This afternoon I suddenly hit a winning streak, and wrote just over 4000 first-draft words in eight hours, when I normally reckon to write 1300 in four, and then lie down in a darkened room. Or go out and conquer the world. I think it helped that it was the end of the chapter and took me to exactly half-way through the novel, and that I knew exactly what needed to happen - well, almost. Having spent much of the last five chapters making two people who shouldn't be falling in love do so, and manoeuvring them into a situation where they might get it together, I suddenly wasn't sure if they actually did. I made a decision on the fly, instinctively, and I hope my instinct led me true.

My first drafts are sometimes very first draft indeed, mind you. The facing page of the notebook is full of scribbled notes:"add choreography", "sounds drippy", "would he say this?", "add sensory detail", '"awk" (awkward phrasing), "NQR" (not quite right), "PL?" (is this period language?), or "sort out", when I've made too much muddle of a sentence, in all its crossings out and reversals, to get it right now.

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Time for a chat with an author of historical fiction I reckon. Welcome, Caroline Rance, author of Kill Grief.

Hello and welcome, Caroline. Would you like to tell us a bit about the book?

Hi Nik, thanks for inviting me onto your blog. My book is called Kill-Grief and is set in the hard-drinking world of a 1750s hospital. It's about a woman who reluctantly becomes a nurse in an attempt to carve an independent future for herself, but she soon finds her past catching up with her. It's quite dark and a bit gruesome in places, but it also has positive themes of determination and survival.



‘Kill-Grief’s’ one heck of a title. Can you tell us how it came about?

'Kill-Grief' is one of many 18th-century slang words for gin, and in the book the main character, Mary, has a constant battle with drink. She uses it as a means of escaping from the horrors of hospital life and trying to blot out the secrets she carries, but it increasingly puts her in danger.

When I started writing the book, gin was only going to have a minor role, but it ended up almost becoming a character in its own right. For a while I thought about using another of its nicknames – Sky Blue – as the title, because there's also a piece of blue silk that crops up in the story, but I decided it was too wishy-washy. Kill-Grief is darker and more atmospheric, and hopefully warns the reader to expect a bit of blood!




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On Monday 3 August, Josa Young joined us to talk about her new novel, One Apple Tasted. We have two copies to give away, and the lucky winners are....

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The liveliest scenes had Emanuelle Devros as Coco's wordly lesbian admirer and purveyor of hat-hungry ladies. They seem to have had the some role as shoes today. Emanuelle's scenes as star of luridly-lit farces made Coco's earlier cabaret act look like a Sunday school recital.



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A quickish round-up, this. For those of you waiting for news of the Commonwealth Short Story Contest, they've notified all winners and will be posting the lucky names on their website in September along with details of the 2010 contest. If you ain't heard, in other words, you (like me) didn't make it this time. Luckily those lovely people at PANK leapt in to make me feel better by snapping up two of my stories, including My Camel Spits in the Sand (which was shortlisted for the Fish One-Page Prize under a different title). The editors wrote: "These stories are awesome. I'm so excited you sent them our way. We would be thrilled to include them in a forthcoming issue of PANK online, most likely November or December." That was a 24 hour acceptance - another reason to say Thanks PANK!

Given the huge number of US run writing contests out there, I was very happy to discover some new (to me) UK biased ones. Including the Cheshire Literature Prize, exclusively for those of us with a connection to Cheshire. Huzzah! Nik, you'll be entering this one, yes? Who else is eligible?

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This post is in picture format, so click through to view.

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Until the editor of the excellent Branta: the might of write asked if I'd like to contribute a post about my daily writing routine, I didn't think I had one. Then I pondered for a few weeks, observed myself, and discovered that I do! It's all here, and I am a little embarassed by it... I feel I come across as insane! Please go have a look and tell me that I'm not, I'm really not...! Please...

Today, for the first time, I hadn’t a clue what to write about when it came to this post. I’ve spent the last few weeks huddled in my garret editing book two, pretending I know what I’m doing. Result? I’m stuck in such a rigid ‘surgical’ mode where I wasn’t sure I could write anything freely. I sat down, completely clueless, idea-less, doodled away….Interestingly the doodles were puddles, hearts and flowers? Answers on a blog reply please?

So in the absence of divine inspiration, I moved away from the desk, sat on the sofa with a cup of tea, closed my eyes and allowed myself to think of my next book. I allowed the characters to have an informal meet and greet in my head. I allowed myself to allow them to be a big part of the process, maybe take the story where they want to – allowed them to live from the folds of my brain. I found myself transported into a world that five minutes before I’d only ever had rough notes on. I could see where they lived, who liked who and why and where the conflicts may arise. I rolled the title round and round in my head and felt a surge of excitement that’s been missing for months.


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This is a tough time for writers, no doubt about it. I know at least two published authors who are struggling with sales and new deals and with agents (not to mention editors and publishers and, yes, readers) whose expectations don't chime with their own. The industry is undoubtedly hauling in its horns. It depresses me whenever I see agents advising new writers to compare their writing to that of one or more published authors, as if only by slotting neatly into the marketing machine can a new writer hope to be published. I know there are agents who specifically state that they don't want such comparisons since they are seeking a New Voice, but these seem to be a shrinking minority; more and more we are being asked to Fit In, to Conform. I appreciate exactly why this happens. The marketing machine is a large and greedy piece of equipment, geared to make publishers less nervous about taking a punt on new names. But I wonder if it isn't partly to blame for the trouble (recently highlighted around the blogosphere) that some writers have in respecting the boundaries of our art. If publishers want the next Dan Brown (gawd help us) then an ambitious writer might be forgiven for doing his or her damnedest to produce such a thing. Whither originality, then?

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'Always listen to your muyu', says the Abbot with the long white beard. He's giving advice to the Shaolin temple's newest recruit, a boy of about eight. In case you were wondering, the muyu or 'wooden fish' is a gourd with a slit that produces a pleasant sound when struck with a small hammer. To get the audience in the mood, a youth in a saffron robe was striking one in the foyer of the Coliseum when I went on Monday. 'Already seen by 2 million in Beijing!' confided my Chinese ticket facilitator.


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