Getting Published
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko: Author
This is the follow-up to my article Writing’s Brilliant. The title of my last piece wasn’t devilishly clever or witty like this one, and that was the intention. Writing is simply fun, and if you write for the pure enjoyment of creativity, you will find it a fulfilling venture. I also alluded to the business of authoring and how making a living is a tough ol’ game, hence why I have a day job where I use not a single cell of my creative grey matter.
However, you can’t go from writing to authoring in one fell swoop. There’s quite a big hurdle in the way, and one that is probably the most frustrating of all: getting published. I’m hoping that this article doesn’t come across as “Oh, I’ve been published, don’t you know, and this is how you might be able to do it.” If it is, I’m a shitter writer than I thought. I’ve had one fiction book published, The Great Right Hope. Book 2 in the trilogy should be out next year, and the final part is being written when I’m not doing stuff like this or working, so I’m hardly an expert on the matter. I’ll just tell you what I think is the best course of action and how I managed it.
Make sure your story’s good.
“Of course it’s good, my mum thought it was mint!” I’m sure she did. You need an honest viewpoint from someone who is not afraid to kick you in the nuts and watch as you collapse to the ground waiting for Hell to swallow you up. That’s why I gave my first ever draft of my first ever story to the missus to read.
You must have seen the auditions on X-Factor or American Idol when tone deaf, scabby horrible scrotes scream the house down with bastardisations of Britney, Robbie, Madge, Whitney, etc, and, then, when the judges slate them, these delusional idiots are genuinely, and I mean genuinely, shocked.
The mother of the scrote usually kicks off and security is forced to interject. Every time I see it, and it happens at least ten times a series, I can never quite believe it. Surely they know they stink? Surely their parents’ rose-tinted glasses aren’t that rosy? My old man sees it as his God-given right to tell me that I am shit at everything, and he does this with gusto and twenty-nine years of practise (although, for some reason, he’s got it into his head that I excel at swimming????). I wouldn’t have it any other way.
But that’s human nature isn’t it? “Everyone is a hypocrite except for me.” It is hard to see your own flaws, and that’s why you need people who will read your work from a completely independent viewpoint. People as in plural, as opinions are like arseholes, and they’re often dirty (I think that’s the saying). It is vital that someone tells you if your novel needs more work, or there are flaws, holes or rubbish characters. Hopefully, they’ll give you some positive feedback, too. You need to give the manuscript the best chance possible when you submit it.
Do you remember the first time?
The art of writing is a little bit like sex. Remember the first time you had sex? The first draft of your first story is going to be similar, and unless your story is half a page long and the hero wakes up and it is all a dream, it probably isn’t what you were hoping for. Even though the thirty second roll in the sack was technically rubbish, you still enjoyed yourself and were immensely proud, but you knew that you needed to practise before trying something real freaky. It’s the same with writing. You have to practise and learn grammar, tenses, building atmosphere, etc, and anything outside your comfort zone before you take on the publishers. To put it another way, anyone can do the pretty ones.
If you can do that you can do anything!
What I’m trying to say is that you should hone your skills as a writer, so that when you eventually submit your novel you want the guy or gal reading your first chapter thinking you’re technically sound. Then, they can concentrate on the story. If the reviewer turns to page one and notices basic mistakes, they are going to assume that you can’t write, or tell a story…even if you can.
As you get better at your art, you’ll constantly see ways to improve what you have written. Sometimes it’s good to finish the draft and forget about it for a month, before having a look at it fresh. You’ll pick out mistakes that you skimmed over, a habit that is unavoidable. Finding mistakes in books from big publishing houses is not uncommon and those would have been edited and proofed countless times, certainly more times and more expertly done than my attempts, sitting at my computer with The Best Rock Album Ever volume XXII blasting in my ears.
First impressions are everything
So you’ve got a great story and you’ve got a well-written manuscript. Job done. Sadly not. You ain’t the only one.
When sending out a manuscript, there’s no point sending it somewhere where it’s doomed before it arrives through the post. I wrote a novel full of gratuitous violence, torturous vampires and a lots of attempted sex (yes - attempted sex), so it wasn’t worth me sending it to Christian publishers or publishers specialising in biographies, evem though my own history is chequered with impressive quantities of attempted sex. Contact publishers who deal with your sort of thang. Don’t take a scattergun approach. You’ll know what they publish from their website. Opposites don’t usually attract in the publishing world.
Sometimes they do. I’m conscious that my last two articles on writing have included pictures of weird animal sex.
You need to send the right submission. What do I mean by this? Each publisher will have a submission criteria on their website and it’s there for a reason. It shows them that we can follow instructions and are at least half-intelligent. It also presents our work in a way they want to review it, making it easier for them. The first way to get bypassed is to not follow these, usually simple, instructions. It can be a pain in the arse to write slightly different submissions every time, but that’s the way it is. Publishers are really good at supplying information about what they want. It’s in both parties’ best interest that you send a good submission as you don’t want to waste your own time and publishers have a pile of manuscripts that can be seen from space.
The covering letter is an important part of the submission and this needs to be as exciting as your opening chapter. The reviewer has to want to read the story, otherwise they probably won’t ever bother looking at it. Be confident, but not cocky.
Get knocked down, and then get up again
Was something Chumbawamba unfortunately told us in the 90s. You will have read the stories of J.K. Rowling being turned down eight hundred times, etc, and, most people can expect a number of disappointing emails and letters. Keep at it, making sure you’re sending it to the right places and just try, try again. The first place I ever submitted a manuscript to was MacMillan New Writing. They take on unsolicited manuscripts and is an instant ticket to the big time, so I thought I’d give it a go. My rejection letter, which was swiftly deleted in a raging keyboard battering, said that my work was not accepted because…it then listed every single possible reason under the sun, from my “manuscript may have been rejected because we aren’t taking submissions” to “it was shit.” I have no idea why it got rejected, and that’s often the way. It’s frustrating, but if you want it, you have to be persistent. Don’t take it personally.
How did I do it?
I’m only speaking from my own experiences, and it’s worth trawling the web for guidance from as many authors around the world as you can find. There are a hell of a lot of people out there who know a lot more than me…but they’re not as hunky. Other writers have got lucky first time with massive publishing houses; some have taken the e-book route (my publisher issued The Great Right Hope as an e-book, six months before releasing it as a paperback); some authors self-publish; some have signed up with agents, first; some, unfortunately, never get published, but remember, if you love writing, is that necessarily a bad thing? I love playing golf, but I’m not planning to win any Majors soon.
I tried about twenty-ish agents and publishers before I got lucky with LL-Publications. “Lucky”? Yes. You need a certain amount of luck. I can’t think of many occupations where success isn’t partially determined by being in the right place at the right time. Jim Brown at LL-Publications saw the potential in the story and the humour was all there, even if not all the correct punctuation was, so he gave me some advice on how to improve my manuscript. This turned out to be a complete re-write and a huge amount of work, but I got there, in the end. I wrote in Writing’s Brilliant that it doesn’t matter about the grammar and spelling and shit, and that is true when you start as I believe the important thing is to create. If you get held up with every other sentence, writing and re-writing, you are going to get sick of it, dead quickly. It would have been less work in the long run if I had learnt a bit more about commas and things, before starting, but it would have quelled my creative juices.
I built my blog and website after I was published, but this is something that is good to do before you try your luck. It gives publishers or agents a chance to find out about you and your style. You’ll need the content, such as the biography, for the covering letter, so you may as well stick it on a webpage.
I hope this was helpful. Best of bloody British getting published, and if you do, remember to plug my work if you make it big. Hope you do…but if you and I are competing for a Christmas number one spot, then let me tell you this, I will cut you. I will cut you up real bad.
Any questions or comments drop them on the bottom of the blog, or mail me at jackhammer@mark-jackman.com
Tags: advice, american idol, anyone can do the pretty ones, author, Britney, cats, dogs, fiction, Jacko, Jim Brown, LL-Publications, macmillan, Madge, manuscript, mark jackman, novel, published, Robbie, sarah jessica parker, submission, The Great Right Hope, virgin, Whitney, writer, x factor
Writing’s Brilliant
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko: Author
Writing’s brilliant. I mean that with every ounce of sincerity that I can muster. I love it. I love creating things, and with a notepad and a pen, I can do just that. I can create anything. I can be anything.
How powerful is that? To really enjoy writing, you need to be the characters. You have to put yourself in the situation and act it out, imagining what would happen to you. This is how you make characters real, even when it is quite obvious that they could never exist in society. Adding that little bit of the real human element gives the ridiculous: substance. It’s fun too, like make-believe for grown-ups (downside is that last night I had a dream that the Predator smashed my head in with a blunt instrument - and that was a normal dream for me).
The technicalities of writing are something that you have to learn, or rather, “one has to learn.” I’m writing for enjoyment, right now. I don’t have to pander to technicalities. I am writing for my own pleasure whilst getting my opinion across in a, hopefully, friendly and amusing manner, and that gives me total and utter freedom. I can write what I want.
Necrophiliac homosexual ducks.
See.
I think the duck watching it all is the real sicko. This really happens, by the way. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/mar/08/highereducation.research
Back to my topic. Writing is complete freedom and, with a little imagination, a writer can live the life of anything and anyone, blah-di-blah.
Now, here’s the thing, I wasn’t a writer, although I do have a GCSE in English language and English Literature. So what did the fifteen-year-old tit version of myself learn from English classes?
1) Jane Eyre is really boring and really, really long.
2) The bird on the Roman Polanski version of Romeo and Juliet had wazza jugs (a forbidden fruit for gentlemen over 16 years of age - she was only 15 when she appeared nude in the film!).
3) Roman Polanksi is a diddler.
4) Girls in my class didn’t find Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts very sexy.
I picked up a pen and paper again, at twenty-four, for no other reason than to give writing a go. Why not? And, if I can do it, you can do it.
Out of all the arts, writing is the most accessible. Even though I am a master at drawing an ejaculating penis, I wouldn’t consider myself an artist. I’m in a band, but I’d hardly call myself a musician. I can invent extravagant lies and hide the hideous truth behind a complex web of smoke and mirrors when lying to my missus about the reason I smell of horse urine, but I’d hardly call myself an actor. You may argue that to write, you need to hone the skills of sentence construction, and so on; and so forf;.! And, I guess that is true to a certain extent, but only to do it well. Consider the title of this piece “Writing’s Brilliant.” Many people would have considered using a witty pun or something to catch your eye, but that’s not what I’m trying to get at. You don’t need flashy crap to enjoy writing. In fact, you can write badly and still create wonder and amazement and ANYONE can do it.
I’ll show you. Here’s some of that writing stuff.
“Gary can smash planets.”
In four words I have created a shit sentence and a being of gargantuan and monstrous proportions. This…Gary…has the ability to break planets. What is this being? Can he break them with his bare hands? Has he invented a doomsday device that can end the world? Whatever it is, one thing is certain, and should be heeded at all costs: Do not mess with Gary.
It doesn’t matter that the sentence is shit. Who cares? What matters is that I have written four words and I have already started my adventure and I can take it anywhere. Gary’s mate, Neil, is a Lightning God, whilst his cousin, Denzel, sells insurance. What a story that would make.
Creative thinking is for anyone and everyone, and writing is the easiest way to exercise it. Someone once sat down and came up with this concept
Things, honestly, don’t get much better than that. Admit it, before Dinoriders hit your television, you fantasised about sitting on top of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which had laser cannons attached, blasting your enemies into a million pieces. See, you can do it!
Now, authoring is a different game, altogether. I consider a fiction author to be someone who makes a living from writing (my definition is questionable). I’ve had one book published, with the two sequels of The Great Right Hope trilogy on the way, but, on a night out, when I am asked by curious, curvy, eighteen-year-old sex kittens what I do for a living I always say “I’m a scientist, but I also write.” Science is a cool profession, by the way. Ghostbusters is awesome!
If you write simply because you wish to become the next J.K Rowling or Dan Brown then you’re probably going to be disappointed. Say you get lucky and get a deal with a big publisher who decides to release your book as a hardcover; you get extra lucky and they print 5000 copies (first Harry Potter run for Philosopher’s Stone was 500 copies), and then you get extra, extra lucky and sell all the books in the first year. If the hardback retails at £15, you can expect a 10% royalty. Go Go Gadget-G.C.S.E-maths! 5000 x 1.50 = £7500. If that took a year to research, write, edit and proof then, based on a 35 hour week, four weeks holiday = £4.46 an hour. Minimum wage is £5.80. Not saying it’s impossible, but you ain’t getting rich writing one book.
That’s authoring. That’s different. That’s bloody hard. Looking back through this little ditty, I realise that I have started the construction of a “shit sandwich.” It’s a non-corporate expression based on the ultimate in corporation man management. The shit sandwich is something for the yearly review: start with something good and positive, then hit the employee with the reason they are getting a paycut, but finish on a high, so they go out of the meeting happy. “You kept your desk very tidy this year. Keep it up.”
I’ve just done the same thing. I’ve told you how great writing is, but then the shit in the sandwich was the “Authoring Ain’t Easy, Baby” bit, and now I have to finish on a high.
You’ve kept your desk tidy this year.
I need to do better.
Here goes.
YOU HAVE THE POOOOOWWWEERRRR!
Or rather,
USTED TIENE EL PODER! That’s even better in Spanish?
How ridiculous is the whole concept of He-Man? Someone created it. Someone let the mind run riot and their grey matter exploded in an orgy of homoerotic strangeness. You can do that to, and before you give me that rubbish about not being able to do anything creative, answer this: how do you know? Have you ever tried? Just let go and see where that brain of yours takes you?
Just try it. Your personality will come out and things will flow. It doesn’t matter if it’s any good. It doesn’t matter if you don’t use punctuation. You can stick that all in at the end. Actually, don’t just put all the full stops and commas at the end of the story, that’s not what I mean. I mean you can learn the art later, but first, you need to enjoy what it is to write and rediscover the imagination of your childhood and just give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?
Oh yeah.
Tags: author, battecat, creative, doomsday, duck, fiction, George Lucas, ghostbusters, he-man, homoerotic, homosexual, Howard The Duck, inspector gadget, Lighning god, man-at-arms has a small one, mark jackman, necrophilia, orco, predator, spain, The Great Right Hope, Tyrannosaurus rex, write
The Next Action Hero (the decline of the lad’s mag)
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko: Author
I wrote this short story after discovering that Men’s Health had overtaken FHM, in terms of sales. Thinking of sending it off to Men’s Health, actually. Worth a shot. They’ll probably conclude that I’m a little bit weird. Anyway, enjoy.
*
It’s Sunday, therefore, I’m hungover. I have to make it through the day for no other reason, other than to survive. It’s likely that I’ll spend the next twelve hours watching television, whilst taking breaks for biological purposes, one for pleasure, and one for discharging the toxic kebab that is currently brutalising my digestive tract. The toilet will become my living Hell, and I’m going to need a magazine for those boring, painful, bloody times…Actually, I’ll probably need a magazine for both biological “necessities.”
I walk into the newsagents. Jimmy the shop owner doesn’t acknowledge me. He knows I’m in a bad place. He witnessed the same performance last week, and the week before, and the…you get the picture.
I fill my basket with junk food: Sugars, fats, e-number things, pig, gristle, Haribo, everything I need to make my waking moments more bearable. Something to read…
I scan the shelves…
Footy magazine – Sky was invented for a reason.
Film magazine – I’m hungover! I want to see shit blown up. I don’t want to read about it, or read an in-depth analysis of foreign crap with subtitles and subplots. Films with “sub” in them mean they’ll be critically acclaimed and borrrrrring…Unless they have submarines in them, blowing shit up.
Gaming magazine – Flashing lights and spinning screens bring forth nausea and the kebab from last night. Reading about them may trigger the same responses.
Porno – I look round the store. No-one I know, and, more importantly no old grannies who’ll tell me I’m going to Hell, again. Romancing the bone does give one the respite from even the most crippling of hangovers, even if it is for five minutes, five beautiful minutes….Nah, too much dexterity required to turn the pages. Internet will bring women, and for free.
Lad’s Mag – Pictures of pretty ladies; a few funny stories and jokes; bit about sport; few film and game reviews; cool articles. A little bit of everything in a neat little package. Sold.
I pick up the magazine and go to see Jimmy. No embarrassment this time after the controversial Older-Bolder-Bitches purchase, last week.
“Hang on,” say I, as something catches my peepers. Men’s Health, I mouth, silently. What’s that? I feel the flab around my stomach and realise that I have never linked the two words together. I scan through the featured articles, displayed, as proud as Pride, on the front of a six-pack.
“Fifteen Flat-Belly Powerfoods,” Is that a sentence?
“Seduce Any Woman-No Talking Required” Free Rohypnol could be useful.
“What works better: Sauna or Steam.” Why would I give a shit about that?
“Jimmy! What’s this all about?” I ask my local provider of magazines, cancer-inducing nutrition, mobile phone top-ups, £6 Bolivian vodka and scratchcards.
“New craze, mate. It’s overtaken FHM for popularity, now.”
“Shut up,” say I, as I flick through the pages of half-naked…MEN! “This is a sausage fest, pal. There ain’t a pair of jugs in sight.”
“There’s usually a bit of tit towards the end,” Jimmy informs me.
I flick through faster than I would the Littlewood’s catalogue when I’m desperately scanning for the lingerie section. Finally, I find flesh softer than the rest of the chiselled muscle that’s on show. I realise that I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. “This is rubbish. You can’t see owt as it’s all done shitely, you know, arty, like.” I read out the featured article’s title. “’Make Any Woman Orgasm In Five Minutes.’”
I look up, unaware of the audience. Strange, a middle-aged lady smiles coyly.
“Why would I give a shit about that?” I ask Jimmy as the woman storms out of the shop.
“Watch your language! Even you don’t spend enough on fags, booze and weird porn to warrant scaring away the other customers.”
I ignore him as I read a little more. “’Put an inch on your arms in six weeks.’” Six weeks of doing these…press-ups…sounds a lot of hard work, if you ask me.”
Jimmy sighs, “That’s why you look like you do, and that bloke in the mag looks like he does.”
“Yeah, but he spends all his time looking at himself in the mirror and sweating with other like-minded freaks. I’d prefer to watch action movies with heroes beating up bad-guys, bagging the birds and engaging in the blowing up of shit.”
“You ever thought that ’cos he looks like that, he isn’t watching it on his TV, he’s actually doing it.”
I once was blind but now I see.
“I can get biceps like these?” say I, as I hold up the magazine to show Jimmy a hunk brandishing an impressive set of guns.”
“Why not?”
“I can get these girls?” I ask, with hope in my heart, as I point at Jimmy’s stock of top-shelf publications.
“I guess so, especially the ones in Swinging Weekly.”
“With a mighty, manly physique, can I crush all my enemies with mighty, manly headlocks and then make love to their women, impressed with my manliness and my ability to make them orgasm within five minutes?”
“…erm…sure, why not?”
“How much for this knowledge? How much does it cost to learn the secrets of six-packs, biceps and the female reproductive system?”
“£4.”
“Shit the bed! Give us a copy of Razzle, instead.”
“Come on, now. You look terrible, you haven’t had a girlfriend in years and chances are high that you ain’t going to get another one.”
Jimmy’s right. I’ve been spiralling out of control since she left me. Booze, fags and fast food had taken its toll, and I had destroyed a body that once was…well, better than it is now.
“You’re right, Jimmy. You’re bloody right. But I ain’t doing this for me,” I throw over four pound coins. “I’m doing this for the women…you know, so I can do ’em.”
*
Yes! A picture of Thora Hird, two blogs running.
Tags: action hero, author, e numbers, FHM, Flex, Jacko, kebab, loaded, mark jackman, Men's Health, Muscle and Fitness, newsagent, older bolder bitches, Razzle, rohypnol, short, story, swinging weekly, Thora Hird, top shelf
