National Creative Writing Graduate Fair 2017 by Louise Marley

I recently attended the National Creative Writing Graduate Fair at Manchester Metropolitan University. There was an opportunity to attend panels and workshops, and pitch to a literary agent! However, it is hard to take in what is being said and make notes at the same time, so I have paraphrased!

Balancing Act:

Living and Working as a Writer

SJ Bradley (Writer)

Adam Lowe (Writer/Performer/Publisher)

AL: If getting started is difficult, try writing about anything. Or write around the subject – write about your characters, the setting, etc. Or draw a map of your location. Anything to trick yourself into writing.

SJB: It can be a challenge to get people to take you seriously as a writer. You have to be strict about your writing time. Think of it as work. Don’t let anything interfere.

AL: Switch your phone off. Have set writing times. Set boundaries.

SJB: If it helps, go somewhere to work where you can’t be interrupted – like a café. You’ll also get that ‘going to work’ feeling!

AL: Find time to think. Let things percolate. Reads books – it counts as work (films count too, if relevant). But be strict with yourself. And don’t work in the evenings, it’s unhealthy.

SJB: But don’t write yourself out!

AL: It can sometimes be helpful to leave something for the next day. Try breaking off halfway through a sentence!

AL: But it is important not to sequester yourself. It’s good to meet other writers. Bounce ideas off each other, compete with word counts, but be supportive of each other. Writers are like magpies, they love new and shiny. Meet new people. Have new experiences. It will make your writing come alive. If you don’t go beyond your own experiences the reader is never surprised and it can lead to inadvertently duplicating ideas or themes from existing books or movies.

AL: It’s easier for others to take you seriously as a writer when you are paid for your work. Don’t use the excuse that because you love your job you’re happy to work for free. Lawyers love their work too but they don’t work for nothing!

If you’re on Twitter, check out SJ Bradley’s timeline (@BradleyBooks), where you can find answers to some of the questions there wasn’t time for.

Going Digital:

New Opportunities for Writers

Kathryn Taussig (Associate Publisher: Bookouture)

Michelle Green (Writer)

Kit Caless (Co-founder/Editor: Influx Press & Co-founder: #LossLit)

Michelle Green told us about her collection of short stories, Hayling Island: Stories at Sea Level, to be published as a digital audio map in collaboration with a composer, digital artist and literary geographer. The map will link to local tidal reports and change according to the real-time time on the island. For example, a story set on one of the sand banks will be inaccessible when the tide is in!

Kit Caless talked about the digital story-telling project, LostLit, which explores the various influences of loss in literature. The LostLit Twitter write club is hosted every first Wednesday of the month between 9.00 pm and 11.00 pm, and open to all. Updates and retweets can be found on @LossLit, and hashtagged #LostLit.

Kathryn Taussig is an Associate Publisher for Bookouture, who were one of the first digital book publishers. Their challenge was to make their books more visible and to stand out from the crowd. With traditional publishing you only have one shot to get it right. Sometimes even the most promising books can fail for no apparent reason. With digital publishing there can be more individuality, and there is the opportunity to re-brand authors and try things that are different. For example, if a book cover doesn’t work it can be quickly and easily changed. Readers of ebooks are voracious and ideally they want two or three books a year from their favourite authors.

Bookouture publish mostly commercial fiction, including women’s fiction, romance, sagas, and psychological crime. They take unagented submissions, which can be made through a portal on their website. Their authors receive a higher percentage of royalties – 45% of everything they receive from the retailer.

Writing the Perfect Synopsis

Debbie Taylor (Founder & Editorial Director: Mslexia)

An elevator pitch is the character, their quest, and the obstacle preventing them getting it. Concentrate on just one character – who is the most important person in your story? – and be sure to name them!

A synopsis is the summary of characters and plot in order, not a blurb. Your submission letter explains who you are, the sample of three chapters proves you can write, but the synopsis is there to show how you plan to develop your story. A synopsis may also be used to create the blurb on the back of the book, and sent to the designer to create the cover art.

A synopsis should be between 500 and 1,500 words (but check individual guidelines). Write it in the present tense, third person, ‘omnipresent’ point of view. It should start with a summary paragraph, similar to the ‘elevator pitch’, followed by the sequence of actions that make up the plot. Summarise each character’s profile when they turn up. Who propels the story forward? Give their name, occupation, social position, and anything distinctive about their appearance or an unusual personality trait.

Related Posts:

NCW Graduate Fair 2016: Part 1: Panels & Talks by Louise Marley

NCW Graduate Fair 2016: Part 2: Pitching to Agents by Sophie Claire

How Not to Submit to a Literary Agent by Sophie Claire

Writing: Getting Serious by Louise Marley

Links:

The National Creative Writing Graduate Fair

The Manchester Writing School

Manchester Metropolitan University

Comma Press

Louise Marley is an Amazon Top 100 bestselling author and a creative writing tutor with Writing Magazine. Her latest book is Trust Me I Lie.

Just Do It! by Sophie Claire

What stops you writing?

For me, it begins with distractions: internet ‘research’, Twitter, writing blog posts, eating biscuits.

Then there are the crows of doubt: I worry, where is this story going? Is it any good? Will I make my word count today? What if I can’t think of anything to write? There are days when the prospect of beginning and completing a 90,000 word novel is so daunting I want to hide behind the sofa!

But last November I took part in NaNoWriMo and was amazed that...

1) I did it!

2) How fast I managed to complete my daily word count.

At my peak I wrote 2,000 words in as little as 2½ hours. It made me realise how inefficiently I had been working before, and how much time I’d wasted worrying when I could have been writing.

I resolved to learn from this. I would keep up the good habits which NaNo had instigated, and write each morning before I did anything else. No Twitter or Internet or fun of any kind until I’d written.

And, curiously, I found that writing became fun again!

A few months on, I’m still doing this. Yes, the anxiety still lurks – that niggling voice which asks, what will I write next? – but I don’t allow it to hold me back. I sit down, I begin to write, and things start to happen, they take shape of their own accord. The story takes flight; the characters speak and move and think and come alive; one scene triggers another, and before I know it, that little number at the bottom of the page is in the tens of thousands.

The writing process is so difficult to describe to those who haven't experienced it for themselves. It’s unpredictable: ideas can take me by surprise, or hide themselves away when I'm desperately willing them to appear. When it goes well I get lost in the story, only to resurface hours later. It sometimes feels as if, when I’m writing, magic happens.

It’s not something I can control, but once I stop trying to, I realise that this is exactly what’s so powerful about it.
So why not embrace this powerful, uncontrollable process? After all, unpredictable and surprising are wonderful attributes for a story. And magic? Well, we could all do with some of that.

Try it! Just write.I hope you find it as rewarding as I did.

Sophie. x

Next month: I’ll be blogging about why you should stop writing and step away from your computer!

T is for Time Management by Annie Burrows

On the first Friday of every month, Novelista Annie Burrows has been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer.  And is dealing with themes in alphabetical order.  This month, she's reached T...so she'll be talking about how she manages her time.

I'm supposed to write two books a year, at 75,000 words each.  Every time I get a new deadline, one of the first things I do is to sit down and work out a timetable which will ensure I get my story in on time.

My last one went something like this:

Due August 31st.

75,000 at 10k per week (or 2 chapters per week) for 1st draft.  = 2k per day.  Will take 7 and a half weeks.

If start 4th March, should be done by April 30th.

2nd draft - revise 3 chapters per week = 8 weeks (assuming 15 chapters)

should take until June 17th

That should have given me a full two and a half months to do a third draft, which is when I usually have only a few little tweaks to iron out.  I was hoping I would be able to get the commissioned story finished, and then spend some time on a book I'd like to self-publish.

But what happened?  Well, to start with, my first draft was over 30,000 words short.  I'd written all the story I could think of, and the only way I could have put in anything else would have been shameless padding.

Fortunately, the Novelistas helped me with some brainstorming, during which we came up with a new ending.  So that my second draft, with a completely new ending, which I managed to finish on June 29th, came in at 64,000 words.  Still a bit short, but not too far off for that stage of my drafts, so I was reasonably happy.  I still had a full two months before the deadline, although I was by then two weeks behind where I wanted to be.

However, I was going to the Romance Writers of America conference at the end of July, which would mean two weeks off, plus any time necessary to recover from jet lag which always turns my brain to mush.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get my 3rd draft done before I flew out.

But then I had an unexpected visitor, who stayed a week.  And a teacher husband at home for school holidays underfoot.  So by the time I flew out I had achieved practically nothing.

My next entry in my "progress with wip" file reads:

returned to work on August 10th.

Have until 31st to deadline = 3 weeks.

Need to revise 13 chapters = min 1 chapter per day.

I finally submitted the book on September 4th, having spent the previous week hunched over my laptop feverishly typing.  And ended up with back spasm, followed by a migraine.

So what had gone wrong with my brilliant plan?  Ok - I knew there would be a couple of weeks out at the end of July for the trip to New York, but I shouldn't have had to end up frantically trying to finish by the deadline.  I'd worked out that I'd have plenty of free time - I'd even hoped I could work on that self-published book that has been on the back burner for what feels like forever.  And this isn't the first time it's happened either.  The last few books I have produced have all gone the same way.  I've started off with a brilliant timetable, which appears to give me plenty of time, and end up begging my editor for an extension.  And given myself a migraine getting it finished.  I'm on my 21st book at the moment, so you'd think by now I would have learned how to write a bit faster than I did to start off with.

So this time, on the recommendation of a blog I read that suggested I should be able to write 10,000 words a day if I followed their advice (cue hollow laughter) I kept a writing diary.  To see if I could pick out patterns.  Which would show me where I was going wrong.  Wasn't I spending enough time at my laptop?  I certainly felt as if I was working as hard as I could.  So perhaps I was taking too many days off to gallivant - although time spent with the Novelistas wouldn't count, I promised myself.  I frequently need their input.  (And the home-made cake).

Anyway, what I discovered when I read through my writing diary was this deadly phrase:

Revisions landed.

And everything made sense.  Because, when I counted how much time I'd spent on revisions to my previous book, when I should have been ploughing forward with my next one, it came to a shocking total of 6 weeks.

The revisions came in two rounds, the first of which took me four weeks, and the second, two.

Even when I did get back to my wip, I found phrases in my writing diary like:

Spent an hour in afternoon just trying to get my head round chapter 10 again

So, it's revisions that are the culprit.  If I hadn't had those revisions, my book would have been submitted in plenty of time, and I could have worked on my own personal project.

So, clearly, when I'm making my timetable for my next book, I'm going to have to factor in those 6 weeks for revisions. And next time, hopefully my writing diary won't have comments like:

Change of plan -

All went to hell in a handcart coz of revisions.  Now need to re date all these targets

So now I am officially only 1 week behind revised schedule.
 

Wow.  It's going to be tight.

 Annie's 20th book, "The Captain's Christmas Bride" is on sale now. 

She has just finished the second round of revisions for her 21st book, and is off for a lie-down in a darkened room. 

When she recovers, you can find her on facebook or twitter @NovelistaAnnie, and her website is here.