This is good advice. At least, my instincts tell me it’s good advice. Writing and publishing are so very subjective that we need a life-saver of instinct to cling to, or else we’d flounder around in a sea of conflicting ideas. Well, more than we already do.

The thing is, I don’t really know if it’s completely true. Personally, sometimes my instincts are spot-on. And sometimes, they really really suck.

My instincts, for example, tell me that everything I write will be loads better with at least one penis joke in it. This is so self-evidently not true that I can’t help but regard my instincts with suspicion.

I’ve submitted at least three books that I actively hated when I pressed ‘send’…and every one of those three books has been called ‘your best yet’ by my editor at the time.* On the other hand, when I sent in my last book I absolutely loved every word of it…and my editor (quite rightly) gave me huge revisions.

Several times, I’ve come up with what I think is an absolutely brilliant idea for a story, only to have it shot down in flames by my agent. But then another idea is okay. Why? Why? For the love of God, why?!!?

My instincts do not tell me. They are too busy partying with the penis jokes.

On the other hand, I usually know instinctively when there’s something wrong with a scene or a plotline a conflict or a character, even if I can’t figure out why. It gets all tangled up and it doesn’t work.

Except, of course, when it does seem to work, and I totally love it, and only discover later on that it doesn’t.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell says that truly effective instinctive people have trained themselves with knowledge and experience, so that their split-second decisions are often the most accurate. After eight years as a published author, I’d like to think that’s true; that my instincts are informed by what I’ve learned. But sometimes, I can’t help but think that while you should trust your instincts, you shouldn’t trust them too much. You should look around for knowledge and experience too. For good reasons to fall back on. Maybe this is why I’m an analytical writer as well as an impulsive one; I like to know why something feels right.

I’ve had a really good couple of writing weeks, and I really like what I’ve produced. I think it does exactly what I wanted it to do; I think it’s challenging me while playing to my strengths, and I am in love with the characters**. I feel that way, of course, until it comes time to let it out into the world. Then my instincts run off to party again.

What are your thoughts about your instincts?

*I like those books a lot better now, with distance. And no, I’m not going to say which ones they were.

**It doesn’t include any penis jokes, though. I wonder if maybe I should put some in?

I used to be a member of a chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars and at the time, I drew some Sherlockian cartoons. I’ve been wanting to put some of my cartoons up on this blog anyway, so this is a perfect excuse. I did this one in, I think, 1992, and it was printed in the Cornish Horrors’ newsletter.

(Yes, I know puffins don’t live on Dartmoor. It’s actually a bittern dressed up as a puffin. That crafty Stapleton!)

But I’m back! With a puffin!

Happy new year everyone. A little bit late.

Now last year this whole car-shaped cake thing didn’t turn out so well, so I had more than a little bit of trepidation. Nevertheless, as soon as I’d dropped Fecklet off at school this morning, I turned on Desert Island Discs and got baking.

Fecklet wanted a chocolate cake, but once I started measuring out, I realised we were nearly out of cocoa. So off I went, into the sleet, to find it. The first shop I went to didn’t have any, so I went to three other shops to find it. Three. None of them had cocoa. They had rose petals, they had kielbasa, they had Your Tattoo Magazine, but the basic ingredients for making a chocolate cake? Nah. Finally I went back to the first shop to get some dark chocolate to melt, and there, on the shelf: cocoa! Lots of it! Bourneville!

Either I missed it first time, or there was a magic cocoa fairy following me around.

So: to work. Last year, I followed the instructions on the bottle of Special Cake Release Fluid: brush lightly onto the tin; no flour or baking parchment needed. That didn’t work and the cake was a broken mess that had to be glued together with chocolate buttercream. So this year, I brushed that stuff on about half an inch thick, added baking parchment to the very bottom, and layered some flour on top of it for luck.

The car-shaped tin is shaped weirdly so the ends cook quickly and the middle never does. Despite my judicious use of tinfoil and baking powder, the cake burned on top, and wasn’t tall enough.

I was also quite frightened that it wouldn’t come out of the tin. But it did. Lesson learned: if you don’t want your cake to stick, use LOTS AND LOTS OF GREASE.

My friend Elizabeth came over for a visit in the afternoon and she offered invaluable assistance as to icing colours and distracting conversation, along with making the Earl Grey. She also advised me to prop the cake up on half a takeaway container from Wok On Wheels so I could use Oreos to make the tyres. Several batches of buttercream later, here’s what I came up with:

Here is a closeup of the Oreo wheels and the spoiler, which I made with bits of cut-off cake (Fecklet is very keen on spoilers):

And finally, here is my kitchen at the end.

All in all, I’m having a pretty good week, having sold a short story and a novella…and it’s only Thursday! I’m also pimping myself a bit around the web, and in real life:

There’s a 75-word paragraph from my story ‘The Black Sheep’ on Paragraph Planet (it’s archived now, alas, but it was there!), and also an interview with me there.

My recipe for cranberry nut bread, and a giveaway of Getting Away With It, are on Chick Lit Central.

On Saturday 10th December, I’ll be signing copies of my books at the Local Author Fair at Reading Central Library, Abbey Square, Reading. The fair runs from 10 til 4 but I will probably only be there till 1.30 or so. I’ll have copies of my new hardback, The Summer of Living Dangerously, and also pretty much my entire backlist for sale, including my Mills & Boon stuff. There are lots of authors there so it’s a great place to pick up Christmas gifts.

On Sunday 11th December, I’ll be signing my books again, this time at Windsor Waterstones, on Peascod Street in Windsor. They’ll have my latest hardback, The Summer of Living Dangerously, plus Getting Away With It, Girl from Mars, and some of my others. That’ll be from around 11ish till 4ish.

I’ve done some little drawings for Christmas cards to give away at the signings, with the web address of my free Christmas read, ‘The Black Sheep’. I think he’s sort of cute. Though not as surprisingly delicious as a cheese string.

Click on his cute little miserable face to read the story.

It’s good to try these new things, I think, but I won’t lie to you: it’s been painful. It’s taken me two days, and many times in those two days I’ve felt as if I’ve been battering my head against a stone wall whilst crows of doubt lurked overhead, waiting to eat the choicest bits of my brains.

So many of the things that give a story richness and depth come to me as I write the actual words: the scene-setting, the intertwined symbols, the layers of emotion, the voices of my characters, not to mention the little funny details or extra dramatic oomph. And for me, that’s a big part of the joy of writing. This synopsis (and it’s still a first draft at the moment) feels like a skeleton without any flesh on it. I’ll have to attempt to add sinew, muscle, blood and skin as I revise the synopsis draft.

However. It’s been a really useful exercise for me in structure and planning ahead. Though it’s longer than a single page, I followed (more or less) the synopsis formula I’ve posted here, plotting events on a three-act graph and making sure that each event raises the stakes for the characters. For once in my life, I’ve figured out the secret twist before my own characters have (shock horror!).

The idea behind this is that it might help me to structure the book better at the scene and character arc level as I write it, and avoid my usual missteps, especially at the beginning when I tend to write and then delete 10,000 wrong words. I think it will be an interesting experiment, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

I do think that every now and then as writers, we have to be open to trying new processes. It can, maybe, push us in new directions, challenge our abilities and lead to something fresh.

Are any of you pantsers who have tried to write to a synopsis? Or plotters who have tried to just fly off into the mist? What was it like for you?

(Edited to add: @MsAlisonMay reminded me of a useful technique I’d mentioned on the course I taught a couple of weeks ago—highlighting different parts of your synopsis to see what you need more or less of. Here, backstory is green, plot is blue and emotion is yellow.

I can see that I’ve got emotion covered, but maybe I want to work on that plot aspect a little bit more. Thanks, Alison!)

…Title meaning Through My Sister’s Eyes, and out in, I believe, May. Pretty, isn’t it?

I am here to tell you that all of that is rubbish.* Every novel, even novels that are not Great Works of Literature, has a theme. Some novels have lots of them. And they’re not difficult at all.

The theme is your novel’s predominant idea, or emotion. It’s what your novel is about—not at the plot or character level, but at the more abstract, intellectual or emotional level.

For example:

The Harry Potter series is about a boy wizard defeating an evil snake guy and playing a lot of Quidditch on the way. But the overarching theme of the series is love. Harry’s strength (and indeed his life) comes from the love of his parents, his friends, and his colleagues. All through the novel, love wins, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated because he can’t understand it. There are secondary themes about growing up, and finding out who you are, and probably several more. This is a single theme going across nine books, and it helps to make them emotionally satisfying. It’s not difficult, but it’s important.

So how can you find your novel’s theme?

Think about what your characters want. How they have to grow and change. Think about the sort of things they get up to, and how that shows who they really are. Jot down some single words that sum up some of the emotions they’re going through, some of the problems they face, some of the ideas they’re wrestling with.

They don’t have to be difficult words: some examples are trust, identity, loss, memory, loyalty. All of these are simple words, which portray very complex ideas.

Perhaps you’ll discover that your novel has several different themes. That’s fine. Lots of them do. But generally, your novel is going to have one theme that’s more important than any of the other ones.

Once you’ve discovered your theme, you can use it to refine your novel so that you make the theme even stronger. You can design scenes and plot events that revolve around this theme. You can use your secondary characters to embody different aspects of the theme. You can refine your language so that the theme is teased out through symbol, metaphor, setting, description, tone.

I like to define my theme very early on in my writing process. It gives me an idea to riff off of. I’ll write the theme down and keep it in mind the whole time I’m writing the novel. It keeps me focused. The theme of Getting Away With It, for example, is identity, which is why it’s about identical twins. The theme of The Summer of Living Dangerously is escape, which is why the heroine takes a job pretending to be someone else. The theme of my next book is motherhood.

Does it matter if your novel has the same theme as another novel? No way. Harry Potter‘s theme is love. So is Romeo and Juliet‘s. They’re entirely different texts, because there’s a lot to say about love.

Some themes are more suitable for certain kinds of novels than others. For example, romantic novels are often about trust, confidence, vulnerability, family, belonging, and less often about ambition, hatred, revenge, morality or existentialism.

If your theme seems to be working against your genre requirements, that could be a good thing (it’s refreshing) or a not-so-good thing (you’re not giving your readers a satisfying experience).

If you’re writing a romance, one of your themes is obviously going to be love. Try to take it a little deeper and discover another one, too; it can give your novel more scope and emotion. But remember: keep it focused, especially if you’re writing a short, commercial novel.

Your theme can give you some ideas for your title, too. Lots of novels have their themes in their title, either literally or through a metaphor: Pride and Prejudice. Crime and Punishment. The Thorn Birds. Gone With the Wind.

Knowing your theme can give you a very useful focus for writing your novel, and—when combined with a snappy plot-based pitch—for selling it. Plus, it’ll really impress your former English teacher.

Thanks to Jane O’Reilly, one of the participants on my Advanced Novel Writing course, for giving me the idea for this post. If you’d like to suggest a topic to discuss in future posts, please do!

*And I used to be an English teacher, so I KNOW.