My Secret Double Life by Sophie Claire

I have a set of questions which I think of as my annual review:

            What did you embrace in 2015?

            What did you let go of?

            In 2016 where do you want to be? 
And so on...

I love these kind of questions. They’re useful for keeping me focused on my goals and reminding me of my achievements, and obviously this was a big year for me with the publication of my first novel. However, one of my answers stopped me in my tracks. I had completely forgotten that 2015 was also the year I came out and told everyone in the real world (as opposed to online) that I am a writer!

Until May, when Her Forget-Me-Not Ex was released, my writing life was a closely guarded secret known only to my close friends and family. Why?

Let me take you back a step. When I first began to write fifteen years ago, I treated it as a hobby. I wrote while my baby was napping and I mainly wrote short stories because that was all I had time for. After a few years, I plucked up the courage to start a novel. I worked on this for two years and by the time I’d finished it, the seed was sown: I knew I wanted to be a writer. So I tentatively told a few people about my hopes of one day being published.

I knew achieving publication would not be easy and I braced myself for rejection, but when I sent my first book to publishers and agents I was stunned by their response. My book was like a boomerang. It used to come back, sometimes by return of post. (With hindsight, I’m so glad – that first book was a learning experience!)

However, I wouldn’t give up. I wrote another novel. And another. I went on writing courses, and I constantly searched out books and articles to try and improve my craft. Gradually, the rejections became less standard and more encouraging, telling me I was nearly there. I saw this as progress (though it was incredibly frustrating too), but some people – non-writers – couldn’t understand my optimism. Their interest turned to sympathy and eventually to pity. So I decided to keep my writing dreams to myself.

Then we moved house. As far as my new neighbours and friends knew, I was a stay-at-home mum of two who did the school run and worked part-time proofreading academic papers. In reality, I proofread at night when the children were in bed, and wrote feverishly from 9 till 3 every day. Although I still hadn’t earned a penny from writing, I treated it as my job and that was all I wanted to do.

I would sometimes vanish for the weekend to attend a writing course, and when people asked where I’d been I kept my answers vague: ‘Oh, seeing friends’. Which was true. I didn’t want to give the game away, but I didn’t want to lie either. It was difficult keeping up the deception. So this year when my book came out and I could finally tell everyone the good news I was so relieved.

What’s your book about? friends asked; Where do you get your ideas? Why didn’t you tell us you were a writer?

The truthful answer is: because I needed the validation of being published to feel I really was a writer.

And how do people react now when I tell them what I do? They’re mostly intrigued. Writing, for whatever reason, is regarded as a fascinating career. I love that some people are bemused by imagination and the concept of making things up (Did you base your book on an ex-boyfriend? – er, no). I love that people want to give me ideas they’ve had for books they think should be written. I love that there is a general perception that writers are all as rich as J.K. Rowling (oh, that this were true!). I love the discussions I get drawn into about other authors and their books. It’s my favourite subject, my passion, and I’m thrilled that I can now openly share that passion.

I am Sophie Claire. And I am a writer.

Sophie.x

M is for...Mills and Boon 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 M...for Mills & Boon.

Like many people who become writers, I started off being the kind of child who always had her nose in a book of some description.

Unlike many, I didn't have a burning ambition to become a writer.  It just never occurred to me.  Not until Margaret Thatcher abolished student loans, just a couple of years before my daughter was due to go to university, that is.  We hadn't a penny saved up to fund her education, and were suddenly faced with the huge cost of her getting a degree.

How to get the money to put her through college?

I know, I thought.  I'll write a book.  I've read so many, I'm sure I could do just as well.  Because when I wasn't reading a story, I was daydreaming.  Those sort of Walter Mitty-ish daydreams where I was the heroine, getting into all sorts of unlikely adventures.

And I had been to university and got a degree in English, so I knew all about what makes great literature.  I was sure, if only I put my mind to it, I could quickly come up with a bestseller.

And I did come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea.  A re-working of the Babel story from the bible, which would show how it affected one family, as the world they knew collapsed into chaos around them.  It was a kind of allegorical, apocalyptic examination of both family dynamics, and social conditioning, which ended up proving that we are all only as civilized as the society in which we live.

At that point I made a discovery.  It is a lot harder to write a novel than I thought.  You can't just sit down and write your ideas down in the order you get them.  You've got to tease out the message, and have enough action going on to get that message across without boring the reader to sleep.  How did I discover this?  Well, because I read sections aloud to my family as I finished them.  If they really did fall asleep, I knew I needed to re-write that bit.

Anyway, that was how I learned to write - by sitting down and doing it, then trying out the effect of my prose on my poor unsuspecting family.

At last it was finished.  My masterpiece.  I got hold of a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and started sending it out, eagerly awaiting the thrilled reaction of publishers who would all be clamouring for the privilege of printing it.

You won't be surprised to hear that none of them wanted it.  Most didn't even bother replying.  Which puzzled and hurt me.

By this time, my daughter had started at college, and I clearly wasn't going to make my fortune with my book, at least not right away.  So I had to go out and get a Real Job, which meant I had less time to devote

to writing that bestseller.  Which I wasn't going to abandon.  I'd got hooked on writing.

I felt I just needed to work out where I was going wrong.  Perhaps I needed a bit of tuition, or something?

But since I was working I couldn't go on a full time writing course.

However, I did see an advert for a correspondence course which involved doing assignments and sending them off and getting them marked.  The first assignments involved researching various magazines with a view to writing articles.

Now, this probably seems logical to you, but this was the first time anyone had suggested researching the market, and writing something in accordance with a set of guidelines.  I thought I could just write whatever I wanted, and some publisher should be grateful to print it out and sell it for me!

I knew magazine article writing wasn't for me, but at least the marks I got from my tutor were encouraging.

There was a fiction-writing segment coming up in the correspondence course, and, getting bored with the factual stuff which didn't make use of my imagination, I skipped ahead and read the section on genre fiction.

Now, because I'd studied Literature at university, I'd been taught to sneer at pulp fiction.  But the one thing that caught my eye, as I read the course outline, was a little sentence that said, "If you send work in to Mills & Boon, someone will read your manuscript, and reply."

A reply from a publisher!  By this time I would have given my right arm to get a reply from a publisher.

It then went on to suggest that if I wanted to write something likely to get Mills & Boon to take an interest, I should buy several recent books published by them, so that I could see if I could write something along those lines.

So off I went to my local library, and got an armful.

I'd never knowingly read anything from Mills & Boon before.  But the moment I did, I was hooked. Why hadn't I read anything like these wonderful romances before?  They matched exactly the kind of stories I'd been making up in my head for years - oh, I don't mean the worthy, literary story I thought was a Real Piece of Writing - I mean the ones where I was a heroine in peril, getting rescued by some strapping great hunk with a tortured soul who needed my gentle brand of wisdom to make his life whole - or the ones where I was an impoverished, though intelligent girl from a genteel family who catches the eye of a dashing rake, or pirate, and persuades him, through a series of adventures where I demonstrated a special brand of pluckiness, that I was just what he'd always been looking for without even knowing it.

From that moment on, I had stories flowing out of my fingertips, drumming at my brain to get onto paper.  Plucky heroines and rugged heroes clamouring at me to tell their stories.

Though it took another few years before the editors at Mills & Boon finally gave in, and agreed to publish one of them.

I wasn't sure exactly which line I wanted to aim at - it was a choice between Moderns (which are like reworking of fairy tales such as Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast, really) or historical, where I could indulge my imagination in tales of adventure, involving rakes encountering plucky heroines.

So what I did was to alternate.  First of all, I'd write a story for the Modern line, and send it in to the relevant editor.  And then, while I was awaiting a response, I'd write a historical one.  So when my rejection eventually came back, I immediately had another one all ready to send out.

At the same time I was buying books about how to write, to see what I could learn.  I can't say that any one book had all the answers, but every single one of them would contain at least one little nugget of advice I found useful.

And my husband got me a computer which would connect to the internet, which opened up a whole new world of research for me.

It was just after I'd signed up for an evening class at a local college in fiction writing that I first heard of the Romantic Novelists Association, and its New Writer's Scheme.  My tutor was giving me good marks for my assignments, but I was still getting standard rejection letters from Mills & Boon, and I wanted to know what I was doing wrong.  Why wasn't I getting anything published?

For a fee, I discovered, the New Writer's Scheme would read a manuscript, and actually send back a report about the quality of my writing.

So, I decided that when my next rejection letter came through, I would send the manuscript off to the New Writer's Scheme so someone would tell me where I was going wrong.

However, that submission didn't get rejected.  Instead, I got a very nice letter asking to read the full manuscript, and then, many months later, a request for very minor revisions.  Before I knew it, I'd got the call with the offer of a publishing contract.

It had only taken me ten years.

My first book, His Cinderella Bride, came out the following autumn.  By this time not only my daughter, but also my son, had both graduated from university.

But I'd got a new career.

 

Annie's first book "His Cinderella Bride" has just been made available as an ebook.

Post-its and Publication by Johanna Grassick

I attend writing courses for two reasons: because they’re an opportunity to get feedback on my work, and because they always give my writing a boost, generating ideas and inspiration. In those respects, this year’s Advanced Romance Writing course with Kate Walker was no exception, but what was different this time was that almost all the group had attended last year. This meant we knew each other (always good in the bar!) and Kate knew us, so she was able to tailor the course specifically to our needs.

Post-it plotting!

This year in Fishguard we did a lot of work on character and how these can really drive the story. We examined the core emotions in our stories and used coloured post-its to make it visual (there was much excitement over the post-its, which Kate generously provided!)

We also discussed our opening chapters, both in one-to-one sessions with Kate and in a group discussion (fuelled by wine – well it was Saturday night!). I found this feedback invaluable, especially as the chapter I brought is a new genre for me: I’ve moved from writing category romance to a relationship novel, and with new territory comes uncertainty.

And there were special celebrations this year because one of the group, Rachael Thomas, has sold her first book to Harlequin Mills & Boon. Kate Walker has seen many of her pupils ‘graduate’ to be published authors, so she knows what she’s talking about when she advises to; “Write the story you really want to tell. Don’t imitate, don’t be afraid – write from the heart.”

So that’s what I’ll be doing – perhaps with the aid of a post-it or two!

Johanna Grassick

Kate is running several more courses this year. Details are on her website:

http://www.kate-walker.com/index.html

Writers Holidays run the weekend in Fishguard as well as other courses: http://writersholiday.net/

Light Bulbs and Strait-Jackets by Johanna Grassick

Posted by Johanna Grassick

I’ll let you know a secret…I’ve been on Kate Walker writing courses before, so I know they’re always fun and really informative, and that’s why I signed up for the Advanced Romance Writing Course which runs every February in Fishguard, Wales.

Because she’d met us all on previous courses (to attend the Advanced course writers must have already been on Kate’s basic Writing Romance course), Kate tailored the course to our needs and requests, covering topics from character to conflict to sex (yes, we had sex on Sunday morning J). We were given exercises to get us writing and spark ideas for new characters, and our discussions really got things flowing so insights were flashing up around the room like light bulbs. 

As an unpublished writer what’s most valuable to me is feedback on my work, and we were offered a one-to-one meeting with Kate to discuss the work we sent in for the course. I came away from mine with a page of notes, ticks and scribbles all over my manuscript, and precious advice on how to improve my opening chapter.

Kate has been writing 25 years and had 60 novels published, so she’s a mine of information. “There are no rules”, she told us, when writing romance – even Mills & Boon books. It’s important to remember this because aspiring writers of the genre can regard the guidelines as a strait-jacket, when in fact publishers are looking for unique voices and new twists.

So “be brave” is the mantra I brought home with me.

Details of Kate Walker’s courses are on her website:

http://www.kate-walker.com/index.html

And Writers Holidays run other courses too: http://writersholiday.net/