TYPICAL WRITING DAY.... C.L. RAVEN
We often read writers’
accounts of their typical working day and it all sounds so idyllic:
they get up early, get to their computer, write a thousand words, and
are finished by lunchtime then take the afternoon off to check emails
or do nothing. Their office overlooks the sea, their planning board
is nearby and their spouse supplies them with hot beverages and
peace.
Our cold writing
dungeon sits beneath a Willow tree, our peace shattered by cats
leaping from the tree onto the roof and frightening us out of a
scene. If we take time off, we get anxious and irritable. As for
early mornings? Just because we write horror, doesn’t mean we want
to inflict it on ourselves. If we got up and went straight to our
laptop, our animal army would lynch us. The guinea pigs riot on a
daily basis. Our army consists of 1 dog, 5 cats, 2 guinea pigs, 1
rabbit, 1 duck, 1 iguana and 2 corn snakes. Most of them are rescue
pets. Two of the cats showed up one day and decided they live with us
now. We found the one’s owner and they collect him regularly, but
he keeps coming back. As for a spouse bringing us beverages, we’re
chronically single and send texts to each other. “Bring me
chocolate and Red Bull.” And the reply is “No.”
Our writing day starts
with dragging ourselves out of bed (antidepressants have a lot to
answer for), feeding the animal army then taking our dog and our
friend’s dog out for a walk in woodlands. A lot of writers use that
time to plan their novel or think of a solution. We use the time to
wake up and pick up litter the public have dropped, while thinking of
creative ways to teach them not to harm the environment. Plus, having
a Lurcher and a Border Collie means they’re not exactly relaxing
strolls. They’re usually accompanied by “what are you eating?”
“Get up!” (they love rolling in dead things) “stop barking,
it’s just saying hello,” and “you are not a squirrel.”
After we get back from
the walk, it’s time for our morning Red Bull and party rings. For
those of you who are not from the UK, party rings are hard biscuits
covered in icing that are very popular with childrens’ parties and
36 year old twins from Wales. The dogs love them too. The cliché
drink of writers is coffee. Ours is Red Bull. Without it, it’s best
to avoid us. Canongate in Edinburgh has never recovered from a Red
Bull-related meltdown. Whilst we snack, we open our Duolingo apps and
try to learn Swedish. We’re going to Sweden on 16th May
to do a signing in a bookshop, so we want to be able to speak a bit
of Swedish. We’re also learning Italian and German.
Every other day, we
clean out the rabbit, duck and guinea pigs’ hutches/shed. We do
more Duolingo then let the duck out into the front garden and fill
her washing up bowl with warm water. She has two ponds, but her hot
tub is her favourite thing. We then clean the house, feed the iguana
and finally start work any time between 11:30 and 1 p.m. One day a
week we do warrior training, where we pay a personal trainer to
torture us for an hour. We do not want the dreaded ‘writer’s
bum’.
We write together under
a joint pseudonym, so our writing process is a little different.
We’ve heard of some writing partners who will take a chapter each,
or divide their characters. That sounds so harmonious, so organised.
So not how we work. Our process can probably be best described as
‘chaotic’. We don’t plan. At all. So if we’re writing
something new, we’ll think of a vague idea, like ‘we want to
write a ghost story’ or whatever brief a deadline states. One of us
heads out to our writing dungeon armed with a skull print blanket and
the laptop. Our dungeon is actually a shed that our best mate turned
into a dungeon using fake stone offcuts from a set she was working
on. She’s a scenic artist for TV and film. Our dungeon is filled
with Halloween decorations, a portable heater, a mummy from another
set, and a ginger cat called Theo -- the one who insists he lives
with us despite having a home. He has his own chair. The mummy has
the other chair.
Whoever goes out first
will write a page, setting the tone, voice and idea. Then we switch.
The second one will read what’s been written then continue it. We
keep doing this until the end of the story. We don’t discuss what
will happen next (mostly because we don’t know) and we just see
where the story takes us. Shift changes are accompanied by doing
flexibility stretches. Sitting at a desk all day is bad for you. Plus
we’re trying to get our splits. In between redrafts we’ll whip
out our phones and go on Instagram to be inspired by – and fume at
– all the poledancers who are better than us. Or when we’re
feeling really masochistic, go on Twitter and read all the bragging
posts by authors who never seem to get a rejection. Or if they do,
they never post about it. We do. We’re goths. Sharing our misery
brings joy to our little black hearts.
After a story is
finished, we’ll take it in turns in do a full redraft. By the time
we’re ready to submit the story or publish the novel, it’s had so
many edits that we can’t remember who wrote what. We don’t try to
meet a set word count – we don’t need the stress – we write for
as long as we have time for. Plus, most of our time is spent editing
rather than writing, so setting word counts would be pointless. If
we’re editing, we’ll try to finish the story, or chapter, but if
we don’t, we don’t stress about it. We’d rather not be late to
our polefit class.
People often ask if we
ever disagree on which direction the story takes, or if we get
annoyed what one of us has done to a character. The answer is no. We
have no idea where the story is going until we’re writing it. We
don’t divide characters, so we’re not precious over any of them.
And as we can’t remember who wrote what part, neither of us gets
upset if something gets cut. It doesn’t sound like it should work,
but it does. We write novels, short stories, articles, comics and
film scripts and it all gets done the same way.
In the afternoon,
whoever isn’t on the writing shift will bath the iguana and feed
the dogs. We usually shut down the laptop at about 5 or 6 p.m. If we
have a free evening, we’ll happily work til 7 or 8 p.m. Our
evenings are spent doing gymnastics (which we’re terrible at)
polefit (which we love) going round a friend’s house to work on a
choose your own adventure game we’ve adapted from our novel, Silent
Dawn, or going to friends to play D&D/RPGs/board games. One or
two evenings a week we have chip and film night, where we get chips
from the chip shop and spend the evening with our mum watching horror
films and serial killer documentaries. They’re our favourite
evenings. We put the duck and rabbit to bed half an hour before
sundown. Our friends are always amused when we message them to say
‘we’ll be round after we’ve put the duck to bed’, but we’ve
had ducks for 21 years, so it’s normal for us. We’re also
training to become polefit instructors. We really need more hours in
the day. We could achieve this by getting up before half eight but we
see no need to make ourselves suffer.
Every Friday evening,
we host The Graveyard Shift, a horror radio show on Vitalize radio.
It’s an online radio station and they let us loose on the
unsuspecting public. We cover topics like films, books, serial
killers and historical events. Whoever is not on the writing shift is
usually researching for the show or sorting out accommodation and
booking for cons, checking emails, getting work ready to be submitted
and maintaining a social media presence. Or sharing photos of our
cats.
At least one weekend a
month, we sell our books at comic cons or horror cons. Some months we
have a convention every weekend. We end up travelling all over the UK
and staying in the cheapest accommodation we can find. It’s usually
Travelodge or camping. If a con is three hours or less away, we’ll
get up at 4 a.m. and drive up on the morning of the con. It saves
money. We write full time. Saving money has become our specialty.
Cons are long hours and hard work, but we’ve met so many new
readers that we wouldn’t have found by staying at home and posting
links online. In terms of profit margins, cons are not good but in
terms of building a bigger audience, they’re great. We now have
people returning to cons just to buy more books from us. That makes
it worthwhile. If we’re not at cons, the weekends are just another
writing day or spent teaching a friend polefit to give us practise
for our coaching course. If we’re not productive, our depression
worsens.
We
schedule our work according to deadlines. The shortest deadlines get
worked on first. If we have nothing pressing to work on, we may write
a novel, edit a novel, or get started on a deadline that’s a month
or more away. We edit a few of our friends’ work so will often
spend days doing that, or formatting books for other people.
Formatting is probably our least favourite aspect of self-publishing
because it’s boring and not overly difficult, once you’ve
mastered how to stop the document screwing up your page numbers.
Every year we try to
visit one new place abroad we’ve never been. So far, we’ve
managed Las Vegas, San Francisco, Paris, Venice and Fuengirola. We
take our laptop and write travel blogs in the evenings after spending
all day exploring. Our holidays are usually a disaster and these
result in great travel posts. Most travel writers write about
beautiful places and local food. We write about poorly placed air
vents exposing Cat in the Louvre and Lynx jumping into the Seine to
rescue her phone. It won second prize in a travel writing
competition.
Links:
Amazon
page https://www.amazon.co.uk/l/B0078NM3M0
Twitter https://twitter.com/clraven
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