Annie Burrows's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-craft"
A writer's life, alphabetically...
Continuing my A - Z of a writer's life.
This month, B is for...backache
I had been trying to get something published for over ten years. So when an editor from Mills & Boon wrote to me, saying that she liked the first 3 chapters of my story, and could I send in the rest, I got very, very excited. I spent every spare minute up in my room, on an old sun lounger, my laptop on my lap, notes spread all over the bed, until the manuscript was ready to send in.
Unfortunately, by that time, I'd given myself a permanent crick in the neck. (Chair was next to the bed, notes on the top, so typing with my head permanently turned to the right) Instead of easing, once I'd posted my precious parcel off, the pain kept on getting worse, until the morning I woke up almost unable to move.
I'd already had some treatment from a chiropractor for a frozen shoulder. But having my shoulder gently manipulated turned out to be totally different from the way he approached a solidly stuck neck. You know in those comedy shows, where a white-coated man grabs someone's head, and wrenches it round to the sound effect of something ripping? Very funny to watch, but not so funny when actually experiencing it. But at least I was no longer in agony.
Until the publishers requested revisions. And I spent another few frantic weeks, up in my room, going over and over my manuscript until I'd got it perfect.
The chiropractor gave me a stern talking to, (as well as half wrenching my head off to free my neck up). I was not to type looking to one side all the time, but get myself a desk. I was to throw away my sun lounger and get a proper typing chair. And I was not to type for more than 15 minutes at a time.
I nodded, (well, at least I could!) smiled, and agreed with everything he said, whilst privately thinking how unworkable all his suggestions were. I lived in a tiny house, with nowhere to put a desk. Let alone throw away my comfy sunlounger, which I could fold up and stack away when I wasn't typing. And as for stopping work every 15 minutes to go and do stretches - how impractical was that? It sometimes takes 20 minutes to really get into "the zone", as any artistic person could have told him. (Indignant toss of the head - since I could now move my head without flinching)
Still, since I didn't want to spend every penny I earned from my writing on physiotherapy, I thought I had better adopt some of his suggestions, or face a future fraught with back trouble.
Hubby bought me a chair for my birthday, and to celebrate landing my first contract. And I did buy a kitchen timer. Instead of setting it to 15 minutes, I set it to one hour. This has worked very well for me, for the last five years. Every hour, the timer goes off, reminding me to get up and stretch, so I can just concentrate on my story, rather than clock-watching.
I won't say I am completely free from back problems. It seems to be a hazard of the job, from what I can gather speaking to other writers. But at least the chair, the kitchen timer, and the regular stretching keeps it at a reasonable level.
This month, B is for...backache
I had been trying to get something published for over ten years. So when an editor from Mills & Boon wrote to me, saying that she liked the first 3 chapters of my story, and could I send in the rest, I got very, very excited. I spent every spare minute up in my room, on an old sun lounger, my laptop on my lap, notes spread all over the bed, until the manuscript was ready to send in.
Unfortunately, by that time, I'd given myself a permanent crick in the neck. (Chair was next to the bed, notes on the top, so typing with my head permanently turned to the right) Instead of easing, once I'd posted my precious parcel off, the pain kept on getting worse, until the morning I woke up almost unable to move.
I'd already had some treatment from a chiropractor for a frozen shoulder. But having my shoulder gently manipulated turned out to be totally different from the way he approached a solidly stuck neck. You know in those comedy shows, where a white-coated man grabs someone's head, and wrenches it round to the sound effect of something ripping? Very funny to watch, but not so funny when actually experiencing it. But at least I was no longer in agony.
Until the publishers requested revisions. And I spent another few frantic weeks, up in my room, going over and over my manuscript until I'd got it perfect.
The chiropractor gave me a stern talking to, (as well as half wrenching my head off to free my neck up). I was not to type looking to one side all the time, but get myself a desk. I was to throw away my sun lounger and get a proper typing chair. And I was not to type for more than 15 minutes at a time.
I nodded, (well, at least I could!) smiled, and agreed with everything he said, whilst privately thinking how unworkable all his suggestions were. I lived in a tiny house, with nowhere to put a desk. Let alone throw away my comfy sunlounger, which I could fold up and stack away when I wasn't typing. And as for stopping work every 15 minutes to go and do stretches - how impractical was that? It sometimes takes 20 minutes to really get into "the zone", as any artistic person could have told him. (Indignant toss of the head - since I could now move my head without flinching)
Still, since I didn't want to spend every penny I earned from my writing on physiotherapy, I thought I had better adopt some of his suggestions, or face a future fraught with back trouble.
Hubby bought me a chair for my birthday, and to celebrate landing my first contract. And I did buy a kitchen timer. Instead of setting it to 15 minutes, I set it to one hour. This has worked very well for me, for the last five years. Every hour, the timer goes off, reminding me to get up and stretch, so I can just concentrate on my story, rather than clock-watching.
I won't say I am completely free from back problems. It seems to be a hazard of the job, from what I can gather speaking to other writers. But at least the chair, the kitchen timer, and the regular stretching keeps it at a reasonable level.
A writer's life, alphabetically...D
D is for...Discipline
I get a variety of responses from people when I tell them what I do for a living. From those who are thrilled, saying they have never met an author before, to those who roll their eyes and say, "Oh really? I wouldn't mind writing a book, if only I had the time."
My answer - If you want to write a book you have to make the time.
It isn't easy. When I first decided to write, I had to start making difficult choices about how to spend my time. Not only "free" time, either. I deliberately chose jobs that wouldn't tax me too much, so that when I did have "free" time I wasn't so drained that my mind wouldn't function.
This meant taking reception work, cleaning jobs, or driving jobs, so that even when I was on the clock for someone else, my mind could still keep working over plot points. Then, when I did get home, and had fed the family, and generally tidied up after them, I could go and write down what I'd been dreaming up all day (when I should have been answering the phone/unloading cartons of sweets/stocking up shelves with greetings cards). Some of my best ideas have come to me while I've been stuck in traffic jams on the M56 with nothing to look at but the tailgate of the lorry in front of me.
(Trucks to the right of me, trucks to the left...here I am stuck in the middle of the queue...with apologies to Stealer's Wheel)
D also stands for determination. It took me over ten years from deciding I could write a book (ok - rather in the manner of those people who annoy me so much now by assuming it is easy) to actually getting a publishing contract. And during those years I went through a huge spectrum of feelings about my ambition. From belief and hope, to despair and self-loathing. There were times I couldn't even walk into a bookshop, and see all those titles sneering at me from the shelves by people who'd managed to do what I couldn't. It simply hurt too much.
Eventually, I went on a writing course (what - didn't I do that first? No. I was just as deluded as all those other people who assume they could just sit down and write a bestseller without any training at all.) By then I was starting to wonder if I was flogging a dead horse. What if I really didn't have what it took to be a published author? Was there a good reason why all I was getting was rejection slips? I finally decided to fork out some of the money I'd earned delivering sweets to village post offices, to go along to my local college and see if I could learn anything from a qualified teacher of writing.
And then, if I got yet another rejection I decided I would send my next manuscript to the Romantic Novelists Association New Writer's Scheme. Because I discovered that they would have a published novelist read my work and actually tell me what they thought of it (unlike publishers, who were just sending back standard rejection letters which gave me no clue where I was going wrong.)
You can see where I'm going with this - even after ten years I just wasn't prepared to give up. I was going to do whatever it took to see one of my own books on the shelves of W.H.Smith with all those others.
Well - going on the writing course did the trick (so my tutor said). Mid way through my second term, Mills & Boon finally showed some interest in a manuscript they'd had so long I was sure they must have forgotten all about it. Eventually it got accepted.
So I never needed to send anything to the New Writers Scheme after all.
But at least I had a plan B.
And if plan B had failed, you can be sure I'd have thought up a plan C, then a D, then...
I get a variety of responses from people when I tell them what I do for a living. From those who are thrilled, saying they have never met an author before, to those who roll their eyes and say, "Oh really? I wouldn't mind writing a book, if only I had the time."
My answer - If you want to write a book you have to make the time.
It isn't easy. When I first decided to write, I had to start making difficult choices about how to spend my time. Not only "free" time, either. I deliberately chose jobs that wouldn't tax me too much, so that when I did have "free" time I wasn't so drained that my mind wouldn't function.
This meant taking reception work, cleaning jobs, or driving jobs, so that even when I was on the clock for someone else, my mind could still keep working over plot points. Then, when I did get home, and had fed the family, and generally tidied up after them, I could go and write down what I'd been dreaming up all day (when I should have been answering the phone/unloading cartons of sweets/stocking up shelves with greetings cards). Some of my best ideas have come to me while I've been stuck in traffic jams on the M56 with nothing to look at but the tailgate of the lorry in front of me.
(Trucks to the right of me, trucks to the left...here I am stuck in the middle of the queue...with apologies to Stealer's Wheel)
D also stands for determination. It took me over ten years from deciding I could write a book (ok - rather in the manner of those people who annoy me so much now by assuming it is easy) to actually getting a publishing contract. And during those years I went through a huge spectrum of feelings about my ambition. From belief and hope, to despair and self-loathing. There were times I couldn't even walk into a bookshop, and see all those titles sneering at me from the shelves by people who'd managed to do what I couldn't. It simply hurt too much.
Eventually, I went on a writing course (what - didn't I do that first? No. I was just as deluded as all those other people who assume they could just sit down and write a bestseller without any training at all.) By then I was starting to wonder if I was flogging a dead horse. What if I really didn't have what it took to be a published author? Was there a good reason why all I was getting was rejection slips? I finally decided to fork out some of the money I'd earned delivering sweets to village post offices, to go along to my local college and see if I could learn anything from a qualified teacher of writing.
And then, if I got yet another rejection I decided I would send my next manuscript to the Romantic Novelists Association New Writer's Scheme. Because I discovered that they would have a published novelist read my work and actually tell me what they thought of it (unlike publishers, who were just sending back standard rejection letters which gave me no clue where I was going wrong.)
You can see where I'm going with this - even after ten years I just wasn't prepared to give up. I was going to do whatever it took to see one of my own books on the shelves of W.H.Smith with all those others.
Well - going on the writing course did the trick (so my tutor said). Mid way through my second term, Mills & Boon finally showed some interest in a manuscript they'd had so long I was sure they must have forgotten all about it. Eventually it got accepted.
So I never needed to send anything to the New Writers Scheme after all.
But at least I had a plan B.
And if plan B had failed, you can be sure I'd have thought up a plan C, then a D, then...
E is for editing
I'm never satisfied with what I write. I even go through my emails a couple of times before hitting "send" to make sure I haven't included any typos.
But that kind of pernickety attitude is essential for anyone who wants to become a published author.
I don't think anybody can sit down and create a brilliant book in just one draft. I certainly don't know anyone who claims to have done so. But every author I know has a slightly different way of getting their writing up to a standard they feel ready to publish.
Some people edit as they go along. At the start of their writing day they will read over what they wrote the day before, and only move on when they're satisfied with the quality of the prose.
That approach has never worked for me. I get so bogged down in the grammar, spelling, and so on that the story usually grinds to a halt. On my first draft I have to just write the basic outline of the story as fast as I can, before I lose control of where I want the characters to go. At least, that is what I aim for as I write. But whenever I print out and read back this first outpouring, I nearly always end up clutching my head in despair. Because what I thought was a brilliant story turns out to be an absolute mess.
However, recently I've discovered that others have a similar experience. And have even coined a phrase to describe the method. It's known as the "sandbox" approach. Basically, my first attempt to tell a story is like flinging a great mound of sand into the sandbox. It's shapeless alright - but I have everything I need to create a fabulous fairytale sandcastle once I set to with a bucket of water and a spade!
OK - I've got my heap of sand. How do I turn it into my fairytale castle?
Well, basically, I want the story to flow from beginning to end. I want to build tension, to keep a reader turning the pages. I want every sentence to drive the story forward, whilst showing the reader something about the leading characters.
But exactly how can I achieve this? You have all heard the adage that you should "show, not tell". But you need to be careful that you don't overdo it. It's all very well to have your heroine twirling a tendril of hair round her finger to denote how nervous she is, rather than just saying "she was nervous". But if you have her twirling her hair every two or three pages she'd going to become tiresome. (Likewise - the hero shouldn't be grinding his teeth at the slightest provocation.)
Setting the scene is important to draw your reader into the world you've created, but over-long periods of description really slow down the pace. I'm jolly glad I discovered this, because I'm not very good at descriptions. When I first started trying to write books, I used to sweat for hours over details of a house, or a room. Nowadays I just tend to give the hero or heroine's impression of their surroundings, how it affects their mood perhaps, and leave the reader to fill in details for themselves.
Some writers will advise you to leave a manuscript for a week or so before reading it over, so that you can come to it with a fresh eye. This may work for some of you, but again, I have to confess it's not a technique I find terribly helpful. You see, I tend to see what I think I've written, rather than what I have actually typed. Printing it out, so that I'm looking at my work in a different medium from the computer screen, does help me to spot some mistakes and weaknesses. But nothing is as effective as reading the story out loud. If my tongue gets tangled up, that is how the sentence will feel to a reader's eye. And if I say it differently to how it appears on the page, I change the text to how I said it - that makes for an easier, smoother read.
And yes, going over and over and over a manuscript before sending it off to a publisher does take some patience. But I've heard the act of creating a publishable story likened to reducing a fine sauce for a fine meal. And everyone knows you can't make a good béchamel, in a hurry. You get lumps.
And who wants a lumpy novel?
But that kind of pernickety attitude is essential for anyone who wants to become a published author.
I don't think anybody can sit down and create a brilliant book in just one draft. I certainly don't know anyone who claims to have done so. But every author I know has a slightly different way of getting their writing up to a standard they feel ready to publish.
Some people edit as they go along. At the start of their writing day they will read over what they wrote the day before, and only move on when they're satisfied with the quality of the prose.
That approach has never worked for me. I get so bogged down in the grammar, spelling, and so on that the story usually grinds to a halt. On my first draft I have to just write the basic outline of the story as fast as I can, before I lose control of where I want the characters to go. At least, that is what I aim for as I write. But whenever I print out and read back this first outpouring, I nearly always end up clutching my head in despair. Because what I thought was a brilliant story turns out to be an absolute mess.
However, recently I've discovered that others have a similar experience. And have even coined a phrase to describe the method. It's known as the "sandbox" approach. Basically, my first attempt to tell a story is like flinging a great mound of sand into the sandbox. It's shapeless alright - but I have everything I need to create a fabulous fairytale sandcastle once I set to with a bucket of water and a spade!
OK - I've got my heap of sand. How do I turn it into my fairytale castle?
Well, basically, I want the story to flow from beginning to end. I want to build tension, to keep a reader turning the pages. I want every sentence to drive the story forward, whilst showing the reader something about the leading characters.
But exactly how can I achieve this? You have all heard the adage that you should "show, not tell". But you need to be careful that you don't overdo it. It's all very well to have your heroine twirling a tendril of hair round her finger to denote how nervous she is, rather than just saying "she was nervous". But if you have her twirling her hair every two or three pages she'd going to become tiresome. (Likewise - the hero shouldn't be grinding his teeth at the slightest provocation.)
Setting the scene is important to draw your reader into the world you've created, but over-long periods of description really slow down the pace. I'm jolly glad I discovered this, because I'm not very good at descriptions. When I first started trying to write books, I used to sweat for hours over details of a house, or a room. Nowadays I just tend to give the hero or heroine's impression of their surroundings, how it affects their mood perhaps, and leave the reader to fill in details for themselves.
Some writers will advise you to leave a manuscript for a week or so before reading it over, so that you can come to it with a fresh eye. This may work for some of you, but again, I have to confess it's not a technique I find terribly helpful. You see, I tend to see what I think I've written, rather than what I have actually typed. Printing it out, so that I'm looking at my work in a different medium from the computer screen, does help me to spot some mistakes and weaknesses. But nothing is as effective as reading the story out loud. If my tongue gets tangled up, that is how the sentence will feel to a reader's eye. And if I say it differently to how it appears on the page, I change the text to how I said it - that makes for an easier, smoother read.
And yes, going over and over and over a manuscript before sending it off to a publisher does take some patience. But I've heard the act of creating a publishable story likened to reducing a fine sauce for a fine meal. And everyone knows you can't make a good béchamel, in a hurry. You get lumps.
And who wants a lumpy novel?
Heroes and Heroines
Every month I've been blogging about a writer's life, dealing with various topics in alphabetical order. If you're wondering what has happened to "G", then I'll just explain that it stood for "Gladrags". My post was all about the glamorous author parties I go to, and was full of pictures of me with other authors, as well as a lot of shameless namedropping. I can't post pictures on my Goodreads blog. So, if you want to read it and look at the pictures, the post appeared at the http://novelistasink.blogspot.co.uk/ (you'll have to go to archived 2014 blog posts and scroll down to older posts. By then you'll feel like an archeologist!)
Anyway, this month I've reached H - for heroes. (And heroines) I've recently handed in a book that is going to be part two of a historical trilogy. The three stories deal with the loves of three officers in the same regiment, who fight at the battle of Waterloo. And about the first thing my co-continuity authors wanted to know about my episode was "What does your hero look like?"
Sarah Mallory and Louise Allen had already put pictures in our joint files of actors who'd inspired them when it came to imagining their heroes. Sarah Mallory chose Peter O'Toole for the Colonel of our fictitious regiment, and Louise Allen picked Sean Bean for her Major Flint.
My problem was that although I had a clear image in my head of my own hero, I hadn't based him on an actor. I just can't do that. Because for me, what the hero is like inside, as a person, is far more important than what he looks like. I always start with the personality, and work outward. And if I start picturing a specific actor when I write about my hero, I'm always worried that the actor's personality traits might sneak in.
However, Sarah and Louise - who write much faster than me - were already writing scenes where my hero would have to stride across their pages, and really, really wanted to know what my hero looked like.
Fortunately (for them!) about that time I found an image of Tom Hiddleston in a cravat, from when he'd been playing a nineteenth century gentleman. That was about the nearest I could come to explaining what my hero would look like. And it wasn't about his features. It was about the cleverness you could see in his features. The potential for wickedness beneath the charming smile.
Posting an image of Tom certainly inspired their imaginations. Whenever they sent me a scene in which he appeared in one of their books, they had my Artillery Major off to a "T". He was a flirt. A charmer. And devilishly good-looking.
Thinking about Tom Hiddleston kept them happy for a while. Well, he seems to make a lot of ladies happy, as you can tell from this buzzfeed post:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaum...
That was, until they wanted to know what my hero's name was. I had to explain that he hadn't told me yet. In my defence, I explained that I was only on about chapter 3 by then, and he was only just waking up after having sustained a head injury. He was confused, and concussed, and couldn't everyone just call him "Sir."
I can't remember exactly when, during the course of the emails pinging back and forth as we created our fictional regiment, we started referring to him as Tom. And then, when I couldn't come up with a surname, Louise Allen coined the nickname Tom Cat, which really, really suited him.
This kind of procedure is how it usually goes for me when naming my heroes. I know that some authors can't start writing their heroes until they have a name, but I find that mine don't tell me what it is until I have got to know them pretty well. My secondary characters had to speak of one of my heroes as Lord Rakey Rakerson well into my second draft of his adventure!
And it's the same with the book I am currently writing. I know quite a lot about my hero's childhood, and naval career. At the time he meets my heroine, he's reached the rank of Captain. He is also an Earl to an almost bankrupt Scottish estate. So naturally, the heroine has been having to call him Captain Lord Scotsman.
But only a few days ago, his sister (who is a minor character in the story) bounced up to him calling him Alec. Which is short for Alexander. And since I knew her name was Lizzie Dunbar (because it's always much, much easier to name minor characters) that meant his family name had to be Dunbar too.
Which is just right, and sums him up perfectly. Alec has a sort of cautious ring to it, somehow. He is a solid, dependable sort of chap. He is also the Earl of Auchentay (a Scottish area I invented several books ago, which has come in very handy)
And yes, I have the same slow process when it comes to naming my heroines. I think it is because it is so important that they get a name that really, really conjures up an aspect of their character - something that will help them to come to life on the page. I can't just pluck any old name out of a baby book, or something similar. The name has to have a resonance. Tom was a good name for my military hero - there's nothing stuffy about a Tom, is there? And you can imagine a Tom being brave on the battlefield, insubordinate to his officers, and lethal with the ladies. And once we started calling him Tom Cat, well...
Anyway, this month I've reached H - for heroes. (And heroines) I've recently handed in a book that is going to be part two of a historical trilogy. The three stories deal with the loves of three officers in the same regiment, who fight at the battle of Waterloo. And about the first thing my co-continuity authors wanted to know about my episode was "What does your hero look like?"
Sarah Mallory and Louise Allen had already put pictures in our joint files of actors who'd inspired them when it came to imagining their heroes. Sarah Mallory chose Peter O'Toole for the Colonel of our fictitious regiment, and Louise Allen picked Sean Bean for her Major Flint.
My problem was that although I had a clear image in my head of my own hero, I hadn't based him on an actor. I just can't do that. Because for me, what the hero is like inside, as a person, is far more important than what he looks like. I always start with the personality, and work outward. And if I start picturing a specific actor when I write about my hero, I'm always worried that the actor's personality traits might sneak in.
However, Sarah and Louise - who write much faster than me - were already writing scenes where my hero would have to stride across their pages, and really, really wanted to know what my hero looked like.
Fortunately (for them!) about that time I found an image of Tom Hiddleston in a cravat, from when he'd been playing a nineteenth century gentleman. That was about the nearest I could come to explaining what my hero would look like. And it wasn't about his features. It was about the cleverness you could see in his features. The potential for wickedness beneath the charming smile.
Posting an image of Tom certainly inspired their imaginations. Whenever they sent me a scene in which he appeared in one of their books, they had my Artillery Major off to a "T". He was a flirt. A charmer. And devilishly good-looking.
Thinking about Tom Hiddleston kept them happy for a while. Well, he seems to make a lot of ladies happy, as you can tell from this buzzfeed post:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaum...
That was, until they wanted to know what my hero's name was. I had to explain that he hadn't told me yet. In my defence, I explained that I was only on about chapter 3 by then, and he was only just waking up after having sustained a head injury. He was confused, and concussed, and couldn't everyone just call him "Sir."
I can't remember exactly when, during the course of the emails pinging back and forth as we created our fictional regiment, we started referring to him as Tom. And then, when I couldn't come up with a surname, Louise Allen coined the nickname Tom Cat, which really, really suited him.
This kind of procedure is how it usually goes for me when naming my heroes. I know that some authors can't start writing their heroes until they have a name, but I find that mine don't tell me what it is until I have got to know them pretty well. My secondary characters had to speak of one of my heroes as Lord Rakey Rakerson well into my second draft of his adventure!
And it's the same with the book I am currently writing. I know quite a lot about my hero's childhood, and naval career. At the time he meets my heroine, he's reached the rank of Captain. He is also an Earl to an almost bankrupt Scottish estate. So naturally, the heroine has been having to call him Captain Lord Scotsman.
But only a few days ago, his sister (who is a minor character in the story) bounced up to him calling him Alec. Which is short for Alexander. And since I knew her name was Lizzie Dunbar (because it's always much, much easier to name minor characters) that meant his family name had to be Dunbar too.
Which is just right, and sums him up perfectly. Alec has a sort of cautious ring to it, somehow. He is a solid, dependable sort of chap. He is also the Earl of Auchentay (a Scottish area I invented several books ago, which has come in very handy)
And yes, I have the same slow process when it comes to naming my heroines. I think it is because it is so important that they get a name that really, really conjures up an aspect of their character - something that will help them to come to life on the page. I can't just pluck any old name out of a baby book, or something similar. The name has to have a resonance. Tom was a good name for my military hero - there's nothing stuffy about a Tom, is there? And you can imagine a Tom being brave on the battlefield, insubordinate to his officers, and lethal with the ladies. And once we started calling him Tom Cat, well...
I is for internet
I is for...internet
(because I'm rambling through the discoveries I've made since becoming an author in alphabetical order)
When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand. I used floppy discs (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work. And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.
I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process. I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.
Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere. So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story? Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?
I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).
The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet. Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities. Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.
And now came a whole new form of time-wasting. Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know. Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating. So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814,
and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!
I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use,another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another whenever I want to describe a Regency dance.
So - internet - good for research? Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.
However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.
And don't get me started on facebook. Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends. But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school? Again?
Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?
Or take another quiz?
(because I'm rambling through the discoveries I've made since becoming an author in alphabetical order)
When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand. I used floppy discs (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work. And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.
I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process. I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.
Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere. So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story? Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?
I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).
The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet. Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities. Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.
And now came a whole new form of time-wasting. Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know. Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating. So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814,
and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!
I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use,another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another whenever I want to describe a Regency dance.
So - internet - good for research? Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.
However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.
And don't get me started on facebook. Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends. But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school? Again?
Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?
Or take another quiz?
J is for...journey
The kind of stories I enjoy the most are ones in which the main character changes and grows, emotionally, during the course of whatever adventure the author has sent them on. There are various ways of describing this aspect of story-telling. Often writers refer to it as "the character arc". I prefer to think of it as the "emotional journey", (probably because the word "arc" conjures up an image in my head of an object which curves right up, then ends up on the same level as where it started.) I like to think I'm sending my characters on a journey, in which they not only have an adventure, but also learn to abandon their prejudices and hang-ups along the way, and end up better people.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a story like this is "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens. At the start, Scrooge is a miserable skinflint - a man who makes everyone around him almost equally as miserable. By the end, he's giving away turkeys, raising his clerk's wages, and generally spreading Christmas cheer. The story is so powerful, and spreads such a touching message of hope for even the most hardened cynic, that it has been adapted over and over again, for retelling to a modern audience. Last Christmas season, I noticed at least four different adaptations aired on TV (including my family's favourite - A Muppet Christmas Carol). The story of this one man's emotional transformation never seems to grow stale.
It is particularly suited to telling at Christmas time. Don't we all make New Year's resolutions? Isn't the turn of the year the time when we examine ourselves, take stock, and vow that this is the year when we'll do better? Stories such as A Christmas Carol, that show a character overcoming his own flaws and weaknesses, give us hope that we can do something similar. Though I have to confess, I'd broken every one of my resolutions before the end of January 1st this year. (And yes, they did all involve eating habits, and exercise.)
Scrooge changed (literally overnight!) because of intervention by supernatural beings - the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But there are many other classic stories where the central character is transformed by the (often healing) power of love. As a writer of romance, these are the ones that have always particularly inspired me. As a child I couldn't get enough of fairy stories, such as Rapunzel - where the hero's blindness is cured by the tears of his beloved falling onto his eyes, and The Snow Queen, where Gerda's tears wash the splinters of the troll mirror from his heart. (Oh, dear, it's always tears, isn't it?), or Beauty and the Beast, where the heroine learns not to judge by outward appearances, and breaks the curse to find the Prince inside the Beast.
Then, as I grew older, it was stories that contained a more romantic love, that I enjoyed the most. The ones where the hero's character and actions helped to unfreeze the heroine's heart in some way. Or vice versa. I think that is one reason why I love reading Harlequin romances - fairly often the heroine's integrity is what persuades the cynical hero to soften and open his own heart to love. She "rescues" him from a life of cynical isolation.
On reflection that's probably what I love about Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen. Although the hero starts out with all the notional power, it is the woman who comes to the rescue in the end. Rapunzel cures the Prince's blindness, Beauty breaks the curse holding the Beast in thrall, and Gerda travels through the Arctic to rescue Kai from the Queen's ice palace.
Gerda is the one fairy tale heroine who goes on an actual journey. My own characters rarely do. It is their inner journey, often from a dark place, that I love to describe. I was half way through writing A Mistress for Major Bartlett (release date June 2015) before I realized my heroine was very like Rapunzel. Although she isn't under a real curse, she has shut herself up in a psychological tower, into which nobody has access, apart from her beloved twin brother. It takes a real shock to jolt her out of her self-imposed isolation, set out on a path to self-awareness, and open her heart and mind to the possibility of love.
Her hero, the Major Bartlett of the title, also has his own emotional journey to undertake. Like the prince in Rapunzel, he has been wandering in darkness for a very long time. And it (sort of) takes the heroine's tears to open his eyes to not only what he is, but what he could become.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
Perhaps the most obvious example of a story like this is "A Christmas Carol", by Charles Dickens. At the start, Scrooge is a miserable skinflint - a man who makes everyone around him almost equally as miserable. By the end, he's giving away turkeys, raising his clerk's wages, and generally spreading Christmas cheer. The story is so powerful, and spreads such a touching message of hope for even the most hardened cynic, that it has been adapted over and over again, for retelling to a modern audience. Last Christmas season, I noticed at least four different adaptations aired on TV (including my family's favourite - A Muppet Christmas Carol). The story of this one man's emotional transformation never seems to grow stale.
It is particularly suited to telling at Christmas time. Don't we all make New Year's resolutions? Isn't the turn of the year the time when we examine ourselves, take stock, and vow that this is the year when we'll do better? Stories such as A Christmas Carol, that show a character overcoming his own flaws and weaknesses, give us hope that we can do something similar. Though I have to confess, I'd broken every one of my resolutions before the end of January 1st this year. (And yes, they did all involve eating habits, and exercise.)
Scrooge changed (literally overnight!) because of intervention by supernatural beings - the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. But there are many other classic stories where the central character is transformed by the (often healing) power of love. As a writer of romance, these are the ones that have always particularly inspired me. As a child I couldn't get enough of fairy stories, such as Rapunzel - where the hero's blindness is cured by the tears of his beloved falling onto his eyes, and The Snow Queen, where Gerda's tears wash the splinters of the troll mirror from his heart. (Oh, dear, it's always tears, isn't it?), or Beauty and the Beast, where the heroine learns not to judge by outward appearances, and breaks the curse to find the Prince inside the Beast.
Then, as I grew older, it was stories that contained a more romantic love, that I enjoyed the most. The ones where the hero's character and actions helped to unfreeze the heroine's heart in some way. Or vice versa. I think that is one reason why I love reading Harlequin romances - fairly often the heroine's integrity is what persuades the cynical hero to soften and open his own heart to love. She "rescues" him from a life of cynical isolation.
On reflection that's probably what I love about Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen. Although the hero starts out with all the notional power, it is the woman who comes to the rescue in the end. Rapunzel cures the Prince's blindness, Beauty breaks the curse holding the Beast in thrall, and Gerda travels through the Arctic to rescue Kai from the Queen's ice palace.
Gerda is the one fairy tale heroine who goes on an actual journey. My own characters rarely do. It is their inner journey, often from a dark place, that I love to describe. I was half way through writing A Mistress for Major Bartlett (release date June 2015) before I realized my heroine was very like Rapunzel. Although she isn't under a real curse, she has shut herself up in a psychological tower, into which nobody has access, apart from her beloved twin brother. It takes a real shock to jolt her out of her self-imposed isolation, set out on a path to self-awareness, and open her heart and mind to the possibility of love.
Her hero, the Major Bartlett of the title, also has his own emotional journey to undertake. Like the prince in Rapunzel, he has been wandering in darkness for a very long time. And it (sort of) takes the heroine's tears to open his eyes to not only what he is, but what he could become.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
K is for writing what you Know (or don't)
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know."
Donald Rumsfeld
When you first start writing people advise you to write what you know. The argument goes that you cannot write a convincing story unless you know your subject inside out and upside down. The trouble is, I wanted to write fiction set in Regency England, which is a place I have never been, and never can go to. All my knowledge of the era comes from books.
However, when I started attempting to get a publishing deal, I felt fairly confident that I knew enough to be able to create a convincing fictional Regency world. I've read stacks of Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen and the like. And whatever I didn't know enough about, I could look up, right?
So I bought loads of books about every subject I thought I might need to know about - fashion, the army, the navy and biograpies of people who actually lived in the time which would hopefully give me an idea of the mindset of people living back then.
I even go round stately homes to get an extra "feel" for the era, especially ones where I can dress up in period costume, or have a ride in a carriage.
All the little details of dress, manners, and so forth, help to create a world that strikes a reader as "real".
For example, an author sets the scene by having the hero check his cravat in the mirror. The heroine curtsies to him. Instantly we're in an age where manners are more formal than today, and the costumes easily dateable. The hero asks the lady to dance the waltz. She refuses lest she be thought "fast". We're very firmly in Regency territory. So far, so good.
The trouble is, there are things about the Regency world that I never knew I didn't know. I didn't know, for example - until it was mentioned on an author loop I belong to - that a girl couldn't waltz in public until she'd been granted permission, by one of the patronesses of Almack's, within those hallowed walls, to do so with an approved partner. I'd had no idea how close I'd come to the brink of writing one of my heroines into committing such a social gaffe.
And a lot of authors fall into the same trap. As a resident of the UK, I cringe whenever I read of Regency bucks going down to Dorsetshire to sample the local whiskey. Or having to banish their dogs to the stables after an encounter with a skunk on the South Downs. For me, such slips of the pen ruin my belief in the Regency world the author is trying to create. Though I don't suppose it has any effect on readers who don't know that in Dorset the local brew would most likely be cider, and that the only way a skunk would wander onto the South Downs was if it had escaped from some local eccentric's private collection of rare species.
Which brings me back to the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, who has been soundly mocked for warning the world about the danger of the "unknown unknowns". As an author, I can vouch for the peril of those pesky facts that hamper us in our creative endeavours. I have had my own heroes and heroines unwittingly do and say things that a person living in 1815 would not have done. I have had them use the word "hello" - which was not in common use until the 1880's except on the hunting field. I have also had them perform a twentieth century waltz, having had no idea that in the Regency era, the waltz was nothing like the rather tame dance performed today.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
However, if I was now to describe the dance with complete accuracy, I suspect that editors and readers alike would find it hard to believe in it if my hero performed an acrobatic leap while the heroine hopped to one side. It would strike them all as bizarre, and would ruin their belief in my Regency world just as surely as it would had they arrived at the ball in question in a porsche 911.
So - I'll probably need to disguise what I actually know, so that a reader will be convinced I do know what I'm talking about.
Donald Rumsfeld might have fared better with the world's press if he'd done the same.
Donald Rumsfeld
When you first start writing people advise you to write what you know. The argument goes that you cannot write a convincing story unless you know your subject inside out and upside down. The trouble is, I wanted to write fiction set in Regency England, which is a place I have never been, and never can go to. All my knowledge of the era comes from books.
However, when I started attempting to get a publishing deal, I felt fairly confident that I knew enough to be able to create a convincing fictional Regency world. I've read stacks of Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen and the like. And whatever I didn't know enough about, I could look up, right?
So I bought loads of books about every subject I thought I might need to know about - fashion, the army, the navy and biograpies of people who actually lived in the time which would hopefully give me an idea of the mindset of people living back then.
I even go round stately homes to get an extra "feel" for the era, especially ones where I can dress up in period costume, or have a ride in a carriage.
All the little details of dress, manners, and so forth, help to create a world that strikes a reader as "real".
For example, an author sets the scene by having the hero check his cravat in the mirror. The heroine curtsies to him. Instantly we're in an age where manners are more formal than today, and the costumes easily dateable. The hero asks the lady to dance the waltz. She refuses lest she be thought "fast". We're very firmly in Regency territory. So far, so good.
The trouble is, there are things about the Regency world that I never knew I didn't know. I didn't know, for example - until it was mentioned on an author loop I belong to - that a girl couldn't waltz in public until she'd been granted permission, by one of the patronesses of Almack's, within those hallowed walls, to do so with an approved partner. I'd had no idea how close I'd come to the brink of writing one of my heroines into committing such a social gaffe.
And a lot of authors fall into the same trap. As a resident of the UK, I cringe whenever I read of Regency bucks going down to Dorsetshire to sample the local whiskey. Or having to banish their dogs to the stables after an encounter with a skunk on the South Downs. For me, such slips of the pen ruin my belief in the Regency world the author is trying to create. Though I don't suppose it has any effect on readers who don't know that in Dorset the local brew would most likely be cider, and that the only way a skunk would wander onto the South Downs was if it had escaped from some local eccentric's private collection of rare species.
Which brings me back to the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, who has been soundly mocked for warning the world about the danger of the "unknown unknowns". As an author, I can vouch for the peril of those pesky facts that hamper us in our creative endeavours. I have had my own heroes and heroines unwittingly do and say things that a person living in 1815 would not have done. I have had them use the word "hello" - which was not in common use until the 1880's except on the hunting field. I have also had them perform a twentieth century waltz, having had no idea that in the Regency era, the waltz was nothing like the rather tame dance performed today.
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
However, if I was now to describe the dance with complete accuracy, I suspect that editors and readers alike would find it hard to believe in it if my hero performed an acrobatic leap while the heroine hopped to one side. It would strike them all as bizarre, and would ruin their belief in my Regency world just as surely as it would had they arrived at the ball in question in a porsche 911.
So - I'll probably need to disguise what I actually know, so that a reader will be convinced I do know what I'm talking about.
Donald Rumsfeld might have fared better with the world's press if he'd done the same.
L is for...loneliness.
"But hold onto your loneliness and your silence. They are part of what make you a writer."
I've got this quote pinned up in my study. I cut it out of The Author magazine some time ago - I think it's by Terence Black. Whenever I start wondering if I'm in danger of becoming agoraphobic, I read it and take heart. I'm not abnormally antisocial, no - I'm just a writer.
Because, you see, I could quite easily be a hermit. (Apart from the growing a beard thing - whenever you see a picture of a hermit it's always a man with a huge bushy beard. I suppose I could throw away my tweezers...) For example, when I go to put the bins out on a Friday morning, I sometimes realize that it's the first time I've been outside all week - and I'm not bothered.
I don't even like going out shopping. The thought of wandering around, browsing has always seemed to me like a huge waste of time. If I have to go into town, I try and get as many things done as I possibly can while I'm out. I write a list, get everything done as fast as I can and get home. And thanks to internet shopping I can have life's necessities, like groceries and books, delivered. Nor do I have to visit an actual library very often. I do most of my research online nowadays.
About the only time I really look forward to getting out of the house is to meet up with other writers, to discuss...yes, you've guessed it, writing. It's only when I'm in the company of other writers that I don't feel odd. They totally get that I have several stories drifting through my head at any one time, and that I would rather spend my day writing down the adventures of my imaginary friends, than going out for coffee with real ones. I don't have much of a social life, apart from having lunch with other writers, or attending writers conferences. But I'm not lonely. Not at all.
What I am, is a bit of a loner.
I think to be a writer you have to be. You have to be content with your own company. Prepared to set your own goals and reach targets nobody else cares about.
And only a writer would completely empathise with Oscar Wilde when he said: "I'm exhausted. I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out."
That's pretty much my life!
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
I've got this quote pinned up in my study. I cut it out of The Author magazine some time ago - I think it's by Terence Black. Whenever I start wondering if I'm in danger of becoming agoraphobic, I read it and take heart. I'm not abnormally antisocial, no - I'm just a writer.
Because, you see, I could quite easily be a hermit. (Apart from the growing a beard thing - whenever you see a picture of a hermit it's always a man with a huge bushy beard. I suppose I could throw away my tweezers...) For example, when I go to put the bins out on a Friday morning, I sometimes realize that it's the first time I've been outside all week - and I'm not bothered.
I don't even like going out shopping. The thought of wandering around, browsing has always seemed to me like a huge waste of time. If I have to go into town, I try and get as many things done as I possibly can while I'm out. I write a list, get everything done as fast as I can and get home. And thanks to internet shopping I can have life's necessities, like groceries and books, delivered. Nor do I have to visit an actual library very often. I do most of my research online nowadays.
About the only time I really look forward to getting out of the house is to meet up with other writers, to discuss...yes, you've guessed it, writing. It's only when I'm in the company of other writers that I don't feel odd. They totally get that I have several stories drifting through my head at any one time, and that I would rather spend my day writing down the adventures of my imaginary friends, than going out for coffee with real ones. I don't have much of a social life, apart from having lunch with other writers, or attending writers conferences. But I'm not lonely. Not at all.
What I am, is a bit of a loner.
I think to be a writer you have to be. You have to be content with your own company. Prepared to set your own goals and reach targets nobody else cares about.
And only a writer would completely empathise with Oscar Wilde when he said: "I'm exhausted. I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out."
That's pretty much my life!
A Mistress for Major Bartlett
M is for...Mills & Boon
Like many people who became writers, I started off being the kind of child who always had her nose in a book of some description.
Unlike many, I didn't have a burning ambition to become a writer. It just never occurred to me.
Not until Margaret Thatcher abolished student loans, just a couple of years before my daughter was due to go to university. We hadn't a penny saved up to fund her education, and were suddenly faced with the huge cost of her getting a degree.
How to get the money to put her through college?
I know, I thought. I'll write a book. I've read so many, I'm sure I could do just as well.
Because when I wasn't reading a story, I was daydreaming. Those sort of Walter Mitty-ish daydreams where I was the heroine, getting into all sorts of unlikely adventures.
And I had been to university and got a degree in English, so I knew all about what makes great literature. I was sure, if only I put my mind to it, I could quickly come up with a bestseller.
And I did come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. A re-working of the Babel story from the bible, which would show how it affected one family, as the world they knew collapsed into chaos around them. It was a kind of allegorical, apocalyptic examination of both family dynamics, and social conditioning, which ended up proving that we are all only as civilized as the society in which we live.
At that point I made a discovery. It is a lot harder to write a novel than I thought. You can't just sit down and write your ideas down in the order you get them. You've got to tease out the message, and have enough action going on to get that message across without boring the reader to sleep. And I learned which parts would bore the reader to sleep, because I read sections to my family as I finished them. If they really did fall asleep, I knew I needed to re-write that bit.
Anyway, that was how I learned to write - by sitting down and doing it, then trying out the effect of my prose on my poor unsuspecting family.
At last it was finished. My masterpiece. I got hold of a copy of the writers and artists yearbook and started sending it out, eagerly awaiting the thrilled reaction of publishers who would all be clamouring for the privilege of printing it.
You won't be surprised to hear that none of them wanted it. Most didn't even bother replying. Which puzzled and hurt me.
By this time, my daughter had started at college, and I clearly wasn't going to make my fortune with my book, at least not right away. So I had to go out and get a Real Job which meant I had less time to devote to writing that bestseller. Which I wasn't going to abandon. I'd got hooked on writing.
I felt I just needed to work out where I was going wrong. Perhaps I needed a bit of tuition, or something?
But since I was working I couldn't go on a full time writing course.
However, I did see an advert for a correspondence course which involved doing assignments and sending them off and getting them marked. The first assignments involved researching various magazines with a view to writing articles.
Now, this probably seems logical to you, but this was the first time anyone had suggested researching the market, and writing something in accordance with a set of guidelines. I thought I could just write whatever I wanted, and some publisher should be grateful to print it out and sell it for me!
I knew magazine article writing wasn't for me, but at least the marks I got from my tutor were encouraging.
There was a fiction-writing segment coming up in the correspondence course, and, getting bored with the factual stuff which didn't make use of my imagination, I skipped ahead and read the section on genre fiction.
Now, because I'd studied Literature at university, I'd been taught to sneer at pulp fiction. But the one thing that caught my eye, as I read the course outline, was a little sentence that said,
"If you send work in to Mills & Boon, someone will read your manuscript, and reply."
A reply from a publisher! By this time I would have given my right arm to get a reply from a publisher.
It then went on to suggest that if I wanted to write something likely to get Mills & Boon to take an interest, I should buy several recent books published by them, so that I could see if I could write something along those lines.
So off I went to my local library, and got an armful.
I'd never knowingly read anything from Mills & Boon before. But the moment I did, I was hooked. Why hadn't I read anything like these wonderful romances before? They matched exactly the kind of stories I'd been making up in my head for years - oh, I don't mean the worthy, literary story I thought was a Real Piece of Writing - I mean the ones where I was a heroine in peril, getting rescued by some strapping great hunk with a tortured soul who needed my gentle brand of wisdom to make his life whole - or the ones where I was an impoverished, though intelligent girl from a genteel family who catches the eye of a dashing rake, or pirate, and persuades him, through a series of adventures where I demonstrated a special brand of pluckiness, that I was just what he'd always been looking for without even knowing it.
From that moment on, I had stories flowing out of my fingertips, drumming at my brain to get onto paper. Plucky heroines and rugged heroes clamouring at me to tell their stories.
Though it took another few years before the editors at Mills & Boon finally gave in, and agreed to publish one of them.
I wasn't sure exactly which line I wanted to aim at - it was a choice between Moderns (which are like reworking of fairytales such as Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast, really) or historical, where I could indulge my imagination in tales of adventure, involving rakes encountering plucky heroines.
So what I did was to alternate. First of all, I'd write a story for the Modern line, and send it in to the relevant editor. And then, while I was awaiting a response, I'd write a historical one. So when my rejection eventually came back, I immediately had another one all ready to send out.
At the same time I was buying books about how to write, to see what I could learn. I can't say that any one book had all the answers, but every single one of them would contain at least one little nugget of advice I found useful.
And my husband got me a computer which would connect to the internet, which opened up a whole new world of research for me.
It was just after I'd signed up for an evening class at a local college in fiction writing that I first heard of the RNA,(Romantic Novelists Association) and its New Writer's Scheme. My tutor was giving me good marks for my assignments, but I was still getting standard rejection letters from Mills & Boon, and I wanted to know what I was doing wrong. Why wasn't I getting anything published?
For a fee, I discovered, the New Writer's Scheme would read a manuscript, and actually send back a report about the quality of my writing.
So, I decided that when my next rejection letter came through, I would send the manuscript off to the New Writer's Scheme so someone would tell me where I was going wrong.
However, that submission didn't get rejected. Instead, I got a very nice letter asking to read the full manuscript, and then, many months later, a request for very minor revisions. Before I knew it, I'd got the call with the offer of a publishing contract.
It had only taken me 10 years.
My first book, His Cinderella Bride, came out the following autumn. By this time not only my daughter, but also my son had both graduated from university.
But I'd got a new career.
Unlike many, I didn't have a burning ambition to become a writer. It just never occurred to me.
Not until Margaret Thatcher abolished student loans, just a couple of years before my daughter was due to go to university. We hadn't a penny saved up to fund her education, and were suddenly faced with the huge cost of her getting a degree.
How to get the money to put her through college?
I know, I thought. I'll write a book. I've read so many, I'm sure I could do just as well.
Because when I wasn't reading a story, I was daydreaming. Those sort of Walter Mitty-ish daydreams where I was the heroine, getting into all sorts of unlikely adventures.
And I had been to university and got a degree in English, so I knew all about what makes great literature. I was sure, if only I put my mind to it, I could quickly come up with a bestseller.
And I did come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. A re-working of the Babel story from the bible, which would show how it affected one family, as the world they knew collapsed into chaos around them. It was a kind of allegorical, apocalyptic examination of both family dynamics, and social conditioning, which ended up proving that we are all only as civilized as the society in which we live.
At that point I made a discovery. It is a lot harder to write a novel than I thought. You can't just sit down and write your ideas down in the order you get them. You've got to tease out the message, and have enough action going on to get that message across without boring the reader to sleep. And I learned which parts would bore the reader to sleep, because I read sections to my family as I finished them. If they really did fall asleep, I knew I needed to re-write that bit.
Anyway, that was how I learned to write - by sitting down and doing it, then trying out the effect of my prose on my poor unsuspecting family.
At last it was finished. My masterpiece. I got hold of a copy of the writers and artists yearbook and started sending it out, eagerly awaiting the thrilled reaction of publishers who would all be clamouring for the privilege of printing it.
You won't be surprised to hear that none of them wanted it. Most didn't even bother replying. Which puzzled and hurt me.
By this time, my daughter had started at college, and I clearly wasn't going to make my fortune with my book, at least not right away. So I had to go out and get a Real Job which meant I had less time to devote to writing that bestseller. Which I wasn't going to abandon. I'd got hooked on writing.
I felt I just needed to work out where I was going wrong. Perhaps I needed a bit of tuition, or something?
But since I was working I couldn't go on a full time writing course.
However, I did see an advert for a correspondence course which involved doing assignments and sending them off and getting them marked. The first assignments involved researching various magazines with a view to writing articles.
Now, this probably seems logical to you, but this was the first time anyone had suggested researching the market, and writing something in accordance with a set of guidelines. I thought I could just write whatever I wanted, and some publisher should be grateful to print it out and sell it for me!
I knew magazine article writing wasn't for me, but at least the marks I got from my tutor were encouraging.
There was a fiction-writing segment coming up in the correspondence course, and, getting bored with the factual stuff which didn't make use of my imagination, I skipped ahead and read the section on genre fiction.
Now, because I'd studied Literature at university, I'd been taught to sneer at pulp fiction. But the one thing that caught my eye, as I read the course outline, was a little sentence that said,
"If you send work in to Mills & Boon, someone will read your manuscript, and reply."
A reply from a publisher! By this time I would have given my right arm to get a reply from a publisher.
It then went on to suggest that if I wanted to write something likely to get Mills & Boon to take an interest, I should buy several recent books published by them, so that I could see if I could write something along those lines.
So off I went to my local library, and got an armful.
I'd never knowingly read anything from Mills & Boon before. But the moment I did, I was hooked. Why hadn't I read anything like these wonderful romances before? They matched exactly the kind of stories I'd been making up in my head for years - oh, I don't mean the worthy, literary story I thought was a Real Piece of Writing - I mean the ones where I was a heroine in peril, getting rescued by some strapping great hunk with a tortured soul who needed my gentle brand of wisdom to make his life whole - or the ones where I was an impoverished, though intelligent girl from a genteel family who catches the eye of a dashing rake, or pirate, and persuades him, through a series of adventures where I demonstrated a special brand of pluckiness, that I was just what he'd always been looking for without even knowing it.
From that moment on, I had stories flowing out of my fingertips, drumming at my brain to get onto paper. Plucky heroines and rugged heroes clamouring at me to tell their stories.
Though it took another few years before the editors at Mills & Boon finally gave in, and agreed to publish one of them.
I wasn't sure exactly which line I wanted to aim at - it was a choice between Moderns (which are like reworking of fairytales such as Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast, really) or historical, where I could indulge my imagination in tales of adventure, involving rakes encountering plucky heroines.
So what I did was to alternate. First of all, I'd write a story for the Modern line, and send it in to the relevant editor. And then, while I was awaiting a response, I'd write a historical one. So when my rejection eventually came back, I immediately had another one all ready to send out.
At the same time I was buying books about how to write, to see what I could learn. I can't say that any one book had all the answers, but every single one of them would contain at least one little nugget of advice I found useful.
And my husband got me a computer which would connect to the internet, which opened up a whole new world of research for me.
It was just after I'd signed up for an evening class at a local college in fiction writing that I first heard of the RNA,(Romantic Novelists Association) and its New Writer's Scheme. My tutor was giving me good marks for my assignments, but I was still getting standard rejection letters from Mills & Boon, and I wanted to know what I was doing wrong. Why wasn't I getting anything published?
For a fee, I discovered, the New Writer's Scheme would read a manuscript, and actually send back a report about the quality of my writing.
So, I decided that when my next rejection letter came through, I would send the manuscript off to the New Writer's Scheme so someone would tell me where I was going wrong.
However, that submission didn't get rejected. Instead, I got a very nice letter asking to read the full manuscript, and then, many months later, a request for very minor revisions. Before I knew it, I'd got the call with the offer of a publishing contract.
It had only taken me 10 years.
My first book, His Cinderella Bride, came out the following autumn. By this time not only my daughter, but also my son had both graduated from university.
But I'd got a new career.
N is for...notebooks
If you're serious about being a writer, you need to have a notebook (and pen) handy at all times, because you never know when inspiration is going to strike. I learned this the hard way, when I had a brilliant idea to deepen my hero's conflict, but by the time I got round to sitting down at my laptop, and applying it to the story I was writing, I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was. I still can't remember what it was. But I can remember how cross I felt that I'd forgotten it.
I now carry a tiny one in my pocket to jot down things that occur to me when I'm on the move.
I have another one in my handbag, in case I'm out without a coat. Or I've hung my coat up in a cloakroom. It's so battered that I'm ashamed to take a picture of it and post it. People who have been to lunch with me will have seen it however!
I have another one on my bedside table in case inspiration strikes me at night. My husband has got used to me suddenly sitting bolt upright and grabbing my pen. "Got an idea?" he murmurs sleepily. Not even expecting an answer because I just grunt at him, and keep on writing. Inspiration is so elusive, sometimes, that even pausing to explain what it is will make it shimmer into a sort of mist that you just can't get a hold of any longer.
And then, there's my collection of big notebooks. These are rough drafts of all the stories that have come to me over the years, when I've been away from a computer to type them straight into my "ideas" file. A big notebook will always go in my suitcase if I'm going on holiday, because when sitting on a beach, I'd as soon be writing a story, as reading one.
And a confession about these notebooks. Some of them have gone to work with me, when I was working in call centres, or as a temporary receptionist. While other temps might sit about filing their nails, I was scribbling down my ideas, under the desk. And sometimes resenting the phone ringing and interrupting me while I was in full flow!
The Captain's Christmas Bride
I now carry a tiny one in my pocket to jot down things that occur to me when I'm on the move.
I have another one in my handbag, in case I'm out without a coat. Or I've hung my coat up in a cloakroom. It's so battered that I'm ashamed to take a picture of it and post it. People who have been to lunch with me will have seen it however!
I have another one on my bedside table in case inspiration strikes me at night. My husband has got used to me suddenly sitting bolt upright and grabbing my pen. "Got an idea?" he murmurs sleepily. Not even expecting an answer because I just grunt at him, and keep on writing. Inspiration is so elusive, sometimes, that even pausing to explain what it is will make it shimmer into a sort of mist that you just can't get a hold of any longer.
And then, there's my collection of big notebooks. These are rough drafts of all the stories that have come to me over the years, when I've been away from a computer to type them straight into my "ideas" file. A big notebook will always go in my suitcase if I'm going on holiday, because when sitting on a beach, I'd as soon be writing a story, as reading one.
And a confession about these notebooks. Some of them have gone to work with me, when I was working in call centres, or as a temporary receptionist. While other temps might sit about filing their nails, I was scribbling down my ideas, under the desk. And sometimes resenting the phone ringing and interrupting me while I was in full flow!
The Captain's Christmas Bride
