The self-published

Why should we celebrate the self-published? What have they really done? Submitted a flawed, error ridden manuscript for a company to print out and bind together? Perhaps they've put years of work into the novel but haven't been able to secure a publisher or agent, so they've headed down the self-pub route. Should we talk about them in the same sentence as Marcel Proust or Fyodor Dostoyevsky?

Self-publishing really only used to be for those who wanted to write about themselves, bind memories into book form, or create a collection of short stories for a niche market or for their children to enjoy, but now, or so it seems, everyone's at it. It's really bucking the trend as the New York Times recently highlighted. The newspaper recently reported that four self-published authors had taken up seven slots on the New York Times e-book bestseller list. Furthermore, the article suggests that this trend will continue in the years to come. The authors include Colleen Hoover - Slammed and Point of Retreat, R.L. Mathewson with Playing For Keeps, Lyla Sinclair with Training Tessa and Bella Andre with If You Were Mine, Can't Help Falling In Love and I Only Have Eyes For You.

Are they any good?

Take our wannabee author, Arthur Reid for example - his book has been rejected by every agent and publisher this side of Texas, so he wants to proclaim to the world that he is 'an author.' So he self-publishes. He contacts the local newspaper, The Bugle, and he tells them he's a published author. The editor, not knowing the difference between mainstream and self-publishing, runs the story. Arthur enjoys a few Amazon sales and word gets around that 'Fifty Shapes of Stetson Hats' is actually really, really good. The cowboys all rush out and buy it.

Then there's 18-year-old Ann Books who secured a six figure sum via Riches and Tops Literary Agency, and ended up in all the papers. 'Bright young literary thing,' was the headline, except the hype died a slow death and she made a handful of sales. She put her tail in her pocket and became a recluse, penning Book Two. But...but...but...she has an agent and has been published by the big men.

Who's the author here? Arthur or Ann? Or both?

Are readers more intent in seeking out a good story, regardless of where it has been published? Do they gloss over the mistakes - there, they're, their etc - and shout about how wonderful the boy meets girl story is? Now that Arthur has self-published, becoming an overnight sensation, will he change his name, nationality and undergo plastic surgery to remove his moustache and re-invent himself as an author proper?

So many questions.

Discuss.

Excuse me!

"Quit whining and get writing."

Picture an office, the frosted glass door emblazoned with the words: Writing Agony Uncle. A writer, clutching a bunch of rejection letters and a hefty manuscript, taps timidly on the doorframe.

"It's open."

The writer touches the door handle, feeling his sweat against the brass.

"Take a seat."

The Agony Uncle leans back in his seat, feet on the desk. He's wearing a Sam Spade fedora. "Shoot."

The writer slumps into a chair, wondering why the office decor dates to the 1930s. He passes over his rejection slips. "It's just not fair!"

The Agony Uncle flicks through the pages, nodding at the occasion titbit of feedback. "Of course it ain't fair, you stoopid Limey." (He's American.) "Who said it's supposed to be fair? It's nature - survival of the thickskinned. Kill or be killed. Use what you got." He senses a bunch of excuses are about to be pitched his way and picks pulls a baseball bat out of the drawer.

"I'm too old to be a successful writer."

"Funny you should say that. Helen Hooven Santmyer was published at 88."

"Well, then I'm too young to be a successful writer."

"Interesting. Christopher Beale had a book launch for This and Last Season's Excursions when he was six years old."

"Okay, but I've had too many rejections to be a successful writer."

"Four words - Gone with the Wind." (Reputed to have earned 38 rejections.)

I've had too few rejections to be a successful writer.

(Flicks through the sheets.) "Somehow I doubt that! What else ya got, kid?"

"I'm not educated enough, I'm too unphotogenic to be an author, and I don't have the right connections."

The Agony Uncle is silent for a while, weighing the bat in his hand. "I hear your pain, kid; sure I do. But you're missing the point. And the point is..."

(After a long pause.) "To...erm...write?"

"Bingo. Write a compelling, knock-me-down-on-my-ass novel and see how those hang-ups fade to the background. Sure, get an education; get some professional headshots - or a stand-in; network and schmooze until you get an 'in'. But remember that the writing comes first. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Now, move along. I've got a two o'clock who's struggling to match the success of her first novel. Jeez, you writers - you'e never content!"

So, what are your excuses and how do you overcome them?

What We're Reading/Writing/Watching

Tracey - I am currently watching Game Of Thrones (hooked!) and reading what already looks like my book of the year, Bring Up the Bodies.

Fionnuala - I'm doing a 'Ross and Rachel' i.e. taking a short break - from writing... I'm about to read 'So Much For That' by Lionel Shriver and I'm also hooked on Game of Thrones on the telly.

Debs - Taking a breath from having just finished the second book of "Fifty Shades" series (too much in this heat) and reading "The Girl on the Landing" by Paul Torday of "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" fame. Watching "Grandma's House""The Voice" and anything with Graham Norton in it - which included the Eurovision Song Contest but we won't dwell on that! Writing wise I'm filling out conveyancing paperwork for imminent house move. Oh, its all go here :)

Caroline R - I'm planning the structure of my new non-fiction book, thinking about what I can include from my existing work and how much new material I'll need. This is a bit of a departure for me as I'm normally a pantser, but I'll have to make myself get organised for this one! I'm about to start reading Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson, and I'm watching The Voice.

Caroline G - I am just about to start writing a new project, having abandoned the last one I was writing. This book is contracted by my publisher and am a bit nervous about getting it right. The one I finished over the winter and early spring didn't work at all! Has had to be binned. (Ouch) As for reading, I've just started Julia Crouch's second book, called Every Vow You Break. Loved her debut novel, Cuckoo. Watching? Bored, bored, bored with TV. Need a good box set.

Gillian - I've set sail on my next book, provisionally called Arktanic - yes that's right - a fusion of Noah's Ark and the Titanic. I'm reading A Parachute In The Lime Tree by Annemarie Neary and watching Indian Ocean with Simon Reeve, as he's a friend of a friend!

Derek is: 1. Writing job applications. 2. Rewriting an old novel, plus an edit, to have a go at self-pubbing through Lightning Source (having received author contribution requests of £1300 and £5000, in the last couple of months, from conventional publishers!). 3. Collating stories. 4. Writing plans. (Yes, that's writing writing plans!) 5. Reading The Little Book of the Great Enchantment by Steve Blamires.

Where do you do it?

What does a coffee shop, bed, a living room, a library and a garden have in common? No, it’s not a joke, it’s actually a list of possible answers to a question we often ask our guest bloggers. Where do you write?

Recently, you got a glimpse into our own writing spaces, compiled by Fi, and we had a range of interesting responses.

It’s one that has me puzzled because in my opinion, there’s only one answer. I mean, to put it simply, I can’t write anywhere other than my own house. If I try to write in public, I get the feeling I’m being watched and it’s incredibly distracting. Take the library for example – I’m sitting at the table with my laptop and Mrs Jones comes in and says hello to the librarian behind the desk, Mrs Pettigrew.
‘How’s young Johnny?’ she asks her.
‘Not too good. I just can’t believe what happened.’
‘Well, give him my best wishes. Hopefully he’ll pull through soon.’
A solemn faced Mrs Pettigrew takes the books off her and thanks her.
Then I wonder what has happened to young Johnny. Has he been in a car accident or did he fall down a well on a farm? I wonder if he has banged his head in the playground or if he has measles. Or a life-threatening illness. I hope not.

This diverts my attention away from what I’m supposed to be doing – working on my WIP. Then I notice the guy at the desk beside me has logged onto crazypeople dot com or something like that, devoted to Doomsday followers. He leaves a message saying the end of the world is tonight, and I wonder if he’s right. His ear lobe is cluttered with rings, about ten or twelve, and he has a skull tattoo, a really angry looking one. The face is coloured in. It’s red and orange. He clenches his fist as he types with one finger, then he logs off and leaves the library. Next to the chair is Ronnie who is applying for a job as a taxidermist, but after keying in all his information online, the form fails to go through. He gets up, kicks the desk, then composes himself. He then starts to browse through the other job vacancies and stops at ‘beauty therapist required for top salon.’

Or picture this – I’m in Starbucks with my laptop and Betty and Bertha sit down beside me. They’re a larger than life duo and they eagerly tuck into their Verry Berry scones and apple and cinnamon pies, to be washed down with double Caramel Macchiatos. They really shouldn’t be here. I wish they’d bought healthy salads instead.

Betty starts talking about her forthcoming weight loss surgery and I wonder why the pair are not at the village hall attending Weightwatchers. They talk about Stanley and Herbert, who I assume are their significant others. Stanley has just been made redundant, having worked at Wally’s Engineering Works for the past forty years. He’s at a loose end, says Betty. Betty and Bertha make for a comedic pair and I can visualise them having cameo roles in my next book.

Of course, all these vignettes give me ideas and ideas are good when you’re writing a work of fiction. But as a caveat, it’s distracting when you have your whole book planned out and you don’t need any more scenes or walk on characters. More importantly, I don’t like to be the subject of someone else’s curiosity.

‘I wonder what she’s doing,’ whispers Betty.
‘I’m writing a book,’ I say, logging off and slamming the laptop lid shut.
‘Oh, that’s great, dear. I tried to write a book once about my arthritis.’
I roll my eyes and leave for home.

Where do you write? I’m interested to know if you find it distracting? Do you feel you are being watched? Or can you work as you would at home? Just curious. I hate tea and coffee anyway.

Guest blog by author Annemarie Neary

Today we are chatting to the award-winning writer Annemarie Neary whose first novel A Parachute in the Lime Tree has just been published by History Press Ireland.

Welcome to Strictly, Annemarie – tell us a little about your early life as a lawyer and how you developed an interest in writing.

I was a compulsive reader as a child, and went on to do an English degree before I became a lawyer, so I’d always had a deep interest in writing. Lawyers are essentially words people, though the differences between legal drafting and creative writing are huge. Drafting is all about deploying hand-me-down language in order to trigger the right bits of case law or statute. You are always constrained by precedent and consequences; it can’t be about just taking a line for a walk to see what happens! Having said that, the law taught me lots of things that came in useful when writing short fiction – keep to the point, and try and say what you mean.

You’ve won quite a few awards for your work - did this encourage you to pen your first novel?

My first ever prizes were for two stories taken from an early draft of A Parachute in the Lime Tree. That news, which arrived in successive months in 2009, was a huge boost. I took the novel in hand after that and worked hard at re-structuring it and paring it down so that when the publishing opportunity arose, it was in better shape than it would otherwise have been. Writers plough a lonely furrow at times and it’s all too easy to let things drift. Competitions provide a community of interest as well as the impetus of a deadline and the discipline of a word limit. However, it’s important to choose wisely– not all competitions are worthwhile. For instance, if the winners’ anthology is not something you’d want to read yourself, then don’t enter!


Tell our readers about your book A Parachute In The Lime Tree and how you secured a publisher.

A Parachute in the Lime Tree is part-quest novel, part-love story. It’s set in neutral Ireland in 1941, during the tense weeks following the Belfast blitz. The morning after Belfast is bombed, the unpredictable Kitty Hennessy awakes to find a German parachute caught in one of the trees in her garden in remote Dunkerin, right at the other end of the country. That sets up a chain of events with life-long consequences for four characters, two German and two Irish. While most of the narrative takes place in Ireland, the story’s roots are in Berlin and in the relationship between Oskar, whose parachute Kitty discovers, and his Jewish sweetheart, Elsa. I’d just finished re-writing the book when I saw the call for submissions from The History Press Ireland on an Irish online resource called writing.ie.. It’s the second title in their new fiction line after Derry O’Dowd’s wonderful medical-historical romance, The Scarlet Ribbon.


What inspires you?

Like most writers, I’m a magpie. Sources of inspiration are wholly unpredictable, which is part of the fun. Something a Turkish waiter told me he’d seen happen in his restaurant turned into a story about America abroad; a woman with a briefcase on a ferry full of day-trippers became a story about land and greed. Place is important; I’ve written a dozen stories set in Venice and Dublin is an important backdrop for sections of A Parachute in the Lime Tree. Inspiration is fragile and evanescent, so it’s important to catch those butterflies before they disappear. That’s why a notebook, paper or digital, is your friend.

What’s next on your writing agenda?

I’ve completed the first draft of another novel, Siren. The material is all there, but the structure needs attention and there’s a lot of re-writing to do, as always. I’m also midway into another novel, but it’s time to put that down for a while and do some research. I have lots of short story ideas pinned down in various places – but they all need time to find themselves (and I need time to write them!).

Do you have a favourite snack to accompany your writing?

Tea and chocolate, please. Pretty much any tea and chocolate will do, but if I’m allowed to be choosy I’ll go for a big bar of Green & Black’s (Almond) with Twining’s English Breakfast tea.

Have you ever read a book and visualised yourself as a character?

That’s a really interesting question! I can’t think of a recent example, but as a child I definitely wanted to be Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I remember eyeing-up an old mahogany wardrobe outside my bedroom for months on end and convincing myself that one day I’d be brave enough to step inside and there would be the lamp-post and all the rest of it…

Annemarie is a former lawyer who now enjoys the freedom of just making it up. Her first novel, A Parachute in the Lime Tree, was published by History Press Ireland on 1March 2012. She has won prizes for short fiction in international competitions such as Bridport, Fish, Columbia Journal and the Bryan MacMahon prize. Her stories have been published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, US and Ireland. Work-in-progress includes a collection of Venice stories, and a novel, Siren. Annemarie is a graduate of Trinity College and King’s Inns, Dublin and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Irish-born, she lives in London with her husband and three sons.

Thanks so much for inviting me over, Gillian, and all the best with your own writing and that of the rest of the Strictly team.

Seeing our writing as others see it

O wad some power the giftie us

To see oursels as ithers see us

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion

I feel a bit sorry for the woman in Robert Burns's poem 'To a Louse.' There she is, minding her own business in church, and not only does she have a headlouse viewing her as nothing more than his next meal, but there happens to be a poetic genius around to immortalise her decision to wear a nice hat. Still, I suppose nits and poets can happen to anyone. They like clean hair, apparently.

Wouldn't it be useful to be able to see our writing as others see it? Such an ability would have saved me a lot of angst over the years. I could check at a glance whether my work made sense; whether it was cringeworthy; whether a naff simile was actually original to fresh eyes; whether I used semi-colons when commas would do. The clarity would enable me not only to avoid the blunders, but perhaps to stop mucking about with the good bits too.

Heaven forbid that this ability should be innate, however. It would have to have kicked in when I was at least 25 and had been round the writer's block a few times, because if I had possessed such a talent during my teens, I would probably never have written another word. Awareness of our own failings might be an admirable state, but I reserve the right for my teenage self to churn out as much woeful adjective-filled tut as possible, and to be pleased with herself for having done so. If you can't have a few foolish notions when you're 16, when can you?

When I wonder what it would be like to view my writing from another reader's point of view, my first instinct is to want to spot any technical failings. On a practical level I do try to make my writing look as unlike my own as possible, by changing the typeface or converting the file to PDF. (Turning things into PDFs immediately makes them look better for some reason – maybe I should try this for my face!)

Technical details, however, are not what I'd really like to know about how other people view my fiction. I don't ask readers what they think of my book because I firmly believe it's none of my business. They have every right to like it or not like it – and if they reckon it's lousy, there's not much I can do about it anyway. But out of pure nosiness, the thing I'd find fascinating is to know exactly how people picture my characters and settings. It would be amazing to see photographic images of someone else's perception – how different would the characters be from the way I see them? Would they be clear or indistinct? Would they look like people the reader knows, or would they be purely imaginary? Would they change the images I hold in my own mind and make me see my work in a new light?

If you could see your writing as others see it – what's the first thing you'd want to know?  

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Why don't they just tell us?

It has been said many times [citation needed] that 90% of the slushpile is awful. And this doesn't mean 'not publishable in the present climate' – it means 'absolutely bloody God-awful; awfuller than Rebecca Black's Friday if it were sung in duet with Justin Bieber and accompanied by Ann Widdecombe doing an interpretive dance.'

I've never seen a slushpile and I have no idea whether this is true. I find it difficult to believe – surely it can't be that bad? And if it is, then wouldn't agents just tell people to give up and stop wasting everybody's time? While first getting rejected, I almost wished someone would just come out and say 'Look, this is rubbish. Stop kidding yourself. You'll be selling potatoes for the rest of your life and you've got to accept the fact that's all you're good for.' I just wanted to know, one way or the other, whether I was deluding myself.

Except agents don't tell us anything of the sort – and now I'm very glad about that. If I were an agent, there's no way I'd be dictating who should stop writing and who might have some very carefully concealed talent that will emerge twenty years later.

This is not just because people might come round and boil me in a vat of green ink, and not just because composing individual letters would be boring and annoying, but because writing ability is not something that remains fixed from the moment we learn how to hold a pen. The writer who sends in a grubby hand-written tale with a narrator that turns out to be goldfish might wise up, work hard for the next several years, read hundreds of brilliant books in their genre, write something that hits the zeitgeist and find out how to submit it properly. (Or they might set up a funny Twitter account and get a book deal in two seconds.)

Writing is a bit like singing, in that people are expected (or expect) to be able to do it naturally, as though ability is doled out at birth and you either have it or you don't. How often have you heard someone state that they 'can't sing', as if that's the way it is and there's nothing they can do about it? And yet it's possible to learn to use your voice just as it's possible to learn an instrument. If you'd always wanted to play the violin, you wouldn't sit there and bemoan the fact that you couldn't. You'd save up for lessons and practise a lot. You'd expect a fair few tortured-cat sound effects at first but they'd all be part of learning and improving.

It's fine – indeed, inevitable – to have a tortured-cat stage of writing too, but this doesn't mean everything we ever do will be rubbish. By communicating with other writers, by reading everything in sight and studying how favourite and not-so-favourite authors do things, and most of all by sitting on our arses and getting hundreds of thousands of words onto the page, even the most unpromising of us can work on our craft.

It stands to reason that a lot of us are going to make a mistake and send something out before it's ready. It would be pretty grim if agents took it upon themselves to tell us to give up, just because we didn't know what we were doing, yet. At the time, I thought it would be a relief to know that my submissions were the pits – but I'm glad no one went so far as to say so.

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.

I'd love to be a writer

Perhaps I'm cheating a bit here, because this video isn't new - it first appeared last year on my own now-kaput writing blog, and was also a featured video on Red Room.

Strictly Writing, however, has a lot more readers than my old blog ever had, so I reckon this is worth another run-out. These awkward conversations certainly never seem to go away...

Why bother with Twitter?

Some say Twitter is essential for writers; others sneer at it as a time-wasting exercise in vanity. I wouldn't say it's essential (which for me means stuff like oxygen and water), but I do find Twitter useful and, what's more, fun.

I've only been on Twitter a couple of months, having resisted joining for ages because it seemed pointless. Like many people who have never looked at it, I thought it would consist of morons informing the world that they're about to eat a doughnut, or that their baby is a genius because it just did a poo.

I was finding, however, that most people I knew elsewhere on the net were other writers, and could not necessarily be expected to have an interest in my history blog. I wanted to find people with shared non-writing-related interests and - dare I say it - I wanted a change from the kind of tortured writerly discussions that always include the phrase 'oh God that's so depressing'. I joined Twitter mainly to promote my blog, but was pleasantly surprised to find there's a lot of interesting, intelligent and funny tweeting going on.

I am certainly no social media guru, but from my limited experience, the advantages of Twitter are:

• You can tweet your blog posts to a wide audience. My blog stats have more than doubled since I've been on Twitter. I also use it to catch up with other people's posts and now don't bother much with RSS.
• If you already have a book out, chatting to people on Twitter encourages them to check it out – but this is all about talking with others because they are interesting, not about constantly begging everyone to buy your masterpiece.
• If you don't have a book out, gathering a crowd of relevant followers who get to know and like you will be useful if you ever do get published.
• Many agents, publishers and book trade news sources are on Twitter, so you can get an insight into what they're doing and what they're looking for.
• Some famous authors are also on there, and if they're using it properly they'll engage with their readers – you can actually find yourself chatting to your literary hero or heroine as if they were a normal person, which usually they are. (Certain ones just broadcast and won't respond to anyone, but this doesn't do them much good.)
• It's a useful exercise in brevity – you have to choose words carefully to keep to the 140-character limit.
• People post interesting links – brilliant for finding research sources, writing advice, short story markets, book recommendations etc.
• You don't have to talk about writing all the time. Well, you can talk about nothing but writing if you want to, but there are lots of other people out there too.

So, is it worth a published writer joining Twitter to publicise their book, or for an unpublished writer to build up a following ready for when that six-figure deal comes along?

Well, yes and no. It's worth it if you will enjoy it anyway. Joining purely to promote yourself or your work could backfire – either people will get bored with your egotism or you'll get bored because your heart's not really in it. And if you aren't published as yet, there is the possibility that you never will be, so being on Twitter under sufferance purely to prepare for a deal that might never happen is a bit sad. If you don't want to join Twitter, don't. You and your writing will survive without it.

If, however, you plan to enjoy it for its own sake and are prepared to join in the conversation and appreciate what other people are saying, then give it a go - it could have a lot of benefits for your writing career.

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www.carolinerance.co.uk

twitter.com/quackwriter

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UPDATE: Nicola Morgan at Help! I Need a Publisher! has a great post today about how to get started on Twitter - click here for her excellent advice.

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Thank you to Crystal Church for the picture.

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?

Under my Bed

I'm going to annoy myself now, because I hate it when people oh-so-wittily start an article with the phrase “It is a truth universally acknowledged...”

But it is a truth universally acknowledged that debut novelists have so many unpublished manuscripts under the bed that there isn't even any room left for monsters.

Without those character-building decades of agony and rejection, the writer whose first-written novel gets published is seen by the more experienced as a bit of noob who just happened to get lucky and isn't really ready for the cut-throat world of publishing or the terrifying prospect of writing a second book.

My book genuinely is the first one I've ever finished, and the first one I ever submitted anywhere. Sometimes that makes me feel a bit awkward and inferior. What if I can never write another one? What if it really was just luck and I've somehow elbowed my way to the front of the queue ahead of people who are more talented and have worked harder for many more years?

So, in attempt to convince myself that I have served my apprenticeship, I made a list of all the books I've worked on since I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I'm reassured to discover that, although unfinished, they amount to a reasonable body of words.

They are:

• My fictionalised autobiography, written when I was 14 (it's always good to get the autobiographical crap out of the way early, I think.) It had the sick-bucket title of Every Cloud has a Silver Lining.
• A comic novel about a beleaguered youth group leader in 1990s rural England. Except it wasn't very comic, and it never got to be a novel either.
• An early version of Kill-Grief minus the gin, the gory bits, the smuggling and the main character, but plus a lot of boring hospital politics.
• Two historical novels set in the 17th century – both about witchcraft but with different characters and plots.
• And my favourite – a YA novel set in 2039, where everyone who reaches the age of 12 is convicted of the crime of “Youth” and the teenage hero and heroine must plot their escape from the sinister penitentiary that aims to obliterate their capacity for independent thought and gives them drugs that turn all skin colours to a uniform shade of grey.

I'd love to know more about the stories languishing under other writers' beds, but it's understandably difficult to get people to talk about these early attempts. Partly that's because all that stuff is in the past now and a lot of it is embarrassing. Partly it's because we aren't supposed to hint at former failure while submitting or promoting our latest work, and partly it's because we were so absorbed by these ideas that it's discomfiting to think of anyone else knowing about them when they aren't ready to be seen.

But although these books fell by the wayside, I think they are important and worth acknowledging. We should celebrate every attempt – whether it was finished or unfinished, whether it was utter rubbish or just infuriatingly “not right for the market.” They are not simply stepping stones on the way to our individual goals, but valuable in themselves for what they've taught us, and for the excitement and inspiration we felt while writing them. And for the fact that – unlike most people - we had the courage to try to write a book at all.

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http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/

Photo: Some of the unfinished books under my bed.

Silly Gene Is Not My Fault

It’s difficult to comprehend that there are approximately 20000 to 25000 genes in human DNA, made up of three billion chemical base pairs. I do feel I have to tag the word ‘allegedly’ here as this information comes courtesy of a well known search engine and I am no scientist. What I am however, is a writer. And I blame at least one of those three billion thingys. It’s not my fault.
Some day, in some far off land and time, some learned being will discover the creative section in the DNA strand, perhaps a single chemical synapse doo dah that is responsible for my urge to write.

My standard response to this inate urge used to be to stick my fingers in my ears and chant, ‘La La La La.’ I told myself not to listen to it, because I had a living to earn and a family to raise. Eventually, I strangled the urge and it became nothing more than an intermittent nag in the furthest folds of my brain. Still there…but definitely muted.

Now my two daughters, who have inherited the silly gene from my DNA, (hereinafter referred to as Strand Bits or SB) have flown the coop and are blissfully embracing their creative sides. Their Dad, my ever supportive, hard working, non creative husband, looks on all three of us smiling. But I know he’s secretly worried about them willing themselves into a life of potential penury. I know too that he wonders where the hell his SB scarpered to.

So why have I used the word ‘silly’ to describe the creative gene? It wasn’t just so you could sing the title to a well known Michael Jackson tune. I also wanted to evoke a harmless, innocent, sometimes misbehaving image - to describe a part of me that’s playful and spontaneous. But the words ‘blame’ and ‘fault’ also appear in the first paragraph seemingly implying that the writing urge is some defect or failure. Sometimes, particularly on receipt of one of the many rejection letters, it feels like it is. So if I could change it, would I? Progress in science already provides us with gene intervention. Would I have them erase my silly gene if I could?

Never. Not now. Not since I understand and embrace this part of my psyche. I only wish I’d been brave enough not to ignore it quite so well when I was younger. I love my job and yes because, as yet, I remain unpublished, it’s taken me a long time to use the word ‘job’ and to say out loud ‘I’m a writer.’ I am. I’m almost certain some yet to be discovered minute part of human SB plays its part in dictating this. And if having the silly gene proves to be my worst defect/failing, I’m a lucky girl.

It hasn't got to be perfect

Ah, wouldn't it be lovely to go on a writing retreat? A week alone in a wilderness-y location, free to tap away on my laptop, scribble in a pretty notebook or spread out the pages of my work in progress across the crisp, non-dog-haired linen of a comfy bed. I'd go out for solitary, silent walks in the sunshine, and return inspired by the sea breeze hushing through the grasses and the lonely cries of eagles in the cerulean sky.

Not for me one of those writers' retreats in a venue shared with Other People. Yuk! For a start, I'm a nutter-magnet, so judging by past experience I'd probably get someone following me around saying my surname was making them channel visions of the Norman Conquest or something.

Not only that, but I'd be sick with fear at having to get together with everyone else in the evening and “voluntarily” read out the day's work. No, my ideal writing situation would be to become a hermit, in an isolated cottage. All I want is a bit of space and quiet. Plus an attractive man to bring me pizza and wine at appropriate intervals. Oh, and broadband, obviously.

All this would do wonders for my productivity. The work in progress would all come together and be finished in no time. I'd also have the leisure to read as much as I wanted, wander along the beach and attend the on-site beauty parlour (all isolated cottages ought to have one) for a relaxing massage.

Or, more likely, I'd turn up and find that it was a bare, dull apartment smelling of cigarette smoke and tacky air freshener, and I'd footle around for a week failing to accomplish anything.

I find it too easy to feel that writing would be simple if only external circumstances arranged themselves around it. It'll be easier once finances are more stable, once the next deadline is out of the way, once the summer's here and I can write outside. It will be easier once my toddler is at playgroup, once other people stop making demands, once I feel less under the weather, once my book is out, once I get a big advance for the next one, once book twenty-three is made into a mini-series...

Writing will always be easier sometime in the future when there's more time, more money to buy that time, more sunshine and more energy.

But, although the external difficulties are changeable, sometimes looming and sometimes receding, they never go away. Perhaps we can shoot a few down, but they always bounce back ten-fold, like aliens in some crappy 1980s Atari game.

A writing retreat or a sudden influx of cash or a new mahogany desk aren't going to make me into a perfect writer. Wherever I go, I'll still be me, worrying that my book is rubbish, wanting to check my email or Facebook one more time, wondering whether I'll ever really be good enough to fill that blank page.

The only solution is to stop dreaming and get on with it, regardless of the imperfect circumstances of noise, tiredness and pressure. A few words written during the clamour of the day are better than no words written while waiting for everything to be perfect.

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Because that would be a heck of a long wait.

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http://www.carolinerance.co.uk/

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Thank you to Václav Pastucha for the photograph.

It's all good

It's good to read, just like it's good to talk (according to BT).


Of course it's good to read, I hear you say. If your nose never graces a book, then realistically what hopes do you have of ever becoming an author?
Granted, you may have been a great speller at primary school and top in the creative writing competitions, but if you don’t read much, let alone stop to analyse a book, then halt your writing dreams now I say.

And this brings me onto what I deem a very valid question - what makes a good book? It’s a question which has been asked many times and one which has generated all manner of interesting replies.
Is is a good story? Interesting characters - ones which the reader can relate to? Or is a good book one which, when you take it to bed, simply allows you to escape the last few hours of a mundane Monday thanks to its engaging plot and intriguing storyline?

Is a good book one in which the plot really grabs our attention? When we think we know 'who dunnit' then the author hits us with a cruel twist, and we're left reeling over the events of the last ten pages? I don't know - what is a good book? Do you know what a good book is? Come on, give me some answers...
Well for me, it's good writing with a page-turning plot - it's as simple as that. Good solid writing with the use of language in a colourful manner. But every once in a while a book comes along and I scratch my head, wondering where its merits lie. I toss and turn at night wondering how the author ever managed to grab the attention of an agent, especially with the opening chapters. There has been one in particular which produced a rather large advance for the novelist and many readers, me included, were convinced our bottom drawer unpublished efforts had more merit. In other words, it needed a darn good edit. Once in a while when a book such as this crops up on our shelves, I wonder why this so-called 'great book' has been labelled by critics as such.
A 'good book' to the average Joe Public reader is usually a personal preference. But if you are a reasonably experienced writer who knows the ins and outs of the business, you tend to look for more than the basis of a solid enjoyable story.

When I read a book, I focus on originality, in characters, story and language. One book which literally blew me away in terms of originality was Darkmans by Nicola Barker - one which now takes its place on my list of all-time favourites.
(If you ask a child what he or she wants from a book, the young reader will almost always say 'I want to laugh' or 'I want funny and sad bits together')

There are books too which have been hailed by critics as the best thing since Shakespeare and sliced bread, and I've struggled to find any admirable qualities. I don't want to condemn certain books as poor quality, but I've just finished Netherland by Joseph O'Neill and I'm still waiting for something to happen. It was like a rambling stream of consciousness with no pace or structure and the reader was constantly being pulled this way and that. I want a book that makes me anxiously turn each page and in Netherland, I was patiently waiting for that. I didn't feel anything happened. More happens in my Bottom Drawer novel in a more erratic fashion.
It’s not the first novel I’ve been disappointed in - there have been a few. A good book will be filled with the author’s passion - and that will be evident in a reading. So whether it be an agent, or an independent publisher, make sure you have a good book lined up too when the time comes.

Have a flick through How NOT to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. I must admit I haven't read it but, according to the critics, it has a plethora of info which will help us avoid the pitfalls of sabotaging our own work....including the over-use of the exclamation mark!! That's my pet hate!!!! So, go on, make your book a good one!!!!!!

Is it worth it?

It's funny how the idea for a blog post develops. Last time I mentioned how, if I were an agent, I might bin a submission because the writer had the same name as an ex-boyfriend. So that got me thinking about crappy ex-boyfriends, and that made me remember the time one of them informed me “you just haven't got the guts and determination to become a professional actress.”

This pronouncement could have been hideously wounding. In fact, it probably would have been, if I'd ever harboured the remotest desire to be a professional actress.

I quite liked amateur dramatics. I'd go in for one or two plays a year, and even “starred” in a soap opera on the university radio station. But that was about it. I had no hankering after Hollywood or the RSC. Neither have plenty of other people involved with theatre clubs. To most outside observers (dickweed boyfriends excepted) am-dram is an acceptable hobby, both for those who are brilliant at it and those who, frankly, aren't.

The same doesn't seem to be true of writing. The moment you blushingly admit that you enjoy penning the occasional short story ... or worse, that you're a member of a writers' group ... or far, far worse, that you've got the nerve to be working on a novel, it's pressure time:

So, have you had anything published?

Oh. Well, d'you think you'll try and get published?

So, you're going to be the next J.K. Rowling, eh?

Mind you, it's very difficult to be a writer, love. You have to be really good to get published. Don't get your hopes up, will you?

It's all right to take part in a local panto without everyone thinking you fancy yourself as Nicole Kidman. You can sing along to Abba in the car, and people don't start smirking about how you haven't got a record deal. You can enjoy a round of golf without anyone adopting a serious expression and saying “What makes you think you're as good as Tiger Woods?”

Writing is different. Increasingly, there's a sense that it's not an interest but an ambition; something not worth doing unless publication – and preferably mega-deal publication with a major publisher – is within reach. Both on and offline, I'm noticing more and more people saying they'd like to have a go at writing, but they're not sure if there is much point when there's no guarantee of success.

Arguably some of those people don't really want to write, in which case, fine – there's no law that says they have to. To the genuine but uncertain ones, however, I say it is worth trying – very much worth trying – for its own sake, not because of what the future might hold.

If writing proves a source of strange inner excitement, if it plunges you into a different existence, if your characters become more real than the shop customers or office boss you have to deal with every day, then it's worth doing. If it makes you look at the red clock-numbers at 3:56am and smile because there are still two whole hours of thinking-time left, if it makes you look forward to getting back to it, if it's the only chance you've ever had to create something that no one else can control, then it's worth the effort. If it makes you feel as though you've said something, when everyone always thought you had nothing to say, then yes, it's worth it. And, even though it would be more highbrow of me to lament that writing is agony, actually, a lot of the time it's very good fun.

So, to any potential new writers who have stumbled on this blog looking for info on whether there's any point: yes there is! Give it a try. Don't be deterred just because someone (a dur-brained soon-to-be-ex, for example) has made you feel that anything short of JKR fame isn't good enough.

(Thank you to Adam Ciesielski for the photo.)

Entry into bloggersphere

I feel under pressure to perform right now as this is my first official blog. Like a debutante's entry into society, this 'coming out' is just as nerve-wracking. But I'm delighted to be here and I'm grateful to you for stopping by to read and of course for any comments you may have.

Let me first of all tell you a bit about myself. I'm Gillian, and for the last ten and a half years I've been working as a newspaper journalist. The most exciting person I've interviewed so far is Uri Geller. Whilst chatting to him, my yoghurt spoon bent. I've also stood beside the Queen (royal, not Freddie) and Hillary Clinton (at separate events) and I've had my picture taken with Adele from Big Brother 3. I've been on the box a few times too and I've produced a short documentary on a pet cemetery which made the Daily Mirror telly critic cry. The most daring thing I've done in my writing career so far is dispose of a used cocktail stick inside an antique vase in the drawing room of the Secretary of State's residence Hillsborough Castle (there was no bin, and I'd no pockets).

At this point, you're probably wondering why I have used an astronomical word in the title (bloggersphere) - well this is due to the fact I received a telescope for Christmas from Santa and have been communing with the moon nightly (I also got a Wii – honestly, I am cool).

For the last three or four years I've been working on my entry into the world of novel writing (note again the astronomical pun). I've just finished novel two, entitled The Standing Man and I'm currently in the process of editing, revising and tweaking.
My first novel A River To Cross, set in North Korea, was completed in the middle of last year and I've since managed to notch up a few rejections, coupled with heartening comments from agents telling me to persevere and not give up on this one. It's still very much alive and well in a little yellow folder on my hard drive. I should tell you that my initial attempt grew wings and went to Novel Heaven in the sky but may be reincarnated some day. I've just embarked on my third novel called Cake, set in a fictional Irish village in which a Women's Institute member goes on a murdering spree after losing a Victoria Sponge competition.

All this of course has been a learning curve. When I started out, I thought my work was the best thing since sliced bread. And when I posted my first submission, I sat beside the phone eagerly awaiting the call from Ed Victor (big scary agent). How wrong I was! Much of the earlier ramblings were utter dross and deserved nothing more than to be consigned to the bottom drawer. Fit for nothing but the bin. But if we are honest, that's how we all start out. There's so much more to a book than a story, as I've found over the years. The novelist Kingsley Amis once said 'The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair.'

Most of all a novel is fun to write. Don't do it for the money - what money, some say? A novel is like a cupboard – you open it up, there are different compartments like characterisation, plot, description, and of course, the writer's main faux pax – telling rather than showing. And I suppose a book for the customer is like a bag of Revels – you open it up and you don't know what you're going to get - hopefully a nice surprise.
Then there's the opening sentence - just how important that is, I cannot stress. That's the crucial bit that allows you to form an immediate opinion about the book. And if the opener is not engaging, there's the danger of the reader losing interest.

The fact I have a background in journalism means nothing. I thought it did - and I was wrong. Yes, of course it sounds good in the letter which accompanies the submission, but it does not make me a better author than the person next to me. If anything it can be detrimental - there's the rush to finish a news article and the urge to pack in as much information, in as little words as possible. And that's not how to write a novel.

But remember - a good writer never gives up.

Well that's all for now folks: if I continue on, I'll be heading off on a tangent into the stratosphere....Wishing you all a happy new writing year and may all your dreams come true in 2009.

I'm currently reading Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.

The Slush-Pile Experience

I've often thought it would be fun to volunteer as a slush-pile reader for a day. When I say fun, I've no doubt I'd lose the will to live after about three manuscripts, but I do like the idea of gaining an insight into how publishers and agents feel about unsolicited submissions. Are 90% of them really crap, or is that just an urban myth? Are 90% of them actually pretty good, now that writers have internet communities on which to share advice, research markets and get feedback on their chapters?

Though I sympathise with the common lament that agents reject work without reading it, I must admit that even if I started out giving careful consideration to everything, this wouldn't last beyond the first covering email that said: “This is teh next harry potter. Tell me how much u r going 2 pay me lol.”

I can see myself whizzing through the submissions going:

Nope.
Nope.
Hmm, pretty good, but... nah.
Nope.
Aww, this one has a picture of the author's puppy... but the book still sucks.
Hmm, nice writing, but it's the end of the first page and no one's died yet, so nope.
Huh, this author has the same name as a loser boyfriend I had 15 years ago, so... nope.

We writers know we must make sure our work is better than the rest of the pile, that our plot isn't the same old chestnut as everyone else's, that we spot the typo we've supposedly proofread a million times, and that we time the submission so that its position in the Leaning Tower of Envelopes corresponds to the ten-second window when the agent is in a good mood. The only trouble is that, as industry outsiders, we've got no way of knowing what the rest of the pile is like. What exactly are those clichéd plots and first-page no-nos? We don't get to see them because... well, they don't get as far as a bookshop. Without access to much unpublished fiction, it's difficult for a writer to appreciate the all-important (and perhaps subtle) differences between a standard rejection and a request for a full.

I think a bit of mutual understanding between agents and not-yet-published writers would be a good thing. Therefore, I have a bright idea. (Yes, just the one.) Agents and publishers could offer exciting Red Letter Days-style activities, like so -

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The Slush-Pile Experience!
The perfect gift for the writer in your life.

Whether you've always fancied yourself as a top London agent, or whether you want to know once and for all how much worse a writer you are than the rest of the world, here's the chance to fulfil your dreams!
Your special day will start with five cups of strong black coffee and a couple of paracetamol (included) before your instructor shows you to your desk for the experience of a lifetime! Are you up for the challenge of trying to break into gaffer-taped Jiffy-bags? Can you last more than two paragraphs of a 500-page political rant in free verse? It's a race against time to read and reject 200 manuscripts by the end of the day! You'll learn all the terminology (including “What a load of crap,” “Oh God, please not the first chapter of Pride & Prejudice under a different title again,” and “This is brilliant, but I just don't love it enough.”) After your exhilarating fourteen-hour shift, you'll be treated to a witty email from a bitter author telling you why he is rejecting you.
A fun and original way to re-discover your sense of adventure!

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Agents would get their slush-piles dealt with and writers would get first-hand knowledge of what really makes a submission stand out from the rest. The submitting writers would have their work read within a year by someone who didn't have thousands of phonecalls to answer and bestselling authors to look after. Everyone wins!

www.carolinerance.co.uk

Thank you to Ali Farid on Stock Exchange for the "Rejected" photo.