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.

Dear Mr Agent

Dear Mr Agent

It’s taken me a while to muster up the will to write to you again, as I’m sure you’ll understand after that debacle of a Dear John letter. I got in from work (note – 12 hour shift) to find the brown envelope on the mat. Anyway, I opened it and there it was. A freaking rejection. You didn’t even have the courtesy to put my name on it. ‘Dear Nellie’ would have been nice. I’m not saying it would have mended my broken heart, I’m simply pointing out that a little personalisation would make you more attractive as an agent.

It’s not for us, you said. Just like that, Without a thought or a care in the world. You simply keyed in those callous words, printed it off, asked your assistant to put it in the ‘out’ tray and went back to drinking your latte at your desk, in your office, where expensive paintings adorn the walls and the bathroom is smelling of roses, the toilet roll dispenser is filled with Andrex, and the kitchen has its own Aga.

So, I’m writing to tell you that you’ve ruined my life. I want to give up my job, because quite frankly I hate it. I mean, do you really want to be scanning soup tins, spring onions and frozen peas through a supermarket checkout all day? Would you like to be taking people’s orders all night in your second job…no onions please…no wait…I’ll have onions….actually give me sweetcorn, ham and mushrooms instead love? Do you really want to be waiting tables at night in a drab café with netted curtains and plastic ketchup bottles on the tables, the rims caked with sauce? No, I bet you don’t. I bet you don’t want to spend all night wiping down the red and white checked plastic tablecovers, serving truckers, frying their eggs and dipping their bread, then presenting them with the greasefest, all in return for a 50p tip.

Let me tell you this, Mr Agent. And I’m going to say it loud and clear You suck. Because you hate my book. You said other agents may disagree. Like you care! While you’re driving your Bugatti round and round the M25 (and I sincerely hope you get stuck on it) you really should spare a thought for me*. Nellie the waitress by night, part-time supermarket check out girl by day and wannabe novelist. My book is awesome and some day, some agent will come along and say so. But for now, I’m going to try to be happy in my two minimum wage jobs. Until my big break comes along*1 JK Rowling did it and so can I.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. Just go back to doing what you were doing before you opened this envelope. In fact, shred it. Forget about me. Forget you even read this.

Yours

Nellie xxxxx

* Nellie doesn’t own a car and even if she did, she wouldn’t give Mr Agent a lift. If she saw him coming out of Marks and Spencer in the pouring rain with his six bottles of champagne in the cardboard carrier, she would toot, make a rude gesture, then drive on.

*1 Anything is possible. Nellie will soon secure that agent and sign a book deal. She’ll walk away from her two jobs and buy a house in the countryside where she’ll live happily ever after. And she’ll be the greatest author who ever lived.

The moral of this is don’t give up. Whether you have had six or sixty rejections from agents or publishers, keep calm and carry on writing. Practice makes perfect and remember, all authors were once unpublished nobodies.

Dreaming of a Write Christmas

Dear Santa...please bring less dust next year

There must be no greater thrill than that for a writer who knows  there’s a fortnight’s worth of ‘time’ available to them in the form of a seasonal break (“End of Term” some like to call it).

And I’m always so stuffed full with good intentions that I’m surprised they don’t start seeping from every orifice with the excess of them. However, I also know full well that about three days before I’m due to go back to the paid work, I will realise I’ve positively frittered away this precious ‘time’ (again) in the pursuit of needless activities that could just as easily be shoehorned into evenings I already squander watching mind-numbingly pedestrian televised ‘entertainment’ (again).

It doesn’t matter how creative I get with this ‘time’, I just can’t seem to make writing my priority. There’s always something else that I’ll “just quickly do” before I can settle. Like that thing dogs do when they turn round and round and round in their baskets before they find the exact right place to bed their weary fur. And they always sigh with such pleasure when they find it. This is the sigh I long for. This is the sigh I need before I can write, care free.

There’s always housework. Especially dusting. Which was clearly invented by a man. No woman in her right mind would have decided that an accumulation of small particles of debris really has to be eradicated in the pursuit of personal calm. It doesn’t bother ME, so why should it bother anybody else? And, like my husband’s always telling me, he didn’t marry for my housekeeping skills  - so I can’t argue with that one - it must be me who’s giving me the hard time.

Piles of paperwork. Stuff that needs to be sorted, windows that need to be cleaned (why don’t window cleaners do the insides too?) and cooking that has to be done in order to satisfy hungry bellies. Why? Can these hungry humans not open a can or slice from a loaf just as well as I can? Why is it considered MY place to be nurturing these co-dwellers? If I had it my way, I’d be perfectly content with a cup of tea every hour and a Hob-Nob on demand. Twenty-four-seven. No, honestly. That’s as high-maintenance as I’m likely to get.

It’s because it’s not ‘real’. It’s still the stuff of dreams. It’s what most people still regard as my ‘hobby’.  My mother used to proudly show off her knitting and I’d nod as enthusiastically as I could to a row of plains and purls. With my Nan it was her steak and kidney puddings; my Dad could skin a rabbit with his eyes shut (as were mine mostly). My brother could have played football for Leeds United and my husband can turn any piece of wood into something beautiful and practical. So why can’t I just get on with my own talent and create something wonderful without placing these unnecessary obstacles in my own way all the time?

I guess if I can’t consider my writing to be as important or as valuable of my time that I genuinely want it to be, then I can't expect anybody else to take me seriously.
Right.  Deep breath. I have a fortnight. I have the Christmas fortnight. And I’ve heard that at Christmas, magical things can happen. Oh, and if Santa can't manage that Dust-Free Year I've asked for, perhaps I'll just take to wearing sunglasses as a kind of perpetual nod to festive irony.

So - a happy and housework-free Write Christmas, one and all!

Dear Agent,

Dear Agent,

You have a tough job, I know.  I’ve read all the stuff about how you’re inundated with unsolicited manuscripts (try saying THAT after a snifter of Baileys), about how you’re fighting hard for your current list of published authors and about how the economic climate is making it so difficult right now for anybody trying to get a foot on the first rung of their writing career.

And I’ve watched enough episodes of ‘The Apprentice’ to appreciate that any kind of business deal, even in the publishing world (maybe especially in the publishing world, where trust plays such a key role) is only as good as the financial return it can realistically make.

So it’s a gamble.  Particularly with a newbie – I mean debut author.  

This new writer whose work you’re reading right now could so very easily turn out to be the lemon of the century.  They could be a one trick pony, a one-hit wonder, even a plagiarist of the highest order who’s got you hooked, lined and sunk already with their clever use of language and their ingenious plot-lines.

Of course you could Google them.  And their Facebook profile alone could ease your worried brow or else send you screaming for the hills.  And if they have a Blog, so much easier.  Unless their blog is a ‘name and shame’ shrine to all the rejection letters they receive from Agents, of course (you know *who* I mean).  Which is just mental. (IMHO obvs.  You might enjoy reading it.)

This work you’re currently holding could be the endeavours of a writer who’s given up opportunities to accomplish success in all fields other than the one true vocation they dream of. The humour which shines brightly through the words you’re reading here, could be all the confidence that is left of this writer – rejections having taken their toll and reduced them to a small quivering mass of nerves. They might have endless ideas overflowing in their ‘to be written’ document file and they might have the bright, exciting beginnings of new books already started, which they’ve already quietly dismissed as a reject themselves – a death before life. A waste of time which they convince themselves they’d probably spend more wisely keeping a house clean and greedy mouths stuffed.

You know how much power you have, dear Agent?  Do you know how monumental the tiniest glimmer of hope that you give to a writer can be?  It’s the difference between light and dark to us – the flick of a switch.  It’s easy to give up and not believe in ourselves when we haven’t achieved what we’ve known we always wanted to from aged 6. But it’s the hardest thing in the world to keep treading the same path wearing different heels and lipstick in the hope that one day we’ll turn a head.

Just saying.

Yours hopefully,

Pursuits of a Personal Nature

There used to be this guy I worked with who loved his garden. There are a lot of them about apparently. Guys who love gardens I mean. Not gardens. I know there’re a lot of those about – they’re everywhere, right? Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I quite like my garden too; I just don’t feel the need to tell everybody how lush my lawn is and what’s sprouting up in my herbaceous borders from one weekend to the next. But this guy was clearly proud of his cultivations and so every Monday morning, after the younger lot of the office had oafishly entertained us with how many alcoholic points they’d managed to down and then Up again, this guy would regale (a kind word for *bore the pants off*) a dwindling crowd with how perfect his privet was.

Which is all well and good if you’re of a gardening ilk.

And there were a couple of kindly souls who’d seek his advice on bug treatment and fertilisation advancements and this would please Gardening Guy no end. Because someone had taken an interest – in his interest. And that, of course, is a nice thing to do.

But behind his back I always saw a rolling of eyes and a sighing of sighs and I vowed never… NEVER to speak of my own personal passion and weekend pursuits EVER.

Especially in the company of the people I worked with. It was bad enough trying to ‘keep it’ from people I lived with and slept with, let alone trying to reveal it to those with whom I spent the majority of my life. Nope, my hobby would remain a figment of my own imagination. Literally.

And now I remember why I felt this way. It’s because the minute you tell somebody you work with that you’ve written a book/are writing a book/intend to write books until your fingers fall off, then you aren’t even met with the well-intentioned looks that Gardening Guy got. There’s a brief pause. (Is it ‘stunned’? I’m never sure. And I’m equally never sure whether to be insulted or flattered by this stunned pause). Followed by a widening of the eyes and a rising of the eyebrows and then you know precisely where this is going:
“So what’ve you written?”
And after you’ve explained – without wishing to appear a staggering combination of pompous/useless/deluded – that you haven’t actually had anything published… yet… there follows:
“Oh you SHOULD”
Like it’s a choice. Like it’s something you haven’t thought of having done yourself. Like it’s such a simple, obvious thing to do that it’s taken the Newly Qualified Teacher of PE and Personal Development to inform you of this and why didn’t you think of this before, you MORON!
And this is the point at which the blood begins to heat up very nicely and the stunned pause somehow transmutes from audience to performer and there follows what any writer worth his/her salt would ruefully term a pregnant pause which lasts all of three minutes or until PE/PD Teacher grabs his warm photocopying from the stack and runs off back to his class, totally disinterested in any form of conversation continuance.

Of course if I’d told him I’d spent the weekend with my arm up a cow’s arse in my passionate pursuit of animal husbandry, I bet news of my 'novel' endeavours would have been round the staffroom like a dose of Andrews.

Sometimes it’s best just to say nowt.

Not the be-all and end-all?

'People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it.'

Ogden Nash never did an email submission only to realise in the nanosecond after pressing send that he'd typed 'Dera Ms Agent...', but his words reflect the experience of many a modern unpublished writer.

Every famous or not-so-famous author has been through the uncertainty or downright agony of being unpublished. But, for some, publication results in a sudden change of tune. It's like someone who desperately wants a baby and then gives birth to one and starts complaining that it cries a lot and actually needs quite a bit of attention. Getting published can have the same effect.

After years striving at their ambition, honing their craft, coping with frustration, crying over rejections, picking themselves up and somehow grasping the determination to keep going, a writer gets published and soon they're saying:

Being published isn't the be-all and end-all, darling!

It doesn't suddenly sort your life out!

We published authors still have problems, don't you know!

It was OK for them to work hard towards their goal, but if you work towards yours, you must be a deluded wannabe who thinks a book deal will make your bank account groan with a million quid and your letterbox collapse with invitations to soirées with JKR. You sad little person, you – sitting there in your crappy job and dreaming of being famous enough not to have a care in the world. If only you knew the difficulty of being a published author!

To be fair, authors are usually just saying these things because they're knackered and worried like everyone else, and because there's a British inclination to play down success and not to look as though they're showing off.

This is understandable. It's still bloody annoying.

Serious unpublished writers know darned well that life will go on pretty much the same but with a book with their name on it on the shelf. This does not make publication something that isn't worth aiming for. All right, the well-meaning author might only be expressing concern that you're making yourself unhappy over the submissions/rejections process, but this is none of their business.

You can give up trying to get published any time you like. No one will care. But if you want to go for it, it will require a bit of obsession and probably a lot of angst. If you're determined to carry on, what's the big deal to anyone else?

I've never read the slushpile so perhaps I'm naïve about the level of delusion and crapness out there, but I think if you’ve got the wherewithal to write something and send it out on submission, and to be with-it enough to engage with blogs like this one, chances are you are not dur-brained enough to think that a book deal will bring you permanent health and happiness, resurrect your dead hamster and stem the BP oil spill. Serious ‘aspiring’ writers are grown up enough to know that what they're aiming for is just publication, not a key to eternal sparkly youth.

Being published is actually pretty cool, and I say that as someone who is not exactly hitting the big time... or even the slightly-bigger-than-absolutely-minuscule time. Being published is several million times better than trying to get published. It's worth aiming for. So, if publication is your goal, I say: keep aiming, and politely ignore people - even the well-meaning ones - who try to put you off.

Sweating the small stuff

Perhaps that title should be: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Or it could be: Why sweat the small stuff? Or, Sweating – the small stuff. That one sounds quite funky. Or, perhaps it could be . . . and that’s my point.

How easy it is to agonise over the syntax or grammar of a sentence. I have to confess to a love of all that tinkering. Part of the beauty of the language is that we have a lavish assortment of ways to express the same thought. I enjoy taking the time to feed every single one of the eighty thousand words in my WIP through the mental thesaurus?

Writing a novel is all about making a series of decisions. Martin Amis made this point in a conference speech about one of Saul Bellow’s books. He includes it in Visiting Mrs Nabokov, but I can’t check exactly what he says as all my books are in boxes at the moment with builders crawling all over the house. As I remember, Amis describes the process a bit like a decision-tree with Bellow starting with big decisions and then working his way steadfastly down to ever smaller ones. The biggest decisions include the overall structure of the plot, who's the main character, the setting, etc. The small decisions include choices of words.

The question I want to ask here is whether it's tempting for those of us somewhere below Saul’s status to jump on the small stuff too early. Am I the only one who goes through manuscripts again and again, polishing and polishing, without having corrected the mega-problems? That way you end up with something akin to a highly polished dustbin lid.

The more you polish, the more you’ve invested of yourself in a piece of writing and, because it is well-written it can be harder to see the problems, and easier to let yourself off. The more you polish, the more difficult it is to make bold changes or even to junk pieces altogether if that is what is really needed.

Is it a form of laziness? In a way, yes; and in a way, no. It's shirking the disagreeable work, but those of us who do this also work long and hard on our prose, attending to each sentence with lapidary care. It's harsh to call us lazy. We're just doing the wrong work. Doing what we feel comfortable with, like the builder doing up a house (an easy image for me at the moment) who rapidly settles on painting the gloss on the dado rail in the dining room when the wall still needs to be moved because the kitchen’s too small.

The bigger questions are often structural, especially whether to remove chunks that don’t work. Does the plot work? Is there enough pace in the narrative? Is the main character interesting enough?

I recently read someone’s draft novel: over 107,000 words without a single typo. That's an amazing achievement for a writer working alone, with no proof-reading help. It was a highly polished piece of writing. What he had missed were the serious structural issues and that there was far too much interior monologue.

When we do this, I think we do it because we long to call the thing finished. We ache to put it in front of some sort of an audience. We've laboured over it for months or years. If it’s polished we can convince ourselves it’s ready to submit even when a little voice in our heart knows about the lurking problems. We know that, at least, it will look professional, from the micro-angle of the quality of prose. Nobody will be able to say it’s badly written, but will anyone want to read it?

Resolutions for the Aspiring Writer

Once more, it’s time to take stock of the past twelve months and work out how to make the next year count – in terms of being more productive, more happy or, like me, by finally understanding that five-a-day doesn’t apply to units of Chardonnay or mini Twix bars. It’s that time of year when we writers resolve once again to… Simply improve? To network on the, er, Net? To get to grips with the position of the apostrophe after a name ending in S?
Well that’s all well and good and bravo to anyone who hopes to achieve the above. What you don’t want to do is make the resolution I have written down every year, since embarking on my quest for literary success:

THIS YEAR I SHALL GET PUBLISHED.

I suspect at this point some of you are cringing – but don’t. It’s an obvious goal for a writer, just like a forty-year chain-smoker resolving to give up the fags. Only a stash of rejection letters will make you realize such grand declarations are pointless and a bit like me resolving to be the next Bond girl à la Ursula Andress. Even if I spent the next six months in the gym, got the obligatory boob job and pumped my face full of Botox, I would still need to kidnap Barbara Broccoli, hold her to ransom and only then might I be in line for an audition (failing a prison sentence). Resolving to get your book published in one year is like wishing yourself to the top of Mount Everest before you’ve planned your trek. Without wings, there is no quick way up – the only way is to take it step by step.
And what a trek it is. Finishing your first ever chapter and eventually your first draft, learning how to edit, striving to create empathetic characters and produce a page-turner of a plot. And then there's coping with rejection, learning to accept critical help and bracing yourself to abandon a much-loved project. In this era of reality shows where apparent nobodies win huge talent contests, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that these winners have usually spent years learning their craft.
So what should the writer in you resolve to accomplish in 2009?

1) Firstly and most importantly, find some writing friends on the internet – join an online writing group, get some constructive feedback from people who know what they’re talking about. Without the support, inspiration and humour of my virtual friends I would probably still be scratching my head, wondering why my fantastic prose hadn’t resulted in the equivalent of JK Rowling’s success.

2) Read in and out of your genre to learn how it’s done – or how it’s not. But do not mimic or aspire to write like another, I say, as someone who for a year or two wished herself to be the next Sophie Kinsella. In the words of Agatha Christie:

We are all the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then, whereas at twenty we put on a show of being someone else, of being in the mode of the moment… As life goes on, however, it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day…
I wonder if the same holds good for writing. Certainly, when you begin to write, you are usually in the throes of admiration for some writer, and, whether you will or no, you cannot help copying their style. Often it is not a style that suits you, and so you write badly. But as time goes on you are less influenced by admiration. You still admire certain writers, you may even wish you could write like them, but you know quite well that you can’t… I have learned that I am ME, that I can do things that, as one might put it, ME can do, but I cannot do things that ME would like to do.


3) Develop a thick skin – we’re talking rhinoceros hide at least. Release and then mop up the tears whilst savouring each word of a rejection letter that isn’t standard. You are in good company as almost every author from George Orwell to Dr Seuss has felt your pain. Do your best to minimise the risk by researching your agents and selectively subbing.

4) Write and write and write, as frequently as you can. Practice is everything. Enhance with How-to books and creative writing courses if desired.

And finally…

5) Never lose hope. There are those who’ve been published with their first book, who’ve been taken on by the first agent they rang, who’ve rarely faced the lows of writer’s block. And remember, the main difference between a published and unpublished author is that the published one NEVER gave up.

As for me, I’m off to Google Barbara Broccoli’s address and do some press-ups…