Jacqueline Christodoulou tells us how Crime Writing found Her...

When people ask me about my writing I usually tell them that I submitted my first novel five years ago. But that’s not entirely true. My journey began a long time before that.

Like most people, I started writing at school.  I didn't give up later on. Likewise, reading began at around five years old and I continued. So when I decided to write novels I thought I had a fairly good grounding. How difficult could it be?

Not so easy, it turned out.

I began to write short stories for publication around 1995 and had some success with women's magazines. So the natural next step was to write something longer. I'd been thinking about a story and I began to write that, with some autobiographical details thrown in. Bound to be a winner, wasn't it? I sent it to the Romantic Novelists Association as an entry to one of their competitions. The main thrust of the feedback was that I had spelt 'whether' as 'wether' wrongly the whole way through the manuscript conjuring up the image of a castrated male sheep for the reviewer. Not exactly what I was hoping for.  I sent it to a couple of agents (with corrected spelling), and it was rejected.

Around that time I had been working with a group of young people at a youth project and learnt that there was more to storytelling than meets the eye - rather than just being a source of entertainment, it's how people construct and understand their life experiences.

So I went to study it academically for many years and came out on a very different trajectory than I entered at - I became a narrative psychologist with a successful non-fiction book about identity construction!

I’d learnt about the nuts and bolts of storytelling, and how it affects people psychologically. I learned about Aristotle’s three acts and how everyday language is storytelling with a beginning, middle and an end. In many ways, studying the way people build their identities through stories brought me closer to understanding how readers understand novels, as a kind of conversation filtered through both the ideas of the author and the experience of the reader.

But I still wanted to write fiction. In fact, I couldn't stop writing fiction. I read a lot of women's fiction and decided I would write fiction for women. Seemed entirely reasonable. I didn't plan to write formula or commercial fiction, rather stories about lives, wherever that took me. The first two novels exorcised my own life out of the stories, leaving my set to write a third story free from my emotional shackles. My third novel was the first one I had been completely pleased with and excited about. However, when I sent it out, I soon realised that it was considered mixed genre.

In between writing the third novel and revising it, I wrote a speculative fiction story and briefly wondered if I was meant to veer off in this direction. Then I started another women's fiction book that, again, had dark undertones.

By this time I had detected a pattern - these women's fictions books were all set against a landscape of the peaks and troughs of lives and how people dealt with loss and various emotions. I'd learnt about Freytag's pyramid by this time, and about comedy, quest and tragedy stories. I'd learnt about seed words and thematic questions. Some time early last year I realised that I my thematic questions were about crime and mystery and I was trying to squash them into a women's fiction-shaped container.

I love my characters, so much that I dream about them. I was, and still am, committed to strong characters who, like real people, have their own nuances, flaws and ticks. So as well as the confusion over genre, I was trying to write a character-led novel with an equally strong plot. This led to a slow pace - I was trying to do everything at once.

It wasn't until my work attracted the attention of agents and I received their feedback that I realised I was a crime writer. I'd had some requests for full manuscripts from agents who represented crime and thriller authors, and I came to realise that this was what the darkness in my writing had been - underlying tones of dreadful things in women's lives. I had also been writing strong women characters and some of the critique from beta readers mentioned that they were perhaps a little too quirky for women's fiction. I told myself that they were quirky because of their horrendous life experiences, but never wrote about the horror. It was almost as if I had been resisting writing what I wanted to in an effort to get myself to a point where I wasn't writing about surface issues.

Writing about crime and mystery has allowed me develop my writing in a way that I had never been able to before. My interest in characterisation extends to the characters surrounding the crime and affected by it, as well as the antagonist and protagonist, and this has given me an opportunity to use my psychological knowledge to understand the dynamics.

Having described my journey so far it sounds like I have a master plan, all plotted out somewhere. Yet when I start writing all of the above is in there somewhere, driving the core of the story as the characters provide a canvas for it. It's still difficult, and a challenge. But the joy from the creative process makes it worthwhile. That, and imagining my novel published and on the shelves of a bookshop.

So crime writing is for me. It always was, right from the first novel when I took imaginary revenge on the man who left my great grandmother alone with a child. I just had to recognise it. Now it's difficult for me to imagine writing anything else. Although who knows where this writing journey will take me next?

Jacqueline has written for best! Magazine, Bea Magazine and The F-Word. She has contributed to the 100RPM anthology and has written a non-fiction book ‘Health, Identity and Women’. Jacqueline is currently working on her second crime novel.  Her first crime novel is currently "under discussion  with interested parties" - watch this space!
Her blog, Keeping it Real, looks at links between psychology, ideation and the writing process.

The Big Mac Book

How often do you see a Burger King or a McDonald's under construction? When I read this, I smiled and nodded to myself. I suppose that's the whole philosophy of a global business of this nature - it suddenly appears in a domineering fashion and stamps its mark of authority on a town, walking all over the independent delicatessens and take-aways who are left to flounder in pools of financial distress. I suppose if the construction of these corporate fast food chain outlets were slow-burning projects, taking months to complete, we may not see it as so authoritative and may possibly view it as a weaker entity. Food for thought (excuse the pun!)

I'm sure there are many authors who wish their books would just magically write themselves and appear on a bookshelf just as a Maccy D and Burger King does. As much as I love writing, there comes a point when I read, re-read, re-re-read and possibly re-re-re-re-read the entire book, that it becomes a chore. And I wish that it would just have magically appeared not only complete, but also printed out.

At the moment I'm struggling with the Difficult Next Book, specifically the voice as well as the style. It's just not coming together as quickly as I had hoped, and that may be partly due to the vast amount of research I've had to do as well as the lack of time. When I'm immersed in researching, the writing becomes a stop-start process and it's hard to click back into the flow, especially now that my time mainly consists of twenty minutes here and a half hour there. I've set myself goals of 7,000 words a week, but having reached 14,978 over the course of three months, I'm lagging badly.

If only my Difficult Next Book would magically appear overnight like one of those Burger Kings which are mysteriously built overnight. I would have missed all the enjoyment of the story coming together, but it would have taken the hard graft out of it. I wonder if I click my fingers will Difficult Second Book appear before me, complete with cover. Abacadabra, pif paf poof.....

Here's Looking at You

Writers often talk about the many things that inspire a piece of writing. But what about our individual approaches to writing?

Take our cat here, shamelessly posing at the window (in the hope of more food). She, like pretty much every cat I've ever met, is a masterpiece of individuality and integrity. 

What can she teach me about being a writer? I put it to her and, once she'd finished a power nap, she offered me the following kitty wisdom.

1. Be true to yourself, like a cat. Cats don't play pretend. 

[Translation.]
Cats don't chase an 'idea of themselves'* or craft a profile based upon social media demographics. They don't commit to anything they don't want to do - because they know that doing so means they're less likely to get fulfilment from it. And cats love fulfilment.

2. You don't need to be a cat whisperer to figure out what's going on in that furry head - tail, demeanour, voice - it's all there. 

[Translation.]
Be honest with yourself and other people. Make space, make time, make demands if you need to.

You became a writer for you, first and foremost, to temper yourself in the fires of your enthusiasm. Don't blow it on writing anything you don't believe in or feel comfortable with - and that includes reviews for other people, blog posts, comments, the dreaded FB likes and all the other techno-wizardry that take time way from the page.

3. Don't apologise for being the cat that you are. That beautiful, luxuriant, bird-killing, slug carrying, yowling fur bag of delights. 

[Translation.]
Don't apologise for the writer you are. Romantic fiction? Faith writing? Poetry? Vampires? Dirty limericks**? If it matters enough to you to want to write about it, that's all that matters.

4. Stay light on your feet and alter your plans as your needs arise. No regrets, no justifications. The human thighs that start out as a pillow may yet need to become pin cushions - that's just the way it is.

[Translation.]

Change your genre. Change your mind. Change your allegiances. Change your perspective. Above all: write. Unless it's time to stop for a while!

5. Ask if you need to, but don't expect. Believe me, I've sat at that cat dish for a good five minutes before any cheese arrived. I should have done what I did one Christmas, and just helped myself from the plate.

[Translation.]
Be honest about your needs, and allow others to be honest about theirs. Most writers are a supportive bunch by nature, but they're not psychic (well, some of them maybe). There's no shame in asking for a favour, and no offence to be taken when the answer is 'no'.

How this blog post came about (apart from the cat and the typing part, obviously).
I listened to a serialised drama on Radio 4 recently - The Other One by Oliver Emanuel*** - and I was mesmerised by it. The kind of rapt attention that makes you stay listening in your car until it's over, even though the oven chips are melting. The story was compelling, and the direction and acting just perfect. And I started to think about how often I write a piece of fiction that's just 'okay'. Not terrible or anything, only not gleaming either. It all starts with the initial premise, but more than that, it seems to me, it starts even earlier with the initial premise of myself as a writer. And how I got from that to the cat is another story.


* Although they probably would if it was tied to a piece of string.
** As if you hadn't already figured that one out.
*** Oliver has very kindly agreed to an interview, when he has some free time. If you have any questions about radio drama, send them in a comment and we'll try to get them covered.

The name's Res... Des Res

single storey detatched with far-reaching views

Words are great, aren’t they?  They can seduce, they can reduce the hardest of hearts to what our American friends would call Jello; they can construct, de-construct and they can transport us to places we've never been to, never heard of and lead us to destinations that only exist in the the writer's mind.

And we all wouldn’t be here - and by ‘here’ I mean on the Strictly Writing site - if we weren’t in love with the written word, would we? 

We ALL LOVE words *group hug*.

Okay that’s the preamble over with.  And isn’t PREAMBLE a great word? 

(preamble [priːˈæmb^əl]n

1.     a preliminary or introductory statement, esp attached to a statute or constitution setting forth its purpose

So it makes unutterably good sense to me that I care about what words I say, how I say them, how they are said to me and how they are laid out to construct meaning and create atmosphere. I still pick people up when they say a soft ‘huh-aitch’ when spelling out a word with an ‘H’ in it.  I can’t help it; it’s one of those colossal bugbears that really grates on my sensitive Writerly nerves – like the fingernails down a chalkboard *can’t say blackboard anymore… sigh* - and now I’m over the hill, it seems I can speak my mind about a lot more things, because people of a ‘certain age’ are expected to be irritable buggers. Much like crabbity indifferent Doctor’s Receptionists, for example.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes.  The Aitch word becoming an eff word. 

But, like any other Wordsmith, I do enjoy seeing those misplaced apostrophe sign’s (see what I did there?) – at least I like them now there’s Facebook and Twitter because it makes me feel less anally retentive when I get all privately hot under the collar by their misuse.  Jeez the weight I must’ve lost in the past, before the advent of social networking sites, when I’d spot a sign that said ‘vegetable’s for sale’ or *shudder* ‘bargain book’s.  My spleen was never more relieved than the dawn of this technological age where everyone shares everything with everybody else whether they want to or not.

So it understandably confounds me that people who are being PAID as part of their job to WRITE stuff for general public consumption are allowed to use words that are misspelt, or written to mislead and entice in ways they really shouldn’t be.

Of course by ‘People’ I mean Estate Agents.  Of course I do.  And by ‘General Public’ I mean my husband.  Oh - and me.  Alright then – just ME!

I know it’s not meant to be great literature and I know it’s not exactly a job which requires the firmest grasp on the basic use of the English language, but.. well…  I am maddened beyond belief to report that the following details seem entirely acceptable to use in the land of Estate Agent:

The property enjoys gas central heating and

The property enjoys a South facing garden. Really?  Can an inanimate object enjoy anything?  Really?

The property delights in a rural location. Well, that’s nice for it - wouldn’t we all?

The property boasts superb pitch roofed outbuildings. On actual inspection, the only factually correct word in this sentence was 'property'.  I don’t know anybody – not least a building – that would boast about having an outside toilet and attached coal bunker, especially if neither doors opened due to the jamming of beds and/or wheelbarrows from within.  This description has, I noticed, changed on the particulars since I pointed out the vagaries of its veracities whilst trying to extricate my foot from an errant mattress spring and ducking out the way of a falling tile.

There is a garage en bloc. This, I have noticed, is quite a popular term to use these days for ‘there is a garage in a block round the corner’ but is meant to sound fancier, like it’s in deepest rural Brittany and not the arse-end-of-nowhere-near-the-house.

But I did come across a description that plucked at a heart string or two as I read them; evidently written by somebody who has more things than monthly commission on their mind:

“The soft neutral schemed bathroom is perfect for relaxing in after a hard day at work, and with the kitchen on the same level it means that the chilled wine isn’t far from reach….

..Imagine curling up in front of the roaring open fire on a chilly winter’s night or entertaining guests on the block paved sun-trapped rear garden which enjoys* panoramic views to the countryside beyond….”

This person is clearly overpaid as an Estate Agent.  They should be struggling to find a Literary Agent and tearing their hair out in Rejection Hell like the rest of us. 

Actually, it's making me think of a career change - if I got paid to make up lovely little scenes like this for the general public, wouldn't that be one step closer to proper recognition?

 

*I let them off this one minor indiscretion

Writing in Real Time

This might sound familiar.  This is how a typical wordcount happens in my own ‘Real Time’ i.e. including all the interruptions, distractions and meandering trains of thought.  These words are fresh and in no way represent anything I’ve ever written (nor perhaps ever will).

The banks of the river lay heavy with morning dew, the fronds wait a minute, ‘fronds’, is that the right word or do I mean fernds? No, surely there’s no such word as ‘fernds’, I’m thinking of ‘ferns’ but I don’t think ferns grow by water do they? Aren’t they more… tropical?  Okay, I’ll have to Google it. Oh… look… Fern Britten’s lost a lot of weight lately hasn’t she?  And that Jennifer Aniston (“did you mean ‘Friends’?”) should start using a better hair colour, you can tell it’s not real….  

*PING* Oooh look… Pizza Express are doing one of those lovely offers; two main meals for a tenner… what should I do? Are we going out between those dates? Should I just delete it in case it entices me, or should I keep it in case the Girl wants to use it with her friends?  I’ll quickly text her to see if she needs the voucher saving. 

Okay definitely fronds.  That’s fine.  I’ll go with fronds.  But where was I going next?  Do I really want my banks heavy with morning dew? Now that I’ve seen before and after pictures of Fern Britten I’m less inclined to go with heavy.  Oh god now I can feel a biscuit coming on.

*PHONE* “No, we’re fine.  No, we had it done a few years ago.  Yes, very happy thank you.  No.  Yes.  No.  Not really.  Okay then not AT ALL. Yes our Soffits and Fuschias are just dandy thank you!”

Maybe I shouldn’t have had that biscuit, now my head hurts.  Or perhaps it was the sales call. Where was I?  Oh the Girl’s texted back.  She doesn’t need the voucher but can I take her to her friend’s house tomorrow night.  I don’t know.  I could say yes but we might be doing something else.  I’ll have to text the hubster just to make sure.  

So fronds it is then. 

Camberley Abbey stood regal and proud in the grounds beyond.  Its splendour shone from the majestic leaded windows on the upper floors to the heavy dark oaked doors beneath.  Wait; is it oaked or oak?  If something been ‘oaked’ does that mean it’s been, like, treated with Oak – as in laminated?  I don’t think a majestic splendid Abbey would have laminated doors, would it?  And heavy?  Again with heavy?  Okay how about In the distance, Camberley Abbey’s splendour shone with majestic leaded windows on the upper floors to the great wooden doors below.  Now that’s just stupid. Nothing shines with lead and wood, does it, FFS. God I HATE descriptive stuff.  Why can’t I just cut out the middle man (like, agents, publishers etc) and go straight to film? That way I wouldn’t have to bloody worry about my heavy flippin’ fronds and my majestic laminate doors. They'd just BE THERE.

*PING* Oh, one of my Strictly teammates has a technical problem.  Should I help or should I let someone else handle it?  If I try to help I’m going to get distracted.  But I don’t want to seem rude by not responding.  And aren’t I already distracted by worrying that I might get distracted?  I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. 

*BRRRR* (that’s the mobile – just to differentiate between that and the *PHONE* landline) Yep, that’s fine.  Two o’clock.  Yes.   What, aren’t you coming with them?  But we gave you a key and everything.  But I might be… yes, we are serious about selling but… yes I know, I’m just concerned that… no, it’s fine.  Yep, sure.  Yes, lovely. I’ll see them then.

Right I definitely need a biscuit now.  This is ridiculous.  What are we paying an Estate Agent for if WE have to do the showing around ourselves?  I could probably have run up some details and stuck an advert on the RightMove website myself for less that we’ll end up paying them to do just this.  I’m cross.  I need to calm down.  I need a cup of tea and then I’ll see how quickly I can cobble together some house details and photos.  Ha – maybe I’ll have a change of career.  Then I could do one of those pieces in Good Housekeeping* about how I changed my life at 49 and ‘found myself’.  I’ve always wanted to find myself.  I’ve looked everywhere…

*TEXT ALERT* Ah.  We’re not doing anything tomorrow night.  Hang on, though, why do I need to know this again?  What was I doing with this information? He’s either being deliberately obtuse or I’ve forgotten… ah wait, yes, it’s coming back to me now… I have to text the Girl .

*PING* Ah the Strictly techie problem is sorted.

*PING*  the Strictly techie problem is sorted.

*PING* the Strictly techie problem is sorted. Yes I know that.

*PING* Aaaargghhhh the Strictly techie problem is sorted.

We’re  such a helpful lot, arent’ we?  Maybe I should just turn off e-mail alerts.  But what if something REALLY important comes through, like encouraging news from an Agent.  I’m sure there’s at least ONE agent out there who hasn’t vilified the last three chapters I sent off.  In fact to save them the time and trouble perhaps I’ll send them a ‘multiple choice tick-off’ postcard with the next lot of submissions I send out.  IF I send any out that is, if I haven’t left the country or stuffed stones in my pockets and wandered off into the nearest….. ah… my fronds… my majestic abbey….

*MIIIAAAAOWWWWW*

I don't really need the wordcount icon on my computer.  I can count to ten by eye!

 *Other glossies are available.

An Integral Part

A bit like the fully-functional fridge-freezer that's cunningly disguised as a larder unit or the washing machine that giggles, hidden behind another 600mm complementary kitchen housing, writing  is something that's always been an integral part of Me.

And, as it's definition confirms: "Necessary to the completeness of the whole".

It was simple enough to slip it into daily life at school - there was always an English lesson, thank goodness.  And  from the day I learned that the teacher wasn't asking me to write the letters 'S' and 'A' on the front of my new English exercise book, I couldn't wait for the next time we were set a new essay to write.  For me, it was like surfacing from the murky depths and being able to breathe, unconstrained by silly lessons involving equations and bar-graphs, cumulus and nimbus, formulas and thick grey gym knickers (although not all at the same time, you understand).

Slightly more difficult to pull off at work as a Secretary,  I managed to restrain myself from turning the Minutes of Meetings into iambic pentameter and felt wholly disheartened when a memo of only one sentence wasn't given the Haiku it deserved.  Even more frustrating were the twenty thousand word reports I had to churn out on behalf of Development Departments at the Ministry of Defence which, although had a beginning, a middle and an (always disappointing) end, were completely devoid of plot.

I couldn't bear it.  I flounced off in a creative huff (I didn't really, I handed in my notice, worked my obligatory 4 week notice and was presented with a Thesaurus and a Complete Guide to English Literature - which made me cry because they HAD realised my artistic leanings and here they were, applauding them *sob*)  and went to work somewhere which I believed would allow my wings to spread.

But being an Employment Counsellor was probably not the brightest of moves.  I couldn't even write in my lunch hour like I'd done back at the MoD, as I hadn't got my own typewriter (more tears) because we had a secretary who did that for us.  So, with wings firmly clipped again, I did another flounce (actually I found myself a job, put myself forward for an interview and even got commission after placing myself, but you didn't hear me say that).

And here at Magic Shrinkwrapping*, I finally began to flower.

Even though my boss was a bit creepy and insisted on talking to me in the fourth person (is that right?) - every Monday morning he would sidle up and ask me "So, did Deborahs have a nice weekend?  What did they get up to?" freaky, right?  And after about a year of freaking me out, I decided to look around for another job.  One in which there wasn't, frankly, a creepy, freaky boss lurking behind the next door asking me if I could step into his orifice (I know).
And when the MD got wind that I wanted Out, he, amazingly, did something I don't think I ever properly thanked him for, not even now, and produced for me, my ideal job.  I became the company's first Advertising and PR Co-ordinator.  I got my own office (smaller than the broom cupboard ... actually it might have been the old broom cupboard come to think of it) and my own budget and I was given almost free reign to write whatever I liked.  So long as it was about Shrinkwrapping machines and how splendid they were.

Mmmmm... shrinkwrapping!

I loved making up the titles - my favourite still being the one I wrote for a Cadbury's line "Eggs-pertise by Magic Shrinkwrapping"* I loved seeing my pieces in print.  I just didn't love my MC particularly.  Shrinkwrappers are pretty much a one trick pony.  They never deviate from the norm.  They don't get all passionate on wild and windswept moors and they certainly wouldn't be seen dead getting all swoony over a member of the opposite sex - if there IS an opposing gender in the shrinkwrapping species.

And so, after having squeezed every last ounce of creativity from this role, I once more slung my metaphoric bindle stick over my shoulder and high-hoed it to my next position of choice.

In which I was rather scarily put in charge of a Junior Secretary and supposed to control six Area Managers at a local Brewery.  Place the company Bar on the same floor as us and a stick a 50% discount on all wines, spirits and ales and you pretty much have a recipe for disaster.  I did become involved in the company newsletter although a lot of it was deemed unprintable (more the result of the Bar being 14 floor tiles away than lack of talent on my part) and not quite the sort of creative juices that the company was looking for -especially when fuelled by 14% abv.

My last (pre-maternity) post was in the Legal Department at our local government offices.  Memos were over-written - mostly to the wrong people, letters were hencetoforthwithnotwithstandingly over-Latinised and my only means of creative enlightenment - apart from getting fictional with my flexi-hours - was to enter (anonymously) articles, working-party assassinations and satiric commenteering to the Staff Newsletter.  Only to find that although my literary genius had been printed, it was minus the irony, sarcasm, rheotric and downright slander.  Some of it didn't even rhyme anymore.

Finally I realised there was nothing else for it; I needed to create something that would make my mark on the world which nobody would be able to edit, cut, alter, restrict or delete.

I would write a book have a baby.
Both of which complete me.  It's just that one's turned out to be a whole lot harder to feel successful about than the other.

Oh, *Magic Shrinkwrapping wasn't the real name of the company.

"Ah Pain, thy name is Writing..."

Okay, here’s a little teaser for you:
What have Chopin, James Blunt, Rameses II, Kenneth Williams, Sheila Hancock, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bruce Forsyth and me got in common?
That’s right. We were all born on the same day. And this has been my ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for as long as I can remember. With a hand to the precocious brow I have escaped many a sideways remark with my claim to arty fame. We’re a very sensitive bunch, us Pisceans – although I’ve heard that anyone born between 19-22nd of any month could arguably be termed a Cuspian because it’s such a close call, day-wise. Anyway, we are the creative Cuspians of the Zodiac.
So there.

Woe-me-oh, woe-me oh!

I’m actually more than a little disappointed that Tony Hancock, Lord Byron and Sylvia Plath weren’t born on this day because at times I feel a total empathy with these people as well. And whenever Brucie’s on the TV, I always get a warm glow. But that could be more to do with the sofa; there’s probably a small empire of hitherto undiscovered life-form living in the depths of that and none of us would know.

Arthur Schopenhauer, as we all know, was the quintessential Philosopher of Pessimism and for that reason alone, I respectfully doff my creative Cuspian Cap; I bet HE turned up "Tears of a Clown" full blast too.


You see, for all the hard skin we writers have to develop, and be seen to be sporting, we’re nothing but a bunch of totally tormented artists, deep down. And this is what I find the toughest thing to cope with in writing. To harden my fragile, approval-seeking skin to the rigours of this very subjective pursuit.

I’ve been wondering recently if Dickens had had access to the internet, whether he’d be trawling through Amazon listings and the Authonomy website hoping to see his rankings increase. And if Jane Austen had a Facebook page, if she’d be constantly fretting over how many ‘likes’ ‘fans/friends’ she was getting daily. And how tortured would Shakespeare have become if he hadn’t got any comments on the blog post he’d spent ages honing to his idea of perfection that morning?

My internal meanderings even took me as far as finally understanding why and how and in what place Van Gogh must have been to have gouged off his own ear. Web-surfing will do that to ME at times. I guess it all boils down to the eternal struggle for artistic recognition, doesn’t it? Our readers. Our audience. The people that we hope we can entertain. The ones who will applaud our finer bits and perhaps ignore or heckle or reassure our bad. And if we don’t get the kind of support and recognition that we hope we deserve, that we strive to achieve, then at times it does make you feel like stuffing dampened blankets round the kitchen door frame and turning the gas up a bit.

My personal response to rejection disappointments is one of retreat. Much like the injured wild animal. I prefer to take my wounds away from societal scrutiny and go somewhere quiet and dark until I am repaired. Until I feel strong enough to try it all over again. Because this is an exhausting road we have lain before us - the road to literary success. And there are other, less scaredy-cats out there who seem to instinctively know how to bounce right back and keep on going for their particular kill.

Which is why Mother Nature invented Little (Literary) Chefs.
I haven’t given up my journey; I’m just having a pit-stop and rethinking my route, that’s all.
And the All-Day Breakfast looks nice too.

In lieu of Inspiration: A post from my girl...

My Name is Alice.

Being the daughter of a full-time modern mother is very confusing. She comments on my Facebook wall posts, takes the Mickey out of my pictures, and generally embarrasses me. She is on the computer more than I am and I’m seventeen – uh, hello? Who’s the teenager here? She gets excited when she gets new Facebook friends or new Blogger followers. She’s constantly looking at her blogs viewing figures and then screeching when she beats her last average. She is fanatic about her books and her reading – reading books when she’s in bed, on the toilet, and when we’re supposed to be watching TV. But then again, she tweets when she’s doing those things too.

Being the daughter of a writer is another thing. She moans when she has no inspiration, even though she’s constantly coming up with new and inventive things to write about. It does get me down when she gets sad about not finding an agent and then seeing others get published. I think it makes her feel like she’s getting pushed down, like she’s not good enough. But she is, and I just wish my mum’s dream could come true – I hope that one day it will.

Because my mum writes, it used to inspire me to write, although I was never very good at it – my stories were dull, and a little bit short. I could never find the write kind of stuff to fill up a whole book! I used to write about talking animals – thanks to the Warrior Cats series – and I loved getting immersed into my own world. The only problem with this was that I couldn’t quite get the words onto the page; I think I was about 9 when I wrote them, so the stories were best kept in my head. I then wanted to become an author myself, before discovering my love for cameras and photography, and then my love for moving image rather than photographs!

Being an English Literature student I have had to read two novels and two selections of poetry (and blogged about it here) but I hate being forced to read something. If I want to read it, I will choose to read it, don’t force it on me! Sadly, I have another year of having to read books pushed in my direction, but hopefully they’ll be more interesting than these last ones. Though because of this course I have realised that Auden was a great poet and that Browning was a little bit messed up – I never thought I’d be able to appreciate poetry the way I do now. Speaking of which… I should probably be revising them now!

So my mother, my wonderful, beautiful, inspirational mother has way more talent than any agent has managed to read into her books so far, and hopefully she’ll be picked up sooner rather than later. I know she deserves it. Followers and viewings make her seem appreciated – so keep it up! Make my mum feel like the special person she is!

NB: No bribes were passed before, during OR after the writing of this, although a tear may have been shed following the reading of it.  I *heart* my girl!

A Proper Conversation-Stopper!

During a family gathering over one of the many holidays we’ve been inundated with recently (who’s getting fed up with them now and who’s lost track of time?  IS it Boxing Day again?) I had a ‘conversation’ with my brother-in-law about my writing.

*ahem* here it is - abridged and with many seethes omitted:

BiL:     ‘How’s the writing going?’

Me:      ‘Oh, well, I haven’t done much lately, haven’t really… um (…how DO you explain about shattered confidence leading to non-production of wordage without sounding like a proper precious ponce – especially when there’s another 15 or so members of your extended family listening in with bated breath?) I haven’t had anything positive back from an agent yet.’

BiL:     ‘You know, you should send it off to some publishers, forget about the agents, just send it straight to them, cut out the middle man and you’ll probably even save having to pay them a fee too.’

Me:      (No sh*t, Sherlock…) ‘Well, it’s not really as simple as that, you can’t approach a publisher without getting an agent first, and that’s not an easy thing to do.  I’ve sent off loads of enquiries already… I have still got a couple -’

BiL:     ‘- you should just print it off; take the whole thing to them, plonk it on their desks, and wait for a reply.  You know what… J.K Rowling didn’t -’

Me:  (I’m allowed one seethe, surely?) ‘- it’s really not as straightforward as that, agents are inundated with manuscripts every day and I don’t think I’d get to see a publisher just because I happen to turn up at the door with a printout of my book, it doesn’t work like that.’

BiL:     ‘I think you’ve got to be more proactive.  If you believe in what you’re doing, your confidence will shine through and they’ll take you seriously.  If I didn’t believe in my work then nobody would be interested. That’s the way it goes I’m afraid; if you want to make a success of something you’ve got to be determined.’

Me:      (trying not to cry… or seethe too much) ‘Well… okay then, maybe that’s my problem (translation: can we shut up now and drink some wine please?).’

BiL:    ‘You know what you should do?  If you published it on line, that’s where yo’ll find your audience, you’d be out there and they’d see how good your writing is.’

Me:     (fascinated to know how he knows what my writing’s like when he’s never read any of it) ‘Online where exactly?’

BiL:     ‘On the internet, that’s when you’re going to get agents and publishers reading it.  I bet they’re always online.’

Me:      ‘I’ve got a blog.  I’ve got all the opening chapters of every book I’ve written on it.  And the only way an agent is going to see anything I’ve written is if I mail them and link to my blog.’

BiL:    ‘Everybody’s got a blog these days.  You want to just publish all your books on the web, that’s the only way to get anyone to read them.  Everybody’s on line these days – you’d be surprised what you can find on the internet.’

Me: (No. Actually I wouldn’t) (oh, and seethe) ‘If you mean self-publish, then I have been thinking about it lately but I’ve always been wary of it; I’m scared it’ll make me look like I’m blowing my own trumpet and not having anybody with authority actually validating it and championing me… I think I’d still rather wait and get representation.’

BiL:    ‘So if you can publish a book yourself then what’s the problem?  Once you’ve got a book in your hands you’ve made it.  People start reading it, then they’ll see how you write… that’s the way to get noticed, you’d soon get an agent or a publisher interested then. They’ll find your book online.’

Me:      ‘But they’d have to do a search to find anything online.  That’s what everyone has to do – they wouldn’t just happen to find it by accident.  And anyway, I think they get enough manuscripts sent to them without needing to search on-line for one that isn’t even good enough to secure an agent in the first place...’

BiL:     ‘Ah, you’d be surprised. For instance, if, say, they wanted to publish a book about a gardener who drives through Tuscany and all the adventures he has,  they could find it no problem… just type in "book... gardener... Tuscany..." publishers are always on the lookout for the next big thing and they've just got to look on the internet to find it.  Who knows, it could be you.  You just need to get yourself out there.  Get seen, you know?

Me:     (through teeth so gritted they'd be grand in a snowstorm) ‘Wine anybody?

Cheers!