First Draft – Fourth Novel – Feeling Good

floral ceramic cup and saucer above open book
Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Hello my people! Wow, I’ve really abandoned this blog of late. I could blame, you know, the global pandemic and stuff, but the real reason is that I’ve been saving all my writing for my new book (which I am SUPERDOOPER excited about!!) It’s a slightly different genre, no history or magic, but lots of humour and uplifting themes around relationships and finding your place in the world. Sometimes I wonder if it even matters what genre you write, as most writers tend to return to the same themes, no matter what the plot. And my theme is always that of self-discovery, which I think we’ve all done a lot of over the past few months.

When this all started, I did what I usually tend to do in a crisis – ignore it! I figured it wouldn’t affect my lifestyle because I work from home anyway, so what would be the difference? I tuned out the news and escaped into my book. But after a few weeks, I just hit a wall. It became clear that I wasn’t immune to everything that was going on and it was expecting waaay too much of myself to remain unaffected by it. Anyway, I won’t dwell on it, it’s been weird for everyone, but luckily I had these wonderful characters and their story to return to. But – I don’t know if anyone’s told you this – writing is hard! There’s always that doubt in the back of your mind, “Will I finish this? Will it be good enough?” So, when I typed the words ‘The End’ this week, I felt all the feels! It was emotional, joyous, hopeful and kind of surreal. It was really when I printed it out (I find it easier to run through the second draft on paper) that it hit home – I’ve made another book! My fourth!! It’s something like a little miracle.

La collectionneuse d'histoires

I don’t know where this story will take me – that’s the joy/uncertainty of being a writer. You just never know. My last book has just hit the shelves in France this summer – I never dreamed in a million years that The Story Collector would be translated into French! La Collectionneuse d’Histoires And now I have a French publisher and a translator! It still hasn’t really sunk in. I had a good feeling about that book when I was writing it and I have a good feeling about this one too. It’s got something special – even though it was (like all books) a challenge to capture the ideas in my head on paper, it sort of flowed too. I just had to be present and let the serendipity happen.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing and I can’t wait to get editing and get this story out there!! I want you all to enjoy this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it – giggling at the funny scenes and tearing up at the emotional bits. It’s a journey. And now my brain wants to outline ideas for book five, because if there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that there will never be a better time to do things than right now. Plus, I feel kind of lonely without a work-in-progress, so when one cast of characters move out, another bunch move in! With more interesting stories to tell and challenges to face. I’m fortunate that I can create fictional worlds in order to better understand this one – giving myself and my readers somewhere to escape to. If we didn’t value storytelling before this, we certainly do now. The arts is what has kept us all going – distracting us, consoling us, entertaining us.  So if you’re thinking of writing a story – DO IT NOW! The world needs more stories.

Don’t forget, I have two FREE short stories that you can download now … Betwixt is consistantly in the Top 5 on Amazon and Girl in the Middle is a tongue-in-cheek look at loneliness in the modern world. And if you like those, please buy the other ones/leave a review! x

When One Novel Isn’t Enough

1I’ve just begun outlining my fourth novel.  No-one is more surprised  at reading those words than I am!  Obviously, I’m still in the honeymoon period, meeting the characters, sussing out locations.  There’s nothing like starting back at the beginning to remind you how delicate this process is and how, at one point, writing more than one book seemed like wishful thinking.  They say that everyone has a book in them, but the greatest fear of all writers is that one book is the limit.  What if that’s all there is?

I remember when I published my debut novel, the thought of writing another book was almost laughable!  Do that again?  Are you nuts??  The idea for that book came to me somewhere around 2010 – but that’s not really the beginning of the story.  I began writing The Heirloom after a two-year break from writing, following the disappointment of my ‘actual’ first novel, unfortunately titled ‘Shoot The Moon’.  I missed.  My ideal publisher requested the full manuscript.  It was too good to be true – I hadn’t even finished writing it (rookie mistake number one) and now I had a major Irish publishing house interested.  When the letter came back, praising my writing but accurately pointing out that the story wasn’t strong enough, I went into a kind of mourning.  One rejection letter of my first and only (and unfinished) novel was enough for me to scrap the entire enterprise.  When  you start out as a writer, your ego can be so fragile that even when positive feedback arrives along with an initial rejection, it comes as a huge blow.

Over time however, my bruised ego healed and I began reading more and beyond the limited genres I felt comfortable with.  I discovered time-slip (or dual timelines) and just fell in love with the idea of connecting the past with the present.  So, my writing was good but my story wasn’t strong enough, eh?  Well, I was going to give them a story to knock their socks off!  I spent over two years researching and writing a monster of a novel, with a story stretching from medieval Ireland to the present day.  It took over my life and at times (i.e. all the time) I felt as though I had bitten off more than I could chew, but when I eventually self-published The Heirloom, I felt a huge sense of achievement.  For about a week.  And then people started asking if I was working on my next book.  I thought I’d misheard them.  ‘But look,’ I’d say, ‘look at the big huge book I wrote.  It took two years and it nearly killed me.  Isn’t it brilliant?  Won’t I be living off this success for years?!’  Tumbleweed rolled by as my audience backed away.  Turns out readers need proof that you’re not a one-trick-pony (bloody readers).  If they like book one, they need book two to satiate their appetite, or they’ll have to look elsewhere.

All of this is like a threat hanging over an author’s head!  Like a lover threatening to leave if you don’t keep them… entertained.  Not a great motivation for writing, but motivation nonetheless.  I quickly realised that if I wanted to stay in this business, I had to write more than one book – hardly rocket science, but still it came as a shock!  This was officially my second book, did I really have a third in me?  But just when I wasn’t looking, the plot for my next novel dropped into my lap.  I was watching a TV show about an Irish chef living in France and for some reason she decided to visit a renowned bakery that was shrouded in secrecy, as no-one knew who the baker was.  I may have made that last bit up; it’s all so long ago that I’m not sure where the TV show ended and my imagination began.  Either way, the ingredients for The Mysterious Bakery On Rue De Paris were gathered and I began writing again.  Just recently while doing a clean up of old files on my computer, I found the first draft, in which I hit the mother of all dead ends.  I had forgotten that, but my original plan for the story just didn’t work.  I thought, that’s it, I can’t write.  I remember now, laughing slightly hysterically with my sister about it, who assured me that I would get there in the end.  But how could she know that?  I didn’t even know it!  As an observer of my writing process, all she saw was another speed bump, not a dead end.  I can’t say exactly how long it took me to work out another route, but one day my main character Edith appeared in my  head and took over the story.  I started having fun again and realised that my first attempt was too serious.  I was trying too hard to be a writer instead of telling a good story and enjoying myself on the page.

Writing never really gets any ‘easier’, but I suppose what does change is your faith in the process.  Practice does actually make perfect and what’s more, it builds confidence.  Somewhere in your neural pathways is the memory that you have done this before and therefore, can do it again.

Whether you are traditionally published or self-published, there are pressures to get more books out there as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure if this is a good thing for writers.  I remember getting the advice that you should have three novels written before you begin publishing and thinking, who are these people?!  I don’t think I would have been able to write another novel if I hadn’t seen that there was an audience for my work.  Also, I am a firm believer in giving your ideas time to germinate.  I see a lot of commercially successful authors who have a new novel out every year for a decade and I wonder, where do they carve out the time to just, think?  Maybe it’s a luxury, but one of my favourite things is turning an idea over in my mind for months at a time, watching it take shape and expand.  This is the time when serendipity peeps out from behind corners, magazine articles, overheard conversations; drawing all manner of flotsam to the shores of your mind, that just happen to fit your story.

If your goal is to sell a lot of books, then yes, by all means write a trilogy and study the genres that are popular right now (it’s grip lit by the way, you can have that for free!).  But if your goal is to be a writer and to write the kind of stories you love, that say something about you, don’t rush.  You have to make the choice between what’s right and what’s easy.  I read an interview recently with Irish author John Boyne who said he always advises his students against taking the easy route and ‘brushing up’ old manuscripts, for lack of any better ideas.  This may have been a cheeky reference to some of his fellow authors, but I get his point.  Sometimes the thought of starting out from scratch again is so scary and the pressure to produce a new novel so great, that the temptation is to cut corners.  But it’s your integrity that’s on the line – your unspoken contract with the reader.  Like I said, it doesn’t get any easier, your ego is still open to bribery.  I wish there was a lovely motivational quote I could use to send you all merrily on your way, but you know the answer and it’s not very glamourous.  The only way to write your next book is sit down and write.  And believe.  And in my case, surround yourself with four different types of chocolate.  And stop looking at Twitter!

Why Do Writers Write?

why-do-write

Why do we do it? Is it because, as the saying goes, everyone has a book in them?   While that may be true, getting that book to come out is really where all the trouble starts. Writing is an absolute slog.  Apparently, only 3% of those who set out to write a novel actually succeed (I don’t know  how they come up with these statistics, but if it makes me look good, I’m including it).  Essayist and short story writer Joseph Epstein encapsulates the process perfectly:

“Without attempting to overdo the drama of the difficulty of writing, to be in the middle of composing a book is almost always to feel oneself in a state of confusion, doubt and mental imprisonment, with an accompanying intense wish that one worked instead at bricklaying.”

As a writer, you work alone, with only your inner critic and self-doubt for company. Just 5,000 words into your manuscript, that best-selling idea which started off so well, falls flat on its face; like an Olympic runner suddenly discovering that she’s wearing clown shoes. But somehow, you have to find the belief and ingenuity to pick your idea up and make it work again. Equally, you have to know when to cut ideas loose and leave them to wash up on someone else’s shore.

Unless you are the next Emma Cline, sparking a bidding war between 12 publishers and winning an advance of $2 million, the chances are that you won’t make much fame or fortune out of writing. I’ve heard quite a few male authors remark on how they only started writing to get laid, but I can honestly say that the words ‘I’m an author’ have never prompted a member of the opposite sex to hop into bed with me, so maybe it’s one-way-traffic in that particular department.   So once again, if not for love or money, why do we do it?

IDEAS. You can be sitting on the couch, eating biscuits and minding your own business when (what appears to be) an innocent little idea comes along and you think, “Ooh, that’s good. That would make a good story.”  And that’s it. That idea will plague you morning, noon and night until you do something about it. So you write a few notes – nothing serious, just a couple of lines, and stick it in a drawer. But like Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, the story’s heartbeat keeps you awake at night. You try to ignore it, because you know that once you’ve decided to write this brilliant idea, you’re going to have to destroy it. Author Ann Patchett describes this murderous process beautifully, by comparing our ideas to pretty butterflies that, in order for us to capture their allure on the page, must be sacrificed.

“The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write — and many of the people who do write — get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”

I think we all like the idea of being a writer, but the reality involves staring down your inadequacies (or at least pretending not to see them) and never giving in. With each book, you strive to get closer to the idea, to reassemble it as faithfully as you can and capture the beauty of the butterfly. That’s the process and that’s what keeps me coming back for more (rather masochistically). That’s why I keep reading authors who are much closer to the goal than I am – to learn how they did it. The goal is simple, as opposed to being easy. And the feeling you get when you have captured an idea, however imperfectly, on the page, is indescribable. To have created something that didn’t exist before you dreamed it up and wrote it down is an addictive process. Which leads me to believe that us writers are all slightly drunk on our ideas and despite the hangover that actually writing a book can bring, we just can’t resist the temptation of a shiny new idea, just waiting to be transformed.

Here’s a song for all the writers out there 🙂

Where Was Your Book Born?

23859383744_324896c9d5

We’ve all heard how JK Rowling famously wrote Harry Potter in a local cafe.  In fact, the chair she sat on recently sold for €344,300.  That’s some indication as to the importance we give a writer’s creative perch.  Writers and readers alike are enchanted by the idea of where a book was conceived, convincing themselves that even the chair they sat on must be oozing with literary genius.  There’s something romantic about it, scribbling ideas in a local cafe.  Writing  at a desk wedged into the corner of your council flat while wearing old Primark pyjamas doesn’t really have the same ring to it, although one can only assume that Rowling must have written at home too.  But does it really matter where you write your masterpiece?

I think I’ve written in every room in my house, bar the toilet.  I would include a photo of my beloved attic (where I write in the summer and stare up at longingly during the winter as it transforms into a fridge) but I’m saving that for the OK! Magazine spread.  The dawn of Pinterest has introduced us to a plethora of ‘designs’ to ‘inspire’ us with ‘ideas’ to create our own ‘writing nook’.  In other words, Pinterest is the devil’s work which bombards us with over-styled images of unattainable shabby chic home offices we will never have.  No I don’t have a pure white room with an old-fashioned writing desk which I’ve upcycled with chalk paint and I’m not surrounded by flower-clad boxes with all my papers neatly filed away in alphabetical order.  I’m the kind of person who sees an empty space and immediately feels the need to fill it with bits n bobs (i.e. junk).  I would love the perfect writing nook, but in the meantime, I generally pick the warmest spot in the house and write there.  I’m basically a cat.  With thumbs.

So what about venturing outside?  Well, yes, writing en pleine air could be a nice change except…. again, I live in Ireland.  I did try to write at the beach a couple of times, but there’s a lot to be said for a comfortable chair and while a large flat stone jutting out to sea might look attractive, my bum says otherwise.  Then there’s the whole writing long hand thing.  It can make a nice alternative every once in a while, but I’m the kind of writer who needs the entire manuscript in front of me when I write.  So squinting at my laptop while my bum goes to sleep on a rock gets old very fast.

Cafes seem like the ideal place to get the creative juices going, but the only problem with that is that they are full of OTHER PEOPLE!  At the best of times, people in public places can be tiresome, but when  you’re trying to write a novel, they are downright intrusive!  I have no idea how writers can focus on their own thoughts while they are being drowned out by clattering delph, noisy conversations and earth-shatteringly loud baristas (do they have to smash that coffee filter like a judge’s gavel Every. Damn. Time.!!)  Seriously, doesn’t anyone drink tea anymore?  Sartre had it only partly right; hell isn’t just other people, it’s other people who drink coffee.

If I do decide to venture out, I usually go to a hotel.  These are much more sedate affairs and best of all, they usually have comfy armchairs so you can really settle in.  No-one really cares how long you stay or whether you order coffee (but if you do, they thankfully prepare it out of earshot).  My nearest hotel has a conservatory that is, for the most part, empty and pipes out a nice mix of chilled-out tunes in the background.  The best part is, you can’t come up with a million excuses to leave your desk when you’re writing outside of the home.  You can’t start attacking the hotel toilets with bleach and a brush, so you just have to stay put and keep typing – not least to make everyone else think you’re extremely busy and important and overflowing with intelligent ideas.

So are there any benefits to having a ‘special place’ to write?  After all, we’re not like visual artists who rely heavily on their surroundings for inspiration.  Writers inhabit the interior world, the imagination.  We create worlds.  We mine our memories and nose through nostalgia for material, then spin all of these threads together into a fine cloak to envelop ourselves and our readers.  In fact, I think the plainer your surroundings, the better.  I’m not talking a monastic cell here, but the truth is that even if you bag yourself one of those writing retreats in rural Italy replete with red tile roofs and cypress trees, you still have to retreat to the solitude of your own mind and write the book.

I think we all saw this coming ☺