Emma Newman's Blog, page 28

What's in a name?

When I started this blog, there were three reasons why I called it Post-Apocalyptic Publishing. The first was because I was convinced I was never going to find a publisher for 20 Years Later, and I was on the brink of self-publishing it – the blog name was my reaction to the apocalyptic thought that no-one was ever going to make my publishing dream come true.

The second reason was simple; my debut novel is in that genre. Well, it could be argued that it's more dystopian, as it's set twenty years after the apocalypse, but that's just splitting hairs for this purpose.

And the third reason is one I have never written about. Oh I've alluded to it, and talked about it in a roundabout way elsewhere, but I've never told you the third reason why this place is called Post-Apocalyptic Publishing.

Now I think I'm ready to talk about it.

Post-natal depression

My son is now three and a half years old. When I go to bed at night, I look in on him, asleep in his little bed and I feel a tsunami of love for him. It builds and crashes inside me like warm waves. I marvel at how much love I can feel for a little person.

Nothing new there. Parents all over the world feel that every day. The reason why it still bowls me over now is that I never had that for the first three years of his life. Why? Because I was in the grips of a nightmarish thing called post-natal depression, something I believe my American friends more often refer to as post-partum depression.

But post-natal depression isn't just depression

It's a whole lorry load of other awful things. Guilt is a big part of it, but I think guilt and motherhood are inevitable bedfellows. For me, the overarching emotion in my illness was anxiety.

No surprise there, I've talked about my struggle with anxiety before, but the anxiety beast that came in the same cart as the post-natal depression one was bigger and uglier than any I've ever had to deal with before.

Whenever I looked at my baby son, I felt terror. That's no exaggeration, it was gut-wrenching, mind numbing fear, twenty four hours a day. It destroyed me. My own personal apocalypse.

There's always hope

When you look most post-apocalyptic fiction – and I mean books and films here – there is usually some element of hope. The heroes may be left in an appalling shadow of what the world used to be, but there is the chance they'll survive. Even in the films where the hero might die, there is usually a sweetener – a child survives, a boat is sighted on the horizon, whatever (I won't give specifics in case it spoils one of them for you!) and life goes on.

That's what this blog is.

Yes, of course, it's also a place for stories and ramblings about writing and occasional bouts of madness, but its essence, for me at least, is hope.

If you're one of those people that hates anything to do with post-birth stuff, look away now.

When my son was three days old, I broke. The birth had been fantastic (at home, idyllic, no complications) but then things started to go wrong with my little man and we found ourselves in the hospital I had done everything to avoid for the birth. He wasn't gaining enough weight, he vomited severely, and I was struggling to establish breastfeeding. That night they put a pump on me to try and get some milk for him. The bottle began to fill with my blood.

It was like something out of a sick horror movie. The doctor simply raised an eyebrow and said "Ah, that's probably what made your baby ill; blood in the milk."

I have fragmented memories of the rest of that evening. They start with me screaming that I had poisoned my baby and crying hysterically. Believe me, I rarely cry hysterically, let alone in public. Yes, I cry at films, but for me to lose it in front of others, well, that's never happened that severely before or since. And I really lost it. I know the hormonal surge on day three, something people call "the baby blues" can be overwhelming, and I know that made it worse. The thing is, it never stopped.

I didn't sleep for two days and nights, on top of the usual new baby sleep deprivation that had preceded it. I watched my baby in the cot, terrified he was going to die any minute. And I thought it was all my fault. On the fifth day, I couldn't speak. And that hit on and off for weeks. It was like a light inside me went out. I was a shell, an echo of myself that cared for my baby as best I could, but was living in a different world of greys and shadows to everyone else.

There's a lot more that happened, and I could write a book on all of the contributing factors relating to the care he and I received in the hospital that I am sure deepened and worsened the PND. I have a lot of biased, emotional opinions about the way motherhood is dealt with in England, and the gulf between media portrayal, societal expectation and the actual experience of thousands of new mothers.

But I don't want to go into those now, because what I wanted to talk about was that hope thing.

I wrote 20 Years Later a year before my son was born. When he was six months old I almost got a publisher – it had taken them a whole year to pass the book higher and higher until the top man rejected it. That didn't help the depression either.

For months and months I didn't write a word. More than that, I didn't have a single thought about writing. Waking up, moving and giving my son all I could was challenge enough.

I will never stop feeling guilty about that time. I will never stop feeling like I was robbed of what so many others have effortlessly from day one. I suffered from an illness, I know that now, but at the time, when I was in the grips of it, not a sane thought passed through my mind.

It destroyed friendships. I withdrew, I moved hundreds of miles away from dear friends to live closer to family to find the support my husband and I needed. It really was apocalyptic.

Looking back to look forwards

Why am I writing about this now? Well, a couple of weeks ago I sent a letter to an old friend who I hurt very badly during those dark years. I was awful to her, but I know now that it was the fractured me, the broken bits of glass that walked in my body that did that to her. I have no idea whether our friendship will recover, but I know it will never be what it was. That's the first of many letters I need to send.

And I've been thinking about how wonderful the last eighteen months have been, how I am finally doing what I should be doing; writing. How all of you, dear readers, have carried me through that doubt and anguish until 20 Years Later finally found a home. I've been realising how much I hold myself back, and learning how to reduce that.

But I also know that there are lots of people out there going through post-natal depression, or healing after it, and a whole host of other personal apocalypses we call life. And I wanted to say "You know, there is some hope. It's not just a cheesy platitude. It can get better."

My Dad told me that a friend of his has read this blog and said "She's a great writer, but she's too open." I guess he meant all the times I tell you how I am really feeling. I'm more open here than in some parts of my real life, it's true. But you know what? Every time I write a post that's truthful about anxiety and depression, fear and envy, I get a flurry of private messages from people saying things like "Thank you. I've been through that and it helped" or "I'm struggling with that too, I feel less lonely now."

And that feels good. Hello. My name is Emma. I've recovered from severe post-natal depression. Most things terrify me. Some days I struggle to do tiny tasks because my anxiety is too strong. But that's ok. How are you?

Friday Flash Fiction: Shedding

The box sat on the kitchen table, she stared at it as the kettle boiled. It was plain, the address label printed with no return address visible. It was the third one to arrive this week.

She poured the water and swooshed the teabags in the cups, the brown clouds filling the water. I could open it, she thought, I could say that it was split when it arrived.

She poured the milk into the cups, resolved to use one of the knives to slice the tape on the top, when the banging in the shed stopped and her husband stepped out.

She'd missed her chance, so she watched him secure the padlock which always irritated her. Why lock it up for a tea break? There was no other way into the garden, how could anyone steal anything even if they wanted to?

He hurried up the path, arms clasped tight around his padded jacket, the tip of his nose pink. He brought a blast of cold air with him into the kitchen. He washed his hands, black with oil, briskly under the hot tap.

"Lovely, thank you mother," he smiled as he took his cup. She smirked, the children had left home years ago and he still called her that.

"How's the project?"

"Fine, fine," he slurped. "What've you been up to?"

"Just pottering." she watched him over the rim of her cup, his overalls were filthy. What on earth did he do in there all day? "When will it be finished?"

He saw her eyes flick to the shed. "Oh a while yet my love."

"Are you going to tell me what you're building?"

He smiled enigmatically and shook his head. "A true creator never reveals the work until it's ready."

She pursed her lips, staring at the shed. He spent hours a day in there, and there was no doubt she was banned from it. She'd heard about men and sheds, even laughed with her friends about it, but at least they knew what their husbands did in theirs. She appreciated the fact that he'd taken the early retirement badly and that he needed to keep busy, but why did he have to be so mysterious?

"That arrived earlier," she said, pointing at the box.

His fingertips wriggled as he saw it. "Fantastic," he beamed.

"Another part is it?" she asked. "Or a new tool?"

"Yes," he said and gulped down the rest of the tea. "Back to work mother."

He pecked her on the cheek, grabbed the box and hurried out again. She watched him fumble with the padlock then dive inside. The clock ticked loudly.

She didn't notice the shed door hadn't been shut properly until she was drying the mugs. Usually he was so careful, but the contents of the third box must have been spectacularly exciting for him to have forgotten all else. She threw on a jacket, slipped on her gardening shoes and stepped outside.

The usual banging and clanging were well underway as she sneaked down the garden path, her breath pluming in the winter air. It sounded like he was building something with gusto, and all she wanted was a peek, just a glimpse of this world-revolutionary lawn mower, or micro-light aircraft for pensioners or whatever it was that he was hammering away at. Just one peek, then she'd leave him to it until he was ready to unveil.

She sidled up to the door and peered through the crack. The first thing she saw was his overalls and padded jacket in a heap on the floor. Biting her lip, she then saw the old tape deck that had been her son's before the CD player came along, and a stack of tapes next to it. One was labelled "drill" and another "sanding wood". She realised that all of the hammering noises were coming out of its speakers rather than in the main part of the shed.

Now sure that something was amiss, her eyes fell upon a plastic tub of old engine oil placed just by the door, a filthy rag next to it. He'd been coating his hands before coming up to the house, to make it look like he'd been tinkering away, when the whole time he'd been…

Still not any wiser about that, she risked opening the door a touch more, revealing her husband climbing into a blue dress, already wearing what looked like a girdle and petticoat. Gob smacked, she pushed the door further open, seeing a clothes rail full of women's clothing and a shoe rack. The latest box rested on a tiny dressing table with a wig poking out of it, and there in front of him, a full length mirror, in which her gawping mouth was reflected back.

He turned to face her, one leg in, one leg out. For a second he looked panicked, then that fell away as he finished stepping into the dress and zipped up the side. It gave her time to take it all in and finally close her fly catching mouth.

"Bernard," she said softly, shaking her head. "What are you doing?"

He stood straight, raised his chin and looked straight at her. She couldn't recall the last time she'd seen him look her in the eye like that, the last time he'd looked so at ease. His usual tension and false cheeriness were gone.

"Come up to the house you silly bugger, it's freezing out here," she said, as she came over and embraced him. "I've got a necklace that'll set off that dress nicely."

—

This story is dedicated to my excellent friend Jenny. I hope you like it x

The sea, the sea!

Exactly one year ago today I went to Pam Slim's London workshop. Nothing has been the same since.

I wrote a post about it, and mentioned the visualisation exercise of imagining our ideal day five years in the future, but in that post I didn't say what my ideal day actually was.

It was simple: I got up, went to a wardrobe full of amazing colourful clothes that I had made (like I used to), got dressed without being repulsed by my own body, and went to write my fiction (and not much else!). In that ideal life I had no money worries, earning enough from my creative writing to live.

I didn't see a mansion, I saw the house I am in now, the same husband (phew) and my little Bean just a bit older. That told me I had the infrastructure but there was a long way to go.

Since then I have reprioritised and well, blow me down if I don't have most of that life right now! I've lost twenty pounds since that workshop and have even starting running. Yes, running, as in moving too fast to be dignified. The only thing I need to do is make those clothes and sell lots and lots of books to make those last bits of it come true.

And I'm doing my best to get there. Pam, here I am! I'm standing up!

It's like cliff walking in Cornwall. You see a point up a hill along the coast and think "The view will be fantastic from there" so you struggle and sweat all the way to the top and then stop to take in the scenery. Well, this is me stopping, panting and looking out. Wow. Look at that sparkling life. It's beautiful.

I'm worried I might sound smug. I don't want to. I just wanted to stop and say "you know what, this ideal life *is* within reach" because sometimes it only takes a few tweaks. Moving more, eating less. Realising that writing stories and novels is not a silly thing to do, but what I was made to do. Giving permission to yourself to put the dream first. Meeting anxiety with kindness instead of a big stick. You know, the little things (that seem impossible right up until the moment they aren't any more).

And I thought that maybe if you guys read this, you could see that if a post-natally depressed, overweight woman who's struggled with anxiety for most of her life can do this, so can you.

Another wonderful picnic stop in this cliff walk is the publication of the Yin and Yang books by eMergent Publishing. One of my short stories is in the Yin book – you can find out all about the books here (it's such a cool concept) and of course, buy them there too.

Now, I can think of no better way to celebrate that launch, and the amazing year since Pam's workshop, than writing a short story for you good people. So here is the official call for story prompts for the next Short Story Club tale. But this time, if you leave a prompt for a story in the comments below, you'll automatically be entered into a prize draw for the Yin book. (It can be an opening line, single word concept, title, line of dialogue, whatever you like.)

So go on, plant a little story seed down there, and who knows, maybe you'll win a free book of stories!

P.S. This post is called "The sea, the sea!" in homage to the fact that 1) I cannot see, or even write about the Cornish coast without thinking those words and 2) It reminds me of a very funny and tragic injury I suffered when holidaying with friends in France (all of whom I miss very much) on the occasion of seeing the sea again after a long spell away from it.

Reminders for writing the first draft

In a flash of frustration with myself today I sat down and typed out all the things I need to remember when I'm writing the first draft.

I'm now writing my third book – you can see the progress meters on the right hand side, and it is going very well. But this morning I felt tired, sluggish and fretful about work and all of that began to crush the real me who is usually desperate to get to the page. Hence the frustration, hence this list of things I need to keep telling myself again and again when these doubts and general lethargy hit.

Remember

You have complete permission to write a terrible first draft.

Mood is not required to write, your presence is.

When it just won't flow, step back, have a cup of tea, but don't use it as an excuse to stop.

You will never know whether it is good or not. Just write the damn thing.

Don't write for anyone else but you. It's hard enough to know what you want, let alone all of them too.

There's no such thing as no time to write.

Writer's block comes in many sizes and many flavours. There is a cure for each one.

Start writing at least fifteen minutes before you sit down to put the words on the page.

The first draft is not the place to fret or polish, get the story down first.

Listen to the characters.

Be brave, but remember, it's just putting one word down after another. The real heroes are in Editing Land.

Stop reading this and write!

—

Does this resonate, fellow writers? Are these the same things you tell yourself or have learnt after many hundreds of hours of slog? Do you have any to add? Are there any that surprise you, or just don't make any sense?

Do you think this list might help you? I've printed mine out and put it on the wall. If you want to do the same, I made a PDF version for you that's much easier to print out than a blog post.

I hasten to add that I am not an expert, nor am I doing this in the hope of passing myself off as one. These are just things that work for me, and I hope they might help you too.

Friday Flash: The Dutiful Daughter

Chloe blew her nose and managed a threadbare smile.

"Are you ready to do this?" her husband asked and she nodded, looking at the boxes all around them. How could an entire life be contained in these boxes?

"Yes, let's get it done," she replied. "I've been thinking about it all week, I know what I want for him."

They sat down together and reviewed the information on the screen. She was trying so hard to take it in, but all she could really think about was not having a father any more. With both parents dead, she was orphaned in the world, she was now the eldest generation in her family.

"Why don't you just tell me what you had in mind," Chris said, pulling her back from that chasm.

"I want a big plot. With a great view, over fields, you know, calming. Somewhere peaceful. I want a prominent position too. It needs to be easy to find. He… he had a lot of friends and they'll want to pay their respects." She broke down. He gathered her into his arms and waited until she'd calmed. "Sorry," she mumbled, blowing her nose again.

"No need to be sorry," he said softly. "You're grieving. It's natural. I think I can sort it out if you want, or at least fill in the admin for the plot. Why don't you get some fresh air and I'll give you a shout when it's done. I won't confirm until I've got it set up, and you've checked it all, ok?"

She navigated through the twisting labyrinth between the stacked boxes and stepped out into the garden. She frowned at the blue sky and singing birds. It seemed so inappropriate. She wanted torrential rain, damp, miserable cats hunkering under the lea of the shed roof and silent birds. Not this pleasant spring day. And not for the first time, she wished she smoked. It seemed to be the perfect time to inhale something noxious.

It felt like no time at all before she heard him calling her back in. She couldn't believe that she was about to organise a memorial plot for her father. How could this be happening?

"I've filled in the forms, it's all ready to go," he said quietly. "There's a mock up of the plot if you want to see it?"

She nodded and slid back into the chair next to him.

There was a beautiful picture of quintessential English countryside; rolling fields, little hedgerows and grand trees in their splendid summer raiment. She nodded, and for the first time that day, she smiled. "It's perfect."

"Want to see it with the text added?"

She took a deep breath and nodded, steadying herself. He clicked and the memorial site words phased into view at the bottom of the picture.

"Here resides the "Somerset Shenanigans" blog maintained by Mr Paul Cunningham from November 2001 – April 2027. Comments are open for well-wishers and messages of remembrance."

"They take care of the migration, and your email address has been given for the admin, so you'll see the messages from his community when they leave them," Chris explained. "I've picked a premium package, so the memorial plot is visible as soon as people go onto the site. It's on the home page for a month, then archived and found through the search function. Are you happy with it?

"It's perfect," she wept. The last loose end was taken care of now. There was nothing else to do except wait for the house clearance company. She leant across, and clicked the "Submit" button herself. "Goodbye Dad," she whispered, as the real legacy of his life went to its final resting place.

—

This flash was inspired by a discussion at a local social media event called Brrism way back in February, but I never published it, and if I'm truthful, I forgot all about it. Reading Pam Slim's post about her daughter's birthday today reminded me, and I decided to dust it off and put it here. A little morbid maybe, but our children will be the first generation who have to think about how to lay our virtual lives to rest as well as our real world ones…

One step closer…

20 Years Later front cover

The ARCs (advance reader copies) for 20 Years Later arrived today.

I was alone in the house at the time, so the poor postman got the brunt of my delighted squeal when I realised the box on my doorstep was from America. I gabbled the reason for my ecstasy in one breath as I signed for the delivery and then raced to the kitchen to cut it open.

I've often said that writing a book is like giving birth, and the feelings of opening the box were incredibly similar to labour. Less physically painful of course, but the mental frisson of questions was the same. What will my baby look like? Will it be perfect? Oh God I've waited so long for this, what if it's not what I thought it would be?

I'm happy to say I was just as thrilled with my book as I was with my little man. It's bigger than I thought it would be – it's half an inch bigger all round than most of my paperbacks. It's the same size as my George RR Martin books, so that made me happy in a silly geek kind of way.

I flicked through and was struck by how different it looks. I've lived with this book for years, on the computer screen and then on hundreds of pages of single spaced lines of Times New Roman. The font in the book looks fresh and modern and the cover looks even better in the flesh paper than on the screen. Reading the passages I have is remarkably different, so much so it's almost like I didn't write it!

I still can't quite believe it! One of the copies has been on my desk all day, I keep glancing at it every two minutes, marvelling at how it has appeared, checking to see if it really is there. I did the same with my little man too, though of course he was in a cot, not on a desk…

So now it's careful proofing time, and the inevitable self-doubt and fearful thoughts have already started. I just keep reminding myself that it's absolutely impossible for me to have any objective opinion about the book, and that the publisher has liked it enough to take the huge gamble of printing it, so I should just let those silly fears slide away.

Whilst that's happening, it will be sent out to fifty people in America for ARC reviews. Again, it's like having a child, now it's going out into the world… will people like it? Will they be kind or cruel? Will it be a success?

It's taken five years to reach this point. No, it's taken thirty years actually – I started writing when I was four years old and it was all building to this first milestone. There were times when I never thought I'd get here, times when I thought that self-publishing was the only option for me, and times when I believed that I couldn't write at all.

So if you've ever felt that way, remember me, in my messy kitchen, squealing and jumping up and down over a battered box of beautiful books from America. Dreams sometimes do come true, even in the real world.

On agility, pants and outlines

So I asked you lovely people if you'd like to hear my thoughts on first drafts, and many of you said yes. For those of you who shrugged and thought "meh"… sorry.

First drafts are strange beasts. They are gloriously exciting; the unexplored land, but they are also terrifying too. But by now you should know I find everything scary, so that's obvious.

I'll talk about the emotional aspect later, let's start with the technical side. I write a first draft in the same way that a certain type of coder approaches a huge project.

Now wait a moment, I hear some of you cry. Coding? What, like websites?

Yes. I am about to take you into a new territory of geekery: the coding analogy of writing the first draft of a novel.

You see, for a long time, when tech companies were given a huge project, e.g. "Build a website served by a database that provides information used by millions of users every day" the techies would sit down for weeks and weeks planning out what it should do, how it should work, and sometimes even what the users would need too.

Sorry, that's a bit of my past creeping in there.

In short, they would make the best plan they could, spec it all out in entirety and then go and make it. That's called the "waterfall" approach to coding a huge project.

However, what usually happens is that it takes far too long, sometimes they code themselves into a corner by not predicting a bit of functionality that turns out to be critical later on and then extra money is needed (or lost) to correct it etc etc.

Now lots of coders are using what's called the 'agile' development approach to big projects. (Stay with me, this is relevant to novel writing, I promise.) Instead, they split the project into "sprints" which begin with specs (initially of a prioritised piece of core functionality), design, then a burst of intense coding to create a part of the bigger project, then an evaluation phase with the client who can feedback earlier, and realise they wanted something completely different when only 10% has been done, rather than 100% three months late.

I'm sounding bitter again aren't I. Sorry.

Then they move onto the next piece of functionality on the prioritised list and repeat the process until the whole thing is done.

Ok, so that's all well and good, but what about novel writing?

Well, the usual debate online is whether you're a pantster (as in writing by the seat of your pants and not knowing where it's all going) or an outliner – usually discussed in the form of outlining the entire novel, then writing it. There's also the phase writing approach, in which people spend a fortnight or so writing an incredibly detailed outline of several thousand words that is fleshed out for the first draft.

Unsurprisingly, I don't like any of these extremes. I am speaking purely for myself here – don't for a moment think I am advising anyone to do it my way. I am not.

The agile approach

I approach my first drafts like an agile developer. I guess that means I could call myself an agile writer, but that creates all kinds of inappropriate associations. I'll take you through the steps I went through on my latest first draft, the sequel to my debut novel 20 Years Later that is due to be published very soon.

When I started, I knew the characters and the huge plot arc that goes across the whole trilogy. I knew several major plotlines – they've been in my head for years – and I knew what kind of character interactions were on the cards as a result of what happened in book one.

At the beginning, it all feels like a huge great big mess. All I know is that there is a way to tease them all out into distinct strands with logical progressions. Event B can't happen until event A has taken place for example.

So what this amounts to is a living room covered in post-it notes.

Then those post-it notes get laid out as plot threads from left to right. By that I mean what happens sequentially in each plot, without any detail other than the level of "person X kills/maims/worships person Y" etc.

I should add that this takes quite a while and several cups of tea.

Once they're in order, I stick them to a big piece of card and then fail to find a proper home for it for months. It moves around my office, generally getting in the way and refusing to stay blu-tacked to my wall.

I then weave the threads together. Once I see where they intersect, distinct scenes come to mind, whilst in the background I start to consider the pacing of the action, the events that need to take place by certain milestones in the book , e.g in the first third, second third and the end-game. This is a bit fuzzy to explain as a lot of it is on an instinctive level.

By the end of this stage I have an idea of the kinds of events that need to take place by certain points.

Sounds like I'm an outliner. Yes, I am, but there's more.

When I have a good idea of the shape of the book, it's time to start outlining chapters, with a few words describing each scene. A chapter is usually described with no more than three phrases.

I plan about five chapters at a time, using the threads, the pacing thoughts and the key events and then I write them in what I've come to call a sprint, just like the agile developers again.

This is where I diverge from some of the outliners I've read about and where the pantster aspect comes in.

When I write a scene, I have an idea of what is going to happen. I make a directorial decision about point-of-view, setting and where the scene will begin – in the middle of action, the exact point in a conversation etc – and then I hand it over to the characters. I simply sit back and watch and listen. My fingers move themselves over the keyboard.

Of course, some days it isn't like that. But 9.5 times out of ten, it's because I've made a poor directorial decision. The writing of book two has done a lot to hone my instincts – and I am finally learning to trust that when a scene is feeling like it needs to be forced onto the page, it's because it doesn't work.

The outline is thrown out of the window. Invariably things take longer to show than I think, and so the numbers of the chapters are inaccurate very quickly.

It's those characters you see…

Most importantly, characters sometimes say things, or decide to do things, that I simply haven't foreseen. Erin, one of the major characters, pulled an absolute blinder on me towards the end of book two and did something that I hadn't planned at all, but when she was there, living it, she made the decision and I went with her.

This is where purest outlining falls down for me. (And where I sound like I am utterly, utterly insane.) I love her decision – it's opened up new subplots for book three and brings in some really interesting character development and tension with the others.

And this is what keeps me excited every time I sit down to write the next scene. I can't imagine using the phase approach; I fear I would be bored before I had even begun to flesh out into a first draft.

I am simply incapable of predicting what will happen in my books at the level of detail that is unearthed in the writing of them. And I am a firm believer in character driven stories. Sure, there are whopping great big plots and things happening externally to the characters that they are reacting to – but they are interacting with and changing their world as they respond. If I didn't listen to them, and evaluate where the story is going at the end of every 'sprint' I would be sacrificing believable characters on the altar of plot.

Yuk.

Of course, feel free to think I am mad and take this all far too seriously, but really, I am immersed in the world when I write. That's why when I really started to work on book two, every other kind of fiction I write had to be left to one side. I never really leave the world. When I am writing for clients I am also chugging over a bit of plot. When I am making tea, I am daydreaming a scene. It. Never. Stops.

Sometimes I do have to rein a scene in. I've got a couple of hundred words into a conversation and it's going off in such a tangent I know it won't work in the greater whole – I drag it back to the outline. It's a constant tension between the two.

I have no idea if this is making any sense. I think I am an agile outliner with big pants. Yeah, that sounds about right…

I think I'll save my thoughts on the emotional side of first drafts for another day. Does this make sense so far?

The End

My body is heavy, my head slightly fuzzy but in a good way, pleasure is seeping from every pore. I have a faint taste of apple in my mouth and the muscles in my neck have finally un-knotted.

I have the urge to lie in a bed of silk, eating grapes from a platter whilst being stroked by beautiful men. I am slowly returning to the world after being somewhere else for some time.

I have finished the sequel to 20 Years Later. And yes, it does feel like I have just had an amazing, prolonged period of lovemaking.

I am deeply happy, relishing the sensation of achievement and still feeling the bliss of the last word typed and the last file saved. But I know this, like all other feelings, will fade, so I've come to press as much of it onto the page as I can, like catching a butterfly and stealing some of the dust from its wings.

Whenever I am in a particular mode I forget what it's like to be anything else. Ask me how I write the first draft of a novel in a month's time and I'll have no idea – that knowledge will be locked away. Ironically someone emailed me to ask for advice on how to write serialised fiction about a week after I'd been sucked back into dedicated novel writing, and I simply haven't been able to answer them satisfactorily. But when I pick up the Split Worlds again, I will.

So I suppose that means I should write a post about how I write the first draft of a novel in the next couple of days. But is that interesting to you? I have no idea.

Tell me if you want to know more, for now I just want to draw you into my arms, to give you the warm embrace of a writer released from her novel at last. Let's look at that sky, filled with its dramatic autumnal clouds, and marvel at the beauty of the world.

For tomorrow, the doubts will come. And it will get ugly. But today, oh today, life is exquisite.

Routine, rhythms and resistance

Lots of writers have a daily writing goal and associated habits. Philip Pullman has his own, and my all time writing hero (and the famous man I most want to meet in the world) Ray Bradbury has one too. So does Stephen King, and many, many others.

I've always avoided it. After so many failed attempts to keep a diary in my youth, I put that kind of thing into the "awful daily chore that you create to make yourself feel guilty for failing" box and went and did my own thing.

For a while I wrote haphazardly, especially when I was coming out of my ten-year long writers block. I did the whole morning pages thing as part of that recovery, but in terms of fiction there was no routine at all.

After years in the desert, I found a spring

I wanted to write 20 Years Later for years but couldn't find the way into the story. Then one I day I literally woke up with a man's voice speaking in my head. I ran down the stairs, switched on the laptop and wrote what he was saying. It was the prologue and has remained practically unchanged since.

After that I couldn't stop writing the book. I finished the first draft 26 days later. It was an orgy of writing. Sheer bliss… a bliss that I never thought I'd experience again.

And I didn't for several years. Then I started blogging and stumbled into a new routine of writing a flash serial every Tuesday and a stand alone flash on Fridays. I wrote a short story a month too. All good.

The accidental routine was making lots of stories, but no novels

Book two simply wasn't getting written. And as the publication of book one was getting ever closer, I realised that I had to find a new routine and fast.

So I decided to try the whole 1000 words a day thing. But it made me realise something that I hadn't even considered before.

A daily word goal has nothing to do with the number of words, or even the daily aspect – it has everything to do with prioritisation.

This all happened at a point when I was really struggling with some anxiety issues. I took a long look at my trigger behaviours, at what made me feel calm and happy, and decided to experiment with how I organise my day.

A while ago I made a conscious decision to not build up my copywriting business and make writing my primary career path, with my business ticking over to pay the bills. But I realised that decision hadn't filtered down to all parts of my brain. On a global level I had said writing comes first, but on a daily activity level no change had been made.

I put that 1000 words goal at the top of my daily to do list. And do you know what happened? I wrote more. The book was getting written. Then I couldn't stop at 1000 words, I had to keep writing until the book let me go. One day I wrote over 5000 words. But not only that, I was feeling happier, more alive and the anxiety loosened its grip.

Why? Because I was putting the best of myself into the writing, and that nourishes me more than anything else in the world.

And funnily enough, all the client work is still getting done on time. The writing I do for them doesn't need as much of me as the writing of a novel does. I've been doing that kind of technical SEO writing for so many years now that I can do it when I'm a little bit tired, or after a few thousand words elsewhere. But that doesn't work the other way round, so when I tried to cram novel writing after client work there was nothing left.

Then the routine was broken

I went abroad for a week, which amounted to two weeks of client work crammed into the week before we went away, then extra work when I got back (I write monthly content you see, so only so much could be written ahead of time). I had so much work I had to prioritise the clients (they pay the bills after all) and so the fiction writing fell by the wayside.

I tried to write abroad, but it was on a strange laptop in different software, the chair was uncomfortable and well, I realised that I don't cope well with changes in my writing routine!

I got grumpy. Less got written. But even worse, I lost my rhythm, and when that happened, an old friend came back to squat in the empty space: anxiety.

I've spent the last 10 days clawing my way back to my old routine, and once I got there, I found I was blocked. That writer's anxiety had crept back. And something else was holding its clammy hand; resistance.

On Saturday I had cleared time to write, but didn't. I was only 5,000 words or so off finishing the first draft of book 2 and I was simply paralysed. So I took the day off. Then I did the same on Sunday. By Monday, I knew I had to address it.

Resisting the inevitable…

I knew it was probably a fear of finishing. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how I get through the day as I seem to be scared of everything. Fear of finishing? A first draft? Oh get a grip!

But it was scary (and still is a tiny bit) because it means the end of this current love affair. It means I have to go into the next project without knowing the shape of it yet. It means that the only time I'll ever spend with book two again is in the Land of Editing. And as we all know, there are no cocktails there.

I'm older and uglier than I was when I wrote the first book though, so I found a way through. Yeah, part of it was fear, but there was also something wrong with the next scene. Having a little flap at my husband about it and then a cup of tea enabled me to step back, finally realise what that was and then write the new version.

All was well with the world.

I'm now in the middle of the final chapter. Yes I am scared, in that "oh good grief Emma you're scared of everything!" kind of way, but I'm still writing. And look over there on the right! Look at how close I am to that final goal.

Rhythm, routine and resistance… all seductive in their own way. The only thing that's real is the need to write. Every day.

Adventures in audio land

A few months ago I officially launched my professional voice services and haven't really mentioned anything about them since. I have been very distracted as you know (and believe me, the pull to write TYL2 right now is so strong it's hard to write anything else, even a blog post!) so I thought it was high time to tell you all the exciting stuff that's happened with the voice work since launch. I also recorded a winning Friday Flash ages ago and then neglected to post it up, so that announcement, and the call for entries for the next draw is at the end of this post.

The adventure begins…

My first commission (you know, the one that produces your first cheque that you want to frame but can't because you need the money so badly?) was from the lovely Kate Maryon who is a local author I had coffee with ages ago. Kate is who I want to be when I grow up; serene, loving life and one of those people who is just so easy to be around. She also diagnosed my gluten intolerance, and since following her advice I have lost a total of 20 pounds in weight and have the energy to walk ten miles a week, play table tennis and do all the crazy work shenanigans I get up to. So, you know, she's done a lot to change my life already!

Anyway, she loved the sample I put on my voice page and commissioned me to record the first four chapters of her novel "Shine" which is simply wonderful. It's aimed at the 9-12 year old market but don't be fooled by the girly cover, it actually tackles some meaty issues to do with interpersonal relationships that are deftly explored.

Harper Collins gave Kate the go-ahead to have the recording done, and it's since been put up as a widget on their website! If you go to the Harper Collins page for Shine you'll find a box called "More Audio" and you can listen to the chapters through that. I did an accent for the mother and daughter that was really fun – Kate had to coax it out of me but I'm glad I did it!

Then I did something a little bit crazy

One of my favourite people online, someone who I have talked about on my blog since I started it, wrote a book that was published as an e-book by Lyrical Press. It's a science fiction thriller called TimeSplash, and the lovely chap in question is called Graham Storrs.

Now I have a lot of time for Graham. Our writing journeys have been very similar in timing, we both struggled for years, got grumpy, frustrated, infuriated, envious of other people's success – and understood that in each other perfectly. Then bang! We both get our first publishing deal in the same year. Not only that, I also love his writing, and his short stories delight the same part of my brain that is reserved for Ray Bradbury, my all time hero, and not many writers are let in there I can tell you.

So anyway, I decided that I wanted to record an audio book of TimeSplash as my first audio novel. I thought it would be a good experience for me, that it would help to raise Graham's profile too and that we could do it like pioneers of a new land; having no real idea of the huge work ahead and the pitfalls on the way, but knowing that there was something on the horizon worth striving for.

To my delight Graham said yes and for the last 3 months I have been recording TimeSplash.

And I have loved every minute of it. It's a great book.

But the story gets even better…

About three weeks before finishing it, I was commissioned for my next audio project by a rather splendid fellow called Greg McQueen. You may recognise Greg (assume Simpsons-esque Troy McClure voice here) from the amazing 100 stories for Haiti project. It's a novella, and one of the first projects for his new micro-publishing company.

So we get talking and it turns out that we have very similar plans and ideas about audio book publishing. We agreed we should collaborate on other projects, and I had several to bring to the table that I thought would really benefit from such a collaboration.

To cut a long story short (too late!) he has picked up the audio book of TimeSplash and offered Graham a print deal to boot. How fantastic is that?

So any day now I'll be announcing that my first audio novel will be available for sale. Squeeeee! And double-squee for Graham; his book is fab and I will be one of the first people to buy it in print. I want it on my shelf. I want to hold it in my hand. Even though I have read every single word of it aloud and then edited it for hours and hours, I still want to own it. That's how much I enjoyed it.

You can read Graham's happy announcement on the TimeSplash blog here and find out more about Big Bad Media here.

So what's next?

Well, I'm working on a novella for Big Bad Media, and there is another novella at the audition stage that I am hoping will happen too. Then there's the re-recorded and professionally produced audio book of 20 Years Later in the pipeline too, plus a few other things…

Friday Flash Prize Draw

I had to miss this in July, but I am opening this up again for your August flashes. Here are the details:

So, just like last time, I am going to record a Friday Flash written by someone in the community (for free), publish it here to showcase their writing and of course, send it to the flash author to do with it what they will. I get a chance to practice producing other people's work, and the winner gets a professionally produced audio version of their story. The only thing I ask is that at the end I get to say that I recorded it and give out my URL in case someone who listens would like me to record something for them.

Here's how it works:

• You look at the Friday Flashes you wrote in August and pick your favourite one

• Leave a comment below, telling me that you'd like it to go into the draw, and include a link to that flash so I know where to find it if it wins, and your Twitter name too

• I'll pick one at random using the random.org number generator (I'm not going to judge or pick a favourite as I don't want to get tangled up in that)

• Over the following month I'll record it and produce an MP3 which will get posted here with a link to the original flash and send you the file.

• Then you can put it on your own site, and if you link back to me to spread the word, that would be great.

Sound good? If you don't follow the instructions above be warned that I won't have a chance to chase you for details.

So if you want a chance to have me record one of your stories, you've got a week to submit – starting now. Please spread the word!

And if you can't bear to wait (or you want to have me record one as a present for a fellow writer), you can always commission a professional story recording by me – the details are here.

The winner of the previous prize draw was the effortlessly stylish and all-round gorgeous Icy Sedgwick. The story is in one of my favourite genres and is called No Place Like Home. Enjoy.