She tossed her apple core towards the river but Elgar caught it. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Throwing my waste away.”
“This is not waste.” The viscount snapped the core in two and took out a small brown seed. “Do you know that one of these can grow into an apple tree?”
“Yes, of course, but there are thousands of apple trees in your orchard, Elgar. I’m sure that you don’t really care about one seed.”
“That’s not my point.”
“Then what is your point?”
“My point,” Elgar said, “is that the seed is greater than the fruit.”
Ella furrowed her brow in confusion. “I already know about seeds, Elgar. You need not educate me on botany.”
“Then why do you fret over that handsome knight?”
Ella appeared irritated by the bizarre line of questioning. “What?”
“You are too concerned with form,” Elgar stated. “Essence is more important than form.”
“I really have no idea what you are talking about, Sir Elgar. If what you are getting at is that I care too much about looks, then I would point out that you put a lot of effort into your appearance. And your wife is very pretty too, so form is clearly important to you.”
“Of course it is, but form without essence is nothing, whereas essence without form is something.”
Ella’s perplexed face was on the verge of a sullen scowl. “So what exactly are you trying to say?”
“That essence must always come before form.”
“I see. And I suppose that you have both essence and form in abundance,” the Queen remarked sarcastically.
“Exactly!” Elgar pointed a finger up. “But I acquired essence before I acquired form.”
Ella’s mouth hung open. “So you used to be ugly?”
“No, but I used to wear herringbone-patterned tweed.”
The pair walked in silence for the rest of the time that they were in the orchard. Soon they were back on the large lawn and they passed the great oak tree. “Can I show you my house?” Elgar asked.
“Of course. You know how much I like attractive things, Sir Elgar, and your house is no doubt both attractive and full of character.”
The viscount grinned and led his royal guest into a glass conservatory at the back of the house. It was a humid and fragrant room full of beautiful and exotic plants. Elgar took Ella through an ivory door and into a vast sandstone hallway. He showed her teak bedrooms, silver bathrooms and grand lounges containing plush armchairs and opulent lampshades.
He then led her into a room which was entirely white. “What do you make of this room?”
Ella looked around the colourless chamber, which appeared empty and zestless to her. But she knew that if she said that, it would give Elgar the chance to philosophise and lecture her again, so she remarked, “What an exquisite room you have here.”
Elgar’s face contorted in puzzlement. “Exquisite?” he said, aghast. “It’s hideous!”
“If you think that a completely white room is hideous, then why do you have one, Sir Elgar?”
“Because I haven’t painted it yet.”
The above is a scene out of my book, The World Rose, but I believe that the wisdom espoused by the character Viscount Elgar is universally applicable.
A few months ago, I joined Wattpad, a site where millions of users read books for free. I thought it would be a good way to bring attention to my work, and within a week, The World Rose had the highest votes-per-read. The praise I received was remarkable and made me feel great; I was compared to Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling, Raymond E Feist and Nora Roberts.
Wattpad is certainly a useful platform for gauging the potential popularity of your book, but it has its limitations. Only about 10% of my readers there converted into sales, which is roughly what I expected, because the majority of them are teens who expect to read things for free. I only released half of the book and some got rather annoyed when I said that they had to purchase it if they wanted to continue reading.
While I gained many followers on Wattpad, I also managed to garner a small number of enemies. Winston Churchill said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something.” The thing that I stood up for was essence, above form. I noticed that Wattpad users frequently attack each other’s writing and an oft-repeated phrase is ‘Show, don’t tell’. I quoted Francine Prose to them: “’Show, don’t tell’ is bad advice often given to young writers.” If you look at almost any successful book – Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, for example – you will find it to be rife with so-called ‘telling’. The process of ‘showing’ is intended to keep the reader at arm’s length, but if you have a great story, then you ought to tell it. If you don’t have a story to tell, then no amount of ‘showing’ will help you. I view it as more of a gimmick, but it astonished me that some young students were so dogmatic about that particular piece of advice. It enraged them when I gave numerous examples of bestselling authors who ignore the ‘Show, don’t tell’ mantra.
They even referred to it as one of the ‘rules of writing’, and that is when I realised that I was dealing with idiots, because as any artist will tell you: There are no rules. There is advice, some of which is good, and some of which is bad. In this sense, I feel fortunate that I didn’t do a degree in English Literature or Creative Writing. It allows me to think about the subject in an independent way. Often, people who formally study an art end up thinking in a limited way which goes against the spirit of creativity. They have the ‘rules of writing’ drilled into them, but great literature comes from original thinking.
Another thing that some amateur writers harp on about is ‘purple prose’ which they’ve been taught to avoid. I have no problem with using elaborate descriptions when it suits a particular scene, and it suits the start of The World Rose. Charles Dickens used purple prose on almost every page and he didn’t do too badly.
But the point I wanted to emphasise to those teenage critics is that essence is more important than form. If you don’t have a great plot and a unique story, then no amount of flashy technique will help in the long run. And that is where life experience comes in; authenticity is crucial. All of my characters are based on real people, which I believe is essential because it gives them a depth and complexity which is hard to achieve otherwise. One user took a disliking to my main character, claiming that she was ‘inconsistent’, but I pointed out that real people are inconsistent. No-one acts in the same way all of the time, and if they did, they would be a very boring person.
Wattpad gave me hundreds of followers, for which I am grateful, but it also gave me a few haters who have been quite persistent in trying to bring down my work. For example, the moment that The World Rose was published, five of them went to Goodreads and gave my book a 1-star rating, even though they hadn’t read beyond the Prologue. Their proclaimed purpose was to “punish my arrogance”.
But the 4 and 5 star ratings are beginning to roll in and I am confident that The World Rose will be a success. Any debut self-published book takes time to gather momentum. It may take 6 months, 1 year or 2 years, but I am prepared for the struggle.
I can recognise my own mistakes. For example, there were too many dialogue tags in the original version, which I have since removed. I accept that they can disrupt the flow, and it took me a couple of days to fix. One of the advantages of self-publishing with print-on-demand is that I can continue to edit if I need to. But I believe that The World Rose is finished and I intend to move onto my next project, Chocolate Hologram, which will be radically different in genre and style.
Sir Edward Elgar, the composer, would launch scathing attacks on his critics, which some found uncouth, but I respect the moustached maestro all the more for it. “Vulgarity in the course of time may be refined,” he said. “Vulgarity often goes with inventiveness.”
