Take a Left at Writer's Corner

So it’s been a while since my last blog post. Why? Well... which is why I’m only writing this now. Did that make sense? No. Actually, I deleted all the excuses and reasons which I had stored up as armour because you don’t really want to know. You don’t really want to know what mundane life-things have happened to me in between posts. Presumably, you’re here to read an interesting blogpost. To be honest, up until this point it wasn’t even going to be interesting but having deleted all that mush in between, I think that’s a pretty good thing to talk about.

When you’re reading a book do you really want to know that after the big party and before the heroine finally succumbs to the hero’s charms that she had to put fresh food down for the cat, that she drew the curtains in the bedroom (which are marigold yellow with orange leaves on them) and that she had to set Virgin Tivo to record an episode of Deadliest Catch which was being shown at 4am?

No!

You want to get down to the nitty gritty of the story that matters. The only exception I might add at this point is if putting fresh food down results in the cat becoming poisoned or throws up in the hero’s shoes causing him to kick the cat and cause a conflict, or because drawing the curtains enables her to see into her neighbour’s house where she witnesses a murder and she and her hero must help police solve the crime.

Okay, those are a bit extreme but what I’m trying to say is you don’t want to read stuff which doesn’t move the story forward in some way. None of it. As a writer, you might think well, I’ve done it for the most part, there’s no harm in slipping in a bit of redundant information here because it feels so good. There is harm! It’s not needed so it should go – all of it!

I know that’s all well and good saying that but as a writer I know just how easy it is to get caught up in the moment, you are so “into” the scene that you just can’t help but describe every little thing that goes on, whether it’s needed or not. And editing that is one of the hardest things in writing. “Killing your babies” as they say. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, quotes a theatre saying (which I’d never heard before): “If there’s a gun on the mantle in Act I, it must go off in Act III”. For any writer who hasn’t read Mr King’s memoir of the craft, then I recommend you do. It’s the best five pounds you’ll ever spend (apart from Keeping the Peace, of course, which is only £1.94 on Amazon).

I found it a terrific help but I still sometimes struggled to put what he advised into practice. I’m a visual kind of person. Loads of instructions mean diddly to me unless I can rearrange it in my head into a picture which makes sense. The way I use Stephen King’s advice is as follows. It may work for you, it may not. Hey, we’re all different but if you’re struggling with cutting down on your descriptive narratives here’s another way of considering it.

Imagine you’re driving in your car in a strange town. You haven’t got a map with you and the Sat Nav isn’t working again and you’re trying to get to – let’s say the library, an old favourite. You stop and ask for directions.

The first person says “Carry on down this road, there are some lovely mock Tudor houses on your right, the Fox and Rabbit pub, some more terraced houses each with a different painted door, while on the left there is a Co-Op, a SpecSavers, a Poundland shop, a Vue Cinema and the Black Cat pub. Take a right into Park Lane, where there is an avenue of maple trees losing their leaves, some Victorian style houses opposite a small green with a skate-park and swings. You’ll come to a set of traffic lights where they are doing some roadworks and you should take a left there into Lower Fifth Street, pass by the bus depot and transport union offices which are painted an off-cream but has graffiti on the walls, past the City Hall opposite the primary school which was used as a bomb shelter during the war and a 17th century cottage where the headmaster lives with his wife. Then you’ll see a TK-Max store with a big car park next door. And the library is your next building along.”

The second person says “Carry on up this road. Opposite the Fox and Rabbit pub turn right into Park Lane then turn left into Lower Fifth Street at the roadworks then park by TK Max and the library is just next door.”

Which set of directions is the more straight forward? I’m hoping you thought the second otherwise we have a problem. The first is just too much. I’m sure it’s nice to know what pubs are in the area and the autumnal maple trees probably do look quite beautiful but you want to get to the library, end of.

In the second example, however, the director hasn’t totally left out a bit of descriptiveness. He or she has mentioned clear landmarks to look out for in order to make the journey easier. That’s great, it’s not completely clinical (i.e. turn right into Park Lane, turn left into Lower Fifth Street), but it’s not overwhelming either. If you took his advice you’d look for the Fox and Rabbit and know that Park Lane is opposite it and you’d hopefully make the turn in time. But the first director has pointed out mock Tudor houses, two pubs, a cinema, some retailers as well and with all that going on you’re probably going to miss your turn-off.

The same applies with writing. If you overload your reader with superfluous information they’re in danger of missing the vital information they need to know in order to navigate smoothly through your book without having to backtrack and get frustrated.

That’s how I think of my writing when I’m redrafting and it makes more sense. If your reader doesn’t need to know it, don’t tell them. But equally so, find a happy balance. Give them some “landmarks” along the way to make the journey easier.

The other thing is “Get in late, get out early”. We’ve all heard that mantra before. We all know it works, it’s proven and it makes sense, but how easy is it to pinpoint when a scene should start? What are you losing by cutting out the two hundred-word introduction and how do you then start the scene without jarring the reader?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Personally, I’ll write the scene with all the trimmings then at the end, once I know what the scene is all about, I can go back and cut out the bits which have now become redundant although they seemed important at the time.

Then there’s the stuff which you want to keep but occur in the cut intro.

Peasy.

Filter them into the next draft. For instance my latest heroine is a big Bonnie Tyler fan. It’s part of who she is so in my opinion is worthy of being mentioned in the story. How do I let the readers know this without creating a whole scene of her driving in her car with the CD player on before the REAL scene where she arrives at the pub and bumps into the hero?

The final piece started with her walking through the pub doorway with Bonnie Tyler still ringing in her ears. There you go. You know what she’s been listening to. You know she was obviously enjoying it if it was loud enough to still be ringing in her ears. The next sentence: WHAM! There’s our hero looking heroic and we cut to the chase.

And so as not to be hypocritical, I’m going to get out now. I’ve pretty much said everything I wanted to say. You’ve read all you need to read. If you reading past this... well, thanks I appreciate your company. Happy writing and happy reading!

Keeping the Grand National Peace

So it’s been a bit of a hectic few days with emotions tumble-turning all over the place. First off: PANIC. The formatting of Keeping the Peace went haywire 48 hours before it was due to be published. Thankfully I have a friend who designed his own formatting programme and was able to quickly put KTP through the works and in the end it went live on amazon almost a day before I’d planned. Hurrah! Now cue the excitement and nerves. Yay – my favourite book so far (that I’ve written that is, my ego ain’t that big yet) is about to be shared with the world*. Nerves: will this book be a success? It’s had some great pre-release reviews but will people feel so kindly towards it when they’ve had to buy it?*

So with that lot swirling inside me, Saturday rolls around. Saturday was important for me for three reasons: firstly, weekends are sacred and should be treated as such. Secondly, I’m a horseracing fan and had to watch the Grand National. Thirdly, I’m a writer who’s just released a romance novel centred around the Grand National. I took a risk that the Grand National would go smoothly and no bad press could affect my sales...

Well, we all know how that panned out.

I was very upset after the National to think of the tragedies surrounding two great warriors like Synchronised and According To Pete. With the latter, I keep remembering his owners, an everyday family who bred him and raised him, and how she was on the verge of tears with pride beforehand. So it is easy to imagine the devastation his death would have had on them.

On top of that, the beating racing fans took afterwards from anti-Grand Nationalists just added to the hole of despondency I was in. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, I know, but I don’t like people telling me how I’m feeling and that I don’t love horses. I do, more than anything or anyone and there is nothing that makes me more proud than watching a grand servant like Neptune Collonges win the greatest challenge in horseracing and be recognised for the hero he is.

But when everyone’s upset, it’s easy for sensitive debates to get nasty, right? Racing gets defensive and lashes out and the label they are already branded with - the one that reads “cruel, greedy, selfish, unfeeling” sometimes looks fitting. But you tell me, when you’re upset, having thousands of fingers pointing blame at you and upsetting you even more, are you likely to say the right thing and should you be judged by that one scenario?

To be honest, I’m already a bit tired of this whole fiasco and like many have pointed out, we should let the dust settle before discussions should begin about improving the safety for everyone involved in the big race (just to clear one thing up: those screens which you saw when the runners bypassed one of the fences were protecting Noel Fehily, an injured jockey. It wasn’t Synchronised). So many opinions are being thrown around from one extreme to the other – from 'ban horseracing all together' to 'make the fences bigger and they’ll jump them slower and pay them more respect'... I thought I would add what I would like to see implemented. It is not necessarily what I think will happen.

First, is there a problem to be solved?

Well, since only one Grand National has been run since the modifications to the fences, we’re left with very few (and possibly fluke-like) statistics on which to judge their effectiveness. But two horses were fatally injured, and that is very much a problem.

Second, identify the problem.

It’s all well and good saying lower the fences, but is the height really what caused those horses’ deaths? No. It’s unclear whether Synchronised injured himself whilst running loose or jumping loose so he is unreliable evidence (apologies if that sounds rather coarse, I obviously think of him as more than just a piece of evidence) on the safety of the jumps. According To Pete jumped the fences perfectly, but was brought down by another horse. Again, the jump was only indirectly involved since it obviously played a part in bringing down the horse who brought Pete down.

Size is not the problem then. Speed then? Certainly, the faster you go the more at risk you are, but at the same time jockeys go that fast because they all want to get the safest position near the front on the inside. A bit of a double-edged sword really. And it’s many people’s belief, including jockeys that if you lower the fences, they are inclined to tackle them even faster than before. So we don’t want to do that!

Jumping prowess then? It’s been suggested that entrants should have completed a course of the National fences in order to become eligible. To show they’re up to the job. A reasonable suggestion until you try find statistics to back this up and here sadly, the complete opposite comes up.

Firstly, not just any horse can run in the Grand National – only the highest rated of those entered (of which the original field is hundreds) make the line-up and all of them have to have won over three and a half miles or more (either three and a half or three, I can’t remember for certain).

Then take a look at the results this year. The winner: Neptune Collonges, who didn’t put a foot wrong the whole way round, had never jumped those fences before in his life. The horse he beat by a whisker, Sunnyhillboy, hadn’t either. The third horse, Seabass hadn’t even been to Aintree before and the fourth horse, Cappa Bleu? You guessed it, he’s run at Aintree before but not over the National fences. So the horses who filled the first four places had never set eyes on those jumps but were still good and lucky enough to come out top.

On the other hand, we have the seasoned warriors like Black Apalachi, who was lining up over the National fences for the FIFTH time and who had come second to Don’t Push It in 2010, State Of Play taking part in his fourth Grand National, Westend Rocker competing in just his second Grand National but nonetheless had won the Becher Chase last year over the same fences – what happened to them? They either fell or blundered so badly that their riders were unseated.

So as reasonable as that suggestion is, there is nothing to suggest that National fence-jumping experience has anything to do with the result.

I have one last piece of ‘evidence’ that I think backs up why modifying the jumps is a waste of time and possibly more dangerous. There have been a few races already run over the course since the last modifications and before the Grand National: the Becher Chase in December (on heavy going), the Foxhunter’s Chase and the Topham Chase – there are possibly more but I can’t think of any right now. Three races over the same jumps, no fatalities.

What was the big difference? The size of the fields in my opinion.

Thirdly, how can the problem be solved?

Lessen the amount of runners and a) there’ll be less speed and scrimaging for position, b) runners will have a clearer view of their fences and c) less runners generally means less ratio of fatalities**.

The Grand National is not the same race it was 100 years ago, it’s not the same as it was 10 years ago, not even one year ago. It’s famous for more than just it’s age – it’s famous for the challenge it presents and that is why it is the most watched and recognised horserace in the world. If we continue to tinker with the jumps, that challenge is going to be so reduced that it is just going to be another horse race and nothing more. I don’t want the National to lose its historicism but at the same time I do want safety to be paramount. With fewer runners – say 25 or 30 – we would have a race that still presented a challenge but with fewer risks involved.

I don’t ignore the fact that horseracing carries deadly risks, but to be honest, living carries deadly risks too. In Keeping the Peace, which is a romance set against a National Hunt racing background, the heroine's main motivation is to run her horse in the Grand National.

Like in reality, I haven’t ignored the risks involved (it’s so tempting when you’re a fan of something with a less than perfect reputation to write about it in the most glowing terms), I’ve included them, and more I’ve tried to portray as best as I can how the people involved in the sport of horseracing react and respond in such circumstances.

I’ve also tried to bring across how horseracing does do good, how it can bring people together, change people’s and horses’ lives for the better and by the time you read those words ‘THE END’ I hope you’ll agree that I’ve portrayed racing in a balanced and truthful light.

That is the intention!

And just because I love the cover which was designed by Pro Book Covers so much, here it is again!

Keeping the Peace

*excluding Asia of course. Come on, Asia! Get Kindling!

** sometimes freak accidents happen and a horse might very well get fatally-injured in a three-horse field, while as we’ve seen in the past, some 40-runner National fields have resulted in no fatalities at all.

The Difference Between Delusion and Illusion

So ten days into the new career, do I feel different?  Yes, I feel like a little round plastic thingy, maybe yellow, maybe red, with a line of string tied around my waist – otherwise known as a yo-yo.  My initial bravado of selling my writing was swiftly followed by an attack of inferiority complex and then the burdening weight of responsibility that when people read my books they are expecting the truth.  The first two peaks and troughs seemed to have levelled out now but the responsibility still lingers.

I also felt this almost overwhelming feeling that now I was publicly trying to sell my name that I had a reputation to uphold.  Now I know this is a delusion of grandeur but what if in the far off future somone says ‘No, I’m not going to buy Hannah Hooton’s book; I saw her littering at the train station’?  In my defense I do try to avoid littering and what can you do if there are zero bins at the station?  This public persona delusion seemed to fold pretty quickly when the day after At Long Odds went live I was slipping and sliding the half hour walk to the station at an icy six o’clock in the morning to catch the Cambridge train so I could attend eighteen hours of university and commuting.  Oh yes, I was in a really chirpy mood.  A group of youths, yelling and tripping over each other, approached and the one girl draped herself over me breathing toxic fumes into my face.  Did I think of my author’s reputation at that moment?  No, I was thinking how ridiculous it was to be still out drunk at six o’clock when I was on my way to work.  So in no uncertain terms I told her where to go and shrugged her off.  She then replied with some surprisingly imaginative insults.

Walking away, I thought that it was really quite ironic.  I don’t recall ever telling anyone to eff off unless I was joking.  I chose to curse publicly the first opportunity and really mean it not 24 hours after becoming published.  Now, I’m under no illusions such a thing would have a long term detrimental effect, or indeed have an effect at all – the girl was obviously never going to recognise me again – but it did make me wonder.

That’s the psycho side of becoming published for the first time.  The other side is the facts.  I’m not about to list my sales numbers etc., but I am amazed and thrilled by just how well received the free promo weekend went for At Long Odds.  It has resulted in some lovely reviews on both the US and UK amazon sites and my latest addiction is checking the Kindle Charts to see if it has moved in the last five minutes.

Naturally, my WIP is feeling ignored and unloved.  To make it feel better I completed another chapter (hit the 40,000 word mark – hooray!) and played around with Title and Chapter headings.  Oh, and I found a new picture for my hero, Rhys Bradford.

In other news, I’m preparing to do the last edit and polish of Keeping The Peace and finding someone capable of designing a cover to do it justice.  With any luck that’ll be up for sale at the beginning of April*.

As part of my degree course myself and two other students made our first ‘movie’ on Monday.  Untitled as yet, it is barely a minute long, is one continuous shot (project requirement) and runs to the soundtrack of Postman Pat (not project requirement).  Not Scorsese-material yet, I grant you, but if you ignore my dodgy camerawork and Mark’s dodgy acting and everyone’s dodgy idea of mise-en-scéne, then I think we did all right.  We’ll find out soon enough.

*deadlines have never been my friend so consider that date tentative

A New Chapter or Six

What happened to Katie Melua? You never hear of her these days yet as I’m trawling the web for suitable tracks to accompany the new book-venture, I’m having to stop myself from lumping her entire collection into my soundtrack. Take a listen to this as you read:

　
Where were we the last time we left off - I promise if I had anything of any interest I’d do more regular updates but alas, my life continues to coast along. Actually, I don’t know if I’d like it if my life became manic. For one, I don’t know how my writing would cope. When I moved to Norwich almost a year ago to the day, it took me a good fortnight to find my writing rhythm again. I think it’s something to do with feeling settled - plus I kept getting distracted by the big ass spiders that inhabited my new bedroom (I have now moved from there and have two cats so spiders are no longer a problem).
Anyway, I digress. Oh yes, last time I was telling you about my holiday in Malta (go there those of you who haven’t, go there again those of you who have) and telling you the continuing saga of At Long Odds and Keeping The Peace.

Just to keep you up to date, nothing exciting has happened on the book front. Keeping The Peace is with some publishers but they’ve been very quiet in the two months they’ve had it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Sorry, I’m a pessimist (leads to less disappointment when things go wrong), it’s probably a bad thing. In the meantime, I’ve started Keeping The Peace’s sequel and am six chapters in. This book has been a bit of a wake-up call. I presumed that when Keeping The Peace turned out to be relatively easy to write in comparison to At Long Odds, it was because At Long Odds was the first proper (note: proper - not the three books I wrote as a fanciful teenager) book that I’d written and therefore still learning the ropes. I assumed that the ropes had now been learned when Keeping The Peace flowed like Victoria Falls onto my screen. Great, I thought! Book number 3 will be even easier!
Cue squealing brakes. Not so.
This book - I haven’t even been able to settle on a title yet and that’s usually the first thing that comes - is like having to drag Dominic West up a hill to a remote cottage. Exhausting and painful, yet each time you look at him or think of what’s to follow when you eventually reach the cottage, it makes you carry on. I shall be very disappointed if I reach that metaphorical cottage with my metaphorical Dominic West and find my only reward is metaphorical tea. So even though I’m only six chapters in I’m already praying the end will have enough oomph to leave the reader with that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I started this book at the beginning of August, thinking don’t be too ambitious with the amount of work you can get done. Keep it manageable so I set myself the target of 7,000 words a week (I read somewhere someone saying it’s best to have weekly targets rather than daily targets - that way you’re not under so much pressure). I kept to that target for approximately 24 hours as I discovered just how uneasy this book was going to be. Nevertheless, I still have the end of the year as my overall target to have the first draft finished and I’m only a little behind (maybe 10,000 words behind but I’ve convinced myself not to panic).

Also having just read Amanda Hocking’s blog here, I am in awe of this woman. Yes, it’s all tremendous that she’s made so much money, blah-dee-blah, but her work ethic is incredible! I think some of her books have taken her two or three weeks to write (once all the planning and prep has been done). There is no way I could hammer out even half a book in that time, so hats off to you, Amanda.

Another thing about Amanda’s blog (I haven’t read any of her books but if her blog is anything to go by then they’re guaranteed to be hilarious) is that I now really understand how much hard work it is to self-publish. It certainly is not the easy way out. I’m under no delusions - I don’t reckon on becoming the new indie-pub sensation - but I still look at At Long Odds with great fondness and read the reviews it has received on fictionpress and it makes me yearn to self-publish it now that the traditional route has turned it down.

Plus, even though there is no evidence to show that book trailers do anything to increase sales, I really want to make a book trailer for it. But a proper trailer that doesn’t just comprise of stills. I want there to be actors. I’ve got the music (check out Miika’s music here, he is a genius) , soon I’ll have access to camera equipment and studios/editing suites when I start my film production degree. All I really need is someone to do hero Julien Larocque justice. He might be modelled on Billy Crudup’s character in the film adaptation of Charlotte Gray but when I think about it, Johnny Depp would be the perfect man to fill that role. Well, if he shaved off his goatee and cut his hair. So Johnny, if you’re reading this give us a shout if you’re prepared to do these things (for free I might add, I’m doing this on a student’s budget).

Billy Crudup

Johnny Depp

See the similarity? Plus, I have the feeling Johnny might do a better French accent than Billy (I loved you in Charlotte Gray, Billy - hell, you inspired me to write a book, but the accent slipped a few too many times).

In two weeks’ time, it’ll be Freshers Week at university. And according to Facebook everyone has only one thing on their agenda: to get completely sloshed. Let me put this in perspective for you: I’m going to see a Neil Diamond tribute concert with my mum this weekend and a walk on the beach. I’m only 30 yet I feel Freshers Week is going to make me feel twice that. I will let you know how it goes down. Take care.

A 30-year-old A Level student in Malta

Recall that sunset and the cloud cover metaphor I used a while back? Okay, think really hard - I realise it was a while back since anything was posted on my blog. To give your memory a nudge I was riding off into the sunset after securing myself a literary agent with my novel At Long Odds. The sunset then became overshadowed by cloud cover when unfortunately the publishing world weren’t as keen to take At Long Odds on as I was to foist it upon them.
Well, I think I might stick to that metaphor with the continuing saga since it implies horses and romance and - yeah, you get the picture, don’t you?
It would seem the horse I was riding off on has become lame. Is it worth saving? Maybe but it’ll be some place further down the line. Instead I’ve jumped on a shiny new steed in the shape of Keeping The Peace, my latest novel. It went through the nail-biting process of the Romantic Novelists Association New Writer’s Scheme (with two critiques) and under the sharp scrutiny of my agent. And the good news is I and Keeping The Peace appear to have come out the other side unscathed. Since it’s submission I think I’ve undergone more changes than the novel (see below).
And now we’re at that point again of waiting. Waiting for publishers to say those magic words. Going back to that metaphor, Keeping The Peace is a stronger, fitter, better-looking and more well-proportioned horse to be riding off on than At Long Odds. Here’s hoping it’ll last the distance (it had better because I’ve just started the sequel).

In other news, I am now officially qualified up to Level 2 standard now after completing an Access course in Creative Writing, English Literature and Journalism. In some ways it doesn’t have the impact that having 3 As at A Level does, but in other ways the work was (apparently) the same difficulty level and was compacted into one year’s study instead of two, making it harder than A Levels. I don’t know. All I do know is that it was a terrific experience; I met some amazing people, both students and tutors and some might say most importantly, it’s got me the grades to get into Anglia Ruskin this September to study Writing and Film Production (is it wrong to tell people when they ask that ‘I’m going to study in Cambridge’? It’s not really lying after all).

And this monumental moment in my life, which usually occurs when people are turning 18 happens the week of my 30^th birthday*. I’ve bid farewell to those short carefree years of my twenties and am now preparing to settle down, behave, act responsibly and get published in my thirties - oh, did I mention I’m going to become an university student in a few weeks’ time? Maybe I’ll just concentrate on getting published in the next decade.

And to bring you more or less up to date with everything in my more than a little haphazard life, I’ll fill you in on the short holiday recently taken by my mother and I in Malta (by the way, this is where I underwent the ‘change’ I referred to earlier). That change came in the form of extremely painful sunburn followed by a beautiful if somewhat patchy tan. For ten lovely hot days, I felt like the island was honeymooning me and I’ve come away having fallen in love with the land and its people. If you’ve been to Malta you probably recognise this feeling. If you haven’t been, then I strongly recommend going. It’s the best place to unwind and just chill out (so long as you have the air-conditioning on).
The best thing that came out of that holiday for me was the inspiration juices it got churning again. I finished my final writing project/beginning and synopsis of screenplay for my Access course while relaxing in Ta Peter's Restaurant, which earned me a distinction and recommendation from my tutor to pitch it as a 6 part drama series to then be adapted into a feature film, using State of Play as an example.  Only if Dominic West or Tom Hardy act in it is all I can say.
On top of completing my course project, I had time to dwell on my next book.  It's slowly beginning to take a more solid shape, characters are becoming more defined and plotlines less blurred. I think holidaying in Malta is going to become an annual event for me (finances allowing of course. When I tell people I’m excited to be going to university in seven weeks’ time, I don’t mention the main reason is finally getting a student loan). And who knows, if I become tired of writing horse-themed novels, Malta isn’t a bad backdrop for a book. It’s just a pity there aren’t any horses there.

Anchored at Crystal Bay

Cocktails at Cafe Puccini

Cathedral in Mdina

　
*thanks for the party, Mel; I never thought I’d enjoy drinking sparkling wine and listening to John Denver on full blast quite so much.