by admin | Dec 6, 2013 | self-publishing, selling, writing
Some years ago, even before I’d finished my first novel, I began to think about getting it published. All the advice said, you need an agent, and I dutifully bought the Writers’ and Artists Yearbook and trawled through it for those interested in my ‘genre’, although I wasn’t altogether certain (then or now) what my ‘genre’ really is. Is my work ‘commercial fiction, or ‘women’s’ or ‘literary’ or ‘historical’? I picked out a dozen agents – all based in London, I noticed – studied the various labyrinthine submission requirements, followed them scrupulously, and waited. Suffice to say, all that transpired after many weeks was a series of generically worded negative responses. After a while I found this so discouraging, not to mention the waste of time and money, that I carried on writing, finished the first novel, decided it was the first of a trilogy, and started the second. Should I try again to find an agent? I thought not.
Self-publishing to my own high standard was an enjoyable project. The resulting two books, professionally edited and designed, look good and sell well. I’m proud of them both as ‘objects of desire’, moderately pleased with the content of the first, and much more pleased with the content of the second. But the hardest part of self-publishing has been promotion and marketing. I am an outsider in the book business: looking at the potential avenues for getting my books to a wider audience I now realise how many of them are blocked simply because I published myself.
Many of the fiction awards and competitions do not allow self-published books; it’s almost impossible to get a review; booksellers can be sniffy and suspicious; requests to be part of literary festivals are brushed off. Everyone in the publishing and book business seems to assume that self-published books are vanity projects of questionable merit, which should be kept at arm’s length.
So I return to the issue of whether I want, or need, an agent, not to find me a publisher but to help me promote and market the books I publish myself. Published writers I have asked about this can’t help me as they have never had to think about it. There are occasional examples of successful self-published writers who have been approached by agents, but this is to get them a ‘proper’ publishing deal, not to help them move forward without one. Maybe it’s just not possible: I don’t know enough about it, and wish I understood more.
I wonder this would be easier if I lived in London or a major conurbation. In the rural fastness of West Cumbria it’s hard to find a ‘writerly’ community with advice and experience to offer. And so for the time being I shall finish Part 3 of my trilogy, carry on doing what I’ve done so far, and see what happens. Patience, Ruth, patience.
by admin | Dec 4, 2013 | Lake District, writing shed
Just after I moved into my house here in the south-west corner of the English Lake District I designed a shed to be built at the end of the garden. It was insulated and double glazed, and therefore useable year-round, not just a summer house. The first roof blew off in a southerly storm, but the company replaced it for me and learned valuable lessons, they said, about how to combat the weather. When it was built I wasn’t a writer. But now I am, and the little ‘shed’ has become my writing place. When I work out how to take a photo, download from the camera and upload into my blog, I’ll post a picture of it.
As I walk the fifty metres from my back door to the shed, something seems to happen in my brain. I switch from a multi-tasking busy person, partner, grand-mother, resident of our tiny street community, into a single focus writer. Currently I’m writing in the 1950s, so that’s where I am. The characters are my friends and family: I know them inside out, their feelings and reactions, on-stage and off-stage. It’s hard to remember that they are fictional fabrications. They live in that shed with me for about six hours a day.
The shed is cut off from contact with the contemporary world. There is no internet or phone access. It faces south, away from the house. The closest neighbours are next-door’s hens and the sheep in the field beyond the hedge. If I need information I add the question to the list of things I need to check when I return to the house and the real world. I have electricity there for my laptop, a blanket for my knees or shoulders, and a little radiator that I switch on before my breakfast to warm up the space. If it’s sunny the big windows capture light and heat, but I have to adjust the screen to avoid the glare.
In the summer the double doors open onto a small patio, where the hot tub sits. I can’t afford to keep it on all the time, but it provides an occasional idyllic experience, especially on cold clear nights when the steam rises from the water towards the stars overhead.
There’s a big sofa bed in the shed, to sit and read, or even sleep through short summer nights. No people, no distraction. I’m so glad the shed is there. I love it.
by admin | Dec 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
I thought I’d set up these posts to link automatically to FB, but I needed to do some more ‘settings’, so let’s see if this works. All the blogs posted since last weekend are on ruthwords.wordpress.com, including all the fumbling first attempts at posting pictures etc which I will delete shortly. Still getting the hang of all this new stuff – new to me at least!
by admin | Dec 1, 2013 | Fallout, writing
Late last September I arrived in Winnipeg to begin a month’s work there. I had come direct from two weeks in the warmth and bright light of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Winnipeg was unusually – and disappointingly – wet. I lay in bed listening to CBC Radio 1 – the equivalent of Radio 4 here – and heard an interview with Andrew Pyper from Toronto who was in Winnipeg for a writers’ festival and doing a workshop on novel-writing at the downtown library that morning. It sounded so useful that I pulled on waterproofs, splashed to the bus stop and turned up at the library to pay my $25 and find a good seat. I’d never heard of him, but he’s obviously a well-known Canadian writer and the place was packed. And how useful it was! All the advice and warnings about how to set about writing a novel resonated with my experience, including all the multiple mistakes I’d made first time around
One thing I learned that morning is that I needed to think, think and think again about the focus, the characters, the shape of the plot and write a detailed ‘map’ of your writing journey before starting the first full draft. Part of me had resisted that, too mechanistic, takes too long etc, but when I began the third novel, the work in progress currently, I decided to take this advice and to write the detailed outline patiently before succumbing to the urge to get going on the first draft. As the outline drafts progressed more and more was added, key conversations and events, insights, perhaps the odd phrase. After the 6th draft I thought it was ready and I got started on Chapter 1.
Almost immediately, discontinuities, weak plot points and gaps in the research began to be obvious, so back I went again to the outline, tweaking and adding before going back to the full draft. And so it’s gone on, start with the outline of the chapter, write, tweak the outline, correct some items from earlier chapters, add to the outline further down the track, write again. It’s not an absolute blueprint, but the outline is always there to guide me. I don’t have to carry the map in my head: I have a visible overview of the lie of the land which helps to get me going every morning and keeps me roughly ‘on track’. Different paths and features of the landscape may appear when I get up close, but the big picture is what sustains me through the complexities that almost defeated me on ‘A Good Liar’, Part 1 of the trilogy. Thank you Andrew Pyper. I’m sure your advice has helped to make the first third of ‘Fallout’ (Part 3 of the trilogy) take shape much more smoothly than before.
by admin | Nov 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
I’ve struggled with this question right from the start, although I think I’m closer now to finding the right balance between necessary authenticity and unnecessary tedium that slows down the action and gets in the readers’ way. I’m trying in this trilogy – based where I live, within living memory – to inject fictional characters into real places and events. It’s not easy, especially when the places and events are as technically complicated as a fire in a nuclear reactor. I need to know how the core was constructed, where the weak spots were and why it went wrong, but all the reader is really interested in will be is what happened to the people they (hopefully) care about before, during and after the fire, rather than the fire itself. I suspect that there may be some that want more technical detail, but more who would be bored or irritated by it. Not for the first time, I’ve thought of writing a companion volume with the background detail, but quite separate from the novel itself.
For the time being, I struggle on. When the crisis happens, we have to know enough about both the characters and the circumstances to appreciate the tension, understand some at least of the dlilemmas and share the worries about how things might develop. It would make a great movie, but I may be getting ahead of myself. One step at a time.
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