The Importance of Being With Other Writers and Inner Voice

I know I've written this before but it is so important....as writers we are alone and in our heads day in and day out. Characters and setting fill our minds. We live in a make believe world. Wonderful, yes, but hard to explain or share with other who don't have the same creative passion. When we are away with the fairies, we might indeed be or we might be figuring out why Jane left her husband and ran off with the hairy biker....not real people but characters we've created...

So its a treat to get together with like minded souls who spend there days listening to voices in their heads. On Tuesday I went to the RNA's Oxford lunch. Bliss. I finally had time to properly meet the wonderful Emma Lee Potter. We know it each other from Twitter and have met at some event, but have never had the chance to chat. As with these things, it happened once chatting there were less that six degrees of separation....her wonderful blog House With No Name is up for an award from Cosmo. Go and vote for it please...

Also at this month's lunch was Becky from Isis audio books and a 'squee' moment happened for me...she recognized the title of my book! She'd been in Orion's offices and had heard about it and thought it sounds perfect for them. Definitely 'squee'! As we all introduced ourselves around Becky shared some insights into audio books at Isis...

- their big market is libraries...so any work that authors do in libraries is key
- it's the author name - name recognition that is so important in libraries for audio books
- they do 28 titles a month
- they still produce cassettes and they do do downloads which appear on Audible etc.
- it's the highest honour when an author says it's the 'right' voice for the reading

As we went round the everyone chimed up with what they were doing...the key thing that came up again and again was trusting your Inner Voice...not the critic that tells you it's all sh*te, but the voice that tells you it's right and the voice that says you don't need that bit no matter how lovely the prose and the voice that reminds you not to chase publication for the sake of it, but listen to the what you really want to write. I really believe this and I was a cheer leader for Anita Burgh sitting beside me. She couldn't say listen to your Inner Voice enough and the more I write, edit, re-write....the more I believe she is right. JoJo Moyes mentioned this same thing in her talk (my notes here). Initially it's hard to trust, but it is your best friend. It will hold your hand as you kill your darlings and write the books of your heart....

Last night I saw the latest version of the cover for THE CORNISH HOUSE...it's lovely but I still can't share...hopefully soon