Voice and Brand

As some of you may know, I’m writing, amongst other things, a marketing series for the newly re-launched SCBWI-BI blogzine, Words & Pictures. The first article on the basics of marketing will be published on 24 April.   After that, in June, I’ll be looking at brands.  Because I’m one of those irritating people who likes to get things done ahead of time, I’ve already written the article on brands – which means I’ve been thinking rather a lot about brands recently.

But in thinking about brands, and reading an excellent post by my dear friend and critique partner, Vanessa Harbour, on 'voice', I started thinking about the connectivity between voice and brand - and realised the two are very closely interlinked. 

In her blog post Vanessa quotes children’s editor, Beverley Birch:.

'Voice' is so much more than tone of the writing and what the characters actually say.  It's a web of impressions, speech, and thought, and perceptions, and physicality, and a whole lot more. It rises from the writer’s subconscious, but it is also something that has to be worked at, refined, honed, made apt and truthful.  It's instinct and inspiration, but also craft and technique...it requires boldness and exploration, and a finely tuned ear for the detail.

In my article on brand I say: “Brands are about everything that a company or product stands for – and strong brands sell.  Strong brands are stories, memories, emotions and, particularly, relationships.  Multiple elements make up brands – logos, fonts, tag lines, style/graphics/colours - but ultimately the brand is the visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that people associate with you or your product, the thing that makes them choose your book over another, the thing they relate to and rely on.”

Here’s the thing:  Both brands and voice are something consumers/readers respond to emotionally.  They made up similar elements – stories, memories, perceptions, impressions, emotions.  Both combine to create a very specific image and response in a reader or consumer’s mind.  Both talk to the notion of a unique identity.

So to writers and authors wanting to develop their own brand, I say, “Look to your voice”.

Authors like Meg Rosoff, Kevin Brooks,  Marcus Sedgwick, to name but a few, all have very particular and strong voices.  And it is the consistency of their voice that creates their brand.  You know what you’re getting when you pick up a book by any of these authors.  You seek them out on shelves because of it – you know you can trust and rely on their words.  And it is those words, created in their voice, that create their brand.

One of the most difficult things for an author to do in an overcrowded market is to stand out.  I have heard so many authors lamenting about how to create the “stand out factor”.  But here’s the reality – be true to your voice and you will create uniqueness – and that uniqueness will in turn create a brand that is unlike any other. 

What it comes down to, in large part, is being true to your own identity - and it might be said that it’s far easier for an author or artist to create a unique brand than it is for a multinational with a 155 product lines or client service offerings.  As an author, all you have to do is to know who you truly are and to be true to yourself.  Because in doing that you create and promote your identity.  And let’s face it, it’s our identity, all the things that we believe in and stand for, that makes us unique.  As Grenville Main , of DNA Design says, “You're just anybody without your identity.” 

Ironically, for all those writers wondering how to stand out, how to create a brand – their marketing is mapped out for them.  Because for writers, their identity boils down to - to a large extent - their voice.  The voice is the writer, and it is when you are true to your own voice that you, as writer, become the brand – and become the marketing. 

Scott Talgo, brand strategist says, “A brand that captures your mind gains behaviour.  A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.”  Exactly the same can be said of a voice that is true and consistent.


For those interested in developing their voice, Imogen Cooper and Beverley Birch of The Golden Egg Academy, will be running a workshop on voice entitled ‘Through the Narrator’s Eye’ at the end of April. For more information please go to The Golden Egg website.

And to learn more about brands, well, you’re just going to have to wait until June…

Wordcasting

I’ve been pondering the notion of success, styles of writing and brands recently, and it’s caused me some concern.

Most writers long and strive for success – many hoping to emulate the kind of success achieved by JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Suzanne Collins.  Aside from  an obvious cost, i.e. loss of privacy, there is another drawback and I wonder how many stop to consider its implications.  I call it wordcasting.

Wordcasting is my word for writerly typecasting.  Just as actors become known for particular roles, wordcasting has all the potential of getting a writer stuck in stylistic quicksand.

 It’s easy to see how it happens.  JK Rowling writes the first Harry Potter, Stephanie Meyer writes Twilight.  The market laps up the books and wants more – the market being the voracious beast that it is believes that if some is good more must be better.  With no offence to the market – especially given I’m part of it – the market is full of sheeple (yes, that’s sheep people following the
flock instinct).

Rowling and Meyer write the next book and the next, movie rights are picked up, a brand develops, and because the books are on a tidal wave of success, the brand becomes a strong one. The authors produce more books and find they have become their brand – the author and their books are entirely enmeshed.  Let’s face it, I say Suzanne Collins, you think Hunger Games.  I say Agatha Christie, you think Poirot or Miss Marple. I say JRR Tolkien, you think of hobbits.  The question this begs is where does that leave the author’s future endeavours?

Success is all well and good but if it ties you into writing the same sort of books over and over again, where does your artistic integrity and your creativity go?  It goes into a very sticky web created by the market, booksellers and publishers alike.  The author effectively becomes trapped by their own success and by the brand created by that success.

The thing is this is true not only for authors writing successful series, but also for authors writing in the same style over and over again.  US author Sarah Dessen springs to mind in this instance.

While this surely means the author is making money it also means the author has become wordcast.

Maybe this is okay for those authors like Sarah Dessen who are able to write different stories each time, albeit in the same genre and stylistic range, but what about Rowling and Meyer – where do they go after Harry and Bella?  JK Rowling’s attempt to “diversify her product line” (to use marketing speak) resulted in The Casual Vacancy.  It sold only because of the Rowling name aka brand, and mostly disappointed because it wasn’t Harry Potter or even a fantasy of hope and triumph. 

In marketing terms Rowling has messed with her brand – and because brands are about trust, integrity and responsibility, Rowling’s publishers will have to market any new book with far more effort, because she’s broken the trust of her readership by deviating from her perceived norm.  Admittedly, the Rowling brand is very strong, so if she reverts to writing what readers expect from her, they’ll forgive her.  But what if she doesn’t want to write more Harry Potters or similar books?  She’s stuck.  In effect, she’ll have to start again – maybe even with a pen name.

Success and successful series are all very well, but they come at a price.

Talking of brands,  I’m writing a marketing series for the newly launched and wonderfully fun and informative SCBWI-BI (British Isles) blogzine, Words & Pictures.  You can either follow it over on the Words & Pictures website, or you can follow it here where I’ll also be posting some of the other features I write for Words & Pictures.  You can read my first feature, an interview with Carnegie Medal judge, Ferelith Horden HERE.

Creativity, a means of staying sane

How doth the little writer
Improve each shining word
when hounded by a blighter
no better than a turd.
See how cheerfully she seems to try
To indulge her creativity
When all she’d rather do is cry
And wallow in passivity.

With profuse apologies to Isaac Watts and C S Lewis.

Unless you’re from planet Zog or have been locked up in a cell with no access to social media for a while, you’ll realise that life around here has been somewhat fraught.  I’m sorry to harp on about it, but there you go.  Aside from a brief period of respite during the builders’ holidays, my life is once again cluttered with snags, problems and the proceedings of an unfinished house.

But here’s the thing – creativity will just not be thwarted.

While I’m doing a very sorry job of squelching out a few words and trying, rather halfheartedly, to crack on with the manuscript (rewrite seventy eleven, draft eleventy-five),  I cannot not be creative.  And that’s the thing, creativity can take many forms.

For me it pours out in two primary places – food and photography/ photographic “art” – I use the latter word advisedly. 

I’ve always loved cooking and there is something about making a good meal, lovingly and indulgently, that satisfies the need to create.  I’m not a great one for following recipes – that’s too easy; instead, I like to mooch through cookery books, read recipes online and then concoct something.  Last night it was a pasta dish inspired by insalata caprese (tomatoes, basil and mozzarella – to which I added garlic, parmesan and pecorino).  Tonight it will be chicken skewers - currently marinating in a brew of lemon grass, chilli, coriander, sesame oil, soy and oyster sauce.

The pleasure I derive from cooking fills the void of just not being in quite the right space to write.

The other outlet has been photography, and more particularly, taking photographs and then turning them into something completely different in the digital darkroom in order create something  unique - which looks more like an abstract painting.

Who'd have though this was once a photo of seven gerberas lying on a canvas...

The simple truth of the matter is that if I can’t write, I’ll do something else that fuels the desire to “make” and to be - because creativity is about being, it's fundamental to who we are.

Creativity is something we hold, or should hold, sacred.  It’s a kind of life force that runs through our veins.  It’s also about play, about letting the mind wander, about letting go of real life and having fun.  Most importantly, it’s a way of staying sane when the going gets a bit rough - an outlet when all the world is going mad.

So if, like me, you should suddenly find yourself well outside your normal creative space, go and do something else – dance, paint, cook, draw, craft – or whatever it is that brings you joy and makes you feel alive.  Because the thing is, creativity is not just about the output, it’s about fulfilling and living true to our very essence.

This $#@*^ business of rewriting

Most "normal" people - and by that I mean people who aren't writers... - seem to think that writing is all about sitting down with a mug of coffee, a bar of chocolate and sploshing words onto a page. Ha, if only it were that easy.

I'm rewriting The Novel, yet again.  I've been working on it since 2008.  Yes, you read that right - five years.  Admittedly, I was also working on another manuscript in 2008 - 2010 and - lest you missed it... - I was building a house in 2011 and 2012 - so I'll beg forgiveness for taking so long.  The thing is, the time involved has actually been good - ideas have been mulled over, little darlings have been murdered, thoughts have gelled, plots have been restructured and finally, finally I think I'm telling, to quote my lovely pal Candy Gourlay, the "right story". But it ain't over yet, oh no, not by a long shot - and hence further rewriting is happening.

The thing is, most times we'll sit down and spill a story onto a page, only to discover that the story we've told isn't exactly the story it's meant to be.  Instead it's a story full of warts and pustules and broken limbs and even someone else's artificial limbs  -  and it needs intensive surgery.

That process is one which is daunting, terrifying, challenging, but, if you're telling the right story, it's a process which is ultimately incredibly exciting.

While I love working on the words and making them perfect - there is so much more to writing and particularly rewriting than that.  It's definitely not about sitting down and sploshing words onto a page.  It's often not even about being creative.  Usually it's about being deeply analytical.  Both halves of the brain have to be working.  Writing?  An easy occupation?  Pffft!

As Susan Sontag was quoted as saying in a recent piece in the Atlantic on rewriting:  "I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive."

Or, to quote Stephen King from the same article: "Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that's what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings) ... I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: 'Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%. Good luck."

Candy has written an excellent blog post this morning entitled "Revising a Novel Has Nothing To Do With Courage" which is well worth reading (you can tell she's between books at the moment, her blogging has once again become prolific).  In it, she says:  "A novel is not...for the faint-hearted - it takes a LONG time and once committed, you've got to keep going till the bitter end.  I should know, it's taken three years to finish my current manuscript. In those three years, I wrote 'The End'  four times, pressed 'send' three times, and started from scratch twice."

The thing is writing is mostly about rewriting and the truth of the matter is we are constantly learning - we never stop (unless we're dead), and that means we're always honing our craft, looking to perfect our stories and rewriting, rewriting and then rewriting some more.

She's not weird, she's a writer...

Living on the flip side of the planet I don’t get to connect much with other children’s and YA writers, but this past weekend has been a blast.  There is, I have to say, a lot to be said for connecting with and spending time with one’s peers.  Facebook is all well and good but it’s cyberspace, and nothing really makes up for “real” connections.  Hugs for example, while well meant, just don’t really translate that well through time and space.

Of course, in the usual feast or famine way, this weekend saw not just one, but two of my oldest writing and critique pals in town.  Author Jackie Marchant, and my long time writing buddy (whom I’ve known for nearly eight years but have never met), Claire Atherstone.  Jackie is travelling with her husband, Eddie, on a WWW (World Wide Wine) Tour of the southern hemisphere and Claire was “home” from New Zealand to visit family.

 Mini Who? Not Mini-Me!  - with Claire Atherstone

The thing about connecting with other writers is you get to remember that even though other people mostly look at you strangely,  you’re not weird – you’re just a writer – because, let’s face it, we’re not exactly like other people.  We wander around listening to the voices in our head – and occasionally talking out loud to them too.  We forget to make dinner for our families, we keep odd hours – often as determined by a capricious muse, we have an excessive capacity for chocolate (and wine – note: Jackie is on a WINE tour!), we’re ridiculously determined - we soak up rejection like sponges and just keep going.  Most importantly, we talk the same kind of language.

“Eddie is absolutely the worst passenger,” said Jackie, launching into the time when…
“That is just not true!” objected Eddie as we sailed over the top of the mountain.  “You’re embellishing!”

Next to me, Lovely Husband burst out laughing.  “I’m glad I’m not the only one subjected to this!”

“It’s called telling a story!” exclaimed Jackie and I almost simultaneously. “We’re writers,” we chorused, “what do you expect?!”

 The windswept look - with Jackie Marchant

During a wonderful weekend filled with a lot of food and a fair bit of wine, stories were told, shared, exchanged and compared. Afterwards Lovely Husband said, in a wondering kind of voice, “You’re kindred spirits.  I listened to you talking to Jackie and to Claire and I realised you’re passionate about what you do – it’s what you have to do.”

And hard as it sometimes is, he’s absolutely right – we write because we must, and we connect with other writers so we know we’re not alone in this extraordinary pursuit of creating stories for children and young adults – a pursuit which often makes people look at us as though we’re really not quite “all there”, and which is often fraught with failure and rejection  - but always lightened by the sheer joy of creating stories.

Aside from all the fun of the past weekend, the one thing I’ve come away with, after months of disempowering and soul-destroying slog with the build, is the burning desire to get writing again.

Goodbye 2012!

I aten’t dead.

Well, I nearly was, but I’m still here.  Fortunately, however, 2012 will shortly not be here.  Which, I think, means “I won.”  Or at least, I survived.

Yep, in short, 2012 as you will probably have gathered from the paucity of blog posts, has been an annus very horribilis.

Untold problems with the building of the new house (and no, it’s STILL not finished! And lawyers are involved), high stress levels, ill health and an unexpected brush with my old pal, Dr D, has made this year a “worst ever”.  And I don’t say that lightly or without the experience of other bad years.

I am cognisant, however, that we learn the greatest lessons in the toughest of times, though just what the lesson has been in this past year, is something I’m still trying to unravel – yes, it’s that deeply complex – and ultimately, fundamentally simple.

I’m hopeful, that once the rubbish that will drag over from 2012 into 2013 is behind me, I will be able to start afresh and pick up not just where I left off, but also a few paces further along.  On just which square of the game of life, I’ll find myself, I’m not sure but change is afoot (isn’t it always?!).

But for now let me just say, as I kick 2012 up the wazoo and bid it adieu, I hope that for all of us 2013 will be a year of peace, serenity, tranquillity, harmony, abundant joy and shed-loads of creativity. May it be a year in which dreams come true.  In short, may 2013 be a “best-ever” year!

The Dry Well

I hereby confirm that the crocodile still hasn’t got me and the rampaging rhinoceros hasn’t managed to charge me over the edge of a cliff (see post below) – though I have to say, it has often felt like both have attacked and left me in tatters.
Is the house finished?  No, it is not.  Am I living in it yet? Yes I am.  If you’ve ever built or renovated a house, then the reality of How I Live Now (with apologies to Meg Rosoff) will be self explanatory.  Think words like “nightmare”, “living hell”, “frustration”, “irritation” and “regular meltdowns” and you’ll sort of get the picture.  It’s not a pretty one.
It is a situation that does less than nothing for creativity - and somewhere, sometime, I did actually have two manuscripts to rewrite and a new idea brewing. Somewhat unsurprisingly, now, when I try to open my brain all I find is grey sludge.
As many of you will know, I don’t believe in writer’s block. I also know many of you do and will therefore heartily disagree with my view.  That’s fine – I’m getting pretty darned good at dealing with disagreements and controversy (see paragraph two above…).
However, what I have encountered during this time of abject stress, is The Dry Well.
After two years of intense creativity – designing the interiors for the house, working closely with the architect, and working on two novels, right now I am sapped.  As much as I’d really like to, I find the mere thought of being creative utterly exhausting.  I keep on top of the house creativity by reviewing the multiple moodbooks I created two years ago.  I take endless photos of sunrises – presumably to see if there is a phoenix rising within them.  But one thing I can’t do is write (it doesn’t help that the glare in my new study means I can’t see my screen unless I screw up my face like an enraged Tasmanian Devil).  The creative well has simply dried up.
Am I worried about it.  Surprisingly, I’m not.  And it probably goes back to not believing in writer’s block but believing in the rhythms of life.  The well is dry because I pretty much burned out after two years of ongoing stress with the build. I can’t possibly begin to expect myself to be creative.  And I am certainly not going to beat myself up about it.
The reality is for creativity to flow, it has to be fed. 
As Ray Bradbury famously said:

“I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.”

Stress is not good food and aside from comfort eating too many carbs and copious amounts of chocolate, I haven’t been feeding myself at all well. But until such time as the various "bastard subcontractors" - as they’ve become known - are out of my space, the stress will not subside.  Right now, by way of example, tiles that were wrongly put on are are being chopped off, walls that were badly skimmed are being hacked at and reskimmed, glass which has been “filthified” by greasy paws are being cleaned with vinegar and there is general grinding and banging and muttering going on all around me. 
When the dust has settled (and there is a lot of it), and peace once again comes dropping slow, then the well will, I know, begin to slowly fill up again – and then the words too will begin to flow.

It goes without saying that until that time, blog posts, along with my writing, will continue to be erratic at best.