Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

August 18, 2008 | contests, writing

Here’s an inside tip for a very excellent competition…and free chocolate.

Little Black Dress, Galaxy chocolate, and Company magazine are teaming up to offer a short story competition. Your story could be printed in an upcoming Little Black Dress book, and you could be invited to lunch with Headline editors to discuss your writing!

Details are in September’s Company magazine, on the shelves now. There’s also a coupon for free Galaxy chocolate!

July 7, 2008 | social life?, writing

On Saturday I whizzed down to Chichester for the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. Originally I’d planned to only go on the Sunday, because I was giving a workshop on pacing, but my husband had an unexpected night off so I begged the lovely organiser Jan Jones to let me come for Saturday night, too, and stay over. And she let me. (Yes, I plied her with chocolate.)

Romantic novelists en masse are wonderful. For one thing, we are strangely obsessed with shoes. For another, we think nothing of talking about heroes all night and when we are together we drink more than is humanly possible. Well, in any case, I do.

I was thrilled to see my friends and colleagues…there are far too many to name-drop about. Besides, I was far, far too drunk. (I don’t get out that often, you know.)

Brigid Coady won third place in the Elizabeth Gouge award. She rules. Nell Dixon and Anna Louise Lucia sold out of their books at the bookstall. They also rule.

I seem to remember drinking much champagne very late at night and then staggering across a field. And the next day I had a hangover of epic proportions. Fortunately Jane Wenham-Jones spoke in the morning about writers’ bottom and her hilarious body wrap experiences in Egypt and I laughed most of my headache away. I also went to Kate Walker’s talk about author websites, and Kate Hardy’s talk about using local history in your novel. Useful and fascinating, both of them. I also wheedled Kate Harrison out of her handout on “Botox for Writers”, even though I couldn’t stay for her talk.

I gave a talk about pacing which involved photographs of my closet door. And I came home with lots of lovely lovely shiny new books to read! (And a lighter purse.)

Anyway, being amongst romantic novelists is always a life-affirming experience. They are warm, friendly, talented and generous and I feel privileged to be part of the group.

Plus, man, can they drink me under the table.

Tags: Romantic Novelists' Association

June 27, 2008 | writing

Scrapping the whole beginning (it was only about 2000 words) and starting again actually worked really well. It’s not that I changed the structure of the chapter, or even essentially what happened; it was all about the mood. It even came down to the first sentence. Changing a few words and an image made all the difference between a character who was not behaving as I wanted her to be, and one who was.

My original first sentence was:

Sunlight crowbarred its way between my eyelids with all the cheerfulness of a gang of Mafiosi.

And I changed it to:

Sunlight beat against my eyelids with the relentless good cheer of a gaggle of girls on a hen night.

You would hardly think that such a change would make a big difference to the flavour of the whole chapter, but it really does.

Now I just have to figure out what happens in the rest of the book.

June 26, 2008 | writing

It was, indeed, crap.

I’m starting over.

June 25, 2008 | writing

So yesterday I started my new book.

I would like to pretend that everything about writing is sweetness and light, but it is not. I didn’t feel like starting. I felt like sitting in the back garden in the sun and reading. Or doing laundry. Or buying food so my family and I don’t have to eat random bits of cheese and strange things in tins. Or blogging. Or any one of a million displacement activities that would stop me having to think, really hard, which is what you have to do when you start a book.

It’s so easy to get it wrong. You can start in the wrong place or make the heroine wrong or put the focus on the wrong character or name someone the wrong name. Once a book has started, you’ve made some choices and you’ve got some momentum, but at the beginning, there is still so much to decide.

Some people find this exciting. Me, I often want to hide under a rock.

The first chapter of Girl from Mars came so easily to me. Ditto the first chapter of Honey Trap. I had to change them in revisions, but I knew where I wanted them to go. But thinking back, to make myself feel better, I realise that I had no idea how to begin One Night Stand and thought it was really boring, and that I began Married in a Rush in a way that I thought would never work, but actually in the end it did. Both times I figured, “hey, WRITE CRAP and fix it later” and in the end, I didn’t have to fix those beginnings much more than I have to fix any beginning.

So yesterday I WROTE CRAP. And it was crap, let me tell you. Very little direction, very little character for the heroine. I started writing it in third person and then three pages in, realised that wasn’t going to work so I rewrote it in first person. Then I took a walk to pick up the Fecklet from his child minder and realised I’d made the heroine REact in the first chapter, rather than ACT. I’d put more attention on the secondaries than on her.

Then I tried to explain it to a friend of mine and I realised that though the chapter is supposed to end on quite a dramatic event (well, actually a very dramatic event) I’d left out all the drama and build-up.

Essentially, today and tomorrow I get to fix all the crap I wrote yesterday. And hopefully it will be better. But if I hadn’t written it to begin with, I wouldn’t have anything to improve.

May 13, 2008 | writing

Creative Writing Workshop with Romance Author Julie Cohen

Date: Saturday 17th May

Time: 10:30 am - 12:00 noon

Location: Thames Room, Windsor Library

This event is open to all adults, no creative writing experience is necessary.

“My books are all character-driven, and my workshop will be about creating a character from the ground up. You’ll come into my workshop with a blank piece of paper, and you’ll leave with a brand-new, three-dimensional character, which you can use in your own story. Or, you can take away the characterisation techniques we’ll be using, to apply to your own creative writing project.” (Julie Cohen)

Places are limited, so sign up now at Windsor Library. Call 01753 743940 or email windsor.library@rbwm.gov.uk

For more information, contact Kathy Dolan at Maidenhead Library, 01628 796974, or Windsor Library, 01753 743940.

(Sorry I’m late posting this…hopefully it’s not too late if you’re interested.)

April 11, 2008 | crows, writing

I’ve finally got some bookcases for the bedroom, so I was dismantling my old bedside table and underneath it I found, to my surprise, my first ever rejection letter.

It’s from Harlequin in Toronto, dated March 19 2002. It’s a form rejection, though it’s printed on lovely heavy cream headed paper. When I first saw the envelope last night, I thought my address had been typed on it in capital letters, but when I looked more closely I saw it was actually my own handwriting, mathematically precise. I remember throwing away a couple of envelopes because I hadn’t made the writing quite perfect enough.

When I received this rejection, just over six years ago, I was very disappointed. I’d thought that Harlequin would at least be interested in seeing the full. Now, I know that that story was very far from being publishable. It’s the only one of my unpublished mss I’ve resigned forever to the attic.

Now, I am working on my tenth contracted book and though right at the minute I am a teeny weeny bit stuck on it, I can see how far I have come.

By the way, one of the people who helped me come this far, Kate Walker, is celebrating the second edition of her wonderful 12-Point Guide to Writing Romance. If you haven’t read it–here’s your chance. And go on over to her blog where you can read her writing advice and have a chance to win lots of books.

March 8, 2008 | Girl from Mars, writing

Despite all that planning in the photo below, my heroine has just done something completely unexpected which changes her perception of everything, so I’ve got to rearrange. I think.

Which goes to prove that all this planning bunk is completely rubbish, because the characters are just going to tell you what they’re going to do anyway, and stuff the coloured cards.

March 6, 2008 | Girl from Mars, writing

I’m about at the halfway mark for Girl from Mars, so today I attempted to plot out the rest of my novel. I did this by using a technique I’ve recommended to my students, but I’ve never done myself. So this is the first time.

I brainstormed all the things that I thought should happen, and then I wrote them, with different colours of card depending on which story thread they fit into. Then I tried to put them into an order that made sense, so that each story thread is spread throughout the book, and so their climaxes roughly fit together and interact.

Then I Blu-Taked them to my closet door, going chronologically from top to bottom, with roughly simultaneous events side by side.

There you have it: the rest of my novel. A little scary, huh?

January 31, 2008 | writing

Leo asked, in the comments to the below post:

When you’re working on a new book, do you work on a character sketch and a complete synopsis first? Or just go ahead and start writing and see where the character takes you having a general idea in your head of what type of person you’re writing about?

I really really wish I could write a complete synopsis before I began. It would help me so much and most likely make me a much less neurotic person. But I generally only have a vague idea of what will happen before I begin. I usually know up to about chapter four (with Girl from Mars it’s chapter seven, so that’s pretty good). Of course with a romance you know the heroine and hero will get together, but I usually have very little idea of how.

I will have one or two ideas of things that should happen, generally big set-piece scenes or scenes that are inevitable (for example, in Delicious at the end of the competition they’ve been training for, or the wedding in Married in a Rush, or when Eleanor goes into labour in One Night Stand). But I won’t know where they’re going to end up in the book. Generally the plot is a big vague cloud.

I do develop my characters a good deal before I begin to write, though usually that’s just the main character(s) and the secondaries develop themselves. After a chapter or two I need to stop and refine my ideas of all the characters, according to how they’ve come to life in what I’ve written (because they do that by themselves). For example in what I’ve written recently for Girl from Mars, I originally saw the heroine’s friend Digger as rather clueless. But as he’s done and said more, I’ve realised he’s one of the wisest characters in the book. So I have to revise my character sketches (and the first few pages of the book) accordingly.

But I generally do have a good working knowledge of my character before I start to write.

I know everyone does this differently and there is no single “right” way to write a book. What do you do?

January 25, 2008 | Girl from Mars, One Night Stand, writing

Because I am being an internet whore (hooray!) I’m a guest today on Jennifer’s Random Musings. Pop on over for a chance to talk about beautiful men and also to win a copy of One Night Stand!

I said I’d blog a little bit about my process for plotting a novel. I’m not much good with plot as a whole; I tend to find that the characters provide the action, so my main job is figuring out the characters. Yesterday, I wrote down a whole bunch of questions about my main character, her three best friends, and the comic book she works on. I’ve answered some of those questions, but I’ve got more work to do on it. As I answer the questions, often scenes pop into my head.

In the early stages of structuring a novel I need to think about how the themes of the book work, and how the secondary characters reflect the main character. Like, for example, in One Night Stand, the characters of Eleanor’s relatives, Sheila and June, reflect issues that Eleanor herself is going through, about change, parenthood, and the nature of responsibility. I developed them and chose what happened to them purely because of how these things would affect Eleanor.

Girl from Mars is about loyalty, and I’ve begun to figure out why and how loyalty affects Fil (the heroine) and Dan (the hero). Now I’m going to do some work about what loyalty means to her three best friends, Jim, Digger, and Stevo–and also what it means to the character in the comic book she draws, “Girl from Mars”.

This should, pretty much, give me the plot! For example, I’m suspecting that Digger has a secret about his family, a very good reason why he doesn’t owe his father any loyalty at all. But something traumatic will happen that tests how he feels about his father and what kind of person Digger is. Of course Digger is a secondary character, so I need to think about how and where I can place this traumatic event so that it actually tests the protagonist Fil’s emotions and sense of herself, too.

I really find that choosing themes in this way, or an issue I want to explore in various permutations, helps me develop the story. Other themes come in, too, and it all gets complicated, but having a general “big idea” is really useful to me.

November 15, 2007 | writing

The plotting worked quite well, and I now have a very rough outline of what’s going to happen.

Including the goat.

I’ve decided to use Hugh As A Tycoon for this hero.

Meanwhile, I’ve got the okay on Girl from Mars and I should start work on that sharpish. Especially with revisions to Honey Trap coming.

And I’ve got a publishing date for Honey Trap–July 2008. Just ignore everything it says on Amazon.