Strictly Writing

What We're Writing...

2012-03-02T06:00:00.000Z

It's always interesting to know what fellow writers are up to, so here's a taster of what's flowing from the nib of the Strictlies right now:

Gillian:

I'm revising the first draft of my WIP while also composing a 'Dear Mr Top Agent' letter! And I'm still grappling with the passport forms!

Fi:

I'm in a writing fug, but reading War Horse for book club. It's a shortbook so I left it until the last minute to read it, thinking I'd fly through itbut... So far, the jury's out - watch this space!

Debs:

I'm struggling with formatting the third book I'm publishing on Kindle Direct ("Let's Go Round Again" by D A Cooper if you're interested) It's a real 'mare. Luckily the cover is beautiful *if only everyone was so easily pleased!*

Helen:

I am writing a radio play aboutliving a virtual life via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Caroline R:

I'm writing a presentation for next week's MAseminar - it's about Victorian lesbians.

Susie:

I've been offered a Q & A interview with alocal magazine, so have been answering their Qs - great fun!

Rod:

I spent three days last week in The BritishMuseum and The National Portrait Gallery, with my poetry buddy, looking atobjects and then writing about them. I am now trying to finish some of theideas for poems that came out of that. He has already written an amazing poemabout seeing his gave reflected in the glass of a famous portrait, so I need tocatch up.

... so what are YOU writing write now...?

Celebrating World Book Day

2012-03-01T06:00:00.000Z

Today (Thursday) it's World Book Day when children of all ages celebrate authors and books by dressing up as their favourite characters while developing their interest in reading. This is the 15th year of World Book Day and it has brought pleasure to many children who otherwise may not have had access to a wide range of reading material.

To mark today in a different manner, I thought I would talk briefly about the appeal of international literature and how it has gained a stronghold in the UK. You'll probably recall one of the most popular and talked-about reads, A Thousand Splendid Suns, the 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini which follows two women whose lives are intertwined. It swiftly gained a following in the UK and was a firm favourite with book clubs. Another of my favourite books which has received interntional acclaim is by JM Coetzee. The Booker Prize winning Disgrace is a touching, yet utterly bleak story of animal and human misery in post-Apartheid South Africa, its central character, the sex-obsessed David Lury, an academic whose daughter is gang-raped. A powerful book and a deserved winner of the Booker Prize.

We're British and the British like their British holidays, their British food and their British music - cue The Beatles. But, I don't think I'm alone in saying I like to take a journey into overseas lit as I enjoy savouring the flavour of the country and seeing incidents through other people's eyes, those immersed in a culture very different to our own. I like to soak up the atmosphere, visualise the scenery, taste their food (vegetarian dishes only!) and smell the surroundings.

A book I particularly enjoyed and which ticked those boxes was The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Despite being a British writer and having never visited Canada, she managed to evoke the time and place so fittingly for this book. The frozen plains of northern Canada were so authentic that readers there thought she'd accessed 1867 via a time machine.

For World Book Day I made a pledge to add ten more 'international' books to my Amazon list. So far I've added A Thousand Years Of Solitude, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, The Long Song and The Saffron Kitchen. I know The Long Song is a popular book and it so far has escaped my reading clutches.

As a final thought for World Book Day, I often wonder what other people are reading around the world - I'm sure they won't be sitting down savouring Bleak House or Wuthering Heights. Are books just as widely read in Hong Kong, Australia, South America, Romania, Russia and even China, a country of emerging literature?

What are you doing for World Book Day? Are you dressing up as Harry Potter? Tell me.

Get Connected.

2012-02-29T06:00:00.001Z

Last week I was watching Carol Vorderman on Room 101 and found myself nodding away like one of those plastic dogs you see at the back of cars.

I don't know about you but I don't find the current format of Room 101 as entertaining as the old one. Turning it into a game show, with three slebs competing, just seems to dilute it and no one gets enough time to really air their predjudices, which is what I always really liked about it. Soundbite culture gorn mad, I tell you.

But I digress. I was (despite the format) agreeing vigorously with the lovely Carol, when she expressed her complete lack of understanding of the attraction of Facebook. Like her, I just don't get it. I mean I understand how it works (well almost) but not what it's for...

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just don't see the point of it. Your friends already know you right? They know your 'status' cos they were at your bloody wedding and clubbed in for the trouser press! They know you have two kids cos they took the piss out of you when your feet were so swollen in pregnancy you had to wear white plastic flip flops from Debenhams!

What your friends don't need to know, or don't want to know frankly, is that you have just baked a banana cake, or the gas man is coming round at ten, or that you are going to spend the morning ironing. Sharing the minutae of your existence is surely the preserve of the deluded? I for one cannot think anyone is interested in the comings and goings of my days. Often I am bored, so why in God's name would I inflict that on anyone else? When the husband asks what I've been up to I only give him the edited highlights. More than the briefest of comments and he starts to glaze over and check the footie scores on his phone.

Thus it was the heaviest of hearts that I finally succumbed and joined up. To be fair, I had no choice. My agent, my editor and more importantly the lovely Jamie-Lee who is in charge of my PR all told me in no uncertain terms that It Was Time. I have a new book coming out in April and I needed to get connected. To stick to my guns started to feel churlish.

So I'm on. I'm hooked up. I'm part of the matrix.

Actually, now that I am, I have no idea what to do. I feel like someone who arrives at the party far too late and far too sober to join the conversation. I have thus far put two things on 'my wall'. Neither of which were that interesting! At this rate I will be forced to inform the ether that the postman has just delivered a pair of Liverpool curtains for my son.

So. If any of you lot are on FB could you please be my friend (was there ever a sadder request from a woman in her forties?) ? I cannot promise anything but gratitude.

Get your tomato ticking

2012-02-28T06:00:00.000Z

At the weekend I attended the Scattered Authors Societyconference in Peterborough. It was a brilliant and inspiring weekend. I caughtup with old friends, made some new ones and felt honoured to be among such atalented group of children’s writers.

There were great talks on everything from the editingprocess by the brilliant Lee Weatherly to how to get the best from blogging andTwitter by the ‘crabbit old bat ‘herself, Nicola Morgan (who is very lovely anduncrabbity in real life).

One that seems to have had us all rushing to try outnew ways of working was a talk by Jacob Sager Weinstein, author of thehilariously titled How not to kill your baby, among other things, in which he introduced something known as the Pomodoro Technique.

Ever heard of it? No, neither had we...

The website for the guy who thought this up is here but in a nutshell, the idea is that you set a timer for 25 minutesuninterrupted working time. The Pomodoro bit comes from those cute timers shaped like tomatoes, but I justused my boring old kitchen timer. During that 25 minutes, you are not allowedto do ANYTHING but work. And yes, that means you don't check your email, go onTwitter/Facebook/, make a cup of tea, go to the toilet, Hoover the dog or feedthe house (believe me, my procrastination techniques can be very inventive).You WORK.

When the 25 minutes is up, you set the timer for a five minutebreak, in which you can do all of the above. Then you set the timer for another25 minutes and get cracking again.

As Jacob said, even the most addicted sadsack can stayfocused for 25 minutes.

I tried this today and I can tell you that it is a brilliantmethod. I think I got more work done than I have for ages and I really stuck toit. The shame of not being able to concentrate for a measly 25 minutes acts as a great deterrant.

Others have found the stopwatch function on their iPhone towork as well and even on your desktop computer there is bound to be somefunction of this kind.

I have to admit to being a bit tempted to buy a proper pomodoro shaped timer...

But if I decide to go for it, I’ll make sure I do my browsing during a five minute break.

Escaping The Slush Pile: Guest Blog with Kate Kelly

2012-02-27T06:00:00.004Z

Kate Kelly has had a number of short stories published in the SF and horror genres but is now concentrating her effort into writing children's fiction. She is represented by Julia Churchill of the Greenhouse Literary Agency. Kate lives by the sea in Southwest England and keeps a blog at http://scribblingseaserpent.blogspot.com/

The Strictly team have invited me along to tell you about how I managed to escape the slushpile and find myself an agent.

You see, it all began with a comment I read on this very blog.

Wind back the clock to February 2010. There I was with several short story publications under my belt but, despite a couple of close calls, a fairly respectable pile of rejection slips for my children’s novel.

However, I had a new novel on the go and this one, I hoped, would be different.

I spotted an interesting blog post on one of my favourite blogs (this one) about avoiding the slushpile, and some interesting comments followed about networking. Inevitably the subject of writer’s conferences came up - and someone mentioned that agents often give one-to-one consultations at these.

Interesting, I thought. Were there any near me? The answer came back, Winchester and Frome. And then someone commented that Rachel Ward, author of the bestselling ‘Numbers’ trilogy, got her deal with Chicken House through one of these Frome Festival consultations.

Well Frome was nearer (and less expensive). So Frome it was.

I booked my slot with a very reputable Children’s agent. At the time the thought of her signing me was the last thing I expected. Of course I hoped. Don’t we all?

What I really thought I would get out of my slot was an idea about the marketability of my story, trends in the children’s market and any indications as to where I might be going wrong. The way I saw it, this could only be a positive experience. She was to be the first agent to see it, and therefore I should be able to make any major changes before I started sending it out…

Of course things never work out the way you expect.

So thank you Strictly Writing, for being such a useful and informative blog, and to all the people who left those helpful comments.

And for those of you who are looking for agents, remember, it does happen. Be on the lookout for any opportunity and grab it when it comes along.

http://strictlywriting.blogspot.com/2010/02/guest-post-by-kirsty-mclachlan-step-out.html

We're reading...

2012-02-24T06:00:00.000Z

Here at Strictly, we like to read and our choices are many and varied. Some of us like commercial women's fiction, others poetry and literary and historical fiction.

We're here today to share with you what we're currently reading.

Gillian is still ploughing her way through Half Blood Blues while also reading over the first draft of her current WIP as well as the dreaded synopsis.

Debs has just finished Flip by Martyn Bedford which was a fab YA read about a teenager who wakes up in a different boy’s body (a kind of Freaky Friday for lads) – total page-turner.
"Right now I’m torn between starting Nine Uses for an Ex boyfriend by Sarra Manning (I *heart* SM) or else Jennifer E Smith’s The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight which is getting fabulous reviews across the globe. SO exciting, all this reading malarkey!" added Debs.

Caroline G is reading a beautiful book called The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.
"It’s a debut, amazingly. It’s based on an old fairytale and about a childless couple living in Alaska in the 1920s, who build a girl out of snow one day and are then visited by a mysterious child. I have a feeling it’s going to break my heart soon! It’s so well written. Am finding myself going back and reading sentences again. Quite sublime," Caroline added.

Susie is reading a non-fiction book called The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters, psychologist to various Olympic athletes. He divides the brain into three basic parts: the Human (frontal lobe, calm and rational), the Chimp (limbic area, emotive and driving) and the Computer which stores all the information from the other two as a memory.
"According to Dr Peters, we are the Human, and our aim is to learn to manage our inner Chimp (who can be our best friend or our worst enemy, but is always five times stronger than our Human). It's an excellent model of the human mind, although I'm not so sure when it moves into the 'self-help' area. But a very interesting read," added Susie.

Rod is reading Her Book by Jo Shapcott (again) having just done a three-day course with her at Faber Academy.

One-liners

2012-02-22T06:00:00.011Z

Do you sometimes read like a magpie? I do. I think it's one of the best ways for a writer to read. By flitting from book to book, author to author, subject to subject, I find I can plunder small neglected items of inspiration (old silver teaspoons, hairclips, etc). And it means you don't get steeped in someone else's voice ("the way butter is tainted by garlic in the fridge" sorry, I don't recall who said this, perhaps you can remind me).

Yesterday I was browsing through some Ted Hughes poems. He's been on my mind recently. I came across Ghost Crabs, a poem I've read before but which has never properly entered "the dark hole of the head". It's a strange poem about a bunch of crabs that take over our beings at night, creeping up from the sea.

All night, around us or through us,
They stalk each other, they fasten on to each other,
They mount each other, they tear each other to pieces,
They utterly exhaust each other.

And so on: it's a feel-good piece. Watch out for those crabs!
I wanted to know more and got to work on Google. That led me to an essay on existential philosophy on a now-defunct magazine site dedicated to Colin Wilson. Apparently Hughes is representing ideas about the will from Schopenhauer. Fascinating stuff, but no more upbeat. That cost a couple of hours leading eventually to dusting off my ancient copy of Colin Wilson's The Outsider - that ultimate cult book. I had part read it twenty years ago, but was slightly put off by the evangelical fervour for Wilson Worshipping by certain friends back then.

That led to reading about Gurdjieff and searching the web for whatever I could find about Ramakrishna. By now I had enough ideas for a volume of verse or a couple of novels, but I couldn't stop. Like a runaway mobile library, I ploughed on through the rest of Wilson and that led to Blake. I took down the huge brick that is The Complete Poems, but nearly broke my wrist trying to open it. So I went to ibooks instead - I'd downloaded Blake last year. The internet and ereaders are perfect for the magpie, aren't they? You have access to more sources than a university library, without leaving your chair.

Blake had me reading a strange poem called The Angel, where William becomes a "maiden Queen". Strange thought, and I've yet to research that one. But next to it is The Tyger so we're back on safe ground again.

The line "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" stopped me in my seat. Although I've known that line for ages, as I'm sure you have, it brought me to tears.

And that led to this idea for a Strictly Writing post (so I did get something from all that crashing about).

What one-liners can make you cry?

There are many for me. I have to admit to a few in The Lord of The Rings. Also from Eliot's Portrait of a Lady, the line(s)

I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

That always gets me. What about you?

Guest blog by Katy O'Dowd

2012-02-21T06:00:00.000Z

First of all, thank you to Gillian for inviting me to a do a blog post. When she asked me I was completely stumped as to what to write about. I didn’t want to talk about myself, I mean really, what’s to know? I juggle as we all do, in my case with children, day job and writing.
I didn’t really want to write about writing either, I’ll leave giving sage advice to people more qualified and widely published than myself.
I’m happy to give a little tip, though, one which helps me to write more visually.

I write medical historical romantic fiction, with my Dad (a doctor) as Derry O’Dowd. When writing by myself I also favour historical fiction.
You know the old saying, ‘a picture tells a thousand words’? Well, I’ve found it really helpful actually, when writing about events – made up, true – which took place hundreds of years ago.

I read a lot while researching, but when it comes to sitting down to start writing I use pictures to help me along. For example, the main character in The Scarlet Ribbon James Quinn, took the form of an Irish actor whom I really like, which helped no end in describing how he looked at various stages of the book. A painting of a landscape. A dress or outfit from the era – you get the idea.

It may well not be for you of course, but writing to pictures enables me to really get into a story, emotionally, descriptively. And once I have said story plotted out the first thing I do before sitting down to write – after getting a cup of tea and some chocolate of course! – is to print off some pictures from the internet or take out postcards and other images that I have collected while an idea has been brewing.

The Scarlet Ribbon has been chosen to launch the History Press Ireland's fiction line.
Written by father and daughter team Michael and Katy O'Dowd, the book follows James Quinn, a young Irish surgeon battling prejudice, suspicion and personal demons in his controversial quest to change the face of medicine.

Following his marriage, tragedy strikes, thrusting James into a life of turmoil and despair. Throwing himself into his work, the young surgeon eventually begins to find solace in the most unexpected of places. From the backstreets of Paris, through the glittering social
whirl of London and finally back to Ireland again, this is a story of the thorns of love and the harsh reality of life in the eighteenth century, where nothing is simple and complications of all kinds surround James Quinn, man midwife.

The Scarlet Ribbon is widely available in bookshops and online.

www.derryodowd.com

Katy is an arts and entertainment journalist and has worked for Time Out, Associated Newspapers and Comic Relief and her articles have appeared in The Times (London), Metro (London) and many other arts and entertainment publications, paper and online. Alongside writing under the pen-name Derry O’Dowd, whose next book she is working on, she writes under her own name. ‘The Lady Astronomer’ will be out with Doctor Fantastique Books in April/May. She is also reviews movies for STUDIO magazine, and is currently co-editing ‘Nasty Snips II’ a horror anthology which will be out with Pendragon Press at Halloween.

Katy blogs at www.katyodowd.com

And can be found on twitter @katyod

Does my ASUS look big in this?

2012-02-20T06:00:00.000Z

This post is being written using what my forebearers would have called 'new-fangled-technology'.

Now I'm all for technology, new-fangled or otherwise, so long as it educates, informs or makes a life slightly simpler. The modern microwave, the high definition televisions and boil-in-the-bag-rice being prime examples.
On my last day at school I remember looking back over my shoulder as I left the 6th Form Portacabin (every expense spared in 1980) as four burly men carried a big square metallicy-plastic thing each into our design technology building. Even the words Design and Technology, to me, meant absolutely nothing, let alone give me any clue as to what those bulky machines were going to be used for.

Although come the following September my brother two years my junior became insufferable in his delight at having a new addition to his timetable called 'Computer Studies'. Ha, I thought, that'll probably be just the same as woodwork but with more metallic bits. And my parents were convinced it'd never catch on. New fangled nonsense. Wasting public funds. Flippin' comprehensives. That sort of thing.
And for the first year he did this weird-sounding course, all he seemed to do was bring back little strips of paper with patterns of holes punched through them and binary numbers written in scrawly biro underneath.
Dullsville or what?
He dropped the subject as soon as he could and took up double skive and extra curricular smoking-related activities.

I'd been using a Petite typewriter for a couple of years at home before I found a job in an office, so of course I had the necessary 'typing experience' when I landed the prestigious role of Q.A Technician at our local Texas Instruments. It was like walking onto the set of Space 1999. Not only did everyone have badges with their names, faces and codes on them, these 'keys' were also used to enter corridors and areas that I only had the necessary clearance for once a month. And we'll have no sniggering about the Menses Room, please.
Oh yes, here, on the last Friday of every month I was allowed, permitted, cleared even, to sit at a screen (like a telly - a TELLY!) and tap numbers out on a keyboard and watch them come up in neon green on the screen - and then type in a name and a code at the top and then press a key and it would be sent halfway across the world. Oh, VDU's where did you go?
And the day TI started selling the first calculator (a snip at £49.50) was the day I thought I'd died and gone to heaven - not that I really needed one now that I wasn't at school anymore and crying over algorithms and friggin' fractions, but what they hey, I'd have one anyway.
The dawning of a new generation - and I was proud to be part of it.

So I've never been shy of modern technology. I remember typewriters being manual, then golf-balled and daisy-wheeled - a different daisy-wheel for itallic font! Does anyone else recall the machines where one line of text came up on a little screen atop the keyboard and then printed the line out mad-fast when you pressed the 'Return' button? And the first time I was given a proper full-sized screen, keyboard, floppy disk drive and laser printer was the day I could have stayed at work 24 hours without pay. I loved it. I lapped it all up, this new fangled stuff that was happening in the world.

And so to celebrate half a century on earth, I have been given what I can only describe as something beautiful and wondrous with which I can just about do anything. Write, read, mail, listen to music, video-call my Australian family, you name it... well, okay then, it won't reheat a chilly brew but that's a minor consideration and one that I'm perfectly willing to overlook.

Besides which, technology and me and a cup of tea.....? You just don't want to know.

What we're watching

2012-02-17T06:00:00.000Z

It's not all work, work, work for us Strictlies. Here's a round up of what we've been watching on television or at the movies. Tell us what's had you hooked lately...

Caroline G has been enjoying Mad Dogs on Sky One and is sad to have reached the end of the series.
"It was a real treat to see some of my favourite actors, including the divine John Simm, having such fun with a cracking script," added Caroline.

Debs is still loving 'Call the Midwife' on Sundays, 'Being Human' and 'Whitechapel' although the family still watches the fluff like 'Take Me Out' and 'Million Pound Drop' (isn't Davina McCall THE most infuriating woman on tv?)

Caro went to see The Artist and found it delightful - she loved the atmosphere and heart-warming humour.
"The dog deserves an Oscar," added Caro.

Helen watched Public Enemies, a Tony Marchant drama about a released murderer and his parole officer. It was so good she watched all three episodes back to back.

Rod watches very little television, only the news and movies. At the weekend he watched a gruesomely realistic British film about marital abuse called Tyrannosaur.
"Amazingly well acted. Brilliant script and deeply upsetting. I wish I hadn't seen it. There are things there I don't want to watch for entertainment. Yes. Very good," added Rod.

Susie watched The TV Book Club which featured Essie Fox's atmospheric Victorian novel, The Somnambulist, along with interviews with actress Sue Johnson and author Ian Rankin.

Gillian is watching Masterchef and this fabulous show on Watch HD called Too Fat For Fifteen. It follows overweight children as they re-establish eating habits at the Wellspring Academy of the Carolinas, USA.
"It shows that not all weight problems are attributed to a love of food. Highly recommended!" added Gillian.

Tell us what you're watching and why.

A Kind of Magic

2012-02-16T06:00:00.003Z

Do you believe in magic?

I do. You may call it different things depending on your outlook – coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, chance, intuition, ‘the universe’, flow, fate or grace. Whichever, it exists for me just as surely as the material world does.

A tiny example: yesterday I slept late and switched on the radio at 10am. The first words I heard were the Woman’s Hour presenter introducing journalist Sophie Radice. Sophie’s novel, The Henry Experiment, has just been published by Linen Press Books – my publisher. Coincidence, yes. But it brings something else, a heightened awareness, a sense of something special happening – as someone I know recently described it, it’s ‘the sparkle in the eye of life.’

Magic is what happens when you go ‘into the zone’, whether writing, painting, running, sculpting, singing or speaking. In these magical moments, all that’s required of you is that you turn up and apply yourself – or, the case of writing, you apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair and begin. It’s like turning on a tap. Gradually, as you move more and more into your ‘flow’, words come to you. Ideas appear. Where did that felicitous phrase come from? How did that simile work so well? They certainly didn’t come through your thinking them up. They just arrived, seemingly fully formed, on the page. It’s the same with painting. I look back at paintings I’ve made and have no idea how I did them, or indeed how I could replicate them now. They ‘just came’.

It puts me in mind of Winnie-the-Pooh and Rabbit, and how Winnie-the-Pooh sits and lets things come to him, while Rabbit goes out and fetches them. Though perhaps a better analogy is that of the sculptor who ‘knows’ that the finished form already exists within the stone – it’s her job to chip away the extraneous material to reveal it.

Perhaps our stories are already there, deep in the recesses of our unconscious, waiting for us to trust our process enough to begin. Perhaps synchronicities arrive to remind us of this. Who knows?

I was sitting in front of a blank screen with no ideas for this post, having just read an email from my father entitled 'Magic'. Why not, I thought?

Do you believe in magic?

Kerry Wilkinson, bestselling e-author answers some Quick Fire Questions

2012-02-15T06:00:00.000Z

Kerry Wilkinson, sports journalist and self-published crime writer hasbecome the most popular author in the Kindle charts after selling more than250,000 e-books in six months.

He told futurebook (http://futurebook.net/content/reader-first-approach-writing-and-self-publishing):“Ultimately, I'm a kid from a council estate in Somerset. I grew up readingthose thin Doctor Who paperbacks which were almost entirely written by TerranceDicks. I love books, I collect them.
There is no way I should be able to compete with a massive major publisher -let alone beat them. How have I done it? I'm not sure I really know. I can onlyever continue to act on instinct. After all, I'm a reader first.”

We were thrilled when Kerry said he had time in his manic scheduleto answer a few Quick Fire Questions on Strictly Writing.

1. Who is you favourite Doctor from Doctor Who and why?
- I always like whoever the current guy is so, at the moment, Matt Smith.

2. Where do you write?
- Pretty much everywhere. Sometimes, if I'm on a day off, I'll use my netbookin bed and write through the morning. I mainly write on the sofa at home, but Ialso write on my lunchbreak at work, I've written on trains and on planes,everywhere really.

3. Best writing snack?
- I don't think anyone can function creatively without biscuits (cookies forour American chums). I have, in the past, nicked out the supermarket beforesettling down to work because the house has been devoid of sugar-based snacks.I'm also a fan of a good old fashioned biscuit tin. There's somethingendearingly British about all that crumbly crap you end up with at the bottom.

4. Soundtrack (if so, what) or peace and quiet?
- I pretty much need the house to be silent but I'm also a walking hypocritebecause I can write on a train, etc, where it isn't quiet at all. The idealsoundtrack is the noise of the ice cream man pulling up outside our house. Ialways move quickest when I'm trying to find my shoes and some money to get outthe door before he pulls away. Then I can settle back on to the sofa with abonus ice cream to aid my creative process.

5. Which book/writer has/had any major influence on you?
- I don't know really. I don't particularly follow individuals. I read morecomics and sci-fi stuff than I do prose fiction. Through that, you could say EdBrubaker or Brian Bendis but I've read some really great stuff. People aremissing out big-time if they don't think comics can tell good stories. Thingslike Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, The Walking Dead, Preacher, Supreme Power,Blankets and many many others. Comics teach you about plotting too because theyrely on finishing on a belting cilffhanger every 20-odd pages. If they don't dothat, people don't buy the next issue, which means the writer has to stoptelling his story.

6. What are you reading right now?
- Chris Jericho's first autobiography. It is very funny and very good. I justfinished the Alan Partridge autobiography for the third time. It's the funniestbook I've ever read. I think I could read it over and over and not get bored.

7. Has (and how) ‘overnight success’ affected your ordinary daily life?
- Basically, not at all. I'm still the same person I was a year ago. I just nowhave better excuses for not tidying up around the house. "I've beenwriting all day" garners more sympathy than "I've been on thePlayStation all day".

8. Laptop or paper?
- What's this paper you speak of?

9. Where do the ideas come from?
- The broad ideas usually come from small stories which you might stumbleacross in a newspaper or on the radio news or something like that. Sometimes itwill just be one line that will sets your imagination off. The whole of booktwo, Vigilante, was born out of a throwaway line at the bottom of a much widernewspaper feature. The funny thing was, someone left a review saying thatcertain part of the book was "unrealistic" when it was the only partbased on fact! I think people are very quick to call things"unrealistic" because real life will always be stranger at somepoint. Think of things like the David Kelly saga, or the Stockport salinestory. That's far "better" in a story sense than most things youcould make up.

A lot of the character stuff comes from incidents I've seen over the yearsor people I've met, although not necesarily directly. Again, sometimes youmight see the startings of an event in real life, then you reimagine them withyour characters.

11.The best advice you could give to an aspiring writer?
- Not even a writer, just anyone who wants to do something creative: Do itbecause you want to. I never feel pressured to write. I only keep going becauseI have something left to say and pads of unused ideas. It's why I never havewriter's block. I've never once sat around wondering what happens next.

12. What would you have liked Q.10 to havebeen?
- I prefer to think of question 10 as like those 11 days in 1752 when Britainjumped from 2 September to 14 September because the country switched to theGregorian calendar.

Kerry's website/blog is here: Kerry Wilkinson.com and you can read the openings of Kerry's first three books, 'Locked In', 'Vigilante', and 'The Woman in Black' on Amazon. Look out for the fourth and fifth books in the Jessica Daniels' series, 'Think of the Children' and 'Playing with Fire' which will be out later this year.

The Course of True Love

2012-02-14T06:00:00.002Z

If I were to get into the spirit of things, I would probably use today's post to give a cringeworthy guide to writing love scenes, or list the top ten best Valentine's gifts for writers, or detail how a caring and tolerant partner is an essential component of the writerly life.

I'm a cynical sod, however, and don't wish to celebrate Hallmark Day in any other way than to be left alone to get on with stuff, so my only concession to today's occasion is that the title of the following 19th-century poem refers to True Love.

I discovered this anecdote/joke a few months ago, and was impressed by its triumph-of-the-underdog theme and its wry realism. It dates from 1897 and appeared in Judy magazine.

***

“I understand that Rudyard Kipling is paid two shillings a word for his poetry,” said the soulful poet to the hard-headed editor. “Now you don't pay me any such price for my poetry.”

“I can hardly pay you two shillings, but look here I'll give you two shillings a line for a short poem.”

Next day, the budding poet returned with this:

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
.

John,

Yearns,

Jane

Turns:

Eyes

Meet,

Love

Sweet!

Jane

Stops,

John

Pops.

Both

Wed,—

'Nough

Said.

II.

John

Mad,

Jane

Sad.

Both

Fight;

Sad

Sight!

Whole

Week,

Won't

Speak.

Re-

Course

Di-

vorce.

The Editor counted the lines, paid the money, saying “I'm beaten for once. I thought you were only a poet, but you've got brains.”

**************************

Ah, who am I trying to kid with all this cynicism? Here at Strictly Writing, we really do have something to celebrate, because our very own Caroline Green has been shortlisted in the Romantic Novelists' Association Awards for her wonderful young adult novel, Dark Ride.

Caroline's book is up for the Young Adult Romantic Novel Award, and we're all very excited for her as the awards ceremony approaches. Congratulations, Caroline, on such a fab achievement!

The E Debate

2012-02-13T06:00:00.006Z

I’ve been researching and listening to lots of debate recently with regard to the argument that self publishing would never be the preferred route to go, if given the choice of a traditional publishing deal. It seems the more and more I hear, the curiouser and curiouser the debate becomes.

Let’s face it – if any of us unpublished writers were truly given that choice today, right now, this morning, we would more than likely grab the publishing house, the editor and the future relationship that they bring. We would grab it firmly by the cojones, take it back home, cuddle it under our duvet and never let it out of our sight. We would announce to the world that we are in bed with Harper Collins, Orion, whoever... We would break out the bubbly that's been chilling for years, waiting for our overnight success, and we'd find it hard to wipe the smile from our face. Or would we?

Because it does seem that more and more people are actually making the other choice. Yes, choice. The choice thing has been quite a shocker to me. What? Proper writers really want to do this? I, like many, have always seen the self publishing option as a last resort. The stigma attached to it, I believed, would only ever see me as someone who had to publish their own novel. However, now, having looked into it, discussed it, raped and plundered the world wide web for information, read some really informative books on the subject , I now believe, that just like has happened in the music business with digital downloads, the tide is possibly turning in the publishing industry.

I’ve found several successful writers and by that, I mean writers of good books, who have found success by making the choice to self- publish. I’m not just talking about the John Lockes of this world or the Amanda Hockings - though their experience is uplifting – I mean people who walk and talk in our world, people we know out there in the blogosphere. (Hi Talli, Mel, Catherine)

So why? Why are people choosing the route? And what will happen to the industry if the trend continues? My worry is that the digital world will be overrun with books of questionable writing and this IS a problem. During my own research, I downloaded some books that had never seen a proper edit, had fairly dodgy covers and honestly, I could not read past page three or four. However, I’ve also downloaded some fabulous reads and believe that good writing will win out. Readers are a discerning lot and very capable of finding books that interest them, whether that be via a traditional method by browsing through a bookstore, or choosing an ebook. (Plus, the Amazon ability to ‘try before you buy’ often allows you to download that first few pages, which does stop a few buying errors.)

It’s clear that if you are contemplating self publishing, the worst thing to do is to consider it a last resort, and just upload those old manuscripts you have lying around. Instead, consider yourself an entrepreneur, launching a new business that has to work. You have a product you love and have faith in (your manuscript). You believe that the world should share in it. If so, treat it as you would if you’d invented a new wheel. Make sure the R&D (Research and Development) are thorough (i.e. make sure the ms is the very best it can be). Push it through the highest of standard checks (i.e. hire an editor, proof reader), make sure that the packaging will whet the buyer’s appetite (i.e. make sure the cover is one that someone would want to pick up on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstones.)

What are the downsides? Well, apart from the still existing stigma I mentioned above, there is the lack of an agent (though not always) and a publishing house.Those authors traditionally published claim both are vital. Also, there’s no advance, but the much higher royalty scheme should help compensate. Besides, from what I understand advances are not what they used to be, as industry margins come under increasing pressure. As a self published author, you won’t make it to that 3 for 2 section either. High street stores will not stock self published books. You also have to become your own self publicist and a good one at that, but again, I feel that this has changed in traditional publishing and many authors have to do this anyway.

Upsides? More control over your product (though not necessarily a good thing unless you really know what you’re doing). Instant publication i.e. once you’ve written that very best book it can be, had it edited, designed a cover – it takes hours, a few days at most before its out there in the world. So, little or no lag time... Better royalties, assuming of course you’ve done it right and are making sales.

So, bet you’re dying to know. Have I convinced myself? What I do know is that when I started to think about self publishing as an option for me, I didn’t have a clue what a minefield it is and indeed, how much work would be involved. Part of me was thinking ‘Why not just stick it up on Amazon and see what happens?’ WRONG!

Wrong, wrong, wrong at every level.

Either way? If Harper Collins phone and I head to the duvet smiling, or I decide to use Kindle Direct Publishing as a future route, my own new wheel still has a few kinks in it - I still have some work to do on that manuscript...

What we're writing...

2012-02-10T06:00:00.001Z

As it's Friday we're giving you all another chance to nose into our lives. And we expect reciprocal rights of course.

So let me fill you in on what the Strictly team have been writing this week:

Debs seems to be spending a huge amount of time designing covers and writing blurbs and pitches now she's leapt into the world of e-publishing. She's all about saturation! She's also writing the first 5000 words for the Good Housekeeping New Novelist comp.

Fi is writing a blogpost for her (not new, more restored) blog and would love some visitors. So get thee over to www.manic-muse.blogspot.com

Susie has been writing her journal (she tries to do a Morning Page every day) and has sent about 30 emails asking magazine editors if they'll review The Making of Her.

Caroline R is writing a Valentine themed blogpost for The Quack Doctor, but is a bit bah humbug about Valentine's Day so is including plenty of death and skullduggery.

Caroline G is powering away on her next book (working title Molly Stone) and feeling a bit better having renegotiated the deadline!

Gillian is revisiting the first draft of The Dodo Society (the bird not the baby pacifier), reworking scenes and expanding ideas and themes. She's also filling in passport forms.

As for little old me, well, I'm now well into the WIP. I tentatively like the plot and some of my new characters but fear my ed is going to pull a face at my, admittedly, complicated structure. We'll see.

So what about you guys?
HB x

Guest post by Luisa Plaja - My Essential Writing Props

2012-02-09T06:00:00.000Z

Ah, writing. Such fun to do, so hard to getdown to. After I’ve danced the procrastination dance several times – thisinvolves checking Twitter, emails and Facebook in ever-decreasing circles – Ithen begin to gather my props. I need to make sure I’m surrounded by thesethings as it’s ~~a total waste of time~~/completely essential.

Five truly essential things for me are asfollows:

- Tea. And plenty of it. I have a reallybig mug. I also have quite a large tea-bearing receptacle that matches my reallybig face, ho ho ho. Ahem. Moving swiftly on…

- Notebook. Any old notebook will do. Icurrently have a scruffy recycled paper one that cost 14p and feels pleasantlyrough. It needs to be there for the scribbles I make while writing, whichinclude helpful comments such as “WHERE IS THIS GOING?!”, “HANG ON – WHAT IS THIS ACTUALLY ABOUT? Workit out!!!!!!” and “Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

- Pen. This is surprisingly difficult toachieve, as pens do not last long in my presence. They get carried away bymysterious invisible breezes and whisked into faraway lands where they roamfree, occasionally resurfacing miraculously in captivity in the unlikeliest ofplaces. Has your imagination come up with a really unlikely place? Double it.That’s where I last found my favourite pen. True fact. (Maybe.)

- Phone. This is an odd one if you bear inmind that I’m not a phone person. In fact, I’m bordering on phone-phobic. Butthe phone has to be there, next to me, as there might be an emergency. Or an(unwelcome, of course, tsk)interruption.

- Tea. Did I already mention tea? Well,this is a deliberate repetition. There can never be enough tea.

I recently read a post that told me Ishould lose all these props, though, and I think it might have had a point.Read the full article about things that writers should do here.

Do you have any essential writing props?Maybe I’ll get rid of the props above and adopt your suggestions instead…

---

Luisa Plaja is the author of several triumphsover procrastination, aka books. Her latest is a teen novel called Kiss Date Love Hate, and it’s published by Random House on 2February 2012.Find out more at her website

Gimme Mawer

2012-02-08T06:00:00.000Z

Simon Mawer is an engaging storyteller whose style of prose elevates his writing above that of many of today’s authors. I‘ve read many of his books including The Glass Room, an incredibly moving and atmospheric tale of architecture, loneliness and love, The Gospel of Judas, Mendel’s Dwarf, Swimming to Ithaca, set in Cyprus where Mawer spent some of his childhood, and The Fall. I talked about The Glass Room some time ago when I first read it because it was one of those books you feel you have to recommend to friends or indeed to anyone remotely interested in good literature. It blew me away and I immediately got caught up in the turmoil along with the characters.

It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and quite rightly so because the book is a real page turner, one that I couldn’t close even though it was going on midnight. Its central idea is the modernist Landauer House which was constructed for newlyweds Viktor and Liesel. But as World War Two threatens and Nazi troops enter Czechoslovakia, the family, along with Viktor’s lover Kata and her child, are forced to flee. I won’t take you through the whole synopsis, for fear of spoiling any interest I’ve managed to whip up, but I do thoroughly recommend this book. If you choose to read this one, I guarantee it’s one you won’t fall asleep to because of the wonderful intensity of the characters and prose. I was sorry I hadn’t discovered Simon Mawer prior to The Glass Room and I asked myself how he had managed to slip through the reading net.

I went on to seek out more books penned by this talented writer and opened The Gospel of Judas. It was a fantastic read, fast paced and cleverly written, all about papyrology. The story involves Father Leo Newman's discovery of a lost papyrus scroll near the Dead Sea which looks to contain a fifth gospel, one that follows Jesus' life and crucifixion from the point of view of Judas Iscariot. And it has a love story thrown in for good measure – the choice between God or a woman.

For the scientists among us, there's Mendel's Dwarf with the central character, Dr Benedict Lambert, a top geneticist who is a descendant of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk. Essentially, Lambert is a dwarf and he attempts to isolate the gene that gives rise to achondroplasia (dwarfism) but while his public life revolves around scientific issues, his private life is centred around pornographic magazines.

Simon Mawer was born in 1948 in England, but has lived for more than 30 years in Italy with his his wife and two children. He graduated from Oxford University with a degree in zoology. If you haven't read any of his books, I implore you to just dip into one and read the first chapter.

And on a final note, Simon Mawer’s literature has been endorsed by a celebrity - Britney really IS singing Gimme Mawer, because she’s so well read.

And here is the weather forecast . . .

2012-02-06T06:00:00.007Z

I hope you are snowed in and unable to go to work or to do any chores: forced to spend a day writing.

And if you do, will snow feature in whatever you write? A few weeks ago when we had the big winds across the UK I wondered if wind was cropping up in scenes in novels and stories all over the place. I wrote a poem called City Wind partly in answer to the wonderful and very rural Ted Hughes poem Wind (This house has been far out at sea all night).

There's a strange zeitgeist of the moment when a common event affects us all and is translated into our creative work, or so I imagine. Come on, own up if you've written about snow in the last twenty-four hours.

When I sat down to do my post for Strictly Writing on Sunday, all I could think of was . . .

Silent Sunday

Today we venture out of our front doors
like visitors in a foreign land
to find the greatest cover-up of all;
our cars are painted uniform
white and our gardens have dissolved.
To some this is the biggest show in town
presenting troupes in gloves and coats and hoods
up for play fights; you may talk to strangers.
London is one giant sculpture park.
A chance to walk the centre of the road.
To another this is inconvenience:
tubes are out and all the buses dead
a struggle just to go and get the news,
a danger to the old folk and the sick,
best to stay inside all day today,
fret about the walk to work tomorrow.
Others marvel at the change of scene:
how beauty has descended on this city,
softened every perpendicular
to moulded curves of crystal,
frozen foam that shines to dazzle and
yields with a delighted crunch.
Pass the camera, point it at our hedge.
Arching over all this, it is the sound
that enfolds this city in its thrall,
every human voice a lonely cry,
a closing door echoes down the street,
the squawk of a magpie hangs in the air
as we are transmuted to a London
of a hundred years ago or more.

Friday Reading Round-Up

2012-02-03T06:00:00.000Z

So what arewe all reading?

I’ll kickoff by saying that I’m thoroughly enjoying ‘Sister’ by Rosamund Lupton, and asa total contrast I’m also reading Luisa Plaja’s latest Young Adult book, ‘Kiss,Date, Love, Hate’ which is making me grin with girlish delight.

Gillian

I'm reading‘Half Blood Blues’ by Esi Edugyan which was shortlisted for the Man BookerPrize 2011 - I'm ploughing my way through the entireshortlist!

Helen

I'm reading‘Weaveworld’ by Clive Barker to my kids. We've decide to keep reading aloud enfamille, even though they're twelve. So we've moved on to the books on ourshelves that my husband and I have enjoyed and which are (vaguely)appropriate...

Caroline R

I'm reading‘Crusade Against Drink in Victorian England’ by Lilian Lewis Shiman. I justlooked on Amazon to check the author's name and discovered that the book islisted in the category 'The Crusades'!

Caroline G

I’m reading‘The Book of Human Skin’ by Michele Lovric, which is strange and very good. Ithought it was going to be a bit heavy going when I started but am gripped now.

Fionnuala

I’m readingthe local planning laws because the f*****rs are refusing our planningapplication! I’m also reading ‘Dead Good’ by DA Cooper - a YA book by an up andcoming author - very much enjoying it!

Susie
I will lower the tone: I'm reading Alexander McCall Smith's 'A Confederacy ofFriends', together with Jane Wenham-Jones' 'Wanna Be A Writer We've Heard Of?'(hah!). I've also been reading my novel through before it goes for typesetting.

Rod

I amreading ‘The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy’. Edited by MirandaFricker and Jennifer Hornsby.

If any ofyou have read/are reading any of the above, we’d love to hearyour thoughts (we’d also LOVE to know what you’re reading right now too – we’re a nosy bunch!) Happy weekend, StrictlyFollowers! :)

The slushpile

2012-01-31T06:00:00.000Z

I’m very chuffed to be able to introduce Nicola Morgan onto this great blog to talk about her new ebook, Write a Great Synopsis: An Expert Guide. Hopefully it will help readers here as much as it’s helped me!

Hello, Strictly Writing readers and thanks for hosting me on the Write a Great Synopsis (WAGS) blog tour.

I have always liked writing synopses and I hadn’t realised what a problem writers had with them until so many people started angsting about it. Many of the questions I get are about how to write this thing that seems to me to be the simplest part of a writer’s work. So, that’s what Write a Great Synopsis is about. I aim to solve the problems and make the task simple and stressfree.

The WAGS blog tour consists of a mix of interviews and extracts. It’s an extract that I thought I’d offer you today. And there’s a competition, too – with prizes of synopsis critiques!

One of the crucial things that writers find most difficult is knowing what to leave out of a synopsis. My extract below consists of two analogies that help you visualise the answer to this.

(Reproduced from Write a Great Synopsis – An Expert Guide)

The synopsis as a journey
Here is a way of thinking that I find useful. Imagine your synopsis as a journey. This is what we need to know:
1. Who is on the journey and why?
2. What is the intended destination and why?
3. What terrible thing will happen if they don’t reach their destination and who or what is trying to stop them?
4. What happens to knock the travellers off course?
5. What characteristics and tools do they use to get back on course?
6. What is their actual destination and who survives and with what injuries?

Here’s what we do NOT need to know:
1. The detours they took along the way.
2. The weather.
3. What they had for their picnic.
4. What they said to each other.
5. What the scenery was like.
6. The route in order.
7. The people they met on the journey, unless one of them is an axe-murderer or someone equally useful.

The synopsis as a healthy human
This is my other analogy. If your synopsis were a human, in order to see that the human is alive and strong we would need to see the healthy glow of the skin and that it is supported by a strong skeleton. We don’t actually see the skeleton, but we know it’s all there. We don’t need to see that the organs are all present and working – that’s obvious from the healthy glow of the skin and the light shining from the eyes. We do need to see the feet: the end of the story. A synopsis without an end is like a human without feet.
(Extract ends)

Analogies never present the whole picture but they are often a good start, offering a visual element to boost understanding of the rest of the argument. Write a Great Synopsis covers everything about synopsis-writing, clearly and reassuringly. At the end of it I believe you truly will say to yourself, “Don’t panic – it’s only a synopsis!” That is my aim.

All commenters below (by Feb 15th) will be entered into the Big WAGS Competition, with chances to win a critique of your synopsis by the Crabbit Old Bat herself! One comment per person on each blog – though you can add to your chances by commenting on the other posts on the tour. Details of all stops on the tour will appear on Help! I Need a Publisher! as they go out.

Thank you for listening and I do hope I can help you write a great synopsis! For details about the book, including buying options, go here.

Let's actually write something today

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000Z

This won't take long to read.

Here's a little exercise I did with a friend the other day and it worked out just lufferly. Phone a writing buddy and agree what you are going to do today. All of your main activities for the day. Not too many, mind. The important thing is to commit to each of them and then agree that you will speak again at the end of the day. For example, I will: 1. Clean the fridge 2. Go and buy Daniel's birthday present 3. Write a first draft of that short story 4. Go to gym

When I did this exercise recently I achieved all of the agreed tasks before lunch. I think the important thing is to set some realistic tasks and encourage your buddy to do the same.

Okay, this is for real. Monday 30 January 2012. I will: 1. Check in with my business partner after my holiday. 2. Make arrangements or book time to do amendments on the marketing project. 3. Go through my poems and choose a batch to submit to mags. 4. Go to gym.

Have to go now . . .

Friday's watching round-up

2012-01-27T07:57:00.005Z

Okay so we've talked about what we're reading and writing. Here's what the Strictlies are watching on telly.

Do let us know what you're hooked on right now...

Susie

All I'm watchingthese days is terrible reality shows and Location Location, because I'm lookingfor a place to buy. Comfort telly.

Gillian
I'm Watching masterchef and Too Fat For Fifteen on Watch HD.

Helen
Well I've been watching Sherlock which was as close to sublime as anything I can think of. Also Masterchef. The PHD atomic physisist rocks!!!

Debs

Watching? Mainly a blankcomputer screen, but Birdsong and Snog, Marry, Avoid recently (shameful) Put me down for Sherlock please aswell, I'm asking for him in a boxed set for my birthday - I am SHERLOCKED!
Caroline

Still feeling bereaved at The Killing II ending and also The Slap, which was an Australian drama based on the best selling book by Christopher Tsiolkas. One of the best bits of television I've seen in years. So now I'm mainly glued to Masterchef! Does anyone else ever get a bit emotional at Masterchef?

Seeing our writing as others see it

2012-01-25T06:00:00.003Z

O wad some power the giftie us

To see oursels as ithers see us
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion

I feel a bit sorry for the woman in Robert Burns's poem 'To a Louse.' There she is, minding her own business in church, and not only does she have a headlouse viewing her as nothing more than his next meal, but there happens to be a poetic genius around to immortalise her decision to wear a nice hat. Still, I suppose nits and poets can happen to anyone. They like clean hair, apparently.

Wouldn't it be useful to be able to see our writing as others see it? Such an ability would have saved me a lot of angst over the years. I could check at a glance whether my work made sense; whether it was cringeworthy; whether a naff simile was actually original to fresh eyes; whether I used semi-colons when commas would do. The clarity would enable me not only to avoid the blunders, but perhaps to stop mucking about with the good bits too.

Heaven forbid that this ability should be innate, however. It would have to have kicked in when I was at least 25 and had been round the writer's block a few times, because if I had possessed such a talent during my teens, I would probably never have written another word. Awareness of our own failings might be an admirable state, but I reserve the right for my teenage self to churn out as much woeful adjective-filled tut as possible, and to be pleased with herself for having done so. If you can't have a few foolish notions when you're 16, when can you?

When I wonder what it would be like to view my writing from another reader's point of view, my first instinct is to want to spot any technical failings. On a practical level I do try to make my writing look as unlike my own as possible, by changing the typeface or converting the file to PDF. (Turning things into PDFs immediately makes them look better for some reason – maybe I should try this for my face!)

Technical details, however, are not what I'd really like to know about how other people view my fiction. I don't ask readers what they think of my book because I firmly believe it's none of my business. They have every right to like it or not like it – and if they reckon it's lousy, there's not much I can do about it anyway. But out of pure nosiness, the thing I'd find fascinating is to know exactly how people picture my characters and settings. It would be amazing to see photographic images of someone else's perception – how different would the characters be from the way I see them? Would they be clear or indistinct? Would they look like people the reader knows, or would they be purely imaginary? Would they change the images I hold in my own mind and make me see my work in a new light?

If you could see your writing as others see it – what's the first thing you'd want to know?

A Re-Kindled Spirit

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000Z

Crikey. Who'd have thought. Not me that's for sure.

My daughter summed up my biggest fear when I told her I'd spent the best part of three days and four nights on both the Picnik and Kindle Direct sites designing the cover and formatting and re-formatting and loading and deleting and uploading and re-uploading and ... well, you get the drift... she said I was scared of the 'Pity Purchases'. And I was. So, so scared of them. Because I've done it myself. I have writer friends who've published books - proper paper books with print on them and everything.. I know! ... and because they're friends and I've known them years (some for over a decade) when they announce they have a new book out, what's the first thing I do?
Okay, second then... the first is always to check my green-levels, lay a metaphorical damp flannel on my seething, jealousy-consumed parts and calm down. Secondly I fly a reply straight back telling them the news is 'fantastic' (which it is, of course it IS) and that I shall be purchasing said new publication as quick as you like.
Which for me, defeats the point. Because I almost never read them. In fact sometimes I don't even get round to buying them. *shameface* And it's not because I don't like said writer friend, it's just that what they write just isn't my kind of 'read'. And if I bought every book written by every 'virtual friend then my shelves would be full to bursting with guilt-edged paperbacks.
So it was with great trepidation that I finally decided I'd self-publish my first teenage book.
My decision was 'helped along by a number of things, namely:

a particularly big Birthday looming
the encouragement and unfailing support of my beloved daughter, to whom the book is dedicated (although she hasn't read it... I rest my case...)
the fact that the characters in this book deserve to be met. They spent nearly two years with two separate agents, underwent three re-writes (at one agent's suggestions) and three different endings only to be shown the nice but still painful door marked 'Rejection'.
I loved designing the cover so much I wanted the world to see it.
a particularly Big Birthday .. wait, have I already said that?
The pressure of precisely Zero. - i.e. no Agent or Publisher to impress, no sales figures to worry about, no shonky marketing to panic over, no angsting over ranking and certainly no deadline over when/what book #2 will be because I've got that covered.

And actually it makes me sad to think that these 39 chapters would just be languishing idle in a dead file somewhere on the home pc and in the folder which sits beside me in my little room if I didn't set it 'free'.

When I finally pressed 'publish' on the Amazon site, I had a cup of tea and caught up with Sherlock. The only people I 'announced' it to was my daughter, my husband and a writerly friend. One texted me back with a 'whoop! one passed me a biscuit and Fi accidentally sent me her credit card details when she bought a copy* (thanks, our new TV is smashing!)
So, I give you 'Dead Good' (originally born 'Double History' and recently renamed) Also meet D A Cooper. She was me, once. She is still only half me. I'm actually a D.J. but a writer friend said the initials suggested more music than words.

It's here but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES is this to be 'pity-purchased' - I will be justifiably insulted if this happens and I WILL hunt you down (I'm sure I'd work out how and who and where.... so don't even TRY it :). I want this book to travel the good old-fashioned route to it's 'target' readership which is teenage/young adult based with a handsome ghost bias.
So, phew. Does this mean I don't get to die unpublished? Does it count? I'm still not entirely sure but I am very glad it has the chance of being read by whoever stumbles across it and I'm even looking forward to it getting some wobbly reviews. Any kind of feedback other than 'not for us, thanks' is going to be much better received, I guarantee.

By llama deciding

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000Z

I find anagrams quite fascinating – there are so many possibilities with each word. It's a time wasting exercise and I wonder about the intellectual capabilities of these websites which can jiggle letters so efficiently. They are so much quicker and smarter than the best contestants on Countdown. But rather than spend hours using my own brain, I decided to visit an anagram generator site to see what goods it would bring forth. Just for fun, of course. But it can get addictive! I typed my name first – I was ‘llama deciding’ then I moved on to a few of my favourite books. ‘The Secret History’ became ‘The Erotic Shyster’ and ‘Darkmans’ became ‘Mad Ranks’. I keyed in ‘The Dissident’ and the generator came up with ‘This Destined’. I then tried ‘Let The Great World Spin’ and it spat out ‘Shrewd Tolerant Piglet.’
Some are random and amusing, raising a giggle or two. I tried my own book – ‘Damning Ants’ it stated. Even if your book title is short, it guarantees a response as the generator will deal with seven to thirty characters. Poor William Shakespeare states ‘I Am A Weakish Speller’ while Julian Barnes is ‘Banal Injures’ and JM Coetzee is ‘Jeez Comet.’

Here is a fun list -

Great Expectations – ‘Castigate On Expert’

Wuthering Heights – ‘Win Thuggish Three’

The Satanic Verses – ‘Scares The Natives’

Cecilia Ahern – ‘A Chancier Lie’

The Sisters Brothers – ‘Birth Or The Stresses’

Pigeon English – ‘In Sleeping Hog’

The Sense Of An Ending – ‘An Eighteen Fondness’

Hunter S Thompson – ‘Shorten On Thumps’

AS Byatt – ‘Batty As’

Margaret Atwood – ‘Dear Warm To Goat’

Are there any books or authors the generator can’t handle? We could have hours of fun with this – try inputting your agent or publisher. See what comes up…..

Work, work, busy, busy...

2012-01-20T06:00:00.001Z

So last Friday you told us what you were reading and very interesting that was too. A bit like peeking into someone's bedroom. Only not as pervy.

Well we're still on a nosy kick and wondered, since we're all writers here, what you're currently working on.
Again, in a spirit of touchy feely sharing and wot-not, here's what the Strctly gang currently have on their desk.

Helen is on the first draft of her sixth novel which she has tentatively called Dark Spaces. And no it's not sci-fi.

Suzie is going through the copy-edit of The Making of Her and gasping at the number of hyphens she uses.

Gillian is writing a letter of complaint to a well known car dealer along the lines of 'Dear Sir, I'm really pissed off with your car...'

Fi is beginning a total re-write of her first novel. Gulp.

Caroline G is writing her third book for Picadilly Press. She's still on the first draft and finding her way in despite having a plan!

Caroline R is writing a 5,000 word essay on Ignaz Semmelweis for her MA. It is due in on Monday and frankly, she will be glad to see the back of it.

So come on guys. Tell us about your WIP.

The Birds and the Bees

2012-01-17T06:00:00.003Z

So it recently hit me that my novel will be published on (don’t snigger) April 1st and that the file labelled Marketing, which has hitherto sat on a shelf above my desk in a floaty, non-threatening, futuristic kind of way, has begun to jump up and down and beckon me – or whatever a marketing file without hands or feet does to signal Urgency.

It’s time, it seems, to enter the publicity machine. Or rather, the animal kingdom. I must imitate the bee and Create A Buzz around my book. I must emulate the bird and learn to Twitter and Tweet (even, it seems, to Re-Tweet - which for some disgusting reason brings to mind Refried Beans). I must copy the spider and spin a website to entice unwary media flies to my lair (mwa-ha-ha).

Now all this doesn’t come easily to me. One of my reasons for leaving the BBC, back in 1996, was because of the emphasis on what they called Your Profile In The Department. In other words, it wasn’t enough to make programmes: you had to be seen to be making them. Whereas all I wanted was to hide away in my tatty corner of the horribly open-plan office and just get on with it. Or so I told myself. So what’s different this time around?

Maybe, like any pushy parent, I want to do the best for my book. I want it to be top of the class, invited to all the right parties, chosen for the first team and elected Head Prefect (jolly hockeysticks and shades of Mallory Towers).

Or maybe my Media Tart is coming out of the closet.

O Media Tart – you of the black lace padded bra, the pillar-box lipstick, the tottering sparkly heels, the perpetually astonished Botoxed brows and the sooty false eyelashes, all the better to flutter at unwary victims –

Erm, sorry. I digress. Get back in that closet, will you, and shut the door.

So I’ve made a start on the seven pages of what-seemed-like-brilliant-ideas-at-the-time. I’ve contacted well-known media figures to ask if they might read and possibly review The Making of Her. So far, the tally is: three no’s (one of them absolutely delightful – thanks, Bel Mooney), one yes, perhaps and six waiting. I’ve crouched over Benn’s Media in the library, sandwiched between whispering students, and copied out 50 contacts, from glossy magazines to cosmetic surgery trade magazines. After that, I will turn to newspapers, literary festivals, bookgroups and local publications. My new Publicity Profile will be peppered with postcards and press releases. I will Face Up to Facebook, Brazen it at Bookstores, Bare All to Bloggers and generally learn to Be Nice.

The other day I had an email from my publisher, wondering whether a new book was in the pipeline. My inner writer attempted to reply, but was prevented by the Media Tart who had decided it was prudent to sit on her.

Will any of these activities make an iota of difference to sales? Ask me in six months time, when the inner writer will hopefully be back in her dark corner, plying her trade.

Meanwhile, let the Media Tart have her wicked, wanton way. Let her make predatory eyes at the press. Let her toss away her black bra and frolic with the birds and the bees.

And wish her luck, will you? I think she may need it

Same story, just different...

2012-01-16T06:00:00.001Z

Last Thursday I went to the cinema with three girlfriends.

To be honest, I rarely do this because Mr Black doesn't get home from work 'til 8.30pm at the earliest, and I worry the children will burn down the house, kill one another or eat the dog, if I head out of the house before he heads in. I recall a stern telephone conversation from Green Park tube station where I was telling my daughter that no, she should not boil an egg. When I say stern , you understand that that is middle class bullshit for shouting right? Commuters all around frowned at me while I screamed into my mobile, 'do not ruin my one night out a year by getting third degree burns! Do you hear me lady?'

Anway, I threw caution to the wind and left 'em to it on Thursday because we had tickets for We Need To Talk About Kevin.

I don't know if you've read the book. If you haven't, do so immediately. It is a work of - and I use this word advisedly - genius. It is the sort of book that, as a writer, you shake your head in awe at the intricacy on display. It's all there; voice, unreliable narrator, structure, tension, twist in the tale. The author, Lionel Shriver plays a blinder.

So I was really excited to see the film. I wasn't sure what to expect. I mean, we've all seen adaptations of books we love and hated them right? Personally, I don't know if I'll ever get over Fight Club. God knows I could look at Brad Pitt all freaking day but that film was a travesty I tell ya, a travesty.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those nay sayers who think all adaptations are rubbish. That the silver screen can never match the glory of the written word. I don't think that at all. Probably my fave book of all time is Trainspotting, or at leats it would come in my top five. And I bloody love that film too. Danny Boyle takes all the elements that make the novel seminal (the rock n roll cool factor, the complete lack of judgmentalism about drugs, the voices) and incorporates them into his film. What he doesn't do is try to follow the plot, such as it is, too closely or worry about the things that a book can do and a film can't. He leaves them be and runs with what a film can do that a book can't - a soundtrack for one.

Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin follows the same path in that the director leaves many of the central themes that she cannot replicate in cinema well alone, instead concentrating on breathtaking cinematography and symbolism that any shrink would be proud of. It is a feast for the eyes. The actors are all fabulous.
As a film it is both dazzlingly beautiful and unremittingly bleak.

But here's the thing. The book isn't either of those things. Where Danny Boyle ran with the original's coolth factor, just giving it to us differently, Lynne Ramsay skips what to my mind is the totem pole of the book, it's spine if you like. The thing that makes We Need To Talk About Kevin a page turner, and it is, despite knowing early on in proceedings what happens, was the reader's inability to guess where the truth lay. Was Kevin evil from birth? Or did his Mother simply hate him from birth? It is the central question which rages on every page...without it there is no We Need To Talk About Kevin. There is just a (undeniably beautiful) depiction of the aftermath of a horrible crime.

And speaking of which, I discovered when I got home that the kids hadn't eaten the dog but nor had they taken her out for an evening poo...

Friday's Reading Round up...

2012-01-12T11:36:00.003Z

When you see someone on the tube or the bus do you check out what they're reading?

Do you wonder what books other people have on their bedside table?

Don't know about you lot but for we Strictlies it's guilty as charged. So please indulge our nosiness and tell us what you're reading at present. We won't judge. And just to show our good faith, here's the list of what we've got on the go...

Helen is reading Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.
Fi has her head in The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
For Debs, it's Me Before You by Jo Jo Moyes.
Susie's half way through Three Men On a Plane by Mavis cheeks.
Gillian is juggling two: Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth and The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt.
Caroline G is reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.
And Rod is into Antoinette Quinn's biography of Patrick Kavanagh.

But this must surely win a prize?
Our Caroline R has this one keeping her up at night: The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality by Ronald Pearsall.

So come one. Fess up. Tell us what you're reading.

Grate cookbooks giving you a pizza their mind!

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000Z

Normally at Christmas we get stuck into the turkey (or the Quorn roast, if, like me you are a vegetarian), the mince pies and the puddings, but this year I wasn’t just as keen to go all traditional. Just before Christmas I Sky Plus-ed a programme called Jerusalem On A Plate which was a journey by chef Yotam Ottolenghi back to his native city, a place of strong food traditions. I love to sample dishes from other cultures and while watching the programme, my mouth watered as I saw the vast array of spices being added to vibrant dishes which are so much part of Arabic and Jewish culture. I suddenly forgot about the mediocre brussel sprouts, roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and creamy mash that I’d consumed and began reading more about these wonderful ingredients used in Middle Eastern cuisine. Chick peas, z’hatar, turmeric, olive oil, coriander, bulgar wheat, pomegranate and tahini. I wanted to explore more of the food of the Middle East and of course the politics that come with it so I did some reading.

As my appetite is now back in action following the hyperemesis episode, I’ve decided to amass a collection of Middle Eastern cookbooks. Yotam Ottolenghi’s new book Jerusalem is out this year, so I’m already looking forward to trying to recreate some of the recipes. I say ‘trying’ because I collect cookbooks merely to look at the pictures and dream about what I’d love to cook. Heck, Nigella Lawson is still sitting on my dining room sofa brandishing her whisk. Unfortunately I don’t have the ‘skillet takes’ (ha ha), the time, nor the patience to cook these often complex dishes, then clear up the mess. The mess is definitely the worst because no matter how hard I try, there are trails of breadcrumbs and dribbles of sauce everywhere. I did try making tabbouleh a few years ago but it ended up swimming in olive oil as I put in double what I should have.

One of the reasons why I love Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian cuisine is the vast array of vegetarian dishes which would be just as appetising to carnivores. I’ve always loved the flavours but never had the opportunity to explore it in depth. And chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi actually care about non-meat eaters, celebrating the wonders of exotic vegetables and spices. As I write this, I’m trying to cobble together another tabbouleh. I highly recommend watching Jerusalem On A Plate and also urge you to read up on this delectable cuisine which is bursting with flavour –

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017znj9/hd/Jerusalem_on_a_Plate/

What’s your favourite cookbook and why? Can you recommend any to add to my collection as I may have missed some?

Pic: my attempt at tabbouleh

Back to school?

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000Z

I love agood writing course. I’ve been on quite a few in the last few yearsincluding two run by Spread the Word and taken by the brilliant Maggie Gee, twoCornerstones residential ones with the brilliant Lee Weatherly, and a bunch ofothers here and there, not always with such brilliant tuition.

Thetrouble is that after a while, I started to realise that the same topics werecoming round again and again; plot and characterisation, dialogue, endings,and, almost always, how to pitch to agents and publishers.

It started to feelas though I was covering ground that I was already familiar with, and althoughI was no expert in any of it, I didn't need to hear the same advice all overagain.

So I stopped looking out for them.

But I'm starting to wish there was something out there for me. A course for when you have a certain level of experience, are maybe even already published,just to help brush up on skills and keep your writing as sharp as it can be.

In manyprofessions, career development courses are a job requirement. My husband is acriminal lawyer and must undertake twelve hours of training every year in orderto be allowed to continue doing his job. Doctors, nurses, teachers,librarians....they and many many others all have to take training courses tohelp them stay on top of the professional world they move in. I wish there wassomething similar for writers, too.

I don'twant to do asomething as intensive as an MA or a PhD. An Arvon course isn't something I could do until my children are a bit older.

I’d just like to take the occasional course that wastailored to my own level of experience.

What do you think, Strictly readers? Dosuch courses already exist?

Apply Within

2012-01-04T06:00:00.000Z

Position: Writer

Hours: 24 per day, 7 days perweek, 52 weeks per year... you get the idea. Yes, even whilst you sleep and shower and… other bathroom/ bedroomrelated activities.

Salary: Let’snot get ahead of ourselves now.

Duties: Mainlywriting. (And predominately writing stuff that people are going to WANT to read– pay good money to read and love so much that they will tell their friends andtheir family and in return make money for the publishers of your book, youragent, and, somewhere along the line, maybe even you [see *salary above]).

Oh, you’ll also have to keep on the paidwork. The one that allows you to pick upscintillating tidbits of gossip from colleagues and turn them into workableplots and believable characters. Becauseotherwise how will you pay for the fuel that keeps the keyboard and screenworking? And eat. Hmm?

Qualities: Over-activeimagination from birth. Tendency to reada lot, write a lot and make a lot of stuff up – whilst not necessarily allowingimaginary stuff to escape mouth (unless cruel boys/thuggish girls deserve it, andactually, maybe not even then, unless you want to get a severe telling-off fromthe Head for being melodramatic) (in front of said bullies) (making it worse)(somebody stop me, I’m whittering).

Abilityto construct sentences; to spell words correctly (or use of spellchecker) andsome grasp of grammar. Humour,intelligence, desire to connect with invisible audience and above all, *capacityto remain unruffled in the face of limitless rejections from agents (initially)(rejections will become ‘bad reviews’ if/when published).

Okay then, *thick skin will do.

Experience: A smatteringof the following would be helpful:

Betrayal
First Love
Childbirth
Bullying
Divorce
Marriage
Death
Good times
Better times
Bad times
Worse times
Rejection
Invisible friends

Makes you wonder what sort of eejit would even THINK about applying for a job like this, doesn't it?!

The Elevator Pitch

2012-01-03T06:00:00.003Z

"Once upon a time, in a far away land, where the streets were paved with gold, there lived a lady writer called Amelia. Her cat, Puss in Boots had made friends with the local Emperor, who liked to walk naked through the town. Her best friend Rapunzel had been imprisoned in a nearby tower and lived her life waiting for a faithful prince to come and rescue her. In the garden of Amelia's house, the house she had bought from Jack's mother, a cutting of a beanstalk leading towards the sky often echoed with the sound of overhead giants.

Sometimes, Amelia felt like she was living in a strange fairytale..."

It's a given that fairy tales have a happy ending. It's more or less understood in chick lit that the girl will get her man and in a tale of good versus evil that good will win out. So spinning a yarn on paper, should be simple. Easy peasy.

The reality is that we writers have many moments of being in the horrors. Days, weeks, spent wondering what the hell we are doing.Times when we doubt ourselves, tell ourselves to stop this madness and move on - do something else with our time. If I had a pound for every time I felt those feelings, it would provide (at least) a part time income. If I had a pound for everyone who looked blankly at me saying 'You're a writer, have I heard of something you've written?' only to follow it up (before I've had a chance to reply) with 'I've thought about writing a book, they say everyone's got one in them, don't they?'

Yes. 'They' frigging do.

So it must be a cinch really, this writing lark. After all, everyone's got a book in them.

Well I've had three actually. All of them pretty steep learning curves in this apprenticeship. But if I'm honest, I can now see their faults clearly and before/if I embark on another novel, I'm determined to try one extra thing I haven't previously done - What’s that? Answer in one to three lines what the story is about... I now believe every novel should have a succinct elevator pitch - saying exactly what the story core is. A pared back pitch from which everything else hangs, the bones without the meat - you get the picture. What is the book REALLY about?

For example, in the case of my opening paragraph:

Rapunzel – A beautiful young woman is trapped, then, realises she already holds the means of her escape in her hands.

The Emperors New Clothes - A vain powerful man is conned by people who know his weakness.

It's easier to do with fairy-tales and of course it can always be done after you've read a novel you love. It is however not easy to do before you write one, or even during the structured writing process. It's different to ‘theme.’ You have to pare the layers away to get to the story core. I could write a book about love, identity and healing friendship - all wonderful themes, but if asked to elevator pitch it to Steven Spielberg in one line, I'd probably say 'It's about a friendly alien who lands on earth and needs to find a way home'.

So what's your current WIP really about? Be it a short story, a poem, a novel, could you have that short succinct reply ready if you met Le Spielberg in an elevator and he asked you that question. Or, despite what I now think, does it even matter?

For the journey...

2012-01-02T06:00:00.003Z

We writers need all the support we can get on what can be a lonely journey. No wonder we join writing communities and writing groups, sign up for writing classes and follow writer’s blogs. It helps to know that others like ourselves are out there, rooting for us, encouraging us, teaching us and supporting us. The tribe of writers is a vast one, spanning the globe and almost every age-group and circumstance.

So as we embark on this new year, I thought I’d write about the resources which have been most helpful on my own writer’s journey. Perhaps you’d like to add your own.

FOR EARLY INSPIRATION

The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
This is the most brilliant resource to really help you focus on your creativity. Especially good if you like a structure. Its combination of a 12-week plan, daily Morning Pages and walking and a weekly Artist’s Date are excellent for restoring your own confidence in yourself as a creative person.

Becoming A Writer – Dorothea Brande
Written many decades ago, this is still seen as a definitive guide to becoming a writer.

The Way We Write – Barbara Baker
A collection of fascinating essays by writers in many different genres about their writing practices.

WHILST WRITING

I love The Complete Book of Novel Writing (everything you need to know about creating and selling your work) - Writers Digest – a vast tome which is made up of essays by writers, each focussing on a different angle of the novel-writing process. Really good on the craft of writing.

Stein on Writing - Sol Stein is fabulous. Stein is both an editor and a successful novelist and he Talks Sense. His other book on growing a novel is also great.

EDITING

This one’s a bit controversial. Self-Editing For Fiction Writers - Browne and King is the Marmite of the editing guides. I found it helpful. Judge for yourself.

FOR THE LOWS: REJECTION, EXHAUSTION ETC.

The Resilient Writer (tales of rejection and triumph from 23 writers) – Catherine Wald
This cheered me up during the hard times.

The Writer’s Book of Hope – Ralph Keyes
Ditto

The Sound of Paper and The Right to Write – Julia Cameron
In these, Cameron is very open about her own writerly rocky patches and how she copes with the hard times.

SUBMITTING

From Pitch to Publication – Carole Blake
Written by the founder of literary agents Blake Friedmann. Gives a good overview of the process of submitting from an agent’s point of view. Not sure about her advice about long synopses, but if you’re subbing to her, you know what you need to do!

MARKETING AND PUBLICITY

Marketing Your Book – Alison Baverstock
Wanna Be A Writer We’ve Heard Of? – Jane Wenham-Jones

ONLINE COMMUNITY

WriteWords Writing Community
A great online resource where writers can get together, let off steam, learn, be critiqued and where several well-published authors are experts and are extremely generous with their time and advice. Free for a month’s trial, then £20/35 per year.
http://writewords.org.uk/

EDITORIAL REPORTS

The Hilary Johnson Author’s Advisory Service
I sent off my first three chapters, synopsis and cover letter and received a very helpful and encouraging report.
http://www.hilaryjohnson.demon.co.uk/

Cornerstones
Have heard good things about them. They also occasionally have competitions which are well worth entering.
http://www.cornerstones.co.uk/

The Writer’s Workshop
Again, heard good things. And they will look at your cover letter by email for free, or at least they used to.
http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/literary-agents.html

COURSES AND OPPORTUNITIES

NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education, aka The Writers Compass)
Used to be called Literature Training. An excellent, free guide to opportunities for writers – courses, classes, jobs etc. You only need to sign up with them and they’ll email you updates every couple of weeks.
http://www.nawe.co.uk/the-writers-compass/about-the-writers-compass.html

Arvon Foundation
I’ve never been on an Arvon course myself, but pretty much everyone I know who has has returned singing their praises. Expensive, yes, but they have the very best tutors and also offer bursaries.
http://www.arvonfoundation.org/p1.html

AND FINALLY...

A friend was kind enough to post me the Guardian Masterclass supplement on How To Write Fiction – a really, really excellent publication which is now available as an e-book for less than £3: definitely worth it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2011/oct/14/how-to-write-fiction-ebook

So that’s my personal list of resources. Would love to hear yours.

And wishing you all a creative, productive and successful writing year from all of us at Strictly.

Happy New Year Everyone!

2012-01-01T12:27:00.003Z

May the next 365 days bring happiness, health, and writing success to us all.

New Beginnings?

2011-12-23T06:00:00.004Z

The Winter Solstice has just passed. The darkness of winter is slowly and almost imperceptibly giving way to the light. This is the true New Year.

No, I’m not going to bang on about writerly resolutions. Instead, I’m thinking about new beginnings. And when they’re necessary, writing-wise.

My first novel was a bit of a miracle. I’d turned up for a week’s How To Write A Novel course, run by the redoubtable romantic novelist, Jane Pollard. I arrived clutching my WIP like a lifebelt – not much of it, but a beginning nonetheless – all bright-eyed and ready to Learn. Imagine my horror when Jane told us to abandon any novel we’d already begun and to start, this week, from scratch. What the hell would I write about? But I reluctantly let the novel go.

That night, something extraordinary happened. After a long day on the course, the germ of an idea appeared. I sat at my kitchen table and began to write. By next morning I had a story. Something I’d never thought of writing. I knew who the characters were to be. I knew roughly what happened and how. I knew how it ended. Indeed, when Jane had us write a sex scene during the week’s course, I wrote the final scene. And whilst much of the novel has changed over the course of the following five years, that scene has remained almost untouched.

So I’ve been struggling to write my second novel for ages. I got as far as a third of the way through, and stopped. Then I embarked on a frenzy of editing – bad idea - and stopped again. I ran it past various writerly friends and colleagues – and stopped yet again.

Of course it’s different second time around. I’ve been busy editing and preparing the first novel for publication. I have a marketing plan to sort out. I’ve also moved house twice in a year and had countless stressful things to deal with. Is this the reason why I haven’t written anything new for over a year? Could be. Or is it fear? Quite possibly. Or the dreaded Second Novel Syndrome? Wouldn’t be surprised.

Or do I need to let this novel go and see whether there’s a sliver of a new idea waiting to be born?

It’s a knotty question. It may be that I haven’t fully committed to the novel. It may be that I haven’t yet fallen in love with the characters or the plot. These things may happen in time. Or they may not.

It’s a bit like being in a relationship which has weathered the early, heady days but got stagnant. Do you persevere with it in the hope that it will deepen and revive or let it go and trust that something more resembling a soulmate will appear?

Part of me longs to set the current novel aside and start again, from scratch. To sign up for a course in novel-writing and begin again at the beginning. To somehow wipe away the years of rejection and angst and find again that bright-eyed innocence, that trust in the process and a successful outcome. But as William Blake wrote, once you’ve been through the process of Experience you will never have that innocence again. All you can do is bring your newfound experience to bear on the next thing, and try to learn to trust.

So my toast, this Winter Solstice, is to new beginnings. Whether this means a new commitment to an old love, or the search for a new, unknown one. Perhaps all that’s required is an empty heart. I wish you all joy for your writerly festivities and all creativity and joy for the year to come. Oh, and here are three quotes, as companions on the journey:

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
F.Scott Fitzgerald

Standing on the starting line, we are all cowards.
Alberto Salazar

You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.
Barbara Sher

Not a Partridge Nor a Pear Tree In Sight...

2011-12-22T06:00:00.003Z

I had this post drafted when there were twelve days to Christmas and had it all nicely tied in the with festive song. However, without boring you with the details, I’m posting a later version of it now. And it’s really got nothing to do with the song, not a sign of milking maids or partridges... It hasn’t even got anything to do with Christmas... However, it is my little gift to you procrastinators out there who like to browse websites/articles with writer-ly stuff. One for each day left in 2011 – enjoy!

1. www.unbound.co.uk

Interesting concept where readers pledge unpublished authors support in getting their book published

2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2040044/Kindle-How-make-million-writing-e-book.html

Article on e-publishing with Kindle. Could YOU make a million?

3. http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-write-synopsis.html

Do you, like me, dread the word ‘synopsis’?

4. http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

How to write a novel using the ‘snowflake method’.

5. http://www.creative-writing-now.com/short-story-ideas.html

A link for those writers who are interested in the world of short stories, but the site offers so much more as well.

6. http://inkygirl.com/a-writers-guide-to-twitter

Do you tweet? If not, should you?

7. http://writewords.org.uk/

Brilliant writer’s forum website and the first place where I met some fab writer friends!

8. http://www.be-a-better-writer.com/character-name-generator.html

Stuck on a name for that guy inside your head? Name your characters in a simple click!

9. http://www.writersstore.com/character-driven-or-action-driven

An interesting read on character versus plot. Which do you write naturally?

10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/07/writers-pen-names

Pen names – why and how?

"Fifty Things I've Learned About The Literary Life"

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000Z

Apologies for the cop-outedness in the compilation of this post, but when I read this I immediately wanted to share it with you all...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/fifty-literary-life-robert-mccrum

And A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS to everybody!

Important announcement

2011-12-19T09:30:00.000Z

YOU SHOULD NOT BE READING THIS.

GO AND DO SOME WRITING -

STOP PROCRASTINATING.

Happy Christmas from Roderic.

(Hope to see you back here tomorrow for our next post)

A Recipe for Success: Guest post by Sam Tonge

2011-12-16T06:00:00.000Z

This week, after 6 years of subbing to agents, I finally signed a contract.Whilst I know this alone is no guarantee of a publishing deal – let alone Hollywood film rights, dinner at The Ivy or worldwidestardom – it’s an important step for me, up onto the first rung of an author’scareer ladder.

So, how have Iaccomplished this? What is my particular recipe for success?

100g of Maths

Hemingway said youneeded to write 1,000,000 words before you were publishable. Okay. I’ve written5 books. That’s 500,000 words. Plus short stories this last year. Call that30,000 with all the rewrites. Blogging for a year, four years at universityyears ago if I can count that… All in all I’ve probably raked up 700,000 words.I’d say once you hit the half million mark, you are seriously on your way.

Someone else said ittook 10,000 hours of practise to become the top of your field – an outstandingsportsman or great concert pianist. Okay. For the last 6 years I’ve probablywritten a minimum of 15 hours a week, minus 2 weeks hols. 50 weeks x 15 = 750,750 x 6 years = 4500 hours. Plus all the extra stuff – uni etc – I’ve probablyracked up around 6000-7000 hours. So, again, whilst there’s still great roomfor improvement, I’d say rack up around 5000 hours of writing practise and thatfirst rung of the ladder should be in sight.

50g of Networking

Networking in itselfwill get you nowhere if the writing is not good enough. But it will open doorsinto getting your work read, hearing about new agents setting up and lookingfor clients, making friends with other writers who will introduce you to theiragents. Over the years, through contacts, I have had large chunks of my novelread by certain agents. They’ve never offered me a deal, clearly I wasn’t readyyet – but their feedback was always invaluable. Join an online forum and get toknow other writers on Facebook. Blog. Attend literary events. Get yourself outthere.

50g of Feedback

Join an onlineworkshop. Upload your work to get critique and, just as importantly, critiqueother writers’ work – it will teach you a lot. Over the years I’ve also hadseveral editorial reports done, from which I’ve probably learnt the most.

I medium-sized eyefor the market

Don’t write in avacuum. Keep an eye on what is selling in your genre.

A pinch of madness

Only a fool would putthemselves through years of rejection, right? Treat with large quantities ofchocolate and Chardonnay.

To Decorate

Ice with a huge dollopof determination and sprinkle with sweat and tears.

For some the recipe ismore straightforward and may contain nothing more than an appearance on acelebrity reality show and a ghostwriter. But for most of us, the combinationof ingredients is more complex. Whatever your own personal recipe turns out tobe, I wish you the best of luck. Don’t give up. The final taste is worth it.

Gimme more...

2011-12-15T06:00:00.001Z

As most of you know, I'm a fairly prolific writer. Not for me endless hours waiting for the muse to strike. But when I read the blog post below, I felt like the biggest fattest amateur out there.

http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html

I must admit that much of what the author said made massive sense to me.

Her first revelation that plotting saves time came as no surprise to me. Indeed, I am already a heavy plotter, knowing pretty much what a scene will look like before I come to my PC. Often I will have already played it out in my head and know who says what to who and where.

I'll have also asked myself the question...where does this scene take me? And I will have satisfied myself that it is integral, nay essential for the story. All before I begin to type.

I know that there are as many methods of writing as there are writers. And I know that the things this author highlights will seem counter intuitive to many. But I would urge anyone who needs to increase their output to at least consider these methods. I'd also give 'em a shot if I were 'stuck'.

Anyway, have another peep at the link and tell me what you think.

I'm A Writer, Get Me Out Of Here!

2011-12-13T06:00:00.003Z

I’m sure you didn’t watch this year’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Did you? I'm sorry to say that I wasted many hours watching various ‘celebs’ Facing Up To Their Fears.

The fascination lies in the way each individual has a completely different comfort zone when it comes to phobias. The Incredible Hunk (Mark Wright) was reduced to a whimpering bundle of terror when faced with a night in bed with a bunch of rats. Antony Cotton from Corrie had a panic attack at the thought of jumping out of a plane. Fatima Whitbread, on the other hand, battled her way through every trial in a gladiator-like manner, even when a cockroach got stuck up her nose. I’m full of admiration for them all, since I’m the Sinitta of the phobia world – petrified of everything.

Which leads me to wonder: what are your writing/marketing phobias? Where does your comfort zone end?

For months now I’ve been compiling a vast file of ideas for publicising my novel, ranging from having postcards printed (to press upon any poor soul who shows an interest) to randomly approaching well-known people for reviews. I’ve even done a public speaking course (which was actually excellent and enjoyable and which helped on many different levels).

So now I’m asking myself how far I’d be prepared to step out of my own comfort zone in order to let people know about my book? Would I walk into one of the large booksellers and ask them to stock my book? Would I learn how to write a magazine article and trawl it around likely publications? Would I dress up in a silly animal costume and give out leaflets? I realised I’d be prepared to do quite a few of these, if they seemed promising (fortunately the animal costume wouldn't be relevant, unless it was a book worm).

But there’s one experience which really terrifies me and feels waaaaay outside my comfort zone. The Radio Interview. Especially live. I fear that I’d find myself a) unable to talk any sense or, worse, b) unable to speak at all. After all, that's why I write - because I can express myself better on the page than at the microphone.

But a writing friend – whose comfort zone boundaries easily encompass radio interviews – suggested that I prepare myself for the (unlikely) eventuality of an interview by thinking about the kinds of questions I might be asked. Rather as an arachnaphobe might be persuaded to open a book about spiders before facing up to touching the real thing. And she suggested that I ask you, dear readers, for your help.

So here goes.

If you were listening to me being interviewed on the radio, what kind of questions would you want me to answer? And what kind of questions would you expect the interviewer to ask me? (My novel, The Making of Her, is contemporary women’s fiction and is about television, cosmetic surgery, middle age and transformation).

Any thoughts would be hugely appreciated!

And please be gentle, or I might scream...

Ya Gotta Have Faith...

2011-12-12T06:00:00.003Z

This post is directed at writers who have faced rejection. Yes, I know that means all of you, each and every one of you. Anyone who writes - published or unpublished, agented or un-agented has to put themselves out there in the line of fire and if and when rejection knocks on the door, there’s a decision to be made. The guarantee is that it will hurt. How much is dependent on you, the writer. Is it going to be a bruising body blow? A crushing kick in the solar plexus? Or a fatal beating from which you/your writing will never recover?

I had one this week. If rejections can be good, it was a good one complementing my ‘distinctive narrative voice’ and ‘my intriguing characters’. There was, however, a ‘but’ which I could sense looming through the good stuff. My downfall was apparently my plot. Whilst it wasn't missing, it wasn't convincing either.

I immediately started my survival process. The first step was denial, where I stuck my fingers in my ears and chanted, while closing down the email and pretending that it never arrived. The second step was that I told no-one, but talked to myself in my head about it for days. I call this my ‘licking my wounds’ phase. Stage three happened in bed this morning at five a.m. (Saturday), the time that I decided was the right moment to discuss the week’s events with my long suffering hubster.

He may not be as glad as I am for the early morning chat. But I needed it. Through my inevitable tears, he told me kindly but bluntly that I had two choices. Give up or carry on. He told me that I was too good to give up and that I may still have a lot to learn but to give myself credit for what I have learned. He suggested that I invent an alter ego – my writing self, who does all the work but deals with the down side too. He suggested I call her Faith.

It’s now 7:15 on Saturday morning. The tears have stopped. I’m back at the laptop counting my blessings. Faith is administering arnica to her bruises and beginning to think about her plot problems. The hubster is deservedly asleep and no, he’s not available for hire. Those short sharp motivational interventions are just for me – and Faith.

Okay, okay... You lot can share them too.

Back in the subbing game - guest post by Jo Carlowe

2011-12-09T06:00:00.000Z

Wrestling with elastic bands, the disappointing thud on thedoormat of a returned manuscript and that: ‘From Pitch to Publication’ plug shamelesslyinserted into agent Carole Blake’s rejection letters.

For me all the above sum up the self-flagellatory processthat typifies the book submissions’ process.

It’s been a while since I’ve done this – in fact it’s beennearly eight years. I recall the routine the first time round. It was gruellingand exhausting. It did eventually involve me being signed up to an agency and ridingthat rollercoaster of false hope. It ended without a book deal and therealisation that if I wanted to pay my mortgage and raise a family then I’dbetter put aside such a foolish dream.

Nonetheless, I made a promise to myself – once the kids wereold enough and I had a little more time, I would write fiction again. It’s apledge that I’ve kept and it’s been every bit as enjoyable and fulfilling asthe first time I set pen to paper.

Last week, I decided I was finally ready to seek out anagent. So I bought a copy of the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook and read theadvice section convinced that in this digital age, there would be differencesof which I should be cognisant.

But to my shock, nothing had changed. I assumed that in theyears that had passed, agents would not only accept emailed submissions butwould insist upon this (it’s environmentally the right thing to do). I waswrong. When it comes to adult fiction, agents still, for the most part, requestpostal submissions.

Even the guidance was the same: lots of stuff about properelastic band usage, correctly spelling the agent’s name and not playing fastand loose with font selection (Wingdings being an obvious no-no).

It is as though time has stood still. Everything is as itever was. My only hope this time, is that the outcome, at the very least, willbe different.

Jo Carlowe is afreelance journalist writing features on health, psychology and lifestyle. Sheis working on her novel: ‘Fly-By’ – a contemporary adventure love-story.www.jocarlowe.com

Merry Christmas, Mr Agent

2011-12-08T06:00:00.002Z

Dear Mr Agent

I’ve wanted to write to you since receiving my Dear John letter and finally I’ve got the time to pick up my pen and tell you how I feel. Some time ago I sent you my book and you wrote back and said you didn’t like it. Well, you said it was a fantastic story worthy of being told, held your attention, blah blah blah, the characters were believable, but you just didn’t love it enough to take it further. So, I’m writing back to tell you I LOVE the book and so do all my friends. In fact, a publisher loves it so much, he’s gonna print it and make me rich. As filthy rich as JK Rowling and Dan Brown combined. He said I’m gonna make millions from this book and he’s gonna turn it into a big Hollywood Blockbuster.

So have yourself a merry Christmas. When you’re chomping on your mince pie, and sipping on the brandy on December 25th, you can think back and wonder how it could have been. You could be rich now. You could be pulling out your wallet, flashing the cash, ordering a Ferrari and holidaying with Richard Branson. You could have bought a nice bottle of Bollinger and some fancy nibbles with your cut of my earnings. I bet you’re sitting there right now, watching the Queen’s speech with your paper crown on your head, thinking: ‘Crikey, if only I’d signed Mrs Writer.’ Well, this is your annus horribilis and you deserve every minute of it. I hope you choke on a brussel sprout.

I should also point out that, if I am invited to the Booker awards this year, I may just ask you to come as my partner, because quite frankly, I really want to see your expression as you sit in your seat while I collect my award. I may even thank you for not signing me, as I’ll get to keep the extra 12 per cent. With that, I’ll buy myself an Aston Martin. You’re not allowed in it.

All that’s left for me to say is Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I’m off to stuff my vegetarian roast and put on my expensive crown, not the ones you buy in supermarkets. I buy the really expensive ones which have gifts such as Mont Blanc pens and Breitling watches inside. And I’m actually pulling one of the crackers as I write this. I’m putting on my watch, and putting the finishing touches to my submission with my Mont Blanc. Are you jealous? I bet you are!

Yours sincerely

A Writer

10 Ways to Stay Unpublished

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000Z

1. Don't write anything.

2. Don't write anything anybody else likes.

3. Don't send anything you (might) write to an agent and/or publisher. Only other people get signed up anyway.

4. Don't enter writing competitions. Somebody else always wins.

5. Sign up for every writing magazine going - they'll be handy to make kindling from in the winter.

6. Make sure 98 percent of your Facebook 'friends' are proper published authors. Read of their success. Sigh. Repeat.

7. Read books that suck. Beat yourself up that you didn't have the nerve to send off a sucky book to anybody (because you followed rules 1-3 above. Either that or you're a Double D-list celebrity who's cashing on on Christmas. But let's not get bitter. You could just be a crap writer).

8. Write crap.

9. Watch repetitively mind-numbingly destimulating reality TV shows and debate the meaning of life from behind a cushion of shame.

10. Sign up to do NaNoWriMo, add some buddies, read the messages on the forum, wonder if you might like to join your local writing group who meet up in Starbucks every Sunday morning, read some excerpts and watch their wordcounts soar. Decide you're better off staying in bed, beating yourself up and reading crap until 1st December.

Reading a Kindle in the bath

2011-12-06T06:00:00.001Z

Last month I had a birthday. The occasion leaves me well and truly within the realms of 'middle aged' – but I was fortunate enough to receive one of them new-fangled things that all the cool kids are calling a 'Kindle'.

Before then, I was very pro-ebook but reluctant to commit to a device that didn't do anything else. I'd been reading on my iPod Touch for the past couple of years, but was wary of forking out for something that only displayed ebooks, especially as the iPod Touch served the purpose very well, in addition to getting on the internet, playing music and providing handy apps.

I was, however, grateful to receive the Kindle, and its usefulness quickly became apparent. I can email academic papers to it rather than having to print them off and have loads of bits of A4 floating around the house at the mercy of a 4-year-old boy and a Staffordshire bull terrier. So far, I've used the Kindle as a PDF-reader rather than a book reader, and for that purpose it's brilliant. I can highlight bits and add comments, and the Kindle lets me view all these highlights in one go, which makes it a great way of summarising a document.

There are some things I'm not so keen on – I find it hard to adjust to the lack of backlighting, and haven't yet found a contrast setting that's as clear as a paper book in ordinary light. It all just seems very grey. Although the Kindle is supposed to be ideal for reading in direct sunshine, well... I live in England, so that's not really an issue. The experimental web browser is well... experimental, (assuming 'experimental' is a synonym for 'crap'). And using arrow keys to tap out a search in the Kindle store is so tedious that I haven't actually bought anything. But overall, I like not having to take print-outs on the train, and another advantage is that my young son doesn't try to commandeer it – he gets bored with the fact that the touch-screen inexplicably doesn't work.

I still haven't read an actual book on it, but I was getting along well with the Kindle until the other day, when I discovered I had been committing a terrible offence that probably dates back to the time of King Alfred or someone. I have been reading my Kindle in the bath.

I had no idea this was a Bad Thing. But when idly looking online for other people's opinions I found out that the phrase 'and you can't read it in the bath!' (presumably accompanied by a hoik of the bosom and a catsbum expression) is the last word in arguments against e-readers.

Why the heck can't you read a Kindle in the bath? If you're worried about dropping it – well, don't bloody drop it then! It's not as if we all went around chucking printed books willy-nilly into baths before Kindles came along. I'm not really bothered about steam getting into it, but for those who are, I'm sure clear plastic bags aren't that difficult to find these days. It's still easier than reading a weighty hardback.

Now that I've said this, there is of course the chance that irony will rise to the challenge and make me drop the Kindle into the water. Luckily I'm one step ahead of that possibility – to cheer myself up in the event of it happening, I've already started saving for an iPad.

And for my next excuse . . .

2011-12-05T06:00:00.002Z

Isn't it wonderful the way life contrives to stand in the way of writing? If you are anything like me then half the time you can't write for reasons of paralysis. I've had long periods when my confidence has been so low I can't even look the laptop in the eye. Apart, that is, from the usual displacement activities of checking emails, facebook, writing sites, etc. At those times I have an almost visceral revulsion at the thought of sitting down to write, and I would welcome any excuse not to do so. This is accompanied by pounding sensations of guilt. Strange, isn't it, that an activity that we don't have to do, and that hardly anyone cares if we do, causes such oppressive guilt when we don't. Usually those periods of gloom have followed a series of rejections in my case. But that isn't how I feel today.

I've had a reasonable share of encouragement recently, with pieces published or doing okay in competitions. Enough scraps of endorsement to keep me going. My confidence is in the greenish amber zone at the moment, maybe even in the green much of the time. So I'm chucking out the words? Racing to the writing desk? Filled with inspiration? Well, not really. Just when you get your fragile mental state together life comes along. Recently it has been family disasters. Illnesses and other problems that I won't go into here but which stopped me in my writing tracks. It seems that there is always something to climb over to reach the writing desk. As well as the personal stuff, work has picked up. It's nice to be earning some cash, but working twelve hour days in Frankfurt with virtually no breaks doesn't leave you full of energy to dash out a short story or a sonnet at bedtime. And now that things are finally settling down again on the family front, and I have the prospect of a couple of weeks away from real work, there's Christmas. Bah humbug!

What The? Seriously!

2011-12-01T06:00:00.000Z

I loathe books which contain glaringly obvious errors, not that there are many out there, but every now and then, one just has to escape through the net. My pet hate with this book started around a year ago when I purchased it from a garden centre. Granted, it wasn’t Waterstone’s or Barnes and Noble, but I did feel the retailer had a duty to sell products which are not misrepresented. It was an impulse buy along with a trowel, a funny book about cats and their antics and some Burt’s Bees products.

The book in question, Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, promised lots of mouthwatering recipes to keep me and my tastebuds entertained. It was heavily discounted – the sticker stated: GREAT VALUE - publisher’s price £12.99, our price £3.99 - but that doesn’t excuse the fact that there were some serious errors in it.

Firstly, it was a ‘vegetarian’ cookbook not a ‘vegetable’ cookbook which would let it off the hook (note to veggies – never order the ‘vegetable’ dish whilst dining out without checking first if it is vegetarian friendly). It contains some of my favourite recipes including Israeli avocado cream, tahini, hummous, stuffed peppers and garlic mushrooms. Upon opening the book, I looked at a photograph and though ‘gosh, they look unusual, I’ve never tasted those exotic vegetables.’ Upon closer inspection I realised the photograph was…shock, horror….prawns!

I leafed onward…..flick, flick, flick, then stopped at a recipe as I noticed the odd man out – gelatine. ‘Crikey, I thought. The writer must be referring to the vegetarian friendly gelatine you sometimes see at Tesco.’ I read some more, pondered making a garlic soup to scare away the vampires, then noticed another suspect recipe. I felt the urge to vomit – ‘Crudites with anchovy dip’. No thanks. Many vegetarians wouldn’t even touch an anchovy, let alone insert it into their mouths. Pescatarians, like Gok Wan would though. Then came another recipe, this time for anchovy dressing. Maybe the author lives near a stream and her husband likes fishing? Maybe someone dumped a load of anchovies on her doorstep (remember PETA dumped a load of horse manure at Gordon Ramsay’s Claridges? Snigger) and she needs rid of them? I then gave Mrs Author the benefit of the doubt and attributed it to a typo. ‘Perhaps she means alfalfa instead of anchovies?’ I muttered.

There is a long lengthy foreword about how modern food production methods have made meat much cheaper than before and adds how the slaughter of animals has caused many to switch on to a vegetarian lifestyle. I looked at another recipe for a yoghurt and tahini dip which, wait for it, would be, and I quote from the book, ideal to ‘serve as an accompaniment to vegetables, salads and also meat or fish dishes.’

How does the publisher get away with a serious error like this? It’s like buying ‘Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone’ and finding ‘The Da Vinci Code’ inside. This leaves me with a dilemma – do I close the book and put it away, give it to a second hand bookshop for another vegetarian to be surprised, or do I write to the publisher? I’m inclined to go for the third (veggie) option.

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000Z

Papering over the cracks

Ireceived a proof copy of my second YA novel for PiccadillyPress the other day. It’s called Cracks and comes out in May 2012.

Istarted to write this one well before my first book, Dark Ride , was accepted, and I wanted to tell you a bit about how it all came about.

Itwas Christmas 2009 and I had just been through a bruising round of submissionand rejection with Dark Ride. Iwas seriously starting to wonder if I would ever get published. Looking back atmy diary from that time, I wrote this:

Have nothing to say on creativestuff…just a big tumbleweedy, miserable feeling about it all.

SoI wallowed for a bit. Then I wallowed a bit more. Then I got heartily sick of wallowing. After a while, a desire to get stuck in to another story started to take over.

I’m absolutely desperate to writesomething now. I’m so fed up with not having a writing project on the go. I’vegot to stop obsessing about writing something the market wants and just writeSOMETHING…..

Andthen just like that, there was some sort of mental shift. By that same eveningI said..

I find myself thinking more andmore about an idea for something called Cracks. I’m imagining a boy who keepsseeing huge cracks and chasms appearing in the world that no one else can see.

Justlike that, I was off and writing again. It’s true what people say. Gettingstuck into a new book was instant pain relief for that bruised-all-overfeeling.

I gotthe book deal for Dark Ride about five months later, by which time I’d writtena fair chunk of Cracks and was able to show it to my new editor. Very happilyfor me, this was accepted too.

WritingCracks was no easy ride though and I ended up tearing my hair out in severaldrafts, trying to make the story work. My poor editor can testify that therewere many days when I wailed, ‘I can;t do it!’ But somehow, between us, we gotthere in the end and I’m very proud of the final result.

Themoral of this tale? When those rejections keep pinging into your Inbox or landingwith a horrible thud on the doorstep, there really is only one way to ease theagony. Start something else.

[Oh andif anyone ever tries to say that publishing a second book doesn’t have the sameexcitement and thrill as the first? They’re lying.]

Reading in public - an update.

2011-11-29T06:00:00.001Z

A few weeks ago I posted here about my fears of reading in public. With some of my poems shortlisted for competitions or appearing in literary magazines I have been finding myself in front of a microphone more often and I wasn’t enjoying it. I hated it. The first time I did a poetry slam it was a traumatic experience and I actually worried that I might not be able to make the journey up to the stage.

Well, here’s an update. A friend of mine, David Pullen, who works with executives on communication skills read that post and contacted me. David said he thought he might be able to help reduce my fear and generously offered to travel up from Sussex to visit me.

A week later we were sitting in the summer house where I do my writing. First David interviewed me about three examples of reading my work when I had experienced extreme fear. He also asked about a place where I felt deeply relaxed. I described the path through the tramontana-swept pines behind the beach in Catalonia, near where we have a holiday apartment.

Next David took me through a sort of hypnotic journey. After helping me to relax and counting backwards slowly he asked me to walk in my mind along the path through those pines until I happened upon a television. David had me watch videos of my previous terrifying experiences of reading my work in public. I had to watch the videos both forwards and backwards and I remember finding it faintly odd, but I tried to give myself up to the suggestions he was making. It helped that David has an open, trustworthy manner and as a former actor he also has a soothingly pleasant voice. When he brought me out of the trance I was surprised to find that there was nothing else to be done. His hope was that this would reduce my fear in the future.

Since then I have done several readings. I was eager to test whether this strange hypnotic journey would make any difference so I signed up for the open mic session “Poetry Unplugged” run by the wonderful Niall O’Sullivan at The Poetry Café in Betterton Street. They get a good crowd there and I had to wait for about twenty poets to read before I got my chance at the microphone. Amazingly, I was much less nervous than I would previously have been. In fact I spent most of the time trying to calculate how nervous I was – in an interested sort of way. In the last few weeks I have also taken part in the open mic session at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, with minimal nerves and have recited one of my poems at a friend’s fiftieth birthday concert. In the last case I was the only poet to read a poem, and that would have been the most terrifying of all. Thanks to David’s treatment I actually felt confident enough to recite the poem from memory. Previously the prospect of reading my work in that type of gathering would have ruined my whole evening and I would have looked for opportunities to cry off. As it was, I felt honoured and enjoyed the chance to gain an audience for the poem and to discuss it with people during the birthday dinner.

A massive thank you to David Pullen.

And the winner is...

2011-11-28T06:00:00.003Z

The lucky winner of a signed copy of Cally Taylor's Home for Christmas is....

Bernadette

Congratulations, Bernadette! Drop us a line at strictlywriting@btinternet.com with your address, and we'll get your prize in the post to you.

Let's get serious - guest post by author Claire Allan

2011-11-25T06:00:00.000Z

Do all writers have to grow up? I don't mean physically, of course. I have learned that despite the best Clarins has to offer there is little I can do to stop the ravages of time taking a toll on my skin. As for my hair colour? Dying these days is not so much a case of "Because I'm worth it" as "Because I have to."

That aside and back to the basics of writing - is there a time when every writer worth her word count has to sit back, take stock and put away childish things?

I ask this question with a semi heavy heart. Only last year I fervently and adamantly fought the corner of the Chick Lit title on this very site. I have said that I embraced the term - loved it - felt inspired by it.

Have I changed my mind with the passage of just 12 months? Sadly, and with my big fat slice of humble pie eaten, I have to say yes. In the last 12 months, you see, this particular chick has grown up. And while I still feel there is good chick lit out there - and in no way feel that the very name of the genre denigrates women - I just don't feel I fit the mould any more.

I now consider myself very much a contemporary women's author. That sounds grand doesn't it? Even saying it makes me react in a different way to those times when I told people I wrote "chick lit". I feel, although I'm loathe to admit it, as if I should be taken a little more seriously.

There's nothing wrong with chick lit, of course. If what you are writing fits that exact model. Chick lit to me is - and I'm aware I'm contradicting my previous viewpoint - the lighter side of women's writing. It is cool glasses of wine, designer clothes, rugged men, falling in and out of love, getting a cool job in a trendy magazine of similar. I love books like that - books which offer complete unadulterated escapism.

But are they relevant to my life these days? I'm afraid not. And I've come to think that dismissing tales of depression, domestic violence, miscarriage, adoption and more as "chick lit" has been doing those topics a disservice. We should not dismiss serious topics as fluffy - we should not say it is okay to write them only as long as they have pretty covers.

Chick Lit is still alive, for sure and for certain but it's not a one size fits all label for women's fiction either. I'm proud of what I've written, and of what I'm writing. And I proud to have served my time at the coal face of the chick lit industry, but I'm moving on.
Claire Allan is an author and journalist based in Derry in Northern Ireland. She has been a reporter with the Derry Journal since 1999 and has written for a number of newspapers including the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News and The Mirror. She has an Honours degree in the Humanities and a MA in Newspaper Journalism. She writes a weekly column on topical issues, with a focus on women's issues and parenting. Claire is a regular contributer to BBC Radio Foyle and Culture NI Magazine. Her bestselling novels have all been published by Poolbeg Press in Ireland. Her fifth 'If Only You Knew' is now available.

Inspiration

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000Z

I'm often asked, especially by myself, how I keep up my work rate.

I've now written five books in just over six years, I think, and yes, at times it's been hard. Not least because the publishing industry is so fickle, so open to highs and lows.

I've had a lot of 'success' compared to many writers, and for that I am grateful, yet I've also had my share of rejection, editorial sharp elbows, poor reviews etc. I'm also as vulnerable as anyone to what may happen in the future. I cannot be certain that after book six I will ever have anything published again. Ever...

Despite the obvious downsides of this biz, I remain though, pretty happy. I wouldn't do it if I wasn't.

Indeed I'll never understand those writers for who the whole process is one long sick-making episode of torture. Why put yourself through that? There are places you can go and pay to have yourself whipped and wotnot if that's your deal.

But even those of us who take things in our stride, would be lying if we said we were never affected. On a grey autumn day, looking down the barrel of a deadline, even I, Queen Pollyanna, am tempted to stick my foot through my PC at the sight of an email from a loyal reader telling me she 'can't get hold of a copy of my latest...'

So what do I do to stave off, if not despair, despondency? How do I keep up the momentum?

1. I remind myself that no-one is making me do this. I can go back to the day job any old time.
2. I focus on my successes and not on my failures (I know this sounds easy when I've got real life books I can touch, but encouragement of any form will work just as well).
3. I turn to Elizabeth Gilbert, in particular the video of a speech she gave not long after EPL became a world wide success. If you haven't seen it before I promise you it will became one of your fave motivators, if you have, can I urge you to watch it again, you won't be sorry. Then save it for any time you need a pep talk.

So pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy...[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA]]

Changing Tastes

2011-11-21T06:00:00.000Z

Time was when I could safely pick up a screamingly 'Girly' book in whichever shop I was in at the time (C&A excluded, of course) and instinctively know I'd like it. And even if I didn't properly love it, I'd maybe become it's second best friend, twice removed or something. I was just safe in the knowldege that I wouldn't NOT like it; that's my point.

I could skirt over the irritatingly obscure names of the MC's (Ebonie, Sherlaine, Twinkzie, Jezzabelle - that sort of nonsense) and during my formative years I didn't even mind very much that I learned a lot more about horses than was absolutely necessary. Jilly Cooper was the dog's doodaghs to this impressionable tweenager and I still have a lot of love for the cheerful gappy-toothed author. She got me through many a rainy day, even though for years I was convinced an orgasm was probably something only seen on display at the organic farmers market every Wednesday and as my mother clearly didn't know how to prepare one, THAT was why I'd never had one.

And I didn't mind too much that these stories of Ella-the-downtrodden-but-feisty-button-nosed-brunette-who-secretly(but to we readers)-enjoyed-fantasies-of-fairytale-love-and-yawn-yawn-finally-got-it-on-the-last-but-one-page.... much. But then, like my predeliction for roasted sweet peppers, although I knew I was going to have a perfectly nice time whilst they were in front of me, once I'd digested them, they'd start to upset my insides a bit.

There isn't a Rennie in the world that can take away the distended feeling inside that this really isn't quite your cup of tea anymore, actually, and you need to find something a bit more... well, agreeable; something that you can rely on won't leave a bad taste in your mouth and have you retching over the literary toilet pan unless you hurl this particular forray of female fiction in aforehand.

I've kind of shifted sideways in my reading fodder. No more do I chuckle and gurn at Ella's silly girly trips over the path to predictable true love. No longer do I have the tolerance for MC's who insist on bringing their monosyllabic, snotty kids into the frame and NO WAY am I putting up with a wizard and/or vampires and werewolves.

So, after having stood at my personal book-buffet for the past 2 years or so, I think I now know which particular tome I can reach out and open without needing an accompanying paper bag.
Give me an edgy, unsympathetic main character who doesn't even own a Louis Vittuon handbag let alone crave ("crave", I ask you) a matching pair of heels. And please don't let her have just been dumped or be best friends with the guy who turns out to be the love of her life If Only She'd Known.

Equally I don't want an Aga, a cute dog (unless they belong to any of Jenny Crusie's MC's because she does them SO well) and a well-meaning mother/best friend who steals the spotlight and gets my lionsshare of love, meaning I couldn't care less where MC ends up.
I don't mind a bit of gore; sadness; deviation. I can put up with paranormal possibilities and as long as sex isn't graphic I can get through those bits too. Too many detectives with too many weird surnames starts to confuse me and I don't want too many secondary characters with their own stories so that I end up losing my thread. And I like a twist but not a tangle.

My taste has certainly changed. I'm not sure what it says or what it means but I'm very aware of reaching out for the darker, grittier looking covers on the shelves these days, knowing that I'll get a lot more satisfaction out of something a bit less fanciful and lightweight than I used to. I wonder what I'll be devouring in another 10-20 years' time - a bit of gentle James Herriott perhaps or even *shudder* autobiographies of TV stars who've brightened up my living room over the decades. Maybe I'll even return to Jolly Jilly again.

Have YOUR reading tastes evolved with you or are you a once-a-fan-always-a-fan?

Equally I also can't say Donny Osmond does the same thing to me now as he did when he sang Puppy Love in that field in the 70's but then he probably wouldn't look at me twice these days either.

Revenge of the Rejected

2011-11-18T06:00:00.007Z

Mea Culpa. It was my turn to post on Strictly today and I've somehow managed to miss this fact. However, my colleagues have suggested posting this video on the subject of rejection - which is actually very funny and a little bit empowering.

Oh, and on this subject, it reminded me of someone I 'know' online who has been writing novels for years and who has womanfully continued to write in the face of rejections for all five of them, determined to keep learning her craft and tenacious enough to keep going no matter what. This week, and for her sixth novel, she's got an agent. And I, for one, am thrilled and inspired and actually in awe of her. So I guess the message for the weekend is -

Don't Give Up. It Can Happen. It Has.
Have a good one.

A Kindle kinda love?

2011-11-15T06:00:00.000Z

Do youown a Kindle?

I’ve had one for a few weeks. Am I a convert?

Kinda. And kinda not, too.

I mainlybought it because I’ve been reading manuscripts as a sideline job. Beingable to download them straight onto the Kindle seemed a good enoughreason to invest in one, plus, the idea of taking unlimited books on holidayhas always appealed.

So farI’m pretty happy with it and although I wouldn’t want it to completely replacepaper books, I do feel it’s been a good investment.

I’venoticed something, though, about the reading experience that has taken me a whileto pick up on.

If I’mabsolutely LOVING a story, and rattling through it at a very fast pace, Ireally notice no difference at all with the experience of reading a regular book.The fact that the screen isn’t backlit is a great bonus for me; after a dayspent staring at various screens, the last thing I want to look at it in bed isanother glowing rectangle. I missed having real covers to look at, it’s true,but it was surprising how quickly I got used to that.

But whenI’m reading something that needs much more of a slow investment, and is takingme some time to get into, then I miss having the physical heft of a book in myhand. I miss being able to pause, look at the cover and the blurb again; mayberead the author’s biog at the start. These all feel like small signposts thathelp light my way when the path into a story feels murkier and more opaque.

So it’smixed feelings from me so far.

Whatabout you?

Churning out the words

2011-11-14T06:00:00.002Z

I never take part in NaNoWriMo, partly because I’m always working and to rack up a word count of six for November would be uninspiring for others and embarrassing for me. I find time to write when time finds me. It could be first thing in the morning, in the middle of the night, or just before bed time. I certainly don’t say to myself: “Right, let’s do one thousand words before 9am.” I work at my own pace; I always have and I never feel pressurised to look at the word count in the bottom left hand corner of the laptop.

For that reason I’m not a fan of NaNoWriMo and I never will be. I prefer to write a few chapters and revise them fully before moving on. I’m not a fan of churning out word after word just for the sake of word count. It may look great on paper if you have managed ten thousand words before November 8, but if you’re constantly shifting POV and have made many grammatical and spelling errors, then what you’ve just written is a waste of time. There are so many people who publicise their writing goals online, some really ambitious. I found one guy who pledged to write twelve thousand words per day – is he writing War And Peace Part Two?

On the other hand if it gives people inspiration to sit down and seriously put a book together for the first time in their lives, then I’m all for it.

I carried out a little experiment - thanks to Rod, we’ve had a plethora of posts about poetry recently, and it has inspired me to write an ode (well, not strictly) to Strictly. Not being a poet, nor having the talent of Shakespeare or Keats, nevertheless, I’ve decided to tackle this art form in a matter of five minutes, reaching my word count of around one hundred. So here we go (it’s all fun of course):

Strictly Writing is by far the best blog.
It’s read by every woman, man, cat and dog.
We serve the needs of the writing people
Across the nation, past the tallest church steeple.
We’re here to help and entertain with our wise words
Accompanied by pictures of pens, desks and birds.
Our readers are novelists and poets too
They write in coffee shops and even at the zoo.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword
So turn to the written word and you’ll not be bored.
Thank you to our readers who comment all day
Hip, hip, hooray to Strictly - is what I say!

(Incidentally, November/Movember is also moustache growing month aimed at raising money for charity. If you haven't the patience to write a novel, then grow a tache. Go check it out!)

Birthing a Book - Guest Post by Cally Taylor...PLUS PRIZE DRAW

2011-11-13T06:00:00.007Z

Back in August when I was eight months pregnant and starting to think about a blog tour to promote my second novel, Home for Christmas, I approached Strictly Writing and asked if I could guest blog on their site. When the Strictly ladies said yes, my first thought was that I'd write about the similarities between having a child and writing a book. After all lots of authors compare writing a book with pregnancy and publication day with giving birth (and worrying that, while you think your progeny is beautiful, the rest of the world thinks it's ugly as sin).

So why have I decided AGAINST making similar comparisons?

I've given birth now!

Okay so it was by Caesarean (my baby was breech) so it could be argued that I got it 'easy' compared to a natural birth, though if you'd said that to me when I tried to get out of bed the day the next day and felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach I would have punched you in the head - right before I fainted! Anyway, in this author's opinion writing a book and setting it free on publication day is nowhere near as difficult as gestating, birthing and bringing up a child. To think I was going to draw a comparison between the characters in your head and your baby keeping you awake - ha!

That's not to say I had an easy time writing Home for Christmas - far from it. Second Novel Syndrome was alive, well and squatting in my brain. My first novel, Heaven Can Wait had an easy 'birth'. I wrote the first draft in under four months and edited it in six. Once I'd found an agent and publisher there were a few more tweaks to be made (I laugh to think I called them 'edits' at the time) and then the book was ready to be published.

Home for Christmas, however, was an entirely different story. Its first incarnation, 'The PDA', was scrapped at 20,000 words when I realised I couldn't stand my main character and didn't care what happened to her (a slight issue if you want your readers to care!) Instead of trying to make her likeable I started a brand new novel instead. I called it 'Happiness Ever After' and, while I loved the main characters, it wasn't long before I realised the supporting cast weren't working and needed rewriting. So I did...for several months...until I realised that the characters weren't the problem - their subplot was. Cue the deletion of the subplot and another rewrite. Finally, over two years after putting fingers to laptop, I had a novel that my agent, my publisher and I were all pleased with. I don't mind admitting that by the end of the process I was EXHAUSTED, my confidence was dented and the thought of writing another novel made me nervous.

Not the most inspiring story is it? Or is it? Because you know what? The second I held a sparkling, beautiful copy of Home for Christmas in my hands for the first time I fell in love with it, forgot how arduous a process it had been to bring it to life, and started fantasising about writing a new novel.

Oh hang on...turns out there is a similarity with having a child after all...

Cally Taylor's second novel Home for Christmas was published by Orion paperback on 10 November. Cally blogs at Writing About Writing

We have a signed copy of Home for Christmas to give away! All you have to do to enter the prize draw is leave a comment below. We'll draw a name from an adorable baby bonnet and announce the winner next weekend.

Guest Post by Anna Stothard

2011-11-11T06:00:00.001Z

I woke up in a panic last night thinking that I’d forgotten to return the telephone call of a friend, then realised (with a sense of impending insanity) I’d been dreaming about a character in the novel I’m writing. I didn’t need to call her back, I owned her, but I still couldn’t fall back asleep.

From Lewis Carroll’s Alice to Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov to my own meagre efforts, the army of fictional creatures populating my bookshelves have had a more profound affect on my world than 90% of the real people I’ve met. Is that a terrible thing to admit? Maybe. Honestly though, I’d rather have known the fiction of Holly Golightly than the reality of most acquaintances, the memory of Jay Gatsby over the memory of quite a few ex-boyfriends.

Done right it’s a baffling power, to design a character, but how is it done? Dickens was inundated with letters begging him to save Little Nell when The Old Curiosity Shop was coming to an end. Some of my most intense memories of the last family holiday I went on revolve around the thoughts of Yossarian from Catch 22 (many apologies to my family about that, I know it’s rude to read at the lunch table).

Like most writers I’d love to know the magic animating ingredient that makes a hybrid of observation, imagination and autobiography come alive on the page and last in the minds of readers. We’ve all probably conjured characters in our heads only for them to fall flat on their faces the moment they hit the page, missing some indefinable something so they just drag their feet and don’t do what their told until we’re forced to brutally dispatch them back into nothing. And then sometimes, bliss, we hit on a character that we feel like we could push out into the world and she’d exist without us. Even then we (by which I mean “I”, others are probably much less anxious) lie awake at night obsessing over whether the figments of our imaginations are too nuanced or too predictable, too unlikely or too obviously based on feral uncle Malcom or that colleague at work we hate. Or, much worse, that our carefully crafted and seemingly inventive protagonists in fact reveal a lot about ourselves that, in other circumstances, we’d rather people didn’t know.

One of the most surreal problems I’ve stumbled on as a young female writer sending young female protagonists out into the world is that people insist that my characters are thinly veiled versions of myself. “You must really hate your mother,” a woman informed me sagely at a wedding reception recently, having read my latest novel, The Pink Hotel, about a young English girl travelling Los Angeles returning love letters and photographs to the men who knew her errant and recently deceased mother. I smiled sweetly at the wedding guest and let her believe that I would be capable of half the seduction and deduction that my character achieves in the course of her journey, but of course she did raise and interesting point.

Nabakov is not Humbert Humbert, Charlotte Bronte is not Jane Eyre, Thomas Harris is not Hannibal Lector, but elements of the writer necessarily exist amongst reams of observation and imagination in the making of a character. That must be part of what makes characters come alive. My character is not based on me, Mrs Know-it-all Wedding Guest, but I can begrudgingly admit there is some crossover. I’d love to know if anyone else has had this problem, being accused of the neurosis or flaws that your character has?

When Breakfast at Tiffany’s was first published, Truman Capote described a “Holly Golightly Sweepstakes” of women guessed to be the “real” Holly when of course there was no such thing. Capote later insisted that Holly was an amalgamation, a “symbol of all these girls who come to New York and spin in the sun for a moment like May flies and then disappear”. Biographers have added the author’s mother to Holly’s inspiration-mix (a rural Southern belle, Capote’s mother was originally named Lillie Mae while Holly’s birth name is Lula Mae) plus the author himself of course (who suffered from the “mean reds” as Holly does). Occupying some perfect place between a symbol and an ideal party guest, a thousand observed arched eyebrows, childhood memories, flirty smiles, little black dresses, martini-nights and witty conversations must have bubbled into the making of Holly.

Thank God for Yossarian and Little Nell, Lolita and Holly and all the rest, I hope I write a character as great as that one day. In the mean time one of the perks of being a writer, penning stories for ourselves or the local newspaper or the web or a publisher, is surely that we never have to choose whether to be a management consultant or a lawyer, an Olympic swimmer or a mother. We can be everything we want, including other people. What other profession can say that? Our alter egos are not “us”, but we can try a thousand lives on for size.

Anna Stothard is the author of The Pink Hotel published by Alma Books

NaNoWriMo - Nine Days In

2011-11-10T06:00:00.009Z

I’m ‘nano-ing’ this year, or supposed to be. So far, and despite many hours of plotting and planning, I’ve written an unimpressive 4000 words and have come up with new and inspiring ways to procrastinate. I should forget novels and write a book on new avoidance tactics. Here’s an example of Monday’s frivolous antics:

“I wander lonely in a shroud
Floating high, my shroud has frills
When all at once I hear a sound
Bang bang they go, the daffodils
Beside the lake beneath the trees
I fluff my frills in the cold breeze”

I know. By Tuesday I was thinking of admitting myself somewhere, especially after I’d compiled the second verse. You ready?

“Continuous as the stars that shine
My billowing shroud wants its say
It stretches towards an alpine pine
While all the time the daffs they pray
Their sound it puts me in a trance
I join their chant and start to dance”

What can I say, except maybe apologise to Mr Wordsworth, whose work I revered until this week. As well as poetry desecration, I found myself putting on unnecessary clothes washes, trying to come up with new Christmas recipes, shopping online, facebook-ing, emailing, and yes, I could even be found loitering with intent on Twitter...

This is all because I’m forcing myself to write a story that I’m not sure I want to write. Has anyone else had this problem? I keep telling myself to keep calm and carry on, that it’s only one month and it might actually take a turn somewhere in the process that could lead to an interesting lead at least. I’ve done ‘Nano’ before and I’m a HUGE fan but right now, I fear for the poets. I really do.

On a serious note, all the faffing around has actually helped me clarify that I should be brave and try another idea for another novel. It’s only the 9th today and since this one just isn’t coming out the way I want it to, I actually feel that the rest of November would be wasted if I continue. I simply can't keep writing just for writing's sake. I have to want to tell the story. The characters have to be demanding to be heard, and they're not. They're giving me time off to write rubbish poetry. (Rod, your crown is safe...)

Rest easy poets of the world... I have a new plan and not having had time to plot, well let the pantsing begin.

Gotta Wear Shades

2011-11-09T06:00:00.001Z

Last week I received my royalty statements for the period January to June 2011.

Yeah, I know it's November, but you remember the publishing industry works on glacial time right?

Anyway, late or not, the statements brought a smile to my face.

Not immediately, you understand. For anyone who has never seen a royalty statement they are possibly the most complicated documents known to man. And I say that as a lawyer in my previous life. So obviously it took me half an hour of knitted eyebrow gymnastics to work out even the basics of what is going on with my books, before the smile broke out.

And no, before Mr Black starts packing for Rio, it wasn't because I'd just sold my millionth copy.

The reason was that for the first time my ebook sales outweighed my paperback sales.

For some time now we've all been told that the digital revolution was on its way. That the ebook reader was about to take its place alongside the ipod. And like many a writer I've been somewhat sceptical. Would the general public really want to read novels from a screen?

The answer seems to be a decided yes...which in turn has made me consider a number of other convictions I've held.

I've always said, and there's no point denying it, that distribution was the key to selling books in any numbers. I've ranted here for example, about authors who have been dropped by their publishers for poor sales when their books never made it into the shops.

My view has always been that the main way to sell books is to have them out there. That the public need to see them. Sure, the punters will go to Amazon et al for a bargain, but what they are buying online are the books that are visible in the shops.

Well hang on a moment. My royalty statement tells me that my very first book, Damaged Goods, has been flying off the eshelves. This, a novel, that was published five years ago and, as far as I can tell, isn't in any shops at the moment.

So what is it that is making people buy them? I'd like to say I'm a household name, but I'm not that delusional. So what is making people who have probably never heard of me buy my oldest book?

The answer seems to be a clever viral campaign by my publishers, very low pricing (readers will take a chance on things they haven't shelled out too much for) and high ranking on Amazon. The latter of course is a self fullfilling prophesy; the more you sell the higher you rank, the higher you rank, the more you sell.

When readers have emailed saying they liked DG, I've asked them how they came to buy it and quite a number have confirmed that they saw it in the top ten female detective list on Amazon and given it was selling for a couple of quid, they thought what the hell.

Now sales at low prices aint ever going to make me rich, I'll grant you. A percentage of fuck all is...well you get the picture. But if a section of this new audience likes what I do and goes on to buy my other stuff, then it's absolutely worth it to me.

All this has also made me reconsider whether self published authors can make a success of it. In the past, I'd have said no. That without the sales and marketing team of a publishing house behind them, an author can't get the necessary distribution. But does that still hold true? If a self published author produced an ebook, marketed it aggressively online and sold it for a song could they sell in numbers? Thre answer in truth is I don't know.

The times they are a-changing. And I think I like it.

Book report

2011-11-08T06:00:00.000Z

I try to read as many newly released books as I can, mainly those in the so-called literary genre, but as you know, it’s like taking on the role of a goalkeeper when a thousand balls are heading toward you. As much as I desperately want to read every book as soon as it's released, I fully appreciate that even the keenest (and fastest) of readers will only select from those newly released books that most interest them. I’ve only read a handful of books this year – the first half of the year was obliterated thanks to having severe hyperemesis. I’ve missed so many good books in recent months but I always try to add them to my Amazon wish list so they don’t slip through the net altogether.

I’ve just ordered this year’s entire Booker shortlist as a Christmas present for myself (!), not only because it looks like a fine combo, but also to see if I agree with the judges’ decision. I have a feeling I won’t though. I’m especially looking forward to reading The Sisters Brothers (shouldn’t there be an apostrophe there?) Then there’s Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan published by the highly respected Serpent’s Tail. My first inkling when I saw the cover was that this particular book had been written by a man. Just goes to show you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Talking about having missed many fine reads over the last year, I dug around Amazon and added quite a few ‘must have’ books to my list, not all of them literary though. I really want to read The Pink Hotel by Ana Stothard, but I may just keep it as my summer sunbathing read. I also added Submission by Amy Waldman, a September 11 novel, The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph, The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi (I love the cover), The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, and The Privileges by Jonathan Dee. I could go on and on and tell you about the 319 books I have on the list. I hope I live long enough to get through the list which isn’t yet complete, and which grows each week, thanks to the Sunday Times Culture section among other supplements.

It’s nice to cosy up with a good book on a cold winter’s night, listening to the gentle patter of snow on the window pane. That, I suppose, is the only good thing about winter. And I'm looking forward to getting through this long list I have. Sadly though, even if I spent every minute of every day of every year for the next fifty years, would I be able to be goalkeeper to all these wonderful books?

Guest post by Heather Peace

2011-11-04T06:00:00.005Z

Thanks for this opportunity. I’m new to blogging and new to being a published novelist, but I’ve been involved with creative writing many years, one way and another. I enjoyed Helen’s recent post and thought I would join the debate. I share your scepticism about this ‘creative writing industry’ that’s suddenly appeared in the last 10 to 20 years.

I started out in theatre in the early 1980s, and was a television script editor through the 90s, and never heard of it then. Creative writing was something you just did – it was called writing. Some wrote novels, some wrote scripts… then I think it started appearing in the school curriculum and a few universities started offering degrees in it. I do remember that the UEA MA course sounded very desirable, as it was taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Ian McEwan shot to fame immediately after finishing it.

Since then the number of different degree courses, workshops, residential courses, mentor schemes etc has exploded; even publishers like Faber are now running courses and putting their top authors in as guest teachers. Mind you, you need to be wealthy to sign up for those. It’s bound to make you wonder whether it’s good value for money.

I’ve even wound up teaching creative writing myself; these days I’m a part-time tutor for the Open University on the Advanced Creative Writing module. I have to say that it’s a brilliantly well-written course, enabling any student whether a beginner or an experienced writer to improve their skills radically in whichever direction they choose. It’s not about telling them how to write, it looks at different approaches and encourages students to help one another achieve whatever they want, by developing their own voice and improving the effectiveness of their writing. I’d recommend anyone to take it, although I can’t vouch for every tutor being equally helpful. Each year a few of my students have a wonderful experience and find that the subject has opened up to them in ways they couldn’t have anticipated; they’re usually people who left school with next to no qualifications and work in relatively dull jobs. This makes it really rewarding to teach.

I’m quite sure there are a lot of charlatans out there, I’ve attended quite a few events myself over the years which I’ve felt annoyed about. I suppose the important thing is to approach with caution, to work out what you want to develop in yourself, and to go looking for it in a discriminating way. There are no rules which can’t be broken, and anyone who tells you how to write is asking to be ignored. The odd thing for me is that I haven’t had the benefit of a mentor of any kind, but my experience of being an editor enabled me to act as my own fiction editor, and the process of teaching creative writing helps in the same way that practising scales is good for musicians.

My novel All To Play For is out courtesy of Legend Press. Its subject is making television drama, and its characters struggle with changes at the BBC in the 1990s, when creativity lost out to re-organisation and commercial pressures, and the consequences are on our TV screens today.
Heather is a former theatre director and BBC script editor who now writes fiction and teaches creative writing for the Open University. Her novel All to Play for, which draws on her television career, is published by Legend Press.

Teenage Kicks

2011-11-02T06:00:00.000Z

Writing for teenagers is a liberating experience. In my personal experience anyway – which isalso debateable since I don’t have anything published – yet. See that spark of positivity? Ah, never mind,it’s gone again now.

I found that being in a *particularlystroppy, irritated, angst-ridden state of mind helped me write my first teenagebook, ‘Double History’, never appearing in any good book stores near youanytime soon or - ever. My protagonist, Maddie was a victim of Gordon Brown’srecession and had to cope with not only her father losing his job in the bankbut the family having to downsize and move house, and then she started seeingthe ghosts of the family who’d died in the house prior to their moving in andgetting stroppy with them too - I know. You’d think it’d have been snapped up by agents and publishers before I’deven typed ‘the end’, right?

Well, no because what I didn’t realise was that agents havereaders who go through plots with a fine-toothed comb and pick apart theteensiest bits that I didn’t realise would even seriously matter.

Like Matter, actually, for instance. I didn’t honestly believe anyone reading thiswould scratch their teenage chin and think ‘hang on a minute, ghosts can’t besaved during a ghostly reconstruction by a living person because they’re already dead…’ (Ending No.1 scuppered). And then, a rewrite and a new ending, let’scall it Ending No.2 also scuppered because it made the ‘hero’ (a very fit butvery dead Leo) too malevolent (okay, so he tried to kill Maddie’s littlebrother, her best friend then her dad to get a body back into the living world –I know! I thought that was a pretty good trick too). So Ending No.3 was triedout which I thought was totally inspired, I sent Leo gently over to the OtherSide whilst still allowing Maddie some romantic closure and ended the wholething on a sunny ray of humorous hope but….. the ‘overall feel didn’t quite work’ - as Prince Charles says - whateverthat means.

Was I sad? Was Iabashed? Was I discombobulated? Yeah, abit. But I cut my teeth withMaddie. She ‘enabled’ me. Shegave me another voice I didn’t realise I had and like I said at the start,writing for a teenage audience is SSsoooooo liberating. You can even put in words like “SSssoooooo”. It’s like that.

The first line in DH was "This sucks." - which for me not only wraps up the teenage mind in dynamic glow-in-the-dark paper, but ties a neon swirl of ribbon around it too. If you had that as a first line in an adult book you could be forgiven for assuming the MC might turn out to be a bit of a primadonna with an attitude problem. But this is almost a given for a young adult audience. They're allowed to speak their mind - their boundaries are still being tested after all.

And teenage issues are so nice and straightforwardly selfish. They don’t have the worries of the world on theirshoulders. They have far lesshistorical, genetic baggage to bother themselves about; their prime concern isMe. What colour their hair could be this week, how many friends on Facebookthey’ve got right now and whether they’ve paid enough attention to the teacherto answer questions in a test or not. Their level of popularity is important (as it always have been forteens, I remember) and the state of the country is simply something that the grown upshave got to sort out because they’re still too young to vote.

Their imaginations are not stifled by worries of mortgagerepayments, energy supplier bills and threats of redundancy. They don’t even have to work out whichmotorway will take them from A to B because they haven’t even started drivinglessons yet. And if they see a strange apparition moving from one side of theroom to the other, they WILL talk to it like it’s a new and interesting lifeform and not be dragged into the ruminations of whether things like should thisexist or not. Teenage writing can be asoff-the-wall as you like because a teen’s life is still pretty much unwritten anyway.

And the innocence is also so life-affirming. You know a child from divorced parents isgoing to love them both no matter what either of them did or didn’t do. You know that a teen is going to be hauntedby the death or abandonment of a parent or a sibling or a close friend. Even apet. Because it’s all about the Self;how it makes them feel. Right now. Andit’s this immediacy that I love so much about growing up that makes writing forteens such a pure, uncomplicated joy.

* aka: PMS

The Hare and the Tortoise do NaNo*

2011-11-01T06:00:00.032Z

Once upon a time there was a Tortoise. Her name was Ms Plotter (Beatrix, if you were on first name terms with her, but that took a loooong while) and she lived in a carefully constructed box at the bottom of the garden. Ms Plotter had many fine qualities: she was steady as a rock, methodical and tenacious. Somewhat shy and retiring, but hey, who's perfect? Ms Plotter minded her own business, which happened to be the Writing of a Novel entitled Slow. Every few years she would add another chapter to her oeuvre. This chapter perfectly echoed the stepsheet made of colour-co-ordinated index cards that she had created before writing a single word. She would then spend several months refining and editing said chapter until it was perfect. All this made her very happy.

Autumn came. On the first morning of November, Ms Plotter opened one eye and pondered: should she begin another sentence or hunker down and prepare for a long winter sleep? She was just turning these possibilities over in her mind when her noisy neighbour, who happened to be a Hare called Ms Panter, squealed to a halt beside her and yelled:
'NaNoooo! sweetie! NaNoooo! NaNoooo!'
- nearly deafening Ms Plotter, who retreated into her shell with all the speed she could muster (not much) in case there'd been an accident.
Ms Panter breathed heavily, but didn't go away.
'Quick, dahling! Quick!' she gasped. 'We have just 30 days to do it.'
'Do what?' said Ms Plotter, wishing the hare would go away and do it, whatever it was.
'Finish a novel, dahling -' and with that, Ms Panter was off, laptop bouncing, on another circuit of the lawn.
'Bloody norah,' Ms Plotter muttered. 'It's That Time Of Year again.' It was bad enough in March, when the Hare and her mates went berserk and dunked dormice in teapots. But this was worse. Much worse.
'It's a race to the finish!' Ms Panter was back again. Panting.
'Finish?' Ms Plotter muttered. 'Who does she think she's kidding?'
'Only sixty-thousand words, sweetie - it'll be a piece of p**s -' and off went the Hare, whispering 'what ifs' and 'and thens' and oohing and ahing like nobody's business.

After that, things went ominously quiet for a while. Ms Plotter kept her eyes open just in case, and, over the course of the next week completed another 78 words of her oeuvre. Then removed 43 of them.

On November 7th, the Hare cast herself, gasping for breath, at Ms Plotter's feet.
'Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God dahling -' she panted, like something from When Harry Met Sally, only considerably less seductively.
'Something the matter?' Ms Plotter resented the interruption. She was just getting into her stride. 'Did you get lost?'
'Lost?!' Ms Panter said. 'How can I get lost when I don't know where I'm going? No. It's just that I can't - well, I can't get them down fast enough...'
Ms Plotter cautiously checked the Hare's nether regions. Everything seemed intact. 'Get what down fast enough?'
'The words of course!' the Hare foamed at the mouth. 'The ideas, dahling. The inspiration, the muse, the whole, whole - damned - thing. You know?' And off she raced again. The Tortoise licked her pencil and very slowly crossed a 't'.

On November 14th, on one of her perambulations of the lawn, Ms Plotter discovered Ms Panter stretched out on her back, her face to the sun.
'Given up, have you?' said Ms Plotter.
'Hardly, dahling! I've pretty much finished, in fact. Thirty days? Pah! That's for wimps.'
'What's the title?'
'Around The World in Eighty Minutes.'
'Ah.'

By November 21st, the Tortoise had completed a whole paragraph. Although it still needed a good edit.
She plodded up to the Hare, who was crouched on the grass, tongue out and forehead furrowed, still writing.
'Thought you'd finished?'
The Hare looked up. 'I have, sweetie, I have. Just the query letter to send off, and I'm done. I should have an agent by the day after tomorrow and a nice juicy deal with a top publisher by the end of the month.'
The Tortoise sighed. 'Aren't you going to revise it? At least read it through?'
'You can't improve on perfection,' smiled Ms Panter.
'Ah.'

Winter came. On the last day of November, Ms Plotter settled into her box of straw, her index cards arranged neatly in a file, the crisply printed page of her manuscript baside it, ready for Spring. Her eyes were half-closing when there was a sharp rap at her shell.

'Sweetie! Wake up!'
'Whaa-aaat?'
Ms Panter was leaping around, trembling with excitement. She thrust a brown envelope under Ms Plotter's reluctant nose. 'It's arrived. From the agent. Just as I said it would.'
The Tortoise opened one eye. 'Open it, then.'
The Hare tore the letter open and read the contents, her ears quivering.
'Dear Ms Panter...read with interest...today's competitive market...with regret...bog off.'
'I'm mortified. Mortified, dahling.' Through streaming eyes, she saw the Tortoise withdrawing her head into her shell. 'But hey...there's always next year. We could do it together. You and me, eh, sweetie? What do you say - yes or no?'

Just for a moment the Tortoise stretched her head out from the safe confines of her shell and blinked very slowly.

'NaNo,' she said, so quietly that the Hare could barely make out the word. 'Nah. No.'

*NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month

Exactly twelve hours to go

2011-10-31T12:00:00.003Z

Today is the deadline for the National Poetry Competition. So dust off your quill and scratch out a sonnet. Have any of you entered? I sent eight poems, which is an expensive way of getting nothing, but if you don't enter . . .

They get about 11,000 entries, I believe, making it the biggest one about, and it's open to all, and judged anonymously. What fun! Six pounds a poem is good value for the dream of winning this. All the details are at The Poetry Society

Good luck to any Strictly Poets.

The long cold wait

2011-10-31T06:00:00.002Z

An agent has had the full manuscript of my second novel for six months now. They read the first three chapters in an anthology put together by the teacher of one of the courses I attended. I sent them the full manuscript and then sat back to wait. Many reading this will know what that's like - the obsessive checking of emails, the runs to the letterbox every time someone puts an advert for a restaurant onto the doormat, the constant checking that you have a good signal on the mobile phone. Actually, I've done none of the above. As far as I'm concerned it will be best if they never contact me. As things stand I can say, "My novel is with a leading London literary agency" and these are words I like to drop into any conversation I have with writerly types. Once they contact me the dream will be over and I will forget that novel for good. Meanwhile it's back to the poems. At least with poetry you can win some minor victories: a poem in a magazine here, a shortlisting for a competition there, an opportunity to read. With novels it's so all or nothing - unless your novel is permanently with an agent who is considering it. Did I mention that my novel is currently in the hands of a top London agency? And no, I won't be sending out any reminders.

Let it snow

2011-10-28T06:00:00.000+01:00

‘Right,’said my editor, ‘This time round, how about planning a fairly detailed skeletonof the book before you start writing?That way,’ she added sweetly, ‘we can avoid any complications or snags with theplot right at the start.’

She madeit sound so reasonable. ‘Okay,’ I replied in a strangled voice,‘I’ll certainly give it a go.’ And then I rhythmically banged my head onthe wall for several minutes, keening a little at the same time.

Thething is, I’m not really a ‘panter’. Orto use another expression I’ve heard, a ‘discovery writer’. But then I’m notreally a classic plotter either. I usually have a rough idea of the overallshape of the book in my mind but with plenty of room for finding new ideaswhile I’m writing. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to write myself intoimpossible corners and then spend a great deal of time going backwards andforwards, a bit like when Austin Powers was in that car trying to get out of a minisculeparking space [funniest thing in the whole movie in my view, but I digress]

So whatshe wants me to do is start with a once sentence pitch. Then, I need to expandit to ten lines. And so on until I have a one page summary. Easy right? Right?

Er...

A writerfriend helpfully pointed out that this was also known as The Snowflake Method,which you can check out here.

I’vegiven it a go and you know what? It has actually helped. A bit. I haven’t gonethe whole hog yet. I haven’t actually done anything as insane as getting beyondthe third step if I’m really honest. But it has prompted some quite decentideas that I didn’t have before. I’ve actually started writing before finishingall the steps [shh, don’t tell my editor] but I do feel as though I willl beable to plan the story out more closely now.

Ifyou’re a panter and it works for you, that’s great [she says a bit enviously].You have no need to try this at all. But if you’re a bit of a panter who eyesthose sensible plotter types with their lovely crisp notecards, highlighterpens and nerdy spreadsheets, secretly wishing that a little of their sensibleways would rub off on you, it’s definitely worth a try.

Stop! Thief!

2011-10-27T06:00:00.002+01:00

Number one on today’s ‘To Do’ list is to ‘write SW post’. Actually it says WRITE SW POST! It is capitalised, unlike numbers 2-11 on my list and it has an explanation mark after it, which seems to imply its creation is either funny or of vital importance.

What is important, is that I get something off my chest. In doing so, I might manage a little ‘funny’ but somehow I doubt it, because at the moment I’m a mite pissed off, which always sours my creative juices. I blame Tesco. Well, not Tesco exactly, but the trip I took to Tesco; the browse I had through Tesco’s books; the fact that I picked up an attractive looking one and read the blurb; the fact that someone else had written my book. Bloody cheek ... It’s like this woman (who shall be nameless, but is a best-selling author) tapped into my mind and wrote my story. This particular story has been rattling around in my head for about two years, so you see it IS possible. Two years ago, the vixen must have latched onto my brainwaves, stole my story and wrote it first. Which of course makes it her story now... Brainwave skulduggery is difficult to prove.

I wouldn’t really mind except this is not the first time I have had my brainwaves stolen. It happens quite often. There I am, thinking that I’m directly wired to the Zeitgeist only to find I am the eternal white rabbit – late to the party, idea already published.

I do understand that there are only so many plots etc and that any story can be handled diversely in different hands. However, I am talking whole books here! You know, similar characters, almost identical plot. I tell you, it’s sabotage. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d have a view. Okay, I have a view – it’s a conspiracy. There’s a certain group of female writers who have all got together, formed a coven and when they join hands, they nick my novels. They must decide amongst themselves who gets what pickings. There’s strength in numbers you know... It’s the only explanation I can come up with.

That or my school reports were right. I spent too much time looking out the window and often lagged behind. The comment, ‘Fionnuala likes to dream,’ was commonplace. I like to think that it was practise. All writers need to be able to imagine other worlds, however, I do accept that all writers need discipline too. Like right now – ‘Come Dine With Me’ is on in the background and I can’t help being drawn to the fact (despite the sound being muted) that someone is making a right *&$£?* of rolling out pre rolled puff pastry. I am thinking ‘how hard can to be to roll out a piece of pre rolled pastry’ when I should be concentrating on writing this post.

Moral of the story is that I now have to come up with a new idea for the novel that I was going to write for NaNoWriMo, because the one I had has been written by someone else. And when I do, I have to WRITE it rather than THINK ABOUT WRITING IT. (Note capitals to imply importance)

Meantime, I know who you are. There are four of you. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. And you can bloody well stop joining hands and using whatever thieving ways you use. Leave my ideas alone, or I shall be forced to make effigies of you all and stick pins in them. In fact, there you go. That’s what my next novel will be about. A deranged unpublished writer who sticks pins in dolls of mind controlling published writers. I dare you. See what you can do with that!!

PS OOPS - EXCLAMATION MARK!!