I’ve just handed in the third draft of my second YA novel for Piccadilly Press.

Phew.

It’s a longer book than my first one, plus the story is more complex. The second draft came back with loads of comments from my editor...so many in fact that I groaned and collapsed in my chair when I read them. Annoyingly, they were all great suggestions [she’s like that, damn her]. Everything she highlighted, I was probably aware wasn’t working deep down. I spent a good few days brooding, mumbling and generally fretting.

Then I picked myself up, dusted myself down, put on my thinking cap and got out the highlighter pens and jumbo pads of paper. I was ready to go back in. I finally emerged, blinking into the sunlight, at the end of last week. It felt as though life was on hold until I’d got it done.


Read Full Post

One of the joys of being published by a small press is the sense of involvement and collaboration throughout the process. Not just the writing and editing process, but the whole business of producing and marketing and selling the book. Some may argue that it is the writer’s job to write and the publisher's job to publish - a simple division of labour. I disagree. I have no wish to hand over my novel to someone else and forget about it. I find the whole publishing process intensely interesting, especially since this is my first (and quite possibly only) chance.

Read Full Post

You'll know by now that I don't believe in "rules" in writing, and point-of-view "rules" are some of the most discussed/agonised-over/struggled with of the lot. Jauss's exploration of point of view and distance is so persuasive that even people who are looking for rules are brought to agree that there's no inherent reason why a first-person narrator can't narrate stuff s/he can't see or wouldn't know. If you follow Jauss, though, you could write things which "break the rules": any individual paragraph may look very like sheer incompetence. So what's a writer to do? You may know why you did it, but what if an editor/agent just tosses your work aside as incompetent?*

The truth is that you can do anything, if you do it well enough, but it's not a truth which gets you much further. Any agent/editor will say that the novels they take on or come close to taking on are the ones where they stop noticing technical issues and find they're reading for the story. Teachers and competition judges say the same. And most agents (I know, I've asked quite a few) would agree that they've got authors who do exactly what they've just said they reject: the writing just works. Yes, 80% of men/women answering a survey say they're looking for a partner who has long legs or blonde hair or a sense of humour. But, actually, lots of short-legged, dark-haired, nice-but-not-terribly-hilarious people do seem to find partners, because what actually makes people fall for each other is much more subtle than that.

Fundamentally, within the very broad spectrum of techniques current in early 21st century fiction writing, you should be using the ones which serve your project best.

Read Full Post

To write about something, you need to know a lot about it. I have always liked to read and fancied to write, maybe not as a way of life (although who knows), but alittle bit more than a hobby. I find it easier to write about fiction than non-fiction, although both genres mixed just do for me. For example, I'm reading now a spanish author called Cesar Vidal Manzanares, la lawyer turned historiand and radio and TV presenter with more than 100 books published (and going), some of them classed as best-sellers. He uses his vast knowledge of History and mixes it with a little bit of fiction to make a very amenable reading. However, as with everything in life, there are titles not to everyone's liking, specially when writing about the old spanish dictatorship.

Right now, I've just finished a book called "The Fisherman's Testament" by the aforementioned author that is the perfect example of mixing History with fiction: the book is abouth a sort of interview between Caesar Nero and an old man called Petros, or Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, remembering the final years of Jesus and his whereabouts, a few decades before that meeting between the Emperor and the old fisherman took place. Quite an interesting read indeed, if only for the way that the author has developed the storyline and makes it very enjoyable and educating.

I've never been a religious person, having been brought up into a catholic family (although barely practising). Now, in my early thirties, having achieved greatly in my personal life as a husband, a father and a professional I turn my interests into what I've always liked: reading and writing.

I recently read a book, "Heaven is for Real" (Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent) that was such a great read: not only made me weep and sob like a little girl, but it also made me change some of my views and aproach to those special moments in life that you need to turn to a something for help. This little book about a little kid made me reflect over things that I have witnessed in my life, over those intimate little chats with those people dear to me and, all together, made me wanting to know more about what's been there all my life. Not in a religious way, but in a historic one: who was this Jesus the Nazarene? who were the disciples? what was life like at the time? how could the powers that be get it so wrong (or right) on the many centuries afterwards? who were the powers that be? etc etc. Definitely, it doesn't help being a scientist (never a "sicentist" - made up word, albeit not very methodic as I tend to get diverted from my main objective quite easily.

Proof: another interest I have is to learn as much as possible about the Spanish Civil War. I'm aware that too much has been written and said about the subject but I just want to follow my mother's footsteps. She put her soul and very little available spare time to put into words a little story that was a catharsis for her, a way of letting go her feelings over her parents, who lived through those dark years of the war. She wasn't successfull, so I'll try this time.

I want to develop that story in a way that could be understood as "what-if non-fiction genre", although I might have just made that up. In two lines: what if some events that happened 80 or so years ago converged with my own present in the case that I did something that I would not do. It could be like living your life onwards time-wise (inevitably) but backwards History-wise. It is much more complex than that but, as you can see (if YOU are still there, reading me) I lack plenty of experience in writing.

So, this has been a kind of introduction from me, although I might have overstayed my welcome with such a long, incoherent, tirade. Oh, always the optimisthic. Never mind.

It feels like a long time since I first heard comments that e-publishing would toll the death-knell of traditional paper books. For a long time we all poo-pooed the idea – electronic readers were clumsy and clonky and would never survive being dropped into the bathwater. And e-publishing was only a last resort of the worst bad writing. And it’s not really being published, is it – not properly published, with a contract and an editor and stuff.


Read Full Post

onlystumbled on this gem of a site by chance and joined straight away.The only thing that dissapoints me is the plethora of vanity publishers allowed to advertise. I'm not against self publishing (done it myself)but I feel VP's are nothing more than rip off merchants.What do others think?

The premise looks good: a Los Angeles psychotherapist is consulted by a 41 year old model who can't decide whether to settle down and have kids with her staid middle-aged lover, or continue a passionate affair with a young playboy rich enough to have a pool and a butler.

Psychotherapist Nancy is played by Tessa Peake-Jones from Only Fools and Horses, who does a fine line in controlled exasperation. The older man, Philip, is Gray O'Brien, the mad-eyed charmer who terrorised Coronation Street's Gale Platt, and as the model, Lily, elegant Josefina Gabrielle resembles a slimmer Nigella Lawson. The young millionaire Dorian has almost nothing to do but Daniel Weyna makes him plausible.

So what was missing? Only a credible plot, any hint of chemistry between the actors, or vestige of witty dialogue. Some amusement was provided by the phone voices of Nancy's other patients in crisis. Tess Peake-Jones wrung laughs from the contrast between the cheerful cliches of her advice and the irritation she was feeling at her clients' behaviour. It's a bad sign, though, when the scene changes are more entertaining than the play.



Read Full Post

The first sign of madness is said to be talking to oneself.

As someone who lives alone, I talk to myself quite a lot. I also write to myself. I’ve kept a journal since I was a child, carefully documenting every meal I ate in childhood, every boy I had a crush on in adolescence, and every internal issue I was wrestling with in adulthood. Folder upon folder of my life - deeply uninteresting to those who might stumble across it, but somehow impossible (so far) to throw out.



Read Full Post

One of the things about doing Book Doctoring, as I'm doing at the Getting Published conference in October, is that you get to see a lot of beginnings of novels. And I'm beginning to think that a great many aspiring writers believe that a book isn't properly dressed without a prologue. And, to be frank, most of the prologues I see aren't earning their keep.

It's not that they're never the right thing (I have one in A Secret Alchemy, and a sort-of one in The Mathematics of Love), only that usually whatever they're supposed to be doing would be better done by other means. And because of that, agents and editors regard them with a jaundiced eye, shall we say: their experience tells them that it's not a promising start. In the interests of making a better book and improving its chances out there, I'd suggest that you ask yourself very stringently, "What is my prologue trying to do?" and then "Could I do that as better or at least as well by other means?"

1) Is it really Chapter One? A prologue is something which isn't part of the main plot/structure/chronology of the novel: it happens in a distant time or place from the main story, it's a different voice or a different character from the main thing. If it's none of these, then it's Chapter One and should be called as much.

2) Is it trying to start the novel with a bang? ...

Read Full Post

Is all writing cliche? (Or just mine).

Read Full Post