Writer Max Adams shares tips and experiences on writing books.
Resident author, archeologist and woodsman of the North East, Max Adams shared his experience as a professional writer in an exclusive interview on Wednesday 12th.
Having published a total of 14 books starting in 2005, Max is a well seasoned writer who uses his archaeological background and his deep connection with nature and landscapes to write wonderfully descriptive tales with careful historical research.
As an aspiring writer, I decided to interview Max in the hopes of learning more about pursuing writing as a career, and throughout the interview I learned a lot about the struggles and experiences of a professional writer. Hopefully this interview will prove as interesting to me as other people interested in writing.
Gabriel Pazmino in conversation with Max Adams
What are your biggest struggles as a writer?
For Max, one of the biggest struggles comes from self perception. “It’s the inability to see yourself as a reader sees you, to read your own writing clean. It’s very difficult to do.”
Discipline is one of the biggest struggles and a struggle that is commonly shared with other writers. “There are of course lots of challenges about writing. One is you have to be driven and motivated because nobody else is going to motivate you to write. It’s an act of free will, writing…The difficult part is knowing when to stop. Knowing when you actually need to stop writing for a bit, refresh yourself.”
How hard is it to make a sustainable career out of writing?
As it turns out, making a career out of writing is not easy. “I don’t for a moment think I have a right to be a professional writer. It’s just something you get away with for as long as you can, and the longer you can get away with it, the luckier you are.”
For Max, his way into writing professionally was a blessing. “I didn’t have a choice because I was nobody when I signed my first book contract. As it happens, I was working as a temporary worker in the office of the Business School in the Armstrong Building here at the university for £5 an hour. It was terrible money. And when I got the offer of an advance to write the book about Admiral Collingwood, I didn’t look back.”
How long does it take to write and research books?
Max outlines his experience when tackling historical biographies.
“I would normally expect to sign a contract for one of those books and deliver 2 years afterwards. It certainly takes a year of almost solid research, even when you know the period quite well. And then about a year of writing, I would probably write 120,000 words in a year. The sums are easy to work out: 10,000 words a month. What I would do during that time is do a week or 10 days of very concentrated reading of things that either I’d forgotten or I needed refreshing about, And then I would do probably 10 days of writing.”
Should a writer meet deadlines?
“The idea that you’d miss a deadline is just unthinkable from a professional point of view. At some point, my publisher will start to think: you know what, Max is just not quite selling as many books as he used to. Either not favourite of the month anymore or he’s run out of ideas. If at that point they say to themselves, on the other hand. He’s not a pain in the neck. He delivers manuscripts that are very clean, very, very few errors in them. He never misses a deadline. And he’s quite nice to work with. When I become a marginal commercial entity, they might just keep me on for one more book because I’m easy to work with and I’m professional”.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
“Writers, if you have a method, the method needs to include a means of climbing over the wall when you hit it. Sometimes, if you’re writing nonfiction, you can always go and check the bibliography, even if you’re having a really off day, you don’t feel creative. I suffer from this as everybody else. What are you going to do? The answer is you’ve got to be productive even if you can’t be creative. I might reformat the text. I might read through a chapter. I might do line editing. That means that at the end of the day, you don’t feel even worse than you normally do.”
How do you handle criticism?
“Same as everyone else. Don’t like it. I don’t want to hear about a nice review because if I don’t listen to the nice reviews, I don’t have to read the bad ones.”
This is rooted in his belief that he acknowledges the shortcomings in his writing. “You know, nobody can say nastier things about my books than I say about them. So I know them and I know what’s wrong with them, I know exactly what’s wrong with them, so I don’t really need anyone to tell me how bad they are.”
Any advice for prospective writers?
“First of all, you don’t write enough. Whoever you are, if you’re a writer, you’ve got to be writing a lot of stuff. Never give up. Make sure you enjoy writing, because if you don’t get something published or sold, then at least you please yourself. You don’t please yourself, and it doesn’t sell. Then you’ve not pleased anyone. Please yourself, write from the heart, be persistent. Learn to know when to carry on, know when to stop. And always, make sure that everything you write is better than the last thing you wrote.”
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