Writing for your reader

Blimey, one month has passed. In that month I've moved house, written a load more of A Baby's Bones 2, received copies of book 2 in all its shiny blueness, received a copy of the Finnish version (also lovely!), struggled with depression and decorated two rooms in my house. Presently we have about 50% of our books on shelves, and the rest in the storage container. Everyone has a bed (at last) and the cats have explored every cupboard, under floorboard space and possible way to the outside. Normal life is starting to creep in. With it is a reminder to myself that I need to write first draft for me, then second and subsequent drafts for the reader.

I am surrounded by pretty talented writers at my local group, and some of them could and should be working their way up the publication ladder. The difference between me and some of them is the editing process is the need to switch from pleasing yourself to pleasing a reader who doesn't know your character inside out, who doesn't know what's going on in your head. 

A classic mistake is introducing too many characters in the first chapter. To a reader that's just confusion waiting to happen, and if I am confused by a book, I put it down. That's compounded if I can't form a representation of the name in my head. A name from another culture, a made up name for fantasy or names that are too alike compounds the difficulty for the reader. I chose (it's a family name) Guichard for my male protagonist. That's Gee-shar to the French, Gwee-shar for the English. I ended up having to get Felix to pronounce it for his audience in book 1 - also for the reader. I had to do the same in book 2. It's my own fault, I should have gone with something less exotic. 

I'm enjoying writing a book that isn't sold, it's a different kind of pressure. I'm writing more for me, while being open to changing it for an audience once they've been identified. But for now, I'm following Viola over the beautiful - but dangerous - landscape of sixteenth century Dartmoor.

Writing limbo

Just when you're dying to write you can't. Pah. We are blessed with a  house move that is turning into a big challenge - we have to move ourselves. Down a long, narrow drive and by hand - from a six bedroomed house. Most of our stuff is already in storage in two big containers. 

Fortunately, I have a bunch of lovely people helping, and we'll do it over a couple of days. I can't wait to be in now. And be unpacked, and have the fire lit, and something nice in the oven, and a kitten or tow on my lap so I can go back to my present project. Even though it's a heavy heavy new desk, I feel it's full of new stories...

I also branched into applying for a writer-in-residence post. The 'job description' just sounded like so much fun - and so much lovely teaching and workshopping as well. I didn't really think of myself as a 'writer' other than - you know - spending time every day writing. But I have learned a great deal through the process of being published, and I would love to share that with other writers. See, I have no problem calling them writers, since they are actually writing! I don't expect to get an interview, but how cool would that be? 

Feedback for book 3 is coming in - thank you Charlotte, Sophie and Guy - and I am working their suggestions in. The worst thing is that I didn't start out to write a trilogy, and certain pitfalls have revealed themselves! It is really difficult to write a book 3 that someone new to your books will like - or understand. Lots more suggestions will need to be explored. The book is with my editor at the moment, I am sure he will have some helpful suggestions as well. I like feedback. I've learned that you can't see your book for the first time again, once you've written it. You need beta readers. But it needs to be better before I send it off to anyone else.

So, all we have to do now is say goodbye to an incredible house, pack up the last few things, and head off to our new life in a Georgian town house near the river. I'm looking forward to a new start.   

New house, new book...

I have delivered book 3 to my agent, which is a huge relief, and am back to charging forward on the sequel to A Baby's Bones, sadly unsold at the moment. ABB 2 is independent so I don't mind too much, and I'm back exploring history and it's another mystery/romance. I hate the word romance, it suggests some giggly silliness that ends up with the perfect guy and perfect girl skipping off into the sunset, but many 'romances' are actually exploring real relationship problems like infidelity and incompatibility. It's more one of those. 

Like previous books it has a historical and a contemporary theme, although I'm leaning heavily towards the historical here. I think, if I have time and the energy, I would like to write a 'historical novel' about the period I've been investigating so heavily. I'm drawn towards a real person whose life was remarkable, but I'm fairly terrified of the level of research you need for a real historical novel. I can do the fill in the gaps bit, I'm just worried about getting the real bits wrong. Like most Tudor women, her life is recorded thinly, and by men. Maybe for a PhD.

In other news - we're moving! Hooray! It's in the everything we need is in boxes stage, pretty well. We're hoping to actually move in two weeks, but the date is still not fixed, not even provisionally. We're moving from a rural, monster quarry-master's house from 1865 to a late Georgian terrace in a town. We're also downsizing from 7 beds to 4 which may produce a few problems but there's just about room for the thousands of books and more than a dozen guitars (not mine!). I'm going to miss the house - it's inspired several books including the one I'm just starting again, the much rewritten ghost story set in a B&B. 

The new house has a great living and dining room/study (for my new desk! Not a good time to buy a desk when we have to pay for the removals and buy my daughter a new car but these moments can't be missed) and stark and cold modern kitchen stuck on the back. I'm sure we'll cheer it up. But I'm going to miss my woodburner the most.

Finished book 3

So, I've finished book 3. Only I haven't really finished book 3 because it still needs massive edits, replacing, and glueing the two strands together. That's the craft part really, rather than the creative part of pushing the story onto the page and following the different perspectives. I wrote 5,500 words yesterday - all day, the last 3 chapters of Kelleys' journey, just leaving the finishing half a chapter for today. I'm reluctant to end - I want to follow their story on to the next few years, really!  

I have been asked a gazillion times by new writers - how long should a book be? Well, you'll get lots of different answers, but you won't get a look at less than 85-90k and you will struggle with over 120k (unless they are epic fantasy). Big books take up too much space on the shelf for a début and less than 90k makes it hard to write a full, character-led book. This ones at 103k at the moment and will finish around 110k. Because it's the last book of the trilogy I need to work at finishing story arcs, especially for less important characters.

The hardest thing has been killing off a couple of my characters. Their race is run, I can't see them doing anything essential, and the drama of their sacrifice works. So it has gone off to my son, Carey (who really is my no.1 editor) who has been hunched over all the chapters, sorting and making notes. He will help me stitch it together in the next few days then - Pow! Off to Charlotte, my agent (I still love saying that). Really, I write for Carey and Charlotte first, then start to refine the book for a family audience (all of whom come back with a million things they would like to change) and then off to my editor, Michael Rowley. It occurs to me - this is the end of my present collaboration with Del Rey, and then I go back to being like every other aspiring author - looking for another book deal! Scary thought, especially as I've just got used to working with Del Rey UK and I think the relationship has been a great learning curve and safe place for me, as I got used to the publishing world! I'm lucky to have an editor who really loves fantasy and sci-fi. I'm also dying to see what book 3 will look like - here is book 2.

Now I just have to come up with a name for the book. Secrets of ... what?Bloody hell, this is the hardest bit... suggestions on a postcard...

When it's working, it's working...

I'm so enjoying writing at the moment. I've written a third of a sequel to A Baby's Bones and I've nailed sixty thousand words of Secrets 3, with just fitting the historical strand in and writing the last three chapters to go. At last! It was a very long dry spell. Worrying about cancer and selling the house and just the everyday stresses of a big family all reacting to their Dad's illness just killed my concentration or even the interest in writing. But the last few weeks have been great. When the writing is flowing, it's like being in a boat of a fast flowing, straight bit of river. Despite a family emergency a couple of weeks ago I seemed to have kept the momentum going. 

Pulling the last book of a trilogy together was both very hard and surprisingly satisfying. In the end, it all seemed to slot into place as I followed up each character. I still have a couple of loose ends and people to chase up but the first draft will be able to go off to my agent shortly. Yay! It's been a long slog. One of the things that helped me deal with an unwieldy, lumpy manuscript was to pull out the two strands and write them separately. Within those strands, I found there were story arcs I could dissect out, write as one continuous narrative (so I was sure they worked) and then pop them back into the flow. Now all I have to do is assemble what I have, write those last chapters (now I know what has to happen in them) and package it up for Charlotte. Then I can back to my heroine in ABB 2, who I left in the dark, surrounded by strange sub-human creatures in the night, defended only by her handsome cousin and her husband. 

Found some writing mojo

It's been a whole month since I blogged, and I have been busy with writing but not just the creative kind. Editing for publication is a serious business. What goes out has to be perfect, or at least, as close as you can get, so lots of blind corners, repetitions, awkward sentences and other mistakes have to go. The copy edit came back with lots of useful suggestions, thank goodness, sorting out the temporal problems.

I have a problem with numbers. A real problem with numbers, like I struggle to remember 4 digit numbers,and can't hold a 6 digit number in my head long enough to dial it. So keeping dates and days in my head as a story progresses - nightmare. Anyway, the copy editor not only found where I had made mistakes but suggested ways to get out of trouble. Then I worked on the manuscript for a couple of weeks and the book was gone through at the publisher's end. Finally, a whole load of typeset pages came my way courtesy of editorial assistant Emily - to be gone through one more time. Three pages of corrections later it is off, and finished.

This has released a flood of pent up story that just needed to be told. A Baby's Bones just cried out for a sequel, so in between mornings spent wrestling with Secrets 3 I have been writing ABB2. It's just steaming along at two or three thousand words most days. I've got 23,000 words in ten days, all of it historical. I've decided to try and write one whole story, then write the other strand as a separate story, a bit like I did with The Secrets of Life and Death. So satisfying to be writing original words again! I'm also writing linking chapters with book 3 - also very satisfying. This is what I want to do, write for a living, but the editing, rewriting and other writing related concerns do take up a lot of time. Meanwhile, the wait for a second book deal goes on... Just because you get one doesn't mean you'll ever get another one, a humbling thought.

We also got kittens...

Jasper

Ki

These are anti-cancer, anti-depressant kittens. I recommend them. maybe they are responsible for the writing mojo. Yeah, baby.

Working with artists

One of the unexpected benefits of writing books for a publisher is that they come up with amazing artwork for the book covers. And then, if the book sells overseas, each editor thinks about how to sell the book in their market. The publisher in Finland (LIKE) have just come up with this:

I really like it - the colour, the birds, the drop of blood. So different from the UK covers. It reminds me of paperback thrillers from the sixties and seventies, sharp. I'm wondering what the German publishers will go for. The US cover is very different again.

I love that another creative person gets to use the book as a jumping of point for their own art. I think it encourages people to speculate more, ask questions about where the character is walking and why? What about the magical glow?The UK paperback is less mysterious, I think and more related to a moment in the book. Here the font of the words tells a story all of its own.

I didn't have a say in the covers, though my opinion was sought. What can I add? I'd be pretty defensive if one of the artists concerned made me change the words! What do I know about selling a book? I think all three, in their own way, are eye-catching. My favourite will probably always be the hardback, and I love what they are hoping to do with book 2. Very classy stuff, I'll post when I can.