My Target Journey

When I was younger, I loved reading Crime Books.

My parents were big readers, and I would find books around the house. I had a tendency to randomly pick up books and start reading them (I discovered Patterson and Pelecanos this way, amongst others!).

When I got it into my head that I wanted to write, I read The Godfather, and was amazed. The plot was fantastic, but it was the characters that moved me more. I was drawn to Don Corleone, to Luca Brasi, to Michael and Sonny. Something in the way they were written resonated with me.

I decided at this point that I wanted to write a crime book of my own. I was reading different things at the time, namely Cocky, a book about Curtis Warren, a drug dealer from Liverpool. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted my own book to be based in Leeds. The area I grew up in, Chapeltown, had a reputation for violence. From this, the idea for Target was born.

It wasn’t named then (I think I called it Prototype). I had the name for my main character, Lamont Jones, from day one.

The name ‘Lamont’ came from one of my favourite rappers, ‘Big L’, whose real name was Lamont Coleman. The surname ‘Jones’, I simply felt at the time that it had a debonair sound to it.

The original concept was for Lamont Jones to be working for a massive drug dealer. His boss grew threatened, so Lamont killed him and took over.

I spent a lot of time in the planning stages, basing characters on the friends and associates that were in my life at the time. My ‘planning’ was a load of waffle at the time; it comprised of deciding what cars my characters would drive, how they dressed, very basic insight into their mannerisms. I kept on adding to the plan, but every time I tried to start, it felt wrong.

At this time, I was writing other things, but ‘Target’ was the one I kept coming back to.

Then one, night, and I apologise for how cliché this probably sounds, but I couldn’t sleep. I was at an old partner’s house and I felt like I had something to say, so I slipped out of bed, and went downstairs where I wouldn’t be disturbed. I found a pen and few loose sheets of paper, and I just started writing the opening. I wasn’t looking at my notes. I seemed to have everything in my head, and I just wrote.

I didn’t write for long, maybe an hour or so, and I certainly didn’t have any sort of discipline at the time, but what I wrote was the foundation for what I have now. I had a protagonist I could build around, I even had a love interest and several support characters. Once I had copied up that initial few pages, it gave me the momentum to keep doing it.

From the beginning, I had decided that Lamont would want to leave the life of crime. That was his goal, so when I read J.J. Connolly’s Layer Cake, I was quite simply enthralled. This book spurred me on and I’m not afraid to admit that I tried to copy so many concepts from this book. I loved the slang style of writing, the fact that it was written from a first person perspective. I copied all of this, and it was raw. But I was writing.

Every spare second I would be writing on paper, to be copied up later as I didn’t have a laptop of my own.

I didn’t have an outline. I didn’t have 3 act structures, or any real structure at all. Just chapters and paragraphs. I wasn’t thinking about word counts, or whether the book would be marketable. I was just writing, and as I wrote, I was starting to learn my characters.

I kept changing parts of the book, and deciding to do different things, so 2006-2008 were largely experimental years. It wasn’t until 2009 that the first draft was finished. It had an official name at this time – Target (More to come on where the name came from!), and I felt that the raw, error-muddled first draft, was good enough to be published. At the same time, something told me it needed more work. I put it to the side to work on other things, then I came back to it, showing it to a friend.

Between us, we sat in Borders in Leeds City Centre, drinking coffee and chopping away at the 140,000+ word behemoth I had. We chopped it down to a manageable amount, and then I began the intense editing process of deciding what worked.

The character of Lamont was still evolving at this point, but it was the sub characters that were capturing people’s attention (My sister told me Lamont was boring!).

As the years flew by, I looked at few publishers, who rejected Target. It hurt at the time but it was a smart move. It was nowhere near ready.

I wrote many other works at this time, mainly showing them to friends and people I worked with. Target was still my baby though. It was my flagship project. I always called it my heart, and I was determined I would get it right.

I devised a ‘Target Timeline’, basing various other books around this timeline. I loved the world of characters I had built, and I wanted to keep it going.

Then, I read over the book again (I’d made a paper copy on Lulu). And, I suddenly hated it.

It devastated me. I was reading it, and it felt bloated, overly wordy, like I was trying to impress readers with my command of language. I didn’t like what I was reading, and I realised I had held onto the first person aspect of the story for so long, because I wanted to be like J.J. Connolly.

Only one other book I’d written (Trapped!) was in first person. Everything else was written in third person, which I was much more comfortable with. I spoke to my Uncle, who has long been an unpaid consultant on my books, and a few close friends who I knew wouldn’t sugar-coat what they said to me, and I made the decision that I was going to write the book in third person.

From 2013-2014, I rewrote the book. It went back up to 90,000+ words. It was more coherent, but the plot still didn’t feel right. I was missing something, and I didn’t see it.

I went back to the drawing board, reading books about technique, and structure, writing character bios and writing short scenes and stories that allowed my characters to breathe and form themselves more.

I quit my job in November 2014, and I threw myself into all of this, writing multiple projects at once, determined to make it work.

That leads me to here. This point. My book finally having a release date (2 May 2016 – My daughter’s birthday). I finally had a finished project that I was proud of.

No matter what happens going forward, I will always remember the journey I went on; from writing on paper in someone else’s room, to typing those final words in my own ‘office’ at home.

I guess the point to this post, is that you shouldn’t let a single person tell you that you can’t do something. If you work at it and believe, you can achieve.

Do you have similar story journeys to tell? Share yours below, or email me directly at rickyblackbooks@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you!