Brilliant feature from Lucy Mangan at The Guardian.

“Do you know how I long for a… a female figure somewhere, somehow, who is not a total drip, who may have and who is yet not defined by her emotional weakness and other incompetencies. Like a real woman, perhaps.”

Choir, preaching to, etc.

I wrote The Dating Detox because I wanted a warm, smart comfort read about funny, sharp, flawed women, and I was tired of the Bridget/SATC-inspired novels about vacuous binge-eating shoe-gasmic debt-accruing humourless ninnies…

Not, by the way, that The Dating Detox isn’t a light read, obviouslah, and hopefully as entertaining as Bridget/SATC (because they are entertaining and sometimes hilarious, and that goes a hell of a long way, even when other aspects of them are killing me). But it takes a lot of whipping to make a good meringue. And I think – I hope - that The Dating Detox is a good meringue.

A few people have emailed me to ask how I wrote The Dating Detox – how I plotted, and if I have any writing tips.

With novel-writing, as with everything else in life, I specialise in intuitive improvisation (AKA, winging it). So if you read this post and think ‘this chick knows nothing’, you’re right. I don’t.

Caveats out of the way, let’s talk about plots and planning.

I didn’t work out the exact plot of The Dating Detox before I started. I didn’t think it was going to be a real book, you see. For the first few chapters I was just writing to make my sister laugh.

In fact, all I really thought, when I started writing, was ‘cool/witty/normal girl gets dumped a lot, swears off men, is funny’. Then when it was suddenly a real book, I had to nut it out and – importantly – all the subplots, too. It was pretty easy, but this is probably why the book is so character-centric, and why the plot relies on coincidence. I worried about the coincidence thing for awhile, till I thought about all the coincidences in some brilliant books (Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle just happen to go to Pemberly and oh fuck me, is that Darcy home early? etc) and decided it didn’t matter. I also wanted every step of the plot to create a very real world of lovely 20-something friends. I wanted you, the reader, to feel that you would want to hang out with everyone in the book, to feel like you’d be friends with them in real life. I don’t bother with people who aren’t nice and that goes for my characters, too. (I had to write about a bitch in the second book and found it quite stressful. More about that another time.)

I approached the second book – let’s call it The Dating Virgin for the time being – quite differently. I wanted to write about learning to be single after a long period of time in a relationship. It’s a tough and strange thing to do, and a lot of girls go through it, including moi, and it’s not often addressed in books or movies. I wanted to write about dating disasters, about relationship insecurity, and broken hearts, and about how you need to be brave and know yourself to win love. So I wrote the plot out in quite specific detail first.

Then I slowly got to know the main character, Abigail. (I knew Sass straightaway.) All I knew, when I started, was that I wanted Abigail to be different from Sass, but equally funny and lovably quirky. So I gave her a different job (one that I imagined I could do in a parallel universe where I’m, you know, a hell of a lot smarter than I am). Where Sass had been out fending for herself in the tarry bogs of London single life, Abigail finds singledom all a bit scary and bewildering – after all, she’s been in the secure hug of a stable relationship for her entire adult life. So she’s not as attention-seeking as Sass. She’d never jump on a table and do air guitar, for example. Abigail is intelligent, but quite subdued, and modest to the point of being a bit blind sometimes and has trouble reading people, where Sass is a tad cocky and very perceptive. Abigail is generally more inexperienced and naïve. At least, she is at the start of the book…

To make her different from Sass I also decided to make her a bit anti-fashion, which was weird. I don’t really know any girls who don’t like clothes. She ends up being very fashion-savvy, though. I couldn’t just leave her sartorially clueless. (And I didn’t used to speak clothes at all. At my university, it was considered extraordinary if we got out of pyjamas to go to lectures. Then I got to London and realized I hated everything in my wardrobe – I actually had ‘smart’ rugby jumpers and ‘casual’ rugby jumpers – and had no idea how to get dressed. Some people would probably say I still don’t.)

Now, about writing. I know a bit more about this. I’ve been an advertising copywriter for almost 10 years, have a degree in English and a postgrad in Journalism. I could talk to you about copy for hours, about structure and syntax and lexical denseness and tone of voice and all that shit. But right now, let’s just talk about what makes good copy.

I think that good copy is entertaining and has a point. And to produce good copy that entertains and has a point you have to read, write, and edit.

Read everything. Especially fiction. (I don’t trust people who don’t ever read fiction, I think they might lack imagination and the ability to empathise.) I will talk about reading another time, if you’re interested.

Write as much as you can. Write emails and poems and stories. Write op eds and essays. Try a blog. And write for other people, not just yourself. When you know other people are reading your words, you’ll try harder to charm and entertain them. As a copywriter, of course, I wrote for other people every day for years, and spent day after day having my copyhopes dashed against the red pen of my seniors. (Advertising is like boot camp for writers.) Try a creative writing course, or post your copy online on one of those forums. (Would I have done that? Fuck, no. I was, simultaneously, too arrogant and too insecure. But that’s me.)

Edit. Think about every word, line, sentence and paragraph. Be as concise as possible. People get bored easily. Don’t let them stop reading: make every line dance for them. Try cutting a piece of copy down by 50%, without losing the tone and facts. It’ll teach you how to, as one of my old bosses would say, get to the fucking point.

By the way, when I say be concise, I don’t mean you have to pare everything down like Hemingway. My novel-writing style is, I hope, warm and chatty. I try to charm and woo people through the medium of copy. So I’m prone to anecdotes and asides, as though we were having a gossip, and it’s all very direct and informal. But I still edit brutally, and every line has been shaped for tone and effect. The Dating Detox is – I hope – a light, funny read, but it takes a lot of whipping to make a good meringue.

I also have some sloppy copyhabits that I want to change. I like to witter on in a long sentence, and meander to and fro and flutter and flirt my words, and then get to the point with a very short sentence immediately afterwards. Like this. It’s a cheap trick, really. I often start chapters with a bald statement of opinion and then go on to say what happened next. That, too, is cheap.

One of my earliest bosses made me read, then print out and stick above my desk, George Orwell’s essay Politics and The English Language, and thank God he did. Here’s an interesting bit:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

You can read the whole essay here. http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html

Lastly, if you keep trying to write and hate everything you’ve got down on paper so far, don’t worry. Just keep going. I’m never that happy with the way I write. I don’t know any writers who are. Complacency and creativity don’t go together; you need the fear of running out of ideas or an imposing deadline to fuel your fire, and you need to be very self-critical to edit effectively. I’ll probably never be able to read The Dating Detox without going ‘oh fuck a cat, what a clunker of a line, I am shit’. But that’s okay. I’m still learning.

Now I have to go and edit The Dating Virgin, my friends. It’s not going to improve itself.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

I feel like this book was the reason I learned to read.

It’s Thursday. It’s cold. And this song is cheering me up.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7jr9WBDVXQ]

Since The Dating Detox came out five weeks ago, I’ve received some lovely emails from readers. Most of them are just a little hello with a note about what they thought about the book, some of them are long and funny dating-related diatribes, some are asking for postcards or suggesting bastard names. I reply to every single one (though one girl replied that she was impressed I replied – I promise, there is no Gem-bot, this is all me, dude). And thus we come to my story. It’s about remorse.

Remorse, when you’re alone and hungover, is the dictionary definition of ‘unbearable’. (It is so. Look it up. No, not in that dictionary. Okay, well you must not have the same dictionary as me so never mind, just keep reading.)

The scene: early one Sunday a few weeks ago. I was up early, editing Book Deux (I’ll have a title soon I promise and even a sneak peek), and trying to ignore Foxy’s little snuffled snores echoing through the house.

Naturally, I was procrastinating. I skipped down to get a coffee at the Grocer on Elgin, shuffled home, checked Topshop.com (they update it sometimes on Sundays, you know) and then, hurrah, up popped an email. A witty but clearly heartfelt e-moan of woe.

She’d been on a date the night before and woke gasping with horror at the realization that she had drunk a bit more than she’d intended… to the extent that she couldn’t remember most of the last hour of the date. She emailed me saying ‘arggggh advice please’. My first though: am I so transparently a drink-sozzled dating harpy that people with hangovers think of me before they even think of Nurofen, coffee and toast? – then I realised that what she really needed wasn’t advice on what to text him. She’s funny and clever (we’d been Tweeting for a few weeks; the girl gives good copy) and able to figure it out for herself. What she needed was reassurance; a warm soul-sustaining word-porridge of comfort that would destroy the searing hot fear-flame also known as ‘what was I like?’. And since it was early Sunday morning, I’m guessing she didn’t want to bother her friends yet but couldn’t bear to lie in bed with just her brain for company either. I understand that: it’s practically the reason I wrote The Dating Detox. My brain was really getting on my tits.

So she emailed, I replied, and she emailed again – and then I asked her permission to reprint my reply email here, in case anyone else ever needs their soul soothed. She said yes.

After all, every now and again everyone craves the reassurance that not only are you not the only person to ever feel the way you’re feeling, but that you won’t feel that way for long. You will be happier again, and sooner than you think. And we all need that reassurance in far more situations than just the once-a-year woe-gasm when the last thing we remember saying is ‘Shall I get another bottle?’. But that’s another post altogether. Anyway, here’s my email reply.

Oh no, remorse! I feel your pain.

Gem x

And by the way, the emailer is still seeing the man in question. So clearly she had nothing to worry about. Which is probably always the way when it comes to these things…

I’m not posting every time I have a review, I promise – but I LOVE this one so much I had to put it here. Sheer Luxe is THE online luxury shopping mecca, and you can trust it to give only Top Gun tips. (The best of the best, obviously.) It also has a brilliant book club. And the reviewers are clearly utterly lovely women. I’d like to take them out for a drink.

A few people have commented that I’m not awfully, hmm, personal on this blog. This isn’t because I’m particularly shy, I just don’t think I’m that interesting… Anyway, someone suggested I do a ’10 things you didn’t know about me’ piece. I got to 15.
1. I can tie a cherry stalk in a knot in my mouth with my tongue. I really can, it’s not a porn thing.
2. I sometimes think about clothes to help me fall asleep at night. Like counting sheep. I used to worry that this made me shallow. Now I don’t care.

3. I have moved house 28 times in my life across four different countries. But I’ve been in London for almost 10 years. It’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. The best thing about growing up all over the place is that I find it pretty easy to make friends. The worst is that I am always missing someone. Especially Bec and Sarah.
4. I failed French at university on lack of attendance. Don’t tell my Dad.
5. Failing French was particularly pathetic considering I went to a French school in Hong Kong. (I know that nothing in that sentence makes sense. Just roll with it.)
6. I giggle in my sleep. I think this sounds adorable, but apparently it’s very annoying.
7. I can say ‘what a beautiful baby!’ and ‘crazy white devil’ in Cantonese. Nothing else, which is also pathetic considering I mostly grew up in Hong Kong.
8. I met my boyfriend in a bar at 2am when his friend chatted up my friend. I wish it was a classier story.
9. I am marrying him in New York in April. I don’t like the word fiancé.
10. My favourite-ever copyline, ‘Love You Long Haul’, for a new long-haul flight, never got past the first hurdle: the uber-conservative account manager. Shame.
11. I can’t count. And I mean, really, I can’t. I’m severely mathematically challenged. Ask me to remember a number and seconds later, it’ll be gone from my brain. Bills are a mystery. Taxes are magic. The word ‘invoice’ makes me perspire.
12. When I turned 29, I quit my job, my house and my long-term boyfriend (who was a very nice guy who just wasn’t the right guy for me – the bastards were before him) in the same week and discovered that life was a lot easier and more fun than I was allowing it to be.
13. I have zero tolerance for judgmental or negative people. Or as I prefer to call them, ass-hats.
14. I love big cities. I want to marry them.
15. I believe everyone is happier in a mullet wig. Here’s a picture of my sister and I wearing mullet wigs. See how happy we are?

I’m chest-deep in the quagmire that is the first edit of Book Deux.

And whilst it’s fine (it’s not particularly difficult or stressful, and anything to do with writing is kind of fun) it’s also like carrying on 11 conversations at once. Or, a better analogy: it’s like keeping 50 pins in your mouth for 50 tiny tweaks in a dress that you’re altering. (For this to work, we need to imagine for a moment that you and I are the kind of people who alter dresses.)

You have to remember how each tweak will affect another tweak, and how the whole thing will hang because of each tweak, and then you think of a new tweak (or hem or dart or shoulderpad, whatever) as you go along, and so you go back and adjust an earlier tweak, and oh… After eight hours I’m exhausted, and after 10, I’m a zombie.

And as mentioned before, editing can be brutal.

Killing dialogue is tough, especially if you think something is funny but know it’s not really adding much else. Killing an entire scene, though, is oddly thrilling when you realise you can do the same job better somewhere else in the story. I tend to scavenge my deleted scenes for my two or three favourite shiny dialoguettes and put them somewhere else. I’m like a little magpie for one-liners.

And killing a character is… well, it’s sinfully easy.

She was only a minor character. Her name was Janey. She whinged a lot, and then after I made her happy, I couldn’t figure out what else to do with her, and nothing just turned up the way plotlines normally do. She never really sparked for me, she was never real the way the others are. So boom: she’s gone. Anything important that she did can easily be done be someone else. No one misses her. She leaves no mark.

I erased her in less than a day, after months of writing about her.

Then, drunk on the power of playing God in my tiny world of lustlorn Londoners, I decided to kill another character, too, even though I found her quite funny. Her name was Leigh. Killing her wasn’t necessary, but neither was her character. I merged the best bits of her plotline with someone else’s. It’s not personal, I feel like telling her. It’s a numbers game.

Let us be silent a moment and think of Janey and Leigh, two characters who were never meant to be.

Right then. Enough of this babble, especially considering how zombie-dull and blunty-witted I am tonight. My next blog entry shall sparkle and shine, I promise. The edits are almost done. And then the book will go to my editor at Harper Collins, and she’ll come back and tell me what she thinks, and I’ll go over it again, with 50 more pins for 50 more tweaks that will leave it a tasty, tight little amuse-bouche of a novel.

Exciting, huh?

And at many points in the next few weeks, as happened today, I’ll wonder if the thing is funny at all, if the main character is as sympathetic and lovably quirky to others as she is to me. Sometimes, tired of my endless edit list, I’ll open the manuscript to a random page, reread the dialogue I find there, scowl with dismay and start viciously editing to make it sharper and (God, I hope) more amusing. And at other times, I’ll read it and it’ll feel like it was written by someone else entirely, and I’ll think, oh, maybe this is a cute funny little thing after all. And then on nights like tonight, I’ll lie back on the couch, my stomach making growling noises because I ate too many cherries, my head lolling on the cushions and my hands tapping on the laptop and I’ll just think, I hope this book is good. I really, really hope this book is good.