Cyberfriends and beta readers

It's my turn to be a beta reader, and I'm enjoying the next draft of a book I've seen develop since its early incarnations on the MA. Being able to hand my book over to readers who are able to stand back and take a critical view - and are confident enough to be honest - was a real gift. I hope I can be helpful, too.


If there's one thing blogging has done for me that I didn't expect, it's to connect with so many people trying to achieve the same goal. Fellow writers, all scrambling for the same limited resource, a publishers' attention and a contract. Yet the spirit of support and co-operation is astonishing. Writers dig into their imaginations, into their very selves, and they connect on a deep level. I will probably meet very few of the people I meet online, yet they have been instrumental in my development as a writer. I started my blog thinking it would just be me, and it would be a record of my growth as a writer (partly to draw on for those pesky rationales and essays). It has become so much more. It's partly therapy, as a whinge (sorry) about dead ends, lack of motivation, lack of confidence. It's partly celebration as I master new skills, travel outside my comfort zone, and have little successes along the way. But mostly, it's to connect with other writers. I can't imagine not blogging, and hope some day I can use the blog to publicise an actual novel.


Meanwhile, reading other people's work gives me the inspiration to keep going, keep trying to get better. It's a journey, and reading is a guide along the way. I think you often pick up things other people do, that you should watch out for in your own work. Back to work. I'm at 17k with the contemporary strand, which is very satisfying.

Draft 2

Having spent time plotting and rearranging I am ready to write draft 2, the first whole draft of the book. I have eleven new scenes to write, then adapt previous scenes, and one of the main characters needs rewriting but I find the actual writing easier than the planning! It's all better than just wailing at the phone 'Ring, damn you' and dissolving into chocolate cravings. No news from the editors or the agent. If I twiddle my thumbs much more they will come off. So, write.


Meanwhile, the sequel to Secrets (still called BT2) is starting to gel. Edward Kelley is such a shady character (we don't even know his actual name, he also went by Talbot) I can sort of make up bits of his journey. That will enable me to finish the Dee strand I started in Secrets. I seem to sort it out in conversation in the car. Since it will take eight hours to drive to the Lake District, I should get the rest planned out before I get back!


My crazy daughter is home, having taken a few days from her hectic life in Plymouth, and I'm so enjoying her company. She's new to all these discussions, and full of questions and ideas. I'm looking forward to no. 1 son-and-editor coming home next week. It's been a collaboration, the kids, the agent, tutors, friends, and they all seem to have an interest in what happens next in 'their' story. I just hope I can give them some good publication-type news at some point. 

The motivation for Bones: the well. I pinched it off a house moving website!

The Planning process - not!

Having got to 40k words with Baby's Bones, I printed it all off, scene by scene, single spaced to save paper, and had a really good look at what I actually have.


On the plus side, good mystery, enjoyable historical strand, archaeology. On the minus side...where do I start? Dull main character, inane second character, cliché, cliché...So I arranged the scenes in some sort of order and have gone through with a  pen. Changing scenes, adding scenes, cutting great chunks. I'm always reluctant to cut scenes which is daft, they take relatively little time to replace and if they are not working, they are just so much compost anyway.


So, the secondary character has a back story, is less loveable and much more interesting, and my main character is more accessible. In my distant past, I found myself in a relationship with a 'separated' man. I'm drawing on that slow and horrible disappointment as I (and Sage), realised that just because something is said apparently sincerely, doesn't mean it's real. It's what, at the moment, he wants to be real. I'd like to be grown up and mature about it, but I hope he has warts and his wife has chucked him out. Sage's ex-lover may get his comeuppance, too. 


So the dining room table is covered with scenes, the living room with discarded notes and scribbled time-lines and the worst is nearly over. Tomorrow I hope to sit down and really write draft 2. 

Gruesome subjects

I'm having a lot of satisfaction writing about - well, a really horrible, can't-stop-reading about-it subject. Foetal abduction. This horribly real crime is on the increase worldwide (but thankfully, extremely rare). I first read about a small village in Italy that had two over a period of a decade, I think between the wars, and the facts stuck with me. Women will pretend to be pregnant then befriend or abduct a pregnant woman to attack her and steal the baby. Very few mothers survive, several babies have died. Worse, there are a small number of cases when the abductor has also killed the woman's other children.


Writing about such a painful, horrible crime allows me, as a writer, to dig deep into the psyche: my own experiences of being pregnant, even the painful years when I couldn't get pregnant. How someone goes from longing for a baby to needing one, obviously, is beyond me. Most abductors have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. But the more common crime of abducting babies from prams or hospitals is from the same psychopathology. Women either seek to attach a partner by claiming they are carrying his child, or they are obsessed with having a child and want to experience a parody of birth. They just turn up with a newborn, announcing the birth to have taken them by surprise. 


Anyway, I wondered how other people write the tough stuff, especially people who write about emotional anguish or crime. I can't say I feel upset exactly, but I do prefer to write undisturbed, because it takes longer to get deep, deep into the painful stuff.  

Anticipation

When I was in my twenties, writing a book/short stories/poems/articles was a process of anticipation, followed by despair (no-one ever answered in less than several months) followed by rejection. Or acceptance but with a load of qualifying conditions like 'could you make it shorter/better or longer/lighter and could the heroine be blond and more bubbly?' When my daughter was born I had had some success but the weight of crushing rejections was heartbreaking. I stopped writing because my daughter was disabled, and I did intend to get back to it, BUT I was glad to give up all the rejections. I was successful as a parent, I was largely unsuccessful as a writer. My acceptance rate for creative work was about 10%. I did get a lot of articles published, but they didn't count to me, they didn't seem important (except that they usually came with a useful cheque). Now, I've stepped on that merry-go-round again, with a load of people reading (and probably mostly rejecting) the book. Kind fellow bloggers have warned me: rejections come first, and fast. Deals are often preceded by questions and criticism. One was asked to change her book from a multiple third to a single first person POV (which means the character has to be at all the action, or told about it, to maintain the story). If I do get a deal, it will all happen fast, and can't be predicted.


So I'm sat here, concentrating on the next book, which isn't tainted by all this possible rejection. It's all mine. I've read it over the weekend and a sharper, darker second draft with a stronger story is forming in my head. My children's book is growing fast, and for fun, and a holiday is two weeks away.


Thank you to all the kind and knowledgeable people that have been supporting me.     The blogging community of writers is a generous and creative one. I'll let you know what happens.

Writing a children's book

Last year, I wrote a kids' book, at least in first draft. My kids (who are mostly over 18!) love the story and have encouraged me to finish up a better draft but I lost faith a bit because it was marked down by a tutor. Quite rightly, as the central character was the least well visualised. But it left it at the back of the pile.


I always write two books at a time. The B&B book (I know it's a terrible title!) and Borrowed Time, then Borrowed Time (now Secrets) and A Baby's Bones. Now I've got Bones to work on, there's a window for the kids' book, maybe in time for the Mslexia competition. Writing two books can be very therapeutic for me. I write fast so my words tend to run ahead of the plot. 1000-2000 words and I need to sit down and think about the next scenes. To keep the fingers flying, I play with writing random scenes for the future book. This means by the time I sit down seriously to write the next book, I've experimented with the characters, got to know them, and have some plot ideas. Marley and the Crow is about 30k words of good quality (except for Marley) but patchy, poorly paced children's fiction for 9-11 year olds. It needs a new draft. So today, to stop myself chewing my fingers to the knuckles, I played with a first person rewrite of Marley, and I think it worked. Very satisfying. It has tension (will the evil developer con poor Aunt Marianne out of her house?) and threat (who is poisoning all the rooks?) and comedy (the budding relationship between a tame crow and Marley) who is trying to deal with her parents' break up. Anyone who knows me is familiar with the crow theme, we have rescued a number of corvids, and we were recently offered a young rook...called ASBO for some reason. We had to decline as we don't have an aviary and I think he would be at war with the cats!
Here is a little sample, and apologies to those who have seen it before.

   ‘Who are you?’

   I jumped a mile. It’s creepy being in someone else’s house, looking for teabags, and the voice was really nearby. It seemed to be coming from a box of cornflakes on a shelf just over my head. Then, there was a really loud tapping, like a little hammer on a metal drum. I pulled the cereal packet forward—and came nose to nose with a huge beak. A big, black bird was sat on a jar, filled with yellow sweets, with a label on. Sherbet Lemons. The bird turned its head, looking at me with one amber eye, then swivelled its head to look at me with the other.

   ‘Who are you?’ I could see its beak open and shut, but it still sounded really weird that a crow was speaking. It pecked the lid of the jar with a loud dink.

   ‘Aunt Marianne!’ I shouted, and stood back against the table. I ought to explain, my aunt’s house is really old fashioned, and her kitchen is like a museum. All the walls are covered in shelves with giant jars on, with strange labels like ‘chocolate sugar strands’ and ‘pumpkin seeds—eat first’ on. We wouldn’t be there, but Mum and Dad had a huge row, and Mum drove us all the way to Cornwall from London.

   ‘Oh, there he is!’ Aunt Marianne bustled in, wearing what looked like a pair of flowery curtains made into a dress, a scarf wound around her hair and about a million bangles and bracelets. ‘Bram, come down from there, you scruffy old thing!’

   ‘I was just trying to make Mum a cup of tea.’

   Aunt Marianne flapped her long sleeves, which made a mist of white powder fly up from a bowl on the table. It tasted sweet, but made me cough.

   ‘Marley, help me. Cut him off…’

   I stood at the end of the shelf while she tried to shoo him off the shelf, but I wasn’t getting too close to his beak. He just hopped from jar to jar. He started cackling, which made him sound like he was laughing at us.

   ‘Get down!’ he shouted, in Aunt Marianne’s voice which was hysterical. ‘Get down, get down, get down!’

   Even Aunt Marianne had to laugh at him, as he hopped and flapped to the end of the shelf.   ‘Quick, Marley, get me a tea towel.’

    I looked around, and grabbed a cloth that was hanging on the back of a chair. ‘He really talks.’

   ‘Oh, crows are excellent mimics.’ She took the towel and held it in both hands, in front of the bird. ‘Oh, come down you silly—’

   As she said silly, she waved the towel at him, he started slipping on a curved lid, and he had to clap his wings to stay on. Aunt Marianne was tall, easily as tall as Dad, but even she couldn’t quite reach him. He tried to get his balance, but fell off, flapping his wings like mad, and landed…whoomph…straight in the bowl of powdered sugar.

   I screwed my eyes up tight, and held my breath.

   When I opened them, everything looked frosted. The bird was sat on the table, looking like a short, fat seagull standing in snow.

   I started to laugh, even as Aunt Marianne started to swear under her breath.

   ‘Ha ha ha,’ said the bird. The more I laughed, the more he said the words, until even Aunt    Marianne joined in. The patterns of her dress had faded with the dust.

   The bird shook himself, turning grey. ‘Who are you?’ he said again. ‘Who are you?’

   I stepped out of the way of the beak. ‘Is it safe...I mean, does it bite?’

   ‘Bram? Goodness, no, he’s quite gentle.’ She batted herself with the tea towel, which just smeared the sugar. ‘If you hold your hand out he’ll probably come to you.’ She tutted. ‘Silly bird.’

   ‘Silly bird, silly bird,’ he echoed. Then he sneezed and his feathers darkened again.

   Then Aunt Marianne did something weird. She gave the bird one of those “don’t-you-dare” looks she sometimes gives Christy, my disgusting little brother, right before he picks his nose in front of Grandma. ‘Just stay there and be good, silly bird. I’ll get the dustpan and brush.’

   ‘Silly bird, silly bird,’ chanted the bird, shaking the dust off his feathers and making my nose itch. I started brushing the sugar off, but it was sticky. The bird walked towards me with lizardy, scaly feet, his tail brushing a zigzag in the sugar on the table.

   ‘Who are you?’

   I brushed the sugar off my T-short until I could see the pattern. ‘I’m Marley, crazy bird.’

I wasn’t planning to hold my hand out for him to peck. He fluffed himself up, looking twice as big, then all his feathers sort of made a rattling sound, like kicking dry leaves. Then every one fell into place, looking as black and glossy as before.

   ‘But who are you?’ he said, in a little growly voice. ‘And what kind of name is Marley?’  

What does it take to write a book of potentially publishable quality?

I have no idea...no, really, I was asked this in a email a few days ago, by a student on an MA in creative writing, and I'll answer it again because I need reminding occasionally too. I've met a lot of people who are aiming to write a novel, and they seem to fall into three camps.

• Those who think they have a novel in them but haven't started one because it seems so unlikely that they would be able to get published there's no point. My advice would be that the reason most of us write novels is because we are driven to write anyway, publication isn't the only goal. Write short stories, send them off to magazines, put your toe in the publishing pool.
• Those who have written a novel and are now polishing and honing the masterpiece prior to taking the marketplace by storm. My advice would be to remind them that first novels very rarely get published,  most of us learn a lot with each novel, and statistically we are more likely to get novel 4 published than 1, 2 or 3. Put the book out there, but start book 2. And book 3. Grieve, move on, get stronger.
• Those who have written a stack of books but can't finish them (oh, that's me!). Take a long, hard look at the best of those books, then rewrite to make the book stronger. Whatever the core of the book is, whether it's a relationship, a threat, a journey - make it more so. If it's a tense thriller, make it more tense. If it's emotionally draining, make it more so. Rewrite, rewrite. If you aren't sure you are making the book better, join a writing group, take a class, apply to an MA, work on your craft. Read good books in your genre, analyse how they do it.

And remember, no matter how good your query letter and synopsis, it's the book that needs to impress the reader. Make the first three chapters absolutely perfect, good enough to enter a competition, say. Then rewrite all the other chapters to be at least as good. If there's one thing I've learned in the last few years and the five books I've written over them, it's that writing is hard work, and your first draft will be enormously improved by being rewritten and re-crafted, probably several times. Whether you do that as you go along, or through successive drafts, those words can probably be improved. I don't know whether I can get a book published, but I know I've got pretty close over the last few months. I'm waiting to hear back from editors, but I'm not sitting around. I'm off to write more books, and more drafts, to make my chances even better. And remember...