RNA Part 3 - Jan Etherington

Next up after coffee was Jan Etherington of radio and script wrting fame. She has written Second Thoughts, Faith in the Future and Next of Kin with her husband Gavin Petrie. First off I have to say that Jan just made me laugh. I first took one photo and she wasn't paying attention and then she this will be better. You see the results above. The subject of her talk was 'Drunks, Wimps or Idiots -Is this the role of men in romantic comedy?'

Fellow Novel Racer, Jane Henry has blogged about the conference over on bookarazzi so I won't redo the great write up that she is done but add in a few of the other brilliant points she mentioned:

1. if they make you laugh you can forgive them anything
2. the rhythm of speech is very important to define your characters; use vocabulary, tec. speech, unfinished sentences
3. be very flexible and have several balls in the air; move on and keep going
4. good hero makes a better story

The comment on the rhythm of speech had me go back and review my dialogue sections I can tell you!

I am making slow progress on the read through and tweak of August Rock. I grab a few hours in the morning and then Mummy duty takes over full time. Fortunately this week it hasn't been too much a of a hard ship as the weather has felt like summer and the beach has been lovely. I am slowly developing my Cornish mahogany tan.

RNA Conference Part 2

It seems a long time ago now but the good effects are still lingering from the conference. I was so pumped up from it that the vibes carried me through the move. The move wasn't too bad but by the end my nerves were pretty thin and i was more than scratchy. Anyway enough of that and back to positive stuff.

The next session I attended was by Alison Baverstock. (she is on the left and Catherine Jones the RNA Chair is on the right) Regular blog readers will remember than I attended her marketing your book session a while back. This talk was 'How Long Does It Take to You to Churn one Out? - Keeping Up Motivation and Morale.' She spoke of the long road to publication and the long task of just writing a novel. In order to survive the process she presented us with 11 tips.

1. Feast on beauty, harvest things that inspire you (ie. a collection of postcards or a copy of you favorite painting)

2. treat yourself well

3. solidarity

4. jealousy is not necessarily a bad thing

5. Community; she cited the Romantic Novelist Association here as a wonderful example (think Novel Racers here)

6. Dealing with time:
a. building blocks; allocate time for writing
b. be selfish with your writing time
c. that time is essential to allow time for the subliminal up rush which she described like projectile vomiting. Here she recommended Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer.
d. make your time at your best writing time (which can be a problem is its 3:30 and you have kids but work with it!)

7. Find somewhere to write ; allocate a place that is yours; people take you at your own estimation and your writing space can affect this

8. encourage other people to take you seriously

9. maintaining own morale; keep the room bright; encourage your own writing; develop your own feeling of being a writer.

10. preset yourself as a writer

11. the importance of being an encourager of others ( Novel Racers!!)

She finished up by saying that remember that marketing is looking at yourself from the outside! Her book Is There A Book in You sold out at the conference book shop which is no surprise. My copy is on its way to Dubai!


Tomorrow I'll report on Jan Etherington.

On my own writing I had begun tweaking August Rock to send off to the New Writers Scheme of the Romantic Novelist Association. On the reading front I have finally finished Time Travelers Wife which I enjoyed but was not what I expected. I now have four other books on the go - The Self-Preservation Society by Kate Harrison, Going Dutch by Katie Fforde, and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.