Credit where edit's due

That's quite enough stick for anyone.

Are you sitting uncomfortably?

I was. And perhaps you will be too, by the end of this post.

It all began, recently, when I was involved in the revamp of a paperback anthology, swapping hats from Derek the writer to Eddie the editor. I was one of the original editorial team, so I knew the material well, but this time the brief was much simpler, though no less difficult: whittle down 100 anthology entries to a smaller collection of 50. Or, to put it another way: dent the dreams of 50% of those writers who'd expect a reprint to feature their work.

I'd add, in mitigation, that we decided to cut down the size of the reprint because the paperback anthology just hadn't sold in numbers big enough to justify a straightforward reprint. The smaller version would be cheaper to produce and have a lower unit price, making it an altogether more attractive proposition. Just so you know.

Anyway, I oped for three piles - Yes, No and Maybe. 

I'd like to be able to tell you that I was scientific, clinical and systematic in my approach. But with real life, and editing, it isn;t always like that.

Some pieces (re)made the cut for obvious reasons - originality, emotional authenticity, or simply beautifully written. Those that definitely missed the boat didn't tick enough boxes, which is not to say they were not without merit. And that awkward mid list of possibilities, awaiting their fate in literary purgatory, fell somewhere between those two poles.*

It was a scarily subjective process, where something can be rejected because:
- It doesn't quite fit the original brief, on further consideration.
- It reads like a shoe-in with a few details added (sparingly) in order to fit the anthology criteria.
- I just don't feel the story.
- There are familiar themes, where something else, covering similar ground, had already won our attention. 
- We need a balance in the anthology, so sacrifices had to be made.

And I can't help thinking that some editor or agent, at various times, has encountered my work and made the same sort of judgements. Along the lines of: not without its merits, but for not me at this time. Whereas, on another day, and up against a different set of competing submissions, things might have been very different.

Editors, I take my hat off to you. Now, about this new novel of mine - I think you're gonna love it...


* At the time of writing, all the pieces are going through a second round of filtering, so it's entirely possible that the final list will change. That's show-business.

Me, for free?

In my experience, the biggest transition from hobbyist to professional writer is not one of achievement but one of attitude. Not merely in our attitude towards our craft, and ourselves, but also the way in which we view opportunity.

When I first started out (feel free to imagine the music from the Hovis ad at this point - Dvorak's "New World" Symphony), anyone who offered to publish my work, or just to let me write something for them, was seized upon in a frenzy unheard of since the shower scene from Psycho. However, wearing a professional hat will very often necessitate looking at opportunities through a lens of, "What's the benefit here?"

The Internet is awash with offers to 'raise your profile' or 'build a portfolio' in lieu of payment, often by magazines that then charge their readers for the privilege of reading all that free work. And yet...and yet sometimes writing for free can pay dividends - whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

It's important to bear in mind that:

- Not everyone is in it for the money and not every creative project can be run on a profitable basis. That's why we have an Arts Council in the UK.

- In an increasingly competitive environment, sometimes getting a free piece out there can not only give you a track record and a publishing credit, it can also give you something to refer other potential editors to. (Which is why, if you do decide to offer a piece of writing for free, it's important not to treat it as a second-best option or to skimp on the editing.)

- Something written for free can garner you valuable feedback, which can help you improve said piece and perhaps rewrite it for a paying market. You may be able to withdraw the original piece from the Internet, but check the terms of any agreement carefully.

Here are three pieces of mine on the Net, now free to read:

Fiction

Perfect Circle - a sci-fi story about a boy who discovers an unusual talent.

Saturday Night - Joe understands the importance of a rich, inner life.

Non-Fiction
How to make money from your writing - a guest post over at Bubble Cow. 

When you comment, let us know where we can see a piece of your writing.

Never give up

by Mary Dinan

Need encouragement? Never give up!

You've written your book. You have put in hours of love, labour and language. Now all you have to do is get someone to believe in it the way you do.

Remember you only need one door to open.

I met with many rejections while submitting proposals, and failure to get an agent was really discouraging. It was then I decided I would be my own agent and approach the publishers. For this, what you need is a one page query to send off and if the publisher is interested they will request a full book proposal. It really saves so much time to email a simple query. It also helps to have the name of the Publishing Director. And it helps to identify the genres which interest your chosen publisher.

A very good friend and columnist with The Sunday Times sent me a text saying, 'Persistence is everything.' During times of doubt I re-opened his text.

Think of all the great authors who met with rejection before becoming published. If you get rejection letters giving the same reason for the rejection time after time, it might be worth taking note and making ammendments but sometimes it may be just the wrong time in that particular place or the wrong genre for that publisher.

Remember you only need one yes. Maybe you are asking, 'well how do you know'?

I know because I've been through all the rejections and doubts. Any positive feedback you get from your rejection letter, keep it in your head for it will keep you going on the dark days.

There was one literary agent I contacted in London in the early days of writing my travel book and he told me that even though it wasn't for him it was 'publishable.' His words spurred me to keep going when all those manuscripts came back. That one straw made the difference between giving up and hanging in there.

It might surprise you to hear that George Orwell suffered rejection. Animal Farm was firmly rejected.
Stephen king had oodles of rejections for his Carrie novel but it didn't stop him. Lord of the flies was rejected by 20 publishers, one saying it was 'un- interesting rubbish and dull'. What would have happened if William Golding had listened?

J.K. Rowling may well have been discouraged as her book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone was rejected by no less than 12 major publishers. Many offering the rejection letters were major publishers. Never underestimate the power of a small press. Never give up.

John le Carré, author of The spy Who Came In From The Cold was told he had no future by one such publisher. If he had listened this book would never have seen the light of day.

These are just a few authors who experienced the closed doors, only to find that one door opened and that was all they needed. Hang in there. It can happen swiftly and unexpectedly.

There is nothing like the joy of a book contract in your hand!

I get up again

The artist in sunnier times.

I've often wondered why there's no eqivalent, positive alternative to 'suffering for one's art'. How about thriving? Or perhaps blossoming? (I draw the line at pleasuring for one's art because that just sounds plain wrong.)

Is the suffering essential? Certainly, artists of all persuasions can and do suffer. They experience fear, isolation, frustration, loss, self-doubt, crushing disappointment, rejection and sheer bloody unhappiness.

What do we gain from all that? Buddha suggested that the root of all suffering (apart from the human condition itself) is attachment. 

When we insist that we and our work are appreciated, we're setting up an equation where we only have control at one end - the rest is a set of variables we may not even fully comprehend.

Suffering may bring about a deeper experience of what it is to be an artist, as well as of the art itself. But what about the audience? What does the reader think?

Personally, although I like to know an author's back story, I care little about whether they've lived in the street or in a mansion. (Okay, I'll be honest here and tell you that the mansion would bother me a little.) First and foremost, it's the writing that counts and not how they arrive at it.

So is there another way, an alternative to suffering? I certainly hope so! Don't misunderstand me, I think creativity is a serious business, in every sense. But surely it can be fun, exciting and fulfilling too?

I look forward to an interview where the writer, when asked about their approach to their craft, says: "I write for the joy of it."

For me, it all comes down to these basics, in the form of a handy cut-out-and-keep reminder:

We, as writers, can only really control three things: How we write, how we edit, and where we choose to submit our work. We have to let go and accept that everything else is in the lap of the Gods, while doing the things we can extremely well.

* A post inspired by a recent weekend where three novel rejections arrived together, like mournful buses! 

Debut novel up for US book critics award

Strictly Writing catches up with Northern Ireland journalist and author Anthony Quinn

A DETECTIVE thriller written by Northern Ireland journalist Anthony Quinn has been selected as one of the five best debut novels of 2012 by book critics from the LA Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle and other daily newspapers.

Disappeared, which is set along the Lough Neagh shore in the aftermath of the Troubles, has been nominated for the Strand Critics Debut Novel Award, the only crime fiction award to be judged solely by book critics. Previous nominees for a Strand award include Stieg Larsson, Lee Child, PD James and Michael Connelly.

The awards, which recognise excellence in the field of mystery fiction, will be presented at an invitation-only cocktail party, hosted by The Strand in New York on July 9.

It is not just Disappeared’s tightly plotted story which has resonated with US audiences but also its moody scene-setting and ‘powerful’ prose.

Reviewers have praised the novel for its ‘powerful mood-enhancing prose’; ‘its convincing tightly-plotted story’; its ‘lavish portrayal of Irish history’ and ‘the ratcheting up of tension as the yarn progresses’.

Anthony has written a number of short stories which have been shortlisted for Hennessy Irish Fiction Awards, but this is his first novel. The idea for the thriller came from a single image of an elderly man burdened by his past wandering across windswept bogland.

“I wanted to write a novel about the past coming back to haunt a group of men caught up in the Troubles”, he said.
“The image of a confused old man struggling to remember a bad deed buried in the past with a desperate sense of urgency stayed with me. I wanted to know what drove him on and what lay waiting for him in this remote landscape.”
The book begins when Inspector Celsius Daly is called to a rural home in the lough-shore area, from which David Hughes, an elderly gent afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, has lately vanished.

Hughes’ sister and caretaker fears he has wandered off and into trouble. But as the inspector investigates, he discovers that Hughes isn’t the quiet country putterer he seems. Instead, he’s part of a larger and much more complicated story connected to the long-ago slaying (by the Irish Republican Army) of an alleged political informer, Oliver Jordan, and the more recent torture murder of an ex-intelligence agent.

The fact that said agent placed his own obituary in a local newspaper, prior to his death, makes this whole affair particularly bizarre. Daly - a detective still wrestling with a recent separation from his wife and more capable at his job than at handling his personal life - adds further to the stakes in this mystery by inviting Jordan’s answers-seeking son into the case. It soon becomes apparent that the missing Hughes harbours secrets in his deteriorating mind that others don’t wish to see released.


You can purchase Anthony's novel on Amazon and other selected outlets.

WINNER WINNER

The winner of our book competition is Vivien - please could you contact Gillian at gfmcdade [at] hotmail. com with your address. Congratulations!

Interview with Deborah Durbin

Freelance writer, journalist and author Deborah Durbin has taken time out from her busy schedule to chat to 'Strictly' about her career and her new book So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer, which is out today (March 29)

Q: WHEN AND WHY DID YOU BECOME A FREELANCE WRITER?
A: Up until I had my second daughter I pretty much flitted from one job to another – I don’t much like working for other people because it’s always in the back of my head that they are earning more money than me! When my second daughter was born I decided I wanted to work for myself, so enrolled with the London College of Journalism and took a diploma with them. Once I had qualified I started out submitting articles to local newspapers and then to magazines. That was almost 17 years ago and I haven’t stopped.

Q: YOU ALSO WRITE NOVELS, SO WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE TYPE OF WRITING?
A: Because I trained as a journalist, journalism writing is what I’m best at. I love the whole process of researching a subject that I know nothing about, interviewing people and submitting. I also love pitching to editors. It’s almost like having a challenge every day – will they accept, won’t they? Having said that I have had two novels published which have both been in the Amazon top ten and I enjoyed writing these enormously. It’s a lot harder for a non-fiction writer to change their style to fiction, because in journalism every word must count and you’re trained to write short and sharp copy to tight deadlines. You have more space and time to work on a novel, but this can often be more of a hindrance.

Q: WHY THE FREELANCE BOOK?
A: So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer is based on my years and experience of working in the industry and details not only what to do, but most importantly, what not to do if you want to become a freelance writer. The reason I wrote it was because so many people have asked me for advice on what to do when they start out, that I thought I would jot down what I had learned in the form of a blog. This was then picked up by Compass Books and turned into a handy pop-in-the-handbag paperback.

Q: IS THE BOOK SUITABLE FOR SOMEONE JUST STARTING OUT?
A: It certainly is. So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer covers everything from starting with the basics such as writing reader’s letters to learning how to pitch correctly and how to get a book deal. All the information has come from my own experience, whether it’s submitting an article to a magazine or persuading a publisher to publish your book. It also details the mysterious world that is the publishing industry.

Q: WHY ARE YOU QUALIFIED TO WRITE SUCH A BOOK?
A: I’ve written for most of the women’s national magazines and newspapers in the UK and the States – from The Sun to The New Scientist and everything in between. I have also had 13 books traditionally published and although I have had agents, I have secured all my own publishing contracts, including foreign rights. Writing is my full time job.

Q: WILL THE BOOK HELP PEOPLE GET PUBLISHED?
A: Yes. Everything within the book is from my own experience, so if you follow the advice in the book you stand every chance of getting published, whether that be in newspapers, magazines or books. I explain in the book that getting paid for your writing depends on a lot of different factors, such as an editor might have already run a similar piece, or be holding one in stock etc, and that very often it is a numbers game, but if you know how to approach a commissioning editor, you’ve won half the battle.

Q: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST BIG BREAK?
A: My first published piece was a reader’s letter for a parenting magazine. This led to me being commissioned for an article with the same magazine and then my first book. Once I had something to show editors that I could write to a publishable standard, my career really took off.

Q: WHERE DO YOU WRITE?
A: In the attic! It’s not as bad as it sounds! Our attic is a fully functioning bedroom and office. I have to have either the TV or the radio on when I work. I don’t like to work in silence. I have two white regency style desks; one with my laptop on and the other with magazines, newspapers, clippings, printer, a tub of Twiglets and a tin of Quality Street on it. I also have a mini fridge in the corner of the room, filled with chocolate and soft drinks – it’s a long way down to the kitchen!

Q: WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM?
A: All sorts of places. I tend to specialise in mind, body and spirit or health and wellbeing features because those subjects interest me, so I’m always reading about them. Having said that, one day I had written features about cell regeneration, white magic, the function of the kidney and dating for the over 50’s, so there are a lot of subjects that interest me and if I think I can make them interesting to a reader and get a commission then I will write about them.

Deborah Durbin’s new book, So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer, is out on 29th March. You can find her at www.deborahdurbin.com or blogging at http://soyouwanttobeafreelancewriter.blogspot.co.uk/

We have one copy to give away to one blog reader - all you have to do is leave a comment below and we will pick one at random.