Louise Dean's Blog, page 10

Meet Our Editorial Director – Lizzy Goudsmit Kay.

You’re likely all familiar with the ‘getting ready the night before’ routine that takes place ahead of a big day. You pack a lunch, and hang your outfit on the back of the bedroom door, and you squeeze your new notebook into a bag (alongside my laptop perhaps, a myriad of coloured pens and - of course - a mask!).

I am doing all of these things right now because tomorrow will be my very first day in a new job. I will become, officially and after weeks of waiting, your Editorial Director at The Novelry. 

I know that you’ve all been here a while, writing brilliant books and sharing your stories, and I hope you won’t mind squidging up and creating a little space on the bench. I know that there will be plenty for me to learn from you over the coming months and years, and I hope that you’ll learn something from me too. 

I have worked - and still work! - as both a writer and an editor, and I hope you won’t mind me taking this opportunity to briefly introduce myself and to explain in a little more detail how the editorial team will work going forwards.  

So, in order:

I started writing as a child, and my love of books and stories was cemented when, aged eight, I won a short story competition judged by my childhood hero Jacqueline Wilson. I’ve had that itch ever since, that need to build worlds and characters and to find things to say about them. This ebbed briefly in my teenage years and in my early twenties, and then returned with a vengeance. I worked for a year on a (not very good) novel, and then found another story that felt incredibly special. I spent three years tightening it and rewriting it and trying to find its heart. 

It would have been wonderful if that had been my happy-ever-after novel but - as some of you may well know - it isn’t always so straightforward. I liked my characters and thought that some of the chapters were well-written, but I never managed to make it a book that people would want to keep reading. It always felt forgettable. I expect that some of you have felt that profound sense of disappointment when a book just won’t work. There are those that can be fixed and - inevitably - there are those that can’t. (I will come to the new editorial team shortly, but just so say here that we are going to be on hand to help you shape and structure the former - the fixables - and to find a path through the forgettables to new stories and new ideas!)

I eventually found the courage to open another blank document and started writing a story that would eventually become my first published novel, Seven Lies. I sent it out to several agents and I cannot tell you how wild my excitement was when I received a long, enthusiastic email from one of them - a brilliant agent with a phenomenal reputation who marries both creativity and commercial smarts, both of which are essential in the publishing world. We worked together for several months and then she sent it out to editors. It was acquired by publishers in thirty countries in the most surreal and unexpected few weeks of my life. It went on to secure incredible endorsements from generous writers and journalists, and hit the bestsellers lists internationally.

I was fortunate enough to be offered a two-book deal, which has shaped my writing over the last two years. I am no longer writing for me, but for editors, and the knowledge that they are owed a finished manuscript is - while a privilege - quite unnerving. I am currently partway through this second book and it hasn’t been without its challenges. I am enjoying it though, and it’s sometimes easy to forget that key ingredient. We will have the chance to talk writing/doubt/dithering in the coming months, and I would be delighted to hear your tips and tricks and to share mine with you! 

I have always written at weekends, and I have spent the weekdays of the last eight years as an editor at Transworld Publishers, a division of Penguin Random House UK. I joined as a Personal Assistant and left as a Senior Commissioning Editor. I couldn’t imagine a more rewarding company in which to begin my career, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to use the skills and knowledge acquired to help all of you at the beginning of your writing careers. 

I was lucky enough - from the very beginning - to have plenty of flexibility and I could choose to work on the books that captured my heart, rather than a specific genre. Over the years, my list has spanned the commercial and the literary, fiction and non-fiction, text and illustrated titles. I was responsible for acquiring, editing and publishing them. I realise that three words sound like they might mean the same thing, but they are, in fact, very different, requiring different skills, and shaping my understanding of the wider publishing world in very different ways.

I have been fortunate enough to acquire the rights to plenty of brilliant books by wonderful authors and so I know what it takes to convince a publisher to take a chance on a new project. I understand how important the perfect pitch can be and the wonderful surge of enthusiasm that pours through a company when a very special submission is being read and loved by the entire team. I also know that sometimes a project needs a little more thought and finessing: perhaps it’s about finding the perfect comparison titles to demonstrate where the book will sit in the market, or reworking the one-line pitch to ensure that the publicity team will feel confident sharing it with journalists and the sales team with retailers, or it might be talking to the author in advance to ensure that the editorial visions match. This is the part of the role that is all about finding talent and championing it from the very beginning!

I was always keen to acquire books that made me look at the world in a different way, whatever the genre. It might have been a fast-paced and commercial thriller that offered a fresh and interesting moral dilemma, or a character who made unexpected choices, or a significant theme that challenged me to rethink my presumptions. I found reading brilliant submissions - those that ticked this box - quite stressful! I would often feel a growing sense of panic when reading a submission like this, knowing that it would be perfect for me and worrying that other editors might be feeling similarly. 

I have never enjoyed going to an auction for a book because it is devastating when you aren’t successful. And I can only assume that other editors feel similarly because the last year or two have seen a dramatic increase in pre-emptive offers, which are designed to tempt an author and agent into accepting quickly before other editors have read and shared the material. Still, the joy of taking on a new author, particularly when you’ve had to fight for them, is immense. It represents the beginning of an important relationship, one that will involve not only the words on the page, but the broader publishing vision: the marketing, the publicity and the eventual sales - all of which are key to building a long-term career. 

When the book has been acquired, and before it is published, an editor is responsible for, well, editing! I often found this the most rewarding part of the role. I enjoyed thinking about the structure and the plot: what do we need to know and when do we need to know it? And I am always drawn to interesting characters: who are these people and what matters most to them? It is always important to identify the part of the story that delivers momentum. What, in these pages,  will compel readers to turn the pages and then, ultimately, to laugh and cry and share this story with their friends? 

I also love playing with words and sentences, finding voices for characters and moments, picking at language to find new ways to convey old ideas. It has been a real joy to work with writers, and to learn from them, and to help them to shape their stories. I love making a suggestion - for a character or a plotline - only for the writer to take that idea and transform it into something even smarter. It’s a collaboration!

We, as an editorial team, will be doing all of this and more for your manuscripts: thinking about the big and small pictures, the main and secondary characters, the language used in each sentence. We will work with you to shape your stories and to make them the very best that they can be.

Publishing. 

Finally, I have been lucky not only to acquire and edit but also to publish books that have received huge praise, and sold in countries all around the world, that have found their way into readers’ hearts. There is no magic formula to make a book successful but a strong pitch and an outstanding manuscript are always the right places to start. And, from then, it becomes about buzz and noise and excitement: finding early readers, early endorsers, champions who will shout loudly and often, that gradual and steady build-up of good news. It is such a thrill to share this part of the journey with a new author, and I hope that many of you will find yourself on that happy road in the years ahead. There are many things that we cannot control - Will a book be selected for a specific promotion? Will it be widely reviewed? But it’s the quiet, everyday work of a team, the conversations over email, the brainstorms in meeting rooms or on screens, that can really shape a publication. 

It is the ability to think strategically, and to launch books with real thought, that makes a publishing team successful. There is always an element of luck, but there are plenty of things that can be done to give a book and its author the very best chance of success.  

We, as your new editorial team, will be doing everything in our power to create success for you - whether that’s in helping to shape and structure your brilliant ideas, guiding you to complete a stand-out manuscript, or pitching your book to literary agents. It is a privilege to work creatively on things that matter to you, and to do so as part of a collective makes it all the more exciting.  

Over the next few months, you will hear from me regularly - on writing, on pitching, on editing. You will also be hearing from my wonderful colleagues. I am delighted to be joining The Novelry alongside a crack team of editors - Tash Barsby, commercial fiction editor extraordinaire, and Lily Lindon, editor, author, podcaster, and all-round powerhouse.

You will mainly find us on The Big Edit and The Ultimate Manuscript Assessment, where we will doing what we do best: editing manuscripts, honing pitches, offering debriefs and reports.

We will work tirelessly to help you write the book that you want to write, whether or not that’s with publication in mind. We will pull apart plot strands, ask questions of your characters, and challenge you to interrogate your stories in fresh and exciting ways. We will also be behind the scenes on every course, working to ensure that you receive the very finest care and attention throughout your writing career with us. 

It’s getting late now and so, with my sandwiches wrapped in foil, my clothes ironed, and my bag by the front door, it’s time for me to wrap things up. I hope you all have a lovely day - and perhaps manage to get a few good words on the page - and I will see you all in the morning!

Happy writing, everyone,

 

Lizzy.

Ready to Write? Asks Rachel Edwards.

From the Desk of Rachel Edwards.

I am between novels. This was to be an open-ended rest, but it has already become a pregnant pause. Despite myself, I have begun gestating: ripening with seeded notions; pulsing with poetry and plot; hoping to nourish a cluster of characters with vital, fluid ideas; contemplating the long labour ahead to deliver what so many call a ‘book baby’.

My second novel, Lucky, has just come out, on 24th June 2021. A moment’s elation, then a feeling of being spent. I am lighter, unburdened.

Then again, drop writing fiction for too long and I might feel untethered. As I hold the hardback reality of my book in my hands, I already glimpse another hovering, a shadow on the periphery of my imagination. ‘Too soon?’ 

You tell me.

With my debut, Darling, I flung myself headlong into writing it after my characters started to whisper, then, in the run-up to the EU Referendum, to shout. Their haranguing was enough of a catalyst to ‘just bloody do it’. I did not come up for air (and edits) for eight months. Living with two first-person voices going at each other in my head day and night actually felt closer to how I had imagined being possessed than being pregnant. Once my debut was signed off, I experienced such a high that I wanted to soar straight on to the next book. Hours later, I crashed and went to bed for two days. 

I broke off writing fiction for some weeks, producing only a few articles, doing radio. This respite from that intensity of engagement was critical. Generating a book on a laptop comprises more than a marathon of finger-tapping; for this battle with oneself it helps to be fighting fit. Stiffened by the months at my desk, I started exercising more, drank less, revitalised my diet. As the days passed, I was starting to scribble down the odd line or phrase on envelopes and scraps of paper and so knew it was time for… the buying of the New Notebook. 

For me, this exotic item of stationery is tool, talisman, and statement of intent. The handbag-sized jotter will be carried everywhere including to my bedside and, in the final days of a novel, to meals (or rather, the meals come to say hi to the Notebook, joining the coffee and wine prison-visiting the Laptop). You do not buy one lightly.

Add to that the general stocking up, buffing and flexing, and all manner of inventive procrastination that I try – and fail - to get out of the way beforehand. Still, the faff steadies my focus. It is the equivalent of the final rituals before climbing the steps to the diving board.

That is the image that pertains, for me, when starting a full-length work. My writing routine is not one; it is obsessive, almost fully immersive in the closing stages. Writing can take over, when it is working, and I choose to let it.

To start a new book is to jump forth and go under, not knowing when you will surface. Creatively, I live for this total submersion.

Lucky satisfied that need, in the end. Exploring online gambling and the risks we all take to survive, it was to be my second anti-racist book of thrillerish pace. I leapt in, only to resurface two-and-a-half years later. I stopped and started until I hit my flow; the writing did not pour out of me in the manner of that very first livid torrent, but I stand by the harder-won result.

In recent weeks, sensing the slow but sure crescendo of a book calling me to write, I have been summoning reasons to delay Book Three: just until I’ve sorted all the rooms in our home; until society has unlocked for longer; until I have replenished body and mind; until I have picked and pressed the still-green apples; by then, surely, I should be ready to push back the walls and put writing at the centre of my world once more… 

Until the other Monday. The day after the World Cup Final, with its deluge of racial abuse on Twitter, floored me. A mild bug and severe horror left me unable to do much more than rest in a darkened room, rallying enough later to tweet condemnation, report the vitriol and post support from my bed. Later that evening, as the hearts healing Marcus Rashford’s defaced mural appeared in news feeds and after a day of collective action - mass ‘social work’ by the outraged, kinder folk online – the world started to right itself a touch. My final post that night was one of resolve. 

Absolute preparedness is a luxury, in these times. In the fight against racism, or for the climate, or indeed with the blank page, acting too soon is rarely soon enough.

The notebook on my desk? Yes, it is new, thanks for asking. Small. The cover features nothing but waves, crested and deep blue, as if inspired by Hokusai.  

I am climbing the steps, taking a breath…

Writing, ready or not.

Rachel Edwards was born and raised in the UK by her Jamaican mother and Nigerian father. She is delighted to have been ‘born on three continents at once’ and identifies as many things: a black British author; a Sunday Times columnist; a wife and stepmother; a London-loving resident of the Shires; a now-wistful Europhile and a diehard Soul II Soul fan.

Rachel read French with English at King’s College London. After a graduate stint in publishing, her break into fiction came in her twenties when she was engaged to craft literary sauce for her first editor, Rowan Pelling. She then won a national fiction award from The Arts Council which comprised mentoring from the acclaimed novelist Catherine Johnson. She has since written for many national publications, freelancing for more than ten years until 2016 when she chose to focus full-time on her fiction. Darling, the result, was her debut novel. and her second novel, Lucky, was published on 24th June 2021.

Rachel will be our guest for a Live Author Session on 16th August. All members welcome!

The Closed Circle Mystery by Lucy Foley

The closed circle is a beloved sub-genre of mystery, suspense and thriller fiction.

It refers to a crime, usually a murder, for which there are a limited number of suspects, each with credible means, motive, and opportunity.  The criminal (murderer) is one of the people present at or nearby the scene, and the crime could not have been committed by some outsider. The detective has to solve the crime, figuring out the criminal from this pool (circle) of suspects, rather than searching for a totally unknown perpetrator.

From the Desk of Lucy Foley.

My favourite Agatha Christie novel – and possibly my favourite murder mystery of all time – is And Then There Were None. There’s the tight plotting, the wonderfully awful cast of love-to-hate characters, the sheer astonishing brilliance of the reveal. But first and foremost for me is the closed circle setting. The island is a menacing, deadly presence from the outset. It’s that idea of the boat leaving them all there and never coming back: the building horror and claustrophobia as they realise they’re stuck on the island with a killer intent on making them pay for past sins. Because they’re forced to face up not just to the prospect of being picked off one by one but also to their own guilty secrets, each knowing that they have evaded punishment for a terrible crime in the past. For me, it is the closed circle murder mystery par excellence. It’s also the book that made me want to try writing something similar myself, in a modern context. Both of my books, The Hunting Party and The Guest List, are in a way a homage to it and to my other favourite closed circle Christies: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile.

In The Guest List, the setting – a deserted island off the coast of Connemara, Ireland – serves two purposes. Firstly, I wanted it to feel like the sort of spot that a glamorous couple like Jules and Will, the ‘happy couple’ in question, would choose for their wedding: somewhere ruggedly beautiful and out of the way, somewhere all their guests can really let their hair down, somewhere that feels exclusive and private in its remoteness. At the same time, I wanted it to feel like a place that could shift fairly rapidly from a beautiful escape to an isolated, isolating prison as it becomes apparent that a storm is on its way, sweeping in from out to sea — and that there’s a different kind of storm burgeoning among the assembled party as long-buried secrets rise to the surface. The landscape mirrors what is happening within the group and the island is, in a sense, like a character in the novel: turning on the characters as they begin to turn on one another, hostile and unforgiving.

In both The Guest List and The Hunting Party, my characters are trapped in an increasingly wild environment – nature red in tooth and claw – which also brings out a certain savage wilderness in the characters themselves as the masks they usually present to the outside world fall away. Robbed of all other distractions they are forced to look a little too closely at one another … but also at themselves. Past sins catch up with them and they are forced to confront their own demons. There is a sense of Fate catching up with them; they can no longer outrun their own pasts. And that is something I enjoy about the murder mystery format, particularly with the closed circle setting: there is the guarantee of a solution and often a sense of moral certainty, perhaps even a righting of wrongs, despite the bloodshed. This has a certain appeal amidst the chaos and apparent randomness of real life, in which the guilty aren’t always caught and punished, or forced to atone for past acts.

As a writer, a closed circle setting is a fantastic tool. The isolation ringfences your characters and forces them under the microscope. They’re stripped back to their most essential selves. They’re exposed in a way that somehow feels natural and inevitable, because when we are removed from our creature comforts and our familiar environments we are exposed, quite quickly we find ourselves out of our depth. Such a setting forces your characters to interact with one another like difficult relatives cooped together at a family Christmas. It’s a pressure cooker situation in which animosities and previously concealed secrets are bound to rise to the surface.

The ‘closed’ environment sets out the narrative as a puzzle for the reader to solve. It tells them to closely scrutinise each of the characters, their motivations and their behaviour, and also to carefully examine how they interact with those around them. I don’t have a Poirot or Miss Marple-esque ‘sleuth’ figure in either book. This is partly because I wanted to remove some of the cosiness that I feel inevitably comes with knowing you’re going to have a brilliant mind sit everyone down and explain everything at the end of the book, but also because I want to put the reader in the position of detective instead. By presenting them with this closed setting I am providing them with their pool of suspects to ‘interrogate’ as they go.

Let the games begin!

Lucy Foley worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry - during which time she wrote The Book of Lost and Found, which was a bestselling debut of 2015. Her first crime novel, The Hunting Party, was a Sunday Times Bestseller. The Guest List was published to great acclaim and achieved bestseller status in 2020 and her new novel The Paris Apartment will be published in 2022. 

She will be our guest for a thrilling live author event for members on August 9th. We will ensure all doors are locked and everyone leaves the session alive, all except for one...

Meet Mahsuda Snaith

 

Can you remember the feelings of first love? The giddy excitement, the blissful sigh of your body as the whole world became covered in a honey-tinted glow? That’s what it felt like for me with my first love; story.

I had a solitary childhood. The only Asian family on a predominately white council estate, my mother rarely allowed anyone over or let us out to see friends. Growing up, what kept me company were stories. The ones read to me at the end of the school day, the TV shows and films I watched when I got home and the books I borrowed from libraries and devoured in my room, their words filling my mind full of vibrant worlds that felt as real as the walls around me. Stories have helped me get through the hardest of times, they have been there for me when I needed them most but, more than anything, they have shown me there is always another way. As soon I was able to, I was making up and writing my own stories so when I discovered there were people who could make up and write stories as a job, I knew instantly that’s what I wanted to do.

I still have to pause every so often to absorb the fact that this is what I do now. I have two novels published with Transworld, an imprint of Penguin Random House, I was chosen as an Observer New Face of Fiction, have won prizes for my writing work and have had my short stories commissioned and published in a variety of collections. ‘The Things We Thought We Knew’ was chosen as a World Book Night book and ‘How to Find Home’ was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. Even reading this list I think, “Really? Me?”

It didn’t come easily, there were many rejections, many roadblocks, especially as a female, dyslexic, writer-of-colour who comes from a council estate. But the thing about roadblocks is this, if you keep on pushing against them, they will eventually move.

I think this why I’ve found such joy working with writers, whether it be via teaching, mentoring or giving feedback. Helping others identify their roadblocks, and finding ways to push them out of the way, has been one of the most rewarding parts of my work. Being a primary school supply teacher for 15 odd years has given me an insight into how we learn. There are some children who won’t understand if you simply tell them something; they have to see it, or feel it, or do it for themselves. Similarly, there are writers who won’t understand a story by being told about it; they have to see it, or feel it, or write it for themselves. My aim when working with writers is to help them find their own personalised method. To identify their strengths, point out their blind spots, advise but not demand what can be done with their writing and, above all, make writing fun.

I remember when teaching on creative writing degree a student talking through her (brilliant) idea for a thriller which was going to be from the viewpoint of a number of people witnessing a tragic incident. I could see she was getting muddled with how she was going to write this story, who she would focus on for each part, how she would switch viewpoints whilst also keeping the story flowing. I suggested that she focus on just one of the characters, the one she was most drawn to, and make them the central focus. I remember her looking at me with astonishment.

“You mean, I can make it easy for myself?” she said.

Writing is not simple; we have to use so many different parts of our mind, so many parts of our heart and soul. It can be mentally challenging, emotionally and physically tiring, but what writing should not be is a chore. Believe me, I’ve had moments when my writing has begun to feel this way and the way I, and most writers I’ve met, have dealt with that feeling is usually the same.

They stop writing.

I see my role at The Novelry as the person who keeps you writing. You may have a plot problem, or an issue with voice or style. You might be struggling with time management or you just need someone to tell you, ‘This bit is great, don’t worry about that bit. Move on. You’ve got this.’

We all need that support, whether you’re a professional or emerging writer. The Novelry gives you tools to get you writing a cracking bit of fiction, but it also gives you the experience of working with feedback from someone who’s been there. This will prepare you for when go on to working with agents and editors and, eventually, your audience (my favourite, and most helpful, reviews are usually from readers). I love helping writers in this way, answering their questions, helping them find their ‘sweet spots’ and preparing them for the road ahead, roadblocks and all.

As a creative writing tutor, mentor and past judge of the Costa First Novel Award as well as other writing competitions, I’m used to reading a wide variety of genres of writing. For me, it’s not so much whether I’m reading a dystopian thriller, or a historic romance, or a literary piece, that stands out but the creativity, the voice and the heart of a story. I’m so excited about discovering those elements in your writing, helping you nurture your seedling ideas so they grow into their full potential. And, with a bit of guidance, I hope you’ll get the same feelings of first love I had for story, except this time it won’t be for other people’s writing, but your own.

Mahsuda Snaith, Author Tutor and Writing Mentor.

Find out more about our wonderful and warm new author tutor Mahsuda Snaith here. Join us at The Novelry and write your novel with Mahsuda at your side! 

 

Imposter Syndrome, Writers?

From the Desk of Polly Ho-Yen

The term “imposter syndrome” was first coined by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in their landmark 1978 study of 150 highly successful professional women in various fields. Susan Pinker, author of The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes, describes Clance and Imes's findings as follows:

“Despite accolades, rank, and salary, these women felt like phonies. They didn’t believe in their own accomplishments; they felt they were scamming everyone about their skills.”

Sound familiar?  

You would not be alone; according to a review article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, an estimated 70% of people experience these impostor feelings at some point in their lives. Impostor syndrome is seen to affect both genders and all kinds of people from every part of life. Perhaps it’s not, in fact, a useful term and helps to mask and proliferate systematic bias and discrimination, as writers Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey explore in their Harvard Business Review article, ‘Stop telling Women they have Imposter Syndrome’.

I’ve just hit send on my ninth book. Mostly I’ve written children’s books: four are middle-grade novels, two have been commissions - a short novel for a reading scheme and illustrated fiction for young readers - and this year marks the publication of my debut in adult speculative fiction. I’ve a first draft of another middle-grade book with my editor and the story that I’ve just sent packing I hope will find a home with a younger audience. And yet despite this, I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t know what I am doing a lot of the time. If I stop to think about it, I begin to feel shaky with my own vulnerability. What better place to admit this but here in this blog post where I’m claiming to have the answers - or at least something useful to say.

Whether this is imposter syndrome or not, there is something that I feel sure of, with each published novel that I tuck onto my bookshelf and every first word typed in place of a blinking cursor, which means I don’t let these feelings of inadequacy take over. Despite my worries, I actually feel I write my stories with confidence (blog posts can be another matter!) This is because I know how to help myself when I’m feeling full of doubt, when I’m worn down and unsure, insecure and worried if what I’m doing is any good at all. I keep coming back again and again to the same lesson: it’s a lesson in kindness.  

When I started writing my debut novel for children, I was teaching full time and I’d just taken over my first class – an exuberant group of five-year-olds in South London who were keeping me very much on my toes. The job was more than enough to be getting on with and yet I found myself turning a story over and over in my mind that I felt I had to write. The first hurdle for so many of us is giving ourselves ‘permission to write’. There are a million and one other things that you should be doing and in the time that you’ve even entertained the idea of writing, that list has grown to a million and two.  To me, it feels like an absolute kindness to yourself to tell yourself that you do believe that you’re allowed to write - just because you want to. It’s the first kindness we must grant ourselves as writers: a playful self-belief. For we’re not asking anything of it (for now); it’s an experiment in curiosity. 

I began to get up before I had to leave for school to write because I knew that I would talk myself out of doing it if I waited until the evening. My second kindness to my writing, and to myself, was giving this time over to this expression. I may not have felt fresh but I definitely wouldn’t have been able to summon the energy after a day of teaching. Unwittingly I had found my Golden Hour, the daily time for writing that we at The Novelry encourage all our writers to find.  

It’s a gentle evening outside as I type this remembering those first hours I dedicated to writing. My days are quite different now; my daughter wakes so early sometimes that a Golden Hour before she gets up simply wouldn’t work. But I still have to carve out regular time, in the morning if possible, where I can disappear into my fictional world. So I instigated an alternate morning timetable with my husband and use my morning lie-in to write. If I don’t write in the morning, I’ll find an hour in the evening to write, as I’m doing now. I snatch up any other opportunity I can, of course – long car journeys, nap times, the odd hour when the house is quiet – but I know that the regular hours are a necessity for me – a kindness to myself that without them, I would simply feel so much less.

It’s still on my road tonight; there’s just the occasional car, the sound of a territorial blackbird piercing the quiet. I now write in the room that is my studio: a simple space with a large desk and a lamp, bookshelves and a bed for guests in the corner. For a very long time, I didn’t have a room of my own and I relish it now (and the door that can be closed.) Since I started writing professionally, I’ve sought out spaces to write in any place I could find them. First, it was the table in the sitting room of our tiny, damp flat before my husband woke up. Then, balancing precariously on a pulled-out drawer in the bedroom (when my husband was awake.) After that came very many public libraries, staffrooms, trains, coaches, a narrowboat, the chair in my mother in law’s attic room, the dining room table at my parents’ house … each of these places I feel strangely connected to. I can recall the way the light would fall, the hardness of the chairs, the texture of the tables. I wonder if this is because each stint of writing feels like such powerful moments of connection for me that they have become etched into my memory. Recently, talking to my fellow tutor Emylia Hall about writing retreats and deciding afterwards that I have just got to book one for myself, got me thinking more about the gift of space that we must also give ourselves as writers. Holding a space, physically, to write in goes hand in hand with guarding the temporal space. Whether it’s a studio or a shed, a corner of the kitchen table or a park bench, seeking out the place or places that will become your writing home is in my eyes, an essential kindness.

I’m about to start my tenth story and I begin my books, in the same way, every time. I like to collect ideas on a blank piece of paper and I scrawl them down on the page as they fall. I let myself think big and small, weird and ordinary – but whatever comes, I welcome it. I trust that I’ll find a story I want to tell - if I just do this for long enough. If I feel stuck, I doodle and let the doodles wander. I’m unstoppably kind with myself at this point because I know I need to get every idea out before I can find the one that grabs me. If I try to weigh each one up as it comes then I’ll end up freezing, worried that none of it’s any use, that it won’t come to anything. I try not to think in terms of an idea being ‘good’ but simply whether it interests and engages me enough to want to write it. It’s never failed me this process; I have my tenth idea for a story scribbled out in between looping curls and inexplicably, sketches of trees, a cup of tea and a woodpecker.

Another incredibly important act of kindness in my process is that I set myself very achievable goals. Just before I started writing my debut I went to an event to hear John Boyne speak and heard him share how he’d written ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ in a period of something like five days. It felt in equal measure inspiring and down-heartening to hear this. ‘It can be done, in just five days!’ flashed through my mind. But when my word count wasn’t stretching to a good eight thousand at just day one of writing, I already felt I had failed. But what if I just brought the daily count right down? What if I made the decision to feel damn right pleased with myself if I wrote five hundred words a day? This is one of the methods we teach at The Novelry.  We find that by taking the pressure off, our writers do better.

Sometimes I could do more but by setting myself up to succeed – finding kindness towards myself rather than a strict agenda has meant that finishing a book has never tormented me. I know I can build it, day by day if I continue to show up and keep on writing.

This piece-by-piece approach is liberating when the whole thing is starting to feel impossible. Perhaps life is taking over, which it has an annoying tendency to do; it’s all too easy to start to feel wretched and frustrated that you’re being kept from writing your story although you’re well aware that your headspace is at an all-time low. A technique I employed when I needed to write when my daughter was tiny and feeding interminably, my brain was depleted of sleep and sanity, and we’d just entered the first lockdown, was to set a timer for five minutes. I would tell myself I would just write for that long. Before I set the timer I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to achieve anything but by granting myself the kindness of making it utterly achievable, I’d get stuck in. Five minutes would pass and by then I’d invariably be hooked until a nap would end and I’d be pulled back into babyland.

Once you’re over the hurdle of actually making the writing happen, that’s when the real fun begins and you can be sure that your inner critic is alive and kicking. By starting, you’ve actually given yourself something that you can tear to shreds.  This is when showing kindness to yourself becomes both a shield and a weapon. One of our ten commandments for writers at The Novelry and perhaps the most fundamental is 'don't be mean to yourself it serves no purpose so just stop it.' The opposite can be said for kindness. By approaching your work with kindness I absolutely do not mean an acceptance that your work is the best thing that’s ever been created – for me, it’s all about clarity and a belief in moving forwards. It’s about, in your re-reading of your writing, to look for what is working and to lose what is not. To connect with your shortcomings and then do something about them.

I know that I’m always very keen to get to the exciting things in my story as soon as possible. I want to get to the action quickly because otherwise I fear I will surely lose my reader. I know I’m doing this because I’m probably a bit insecure about the story. Time and time again, I do this but especially so, when I was starting out with my first book, Boy in the Tower. I know now I need to employ the same lesson of kindness towards my characters that I’m purposefully and stubbornly giving myself: allowing them to have the time and space to grow before I move the story on.

At this point in writing, when I’m redrafting and editing, I know that every tool I’ve employed to get me to this point, I need to draw on more than ever. I must continue to hold both time and space for this story, even if I’m losing hope and my energy is flagging. My daily goals must be completely possible for me to achieve and so that I’ll keep at it, working word by word, sentence by sentence. The process of editing - of rereading, revising and reshaping - is one that fascinates me. I love what George Saunders has written on the subject, that editing is, in essence, an act of empathy towards your reader:

We often think that the empathetic function in fiction is accomplished via the writer’s relation to his characters, but it’s also accomplished via the writer’s relation to his reader … This mode of revision, then, is ultimately about imagining that your reader is as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well-intentioned as you, and that, to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her. You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: “No, she’s smarter than that. Don’t dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.”

- George Saunders’, The Guardian, ‘What Writers Really Do When they Write’

Finally, you might find yourself reaching a kind of finishing line: your book is on submission, you’re waiting to hear back from agents or publishers and after that tiny beginning, that playful self-belief, and the hours upon hours of work, you await judgement. Ironically, either a negative or a positive outcome may still lead to feelings of being an imposter. Perhaps, if you are successful you’ll wonder how you ‘got away with it’ and if you are not, that you never ‘had it’ in the first place. This is the time when kindness to yourself is more important than ever. Reaching this point, I feel all you can do is to tell yourself that you have done everything that you could and that now it’s down to luck. I like to remember this quote from Charles Horton Cooley which I read in one of my favourite books I go to if I ever need a pick-me-up: ‘Your Inner Critic is a Big Jerk and Other Truths about Being Creative’ by Danielle Krysa:

“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one” – Charles Horton Cooley 

I remember that if I have exercised kindness to myself throughout this whole process then the publishing of a work is a cherry on top. Having already had the reward of crafting the work, everything else that may or may not follow can fall away. I’ve given myself this gift of writing and nobody can wrestle this from me.

Happy writing,

Polly x

At The Novelry, we practice kindness as a way of helping our writers write. It's possibly our most important tool in terms of productivity. We don't have many rules, but we do offer some tips as a mantra on the novel course main page, the last of which seems so simple but is so hard for so many - do not be mean to yourself, it serves no purpose!

We are active in our support of our writers because as working writers - each and every one of us on the team - we know how doubt and fear can take over if they're not put in their place.

They do serve a purpose, in fact. They're there for taste and judgement and are useful when you're editing your novel. But they're not so much use when you're in the first draft creation phase. 

One thing we find, and we thank our writers for this, is that the sense of not being alone, that others feel the way you do, means that we can - perish the thought -  laugh at how rotten we can be to ourselves.

Writing alone is, well, writing alone. Come over to the sunny side. We're all imposters, for sure, but if we can grin about it we can get novels done nonetheless. The frailty so common to all of us is, after all, at the heart of the honesty that characterises memorable and touching fiction. Maybe it's good  - and brave - to 'lean in' to feeling afraid.

We will look forward to seeing you at The Novelry soon where we'll take good care of you.

Happy writing,

Louise x

How To Introduce a Character in a Novel

...the Artful Flaw. 

From the Desk of Katie Khan

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with how we first meet our favourite characters. Whether they’re honourable, ethical good guys, or down-and-out criminals with a wicked streak, how we’re first introduced to our hero’s flaw will define the shape of the story. Whether the novel will arc upwards as their situation improves – or downwards in a dramatic fall from grace. 

Some common character flaws include our heroes being vain, conceited or narcissistic; lustful, libidinous or predatory; proud, deluded or boastful; angry, vengeful or rash. Your character might be more on the pathetic side of flawed – miserable, helpless and isolative; slothful, apathetic, small-minded or indifferent.

Choosing and revealing your character’s flaw is, I think, one of the hardest parts of writing a novel. It’s also the most open to misinterpretation. In early drafts we often create deeply unhappy, broken characters who are so down on their luck the first chapter is a misery-fest. Characters so aware they are awful that they stand already on the precipice of self-hatred. Pity them, the author seems to urge; pity this tragic figure for their plight.

This doesn’t work, I’m sorry to say. I’ve spent weeks if not months pondering why; I’ve concluded that when an author steps in and urges us to pity their character, it means we cannot root for them. We’re being given an opinion, rather than being allowed to form one. More so, when a character openly recognises their own flaw at the start (‘I’m awful and I have to change’), the journey ahead falls flat because not only are we again being told what to feel about them, but they are not forced dynamically out of their equilibrium. Resistance to change drives plot. Having no choice but to change is a story.

Remove authorial judgement

Consider Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, one of our Hero Books at The Novelry. Highsmith throws us into the opening scene, in media res, as Tom Ripley believes he is being followed and enters a bar on Fifth Avenue to see if the man will bring out a police badge and arrest him. Instead, the man introduces himself as the father of Dickie Greenleaf, a vague college acquaintance of Tom Ripley’s. Ripley is relieved.

He followed the man towards an empty table at the back of the little room. Reprieved, he thought. Free! Nobody was going to arrest him. This was about something else. No matter what it was, it wasn’t grand larceny or tampering with the mails or whatever they called it. Maybe Richard was in some kind of jam. Maybe Mr Greenleaf wanted help, or advice. Tom knew just what to say to a father like Mr Greenleaf.

--The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, p.2

 Ripley’s criminal activity is presented so matter-of-factly here I almost missed it: ‘it wasn’t grand larceny or tampering with the mails’. Ripley has clearly been up to no good before this first chapter. And right on its tail, Highsmith points out Ripley’s true nature – a manipulative person with the ability to run a con on the wealthy. ‘Tom knew just what to say to a father like Mr Greenleaf.’ Now imagine if Tom Ripley felt remorse in this first chapter, instead of a reprieve from jail; imagine if Highsmith urged us to pity this morally corrupt creature. It wouldn’t have anything like the same effect. Ripley would be a whiny rule-breaker who deserves to face justice. It would be tiresome and dull. Highsmith doesn’t judge her creation, and so we (the readers) don’t either. We’re in on the con. We’re off on an adventure, criminal behaviour be damned. 

Let’s look at something more recent – the multi-million-copy bestselling and award-winning novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. In the first line, we meet Eleanor, who immediately tells us her position in the world – unimportant.

When people ask me what I do – taxi drivers, dental hygienists – I tell them I work in an office. In almost nine years, no one’s ever asked what kind of office, or what sort of job I do there. I can’t decide whether that’s because I fit perfectly with their idea of what an office worker looks like, or whether people hear the phrase work in an office and automatically fill in the blanks themselves – lady doing photocopying, man tapping at a keyboard. I’m not complaining. I’m delighted that I don’t have to get into the fascinating intricacies of accounts receivable with them.

--Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, p.1

 Oh, this is a tragic figure, isn’t it? Look at the people who ask Eleanor about her job: taxi drivers, dental hygienists. She could have added ‘hairdressers’ and we’d have got the gist – people who are duty-bound to ask personal questions as they go about their work, rather than actual friends or interested parties in her life. Eleanor is a loner. (Perhaps hence the name choice.) Consider the total absence here of the author’s opinion from the narrative: there is no authorial pity, either in the presentation of the story or in Eleanor’s narration. She doesn’t pity herself. In fact, the world’s lack of interest in her is great: she doesn’t have to explain the specifics of her very boring job!

As Eleanor details the ins and outs of her daily routine, we learn that Eleanor eats lunch alone (a sandwich from Marks and Spencer on a Friday, ‘which rounds off the week nicely’), talks to no one, then goes home to an empty house where she listens to The Archers and eats food she doesn’t enjoy. The lonely minutiae of her working week is laid bare – and then she describes her weekends. 

On Fridays, I don’t get the bus straight after work but instead I go to the Tesco Metro around the corner from the office and buy a margherita pizza, some Chianti and two big bottles of Glen’s vodka. When I get home, I eat the pizza and drink the wine. I have some vodka afterwards. I don’t need much on a Friday, just a few big swigs. I usually wake up on the sofa around 3 a.m., and I stumble off to bed. I drink the rest of the vodka over the weekend, spread it throughout both days so that I’m neither drunk nor sober. Monday takes a long time to come around.

--Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, p.3

Still no judgement. In fact, the only place judgement bleeds into the narrative is when Eleanor is talking about her colleagues, or the doctor she sees about the back pain she’s experiencing due, in her opinion, to the weight of her breasts which she has weighed on her kitchen scales. ‘My tone went completely over his head. […] That’s the downside to the younger ones; they have a terrible bedside manner.’

Other characters are treated with scorn, they are judged and found wanting; Eleanor is treated with empathy, albeit matter of fact.

The Triumphant Flaw

Though we are aware of the shortcomings of Eleanor Oliphant’s existence from the first line, we are less than five pages into the novel when Gail Honeyman hits us with Eleanor’s true flaw. It’s not that she’s an outsider who is lonely, a bit of a quirky oddball misunderstood by others. It’s that Eleanor Oliphant is PROUD of her life. Her flaw is presented as a triumph.

I have always taken great pride in managing my life alone. I’m a sole survivor – I’m Eleanor Oliphant. I don’t need anyone else – there’s no big hole in my life, no missing part of my own particular puzzle.

--Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, p.5

This is a big, big key to a nuanced and artful character flaw: they believe they are in the right.

There is something fascinating about people who wear their shortcomings like a shield. ‘I’m plain-spoken, me.’ ‘I don’t suffer fools lightly.’ They name their coping mechanisms rather than putting the finger on the truth. Being ‘plain-spoken’ is being blunt and rude by any other name, isn’t it? And what makes a person blunt and rude? Prod it, like a bruise. Underneath that defence, there’s the flaw.

A character who has put walls up so high they are impressed by themselves, whose coping mechanisms have become a source of pride; a criminal relieved he is not being arrested but instead spots opportunity; a character certain the world is wrong and they are right – these are the characters I’ll follow through 350 pages of a novel. Because when that belief begins to unravel, when their world begins to crumble… what a reckoning they’ve got in store for them.

The Character at Odds With the World

The world around your character is a huge part of designing an artful character flaw. I mentioned this in my blog about high-concept fiction, but again and again I return to the question: who is the worst-placed person to deal with the premise of this novel? If your book is about the end of the world, a character who over-relies on law and order is the ideal foil to experience the complete collapse of society. What will they do without their Excel spreadsheets? How will they cope? How will they change?

In a novel about solving crime, a flighty and disorganised detective who relies only on gut instinct as their home and professional life unravels… we’ve seen that before, haven’t we? There’s a reason it’s become an archetype of the genre, if in need of a little refresh. The character is in opposition to the world. Their flaw is in opposition to their quest. They are the worst-placed person to do this thing, and by doing it, they must change. They will grow.

But What if They’re Unlikeable?

There is, of course, the common complaint that a character isn’t ‘likeable’. Andy Weir, bestselling author of the stratospherically successful The Martian, recently spoke on his own characters’ likeability on the Write-Off Podcast with Francesca Steele. Regarding his second novel, Artemis, he said: ‘People didn’t like the main character, I made her too flawed, maybe a little unlikeable; a lot of people had a hard time rooting for someone who is so much the agent of her own problems.’ 

In my eyes, ‘likeable’ does not mean the reader must want to go for beer with that character and swap notes on baking tips and London’s best dog walks. I’m probably never going to ‘like’ a misogynist, or a murderer. And if you give me a two-dimensional portrayal of an ‘angry’ or ‘self-pitying’ character then my empathy will likely go AWOL. But if you can present that character without authorial judgement, if you can make them believe the way they move through life as a result of their flaw is their strength, and if you keep them unaware of their true flaw until the world crumbles around them and they have no choice but to face it… well, then I will follow that person anywhere, even to Hell. We are invested enough to root for them, warts ‘n’ all, whether that character is good or bad. Hopefully a bit of both!

Happy writing,

Katie 

How to Keep Writing Your Novel.

May You Always Be A Beginner.

Write with innocence, wide-eyed about the vagaries of humanity and a willingness to be surprised at how low or high humans can go.
Write with hope, that your tale will bring a smile to even one person, take another to a location they will never visit in real life, cause an individual to reflect on the human condition or guide someone on a thrilling adventure that happens in the safety of their minds/imagination.
Write with generosity, with a heart so big that you’re willing to share your dreams and crazy ideas with someone else through words.
Write with love, for people, life, love and everything that lies within and between.
Write with an open heart, willing to listen to feedback that only gets you back on the computer, not down in the pits of despair.
Write your truth. Always. That’s where authenticity comes from, that elusive quality called ‘voice’ but is really industry parlance for ‘to thyself be true’.
Most of all, Write.

Whatever you heard or read about 'The Difficult Second Novel' is all true and more. But that is not what this blog is about. At least, not solely.  

From the Desk of Femi Kayode.

As of the time of writing this, I am over 90k words and still going with no end in sight. Three nights ago, on a cold Windhoek night (I can only write when normal people are asleep or at nightclubs or binge-watching Netflix), I bawled as I sat in front of my computer, finally able to admit that despite my plotting and planning, quite restful siesta, liver poisoning-level of black coffee, and my favourite writing outfit (a UEA hoodie with loose slacks), nothing was going to happen. For over three hours, I could barely remember the name of my protagonist, let alone the plot that less than 12 hours earlier I was eagerly recrafting based on research. What happened? How did I lose the plot, literally?

I have had time to reflect on what was going on. And at the heart of it all is memory. How easily we forget past experiences, especially when they have been rewarded in one way or the other. My debut novel was published in 2021, less than 6 months ago. Despite all I have read about how difficult writing the sophomore book is, I was sure I could rise to (if not above) the challenges. I had learnt so much in writing my first novel that I was confident that I was well poised to apply all the past four years had taught me. After all, all this did not happen by chance. It was the culmination of careful, orchestrated action towards being a published author. It took much longer than expected, but it did happen.

Prior to my MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, I had explored several programs in my home country, Nigeria (an MSc in Clinical Psychology and a truncated attempt at a PhD in the same field), the US (a post-graduate diploma at the University of Southern California and another in International Health at the University of Washington, Seattle) and in South Africa where I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Futures Studies at Stellenbosch University. In practice, I had written several stage plays, some screenplays, radio dramas while creating and developing several TV dramas. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

Rewind.

 I decided about five years ago that I was no longer interested in writing for screen within the current environment in Nigeria and the continent at large. Copyright laws are archaic and a writer’s role in the value chain remained (to my mind) questionable. I was tired of wrangling over fees, residual rights and credits. I was discouraged by my lack of control over the final outcomes and most importantly, I baulked at the idea of being labelled a ‘Nollywood’ writer. But, it was an invitation to be part of the storylining team for a successful soap opera in Nigeria that reignited my dream of writing a novel.

Storyliners in a soap opera are not scriptwriters. They plot, structure the story, and ensure continuity. For several weeks, I and about seven other writers were sequestered in a hotel in Lagos, churning out hundreds of thousands of words, coming back to discuss character and plot in a workshop environment, and going back to our rooms to write more. It was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. Stories are broken down by the head writer, scenes structured to fit with the different story threads, and each beat structured to flow into the other writer’s plotline. I loved it.

But, the remuneration for being a storyliner was not impressive enough to take this on as a career path. Besides, I knew my ‘voice’ would be lost in the sequencing of breakdowns, scriptwriting and editing, with the involvement of a myriad of directors, producers and a hundred other personnel all working on the soap. A TV show is a brand and everyone that works on it writes to the brand. Your ‘voice’ – whatever that really means — is inconsequential, and your originality is appreciated as long as it within the proverbial box. I was already working on brands in my day job in advertising and there was no way I would do that for my side hustle too. Life’s really too short!

Nonetheless, the idea that I could write a novel had taken root and wouldn’t let go. I applied for the UEA pilot Crime Fiction programme but missed the email that was sent to me for an interview to finalise my admission for the 2016/17 session. I was devastated. Fortunately, UEA were understanding, and offered me admission for the 2017 session. I might have missed doing the course at the same time as The Novelry’s own tutor, Harriet Tyce, but at last I was definitely going to be writing a novel! 

If there was one thing going back to school taught me, it is that the secret to writing the novel lies within you as a person: your determination, commitment to craft and ability to pick up the pieces of your ego off the floor and start over. The end result is generally a tale that is peculiar to you because your journey to that story is a culmination of your experiences, psyche, disappointments, pain, dreams, hopes and more.

For me, I had dreamt of writing a crime story in the tradition of the high stakes, almost implausible storylines of Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins. I wanted the stories to be set in Nigeria, while presenting my continent in a manner inconsistent with the literary world’s experience of ‘African Literature’. Most of all, I wanted to write contemporary stories about Nigeria to show the people, its cultures and landscapes in a truly human manner that reinforces the notion of the ‘universal experience’ rather than one of the ‘dark continent’. Because I could not see any writer from my world doing this, I had no template to follow or deviate from.

I took solace in Toni Morrison’s advice to young writers; If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. In fact, this quote was my screensaver all through my writing of Lightseekers and I believe that’s where this amorphous idea of ‘voice’ comes from in creative writing. It really is about originality, and the way to guarantee that is to use school/workshops/training to know what has been done, learn the rules and the tropes, and then go out there and break it all. Training allows you to risk it all without the fear. There is an innocence that learning confers on you (contrary to popular opinion), and it is no wonder that some of the great innovative thinkers of our time are the ones that never stop learning, and growing. They are constantly ‘training’ their minds to keep searching for knowledge with an open mind, and then going on to break the rules of all they learnt.

I graduated with a distinction, Lightseekers won the Little Brown/UEA Crime Fiction Award and I had an agent who was willing to take a chance on me. It is important to note here that I don’t think I would have had access to the publishing industry from my little corner of Windhoek if I had not attended UEA or expose myself to the community of writers that further training via workshops or programmes like The Novelry offer. 

The Italian rights for Lightseekers were picked within 24 hours of sending it out. And after an exciting bidding process amongst publishers, I was able to get a two-book deal with Little Brown in the US and Bloomsbury in the UK/Commonwealth. The catch? The second book must be a sequel to Lightseekers, setting the stage for a series. 

Back to The Difficult Second Novel.

As I write this, I am realizing that to deliver the manuscript within the prescribed deadline, I need to replicate the magical season of risk-taking, or learning, and growing without fear of failure. Truth is, few people can tell you the secret of writing a bestseller and most of them can only tell you what they did, how they arrived at the destination only after they are there. No one knows the route or the secret formula that will deliver that Booker prize-winning book. The best you can do is your best. Start by writing. It sounds basic and patronizing even, but that is really the secret of writing a great novel: write!

Write with innocence, wide-eyed about the vagaries of humanity and a willingness to be surprised at how low or high humans can go.

Write with hope, that your tale will bring a smile to even one person, take another to a location they will never visit in real life, cause an individual to reflect on the human condition or guide someone on a thrilling adventure that happens in the safety of their minds/imagination.

Write with generosity, with a heart so big that you’re willing to share your dreams and crazy ideas with someone else through words.

Write with love, for people, life, love and everything that lies within and between.

Write with an open heart, willing to listen to feedback that only gets you back on the computer, not down in the pits of despair.

Write your truth. Always. That’s where authenticity comes from, that elusive quality called ‘voice’ but is really industry parlance for ‘to thyself be true’.

Most of all, Write.

I am reminded of all the above as I prepare for the last leg of writing my second novel. Notice that I have removed ‘The Difficult…’ as a prefix to this privilege that’s been afforded me. It’s not ‘difficult’ except if I make it or think it is. I wrote the first novel and it’s not too shabby an effort. Lightseekers made the Book of the Month in 9 UK publications, was reviewed in The New York Times and Booklist gave it a starred review. Hindsight tells me that the pressure I was putting on myself was to write ‘better’ because apparently, I now know better. This is the beginning of the great fall towards the ‘difficult’ part of writing the second novel. You don’t know better. You are not smarter. You are as clueless as when you wrote the first line in your first book. Embrace this ‘engineered innocence’ and you might regain the freedom to take risks, have fun and just write.

I don’t know whether Book 2 will be any good. I don’t know if my editor will trash it or if my agent will hold his head in despair after reading it. I have no clue about anything beyond my need to love the process as I did the first time, and have as much fun as possible doing it.

May I always have the wide-eyed innocence of the beginning writer who is as eager to know what happened next as the future reader. 

This will be my mantra for finishing this book, and writing the next, and those that follow.

Femi Kayode will be our guest for a live session, in conversation with author tutor Harriet Tyce on Monday July 26th at 6 pm BST.

His debut crime thriller, Lightseekers,  won the 2019 UEA Crime Writing prize.

Selected as a Best Crime Novel of the Month by The Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian, Observer, Financial Times and Irish Times.

'Lightseekers is ripe with all the twists and turns you could hope for... A fast-paced thriller that offers insight into the ever-present tensions in a poverty-stricken community. An action-packed and spirited debut.' Oyinkan Braithwaite, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer

When three young students are brutally murdered in a Nigerian university town, their killings - and their killers - are caught on social media. The world knows who murdered them; what no one knows is why.

As the legal trial begins, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is contacted by the father of one of the boys, desperate for some answers to his son's murder. But Philip is an expert in crowd behaviour and violence, not a detective, and after travelling to the sleepy university town that bore witness to the killings, he soon feels dramatically out of his depth. Will he finally be able to uncover the truth of what happened to the Okiri Three?

Advice For Writers.

From the Desk of Kathy Lette.

Hello All, 

As many of you writers at The Novelry will know, the best thing about being a writer is that you get to work in your PJs all day, drink heavily on the job and have affairs and call it “research”.

But I principally became an author as it involves no heavy lifting. Except for those writers who lift whole sections of other people’s work and then call it their own. But hey, you can’t have all work and no plagiarism, right?

But if you really want to be a writer, your most important assignment is to think of a witty epitaph. Spike Milligan’s was: ‘I told you I was sick.’ I think mine will be: ‘Finally – a good plot.’

I’ve been writing novels since my teens, so have been lucky enough to rub shoulder pads with many of the world’s most inspiring authors. I’ve done the limbo with Salman Rushdie, waltzed with Julian Barnes and tango-ed with Clive James. I’ve gone to a lap dancing club with John Mortimer and prowled funeral parlours with Jessica Mitford. I’ve skinny-dipped with Tom Keneally and body surfed with Ian McEwan. I’ve eaten oysters at the Savoy with Joanna Trollope and downed martinis in New York with Christopher Hitchens. I’ve sung duets with Douglas Adams; accompanied by Procol Harem. I’ve had pyjama parties with Fay Weldon and crashed parties with Ben Elton. I’ve dined with Margaret Atwood, Gore Vidal, Stephen Fry, Jeanette Winterson, Ishiguro and whole shelves of inspirational scribblers. I’ve been drunk under the table by most of them, too. I’ve basically got a suntan from basking in the reflected glory of some of literature's greats.

 In short, writers are my favourite species. Why? Well, having left school at 16, (I always say that the only examination I’ve ever passed is my cervical smear test) books have been my education. Yes, I’m an autodidact – clearly, it’s a word I taught myself. Writers have helped me make sense of the world. And offered me escape from it too. Grounded by Covid, books became our only means of travel, offering endless flights of fancy.  As Dr Johnson observed, ‘The true end of literature is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it’.

If you are a budding author, I’d advise you to strap yourself into some kind of publishing simulator to experience the terrors and exhilaration, to see if you have what it takes, because the list of requirements is gruelling. First, there’s the honing of cheerfulness to chat show perfection. Then there’s the mandatory haemorrhaging of charisma at book signings. 

Then there’s the loneliness of the long-distance punner; I occasionally get so sick of my own company that even my imaginary friend gets bored and runs off to play with someone more interesting. Worst of all is the dreaded book tour which involves flying hundreds of miles from Dipstick, Ohio, to Buffalo Fart, Wyoming, for a one-minute slot on breakfast radio with a member of the ‘Illiterati’ whose reading material is limited to his bank balance and Instagram posts.

I honestly think there should be a R.S.P.C.W  - Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Writers. Especially when it comes to American book tours which are an exercise in humiliation. One night in Pittsburgh, I sashayed onto the Town Hall stage and launched into my funny feminist routine about the sex war. But silence reigned. Panicking, I then shot from the lip with my most lethal one-liners. Surely the audience would have quip-lash by now? …Cue slow hand clapping. Desperate, I now told even bigger and better jokes – hell I was aiming for a black belt in tongue-fu….But boo-ing ensued. Finally defeated, I shielded my eyes and looked out at the audience. 500 middle-aged white men in suits stared back at me. This was not my normal crowd. Demoralised, I skulked off stage. “What the hell happened?” I asked the organizer. 

“Sorry,” he replied, “but we got your night mixed up with Senator John McCain, whose touring his memoir.”

The only thing that cheered me up was the fact that the next night McCain was going to get my readers – feminists, lesbians, breast-feeding mums and G.G.L.G’s. (Gorgeous Gay Love Gods.) Now that really would have been funny!

If you’re going to be a professional writer, you must also strap on a bullet-proof bra because criticism is an occupational hazard. If there were an Olympic Games for Hypocrisy, writers would win Gold. A glowing review, and we’re sycophantic with praise – ‘Critics! So perspicacious! Such literary taste and intellectual discernment!’ Grateful feelings explode in you like champagne. I once had a glowing review printed on a t-shirt and wore it for weeks. Hell, I had to be restrained from getting it tattooed onto my forehead. But when we get a bad review, critics become no better than pond scum. ‘Critics! Ugh!” we whine, “Cyborgs that eat human flesh are less alien than bloody book reviewers!’ 

If I have any gift as a writer, it’s putting into words what women are thinking, but not necessarily saying out loud. In all my 14 novels and four non-fiction books, women always come out on top.  Why? Because it’s still a man’s world. 100 years since Emily Pankhurst tied herself to the railings and women still don’t have equal pay, we’re getting 75 pence in the pound – plus we’re getting concussion hitting our heads on the glass ceiling, and we’re supposed to clean it while we’re up there. Any woman who says she’s not a feminist has kept her wonderbra and burnt her brains. 

But we don’t cry about it. No. My only motto is - laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you get salt in your champers! The reason I write comic novels is because laughing at life’s adversities is just the way women cope. And yet, I still hear men say so often that ‘women aren’t funny.” I’ve heard that in every country of the world I’ve ever been on a book tour. Why do some men insist on perpetuating this myth? I think they’re just terrified what it is we’re being funny about. I presume they think we spend the whole time talking about length of their members, which is not true; as we also talk about the width – which after childbirth is so much more important! If a man ever says to you that females aren’t funny, just explain that the reason women can’t tell jokes is because - we marry them. Then ask him if he knows why men like intelligent women? And simply reply - because opposites attract.     

After forty years in the trade, what other bookish top tips can I share with you? I can reveal that  “Anonymous” is simply a married author writing about sexual infidelity. And that a “ghostwriter” is nothing more than a shadow of her former self. Oh, and name your cat, “Booker”… just you can say that you have one.

There are also a few technical terms you will need to master. For example, do you know that ‘brontosaurus’ is an anthology of works by 19th-century English sister authors? Then there’s grammatical precision. A double negative, for example, is a complete no-no. 

But despite the angst and bad reviews and literary feuds, the best thing about being a writer is that it’s such a cathartic profession; impaling enemies on the end of your pen is the most effective way to exorcise angst. That’s why, when I finally get around to writing a memoir, I have the perfect title -  Lette Bygones. 

I can’t wait to hear all your book ideas and have a laugh together. See you then. And if you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll simply adopt a non de plume - I’m thinking perhaps Sue Donym. 

The inimitable and outrageous Kathy Lette will be our guest on Monday 28th June at 6 pm BST. All members of The Novelry most welcome to join us for a fabulous session. Bring a bottle.

Writing a Fantasy Series.

Writing a Fantasy Series.

Bestselling Fantasy Author Tricia Levenseller explains:

Start with a hero or heroine (make them a fierce badass  i.e. a girl monster slayer)
Pick your sub-genre (i.e. high fantasy, urban fantasy, dystopian, sword and sorcery, dark fantasy...)
Forget about what the market wants and write for you
Have your cake and eat it; combine the things you love your way
Build a world that works for your combo
Drive the plot according to your main character's overt and covert wants and needs
Add the familiar fantasy element or trope - literally pick a preference: (i.e the chosen one, the dark lord, talking animals, the mentor, medieval magic (unicorns, elves etc.)
Divide the quest, story or quite literally the map of the world into parts

When I decided to try writing a book for the first time, I’d been given this horrible piece of advice: write what you know. I was seventeen years old. I didn’t know what I was doing, only that I had a love of books and reading. For a school project, I decided to try my hand at writing the beginning of a novel. So, like the beginner I was, I followed the advice I was given.

Being a girl in high school, my book was, naturally, about a girl in high school. That’s what I knew. It was a contemporary romance, because even in my early attempts at writing, I couldn’t figure out how to write a book without romance. It had no plot. It had no driving force. It was just me rambling about this girl and all the things she hated about school.

To give seventeen-year-old Tricia some credit, she managed to write 40,000 words on that project, which is impressive given the fact that the novel lacked said plot. That first attempt at a novel also featured a lengthy prologue that had no relevance to the story whatsoever and a rather unfortunate meet-cute in a public bathroom. Thank goodness, it will never see the light of day. 

Because I petered out. The story became uninteresting to me after a while, so I stopped. I got another idea for a different contemporary romance and started that one. This time, I only made it about 15,000 words before I became bored with it.

Then I went to college. Life got really hard, and I put my full focus into my schooling. When I went to visit home for the summer, Mom and I made a deal: she wouldn’t make me get a summer job if I finished a book. I was suffering from some pretty serious anxiety at the time, so I jumped at the opportunity.

And I tried something new. I gave myself permission to write what I didn’t know. I crafted an urban fantasy about a girl who discovers she’s the only female of her half-demon, half-human race. On top of that, she’s a monster slayer with special abilities.

That’s when I discovered my true calling: fantasy and action/adventure. Because I finished that book in five months, edited it for four months, queried it for three days, waited on an agent to read it for two weeks, and then boom: nineteen-year-old Tricia had an agent for her urban fantasy book titled The Curse of Beauty.

But life never turns out the way we expect.

I had an agent who was subpar, at best, in his enthusiasm in finding a publisher for my book. A year went by; nobody wanted it.

I wrote a second book, a high fantasy, where I discovered that I much prefer writing in made-up worlds rather than the real world, which was an important realization. I’m so glad that first book never sold because I would be stuck as an urban fantasy writer. (Publishers like to brand you early and keep you in your lane.)

Alas, book two also never sold. Book three was flat out rejected by my agent. It never went out to publishers, which turned out to be a good thing in its own way, because then I started book four.

I decided to forget worrying about what my agent would like or what I thought publishers wanted. I allowed myself to write something just for me.

And what I wanted to write was a pirate book. Specifically, a pirate book with fantasy elements and romance and action/adventure and humour—all the things I love most in stories.

So I began to plot.

I loved the idea of a girl getting kidnapped by pirates, and I also loved the idea of a female pirate captain, who is a total badass. At first, I struggled to think of how I could put the two concepts together. How could a girl who is a capable pirate also get kidnapped? Then I decided that this pirate girl wanted to get kidnapped. In fact, she orchestrates the whole thing because there’s a treasure map on an enemy pirate’s ship that she needs to get her hands on.

I like princess stories, so I thought What the heck? Why not make her a princess, too? Then I had to figure out the logistics of a pirate monarchy. How that would work, what it would look like, how was it even feasible. In order to have a pirate king, I needed to create a world with a lot of water. That’s how the Seventeen Isles were born. I needed to craft a kingdom that depended on sea travel for trade, travel, and basically everything else. The pirate king has a monopoly on the sea. Anyone who wants to sail on his ocean has to pay a toll or suffer the consequences.

So I had a world, a plot and the main character—what I still had left to figure out was the fantasy element.

I thought about the most common things I see in sea stories: mermaids, the kraken, selkies, etc. What I hadn’t seen a lot of were sirens. When I decided I would use them, I had to figure out how to work them into my already existing world and plot. 

The thing I like most about sirens is the fact that they lure men into the water with the power of their singing. They have their way with them and then drown them. Which is both horrifying and awesome. But how did this fit with a pirate girl looking to find a treasure map? And then it came to me. What if sirens also stole anything shiny off a sailor’s body after drowning him? What if sirens were like dragons in the sense that they hoarded treasure? What if that treasure map that my pirate girl is looking for leads to the siren treasure?

Then I took it even further because I knew I wanted this story to be a series.

What if this treasure map was split into three parts? What if three different pirate lords were each in possession of a piece of the map? Book one would cover acquiring the first piece.

Everything fell into place so perfectly. I wrote my first published novel, Daughter of the Pirate King in four months. Edited it for two months. Got a new agent in another four months. Went on submission for eight months before a publisher wanted to buy it. I had initially pitched the idea as a trilogy, but my publisher would only buy two books, so I condensed books two and three into one book, which became the sequel, Daughter of the Siren Queen.

 Now I’m five books into my career. I still write high fantasy. Sometimes standalones, sometimes series, but always stories rife with fantasy, adventure, and romance. I’m writing what I love, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s so much more entertaining than writing what I know, because, for me, books are my escape. It is my greatest hope that my readers enjoy escaping into my worlds, too.

From the Desk of Tricia Levenseller.

(Read on to find out more about Fantasy Tropes from our author tutor Katie Khan.)

Tricia Levenseller is the bestselling author of six YA fantasy books, including The Shadows Between Us and the Daughter of the Pirate King duology. Her latest novel is Blade of Secrets. She will be our guest for a Live Author Session on Monday, July 12th at 6 pm BST.

From the Desk of Our Author Tutor, Katie Khan:

Of Tropes and Trends in Fantasy.

Modern fantasy fiction is heading into exciting places – both metaphorically and geographically. Fantasy novels based on non-European cultures are breaking out in a big way: take a look at Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, Jade City by Fonda Lee, and The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, which are brilliant examples of the genre.

Think carefully before you reach for a medieval English or European setting for your novel, as these have been done to death by everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien to George R.R. Martin, and it’s hard to bring something fresh to such a well-established time and place that readers have seen many times before… and I’m afraid the same is also true of Celtic mythology.

What can you twist, to make your novel setting feel different and new? Or is there somewhere you have personal experience of, and a deep understanding of the culture, which could inspire a new fantasy analogue, particularly a place that’s not often seen in fiction?

As Tricia has so brilliantly written herself, there is definitely a current trend for pirate stories, particularly featuring female leads taking to the high seas – I ripped through Fable by Adrienne Young, which was a Reese Witherspoon YA book club pick, and the sequel is published in the UK next week. I think this speaks to a larger trend of female adventurers dominating parts of society that have previously belonged to men: pirates, assassins, thieves. The main characters don’t always have to be criminals, but it sure is fun to read!

Fairytale retellings are also having a moment, but as they’ve been popular for a while the new wave tends to have a radical take, often centring on characters who have previously been pushed to the margins – for example, Malice by Heather Walter is a sapphic retelling of Sleeping Beauty, in which the female villain is in love with the princess. It’s wonderful to see LGBTQIA representation coming through in this genre louder than ever before.

Tropes in fantasy fiction aren’t always a bad thing: regular genre readers will have certain expectations, but it’s up to you as the author to decide how you fulfil them. Any twist or subversion on iconic tropes such as the Chosen One or the Prophesy will be appreciated by a well-read reader – Denis Villeneuve’s recent film Blade Runner 2049 had an eye-opening twist on the well-trodden 'Chosen One' path.

What could you do with yours?

There’s never been a better time to write fantasy fiction. The genre offers the opportunity to say something about the world we live in, but to tell it through the thin veil of allegory. It’s one step removed from our society, and often escapist and joyous in its imagery, but almost always revealing and startlingly relevant about people and history and where we’re going next.

For a useful listing of tropes take a look here.

If you're writing fantasy, you'll find our famous Classic Course will inspire you to put that story on steroids, mining your own fiction passions and pairing your interests with the archetypes, tropes and techniques of the all-time bestsellers to help you with your world-building and story planning to prepare for a fierce fantasy! Join us on The Book in a Year Plan which begins with the Classic Course and will see you all the way through completing your novel, with an author tutor at your side, as you scope out your series.

I Write Because... Adele Parks

Life is complex and I am always trying to make sense of it.
I like to entertain, be useful and have a role.
I think I like being the centre of attention.
I also hate being the centre of attention.
I’m not great at acknowledging pain in real life but I find I’m excellent at acknowledging it on the page.
Writers are interesting.
Reading is empowering.
I have a hunger to be known and understood.
I have a desire to make connections and feel less alone.
I cannot not.

I’ve found writing is best if:

I don’t think about my mother reading what I have written.
I don’t think about prizes, chart positions or reviews.
I do think about being honest.
I redraft and edit as I go along.
I am disciplined and write regularly, by which I mean every day.
I risk being unpopular, so I don’t chase a tide of popularity in terms of genre.
I don’t copy other authors’ styles.
I challenge myself.
I doubt myself.
I believe in myself.

I’ve managed to write 21 novels in 21 years because:

I’ve been given the opportunity to do so, it would be madness not to.
I find writing the most consistently fulfilling experience of my life.
I am incredibly disciplined.
I have the good old-fashioned quality of being hard-working.
I don’t care what others are doing, I’m only in competition with myself.
It’s my job, and a great job. Why would I take a year out of a great job?
I constantly challenge myself in terms of new ideas and genres, so I don’t bore myself or my readers.
Being busy is important to me. Being idle fills me with dread and horror.
I have a lot to say.
Writing for a living was my dream, I am living the dream!

Adele Parks is the author of 21 novels, all of which have been bestsellers. She has sold over 3.5 million UK edition copies of her novels and her books have been translated into over 26 languages. Lies, Lies, Lies was shortlisted for the 2020 Fiction Book of the Year in the British Book Awards. Lies Lies Lies and Just My Luck were Sunday Times #1 bestsellers.

Her new novel Both of You published May 2021 was described by Lisa Jewell as: ‘Yet another stick of literary dynamite from Adele Parks: chilling, gripping and entirely unputdownable’.

Adele will be joining us as our guest for a live session on her writing craft and process for all members of The Novelry on 14th June. We can't wait!