by Ashley Lister

Aside from wishing everyone reading this a wonderful 2020, and hoping it is a year that brings you all the satisfaction and fulfilment you crave and deserve, I also want to offer everyone an opportunity to reflect before we hurtle into the first year of this decade.

With the start of a new year we have a symbolic opportunity to be reborn. This is why so many people vow to quit smoking, drinking or eating unhealthily: in order to stop the bad habits of the previous year. Or they vow to eat better, exercise more regularly and moderate their language so the expletives aren’t so powerful as to make sailor’s blush.

My new year resolutions are simple ones, no different to friends and colleagues from all over the world. I’m sharing them here so I can look back over the next twelve months and make sure I’m continuing in the correct direction.

I want to write (and publish) more
I love short stories. My PhD was devoted to the genre and my most recent non-fiction title, How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published, is focused on short stories. Consequently, before the end of the year, I want to write and publish half a dozen short stories. I also want to publish my next horror novel and produce and perform two new poems each month, so writing is pretty high on my personal agenda for 2020.

I want to do three 10K runs
I did a couple of 10K runs last year and they were exhilarating. The second one, I managed to complete in under one hour. Admittedly, both runs screwed over my knees for a week afterwards, but, on the plus side, training for these events has meant that I’m in a healthier condition than I’ve ever been in my life. And, as a sedentary writer, who spends most of his working day pushing his ass into an office chair, anything that improves my physical health has to be seen as a benefit.

I want to do at least one act of kindness each week
We live in a brutal world. Global politics currently seem to be driven by the machinations of hate and divisiveness. The divide between those who have plenty and those who have nothing is growing wider and wider.

So, I’m going to try and do one act of kindness each week. This might involve making a charitable donation. It might mean giving my time to a good cause. It might mean giving something of personal value to someone in need. Or it might mean doing something I haven’t yet considered.

I’m not trying to suggest that this will change the attitudes of those in the world or address those matters that divide everyone: but I’m hoping it will make someone feel better, even if that someone is only me.

We’re at the start of a new year: a new decade if you want to be pedantic. I genuinely hope this next twelve months brings you everything you desire. And, if you feel up to sharing your resolutions below, I’d love to know what you’re planning to do to make 2020 special.

By Ashley Lister

Today I’m the bearer of sad news. The Apostrophe Protection Society has shut down with the bleak explanation that ‘ignorance has won’.

I was going to use this spot to talk about my new book, available in a little under two weeks, How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published. It’s a fantastic little book that goes into the mechanics of writing short stories. The book is based on knowledge and experience I’ve accrued from fifteen years of teaching creative writing, and from twenty-five years of being a published author, and from the research I conducted whilst acquiring my PhD in creative writing. If you want to write short fiction, I want you to buy a copy of the book. Here’s a picture of it, if you’re curious.

But, rather than promoting my personal interests, because I know how important punctuation is to clarity of communication, I wanted to spend some time talking about punctuation and the closure of the Apostrophe Protection Society.

Punctuation is an essential aspect of the written word that lends clarity to communication. This is important because, during spoken communication, we can use a variety of prosodic features, such as pausing, increasing or decreasing the speed of our speech, making our voices louder to show anger, or finishing a sentence on a rising intonation to suggest a question. These nuances, which we take for granted with the spoken word, are difficult to replicate in written communication.

Take, for example, the old internet joke about punctuation being the difference between: ‘I helped my Uncle Jack off a horse’, and: ‘I helped my uncle jack off a horse’. Similar amusement is gleaned from the need for a comma in the sentence, ‘Let’s eat Grandma,’ or the oxford comma needed for the newspaper article which described the content of a programme as presenter Peter Ustinov having encounters, ‘with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.’

Punctuation provides the signposts readers need to understand the subtle inflections we take for granted on hearing the spoken word. Apostrophes are a very important aspect of that understanding. For example, if we take the unpunctuated sentence, ‘The boys books’, the reader doesn’t know if the books belong to a single boy or several of them. Admittedly, this is not the sort of world-changing sentence that will make everyone think, ‘We need more punctuation’, but it is the sort of sentence that might cause confusion and drag your reader out of the story you’re writing.

This is a link to the article on the closure of the Apostrophe Protection Society. I would disagree with the article’s conclusion that ‘ignorance has won’, even though the current political climate would suggest that ignorance is a way of life for many voters and their party leaders. Personally, I try to keep on top of apostrophe usage and will happily photograph and tweet offending examples, making sure the responsible companies have a chance to see that their errors have been noted.

But, I know, what I’m doing is a small contribution to a very large problem. Fortunately, there are a couple of pages discussing the need for appropriate punctuation in my forthcoming book: How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published. Perhaps that might help.

By Ashley Lister

I talk a lot about how to write in this column, but I seldom mention the equally important task of reading.
Here, I’m not going to advise anyone on how to simply read. That’s easy enough. You just point your eyes at the words in a book and follow them consecutively, making meaning from each one and combining them all into a cohesive whole.

What I want to write about today are the techniques for reading aloud. To an audience.

I advocate reading work aloud during the drafting process. It’s a wonderful tool for spotting what works and what doesn’t in a nearly-finished manuscript. Those typos and duplications that the eye skips over when we’re silently reading, grate on the ear like a flat note in an acapella solo.

But there are reasons for reading aloud, other than hearing our own mistakes. Reading work to an audience, either at a book launch, a signing or an evening of public story-sharing, can be a satisfying way of experiencing the work of others and sharing your own work in a format that is livelier than dull black words on a still white page.

Prepare. Print off a large-print copy of the text you’re going to read. The font in a novel is great for quietly reading at home. But, when you’re standing before an audience, and apprehension is fraying your nerves, the font in a book can shrink. More importantly, when you’re reading your work to an audience, the audience want to see your face, not your head hidden behind an open book. Printed text in a large font will mean you can keep the paper at a reasonable distance, allowing your audience to see you and allowing you to see the print.

Practice: Read the piece through, aloud, several times. Make sure you’re comfortable and confident with the pronunciation. Make sure you can enunciate any tongue-twisters that appear in the piece you’re going to read. I am aware that most of us will notice if we’ve written a line that says, “Her job? Why she sells seashells on the seashore.” However, there are some phrases such as ‘unique New York’ or ‘the sixth sick Sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick’ which can trip up an unsuspecting tongue.

Practice. Time yourself. Annotate the pages you’re going to read so you know when to breathe, when to pause and when to adopt a different voice (if you’re going to use different voices for your narration).

Relax: If you’re standing in front of an audience, it’s natural to be nervous. However, it’s easy to forget that the audience are wanting you to be successful and they’re willing you to be good. No one wants to sit through a boring reading so they’ll be hoping your story is exciting and well-delivered. You know this yourself from the times you’ve sat in an audience.

The key to relaxation is simple. Breathe. Smile. And be confident.

Breathing should be easy but sometimes, in the focus of the moment, we forget. I once knew a poet whose trousers fell down when he began reading a poem on stage and he didn’t realise until he got to the end and his trousers were around his ankles. This wasn’t done for effect or to be funny – it simply occurred because he was too nervous to notice what was happening around him.

Focusing on your breathing allows you to stop being oblivious to your circumstances.

Smiling is important because it allows your audience to see that you’re a likeable person. We respond to smiles on a human level, empathising with a person who smiles and feeling better disposed to them. And, if we’re reading our work to an audience, surely we want those listeners to feel well disposed towards us?

There are other tips for reading to an audience and, if you’ve got your own personal ones, I’d be interested to see them in the comments box below.

By Ashley Lister

5.00am: The day begins with an early start
No one ever wrote a novel by sleeping and we all know that sleep is for those lesser mortals who don’t have deadlines. Consequently, sleep needs to be ended as soon as possible. 5.00am is the perfect time to start the day and allows me to get ahead of all those slugabeds who are still in dreamland.

5.30am: Off to the gym
I believe the axiom ‘healthy body, healthy mind’, is quite true. If you want to make sure your mind is in the right place for writing, make sure your mind isn’t worrying about your body. I do a little cardio and some free weights.
I also get to ‘people watch’ those people who are taking care of their bodies, which means I’m researching the heroes of my next opus magnus.

6.30am: Breakfast
Back home to a breakfast of protein shakes and macrobiotic yoghurt, all of which is going to keep my bowel and colon healthy. This is about all I can manage on a morning as, thinking about the health of my bowel and colon is not conducive to a large appetite.

7.00am: Shower and dressed
They say you should dress for the job you want. As I don’t have a Batman suit, I dress in a three-piece suit and tie my tie in a Merovingian knot, just to look a little different. Is this necessary for good writing? Of course not. But I feel more confident when I’m dressed like my personal image of a successful writer, so (to me) it’s an important part of my daily ritual.

8.00am: Check emails
Delete all the ones offering me the chance to look after the millions from a Nigerian prince. Search (fruitlessly) for offers from Netflix script writers who want the rights to one of my novels or short stories so they can make it into the next binge-worthy blockbuster. And maybe reply to three emails that are relevant to my business life as a writer.

8.30am: Feed and walk the dogs
This is good thinking time. I can bounce ideas off the dogs and they don’t tell me I’m being ridiculous. Also, when I’m picking up their warm poop in a plastic poop-bag, it reminds me of Amazon reviewers.

9.30am: Begin writing
This is the most important time of the day. It’s a time that’s preceded by rituals.
I used to need a cigarette and a coffee on my desk to help stimulate my creativity. Nowadays, older, wiser and with dyspeptic intolerance for the things I used to find fun in life, I begin my writing armed with an unsweetened green tea and a punnet of black seedless grapes.
I use Microsoft Word because it’s the software I’ve been using for more than 20 years. It works for me because it’s a word processor that I can easily operate using muscle memory, allowing the creative portion of my brain a chance to focus on being creative.
I also have my watch programmed to remind me to take 250 steps every hour. Research has shown that people who have sedentary occupations can live longer if they invest in an extra two minutes exercise each hour. So, if I’ve not moved from the desk in an hour, my watch prompts me and I go play fetch with one of the dogs. (The dog usually wins). This is all part of my plan to live for ever.

12.30pm: Lunchtime

1.30pm: Back to the current WiP
There’s always a temptation to dip into emails, mess about on social media, or try to beat my high score on Candy Crush Saga. However, Edgar Allan Poe did not achieve his output by responding to emails; Shakespeare did not mess about on social media; and Charles Dickens would probably have been crap at Candy Crush Saga.
Sometimes it’s difficult to find the tenacity to sit in front of the PC producing coherent words, but this is where deadlines become so useful. If you haven’t got a publisher giving you a deadline, set a personal deadline and stick to it. Admittedly, this means extra pressure. But, if there’s no pressure, you don’t get diamonds.

5.30pm: Feed and walk the dogs
Rather than bouncing ideas off the dogs on the evening walk, I’ll stick in headphones and listen to an audio book. In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey advocates the need to ‘sharpen the saw’, that is, seeking continuous personal and professional improvement. Listening to audio books, immersing myself in current writing and paying attention to the way in which modern authors tell stories, is my way of sharpening my personal saw.

6.30pm: Evening Meal
I dine with my beautiful wife. She’s a successful artist and we talk about our respective days. Sometimes I even listen to what she has to say. We never have wine with the meal because neither of us like the taste.

7:30pm: More Saw Sharpening
After the kitchen has been tided, and the dishwasher is cleaning the pots, pans and plates, we retire to the drawing room and find something edifying to watch on the idiot box. I enjoy horror films and comedies. I also like TV Shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race and Ultimate Beastmaster – because these are shows that present people in challenging situations and I get to see how others deal with conflict. Again, this will feed into my writing and help me shape characters and plot developments in future fiction.
This might also be the part of the evening where I treat myself to a finger of bourbon.

10:00pm: Bedtime
The incredible poet, Edna St Vincent Millay, wrote the following lines:
I’d love to burn the candle at both ends but I know it would take a harsh toll on me. So I have to make the sacrifice of early nights and early mornings. It’s an ascetic life, but it’s one that makes me happy. The suggestion that writers should ‘write drunk and edit sober’ is one that always irritates me because I think it’s just another way of glamorising substance misuse.
And so, with those pious thoughts in mind, I retire to bed, rest, and prepare for another day of being a healthful, happy writer.

By Ashley Lister

For the longest time I didn’t believe in writer’s block. I’d hear friends and colleagues talk about how they were suffering from writer’s block and, whilst I’d respond with cordial sympathy, I’d inwardly ascribe their words to some need for attention: an acceptable way for them to say, “I’ve not put pen to paper for a few days, but I really am a writer.”

I understood this to be true because I’ve always viewed the ability to write as being akin to a superpower and being able to say, “I’m a writer,” is nothing short of saying, “I’m a superhuman.” Writers are the real superheroes of this world and, to my mind, the notion of writer’s block was merely a rumour about a Kryptonite that didn’t exist.

However, I am now older and wiser and I’ve revised my opinion about writer’s block. According to Wikipedia:

Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges from difficulty in coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years.

This strikes me as a sufficiently succinct description, and I want to look at potential reasons for each of these symptoms, and potential ways to address them.

Losing the ability to produce new work

There could be several reasons for this. Blaming it on writer’s block is merely labelling the symptom rather than identifying the cause.

Whenever I’ve felt unable to produce new work, I can usually find the reason has an external factor. Personal issues such as grief, loss, illness or other major life-changing events, can often be a cause. If someone has suffered a bereavement no one would expect them to sit back at the keyboard, shrugging off their upset for a couple of hours, whilst they try to hit the day’s planned word count on a new and exciting story. However, as writers, we expect ourselves to be able to turn on our abilities like a proverbial light switch.

Writer’s block doesn’t have to be caused by such major personal issues. I’ve found it difficult to write when I’ve felt my work wouldn’t be read by a sufficiently large audience. I’ve found it difficult to write when I’m tired or distracted.

Producing new work is not an easy task and, as superhero writers, it behoves each of us to remind ourselves that what we do with our superpower is an act of creation: and all creativity needs a period of incubation.

Experiencing a Creative Slowdown

It’s an established fact of life that, as we get older, we get slower. From driving to digesting, and from sex to being creative: we get slower as we get older. However, because we’re all looking at our writing as a superpower, we want to be able to spew out one original idea after another in the same rapid succession we managed last year and the year before that.

To use the driving analogy, we might be driving more slowly: but we’re also driving more carefully and residing in an insurance bracket renowned for drivers less prone to accidents. To use the sex analogy, perhaps we’re not doing it four and five times in a night: but, when we do anything, we’re doing it four and five times longer.

Difficulty in Coming Up with Original Ideas

This is less a problem with writer’s block, and more a problem of modernity. Trying to be original in the twenty-first century is not easy. I’m not going to say that every story that can be told has been told, but I do believe every story we think of has at least one precedent somewhere in recent memory. To make this worse, as writers, we’re encouraged to pitch our ideas as though they’re a combination of existing material: It’s like a combination of Pride and Prejudice and Caligula, or it’s like John Wick meets 101 Dalmatians. No matter how original those ideas are, they’re still being compared to popular stories that have gone before.

Theorists such as Campbell and Propp have shown us that structure is consistent and, sometimes, we see the familiar shape of structure as being symptomatic of a lack of originality.

All of which is said here to argue that, whilst writer’s block does exist, it can be overcome.

I’d suggest fighting it as though it’s Kryptonite. As I’ve said before, if you’re a writer, you’re one of the world’s superheroes. Instead of suffering with the misery of being thwarted by your nemesis and not being able to write, pick up a pen or sit down in front of a keyboard, and show that you can churn out words. It might not be easy. At first all the usual doubts might creep in. And what you initially produce might not be what you want to write. But, eventually, like the superhero that you are, you’ll break through the block.