How I write

I was chatting earlier to friend and fellow writer, Dan Wagstaffe, about how we go about writing.  It transpires that we write in a completely different fashion.  I won't discuss Dan's particular method for writing.  That's personal to him.  But how do I write?

I see writing as a part of me.  I could not exist if I didn't have time to write.  I've taken to carrying a small notepad around with me all of the time.  If I'm sat in a coffee shop, a pub, waiting for a friend to arrive, I can take out a pen and jot stuff down.  Short stories, mainly, paragraphs snatched from my mind and onto paper in those brief moments before friends arrive.  Some of those short stories, they amount to nothing.  Some might end up getting finished.  Others, they might be developed into something bigger.  One such short story, I'm currently developing into my next major novel, One Eight.

Here's how I write. 

I don't meticulously plan the story.  I have an idea, a situation, at least one character, sometimes a handful.  But that idea, it's the beginning of a story.  I will usually know in what direction that story is headed, but invariably I don't have an ending.  Writing a story, a novel, 125,000 words, or even 60,000 words, that takes time.  There's plenty of time for an ending to materialize.  If I'm writing from a first-person perspective, then that ending will usually be decided by my lead character.  Though I have to confess that sometimes I may wait for many days or even weeks before my lead character comes up with the ending. 

I write.  That's all I do when it comes to writing a novel.  I just sit down and write.  Previously, my novels have been typed up on a PC, but my latest, One Eight, I'm writing in longhand and typing it up every few days (in case I get mugged again and lose my work).  Some days, I might write absolutely nothing (well, I have a part-time job that ensures I have a regular source of income - hey, a man's got to eat).  Other days, I might sit there full of good intentions, and end up writing nothing as I drink a bottle of wine and sing along to Radiohead or Coldplay.  And then there are days where it all comes out.  Not just a sentence, not just 100 words, not just a page, but word upon word of my latest book.  I write until I'm too tired.  I write until I can't write anymore.  On occasions, I've written from 3pm in the afternoon until 6am the following morning.  A handful of times, I've written for a couple of days solid.  But I write.  I don't set myself a target.  And to be honest, I don't set myself a deadline until I've finished the first draft and it's time to re-read and redraft what I've written.

Re-reading and redrafting.  Oh, the joys within.  It is during that initial reading that obvious errors come to light.  Sentences that don't make sense, sentences that aren't required because what they're saying is obvious to the reader, sentences that are repeating what has already been said.  Those are mercilessly slain.  Sentences that don't read right, they have to be rewritten.  There are lots of those in every first draft.  Red ink, words, sentences, whole paragraphs, scrawled through, changes suggested, big red question marks where a paragraph was written without much research and further research might be needed (Did Hitler like tea or coffee?  I don't know, so I'll put coffee and check it out later - no sense in spoiling the rhythm of writing by carrying out an hour's worth of research), underlining a character - do I need this person in my book?

Type up those amendments, print off, re-read.  Some sentences still don't make sense, some new ones aren't required, more necessary research uncovered - exactly what colour is bleomycin? 

Type up those amendments, print off, re-read.  Surely there won't be much red ink here.  But then there are the typos you've missed on the first couple of drafts.  And there are still sentences that aren't required, sentences that could, seeing as how you've read them twice before, be written in a better fashion.  And that character ... do I really need her?  If I don't, I'm going to have to change a big chunk of the book.  And the ending ...  It doesn't have enough of an impact.  More red ink there than anywhere else.

Type up those amendments, print off, re-read.  This must surely be the last draft.  I've read this book enough times already.  But now it seems to flow.  It is whole.  Each sentence leads into the next to create perfect paragraphs, or even magical ones, and each one leads into the next paragraph to create great chapters.  This is a whole book, written by one person, in the same voice.  And yet still there is red ink ...

Type up those amendments, print off, re-read.  And I'm getting there, it's almost complete.  Just a few final tweaks ...

That's how I write.  Throw those words down, let them work for me, and then craft and perfect it through re-reads and redrafts.  It sounds insane, I know, but then generally I'm writing about people who are less than perfect, and if I'm writing a book about them, from their perspective, then the book should be less than perfect.

But whatever the method a writer uses to complete a book, he or she should remember that writing is supposed to be fun.  Write what you want to read, not what other people want to read.  That way, you will care about what you're writing.  And always, in your mind, you should have faith in what you're writing.  You are the best writer out there.  Who's to say you're not?  Enjoyment of a book, a writing style, it's all subjective.  The stuff I write, you might not like.  The stuff I read, you might not like.  And vice versa.  But Grisham isn't a better writer than me.  Nor is Martina Cole.  Is Chuck Palahniuk better than me?  No.  We are all writers, we all have our style and our voice, and we all write books.  Are those three richer than me?  Of course they are, but that doesn't make them better.  It just means their marketing team is better than mine.

But of course, that is a whole different topic to write about ...

If you're a writer, believe in yourself.  Even if only two people are reading a copy of your book at any one time, that's still two people who are reading something you've created.  So put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and write.

My website

So, what's the difference between a blog and a website?  Well, I guess a blog is kind of like an extended Twitter account or Facebook page.  I can write random shit here, and a) I'm not confined to 140 characters or b) I don't have to worry too much about offending people I consider to be friends.

You can find my website at www.shaunstafford.co.uk.

I like to think of the website more of an advert.  It's where people can read about my books without having to worry about me swearing viciously at them.  The website creates a persona, a character, and gives some background as to what makes me tick.  There's information on pretty much everything I've ever written.

Get on down there.  You know you want to.

What the fuck is transgressive fiction?

See, only somebody who can't actually write, who is either a critic or some arty, wanky student studying English Lit would ever attempt to define what transgressive fiction is.

See here, somebody's definition - http://transgressivefiction.pbworks.com/w/page/31524188/Transgressive%20Fiction

The thing with transgressive fiction is, you simply cannot define it or lay down rules (Christ, it's transgressive, so there are no rules).  You certainly shouldn't attempt to define it merely for your fucking BA or MA in English.  Transgressive fiction is no more complex than this - "an individual, who may or may not be a nice person caught up in a really fucked-up situation."  End of definition.

From that definition, even John Steinbeck and George Orwell have written works of transgressive fiction.  It's not all "The End of Alice", about men tossing themselves off over unconscious children.  Thank fuck.  It's about situations we wouldn't like to be caught in.  More than that, it's all about getting into the mind of the person in that situation.  It shouldn't just be about shock.

If I wrote a short story about turning up for work on my last day in the civil service, drinking 14 doubles of neat Jack Daniels (that's British doubles, not American ones) in the space of 90 minutes, then turning up back to work totally fucked out of my brain, that would be a work of transgressive fiction (actually, that did happen, so perhaps that's not fiction).  People like to read about people doing things they themselves won't do.  From the lowest common denominator, the mummy porn of Fifty Shades of Shit, or the thriller writing of Higgins and Seymour, we read about things that we're too scared to do.  For me, transgressive fiction doesn't just write about it - it gets you right in the lead character's mind.  It's tough to write, believe you me, because you have to become that person.  It might be easier to read, but it's still fucking tough.

But don't be put off by transgressive fiction.  Some writers use that whole "Schlock and lure" thing.  I don't.  I write about real people caught up in a fucked up place.  Today, you're fixing your kids' breakfast, you're going to work, you're occasionally pissed off by work-based politics.  Tomorrow, the doctor might tell you that you've got 5 months to live.

What do you do?

Read Besotted and find out what Benjamin Beerenwinkel did ...

Dan Wagstaffe

Dan Wagstaffe was a writer and a film director before he met me.  I still remember the first time I met him.  I'd put on a film festival in my favourite pub, the Hit or Miss, in Stamford.  Dan came all the way down from York because his film, Bang Up or Pay Back, was being shown.  I remember flashing him a first edition of my own book, die Stunde X, which was in the pub's library.  He seemed impressed.  And I knew, even back then, that we were kindred spirits.

What impressed me about Bang Up or Pay Back wasn't just the subject matter. It was the fact that his submission turned up in an evidence bag from HM Prison Service.  I used to work as a prison officer, so I was immediately intrigued.  Even had the film been shit (which, I hasten to add, it wasn't) I would've put it in the festival.  Yes, I was that shallow.

Dan didn't drink the bottle of wine that every film-maker who attended the festival was promised.  Well, he had to drive home after the event, and to be honest, Dan doesn't drink like me.  But we had a great chat about writing.  A few weeks later, Dan sent me a copy of his book, Honey Rich.  Naturally, I read it.  It entertained me for a few days (as most books do).  That book was written many years ago.  Dan hasn't had a follow-up published yet.  I remember castigating him for this fact on numerous occasions.  I've also had a go at him for not using his massive directing talent in recent years.

You see, Dan is an artist, just like me.  Just like me, he has his tortured moments, as all creative individuals (writers, musicians, film-makers, actors) have from time to time.  But throughout it all, Dan has remained a friend.  Dan is a writer wholly unlike me.  He writes in a different way.  But at the end of the writing process, I think we both produce some pretty good stuff.  The path to producing the product (and I hate calling books a "product" - it makes me sound like some pretentious marketing cunt) is completely different, but after a few months of slaving away, that book is held in the hands of people neither of us know and it's read.  That's the aim of a writer.  Getting your stuff read by people who don't know you.  In fact, I have a few friends who, in the past, have refused to read my work because they know me.  As a cocky, arrogant bastard, I could say that they're missing out.  Anyway, I'm digressing.  This piece is about Dan Wagstaffe.

Dan is younger than me.  Mid-thirties, he has plenty of time to achieve the accolade that every creative person - film-maker or writer - wants to achieve.  To be noticed, to have their work read or watched by a wider audience.  I see myself and him as having a Kafka/Brod relationship, although in our case, both Dan and I are Kafka and Brod - the tortured writer and the good friend.

You can't currently get Dan's last novel, Honey Rich, on Amazon - it's "unavailable" - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Honey-Rich-Daniel-Geoffrey-Wagstaffe/dp/0956107206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384735494&sr=8-1&keywords=honey+rich but it's a good read.  And I'm sure it must be in a bookshop somewhere.  Dan is finally working on a follow up, and he tells me it should be finished in a few months.  I would urge you to read his work.  More than that, I'd urge you to watch his directorial debut, Bang Up or Pay Back (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9bCnWRhcaM).

I guess what I'm trying to do here is encourage Dan to keep on creating.  For too long this man has been in the wilderness.  He is a good friend, that much is probably obvious by what I've said previously, but he is also a massive talent.  Plus, he also managed to squeeze a copy of Putrid Underbelly into Chuck Palahniuk's transgressive grip.

Dan is a friend, a brazen bastard, and a massive talent.

die Stunde X and beer money

There's one thing which particularly annoys me about die Stunde X.  And it's the cover.  Now, I think the graphic designer, Charles Burdett, did a fantastic job.  But he put Die rather than die, and I reckon I was too pissed at the proof-read stage to spot it.

Anyway, did I say there was one thing that particularly annoys me about die Stunde X?  Well, I'm lying.  What really, really annoys me about that book, written when I was perhaps 24 or 25, is the fact that people love it.  It's my best-seller.  It's the one that keeps me in beer money.  It's a proper thriller, and you know what, I'm fucking struggling to write something like that again.  I mean, I'm really struggling.  After die Stunde X, I wrote The Journal (actually, I'm kind of lying - I wrote a few bits of work between die Stunde X and The Journal ...).  I wrote The Journal after I read Fight Club.  I was inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's style.  Indeed, my friend Gary Wright (whose own book, The Caging of George James, is now available on the Kindle) said at the time, "That book sounds a bit too much like Fight Club."  But since The Journal, I've really become obsessed with writing books from a first person perspective.  I like to get into the mind of the lead character, but that leads to problems.  My last lead character, Benjamin Beerenwinkel, was a hardcore drinker.  But then, was he based on me, or vice versa?  To be honest, in that respect, I gave up alcohol for a month with no side effects, so I'm not as bad as him.

But anyway, I digress.  Back to die Stunde X.  That book was very episodic.  I ended virtually every chapter on a cliff hanger.  And people kept turning the pages.  I look back at it now, and I think it's very juvenile.  I think it's a work of YA fiction kind of mixed in with alternative history.  When I sent that book to publishers in the mid 1990s, I was told, "Yeah, it's written in a strong style, but there's already two or three books out there with a similar topic - you know, alternative history, what if Germany had won the war, so I think we'll pass."  Now look at the alternative history market.  Even King (that's Stephen, not John) has written an alternative history book. And look at the YA market.  Every single wannabe writer who sees writing as a way of making money (misled, sad fucks) writes a YA book.  The "free" section and even the low-rent section of the Kindle marketplace on Amazon is full of young girls falling in love with vampires and zombies.  Anybody who knows me will know that I'd rather cut off my own nutsack, remove the testes and fry the scrotum, still with hairs attached, in a shallow pan, and eat it with a variety of herbs and spices, than write a work of young adult fiction ...

Or would I?  The irony is that die Stunde X has two young people (people in their early twenties) as the lead characters.  For the Love of the Devil, an erotic paranormal novel which was unfairly cast aside by an erotic paranormal website because it featured Hellish scenes of a character getting his genitals bitten off by prepubescent boys, features a handful of young characters, and so can be defined as a YA novel (albeit one which was deemed too strong for a certain blog - it might've been, but don't quote me because my publicist at the time was dealing with them, Read Our Lips).

What I'm trying to say is that I now write transgressive fiction, which is a niche market.  My best seller is an alternative history book, which used to be a very niche market, but has now expanded.  And the book I'm least happy with is actually a piece of YA fiction, written in 1999, where a young girl, the singer in a band, falls in love with somebody who turns out to be a demon.  Actually, shit, I was fucking ahead of my time.  Anyway, digressing again.  The thing is, my most successful work is the commercial stuff.  But it's not the stuff I like writing anymore.

Should I whore myself out and write that kind of shit again, or should I just say, "Fuck it", and write the stuff I myself enjoy reading?

To be fair, I don't even care what people say.  I know exactly what I'll continue doing.  Here's to Besotted, my next book.  Don't fucking have nightmares.

Besotted ... a bit of a delay

Besotted has become my opus magnum, the book that has taken me over a year to write.  For reasons that some of you will undoubtedly be aware, I lost a lot of work on this particular book in January of this year.  I've slaved over this book for months, when usually I can knock out 10,000 on a particularly good evening.

Besotted is about a tragic character living in a fucked up situation.  It won't be an easy read, but I'm hoping that people will want to read about Benjamin Beerenwinkel, find out what happens to him through the journey the book will take them on.  I've spent a long time completing this book, and it would be wrong to rush it out to publication until I know for certain that it's the perfect draft.

Most writers, they suffer this fear that their work will be ridiculed, that people will think it isn't good enough.  Well, I've got that arrogance, borne out of years of taking shit, which means I don't really care what people think.  So long as I'm happy with the final draft, then I can't ask for anything else.  I would hope that some people will like it, but if some people don't, well, I won't lose any sleep.  Books are very subjective.  My main inspiration is Chuck Palahniuk.  To me, he is like a modern-day Bukowski (though Bukowski, another of my heroes, drank like a fish (much as I do) whereas Chuck comes across as pretty damn clean living).  When I read Fight Club (before the film came out), I realized that I had to start writing transgressive fiction.  But here's the thing.  Even Chuck, for me, has written a couple of "bad" novels, books that didn't really float my boat.  No writer can please all of his or her fans all of the time, but so long as we're happy that the work we've produced, the work that's been signed off for publication, is the best draft possible, well, we've done our job.

Anyway, keep watching this space.  Besotted will be out in December.  Just in time to ruin your Christmas ...

Chuck Palahniuk in Hull

I went up to Hull on Friday evening to watch Chuck Palahniuk, fellow transgressive writer, author of Fight Club and Choke, and my main inspiration when it comes to writing deliver a talk.  Of course he did a reading of Guts.  That seems to be de rigueur for Chuck nowadays.  The tale that turns people's stomachs, which sees some people leave the auditorium, while others faint.  I'm not convinced members in the audience do actually faint.  I get the impression that these people are the kind of people who "allow" themselves to be hypnotized into simulating sex on stage - attention seekers.  Nevertheless, it was great to see him read such a famous piece of work.

I was there with fellow writer and friend, Dan Wagstaffe.  Dan was particularly pissed off because during the question and answer session, somebody stole his question - something along the lines of, "Are there any topics that are taboo for you?"  Chuck's answer was essentially a firm no.  I agree.  I don't think any topic should be a taboo subject.  On the drive home, Dan and myself discussed that particular idea, and I suggested that tough as it might be, I could write a story about a paedophile or a man obsessed with bestiality (those were two of the "taboo" topics Dan threw into the conversation).  Dan's response was, "Does the world really need a story about a paedophile?"  My answer was, "Does the world really need another John Grisham novel?"  Essentially, the answer to both questions is neither a yes or a no.  Reading is subjective, and I recognize that some people fawn over Grisham and his novels in much the same way as I might fawn over Chuck Palahniuk and his books.

It was an excellent evening, which ended with Dan managing to get a copy of Putrid Underbelly within Chuck's sweaty paws.  Not that Chuck necessarily has sweaty paws, but you know what I mean.  Chuck Palahniuk has, maybe, looked at the cover of one of my books.  That is an achievement, and I thank Dan for having the bravery to make that happen.  But as I said to Dan later, "He's a transgressive writer.  He's probably wiping his arse on it."  I won't tell you what Dan's idea was about what Chuck was doing with my book, but it was something even more transgressive than using Putrid Underbelly as makeshift toilet paper.

Anyway, happy days, and thank you, Dan.

Or should that be "The NEW home of Indie transgressive fiction ..."?

Shaun Stafford's Putrid Underbelly used to be hosted by blog.com, but that particular host is beset with problems.  Either the entire blog is down for days on end, or else it's impossible to get into their "dashboard" to create new posts.

So consider this place to be the new home of Indie transgressive fiction.  Hopefully, as and when I can be arsed, I will migrate some of the stuff from the old place to the new place.  But in the meantime, set your links to blogger.com.