http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvs/5363131576/

I’ve been working all week on my first assignment for my Open University course. It’s funny, because when I sat down to write my first short story a few months back, I remember thinking: this is hard; I’d rather write an essay. And all this week I’ve been thinking: God, I hate this. Let me just write a story instead.

Anyway, all that formal writing has temporarily killed my creative wood, so I haven’t thought of a good “idea” for a blog post. I think I’ll just talk instead, see where it goes.

I’ve got about 3 stories that I’m working on right now. One is for my short story course. It’s about a guy in his early 40′s who lives at home with his mother and brother. He’s a little overweight, working as an office drudge, and drives a Toyota Picnic. He’s not having much luck with the ladies, so he decides to try a little online dating. He gets a real shock as he’s perusing the profiles of single ladies and sees someone he works with and despises. He gets himself into a spot of bother when he sends her a message. There’s a nice twist in this story having to do with his family, who aren’t what they seem.

Another story is a more serious piece about a woman, 37, who’s suffering a gynaecological problem and must take stock of her marriage and make a decision regarding her treatment. It’s a character-driven story about self-image.

The third story is about a young woman who locks her mother in a steamer trunk: crazy people, dead cats, and good fun. I love this story, but it’s giving me a real headache.

Now, I cry easily. When I was a student nurse, I cried at least once on each of my hospital placements. I can’t pinpoint a single reason for it…in all three cases, I think it was a combination of stress, lack of confidence, and being out of my element. Nurses must be confident, and I was not. In my last placement, I cried when I couldn’t fill out a patient admission form. I’d been a student nurse for a year and didn’t know how to admit a patient. It didn’t help that one of the staff nurses was laughing at me.

I’m sensitive. I get stressed, I cry. If something matters to me and I’m struggling with it, I cry. And I knew when I took up writing seriously that it would make me cry.

I’ve spent weeks working on my crazy people story. I posted it on Scrib to get feedback, to see how I can improve it. I’m not on there to be told my writing is perfect. Those guys have helped me whip 3 or 4 other stories into shape, and I loved the whole experience.

I got what I asked for.

I’ve had 9 critiques. That’s a good number. A few of the critiques didn’t offer much advice, but 6 of those critiques were highly detailed and so thoroughly helpful that I was overwhelmed. What made this so difficult was the praise; there was a lot of it, and it was specific and genuine. If the story was just crap, I could trunk it or toss it. But it’s a good story. A few people, who have themselves been published, have said it was publishable; they encouraged me to send it out. After I’d nearly completely rewritten and restructured it.

Just shoot me now, please.

The most difficult one to read came from a friend who, commenting after I’d done some revising, said I’d “lost the spontaneity and verve” of the original. And she’s right, which is why it was hard to take. And here I am planning huge rewrites which could possibly kill the story dead if I’m not careful. I’ve gotten so much feedback, some of it conflicting, so I’m going to have to print it all out and do a lot of thinking.

I vented to this same friend, and she said she rewrites dozens of times and something is always in the rewrite. One of the things she does is to save the first draft and go back to it as she’s revising, in order to help keep the freshness of the first draft.

No wonder she’s a published writer.

I usually overwrite my first drafts with my changes, but thankfully I’d kept the first draft. I’ll always keep the first draft now.

But I’m not touching it right now. I’m working on the other two, which are still in the first draft stage. I need to get the literary piece done because I’m sending it in for the Mslexia Women’s Short Story Competition. The deadline is March 19th, and I’ve only got about 500 words done out of around 2000.  I need to complete it, get it posted on Scrib, wait for critiques (that can take about a week, even 2), and rewrite. Not sure if I’ll get it done by then. Especially because it’s literary and I can’t do a lot of plotting. For me, literary stuff sort of unfolds as I go along.

I guess I should be working on it now.

Oh, and I didn’t cry. I got out my OU essay and worked on that. I guess I’m not such a snowflake after all.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60852569@N00/ When your ouija board catches fire, it's time to put it away.

I’ve got a cold. And last night, at around 3am, I woke up coughing. I realised that I had been coughing for some time, and that for whatever reason, my left arm was pointing straight up at the ceiling. Under normal circumstances, I would have said to myself, “Put your arm down, you weirdo,” and obeyed.

****Spoiler Alert****

But last night was different. You see, the day before I’d watched Paranormal Activity. And now that I was fully awake, I was remembering the movie, and freaked out by what I was doing. I lowered my arm, but I was suddenly convinced a demon (or my cat– same thing) was going to come, drag me out of the bed, and bite me in the  writer’s ass. It was sure to bite me there, being such an easy target. Then I was going to come back to bed, kill my husband, set up a camera, and throw him at it. That’s what happens at the end, right? I was covering my eyes for that last part.

The room was hot, and I needed to tinkle. I was scared stiff. Trying to get it together, I started thinking about the movie, but from a writer’s perspective. And I thought, Why didn’t the demon just bite her from the start? Why all the drama? And then it hit me: This movie has almost no plot!

Basically, it’s just one not-scary, to somewhat-scary, scene after another, with nothing really moving the story along. You could have skipped the entire middle and the ending still would have made sense. The only semi-interesting development was the discovery of the photo, but even that just made me think, What was the point of that?

I also kept thinking, Why don’t they turn on the damn lights!???!?! I know I’d be installing some  floodlights in my bedroom if my sorry self was getting haunted. I’d sleep in the day, out on the lawn if I had to, then once it got dark, BZZZT!!! on them floodlights would come; I’d light the whole friggin house up.

And Katie’s half-assed efforts to get the demon exorcised. Come on! Get a priest, already. Forget the pussyfooting ghost-hugger. Get you some proper demon busters. You don’t mess around with this shit. Put the baby powder away and get Father Lankester Merrin in there.

What? He’s dead?

Killed by a demon, you say?

Well, damn.

Don’t get me wrong; this was a gripping and entertaining movie. I highly enjoyed it even though I was watching it on a small window on the computer and my eyes were hiding behind my hands for much of it. Sure, the acting was pretty bad, but for such a low-budget film it was good fun. I loved that the demon was never actually shown, which is so different from most horror movies. There’s never any room for your own imaginings. At the beginning, you could almost say, Oh, she’s just imagining things.

I love and hate scary movies. I will not watch gory movies, but ghostie flicks, I love. I’m scared witless afterwards, but I still love them. Really, I was okay until I woke up in the middle of the night and kept seeing Katie getting out of bed, standing there, doing nothing. That scared me more than anything. What I hate are the horrible endings. I don’t want the demon to win; it’s too depressing.

I’ve now got Paranormal Activity 2 on my lovefilm rental list. I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ll never sleep again.

I did get it together last night. Our next door neighbour turned her light on, which shines a little into our house and I felt brave enough to get out of bed. I just hope the demon wasn’t at my neighbour’s house. Well, if it was, at least she was smart enough to turn the light on.

I’m sure it’s gone now.

According to the kids on Scrib, e-zines are usually created by writers, for writers. For the most part, the general reading population does not read them. It’s a bit like show and tell.

Some of them pay, and some of them do not.  One e-zine I looked at did pay. $3. Per story.

Here’s what that translates to:

This is not my keyboard, by the way. Ew. http://www.flickr.com/photos/asimzb/

So, I put in, say, 10-20 hours on a story and they give me three bucks.

Sounds fair. If you’re living in 1821.

Oh wait, no, sorry. They’ll also link to your blog.

Well, that makes it all better. You know what? You don’t even need to pay me. In fact, I’ll pay you. Here’s my story, my contract signed in blood, and my first born, plus a million dollars. Don’t forget to link to my blog.

What was that? You’ve gone bust?

Damn. Can I have my story and first-born back?

Seriously? I have to choose one or the other?

Can I think about it?

It took me 18 hours to write that story, but only 15 hours to give birth to my child.

I think I’ll take the story.

There are easier ways of getting scammed. You know, I’ve got these diplomats from Nigeria that are literally begging me to do business with them. All I need to do is send them my bank account details. It would only take me a few minutes to be thoroughly ripped off. Why would I slave away over a story only to be partially scammed? If you’re going to do something, do it right.

“Better than not getting paid at all!”

Who said that?

No, it’s not better. If I don’t sell my story, it’s still mine. I can post it here, save it to put into a collection that I can later sell as a Kindle book, or hold onto it until I do find a magazine or other suitable publication. I’ve not lost anything.

Yeah, I know, most of these publications are only for first rights, so after a year the story is mine again. But nobody wants seconds. I don’t want the caption: Originally published in The Writer’s Black Hole: Where Stories Come to Die e-zine below the story.

Joking aside, I know they’re not all like that. Some are great, and there are one or two I’ve got my eye on, but most of them are just a way for writers to compensate for the flooded market: there’s no place for my story, so I’ll make one. You know, a bit like a dog groomer without any dogs to groom, so he starts breeding them and giving them out to people and says, “Now, bring them back to me so I can groom them.” Kind of. Not really, but you get the idea. Creating work for oneself. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it doesn’t get you any real publishing credit. It does not further your career. It’s like printing out a fake degree to hang on your wall. Everyone knows it’s a fake, including you.

Maybe I’m setting my sights too high. Maybe I’m a snob. Maybe I’m just naïve. Maybe after my 666^th rejection, I won’t be so quick to dismiss the fly-by-night e-zines.

For now, though, I’ll hang onto my work.

Let me repeat that, in big writing:

I’m not very original.

That’s right. My ideas aren’t very original. Everything that I come up with has been done a thousand times before, and probably been done better than I ever could.

But here’s the thing: an unoriginal idea can be made into something that is original. I can start with something predictable, something totally worn, and morph it into something that hopefully hasn’t been done ten thousand times already. I can add a new spin. I let it germinate. I hold in the back of my mind while I’m doing other things. I cradle it and nurture it and let it grow. Sometimes it fails to thrive, sometimes it grows into something unruly and outrageous and I have to prune it back or pull it out by the roots. And other times, it flourishes and becomes what it needs to be.

In other words, I don’t just settle on the first idea that comes to mind, be it a premise for a story, an ending, whatever. I play with it.

*                    *                    *                    *                   *

I wrote the above on November 25th last year. Today, I watched this video of John Cleese talking about how to be creative and learned that I’m doing exactly what I should be doing.

This talk provides the most practical advice on creativity I’ve ever come across. If you’re a writer or a person who does anything creative…heck, if you have a pulse, you should watch this.

John Cleese – a lecture on Creativity from janalleman on Vimeo.

When I blogged  last time about my newer stories sucking because I was putting too much pressure on myself, I was spot on. I was “working” too hard and not “playing” enough. I blame Uncle Chuck a bit for that, because he’s always telling us that writing is work. And it is. But it’s not. With writing, you have to play and work, play and work. And if you’re freelancing with deadlines, it probably is more work than play.

To summarise the key points:

• You need a quiet, private place to conduct creative play, aka the open mode.
• You need a set amount of uninterrupted time, about an hour and a half. Less isn’t enough, and more than that will just tire you out.
• Don’t settle on the first idea. Tolerate the discomfort of the unsolved problem. Fresh, sparkling  ideas will come.
• There are no right or wrong answers; it’s just play. Have confidence and banish the doubts and insecurities.
• Lean gently and persistently on the problem; keep it in mind and your subconscious will reward you.
• Once you’ve reached a decision, switch back to closed mode and follow through with the idea.
• Reassess, return to open mode when needed.

Here’s another video where he gives a shorter version of the lecture, with a few added insights:

Er, I'm not getting paid at all.

In the past two months, I’ve completed four short stories, and I have three at various levels of completion. I don’t write everyday. An entire week passed once when I didn’t write at all. When I do write, it’s around 500 words.

I’m not exactly killing myself.

But lately it has felt rushed. I have pushed myself to meet competition deadlines. I have forced myself to write things that conform to pre-chosen themes, and picked ideas that will be acceptable to the judges.

And I don’t think it’s working very well.

I’ve not had any feedback yet regarding the comps I’ve entered (it’s far too early), but my stories suck.

The first story I wrote, The Courtesy Coach, doesn’t suck. I spent probably 15-20 hours working on that one. Yes, I was writing to a theme, but I had time and I wasn’t worrying about any other deadlines. I hadn’t created my competition spreadsheet yet. I didn’t have a daily word quota yet. I was completely engrossed in that story and I played to my strengths.

When I instigated a daily word count, the crap level rose exponentially. Because spewing out words doesn’t equal Writing. If it’s all going to get axed, what was the point in doing it? So I can fill in that little box with some numbers proving I wrote that day. No one looks at this sheet, by the way. It’s just for me. So I was trying to fool myself.

There are two problems:

• I’m worrying about deadlines and not giving each story the attention it needs.
• I’m not sticking with my strengths.

Granted, I’m new at this and I don’t have a full grasp of what my strengths are just yet. But I know that I like humour and different. Dark humour. I have that in The Courtesy Coach. I have a little of it in Just in Time. But it’s lacking in my other stories. I’ve tried to write tug-at-the-heart drama and I don’t think I’ve pulled it off. I’ve had some good feedback on Scribophile, but I still think it’s trash.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. Do all writers hate their writing? I don’t hate my first story. I want to marry it and have its word babies.

I believe in writing widely, pushing yourself as a writer, so this is all a learning experience. Maybe I’ll be able to do the literary stuff better when I have more practice.

And I know this sounds ridiculous, but I feel like I’ve been employed to do a job that no one wants me to do and that I won’t be getting paid for. Kind of like some mysterious authority has shoved me into a giant hamster wheel and told me to keep it spinning. For reasons unknown or forgotten

That’s idiot-talk, because the one shoving me into that hamster wheel is me. I done did it to myself. And I need to remind myself why. Every day.

Oh, you know what else I didn’t do with that first story? [Giggles and stage whispering.]  I didn’t outline.

Shhhhhh-uh! Don’t tell Uncle Chuck. He’ll hit me about the face and neck with his expletive stick.

I love me some outlining. Outlining makes it safe and easy and comfortable. And shit.

For me anyway, knowing how it’s going to end from the get-go doesn’t make it as good. I had no idea where the hell I was going when I wrote that first story. No road map, no signs, no clue. I agonised and pulled my hair out and banged my head on the keyboard, not knowing how or where to park it. But I found the perfect spot and whipped her in smooth and straight.

I think those outlines stop me thinking. I try to think of other possibilities after I’ve outlined, but once I’ve figured out the end, I just fill in the blanks.

Maybe I’m just talking nonsense. I’m a rookie with all of 4 stories to my name. Four.

I have about 5 more competitions I want to enter with deadlines before the 31st of March. I’m putting the last touches on 1 (it’s too late to save it from its mundaneness), I have the first drafts of 2 more nearly finished, and ideas for the others. I’m going to have to prioritise. I may not be able to enter all of them. Next year will be better, though, because by then I’ll have a stack of rejected stories that I can submit elsewhere.

I’m shooting my weekly word count in the face. I’m still keeping a log, but no more word count quota. My quota is to work on something everyday. And to use my brain, think about what I’m writing.

Here’s my new process:

• Think
• Write
• Revise
• Repeat

By revise I don’t mean fix grammar and spelling (although I do, because it bugs me). I mean read what you’ve written and ask yourself, Is this jumk? If it is, then there’s no point going on until it’s not junk. If you keep going, chances are you’ll just have to cut what you’ve done. Why waste that kind of time? I’m not saying it needs to be perfect, but it needs to not totally suck. If it’s boring, make it not boring. Because if you’re bored with the beginning, you’re going to write a boring middle and end. Make it exciting. If you’re excited, you’re going to write the rest of it with fireworks going off under your butt.

Except when you don’t. Because it won’t always be that much fun. There were times when I hated The Courtesy Coach. But once I had something that got me excited (the ending), then I revised and reworked. I knew I had something and that enthusiasm was reflected in the rewrites. Know when to plough on and when to revise. It’s a delicate balance.

Work daily, bitch-slap the word count.

This is purely a writer’s perspective. And I may be a rookie writer, but I’m definitely not a rookie reader.

Also, this is something that had occurred to me as well, and while it may be true, and may spell the end of that particular writer’s short-lived stint as a writer, it doesn’t stop the continuous spewing of crap.

I’m looking at it as an obsessive reader. If the market is flooded with tripe, one bad read is just replaced with another. And another. And another. There are a tribillionty wannabe authors out there. One is shot down, and another one is lined up.

So, yeah, great, author #23v8q&752%sk!78y+S3 is down, but there’s another one right behind him formatting his piece of shit manuscript as we speak. It’ll be out before you wake up tomorrow.

Here’s what it looks like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chronographia/

You know what else is done quickly? Tract housing. Fast food. Bad hair cuts. Surgeries where they leave the scalpel inside you.

Nothing worth doing should be churned out at warp speed. Homes, food, hair styling, medical procedures, and literature all deserve precious time. Don’t these authors love their books enough to spend time on them?

I’m not saying a book needs to be agonised over for 10 or 15 years.  And I can see how, if in capable hands, a cracking genre piece could be written, polished, and ready to go in 6 months. But 3, 4…6 books in one year? Please don’t. I don’t care how good you think you are. This ain’t Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Let’s get it looking more like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/

Real medical condition. You can look it up.

In the past few months I’ve put on 5 or 6 pounds. That number’s only a guess because when I feel fat, I become allergic to scales. I’m basing it on how hard it is to zip up my jeans. If I can *just* get them zipped, that equals 5-6 pounds. If I can get them on, but not fastened, that equals 7-8. When I can’t get them over my trollish hips, that means I’ve hit 10 pounds of excess baggage.

If I keep it up, I’ll be outgrowing those jeans real soon.

This is my derrière. Only it's not yellow. And it doesn't have a license plate, although it needs one. http://www.flickr.com/photos/madhakish/

It’s all the snacking sitting snacking sitting.

It’s both.

Let’s analyse this in a bullet-pointed list:

• I sit to write.
• I snack.
• I sit to critique.
• I snack.
• I sit to read.
• I snack a lot.

And let’s face it– I’m not snacking on carrot sticks and dust.

Books=food. When I sit down to read, I automatically reach for the goods. Doritos. Chocolate. Toast. Chocolate on toast. Chocolate on Doritos.

When I’ve been working on a story for a while, I can literally feel my ass widening. Writer’s Ass.

I’m not about to stop snacking. I can get myself to cut back a little, but there’s no way I’m giving up fried Mars bars and maple syrup pie à la mode. With cream. And sprinkles.

I’ll just have to get moving.

I wish there was a way to write and exercise at the same time. I could buy one of those digital voice recorders and just tell the story and type it up later. But it would sound all breathless and…inappropriate. Good if you’re writing romance stuff, but that’s not what I write. Some of that breathless enthusiasm may leak into my written story, and that would just be awkward.

I’m hoping to do some swimming two evenings a week, but I’m pretty lazy when it comes to going places for exercise. Evening comes and all I want to do is curl up with the Kindle. And two or three cupcakes.

For me, exercise works best when it’s done in the morning. I tend to lose more weight that way. Sure, I feel like half dead rat floating down the Thames afterward, but it works.

I just need to get motivated.

That probably won’t happen until I can’t get my jeans on. Maybe not even then, because as Uncle Chuck is so fond of saying, writers don’t need to wear pants. Read any three of his posts, and I guarantee in at least one of them he will mention this.

Back to work. Now…where are the Mars bars?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hippie/

#1 If you’ve completed a piece of work and are submitting it somewhere, be sure to have a bio ready.

I submitted a story yesterday for a competition and was required to include an author bio. There I sat with the empty text box, unable to submit my story, and unable to come back later to submit because I’d just paid the entry fee via PayPal and had been redirected to their site. I had to come up with something on the spot.

I managed it. I mean, come on, I’m supposed to be a writer– I’d better be able to write something off the cuff. But it would  have been better had I prepared something beforehand. I didn’t think I’d need to provide a bio until I actually got something published.

Get your bio ready.

On to the next:

#2 Don’t get scammed.

After I submitted my story, I started thinking about the terms of the contest. Here are the prizes:

• The prizes are: First prize: £2,500, second prize £1,000, third prize £500.
• The winners, ten runners up and five highly recommended will be published in Chapter One Promotions anthology.
• Each writer will receive one copy.

Sounds great, right? £2,500 is quite a prize for a short story competition. It’s actually the second point that kind of bugs me. All I’d been focused on were the first, second, and third prizes. But there’s a chance I’ll be one of the 15 who don’t actually win, but get their story published. But get published where?

In a book that they sell on their own website, and from what I can see, no where else. Does anyone really buy it?

I’m not saying my story is going to win. But I do think it is a good story, publishable even. I’d rather be published in something that actually has readers, and if I can, get paid for it. It isn’t about the money, it’s about valuing my work. Now, if People magazine came along and said, Your story, “Just in Time,” is quite simply one of the best stories we’ve ever come across. We’d like to publish it. We’re not going to pay you, even though we can afford it, and it will probably go on the second to last page, at the bottom, in tiny print, but…”

I’d be all over that. Because it’s a publication that has a gazillion readers. It’s serious recognition. If I can say on my CV that I’ve been published in People magazine, that’s without a doubt going to help me get published with the traditional folks if I choose to go that way. It’s serious cred.

I don’t want to be published in an anthology that no one’s going to read and and that didn’t pay for my contribution. In fact, I had to pay them. I could submit that story elsewhere.

Now, let me just be clear: I don’t think this competition is a scam. The judge is the chief editor of Austin & Macauley Publishers, and they’re not asking the entrants to purchase the anthology, they’re giving one to each. Unlike the International Library of Poetry (now known as Poetry.com), which is a vanity publisher and not a contest at all. I fell for that scam when I was 17. Yeah, I got my poem published…alongside 8 million others. But I didn’t know that at the time because they dressed it up as a competition.

Most likely I won’t get anywhere near the shortlist anyway. By the end of April, I’ll be able to resubmit the story elsewhere, somewhere where publication=getting paid. You know, like a professional writer does.

I’ve been focusing a lot on competitions lately. There are quite a few with closing dates between now and the end of March, so I get the feeling that we’re in the midst of competition season. I’ll probably enter a few more, but I want to focus on submitting to magazines and other reputable publications.

My point is: take care when entering competitions. Read the fine print and think about it. Some great advice can be found here: http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/contests/

I have not included links to any competitions because I can’t guarantee they are legit. I got my lists from writing magazines (probably the best source) and online searches.

Just goes to show the importance of a catchy title and appealing cover.

Susan Wendt, her husband, Alex and three-year-old daughter, Emma  move out of their tiny flat into a roomier apartment. They love their new home, even if the landlady, an elderly lady named Andrea, is a little eccentric. But Susan is soon plagued by bedbugs–Alex and Emma remain untouched. Susan sets out to get rid of the creepy crawlies, but the exterminator gives the all-clear. Is it all in her mind? Or is there something more sinister lurking in the house?

The prose is uncomplicated and direct. I was hooked from the start, and stayed hooked. The light tone was in direct contrast to the creepy developments, most of which centred around Susan’s growing paranoia over bedbugs that don’t exist.

Or do they?

This is a horror book and it should seriously come with a warning: Do Not Read In Bed. I read the final 100 pages all cosied up in bed. It was all nice and creeptastic. Now, some of the pages are covered with little printed bugs. And when you’re reading, you sometimes catch a glimpse of them along the side. This happened at one point, and for a split second, I thought a bug was actually crawling along the side of the book.

Hey, it was late, all right? I mean, look at that —>

Moving swiftly on…

Fiction elements:

Irritants

Okay, this isn’t an element of fiction writing, but it should be. Someone should include in a book on writing things to avoid so as not to irritate the reader. Here’s what irritated me in this book:

There was this branding thing going on. Instead of just saying laptop, sunglasses, mixer, cell phone, food processor… it was Macbook, Ray Bans, KitchenAid, iPhone, and Cuisinart. These are the kinds of details I’d rather imagine myself, if I want. I don’t give a damn about brands of sunglasses. If I did, then maybe I’d imagine them as Ray Bans. Maybe not. I do like Kitchenaid and Cuisinart, but I don’t need to be told those are the brands they have. This seemed to add a shallowness that pulled me out of the story.

Characters

Emma was adorable, but a little too precocious. She never does anything bad and she knows big words like “amethyst.”

Alex was kinda boring. He was just one of those good-looking nice guys. Drinks beer. Works hard. And thaaaaaaaaat’s about it.

The crazy landlady was overdrawn, as though the author was trying to make her memorable. She doesn’t need it; you’re not going to forget her.

Susan was fascinating. Prior to moving into the apartment, She suffered from insomnia, and you get the feeling it stemmed from some mild depression or anxiety. I also really enjoyed her antagonism toward Marni, the babysitter. There was a lot going on there and it made for a nice subplot, which later linked into the main plot.

However, I wasn’t really feeling Sue’s artistic ambitions. The woman quit her job to pursue art full-time, but she didn’t seem to view the world as an artist. When I did a lot of drawing and painting, I was forever looking at things as though they were potential subjects. I also examined how the light fell on something, the shape of shadows, colours of everything, chiaroscuro, negative space…none of this, or anything similar, was there.

Ending

Lots of little nuggets that the author had strewn about earlier get tidied up. I liked that. But, the final 50 pages are pretty gory, and in my opinion, too many people get axed. It started to lose some credibility

The peak of Susan’s madness did bring about some interesting turn of events. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll leave it at that.

But the conclusion…it was predictable, I have to say. Disgusting and appalling, yes. Surprising? No. One thing really bugged me (haha), though: Why was the baddie still doing what they were doing? (I know that makes little sense if you’ve not read it, but I don’t want to give the ending away.) It feels as though the author wrote with the ending firmly in mind. He knew how it was going to end before he started writing and probably had quite a detailed outline. Outlining’s great. Many great writers do it. I couldn’t write without one. But it’s better to write *for* the climax, not the resolution. If the author, while writing it, doesn’t know how it’s going to end, the reader probably won’t know.

Rating: 3.5/5