Happy Holiday to you if you are enjoying a few extra days off for Easter. If not you are perhaps from a different religion, whose own holidays will be along soon enough or you are perhaps living in the USA, which seems to have one of the meanest allowances in the whole world for any kind of holiday time off, no matter what your beliefs are. My American friends always seemed envious whenever I told them how many days off a year my UK employers gave me because they barely enjoyed even half of what I had. Of course now I am a writer, most people think that Every day is a holiday for me, even when I find myself writing 7 days a week!

A number of medical procedures have unfortunately ensured that the past few weeks have been anything but a holiday for me. Most, which would come under the heading of ‘preventative maintenance’ are not worth mentioning beyond declaring that I am very fit and well. Indeed, one doctor even told me that my results are what he would expect of a much younger man, although it is still unfortunate that my looks no longer back up this flattery! Which all neatly brings me onto the subject of my recent nose job.

Some of you may remember how I described, late last year, a close encounter with a number of wild boars. How the animals not only succeeded in knocking me off my scooter, but also appeared ready to attack me until one of their piglets moved away from a position where I was between it and its HUGE mother. Although I didn’t realise at the time, I suspected that I had broken my nose… again. However, this didn’t become a problem until I realised that I was waking up several times a night and on hearing that instead of snoring, only when I was very tired (or had too much beer) I was now snoring almost every night.

So a few weeks ago I found myself in the office of an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) Surgeon, who quickly diagnosed a condition called Sleep Apnoea, caused by a deviated nose septum in my left nostril, which basically restricts or blocks completely the flow of air. I had heard of this condition that basically means you actually stop breathing for up to 2 minutes when you are sleeping, which then forces your brain to flush your bloodstream with adrenalin to wake you up. The Doc told me that this was undoubtedly why I kept waking up with a racing heart and pointed out that the condition has not only the potential to shorten one’s life, but in some instances some people fail to wake up at all and simply die prematurely in their sleep.

Death is never something you want to hear in any diagnosis, so a week later I found myself waking up from a four hour Op in a Bodrum hospital. Although I should explain that the original Op had been extended from up to two hours for a couple of good reasons: Firstly during the Op the surgeon realised that nostril 2 wasn’t firing on all cylinders either, probably because of an even earlier break, and so fixed it for me. Secondly and more significantly I had also elected to back2back the nose job with another procedure. I won’t bore you with the details of the other Op but will just say that I am a bit of a pussy when it comes to anaesthetics so rather than have two lots I went to sleep in one hospital theatre and woke up in a completely different one, on a different floor, after my ENT guy had also worked his magic.

They tell me it takes about three weeks for all the swelling and tissue to repair itself before I know how successful the Op went. So with two weeks gone I am happy with the results so far, although the odd thing now is that I can no longer remember how bad the old nose was so I just hope that is a good sign.

Finally, for those of you who don’t know what I look like from earlier posts. I should just point out that my nose is never quite as big as it is in the photo above and the reason one of my eyes is half closed is because moments before it was taken, the surgeon had just yanked the splints from my nose. Sorry there is unfortunately very little I can add to mitigate the rest of my appearance as this is really how I look!

Happy Holidays!

A few months ago after I did a piece on writers block I was surprised by the amount of people who told me they were eager for other writing tips or simply wanted me to somehow give them the ‘secret’ of writing. So if you have looked in for something more topical and have little interest in writing, sorry, this week’s post is mostly for those guys because it is mainly my own loose ideas on the process of trying to get something out of your head and into some semblance of readable and hopefully sellable order. If you are still curious please stick around for a few minutes and read this.

1. Be Choosy – They say we all have a book in us but not Everything deserves to be published. Although there are some strong ego’s out there, I have yet to meet a writer who does not have the capacity to learn, not only from other writers but also from their own mistakes. How often do we hear about how some ‘famous’ writer now regrets some or even most of their earlier published work. Of course in years gone by there was a kind of belt and braces approach to getting your work out there because first and by no means least you had to find either an agent or publisher to accept your work. So then, in a critical world, even if that story now lacks something with the passage of time at least it went out, on paper, edited and presented to as high a standard as the publishing house could meet. Unfortunately (or fortunately as some believe) that completely changed with the arrival of the ebook, which heralded such a revolution in the way writers do business that nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Photo by goXunuReviews

Nook, Apple and Kobo are now big players in the ebook game but by far the biggest is Kindle. It is hard to believe nowadays but Amazon, who introduced Kindle in 2007, were once heralded as the saviour of traditional publishing. However, that all changed when Amazon introduced the Kindle self publishing service, where anyone, absolutely anyone irrespective of talent or motivation could publish an ebook and sell it, or even just give it away for free on Amazon.

2. Edit, re-edit and read While some established authors do embrace self publishing as an escape from the confines and low royalties of publishing houses and other talented writers finally found a means to get their quality work finally out there, there has also been a massive downside. With a lack of talent, imagination, grammar or integrity no longer a bar to publishing your own work online with the press of a button, cyberspace is now awash in a veritable ocean of, for want of a better word crap. Now someone who spent a few years on a book can find themselves listed alphabetically next to another book that was perhaps written over a drunken weekend by some friends, who didn’t overly concern themselves with structure, spelling or any semblance of a plot or literary narrative.

Reading a lot and reading as a critic can help you develop perhaps one of the most valuable talents a writer can ever have: the ability to self-edit. This can only be done by critically evaluating what works and doesn’t work in the fiction of others. Once you can pull that off, it becomes easier and easier to find flaws and strengths in your own work. So it is vital to develop this skill.

3. Concentrate on nouns and verbs for strong writing. I think that novice writers, or people who don’t write until it’s time to put together an email or letter or report, rely far too much on adjectives and adverbs. That is the primary thing I notice when it comes to spotting the difference between a quick idea simply thrown out there almost naked and a piece of work that someone has taken the time to edit, love and polish as the best they can do. The sad truth is that good writing almost always looks effortless – but to get to that you need to take a long time to get the absolutely right word into the right place. What is better writing: “quickly ran” or “sprinted?” “Large man” or “giant?” You get more done with less when you focus on the best nouns and verbs you can come up with. An adverb, to some, is an easy to find note to rethink that particular phrase — just look for the “ly” ending words and stare at it a while until the right verb comes along. I would never say get rid of all adverbs because sometimes the adverb is the best choice or the only choice. You will absolutely and definitely find adverbs in my writing, but I do try to consider them carefully… most of the time.

4.  “If you write something for which you were given a check, and that check did not bounce, and you paid the light bill with the money, then I consider you talented.” I recalled this Stephen King quote on the day I finally got paid for writing, and although the cheque didn’t bounce you never quite believe it, even when you see your work at number 9 on a national Bestseller List well on its way to Number 1. Goal-setting through inspiration works, so if you read or hear something that will give you courage or simply give you a push when you are blocked or suffering from that killer of so many promising writers – procrastination, write it down and hang it up somewhere you can see it easily. Just keep going and trust that one day you will get paid for something you wrote (an extremely difficult feat) because when you do there will be no question that you do have talent.

5.  Don’t succumb to procrastination, Finish it! Writing is sometimes like an endurance race. You start off with high hopes but as time goes by, running alone, with few people around to give you encouragement, you can begin to doubt that you can make it to the finish… but you can, you know you can if only you stick with it. Keep going, and don’t worry too much about making mistakes, you only learn by making them and can always come back later and pick them up in your edit. Finish your first draft and always, always, finish your projects. Why? Because you’ll be surprised at what happens by the time your “lost project” is done. You’ll be learning how to write by making mistakes, which you can always go back and fix it later. Maybe the second half of this story will end up being the first half of an even better tale because you were writing background the entire time, gaining momentum for the good stuff. But beware there will also be times when the lure of something new, sparkly and perfect comes along. A concept so amazing you tell yourself you should drop your crappy project immediately and start work on the real thing. You know what to do if this ever happens? You finish what you’re working on first, you finish, you finish, you finish it.