Novelicious.com | The Women's Fiction Blog for Readers and Writers

Tracy Bloom’s Top Five Writing Tips

Tracy Bloom's debut novel, No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday, is still riding high at the top of Amazon's Kindle Chart. Here Tracy shares with us her top tips for writing.

1. Don’t think about it too hard. The harder you think the less you write.

2. Sometimes you’ve just got to write it down even if it’s rubbish. If you write for long enough something good eventually pops out.

3. If you hear someone say something that strikes a chord in some way, write it down. They are little golden nuggets that always come in useful.

4. Join a writing group/class. Really helps to work out if you are any good or not before you plan your retirement based on your international best-selling novel!

5. Enjoy it – when you write something down that you know is exactly what you were trying to say – take a moment – today you were a great writer.

My Writing Room – Alice Peterson

Alice Peterson is the author of two bestselling novels, 'Ten Years On' and 'Monday to Friday Man'. Her new book, By My Side, is published as a paperback on 18th July.

 

© Paul Donnellan

 

In an ideal world, I’d love to have an office – my own little space that’s separated from the rest of the house. However, that’s not possible so I have divided my sitting room into two by placing two sofas back to back to give the impression part office/part sitting room.

Mary Grehan’s Top Five Writing Tips

Mary Grehan is an Irish author whose debut novel, Love is the Easy Bit, has recently been released. You can read our review of it here. Mary's top tips for writing are...

1. You don’t have to repeat yourself. Repeating yourself is nagging and the reader does not want to be nagged. The astute reader will get it first time.

2. Vary the pace of your writing, from slow to fast and back to slow.

3. Read your writing aloud, all of it, not just the dialogue. This will tell you if it is flowing. It will also show you the pace of the writing which you may want to vary.

4. You can use dialogue to expose the quirks and ticks of human behaviour, show how people don’t listen to each other, how they say one thing and do another, how they say one thing and think another, how they repeat themselves, how they contradict themselves…

5. You might have written the most clever, lyrical piece of prose, but if it is not serving the story or your characters, it will have to go. Sorry!

My Writing Room – Lucy Diamond

This week Lucy Diamond shows us around her office. Her latest novel, Me and Mr Jones, is released on Thursday.

I have had many writing spaces over the years: a tiny folding table in our basement Brixton flat; up in the attic of our Brighton house (accessed only by a pull-down ladder, i.e. total health and safety nightmare) and now, at last, I have a proper office in our current home in Bath.  A room of my own. I love it.

Ask the Editor – What are the most common myths about being an editor?

Caroline Hogg has worked in publishing for almost ten years, at Little, Brown Book Group and more recently at Avon, HarperCollins. She's currently at Pan Macmillan as Senior Commissioning Editor for Commercial Women's Fiction. She knows her stuff!

Today's question comes from a Novelicious reader who asks:

What are the common myths about being an editor?

Caroline says:

I would like to blame Jude Law in The Holiday for perpetuating the myth that editors lie around in bed with a stack of A4 pages, drinking wine and chewing on the end of their wire-framed glasses in moments of deep reflection. (Which is not to say this never ever happens.) There is reading involved, of course, but not just reading. In fact, so much of an editor’s working day is taken up with meetings, running costings, negotiating deals, working with the sales, marketing, publicity, design and production teams, writing copy, talking to authors, checking covers, checking out competitors and more besides, that it’s quite rare you have enough time or peace and quiet to read submissions at your desk.

Helen Chandler’s Top Five Writing Tips

Helen Chandler's debut novel Two for Joy is released as a paperback next Thursday. Here's her top tips for writing.

1. Write what you want to write, and in the style you feel comfortable with.

2. Read as much as you can, in your chosen genre, but more widely as well. Not just books either, I find you can get a lot of inspiration from magazines, newspapers and blogs.

3. If at all possible, allocate a time for writing, and write at that time. Write even if you don’t feel inspired at all. Nine times out of ten I found that within half an hour the words would be flowing, even if I was convinced that I was too tired/stressed/bored to concentrate. I remember reading an interview with Jane Green in which she said that her background as a journalist was very good training, because she was used to having to produce a set number of words, whether or not she felt her muse was visiting that day, and it helped to bring that approach to her creative writing.

4. Be judicious about who you allow to read your work in progress. Be prepared to take criticism and suggestion, but if you feel strongly about something then don’t change it, it’s your book after all.

5. Be positive – everyone talks about what a difficult market it is, and how few books get published, but at the end of the day, some have to, and there’s no reason why it couldn’t be yours!

My Writing Room – Jennifer Cryer

Jennifer Cryer's debut novel, Breathing on Glass, was released last year. Here Jennifer let's us see where she works and gives us some insight into her writing process.

My writing takes place in several phases, in a milieu of high and low tech, and each of them seems to have a preferred location where it develops best.

Authors start from many places, a first line, an overheard conversation, a character who won’t leave them alone. I usually start from theme. For Breathing on Glass it was the idea that what you do at work, day in and day out, influences the sort of person you are. I play with ideas like this everywhere I go but some of the best times to muse on them are when it is impossible to do anything practical. Rhythm seems to help, on a train, running on the treadmill at the gym, walking. I speculate about one of those swinging hammocks in the garden, strictly for work purposes, of course, but the weather doesn’t seem to justify it, so I just fit this phase of my writing into my daily activities.

Ask the Editor – How did you become an editor? What was your first job in publishing?

Caroline Hogg has worked in publishing for almost ten years, at Little, Brown Book Group and more recently at Avon, HarperCollins. She's currently at Pan Macmillan as Senior Commissioning Editor for Commercial Women's Fiction. She knows her stuff!

Today's question comes from a Novelicious reader who asks:

How did you become an editor? What was your first job in publishing?

Caroline says: 

My first job in publishing was as an editorial assistant at Little, Brown Book Group, on the Abacus imprint. I can’t stress how lucky I was: only a few months out of university, having never worked in an office before and admittedly rather clueless about publishing! My first two bosses were incredibly lovely people that took a chance on me and gave me an excellent grounding in the business. I had already had several work experience placements (which I really recommend if you want to get into publishing. You not only get a flavour of the work but you get to meet people, and so hear about job openings) which was a good introduction to the industry but only really skimmed the surface. There was so much to learn and it all seemed so glam: launch parties (where I could be found serving the wine and snaffling canapés when no one was looking), submissions to read (though I mostly read from the slush pile to start with, which was certainly interesting) and most exciting of all was meeting real authors. It took me quite a while to stop becoming completely speechless in front of them – I was a quivering wreck in front of Margaret Atwood, which still makes me cringe to this day – and I had to pinch myself that it really was my job. For an English Literature graduate, it was a dream come true.

Stella Newman's Top Five Writing Tips

Stella Newman is the author of Pear Shaped and Leftovers. You can also read her fantastic Writing Room piece for Novelicious here.

1. Sit your arse down. The hardest thing is starting. So start.

2. Write. Even if it’s bad, just write. Keep writing and you’ll get to the good.

3. Read everything and anything. You can learn as much from bad writing as good.

4. Write what you want to read, not what you think will make money or what you think the market wants. If there is passion and energy and sincerity from the writer, that will shine through on the page.

5. Try to build in time away from the work. It’s very hard to get any perspective when you’re fully immersed in a project – but time away is essential and good things can happen when you temporarily switch focus.

My Writing Room – Mary Grehan

Mary Grehan's debut novel, Love is the Easy Bit, has just been released. You can read our review here. Over to Mary!

I write in my attic which is converted into a bedroom and used to be my artist’s studio when I was painting. (I stopped painting when I started writing seriously back in 2008.) It is also the guest bedroom, so before anyone comes to stay, I have to be careful to hide away latest print outs of work in progress.

There are lots of good things about my writing room. It’s quiet, large, warm and bright thanks to two Velux roof windows. The big drawback is that it is a room without a view, unless you count the grey Irish skies which are occasionally blue. It’s a shame because outside my house are beautiful views of a hill inhabited by wild goats and of a slow, grand estuary that divides County Waterford from County Wexford on which boats sail into Waterford city.

My Writing Room – Cathy Woodman

Cathy Woodman is the author of the Talyton St George vet books. The next in the series, Country Loving, is released in August.
 

I tend to write whenever and wherever I can, including in the car and on the train, but when I’m at home I like to have my laptop, notes and books spread across the dining room table so it looks as if I’m working really hard. I have a study upstairs, but I don’t use it for writing because it’s a cold room and too isolated from the rest of the house, whereas the dining room is warm and handy for the kitchen – I need a constant supply of coffee and snacks when I’m writing! I tell myself that the caffeine and sugar are good for maintaining brain activity, although the latter isn’t terribly good for the waistline.

Lucy Dillon's Top Five Writing Tips

Lucy Dillon is the author of Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts, which won the 2010 Romantic Novelists’ Association’s ‘Romantic Novel of the Year Award’.

1. Don’t use your friends and/or enemies as characters in your books.

2. Read as much as you can.

3. Edit out as many adverbs as you can bear.

4. Read what you’ve written out loud.

5. Decide what needs to happen in every scene, and make sure the plot’s moved along in at least three different ways, even if two of those things aren’t immediately obvious to the reader at the time.

Writing Comps and Opportunities Roundup 14/05/2013

Every other Tuesday we will be compiling a list of competitions, courses and opportunities on offer for wannabe writers and those of you who might want to work in publishing. If you have a competition, course or opportunity you would like us to shout about send info to cesca@novelicious.com. If you can't see your comp here we might be saving it for a later date.

And please, Novelicious readers, let us know how you get on! We'd love to hear your success stories...

Competitions

There are some brilliant writing competitions about but note that some close this week so you'll have to get your writing skates on. Here are a few we've spotted:

Flavorwire is thrilled to announce its first-ever short fiction contest. In honour of May’s National Short Story Month, they’re offering a prize of $500 for one outstanding short story.

Write Your Novel – World Building

When you hear the phrase ‘world building’ you may think of doorstep-thick fantasy epics or historical fiction; I know I do. However, the fact is even if you’re writing a book set in your home town circa last week, you still need to do some...

World building is setting on steroids. It’s where you hammer out the details of your world or, in the case of historical fiction or a real-world setting, where you research those details to give your setting depth and to ensure you don’t make embarrassing mistakes.

Even if you have normal settings, you need to recreate them for your reader and details count. Let’s say one of your locations is your heroine’s home, you need to decide whether it’s a flat, a house, a bungalow or a caravan. (Make sure whatever you choose is in-keeping with her level of income or have some other explanation for how she can afford it). Work out the style of the house, its location, decor, number of rooms and layout. For the last point you can even scribble a quick floor plan to get it really set in your mind.