Sara Jayne Townsend's Blog, page 55

2010 In Review

On the last day of the year, my thoughts inevitably dwell on the year gone by. 2010 has been a good year. In fact, it's been the best year. I became a published novelist – not much can top that.

In revisiting my writing goals for 2010, however, it's been slightly less successful. I pledged to kick my urban fantasy novel out of its second-draft slump. Well, this has not yet happened. However, thanks to a late night plot-wrangling session with friends and fellow T Party members Gaie and Sarah, I am feeling much more confident that this WIP is actually salvageable.

2011 will see the e-book publication of DEATH SCENE, my amateur sleuth novel, which I am immensely looking forward to. However, this book is the first of a series, and Lyrical Press are not currently accepting any more mystery novels, so the future of my amateur sleuth is a little uncertain at this point in time.

I'm halfway through the first draft of the second book in this series and it's going quite well, so I am reluctant to abandon it in mid-flow, even if it has no home to go to when it's finished.

I can't help feeling that the urban fantasy series might be the way to go. The urban fantasy band wagon shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. I want to aim high with that one, and put it on the agent circuit when it's ready to go. I just have to finish the damn thing.

So with this in mind, here are my decidedly ambitious writing goals for 2011.

1. Promote the pants off DEATH SCENE, pending its forthcoming release in 2011.

2. Get to the end of the first draft of the sequel to DEATH SCENE.

3. Work hard on the urban fantasy, and get it to a stage where it's at the very least ready to be critiqued by the T Party at the end of 2011, if not yet ready to go out into the world.

It's a bit scary looking at these goals laid out this way. But hey, why not aim high? Trying and failing is better than not trying at all.

Happy New Year, everyone. I'll catch up with you again in 2011.

Finding Time To Write

(Cross-posted from the WriteClub blog)

I complain frequently about how difficult it is to fit writing time in around the day job.

It is rare for me to have a day I can dedicate completely to writing, as all my weekdays are spent at work and my weekends are then spent doing those chores I don't have time to do during the week.

This time of year, however, I usually have about ten days off work. Even accounting for the madness of the Christmas festivities, that still gives me several days I can spend at home, dedicated entirely to writing if I chose to do so.

But do I get more writing done on those days? Sadly, no. If I spend the day at home, I find too many distractions. I waste time watching TV or playing computer games. When I do put my butt in the chair in front of the computer, I find myself stopping to make myself endless cups of tea, or wandering off in search of biscuits. Or one of the cats will come along and sit on my keyboard, making it rather difficult to get any typing done.

I seem to function better with the pressure of deadlines. Those mornings I crawl out of bed at 5:30am to sit in Starbucks for an hour before work I get more words written than I do sitting at home for an afternoon. Knowing I've only got an hour makes me obliged to write the words. If I know I've got six hours with nothing more important to do, the pressure is off and I'm much more inclined to get sidetracked doing something less important.

It seems I'm not yet disciplined enough to be a full time writer. I'm only an effective writer when I have deadlines. When I know my writing time is limited, I have to get on and do it.

Perhaps there's some truth to the old saying, "if you want something done, give it to a busy person". And perhaps I should stop whingeing about not having any time. When I have time, I am more inclined to waste it. When my time is limited, I make better use of it.

So I shall keep up my early-morning writing sessions, because they are proving to be the most effective time to write. I shall endeavour to complain less about not having any time. After all, we all have the same number of hours in our day. It's how we use them – there's the trick.

Perhaps one day I shall be ready to be a full-time writer. Until that time, I've got a lot more to learn about discipline.

In The Spotlight

Today I've got the Author Spotlight on Tim Marquitz's site, talking about SUFFER THE CHILDREN and the forthcoming crime novel DEATH SCENE. Click here to view the full interview.

Over-Writing Vs Under-Writing

(Cross-posted from the WriteClub blog)

In the January 2011 issue of 'Writing Magazine' (a mag I would, incidentally, recommend all writers read), Lorraine Mace discusses the fact that writers fall into two categories when it comes to writing first drafts: over-writers and under-writers. The former group end up with a first draft containing too many words; the latter end up with too few.

Over-writers end up having to murder their darlings in re-writes. Like Lorraine Mace, I am an under-writer. My first drafts are rarely more than 50,000 words. I tend to stick to the facts in the early drafts. I don't worry myself with little things like description in the first draft. Or sub-plot.

So, serial under-writers like me have to spend several drafts fleshing out the story. It's one reason why I don't let anyone read my first drafts. If my first draft was a person, it would not only be naked, but have bare bones visible through the flesh – a stark and somewhat scary being really not fit to be seen in public.

Over-writers on the other hand have to go at the manuscript with a sharp object, hacking away all the excess flesh that's dragging down the plot and making the manuscript unwieldy and unmanageable.

The problem I have with being an under-writer is that when it comes to the second and third drafts, in a desperate attempt to increase the word count, I will sometimes overcompensate by adding too much unnecessary padding (a fact I'm sure my editor can testify). The final draft has to be a careful balance – enough description to add atmosphere and flavour; not so much that the manuscript has become an unwieldy tome.

Thankfully, that's why first drafts exist. They're allowed to be rubbish. By the time it gets to the fifth or sixth draft, my WIP will emerge, blinking, into the light, hopefully a halfway presentable manuscript.

So over-writer or under-writer? Which are you?

By 'Eck It's Parky…

…as my Lancashire grandmother might have said.

Once more London is struggling to cope with heavy snowfall. And this year it's even earlier than usual – we've not had snow before Christmas here in over 30 years.

My friends and relatives in Canada are laughing a bit at the way London struggles when it snows. They cope fine with the snow, whereas here everything seems to shut down at the first sign of snow. However, most of Canada is buried under snow for nearly six months of the year. They cope because they have to, and they're used to it. They have snow ploughs and snow boots and chains on the tyres of their cars to grip the ice. Shovelling one's driveway is on the chores list of every Canadian household.

We don't have such things in London. I can actually see the argument that if we get snow once every twenty years, is it really worth a council spending a huge amount of money – money that could go towards more urgent things – on a snow plough?

Living in Canada, though, taught me how to dress in the snow. This week I've been trudging to work in long johns, hiking pants, thermal socks and hiking boots, to get me through the ice and the slush and the snow. All these things come off when I get to work – I keep indoor shoes and a pair of work trousers in my desk drawer. My colleagues laugh at me, but I feel prepared. I seem to feel the cold more than most people do. With all these layers, at least I am staying warm.

I've also been leaving the house really early, expecting train delays but so far this week – and I am reluctant to declare this, in case I'm tempting providence – my journey has been relatively delay-free. Not so for my colleagues, though. It seems those who come from the North of London are having the most problems.

But it's been this way for the last three winters. So is this the sign of winters to come and London should invest in snow ploughs? Not according to Phillip Eden of the Royal Meteorological Society in this article here from the BBC website. He says we're just following an established pattern, and we can expect a run of mild winters from next year.

Here's hoping he's right. In the meantime, I've got another three early mornings of struggling in to work in the snow, and then I have ten days of lie-ins over the holiday period.

I don't really mind if the snow sticks around after Christmas. Hanging around the house, with hubby and the cats, working on my WIP and blasting zombies on the Nintendo Wii, sounds like a pretty good way of spending the holidays to me.

Visit to Singapore

Sitting as it does practically on the Earth's equator, Singapore has only one climate all year round. Hot. Humid. Frequent torrential downpours. If like me you have hair that's prone to frizz at the first sign of humidity, you may as well resign yourself to 'bad hair days' for the duration of your stay in Singapore (as the attached pictures of me clearly demonstrate!).

The last time we visited Singapore was in 2004, during our 'round the Pacific' honeymoon tour. It was nice to come back, but the city has changed a great deal since then.

Me on the Singapore Flyer

The best way to get an overview of the city is to take a trip on the Singapore Flyer. It's a giant ferris wheel with 'pods' (very like the London Eye). From the top of the wheel you get a panoramic view of the city, with all of its sky scrapers and carefully landscaped gardens. You also get a commentary as you ride the Flyer, which explains how the entire city has been built on the principles of Feng Shui, thus ensuring good luck for all who live there. Whether or not there is any basis of truth in Feng Shui I couldn't possibly comment. But it has to be said the majority of people who live in Singapore seem happy enough.

Singapore is, on the whole, a nice place to be. Very modern and clean – it's illegal to leave gum or any other litter anywhere in Singapore, and a city-wide indoor smoking ban was in force before this was introduced anywhere else in the world. The oppressive humidity tends to mean that you don't want to spend any length of time walking around outside – you get very tired very quickly. But everywhere indoors is air conditioned, and the underground metro system is quick and reliable – and also air conditioned. So you really don't need to be walking very far.

F1 Track and Paddocks - view from the Singapore Flyer

The Formula One circuit is a new addition since last time we were in Singapore. You get a very clear view of the track and the paddocks from the Singapore Flyer. I am actually a fan of Formula One racing and I found it quite exciting to walk on the track. Naturally the track is quiet at this time of year – race season is over. But the tyre skid marks on the track can clearly be seen, and I wondered, as we walked on them, whose car made the marks. Was I walking in the tyre tracks of Lewis Hamilton or Jensen Button?

Another recent addition to the Singapore skyline is the luxury hotel and casino the Marina Sands. It has a very distinctive design – three skyscraper towers with an immense concrete ship balanced on top of them. It's not quite finished yet. The hotel is open for business, as is the casino, but the huge shopping centre at the foot of the complex is still mostly empty, with only a few shops currently in occupation.

Me & the Marina Sands

You can take a lift up to the top of the building – up into the 'boat' bit – for another impressive view, but it's actually quite expensive to do this. Entrance to the casino is free of charge – if you're a tourist, and can produce your passport to prove this. Locals have to pay a hundred Singapore dollars to get in. Apparently the government does not want to encourage its citizens to gamble. But clearly it has no qualms in taking tourist gambling dollars.

Singapore is perhaps more cosmopolitan and Westernised than other Asian cities. It's clean and contemporary, full of skyscrapers and enormous shopping malls.

We arrived on 1 December, and moved on to Bali three days later. I will be blogging about our adventures in Bali soon. Stay tuned….

Beginnings, Middles and Endings

Cross-posted from the WriteClub blog.



I have had many a discussion in the past about what makes a book "good". I am willing to concede this is a matter of personal preference. A book might be superior in its language, and win all kinds of literary prizes. But that doesn't mean I'm going to like it.

Other books might tell a great story, but the writing style leaves a lot to be desired. They still manage to be mega best sellers ([cough] Dan Brown [cough] Stephenie Meyer).

I admit to being fairly simplistic in my literary tastes. I like a beginning, a middle, and an end. I like things to occur in chronological order. I like plenty of action. There has to be death, and danger (and preferably a bit of gore). This is what draws me to horror, crime and urban fantasy – on the whole, these genres have plenty of excitement, the characters face danger, and blood gets spilled.

A few years ago I read – and really hated – Donna Tartt's "The Little Friend". It started off well. A 12-year-old girl goes sleuthing to discover who murdered the brother who was killed before she was born. A mystery, then. I got quite engrosed in following her journey as she picks up clues.

But the book comes to an abrupt end without revealing who the killer is. That's an unsatisfactory ending. Fans of "The Little Friend" tend to say that the book is not about the murder, it's about the main character's emotional journey through adolescence. But you know what? That sort of journey just doesn't have enough action for my liking. And to introduce a murder mystery in a plot and not solve it? Well, that's just cheating.

I may never win any literary prizes in my writing career. I'm not even claiming to be all that good a writer. I just want to tell a story that has a beginning, a middle and and end. And preferably a horrible death somewhere along the line.

'Genre' fiction gets bad press sometimes, perceived as somewhat low-brow. But I'm happy to stick with my crime, horror and urban fantasy stories. Generally I'm in for an enjoyable read. And I'm also fairly confident I'll get a proper ending.

Who's The Tourist?

I am just back from my Singapore/Bali holiday, a trip I'll be blogging about in further detail soon. For now, I just want to tell you about one particular moment.

We were sitting on the beach in Bali, on a day that was a national holiday for the Balinese – a Hindu celebration involving giving thanks to the gods, feasting, celebration and spending time with family (much like Christmas). Because of this, the beach was pretty quiet that day. We were settled on our sun loungers with books to while away a pleasant morning in the sun when a Balinese family came over, and though they didn't speak English, they seemed to be indicating they wanted to take pictures.

There were about half a dozen people in this group, spanning three generations. When we said we didn't mind, they took turns to pose with us, on our sun loungers, while other family members took the pictures. After half a dozen or so shots, they thanked us and left.

Clearly they found us a peculiarity, but it got me wondering what it was that they found photo-worthy. Is it that the locals find it quite amusing that these pale-skinned foreigners come thousands of miles to sit on their beaches wearing next to no clothes until their white skin is roasted red by the sun?

Most Balinese don't travel abroad – it's too expensive. Perhaps this family just came to the beach on their day off to gawk at the foreigners – the same way that we Westerners travel to far-flung places to gawk at what we consider to be exotic foreigners. In any case, it made me wonder just who the tourists on the beach that day were.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

I am currently in Singapore and not expecting to be blogging for a little while. But the journey here was an adventure in itself, and I thought I would share it.

Our plane was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 10pm on Tuesday evening. We'd booked a cab for 5pm that afternoon – figuring, even with the predicted bad weather, that should still leave us plenty of time to get there.

The snow began to fall in London on Monday evening, and showed no signs of stopping as Tuesday progressed. I began to get a bit worried, but checks on the airport website showed that there were no significant problems with the flights. One of the reasons I hate snow in the UK (as opposed to Canada, where it's so common everyone knows how to deal with it) is that the country grinds to a halt at the first snow fall of winter.

Then around noon the cab company phoned. They had no drivers available to take us to Heathrow. They had tried ringing other cab companies, but found no one available. They were really sorry.

After a moment of panic, we thought perhaps public transport might be an option. More internet research revealed that the trains and underground were, apparently, still running. The snow was still falling. Fortunately we were done with most of the packing – we finished hastily, bundled up with gloves and scarves and thermal socks, and left the house three hours earlier than planned.

It's a five minute walk to our local train station, but we had to drag our suitcases through the snow, so it took rather longer. The cases have wheels, fortunately, although if we'd have known before we started packing there would be walking involved, we might have gone for the back-packer option instead. Dragging cases through snow is not recommended. And although I had been cursing the cab company, figuring that when they said they had no drivers available, that could be interpreted to mean they had no drivers prepared to drive in snow, during the walk to the station I began to understand what the problem was. The roads were gridlocked. Even struggling with our suitcases, we were still moving faster on foot than most of the traffic.

Still, we got to the station, and got on the next train to come along, which took us to Victoria Station. After that, it was a trek on the underground, which fortunately had no delays, and the fact that we were travelling mid-afternoon instead of rush hour helped immensely.

We made our way to Paddington Station (the home of the famous bear) and decided to catch the Heathrow Express. This is a very fast and convenient train, but very expensive. However, given that we were anxious to get to the airport, we decided it was the best option. And indeed it was – we found ourselves, after all the hassle, at the aiport six hours before the flight was due to take off. But we were just relieved to be at the airport. We checked in, we wandered round the shops, we had coffee. We find a place to have a leisurely dinner. I got through a complete Janet Evanovich book on my e-reader while we were waiting.

And the plane, though delayed by over an hour, took off. Safely in the air I breathed a sigh of relief. It had crossed my mind many times over the last few hours that we weren't going to get to that stage.

After a twelve hour flight we landed in Singapore. Rolling our suitcases across the concourse and out of the airport, into 28c heat, we were hit by Singapore's oppressive humidity. With my thermals stuffed into my hand luggage, both the jacket and fleece I was wearing to stave off the chill in London slung over my arm, I thought about how strange it was that our suitcases had started their journey, many hours before, covered in snow.

I hear on the news now that Gatwick Airport is closed. I think we were very fortunate that we managed to get on our plane, though getting there was a journey in itself. In the meantime I am going to enjoy this heat, and hope that by the time we get back to London, the snow will have gone.

Give Me A Break

If you've been following this blog a while, you will be aware of my love/hate relationship with exercise.

Actually, that's not exactly true. There's no 'love' about it. I hate exercise. I endure it as a necessary evil because it's good for me (like eating vegetables). Because of this, it's easy for me to find excuses not to do it. The last few weeks have seen a plethora of excuses. I'm too tired. I'm too busy. It's too wet to tramp over to the sports centre. It's too cold. My foot is sore. My arm is sore. The list goes on.

This is, sadly, a fairly familiar cycle because to me exercise is a life sentence. Starting is hard work. I get into a routine and it becomes easier to at least get there, but I miss a couple of weeks and I have to start all over again. Having missed several weeks now, of doing any exercise whatsoever, I find myself once more at the bottom of the hill staring up at the top, and it's a very long way.

And just how many of my exercise classes I'm going to get to in the remainder of the year is questionable. After all, the most enjoyable part of the 'Festive Season', which is already upon us, is having an excuse to eat all the things I love but which are bad for me, and drink too much, and why would I want to spoil all that indulgence with the guilt of missing my body conditioning class?

So, I've decided to cut myself some slack. I have removed my exercise classes from my calendar for the rest of the year. There seems little point in keeping them there, when I have no intention of going to them, and to remind myself that I'm not there will just serve to make me feel guilty. I pledge to enjoy this indulgence without guilt.

In the New Year, of course, there will be no excuse for the guilt, and I will pledge to start the exercise regime afresh. I lose interest, but I always go back to the class. That's part of the cycle.

But that's next year. For the rest of this year, I've decided to focus on eating, drinking and trying to be merry. Pass me those mince pies…