Whatever Next? - by journalist and novelist Sophie Radice

So the first novel has come out - and another must be written while the momentum is there. Or that’s what I’ve been told.

People are full of ideas for me. They say they miss Anna, the main character in my novel, when they finish reading and so they want to read about her in other situations. Someone has suggested I work on the thrillerish element in the first book and that I should read Sara Paretsky, to learn how to write really good character driven thrillers with a female heroine and with an interesting political perspective. While I was talking to this person I was quite inspired. Wouldn’t it be good to put Anna, the heroine of The Henry Experiment, in some really difficult situations, possibly to do with the Congolese community she had started to become involved with in my first novel? I could see her stumbling into some really complex stuff, which would take place in London and Manchester. The situation would again have something to do with a missing child but this time a much older one.

The trouble is that I didn’t really know there was a thrillerish element when I was writing it, although it was meant to be quite tense. Which is strange because I hate tension. I tend to make gasping sounds and grab people's arms in the cinema when someone is in danger and just avoid books that make me feel stressed or uncomfortable. I think someone must have told me to try and get some tension in a book if you want people to carry on reading it.

There is also the problem that I was imagining my next book would be a book that wrestled with really big themes – themes such as God and Darwinism all packaged up in a really good family story.

So what to do? Write two books at the same time (in between trying to earn a living, look after children blah blah) – switching from one to the other? No. That is impossible. Write both of them, back to back (and try not to think of the years ahead and the huge effort it takes to get published and then to get people to actually read your book)?

Which is another thing. I am so preoccupied with trying to sell The Henry Experiment and get publicity that I am not sitting and thinking about what my next one is going to be at all. No, I’m far more concerned with trying to get bookshops to take my book, get people to write about me and get reviews. I must try and sit down and think at some point.

The trouble is that I have really forgotten how it is done. When people ask how long it took me to write The Henry Experiment, I have no idea. I can’t seem to remember how I wrote it or in what circumstances. Did I have a routine? I can’t have done. I was working full time, with kids and a difficult husband. I think I must have written it in the evenings. Or was it such agony that I have put it out of my head? Perhaps I used to force myself to get up at five in the morning before I went to work? - but somehow knowing myself I very much doubt it.

Perhaps it wrote itself.

Sophie's novel, The Henry Experiment, can be bought at: http://www.linenpressbooks.com/shop/the-henry-experiment-2/

A Kind of Magic

Do you believe in magic?

I do. You may call it different things depending on your outlook – coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, chance, intuition, ‘the universe’, flow, fate or grace. Whichever, it exists for me just as surely as the material world does.

A tiny example: yesterday I slept late and switched on the radio at 10am. The first words I heard were the Woman’s Hour presenter introducing journalist Sophie Radice. Sophie’s novel, The Henry Experiment, has just been published by Linen Press Books – my publisher. Coincidence, yes. But it brings something else, a heightened awareness, a sense of something special happening – as someone I know recently described it, it’s ‘the sparkle in the eye of life.’

Magic is what happens when you go ‘into the zone’, whether writing, painting, running, sculpting, singing or speaking. In these magical moments, all that’s required of you is that you turn up and apply yourself – or, the case of writing, you apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair and begin. It’s like turning on a tap. Gradually, as you move more and more into your ‘flow’, words come to you. Ideas appear. Where did that felicitous phrase come from? How did that simile work so well? They certainly didn’t come through your thinking them up. They just arrived, seemingly fully formed, on the page. It’s the same with painting. I look back at paintings I’ve made and have no idea how I did them, or indeed how I could replicate them now. They ‘just came’.

It puts me in mind of Winnie-the-Pooh and Rabbit, and how Winnie-the-Pooh sits and lets things come to him, while Rabbit goes out and fetches them. Though perhaps a better analogy is that of the sculptor who ‘knows’ that the finished form already exists within the stone – it’s her job to chip away the extraneous material to reveal it.

Perhaps our stories are already there, deep in the recesses of our unconscious, waiting for us to trust our process enough to begin. Perhaps synchronicities arrive to remind us of this. Who knows?

I was sitting in front of a blank screen with no ideas for this post, having just read an email from my father entitled 'Magic'. Why not, I thought?

Do you believe in magic?

very small is very beautiful

One of the joys of being published by a small press is the sense of involvement and collaboration throughout the process. Not just the writing and editing process, but the whole business of producing and marketing and selling the book. Some may argue that it is the writer’s job to write and the publisher's job to publish - a simple division of labour. I disagree. I have no wish to hand over my novel to someone else and forget about it. I find the whole publishing process intensely interesting, especially since this is my first (and quite possibly only) chance.

First, the editing. All publishers will offer some editing - most with a great deal of commitment. I am lucky enough to have an editor who also happens to own the company (Linen Press Books), so between us we are pretty focused on creating the very best ‘product’ we can. The first stage focused on the manuscript as a whole. My editor suggested a number of structural revisions: a new beginning; bringing in a character earlier; writing new scenes to create empathy for one character; working on making another character more spirited. And in the process I discovered two new sub-plots which needed to be written. Once these were done, we began going through the manuscript, chapter by chapter, by email. My editor tidies up a lot at a superficial level (I’ve discovered various writerly ‘ticks’ which I was barely aware of) and makes suggestions for rewriting some whole sections. She is very good at putting her finger on the issues that need addressing, making appropriate suggestions and then letting me address them in my own way. This process will take months – the novel is about fifty chapters and we get through two or three per week. Simultaneously, she is working with another writer, Sophie Radice, whose novel, The Henry Experiment will be published early next year, so it’s all go. Mine is due to come out around the same time.

Then there’s the cover. As a painter, this has been one of the most exciting bits so far. I have heard of writers who feel upset and angry because their covers do not reflect the content of their book. I was directed to a wonderful photographic images site (Arcangel-Images) where I browsed for many happy hours, finding photographs which reflected the atmosphere and themes of my novel. My editor did so too, and there was quite a bit of to-and-froing until we found an image we both loved. This was then handed over to the designer to create the cover design.

Now we are approaching the marketing stage. This is where the big difference between the small independent publisher and the ‘big boys’ becomes clear. If you are published by one of the large houses, you may be assigned a publicity person and there may be some money in the pot for marketing. This might include your novel being sold in a prominent position in the bookshops (although not for very long, unless it turns out to be a best-seller). The publicity for The Making of Her will be entirely down to myself, my editor and her hard-working intern, as will persuading bookshops to stock it. This feels like a mountain to climb – but a fascinating and challenging one. As someone who is happy (ish) spending vast amounts of time alone with her computer, the thought of going out there and talking about my book is daunting, to say the least. But it’s also exciting. It's bringing out my latent extravert. I’ve drawn up a marketing plan. I am planning to take some evening classes in public speaking and I’m learning how to write a press release. Hema Macherla, Linen Press author of Blue Eyes and Breeze from the River Manjeera has been really helpful in answering my questions about how she approaches bookshops. I’m going to have postcards printed to hand out to everyone I know or meet. I'm researching literary festivals, book groups and libraries, local papers and magazines. This is the easy bit. The hard part will be making myself go out and talk to people. I suspect it may be like my search for an agent: a lot of knocking on doors and a lot of No, thank you.

Recently Linen Press have withdrawn their books from Amazon because every sale costs them £3. Yes, that’s right. Amazon takes 60%. So The Making of Her will be available through the Linen Press website, through Gardners and in chain stores like Waterstones if we can persuade them to take it. The indies may stock it but their turnover is generally small. An individually tailored marketing package and a personal approach seems to be the best, and only way forward.

Of course, the likelihood of selling a large number of copies is small and we don't know whether it depends on good reviews, articles in magazines, the grape-vine or just good luck. But you know what? After years and years of rejections and knock-backs, I consider it a huge privilege to be involved in the process of creating and selling my book. It may never happen again. So I'm going to do my best to enjoy every minute.