This is just a quick reflection, but it’s one that has really helped my fiction writing to develop, and I hope it can help you if you get stuck working on your stories.

When I was writing my first novel, The Sadness of The King George, I would sometimes get stuck on what certain characters should do. I had the main arc of the plot, but I would get stuck on how its inhabitants would act or react in certain scenes.

It wasn’t until I got near the end of my second novel (which will be published early next year) that I realised I was making a basic mistake by looking at things the wrong way round. I didn’t have to dream up what my characters should be doing and thereby graft my ideas onto them; they knew the answers. It’s a subtle switch — because we obviously create our characters — but I’ve come to the realisation that if you’ve drawn them well enough, then your characters can come to life and provide you with all the answers you need to move your story forward.

This goes for the plot too. Again, in my first novel, I was guilty of simply starting writing at point A and aiming for point B with little thought as to what was going to happen during the intervening 80,000 words. This meant I often got stuck on what should happen next and sometimes ended up in dead ends. It was a bit like building a tower and just going up and up and up, stacking ideas on top of each other, without paying any attention to what the foundations were telling me to do.

I initially approached my second novel in a similar fashion until I realised, about three-quarters of the way through the first draft, that what I’d already written held the answers. Themes or ideas that I may only have come up with as a passing reference earlier in the text could return and be developed. In my new novel, one of the major characters was initially a minor one added for convenience, but when I reached an impasse about two-thirds of the way through, I paused and looked back and realised that everything was laid towards him being a major character, and given what he was like as a person, he would clearly have wanted to be a major character. The answers were all there. I just needed to listen rather than keep talking.

This might all sound obvious to you, but to me, it’s a bit like one of those old magic-eye pictures (which I could never get my head, or at least my eyes, around): once it’s pointed out, it becomes obvious. 

If you prick us, do we not write?

There’s no one reason why any of us start, or continue, writing, but I’d argue that most of the reasons we do reside at least somewhere in the suburbs of therapy. Journalling has many proven health benefits, making lists can help us feel like the world is that little bit more in order, and even when a larger writing project, such as a novel or a script, can feel like you’re chasing a perpetual horizon — particularly by the third or fourth draft — the old chestnut of hating writing but loving having written still applies and is the motivation to keep scribbling or typing, trying to get all the ideas out of our heads and in some semblance of order so that we can at least sleep at nights!

To me, all of this suggests a desire to communicate, a humanity, a basic sense of warmth. In other words, I’d argue that those of us who start writing creatively rarely do so from financial motivation. Of course, there’ll be the odd person believing that they can puke up a novel in a week and become the next JK Rowling or Stephen King, but as we all know, those odd people rarely make it until Wednesday. (I should note, however, that there are exceptions: ex-Tory MP Jeffrey Archer claims to have written his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, in a last-ditch bid to avoid bankruptcy after losing his entire fortune in a fraudulent investment scheme. He has since sold 320 million books worldwide, so it can happen! Or at least it could to middle-class blokes in 1976).

What happened to the dream?

But unfortunately, for those of us who want to take it further and become published, perhaps even full-time authors, nothing douses the warm flame of writing faster than the cold realities of the professional publishing industry. For all of its cosy quirkiness, its cottage-industry kookiness, and its caring social conscience, it’s a thoroughly gatekept business, capitalist and concerned with the bottom line.

It doesn’t matter how woolly the cardigans, ethically sourced the dungarees or unusually shaped the spectacles, literary agents and publishers, even radical ones, want work they can sell for money — and the more money the better. There may be honourable reasons why they want the money, but they still want it above all else.

Likewise, you can pay £25-£50 to enter competitions where your very best work will get nowhere. You can submit things you’ve worked on for years to agents who often won’t even reply. This is not an industry where everyone gets a prize, or even noticed. It’s definitely not an industry where everyone gets published.

Corporate sellout

I’m not saying this because I’m bitter (I’ve been traditionally published twice) or think that I somehow know better (I don’t), nor am I saying it to put aspiring writers off; I’m writing it as a realistic reflection that anyone who wants to pursue a creative writing career, particularly as a novelist or poet, will at some point have to reconcile themselves with the fact that writing (if not all art) is an industry as cutthroat as any other corporate sector you can name.

Some of us, and I include myself in this, can come to terms with it and are willing to slog away at draft after draft, taking rejection letter and rejection letter (and trust me, they still sting, even when the 100th one lands in your inbox) in the belief that someday, somehow, the warmth of our intentions will prevail. We’re also willing to accept that writing involves endless self-promotion (even though writers are often the most introverted creatures imaginable). Finally, we’re willing to put our work up for the inevitable criticism and misreadings that come with putting anything creative out into the world.

I would argue that this is a vital step for all serious writers to take. I have a musician friend who, close to 40, still holds the same romantic notions of music he did as a teenager. He could have “made it” as a musician, and he had multiple opportunities to do so, but he ultimately couldn’t stomach the notion of music as “a business” and so walked away every time. I truly admire the sentiment, but I also note that he ended up doing equally business-like jobs that he didn’t particularly want to do. Would I rather keep the essential purity of my writing intact and stay pulling pints (as I did for 16 years), or would I be happier making some concessions to accessibility and having a greater chance of people actually reading what I write? It’s an age-old conversation, but it’s always one worth having, especially with yourself.

The writing industry is a cold world for warm people, an unfeeling world for romantics… It’s everything that we as creative writers wanted to avoid in life, but realistically, if you want to write professionally, then the publishing industry is a bit like the mud in We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: you can’t go over or under it; you’ve got to go through it.

All together now: Squelch, squerch, squelch, squerch… 

Have you ever felt like the world doesn’t care about your writing — specifically, the world around you: friends, family, social media contacts?

You could be a poet just starting out or a published novelist, but those closest don’t seem to get what you’re doing or why you’re doing it; they imagine you want to be famous, or that it’s just a hobby, like keeping a diary. In other words, it’s not all that serious.

In truth, it can sometimes feel like you're trying to make yourself understood through a thick pane of glass — for years, the suggestion given to me was that I go into journalism, which never interested me but is an understandable idea given I come from a background where that would likely be the only “proper” writing career to come to mind.

If any of this sounds familiar, then don’t worry; you’re not alone. In fact, it’s pretty standard for creatives in any discipline, whatever their background or class status. In my case, only one family member has read all three of my books and told me what they thought. There have been various instances where friends or extended family members have told me that they’ve bought one of my books and they’re looking forward to reading it… Only to never mention it again.

The most embarrassing moment, however, came when my old band, FABRIK, released our second album in 2020. We’d spent three years recording it, and put a lot of time, effort (and money) into making it as strong as possible. I was hugely proud of it (and still am), and of course, I posted about its release on my Facebook and Instagram.

Around the same time, I posted a picture of some potatoes that I’d managed to grow in my first attempt at a veg patch.

Guess which post got more likes.

The album sunk without trace (not helped by all live promo being cancelled by the pandemic), and FABRIK ended. I couldn’t consider making music for at least a year afterwards because I was so bitter about it — and some potatoes getting more attention than my heartfelt creative endeavours felt like the universe spitting in my face.

Even before that happened, however, I’d spent years fretting about and getting frustrated by similar things, assuming they meant that my writing — or any of my creative work — wasn’t good enough, and that, by extension, I wasn’t good enough either. And I know I’m not the only one. I remember a musician friend once venting on Facebook about how more “friends” liked posts about his then-new EP than actually went and listened to it, and I’m sure you have at least one equivalent story.

But a few months ago, I stumbled on a quote from Garbage singer Shirley Manson (which, for the life of me, I cannot find again, despite half an hour of Googling). In it, she said something to the effect that anyone who was going to dedicate themselves to something creative had to persevere with it, even though friends and family were never going to be into it. This from the frontwoman of a multimillion-selling rock band! The implication was that, despite all that she had achieved, some of those closest to her still didn’t understand it all.

What she said chimed with my own, much lower-level experiences and helped me to finally realise something crucial that I believe any creative should bear in mind: Your network is not your audience.

But crucially, that doesn’t make your work worthless; it just means that the people you have on social media — people you work with, went to school or uni with, randomly met on a night out, or even share DNA with aren’t automatically the right audience for your writing.

This leads us to the positive side. If you’re a creative with something to say, and you can say it to a certain level of technical competence, then there is an audience out there for you. Almost all of my most enthusiastic (and most honest) reviews have come from people I’ve never met — and probably never will meet. And I have to say that that is at least as satisfying than a member of my immediate family liking what I do. There’s nothing at play beyond someone enjoying my work for what it is — there can be no question of not wanting to hurt my feelings.

The most difficult part, of course, is finding that audience, and this is where you need the help of outsiders: agents, publishers, bloggers, poetry night organisers, writer groups, writer development programmes like the one I’m fortunate enough to be on… The list is long and consists of people you may not have met yet but who can help you get your work in front of people who will understand it.

The search for an audience is a serious, often lonely graft, and however selective you are with approaching agents, etc. It can often feel like door-to-door leafleting — shoving your work through the doors of possibly hostile strangers, often to no response — but don’t let the ambivalence of those closest to you dishearten you. There are people out there who will appreciate and even love your work, even if you have no idea who they are.

Have you written something you want to get out into the world? Do you feel like it could do with a fresh pairs of eyes to check it over first? If so, then get in touch; I’d love to help.

When I self-published my first-ever book, Pop Art Poems: The Music of The Jam, back in summer 2016, I was not yet a professional writer, proofreader, and editor. I didn’t see this as a problem and decided to go it alone, doing pretty much everything except physically printing the books.

As a result, I made mistakes. On the one hand, that’s okay because if you never make a mistake, you never learn anything — and I did eventually sell the 1,000 copies I ordered, making a profit and getting some good reviews despite minimum marketing.

On the other hand, it meant that the book I’d spent four years working on wasn’t as good as it could have been. There were some glaring errors, and it took a lot of work to correct them for the second edition, which I self-published through
Amazon’s KDP platform five years later.

My biggest mistake by far in self-publishing was not employing a proofreader who understood grammar more than I did at the time (I worked full-time in the pub trade back then, more used to changing barrels than correcting comma splices). As a result, I spent a lot of money on 1,000 books that contained multiple typos and formatting errors. I remember reading it through for the first time and each fresh mistake feeling like a gut punch. There was no way I could alter any of it, either; I had to go out and sell something I knew was flawed. I’d worked on this book for four years and fallen at the final, pretty low hurdle.

At the very least, I wish I’d hired a professional to act as a fresh pair of eyes.

So why didn’t I use a proofreader? Looking back, I think there were three main reasons:

1. Pride

I knew I was a good writer — I had a first-class degree, after all — what could a proofreader have taught me about writing?

This is clearly not a healthy approach. Even if you’re self-publishing, it still takes a village to make your book as brilliant as possible, and a sensitive proofreader or editor can help you achieve that by noticing typos or suggesting subtle changes you might have missed because you’ve gone through your manuscript so many times that you’re no longer seeing it objectively.

2. Money

My manuscript was roughly 100,000 words and would have cost a few hundred quid to proofread. Looking back, given how much I was prepared to spend on printing and getting permission to use the picture I wanted for the front cover, adding, say, £500 to the initial outlay should have been a no-brainer, but I picked this crucial area to cut corners on.
As I had a degree and was good at spelling, I figured that a thorough check with Word’s spellcheck tool would sieve out any mistakes. It didn’t, and that’s the main reason I can’t look at first editions of the first book I ever wrote.

3. Panic

For reasons I’ll save for another blog, I rushed the self-publishing process, going from finishing the second draft to having physical copies in my spare room in a matter of weeks. On reflection, this was unnecessary. At the time, I had no concept of proofreading turnaround times (today, I could proofread a book of a similar length with a similar amount of errors in around 10 days), and to delay publication by any length of time would, I felt, have ruined years of research and writing.

As it happened, the opposite was true: the rushing ruined it.

So, in conclusion, I encourage — no, I implore you to employ a proofreader for your book, blog, website, course, or script. Yes, I do so because I’m a professional proofreader, but I also write as a fellow author who ultimately let his work down by not giving it that final polish.

Got something that you think would benefit from a proofread? Get in touch with me at [email protected]. I can’t wait to hear about your project!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere at the moment. And whether we like it or not, it’s going to stay everywhere.
I admit I’m a relative latecomer to it and was vaguely worried that it was going to steal my livelihood — who’s going to pay me to write something for them when ChatGPT can do it for free at the click of a button?

But then I had the good fortune of being asked to edit Andrew Reid’s excellent book, The ChatGPT Guide for Business, and its non-sensational, step-by-step approach helped me to realise that AI could help my work, rather than hinder it.

However, as there are currently a lot of worrying headlines about what AI might be capable of (from taking jobs to destroying humanity), I thought it wise to write this brief explainer so you know that when you employ me, you’re working with me and my skills; you’re not paying me to get a computer to do it all.

So yes, I have decided to adopt AI, specifically ChatGPT, into my work. However, I emphatically do not use it to generate content that I am being paid to write. Nor have I used it to generate any content for this website beyond two random paragraphs for me to demonstrate what editing and proofreading are and a suggestion for a section title. I have then thought about and amended everything I have asked it to generate.

When I do use ChatGPT for a project, I essentially employ it as a kind of mega-Google, asking it questions about, say, US/UK grammar conventions or whether a certain term is hyphenated or capitalised in a specific context. I may also use it as part of my SEO research or ask it for guidance on something like writing a meta tag. For these kinds of tasks, I think AI makes my work stronger and more accurate.

​I must stress, however, that I do not use ChatGPT as a wholesale spelling-and-grammar-checking tool (its grammar isn’t perfect, I have to say!), and under no circumstances would I ever paste any portion of my clients’ work into it. When you work with me, anything you have written or you want me to write with you is treated sensitively and confidentially unless specified otherwise.

The difference between proofreading and editing is essentially the amount of work required and the amount of involvement I, as your proofreader or editor, am allowed with your words.

To best demonstrate what I mean, I asked ChatGPT to generate two random 100-word paragraphs that required proofreading and editing (I then further added mistakes for me to correct). I then corrected them both to the required level, hopefully giving you a clear picture of what to expect when you employ me as a proofreader or an editor.

First off, here is a 100-word paragraph from a tech book or manual, which requires proofreading rather than editing. See if you can spot the mistakes:

To properly assemble the device, please follows these steps carefully. First, insert the battery into it's designated compartment, ensuring the polarity is correctly aligned. Next, attach the cover securely by fastening the screws tightly. Then, connect the power cord to the device and plug it in a nearby wall socket. After that, turn on the switch and wait for the indicator light to turns green. Once the device is activated, make sure to not touch any of it's internal components, as it may cause damage. Finally, refer to the user's manual for further informations on operation and maintenance.

…And here is my proofread version. See if you can spot the changes:

To properly assemble the device, please follows these steps carefully. First, insert the battery into its designated compartment, ensuring the polarity is correctly aligned. Next, attach the cover securely by fastening the screws tightly. Connect the power cord to the device and plug it into a nearby wall socket. After that, turn on the switch and wait for the indicator light to turn green. Once the device is activated, make sure to not touch any of its internal components, as it may cause damage. Finally, refer to the user's manual for further information on operation and maintenance.

This example only required proofreading because the content was correct, well-ordered, and had almost correct spelling and grammar. It has likely been gone through several times, possibly by another editor. I did, however, have to make the following changes:

• Changing “plug it in a nearby…” to “plug it into a nearby…” so that it reads more professionally.
• Changing “it’s” (always short for “it is”) for its where necessary.
• Correcting the spelling of “turns” and “informations” (turns isn’t misspelt, but is wrong in the context used; the plural of “information” is “information”).

​I haven’t made any major changes, and were this a real book, I might go another page before finding another correction, but if I hadn’t made the changes I did, this paragraph would be far less professional, blighting the book. (And believe me, I’ve learned from experience what happens when you publish something without getting a third party to proofread!)

Now let’s look at editing, which requires more work and allows me, as your editor, more scope to sculpt your words.
​
For this example, I asked ChatGPT to generate a 100-word paragraph from the introduction to a non-fiction book about a random subject (it chose the human mind, which may or may not be a bit spooky). I asked it to include examples of common things that editors pick up on and alter:

In this book, we embark on an exploratory journey into the intriguing realm of mind, and consciousness. Preare to delve into the deep perplexing depths of the human psyche as we unravel it’s brilliant, mysterious labyrinth. From the intricate neural networks deep within our brains to the enigmatic nature of dreams, we'll navigate through the vast ocean of cognitive processes. Discover the dizzying, complex kaleidoscope of thoughts, emotions and perceptions which shape our colorful understandings. Through the complex prism of scientific research and philosophical ponderings, this book aims to illuminate the wonderous tapestry of our inner worlds, shedding light on the unexplored frontiers of human cognition and consienceness. So, embark on this thought provoking odyssey and let your minds horizons expand like a burst of crazy, awe-inspiring vibrant fireworks in the twilight November skies!

And here's how I edited it:

In this book, we embark on an exploratory journey into the intriguing realm of mind and consciousness. Prepare to delve into the depths of the human psyche as we unravel its mysterious labyrinth. From the intricate neural networks of our brains to the enigmatic nature of dreams, we'll navigate the vast ocean of cognitive processes. Discover the kaleidoscope of thoughts, emotions, and perceptions that shape our understanding. Through scientific research and philosophical ponderings, this book aims to illuminate the tapestry of our inner worlds, shedding light on the unexplored frontiers of human consciousness. So, embark on this thought-provoking odyssey and let your mind’s horizons expand!

As you can see, I’ve made some small changes and some larger ones. I have:

• Corrected the obvious and more subtle spelling mistakes.
• Deleted commas that were in the wrong place and added ones that were missing.
• Removed unnecessary words that say the same thing twice (“i.e. the deep depths”) or are overused (“complex” appears three times in the unedited example, only once in the edited one).
• Tidied the grammar up (“its” instead of “it’s”, “mind’s horizon” instead of “minds horizon”, “that” instead of “which”, hyphenating words where needed, etc.).
• Cut down on adjectives (in the unedited paragraph, the author is clearly passionate about their subject — which I want to preserve — but they are trying to convey their passion with lots of lively describing words, and these are obscuring the message).
• Removed the final simile because it’s what is known in the trade as “purple prose” (over-the-top writing, which, like overusing adjectives, can make writing appear less professional and harder to read).

This example conveys how editing is more active than proofreading in suggesting where writing could be tightened or improved — without losing the essence of your unique voice. When you work with me on your project, all changes are “tracked” in Microsoft Word, meaning you can review them and accept or disregard as you see fit.