Playing (partying) With the Big Girls

I've already written about Orion's Cherry Picks evening here but Orion sent through this picture taken of all the authors present and well I had one of those moments...OMG...I'm in the picture!!!! In the past I've been pictures with many fabulous authors...fan girl moi but this time it was different! Still not quite sure how I got there....but not complaining at all!

From left to right Cherry Menlove, Hannah Richell, Lesley Lokko, Erica James, Shelley Harris, Veronica Henry, Kate Mosse, Julia Gregson, Katherine Webb and me!

A Women's Fiction Evening in Soho or the Glamorous Side of The Writing Life

Last night I was in the House of St Barnabus in Soho for Orion's Cherry Picks evening (and yes, yesterday was a busy day!)....

Veronica Henry with Orion's Gaby Young

 with some fabulous authors...Kate Mosse, Veronica Henry, Shelley Harris, Lesley Lokko, Erica James, Julia Gregson, Hannah Richell, Katherine Webb and Cherry Menlove....

Shelley Harris, Katherine Webb and Hannah Richell

Also there...the fabulous Orion team and many wonderful people from the the press and blogging world. So with prosecco and yummie canapés we chatted non-stop for hours...

Erica Jame, Julia Gregson and Lesley Lokko

Of course with so many women writers gathered together there had to be some fabulous shoes...

Katherine Webb;s amazing boots

Shelley Harris's fabulous shoes

Of course when the official party ended a few of us (Lelsley Lokko, Julia Gregson, Hannah Richell and moi) weren't ready to burst the party bubble and we wandered into Soho to spend a few more happy hours chatting over Thai food and mint tea....

Chichester Writing Festival - Part Three

As I mentioned yesterday I was nervous...I was going to be on a panel with three other writers - Shelley Harris, Adele Parks and Jane Sanderson and with Greg Mosse entitled Fiction-True- Because I Say So. Yesterday's post gave you the gist of the panel on non-fiction and I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about our panel except that it well received...and people were surprised at how supportive we all were of each other...

Just after lunch we had a panel on What They Want. The panellists were Felicity Bryant-agent, Jon Wood - publishing director at Orion and Stewart Ferris - co-founder of Summersdale Publishing and author. I took only a few notes and quite frankly they aren't much use to me or anyone except the stats from Orion that Jon quoted...

20% of all sales at Orion are from ebooks and it's higher in the SciFi at about 40-50%...he also commented that he doesn't just 'buy' a book but the author (not sure I phrased that correctly but I hope you can get the idea)

There were two great sessions in the afternoon but I was too drained to write notes...again appologies.

However a glass of wine or two and a meal I was able to take notes for Kate Mosse's wonderful interview with Joanna Trollope...after  an exhausting day I doubt these are very reliable but here they are...

KM – The writers who are benevolent last – they love people

JT...

Story is how we do things – very keen on it

You can be far too young to write but never too old

Nothing new about the human condition – she had something to say to her generation – she has a voice

Her earliest novel wasn’t brave enough – didn’t push it far enough…The Choir

She listens to the world – what are the zietgiests, chronic eavesdropper

She starts with the story idea then characters…comes in a patchwork of characteristics…roams through the press for names until something fits

Plots the first 25k then plots the end – but then lets the rest develop organically

More of a notice rather than a writer, not a stylist, good on a good day, internal process – a journey that will last

The spectacles through which we see the world – are words – where we feel most at hom

Writing is about humanity

She wrote the first novel on a full tank of fuel but the doesn’t have the accumulated rocket fuel – a responsibility to the readers, more skill and assurance

Believe a degree of vulnerability and anxiety is vital

Conscious of creative engineering to make characters different and reflective of her own reactions

How do you feel about being too young to write? I tend agree but on Sunday one of the writers was just 27...maybe it depends on what you are writing and who for????

Reading and Books Set in Cornwall

First I'm not sure if I've posted this before but it's certainly worthy doing so again. Over on Read_Warbler's blog, she has a wonderful list of books set in Cornwall here.

And this leads me on to reading of which I have been doing a fair bit- both novels and research. I tend not to read novels or more correctly more recent ones when I am writing a first draft for fear that the writer's voice or style will creep into my head and then into my work. However when I'm rewriting/editing it's different....so recently I have read some fabulous books - THE SOMNAMBULIST by Essie Fox, JUBILEE by Shelley Harris, HARNESSING PEACOCKS by Mary Wesley and a book I won't name. I won't name it because I didn't like it. I made me angry. I found the writing sloppy and the head hoping annoying and plot trite. It held me back on other books for a long time. I could only take about ten pages at a time and at one point I threw the book out of the bath and across the room. Yes, it made me that mad...

Now I know you are wondering what book and what writer but I won't say...you are also wondering why I persevered???? Well, this book has sold in the shed loads as have all this writer's books. I felt there must be something to learn from it aside from how not to head hop....

Let me jump away for a second...because in Harnessing Peacocks there is some head hopping but it didn't upset me - the changes were pretty well signalled without me having to go back a reread the paragraph to find out which head I was in...so let's just say that it was head hopping well done, but when rating the book on Goodreads I gave it a 4 even though I loved the story....

So I found myself wondering does head hopping bother most readers? Do they notice? Is it just a thing that pisses off writers like me? I have tried to remember my reading days pre-writing to see if I can remember if it upset me or pulled me out of the story....and I can't.

Let me just say...I love books with multiple points of view, but not in the same scene... or page but definitely not in the same paragraph....but I may be alone in this. Also I found it frustrating investing energy in minor characters whose head I was in for maybe three scenes then they were never heard from again (there has to be another way to get that information to the reader in my opinion)....enough said...

Now, I had to stop reading another book recently but not because it was bad...in fact it was the exact opposite....just too good and written in first person and that's what I'm trying to rewrite August Rock in so I'm afraid I will try and copy the excellence and fail....I will tell you this book though - Julie Cohen's THE SUMMER OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. It will have a wait a bit more until I am sure of my voice in the first person...

On a final note...I was interviewed for radio here in Dubai regarding the upcoming Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature...and they asked my most feared question which I'll blog about tomorrow.

Oh and it's so exciting...on Monday evening I'm going to the Orion author party!!!! Will try and take pictures to share...just not sure what I'm going to wear yet and oh, what shoes to wear.....

How Do You Know When Your Work Is Good Enough????

I was writing an article for the March edition of VIVA magazine listing my tips for getting published. One of the things I mentioned was don't send the work out too soon. So how soon is too soon and how do you know????

Lying in the bath yesterday, I was planning the day which included a trip to Waterstones. I wanted to buy Shelley Harris' debut book JUBILEE. I'm really looking forward to reading this...because back when I went to the York Festival of Writing in 2010 she was there. Now that in it's self is not enough to 'sell' me a book, a book I paid the full £12.99 price for....

Now regular readers of this blog will know that this conference was a break through for me in many ways and I only realized yesterday in the bath that Shelley provided one of the most important parts...how do you know when your book is good enough????

One the first night about ten unpublished writers read some of their work...what an insight. I have forgotten all the other writers except Shelley. The passage she read held the audience spellbound. The imagery is still with me. When she finished every agent in the room approached her. Yes, it was that good. It had that undefinable quality...and I knew in that moment that I wasn't there...yet.

Now I'd been writing and submitting for five years at that point, but that was the moment when I stopped. It was crystal clear what was good, no not just good but superb. I wanted that, well, not that exactly but I wanted that for my writing. I knew I had to dig deep to find it...

Now, seeing your own work with such clarity is hard, but if you imagine standing in front of a couple hundred people and holding them spellbound with the images you have created then you begin to get the idea....Shelley's work stood so far above everyone else who was brave enough to read that evening...I was deeply grateful I wasn't one of them.

So when you are wondering if it's ready, if it's good enough...think of reading it to a large audience who are judging you....can you capture them? Does you work have the spark? If you have the opportunity to listen to writers reading their work out - go...develop your inner critic then apply it to yourself

I know that when I began I was desperate for feedback, for validation that i could write... but it was only when I was in York listening to Shelley that I knew I had jumped too soon before. I knew that I needed to push myself further and in that moment I began to see my writing more clearly...

But the funny thing is...i still don't think it's good enough. But that's a good thing. It makes me keep trying harder...