Plan of attack

I am not, if I’m honest, what you would call an organised person.
Open my handbag and you will find neither diary, nor pen. A stash of wine gums, yes, maybe the odd out of date voucher.
I do not remember to charge my phone or fill the car with petrol.
I have friends who keep colour coded wall charts that tell them where every member of their family should be at any given moment. They organise children’s birthday parties with the military precision of an invasion.
Invitations, check. Matching napkins and paper plates, check. Wholesome and varied sandwich fillings, check.
I have twins and the night before their last birthday I was up till four turning two Swiss rolls and a packet of Smarties into a replica of Hogworts. Authentic it was not.
I berate myself constantly, promise to change. But I don’t.
Tonight is my publisher’s annual summer party. I have known about this for A WHOLE YEAR. As we speak, authors and agents are getting their hair cut and slavering themselves in Fake Bake. It is with no pride that I admit my ‘good frock’ is in the bottom of the washing basket and my roots are so dark I look as if someone might have taken an axe to my head.
My mate and fellow thriller writer, Lee Weeks, will glide in like an extra from Sex and the City. I on the other hand look not unlike Myra Hindley in her famous mug shot.
There is, however, one aspect of my life which I plan meticulously: my writing.
Before I begin each novel I plan it in a detail that would make Madonna blush.
Having decided upon my structure, I set out each scene on a separate sheet of paper. Each scene will be numbered and written in different coloured ink depending on whose view point it is. It will note which tense the scene must be in ( I use a slippery mixture in my books ), where it is set, what will happen and how it will end. I often include dialogue and snippets of information and description.
Anything I haven’t worked out or need to research is listed in a separate document cross referenced to the relevant scene in the plan.
This part of my writing process is time consuming and I show a pedantry and self control quite out of my normal character. Where I would happily toss a red sock in a white wash, I simply could not countenance the incorrect coloured pen for my main character’s scenes.
I know many writers would find this way of working abhorrent. They begin with a vague idea and see where it takes them. Stephen King notably talks about building a character and letting them find the story. How can the writing, the argument goes, excite and surprise the reader if it doesn’t excite and surprise the writer?
My answer to that is I am hugely excited during the planning stages. I have no idea what will happen and love teasing out the twists and turns. As a crime writer, the laying of clues and red herrings is a huge part of the fun. Misleading the reader is, I find, an exact science.
So, however unlikely, I must accept that this is my style. My method. The system that works for me.
Now, has anyone seen my car keys? I put them on the table next to the unpaid gas bill and the box of Christmas decorations.

Guest Blog and Book Giveaway by Jessica Ruston - Under the covers; between the covers...

One of the first things people ask me when I describe my novel, Luxury, is ‘is there lots of sex?’. Maybe my friends and acquaintances are just a filthy bunch, but I suspect it’s more universal than that. So, let’s talk about writing sex…
As well as being one of the things everyone asks about, it also seems to be one of the things most writers worry about. Is there too much sex in my book? Not enough? Is it convincing? Is it cringe-making and worthy of winning the Bad Sex Award? Will everyone who reads it think that every bit of sex is autobiographical? And finally, what will my granny think?
Because Luxury is a bit of a ‘blockbuster’ novel – big characters, big swathes of time, lots of juicy betrayal and revenge and passion – people expect it to have plenty of sex, so I’ve had to face up to all the questions above. I don’t have any grandparents, but my father kindly proof-read the text for me, and I seriously considered blacking out ‘certain’ pages with a marker pen. The sex in Luxury tends towards the overblown and over-the-top, but I’m afraid the answer to the penultimate question is, almost certainly, yes. People always assume novels are more autobiographical than not, in my experience, especially first novels, so I expect plenty of raised eyebrows after my friends have read it (However, I would like to state for the record that I have never had sex on the bonnet of a Bugatti Veyron…).
So how do you make sex scenes work as part of a book, rather than ending up with something that feels tacked on and awkward?
On one level, it’s like describing any other sensory experience such as a meal or a sunset. Avoiding cliché and bringing depth and fresh thinking to the matter will help.
But fundamentally, it’s about nailing your characters (so to speak…) Sex scenes are simply an extension of the relationship between your characters. Don’t think of them as ‘sex scenes’ as such, think of them as just another way of showing the ways your characters interact with one another, and another manifestation of their personalities, quirks, strengths and weaknesses.
Also, you don’t have to get too gynaecological about things – in writing, as in life, some of the most highly charged moments take place out of the bedroom, fully clothes. A sex scene doesn’t necessarily have to involve pages and pages of awful adverbs and coy euphemisms, as a lot of what determines whether a sex scene works is in what has happened before the clothes come off. If you have created two characters who live and breathe in your readers’ minds, and a relationship between them that is plausible and real, whether it is a full-blown love affair or a one-night stand, the sexual tension will be felt and the scenes involving sex will succeed. If not, you won’t.
For inspiration, check out India Knight’s The Dirty Bits: For Girls, for warnings of just how bad things can get, read the past winners of the Bad Sex Award…


Do check out Jessica's website! Her first novel, Luxury, is published this Thursday 9th July. For a chance to win a copy simply comment below and a name will be drawn out of a hat - the winner to be announced on Saturday! Sorry, Strictly Writers - yes, that does mean you, Rod - aren't eligible to win!

Guest Blog and Book Giveaway by Rosy Barnes - The Life of an Unpublished Author

Visit Vulpes Libris today for more info about The Borders Book Festival that Rosy talks about here!

Your hands sweat. You check your email inbox.
Nothing.
You check your answer phone.
No new messages.
You check the area near your letter box (although you already checked it this morning).
Still nothing.
You might as well just check your email once more.
Nope.
Perhaps it went in the spam folder. (No.)
You tamper with the idea of sending a message, “Sorry to send this message, but just wanted to check if you received the submission of my new memoir “Travels with my Hamster…” .
You agonise about whether to send it…
You do, of course.
A few minutes go by. Nothing. Perhaps this message didn’t get through either. I mean HOW LONG does it take to read and respond to an email?
Stuff it! You don’t need them anyway. Who needs to be published? You’ll sit it out and go for accolades and glory after death, thank you very much. Yes. That’s it!
(You send another email).
Those of you Strictly readers who are unpublished or “aspiring” writers will recognise this as the torture known as the Submission Process.
It is impossible not to feel too forward and yet simultaneously pathetic and needy, slimy and disgusting – the worst sort of life-form to crawl out from under a stone – when you’re submitting your book to agents or publishers.
Your world reduces down to the size of an email inbox (empty). You become incredibly boring. People start moving away from you at parties.
You might – by chance – meet someone who works in publishing at your friend’s wedding. You are delighted to meet them. You get the strangest impression that they are not quite so delighted to meet you. Probably paranoia. When they go down with Salmonella halfway through the reception and go home early you think nothing more of it.
And so it goes on…
You have to remember that agents and publishers won’t be aware of your suffering. They might sigh inwardly when you send in your memoir, “Travels Through Wales with my Hamster, Bob” and throw it straight in the bin, but they won’t see the sweat, your general disgustingness or be even vaguely aware of the long dark night of the soul you just went through to build up enough courage to contact them in the first place.
Unless you start stalking them that is and they meet the general disgustingness which is you in person…outside the school…when they’re picking up their kids…with a 4000 page manuscript clasped in your sweaty hand…
(Note: Stalking, harassing or assaulting agents and editors is generally considered to be a BAD IDEA.)
If you are really really lucky, at some point the rejections will start coming in.
“Whilst I loved the warm cuddly characters and the original voice, I wasn’t so sure about the unconventional subject-matter.”
“Whilst I enjoyed the unconventional subject-matter, I loathed and detested the acerbic unsympathetic characters.”
If you try to make sense of any of this stuff you will go slowly mad. Please try to avoid sitting down and addressing a reply that goes:
“Dear Mr Agent
Thank you for your rejection of my memoir “Travels Through Wales with my Hamster, Bob”. Do you realise it took 3 decades to write this work of unparalleled genius? How long did it you look at it for? A couple of minutes? Yeah right! If YOU were capable of writing a work of unparalleled genius you wouldn’t be an agent but writing your own hamster memoirs, you blood-sucking parasite.”
After months, years of trying, you finally stalk, harass or bully an agent into representing you. This is a real landmark moment. You feel exhilarated, exonerated and all sorts of self-justifying smug and self-satisfied sorts of emotions. Make the most of the bragging, trumpeting and general “I told you soing” to friends and family…because it will be a LONG time before you can do this again.
Life after getting an agent can feel pretty similar to life before getting an agent: a lot of waiting, basically.
At this point in the process you enter something called Publishing Time. This is where all life stands still. No birds sing. Plants stop growing and the only thing getting older and more shrivelly and wrinkled by the day is you.
Basically, the road to publication is full of corpses who just died of boredom whilst waiting along the way. It is excruciatingly stressful.
For me, I was eventually saved by the publishers, Marion Boyars – who loved the book, published it and really got behind it.
I was totally pig-headedly convinced that I would get there in the end. But - start to finish - it took a while. It was just a matter of finding the right fit.
-----
So, my message is quite simple: don’t listen to a word anyone says about how to get published.
If you go looking, you will find millions of websites telling you how to achieve this goal. The truth is: none of them know how to get published.
Even people who get published have no idea how to get published.
Basically, my view is that there are no blanket rules. There are far too many people writing books and a lot of myths.
I have committed all the crimes. I’ve disobeyed submission guidelines (something that many people would say denotes me as a complete moron who deserves to be taken out and tarred and feathered by my peers). I’ve phoned up people (another heinous crime, apparently). I’ve written personalised and perky submission letters that sound like I just might be a human being (another crime punishable by complete excommunication from the writing world), and synopses of all shapes and sizes that left things hanging and didn’t reveal the ending (should be shot for that too.)
But, most importantly, I got out there, did my own thing and got involved.
One of the best things I did was become part of an online bookblog – Vulpes Libris Written by people from all over the world – from Scotland, Finland, France and Chile – to the darkest depths of Cornwall – iIt has allowed me to find out things about the world of books, interview publishers and writers and ask them the kinds of questions we all would like to know. It has also been a huge amount of fun. I’m sure the Strictly crowd feel the same way about this site.
So if there was any advice I’d have to unpublished aspiring authors it would be that – stop obsessing over your emails and get out there and be part of things. Take an interest in the world of books and channel the angst into something positive. You just don’t know what will come of it.
(Oh yes, and write a book, of course. But you knew that already…)

NB. This article formed the basis of RosyB’s talk given at an event for Debut Writers at The Borders Book Festival in Melrose 2009. (Please note Ferret Bill has morphed into Hamster Bob because she was getting bored of him.) Remember, do pop over to Vulpes Libris today to hear Rosy talk more about this event!

Rosy Barnes is a talented new author and to win a copy of her debut novel, Sadomasochism for Accountants, simply comment below and a winner will be drawn from the hat - sorry, competition not open to Strictly Writers! The winner will be announced on Saturday!

On wanting to be a woman

The other day, at the end of the leadership development programme I had been running, I took a taxi ride to Godalming station. As we passed under the oak leaves along the Surrey roads, the driver reached for his clipboard and brushed his hand against my thigh.

‘It’s okay, I’m not on the other side,’ he apologised.

It reminded me, with a jolt, that there are still people out there who find being gay unacceptable.

He drove on and I dreamed on, and, in a somewhat loosely linked way, his remark started me thinking about writing on the other side: in other words, from a different sexual perspective. I’ve always been a little wary of books where the author takes the point of view or the voice of someone of the other sex, even more wary when they try to be a dog or somesuch. My rather narrow-minded stance has been that if I want to read about what it’s like to be a woman, I would do better to read something by a woman. Of course, this reasoning breaks down in the case of the dog. I take a similar attitude to historical fiction: why read period pieces when I could be reading Jane Austen? Please forgive me, you hist fickers.

But everybody’s doing it. Writers seem to be magnetised by the idea of cross-writing. Nick Hornby did it in How to be Good, and according to The Guardian, who know about these things, “the shift in gender opens new possibilities for him: of more sustained psychological insight, and a bolder narrative rhythm.” Well, that’s got to be worth a try. And it’s been going on for a very long time: Henry James tried to know What Maisie Knew, and that’s often quoted as a classic of viewpoint, not just female but child too. I enjoyed What Maisie Knew, although I struggled with the long, complex, interwoven sentences. Many of the nuances were lost on me. Hornby is a slightly easier read.

When it comes to the female to male gender jump, the most recent example I’ve read is Rose Tremain’s The Road Home. It's an engrossing read but I didn't find the protagonist entirely convincing as a male. So, everyone’s done it, and everyone’s doing it, but I still wasn’t convinced.

Then I read a couple of Colm Toibin’s. In both The Blackwater Lightship and Brooklyn, his most recent offering, the main characters are women. In Toibin’s case, he pulls this off to perfection, (in the opinion of this male). Certainly my experience of his characters tallies with my experience of other women. Many of the scenes in Brooklyn, such as the sexual tension of two women whilst trying on swimsuits in a closed department store, are daring examples of cross-writing. I kept reminding myself that it was written by a man.

It’s irresistible. I’ve got to have a go for my next attempt at a novel. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time (plotter not panter) and the prospect does come with some trepidation. Perhaps it’s a bad idea, but I think I can pull it off. My credentials are that most of the people I relate to easily are women - I'm more at home with them than in the company of men. I started a business on my own and ended up working with fourteen women – it’s surprising no blokes ever took me to a tribunal.

At times I’ve felt like a gay man trapped in a heterosexual’s body. My girlfriend constantly ribs me about being gay. Now, before you all jump on me, I’m not saying that gay = female. I do understand that. The fact is, I’m not gay, not even a little bit, but I do believe I’m more in touch with my feminine side than many men. So it’s high time for a sex change. I’ve tried it in short stories and now for a novel. For ages I’ve been collecting examples of what it's like to be a woman – there's fun research to be had asking about this.

So, do you write on the other side? A million examples spring to mind. Anne Brooke springs to mind. What are the pitfalls I should avoid? Am I gay?

The Pram in the Head

There’s a pram in my head and it must come out.

 

When my twins were born, I had no time or energy to write. But the day they started school I sprinted home to my desk and haven’t stopped writing since. That was two years ago. All I have to show is a couple of published stories and a dreadful draft of a novel. What happened?

 

I’d heard Cyril Connolly’s warning: ‘There is no more sombre enemy to good art than the pram in the hall,’ but I mistrusted a decree from someone I doubt changed a nappy in his life. Anyway, he’d missed the point. Motherhood brought a creative license to make mud slides into rivers, dig clay from ponds for finger pots, build skyward ski jumps and all pile onto the sledge to test them, keep snails as pets, make vinegar and bicarb volcanoes– the list is endless and beguiling. Admittedly play doesn’t transform anyone into a good author, but it does demand sensory experimentation and tireless curiosity. Good traits for a writer. And though play makes irresistible calls on one’s time, it’s time that would be spent with children anyway. Then there’s the freshness children bring to language: ‘We run through muddy darks!’ my toddler announced when plunged from the brightness of a meadow to the sudden shadow of the woods. How could such a fertile time have diminished not strengthened my writing?

 

I thought at first it was rustiness, that practise would free it. It didn’t. I needed feedback then. Joining critical forums just proved the work was mundane but not how to fix it. Then one day a spritely woman from church approached me for the title of an anthology I had work in. She wanted to recommend it to her book group. I couldn’t believe how loudly, ‘Nooooooooooooo’ rang inside my head as I feigned an emergency and scarpered. The idea of anyone in the village reading what I used to write had me up all night. What would they say about that prisoner losing control of his bowels? Or those sexual fantasies of an underage teenage girl? They must never read that work. It was uncensored. The problem had come to light.

 

I’d  spent five years programming myself away from the writer’s instinctive role of impartial social observer to that of Pillar of Suburban Morality. Joyce Grenfell had nothing on me. Five years of, ‘Don’t slurp your milk! Don’t prod the cat! Pull your pants up! You know we never say that!’ had quite simply whipped my voice into submission. I now type with a straighter spine (sit up at table!) and there’s no longer rolling tobacco between the keys (a good thing, alas) but the words are as sterile as a bottle teat. My writing wasn’t particularly salacious or explicit, but it was direct, and now it’s sanitized. Or was, until recently. For me, the antidote was to return to basics. I picked up my dog-eared Natalie Goldberg, whose Zen-babbling enthusiasm I’d long scorned in favour of more stringent tutors. I read her in the bath and in bed and at dawn. I applied her rules (don’t think, don’t stop.) The pram is freewheeling downhill.

Guest post by Deborah Dooley at Retreats For You

Deborah Dooley has been a freelance journalist for over 25 years, covering a huge variety of subjects from health issues to celebrity interviews. In 2008 she started Retreats for You, welcoming writers to her idyllic home in Sheepwash, North Devon.

Deborah blogs at http://retreatsforyou.blogspot.com/

We’ve all heard inspiring stories about women writers who regularly rise at 5am to write for 2 hours before waking their four children, getting them dressed, breakfasted and off to school, and then going off to work, (wearing a neat suit, high heels and full makeup), having first bestowed on their partner a kiss full of sexual promise. They’re marvellous. I’m not. And I suspect that had I not been fortunate enough for the last 25 years or so, to write for a living, I would rarely have found the time or indeed the energy to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

And so I sympathise entirely and profoundly with people whose jobs, children, partners, cats – whatever - sabotage their literary endeavours. And when the last of my three children flew the nest, a suggestion for filling the resulting space wrenched me from my brief and slightly self indulgent period of empty nesting with all the force of a Chambers Thesaurus hurled through the air by a frustrated journalist with writer’s block and a tight deadline. The idea was so obvious, and so right.

A writers retreat. A place for people to write, with no distractions, and discussion and feedback on their writing if needed, in a supportive environment, nurtured by plenty of home cooked food and enough good wine to fuel the muse.

Researching the idea, which was thought up by a dear friend, was simple. I asked every writer I knew, and a great many I didn’t, what they thought. Reactions ranged from ‘it sounds like heaven’ to ‘how soon can I book in?’ The plan was an unqualified success, even before we’d opened. And since Sheepwash, our village, is somewhat off the beaten track, my husband, an affable type, volunteered to run a taxi service for guests, to and from the nearest mainline station in Exeter.

In March last year, following the application of a lot of white paint, and the purchase of some crisp white cotton bedding and several angle poise lamps, we welcomed our first guests to ‘Retreats for you’.

To a lot of people the idea of opening your home to strangers might seem a daunting one. But the simple fact that this is a home and not a hotel, plus the immediate common ground we all share, means that we get to know our guests with astonishing speed. Within hours they are helping themselves to tea in the kitchen of our rambling house, and wandering comfortably in and out of the unlocked front door, to visit the village shop or pub, or wander around the beautiful Devon countryside.

We all eat together around our big wooden table, like a large literary family, (although if someone wants to carry on working, they can take a tray up to their rooms). And in the evenings we sit around the fire in the living room, discussing and sometimes reading work, and sharing ideas and creativity. Our guests have included fiction writers (including one Mills and Boon author), poets, people writing autobiographies, screen and playwrights, and children’s writers. All have been charming in so many different ways, and in almost every case, they achieve much more than they set out to during their time here. For me, witnessing their level of achievement is a pure delight. A bit like giving birth - but much less painful. Retreats For You is now a year old, and I am immensely proud of our many positive testimonials, especially as the recipe for success is so simple.

Take one writer, and add a cosy but xen like room with a desk and kettle. Remove the pressures and chores of everyday life, combine with feedback if needed, and fold in plenty of good homecooked food and a dash of wine. The result? Several thousand good quality words.



www.deborahdooleyjournalist.co.uk/retreats.html

Head Count

At a recent book reading and signing I was asked an interesting question.

Frankly, any question is welcome over the sea of bemused faces that usually follow my reading an extract from my latest novel, which makes no sense out of context and has been expunged of all swearing, violence and spoilers. At that point someone asking the way to the loo is a godsend.
But I digress.

On this occasion there was not only a question but a thoughtful one: as a child had I had imaginary friends?
I conceded that indeed I had, being an only child, had many.
The rather fearsome, elderly lady asking – for these are generally the ones with the cojones to pipe up at such gatherings. And bedraggled CW teachers. But they often just want to moan about the state of the publishing industry, how it no longer nurtures true artistic talent.
But back to my lady. It was her theory that all writers had imaginary friends as children. That most lived in entirely imaginary worlds.

As adults, she advanced, we continue until we eventually feel compelled to write it all down.
Now I can’t speak for others, but this struck a chord with me.

As a kid I had armies of exciting playmates freewheeling in my head.
Together we would form pop groups, perform complicated dance routines and travel to far flung lands. Frequently Hawaii.

From time to time, we would quarrel and I’d be forced to cull. Fortunately, there were infinite new friends waiting to be born, all more engaging than their fallen comrades.
By puberty, when many put away childish things, I simply swapped my pigtailed pals for handsome teenaged boys. Naturally, all were desperate to kiss me.
By adulthood, I knew that my little dream world wasn’t entirely normal, that I should engage more fully with ‘real life’, make actual human friends.

I vowed to spend more time with flesh and blood friends. The trouble is of course, those friends are rarely vampires, or the President of the United States. They don’t suggest trips to the Amazon or invent ways to travel through time.
A few years ago, well into my thirties, a new ‘friend’ appeared. She was energetic, outspoken and funny. Great company. She lived in a world where terrible things happened to innocent people and her knack was to set everything right.
One night, I can’t say why, I wrote her down on a piece of A4. The rest is history.
Three books later, Lilly and I are still enjoying our time together. She gets stronger and deeper, more herself with every day. Sometimes we argue, sometimes I’m sick of her. But mostly we have fun.
Of course she’d better not get too cocky or I might throw her under a train.