Creator Spotlight - Terry Freedman

Another wonderful writer shares a few thoughts with the How About This community

Dec 06, 2022

Today’s Creator Spotlight is another STSC (Soaring Twenties Social Club) member: Terry Freedman. Terry writes and publishes Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life, a wonderful potpourri of topics unleashed on the world via his Substack newsletter. With three decades of writing experience, published in numerous magazines and books, Terry brings wit and humour to his observations of everyday life, reviews of books and other media, and other great musings.

Here’s Terry!

When you were a teenager, what did you want to become when you grew up?

I wasn’t very good at school, so I left at 16 to work in a solicitor’s office. But after a year there I realised I wouldn’t be able to progress much beyond a certain point, so with the support of my parents I went to college when I was 17, to get some qualifications. I seemed to thrive in the adult ethos there, and after a few months I realised that I’d love to teach. And seven years later I started my first job as a fully-qualified teacher!

Do you prefer writing by keyboard, do you prefer pen and paper, or do you have another favorite method?

I sometimes write outlines and articles with pen and paper as it’s a good way of writing for certain kinds of creativity. It is has to be a high quality notebook though, because I love the feel of good quality paper. Also, it has to be a nice pen or pencil, otherwise my handwriting goes to mush. But for the most part I prefer the keyboard, because (a) I can type faster than I can write, and (b) it’s then easy to move things around as I’m working on a piece. For example, I sometimes write the last sentence before anything else!

What's the story of how you came to publish your first non-fiction book?

I bought some computers for the school I was teaching in. The software that came with it was pretty good, but I didn't think the manual was very good. So I phoned the company and told them I thought I could do a better job! To my astonishment, they commissioned me to do that, and also to write other books for them.
I do think though that my case, so to speak, may have been helped by the fact that I had already been published in magazines for three years prior to approaching the publisher. That’s something that came about after spending a year pitching editors and receiving rejection slips.
My bestselling book came a few years later, when I approached a publisher with an idea for an educational book. Specifically, it was a guide to how to manage a computing department in a school. Even now, over twenty years later, I sometimes have people come up to me at conferences and tell me that that book was a lifesaver for them.
I mention these things not for egotistical reasons but because:

I think anyone thinking about writing a book should try to build up a body of work – whether on Substack or their own blog or somewhere else – in order to demonstrate to potential publishers that they can write.
I know everyone knows this, but it’s worth pointing out that getting rejections is all part of the process: innumerable famous authors started out by being given the brush off. But persistency often pays off.
I think you stand a better chance of success if there is a genuine need for the kind of book you’re pitching.
Success is not necessarily measured in terms of money. If your book is really helpful to people, that’s worth more in a way.

What's one thing about being an author that most people don't understand?

In my experience a lot of people think it’s easy to write a book, and that it doesn’t require any craft, much less effort. Otherwise they wouldn’t say things like “I’m going to write a book once I’ve retired”, as if it’s something that can be regarded in the same way as a hobby, something that you do in your spare time.
The other common myth is having a book published is like owning a money-printing machine. Most books sell few copies and don’t make an enormous amount of money. In fact, many fail to make enough sales to cover the advance – assuming they even get an advance in the first place.
A bit of simple arithmetic will prove the point. If your book sells for £10, and you have managed to secure a royalty rate of 10% (in which case, by the way, well done!), you will earn £1 for every copy sold (that’s before income tax, of course). So to make a decent salary, you would need to shift around 30,000 copies a year. That’s impossible for most people.

However, having a book published, especially non-fiction, marks you out as an expert in your field and tends to lead to other opportunities, such as speaking engagements and consultancy work. The royalties, or the flat fee, from the book is therefore almost a bonus.

Do you do any writing exercises or other work to further develop your writing skills?

Indeed! I like to use the techniques of a French writing movement called the Oulipo (https://terryfreedman.substack.com/s/oulipo), such as attempting to write a piece without using a particular letter, or other constraints. Their approach is good because having some restrictions really forces you to exercise your ‘writing muscles’.
As an offshoot of this, I have also been writing a series of articles under the general heading “Experiments in style”. I have written a fairly bland story, not much longer than an anecdote in fact, and I rewrite it in different styles. That has been a real challenge in some cases, and a real eye-opener as to how changing the style impacts the whole tone of the piece.
Even when I’m not experimenting or trying specific techniques, I write most days, even if there’s little likelihood of my publishing it. It’s my version of soccer training, or playing scales, or any other sorts of training that professionals do.
There are three other things I do to further develop my writing skills. I read a lot: books (both fiction and non-fiction) and a wide variety of articles. I also attend writing courses and literature courses – at least one a term. And I teach in the Writing department of an adult education institute – and there’s nothing that tests your understanding of something quite like having make it accessible to someone else! I also read books on writing technique.
Finally, whenever I come across a really expressive piece in an article or book, I try to analyse why it works. I think writers can always learn by example.

How did you discover the STSC (Soaring Twenties Social Club) and what led you to join?

I discovered it through reading your newsletter. I decided to join for the following reasons:

I have the impression that you wouldn’t waste your time on rubbish.
I read a few of Thomas’s newsletters and liked them.
I thought it might be nice to take part in a community of writers who are supportive rather than rivalrous.
Because Thomas includes the work of paid subscribers in his Omnibus newsletters I thought it might prove to be a way of coming to the attention of a wider group of people.

Are there any authors who particularly inspire you and influence your work in any way?

Many authors inspire me, because writing done well is like beautiful music: it envelops you and makes you sit up and want to hear it again and know how it was done! For me, the most prominent writers who fall into that category are Calvino, Nabokov, Orwell, David Foster Wallace, Borges and Gay Talese. The last two in particular have influenced me as they are almost the inverse of each other. Borges writes fiction as if it's nonfiction, while Talese's essays read like short stories.
A very particular influence has been a journalist called Paul Jennings. He wrote a weekly column called Oddly Enough for The Observer newspaper in England. Those pieces consisted of observations of the oddities of everyday life. These included strange company names, buses and even a station! In fact, some of the articles in my Substack newsletter Eclecticism are loosely modelled on his approach.
I heard a great anecdote yesterday, from a music student. I think that as writers, especially when starting out, it’s tempting to try and emulate the style of one's heroes. The student said that Gershwin once went to see Ravel to ask him to teach him how to compose classical music. Ravel responded by saying “Better an excellent Gershwin than a second rate Ravel.” I think the same applies to writing.

You've recently shared your concerns about some of the most recent changes to Substack, such as the new badge system. Do you foresee things getting to the point where you might not like to keep using Substack?

Well, I suppose that the short answer is “yes”, but it’s much more nuanced than that. Firstly, I have other newsletters, not in Substack, and what I really like about Substack is that (a) the great sense of community and helping each other; (b) the huge amount of facilitating connections and referrals between writers and readers; and (c) the possibility of earning money is built in, whereas with the others I’ve tried it’s a clunky add-on.
However, I think badges based on how many paid subscribers you have is a very blunt measure and does not lend itself to incentivising people in my opinion. A far better measure would be something like newsletter open rates, and click-through rates. I suppose I just fear that the badges thing will lead to people humble bragging about how they’re so honoured to have even more paid subscribers. It would be such a pity if Substack started to resemble social media in that regard.

Do you watch much television (including streaming services)? Any particular likes or dislikes?

If I need to give my eyes a rest from reading or writing (which is every night!) I like to watch either a documentary or a detective program. I also like to watch science fiction movies, but I’m the only one in my household who does!

Pretend you wake up one morning and you discover that the Internet has been destroyed. What's the first thing that you do?

Breathe a sigh of relief: peace at last!
From a communications point of view it would obviously be a bit of a blow, but we communicated perfectly well before the internet so we could start to re-learn old skills, and perhaps become used to life proceeding at a slower pace.
As far as writing is concerned, I would spend my time pitching articles to magazines, and self-publishing books which I would then try to sell at conferences or in libraries.
I’m not suggesting any of this would be easy, but it wouldn’t exactly be Armageddon. Having said that, I do worry about how dependent we, by which I mean whole countries, people and systems, have become on the internet. I hope that there are contingency plans in place should there be a massive disaster that knocks the internet out of commission.

Thanks to Terry for agreeing to this interview!

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