I think – or at least I hope – I’ve achieved that for the characters in my novel, particularly the two from whose point-of-view the story is told. They’ve both changed during the course of the novel, and I’ve tried to reflect that at the end. It’s this sort of resolution – even more than the defeat of the villain – that I find most satisfying in stories, which is why I’ve tried so hard to achieve it.

In thinking about character arcs, I’m also reminded of examples that did exactly the opposite of what I’ve tried to do – with frustrating results. Just a few months ago, the BBC aired the very last series of Spooks, a drama that had been running for years. I watched the last series, as I’d watched all the others, and enjoyed it. Right up until the end of the very last episode, that is. [Major spoilers ahead, in case you hadn't guessed. If you haven't watched the end of Spooks and want it to remain a mystery, stop reading now.]

You see, there were two major characters in the series – Harry and Ruth – who had been having an on-off almost-relationship for years (literally years, if you’d watched the multiple series when they were first shown on TV). As the last series came to an end, and secret after secret was uncovered, there seemed to me three ways in which the Ruth-Harry relationship could be resolved.

The first was for them to end up together, and do the equivalent of riding off into the sunset. Whilst it wouldn’t be quite that simple – both had been deeply scarred by their work for MI5 – I was certain that wouldn’t be the way the series ended. Spooks had always been ruthless with its characters, and shown no qualms about killing them off. I didn’t really expect that to change.

So, that left two more options. I was hoping they would go with the following: Harry would be killed, whilst Ruth – who had been preparing to retire to the seaside and start a new life – would do just that. Here, I thought, would be resolution. Harry, whose secrets were all finally revealed in the last episode, would at least find more peace than he’d ever had in his working life. Ruth would finally get the fresh start she’d been craving. It wouldn’t be a happy ending, but it would resolve both character arcs in what I would consider a satisfying manner.

Instead, we got just the opposite. It was Ruth who was killed, and Harry who lived, effectively providing no resolution to their character arcs at all. Everything Ruth had been hoping and planning for was wiped out by her death. Harry, now even more broken than before, didn’t even leave MI5 – he briefly mourned Ruth, then just went back to work.

I was deeply frustrated with this ending to a series I had been watching for years. I felt like all my hopes for the characters were completely obliterated, and their arcs were incomplete; Harry’s in particular was left in a kind of depressing limbo. I almost wished I hadn’t watched the final series at all, as everything that had happened previously was made completely in vain by the choice of ending.

Clearly, not all stories have to have a happy ending. Many are better without one. However, if your novel leaves your character arcs as unravelled as Spooks did, there’s a big risk that your reader will end up feeling alienated and frustrated. In the case of Spooks, that was no problem for the BBC, but if you’re trying to build a fanbase as a writer, that could be disastrous. Why pick up another of an author’s books if you fear their characters are going to be left abandoned at the end? It’s when characters don’t feel to have gone through a story in vain, whether they live or die at the end, that I’m more tempted to read the next book in the series.

So, what endings have you read or watched that have been either deeply satisfying, or deeply frustrating – and why?

I wanted a new hobby that was more of a craft, though, with which I could make something useful. Now, I hate sewing (too fiddly), and I’d never taken to knitting when I was younger, but I decided it was time to give it another go. Knitting, I reasoned, would be relatively easy to learn, and I could actually make things I wanted to wear – I love scarves, and gloves, and thick warm jumpers. Perfect.

Somewhat to both my surprise and my mum’s, I started to learn to knit, picked it up quite quickly, and have enjoyed what I’ve done so far. After the initial knitting-the-same-thing-over-and-over-again to get the hang of what I was doing, I decided to try my hand at a simple ribbed scarf. The first few inches (and proof that I have actually learnt something!) are below.

It’s not perfect, and the imperfections are much more apparent close up, but it’s been a lot of fun to make. Knitting also reminds me of writing: both require simple building blocks (knit/purl stitches, and of course words), but the order of and consistency with which those blocks are used has a huge effect on the outcome. Those two simple stitches can be used to create just about any knitted item, and whilst there are far more than two words, their relative simplicity is still key to so much we do as humans, be that spoken or in writing.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: knitting, and other hobbies. If you knit, or sew, or similar, what do you most like to make? What tips can you give me? And if you’re not into crafts, what hobbies do you enjoy when you’re not writing, and need to give your brain a rest?

The more projects I work on, the more I realise that my stories typically fall into three categories. The first: those I want to get published. These are the ones I work on the longest, edit the most exhaustively and get beta-read. The second category, therefore, is fairly obvious: stories that are unpublishable. A fair chunk of what I start never gets finished, either because it doesn’t go to plan or I decide my initial idea really wasn’t as good as I thought. Even when I do finish these stories, sometimes I decide they’re just not good enough to send out into the world, and that it would be better to sit on them (and maybe rewrite them later).

There is a third category, though, which is what this post is really about: stories that are unpublishable, but that you need to write – and finish – anyway. I think a good chunk of the fiction produced by a beginning writer will fall into this category, my own work included. These are practice stories, shorts to test out world-building for later novels, experiments in tone and style. These are the stories that frequently turn out utterly unreadable, but were absolutely necessary to improve your writing skills.

For me, this category is not just made up of short stories, either. I’ve written any number of novels that I’d also include, which were experiments in everything from first-person POV to writing longer chapters. It’s possible that I’ll rewrite these novels some day, but given the number of new ideas I have on a daily basis, it’s unlikely. The important thing, though, is that these novels were necessary for me to write; instead of rewriting them, I’ll go off and write newer, better novels in first-person POV or with longer chapters, using what I’ve learned the first time round. I haven’t been wasting my time writing unpublishable fiction: I’ve been learning, and strengthening my writing skills, and getting to the point (hopefully) where more of my stories are of publishable quality than not.

So, the next time you start writing a new, unplanned novel in the middle of the night, or decide to write fan-fiction, or a story from the POV of a snail, remember that you’re not wasting your time, no matter how unpublishable the story might be. Instead, you’re practising your craft, and writing the stories you need to write to make you a better writer in the long run.

• Start submitting Sanguine. This is the novel I’ve been working on for several years now. The actual first draft only took a few months, but I’ve been editing it – on and off – ever since. I’ve now reached the point where I really can’t do any more, so my first priority is a final copy-edit to catch the last typos and infelicities, then sending it off to agents.
• Finish Dust. This is the novel I started in the second half of 2011. I have about a third written, so I’m aiming to finish the last two-thirds by around June. Not much more to say about that: it’s a simple case of sitting down and hammering out the words. (Simple. Ha! That’s never simple, no matter how many times you’ve done it.)
• Start… Something Else. Bit of a vague one, this. I have yet another novel in the planning stages, which is what I’ll probably work on once Dust is complete. Probably. Maybe. We’ll see.
• Short stories. I always make goals regarding short stories – how many to write, how many to submit, how many of last year’s to edit – and I always fall flat on my face. I’m still planning to write more shorts this year, but this is the most nebulous of my goals. I’ll probably work on dozens, but I may well not finish a single one, and actually selling them is even less likely.
• Reading. Actually, this might be my most nebulous goal: read more. More, more, more. I seem to have been reading even more slowly than usual this year. I usually aim for a book a week – which I was far behind in 2011 – so that will be 2012′s goal.

So, there are my goals for 2012, at least in reading and writing (I’m not counting the others, like learning to knit, and growing more veg, and doing more exercise). If you’ve got goals for the year ahead, feel free to share them in the comments. Sometimes, writing your goals – or resolutions, if your prefer – down is the first step to achieving them.

Having said that, I did read plenty of really good books too. I talked about a fair number of them here (in March), and here (in September). I’m not going to attempt to pick a favourite out of the seven books I mentioned in those posts – all were excellent, and deserve your attention, be they new books or classics. There are one or two excellent books I’ve so far neglected to mention, though, which are as follows:

‘The Broken Kingdoms’ – N.K. Jemisin        I’m amazed I haven’t already mentioned this book on the blog (I don’t think I have, anyway), because it was absolutely one of my favourite books of the year, as was the previous book in the series. If anything, ‘The Broken Kingdoms’ is possibly even better, expanding the world and the gods in fantastic new ways – and turning all my expectations from the first book completely on their head (there was one character in particular I thought would be impossible to like – until this book). And if you don’t sniffle even a little bit at the end, then you must have a heart of stone.

‘Retribution Falls’ – Chris Wooding        Airships! Fights! Action! A motley crew of strong characters with unfortunate pasts! I’ve been a fan of Wooding’s books for years, particularly the ‘Braided Path’ series, but if anything, ‘Retribution Falls’ is even better. If you like your fantasy fast-paced, action-packed and never boring, whilst still being able to believe in the characters, this is the book for you.

‘The Third God’ – Ricardo Pinto         The last book on my list took me a full six months to read, which doesn’t sound like an endorsement, but truly is. Pinto’s ‘Stone Dance of the Chameleon’ series has got to be one of the most intricate, fascinating and innovative fantasy trilogies in the last decade, and I’ve been waiting for the last book in the series ever since the second came out (in 2003, I believe). Why did it take me six months to read ‘The Third God’ then? Because it’s vast, and complex, and there were some parts so harrowing that I had to put the book down for weeks at a time. That probably still doesn’t sound like an endorsement, but fantasy so often takes the easy way out – Pinto doesn’t. (And if I still haven’t convinced you, the whole series is worth reading for Pinto’s magnificent writing alone.)

So, three more excellent books to round off the year. What great books did you read in 2011? Suggestions for great reads in 2012 are always appreciated!

So, what about 2011? My final word count for the year was 155,389 words, which doesn’t sound bad, but is a long way from what I’d anticipated. Much of the year was taken up with editing – in fact, from February to July, my word count hardly rose at all, apart from a few short stories. The second half of the year saw the bulk of new work, with one novel started and 50k words written for NaNoWriMo. As for actually finishing things, I managed one first draft novel, one almost-almost-finished novel (I’m so close!), NaNoWriMo and more short stories than ever before, which I’m counting as an overall success.

Where does all this leave me? 2011 was a busy year, whether the word count reflects it or not, and I’ll be giving myself a (small) pat on the back for that. As ever though, I have multiple projects half-finished, and my goals for 2012 (coming in a later post) will reflect that. Can I beat 2011′s 155k words (or 2010′s 161k, for that matter) this year? I certainly hope so. Can I actually sell some fiction? That’s less certain, but I’m hoping for that even more.

As for the blog, I’ll be taking a quick look back at 2011, then forging ahead with 2012′s goals and plans. It may be the end of the world, but I’ve got work to do!

Happy New Year everyone!

• If you want to be a writer, make sure you’re WRITING. 2011 has been something of a strange year for me. I’ve been working hard, but there have been a couple of projects that took up far more time than they should have done. As a result, my actual count of new words this year has been relatively low. NaNoWriMo was an excellent reminder that it’s the writing part that I love most, and I need to make time for it no matter what else I’m working on.
• 1666 words a day isn’t that many. NaNoWriMo and its requisite daily word count isn’t the challenge for me that it once was, which tells me two things: 1) I probably don’t need to do NaNo again (although that doesn’t mean I won’t), and 2) I should be aiming for more than 1k words a day during every other month of the year. That’s a daunting thought, but it tells me just how much I’ve grown as a writer in the last few years.
• Planning is (nearly) everything. Plotting vs. pantsing is one of those eternal debates in writing circles. I’ve always veered towards plotting, but NaNoWriMo has reminded me how important planning is for me. I would never have been able to produce so many words so quickly (I managed 2000 words in roughly an hour, some days) if I didn’t know in advance what I was going at write. At the same time though, I kept my plans fairly loose, which meant plenty of room for interesting developments as I was writing, without throwing the whole novel off course.
• Taking breaks. I’ve written in the past about the importance of taking time off, and this month has really highlighted that for me. Writing every day for a month, I can handle, but consistently never getting a single day off? I’m not sure my brain could take the strain. I need time to do other things, or it’s my writing that suffers.

And on that note, I’m signing off. No more writing for me today – I have half a series of The Killing to watch and lots of Mass Effect to play!

I’m going to keep this post short, and lay the floor open to comments (I’ll post a more thorough follow up later in the week). Have you finished NaNoWriMo this year? Are you too far behind to catch up? How many words did you accomplish? Any word count is a victory over the zero you had at the start of the month, so share your counts and we’ll celebrate (or commiserate) together!

Art, it seems, is very much a compulsion, be that drawing or music, dance or writing. Having a break from writing can be pleasant, of course. Not writing for any great length of time – be it because of other commitments, or lack of inspiration, or illness – is decidedly less so. During my first year at uni, I went through six months without writing more than a few thousand words of fiction. Whilst I was kept busy writing essays and other things, the lack of fiction writing in my life wasn’t something I was happy about.

Now, I certainly wouldn’t say my writing compulsion goes as far as hypergraphia, but it’s still there all the same, and I would think it’s there in most writers, to a greater or lesser extent. Writing, as was mentioned in the comments thread a couple of posts ago, is not something you do for fame and money (in most cases, anyway). It’s something we do because we have to; because the world seems a little bit duller and a little bit colder when we’re not writing.

Which, appropriately, brings me back to NaNoWriMo. There are many great reasons to take part: being surrounded, physically or in online communities, by other people who understand that urge to write is just one of them. It’s the main reason I’ve been blogging exclusively about writing throughout November. When you discover you have that compulsion to write, and try to make it a part of your life, you quickly discover just how little everyone around you (family, friends, even spouses) understands it. NaNoWriMo, though, does a great job of bringing writers together, and reminding us that there are plenty of people out there who understand our passion – and not just understand it either, but celebrate it.

(On a final note, we’re now three weeks into NaNoWriMo! If you’re still hanging in there, whether you’re behind – like me – or not, keep up the good work. The end is in sight!)