Since my last post two weeks ago, my ‘writing life’ has been something of a mix, because I’m still working on book three but I’m also trying to make some headway with book four. So this is where I’m up to as we speak:

I’ve now had my editor’s feedback on the first round of edits and it was all generally positive. There were a few typos, repeated words, and little things along the lines of: ‘this chapter ends rather abruptly, add a sentence or two to round it off?’ All easy to deal with.

There was just one thing that she felt still wasn’t working, and that centred around a character’s motivation, which my editor wasn’t convinced by. She felt that this particular character wouldn’t do the thing I had her doing. I gave this a great deal of thought, and then I re-read the chapter. I could see what she meant – this buttoned-up, emotionally distant character was a little too in touch with her feelings in the scene. However, the reason she does what she does is clear in my head and is not  unconnected to her emotional reticence.  I rewrote the chapter, changing her behaviour and attempting to make her motivation clearer. I hope I’ve succeeded. I’m waiting to hear from my editor who has kindly agreed to look at the rewritten chapter and give me her thoughts before I send back the whole draft.

I’ve worked through all the smaller points now, and if the rewritten chapter is okay, my next step is to read through the whole novel again, but I’ll do that after I’ve heard from the two trusted friends who are now reading it. These are my first readers apart from my husband, who’s just read it, and my editor and my agent – I don’t ask anyone to read the whole draft until it’s nearly ‘there’. One friend is already halfway through and loving it (hoorah!) and she flagged up something that confused her – another case of what was clear in my head not being clear on the page!

If the rewritten chapter is not okay, then it’ll need more of a rethink, but I’m hopeful. Apart from that, the main thing we need to do now is agree on a title. I’ve come up with a list of possibles and my editor is doing the same. Watch this space!

Update on book 4 (no title for that, either!) I haven’t moved very far forward in terms of word count since my last post – only a couple of thousand more words – but I’ve been thinking about it a lot and brainstorming ideas. I’ve also been doing some research for the main part of the story which is set in 1961/62, and I’m having a great deal of fun doing that, especially since I managed to get hold of some copies of Woman Magazine from 1961.

What fascinating social documents these have turned out to be, and invaluable for researching women’s lives at the time. As well as interesting features, there are advertisements providing lots of information on fashion, cosmetics, and furniture and household appliances. There are recipes (none of which I’ll be trying any time soon!) giving an idea of what people were eating in those days, and one of the most interesting sections – readers’ letters. The problem pages tell you so much about day-to-day living, morality, and society in general. And all the letters are great for language – lots of words and expressions used then that we don’t really hear any more.

This feature, which is all about dressing appropriately for what the day has in store – Lorna’s outfit was perfect for work and for an evening with her ‘current boyfriend’ afterwards. “He said, ‘let’s go for a spin in the car and will have dinner out later’ – forgetting to mention a round of golf on the way home. Lorna’s formal suits didn’t quite make the grade!” Poor Lorna. The feature goes on to examine Lorna’s lifestyle in order to give her some fashion advice. In just one paragraph I learned that Lorna, who was a ‘high-powered press and publicity gal’, earned £10 a week, out of which she paid £4 rent for her small flat, 4s 2d on travel, and 2s  on lunches. She also spends 9s 6d (so about a twentieth of her weekly wage) on a ‘professional hairdo’ once a fortnight, 6s 6d on cosmetics and 1s 6d on hand cream because ‘she does her own housework and must care for her hands.’

All fascinating stuff, and so much detail – it’s amazing how just including a few accurate period details can give your story authenticity.

So, that’s been my ‘writing life’ this time. Oh, and one other thing to tell you about – it’s always nice to get emails from readers saying they’ve enjoyed your books, but it’s particularly nice when it’s from someone who isn’t your typical reader. I had a lovely email this week from a man who said he usually reads police dramas and espionage thrillers, but he read the blurb on the back of The Things We Never Said and thought it sounded interesting so he bought it. He said, ‘I could barely put it down, and I will be ordering your second book as soon as I finished typing this.’ so that, as you can imagine, rather made my day!

If you’d like to know more about me and my work, or to sign up for one of the How to Write a Novel workshops, visit my website, like my Facebook page or follow me on twitter

I realise I’ve been repeating myself a lot when I introduce each blog post, so from now on, I’m just going to suggest that if you’re new to this blog, you might like to take a quick peek at my last post, which explains where I’m up to with my novels and how I got to this point.

So, I last posted when I was just about to head off for a writing retreat at the Arvon foundation’s west Yorkshire writing house, Lumb Bank. I arrived in thick fog, which was wonderfully atmospheric and spooky. It boded well for a few days of intense writing, too, because walking in the surrounding woodland would have been quite dangerous when you could barely see your hand in front of your face.

First sight of Lumb Bank in the fog

I had a lovely room, which had two desks – didn’t know which one to write at! And here’s the view, such as it was in thick fog.

An Arvon ‘week’ is actually a five-night stay. You arrive on Monday afternoon and leave on Saturday morning, and the only domestic work you have to do while you’re there is help to cook one evening meal, and wash up after one evening meal and one lunch, so there’s plenty of time for writing.

Table set for dinner

Regular readers will know that I’ve recently finished the first round of edits on my third novel and am currently waiting for my editor’s feedback, so I thought I’d use my few days at Arvon to make a start on book four. Maybe it’s not quite accurate to say ‘make a start’ because I’m rewriting some material I wrote four years ago during that year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  I wrote 50,000 words that November, but by the end of the month I’d stopped actually ‘writing’ and started adding sentences in capital letters  with suggestions for where the plot might go next.

So after I sent the latest draft of book three back to my editor, I read over the 50,000 words again. When I wrote them, I thought they were absolute drivel, but I found myself becoming so engaged in the story when I read it again, that I was quite annoyed when it finished. Well, it didn’t ‘finish’, exactly, because I’d got lost and didn’t know how to end it, so let’s just say I was disappointed when it stopped.

Anyway, I’m still not sure where the story is going, but I was so engaged with it, particularly the part of it that’s set in the past, that I decided to start working on it again and see if I can make it work as my fourth novel. So I separated the past and present stories and, given that it’s the past narrative that excites me the most, I decided to work on that. I took about 25,000 words to Arvon with me and did some extensive rewriting as well as some new writing, and I now have just over 33,000 words. This is still very much first draft, obviously, and given that I still don’t know how it will end, I’m not entirely certain that this WILL be book four, but I feel it has something, so I’m going to keep going for the time being.

I met some great people at Lumb Bank, and was delighted to meet up with three lovely writers I’d met there on previous retreats. I find it so nourishing to spend a few days in the company of other writers, discussing the highs and lows of the process, as well as the ins and outs of our plots.

A frequent topic for discussion among writers is always, ‘are you a planner or pantster?’ In other words, do you plot things out first, or do you fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along? Everyone works differently, and for many writers, myself included, it’s usually a bit of both. But this is the first time I’ve embarked on a novel without knowing roughly what’s going to happen at the end.

This could be dangerous! I would always say you need to have some idea of where you’re going (okay, I suppose I do have some idea) even if you’ve no idea how you’re going to get there or what will happen along the way. I suppose what I’m doing this time is just writing towards the next thing I want to happen (I know quite a lot about what I want to happen) and see where that takes the characters.

This one might be a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but I’m feeling almost confident at the moment, because I’m convinced that the next book can’t possibly be as difficult as the last! Book three, for those of you who are not familiar with this blog (and my constant moaning), has been a bit of a nightmare, even though it turned out to be worth it in the end.

When I wrote my first novel, I think I had the idea that the next one would be easier, the next easier still and so on. Ha! How wrong can you be? Every novel appears to have a life and character all of its own, and it seems to me that author and novel are two separate entities working together,talking to each other and growing together rather than it being as simple as one creating the other. Does that make sense or have I finally lost the plot? (Pun intended!)

Have you ever started a book without much idea of how it will end? Are you a ‘planner or a pantster’, or a bit of both?

To find out more about me and my work, or to sign up for one of the How to Write a Novel workshops, visit my website. Or you can like my Facebook page or follow me on twitter

I’m going to start this blog with a picture I took this morning while walking my dog in the General Cemetery: A leaf, apparently suspended in mid-air, twirling in the autumn sunlight. If my three-year-old granddaughter had been with me she would have thought it was magic, and it occurred to me that this makes quite a nice metaphor for the writing process. The leaf was of course suspended on a strand of spider silk, but because I couldn’t see that it was attached to something, it appeared beautiful, magical, and with a life of its own. In my opinion, that’s what a novel should be like – the reader shouldn’t be able to see the writing. I’ll address this point again soon in another post.

So, only one post in seven weeks; bad blogger!! But as regular readers will know, I’ve been deep in the first round of edits on book 3. Just a quick summary for new readers: I’ve been working on my third novel for around 18 months. I’ve really struggled with this one, and I’ve blogged about it fairly regularly. In January 2015, I thought I was getting there and I submitted a rough first draft to my editor and agent. I knew there were big problems, particularly with structure, but I hadn’t realised quite how rubbish that draft was. Anyway, the three of us had a wonderfully creative brainstorming meeting, and in the weeks that followed, I began to have more ideas about how to sort out this novel that I knew I wanted to write.

To cut a long story short, at the end of August, I submitted what was actually a second draft but felt more like a first, given that I’d rewritten around 75 to 80% of the original. The happy news was, they liked it! In fact, they appeared to like it very much. In recognition of my hard work, my lovely editor gave me a few welcome weeks off before sending her comments.

Since I received the editorial feedback five weeks ago I’ve been glued to the manuscript. Happily, there are no major problems. It seems to be mostly a case of strengthening certain aspects, clarifying things to make motivation clear and simplifying scenes that are overcomplicated. There has been no feedback so far that I have disagreed with, and only one suggestion (and it was made clear that it was only a suggestion) that I’ve decided not to follow.

I find the first draft an agonising process. Many writers are exhilarated and excited by the first draft, and that’s probably how it should be. However, for me, the second, third and however many subsequent drafts is where the excitement lies. At this stage, I know the story, I know and love my characters, but having been so close to the manuscript, there will be things playing out in my head that I’ve not been able to convey properly on the page. This is where the insights and experience of my agent and editor come in. Their feedback enables me to go back and refine and improve and bring the whole thing closer to what I’d originally intended, and I love seeing it blossom before my very eyes into something so much better.

So for the last few weeks, that’s what I’ve been doing. I start by making a ‘to do’ list and then I work through, item by item, leaving the trickiest until last. Even problems that seem insurmountable at first feel easier to tackle at this stage. I worked through everything on the list, leaving the ending until last – my editor thought the ending felt a little ‘rushed’, that it needed to be somehow ‘bigger’. I completely agreed, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. In the end, I made myself simply sit down and rewrite the scene, and lo and behold, it got better! (whether it’s better enough, remains to be seen!)

After that, I read the whole novel aloud (not in one go!) To check for repeated words, clumsy sentences and the general rhythm of the writing. Then I sent it off to my editor again. I know there will be more to do, but I don’t think it’ll be huge. Watch this space!

I’m off on an Arvon retreat today with the aim of getting started on my fourth novel. Again, watch this space! Dashing off now to get packed, but will blog again next week with an update.

If you’d like to know more about me and my work, or if you’d like to sign up for a workshop in the How to Write a Novel series, please visit my website, like my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter

It’s been a few weeks since my last blog, because I’ve been unable to tear myself away from editing the new book. I’ll do a post specifically about that in the next couple of weeks – I’m aiming to get this round of edits finished by the end of the month. And although I’m desperate to get back to it, I thought I’d take a little break to tell you about a talk I did last week as part of the Off-The-Shelf literary festival here in Sheffield.

As you can see from the flyer, the talk was called A Slice of Sheffield, because although I talked about my books and writing in general, I wanted to focus on the importance of setting. My first two novels are set in London, where I grew up, Sheffield, where I live now, and Hastings, a seaside town I fell in love with when I lived down south. The new book, which is still untitled at the moment, is set in south-east London and Scalby, near Scarborough. I do like a bit of seaside in my books!

For me, setting is massively important. As a reader, I really want to feel the place I’m reading about; I want to see it, smell it, hear it, and understand how I might feel while walking around it. So as a writer, that’s exactly the experience I want to offer my readers.

It was lovely to be able to talk to a group of Sheffield people about how I’d used Sheffield in the novels, and during the Q&A session and discussion afterwards, I discovered lots of lovely little titbits about Sheffield that I wish I’d known earlier!

There were some interesting questions that came up in the Q&A, and I thought I’d share three of these with you:

1. Question: What sort of research do you have to do? Do you need to approach organisations or individuals with certain areas of expertise, or do only need to research the location?

 Answer: For The Things We Never Said I needed to know how DNA evidence is used by the police when reviewing ‘cold’ cases. I read a lot about actual cases where DNA was used in evidence to help prosecute perpetrators many, many years after the crime. I also talked to police officers and forensic scientists so that I understood (after a fashion!) how it actually worked.

For that book I also needed to know about psychiatric hospitals and treatments in the early 1960s, in particular, electro convulsive therapy. Again, I read widely, and included in my reading actual accounts of patients who had been treated with ECT at that time.

As for location, I relied on memory for my descriptions of south-east London, I’d taken a lot of notes when I was last in Hastings, and I wrote about Sheffield as a newcomer to the city, so I probably noticed things then, that I wouldn’t notice now – more of which in a moment!

For The Secrets We Left Behind I talked to a coroner, and a former scenes-of-crime police officer officer (even though it’s not a crime novel!) Apart from that, it was just the location. By the time I wrote this novel, it was several years since I’d been to Hastings so I arranged a short research trip during which I took photographs and made notes. I was still able to write the London sections from memory, but I made the mistake of assuming that, having been in Sheffield for a few years, I now knew the area well enough to write it from memory. When my editor read the first draft, she pointed out that, while she felt she could ‘see’ the scenes set in Hastings and London, she wasn’t ‘getting’ Sheffield.

I learned a valuable lesson here – don’t assume that just because you’ve walked through the city centre many times you will be able to recreate it meaningfully on the page! So, I took my notebook and I went and walked around the city centre again, really looking this time, taking notice of what I could see, smell, hear etc. And it worked – the setting came to life.

2. Question: Do you do your research before you start writing or as you go along?

Answer: A bit of both. Research can be an excuse to procrastinate, and believe me, I can procrastinate with the best of them! But I try to restrain myself and only research as much as I  need to in order to start writing. In the early stages of the book, I won’t know everything that is going to happen and therefore I won’t know what I’ll need to research until it actually happens.

So basically, I do the minimal amount of research before I get started, I do a few little bits as I go along, and I do a fair bit at the end of the draft – I put notes in the MS in capital letters along the lines of: ‘check how this would happen’; ‘find out how much this would cost’. Stopping to research these things along the way would detract from the writing and if I don’t need to know in order to carry on, then researching at this stage would probably be an avoidance technique.

3. Question: Would you ever set a novel in an imaginary place?

Answer: No! Again, this is based on my preferences as a reader – I love to read about real places, preferably places that I know or have visited. I’m sure writing about imaginary places would make my life as a writer slightly easier, but it’s just not something I ever see myself doing. I am slightly worried that I might run out of real places, though – the new book was originally set in York, but despite several research trips, I just couldn’t get the place right. Maybe I’m just not good enough at research, but I think I need to either live in a place or know it very well indeed before I can write effectively about it.

There were lots of other fascinating questions as well, but too many to go into here. One thing the audience wanted to know was which of my books was the most difficult to write. They were slightly surprised when I replied that, though I found them all incredibly difficult (the writers among you will know that you have no idea just how very, very hard it is to write a novel until you actually do it!) the most difficult has definitely been the most recent one – the one I’ve been blogging about for well over a year. There were some expressions of dismay that it doesn’t necessarily get easier!

Ah well, onwards and upwards!

If you’d like to know more about me and my work, or if you’re interested in attending a novel writing workshop (currently planning a series of these for 2016) please visit my website. You can also follow me on twitter or like my Facebook page

Hello! If you’re new to this blog, I’ve been blogging about my experience of writing (and rewriting) my third novel for just over a year, although I blogged for quite a while before that on more general writing and book related matters. Last week, I submitted the draft I’ve been agonising over and already I have feedback from my brilliantly wonderful editor and fabulously marvellous agent. You may guess from my hyperbole that I am happy. Very, very happy. In fact, I’ve been doing the happy dance ever since I got the email, singing, they like it, they like it, they really, really like it!

Those of you who’ve followed my progress will know that it’s been a bit of a nightmare. I’ve really struggled with this book, and with the structure in particular. I knew that there was a story I really wanted to tell at the heart of it somewhere, but I got horribly lost along the way. There were points at which I despaired. Could I really do it? Had I had bitten off more than I could chew? There were times when my confidence was so low that I honestly wondered whether I would have to abandon the whole thing and start a different novel. But some part of me refused to give up.

The main point of this week’s post, is partly to share my absolute joy with you – I’ve been quick enough to share my frustrations and misery along the way so it’s only fair to share the good stuff too! And partly because I hope it will encourage and give hope to those of you who are battling with your own novels as we speak.

First of all – the joy! Picture this: you’ve sent off your second draft (the first having been an absolute pile of crap); you know it’s better, you believe in the story and care passionately about your characters, but a little niggle of self-doubt tells you it may still not be good enough. You know you won’t have to wait long for feedback – your editor knows you’re biting your nails – but you expect it’ll be at least a week or two. And then, a mere five days later, the email arrives, Telling you she loves it, you’ve cracked it, she started reading it and couldn’t put it down. Hoorah!!

Now you know why I’m doing the happy dance! Yes, there will be rewrites, but she assures me they’re small and nothing to worry about, and what’s more, she is deliberately not sending them through for a couple of weeks so that I can take a bit of a break.

So the other point is just to say, if you’re struggling with your novel, stick with it. It may take a long time, you may even need to go back to the beginning (I did – this draft is almost 80% completely new writing.) You may have to get rid of characters (see last week’s post); you may have to completely rethink your structure. But the chances are, there IS a way through, and you just have to keep working until you find it. My editor and agent both talked about my dedication, hard work, and commitment; I’m not saying that to show off, just to reiterate what all writers are told again and again: it’s 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration or it’s 10% talent and 90% sheer hard graft or however else you want to put it.

My favourite quote on the subject (and I have this pinned above my desk) is this;

‘Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.’
Calvin Coolidge

I’m going to have a break from the blog for a couple of weeks now and I’m off to Whitby for a few days to see the sea, eat fish and chips and catch up with some reading. I’ll start the blog again towards the end of September, and I intend to keep it going as I work through the editorial notes for book three and find a suitable title etc.

And then, dear readers, I invite you to come along with me as I take the perilous journey through the writing of novel number four…

Thank you again for all your support, and remember, persistence is everything!

If you’d like to know more about me and my work, or if you’d like to attend one of my events or workshops, please visit my website, like my Facebook page or follow me on twitter

One week to deadline!

If you’re new to this blog, you’ve come at a good time! I’m feeling quite upbeat at the moment because I’m editing, and I LOVE editing! I’ve been blogging for just over a year about the experience of writing my third novel, and for the past seven months, I’ve been redrafting the not-very-good-at-all first draft I submitted in January. I have promised to deliver this draft by the end of August, and I’m on target. In fact, I hope to deliver it before the end of this week.

I’ve been setting goals each week, and this is what I said in last week’s post:

Edit my final two chapters, finish drafting the epilogue, and add in two little incidents I’ve come up with for earlier in the book.

Well, yet again, it’s Mission Accomplished! I’ve also sorted out some timescale problems (I had a pregnancy lasting eleven months!!) and little plot issues, such as two characters apparently meeting for the first time when in fact, they met earlier in the book.

By the way, if you’re a new reader, I should point out that I’m not always this good. In earlier posts, I frequently failed to meet my modest targets, and I spent a lot of time moaning about how hard it all is (and it is, it really is), but this stage, the editing stage, is the fun part, the payoff for all the agony that is a first draft.

One of the things I really enjoy doing is adding in all those little nuggets that enrich a narrative. It may be a little snatch of description, an incident that reflects or foreshadows something else in the novel, or a character detail I hadn’t thought of before. Long after my first novel was published, I kept finding little notes I’d made but hadn’t included – so annoying!

Since then, I make sure every note goes on a postcard or a scrap of paper and is put in a box or file, ready for the editing period. I then read each note and try to work it into the novel, or discard it if it’s no longer relevant. This time, I found three separate notes with the same thing written on them – a pretty clear indication that it was worth including! I still use notebooks, too, but I make sure I cross through each item when I’ve dealt with it so I don’t have pages and pages of notes to read through.

I’m virtually there now, I think. I still have a couple of things to address – there’s another time problem I’ve just spotted, and also something quite important that needs to be mentioned a second time. I’m also checking for my ‘tic’ words – I’m a shocker for ‘slightly’ and ‘almost’, and words like ‘very’ and ‘just’ which are often completely redundant. Another thing I have to watch out for is just how many times characters nod, shake their heads, or smile. These are all perfectly legitimate actions, and can be a good way to break up a bit of dialogue, but I had one page where everyone was nodding so much that I don’t think ‘ridiculous’ would have been overstating it!

So, next week’s goal is easy-peasy: finish the bugger! When I say ‘finish’, you know what I mean – while I know this draft is better than the one I submitted in January, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot more work to do once I have feedback from my editor and agent, but it’ll be a great stage to reach. I’m hoping to get this sent off before the weekend, and then I intend to drink some champagne before writing next week’s blog post at a more leisurely pace. (Not immediately before, obviously – I usually try to remain reasonably sober while writing this blog.)

See you next week!

If you’d like to know more about me and my work, please visit my website, like my Facebook page, or follow me on twitter