Working On A Book

86,520 Words

2009-01-09T12:41:00.001Z

Yep, finished it on New Year's day. Polishing now, but 1st two submissions of opening chaps already sent out. Couldn't wait.
A

82,455 Words

2009-01-01T12:31:00.003Z

I think I might finish the first draft today. There will be some fleshing out to be done afterwards, but I can do that whilst my opening chapters are doing the rounds. I still think it will come out very close to my 90,000 word / 50 chapter target. And it's only taken about four months (not counting school holidays, during which everything stops).

I hope this one will sell but, if it doesn't, I have a firm idea for no.3 to keep me going. And there's still the Norwegian one that I will resurrect at some point, simply because I was enjoying it so much. Not foot-in-the-door material though.

I got a copy of The Golden Notebook for Christmas. I made three attempts at the preface before giving up and moving straight on to the story itself, which is a doddle in comparison. So much repetitive explanation and justification for this and that - how would I react to being attacked as she was? Unlikely, of course, that anything I write will receive enough attention to merit a ten-year anniversary re-print complete with preface by the author, so I doubt I shall ever have to cross that bridge.

(Nearly) two books on from where I started this diary, what has changed? Better to ask what has stayed the same. Same town, same street, same permanently-in-the-red bank balance. Same two kids (although larger), same husband (still utterly lacking in any form of common sense or domestic know-how). I am in paid employment - that has changed. I am a self-employed domestic cleaner, much to my father's disappointment (he keeps asking me when I plan to go back to work, to which I respond: I already have). I still have a cupboard full of trackie bottoms and old woollies, but now I choose to write (in my freezing cold house) wearing a cashmere jumper and a silk scarf which are much, much lighter and more comfortable (I dream of Boden, but accept Tesco). I weigh two stone less, soon (hopefully) to be three. I have fully come to terms with the fact that I will not have a third child. And I suppose the biggest change of all is that I'm actually starting to believe that I can do this - that I have more than just one book inside me - and that I have the willpower to keep plugging away at it until something sells.

Love A x

62,931 Words

2008-11-21T12:28:00.003Z

This one seems to be rattling along at a fair old pace. The most worrying thing for me this time is false confidence. You see, with the last one, I knew parts of it were okay but deep down I was always aware that other parts were hideously self-indulgent and grossly overwritten. This one feels so much better. It comes onto the page so much more easily. The idea behind it feels cleaner - less cluttered. This book has a lot less baggage.

So, to be brutally honest with myself about its weaknesses, what am I expecting in my rejection letters this time around?
- too domestic
- dialogue-heavy, too little description of settings and characters
- bad language

There isn't much bad language and I'd be loath to take it out, but I know some WF editors just don't stand for it.
I'm going back over the most talky chapters and trying to put some flesh onto their bones but I don't want to make them too flowery.
And I think that the first few chapters need to be quite cosy and domestic, in order to create a contrast when it all goes pear-shaped.
But then I also believe that, if you find yourself having to defend or explain something over and over, your book's simply not working. No point flogging a dead horse.

We'll have to wait and see.
A

56,223 Words

2008-11-09T11:41:00.005Z

The Companionate vs. the Romantic Marriage

Or civil partnership, or shared mortgage, or co-parenting, whatever.

The companionate relationship is defined as based on friendship and the practical needs of both partners (running a home/family/joint business, etc.) It isn't necessarily celibate or without tenderness, but it's hardly the stuff of Mills & Boon. The romantic marriage, on the other hand, is focussed primarily on the feelings of the couple for each other, and everything else: home, family, etc. springs from that, but the romance between the partners is the root of it all. Both kinds work equally well if the needs of both parties are aligned, but if one or both yearns for the other kind, things can get messy.

It's becoming clear, around the halfway point of my WIP, now that the mystery of the exotic postcards is solved, that the theme of my story is this: can a companionate marriage ever become genuinely romantic? Can the footing be fundamentally changed if one or both parties is unhappy?

Obviously, I'd love the answer to be "yes" because I want my couple to get back together at the end of the book - rejuvenated and more in love than ever. But I also need it to be believable. So, would you believe it? Could you? And how might it happen? Can it be done without feeling like you're just playing a role?

Any thoughts much appreciated.
A

35,518 Words

2008-09-26T10:36:00.002Z

I met Denise Mina on Wednesday night (Garnethill, Exile, Resolution, etc. see link.) A fab crime author and a really nice woman too. It's made me wonder if I gave up on Amelia's Body too easily. I think I just got to the point where I really hated it and when J.M. said she didn't want it, I just thought fair enough - neither do I.

So what exactly happened? It's a bit of a blur, probably because I was in the process of thickening my skin and initially pretended the rejections weren't happening. I've been back through the pile so let's look at the stats.

1st lot of submissions: 17. Rejections: 17
Followed by six months of rewriting.

2nd lot of submissions: 8. Rejections: 7, requests for full ms: 1
Followed by six weeks of furious polishing and spell-checking.

March 2008, sent off full ms to agent J.M.
Rejections: 1

Embarrassment at getting full ms returned and discovering it contained two chapters with identical titles: excruciating.

Maybe all is not lost with novel 1? I don't hate it quite as much as I did six months ago.
A

25,686 Words

2008-07-18T09:32:00.002Z

J.M. says she's not interested in Pandora's Shoebox (based on the 1st five chapters) because they contain too much domestic detail. She admits that the idea of the mystery postcard-sender is 'intriguing' but makes no offer to re-read.

Have just cut out 2,000 words of domestic detail.

Perhaps I should change the title to Love, Sugar, Pink, Chocolate, Shopping?

Pics for WF

2008-06-18T16:29:00.002Z

14,899 Words

2008-06-16T19:22:00.003Z

A review I read recently, described Isabel Fonseca's novel Attachment, as a 'midlife' book - and that was a bad thing, apparently. It deals with an established marriage, ageing parents, a breast cancer scare, and other fairly ordinary things. Extraordinary things do happen, of course, but within this 'midlife' context.

Is my book going to be labelled the same way? Might it never become an actual book for that very reason? My female protagonist is younger, at thirty-six, but that might be even more problematic. She's not a naive, career-minded twenty-something, nor is she a worldly-wise, experienced forty-something. Is anyone really interested in the trials and tribulations of my age-group? Are we even interested in ourselves?

There is a section of the population, of which I am a part, who rejected the 'Sex & the City' lifestyle of the aspirational singleton in order to marry young, and have children young. We weren't quite teenage 'pramface' mothers, but we had our babies younger than our mothers or aunts did - straight after university, or even instead of university. I spent my twenties changing nappies, rather than concentrating on my career, and now I have nothing to go back to. I was rising quickly up the career ladder at one point, but I think I got off too early, before I had anything very impressive on my CV.

My protagonist feels as lost as I do. But maybe that's not something anyone wants to read about.

A

9,566 Words

2008-06-10T20:33:00.002Z

Still going well. Still flowing. And my group likes it. So... I'm happy. Just getting on with the job. I think I might send the first five chapters to J.M. Not in expectation of a proper response - just so that she doesn't forget me.
A x

4,141 Words

2008-05-23T16:04:00.002Z

So I'm three chapters into Pandora's Shoebox. This time I have a grand plan right from the start and it feels good. My writing group seems to like it - one member even described it as 'fun' and another, 'jaunty', which certainly could not be said of Amelia's Body.

Perhaps they're right - the ones who say that books are like pancakes: the first one is for the bin.

A

No

2008-05-23T15:59:00.009Z

Dear A___________

I have now read your complete typescript.

I do think you write really well but I think there is a problem with the over-convoluted structure which makes for a rather disjointed, uninvolving read. I like the initial switches from the crime scene to the other characters but they need to be very focussed and highly plotted, and the timescale needs to be much clearer. After a while they become more confusing and distracting. At the moment it is lacking in narrative drive and tension (and it is also too long - it could be cut by at least 100 pages). There is also too much rather waffly dialogue which does not move the story on. I was left wondering what the point was - and also I was not sure who I was meant to be rooting for. It also sends mixed messages - part police procedural, part suspense, but the two strands are difficult to follow at the same time.

I would be interested to see your next work but I think this needs a massive rethink. I regret it is not something I could successfully handle. Thank you for letting me see your work which I am returning herewith.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

J_____ M_____

----

She's totally right, of course. The bright side, I suppose, is it looks like I can take this as an invitation to send her the 'full' of my next WIP (when it's done) without first sending a partial and waiting for her response.

Authonomy.com

2008-05-16T13:09:00.002Z

Well, I have nudged. Very gently. And I have also put the first 10,000 words of the book up on the new Harper Collins website - Authonomy.com

As for the new WIP, I started writing Pandora in the end. So I suppose I really ought to be keeping a word count.

3,066 words. Fingers crossed for this one.

A

To nudge, or not to nudge?

2008-05-12T15:43:00.002Z

It's been two months since I sent my full typescript to the agent. Can I email and ask how it's going? Or will that just annoy her into rejecting me out of hand?

The Seaside

2008-05-11T18:46:00.001Z

Just wanted to share this.

On Friday morning, the weather was so glorious that I had a brainwave: the following day we would go to the seaside! Then a reality-check: the roads would be chocka, the car would be hot, the packing and the early start would be a nightmare, etc, etc. It would all just be too much trouble.

Then, I had another brainwave: why not pack up that night and camp near the coast? So that's what we did. I googled for campsites and found one without any of the following words in the description: games room, bar, Sky TV, organised activities. And found one that allowed children, ball games and camp fires, demanded total quiet after 10.30 at night and only cost £13. I rang up - they had space for our tent - we went straight after work and woke up the next morning 3 miles from a perfect, deserted beach. It was pure heaven, and we were home in time for Dr Who.

So this is my plea - go to the seaside! Paddle. Eat a Mr Whippy ice cream and breathe the sea air. The British seaside is truly wonderful!

A

P.S. Take extra blankets though - it's still bloody cold at night.

Still hovvering

2008-05-02T10:34:00.002Z

Still no news on the book.

I missed a flurry of activity from my fellow WWers last week - tagging in each other in their blogs, which I missed! I think I've already tagged all them in the list on the right - if not, I will.

So, what have I been doing with my Fridays since I sent off my 'full'? Well, I spent some time in corrections to my manuscript. Shockingly, I found that the typos got worse and worse towards the end of the book. I'd obviously gone over it less often than I had with the earlier chapters. I had even given two of the later chapters the same heading - unforgivable. It's all fixed now. At least, when JM rejects it, it will be in better shape when I start sending the partials out again.

I wrote a short story (Pandora's Shoebox) for the WOMAG market, which I've sent to Woman's Weekly, in the hope that it might make it into one of their fiction specials. Still waiting to hear.

I wrote a story a while ago (Privet) for The People's Friend, but they said it was "too melancholy". On the bright side, they promised to read a revision, and gave me a direct address so that I could bypass the slush-pile. I haven't done it yet. I've thought about it, but I just can't envisage the story without its melancholy bits. Maybe I should just start from scratch.

No further on with my novel-beginning Stina Trolldatter. Still only three chapters in existence. I think it's because I know it will involve a lot of research, and I'm reluctant to begin when I have no idea whether or not such a thing will sell - the idea got a mixed response from my writing group - very mixed.

I'm still filling index cards with ideas for a follow-up to Amelia's Body, but I haven't started writing it yet. It seems stupid to begin the sequel in earnest when I don't know yet whether or not the first book will find a home. You see? Limbo.

My only other idea, at the moment, is to expand Pandora's Shoebox into a novel for the women's fiction / chicklit market. I deliberately kept the story light and romantic for Woman's Weekly, but I had to go against my instinct, which was for a darker, more emotional tale. As a novel, I think that Pandora's marriage would still survive, but with complications. I don't know whether I should begin it. It is the strongest idea I have at the moment, but I'm dithering...
A

In limbo

2008-04-01T18:58:00.003Z

Nothing much to say.

Book is out with J.M.

Utterly mortified at the number of typos I'm still finding in the ms.

Can't seem to get on with book two, although I know that's what I should be using this time for. Catching up on my reading instead.

Unfortunately, I'm reading Possession, which is just making me feel stupid and inadequate and, frankly, rude, for even attempting to write a book myself.

A

Trowbridge

2008-02-20T12:41:00.002Z

I think I might be moving to Trowbridge.

I'm supposed to be having a writing day - a day all to myself - but all I can think about is Trowbridge. Husband has just been promoted within his company (yay!) and I was really looking forward to being able to fix the house up a bit. It isn't too bad but it needs a new garden fence, a cap putting on one chimney to stop the rain coming down (which requires scaffolding) and -ideally- a new bathroom. Nothing too major, but all things we would expect to have to do if we ever want to get a good price for it when we move. (I had expected to have to move in about three years anyway, because we don't much like the local high school.) Anyway, a while ago he put his CV up on some of those internet job sites and he is currently being hassled by another mobile phone company to come and work for them. It's a VERY good offer. It's a good company. He would be mad not to take it.

BUT: it's even further from our parents than we live now, it's too far to visit our Yorkshire friends more than about once a year, we'd have to down-size our living accommodation at least temporarily because houses cost more down south, and in the current economic climate I'm not sure if our house would sell at all. Plus, with all that upheaval, when would I find any time for writing?

If he could be certain that another position would come up in a couple of years, I'd say wait, but a bird in the hand... and so on.

A

My name isn't Amy Winehouse,

2008-02-17T14:39:00.002Z

but it sounds a lot like Amy Winehouse. I had a horrible thought the other day, that J.M. doesn't in fact think my story is any good at all, but has noticed that I have a very marketable name. Enough people will pick up the book, thinking, 'I didn't know she was a writer too. Well fancy that, she managed to put down the crackpipe for long enough to churn out a novel!' before noticing their mistake, to make it a viable publishing option. A shame really, because I always wanted to be published under a pseudonym.

Hey - perhaps I could select a pen-name that sounds a bit like someone else famous, instead? Like 'Britney Shears', or 'Heather Mills McCaffrey'. What do you think?

Let the wine do the talking...

2008-02-16T14:31:00.002Z

That's what I obviously did last night, anyway.

I bought a copy of 'Thirty-nothing', by Lisa Jewell, because she is represented by the same J.M. that has asked for my ms. I'm quite enjoying it. Both the story, and the fact that I find it quite non-threatening as a standard to live up to. Then I skimmed the first few pages of 'The Mathematics of LOVE', by Emma Darwin, because I sort of know her and I thought I should. Big Mistake. Now feeling totally inferior and useless.

A

The Romance

2008-02-15T22:35:00.002Z

Been thinking a lot about the structure of the book. Now thinking about the basic parts. The ingredients. There is The Hook. There is The Murder. There is The Investigation. The Romance. The Tragedy. And The Happy (for some characters) Ending.

Thinking about D a lot lately. I nearly cut him, until I realised how important his character is to the book. Thinking about what a strange almost-couple we once made. When he reads it, he'll doubtless imagine I'm still pining for him, after all these years. Probably my husband will too. God knows what they'll make of the second book then. But I can't let that hold me back. There are things I want to write about in the second book. Things that will upset my other half. How do you explain that the novel might resemble our life, but it is life to the power 10? It is life, exponentially heightened and dramatised. My life is the kernel of truth - the one percent - at the heart of a 90,000 word novel.

Maybe I just won't let him read it.
A

The Countdown

2008-02-06T19:52:00.000Z

Well, I confessed that it wasn't in a fit state to be seen, and have been given six weeks' grace (of which I have just over four left). So I'm furiously working on it every night and weekend. Unfortunately, half-term's coming up, so I'm likely to be too shattered to write. I'll just have to be really disciplined and force myself to use my usual 8-9pm slot for things like spell-checking and re-formatting - stuff that doesn't require much brain power.

More interestingly, my WriteWords group got set up. I am now the proud host of 'Intimate Moments', which is a specialist group (alongside such groups as 'crime & thrillers', 'women's fiction', 'teenage fiction', 'synopsis & outline', etc.) where people can post the sex scenes from their novels, for peer review. In the hope of avoiding The Bad Sex Awards, when and if we get published. It seemed to me like the part of a book that a writer was least likely to ask for advice on - I certainly was.

Well, the first couple of days have gone well. The double entendres are flying thick and fast. Things like:

'So, this is the kind of group you just join when you get to that stage in the WIP? I expect it'll be quite fluid. We can cum and go as we please?'

Of course, there have been all the ones about it [the group] being up already, plenty of gags about members, the 'thrust' of the new group, getting down to business, the name of the group sounding like either a box of pink ribbed condoms or even a brand of 'feminine wipe', depending upon whom you ask, etc. , etc. Oh, and someone pointed out that the open-mouthed 'shockie' emoticon, looks like it's about to perform some other sort of job entirely. :o

Hey, ho. They'll run out eventually. On the upside, we're already quite a diverse group, incorporating both male and female writers, gay and straight, so there's hope for us yet.

Love A

A request for 'The Full'

2008-01-29T19:52:00.000Z

Literary agent, J.M., has asked to see the full typescript. This is my first time. Although I am fully prepared for this to come to nothing, it is still one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It is another rung on the ladder.

One thing that encourages me is that, although she is the 18th agent to whom I have submitted opening chapters, the first 17 were so long ago (May-July 07) that it was a very different book. It proves that the book is better now. It shows that I have been doing something right.

A x

Lay Readers

2008-01-27T13:22:00.000Z

I'm quite well on with the current rewrite. The book's in three fairly equal parts and I'm just into part two. I do like it better this way. It's as though I've been winging it without the instruction manual thus far, and now I've finally found one. My problem has always been seeing the big picture of the book. I tried printing out and stapling each chapter separately, and laying them all out on the floor, so that I could get an aerial view of it, by standing on the bed. I enjoyed the exercise, but it didn't accomplish very much. I've also tried writing a single paragraph for each chapter - a sort of mini synopsis - but it felt like it was taking too long so I gave up and got back to the writing. Perhaps I ought to try again? I'm a member of a couple of good writing sites, but you can only post work in very small sections so, helpful as they are for some aspects of writing, they can't really help with the flow of the novel as a whole.

As I've said before, my husband won't read my stuff. I've never actually had it out with him, so I don't know if it's because he's afraid he won't like it and I'll be upset, or what. I put an early draft of Amelia's Body on his bedside table once, and it just sat there, gathering dust, until eventually it was so out-of-date that I binned it. My mum's read a later draft, and had some good comments about the ending, in particular. I don't really have anyone else I can ask to read it though. My nana's asked repeatedly for a copy, but mum and I keep stalling because of the swearing!

It's not like I think my nana hasn't lived, but a few weeks ago, mum and I went to see her in Nottingham (she's 89 and still lives alone) and, as we were leaving, she was telling us about these woolly hats she'd been knitting. She was standing at the front door, with her little 3-wheeler trolley, going, "So I've made two. That's TWO hats, one for A___ and one for D___." Indicating the number two by waving two raised fingers at our retreating backs. Her neighbours in the opposite bungalows will no doubt have been wondering what on earth we'd done to merit such a send-off, from so mild-mannered a Quaker octogenarian. We had a good giggle about it in the car.

A

Omniscient 3rd person

2008-01-18T12:02:00.000Z

Can the narrative voice, the omniscient third person, be in several heads at once?

Some say no, it's too confusing. Some say yes, as long as their thoughts are sufficiently differentiated (i.e. you can easily tell whose inner voice is being translated onto the page at any one time.)

Well, here I have a problem. My MC is Caroline. Caroline aged 18 (in the 'present' within the book) but also Caroline later in life, looking back on events, through the medium of her journal entries. My second biggest character is DS Jean Wright, one of the detectives, who only ever appears in the 'present'.

The journal entries are straightforward - no need for a narrative voice - Caroline narrates herself.

The 'present' is more difficult. In alternating Post Mortem/Investigation chapters, I want the O3P to see into Caroline's head, and then DS Wright's but I want there to be certain similarities between the two women. I don't want to differentiate them too much.

To make things even more complicated, there are a few 'Post Mortem' chapters, in which I take the controls away from Caroline and hand over to one of a small cast of minor characters, when one of them has something important to say. In these moments, it seems essential to allow the O3P to see inside these characters heads too. Of course, these voices are quite different, and their sections are pretty short and sweet.

I give up. I'm starting to annoy myself.
A

Another bloody rewrite.

2008-01-06T20:47:00.000Z

I've been away so long, hard to know where to begin.

Stina's doing pretty well on YWO - my highest rated piece currently. Privet comes next and Amelia languishes at no.20.

I put Amelia's Body up on The BookShed, and got some interesting advice back. Reviewers have long complained that the structure was too confusing, the 'Post Mortem' chapters hopping about in time as they do, and written all in different styles (journal entries, police interviews, conversations, random monologues, etc.). Anyway, this reviewer (Patti) said just choose a couple of these styles and stick with them, bend everything to fit them, and reduce the no. of characters that you are allowing top 'speak' through these chapters, giving over nearly all of them to Caroline.

Fantastic advice, I thought. I applied it to the first three chapters and re-uploaded them.

Reviewers now agree that the result is far more cohesive than before, but they now complain that all the heart has gone out of it. It is dry and cold.

So, now I have a choice to make. Do I just put it back the way it was and ignore the niggles over the structure? Or do I persevere with the new way and endeavour to put the warmth back into it somehow?

It's got to be the latter, hasn't it? Bollocks. It'll take me weeks.

A

Christmas Card

2007-12-12T10:58:00.000Z

Merry Christmas to all my visitors, especially:

PoppyV, Jem, EmmaD, Rosy, susieangela, caro55, groovygal2k, susanna, ireneintheworld, portobelloprincess, SheScribbles, pat1, Brady, altguy3, perryi, and soulcompost.

Doris Lessing

2007-12-11T21:00:00.000Z

I have just finished reading the acceptance speech in my paper (it generally takes me all week to get through the Saturday Guardian) and, although I was utterly spellbound by her stories of Africa, I felt that familiar annoyance I always get when people slag off the Internet.

She says people 'waste all day blogging, etc.' Would she consider the keeping of a handwritten diary a waste of time?

Of course there is an awful lot of pointless sh*t in the blogosphere (probably including my own tedious ramblings), but what about blogs coming out of Iran and Afghanistan? Especially blogs by young women, many of them literally risking their lives to do it.

What about the Burmese bloggers, who let the world's media know what was going on during the recent crackdown?

So I would ask you this, Ms Lessing, if I had the opportunity: if Anne Frank had had a laptop and a WiFi connection in 1942, what do you think she would have done?

Oh dear, sorry Wendy...

2007-12-11T11:39:00.000Z

... I transcribed a haiku of hers (On looking out of the back bedroom window without my glasses) in an earlier post. I take it, from her article in last Saturday's Guardian, that she wouldn't approve.

A

What's it all about?

2007-12-08T12:57:00.000Z

In 1994/5, I lived and worked 'au pair' on a farm not far from Oslo. I learnt to speak, read & write Norwegian and, as I was looking after children, was totally immersed in the incredibly popular folk tales of Asbjornsen & Moe (think Scandinavian Bros. Grimm). I was also blown away by Sigrid Undset's Nobel Prize winning historical trilogy 'Kristin Lavransdatter', and thought I'd like very much to set a book there one day myself.

So, what began as an idea for a younger children's book, based on the folktales, has now, after some more research on the Norwegian women's suffrage movement, 'grown up' into the 12+ age-group and threatens to grow farther still. I am having to watch myself at every turn and guard against letting it grow up too much, or risk alienating my potential audience.

The working title is Stina Trolldatter, and the background to the story is as follows:

- Firstly, trolldatter or trollunge means something like 'troll-child' or 'changeling', and is sometimes used rather in the manner of 'cheeky monkey' - a half-hearted telling-off of a willful child. It can also mean the true daughter of a troll and his hag; such girls appear in the folk tales from time to time, usually they are slow, stupid, and come to the same sticky end as their awful parents.

- Secondly, Norwegian women began their struggle for the vote around about the 1860s, becoming significantly more organised during the 1880s, and finally getting the vote in 1907 (local elections) and 1913 (national elections).

The organisation of of women into feminist groups began with women-only bible study meetings and charity organisations, and grew relatively quickly, compared with England, even though it was a much more rural society and far fewer women were in paid work.

They were helped by contemporary cultural goings-on, such as the publication of diaries & novels by Camille Collett, the letters from America of Frederika Bremer, the translation into Danish of John Stuart Mills' On the subjugation of women, and (perhaps unwittingly) the staging of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which premiered in 1879 in Copenhagen, and was performed in Oslo in January 1880. As you may know, the protagonist of the play, Nora, leaves her husband and children at the end of the story, which scandalised audiences and lead to the play's being banned in England and given a 'happy ending' in Germany.

Okay, background out of the way, on to the story itself:

- Stina (aged about 14) and her little brother Halvor, live an idyllic life in rural Norway with their extended family. The year is 1880.

- Their mother has been taken off to Oslo on a 'shopping trip' by her younger, unmarried sister Aunt Kari (Tante Kari, in the Norwegian).

- She doesn't come back.

- At first, the children and father are just plain worried. Then comes news that she isn't coming home. She and Kari were, in fact, planning to see a performance of A Doll's House, with Kari's bible group - actually a covert feminist group. The children's mother had been uninterested at first, but experienced an epiphany whilst watching the play.

- Stina echoes her father's reaction of shame and anger, and willingly takes over the 'woman's role' in the household, simultaneously trying to shield her brother from the terrible truth through her great love of storytelling. As we know, many such folktales are highly allegorical. There are many tales to choose from, and she selects those that she thinks will help him to understand their new circumstances.

- Stina also spends a lot of time, over the next few months, amongst her mother's things, trying to understand why she left so abruptly. Under the mattress, she discovers a dog-eared copy of John Stuart Mill's book that has been passed on from woman to woman, and was finally pressed upon her reluctant mother by Tante Kari. Stina begins to read the book, although the Danish translation is hard to decipher, being somewhat different from her own dialect.

- More interesting to Stina, during these secret hours she spends reading, in between the household chores and looking after her brother, is the marginalia left by all the women who have previously owned the book. As she reads on, she begins to get why her mother left. Consequently, the stories she tells to Halvor (with her father listening in) begin to change - she is not ashamed any more. Where she cannot find a story to fit her feelings, she seamlessly invents one, and passes it off as authentic, thereby gradually changing the minds of both Halvor and her father.

- Eventually, they (or perhaps just the children - I haven't decided yet) make the journey to Oslo to bring their mother home; to a household changed for the better, and a family that appreciates her a little more than before.

- So A Doll's House does get a new happy ending, in a way, and their mother isn't saddled with Nora's lonely future.

THE END
(Well, more like 'the beginning', I suppose.)

A

1,760 Words

2007-12-02T20:54:00.000Z

Have started a new book.

A

A review from 'marko'

2007-11-30T18:52:00.000Z

Marko has already done all three of the short stories I posted on YWO, so I was eager to read what he had to say about Amelia's Body.

'Well, you obviously don’t believe in doing things the easy way, AC.

This is a bold and brave experiment, cleverly written. You have a polished talent for narrative so that whatever you write reads well. The wealth of detail is dispensed with a casualness that I found particularly impressive.

Having said all that, I’m not entirely sure where this is going. Each individual cameo is so satisfying that I found myself wishing that the story had been written in a more conventional form, so that I didn’t have to fit all the scattered pieces together myself (never had the patience for jig-saw puzzles).

I suppose you could accuse me of idleness.'

--

I know what he means. People keep telling me that I'd get on so much better if I just wrote the story as a conventional narrative. I will do - in three years' time, if I still haven't found a publisher to take it on!

--

This December, I will be reading 'The Children of Green Knowe' to J (aged 7) and 'The night before Christmas' to T (aged 2). I've also bought them the most wonderful book as a present: 'The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon' by Mini Grey.

Love A

Nope, gone off StoryWar

2007-11-24T15:20:00.000Z

They gave my stories three out of ten! Stupid Americans.

(Sorry nice Americans. I know there are lots of you out there really.)

What a nice man!

2007-11-24T15:13:00.000Z

'perryi' wrote:

This is really very good. I like your authoritative attitude, your prose is hard-bitten and emotionless when it needs to be and the clues you present and the characters you describe are rounded and lifelike.

I like the way you play with point-of-view and timescale. It keeps your work original in an area which has been well and truly explored and expolited by other writers and indeed television dramas. You get inside the head of a fourteen-year-old girl very well (to the best of my knowledge, anyway, never having been inside the head of one myself), and when the narrative changes with time, you update your language and dialogue well.

I wonder how long you've been writing. It reads as if you are well-practised in the art. Your air of authority makes the police-procedural aspects of your narrative thoroughly believable. If this is a product of research, then it is well-handled, and you don't let the textbooks cramp your style. If the procedure is imagined, you make it seem real anyway. I like the way you describe weather and other details surrounding the murder scene, and I like the way you hint at backstory for your hardened and embittered police officer and pathologist. I would like to read more of this book.

There are a couple of things which I think need looking at. I mention them here in some detail not to be picky, but because I think you're on to something here and they deserve to be pointed out rather than glossed over. Here they are:"The snow outside is falling hypnotically in large, fast flakes." Kill the adverb, it is your enemy!

"MIGHT have done, or places she MAY..." Capitals are shouting, italics are emphasis. I realise that YWO doesn't allow italics, and you may have written these words in italics anyway, but if you haven't, perhaps you should. If not, leave them unemphasised and allow the reader to place the emphasis.

“I’m Emma,” answers the taller, slender girl, with Louise Brooks hair. “I’m the eldest; I’m twenty-two. Sarah-Jane here is twenty, and Amelia is another two years younger than her". Who is Louise Brooks? I'm a bloke, I know nothing of these things! Is she a famous model or a hair stylist?

"bloody sex life. We can’t seem to talk about anything else without arguing. (Ruefully) I can’t say I bring much to the discussion; we all know about my two 'epic romances',”" Not sure if the (Ruefully) works. It's clumsy in mid-dialogue, and again, the reader can make assumption about the nature of her speech.

I know the Leicester area well, having spent a few years of my misspent youth there. The following is a clue, but only in some people's minds - "“Dad was the only one who didn’t see her last night. He had some meeting in Loughborough and had to stay over." Now, you and I both know that Loughborough is only half an hour or so from Leicester and that Dad could have quite easily come home, so my immediate thought is that Dad was up to something he shouldn't have been. Many readers won't know this geographical fact, so maybe you should sneak it in somewhere a bit earlier so the reader can think "ah-hah!" (if indeed they're meant to, but I certainly did). I felt unfairly advantaged by this.

The following sentence is really, really good. "I expect one of them will ask, ‘Who is Amelia?’ and, although it has been fifteen years, I will begin to cry. A man named Max took her from me. He took her with a velvet glance, with a razor-touch so sharp and swift that, for a long time, neither of us noticed that the other was lost." That's very, very good narrative. It gives an opinion, rather than pointing a finger, too, so we are quite deliberately no further forward in the whodunit stakes whilst the prejudices of the character are revealed. Brilliant.

So, I've been a bit picky there, but only because your story is so good. The points I've made haven't diminished my marks, which were fours and fives, so please don't think I'm nitpicking.

I liked your story very much and I wish you every success with it.

--

He also emailed me separately, to talk more about it, which has only happened twice, but it's very nice when it does.

Love A

P.S. I also got a straight 'fives' review for my short story 'Privet' today, which was good, because the last-but-one reviewer said it was boring!

Story War

2007-11-17T12:33:00.000Z

Try this: www.storywar.com

I haven't a clue whose idea this was but you can post as many short stories as you want and readers give them a simple rating out of ten - then the stories are automatically ranked against each other - such a simple concept. Readers don't need to login or hand over any details or money. All the stories are under 3000 words and the vast majority are by American authors. It's a fascinating site. I doubt any serious agents/editors ever look at it but it's still interesting. I put a couple of pieces on there to see how they would do.

A

Girly things

2007-11-16T10:55:00.000Z

I've been getting so sick of never having anything new that, a couple of weeks ago, I broke out my credit card and went shopping on the Boden website. The stuff has now arrived and I was sure I'd get that familiar sick, guilty feeling but it was all lovely so I'm keeping it! I went through my whole wardrobe, deciding what was worth keeping and what wasn't and I actually IRONED several things that I haven't worn in years because they had taken up semi-permanent residence at the bottom of the ironing basket. I organised my wardrobe BY COLOUR and, after getting dressed in my new clothes, I actually went into the bathroom and put on LIPSTICK! I felt almost human again. I think it must be that crucial my-toddler's-just-reached-two-and-a-half stage that all mums go through. With daughter no.1 though, I was working full-time so I never had the chance to notice it.

Love A

'ayodelecampbell'

2007-11-16T10:37:00.001Z

I feel awful. I had to review her piece last night (she wrote some lovely things about Amelia's Body - see below - although she wasn't quite so nice about Love Child) anyway, that's not the point. It was the first piece, since the one by 'angelscribe', about which I could find almost nothing good to say at all. It's so hard. I tried to be encouraging and constructive but I'm afraid I'll have upset her just the same.

A

A turn-up for the books

2007-11-16T10:21:00.000Z

Well, a turn-up for me at any rate. Still getting the reviews in, still polishing the book. Actually, I put up a short story on YWO as well, and it was doing better in the ratings than Amelia's Body, so I wrote another and that did well too, so I wrote another! So I now have four pieces on the site getting reviewed but I won't bother transferring any of the shorts reviews to this blog. I'll let you know my star-ratings as they come in/change though (these are averages of all the individual reviewers' ratings, stars awarded out of 5).

They give you an overall rating and then a second rating which is your 'genre fans' rating, i.e. ratings given by people have your chosen genre listed amongst their favourite reads. So far I have:

Amelia's Body - overall: 3.5*, genre fans: 4* (out of 5)

Privet - overall 4*, genre fans 4.5* !!

Love Child - overall 3.5*, genre fans 4*

Celeb - not enough reviews for a star rating yet - need four at least

So I'm pretty chuffed with all that, especially as everyone's trying to get their own stuff into the top ten at the end of the month, so there is little incentive to mark highly.

:)

A

Re: comment to last post but one

2007-11-11T15:30:00.000Z

Thanks Hecate - I will. (And thanks for the confidence booster too!)

A

They either love it or they hate it

2007-11-11T15:17:00.000Z

'Ayodele Campbell' wrote:

The interweaving of the different points of view really works for me, the teasing tidbits of information from past present and future timelines making the reader work towards a solution for the puzzle that is Amelias body. The intricacy of detail really held my interest. I don't think the comments others have made about the narrative voice of Caroline are viable; who hasn't been 17 or 14 ? The importance of communicating the vivid moods expressions feelings insecurities and immaturity of youth is perfectly captured in your narrative, and I would say quite definately don't rewrite your character Caroline, I found her believable; teenage is usually a bi-polar existence especially since intellectual development and physical development have to coexist in the same burgeoning potent body. I loved your narrative.

But 'Jeff' wrote:
I found Amelia's body to be fairly well written, but that the story was segmented too much. Because of this I quickly lost interest. I would also say that it was quite slow and lacked that ocassional burst of activity that keeps your interest. It seemed to plod along at one pace and never break it up with a bit of humour or action. Other than that I have little else to say except that in the line that says "That's about the size of it," she frowns, "one o'clock wev'e got to be back." I thought that the second part of this dialogue would start with a capitol letter. I say this because I have been criticised many times for doing the same thing, although a capitol should only really be used in this way if it is a proper noun. Good luck, although it's not my cup of tea.

And then 'Hecate' wrote:
This is a stunning piece of work, in my humble opinion. Okay, partly subjective in that it's exactly the kind of book I would choose to read, but the writing is flawless. Sorry if this sounds a little OTT, but it's an honest reaction.
2 miniscule 'criticisms': the repetition of 'inventoried' in the prologue, then the next section (probably doesn't matter much); and 'practicing' should be 'practising', unless you're writing in or for the US, in which case, please ignore!
I loved the structure. The POV switches worked extremely well, I thought, and the way the backstories were woven inbetween was great – so huge variety, which was engaging, yet still completely coherent and moving the story forward.
Lovely descriptions of place/time – eg in the woods, at the crime scene. I'm normally averse to descriptions of place (plus I can't write them myself to save my life) but this was just right, and said in so few words.
I thought the characterisations were brilliant – even those who appeared for the briefest moments, or said very little, eg Caroline's male friend and David, came across vividly and believably. Also, some fantastic psychological observations in even minor characters, and nice little touches, eg Dad's occasional attempts at asserting himself in the all female household. In fact, the biggest mystery at this stage is the character of Amelia – but, of course, that's great, because we want to find out more about her.
Re your query about Caroline's dialogue. I don't know whether you've changed it since previous reviews, but to me it came over as absolutely convincing. I mean, teenagers ARE adult one minute, childlike the next – and their speech reflects this. I really, really would be very careful about altering this. In fact, the scene where Caroline is talking to her friend is actually quite lengthy, especially given that she's doing most of the talking! – but it read very easily and didn't seem too long at all. And totally 'right' for a 17 year old. Ah - looking again at your comments, I see you were referring to all the teenagers' dialogue – but, really, same point – all came over as convincing to me; infinitely more so than what you can get in a lot of published novels, I think.
And did I mention that I liked this?
Well done.

--

So now of course I don't want to change the structure. I'm also pretty relieved because it would have meant and awful lot of work.
Love A

6th and 7th

2007-11-07T10:31:00.000Z

'Dragongirlanonymous' wrote:

Wow. Perfect 5 on every point. I could find absolutely nothing wrong. At all.I love the splintered view points and the rapid-succession time changes that lead from findings of the post mortem. Effortless transition. Her story is not told linearlly but from a thousand viewpoints across time and space, all somehow connected with her life. Very, very cool.Don't worry about the dialogue. I found it very realistic. A lot is also inferred about the characters without going over-board. Subtle, sharp, and poignant.Again. Perfect. Wowza. EXCELLENT job. And nice job subtely slipping it into Brittain. Standing ovation. Possibly the most unique story I've ever read. I want more!

I really needed this. I'd just had another one saying that my structure was crap, so I altered the 50-word synopsis on the front page of my extract on YouWriteOn.com. I took off the bit saying that the book was aimed at both adults and older teenagers, leaving just the 'adult' part, and I added a few words to prepare the reader to expect my attempt at a 360-degree POV structure. I hope that this 5* review won't turn out to have been a one-off. Anyway, when I get review no.8 I hope it'll be good enough to allow me to delete 'ronmcmillan' who gave me all those 2s back at the beginning (and thereby increase my average and also my chances of getting into the top ten this month).

Also, 'sunny' wrote:

Bottom Line: You write well, but the story's structure and the large number of characters leads to confusion.
The story's strengths:
1) Amelia is immediately interesting. She is both the murder victim and perpetrator (she didn't deserve their love).
2) Interesting character detail, about how Amelia paints her little toe although it has no nail.
3) Also interesting that Caroline's baby has a problem with her little toe (and she should have been named after Amelia)...however, unless the baby ends up being Amelia reincarnated, how does this move the story ahead? (It is hard to tell since I've only read the first ~10K!)
4) You write well. Each part of the story flows well, but I don't know why they are important or how they fit together.

Suggestions:
1) "At this moment, or maybe this, but she did not resist." Is there a typo in this sentence?
2) When you initially switch to the scene in Leicester, you state the date is 1991. We have no frame of reference for what this means since you don't immediately share the year of her death. In addition, explicitly indicate each switch in POV to alleviate confusion. I suggest starting every change in POV indicating the name/age/time in a consistent fashion.
3) "Rose is complaining again that Amelia won’t do voices for the different animals. She says Amelia always does them when they’re on their own and it’s just because I’m here that she won’t do them now. Amelia is denying this completely. Rose says if Amelia’s going to be stupid about it we can both get out of her room right now." You can do this with dialog.
4) Do teenagers really want adult POV?
5) I suggest examining each scene/POV change and determining whether it moves the story forward. Remove any that don't.

On your writing style:
1) You switch between past and present tense. This is a bit unsettling. Switching tenses might work if you purely used present tense for the investigation and past tense for the past.
2) Stick to said/asked as much as possible. Whined, calls, cajoles, etc. are distracting.
3) Mostly use active voice, but a few times slip to passive (e.g. a weak sun has risen)
4) You do a lot of telling. I would enjoy more scenes with Amelia, showing her personality.

There are some fair points in this one, but two things I definitely don't want to do are to add more descriptive detail to the 'Investigation' chapters, or to flesh out the character of Amelia (the murder victim). Here's why: 1) in my head I see the Investigation chapters in black & white - almost like a documentary - the 'life' is in the other strand, the Post Mortem strand. If it were a film, only the PM strand would be in colour. This point of style is very important to me. 2) Amelia is NOT the central character - Caroline is. I like the idea that it will take readers a little time to see this.

Still plodding on,
Love A

4th and 5th reviews on YWO

2007-11-04T12:45:00.000Z

'angelscribe' wrote:

A, thanks for your two reviews this weekend-recently due to feedback that wasn't helpful or constructive, and ratings you gave me of 1s and 2s, I had to remove it. Sorry! AS for yours, you have a good storyline but needs a bit of work.

Characters: 3 [we mark out of 5 in each area]
To me, they didn't seem real. None of them are described in full details or have background. None of the police have first names. They appear flat. Describe them and give them some history, other Max is Amelia's boyfriend/killer?

Story: 4
Interesting concept. This isn't teen fiction. This is mainly a crime novel. Your prologue is short. Insert spaces between narration/dialogue in some areas. Good drama.

Pace: 4
Very good pace. I didn't care much about the layout between the post-mortem report and the flashback. I don't think our crime novels are set up like that. But that's just my opinion. The construction was okay, the structure was fair.

Language: 4
Very well done. Thirteen-year-old is hyphenated. God is capitalized. Watch out for super long sentences. No colons. Use semi-colons to combine two full sentences, not fragments-you're using them wrong. Use commas. Owens' should be Owens's. Word echo: layers. On page 18, you're missing punctuation. Girls shouldn't have an ' in Girls Night Out.

Narration: 3
The flashback/PM report throws me off the flow like a distraction. Good POV and details.

Dialogue: 4
Very natural. Don't end dialogue before tags with periods-use commas. You're missing some dialogue on a page. Says isn't capitalized.

Settings: 3
No descriptions of any setting or scenery. Make it 3D by giving it layers of foundation like the Owens's home and the desk at the autopsy.

Theme: 4
A good concept, but needs a new layout to tell the story in narration. It's almost too much telling that way. Give your places and people some description.Thanks for the read.

--

'leightvwersky' wrote:

hi
this was a triumph of style over content. my first reaction was that you need to work on the structure of this novel because although you have attempted something potentially very interesting and innovative it doesn't quite work yet (for me at least). the zipping back and forth between narratives and narrators is initially highly confusing and while not inscrutable certainly requires much re-reading for clarification. i'm afraid i think that is quite a serious fault line so early on.

too much mystery is a turn-off rather than a hook.

there are also loads of names that just get lost. stefan maric is never mentioned again, but will probably be important later. all those police officers' names are simply not necessary when you are introducing the plot in such an indirect way - smith and dexter can wait, so can dilbur kaur and dr hussain. the names distract at this stage when we really just want to concentrate on amelia and her close friends and family, and the police dealing directly with the case.

you also repeat a lot of information, for example the 6 am phone call and the fact that amelia's dad was in loughborough is repeated almost verbatim when wright and sharpe talk.

the summary of the police notes (p13 in my print-out) tells us nothing new.

also i wasn't sure why sharpe's habit of not using interrogatives in questions would irk wright? that seemed gratuitous. i also found her sentence 'did you see the body yet?'very odd. is she american? if not why doesn't she use the present perfect and say 'have you seen the body yet?' reading this was like watching one of those hollywood thrillers where the initial scenes are very brief, jumpily edited back and forth and are full of vital information (and you hope you haven't missed too much).

i think the fact that you had to spell out who exactly was who in no uncertain terms (i'm caroline aged 14 etc etc) highlights the fuzziness obscuring parts of your narrative.i'm afraid i found caroline and amelia's 'voices' aged 14 unconvincing - both way too old and way too young. and what are crumpled leaded windows? do windows crumple?

sorry to have so much to criticise. your descriptions of amelia's body, the vivid image of bridie throwing up in the mortuary, the breakdown of emma and sarah-jane were very good. and i liked david cooper, the blonde girls and luka ( but what on earth is a 'ubiquitous' blonde supposed to mean???).overall i think you have the basis of a really gripping thriller/mystery here but at present it needs another draft. you have a real talent for descriptions and atmosphere but get carried away by some odd expressions like the ones i mentioned above.

i gave this 3 for characters and story, 2 for pace, narrative voice and dialogue and 4 for language, settings and themes.

i wish you good luck with this novel.
regardsleigh

--

I have made some changes, particularly in response to that last review (not all of which I thought was fair, I have to say) but I'm waiting for more of a consensus view before doing anything drastic such as totally binning the two-stranded structure of the novel. That really was my starting point for the book. That was the idea that made me actually sit down and put pen to paper in the first place. I thought 'What if I wrote a crime novel in which we don't see everything through the eyes of the detectives, or even through the eyes of the victim, or her mother, or her best friend? What if a 360 degree narrative could be constructed using many different points of view? Could that work?'

Maybe the simple answer is 'No, it can't.' but I'm not ready to give up on it yet.

A

3rd YWO Review, no more rejections yet

2007-10-30T22:27:00.000Z

'Alastaira1' wrote:
I found this a very well crafted and competent piece of work. The plot, characters and dialogue all appear very natural and believable. The pace is fast and it is generally tightly written. I think the constant changes in points of view work well, and no doubt will slowly build up a complete 360 degree picture of Amelia and her death just as a police investigation attempts to do- so a very effective device.

My only criticisms were 1) A little more descriptive to create a stronger sense of atmosphere and place, and 2) The reader is being required to absorb a huge amount of information very quickly: names, relationships, places, events, timelines, which I frankly found quite tiring and to be honest I did find my concentration starting to stray at times. While I wanted to stick with it because the story is interesting and seems fairly novel in spite of a very crowded genre I did find my enthusiasm sagging at times under the weight of all this information -obviously you want to keep the pace brisk, but is there some way you can also weave in a certain atmosphere or suspense which I found lacking?

Peer reviews at YouWriteOn.com

2007-10-28T14:58:00.000Z

I really can't believe that it's taken me so long to discover this website. For anyone that doesn't know, it's funded by the Arts Council and you upload your 1st 10,000 words for peer review by other members. You can only earn reviews by writing reviews and so it goes, around and around. By recieving positive reviews, a work may move up the chart and, if it reaches the top, recieve a free 'professional' critique from either an agent, an editor or a published author.

I uploaded my stuff for Amelia's Body yesterday and have recieved 2 reviews so far. One loved it, the other hated it. See for yourself!

'Sensian' said:
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. There was only one point I found a little confusing which was the part where Amelia, Caroline and Rose were sitting together playing Sylvanian Families. I am not sure if it was a slip of point of view but I had to reread this part a couple of times. I lost who was narrating.Apart from this I found myself wanting to know what happened next. I instantly took to the characters, especially those of the detectives, and the descriptions gave a pefect image. I knew how they all looked, what their surroundings were like and their character. I would definitely buy this book. I am just a little disappointed I couldn't finish it today. An enjoyable read thank you.

But 'RonMcMillan' said:
I am sorry to have given fairly low marks for this review, but if I didn't I don't think I would be being honest.The author has a good ear for teenagers' dialogue, and does a good job of making the chat among the teenagers sound real, and believable. Some of her detail in terms of narrative description is strong and entertaining, too.However, the way the plotline is laid out, complete with irritating interruptions in the form of headlines/titles, reads, not cleverly, but annoyingly -- as if the writer could not be bothered developing the plot in the narrative, and thought it would be a good idea to stick in a few short-cuts along the way.Sentence lengths vary too much -- and err on the side of the over-long, in my opinion. The author might, if not already doing so, read the text aloud; this is a time-served way of identifying faults of all types.

I have the feeling that a distinct gender-divide may open up over this book. 'Sensian' is definitely female (I know from her online biog.) and 'RonMcMillan' speaks for itself (His uploaded book, by the way, seems to be about a middle-aged photographer getting offered lots of sex in the Far East: wishful thinking perhaps?).

Off to earn some more reviews.
A

12 Rejections

2007-10-26T11:31:00.000Z

The latest one said:

A clever idea but lacks a central character for me to care about - a hero/heroine - I like the old fashioned sort of story.

I'm back to the same old problem. My book does have a central, sympathetic character: Caroline, the childhood best friend of the victim, but she obviously isn't coming across effectively within the first two and a half thousand words.

I've been re-reading Agatha Christie, particularly a book of short stories called 'Miss Marple's Final Cases'. It's her opening lines that really impress me - they convey so much so efficiently. This is a skill I obviously haven't developed yet. For example, from an exquisite little story called The Dressmaker's Doll:
The doll lay in the big velvet-covered chair. There was not much light in the room; the London skies were dark. In the gentle, greyish-green gloom, the sage-green coverings and the curtains and the rugs all blended with each other. The doll blended too. She lay long and limp and sprawled in her green velvet clothes and her velvet cap and the painted mask of her face. She was the Puppet Doll, the whim of rich women, the doll who lolls beside the telephone, or among the cushions of the divan. She sprawled there, teternally limp and yet strangely alive...

There's so much repetition in these few lines - green, velvet, sprawled - and yet still it works. You can see the room. You already know that the doll is slightly sinister, even before you've clocked that it's a ghost story.

Or this, from Tape-Measure Murder:
Miss Politt took hold of the knocker and rapped politely on the cottage door. After a discreet interval she knocked again. The parcel under her left arm shifted a little as she did so, and she readjusted it. Inside the parcel was Mrs Spenlow's new green winter dress, ready for fitting. From Miss Politt's left hand dangled a bag of black silk, containing a tape measure, a pincushion, and a large, practical pair of scissors...

Even though you've been told it's called the tape-measure murder, and here is Miss Politt, the dress-maker (a coincidence, there are no further dress-makers in the collection) whom we are told is carrying a tape-measure, and whom we can picture perfectly from this brief description, yet it is still a surprise when she is revealed to have murdered Mrs Spenlow only minutes beforehand.

So, 12 rejections, 3 submissions outstanding - possibly binned. I'm beginning to look at The Writer's Handbook in a different way. It's touted as the key to the kingdom but this is a lie. It is the lock on the door. The primary function of The Writer's Handbook is to stop unpublished authors from pestering the better-known agents and publishing houses. Nine out of ten rejections begin As this is only a very small agency, it is not possible for us to.... You can tell it's a non-starter from the address before you even post your submission to Wisteria Cottage, 5 Drystone Lane, Little Foxington, somewhere-in-Essex/Devon/Lincolnshire. It's nothing but an enormous con and I'm sick of it.

From a couple of weeks ago - never got posted:

2007-10-26T11:30:00.000Z

Do you know what I want? (what I really, really want)
I want a housekeeper. Just for a couple of hours a day. More than (almost) anything in the world I want someone to come along and look after me and this house while I write. I don't want to think about the washing or the cat or the shopping or just how dirty the kitchen floor is becoming. I want to be able to wake up in the morning, make a nice cup of tea, wave the kids off and just start working while someone else (someone well-paid and respected of course, so I don't have to feel bad about it) does a bit of housework or puts a casserole in the oven. Wouldn't it be heavenly? I wonder how many books you have to sell in order to live like that.

The endless re-writes

2007-09-21T12:15:00.000Z

Hi, here it is, The Book.

I'm re-writing again, based on the advice I had from the agent who wrote last week. You see if I remove Stefan Maric's back-story from the prologue (which incidently I do think is a good idea because we don't hear very much more about him, except his re-occurring name, until half to two-thirds of the way through the book) I still have to include it somewhere and I don't want to just shove it in somewhere else. I think it needs to be sprinkled about a bit, and unfortunately sprinkling is a great deal more time-consuming than shoving.

More feedback from agents

2007-09-13T18:30:00.000Z

This one was wonderful - a standard form letter, under which the respondent had made use of every remaining patch of white paper to give me the following (greatly appreciated) advice:

Dear A_________
Thank you for letting us consider 'Amelia's Body'. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your work and I believe you write to a high standard. Sadly it is not for us though as it seemed like you were trying to squeeze in too many sub-plots for the reader to grasp and enjoy. I personally did not like the 1st prologue + would suggest you take this out, and only keep in prologue 'Amelia Owens: Victim'. The information on Stefan Maric is fascinating but would be better later on in the novel as it feels a bit thrown in. I also did not warm to to Caroline's diary extracts + would suggest you go from that single prologue straight to 'The Investigation' section page 15.
We deal mainly with commercial fiction and therefore prefer work to follow a commercial structure.
Best of luck with another agency.
C.B.

What can I say?

Noted. Improvements already underway. Thanks C.B.

Love A

The second wave

2007-08-30T19:01:00.000Z

I've done a hatchet job on my prologue and first three chapters to try and make the story a bit more immediate. Tomorrow I'll re-work my synopsis and CV and then it'll be time for a new batch to go out - maybe only four or five this time.
--

It's the next day and A is "working from home" so I've got some time to sort this all out. He's taking business calls on his mobile whilst pretending NOT to be at the park with the kids.

I just don't know what to do. I re-write and re-write but where do I stop? I can make it different and different again but how do I know what is better than what? And is better really important? For example, I liked how the book began back in April/May, before I got to the end and began the big re-working, but the two people I showed it to said it was too slow and needed more spark to catch the reader's attention, so I speeded things up. I got rid of some of the more lyrical bits and some descriptive passages and added more hints as to the darker things (i.e. sex and violence) that would follow, should the reader persevere. That went down well with my audience but I wasn't happy with it. If Heathcliff had ravaged Cathy within the first three chapters, who would have bothered reading the remainder of Wuthering Heights?
A

Must try harder

2007-08-23T08:41:00.000Z

This morning I received the 7th and final rejection of my first batch of submissions. I could have kicked myself when, on flicking through the pages, I discovered that the printer had cut the top off one page completely. I was so sure that I had checked and double-checked every single sheet before posting. Never mind. I must manage somehow to get this forthcoming bank holiday Monday all to myself, so that I can re-write my synopsis thoroughly and draft some more letters.

On the upside, I was reading aloud to the girls in Horbury Library a couple ago and one of the librarians stopped me on the way out to say that she had been listening to us and might I be willing (and available) to read stories to their toddler group on Friday afternoons at 2 o'clock? I said I'd love to. I'm taking up the literacy/storytelling post in T's Thursday morning playgroup from September anyway (also unpaid of course) as another woman is leaving, so at least if I've prepared any materials, props, etc. they will be put to better use. I'm really looking forward to it.
One small irritation is that the Thursday playgroup have saddled me with their accounts too, as part of a 'you win some, you lose some' package I suppose.
I'm perfectly numerate but I've never done 'accounts' before. I'm assuming it's a simple case of money-in vs. money-out but I had terrible trouble with my tax return.
It was my first ever one, because I did some paid technical writing for an environmental consultancy in Otley last year, so I had to register myself as self-employed (even though it was only £500). I knew that 99% of the questions weren't relevant to me but I had no idea where I should be putting zeros and where I should be leaving blank or simply repeating the one and only number I had: 500.
The form was composed of familiar words (attentuation, output, profit, benefit) but this new context somehow rendered them practically unintelligible, even with the help of the explanatory notes. I ended up making full use of the final box (any other information) to explain, in plain english, my financial circumstances - hoping that my form would at some point come into contact with a real human being who might take pity on me. I felt like such an idiot. I could have asked my dad to help, but he would only have made me feel like even more of an idiot. It would be me, aged eleven again, struggling with my maths homework, reduced to tears by his kindly-meant entreaties to 'try doing it HIS way - it doesn't matter what the teacher says as long as the answer is right'. Me, trying to explain that I'd lose the marks set aside for 'working', that if I didn't do it the teacher's way I wouldn't be able to understand the next piece of work that would inevitably build upon what had gone before. Me, finally realising that my dad didn't understand these new ways of doing things and was drowning along with me, in deep denial. I know this because I am occasionally baffled my my daughter's maths homework, which is madness because I did achieve top grades in the end, despite all the tears and trauma.
A x

Summer reading

2007-08-20T19:51:00.000Z

Quarantine by Jim Crace - some lovely descriptive passages but, on the whole, extremely tedious.

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey - fascinating, if a bit repetitive. (I had it on audiobook - poorly read - probably didn't help.)

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III - faired better of the 2nd attempt and really enjoyed it, although it wasn't particularly literary.

Towards Zero by Agantha Christie - an interesting one in that it worked backward (or rather, forward) from the planning of the crime towards its execution. Very good.

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh - heavenly.

Still mightily enjoying Borges' Ficciones, albeit in small doses.

A x

Tension

2007-08-20T09:25:00.000Z

I hate this inactivity. My fingers have begun to feel clumsy on these keys. Up until now I've always enjoyed the forced break from writing that came with the school holidays (I can't write in the evenings after a full day with the kids - my brain just doesn't work that way). Before I've used the time for 'spring' cleaning, decorating, catching up with my children, painting, maybe writing the odd short story or poem as the mood took me but this time it's different. Everywhere I look there are ideas for stories. I'm daily scribbling on scraps of paper and shoving them in to my desk drawer for later, but they never mean as much to me when I go back to them - the impetus is gone. You could say that perhaps they weren't good ideas in the first place, but I think some must have been.
For the first time I can't switch off: I feel this creative impulse (for want of a better phrase) simmering constantly, just beneath the surface. For three years now I have enjoyed being a full-time mum but now there are times when I feel that the girls are in my way and I find myself short of temper - then I apologise and feel guilty for the rest of the day.
I never wanted to go back to work but now I'm really beginning to feel that I can't go back. If I'm getting bad-tempered when I'm prevented from writing now, what would I be like after an eight-hour day at the office? When I went back to work after my first child was born I made every possible effort to make the minutes I was at home count, to the point that I did nothing whatsoever for myself - my personal grooming routine consisted of the daily 5-minute shower and nothing else. Occasionally I would have cause to glance down at my toenails and discover that they were literally beginning to curl back into the flesh of my toes, it had been so long since I had even thought of attending to them. My post went unanswered, even unopened. My sex life was virtually non-existent. And all the time I felt like I was missing something, like I was racing against the clock and something important was getting left undone - something more important than paying my credit card bill or arranging to get my hair cut. I don't want to go back to that.
A

93,020 Words

2007-07-31T09:11:00.000Z

Three rejections so far, out of seven submissions. One didn't have time to look at it at all and merely sent his apologies, another responded with a form letter, but the third has given me some advice, for which I am extremely grateful:

I realise you're trying to do something different with the genre, and I admire your ambition. But crime readers like their rules to be observed before they are broken - or publishers do - and in my opinion your narratiuve shifts dilute the tension rather than adding to it.

Of course publishing is a subjective business, and others may take a totally different view, so don't be discouraged.

This is very helpful to me because it tells me what impression I am giving people of the book, through the opening chapters and the synopsis that I have written for it. Two things leap out at me, that need to be rectified a.s.a.p.
1) The murder part of the story takes too long to really get going.
2) My synopsis gives the impression that the ending of the book is left wide open, with the case unsolved. It isn't. The true murderer is not convicted but he does get his comeupance and is therefore prevented from hurting anyone else. The person who does take the blame for Amelia's murder is by no means a sympathetic character and does share some of the blame, albeit indirectly. I need to make this clearer in the synopsis.
A

P.S. My mum's advice was also sound. She says I am too concerned with the back stories of minor characters (so I have cut some parts already) and that I have used the word 'bubbling' one two occasions, when describing people drinking, which is one too many. She has also advised me to cut/re-write the sections relating to a minor character who is writing her own book about what happened to Amelia, in contrast to Caroline's memoir, which is a major part of the story. She says this is an unnecessary distraction. However, excising this 2nd book would involve re-writing so much of my story that I am tempted to leave it in for the moment. I have made changes to the way it is presented, and spelled out (what I see as) its importance in clearer terms when it is first introduced into the narrative. I hope this will suffice.

Literary agents

2007-07-20T12:59:00.000Z

I'm just off out to post my first batch of submissions to literary agents - seven in total. There are eighteen agencies in the Writer's Handbook that sound as though they might be interested in the work I'm doing but I ran out of steam. My printer has decided to abandon the conventional 1 page of text = 1 sheet of paper method of working and takes as many sheets as it pleases, fanning them out and printing across all of them simultaneously. I have therefore been reduced to spoonfeeding it one sheet at a time and I've been at it for hours.
Love A

Strange days

2007-07-19T13:11:00.001Z

Still no news on what happened to Uncle A. Family found him dead in his bed yesterday morning. Doesn't quite seem real. Sent card to my cousin. Not 'sympathy' card, just little notelet saying we're all thinking of her and her mum and sister. Autopsy inevitable, sorry to say.

Until yesterday's bombshell, I was planning to update you on my reading.

For the Death of Me - Quintin Jardine (Awful, I mean awful. A definite attempt at a portrait for the attic - pure vanity.)
House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus II (Started well. Lost interest after a bit but will give it another go.)
The Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss (Self-consciously 'witty' but never the less pretty entertaining.)
Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges (Saving it as an antedote to the new Harry P, which will arrive on Saturday and be devoured within 48 hours - and yes, I am suitably ashamed of myself.)

Love A

First Eyes

2007-07-18T19:23:00.000Z

What my mum said (by text message) in full, as promised:

Finished! Complex and well thought-out. We could send A and J out with the girls next Saturday whilst we talk about it. D & R can't make it. Are you coming Friday night? xx

I can therefore expect a more thorough verbal dissection on Saturday, which I will attempt to paraphrase for you. I should perhaps say that my mum has been a librarian for over thirty years and is currently Stock Strategy Manager for Leicester Libraries - that's why I wanted her opinion in particularl. I could have given it to my husband to read. In fact I offered him a look when it was only about fifty pages long - he didn't like it. Neither did my dad. I put a more recent printout on my husband's bedside table, it was about 75,000 words at that point. Well it sat, and it sat, and it gathered a little dust, and then a little more. Eventually I had re-written to the point where there was no use in him reading the printout as it was so out of date. I removed it. Nothing was said. I am still quite angry about it. He does read an awful lot, but not crime, perhaps he is afraid of not liking it and me being annoyed with him. Perhaps he is jealous that he can't give up work and live the life of a writer (and it is a good life - even though I haven't seen a penny yet - slow, meandering life that allows a person time to take in all the delicious details, both within and without).

Interrupted by phone call from mum. Uncle Andy dead. Reason unknown. Got to go.
A

92,070 (iii)

2007-07-13T11:09:00.000Z

Sorry, the MySpace link doesn't seem to be working. We'll try another way: use the following link to get to my homepage and then select 'Blog'.

www.myspace.com/gapyearstories

For FaceBook, register and then search 'Amy Whitehouse' to find my picture. It's the same pic I posted a few weeks ago of me and the kids - scroll down to see it.

92,070 (ii)

2007-07-13T10:57:00.000Z

Hi, nothing to report from mum yet, so I've begun researching my next book. It will be called CrashPad and it will be similar in structure to Amelia's Body, with two intertwining narrative strands. One strand is of course the investigation and the other is to be composed of the characters' memories of their gap year travels (which all go towards explaining what is happening to them in the present). To whit I have put out a general call for 'gap year/travelling stories' on my FaceBook and MySpace pages.

www.facebook.com
www.blog.myspace.com/gapyearstories

If you have a story to add then you can either post it here, as a comment to this blog, or visit one of the pages linked above. (You will have to register on one or other of the sites in order to comment, and for FaceBook you will also need me to confirm you as a 'friend' before you can see my profile or read any of the other stories posted there. I will aim to respond to all requests a.s.a.p.)

Love A

92,070 Words

2007-07-01T19:55:00.000Z

I've finished the re-write and given it to my mum with instructions to be brutally honest. In particular, I wanted to know:

Is it always clear who's speaking to whom?
Are there any continuity errors or parts of the plot that otherwise make no sense?
Are there passages that digress too far from the story and ought to be cut?
Is it all just too depressing?

I'll post her verdict in full.

84,630 Words

2007-06-12T11:18:00.000Z

I've recently joined Facebook. I warn you, it's highly addictive - like Friends Reunited but with loads of space for photos and free messaging. It's amazing how many people will come and find you on it within days of joining. It's very strange to see those old faces again: different hairstyles, more or less tanned, fatter, thinner, greyer than you remember them, and yet their voices are wonderfully unchanged.

It's made me realise how provincial I've become, living up here. I hadn't exactly forgotten that London or Leicester existed - I hadn't quite re-centred my whole world view on Dewsbury just yet - but I had allowed these other places to shrink away gradually from my Everyday Life, until they were but blips on the radar. I feel like my world has suddenly expanded again. So-and-so doesn't just live in Wolverhampton, she LIVES there - her full-on 24-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week life is going on, concurrently with my own, with all its particular dramas, joys and difficulties, as are all the other anonymous lives on and off the website.

Re: The Book.
I've ordered the latest Writer's Handbook, and am well into the re-write already.

Love A

84,610 Words

2007-06-10T19:52:00.000Z

I've bloody finished it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blissfully,
A

81,448 Words

2007-06-10T19:51:00.000Z

So close. So close now and I'm dying to print it all out again so that I can just hold it in my hands - the whole thing, and feel the completeness of it. I know it'd be a waste of paper. I still have six or seven pages to go and then of course there will come another monster re-write, because I have dashed off these last twenty thousand words so quickly, there will be inconsistencies and spelling errors galore. Still, it felt really great to pass the 80K mark. It felt like I could actually start thinking of myself as 'a writer', rather than just a tryer. The 2nd biggest challenge is yet to come (the first being writing the damned thing) so I still I can't say it out loud until someone agrees to publish the book. Until that moment I will continue to answer the perennial question "So, when are you thinking about going back to work?" with my usual, noncommital "Oh I don't know. Not just yet. I think maybe I want to do something completely different."

I've been giving a lot of thought to the first page and the last page - surely the most important pages of any book. The first page (apart from the jacket and blurb, which are likely to be outside my control) is my one shot at getting the potential reader to take it to the till, and the last page is what will determine their lasting impression of the book if they finish it - will they feel their time has been well-spent? Will they recommend it to a friend? Will they even remember what happened in a fortnight's time? Instead of endlessly tinkering with my first page I decided to write a whole new one (I'll put in on the website later today) and I'm much happier with it now. The last page hasn't been written yet but I have some ideas. Better get on with it I suppose...
Love A

P.S. On the subject of book jackets, I really fancy white, snow-covered ground with the slightly fuzzy shape of a scarlet coat lying there, abandoned. I've read many times that 'white covers don't sell' but I have several books with white or mostly white covers, and it's never been a factor in my choosing or not choosing to pick up a book. My favourite book covers though are the deep turquoise covers of Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell & The Butterfly. Now both those covers did influence me to pick up those books, and still they glint invitingly on my bookshelves, calling me to re-read each more than once. Blue wouldn't have any relevance to my story though. A shame really. Perhaps I could have just a close-up of Amelia's red coat - so close that you could see the weave of the woollen fabric - that would be nice. Red is my favourite colour.

P.P.S. I can see that all this daydreaming about 'what I'll do when I'm published' might seem annoyingly presumptuous to some readers, but really, what's the point in all this effort unless you believe in yourself? in the strength of your will to succeed? I read that Marina Lewyncka gave up trying to get her 1st manuscript published after 40 rejections. Forty? I'm expecting that many in the first wave alone.

Essential books to read to children

2007-06-07T18:37:00.000Z

After listing my own favourite books, I started to think of the books that my children have read and loved and re-read. With the picture books, these are the ones they learn by heart - the ones I have heard them telling themselves in their cots late at night when I have thought they must have fallen asleep already (they were being so quiet). With the books for older children, they are the ones I have read to my older daughter and now find her taking down and re-reading to herself. With most of the books for over-sevens (as J is only just coming into that bracket) these aren't books we've read together yet but rather the ones I remember most vividly from my own childhood, and so I look forward to reading them aloud.

Most, perhaps all, of these books are just as good for either sex but, as I am raising only girls, there certainly a bias towards girly books or books with female characters. If I could deliver these forty books to every baby girl born in the english-speaking world, I would do so with love and die happy.

Top ten for under 3s

Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear - EMILY GRAVETT
The Baby's Catalogue - JANET & ALLAN AHLBERG
Peepo! - JANET & ALLAN AHLBERG
Moo, Baa, La, La, La - SANDRA BOYNTON
Where's Spot? - ERIC HILL
I Want My Potty - TONY ROSS
Dear Zoo - ROD CAMPBELL
The Very Hungry Caterpillar - ERIC CARLE
We're Going On a Bear Hunt - MICHAEL ROSEN
Where Does Maisy Live? - LUCY COUSINS

Three to Five

Pants - GILES ANDREAE
Rosie's Babies - MARTIN WADDELL
The Gruffalo - JULIA DONALDSON
All Join In - QUENTIN BLAKE
The Rascally Cake - JEANNE WILLIS & KORKY PAUL
The Hairy Book - BABETTE COLE
The Tiger Who Came To Tea - JUDITH KERR
Mr Gumpy's Outing - JOHN BURNINGHAM
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go To Bed - LAUREN CHILD
Slinky Malinki - LYNLEY DODD

Five to Seven

The Enchanted Wood - ENID BLYTON
The Twits - ROALD DAHL
Sheep-Pig - DICK KING-SMITH
Popular Folk Tales - THE BROTHERS GRIMM
Lion Boy - ZIZOU CORDER
Harry Potter & The Philiosopher's Stone - J.K. ROWLING
The Wind in the Willows - KENNETH GRAHAME
Flat Stanley - JEFF BROWN
Utterly Me, Clarice Bean - LAUREN CHILD
The Bad Beginning - LEMONY SNICKET

Seven to Nine

Just William - RICHMAL CROMPTON
The Secret Garden - FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
The Just So Stories - RUDYARD KIPLING
The Happy Prince & Other Stories - OSCAR WILDE
Lorna Doone - R.D. BLACKMORE (Ladybird Children's Classics version)
Gulliver's Kingdom - JONATHAN SWIFT (Ladybird Children's Classics version)
Matilda - ROALD DAHL
The Ha Ha Bonk Book - JANET & ALLAN AHLBERG
Wolves - EMILY GRAVETT
The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe - C.S. LEWIS

Nine to Twelve

Anne of Green Gables - L.M. MONTGOMERY
Daddy Long-Legs - JEAN WEBSTER
The Dead Letterbox - JAN MARK
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 - SUE TOWNSEND
Over Sea, Under Stone - SUSAN COOPER
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - JUDY BLUME
The Children of Green Knowe - LUCY M. BOSTON
Moondial - HELEN CRESSELL
Carrie's War - NINA BAWDEN
The Silver Sword - IAN SERRAILLIER

Enjoy.
Love A

My Books of 2007

2007-06-07T13:21:00.000Z

They're not all mine. The one at the back is J's best friend from two doors down.

I've noticed that many book-bloggers keep an online diary of what they're reading and this prompted me to try and list my own reads of 2007. I couldn't remember all of the talking books I've had but I tend to think that if they weren't memorable enough to stay with me, they're probably not worth mentioning.

In no particular order:

A Rebus (can't remember which) - Ian Rankin

An Insp. Wexford (ditto) - Ruth Rendell (seriously dull)

R is for Ricochet - Sue Grafton (An awful shopping list of a book)

Sleep Pale Sister - Joanne Harris (too self-consciously gothic, including annoying over-use of the word 'gothic')

Taras Bulba - Nikolai Gogol (fascinating but brutal)

The Blooding - Joseph Wambaugh (plenty of amusing American misunderstandings of English words)

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (enjoyed it but was a bit baffled about why it was SO popular)

Books I & II of Tender is the Night - F.Scott Fitzgerald (really love the style but needed a break before book III)

Persuasion - Jane Austen (SO much better than the recent TV adaptation)

The Children of Men - P.D. James (interesting premise, slightly dull book results)

A Henning Mankell (can't remember which)

Hen and the art of chicken maintenance - Martin Gurdon

Collected Poems - Fernando Pessoa

Glad to Wear Glasses - John Hegley

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Currently reading:

The Life of PI - Yann Martel (enjoying)

Behind the scenes at the museum - Kate Atkinson (enjoying most of it, the odd slow patch makes me pick up something else instead)

Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov (really enjoying)

Perdita - Paula Byrne (may never finish)

A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (keep picking this up and then getting distracted by other things)

The Crimson Petal & The White - Michael Faber (again, may never finish)

Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak (needs more attention than I can give it at the moment)

Days of the Consuls - Ivo Andric (slow-going)

My favourite books:

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

The Diving Bell & The Butterfly - Jean Dominique Bauby

The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Collected Poems - Fernando Pessoa

If I Don't Know - Wendy Cope

Other books I intend to read this year:

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Snow - Orhan Pamuk

Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

I'll let you know how I get on.

77,510 Words

2007-06-03T15:58:00.000Z

I thought I might finish it today. I'm so close. Only another two or three thousand words I think. I could go at it for another couple of hours but my fingers hurt. So do my elbows, my wrists, my buttocks, my eyes... I'll have to wait until Friday now to do any more but I really think I might be celebrating Friday night!
Fingers crossed.
Love A

74,134 Words

2007-06-01T18:53:00.001Z

A burning building, a decapitation - I'm really starting to let myself go with the flow now that I'm so close to finishing. The characters are almost writing themselves, now that I have such a strong idea of what they would or wouldn't do - especially the baddies! It's great fun.
A

73,050 Words

2007-05-30T19:22:00.000Z

STORY VS PLOT
I'd be interested to know how established crime writers conceive their plots. Do they begin at page one and just let it form itself along the (linear) way? Do they brainstorm it all out in a big spiderweb, adding 'story' into the gaps as they go?
My writing falls somewhere in between. I started off as the former type. Then, at about the halfway point, I panicked and started doing the brainstorming thing, creating a pinboard-full of scribbled yellow post-its. My big, halfway point re-write involved adding some of these new ideas in, and emphasising others that were already there. Eventually, when I felt able to move forward again, I carried on with the straight linear approach, just banging the words out, but with the benefit of all the extra thinking I'd stopped to do in the middle.
The main difference is that, as I write now, and I'm very close to the end, I'm having to go back and add 'clues' (for want of a better word) into earlier chapters. I just hope they won't stick out like sore thumbs. I don't want the plot to appear 'tacked on'. It does seem a very false way to do it but this book is definitely more about 'story' than 'plot'. I hope that isn't seen as a drawback.

I've been at this too long and I'm accomplishing very little. I was up at six with a snotty baby (poor thing). I need to get out of the house and buy some chocolate.

A

72,068 Words

2007-05-30T18:58:00.000Z

REVIEWS II
Every time I come up here and sit down to write, I begin with the ritual of a cup of strong, black coffee in my armchair and the pages of the Guardian Review section from the previous Saturday's paper. I usually only read two or three articles in a sitting, just to get myself focussed and in the right frame of mind to work. Occasionally I find real inspiration in somebody's comments about another piece of work or discover some truth about my own work that I had (up until then) been hiding from. To whit: I've just read a review of The Post-Birthday World (Lionel Shriver again), that said the author appeared to have sacrificed drama because her story was so autobiographical. This little snippet hit me like a sledgehammer. I am also guilty. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say: I am also cowardly.

There is a fair amount of drama in my book. There is also a fair amount of people saying that these events are awful, terrible, heartbreaking, etc. while at the same time I have shied away from the more extreme things that could have happened to them - I have been letting my characters off easy (for example: the murdered girl wasn't raped, the father wasn't the killer, the detective had already split with his girlfriend when he met his new love-interest, the asian constable is generally well-treated...). Each time I rejected one of these avenues, I told myself that it was for the sake of realism: if too much bad stuff happens to a small set of people, it will become ridiculous. However, I ought to have remembered its corrollary: if too little happens to a set of people, it will become boring.

Some of the characters in my book are very loosely based on real people. They are not portraits, however. It's more like I took a photo, or maybe even just a silhouette, of people I have known and used that static, empty thing as a template upon which to build a fictional character. They are like people-shaped blank canvasses. For example, I am Caroline, but Caroline's mother is not my own mother, she is lifted from the aged aunt of a friend whom I once met for less than an hour. I have imagined her personality and I have knocked twenty years off her age and, hey presto! one fictional mother. They are all a bit like that, however, I find it hard to let some things happen to the characters because of who they used to be. I must try to free myself of this self-defeating inhibition.

I'm also midful that my parents (and their long-established book group) will want to read it. Even my Nana has asked for a copy of the manuscript, although it is somewhat of a perverse relief that she can only manage talking books and the occasional magazine nowadays, as she can neither hold a heavy book for long, nor raise her head sufficiently to look at one.
Gautam Malkani was asked what his parents thought of his book and whether the idea of their reactions had held him back at all, particularly in the areas of sex and swearing - he seemed genuinely surprised at the question!

P.S. Of course this means that if anyone who believes that they know me, thinks they recognise a version of themselves in my book, don't take it personally if bad things happen to 'you' or if I cause 'you' to do bad things to others. It isn't you at all! I have heard it said many times over that the reason a second novel is so hard is because a writer puts their whole life (up to that point) into the first book and the next one has to be pure imagination. (I think the same goes for debut albums.) There must, therefore, be people all over the world who don't realise that some mutated form of themselves exists on paper: copyrighted, sold and distributed to the masses. I might even already be in a book myself. You might.

A

71,392 Words

2007-05-28T12:18:00.000Z

REVIEWS
As I near the end of my book and aspire to commercial publication, the inevitable subject of reviews comes to mind. I read that Harper Lee, on finishing To Kill a Mockingbird (her first and only completed novel) dreamt only of 'a swift and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers'. Lionel Shriver, in contrast, got into such a bitter email exchange with one Washington Post reviewer his comments about her 6th(?) book that she dreads his ever being let loose on another because now it's personal. If they're going to pan it I would certainly prefer a short, sharp 'we hated it' but on the other hand, a more detailed critique would surely be useful feedback as I intend to make my living out of this and expect to get better with practice. I hope I can learn to take the lashes that really smart without being tempted to hit back or simply to give in.
Realistically speaking, if my book's no good, it simply won't get published or it'll get published but no one will bother reviewing it. But if I could dream of the perfect review, if I could whisper the words into their sleeping ears and have them wake up believing they were genuine, what are the words I would snip from the newspaper and treasure? artful, suspenseful, shocking, tragic, a metaphor, a subtle depiction of..., loneliness, grief, identity, loss, family, sisterhood, outsider, jealousy, murky, scheming, finely drawn, a patchwork, a slideshow, a series of vignettes, gestalt - the whole being more than the sum of its parts. Which words do I most dread? What are the weaknesses I am trying my best to stamp out? repetitiveness, clumsy dialogue, full of holes, lost strands of plot, pointless, predictable, boring, weak.

QUOTATIONS
I've used a lot of poetry extracts and quotations from other novels in my book (well, about ten in all) and I wonder whether the author is supposed to go about getting permission to include these or whether the agent or publisher has that responsibility? I wonder if either of the aforementioned would be put off taking on a manuscript because of that extra work? I've divided my book into five sections: prologue, parts one to three and epilogue. I've chosen a poem to begin each section and there are also some parts of the book where the more bookish characters, partilcularly when diarising, quote phrases from books or poems that express what they feel. I'd hate to lose or compromise those bits of my book.

ADVICE
Avidly I devour articles by authors, interviews with authors, anything I can get my hands on. Some of their advice grates, a lot seems wise at the time of reading but is quickly forgotten and a few things, just a few, stay with me. I can't remember who said each of these things but these are the pieces of advice I have found the most valuable.
(some of them I haven't explained very well, some comprise a single buzz-word that I keep in my head but they all mean something important to me, they are like my writing-mantra)

Show, don't tell
Suspense can only be achieved by keeping another possibility alive until the last possible moment
The semiotic vs. the symbolic (the emotional narrative vs. links to real-world objects)
Intertextuality
The number 3 - a storytelling staple since the beginning
Truths, themes and plot points
'Postmodern tricksiness' - I once read a book described as such by a reviewer and it really appealled to me
When I think I know where a character is heading and am in danger of plodding, continually to ask myself 'But what if...?'
Different ways of indicating the passage of time
Always speak your dialogue out loud when re-reading - imagine it's a TV programme or a film

65,654 Words

2007-05-13T18:23:00.000Z

Overdrawn again and it's only the thirteenth of the month. I'm really torn between keeping up the pace with my book and trying to make money by other bits of writing.
I've sketched out half a dozen children's picture books in spare moments, usually in the school holidays when I don't have the significant blocks of time necessary to work on Amelia's Body. I haven't sent them out in any kind of organised manner. I'd have to spend valuable time improving the presentation: I'd need to re-draw most of the illustrations on better quality paper and spend money on having them properly photocopied. Then there's the time spent researching the right publishers and agents to send them to, the covering letters, the postage, the SAEs... It doesn't sound like much but it very quickly eats into both your writing time and your bank account.
I don't want riches, I'm just so tired of worrying about fitting in one last 'big shop' before the end of the month, not being able to get things fixed when they break down, praying secretly that the girls don't get invited to too many birthday parties. It's just exhausting.
--
He's finally had the 'all-clear' from the hospital. That probably isn't improving my mood.
--
I'm worried about my book. I think I'm trying to fit too much in. I read a review recently (I forget the name of the book) which said something along the lines of 'The author seems to be trying to write several books at once. One should not attempt to include every single good idea one has - some may be saved for later.' I have that problem. Maybe it will turn out David Mitchell-like: a patchwork of short stories, loosely sewn together. I'd be okay with that, after all, that's how life is.
A

64,715 Words

2007-05-11T11:44:00.000Z

Hi,
It occurred to me yesterday that I will be finished in 60 pages or so. It made me realise that I have to take a new approach with the book.
So far, I've been plodding forwards, a few hundred words at a time, stopping every now and then to re-read and make changes. It has been a very linear process. Now I realise that I have to allow it to unfurl. I have to spread it out, literally, chapter by chapter and get a really good look at the whole story. So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of days.
I printed it all out (a page at a time, instead of two or even four pages per sheet, as I usually do) then stapled each chapter together and laid them all out on the floor. It was quite revelatory.
For example, it was by looking at it in this way that I noticed that I had let six chapters come between the 2nd crime scene being discovered and anyone doing anything at all about it. They were only short chapters and, within the linear narrative, it made sense to do so but in the story (which I am coming to find is a different thing, not always rational, not always easy to bend to my will) it was just silly to have such a big gap. Anyone reading the book would have thought 'Eh? What on earth has this got to do with anything I've been reading about so far?' so I've added bits and chopped bits and generally made it flow a little better.
This gave me another shock: if I'm likely to be ADDING to the chapters I've already done, a page here, two pages there, then this 60 pages that I have left to do is going to get eaten up pretty quickly. If I still want to constrain the book to 80-90,000 words, I've got to wrap things up in maybe as little as 45-50 pages to the end.
I have 15 chapters left to do (this is dictated by the structure that I've been working to from the very beginning, and can't be changed). I had planned to manipluate the pace of the story by shortening the last few chapters, in order to create a feeling of racing toward the conclusion. At this rate, the last two or three chapters will only be half a page each! People may think it's pointless and perhaps too contrived to stick so rigidly to a word count and a preconceived structure but I have to do it, at least for this first book, or else I'd never finish. I'd re-write and re-write, adding descriptive passages, over-explaining the motives of the characters, adding internal monologues to clear up vague plot-points; all of which might benefit the story, I don't know, but I'm a real short-story fan so I know it's possible for a writer to do everything they want to do within a strict word-count, if they're only clever enough. I'm determined to try.
A

62,122 Words

2007-05-04T13:26:00.000Z

I've done the room, so how about me? My photo doesn't give away much. It's only partly because I don't tend to like most photos of myself, who does? It's more about anonymity. If I'm ever published, I'd prefer it to be under a pseudonym, although I realise that this blog and my other site provide plenty of clues to anyone interested in finding me but I have no interest in celebrity whatsoever. I never fantasise about going into a hotel or shop and hearing people say 'Hey, isn't that _____?' I've never wanted special treatment.

Well, I'm 5'6'', female, 30 years old. Short dark hair and greeny-brown eyes. Average really. Neither as slim as I want to be or as fat as I could be (if I ate what I wanted).
Husband, two kids, three hens, two rabbits, one cat - an inventory of my predominantly happy life.
First class honours in environmental science with energy engineering. Post-grad in climate change.
Likes: reading (of course), painting, film, theatre, summer festivals, cooking, wine, etc. etc. The usual stuff.
Currently reading: Death & a penguin, The children of men, Behind the scenes at the museum, Tender is the night
Listening to: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Madeleine Peyroux, Radio 4
Notable talents: I speak Norwegian and I can still do a perfect cart-wheel after all this time, although sadly I can no longer manage the splits.
Currently wearing: a long black dress that I had from M&S to use as a maternity dress because it's cut on the bias and it's actually a size 22 so if you stretch it out it just grows and grows. I still wear it when I'm feeling lazy and I don't think anyone can tell. It's shrunk quite nicely after lots of washes. A ratty old tesco cardigan, hopelessly pilled but it has a collar that sits high up on the back of the neck and prevents that stiffness you get when sitting at a computer for a long time, so I sew it up every time it gets a trailing end of wool or a stray thread and hopefully it'll last forever. Some very fetching knee-high anti-DVT socks, because I've had varicose veins before and don't want them again. Underwear of course. Not my best.
So that's me on an average work-day.

Speak soon.
Love A

60,681 Words

2007-05-02T15:13:00.000Z

Hi,
I really feel like I'm on the home stretch now, as I'm both writing forward from about 59,000 words and backwards from the ending. I feel considerably more comfortable with the whole thing now that I know for certain how it's all going to end. I expect that, having reached my target of 80-90,000 words, I will have to re-write and shuffle things around, tie up any loose ends that I might have forgotten about, and then of course there are the typos - especially those hard-to-spot ones that spell out a real word (not the right word) and therefore sneak past the spell-checker.

People keep suggesting things that I might do to earn money in the meantime: write short stories for magazines, write book reviews for book-clubs, etc. but I'm so desperate to finish this now. I foresee a long waiting period, after I start sending out drafts of my novel to publishers, when that sort of thing will be essential - perhaps more for my sanity even than for my bank balance. I already know what my 2nd book will be about (and the one after that!) but I don't think I will be one of those writers who can post their drafts one day and sit down to work again the next. I'll need to concentrate on placing the first one before my head is clear enough for another big project. Maybe I'll do some paintings. I'm pretty good at watercolours and I can do those detailed botanical pictures that are quite popular.
Speak soon.
A

57,908 Words

2007-04-27T10:42:00.000Z

Hooray! Progress! The Easter holiday is over and I'm feeling good. I'm increasing T's childminder hours from three a week to five and I'm determined to get this thing finished.
A

56,190 Words

2007-03-22T15:04:00.000Z

Hi,
This has been sitting in Wordpad for a couple of days, waiting for me to get back online.

I've been reading about hyperfiction; its proponents apparently believe that readers are oppressed by the traditional beginning-middle-end structure of the novel and would prefer to navigate our own way through the story, altering the line of the narrative and perhaps even switching between alternative universes (presumably the result of making some different choice at any particular crossroads in the plot) and changing the 'main voice' of the story or its narrator. It occurs to me that the author of the essay (Susan Sontag), who disliked the idea of the hypernovel and did not believe it would catch on, has missed a glaringly obvious point: the hypernovel exists - in fact I would go so far as to call it ubiquitous - and may be found on every playstation and x-box in the world. They hypernovel has snuck up on us literary types, unawares, and any who would dismiss modern computer games as having no real story have obviously never tried them. I, personally, am not a great fan of these infinte wasters of time and mental capacity but I do appreciate their cleverness.

For me, it has to be the traditional novel structure, for now at least, although I have been seriously considering doing a Scooby-Doo ending. There are precedents in literature: A Portrait of a Lady, The Story of O, and others. I think they are a class above the cliffhanger ending, in that you are left with two or more distinct possibilities for the conclusion of the tale, rather than being left with nothing. The author may even be pointing you firmly in one particular direction but he at least leaves open the possibility that Isabelle might just change her mind - and you can believe that she did, if it makes you feel better.

54,493 Words

2007-03-15T13:38:00.000Z

Hi,
Anybody want to send me a spring-themed haiku? Your own work or just something you read and enjoyed. You send it as a 'comment' by clicking below, or as a private email message. Please say if you don't want me to post it on the blog.

There are three lines, the syllables go 5,7,5 and it really ought to be concerned with nature, an emotion, a season and (in the last line) a contrast of some kind.

This is one of my favourite poems, it's by Wendy Cope, from the book If I Don't Know (2001, Faber & Faber):

HAIKU: ON LOOKING OUT OF THE BACK BEDROOM WINDOW WITHOUT MY GLASSES

What's that amazing
new lemon-yellow flower?
Oh yes, a football.

Love A

54,019 Words

2007-03-10T14:44:00.000Z

Saturday morning:
When I write for a long time and then am called upon to return, suddenly, to the real world by a crying child or ringing telephone, I experience an unpleasant inverse vertigo. As I descend into the rest of the house I feel dizzy. I have difficulty knowing that it is real. I am disconnected and everything is smaller and slightly out of focus. It takes me a few minutes to acclimatise. To others it probably looks like I have just woken up: not writing but napping.
--

Later:
I'm in a love/hate phase with the book at the moment. When I'm sitting working on it, the time flies by and yet I find it hard to make myself sit down in the first place. It's like putting off doing your homework. First I trim my nails, then I notice how dusty the bedroom is beginning to look in the daylight, so I get a cloth... and so on. I feel resentful towards the book itself; I feel like it should be less laborious to get the story out of my head and on to the page.
--

PM:
As I go, I'm making two lists on pieces of scrap paper beside the computer: words I think I've probably over-used and need to check, and words I like and would like to use if possible (portent, lacerate, denigrate, scowl).
--

A poem:

Looking Forward

Crisp, bright October Sunday
Alone in my garden -
I breathe in deeply.

Each pale, waxy bulb
Bedded in cool receptive earth.
I mulch in silence.

Soft warm wool
Envelops my own skin -
I am in heaven.

Nothing

2007-03-10T11:13:00.000Z

The cycle of my fertility swings around and around as V's belly grows.

I make new curtains for every room of the house.

53,625 Words

2007-03-08T17:06:00.000Z

I'm still just going over old ground but I'm quite enjoying it and I'm having lots of new and unexpected ideas about where to take the story after p.184.

In Writers' Rooms, they always describe/explain the items on their desk and what else is visible in the room. If you could have a tour of my surroundings, they would look like this:

I live in a terraced house that was once two back-to-backs (a style of two-up, two-down housing that I have been told is particular to industrial Yorkshire, although I'm sure people will point out if this is incorrect). This old stone terrace is surrounded on three sides by 1950s council semis, from which the noise, especially on summer nights, can be horrendous. The garden, however, is 120 feet long and the road in front is so quiet the kids can play out on it all day long unless some local idiot is riding one of those high-pitched, improbably loud motorbikes around the streets, in which case they know to keep well clear.

We share the garden with the next-door-neighbours for a bit of extra width but it can be problematic: the wife especially gets very grumpy if there is any noticeable wear and tear on 'her side', despite the fact that she seems never to sit in the garden or take any share in maintaining it. I'm thinking of fencing it off when we can afford it but her husband is such a lovely, kind man and adores having the place teeming with children (their grandchildren play very well with our girls and the other kids on the terrace).

Inside, we live on four floors, including a cellar kitchen and loft conversion. The loft is our bedroom and that's where I write, on the desk that my neighbour made for me. The low walls and sloping ceilings are cream with amazingly solid, bulky old timbers exposed and polished. My neighbour told me that the mill-owner who built the terrace of back-to-backs in 1900 salvaged the timbers from ships being broken up in Hull. I love the idea that these timbers, under which I sleep and work, have been all around the world on unimaginable adventures. I like looking at their marks and scars and dreaming of the hands that might have made them.
The floor is polished wood and there is a low, wooden king-sized bed, also made by my neighbour, from whose daughter we bought the house (bed included). We have a big leather armchair that we bought secondhand from a guy a work, which has white cushions and a dark grey fleece blanket on it with a little round side table and that's where I curl up to read my printouts. We have white fairtrade rag-rugs on the floor to break up all the dark wood and two square-framed prints rest on top of the enormous horizontal beam that serves as a headboard: they are japanese in style, mostly white, blue and green with a hint of mustard and an even tinier hint of pink on one of them. Andy's shows a mountain and storks; mine, blossom trees and people in traditional dress. My parents bought them for us for Christmas a few years ago. We couldn't agree on a single picture in the gallery so we compromised on these and I love them more every time I look at them.

We have bookshelves built into the walls of the winding staircase that brings you up here and more low bookcases along one wall of the room. My desk is in quite a dark corner but I have a pretty lamp that was a wedding present from the aforementioned (pregnant) V. The desk has holes to tidy away the wires of my laptop but I keep having to cart it downstairs to the phone socket every time someone else needs it so they're still unused. I sit in a worn, gold-painted Lloyd Loom chair (a real one) with cushions embroidered by my mum. Behind my computer, leaning against the wall is a big pinboard, covered all over with fishscales of post-its in various brightnesses of yellow, ranging from full-on headache to a dull custardy tone. I have the obligatory dictionary, thesaurus, Writer's Handbook and Writers' & Artists Yearbook, although these last pair are from 2003 and 2004 respectively, so I don't know how much use they are. My mum rescued them from a library stock cull a couple of years ago. I also have, close at hand, A Writer's Guide to Police Organization and Crime Investigation and Detection, which is useful but contradictory at times and a How To... guide called Writing a Children's Book, which is pretty pants.

Also on my desk, I have a little statue of a Native American 'story-lady' with her mouth open, singing her stories and tiny little figures swarming all over her body and in her hair - these are her characters. My parents brought it back from Arizona for me. I have a cuboid, copper pencil pot, which I was given when my great uncle died - I believe he made it - and a small, deep, green bowl I brought back from my honeymoon in Crete, which is full of drawing pins. A red Oxfam cocoa tin is also full of pins, paperclips, tiny little bulldog clips and several small keys, of whose purpose I have no idea and yet I daren't throw them out. I have a two-inch cross-section of a tree branch, stripped of its bark and beautifully polished, with a flat-bottomed hole drilled in the top, that was made for me by my neighbour Odd (from when I lived in Norway, the name means 'the point of a knife'). He says the hole is for storing toothpicks but I've never seen the point of them. I occasionally put earring studs in it if I'm taking them off and afraid of losing them. I mostly just keep it because it's pretty. He also made me a set of a necklace and earrings out of varnished elk-dung (I kid ye not!).

Well, that's me really. A few photographs, jewellery boxes, stacks of cds, six blue and gold tea glasses from Morocco (where I visited a university friend who was studying arabic), dark yellow curtains I made for the velux windows because the blinds were too expensive (we didn't do the loft conversion, it was like this when we bought the house). The bedding is IKEA: white cotton with narrow stripes of beige, black and duck-egg blue. The lamps have the same blue in their ceramic bases and plain cream coolie shades. It's all very neutral but I find it peaceful, especially the way that the small touches of colour all come from the prints over the bed. The strange thing is that we didn't buy anything new for the bedroom when we moved here - different pieces came out of different boxes, just because they served a purpose, not chosen for their colour scheme - most of these things were in different rooms in our previous house and yet, when I finished unpacking and sat back and looked at the whole, everything seemed to just fit. It's the same in the lounge. I feel like we are meant to be here, despite everything.

Love A

53,029 Words

2007-03-06T16:01:00.000Z

Morning,

It's eight songs isn't it? I realise that now. Well, my eighth song would have to be Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen because that's my funeral song. It's not that the lyrics mean anything special to me, it's just the sound of it I love. It's so mournful and beautiful.

I've been daydreaming again, only this time it's purely material. I read last week in the Guardian Review about a blogger being paid £70K for a book and my mind keeps wandering off at inconvenient moments, like when I ought to be concentrating on NOT going onto autopilot at the roundabout down the road and heading off towards junction 40 when I need to take any one of the alternative exits (I can't tell you how many times I've done that!).

I would buy:

a new computer, just for me, so I don't have to share it with people checking their email and little ones playing on the cbeebies website. Maybe I'd have one with a vertical screen. I saw one like that in a 'writers' rooms' feature a few weeks ago.
two mornings a week of childcare instead of just one. (I'm still waiting to hear about that bloody job! For a scale 4 job, that's about £14,000 a year full-time to those not familiar with local authority payscales, I've had an interview, an aptitude test, given two initial referees plus one extra that they asked for and now they want me back in a week for a 2nd interview. I used to be on scale SO2 when I worked full time, which is four whole scales higher, and it didn't take this much effort to get that job!)
a landscape gardening co. to move my shed, which is currently halfway down my long, narrow garden, to a position right at the bottom, facing up to the house. That way I'll be able to see the kids wherever they're playing and I can have a patio where it used to be.
a downstairs loo! Perhaps that should have been no.1 (pardon the semi-pun there) we're really desperate for one so that we can take hosting Christmas off my mum's hands. We've got enough bedrooms if the girls squidge in together but the bathroom situation would be horrendous.
I'd go on one of those plastic surgery holidays and have my mummy-tummy done. Honestly, I'm alright in magic knickers but let's just say we don't leave the light on anymore.
a family holiday somewhere sunny, somewhere we can do some voluntary work. I love going to Wales and Scotland with my parents but, like Karen Blixen, I have a dream of Africa.

I love my new desk, by the way. I was so eager to get to work on it that I've only put one coat of beeswax on the top and the rest is still bare. It has a series of built-in bookends in the back left-hand corner where I can store my most frequently used reference books within arm's reach and, although the lovely smell of the beeswax faded within a couple of days, I get a fresh, spring-cleaning whiff of it every time I lift a volume.

PM now:

In the book I'm really beginning to see the refugee thread of the story coming to the fore. I think the plot is going to end up hanging fairly heavily on it. The rest of it ties in well too, I think: families that work, families that don't, people who feel like strangers within their own families, people who are separated from their families and really are surrounded by strangers, teenagers just finding their own identities, juxtaposed with the loss of identity experienced by a refugee - not just national identity but that deep-down, certain knowledge of who you are that allows you to relate to other people and to function in the outside world.

I do have some refugees whom I can count as close friends, in case anyone was wondering, so I have had many of these experiences straight from the horse's mouth and I have, of course, asked their permission before fictionalising their experiences. One beloved friend, M, said that she thought as many people as possible ought to know how hard it is to leave your country, to lose your family ties and possessions, to lose so much time out of your life in the arduous process of starting from scratch. She wants the world to know that no one would make such a decision unless it was LIFE OR DEATH.

Love A

52,236 Words

2007-02-27T15:36:00.000Z

Hi,
Just a note to anyone who might be following my progress: as I edit I do also update the extract available on my website, www.yorkshirewriter.co.uk in case you want to read it/re-read it.

Love A

51,982 Words

2007-02-27T11:39:00.000Z

Hi,
Still heard nothing about that job. Well, not nothing exactly; I heard on the grapevine that it was between me and one other candidate, and I was told it would be sorted out by the end of last week. Today is Tuesday and I still can't get any answers. I tried calling them but the woman from personnel said they couldn't be contacted and she'd make sure they got back to me. But I know local government - know it well - and I'd bet anything they're fiddling around with the hours to try and fit us both/all in, only there are so many rules and regulations that they can't just hire us, they'll still have to hire just one candidate for now, but they can create and advertise new posts and make the others apply again. I once vowed never to go back into local government; for a time I forgot why, now I remember all too clearly.

My current inability to make any kind of plans is affecting my writing. I don't seem to be able to get going, I don't feel settled. Our lives are so tightly scheduled and this web of mine so precariously flimsy: the whos and wheres and whens set down in spidery scribbles across the too-small squares of the family calendar; the thorn in my side that is a mother wanting to change our joint school-run rota, which suits me just fine the way it is; the childminder who's hanging on, waiting to see if I need her or not - not wanting to let me down, not wanting to let others down. They have no idea, the potential employers, of the stress generated by a single week of uncertainty.

A

Half-term hiatus

2007-02-21T14:20:00.000Z

Hi, not much time for writing this week so I've been doing other things instead. I'm attending the small presses fair at Huddersfield library on 18th March so I'm hoping to be able to give out some copies of my manuscript. I know small presses don't have the wherewithall to offer anything so luxurious as an advance, but it's an opportunity I can't afford to miss. I've ordered printable CD labels and paper sleeves and I'll take half a dozen discs with me on the day.

I've also been in the process of applying for a job. I used to be a library assistant before I went to university and, for a while, I've been thinking I'd rather go back to that part-time than my other career. My other career, although well-paid, had become increasingly depressing - so depressing in fact that I didn't request maternity leave, I just handed in my notice. I didn't feel that I could enjoy my time at home with the thought of that place hanging over me: my awful, thankless job still there, waiting for me. I know I could have taken maternity leave and then not gone back at the end of it, and I'm sure I'd have been better off financially but I just couldn't bear it. Anyway, the interview was two days ago, I've had a call saying I made their short-list and they're just waiting for the last few references to come in before they make their final decision. It's only 15 hours a week, and they're funny hours so childcare is going to be difficult, but at the moment I'm writing for an hour a day (when T takes her nap) 4-5 days a week, and I'm not getting anywhere fast. I can't produce anything worthwhile in the evenings - I've tried, and I can't continue a train of thought for long enough in the daytime to really get to grips with the plot. If I work 15 hours, then I can afford to pay for childcare for the 21 hours (across 2 children) that it'll take me to work and travel back and forth, and an extra 3 hours on a Tuesday morning just for writing. It doesn't sound like a lot but I ought to get 2 or 3 more 'nap hours' each week on top of that and I'm hoping that this block of time will make all the difference. And, oh the excitement, I'll actually have about £20 a week left over! There, I've counted my chickens now so I expect I won't get it.

A

51,874 Words

2007-02-17T17:10:00.000Z

Hi,
I'm still retracing my steps so forward progress is slow but it'll be worth it in the end.

I've been daydreaming my Desert Island Discs again. I thought I'd put them here so that I can have a good laugh if I ever do get successful enough to be invited on. Or I can cackle bitterly through my tears if I never get anywhere at all. Either way I can't remember how many songs you get - I'll do seven.

KIRSTY: "Well A, your fourth book, The Towers, set in medieval Milan, has just been nominated for the Costa and I think we can all agree that it's a far cry from the Leicester-based detective trilogy that first made your name back in 2007, tell me... were you already fluent in Italian or did you have to learn it in order to research this book?"
A: (provides witty yet succinct response, and reminds Kirsty that they actually met once, at an awards ceremony in 2003)

KIRSTY:"Why that's amazing! (of course she doesn't remember at all) Tell us about your first record."

My records:
1. Between the Bars, by Elliott Smith, sung by Madeleine Peyroux (my current favourite song)
2. Flower Duet from Lakme (the first piece of music to give me goose bumps - I remember seeing the BA ad as a child and asking "Mum, what is that music?")
3. Smells like Teen Spirit, Nirvana (the second piece of music to give me goose bumps: fifteen, house-party, bottle of Thunderbird with the top smashed off because we none of us had a corkscrew)
4. Faure's Requiem, because it reminds me equally of my late Grandad and his American cousin Gene, living 3000 miles apart they both loved this piece and both played it to me, each hoping to be the first.
5. Something by Portishead because it's so evocative of my later teenage years - a whole new sound (3rd set of goose bumps!)
6. Canon in D by Pachelbel, because we had it at our wedding, not caring in the least that everyone does. Why pretend not to love something, just to be cool? We also had Let's Stay Together by Al Green and karaoke! (We were 23 so you'll have to forgive us - it was a fun wedding though)
7. A cello concerto, perhaps Dvorak - to remind me that one day I intend to learn the instrument properly (I started at school but there was an incident with a soft cello case and a self-closing door and I was asked not to continue unless my parents bought me one of my own, which they were unwilling to do, perhaps understandably)

My book: If I could recapture the way I felt when first reading Jane Eyre, I'd probably take that but it ought to be a book I could read over and over, perhaps Midnight's Children. Actually, if it were allowed, I'd take my photo albums instead. I'm, assuming that I'm there without my children and family and I think they would be the only 'books' I could never tire of.

My luxury: my photo albums if she says they don't count as my book - otherwise chocolate.

And which record would I save? Well, if the waves are taking my stuff, chances are it's global warming and the sea will soon claim my entire desert island and me with it. So, if I'm about to die, I'll take Lakme please, with that music in my ears I could really believe in heaven.

Love A

51,016 Words

2007-02-13T17:20:00.000Z

So many books that I've read have been ruined by badly executed sex scenes. The sad thing is that even if I enjoyed the rest of the story, it's those awful, laughable, cringe-making phrases that tend to stick in the memory. So how DO you write a sex scene without letting yourself down by using any of the following words?

- aroused, stiffened, engorged, tumescent, hard, soft, wet, creamy, crotch, caress, embrace, manhood, member, cock, etc. (and the equivalents for the female characters of course)

I'm not really sure but I'm about to have a go anyway. I hereby take the following additional and most solemn vow: in no book will I ever cause one character to christen, or speak directly to, another's genitalia (unless I am deliberately going for laughs). Perhaps I should make a proper list of the things I must try to avoid - these to be my commandments for ever more.

1. as above
2. I will not describe the exact fabric, colour and cut of my characters' clothing - it soon becomes dated and besides, it is annoying.
3. I will not moon over the handsomeness/prettiness of my characters. I will not compare their eyes to deep pools of water or flashing jewels.
4. I will not make my characters deliver speeches on my behalf, for the purposes of proliferating my political or other opinions - it's always obvious and again, it is annoying.
5. I will not use ridiculously obscure words that will send readers off hunting for their dictionaries, just to show how clever I am - I will use the words that fit, short or long.
6. I will not bring in half a dozen different regional accents because I have no other way of differentiating the personalities of my peripheral characters.
7. I will not hang my entire plot on an obscure and long-forgotten character/conversation that occurred in chapter three. Likewise I will not reveal additional knowledge in the final unveiling, that wasn't in the story and the reader could have no way of guessing.
8. I will not twist just for the sake of it.
9. I will not give my characters all the flowery (or otherwise OTT) names that I didn't dare saddle my children with: Arabella, Florianne, Violetta, Troy.
10. I will not fear cliche, no matter what some critics may write. In descriptive passages, yes, it can be just plain lazy but cliche is how people speak to each other, it is a valuable cultural shorthand and can be more real, in dialogue, than its tortured avoidance ever could.

I've been reading The Lovely Bones because I'd heard things that suggested to me that it might be similar to what I'm trying to do. I wanted to make sure that I found out in time so that I could steer myself away from my intended path if necessary. I needn't have worried. I'm enjoying the book but it isn't too similar to mine, for a start, Amelia isn't looking down on everyone from heaven or anywhere else - her influence is definitely felt by the surviving characters but the only place she lives on is in their memories of her. In fact it isn't the memory of what Amelia did or didn't do that's the point, it's really much more about how those events made the other characters feel about themselves.
Having written that and re-read it I'm actually beginning to think it could equally apply to The Lovely Bones. Well, the setting and the timeframe are both different and, although Amelia may have been killed by someone she knew, she never saw them coming so there's no element of her watching her murderer escape like there is in Alice Sebold's book. I'll have to finish reading it before I can really comment I suppose, I'm still 3/4 of the way through.
The thing I do find heartening about it though, something I had worried about, is that it's success shows that an adult audience will read a book predominantly about teenagers (as long as there's more to it than 300 pages of pubescent whining and fumbling behind the bike sheds).

Love A

Thank you

2007-02-07T13:15:00.000Z

My mum likes my writing but that's her job - it is indescribably lovely to have encouragement, unprompted, from a perfect stranger. I used to like to do competitions: poetry and short stories. It was another way of testing the waters. I was even shortlisted in one, but now I find them too distracting. I get that building up a writer's CV is considered important by agents, etc. but it's hard enough to find time for my book as it is! The blog is different. When I started my novel, it was all handwritten in a big black notebook and I used to feel compelled to make little notes in the margins about how I was feeling about the plot, the characters, the very business of writing. When I reached page 100 and started typing it all up on the computer, this seemed to be the natural alternative. I quite like the idea of its transcience - web-logging has the potential to prove revolutionary in terms of grass-roots personal history for future generations of social historians, and yet at the same time it's all just molecules of silicon in a chip in a machine, in a room, in a building, in a city. I don't even know where. It could be obliterated at any time at the flick of a switch, not to mention fire, flood...

--

When Beth & Nicholas Hardiman left the Saturday Guardian's Review section I was (briefly) distraught. I was slightly baffled by the whole incomplete snowman thing but I love the new 'writers' rooms' feature, it has really captured my imagination. I've been thinking that my desk is too small, and too high. Papers and pens migrate down the back of the radiator that it rests against. I spent an hour last week measuring and drawing my ideal desk and my next-door-neighbour is making it for me out of pieces of birch ply that his son brings home from his job at a printing firm. My neighbour is retired and usually makes garden furniture and rabbit hutches but lately he and I have been copying designs from catalogues for dolls' houses and toy boxes and the like. I can't wait to have it. I can't help feeling it will be lucky.

Love A

50,483 Words

2007-02-02T13:05:00.000Z

I've been editing again, hence the odd word count.

A funny day, this: it's usually here that I'm a writer, rather than a mum; it's in this room that I forget about washing the PE kit and what time pottery club finishes; I forget about nappies and 5-a-day and concentrate on what's inside my head, but today the two halves of me are inseparable. My friend V has just texted me that she's pregnant again. She has one daughter, the same age as my little Tabby. I should be happy because I already have two beautiful girls. I should be happy because she is a little older than me and was semi-secretly afraid that it might not be so easy the second time around. I should be happy because I don't want another baby just yet - I want to do this, for a while longer. I should be happy because my husband's controversial vasectomy seems to have failed so at least I have the possibility of another child, at some point. I should be happy because I hope that V might ask me again to be godmother, and I have liked having that connection to V's little girl. It was just a wobbly moment, I hope, when I felt like sitting down, just where I was at the side of the road, and crying. The funny thing was the idea that consoled me: I thought to myself Well I'm on this diet now. As long as I am shrinking as she is growing, I'll feel okay. I was shocked at myself at first, and have tried to fathom the reason for this odd mode of thinking which, however strange, seems no less true to me now than when it first popped into my head. Perhaps it is that I must make a change in my life, in order not to feel stagnant, left behind, boring even; there are many possible changes: I might get a part-time job, I might even get published, but dieting is something I can control - for certain. I have heard the theory of eating disorders as responses to a world one feels one cannot control, and today I agree.

A

50,776 Words

2007-01-16T16:09:00.000Z

Back to work today. God I love writing.

Love A

Happy New Year

2007-01-10T13:36:00.000Z

I didn't get on so well with my pile of holiday books, as there wasn't much holiday to be had after all. I just couldn't devote enough time to Dr Zhivago to really come to grips with the way all the characters are known by two or three different names - it's really not the kind of book you can read in dribs and drabs on the loo. It's back on my favourite bookshelf though, saved for a rainy day. I went back to Tender is the Night instead, which I'd sort of lost interest in, despite enjoying it so much at first. In the end Christmas was such a hectic period that I still haven't even finished that! I was so tired most of the time that I opted instead for listening to trashy crime thrillers on audiobook at bedtimes. Sorry.

I've been away from my own book for so long now that I need to print it all out and read it with a fresh eye. I really need to pick up the pace in it now, and make sure the story is sufficiently balanced between the different plot points of the mystery. I hate it when you get to the last page of a crime novel and realise that the author is hanging the entire plot on some character or conversation from half a book ago, that you didn't pay much attention to and have long since forgotten. Anyway, I've got no ink in my printer so I've ordered a 'remanufactured' cartridge from Cartridge Express in Leeds and I'm waiting for it to arrive. I used to go to Cartridge World for re-fills but ours has since closed down.

Our boiler's packed in over Christmas too - as if we needed to be any poorer - so we're looking at over £1500 to replace it, all in, and on top of that the plumber reckons that getting the old one out of its cupboard will probably wreck the kitchen as it seems the lovely reclaimed timber units were built around it and are mostly glued rather than screwed. We've still got heating, thank god, just no hot water. My husband's suddenly becoming very keen to take the kids off my hands and allow me more time to write! He thinks I'm going to save us all.

Love A

50,003 Words

2006-12-08T22:20:00.000Z

I took a week off writing to read Jane Eyre. I cried continually for the last ten pages and felt thoroughly exhausted afterwards. I enjoyed it so much I realised how much I've missed reading these last few months. I've been reading books of course, now and then, in the gaps, but I haven't been giving them my full attention. I haven't been allowing them to set their own pace - you know: the ones you can't put down; the ones you savour. By my bedside I've got Dr Zhivago, Tender is the Night, A Portrait of a Lady and Alan Bennett's Four Stories, and I'm not writing another word until January.
Blissfully,
A

49,935 Words

2006-11-28T12:58:00.000Z

It's been a tough couple of weeks, writing-wise. The mysterious J and his offer have vanished as suddenly and unexpectedly as they appeared. In addition, my brother and I had been, for several weeks, developing an idea for a free website on which unpublished writers could post samples of their work for peer review and (hopefully) the attention of agents and publishers. I read in Saturday's Guardian that someone has beaten us to it: see thefrontline.com. Maybe there's cyberspace enough for two such sites? I don't know, but for the moment we're abandoning the idea. Perhaps we'll feel differently after a fuller investigation of this new site - perhaps it is sufficiently different from what we had planned to do. All in all though: a depressing time.

A

47,760 Words

2006-11-14T12:49:00.000Z

Hi, I'd love to share with you some feedback I received through my homepage recently (linked somewhere on your right); I don't think it needs any further comment from me, except perhaps to say that it made me laugh.

Visitor Enquiry from : yorkshirewriter.co.uk
at 11/11/2006 10:34:38 AMEST.
Contact Name : Halford Haorsey
Company Name : HH promotion
Street :
City :
State :
Zip :
Country : uk
Telephone :
Fax :
Email : justinhjohnson@*********.com
Comments:
your text is promising but is more in the legue of $55/$1000.
It is esy to get dipirited a a novice but don'y give up. Try to join a
local writers group or even start one.
If I can give you one real tip it is."remember English is an art form
before you use it take a test". When you leave High Schoolget some live
experience under your belt before you try to write again young man.
Best regards, Halfor Haorsey senior.
--

I swear it's genuine! I only blanked out the sender's email address for privacy. I'll admit my punctuation is a little wobbly, but any mis-spellings are more likely to be due to over-zealous typing than a genuine inability to spell the word.

A

P.S. Still no response from J, and he's been getting more negative feedback on Ebay too. I don't hold out much hope.

46,936 Words

2006-11-09T22:12:00.000Z

I take it back. I will go to sleep believing that the offer is genuine and all is well. He's just been busy, that's all.

A

P.S.

2006-11-09T20:44:00.000Z

I've decided, once and for all, to set the book squarely in Leicester. After all, it's set during the period in which I lived there, so it'll be more accurate. Also, as I said before, there are fewer books already set there (see Rod Duncan's Leicester crime trilogy - all the b's). I still have good contacts within Leicester Libraries too, so I can probably wangle some free mutually beneficial publicity out of them.

A

46,935 Words

2006-11-09T20:31:00.000Z

48 hours and no response from J. I've tried everything I can think of and I'm getting worried now. I know it's not a long time but for a writer, getting that first book published is such a crisis point: you build your hopes up and they're dashed - your skin thickens a little, you build them up again, more cautiously this time, and again - shot down. Then someone approaches you with an offer and the initial reaction is disbelief - denial. It's a joke, it's got to be. Someone's just having a laugh at your expense or they got you confused with someone else. Then you begin to think it might really happen. Then you check his Ebay profile and discover that he's currently auctioning Iraqi dinar, 10,000 at a time (provenance unknown). Maybe I'm being naive but if that's completely legal it still doesn't sound ethical to me. All that money for reconstruction was stolen, billions of dollars' worth, some in US, some in gold and some in dinar, and here it is being traded on Ebay. He's by no means the only one selling it - not by a long shot, but I can't help feeling that something isn't quite right. I still hope I'm wrong, and that everything will come up roses in the end. I feel like someone's pathetic ex-girlfriend who just won't stop calling.

Yours, in pieces,
A

46,203 Words

2006-11-07T19:59:00.000Z

Not much progress I know, I've been doing some reformatting and fiddling around with the place names. In my head, the story takes place mostly in Leicester, with a bit of Leeds thrown in (these being the two cities in which I have lived longest) and so I blended them together to create a fictional city. Then I read an article about the importance, for the readers, of being able to place a book geographically. Sometimes it's a city you live in or have visited, sometimes it's a more exotic location that you associate with a holiday, etc. I agree with this completely. I have read locationless books and enjoyed them but they aren't as memorable as books like The Bull from the Sea (read on the island of Poros), Hunting Mr Heartbreak (read in Arizona), Tender is the Night (read shortly after returning from a budget weekend in Paris) or any very English novel, such as I Capture the Castle. Crime fiction seems particularly to rely on it's geography - the city becomes a central character in itself. Leeds has both Frost and Dalziel & Pascoe, Edinburgh has Rebus and Skinner. I don't want to tie my book to Leicester, mainly because many of the characters are amalgamations of real people, or people I have met but renamed and exaggerated out of all recognition - or at least this has been my intention. If I set the book in Leicester, it would be just my luck to find some old schoolmate popping out of the woodwork with some bogus claim, saying I've defamed them or whatever it might be. You're so vain... as the old song goes. If I tie the book to Leeds I invite unfavourable comparisons with well-established 'Tecs like the above. It's a dilemma but I think I've plumped for Leeds in the end - after all, I know it better.

On another tack, I've had an interesting response to my Ebay listing: an internet entrepreneur (for want of a better description), let's call him J, has contacted me to say he's planning to set up a small press of his own and would be interested in publishing my novel. This is no self-publishing offer either (they are ten-a-penny), he will meet all production, advertising and promotional costs and give me 50% royalties. Sounds great doesn't it? I mean it's not a £10K advance but it's definitely not to be sniffed at. Unfortunately I couldn't reply because the auction ended and Ebay blocks you from responding to questions after the time has run out. I re-listed but it made no difference and J hadn't included his email address so I had to Google him. I found several references to him, in various capacities: web-hosting, website design, advertising, even setting up his own charity (something I tried to do once, but that's another story). So it seems he's genuine, although I have some reservations about the no. of typos in his website and the old adage jack of all trades, master of none did come to mind. All I can say is that I hope (I hope, I hope, I hope...) that I am wrong, and that this offer is kosher, and that a year from now I will be opening a crisp new paperback full of my own words.

I wonder too how much research he's done into small presses. I understand that there is an Association of Small Presses (or somesuch) now in existence, and that some will qualify for help or funding from the Arts Council. I know that they can also get help from their local authority LDO in many cases, with publicity, etc. I hope I can manage to find J again, somewhere in cyberspace and ask him all these questions. All in all, it's been a mixed up kind of day.

A

Snowmail

2006-10-27T21:23:00.000Z

By the way, what the hell is up with Snowmail? I had 45 messages when I logged on today - the usual 20 or so offers of cheap porn and generic Viagra, followed by 19 old Snowmails, and they keep on coming. I was very confused at first, being told that Charles Kennedy was having a tough time with the press over his income tax plans.

J. K. Rowling

2006-10-27T21:07:00.000Z

Thanks for the tip Anonymous, I'm not trying to write a Harry Potter-alike so I don't have to worry about that. I don't think my story is derivative. I've read a great deal of crime fiction (only because I've read a great deal of everything - but never enough of course) and I haven't come across anything like it. Of course that could be a very bad thing - meaning they don't publish books like mine because no one WANTS books like mine. I've given this some serious thought. I even got a 'How to...' guide from the library but, in the end, there wasn't much of a dilemma - I decided I'll write this one exactly the way I want and if it gets nowhere I'll aim for something more saleable next time around. If I wrote with someone else's template in mind I'd lose any spontaneity I have. The parts of my book I am best able to re-read without cringing are those that came out in a flood - the ones I hardly remember writing at all.

I read an article in my local paper recently about a girl in her early twenties who had written and self-published (although of course she didn't say so outright) a medical crime novel. When the interviewer asked "And what kind of books do you like to read?" the author replied "Oh I don't have time for reading because I'm writing all the time. I did used to like Stephen King though." Surely, I think to myself, surely I have more chance in this career than her? If there's any justice in the world. I probably just answered my own question.

Speak soon,
A

New mag calls for submissions

2006-10-25T19:36:00.000Z

Any writers out there with a connection to Leicester, Derby or Nottingham and who want to get paid for their poetry or short fiction, should submit their work to the new Tripod magazine. It's just being launched off the back of the successful Three Cities short fiction competition last year. I don't live there now obviously, but I used to so I'll probably have a go. See their website if you fancy it: http://leicesterliterature.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/tripod-magazine/

Good luck
A

Ebay

2006-10-24T17:57:00.000Z

Well, as you know I've listed my unfinished manuscript on ebay. I've been logging on now and then to check the counter and somehow managed to spend nearly £60 on children's toys at the same time! It's amazing what bargains they seem until you factor in the postage costs. So no more - I'm sworn off it for at least a month.

It's half term where we are so the word count stagnates...

A

Dear Sam

2006-10-18T18:53:00.001Z

Dear Sam
Thanks for the constructive criticism, however I will not be taking your advice and giving up. I'm sure you're vastly qualified to be making such negative comments about my writing, but so are several other objective readers who've been a lot more helpful and encouraging than you. Of course I am horrified that my work doesn't match up to your exacting standards - all this time I was sure I was writing the next Nobel prize winner, rather than just a popular crime novel.

Kind regards
A