Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author - Finding The Perfect Partner

I think I have the perfect partner in my husband, he’s very motivational, pushing me upstairs into my writing room of an evening (has nothing to do with the darts/rugby league/snooker/football/superbike that is on TV, he tells me).  But lately I’ve been thinking I may need a new partner. This is nothing do with my husband’s choice to go watch to a football game on Valentine’s day. No, I think I need a writing partner...

Now, I’m not talking about writing with someone, I don’t think I could ever do that – I’m a terrible sharer. But I was reading last week about a Match.com equivalent for writers; a website called Ladies Who Critique where you can sign up and connect with a critiquing buddy who also writes your genre. 

I’ve never joined a writing group, mainly because I haven’t wanted to join a mixed group of genre writers. I guess I think that often chick lit is viewed as the poor relation in the literary world (undeservedly so) but I didn’t want to have to constantly defend my writing choices. I also don’t know whether I’d trust non chick lit lovers to critique my work. I mean, I wouldn’t dream of reviewing a fantasy novel for a review site because I’d have no idea about comparable works in the genre, so how could I critique a fantasy writer in a writing group?

My Writing Room - Charlotte Betts

Today we are having a gander at Charlotte Betts' beautiful writing room. The Apothecary's Daughter by Charlotte Betts has just been published and you can read our review here.

My Writing Room by Charlotte Betts

 

 

I have a wonderful writing room in a converted outbuilding, rather grandly called the studio, as it’s where I used to base my interior design business. One day, when I find some time, I’ll use it to paint watercolours again. Unfortunately, due to the astronomically rising cost of heating oil I can only afford to use the studio in the summer.

It has a large roof lantern which floods the room with light and a high, wide window like a giant letterbox above my desk, from where I can see the garden and watch the birds on the feeder hanging from the pergola. Beyond the garden are woods, mostly beech and silver birch. Sometimes the garden is visited by deer to the detriment of the roses!

The studio is painted a soothing pale duck-egg blue and has one wall lined with bookshelves. I have a favourite wingchair where I do my thinking and research and drink endless cups of tea. In the summer I always write with the door open and can stroll around the garden muttering snatches of dialogue under my breath while I wrestle with plot problems.

In the winter, now I have a demanding and time consuming day job in an office in the local town, I simply write whenever and wherever I can. Most often I set up my laptop in the orangery which open-plan to the kitchen and you can see it in the photo above. It’s light and spacious and, in the interest of preventing back problems, I use a proper office chair at the ten-seater Victorian dining table. There is plenty of space to set out all my research files and books but it is annoying to have to clear it away for dinner time. (Actually, I usually just push it all down to one end and try to disguise it by placing a large bunch of flowers in front!) I still have wonderful views over the garden to the woods and I can keep an eye on the potatoes if I’m preparing the dinner at the same time as writing. Sadly, this is a common occurrence.

Sometimes I manage to take a lunch break from the office and my colleagues joke that I’m going back to the seventeenth century for an hour. I take my net book over the road to The Chequers Hotel, order a cappuccino and set up camp in the bar. I’ve learnt to shut out all muzak and conversation and I immerse myself in the novel, typing away like fury to beat the clock. I never have time for writer’s block any more and it’s amazing what you can achieve in terms of word count, if you have to, in a short space of time.

And then there are the notebooks. A lot of ‘writing’ goes on in my head, wherever I happen to be: on a train, driving or waiting to see the dentist. I have notebooks in various different sizes and colours to suit different handbags and pockets. I would no more leave the house without a notebook than my shoes since I hyperventilate at the thought of forgetting any fantastic ideas that will surely evaporate if not speedily captured on paper.

 You can read more about my writing life on my website at www.charlottebetts.com

 

Jessica Ruston's Top 5 Tips For Writers

1.  Read, but not just for pleasure – read thinking about what works and what doesn’t, and why.  Look at the structure of books and how writers you admire achieve the effects that impress you.

 

2.  Be a magpie.  Pick up bits of conversations, places, smells, characters, ideas for names everywhere you go.  They’ll come in handy.

 

3.  Don’t write about what you know – write about what you want to work out, know more about, learn about.

 

4.  Don’t wait for the muse – get writing.  The more you write, you more ideas you’ll have.

 

5.  Writing a whole book takes a long time, and can feel like walking a tightrope.  Don’t look down…

 

Jessica's next book is The Darker Side of Love and is released on February 16th.

Jessica's Website

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell - How NOT to Sub a Novel

1. Don’t write ‘Dear sir or madam’

Every blog about this subject will tell you to take your time, to do research on the company, and target agents that read your particular genre. The query letter I’d written was addressed to Curtis Brown and started ‘dear sir or madam’ . I wonder now why I hadn’t taken the time to look at their website. Surely I should have addressed it to Shelia Crowley (who represents Melissa Hill, Jo Jo Moyes, Fiona Walker.... I could go on), but I clearly hadn’t done any research.

2. Don’t tell them your work is a cross between other authors

 “Imagine a combination of the authors Emily Barr and Freya North; all the local flavour of a tropical destination (without the dark story line) combined with a warm and fuzzy heart warming tale.”

This presupposes two things, that they’ve heard of these authors and if they have heard of them that they’ve actually read their books. It tells them very little about my book.

3. Don’t tell the agency that your book is a result of a drunken conversation (ESPECIALLY in the first line)

“I’m submitting you part of my debut novel which was written because of a drunken statement I made to my boyfriend after a failed interview attempt for the television show The Apprentice.”

Whilst I’ve never come across this as a piece of writing advice, I’m pretty sure that it's not the best first impression to make. At the time I thought it was endearing, but now I think not so much.

4. Don’t tell them you don’t want to win awards

“I don’t want to write a Booker prize novel”

I’m guessing this would be read as I’m not capable of writing a Booker Prize Novel. Which of course I am (honestly).

5. Don’t forget to actually write about your book in your query letter

In how many lines of the 29 lines in the letter do you think I mention the actual storyline of my novel? A) 15 B) 10 or c) 3. You know that based on the above it has got to be C don’t you?! And those 3 lines barely mention the plot of the book.

6. Don’t be funny. Unless you are  (judging from the rest of my letter I am not)

“In terms of writing experience, people read my work on a daily basis, although on the walls of museums... In order to make my writing more accessible (and less limited to walls) I’ve created my own website” 

Now considering that I work in a fairly academic industry this is probably not the best description I could come up with about my day job.

7. Don’t write your synopsis in first person narrative

Now this is a peculiar one. I wrote my synopsis from the perspective of my main character Kate, as if she were talking about her ‘Thailand Fling’ in a chatty almost Phoebe-from-friends-catch-up-on-the-past-series, type of way. Not only is that probably not how you’re supposed to write a synopsis, the weird bit was the original book is not even written in the first person. Which means even if they had liked the synopsis, the book was not more of the same.

8. Don’t write more about your boyfriend than you do your book

“Unlike ‘Rich’ the evil villain in my chick lit, my boyfriend is not a ‘dream quasher’.” 

Again, you think this might be a no brainer. But on line counting, my now husband, is mentioned on five lines (I was telling an endearing story) as compared to my three lines that mention my novel. I may have got confused with the acknowledgment page in an actual book and the purpose of a query letter...

So there you have it! My top 8 tips of how NOT to sub a novel. Points I've hopefully learnt loud and clear for my new round of subbing. Now what I want to know is, am I the only aspiring author to have written a cringey submission? Anyone else want to share? 

 

My Writing Room - Daphne Kalotay

This week, Daphne Kalotay (who we also interviewed this week) tells us about her writing room in Boston.

My Writing Room by Daphne Kalotay

I’m very fortunate in that I rent a lovely apartment with its own study off of the main room.  This study has nice big built-in bookshelves, which I think make any room look immediately better!  But best of all is the sunlight; the room faces southeast, making it nice and bright in the morning, which is when I like to write.  And natural light always gives me energy, especially in the winter (which can be long here in Boston.)

I like to be able to spread out, so when I first moved in and started looking for a desk, none seemed large enough.  I ended up buying this dining room table at Crate and Barrel, and put it together myself; only if you look underneath will you see that not all the screws are in correctly….  The chair came from the furniture company where my sister works; it supposedly has some irregularity that made it unsellable, but I’ve found it comfortable.  I also like that it’s red, because I learned somewhere that red is an energizing color.  The rug I chose for the floor is red, too; a friend brought it back for me from Morocco.

 I know that some writers don’t like distractions and wouldn’t want their work area to be facing a somewhat busy street, but I’m the opposite.  Since writing is such a solitary activity, I like (crave, actually) the company of the world outside—the sound of passing cars, of people chatting, of dogs barking and birds chirping.  So a key element of why my writing room works well for me is that I can look right out the window and see life going on all around me—people walking past, the mailman making his rounds, a neighbor out jogging.

One block away is a playground, and when I have the windows open there’s a constant din of children’s voices (lots of joyful screaming), which I find lively and vitalizing.

 It’s now been nearly ten years that I’ve been writing at this desk; it has faded quite a bit from all the sunlight.  Sometimes I put out some inspiring little thing to keep me going—a photograph, or a quote I like.  Right now I have a little picture of a bird I clipped from a magazine, just because I love birds and thought it was cute.  I also have a postcard of a picture by Rodin, because it figures in the new piece I’m writing.

 Visit Daphne's Website

Join Daphne on Facebook

 

My Writing Room - Martina Reilly

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

This week we look into Martina Reilly's writing space. Martina's novel, Even Better Than The Real Thing has just been released.

 

My Writing Room by Martina Reilly

You have no idea how long it took to try and make my writing space look inviting and interesting, but  the camera never lies. This is it, minus all the junk that usually sits on my desk. I write, at the moment in my sitting room, facing a wall. The room itself holds four sofas, two computers, two televisions, a hall table, a printer which sits on a chair and numerous labelled boxes.

We’re actually in the middle of a house move – we have been for over a year now, so we’re in a rented house, which holds all the landlords furniture and all of ours. At first I didn’t believe I would be able to write in such a space, but I have discovered, much to my delight, that I can literally write anywhere, once I’m interested in what I’m doing. I’ve written my latest book (not out until 2013) here. The room itself would be cosy if it wasn’t so cluttered and the place where we live is quiet, so most days, despite the cluttered nightmare of my surroundings, it is peaceful. Because we’re renting, no one around really wants to invest much time in getting to know us, so during the day, when the children are at school, no one calls to my door, unlike the last place we lived where we knew everyone. This situation has been great for my writing but terrible for my social life.  Thank God for the phone, Facebook and twitter!

Even Better than the Real Thing was written partly from my bed (in our old house) I used to think how fabulous this arrangement was until I ended up crippled, both in body and in wallet! Due to severe stiffness and pain in my neck and shoulder, I could barely get out of bed most mornings and thanks to Google, I convinced myself I had advanced arthritis. The physio however soon put me straight and advised me to invest in a new chair – the snazzy red one you can see in the picture, a back cushion – which is not in the picture – and the keyboard, which my laptop sits on. This keyboard cost about one hundred euro and was the best money I ever spent. Ignore the paintbrushes, I dabble occasionally but have no idea how they got into this picture!

Hopefully by the time the next book comes out, I’ll have a really cool writing space, with shelves and gadgets and views of green, well tended gardens to stimulate me. For now however, I’ll just stick with the view of the wall! 

My website is www.martinareilly.info and you can catch me on Facebook or Twitter at @Martinareilly.

Top 5 Writing Tips from Claire LaZebnik

1.  Keep moving forward.  Don’t stop to fret over individual words or an awkward sentence.  Tell yourself you’ll come back to fix all that in the next draft.  (You will.)  Just keep writing.

 

2.  Starting a novel is easy.  Finishing one is hard.  Let that be your first goal.  Yes, you want it to be good and published and all that.  But focus first on just finishing.

 

3.  Some days you won’t feel energetic or inspired or enthusiastic about writing.  Use those days to read back over previous pages and revise. Sometimes you’ll get inspired to do more by starting slow.  It’s like exercise: you might not feel like you have the energy to run a mile, but if you say, “I’ll just jog for a minute,” you’ll often keep going after that minute’s up.

 

4.  When in doubt, opt for clarity.  No one ever went wrong writing a nice clear, simple sentence. 

 

5.  Any interesting life experience will make you a better writer.  Sometimes you need to walk away from the computer and do something fun or unusual.  (Advice I don’t always take myself—but I should!)

VISIT CLAIRE LAZEBNIK'S WEBSITE

1.      Keep moving forward.  Don’t stop to fret over individual words or an awkward sentence.  Tell yourself you’ll come back to fix all that in the next draft.  (You will.)  Just keep writing.

 

2.      Starting a novel is easy.  Finishing one is hard.  Let that be your first goal.  Yes, you want it to be good and published and all that.  But focus first on just finishing.

 

 

3.      Some days you won’t feel energetic or inspired or enthusiastic about writing.  Use those days to read back over previous pages and revise. Sometimes you’ll get inspired to do more by starting slow.  It’s like exercise: you might not feel like you have the energy to run a mile, but if you say, “I’ll just jog for a minute,” you’ll often keep going after that minute’s up.

 

4.      When in doubt, opt for clarity.  No one ever went wrong writing a nice clear, simple sentence. 

 

 

5.      Any interesting life experience will make you a better writer.  Sometimes you need to walk away from the computer and do something fun or unusual.  (Advice I don’t always take myself—but I should!)

Cathy Woodman's Top 5 Tips for Writers

1) Never give up!  If you are feeling despondent because you have a bad case of writer’s block, or you’ve received another rejection letter, don’t give up.  Move on to your next idea or project.

 

2)  Make sure you end each chapter with a hook or page-turner to ensure the reader just has to read on.  Make your book unputdownable. 

 

3)  When you have written a chapter or short story, go back and re-read it to check that you have conveyed the emotion of the scene.  Have you made your reader laugh (if it’s supposed to be humorous), or cry (if it’s supposed to be sad)?    

 

4)  Create the romantic hero you want to fall in love with!  If you are in love with him, it will show in your writing and make your readers fall in love with him too.  

 

5)   Get the first draft of your story down then go back and edit it.  I find that editing as I go tends to interrupt the flow of the writing.

 

READ CATHY'S BLOG!

Novelicious Chats to... Cally Taylor

Cally Taylor is the author of Heaven Can Wait and Home For Christmas. She also appears in the brand new short story collection, Tears and Laughter and Happy Ever After (which also stars our very own Debs Carr!).  

 

Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?

 I’m not sure there’s such a thing as an average writing day for me as I’ve got a full time job (as an e-learning manager for a London university) and squeeze in writing my novels in any bit of free time I can grab. Mostly that tends to be in the evenings and weekends although I do occasionally take holiday so I can concentrate on writing or editing. With editing, because it requires so much concentration, I find it useful to get out of the house and book a week or ten days at a writing retreat like Anam Cara in Cork, Ireland.

 

When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration?

 Not really – although sometimes, when I’m trying to visualise a character, the face of a celebrity pops into my mind and that helps me write about their expressions and mannerisms. With ‘Heaven Can Wait’ Saint Bob looked a lot like Bob Hoskins! That said none of the characters in ‘Home for Christmas’ are based on celebrities.

 

What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?

I think it has to be ‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell. The structure of the book is unusual, the mystery that runs through it had me absolutely gripped and I felt emotionally shaken for DAYS after finishing the book. The prose is gorgeous too.

 

What is your writing process? Do you plan first of dive in? How many drafts do you do?

 I love the initial stage of planning a book although, for me, it’s more like daydreaming than coming up with concrete plot points. That said I do like to know what will happen in the first few scenes, what the inciting incident is in the middle of the book and what happens at the end. I let my characters guide me between those points – it’s more fun that way! I tend to do a rough and ready first draft, a second draft that tidies everything up and sorts out the structure and a couple more drafts after that where I tweak.

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell - Name That Book!

I have to be honest, the last thing on my mind when writing or trying to write a novel is creating a title for the book. I’m too busy trying to craft the plot and actually write 80,000 words. I guess I just hope that my working title will magically morph into a clever catchy title by itself. But when it doesn’t – what do you do? Well in my case, you appeal for help from the lovely readers of Novelicious.

I wrote a little while ago that I’m turning my podcast novel into a Kindle e-book, and I’ve been working away editing, reediting and getting it ready for print. It was only when I started to design my cover title that I realised I’d never really moved away from a working title for the novel.

When it was a podcast it was called An American Wedding. Sure it tells you that the novel is going to be set at, yep you’ve guessed it, an American Wedding, but other than that it doesn’t give you any clues really to the genre or the story.

I shelved it in my mind and ploughed on trying to design the cover, the title could still come later. But could it? What if I called it The British Bridesmaid the cover would need to have probably a Bridesmaid on the front and the British flag incorporated. If I called it Millie and the American Wedding then the cover would definitely need to feature someone that we could associate to be Millie.

So how do you title a book? What would you need to convey in a title? I started thinking about books I’d read recently. Something from Tiffany’s (Melissa Hill) , The Secret of a Happy Ever After (Lucy Dillion) and Miracle on Regent Street (Ali Harris). Even if you haven’t seen the covers you can imagine that each one has a magical and romantic tale inside. For my book, I wanted to convey romance, despair, emotion and a teeny bit sparkle as it is set in New York. Easy peasy right?

Well I still can’t decide. So I’m asking for your help, think of it as a little market research. I’ll give you the synopsis and the five possible titles then please could you comment and let me know which one you like the best!

Millie accidentally accepts an invitation to be a bridesmaid at an American Wedding in New York. It's Millie’s worst nightmare. Not only has she slept with the groom, but her ex boyfriend (the one that got away) is the best man and he’s married. As her friend, Kristen, gets ready for the best day of her life, Millie gears up for the worst week of hers.

And here are the possible titles:

An American Wedding

Millie and the American Wedding

Fear and Loathing in a Bridesmaid Dress

The British Bridesmaid

Surviving the American Wedding

Or do you have a suggestion for me?!

Thanks :)

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell - All In The Name of Research

  You can listen to Anna’s podcasted novel over on her websitewww.annabellwrites.com and follow her on twitter @annabell_writes

Now if I was a famous published author and I was able to set my books in tropical locations and claim my research trips back as tax deductible expenses then I would absolutely love doing research. But for me as a non published author I find the research side of things the most difficult.

 I see it as difficult to not get sucked into writing novels. I’ve thought in the past that it is better for me to be writing a novel that I can submit to agents rather than spending hours and hours researching a character who may only see the inside of my hard drive. I’ve tended to play it safe with novels I’ve worked on previously, writing characters that do generic jobs (which I barely mention) and set in locations I know well. But with my latest work in progress my main character goes on a business trip, and (unfortunately for me) something work related goes wrong on that trip...

The Secret Dreamworld of an Aspiring Author by Anna Bell - Quantity Vs Quality

 

  You can listen to Anna’s podcasted novel over on her websitewww.annabellwrites.com and follow her on twitter @annabell_writes

Literary agent, Kate Nash tweeted last week, ‘NaNoWriMo places too much emphasis on quantity over quality’ and I was nodding my head in agreement as I was inclined to agree. But then it suddenly dawned on me that although I don't do NaNo (let's just say I'm a tad over competitive and it brings out my worst side), my entire writing style is reminiscent of NaNo. I plan the novel out, and then I write it. And I write it furiously. 

I remember tweeting one Saturday that I was hoping to bang out 6,000 words and someone asked me whether I meant in one go. Now I know 6,000 words sounds ambitious, but because of my novel structure my chapters are only 2,000 words each which meant that I was only going to write 3 chapters. And because I’ve planned my novel in detail, chapter by chapter, I already knew the start middle and end to the chapter. Which means when it comes to writing I could write each chapter fairly quickly. I’ve written just 50,000 words of my novel which I started mid September – 7 weeks ago. I’m hoping that I’ll finish the 30,000 words needed to complete it before January. Which would be about three and half months, not bad going when you consider I work full time! 

Top 5 Writing Tips from...Nuala Woulfe

Nuala Woulfe is the author of newly released The Goddess Village.

1.  Just write, break it down into small steps, for example look at your favourite writers see how long their chapters are and decide to write one chapter of similar length, then another of similar length, then keep going.

 

2.  Write at different times of the day if you can and when you’re feeling happy, sad, have raging PMT etc. - different emotions will give your book different perspectives.

 

3.  Get into a general routine, i.e. mostly write an hour or two at night or in the morning or at the weekend it doesn’t matter if it’s half an hour or two hours the point is to just do it and not to beat yourself up about it when you don’t.

 

4.  Buy Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass– I found it an eye-opener.

 

5.  There are on line book support groups who can help in the process of becoming a writer. If you need support they can be very good for direction and can introduce you to workshops and agents.

VISIT NUALA'S WEBSITE

My Writing Room - Cally Taylor

My Writing Room is a fabulous fortnightly event, in which some of our favourite authors show us where the writerly magic happens, and tell us a little about their writing life.

Today our guest is the lovely Cally Taylor, author of Heaven Can Wait and the brand new, wonderful Home For Christmas.

 

My Writing Room by Cally Taylor

 

Ever since I stopped living in house shares in the late 90s and lived on my own instead I had to learn to squash my life into one tiny one-bedroomed flat after another. Both of my novels - ‘Heaven Can Wait’  and ‘Home for Christmas’ - were written either at a desk in my bedroom or on a laptop on my knee in the living room and it wasn’t until I moved in with my boyfriend earlier this year that I finally got a ‘room of my own’ in which to write.