This issue comes in one of those extra big bags and makes crazy promises on the cover. Sex tips from the FBI! Wow! I have no idea what they could be. Always show identification? Make sure your partner doesn’t get shot? Hmm. There are also, apparently, the 21 easiest recipes ever, although how they could be easier than “pierce film lid” I have no idea.

There’s your standard “get back in shape” on the cover – pretty much expected around the Christmas period – and a detox headline too: “detox with peanut butter and DVDs”. I don’t like peanut butter. Not a good start. Six pack on a plate – gorge your way to perfect abs – sounds like something I might give a go this month, as does “grow two inches taller in just one month”. I must get someone to measure me. Mind control tricks to hypnotise yourself slimmer – well, we’ll see; 72 hours to renew your liver sounds easy enough; new cruel rules for success is probably one of those articles which won’t really apply to a freelancer.

Oh, and there’s £30k worth of technogym gear to be won. Might have to give that a go.

Right – time to read. Back in a little while…

Basically, I’m going to live my life by Men’s Health for a year.

Not completely, of course. I’m not going to take up – forever – every exercise regime in the magazine. I’m not only going to eat from recipes in the magazine. I’m not going to buy all the gadgets. If you’re not familiar with Men’s Health, it’s like many other high-end sub-grot magazines: lots of pictures of gadgets and ladies in pants (often holding gadgets) but also quite a few men in pants. It’s like posh smut for everyone; whatever your gender or orientation you’ll find someone to ogle and quite a bit of body dysmorphia inducing photography.

What I am going to do, though, is buy it every month and try as much stuff from it as I can, especially the “get an xxxx in six weeks” things. Get a six-pack in a month? Well, let’s see. I’d love to be able to try all the gadgets, too, but unless someone sends them to me to double-check the Men’s Health reviews, I doubt that’ll be possible. As for the sex tips… well, I may ask female friends what they think about them as concepts.

Why am I doing this? I don’t want to be muscle-bound. I’m not even that bothered about getting to Men’s Health cover-model standard. I want to look a little better, feel a little better, and see if it’s all actually possible. Especially when I have a full-time job and not a massive income. Above all, I think it’ll be an interesting thing to blog about. A challenge.

Some background

This time last year I was reasonably fit. I’d run a couple of 10k races in respectable times, and was preparing for my first half marathon, which I ran in March. After that, though, I returned to freelance writing as a job, and all of a sudden my time just disappeared, along with my motivation. I ran a bit after that and kept going to the gym a bit, but less and less, until I completely stopped.

I don’t have any excuses. I could say I was spending all my time with my girlfriend (which I was); I could blame work. But, when it comes down to it, I was lazy. I’ve always had that aspect to my personality, especially where exercise is concerned. I’ve been blessed with decent genes and stayed pretty skinny until now, but age (I’m only 32, but still) is overtaking me. This year I’ve gone up to a 34″ waist in my jeans for the first time ever. I have a bit of a belly and something of a bottom.

I’ve never really had pecs or a six-pack to speak of. I’ve always been quite shy of showing my arms and much prefer long sleeves, even in the summer. I used to bike a lot, and then fence, and then run, and had a decent pair of legs. If I had to pick a best bit of myself, it’d be my pins.

Now, I’d describe myself as tired-looking and saggy; my face is certainly starting to show this year’s late nights and long working hours. I’m aware of my belly as I sit anywhere, and the shirts I used to love wearing now reveal a bit of a gut. Time to do something about it. I’ll post some “before” images soon. They will be horrific. I might be in my pants. Sorry.

The structure

Each month, I’ll take a look through the magazine, tell you a bit about it and pick the articles to write about over the month. I’m not going to do everything, and I’m certainly not going to be reproducing any content. If you want to follow along, a subscription is less than £30 for the year, which is pretty impressive, especially at a cover price of £3.99 per issue.

Other than that, no rules. Let’s see how it goes. You can see all the posts here.

Disclaimer

I have nothing to do with Men’s Health magazine. I’m getting nothing from them, yet, or from anyone else I may write about. If I do, I’ll tell you, but let’s be honest here: I’m a freelance writer. I work hard. I earn little. If there’s anything going free, I’m taking it.

It turns out re-drafting is a more time-consuming activity than writing the first draft; more intensive, at the very least, requiring far more of a view of the whole and how it hangs together. It took me a week to write 600 words which normally would have taken an hour; sections which now fit between two known points have to join them up effectively, which is quite a constraint.

I’m also finding that I have more ideas now about how to tie the whole thing together, and larger themes and ideas are emerging.

One thing I’ve learnt – and this may be of use to other writers – is that I have to let go of word count now. I’ve gone well over 80,000 words, so I can lose 8,000 or so. I’m writing new sections too, and these will replace what I remove. There are large blocks of text being removed from the chapter I’m currently working on and it’s very tempting to try to re-write these when, really, they serve no purpose and – if anything – break the flow. There are long sections of self-indulgence which really need to go, too, and it’s an interesting exercise to see how much my writing has changed over the nine or ten months I’ve spent working on it. The end is far more descriptive, using far more of the “show, don’t tell” principle so many writing teachers recommend.

Right – I will go back to it. More insights to come soon, I hope.

Redrafting

I’d originally thought when writing the first draft that it had to be right. That the words had to be beautifully crafted, and that I could spend hours getting each sentence just right; that the re-drafting would be a case of sorting out spelling mistakes and throwing in a couple of new ideas here and there. Well, it’s not like that in the slightest. For me – and perhaps this is partly due to working on a laptop – the first draft ended up being little more than a story, not yet a novel.

It’s a bit like restoring a car, I think. You start by building a chassis, and that’s the structure for the car; you put the engine in, and that’s what makes it run; you basically get it going before you even think about making it look pretty. Writing this novel has been a lot like that. I’ve built the chassis and the engine now, and it’s time to get those bits which work into a (hopefully pretty) shape. It’s time to turn it from something which goes to something people actually want to go in.

The first step was to get the manuscript printed, which was done with the incredibly kind assistance of Oliver Stanton at Russell Associates. I’ll be honest: a book manuscript looks damn cool. I feel like a real writer when I hold it.

Next up was reading it: I’d never read through the whole thing, so in three sittings I worked my way through – with the setup you can see above. A pencil, a pad, lots of music and caffiene. This read-through was to make note of patterns, major plot holes and inconsistencies and to see that it hung together; it still wasn’t about the language used or doing any kind of serious re-write work. While I did make some notes on the manuscript, most at this stage were made on my pad, which makes it easier to cross-reference pages which might be at opposite ends of the manuscript.

And now I begin stage two: the process of actually re-writing the manuscript. Several chapters need complete re-writes, thanks to plots I introduced later on in the first draft. Others need less work, but can still be a lot nicer – while I feel that the manuscript as it stands does hang together reasonably well, it’s not the style or impact I really want to get from it. This stage is basically about taking that structure and making it entertaining, making the language sparkle and giving it some originality.

I think it’s probably going to take a long time.

I’m going to link to the books in this post on Amazon: I’m afraid they’re affiliate links. You pay no extra; I’d recommend these books regardless of the affiliate linking; and I have to pay for hosting. But if you’d rather buy them from elsewhere, I’d heartily recommend your local independent bookshop.

On Writing – Stephen King

Whether you read Stephen King’s novels or not, this is an excellent book on the process of writing. Part biography, part instructional manual, former English teacher King takes you through the basics of the novel writing process – and has enough anecdotes to help you feel like you’re not the only one who gets writer’s block/can’t find the time/gets run over by a car. He also tells you a few things to avoid – getting run over being one of them, and an addiction to alcohol being the other. Not all the advice is quite so big-picture, though: there are a lot of the basic principles of story structure, grammar and the process of writing explained. It’s very good.

Buy On Writing

Why I Write & Books V. Cigarettes – George Orwell

These are lovely little books from the Penguin Great Ideas range (it’s well worth collecting the set). Beautiful covers, handy pocket sizes, and these two collections of essays contain some of the most useful bits of writing an aspiring novelist could read; “Books V Cigarettes” justifies all those book purchases and makes you feel virtuous (unless you smoke as well); “Politics and the English Language” is vital reading for anyone who writes (and I think should be made compulsory reading for all my clients!); and “Why I Write” makes you feel a little less alone. It’s a bit political in places – well, it is George Orwell – but some great writing and made the rest of Orwell a little more accessible to me. After these I devoured his full books.

Buy Penguin Great Ideas : Why I Write
Buy Books v. Cigarettes (Penguin Great Ideas)

The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell

If you’re writing genre fiction – in particular sci-fi (and you love Star Wars) this is absolutely vital reading. Even if you’re writing something “literary” it’s pretty useful, explaining plot structure from ancient Greek and Roman stories to the modern day – and how they all share common elements. I think you can interpret just about any story to fit these elements, rather than them all conciously containing the archetypes described, but it does make for interesting reading – and a perfect match for stories like Star Wars. Having just a little knowledge of this approach can help you when you’re re-reading your story to ensure that the plot hangs together as expected.

Buy The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Elements of Style – Strunk & White

This might be a little contentious, but bear with me. This is a book on grammar and style; I’d say it’s vital reading for any copy writer, especially any web writer, but novelists might not like it. I, personally, love it: Strunk gets as wound up about grammar as I do but does so with a lot more humour. I have a beautifully bound hard-cover copy with illustrations, but the link below will take you to a nice practical paperback.

You might wonder what use this is to a novelist; after all, you love your long flowery sentences and grammar is just restrictive, right? Well, maybe; but in order to break the rules properly it’s best to understand them first. Regardless, if you have a love for words and language, this book is just great.

Buy The Elements of Style

The Freelance Writer’s Handbook

OK, so it’s not the most immediate choice for writers working on a novel, but it’s an incredibly useful book on making money from your writing. There is a section on writing novels in here – the main lesson being don’t forget your audience – but the sections on ghost writing and general freelancing are helpful too.

Buy The Freelance Writer’s Handbook: How to Make Money and Enjoy Your Life

A couple of weeks ago I finished the first draft; clocking in at around 89,000 words it’s the longest single piece of writing I’ve ever created. I decided not to blog the process of writing it for fear of breaking the flow, but now begins the editing, which feels at the moment like it’s going to be a far less linear process, so I’m going to start putting some notes up here about what I’m doing and why. Hopefully some of what I write will be of interest; I’m going to write about what worked for me, and if you’re writing a novel it won’t necessarily work for you. I’d strongly recommend going on a creative writing course of some sort if you’ve not done much creative writing before. If you’d rather not (and it’s certainly not vital) I’ll do a post with a list of some books you might want to think about reading at some point in the future too.

My thoughts on writing the novel will come in two flavours: a non-chronological, rather rambling list of things I remember from the process of writing it and, hopefully, some more coherent thoughts on the re-drafting process. They’ll all be categorised as “creative writing”, and when I’ve done my planned re-build of this blog you’ll be able to access them all in one place. So – on with the first post. Today: routine.

All about my writing routine

The designer where I work regularly tells me that routine aids creativity, and I’m starting to believe him. Just as it’s important as a freelancer to get up at regular times and put in place a separation between home and work life, I found it important to get away from the distractions of home, to set aside periods of time to write, and to do this regularly. I found that the first month or two was quite easy; after this the realisation that progress can be slow is very disheartening, and without a routine in place it’s easy to be distracted. By putting aside certain times of certain days to write, and by setting targets, it’s easier to manage these distractions.

I started by setting Sunday afternoons aside; I found, however, that this didn’t quite work. On Sundays I have commitments in the evening, and invariably just as I was getting into the flow I’d need to stop writing. I could also end up hungover on a Sunday and start writing very late, and with a bad head. By changing my writing day to Saturday, I could write well into the evening without worry – and as long as I managed to do my cleaning, Sunday was often free to get a few more words down. What did I learn? If you believe in the project, make sacrifices. I gave up my Saturdays, most of my Sundays, most of my time off, in fact; I’m sure friendships have been damaged. But I had to write this novel for the sake of my mental health. I’d never forgive myself if I hadn’t. You don’t just pop out a novel in a month. I was naive when I started in thinking it would take 6 months; 9 months later I know I’m only about half way there with the writing, and then there’s the struggle to get published to come after that, and there’s still no guarantee of success. Worth it? Yes, I think so. But ask again in 9 months.

Break things

One of the best things to happen to me during the drafting was my car breaking down. It meant the only way I had to get around was the bus, and given how irregular they are around here (in timing, not in shape or anything: they all do look like buses, at least) I often ended up with an hour or two to spare. I had thought that this wouldn’t be long enough; I’d been of the opinion that 1,000 words in one go was the lower limit of a useful creative period. But that’s not how I work. It turned out that if I was in the mood to write, an hour would be plenty to keep things moving, so I took advantage of that and ended up writing – at my peak – for at least an hour four days a week. The main learning? Whatever works for you – you just have to try it. Some people will get up an hour or two early and bash out 1,000; I’m a night person, so I’d rather go to bed a couple of hours later and work then.

Next time…

Next time I’ll tell you about a few of the books which have helped in the writing so far – and a few books which are essential reading for any writer, whether a novellist or copywriter.

Childhood memories are normally very vivid; although they may be twisted a bit by the passage of time, if anything this enhances the way they can be described. Rose-tinted spectacles bring more colour to your memories. In fiction, of course, your recall doesn’t have to be perfect – just evocative.

The pipes

It’s a cliche – or perhaps a truism – to say that they’d not be allowed today. The pipes.

Once more with the hushed reverence they deserve – the pipes.

Vastly superior to any other climbing frame, playground equipment or landscaping feature, the pipes were nothing more sophisticated than the name implies: five or so large, unused – well, hopefully unused – sewage pipes. Perhaps coated with something protective to make them slightly glossed, but adapted no more than that. Fixed in place with hidden cement or half buried, they formed a climbing frame like no other.

It’s something of a surprise that no-one ever lost teeth falling off them, or into them, or slamming into them after a pell-mell rush across the playground. They provided hours of fun just climbing in and out, clambering on top of the largest rather than just crawling through it, the soft curves radiating second-hand heat from a sun which seems to have lost some of its power over the last 20 years and providing the perfect point to bask, if you could avoid being pulled off them. It was easy to relax just a little too much and slide down into the gap between two of them. They were the perfect summer holiday forbidden pleasure. For six weeks every year they were free of competition for their affections, for the caress of their concrete against the backs of your legs.

Looking back, they were undoubtedly dirty. I’m pretty sure we’d sometimes find cigarette butts scattered around them, and I certainly remember strangely congealed masses, perhaps half-chewed sweets that seemed to us – back then – like alien embryos or the burst remains of vivid, poisonous puffballs. I’m pretty sure I ripped trousers on them several times. But I still remember fondly conforming to the warm curves at the bottom of the largest, avoiding the worst of the sun but enjoying, alone, the best of it too.

OTTER BOTTOMS

Otter bottoms
Wet, wet;
Otter tops
Often plop
In the water too
Rapidly following the otter bottoms
They are invariably connected with
Via otter middles.
Otters
Animals with both bottoms and tops
Like good pyjamas
But with middles as well
Like bad ring donuts.

The lesson leading up to this was about cliche and similies – and as part of that we produced some mixed-up, non-cliched similies. Choosing a favourite, we then wrote a page of… anything, really, around it. This is mine. My simile? “As quiet as a sleeping beatnik”.

The bars

There was a choice he made when he started going to the new bar. He could be one of the cool guys with the confidence or he could be the endearingly shy type. Going to a new bar was reinvention. It was a chance to shake off the rejection of the last – or to drop the commitment expected of the successes. So he always had this choice.

In terms of success, cool and confident was nudging ahead of endearing and shy by five to four. Logic dictated that he should stick with the more successful technique and further refine it, but he felt sorry for Shy. He wanted to give him another chance. He was certainly more likeable; more likeable to other men, because he was less of a threat. And he got more follow-up, received more emails and voicemails than Brash. If I ever stop doing this, he thought, I will be Shy forever. I will find my attractive barmaid and we will settle down and I will get a cat. I will spend my Sundays on sunshine patios, dozing with tea, quiet as a sleeping beatnik.

So this evening he became Shy again, decided to give him a last hurrah and hoped that things would work out OK for him. He packed his challenging books and his pens and notepad into his battered satchel. He tugged on his cordroy jacket and his brogues. He left his tissues and his receipts in his pockets. He took the padded wallet, the one which didn’t show the ring of rubber so brazenly imprinted into the leather. He took a little less care about shaving. He took the bus.

Shy ended the evening laying on his back with a woman standing over him, although the route there was not quite what he’d hoped or planned. Shy, he realised, was a nice bloke. He did have many redeeming features. He probably was the one who would do the retirement from this game. But he certainly wasn’t the one to deal with the barmaids who moved jobs and swapped stories.

Obama’s speech writer is a 27-year-old. He has my dream job. Kind of. I have an overwhelming sense of envy.