Plotting: Wrong Way or 'Write' Way? by Sophie Claire

Are you a plotter or a pantser? (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, there's a good explanation here)

I’m a wannabe plotter. 

I would love to be able to sit down and plan a book. I wish that before I started I could produce a neat map detailing exactly how the plot will unfold, when and how the characters will develop and change, and which obstacles they will face and overcome. And with every story I write, I try to do this.

Unfortunately, my mind doesn’t work that way.

My plot outlines are usually hazy with two-dimensional characters and predictable situations. 

It’s only as I write that the characters come alive and usually throw my plan out the window to take new, unexpected routes of their own choosing. Which is great. There’s nothing better than a character who knows their own mind and has their own unique fears and dreams and opinions. And if they surprise me, then hopefully they’ll surprise the reader too.

But to get to the point where my characters become fully developed like this involves a lot of hard work: hours spent at the computer, writing scenes which will later be deleted. 

In essence, I write, scrap what I’ve written, then rewrite and rewrite again. I have to explore a lot of dead ends before I find the right way. 

It’s a time-consuming process, and I used to berate myself for not getting it right first time. I wished there was a trusted and experienced professional would read my synopsis and instantly spot the flaws. A fairy godmother who would give me advice (kill off the ex-girlfriend, increase the conflict here, raise the stakes there…) which would save me months of work.

Over time, however, I’ve realised that no one has a magic wand, and this is simply my method of writing. 

It feels scary, fumbling around in the dark, struggling with a story for weeks and months. When it's not going well, writing feels like the loneliest job in the world. I feel lost and alone, I question why I ever started this novel...

                               – then, suddenly, a bulb lights up and everything falls into place.

This has been the process with each of the last 3 books I’ve written, and I’m finally learning to accept it. To keep the faith and keep writing even if what I write today will be deleted tomorrow. Now, rather than seeing these scrapped scenes as wasted pages or wrong turns, I understand that they’re invaluable for getting to know my characters and understanding what makes them tick.

So that when I find the right path, I’m certain it’s right. 

What's your writing method? Are you happy with it?

Sophie.x

www.sophieclaire.co.uk

Photos copyright: Sophie Claire and Pixabay

I Can't Write Without... by Sophie Claire

…My stash of rough paper.

I know – it's not glamorous, it's not an expensive gadget, and in this world of laptops and printers you might think it's a little peculiar and very old-fashioned.

Obviously, I have a computer and this is essential for editing and making the manuscript presentable to the rest of the world, BUT without rough paper I simply wouldn’t have a book to show in the first place.

What Do I Use It For?

• Morning pages (à la Julia Cameron). To get me into writing mode at the start of the day I write three pages of whatever's on my mind. It's a great warm-up, and also good for getting any worries off my chest so I'm then free to focus on the novel I'm writing.
• Sketching out a new scene. Everything I write begins life as rough scribbles, sometimes pared down to pure dialogue to give me the essence of the scene, and I build up from there. 
• Thinking through problems: if I’m stuck, I stop typing and go back to paper. I brainstorm solutions, or write a kind of stream of consciousness, putting down on paper any thoughts that come to mind. Anything at all. This often throws up surprising results and sometimes the solution isn’t as difficult to find as I first thought.

The stash:

It’s made up mostly of discarded printouts of my work which I’ve scribbled all over (are you surprised that I also edit by hand?), but environmentalists will be pleased to know that I also salvage from around the house any paper which can be re-used. Letters, flyers, the children’s old homework, including maths papers and sheet music. (For some reason, these especially delight me: I love to see the outlines of graphs which are beyond my understanding or the notes of silent melodies). 

It’s messy - but that's the point:

The fact that it’s not pristine sheets of paper is crucial. 

It tricks my brain into believing that what I write doesn’t matter, that I can relax and anything goes. Whatever I scribble on there can be as messy, as clichéd, as honest and as terrible as I like because it’s for my eyes only. The paper’s usedness, its tatty, second-hand rejected state encourages me to open up and just write.

The first couple of lines are usually rubbish, but then I tackle the problem, thinking around it, or getting into the head of the character who’s been enigmatic. They begin to reveal important facts, or sometimes, if they’re still holding back, I ask them questions. (I’ve been told that if I did this using my left hand to write it might be even more effective because it unlocks the right part of the brain, but I confess I’m too impatient). 

With the help of my stash of rough paper, I often unearth gems of ideas, or come up with novel solutions to plot problems. I simply couldn’t do without it.

Do you ever use paper and pen? What is essential for your writing?

Sophie.x

Her Forget-Me-Not Ex is currently 99p/$1.30 in the Kindle sale! 

It's available here.

How Running Helped My Writing by Sophie Claire

Remember the post I wrote here on filling up your creative well? Well, last summer I followed my own advice (no.2) and set myself the challenge to get fit. Why? I’d put on a bit of weight. Not much, but enough that my clothes didn’t fit any more and I didn’t feel good about myself.

‘You could eat less cake,’ my husband suggested. (Anyone who follows me on Instagram will understand what a dangerous suggestion that was!) 

How bleak would life be without cake? 

No, I decided, I would simply exercise more.

So I joined a gym.

One night I was telling my son how hard I found the treadmill – I could only run for two minutes before feeling like I was going to die. It was no surprise – I’ve had asthma since I was a teenager and I’ve never been able to run without struggling for breath. ‘You need to run slower,’ my son said, with the matter-of-fact wisdom of a fourteen year old who has asthma himself, but has always been a keen sportsman. ‘Imagine you’re setting off on a marathon and you’ve got to keep up that pace for several hours.’

I tried it.

I felt self-conscious running so slowly I was practically walking, but it worked. I ran for six minutes without stopping. It sounds like nothing, but I’d been trying and failing for weeks – for me, this was a breakthrough. I worried it might have been a one-off, so I tried it again and ran ten minutes, twenty, then forty! And the sense of achievement – to have done something I’d always found impossible – was enormous.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. One day I limped home dejected because I’d been so tired I’d had to walk most of the way. ‘Don’t worry,’ said my husband (who runs marathons); ‘We all have off days.’

Now I look forward to running (never thought I’d type those words!) It’s the fastest way I know to burn calories so it doesn’t cut into my writing time too much, and afterwards I’m positively glowing with pride. 

So how does that affect my writing?

• Well, for starters, that sense of achievement has been good for my confidence. Most writers would agree that writing is a challenging occupation. It can be difficult to find time to write when you’re juggling a career or family commitments; there are days when inspiration doesn’t come readily and writing is a slog; it can be dispiriting to receive rejections from agents, publishers or readers in the form of bad reviews. But if you can crack one challenge, it sets a precedent in your mind. You’re less likely to accept defeat, more likely to think, ‘I can do this’. 

• Just do it. This is the attitude I take to running: my focus is on getting it done rather than running fast or far. And most days I’m pleasantly surprised by the results. So it is with writing: whether I write anything good or not is frankly beyond my control so I simply make sure I show up and write something. Anything.

• Good habits yield results. Like keeping fit, the habit of writing every day builds the writing muscle, and the cumulative effect is huge. Write 500 words every day and you’ll have a first draft (75,000 words) in 5 months.

• Getting fit has helped me feel healthier and brighter. My concentration is better, I feel more positive and I know I’m more efficient because I get my work done faster.

• And finally, running gives me thinking time. Some days my mind is immersed in my fictional world and I take the opportunity to mull over ideas or new scenes. Other days I switch off and simply observe the landscape around me, the changing seasons, the light, the sounds, people in the street and the little snapshots I get of their lives as I pass them. (You don’t need to run to enjoy this; a daily walk would bring all these benefits too).

 But, best of all? I get to still have my cake and eat it. 

What helps your writing? I’d love to hear about your experiences…

Sophie.x

The Ideas Jar

On the first Friday of each month, Novelista Annie Burrows will be drawing a question out of the jar where we've been putting all the questions about the writing process posed by readers -

This month, the question that came out of the jar was:

How do you decide on how many secondary characters should appear in a book?

1) Planned out list?

2) As and when required?

That's a very good question Cheryl! (waves)

As you know, I write for Harlequin Mills & Boon, so the focus is very much on the two main characters, and their love story.

However, they do need a world in which to act out their story, and I do have to populate it with secondary characters.

When I first start thinking about any story, the first thing I do is imagine the backstory of my hero and heroine.  I have to know what kind of childhood they had, which means placing them in a family.  And at this stage I often do write out a list of "the sisters and the cousins and the aunts" (to paraphrase W. S. Gilbert.)  I may also give them a pet such as a dog, and since my books are set in Regency England, a horse (with its own personality.)

There may also be a villain, with henchmen, who will also go on the list.

But then I start writing.  And my characters, at this point, become much more rounded.  And the world in which I have them moving becomes far more detailed as well.  As the story develops, I do find I need "extras", as well as the initial cast I drew up.  A butler, to answer the door, a footman to carry a note, a maidservant to help my heroine dress and undress, and various lords and ladies to populate the ballrooms.

But then, sometimes, characters also just walk into the story without my say so because they decide they have a part to play.

For instance, when I was working on the Silk and Scandal series, I sent my heroine to the house of her estranged half brother, and when she knocked on the door, it was opened by an Indian manservant I never knew existed before.

Since another author was responsible for the part of the series that dealt with this half brother, I immediately e-mailed her, to tell her what had happened.  I think the email went something like - "Midge has just knocked on Stephano's door, and it has been opened by an Indian manservant.  Have you any idea where he came from?"

As this email went to another author, she was not at all phased by this, and immediately emailed back with a whole story of how Stephano had rescued this man whilst seeking out jewels in India, and how he was now a devoted servant who would protect his master with his life.

It was as if neither of us invented him.  He was just there, hovering in the wings, waiting to walk on and play his part.

So, in short, the answer to the two-part question is Yes!  Both!  I start off planning the characters I think I'm going to need, add others when I need them, and also get surprised by characters I didn't know were lurking in the background, who simply want to get in on the act.

So - do you have any questions about the writing process you would like to ask?

If so, please leave your question in the comments box.  All questions will go into the jar, and I will draw one out each month. 

Annie's latest release is "In Bed with the Duke" which you can buy from Harlequin in the US or Mills & Boon in the UK

U is for...Unique Selling Point 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, in spite of being hampered by Christmas and New Year festivities, she's reached U...which she has decided should stand for Unique.

When I started out as a writer I didn't want to have to do any marketing of myself.  In fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to write for Harlequin Mills & Boon.  I thought I would just be sort of absorbed under the umbrella and become part of their brand.  I thought I could just concentrate on writing my stories, and my publisher would do it all the publicity for me.  And to a large extent, they do.

But I write in what is a very crowded market.  There seem to be dozens and dozens of other writers producing the same sort of book I do - Regency Romance.  And with the rise of self-publishing, the marketplace has become even more competitive.  Why should anyone want to pick up my book and read it, when there are so many others on offer?  What is going to keep a reader remembering my books, and coming back for more?

According to marketing gurus, what I need to do is offer a Unique Selling Point.  Something that will make me stand out from the crowd.

Fortunately for me, Mills & Boon have been brilliant about helping me develop my "brand".  When I first started writing for them, they had a reader panel, made up of fans of specific lines, who would send in a questionnaire about what they liked (or didn't) about each month's books, in return for being entered into a draw for free books.  This was a great piece of market research which I couldn't possibly have undertaken myself.  And eventually my editor contacted me with the news that what readers liked about my books was the humour.  One or two people had already told me that they had giggled when reading certain sections of my stories, so when she asked me if I would mind concentrating on that, rather than on what she termed "my dark side" (which made me feel as if I was perilously close to joining forces with Darth Vader) I agreed.

Because every writer needs to fulfil reader expectation.  If you pick up a Dick Francis, you expect the hero to be an unassuming chap who thwarts the bad guys within a setting which is something to do with horses.  If you read a Dean Koontz, you expect there to be something a bit spooky going on in the background of the thriller.  Even I could see, that within the Harlequin Historical line, some writers tended to create "bad girls", those of the demi-monde, who maybe turn to crime to survive.  Others are known for getting in a lot of historical detail.  Others write extremely tortured heroes, or go for unusual settings. 

I'd already had an Amazon review from a reader who was disappointed that the heroine of the book she'd just read by me hadn't been a virgin.  And when I looked back at previous books, I saw that this was something else I'd done without really thinking about it.  I'd made my heroines virgins, (at least, to start with!) and my readers had come to expect that from me.

So, thanks to the market research done by my publisher, and a disgruntled Amazon reviewer, I'd discovered what readers wanted from my writing, and I started going all out to provide it. It wasn't any hardship...just a slight adjustment to the way I went about thinking up my plots.  I can never resist deflating a pompous character, or inviting someone to share in a joke with me, and I'd already been doing that in my stories without really noticing I was doing it. 

But then my publishers did a series of webinars on marketing and branding.  By this time even I could see it wasn't enough to simply write the best story I could.  We've all moved into an era where we have to have an online presence.  Which, they said, should be consistent across all platforms.  Which meant thinking up a tagline which expressed what we stood for.

Ulp!  As if it wasn't enough learning how to write, and write to a deadline and a wordcount, now I had to promote myself too?

Fortunately, I'd recently had a revisions letter from an editor, saying that my current manuscript (at that point) lacked the "trademark Annie Burrows sparkle".

Aha!  That was it - that was what I wanted to offer readers, and what readers seemed to want from me - some sparkle.   So my tagline became "Sparkling Regency Romance".  Now a reader has a clue what they are going to find within the covers of one of my books.  Though I do aim for total historical accuracy, which demands a lot of research and double-checking, not a great deal of that actually makes it to the pages.  In the end, what I offer my readers is a light-hearted, fun sort of read.

 

That is my Unique Selling Point - the sparkle.

What is yours?

Annie's latest Sparkling Regency Romance is "The Captain's Christmas Bride", still available from Amazon, Mills & Boon and Harlequin, and other book stores.

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.

A Mother's Duty by June Francis



Looking for Inspiration:
June Francis (left)
at a writers' party in London

I don’t often get inspired when it comes to writing the next novel. An idea doesn’t hit me like a bolt from the blue. I was really searching around for ideas for my novel, renamed A Mother's Duty, when it actually occurred to me to do what published writers are forever telling wannabes, and that is write about what you know. So this book is one close to my heart because it is about Kitty, a mother of three sons. I know what that is like. What it feels like to have someone poke their heads under the hood of a pram and say, “What is it?” And, when I answered the second and third time, “A boy,” a look would come over some faces and I would hear the words, “Another boy! Wouldn’t you have liked a little girl?”

Big sense of failure! Especially as my mother-in-law was one of those who longed for a granddaughter, having given birth to just twin boys, herself.

So Kitty, who just like me loves the bones of her lads, has a secret longing for a daughter. It’s not that she has a sense of failure, though, because she had given birth to a girl. Sadly it had been stillborn. Happily I never had to harbour such a grief.

We writers have to spend a lot of time thinking up obstacles to put in the way of our main characters achieving their aim. So Kitty is a widow who has passed thirty-five. I also wanted her situation to be a bit out of the norm so decided she would be the proprietor of a hotel. There were lots of hotels in Liverpool city centre during the period I had settled on ‒ the Thirties ‒ with plenty going on, ending with WW2 and the famous May blitz in 1941. I knew next to nothing about running a hotel, so I rang the doorbell of one on Mount Pleasant and hoped for the best. I was blessed because I was welcomed in by the proprietor’s son, which led to an interesting conversation with his mother. There is nothing like research for giving a writer ideas.

Hotels on Mount Pleasant, Liverpool

What about my hero? I didn’t want to write the obvious, such as him being a guest in the hotel. No, he’s an ex-medical orderly who had seen action in the Great War. Half-English, half-Scots, with a secret, he’s a bit of a wanderer and entertains cinema queues playing the fiddle.

How much were Kitty’s sons inspired by my own three? I never put real people in my books but I use the odd trait. So the eldest son has a sense of responsibility and is a bit of a worrier. The middle one has a touch of the rebel and the adventurer which gets him into trouble. As for the youngest, he has a real curiosity about people which can lead him astray.

Does Kitty get what she longs for? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

  

A Mother's Duty
Out now!

The Child Behind Every (Grown-Up) Writer by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

The other day I shared a picture on Facebook, a selection of classic Ladybird children's stories. It prompted the sort of response that led me to think, Ah FB isn't so bad, after all. It isn't just a bunch of people shouting out random things and being ignored. I suppose I was becoming a bit too cynical. Anyway, it got me thinking about books and childhood and the stories that shape us as we grow up.

Here at Novelistas Ink we're a very diverse bunch of writers. 

As you can probably tell if you're a follower of our blog. We're all good friends, though, and our lunches are infamous throughout North Wales. OK, slight exaggeration, but then we do write fiction. The common thread we share is our passion and love of writing. We're besotted with it. Head over heels. Can't get enough of it (or perhaps we can when we've got a deadline looming, or edits-from-hell to wade through, but on the whole we enjoy it).

Our genres range from witty romantic comedies to moving war-time sagas. From atmospheric historical novels to sparkling Regency romances. From plot-twisting, cliff-hanging romantic suspense to modern, grown-up fairy tales. And all that wonderful stuff in between such as contemporary YA or straightforward novels about relationships and marriage. I'm not sure anyone's written a spy thriller yet, but give us time and we just might.

But what steered us to write in our favourite genres?

What made us the writers we all are today? Was it the books from our childhood or the books we've read as adults, or maybe a mixture of both? I believe it's a mixture, but I also think we can't deny the power of those stories we've carried with us most of our lives. Those treasured tales that lodged in our hearts and never left.

As a girl, I spent hours in my small local library...

It was just round the corner from our house, so I often hid away in there after school or during the holidays. Sometimes with similar minded friends, but often alone. If I wasn't reading I was writing or researching. I've written stories since I first learned to misspell words, aged four. There was also a bookshelf in our house full of novels that looked like this, no dust jackets or blurbs, just the bare bones of a cover:

As an only child, I spent hours entertaining myself reading. My parents still own most of those books, and my own children's shelves still hold the favourites I loved to read over and over again.

A beautifully written and illustrated anthology

This anthology of classic fairy tales from around the world (see photo) is probably mine and my daughter's current favourite. I owe a great deal to this huge collection of stories. It was given to me as a gift by a family friend. Little did they know how much it would shape me and nurture a love of fairy tales that's stronger than ever these days.

Of course, I loved Enid Blyton, too. I had all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books.

I think those taught me how to pace a plot and keep a reader turning the pages. Those were the ones I read under the covers with a torch. Come on, admit it, we all did that. Maybe some of us still do.

Now admittedly, if you write erotica, you probably didn't read it as a child. Or maybe you used to sneak down the more adult books from the shelves at home when your parents weren't looking, and thumb through them for those, er, interesting bits. As a teenager in the 80s, I can still recall all those mini-series on TV based on the doorstop sex-and-shopping novels that were so fashionable...

Lace, Mistral's Daughter, Princess Daisy, etc.

These are the books my friends and I consumed and tried to emulate in our stories (I wasn't the only one of my gang who wrote fiction back then). It was a glitzy world we knew nothing about apart from what we read or saw on TV, but boy did we have fun trying to write about it! Then there was Virginia Andrews and Danielle Steele and Barbara Taylor Bradford... The list is quite lengthy and I could probably rattle on all day, but then this post would be too long, and the whole point of it was to provoke a discussion.

Do you think the books you read as a child have influenced your writing as an adult?

If so, to what extent? I think it's a fascinating subject to consider, both for established or aspiring writers.

Every now and again it's good to examine why we write what we write. Because doing it for the market alone will never truly make us happy if we don't pen (or type) our words with love, honesty or joy. We need to find that balance in our work in order to be healthy and well-rounded. We owe it to our readers as well as ourselves. They can always tell if we're short-changing them.

Just a small selection...

So maybe, if you're stuck in a rut right now, and don't know where to turn or what genre to aim for, it might help to travel back in time and remember the tales that inspired you and made you want to be a writer in the first place.

I can tell you, hand on heart, a few short years ago this is precisely what helped me.

Please leave a comment if you have something to add, I'd love to hear your views on the subject.

All the best,
Valerie-Anne x

Valerie-Anne Baglietto's latest release is the full-length novel FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY.

Romance, magic and vintage fashion in the sleepy Cheshire village of Fools Castle, where a young fairy-godmother who normally gets things very right suddenly starts getting them disastrously wrong.

A modern, grown-up fairy tale perfect for fans of Sarah Addison Allen and Cecelia Ahern.

Amazon US - view here
Amazon UK - view here

www.valerie-annebaglietto.com
Twitter: @VABaglietto
Facebook: Valerie-Anne Baglietto Author

A Writer's Resolve ... by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

So - what exactly does RESOLUTION mean?

Its original definition was, apparently, 'to loosen or dissolve again'. Ironic I think, because that's exactly what happens to most people's New Year ones as January lurches on, freezing, wet and windy, and possibly the bleakest of all the months in the northern hemisphere. Our resolutions, like tight, tense knots in our days, loosen. Our determination dissolves in the face of teeth-chatteringly cold mornings and dark evenings. Spring is somewhere out there, we can sense it, but it's still too far away. We try to starve after Christmas, forgetting that our bodies need a few calories to stay warm. We vow to go to the gym, but funnily enough, there still aren't twenty-five hours in a day, even in our technologically advanced 2015. We promise ourselves lots of things we never live up to, and so we get depressed and winter eats into our bodies and souls until we get the flu, or just binge on wine or hot chocolate or too much tinned soup. Anyway. 

Enough.

My resolution this year was paradoxically not to make any. I broke it almost immediately by making one. My wardrobe is so fit to bursting that I decided to take a leaf out of my daughter's book and try experimenting more with what I already have rather than adding to it. My daughter isn't afraid to try out combinations you wouldn't think would go together, and quite often, she manages to pull it off. Maybe you can get away with this when you're nine.

Well, I then went and broke my resolution not to buy any new clothes almost immediately last weekend when I bought this... 

I couldn't resist, it was on sale. It's obvious I need to stay out of shops because my willpower is pathetically low.

So as my husband returned to work and my three children to school, I turned my attention to the WIP that I'd put aside to make way for Christmas. Maybe instead of resolutions I knew I couldn't keep - anything involving retail therapy basically - I would focus on my writing instead.

Writing in itself has always been like a form of counselling for me. When it's going well and I'm getting lots of words down on paper, it helps keep depression at bay. But sometimes there's a glitch and I'm not getting those words down fast enough, and the glitch isn't life getting in the way but my own fixation on making those words Perfect with a capital P. I can obsess for far too long and lose sight of my reader, who won't care or notice that I substituted a fancier word for another with the same meaning. If the emotion is there, and the page-turning elements of the plot, it shouldn't make any difference, as long as the word I decide to use doesn't jar, or detract, or fall short. 

I know voice and style and good prose are vital, but not at the expense of getting the story across and making it resonate in the reader's heart. What I mean is that I'm going to focus on the emotion in my story, and on the narrative more, and not get so bogged down by the prettiness or cleverness of my language quite as much.

So, that's my first resolution. For me, it's important. It should increase my productivity. But at this gloomy time of year creativity in general might need a boost anyway; like a blast of virtual Vitamin D, we often need something to pep us up. Another creative outlet besides writing often helps. 

I'm no good at crochet, sadly. My spirit is willing but my fingers are rubbish at it. I do enjoy photography though, I always have. Nothing serious, but these days I like the challenge of taking good photos with nothing but my phone. I also like playing around with filters afterwards. 

#NoFilters (Taken on 29th Dec 2014)

It serves a second purpose because I'm also taking photos of places or objects that inspire me and might end up in one of my books. So I'm resolved to enjoy this hobby more than ever this year and take advantage of Instagram. It's fun and I've met some lovely people on there. 

As writers, our words and stories paint pictures but sometimes we need to fix that picture in our own heads first before we can convey it to our readers, and with the digital wonders of Pinterest we don't need that pin-board hanging above our desks any more (which is just as well as I don't have room for one.)

Well, these are my most important writerly resolutions. I think some of the Novelistas are planning to share theirs, but we'd love to hear yours, too...

Happy 2015!

Valerie-Anne x
www.valerie-annebaglietto.com 
Twitter: @VABaglietto

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