On the first day of Christmas, against a target of 1,000 words, I managed to cross the finish line at a modest 1,150 words. I sat at the kitchen table, with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice for company, and took 5 minutes to roughly plot out the structure of the next few scenes, before getting down to it.


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I’m sure you didn’t watch this year’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Did you? I'm sorry to say that I wasted many hours watching various ‘celebs’ Facing Up To Their Fears.

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This morning, with my short story near to completion, I knew that I'd have to motivate myself to pick up The Curse where I left it, at around 16,600 words. And then I realised that we only have 12 days till the eve of Christmas, and a challenge formed in my mind.

It started with a very simple concept - 12 days until Christmas, 12 days of writing. And then I thought if I used this opportunity as a countdown to Christmas, using a daily multiple of 1,000 words, i.e. producing 1,000 words on day 1, 2,000 words on day 2 and so on until day 12 itself with a target of 12,000 words, I could well have myself a rough first draft by Christmas. In twelve short days I could accomplish a wordcount of 78,000 words, and adding that to what I've already done, I'd end up with a first draft of around 94,000 to 95,000 words.

Sounds exciting in principle, right?

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Three out of my four St Petersburg novels are on sale in ebook form on Amazon for just over £1.50. The Cleansing Flames and A Gentle Axe are priced at £1.52; A Vengeful Longing at £1.59. The third novel in the series, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, is being sold at £3.99.

I believe a cappuccino at Costa Coffee costs £1.79, so you can get some of my books for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Now I like coffee as much as the next man , but even the best cup of coffee only lasts – what? – ten minutes, half an hour max. When you look at the relative purchases in terms of pleasure hours, one of my novels offers far better value.

I’m not trying to diss coffee. I’m just trying to point out that those ebooks are ridiculously cheap.

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Whilst still banging on the door with my first novel, Delve, I thought what better way to take my mind off the painfully long submission process than to start a new novel. I knew it wouldn't stop me checking my email every half an hour, or ringing my husband from work to ask if anything had come in the post, but it would provide some form of distraction.

And so whilst I knew that Delve in my mind was the first novel in a series, what I couldn't predict was whether it would be successful or not. Not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I started out with a completely different kind of project. Not another young adult novel, but an adult horror with supernatural undertones. And not first person POV, but multiple person POVs.

Little did I know how much a challenge The Curse (working title) would prove to be.

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Wrestling with elastic bands, the disappointing thud on the doormat of a returned manuscript and that: ‘From Pitch to Publication’ plug shamelessly inserted into agent Carole Blake’s rejection letters.


For me all the above sum up the self-flagellatory process that typifies the book submissions’ process.


It’s been a while since I’ve done this – in fact it’s been nearly eight years. I recall the routine the first time round. It was gruelling and exhausting. It did eventually involve me being signed up to an agency and riding that rollercoaster of false hope. It ended without a book deal and the realisation that if I wanted to pay my mortgage and raise a family then I’d better put aside such a foolish dream.

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The “winner” of the Literary Review’s Bad Sex Award was announced on Tuesday. The recipient of this mean-spirited slap in the face was David Guterson for scenes in his novel Ed King. I haven’t read the book, but I did read an “offending” passage on the Guardian online and I have to say, it seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable bit of writing:

“she took him by the wrist and moved the base of his hand into her pubic hair until his middle fingertip settled on the no-man’s-land between her ‘front parlour’ and ‘back door’ (those were the quaint, prudish terms of her girlhood)”.

In particular, the Literary Review’s assistant editor Jonathan Beckman seemed to object to the terms ‘front parlour’ and ‘back door’. He is quoted thus: “He says in brackets that these are quaint, prudish terms but I don’t think that is sufficient justification for using them.”

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An agent or publisher, ideally both. I’ve been down this road well trodden, and it seems to have no end. I’ve been subbing Delve since the Summer with little success. I get the standard rejections that many receive, but in amongst them I find a personal note or comment that motivates me to keep going, and keeps me true to the vision.


I have a submissions tracker that records my journey. To date, this is how it reads:
First tranche, sent in Jul 11 - 9 rejections (including 1 positive), 2 non-responses.
Second tranche, sent out at the end of Oct11 – 3 rejections (including 1 positive), 6 outstanding


Note. After the first tranche, I took the opportunity to review my initial submission, took some constructive advice and reworked my submission. I’ve had a low response rate to date on the second tranche, but I’m still hanging onto the possibility that someone will see the potential in Delve as I do.


But whilst I may exude calmness and confidence, beneath my exterior something simmers. A kind of aggravation and impatience, tempered with humility. I knew the road was long but I’d hoped to, at least, catch a glimpse of the final destination, but it twists and turns before me, the prize frustratingly out of reach. And now I feel as if I’m at a crossroads, seeing new paths materialising in front of me that I hadn’t fully considered before.

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In the comments on my post How Don't You Do It?, Glen says that she's been in writers' groups where:

they regard any form of deliberate intentionality in the first draft stage (as opposed to the later reworking stages) to be completely noxious to any eventual artistic merit. Now, this is all fine, but then these authors seem to imply that EVERYONE has to do it this way, or else you're being a fool to yourself and a burden to others (so to speak.)

I know exactly the kind of conversation Glen means - and I speak as one who's often explaining (even preaching) the merits of what you might call the NaNoWriMo or Shitty First Draft approach to writing. Various thoughts about this in no particular order.

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Lord knows, I’m not the fastest writer around.

I can sit and stare at a single paragraph for an unbelievable amount of time as I fiddle with a phrase here, a word there. I’d like to say it makes the eventual product worth all the agonising, and mostly I think it does, but every so often, I catch myself puzzling over a new phrase, a new twist on an old idiom until my brain feels as though it’s turned to porridge and is gradually leaking out through my ears.

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