A-z Blogging Challenge: H is for Helsinki

My theme: Writing and the business of writing

What has Helsinki got to do with writing, I hear you scream. Well, OK, absolutely nothing, although, Helsinki is the setting for two of my books, and will be the setting for my next book too. (More about this later.)

I just thought today, about third way thoroughly this challenge, it's time for a pictorial post.

I wasn't born in Helsinki, so I can't claim to be 'bare footed' Hesalainen (I don't know why Helsinki born Finns are called 'bare footed', strange?). But, I was only 15 when we moved there, and I lived in Helsinki until I moved to the UK, so it's very much a home town for me.

I've also just booked tickets to go to Helsinki in May to do some research for the above mentioned book, so I thought these pictures I took last summer would be fitting. I hope you enjoy them!

To learn more about Helsinki, go to Visit Helsinki.

A-Z Blogging Challenge: E is for The Englishman and F is for Freebies

My theme: Writing and the Business of Writing

Free Books

Many people when they hear that I am putting my e-books on a free promotion look at me puzzlingly, ' Really?'

Why, they ask, after spending up to two years writing, editing and formatting a book, do I want to give it away free? When as I mentioned in my Creativity versus Cash post, even us writers need to eat?

There are many reasons.

Firstly, the more people read your words the better. As with the blog (which after all is the same: ie giving your work away free) the more readers you have, the bigger your writer platform. And a big platform means more book sales, eventually.

Or so the theory goes.

Here's what my experiences have been so far.

The Englishman

I've just finished a second free promotion of my e-book, The Englishman, and once again had a good response. It's exciting; I love getting new readers, the more people read my story, the better.

The Englishman - as those of you who've followed my blog for some time know - became a book after I started telling the story of my life here on my blog. The first draft of the book was fairly quick - it took about 6 months to write. At the end of it, however, what I had was just a set of blog posts, not a novel. The editing process took best part of eighteen months. I really struggled with the format. Should I keep it as a memoir, even though the story had already veered into the fiction side? Or should I take it into a fully fledged novel? What I first produced, about a year ago now, was a first person hybrid, which I sent to a few of my biggest fans (including Liberty London Girl and Mrs Trefusis). All were influential people in their fields, so I thought their advice would be invaluable. I knew I was lucky to have such people taking an interest in my writing.

All the good advice pointed in one direction - to make the blog posts into a 'Will they, won't they' love story, ie a traditional novel. So I changed the point of view (more on POV, my pet love/hate in the P post of this challenge) from first person to third person, and added about 20,000 words. After a few more final edits, it was time to send it to a professional editor, and in August 2012 I eventually let The Englishman loose on the world.

When the novel came out, the first sales figures where very promising. I also had several incredibly fabulous reviews, and many of my blogging friends hosted me and the book on their websites. The Englishman was featured on The N10 Show and the book was even recommended as a good read on the Alliance of Independent Writers web site. Accolade indeed!

But by October sales had started to flag a little, so I decided that, to keep up interest in the book, the best thing would be to make The Englishman free for a period. And I have to say the results were staggering. Overnight, during the first 24 hours of the promotion, over 600 copies were downloaded. During the whole promotion I 'sold' over 1,000 copies. That, I've been told is not a bad figure for a first novel in any genre or format.

But, and this is a big but against giving your books away free.

After The Englishman's success, I decided to publish my other two books, Coffee and Vodka and The Red King of Helsinki also as e-books, and at the same time, do another free promotion for the backlist novel. But now the free promo is over, some of my readers are asking me when (not if) the other two will be free…

This is very flattering, it is truly wonderful for a writer who has struggled for years to have any readers at all, to be asked when your work will be available.

But at the same time I wonder if I've created a reader expectation that all of my work will forever be free? Have I completely destroyed any hope of ever making money (read: breaking even) with my writing?

I do hope not, because as I mentioned before, I too need to eat.

Author exits stage right.

A-Z Blogging Challenge: D: is for Dialogue

My theme: Writing and the business of writing

[I know, I know it's 5th April today and I should be on E, but I'm running a day late…Yesterday, I couldn't get away from the office (yes, I have a day job), and in the evening I had promised to go to a members' viewing of Lichtenstein's Retrospective at Tate Modern with Daughter. By the time we were at home, the splitting head ache from which I'd suffered most of the day, got worse, so I'm afraid I abandoned any thoughts of the A-Z  Blogging Challenge. (And did your dog also eat your homework, I hear you ask. Tsk!) I will catch up, I promise!]

Dialogue is a very important part of any work of fiction. It gives the reader a breathing space from block text and it can also give the story a funny, or sad, interlude. 

Done well, it should highlight the peculiarities of your characters. So if your heroine is a self-absorbed woman, she may well talk too much; an Alpha male may just utter the occasional command. That's if your book is filled with caricatures, but you get the point?

Dialogue should take the plot forward, so it shouldn't repeat what's said in the text (unless this is a particular style of course - every rule should be broken and all that). This is something we all fall for at times. The sentence below is from my latest book, The Red King of Helsinki. 

The Colonel gave him a set of car keys and told him where to find it, 'It's a moss green Opel Kadett parked in bay 229 in the car park underneath Erottaja. You know the air shelter?'

The highlighted words were removed by my editor with the comment, "We know he tells Iain where to find the car, because he does so in the next sentence." Doh! 

There's nothing worse than dialogue that doesn't flow. Non-writers often think dialogue is something we writers pick up word for word on the tube or listening in to people's conversations in a cafe. This is partly true, however, most real conversations make very poor dialogue. Just try to write down all the words next time you're listening in on two or more people having a conversation. It's impossible because first of all there are too many Umms, Ahhs, Errs and Y'know's. There are too many repetitions and too much talking over one another. There are references to people and places you don't know. What writers do is modify, or fictionalise, what they overhear. We take away the repetitions, we add people, places and plot twists we have in the book, and we above all shorten the conversation. 

And that's how good dialogue happens.  

A-Z Blogging Challenge: C is for Creativity versus Cash

My theme: Writing and the business of writing.

Creativity and the art of making money are often deemed complete opposites: creativity is pure and beautiful, whereas cash is dirty and ugly. How could these two things possibly be connected?

But even writers have to eat.

In fact, one could say artists are the ultimate self-employed businessmen (and women). There are few professions where you rely so much just on yourself, and your creativity, to provide food and shelter for yourself. (Or shoes and handbags)

Contrary to what the populist opinion of today may say, many artists are excellent at making money. More surprisingly it's often the lack of funds which spurs these artists on to make their art. Just look at my hero, Strindberg. As soon as he ran out of money (which he did frequently), he sat down and wrote another play. Apparently he didn't even like writing plays, but did it because plays were quicker to write than novels and they were easier to market. When even his plays wouldn't sell, he started painting oil canvases, which now fetch a pretty penny.

August Strindberg, the Swedish playwright

It could therefore be said that without the need for cash there would be much less creativity. Discuss...

A-Z Blogging Challenge: B is for Blogging

Should writer's blog?

When I started blogging three years ago, I did it purely as an experiment and because I like writing, whether an article for a magazine, a blog or a novel.

I also knew that blogging can be a very good way for a writer to build a platform, to get your name out there. It can also provide a support network, and build friendships. If writing is your day job, it can be a very lonely profession.

Recently, however, many people in the blogosphere and even in the publishing industry, are doubting whether blogging is good for authors. Shouldn't a writer put all his or her energies into producing the thing they want to to produce, ie books, rather than blog posts?

I've noticed that there's also a school of thought where if you are a non-fiction writer, setting up and keeping an informative blog on your specialist subject is almost a must, whereas for fiction writers it might be more of a distraction to have to keep up blogging as well as 'proper' writing. There's an excellent recent blog post about this on Joanna Penn's blog, The Creative Penn.

Personally, I know I wouldn't be the writer I am today if it wasn't for this blog.

Firstly, my first published novel, The Englishman (which incidentally is on a short free promotion at the moment), was born out of a set of blog posts I started writing here (remember How I Came to be in England?).

Secondly, I've made numerous friends since I started blogging. These online readers and fellows writers have spurred me on in ways I could not have imagined before I started writing a blog. You guys gave me confidence to finish The Englishman, as well as to bring out my other two novels, Coffee and Vodka and The Red King of Helsinki.

Thirdly, I have learned a huge amount about publishing, book marketing, and - yes- writing through having this blog and reading other blogs.

Lastly, writing a blog has taught me discipline in writing. For instance this A-Z Challenge is just what the doctor ordered for me right now. With all of my completed books out, I literally need a kick up the preverbal to get me going on a sequel. (Not telling you which book will have a sequel yet…it'll be a surprise!)

So, for me as a writer, blogging is a must.

A-Z Blogging Challenge: A is for Agents

I've thought hard about what theme I should have for this, my first A-Z Blogging Challenge and decided that since all of my completed novels are now out, I should write about the business of writing and publishing. 

A 'Guide to writing' or 'Helena's Writing Life', if you like.

Sooo, on this April Fools' Day, I am going to talk about Agents. (Seriously, not in jest, although the temptation is huge....)

When, a few years ago (hmm...try ten years - how time flies!) I took my MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, (more about this on a later post under 'M'), it was a fact universally acknowledged that you could not be a proper writer, or a published writer, without having a Literary Agent. Getting accepted into the golden stable of an Agent, however, was harder than getting a publisher to publish your work. And most publishers wouldn't even consider your submission if you didn't have a literary agent on your side. 

The job of the literary agent, we were told, was to sell your book to publishers. They would only take you on if they knew they could do this - or as it's called in the industry lingo, 'place your book'. I have lost count of the amount of agents who have told me in letters and emails that they like my writing ('I love your work', 'you have talent', 'you can write'), but that they just couldn't see where to place it. Of course there are several examples of famous writers who struggled to get and agent or a publisher, and went on to sell millions of copies when someone finally believed in their of work. (JK Rowling with Harry Potter and lately E L James with 50 Shades). 

Agents' letters

But times have since changed. 

Today there are several commentators, such as the successful writer, Sean Wesley Smith who believe agents are rapidly becoming extinct as a literary species. Why should you, argues Sean, give your hard earned 15% to someone who is just, figuratively speaking, sitting in your basement, living off your hard work, when you can get your book to market, and straight into a reader's lap without so much as a wink in the direction of the said agent. 

But there are others who feel that an agent still has a place in the physical publishing world. 

Take the author of Wool, Hugh Howie. Hugh self-published Wool in a series of free-standing e-novellas, and when the books became best-sellers online, was contacted by several agents. Reluctant at first, he did sign with an agent (on his terms), and with her help managed to get a unique publishing deal with Simon & Schuster which excluded the e-book rights to Wool. This deal is a first of its kind and something which most independent publishers/authors dream of as the ultimate goal. 

This is worthy of a sideline explanation: To publish printed books takes time and money, as opposed to e-publishing which on the face of it doesn't cost a bean. Not counting all the costs of editing, cover design, online advertising, and the time and effort the author puts into both the writing and the marketing.  So, when an author has already done all the hard work of getting the e-book out, why should a publisher sweep in and take a large percentage of the e-book sales as well as of the physical book sales, which is the part he'll make an actual investment in?

But I wonder if Howie would've got the book deal he really wanted without the help of his agent Kristin Nelson? I somehow doubt it.

So, although a writer no longer needs an agent to publish and make money out of his/her e-books, I personally think in the traditional publishing world a (good) agent still has an important role to play.

This, of course, may change in the blink of an eye. But then, that's today's publishing industry for you!

I hope you enjoyed this first post in April's blogging challenge. Tomorrow I'll be writing a post on the subject of 'Blogging - should writers blog or not?'

A-Z Blogging Challenge 2013

Having just had a long discussion on Twitter and on Jane Friedman's excellent site about whether writers should blog or not, I have done the almost opposite of what the post by L L Barkat recommends.

I've only signed up to the blogging A-Z Challenge. A blog post on a theme per day on each and every letter of the alphabet during the month of April.

See, I just can't help myself. I saw a post about this fun challenge on Karen G's blog and before I knew what I was doing, I'd signed up.

I think I need help….is there an AA meeting for bloggers I could attend?