day about some of the rubbish I found in these books, and how following it stifled my writing to the extent I couldn’t write anymore – “show, don’t tell”, “write what you know” and all that other pompous, meaningless shit that authors spout when they’re invited to discuss their craft and impart nuggets of wisdom to the Great Unwashed and Unpublished – but we’d be here all year and this blog would bring all the servers crashing into the sea.

There appears to be so much “advice” that seems designed to put you off writing before you even truly get started, but this is by far the most damaging. Your first novel is “one you need to write to get out of your system”, one to “not even bother agents and publishers with”, as though you can’t even begin to write a “real novel” until you’ve written a crap one first. Regardless of storytelling ability or talent, the investment of time and energy a writer puts into any novel is enormous, but arguably none more so than that first novel. (Well, that Difficult Second Album – sorry, book – is one, but that’s for another day.) A popular analogy describing the difference between short story and novel writing is that of a sprint and a marathon. Both centre on running to achieve the goal, but both rely on different types of running, and it’s the latter that requires more stamina and is more gruelling, demanding and exhausting. It’s a commitment, and a terrifying one at that; you’re going to put so much more into this project than you would a short story – maybe more than you realise…

Along with the emotional investment and time commitments, you’re pouring your heart and soul into the story. That’s the problem, and I now understand the reason the “ignore your first novel” advice is given: if you’re not careful, you become the story, and your novel becomes little more than a semi-autobiography. That’s also why you hear of many first time novelists who struggle with their second novel – they’ve used up all their material, their life experience, they struggle with that second marathon: they’re running on empty.

“Whaddya mean you’ve hit The Wall? It’s only your first draft, for f*ck’s sake! Get back to the start!“

But hey: that’s general and literary fiction, isn’t it? Tales of the Struggling Artist and his battles with uncaring establishments and work commitments/family responsibilities/midlife crisis/dying pets. Doesn’t happen in genre fiction, does it?

Well, yes. Consider the amount of stories where the main character is a writer – usually unpublished, battling with uncaring establishments and work commitments/family responsibilities/midlife crises/dying pets…and that’s in published works. God knows how many pieces with this main character set up have landed on the desks of agents and publishers…

A bit of autobiography is a good thing; it can really flesh out your characters and add spice to the plot. But once you start, where do you stop? Even with a rigidly-structured plot/synopsis, once that character-based-on-yourself-or-situation starts talking, he or she can take over the whole damn book…and author intrusion is no longer confined to clumsy writing, it’s quite literally happened!

All first drafts are awful, it has been said; and when I look at the first draft of The Caretakers I shudder and cringe and thank God it was written before the digital self-publishing revolution. I started it back in 1997, when I was in my mid twenties and undergoing all sorts of problems: problems I wasn’t consciously aware of, yet were surfacing in my novel. The protagonist is Danny Greene, a twenty-something white van driver who is sliding into alcoholism as he struggles to hold onto the carefree youth of his long-gone student days in the face of his imminent thirtieth birthday and despairs at the meaningless and lack of purpose in his life. His involvement with All Souls College and the journey that leads to his self-sacrifice is really wish-fulfilment on my part: that there is a reason he is the way he is, and he has a Noble Destiny to Fulfil.

Not only was I writing my wished-for autobiography (messiah complex, anyone?) I wanted to write the Ultimate Cambridge Novel: a book that meticulously captured life in the Venice of the Fens at the end of the second millennium with all its conflicts and issues: with Town and Gown, van drivers and professors, warehouses and academic colleges, burger vans and High Table, doner kebabs and Founders Feasts…

High Table for us non-collegiate scum

What a load of old bollocks. The manuscript was getting close on to 200,000 words and still nowhere near the final act!

I left Cambridge in 2002, split from my then-girlfriend and moved back to the parents’ home in Oxfordshire. It was a grim time for me; moving back to mum and dad felt like I’d failed in life, whereas this actually saved me from alcoholism and possible suicide; only by moving out of the life I had could I see what was wrong with it. Objectivity was restored.

And that’s exactly what happened with my novel. I didn’t touch it for a good few years, and almost stopped writing completely – the book had become that old cliché, an unfinished manuscript in a bottom drawer.Cambridge became a distant memory, and no longer the centre of the universe; but the novel was never forgotten. The story played on my mind constantly, not just nagging away like a rotten tooth but evolving and reshaping itself. There was a story in there that needed to be told, but it wasn’t the one I was writing!

When I got back into writing after a six-year break addicted to eBay selling, I reconsidered that jump from short story sprint to novel marathon. Could I do it again, and actually get past the post this time? Should I start a new novel from scratch, or go back to the Cambridge one? I’d already planned out a new novel, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for it; not because I had no confidence in the story, but because I had to tell the other one first…

So, six years after putting The Caretakers into cold storage, I pulled the manuscript out and examined it. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but the Danny Greene stuff made me cringe. The universe centred on him, and he was a twat. No-one would be interested in his story, because I certainly wasn’t. He had to go.

One of the more useful pieces of writing advice is to combine characters. I had way too many, most of them doing and saying the same thing (espousing my then world view) and not driving the story forward. The more likeable side of Danny was combined with Rob Benson’s character, and I knew then Andy Hughes had to be the lead.

Yes, he does look a bit like Jim McLeod, doesn’t he?

Andy is a real person. That’s his real first name as well, though I forget his surname now. I met him in 1997 when we both worked for a hospital catering firm, delivering meals on wheels to Cambridge’s mental hospitals. He didn’t stay long, and didn’t speak much. All I knew was he was a roadie for a local band and had been a bouncer at some point. He was calm and inscrutable, but there was a palpable atmosphere whenever he walked into the room, a tension that hinted at hidden strength and suppressed rage. He unnerved me and fascinated me, and I knew I had to put him the Ultimate Cambridge Novel. I just didn’t know where to place him. Back then, I never dreamed he would be the lead. It was my story, damn it!  Mine, by me, me, ME! Everyone else were merely supporting characters.

Bloody student.

This is why The Caretakers is a much better novel: it’s Andy Hughes’s story, not mine. I feel jealous of Andy Hughes now and then, especially when DCP team mate Tracie McBride said she found him “dead sexy” and my sister said she liked him because he’s “a man’s man, but not a blokey one”; I know they would not have had the same opinion of Danny Greene!

It feels strange to think I killed Danny Greene by not killing him off in the book; whereas Andy Hughes lives on in the reader’s mind long after his death. In the first unfinished draft, Danny Greene’s still alive and about to enter the Great Hall of All Souls College to meet his destiny; he’s in that strange limbo where unfinished stories and characters lie. Yet to me, he’s dead, because I’ll never bring him out.

Thank God for that writing break and the end of my Cambridge days. It felt like the end of the world at the time, and in many respects it was: it was certainly the end of life as I knew it, which was no life at all. And Danny Greene is dead, whereas if my twenty-something self had been going through all that with the ease of digital self-publishing, his story would have been polluting Kindles and getting one star reviews and quite possibly ending my writing career before it got started.

What’s the moral to this story? Well, there isn’t one. Not really. But without realising it, I had taken the advice I’d always hated and dismissed: in many ways, the First Novel really was one I had to get out of my system, but not the whole book – only the first draft – the bare bones of the story were fine. Throw away the bathwater, but not the baby…

But it’s not just that that helped: I know now I also needed that break from novel writing to clear the rubbish out of my head and restore some objectivity. It’s a shame those six years were wasted on selling crap on eBay rather than developing my writing skills and improving my craftsmanship, but…hang on! There might be a novel in there somewhere…

I wonder what Danny Greene is doing these days?

Jasper: a better driver than Danny Greene…

Adrian Chamberlin still has his eBay selling account, and goes under the handle whitevandan. Andy (real surname unknown) is still in Cambridge somewhere. Rob Benson’s dog, Jasper, is real. Danny Greene is still missing…