I'm a sucker for an agony column, and since it's years since I've had a proper job, Jeremy Bullmore's in Saturday's Guardian has the same pleasure for me as gardening programmes do: intellectually fascinating, without the least necessity to take it (at the moment) to heart. And today's column included a problem which I found myself reading as a perfect analogy for a particular writerly situation. I hope Jeremy won't mind if I don my costume of Jerusha Cowless, agony aunt to the passionate, aspiring author, and paraphrase:

Dear Jerusha; I'm in my late 20s and currently working in a bookshop while trying to get my novels and stories published. I've spent a lot of my career with this aim, reading all the great authors and doing an MA, but now that I'm trying to find a publisher, I'm feeling as if there's no place where I and my writing fit. I have struggled to find an agent who sees fiction as I do, and no matter how much effort I put into revising my work and trying to make it so good they can't resist it, I still often find that my work is misread, or rejected outright. Over the past couple of years I've really stretched my reading and writing, and worked out what to me is important about literature. It has very recently occurred to me that a lot of my professional frustrations thus far may be down to my personal view of what's important in writing, and indeed my strong instincts about what I believe to be good and bad literature.

I have been looking to write for a living and/or do other related literary work in publications and forums which I believe in, but in the meantime it's obviously crucial for me to get that first publishing contract. Although I'm not overtly opinionated in my submission letters and networking in the writing world, I cannot change my literary nature any more than I can change the colour of my skin. Any advice as to how I might get my work to fit better, so as to get that contract, would be greatly appreciated.

From what you say,

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And if you don’t know who those characters are, stop reading now! Clearly, you aren’t well enough to be on-line as you must have been in a coma the last couple of years. Go take a pill! Go work on recovering your memory!

I am talking, of course, about the three stars of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Series. Today I am (rather bravely, I think), putting forward my case on the respected bibliophile’s site, Vulpes Libris, So, please, any of you who have loved the series as much as I have, take a look; back me up; I might need all the help I can get!

Why? Because, like so many commercially successful novelists, Meyer has been much maligned – regarding the quality of her writing, the quality of her characters, her motives for writing these stories. Even the Vatican has added its criticism. Yet, not for years, have I sped through such a serial, reading late into the night. Vampires? Werewolves? With a good dose of unrequited love? What more could a girl want? Ah yes, I know – Robert Pattinson cast as the hero when the book finally made it to film.



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Being slightly Christmas-phobic I’ve decided to leave all tinsel related topics in the capable hands of other Strictlies less inclined to panic attacks whenever the subject of Delia’s Christmas versus Nigella’s is raised. Instead, in this post I’ll mostly be focusing on two writing relating incidents that have particularly caught my attention this week.


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I started out as a short story writer. In fact, it was winning two short story competitions that established me as a ‘proper’ writer (in my own mind, if not in anyone else’s!) – and I went on to have stories published regularly in Woman’s Realm, Woman’s Weekly, Woman, etc. I was proud of this, and so were my friends and family – but I did come across a certain amount of snobbery from people who had no idea how difficult it is to achieve publication in these magazines, and who presumed I’d try to go on from there to ‘have something more serious published’. As if it were that easy!



Well, I’ve never had much ambition to have anything ‘serious’ published – whatever that means. But like lots of short story writers, having a novel published did seem like the ultimate goal. To be honest, working full-time, as I was back then, and with three teenage daughters, a dog and two cats to look after (not to mention a husband and a house), even finding the time to write a novel seemed more like a silly fantasy than a goal. I did try – several times – and abandoned the resulting pathetic attempts, most of them fortunately before submitting them anywhere. But then I had the idea for The Trouble With Ally – a kind of chick-lit novel about an older woman – a fairly new theme back in 1990 when I started writing it. I was so fired with enthusiasm, so sure this time it was going to work, that I finished it, liked it, submitted it. Don’t ask how I found the time – the job, kids, animals and husband must have all suffered neglect! Over the course of eighteen months I collected rejections, although several of the agents I tried were complimentary but didn’t take me on. I moved on to trying publishers direct and eventually, after several more rejections, got a two-book deal with Piatkus.



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On Saturday morning it started snowing. And snowing. And snowing. The world turned dark, grey and invisible. It was a day that makes little writers want to take a Thermos of tea, a large bar of Dairy Milk and hibernate in their dens until Spring.

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The next installment of interviews with writers about giving up their day jobs features Emma Darwin, author of historical fiction novels The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy, which has just been named as one of The Times’ Top Fifty Paperbacks of 2009.

MT: Hi Emma. Can you tell us abou the day jobs you have done?

ED: As a student, front-of-house in the West End and for the RSC at the Barbican Theatre; then marketing and distribution for academic publishing; then part-time in a music shop, fitting little fiddles on five-year-olds and ordering sheet music; writing and editing for a magazine about childcare.

MT: Anything in those day jobs that has inspired your writing?



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Dear Literary Santa,

I think I’ve been a good girl this year. Just look at this blog! Just look at my latest book! Um – okay, it hasn’t found a home yet, but it’s the best I’ve produced in terms of editing, taking on board criticism and research. Although I know I’ve been ratty; wept at rejection; eaten too much chocolate. But I’ve not given up. I’m determined. So, please, may I request the following gifts?

1) A large bottle of patience, two spoonfuls of which I can take directly after each submission.

2) A generous slice of humble pie, for those moments when I come over all X-Factor Contestant, and tell myself I should already be choosing my dress for the world movie premiere of my novel.

3) Contact lenses to hide the green in my eyes when yet another writing friend gets a deal. Envy is not an attractive quality, Santa, I know, but I can’t escape it and have decided camouflage will be more effective than seeking a cure.

4) Vouchers for cognitive therapy to help cure me of my email obsession.

5) Clear instructions on how to write in the First Person without being too introspective.



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One of the Chapter Titles - one of the Big Issues - in the how-to-write books and courses and seminars is Characterisation, and I'm putting capitals all over the place because that's how it feels that aspiring writers talk about it. Whereas when agents and editors and experienced writers talk about it, they just say, 'I love the characters.' And having written that first sentence as a run-in to what I really want to say, I'm realising that it's the abstraction of the idea of characterisation which is daunting for beginner writers, not the process. After all, thinking about how different humans tick is what we all do most of the time, as soon as we enter a room or a world which has other humans in it. Non-writers may not be aware that we've been speaking prose all our lives, or that we emplot our existence as a way of understanding and finding meaning in it, but we all know that we spend an awful lot of time trying to work other people out: what they are, why they're like that, whether they're telling the truth, what they'll do next, what they'll do if we do X.

Indeed, working out how things work is the fundamental nature of childhood, and it's not an accident that so much of the best and/or most popular children's fiction involves the protagonist landing in a strange world, without parents who can or will help, where they have to work out the rules in order to survive: boarding school, space, time travel, shipwreck, being orphaned, evacuation, or anywhere with magic or science which operates differently from the known world. The experience of working it out, and eventually understanding if not altogether mastering that world, embodies a child's experience of the real world. And not just children, either: I write as one who's just started reading Robinson Crusoe.

So I don't think it goes without saying that the best way to develop your characters and write your novel is to work them out in detail beforehand, but you wouldn't think that to read some of the how-to books.

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As I mentioned here, I hugely enjoyed Cally Taylor's Heaven Can Wait when I read it a little while ago. It's a terrific book, funny and sad and affecting and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. So it really is a huge, huge pleasure to welcome Cally to my blog for a little chat (and I know I say it's a pleasure to welcome everyone I interview here, but it really is - I don't interview people I don't like or whose work I don't think is awesome!).

Cally Taylor. Hello!

Hello Nik! Thanks so much for inviting me onto your blog.



First things first (let’s get this out of the way). Your book, the brilliant Heaven Can Wait, made me cry. How does it feel to have written something that made a grown man weep?

Pretty gobsmacked to be honest, and a little bit guilty for upsetting you! When I wrote ‘Heaven Can Wait’ I never imagined that

a) men would read it and

b) it would touch them

but I’ve heard back from a couple of men who’ve read it now and had nothing but positive comments (the ones with negative comments probably decided to keep them to themselves!). Interestingly the part of the book that made you cry made me cry when I wrote it and I think maybe that’s what touches people, the genuine emotion I put into ‘Heaven Can Wait’.



Can you tell us what the book’s about?

‘Heaven Can Wait’ is a supernatural romantic-comedy (yes, despite the crying there are funny bits in it!) about a woman called Lucy Brown who dies the night before her wedding and ends up in Limbo. She’s given the choice between going to heaven to be reunited with her parents or returning to earth to complete a task that will allow her to become a ghost so she can be reunited with her fiancé Dan. Lucy decides to return to earth, joins two other ‘wannabe ghosts’ in a grotty house in North London, and has twenty-one days to find love for a total stranger. The pressure is on, and it just gets greater when she realises her so-called best friend Anna is intent on making a move on Dan.



When and why did you start writing it?


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