A Lesson from a Woman in her 90s

Writing Inspiration 

This remarkable American lady talks about the Great Depression as she shares her recipe from that time. Without those circumstances, this recipe may never have been part of her life. Now, though, it is a way to connect with new generations - and technologies - and share her story. 

What foods came into your life by chance, and how have they coloured your life? If you are a writer, how important is food to your characters? If you are a reader, how much do you connect characters and food?

Even if you're not much of a reader, what about characters in other places, such as television and film. Have you noticed how writers work food into the scripts? Which FRIENDS character won't share his food, loves pizza and lasagne, and tries to eat a whole turkey? Which one is obsessed with gourmet food? Which one is vegetarian? If any of these were switched, how would that affect your perception of the character, or are they so bound into the characters that they could never be switched? Share your thoughts below, after you've watched Clara...

A Lesson from a Woman in her 90s

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Who's Steering this Thing?

This year has been intriguing.  A year or so ago, we all had a rough idea what the book industry was.  In fact, the premise of the blog I set up a year ago was that my words would eventually end up on a bookshelf.  As I gave my blog a make-over today I was aware of this.  How likely are my books to end up on a bookshelf now?  It is by no means certain that actual, physical books will be made from my words.  They could become best selling novels and never go near paper.  With every month, it is more clear to me that writers are not the only ones fumbling through a maze whilst wearing a blindfold: everyone is doing it.  

Readers are confused.  One minute, books were physical things.  The next minute, you could download PDFs for free - or for pennies.  Suddenly, ebooks can sell for as much as, or even more than, physical books.  I laughed at the idea of paying $75 for an ebook the other day, when I saw it being discussed on Twitter, only to be pulled up by someone who had thought nothing of spending $150 on one.  Meanwhile, independent shops have been forced out of towns by big book stores and they, in turn, are now being forced out by supermarkets and Amazon.

Ah... Amazon.  How convenient it is.  I love Amazon - there's even a little carousel of wonderful writerly things I lust after at the bottom of this page - but I am a little startled by their newest offer.  It is something wonderful for writers: utterly liberating.  We can finally grab our careers by the lead and march them through the park of profitable endeavour.  That said, it is a cloudy day for publishing.  What am I on about?  Well... you know that writers can now self-published through Amazon?  Their very generous royalty calculations have just exploded.  30-ish% is now 70%!  A fair share for writers will be exchanged for a fair price for readers and exclusivity to the Kindle.  Is this the best thing to happen for writers and readers in an age?  Should we all buy Kindles and publish our books with Amazon?  What would that do to publishers and book shops? How will the Apple iSlate change the literary climate?  Should we wait?  What do you think?

Who's Steering this Thing?

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Is This the Worst Time to Be Unpublished?

First of all, thanks so much to everyone for the support today. It's no fun at all when you receive a rejection letter and even though Jamie Ford (NY Times Bestseller) sent me a lovely note telling me that there's nothing wrong with a few rejections, it's still an occasion that calls for extra sugar in the tea and a mild hissy fit at not being able to afford chocolate.

The important thing when your work is rejected is to be analytical; evaluate whether you could have done anything to improve your chances or not, and work out how to vary your strategy next time.

I was fortunate enough to meet someone who's been rejected by this particular agency and gone on to be published elsewhere. He told me to pay very close attention to their wording if they rejected me as they are good at pointing out exactly where writers have gone wrong.

They said nothing negative about my writing. They described it as 'fluent and easy to read' and went on to explain that the marketplace has become very tough and they lack the confidence to take me on in this marketplace. Basically: 'there's a recession; you're unpublished; we don't want to take a gamble.'

I've noticed that this is happening to quite a number of new writers at the moment and it's understandable. I'm not cross with this agent for not taking a chance on my writing, I'm just frustrated. If they'd told me that the characters weren't strong enough or the writing jarred I would have something to work with. This isn't something I can edit my way out of.

Everyone's going through this at the moment. Companies are closing and qualified people are unemployed. Why should the creative industries be any different?

Our writing can't just be 'good enough' or even 'fluent and easy to read' any more. It must be extraordinary. It must be the equivalent of the Family Guy episode that screened in England last night - The King and I with robots and strippers. If it's not completely different then it won't get noticed. If it is completely different, however, doesn't that also make it a risk?

I suppose I'm asking two questions:

1/how do agents/publishers make the right choices in the current market so that their own businesses don't go under?

2/how are we, as writers, supposed to handle these choices?

Is This the Worst Time to Be Unpublished?

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The Best Bit of the Recession so Far was when... I bought 1 iron, 1 ironing board, 1 laundry basket and 20 wooden hangers for 20p!

Small recession related celebration on the blog today. I found a load of TESCO vouchers I’d been hoarding and managed to sort out all my laundry needs for the cost of a couple of chunks of chocolate. In these downturn days, the joy of a tremendous bargain is so very sweet.

The floor is open. How’s the recession treating you? What are the best bits? Have you started hoarding vouchers, making food from scratch or renting DVDs from the library? Discovered Freecycle? (We did and someone gave us a free TV!) Maybe, if you’re also a writer, you’ve lost your job and found more time to write. Whatever it is, banish the doom with a bit of recession celebration.

Finish the following sentence:

The best bit/s of the recession so far was/is when....

The Best Bit of the Recession so Far was when... I bought 1 iron, 1 ironing board, 1 laundry basket and 20 wooden hangers for 20p!

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Guest Blog 1: Recession Expression - A Guide to Writing Through the Fear by Rebecca Woodhead

We’re in it Together

We’re all in the same boat: it’s sinking, but we’re all in it. This is the time to give thanks to your chosen deity that you are not a banker. You were born creative and with creativity comes inventiveness and resilience.

Your laptop is your life raft. As a writer, your job is not to stand on the sinking ship complaining that the brochure said it was ‘unsinkable.’ As a writer, your job is to chart the progress of the journey. The vessel may not be heading towards its intended shoreline – it may, in fact, be going down – but it is still on an historic journey and your fingers are the ones that can tap that journey out.


Why Write in a Recession?

Why not? This is a decisive moment in history and anything you write now will be valuable. Does that mean it will make you a millionaire? Probably not but it will certainly make you more wealthy. In a recession lots of bad things happen. People lose their jobs; creditors call in debts; houses are repossessed… none of this is good news. These external factors can affect you badly and make you feel trapped and fearful but none of them should stop you writing.

The things that trap us and make us feel truly hopeless are what William Blake called “mind forg’d manacles” and these, not the external factors, will have an effect on your ability to write. If you decide to write no matter what is thrown at you then, while other people are able merely to complain about what they have lost, you will be able to create new things: books; articles; blogs... Creation in the midst of destruction: that is true wealth.


Releasing the Mind Forg’d Manacles

Well, now we’re all fired up to write, and feeling great about our creativity and place in the scheme of things, it might be time to throw in a few practical tips.

The theory’s sound but if the manacles are clamping down or the raft has sprung a leak what then?

1. Forget everything. Forget the money you hope to make from your writing; forget the collapse of the global economy; forget the endless to-do lists. Simply find a space to write and commit to doing so.
2. Understand that the space doesn’t have to be a location, it can be a time. Give yourself a set period of time when you will not allow yourself to be disturbed. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a room on your own or a busy coffee shop. You have to decide that this moment is your writing space and it will not be disturbed. Once you’ve done that, write. Don’t edit it or criticise it. Let it flow. Let yourself write unutterable garbage. The point is to keep the pen moving or the fingers tapping. You can edit it later.
3. Know that you are doing something important. I have read many letters from writers saying that they lack support. They frequently express a lack of confidence in their work because their friends or family members mock them for thinking they can be a writer. Tune it out. You know you are a writer. That is enough. If you act as though your work is important, your mind will pick up on it and make the time and space for you to write.

And Finally…

Even with the best intentions, it can be hard to focus on writing when you haven’t enough money for food or heating. You need to know that this is no excuse. It is perfectly possible to be living in subsistence level poverty, scraping by on benefits and still be creative. I have had two brushes with hypothermia over this winter and we can’t afford to go food shopping more often than once every two weeks, so I’m not writing from an ivory tower myself, but I’m in a far better position than many writers and I’m sure the same is true of most of us. Anne Frank was creative. What do we have to complain about? That said, here are a few tips to make the process easier.


Writing on a Budget – Tips

1. Keep your food costs down by buying in bulk. If you buy unbranded sacks of rice and pasta and store them in airtight containers, you’ll save a fortune. They keep for ages so, if you find yourself with some spare pennies one week, stock up. Also, stock up on vitamin pills for the weeks when a food group or two goes astray.
2. If you’re an omnivore, buy chicken but don’t buy chicken breasts. When you buy chicken breasts, you’re paying processing and packing costs you don’t pay when buying a whole chicken. You can get 16 meals out of a chicken (see my blog for more info on this obsession of mine!) Let none of it go to waste. Make stock from scratch and you’ll have soups, stews, pasta sauces etc for the week. I don’t choose to be a vegetarian, but I strongly believe in being an ethical omnivore. I don’t buy ‘battery’ chickens or eggs however poor we get. If I can’t afford free range, I don’t buy the chicken. If you scrape together the money to buy a free range chicken and you can get 16 meals out of it (or 20 as my husband managed the other week – don’t think I’ll beat that) then the food is way cheaper than the price of some breast meat from a battery-farmed animal.
3. Make friends with your freezer. If you’re on a real budget, freeze everything you can. If you make meals from the chicken as soon as you get it home and freeze them, you can live on the food from the fridge in week 1 and the food from the freezer in week 2.

Now you’re equipped to thrive through the recession as a writer. If you have a shaky moment when The Fear grabs you, ask yourself one question:

‘If Shakespeare were alive today, would he complain because his television had been repossessed or his games console had been sold or his electricity had been switched off?’ Would he? Or would he pick up his pages, sit at his table, light up a candle and write?

To follow my writing journey and for more tips on writing through the recession, go to my blog:

http://frombrain2bookshelf.blogspot.com


Rebecca Woodhead
www.rebeccawoodhead.com 

Guest Blog 1: Recession Expression - A Guide to Writing Through the Fear by Rebecca Woodhead

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From Drafted to Crafted

Operation 'Land Ahoy!' Limps into Action
Right, enough of this nonsense. Operation 'Sh*tstorm' (see earlier post) has been optomistically promoted to Operation 'Land Ahoy!' as the government has offered temporary port-in-a-storm assistance with various fundamendal expenses, which is nice. Glorious subsistence-level bread-line abundance stretches out before us but, perpetual chin-up-edness aside, the third week of my husband's redundancy has been a fun-sapping exercise of the worst kind.

Leaping Salmon or Fetid Fish?
It's not something they've made up to sell papers: there really are no jobs out there. Numerous big (some huge) companies nearby have recently breathed their last and the employment market is flooded with the overqualified and supermotivated. I am reminded of salmon: desperately aiming for one small dot of river; crammed together and unable to move; using up all the oxygen in the water as bears and eagles pick them off like wasp-ridden fruit from a plum tree. Wow. Note to self. Stop watching wildlife programmes.

Close to the Edit
Analogies aside, it's tough out there. Hubby's doing his best on phone and Internet; and pounding the pavements with his head held high and his Curriculum Vitae held higher but no luck so far. My plan to launch straight into my editing has gone awry in the face of such gloom and I have been gripped by the need to do my best housewife impression and focus all my energy on keeping hubby's grin firmly in place. For the most part, I have done a passable job but I have now lost the plot and need to return to my writing. He's a grown up. He'll cope.

Today begins the big edit. The process of looking my work square in the face and chiding it for its very existence is upon me. I must mock it mercilessly and hack it to bits until it cries
'No more! For the love of all that's good and green! Why me? Why??'
Should be fun. Wish me luck.

From Drafted to Crafted

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Happy Depression!

Technically, I'm not blogging or writing for a few days - it's supposed to be a break but it's torture. All the books say you should take a couple of weeks off after writing a novel to think different thoughts before going back and reading the thing with your critical editor's eye in focus. I'm not loving it. It occured to me that I could legitimately publish an off-topic post and that would enable me to stay within the non-writing rule a bit.

How to Enjoy the Recession/Depression
A recession is upon us. What fun. A jolly challenge presents itself and we all get the chance to perfect a bit of old fashioned stiff-upper-lipped Britishness (whether British or not.) Dust off the brown tea pot, polish up your knitting needles, get out your baking trays, it's show time! Some of the following will only apply if you're English but the general gist of it should be of assistance regardless.

• Don't be a wimp. If you need to cry about the economy taking a downturn, losing your job etc do it now and get it over with... finished? Good. Get counselling for it once the economy picks up again but for now, get over it; there's more important stuff to do. Remember something that is easy to forget in a capitalist society - you are more than the sum of your belongings - Get some lipstick and, on your bathroom mirror, write the following in 'large friendly letters': DON'T PANIC!
• Edit your friend wardrobe. If you have any friends who only judge people on the basis of what they earn or possess, they need to go. You can pick them up again when the economy picks up - if you want to - but for the time being they will make you spend too much and cause you all manner of hell once they lose their own money and realise their lives are empty. Get out while you can. Friends cost money and in a recession you can only afford the good ones. Work out their 'cost per grin' value and if it fits into your happiness budget they can stay.
• Poverty doesn't kill you. Starvation kills you. Enjoy your food. Rejig your attitude to your jiggly bits. Stop asking 'does my bum look big in this?' Start asking 'does my bum look small in this?' If it does, eat some biscuits. If this recession turns into a depression, some people will starve. Make sure you are not one of them. Carbs are your friends. Throw out the sugar substitutes. Shake that healthy butt. Camels have humps for a reason and so do you. Celebrate your body's ability to store calories for later use. Exercise them off again when the economy picks up. Until then, remember that rice and pasta keep for ages so if there is a supply problem later in the year or the price goes up due to requirements elsewhere on the planet, it won't hurt to have some in a cupboard.

If you are in financial difficulty, contact the following people:

The Council: you may be entitled to housing benefit - most people are. If you have less than £16,000 in savings you could be getting help with rent while times are hard. You've paid your taxes so the money's yours if you need it. Stop being proud and call them. They're nice people. Really. Be kind to them - they have lots of angry people going in and shouting at them. It's not nice. Smile at them and they'll help you. You may also be entitled to help with Council Tax etc. This particularly applies if you've just been made redundant.
-Citizens' Advice Bureau: They'll help you take the right steps for your particular situation, put together budgets etc.
- Payplan: These people are amazing if you have any problems with debt. They are the ones the Citizens' Advice people or National Debtline will put you in contact with if you need help sorting out your finances so go straight to them if this is your particular problem. They can put together an IVA for you or a debt management plan or advise on things like bankruptcy and relevant financial legislation and they are FREE!
- www.moneysavingexpert.com You can download forms if you've been mis-sold insurance or need to claim back bank charges etc. There's advice on what to do if you've been made redundant, been messed about by your bank etc. There's an answer for just about everything on this site.

If you're not in financial trouble, have oodles of cash and don't know what all the fuss is about take the following steps:

• Look at why this is. If you have inherited money or made a killing out of business, the ultimate source of your profits will be the difference between what you or your ancestors paid for people's time and effort and what it was actually worth. If it weren't for the work of the masses you wouldn't have the cash and if these same masses don't get back to work, you won't have anything to spend your cash on. Don't feel bad about being loaded, it doesn't make you a bad person, but don't feel too smug about it as it doesn't make you a good person either. You've been helped out along the way whether you know it or not, so now's the time to do something about it.
• Spend some of it. Look around; think which businesses will affect the local community most if they disappear and spend more cash there.
• Pay taxes. Stop it with the tax-haven malarkey. It's just wrong in the current climate. Pay some tax in your home country. Go on, you know you want to really.
• Give some away. None of this 'ooh, look at me, I'm giving away money' stuff - unless you really need the approval in which case do it. Try giving money away to people who really need it. Who in your county or country needs some money and would do something great with it? Just give it to them. Do this with at least 10% of your worth every month. Wipe out your affluenza at a stroke.
• Buy organic. Lots of people are having to adjust their organic and green principles in favour of annoying things like avoiding starvation and hypothermia. You don't have to do that so splurge on organic, environmentally and ethically sound produce and keep these people in business. Keep partying for the greater good.

Happy Depression!

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A Tale of Two Days

Two Taxing Days
I am surfing a giant stress wave. There are only two more days until my first-draft deadline which would be stressful enough were it not for the nightmare pair of days I am currently contending with.

Loyal followers will know the story to this point. Newcomers should travel through some of the 'journey so far' and come back so you are aware of the gravity of the situation before reading this post. Go on. We'll wait for you....

Hobbits on a Hill
Ready now? Good. Through the magic of squirreling things away and being creative with chickens, we had enough cash to pay for rent and heating for another month. Looking through our paperwork in an effort to be super-organised, I noticed something scary. My car needs an M.O.T. and Road Tax by the end of the month. Just as I realised this, the temperature plummeted and one of the reassuring lines on the oil meter (which heats the house and water) disappeared.

'Never mind,' I thought, 'I can take some of the heating budget and throw it at the M.O.T. then I can make it SORN (put it off the road.)'

It was a matter of seconds before I realised that I know of nowhere actually off the road where I can store the thing so I can't avoid the full whack of tax even if I want to. It was a matter of hours before another reason not to follow the plan arose. My husband's car broke.

Long story short, the battery was dead and had to be jump started but, as we stood knee deep in snow and surveyed our isolated Hobbitonesque village, we knew that we couldn't avoid the stark truth: modern-day Hobbits need cars and modern-day cars need tax.

My car, being still with tax and M.O.T. for a few days, carried us to the Council Offices for the second taxing event of the week.

"Money for Stamps Guv'nor?"
'We are Povs,' we said, 'be we worthy of benefits?' We didn't actually say that, but that was the gist of it. Many bits of paper were shuffled through and a few reassuring noises were made. We'd heard a few of these the day before at the Citizens' Advice Bureau where our organisational skills and ways with chicken carcasses were applauded and we were told that we'd done all that could be done and they could do no more for us.

'When I am homeless,' I thought, 'I will carry my library card and beg for cash with which to print out manuscripts and buy stamps. I will be the mad, novel-writing bag-lady. "Money for stamps; money for stamps!" I will shout.' I went into a bit of a Dickensesque dream until the man asked us to leave his office.

Anyway, back to the Council Office. Well, the good news is that we may be entitled to a few scraps of government assistance, which is nice, and since the library is close to the Council Offices, Hubby and I went in and loaded up on free literature.

The Deadline
The book is nearly finished. So close now. I feel almost optimistic about hitting my deadline. This afternoon, I'm off to get the car M.O.T.ed. Pray for me that it passes. When I get back I will be typing my fingers off. The novel must be finished. The world may be falling down around me but I have a deadline and as the Internet is my witness, I will finish my novel on time!

A Tale of Two Days

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I think This Counts as an Extreme Weather Event!

A Very Specific Kind of Storm
Operation Sh*tstorm is go! Well, the weather was predicted so the foot or so of snow outside is no shocker but my husband being made redundant yesterday is. Fortunately, my 'hope for the best; prepare for the worst' philosophy has caused me to collect rice the way a Dyson collects dust. Great big sacks of it. (Dysons don't have sacks so that may not be the best analogy but the rice comes in sacks so stick with it.) In the event of twice the current snow and half the current income, the rice will see us through.

Hubby and I formulated Operation Sh*tstorm when the economic climate dipped. We anticipated panic if he ever lost his job so we put together a folder of relevant documents (benefit forms, to-do lists etc), labelled it 'Operation Sh*tstorm' and put it on a shelf. When hubby came home without a job yesterday, it was the work of seconds to locate 'Plan B.'

Our food budget for this week is a little over a pound each a day - if they can do it on Big Brother I don't see why we can't. I toyed with the idea of panic. I considered rocking backwards and forwards on the floor for a couple of days but it seems daft so, instead, we set the alarm for 7.00 this morning, hubby rewrote his CV, applied for every benefit we might be entitled to and searched the internet for jobs, while I wrote another chapter. Only another couple to go now!

In the unlikely event that everything takes an even greater turn for the worst and we end up on the streets, I'm keeping very close hold of my library card. They have computers and I have books to write.

I think This Counts as an Extreme Weather Event!

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Gawd Bless Us...Every One

The 'gawd bless us every one' turkey was a huge success. What it lacked in stature it made up for in taste and, thanks to the festive soup and some homebaked cheesy-nibbly-things and straight-from-the-bread-machine bread, nobody went hungry. Frosty the Fan Oven did splendid work after the electrician chap came out and declared that the previous electrician chap had connected it wrong. A couple of minutes of tinkering and Frosty was Toasty once more. Hubby escaped the grips of man-flu just in time for Christmas, the parental units were jolly and we had a festive truffle of a day.

So, with stockings packed away, my thoughts bungee back to writing. There is still no word from the agent but January is only a couple of days away now so I am excited. I promised not to approach anyone new until January so I have only a few days to wait before I can send off the manuscript to the next few on my list.

Can't wait to get back into the old writing routine. January and February are going to be great. I don't expect to emerge from my writing room at all until my first draft is buttoned up. Maybe I'll break in a new candle to celebrate. By the end of the first week, I will have waded through the tricky middle section of the novel and be scampering down the hill towards the finish. Love this bit!

Gawd Bless Us...Every One

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The Pen is Mightier Than the Oven

The moment I declared that I would write 4,000 words yesterday I knew something would happen to knock me back down to earth. Of course I managed fewer than 2,000. I have a delicious excuse, however. It is nearly Christmas and, for the first time, the clan is descending upon us and our new abode. The turkey has been ordered. It will cost the entire week's food budget. Times are hard and much rides on the perfectly roastedness of our 'Gawd bless us - every one' festive bird. This is the point at which our oven breaks.

Frosty the Fan-Oven
We bought the cheapest oven. We had to. We'd just moved to the first place we'd rented that didn't have an oven... or carpet... or curtains. It was an expensive time and we are povs - a temporary state I hope but a state none-the-less - and as such, we couldn't afford an all-singing, all-roasting oven but we thought, or at least we suspected, that even with a humble price tag an oven would still be able to cook. We were naive. I see that now. A cheap oven will warm your food for a while, then go on strike. In two months, it has broken twice. Will it be able to roast a turkey? What do you think? Much of my time between now and then has been spent on the phone to the shop, supplier, electrician etc begging for a box full of turkey-roasting heat by Christmas Day. The rest of the time has been spent mopping the brow of Hubby who arrived home last night with man-flu.

Non-Stick Flapjacks
Fortunately, the slow cooker had just delivered the latest of my home made soups so we can still eat. The flapjacks I had planned to put in the oven fared less well. The hob still worked and I was very enthusiastic in my attempts to 'bake' on it but we ended up with a kind of clumpy granola and the pan lost some of its non-stick. Still, broken granola-flapjacks and non-stick flakes made a fine supper (Hubby refused soup and insisted it was kept back until Christmas Day, in case the oven isn't fixed.)

I can see my parents' faces now when, the first time we host Christmas, they are presented with a delicious bowl of festive chicken and vegetable soup. Gawd bless us - every one!

The Pen is Mightier Than the Oven

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From Post Office to Publisher

Waiting for the First Reply

Well, it's been a couple of days since I handed over my words to the chap at the post office. The agent will definitely have received them by now. I wonder if the envelope has been opened yet...intriguing...

Wonder who will read it first? I have read all the usual horror stories about manuscripts being returned unread. I believe that, actually: I worked as a casting agent for a minute or two in the nineties and actors' letters were constantly being thrown away unread. I hope someone does read it though: I took the postage out of the food budget. My in-laws are coming over for roast chicken and I've stuck their chicken dinner to an envelope - monetarily speaking. I hope they will forgive me if I bung something cheap into the slow cooker and light some festive candles.

Writing in the Freezer

I'm quite excited to receive my first rejection letter actually. I hope it will have loads of handy suggestions in it. I'm leaving my manuscript with this first agent exclusively until next year when I'll start sending it out to all the suitable agents I can find. My printer is almost out of ink though so I'm hoping for some cash from rels at Crimble so I can buy ink and stamps. We can afford to keep the house heated until mid-January so it would be great to get some good news by then: I don't mind taking money out of the food budget for stamps but after a brush with hypothermia last month I'm too much of a wimp to steal from the heating budget too. I'm just going to have to get really good really quick: it's the only affordable option!

Jilly's Jolly

Wouldn't it be great if there were no rejection letters at all? I can hardly allow myself to imagine such a world. I spoke to Jilly Cooper about preparing myself for this bit of the journey: the bit where you send out millions of manuscripts and receive millions of rejections and she looked at me as if I were potty. She said that I will be published immediately and then said some really sweet things about why that may be the case... modesty forbids. She's nice like that. It would be wonderful if she were right though.

From what I gather, the important bit with an agent is that they know their stuff, love your work and you get along swimmingly so maybe rejections aren't a bad thing after all because they just help you cross people off the list and get closer to your perfect agent.

Well, I'd better hop off and tap out some words. I plan to finish the first draft of my second novel by mid-February so I need to get a wriggle on. I'll try to get 4,000 words down today. Wish me luck!

From Post Office to Publisher

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From Brain to Post Office

Writers write. Who said that? I should probably have looked that up before I started this blog shouldn't I? Clearly writers don't merely write: writers research then writers write. Never mind. The point I was planning to make was: 'writers write and now I know that.'

Bet you're thinking 'thank goodness I clicked onto this blog, it's so very insightful. Now I can face my day,' but before you go off and make some toast, let me explain why I am such a big fan of the 'writers write' thing.

The 'Writers Write' Thing


I have lost track of the number of novels I have started to write. Having read about a bit - magazines and such - I am tempted to believe that this is a common malady. In drawers and boxes around the world lie the very early stages of great works of fiction, stashed away for possible future development by hopeful hoarders. I like to think that Shakespeare's earliest (unpublished) work, 'Beryl and The Impatient Shepherd,' will be found any day now and make us all feel better. Until then, my advice to any writer would be to pull the early stages of a book out of the drawer and turn it into the later stages of a book: this is where the magic of 'writers write' will be made known to you. Starting a novel is easy but, and forgive me for allowing myself to sound like an expert on the subject having cranked out a single novel, finishing a novel is tricky. The reason? The middle bit.

The Middle Bit


It's not so much the beginning of the middle bit that did my head in. It was the absolute middle of the middle bit. You know when you're on a journey - maybe in a car or even on a boat or plane - in horribly dodgy weather and all the time until you get to the middle bit you are thinking 'it's OK, we're not far from home, we can go back if it gets REALLY bad'? Well, you know that middle point, before the bit where you think 'it's okay, we're past the half way point, we're nearly there'? That's the bit I'm talking about. There was a point in the middle of my novel when I felt completely out of control. The characters that I had so lovingly created started to turn on me. It wasn't that they jumped off the page and throttled me exactly, it's just that they became the decision makers in the novel. Suddenly I was no longer monarch and president-for-life over the world of my book. Suddenly, the characters owned it. There had been a revolution and none of them thought to tell me until the middle of the novel, when I was too far in to run away.

The Revolution


Partially sighted panic tackled me onto the floor and sat on my chest for a while until I got my breath back enough to decide to write through the fear, even if it meant I had to throw my very detailed plan out of the window and go where my characters led me, which is what I did. Gradually the clouds cleared and the homeward journey was actually a wonderful experience. My characters had been absolutely right to drag me somewhere else and were kind enough to allow me to steer them back through a few of the lanes I had planned for them to meander down on the way home.


The Post Office


So yesterday, after about a billion years of agonising over the letter I wrote to the agent, I walked to the local post office and handed across my precious work. When he asked whether it contained anything valuable and I replied 'only my life's work,' he looked disdainfully at the slender package so I was forced to add 'only the first three chapters of it.' Fortunately, as people were queuing behind me, I stopped myself from adding 'and it's not my life's work as such, I've done lots of other things' before handing over my C.V. He wished me good luck, I came home and had a cup of tea and now my future lies in the hands of someone in an office in London.



The Blog


This brings me to the blog, which I just decided to do on account of the fact that, however convinced I am in the brilliance of my own work, the statistics don't make chirpy reading. Evidently getting published takes a while, so while I wait I thought I'd share the process and we could all have a jolly good giggle at my rejection letters.


I haven't a clue how this thing works, having not done it before, but I guess there's some way in which you can leave messages of a hopeful or interesting nature and if I'm right and you can then please feel free to do so. In the mean time, I will blog back whenever there is anything to blog as I'm pretty sure the rule applies: bloggers blog.

From Brain to Post Office

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