Pink Tea and Paper

When the Hero Dies. . .

2012-01-30T10:07:00.000Z

Last night I watched a film (I won't tell you which one because of the massive spoilers that will result). It was a thriller about a (fairly) good man who finds himself embroiled in a world of high-powered intrigue, murder, war and all manner of uncuddly things. And he was alone - to heighten the tension, there was quite literally no one on his side throughout the film.

And at the end, just when he has finally won out, and I'm ready to go to bed with a cup of herbal tea . . .
. . . he gets hit by a car.

I was not happy. I felt cheated - I had rooted for this guy for two and a half hours (including very long ad breaks) and he dies at the end.

I'm not categorically against heroes dying. One of my all-time favourite films is Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, which has one of the most famous heroes-peg-it endings in cinema history. I also love Bonnie and Clyde, which ends with a similar shoot-out. And don't even get me started on books where the heroes die - I'll be here all night listing the ones I love.

But I didn't feel it worked within this genre. I don't watch a thriller to be challenged. I watch it to be entertained. As I switched off the TV feeling down, I wondered if that was what the filmmakers were after. I wondered if that was the feeling they wanted to leave the viewer - melancholy and miffed.

What do you guys think? Is it always acceptable to kill the hero, or are there times when he or she must survive, no matter what?

The A-Z Challenge: To Do or Not To Do?

2012-01-27T09:30:00.000Z

Already the blogosphere is buzzing with talk about the A-Z blogging challenge, which takes place in April. Sign-ups begin on Monday.

I did it last year and it was great fun. But I'm in two minds about doing this year.

See, I blog about books and writing (and occasionally I get a bit ranty about things). I've been blogging about being an unpublished writer for quite some time. To be perfectly frank, I'm running out of things to say, short of changing this blog's focus entirely to, I don't know, mittens on kittens or something (note to self: could be on to something with the kitten thing).

Blogging daily for a month, about topics on which I lack new wisdom, doesn't sound like it will be appealing to write, or to read.

But.

I have an idea.

I am going to write a piece of micro-fiction (under 60 words) for every letter of the alphabet.

So who else is taking part? Any ideas for themes, or will you blog according to your mood each day?

How My Fear of Judgment Helped My Book, For Once

2012-01-23T10:42:00.000Z

I recently sent the first three chapters of my current WIP to two people. One of them knows me quite well, one I have only met recently.

Of course, I skimmed over them before I sent them, to make sure I didn't have any embarrassing typos (true story: I wrote an essay in college about the treatment of race in a particular novel, in which I had typed 'White Dessa. . .' instead of 'While Dessa. . . ' Dessa was black. Thankfully I caught that before submission and changed it with a ballpoint pen and a profound sense of relief), and to make sure there were no glaring inconsistencies (another true story: an uncle became a great-uncle and a mother became a great-aunt in this one. Switched them back before anyone saw it).

And I was skimming it, I was conscious of how these two people would read it. In one chapter, there was quite a long segment where my main character thinks some fairly nasty and judgemental stuff about her friend. As I was reading it, imagining how it would read to someone else, I realised it was quite unnecessary. My character is pretty judgemental sometimes, but this felt. . . wrong. It wasn't quite her.

I'm not sure I would have spotted it if I hadn't been reading with one eye fixed on how my writing would make me look.

I think that being too concerned about how our writing makes us-as-people look is a bad thing - if I was to worry too much about that, I'd end up trying to write books entirely devoid of sex, lies and bad people. Which wouldn't work. But in this case, it helped me to catch something that otherwise I might have let slip.

Have you ever removed something because you were worried about how it made you look? Or considered it? Do you think it was, or would have been, a good or a bad decision?

Oxymorons and Oxytocin - Romance Novels and How We See Love

2012-01-20T12:45:00.001Z

I had a wee rant on Monday about why romance novels are seen as unfeminist in spite of the fact that they depict women in a healthy way - and in spite of the fact that the very society that criticises them foregrounds love and marriage in a very unhealthy way.

I feel there is more to be said on the subject (don't I freaking always!). I mentioned on Monday that society tells us that finding love should be our ultimate goal as human beings (I'm speaking as a woman here - I know men also face pressures, some different, some the same). I think we need to get a bit more flexible on that (perhaps the popular press might acknowledge, even tacitly, that single people can be happy and that not everyone is suited to marriage and family life).

But foregrounding love as a goal is not something I have a problem with. I don't always like how it's done, but it's probably better than telling someone that the car they drive is critical to their psychological health.

I'm not going to quote divorce statistics - we all know that 'happily ever ever' is becoming an aspiration rather than a reality for a lot of people. Which sucks - quite apart from the emotional pain for the people involved, this means that across my lifetime I can anticipate attending almost double as many weddings as my parents had to. This will cost me a fortune in dresses, hats, and tasteful silver-plated photo frames, not to mention increasing the number of unflattering photos of me in circulation.

It seems to me that now, creating a successful relationship is no longer the default. People no longer enter into marriages and stay in them 'just-because.' They can walk away if they stop working.

Which means that relationships are now something that people work on. It means that creating a good one is not an optional extra ('Meh, we're married, he/she is stuck with me!' no longer holds water). A strong marriage is not just a blessing. It's an achievement, and it requires constant work. Hopefully enjoyable and rewarding work, rather than the Sisyphus-pushing-the-rock-up-the-mountain-forever type.

And yet, here we are, as a society, looking down on books about people who find love and make it work.

More tea, please, waiter. I could be here for a while.

Romance: Why Is It A Dirty Word?

2012-01-16T13:21:00.000Z

There is a lovely interview with Nora Roberts floating around the web (I found it when hunting through Claire Hennessy's blog for her series on writers and day jobs for my last post). I haven't read any of Roberts's books, but I loved how she sounded in the interview. High on books, low on crap.

Roberts writes romance, a genre I read now and again but have never written (I'd like to, someday). It's not a genre that commands respect. Chick-lit, at least, suggests that it might be funny. Romance has been perceived as light escapism for unhappy housewives. It has been criticised for giving women 'unrealistic expectations'. (Roberts's answer to that is great: "Because women aren't supposed to have expectations, right? We're pretty smart. I think we know the difference between reality and fiction. I don't think that people read Agatha Christie, and then think: I know, I'll go and murder someone.")

Roberts's response to the general lack of respect for romance is also interesting:
"it's just so insulting towards millions of people. Why would you apologise for what you read for pleasure? Just think of the illiteracy rate. Every book read for pleasure should be celebrated. And novels that celebrate love, commitment, relationships, making relationships work, why isn't that something to be respected?"

She's hit on something really interesting there.

As a woman, I feel I live in a society that tells me that finding Mr. Right, getting married and having babies is IT. Most books aimed at women my age involve some level of love story. Most magazine covers are emblazoned with stories about finding, keeping, improving or pleasing a man. Newspaper columnists are constantly telling me that while having a career and deep, close friendships is all very well and good, ultimately they will disappoint me when compared to paying 20k for a party and ending up covered in puke and stepping on Lego pieces when I get up to go to the bathroom at night.

Ahem. I'm just being bitchy there. Married life and parenthood actually sound like wonderful things. I don't know yet if they are right for me, or if I'll ever have them. But I'm constantly bombarded with the message that finding True Love is the only point to life.

And yet, romantic novelists today are writing strong, cool, independent women, feminist-y characters who seek and find fulfilling love. And they are not getting respect for doing that.

I know that as a woman and a reader, I would far rather curl up with a book that depicts a strong woman falling in love, creating a good relationship and being happy, than read yet another magazine article how to 'keep my man' (apparently just showing up won't cut it anymore. Who knew?). As a feminist, I think romance (and chick-lit) novelists today are sending a far more positive message than - well, most other writing aimed at women.

So, to recap - some elements of society say that relationships and marriage are the only things a woman should care about. But romantic novels are un-feminist and trashy.

I can't get my head around that. I think the only solution is to make some tea and read a good novel.

Some Nora Roberts, maybe. . . :)

Writing and The Day Job: Choices and Aspirations

2012-01-13T13:48:00.000Z

So often in the world of blogging, one finds that someone else has made one's points better than one.

That sentence sounds clumsy. Let me try again.

So often in the world of blogging, I find that someone else has made my points better than me.

That's better.

Claire Hennessy has a great series of posts on day jobs and writers, which can be found here. The final post has a great series of questions about choosing a day job that works for you, both as a writer and as a person, which is worth reading.

There is another question about writing and day jobs that I want to address, though, and it's a big one. Especially for those of us in our twenties and thirties, not long out of education and still building a career rather than riding the wave.

That question is where to direct your priorities - towards the day job? Or towards writing?

When I was in college, a salary of €16,000 a year sounded like more money than I could ever spend. I now know that for a young professional in Dublin, it's a challenge to live well on that. It means public transport, it means cheaper food, it means nights out in the local pub on Student Night rather than a going to a restaurant with your friends.

As I get older, I know that my needs will increase more and more. At the moment I don't own a home, for example. My healthcare costs are minimal. These things will change, and my income needs to change with it. I don't want to live like a twenty-year-old when I'm forty (although obviously I will still resemble one. AHEM).

And the question arises of whether it makes more sense to prioritise writing (with the knowledge that it may always remain a second income, but nevertheless with the intention of turning it into an income), or to prioritse advancement in the day job. Free time is precious - should it be spent writing or taking a night class in Accountacy, or Marketing, or Advanced German for Unadvanced Students?

I don't know the answer, but I'd be interested to hear how some of you guys have made your decisions, or tried to.

Writing and The Day Job

2012-01-09T10:41:00.000Z

I've spoken a lot - OK, exclusively - about goal-setting this year. I've admitted that I am a person who makes wildly unrealistic goals ('I'll write the last 20,000 words in a day! I can do it!. . . oh, wait, I can't.').

I am also a person who wants to be a writer, but has to work full-time for financial reasons. I don't talk about my day job online, but I will say it is the kind of job where some days are sedate and everything moves at a gentle, manageable pace, yet other days - or weeks, or months - can be very intense and stressful.

Time management is an issue for every writer. My old favourite way to carve out time was to bring my netbook to work and write during my lunch hour (my office has a really nice recreation space with a great view - when I write there, I probably have the best view of any writer in Dublin, unless a tourist is scribbling in the corner of the Gravity Bar).

But that only works on a relatively stress-free day. If I'm very busy, it's hard to find the motivation to work through lunch, even if I am working on something I enjoy.

There is now the added complication that spending too long in front of a computer screen doesn't help with my new-found tendancy to get migraines. I depend on looking at a computer screen to earn a living. That hour away from it in the middle of the day helps a lot. Also, if a migraine does descend, one of the nasty side-effects for me is that total inability to use the English language the following day. Anything I write the day after a migraine (and I include emails in this) will be unusable porridge.

Writing after work is usually easier, but that is vulnerable to the demands of family, friends, relationships, socialising, exercise, housework, cooking, laundry and all the other things we do to ensure we can get up and go to work the following day.

I once read - have forgotten where, if you know please tell me - that the modern working week in Western society evolved ina time when every worker (the majority of them male) was assumed to have someone at home (usually female), whether wife, mother or landlady, to support their role in the workplace. Workers worked, but they didn't cook, clean, wash clothes, look after children or shop for groceries. Now, both male and female workers are trying to fulfil this role for themselves on top of a working week that, for most people, is getting constantly longer.

I'm incredibly fortunate in the latter regard - my workplace does not suffer from a culture that rewards people for working long hours, and it is understood that working longer does not necessarily mean you're working better. I'm thankful for this every day. But like everyone else, I do have demands in my personal life, and balancing these with work is challenging. Balancing them with writing sometimes feels impossible.

For me, the easiest thing to sacrifice is my health. Spend my lunch hour in front of the computer and leave work frazzled, tired, with the beginnings of migraine aura in my peripheral vision. Stay up later, and drag myself out of bed no matter how desperate I may be for more sleep. But that doesn't work for longer than a few days.

Trying to cut out cooking or exercise doesn't have the same short-term health impact, but long-term, eating take-aways and never exercising will catch up with anyone.

How do you guys find the right balance? What gets cut to allow for writing time?

2012 - Writing Goals

2012-01-06T12:45:00.001Z

On Tuesday, I talked about my 2011 accomplishments. As I start 2012, I'm going to post my goals here - I'm hoping it will help to keep me accountable!

I am prone to setting myself absolutely impossible goals. My logic is simple but completely stupid - Nanowrimo works for me, ergo I can handle large and impossible goals. What I fail to realise is that Nano may be a large goal, but on a daily level, it is attainable (1,667 words a day). And during Nano, I somewhat suspend normal service. Friends see me less often, the blog isn't updated as much, I write during lunch hours instead of running errands. I can't sustain this year-round.

In spite of this, with a delicious empty year stretching before me, it's tempting to write a list of goals taller than I am (not as difficult as it sounds, I'm about 5'3). But I have to be mindful of reality.

I work full-time in a job that alternates between being very stressful and not at all stressful, so I can't guarantee a regular amount of spare mental time. Some days I want to go home from work and switch my brain off - other days I go home from work raring to get cracking on my novel. But I can't promise I'll write every day.

I occasionally enjoy eating food, reading books, showering and sleeping. And three, I've had a few health problems lately. Burning the midnight oil is clearly not for this migraine-ridden hypochondriac. . .

This year, I am trying to be realistic for a change. So here goes:

Goals for 2012

Finish Curse of the Carberrys (currently about 55k, maybe two-thirds of the way through the plot)
Edit Curse of the Carberrys (this includes getting feedback from beta writers, crying over the harsh comments, consuming Ben & Jerry's to console self after harsh comments, resolving to never write again and resolving to write the best book ever to'show' my enemies in unspecified fashion)
Finish the third draft/final edit of Crooked Paths (2010's Nanowrimo project, better known to blog readers as 'Becky')
Query agents with a manuscript I'm happy with
ML for Nanowrimo again
Win Nanowrimo again
Start research on a non-fiction project
Try my hand at writing a short story
Write articles (aim for one per month) and submit to publications
Update this blog twice a week and stay active on Blogger and Twitter

May you all have a wonderful 2012 and achieve all of your goals! I can't wait to read about everyone's year.

2012 - Goal Setting from Someone Other Than Me

2012-01-03T10:54:00.000Z

Happy 2012, everyone! I hope this turns out to be a wonderful year and everyone's writing - and non-writing - dreams come true.

A new year is traditionally a time for looking back, reviewing, and setting goals. I don't know much about this, but the good news is that after a short review, I'll be turning you over to someone who does :)

2011

Good stuff

* I finished the second draft of Becky, my 2010 Nanowrimo novel, which included a much-improved ending.
* Was a co-ML for Nanowrimo again
* Won Nanowrimo in spite of a few health problems surfacing that month
* Actually quite liked the book I started during Nano
* Had a piece published in a national magazine (nationally distributed in a tiny country, admittedly, but still!)

Not so good stuff

* Decided to rewrite Becky a third time, so didn't query at all as I felt it wasn't strong enough.
* Didn't make my personal Nano target of a completed first draft. and also didn't manage to do that by the end of December, either.
* Didn't get paid for any writing.

So I have some things to build on, and some things to improve. It could be worse!

I am not very good at goal-setting. I either go for crtazily unattainable goals in the hope that they will motivate me, or I set the bar so low that I become complacent and keep telling myself it'll be so easy that I don't have to strat working yet, until the deadline sneaks up on me, coshes me over the head and steals my self-respect.

Christine, however, seems to be rather good at it, so I'm going to direct anyone setting goals for 2012 - and indeed, anyone who ins't, because her positive attitude is infectious! - to her fantastic blog. I found these posts especially helpful:
Christine's method of goal-setting
An example of Christine's completed goal list
Some proof that her method works for her!

There are a few reasons why I think Christine, who doesn't claim to be an expert goal-setter, is a fantastic resource. Firstly, she is a devoted wife and mom who blogs about the very real challenges of handling a home, family and writing career simultaneously. She also takes herself incredibly seriously as a writer, even though she hasn't published yet (and once you get to know her, you'll see the emphasis is on the 'yet'). Too many unpublished writers don't take themself seriously, and Christine's kooky system of paying herself in quarters and for rejections always makes me smile!

And finally, Christine embodies a lesson every writer needs - be flexible. She says:

My goals aren't immovable objects I must reach. They are check points along life's highway. Sometimes they are easy hills to climb and conquer. Other times they are not. Occasionally, life throws me a curveball, and I have to take a detour which leads to unexpected places. And then my life journey's GPS signal has to recalculate the route.

Amen. Sometimes life gets in the way - work becomes demanding, family members fall ill, friends are inconsiderately born at a time of year when your book is at a critical stage. And we give ourselves plenty of flack for not writing often enough, well enough or artistically enough. The art of giving oneself a break is a key one for all writers to learn.

So what are your goals for 2012? I'll be sharing my full list on Friday but would love some inspiration before then!

Christmas in Books

2011-12-23T12:55:00.001Z

So you thought you might have the good fortune to read a blog post today that didn't mention Christmas? I hope you find it, but sadly you won't find it here :)

I have this problem with Christmas in my books. Specifically, there is rather too much of it.

I usually do my first drafts in November, for Nanowrimo. This means that as I write, the Christmas party invitations are starting to trickle in. My three incredibly close friends who have the temerity to be born in early-mid December (Interrailing Buddy, Lilac Faery and The Sociologist, to be precise) are usually starting to iron out their celebrations during late November (they have lots of friends in common - sadly I am not unique in that regard! - and tend to coordinate so they don't clash. Thankfully!). And I'm starting to look for Christmas gifts, birthday gifts and to think generally celebratory thoughts.

This always spills into my books.

In Becky (sorry, still no title!), Becky's upbeat flatmate asks her about her Christmas plans. One of the key moments in Becky's journey back to being a real person as well as a job is when she realises that she has been left out of her college friends' annual Secret Santa/ Kris Kindle present exchange because she hasn't seen any of them since the previous year.

This year, I'm writing about a family, and my main character is locked in a row with her sister about what they will do on Christmas Day. It's actually one of the more serious conflicts in the novel.

I enjoy reading Christmassy books, but I don't tend to read them as much during the rest of the year.

How about you guys? Do you have any favourite Christmas books? Any Christmas books that you don't read any other time? Have you ever read a Christmassy book at another time of year, and how did you find it?

This will be my last post til January so I hope you all have a lovely holiday season!

Blogging 2012

2011-12-20T10:57:00.000Z

You guys may have noticed I've been far more sporadic about my blogging lately. It started with Nanowrimo, when I was both busy and sick, and some of my health problems are stubbornly refusing to go away. Nothing serious, before anyone starts to worry, just annoying, niggly things that nevertheless have a tendency to sap energy.

I've also been plugging away at the Nano book, trying to get a first draft finished. I'm happy with how it's going, but it's very much a first draft and I suspect huge chunks won't survive the first edit.

I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately. I find I'm reading fewer blogs, commenting less and posting less. Yet, when I do take the time to read and comment, I'm enjoying blogging as much as ever. I just feel I have reached a point where I have less to say that I did.

Which is why I'm changing my posting schedule. Instead of Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I will now only be blogging twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.

I figure you'd all rather read something I'd put some thought into rather than a random collection of Guardian articles desperately cobbled together for the sake of posting something!

And while I'm here - hello to all new followers and readers, and thanks for sticking with me through my sporadic blogging period. I didn't lose a single follower during my radio silence and I'm very glad :)

Deja Vu Blogfest!

2011-12-16T14:10:00.000Z

DL Hammons - among others - is hosting the very fun Deja-Vu Blogfest today! The idea is for bloggers to re-run their favourite old posts, perhaps from before they encountered many of their followers.

My actual favourite blog post is surprisingly popular, given that it's called 'Grabbing Life by the Bouillabaisse'. But it's only one paragraph long, so I have decided to pretend that I'm far more highbrow than I actually am by repeating a post about a book. Here is my sort-of-second, almost-joint-first, kind-of-one-and-a-halfth favourite blog post, about one my my all-time favourite books - 84 Charing Cross Road.

It's an All Bar One now.

84 Charing Cross Road, that is. The most iconic bookshop in an iconic street of bookshops. And it's a pub.

The person who first lent me 84 Charing Cross Road may be able to see the positive side of this. Me not so much.

The first time I read Helene Hanff's most famous book was in a volume that included The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, a later account of her trip to London long after the death of Frank Doel. It's a delightfully London-y book, and Helene Hanff is like a Dorothy Parker that you wouldn't be scared to invite to your parties. Smart, acerbic, New Yorker, likes martinis, but paradoxically not prone to having feuds with people and attempting suicide. What's not to love?

When I borrowed the book first, I refused to give it back until I'd bought my own copy (this is still a sore point). I knew that I could never go to London without it, because when Helene Hanff finally made her life-changing trip to London, nearly a decade before I was born, she stayed in My Bit. My Bit is Bloomsbury. Next to the British Museum, close to Russell Square (one of my all-time favourite parks), walking distance to Oxford Street, Covent Garden and - natch - Charing Cross Road. I am extremely attached to My Bit. It has pretty brown-brick buildings that remind me of seeing 10 Downing Street on TV when I was a kid. Black Books was set there. UCL and Birkbeck are there. There is a three-story branch of Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road that I once visited with a friend late on a Thursday evening in December. We got a doubled-over giggling fit in the lift in our hotel because we felt so decadent buying stationery in the dark.

Substantial parts of My Bit also got blown up in July 2005. Usually, when places I love get blown up, I book a flight to them. Like Helene Hanff, bound for London still crippled by a recent hysterectomy, I can never just go to places. Disasters tend to drive me there.

Since I read 84 Charing Cross Road, the small volume including The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street has come with me on every trip to London. My edition has a quote on the cover, taken from the publicity material for the film adaptation, which describes the book as a love story. This incensed me the first time I read it - the platonic nature of Helene Hanff's friendship with Frank Doel is the best bloody thing about the book, as far as I'm concerned - but I got over it. It is a love story - several love stories - and that's why it comes to London with me every time. Partly because the second book is a love letter to My Bit (even if Helene never went to the British Museum, mad heathen that she was), partly because the first book is all about second-hand books, which I buy in vast quantities every time I'm in London, and partly because 84, Charing Cross Road is one of the best accounts I have read about friendship and how it can begin in the strangest of circumstances and survive for so long. When you find yourself in a city that you love in the way that normal people love other people, it's nice to have something to remind you why getting on the plane home is a good idea.

Annoyingly, though, I can't go into number 84 and buy a book each trip, as a sort of thank you to Marks & Co. for making my trips richer. But even more annoying is the other book that has to come with me on every trip to London, the only other book I've read that comes close to 84, Charing Cross Road in its love for London.

Forever Amber. Forever sodding Amber. 972 pages. Do you have any idea how much that thing weighs?

Heart in the Marketplace: What to Write

2011-12-14T10:08:00.000Z

Rachelle Gardner has an excellent post today on how writers handle the conflicting messages out there: 'write with an awareness of the market' vs 'write what's in your heart'.

I am an awkward writer (I'll give you all a moment to recover from the shock of that revelation). I often write things that don't quite fit a genre. My last book was a straight-up urban fantasy. This one - well. It's a bit less straightforward. There is a supernatural element that underpins the entire plot. But the writing is much closer to chick-lit than to urban fantasy. I suspect that when the time comes to write a query letter for this one, I will cry myself stupid and bloggers in Britain will hear my screams carrying across the Irish Sea when the wind is from the west.

But I love it, and I want to write it, and I believe I can write it well. So I'm writing it. When the time comes to try to pitch it, I'll be looking at the market then and trying to find somewhere that it fits.

I think it's about balance. If I was to say to myself 'Oh, steampunk, that's hot right now!' and start bashing out a tale of - well, whatever the classic steampunk elements are, I've only read Gail Carriger - I don't imagine I'd produce anything worth reading. But that's just me - some writers are fortunate and can find scope for creativity within any parameters.

But I'm not one of those people, and so much of writing is about knowing yourself.

What about you? Do you write for the market or for yourself?

The Diffney Quiz - Offbeat Holiday Traditions

2011-12-05T16:29:00.000Z

As many of you probably know, my dad is sadly no longer with us. He passed away sudddenly in 2005. And as all of you probably know, when the Christmas season hits, most people's minds turn to loved ones, lost or otherwise.

When I was about fifteen, my dad came home from work one evening with the Diffney quiz. Do not ask me what made him go into Diffney (he was a marine engineer, so he tended to buy very functional clothes rather than stylish ones. They tended to get covered in engine oil and dust very, very fast).

My dad loved crosswords, brainteasers and puzzles. His evening ritual was to sit with the Daily Mirror Quizword and work his way through the general knowledge clues. The Diffney quiz was designed for him.

Anyway, the entire family became addicted to it. Not just my parents and me, but the extended family. My mother posted a copy to one of her sisters, and the other sister saw it when they were having coffee together.

Slowly, it took over our December.

Right up to the February deadline, we were calling and texting back and forth from Dublin to Wexford to Scotland to Nottingham, with clues and suggestions and debates. Once you've done it once, you learn a few tricks - there is usually a clue about Diffney itself, for instance, and at least one Dublin placename and its postcode (Dublin has one-digit postcodes, the rest of Ireland doesn't, which makes internet shopping all kinds of fun). There is usually a film or two, a song lyric as well as some titles.

Like a crossword, you eventually get into the mind of the compiler. Over the years, we have all got better and better at the Diffney quiz. It is no longer the absurd challenge it was that first year (and of course, we all secretly believe it's getting easier, in the same way exams were harder when we sat them).

But the Diffney quiz is addictive. It has an odd siren song - most people can answer a lot of the questions in one sitting, easily. But the ones that you can't get nag at you and gradually take over your life so you are a mere husk of your former self.

Over the years, I've shared it with friends and family, and most people who enjoy puzzlesget quite sucked in. Sometimes you get texts at 2 a.m. that merely say 'Amazon River - 3976 miles long!!!!!!' or, if you know someone really sadistic (or sensitive about spoiling your fun) 'I got number 23. Call if you want the answer.'

I got the 2011 Diffney quiz on Friday when I was starting my Christmas shopping. Two copies go in the post, one is left blank for photocopying, one will get filled in bit by bit over the next few weeks.

It's not quite the same without Dad, becayse he wa sthe most enthusiastic Diffney quiz lover of us all. But it is nice, every year, to watch a little of Dad come out in all of us as we trade clues and answers, jealously guard our hunches, argue for our own suggestions and shamefully resort to Google when we're desperate.

For me, Christmas starts with the Diffney quiz.

Any odd holiday traditions in your family?

50K in 30 days - The End of a Tough Nanowrimo

2011-11-30T10:02:00.000Z

Guys, I have neglected my blog, Twitter, Facebook and almost everything else for the last few weeks. Thanks for hanging around :)

November was a tough month this year. First ever migraine, some panic issues, four days off from my day job due to another illness. Overall, I lost about nine or ten days of writing time to various illnesses and ailments.

Last night, while in Writer Friend's living room, I crossed the 50k finishing line. There are rumours that I may have done a happy dance in the kitchen while Writer Friend continued to type frantically in the other room, but so far these remain unconfirmed.

I learned a lot this month. I learned that, when you fall behind with a goal, there's no sense in deciding all is lost and abandoning it. I wanted to do that very badly when I found myself almost 6k behind target. But I figured I would feel worse if I gave up (I'm an ML, and Nano HQ ask us to try very hard to win to keep our region's Wrimos motivated).

Every time I thought about that almost-6k deficit, it felt insurmountable. There was no way I could make that up. Instead, I focused on making up as much as I could. Some days I just wrote my bare minimum target (1667 per day) and made sure I didn't increase the deficit. Other days, I managed to bash out an additional thousand words. Other days it was an additional 500 words. Slowly, the deficit got smaller.

I'm reminded of W. C. Fields's wonderful line - 'If it first you don't succeed, try, try and try again. Then quit. There's no point being a damned fool about it.'

Sometimes you do just have to give up, when something is genuinely impossible. Sometimes, it's worth hanging on and chipping away.

I'm not finished writing this book yet - I think there is about a month of work left in it, so I'm hoping, with luck, to finish the first draft by Christmas. We all know that writing a book is a long journey. Taking the first steps this November was tough, but ultimately it's been very rewarding.

Also, I had celebratory chocolate. And tonight there will be celebratory dinner. Any excuse :p

So how have you guys been while I've been flicking between Nanowrimo.org, WriteOrDie.com and OpenOffice? Any news? What did I miss? :)

Saying Thanks

2011-11-25T12:53:00.000Z

Fellow Irish blogger Paul is talking about being thankful today. I agree that, in spite of living in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, it is nice to take some time to feel gratitude, so I'm going to post about that today.

Right now I'm off work sick. This month I joined the reluctant club of migraine sufferers. I'm behind on Nanowrimo. Due to my various health issues, typing is hard - I can't focus on computer screens for as long as usual, and I'm more prone to typos and stupid errors, which makes me feel like I'm losing my mind or my ability to write. It's scary, even though I'm sure it's temporary.

But even in the face of these setbacks, it's important to be grateful for what I have.

I can write. I may be behind with Nano, but I'm also 40,000 words into a new book that I'm really enjoying writing. Yes, I've been quite ill this month and my panic hasn't exactly been great either, but I'm thankful it's nothing more serious! Migraines can be debilitating and are deeply unpleasant, but they can often be managed, and they're certainly less debilitating than a lot of other conditions out there.

I'm thankful for the fact my blog followers haven't all vanished in the wake of my posting famine in the last few weeks.

I'm thankful for all the love and support I have in my life.

Hope all my US friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that you enjoy a year full of things to be grateful for.

Apologies for being a rubbish blogger

2011-11-09T10:08:00.000Z

Guys, I've been quiet for a few days. I'm in the middle of a busy week and I am still battling to get my 2500 words a day down (I'm aiming fr 75k this Nano, just for giggles).

And last night I apparently got my first ever migraine, which means a few days of enforced taking-it-easy. My ability to be in front of a computer screen will be dedicated to my day job and Nano, which doesn't leave much time for blogging.

So I'm taking a few days of downtime. I'm going to a gig tomorrow and I want to be well for that, so you may not see me blogging much in the next few days. Looking forward to catching up when things settle down a bit!

Insecure Writers' Support Group - How [NaNoWriMo] has worked for me

2011-11-02T10:49:00.000Z

See what I did there? My monthly Insecure Writers' Support Group post combined with Nano! I'm a multitasking queen, clearly. . .

I have found Nano excellent for dealing with my insecurity. The Nanowrimo ethos is simple - write without regard for quality. Just write. Write for fun.

For me, this is a great way of burning through insecurity. Yesterday I wrote 3251 words on Day One (official target: 1667. Personal target: 2500. I try to do extra every day so it's not the end of the world if I have a day when I can't write later in the month. In my experience, there is always one). And as I wrote those 3251 words, I wasn't thinking about whether or not they were amazing words. I was thinking 'Oooh, I knew Uncle Max was a book collector - maybe he could have been a book reviewer for a newspaper when he was younger?' and just dumping the new idea right in there. I was getting to know Claire, Penelope, Dot and the as-yet-elusive Sandi. And Uncle Max, of course, although like Marley he was dead to begin with.

It was brilliant fun. This morning I emailed it to Writer Friend (who invented the term 'Bloomsbury' and will be back for a visit soon!) and Paul, just because I had thoroughly enjoyed writing it and fancied sharing it. This is against the Nano ethos, really, and it's very unusual for me - I rarely share before the second draft. But it was just such great fun that I wanted to pass it on.

I haven't re-read it myself, because then I really will get insecure. But as soon as I get a few quiet moments today, I'll be curling up with my trusty netbook and hammering out the next instalment (I believe I'm taking Claire and Dot out for dinner tonight. Luckily, as fictional characters, they are cheap dates). Never mind insecurity. I'm here for the fun.

That being said, Nano is definitely not for everyone. It works for me, it may not work for you. But recapturing the fun is always a good idea, so even if Nano isn't your thing, hanging out on the forums for half an hour may help you to let go of the internal editor (I don't know about yours, but mine is a bitch) and rediscover the fun.

Happy November, guys!

[NaNoWriMo] It's the Final Countdown. . . Tips and Strategies

2011-10-28T09:52:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the cheesy 80s blog post title, but I couldn't resist. I'm not made of stone!

The madness of Nano starts on Tuesday, so we have a weekend (a long weekend, if you're Irish) to plan and prepare. Here are my favourite first-week tips:

1. Get ahead of target early.
Cannot stress this one enough! I've used up all of my annual leave for the year, so I can't take the Tuesday off to get a head-start (I did last year), so for the first four days, I'll be balancing Nano and work. Still, this step is important. For the first four days, I'll be aiming to write more than my daily target of 1667, so that if I have a bad day, I'll still be somewhat ahead.

If, like me, you're balancing Nano and work, school, kids, etc., just carve out some time as early as you can and pull ahead. I've planned a full day of writing with Writer Friend (who isn't doing Nano, but is in the late stages of an edit and is using Nano as a motivator) on the first Sunday in November, with the intention of creating a nice little cushion of words in case something comes up later in the month and I fall behind.

2. Plan the first bit.
I'm a pantser rather than a plotter ('half the fun is getting there', as the Greyhound ads used to say), but for Nano, I plot the first sections of my book. Sometimes it's just a few scenes, sometimes it's a chapter, but it's a fantastic way to stop those moments where you freeze 500 words in and think 'OK, I got her off the bus BUT NOW WHAT??'

My planning looks usually looks something like this:
Kate arrives at the house. Goes inside. Talks to parents. Goes upstairs. Sees letter on bed. Reads letter. Calls Marge. Marge's reaction. . . . etc.

So, when I start writing, I have this skeleton to flesh out with descriptions of the three characters (and probably some description of Marge, too, although we don't see her) and I'm less likely to get stuck while Kate is chatting to her mum and forget where to go next.

Usually I do this for the opening bit and then allow myself to revert to my classic pantser ways :)

3. Make the most of the first week or two.
I find that during the first week, friends and family are cheerfully indulgent about your inability to spend any time with them or behave like, you know, a normal human. I hear lots of 'It's great that you're so dedicated!' 'That's such a cool thing to do!' and 'Can I read it when it's done?'.

But after a week or two, I start to feel guilty for saying 'no' to everything, and I start to make plans and accept invitations. Also, as November wears on, we get over closer to Christmas and I always find that things just crop up and need to be done.

So get as much done as you can while the guilt is at its lowest level!

4. Ignore other people's word counts.
Nano is a competition with yourself, not with anyone else. Don't worry about anyone else's word count. Some people on the Nano forums break 50k on the first day. Also, don't fall into the trap of assuming that everyone writing faster than you is writing total rubbish - they might be, they might not. But don't give them any headpsace, positive or negative. They are on their path, you are on yours. Put blinkers on and get back to writing.

Real Women Week: Cecelia Ahern and Realistic Role Models

2011-10-26T12:50:00.002+01:00

This week I'm doing a couple of posts on 'real women' - see Monday's post for my discussion of the phrase itself!

I was watching TV last week and the Irish author Cecelia Ahern was being interviewed. I haven't read any of her books yet and had no prior opinion of her.

Cecelia had just had her hair cut quite short, and it looked good. The interviewer asked her about it and she said 'Well, I'm not a natural blonde - which maybe a shock-horror moment for some of you! - and I dyed my hair so much that it got really damaged and I had to cut it off.'

I had two thoughts.

One was, I'm very glad I don't dye my hair. I have absurdly sticky-out ears and having to go for a pixie-cut would equal fashion suicide for me, not to mention cold ears (I have a theory that no blood reaches them because they are so far from my head).

My second thought was, well done to her for saying it!

I have a bit of a bugbear about celebrities who present unrealistic standards for women. Some years ago, a perfume ad featured a shot of Victoria Beckham from behind. Several sources alleged that the image was digitally enhanced to make Victoria's butt look curvier than it is, and looking at the photograph compared to candid shots taken of her, it certainly seems likely.

I don't know if it's true or not - I hope it isn't - but if it is, then it's the kind of thing that makes me really angry.

Some people are born beautiful, and that's great for them. But for most women, famous or otherwise, life is a constant struggle with what we perceive as our own inherent mediocrity. We dye our hair, we wear makeup, we buy clothes to hide our 'faults', we wear loose-fitting trousers because of our 'thunder thighs' . . . some of us get cosmetic injections of surgery.

And virtually no one is perfect.

Which is why the Victoria Beckham Arsegate thing annoys me so much, if it is indeed true. VB is extremely skinny. Like all physical characteristics, skinniness can be very beautiful or very ugly, so I'm not making any comment on that fact. But I feel that celebrities have a responsibility to present the downsides of how they look too - or rather, the reality of how they look. It is incredibly unlikely that someone could maintain a figure as slim as VB's and still have a round, curvaceous butt. It's possible, but I have never seen it in real life. I carry all my weight on my butt and even mine gets smaller when I lose weight.

When I hear of things like that, I picture a teenage girl who hates her body, looking at TV ads and thinking 'my waist looks like hers, but why is my stupid butt so flat??' or 'My butt looks like hers, but why do I have this stupid belly to go with it?' Because, sweetheart, life does that and the media is lying to you. It's hard to gain or lose fat in a focused way, especially for those of us who don't have personal trainers and our own chefs.

Which is why I applaud Cecelia Ahern. She has lovely hair. It's a very nice colour. But she just told the whole country (or at least the ones who watch TV at 8.10 am) that if you want hair that colour and you decide to dye your hair to get it, you may face the consequence that it gets damaged. She was honest about what lay behind the - very attractive - image that she projects.

Every time someone is honest about their looks, we move a step closer to accepting women as they are. We don't have to be perfect - we need to be OK with being as we are!

Real Women Week - Love, Hate and Labels

2011-10-24T11:29:00.001+01:00

I have a love-hate relationship with the term 'real women.'

As I said in my post about panic disorder, I think being open and honest about what we're really like as humans is ultimately a good thing. Not that every individual needs to share deep and personal information, but in general I believe that a wee dollop of honesty helps everyone. So I am cool with the concept of 'real women' - of all women being able to talk openly about how they really are. Myths have damaged a lot of women.

But. I detest a lot of the ways in which I see the phrase 'real women' used.

I have found that the term 'real women' is very often a euphemism for 'women above a certain weight.' There are Facebook groups with names like 'Real Women Have Curves!' and 'Real Women Eat Cake!' and such. I have heard men declare their preference for 'real women' when what they mean to say is 'I prefer women of a particular size or shape. I am choosing to use an insanely prejudiced term to express a perfectly acceptable preference.'

We're all real, folks. If you don't like some of us, that's life. But don't say any woman isn't 'real' because her body doesn't conform to what you like.

Real women have curves. They have lumps and bumps. They also have slim waists, flat stomachs, toned butts and every damned thing in between. And it's all cool.

We live in a society that likes to tell us we need to be super-skinny. That's crap, and it's great that people are embracing the idea that this isn't necessary, and owning their curves.

But seriously, it's time to start thinking about the language we're using for this backlash. Can it maybe not be so freaking nasty and exclusive?

The oft-quoted statistic is that the average British woman is a size 14 to 16, depending who you ask (for US readers, think 12 to 14). Yet a size 14 to 16 is perceived as large. It's good that we're more aware that not every woman fits into the profile that the media tells us is attractive - in fact, very few do.

And yet, there's more to that statistic than meets the eye. By definition, if 14-16 is average, then a lot of women must be below that weight, and equally a lot of women must be above it. Let's take a look at one woman who is a size 8 and one who is a size 22.

She might be healthy. She might be unhealthy. She might be far from her ideal weight. She might have an eating disorder. She might be beautiful. She might be sexy. She might be married or single.

Every one of those statements could apply to either woman.

So why do some people say that the smaller woman isn't real?

Women claiming their own appearance and accepting themselves is a wonderful thing, and I hope it continues. The next step is to learn to make ourselves feel good without using language that dehumanises and defeminises any woman. Because if you can only feel good by putting someone else down, that's called bullying. And everyone agrees that that sucks.

Priorities - Top and Otherwise

2011-10-21T11:53:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday I said there was one compelling reason not to do NaNoWriMo - if it conflicts with another, higher priority.

We're writers, though - artistes. We're not supposed to have other priorities! We're meant to be dedicated. Over and over, we're told 'You have to want this.'

We do. But we can't want it at the expense of everything else.

In the last few years I've come to understand a lot more about priorities. Like most young people who are lucky with their health, it took me a long time to realise that health always had to be the top priority. Always.

I've been fortunate with my own health - apart from a terrible susceptibility to colds, and a tendancy towards anaemia and low pressure, I have had few health problems since I was a teen. But I do have anxiety, and my anxiety manifests as health anxiety or hypochondriasis. I have never lived with health problems, but I have lived with the fear of them, and that has given me the tiniest glimpse into what life may be like if you don't enjoy good health.

It looks tough.

Without my health, I couldn't work as easily, I couldn't write as easily and I may find it challenging to spend time with the people I love. So in spite of my enormous desire to be a writer, above all else I prioritise my health. If I need sleep, for example, writing has to wait.

And there are so many other things - day jobs, families, friends, hobbies, passions, charity, volunteering, exercise. You can fill in your own blanks.

It's wonderful to love writing, and to be dedicated to it. But it's also important to be able to step back say 'Guess what? Right now, this needs to come first.' Whatever 'this' turns out to be.

Have a fab weekend everyone!

[NaNoWriMo] 5 Reasons To Do Nano . . . And 1 Reason Not To

2011-10-19T10:34:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again. . . writers and would-be writers all over the world are wondering whether or not to 'do Nano'. In fact, sometimes it seems that so many people are passionately pro-Nano that not to do it means you aren't a real writer.

I'm as pro-Nano as they come and I disagree. Nano isn't for everyone. And even if it is for you, it's not necessarily for you this year.

5 Reasons To Do Nano

1. You think you'll enjoy it.
The absolute best reason to do almost anything. If Nano looks like something you'd enjoy, and there's no outstanding reason not to do it, I suggest jumping right in!

2. You have a book idea that you've been considering for a while, but can't seem to get started.
Nano is a great way to get a kick-start - the forums are full of people all over the world, at every stage of experience, and they act as a great motivator (and a terrible time-drain!). The deadline, the challenge and the community can be a great way to galvanise yourself and get going. Which brings me to. . .

3. You don't know anyone else who writes and feel a bit lonely.
The blogosphere is amazing. It is a fantastic way to meet other writers, talk about writing, and feel less alone as we sit pounding the keyboard while our friends and family wonder why we aren't in the pub. Nanowrimo is very similar, except on a larger and somewhat less personal scale. Instead of connecting quite deeply with a smaller number of writers through reasonably in-depth posts, you get quick, message-board sized titbits from thousands upon thousands of writers. I don't think anything beats blogging for forming connections, but if you want to feel as though you are part of a large, global community, Nano is the undisputed king.

4. You're a perfectionist who writes five words and changes seven of them.
I've done this. I get so obsessed with writing a perfectly publishable future bestseller than I can't get anything actually written (I'm reliably informed that this is a prerequisite for any of the other stuff happening). I write my opening line: 'Heather took a long drag on her cigarette.' Then I think 'Does one drag on, off or from a cigarette?!' and ten minutes of frantic Googling follows. Then I decide that to say someone has dragged or pulled on a cigarette is a cliche. Then I think 'No one will publish a book if the first line shows someone smoking. How about she took a sip of her coffee. . . but will I be accused of copying Friends if the first scene is in a coffee shop?!'

The Nano ethos - write fast and write fun, essentially - cuts through all that. Heather has her cigarette and the novel keeps going, because I have to write 1667 words that day to stay on target. She can quit smoking and start on the protein shakes in December, when the editing starts. But as (I think) Sam Goldwyn said, at least you have something to change.

5. You want to write outside your comfort zone.

This is my favourite reason to do Nano. Usually, I write historical fiction. Last year, I fancied trying an urban fantasy for a change, and I loved it (the experience, not the book. We will talk about how crap the book was another time). My latest idea is also an urban fantasy and I can't wait to get stuck in. Without Nano, I would have been completely paralysed by the fact I was attempting something new (see above reason. . .). Next year I'm hoping to try a whole new genre if I'm feeling brave!

. . . and Two Reasons Not To.

1. It doesn't fit in with other, higher priorities.

It would be lovely to think that writing was our top priority all the time. But life is very big, and people have families, friends, day jobs, college, illness and all manner of other things. If something is a higher priority for you than doing Nano, you need to decide if you can balance the two. And if you can't, applaud yourself for knowing what's best for you and your life. Regardless of what anyone says!

A Little Bit of Blog Housekeeping

2011-10-17T12:15:00.000+01:00

I've mentioned a few times recently that I felt I was losing some of my blog mojo. I've been blogging for a couple years and I'm still unpublished, and I may be exhausting the list of things to talk about!

I don't want to stop blogging, but three times a week is proving a little much. So for the moment, I've decided to run some weekly posts on topics I really want to write about, that are slightly outside my normal range.

The first one, predictably, is NaNoWriMo. I'm one of the MLs (Municipal Liaisons - local reps) and a passionate pro-Nano evangelist, but I also recognise that the Nano ethos, while it works for me, doesn't work everyone. I am also aware that the blogosphere explodes into a sort of Nano-inferno every late October and early November.

If you don't want to read my Nano posts, there will be a great big [Nanowrimo] at the start of them so that you can avoid them easily. There will also be lots of non-Nano blogging too, as non-Nano bloggers are a resilient and tolerant bunch, and they deserve some content too :)

The second regular feature will be announced as soon as I can think of a name for it :) Expect a Nano-post on Wednesday.

Thinking of Self-Publishing? What Doesn't Matter - Guest Post from Catherine Ryan Howard

2011-10-13T14:35:00.000+01:00

The blogosphere's self-publishing guru Catherine Ryan Howard is on a blog tour at the moment to celebrate the launch of her kick-ass new novel, Results Not Typical. She has popped by today to talk about the issues that every author considering self-publishing should . . . not worry about. This is why Catherine is great :) - Ellen

About a year and a half ago, I self-published for the first time. Eighteen months is a long time in a revolution, and it’s difficult to really remember how radically different the attitude towards self-publishing e-books was, not to mention the technology available to those of us who decided to take the plunge.

But it was different.

I’ll give you a for instance: when I self-published Mousetrapped, Amazon Digital Text Platform had just started accepting Microsoft Word documents; before that, you had to have at least some technology savvy to use the service (or more than I had). Flash forward to today and you not only have a name change – Kindle Direct Publishing – but one of the easiest to use self-publishing services in existence, and the promise of your book in four Kindle stores and counting.

Another thing that’s changed is that the internet is now rich pickings for anyone looking for information on self-publishing – my own blog included. But some of it is less practical help and more ill-informed conjecture. I pity some times the writer thinking of or beginning the process of self-publishing, trudging through all the hot air, BS and (occasionally) downright ridiculousness looking for instructions on how to upload to CreateSpace, or what’s the best price for their book. In the best cases, the person speculating on the future of publishing is in another league to you and me, and we don’t need to listen to them because we cannot yet relate. In the worst, the person has as much experience in publishing as I do in marathon training. (None, in case you were wondering!)

So if you’re out there combing blogs, forums and Twitter feeds for the data you hope will help you decide whether or not to self-publish or, if you’ve already decided, how you should proceed, remember that these things do NOT matter:

1. WHAT’S DEAD

The book is dead apparently, and by the end of next week there won’t be a single bookshop left in the world. But just like those science-fiction movies of the Sixties that had us all whizzing around in flying cars by now, believers in the end of publishing might have jumped the gun.

This doesn’t matter because you are not spending all your life savings in order to open an independent bookshop. You are self-publishing, in all likelihood, an e-book (which we know the market is growing for) and a POD paperback (that, even if it never sells a single copy, will not cost you money). Whether or not we’ll be reading print books ten or twenty years from now has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re doing.

2. WHERE PUBLISHING IS HEADING

This is another topic popular with the self-publishing evangelists: should you forget about submitting to agents and publishers (remembering that all print books will be gone by the end of next week...) and go straight to self-publishing instead? Won’t you make more money that way anyway? And won’t you likely waste months if not years of your life trying to get your book published?

This doesn’t matter unless you have a time machine that has enabled you to see into the future where you’ve, apparently, made a million selling your own books, and you also have a six-figure book deal on the table from a publishing house. Tip: money that doesn’t exist yet doesn’t actually exist at all. You can’t assume that by uploading your novel to Kindle and setting the price at 99c, you’ll be the next Amanda Hocking. You won’t. When you hear of authors turning down publishing deals so they can self-publish instead, read beyond the headlines. They frequently have successful publishing pasts and so already have established readerships that can support such a decision. Furthermore, submitting your book to the experts – and yes, agents and editors ARE the experts – will at the very least get you some feedback on whether or not your book should see the light of a published day, whatever way you decide to go.

3. OTHER SELF-PUBLISHERS

There are some self-publishers who think there’s a magic formula to this thing, and that they can copy or emulate the success of the likes of Konrath, Leather, Edwards and Voss, etc. by doing exactly what they did: writing a good book, price it at 99c, get a good cover, write a good description, repeat as required. Recently a very famous e-book success story wrote a book about exactly how he did it – which was a bit different to everybody else – and there was such a spate of wannabes writing blog posts like him and tweeting like him that it was practically embarrassing.

This doesn’t matter because self-publishing isn’t black and white. It has many shades and you have to decide what’s right for you. It might sense for one writer to self-publish their backlist and their next book; it might make sense for you to continue to submit your novel but self-publish some short stories on the side. Similarly, you can’t repeat the success of other self-publishers by doing what they do, because luck and timing are such huge factors. Get tips and ideas from them, yes, but don’t copy them. You need to follow your own path. You may not be as successful as them, but being somewhat original is the only way you’re going to find any success at all.

______________________________________

Results Not Typical on Amazon.co.uk:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Results-Not-Typical-Novel-ebook/dp/B005M33XD6/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316862559&sr=1-7

Results Not Typical on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Results-Typical-Catherine-Ryan-Howard/dp/1466224657/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316862619&sr=1-8

Goodreads Giveaway:

If your readers visit http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/14791-results-not-typical they can enter a giveaway to win one of five paperback copies of Results Not Typical. Open for entries from September 30th-October 31st. Open to all countries.

About Catherine:

Catherine Ryan Howard is a 29-year-old writer, blogger and enthusiastic coffee-drinker. She currently lives in Cork, Ireland, where she divides her time between her desk and the sofa. She blogs at www.catherineryanhoward.com.

About Results Not Typical:

The Devil Wears Prada meets Weightwatchers and chick-lit meets corporate satire in the debut novel from Catherine Ryan Howard, author of the bestselling memoir Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida. Through their Ultimate Weight Loss Diet Solution Zone System, Slimmit International Global Incorporated claim they’re making the world a more attractive place one fatty at a time. Their slogans “Where You’re Fat and We Know It!” and “Where the Fat IS Your Fault!” are recognised around the globe, the counter in the lobby says five million slimmed and their share price is as high as their energy levels. But today the theft of their latest revolutionary product, Lipid Loser, will threaten to expose the real secret behind Slimmit’s success...The race is on to retrieve Lipid Loser and save Slimmit from total disaster. If their secrets get out, their competitors will put them out of business. If the government finds out, they’ll all go to jail. And if their clients find out… Well, as Slimmit’s Slimming Specialists know all too well, there’s only one thing worse than a hungry, sugar-crazed, carb addict – and that’s an angry one. Will the secret behind Slimmit’s success survive the day, or will their long-suffering slimmers finally discover the truth? Available now in paperback and e-book editions.

Pendants and Panic Attacks - U Magazine Reader Issue

2011-10-12T16:08:00.000+01:00

I got a nice surprise in the supermarket yesterday. This is not a sentence I have a chance to say very often.

I spotted the readers' edition of U (an Irish fortnightly magazine). I had submitted a short piece for their 'Favourite Things. . .' section, so I picked it up to see if they had used it.

They had :) I picked up a copy to go with my lunch and spent the rest of the day in a benign good mood. There is something very nice about seeing one's name in print.

Anyway, the item I chose to write about was a silver and garnet pendant I bought while I was interrailing in 2008. Other contributors chose sensible things like sunlight, being female. . . I wrote about jewellery. Of course. They're lucky I didn't write about chocolate.

But going on that trip was a major step in my ongoing journey through panic disorder. I promised myself that if I got through the trip without a panic attack, I'd buy myself something great in our last stop (which was Paris, so evidently finding something fabulous was going to be a dreadful trial. I mean, clearly. Guys, not only did I shop in Paris but I made my friend come with me. Luckily she still talks to me). This pendant was it. It isn't my normal style - or it wasn't, at the time - but I fell in love. It looked like something that a European princess would have owned - a Habsburg or a Wittelsbach or a Braganza. It looks like something that would be smuggled across borders under a corset, and sold to a shadowy gentleman to fund a revolution.

In other words, it had no business being owned by a temp from Dublin. With bitten nails.

I bought it anyway. It reminds me of how far I've come on my journey through panic, and it reminds me that I got here largely by taking risks, pushing myself outside my comfort zone and generally behaving like a normal person in the hope of becoming one.

I stepped outside my comfort zone with this piece too. I just told the readership of a national magazine about my mental health issue. It's firmly in the public domain now.

But I'm cool with that. There is still a stigma attached to mental health issues, especially in Ireland. And while I can't preume to comment much on lots of the more pressing mental health issues out there, but I can talk about my experience with panic. I can't offer any wisdom or any insight. But I can say what worked for me, what didn't, and perhaps most importantly, I can turn to another sufferer and say 'Me too.'

Might not be much help, but every step helps to de-stigmatise a little.

Guest Post: Pete McCluskey on Writing

2011-10-10T11:27:00.001+01:00

Today I have Pete McCluskey visiting my blog - Pete has just released a new book, My Little Lighthouse, and is donating some of his proceeds to one of my favourite charities, Crumlin Children's Hospital in Dublin. Crumlin was one of two hospitals that cared for my friend Paul's son Conor, whose life was an inspiration to Paul's friends, both online and offline. Hope you enjoy his post and thanks for visiting, Pete! - Ellen

“Ask and you shall receive”.
My wise old mother has many sayings but this is one of her favourites.
I’ve been reading and admiring Ellen’s blog for many a long day now. After polite enquiries, Ellen kindly agreed to accept a guest submission from me for her blog and I’m delighted I asked.

I’ve written three books of contemporary fiction in the last three years and each one, I hope, is simple in style and clear in direction. This is my style. This is the way I write. This is why I am drawn to blogs like Pink Tea and Paper. It’s down my alley, right up my street and bang down the avenue of things I like. Things like Trigger Bars, Talking Heads, cheesecake, Colin Bateman mystery books, trifle – uncomplicated-you-get-what-it-says-on-the tin stuff.

I like reading books and writing books that both I and millions like me can understand without having to memorise a cast of thousands, without having to look up the dictionary for unpronounceable four syllable words (John Banville – I love your books but why so many obtuse and obscure words???), without having to read through pages of the traumatised lives of pauper-like creatures that are barely human, who live in the lashings of rain in Limerick (I tell you no word of a lie – Angela’s Ashes sucked the life out of me!!).

Give me a happy book, a book with sunshine, a book with some humour in it, a book with a happy ending. It doesn’t have to be “Little House on the Prairie” happy – just some smidgeon of happiness. Something to make you smile, something to brighten your day. Something pink, something with caffeine in it, something written on paper that makes you take your mind off the daily routine.

I’m currently publicising my latest book, “My Little Lighthouse”. It’s a self-published book – as are my previous two books. Not everyone is lucky enough to hook up with a publisher or an agent – in Ireland the number is down to about half a dozen of each species. You probably stand more chance of replacing Wayne Rooney on the Manchester United team, or winning the Euromillions or scoring the presenter’s job on the Late Late Show. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. It also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go the self-publishing route. If it was okay for Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Roddy Doyle then - it’s alright by me.

“My Little Lighthouse” is about a man who gets struck by lightening (ouch!) and as a result looses his memory. He runs his software company nearly single-handedly and the company will go down the tubes if he doesn’t regain his memory. Will his wife – the only person he recognises - and his two grown-up kids be able to save him, his company and their family life?
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Don’t worry – it’s not doom and gloom. Don’t worry – there aren’t any four syllable words to look up. Don’t worry – it doesn’t rain once after the first chapter! Happy ending??? Now that would be telling now, wouldn’t it. . .?

Anyone who would like to buy a copy from my website will be helping Crumlin Children’s Hospital. All website sales up to the end of this year go directly to the hospital charity. Visit me at www.petermccluskey.com

Finally, a thanks to the lady with the pink tea and paper. Continue reading and supporting Ellen’s blog and let’s make the rain stay away a little longer.

Book Covers and Font Issues

2011-10-07T10:50:00.000+01:00

Have you seen India Drummond's excellent cover for Talli Roland's no doubt excellent novel, Build A Man?

If not, it's worth looking at - I think it's a great example of good cover design. And it got me thinking about cover art, and what does or doesn't work for me.

I know absolutely nothing about design, but I have very strong feelings about it - like the guy who said 'I don't know about art, but I know what I like.' I know what I don't like.

My big pet hate is anything that looks amateurish. If I look at a cover and think 'I could have done that,' I instantly won't like it. I want to feel that skill has gone into creating a cover. And there is no area with more scope for looking amateurish that the text of the title (And I have a font problem. I love them. I download them constantly. When I designed the invitations for Paul's wedding, choosing the fonts took weeks, not least because his wife is as bad as I am).

But a good cover is a fantastic thing. I think India's design does a great job - it's vibrant and eye-catching without being loud, and it gives a sense of the character and the tone of the book (or at least what I assume the tone will be, having read Talli's other books).

Do you have any favourite book covers?

Insecure Writers' Support Group - Proving Myself and Salmonella Scones

2011-10-05T10:00:00.000+01:00

Once again, it is the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for all Insecure Writers to stand up and be counted. There are some great bloggers participating in this monthly blog hop so it's worth popping over to Alex's blog and having a browse :)

Today I want to talk about making myself jump through hoops. 'Jumping through hoops' is a phrase we hear a lot as writers - agents with stringent submission requirements are 'making us jump through hoops', publishers that won't accept unagented submissions are 'just giving us an extra hoop to jump through.' One of the most common arguments in favour of self-publishing over traditional is simply that - 'I don't want to jump through any more freaking hoops!'

But I am a pessimist, a hypochondriac, and above all, I am an insecure writer. I like hoops.

I have blogged before about my terror of succeeding, so I'm sure you all know that you are not dealing with a sane person here.

I am not a person who trusts myself. I don't think I'm a good driver. I don't think I'm a good cook. I am convinced I will be the first person in the world who gives her family salmonella from undercooked scones.

So how does this manifest in my writing?

When I seriously started writing again after a few years of, well, not, I told myself I wouldn't query until I had written two books. My first novel was a deeply personal one, and I was scared I only had one book in me. But if I'd done it twice, I thought, I could confidently sign a contract for more than one book and trust myself to honour it.

It was a good idea. I have never queried my first novel, as it isn't strong enough, but last year's sketchy Nanowrimo idea has turned into a proper novel that I intend querying, and I trust myself to keep coming up with ideas. Now that I'm looking for them, I'm finding them.

If I hadn't given myself that space, that two-book window to learn about myself, I would have been desperately querying a substandard novel and sitting up all night chewing my fingernails and worrying about honouring a contract that I had not yet signed. (Like Charlie Brown, I am trying to only dread one day at a time).

Someone probably does need to sit me down and assure me that scones won't cause salmonella. But making myself jump through a hoop before I considered querying worked for me.

There are times when you need to learn to trust yourself.

Just hope you have a sympathetic friend who'll tell you when you're not growing anymore and you're just letting the fear win :)

Character Names - A Little Alliteration

2011-10-03T10:05:00.000+01:00

The main character in my current work-in-progress has an alliterative name. She was Becky Bailey, until I discovered the show Spooks has a character called Beth Bailey, so I changed it to Becky Barrett. It hasn't stuck yet - I'm hoping it will. I've always found alliterative names cool, and Becky isn't very good at being cool. She deserves a little cool in her life.

Unfortunately, the main character of my next book has popped into my head and she has an alliterative name too. I'm not too attached to her first name yet, so I'm working on changing that - her family figure heavily in the novel and I'm very attached to their surname (it fits very well with my - you guessed it! - alliterative title).

I don't want characters with alliterative names to become My Thing. JK Rowling pulls it off in the Harry Potter universe, but I write either urban fantasy or realistic fiction in which some weird crap happens. My characters are grounded in the real world, and alliterative names just aren't that common.

Anyway, at least I have a title for the next one! That's always an important step :)

Now, back to editing Becky. Sigh. . . . How is everyone else's week looking?

Review: Watching Willow Watts, by Talli Roland

2011-09-30T11:20:00.000+01:00

I was looking forward to Watching Willow Watts rather a lot. I loved Talli Roland's last book, The Hating Game, and I was hoping for big things.

I ended up liking Watching Willow Watts more than The Hating Game.

Once again, Talli is writing about fame, celebrity, and ordinary women in extraordinary situations, which seems to be what she does best (if there is something she does better, I would like to read it. Now, please). Willow Watts dresses as Marilyn Monroe during a village fete, and the resulting video is uploaded to YouTube, where it becomes an overnight sensation - not least because some fans believe they have spotted Marilyn's ghost in the background. Willow, an unassuming former florist, is not prepared for the reality of being hailed as the reincarnation of a dead sex symbol.

Her path to riches - well, the moderate riches she needs to pay the tax bill for her dad's antique shop - is beset by an unscrupulous failed agent, a mad American divorcee, a super-glam best friend, the ex who got away, the ex's new love interest, an aging reclusive film star, immigration officials, a JFK impersonator from Essex who sometimes forgets he isn't JFK, some butt padding and a large pink elephant (don't ask, just read).

Like The Hating Game, this is a funny book. But it isn't full of lame jokes and puns. It's seriously told, but by a writer with a marvellous eye for the ridiculous and a sharp sense of humour.

But as always, it's the characters who shine most. Willow may be quiet and unassuming, but her life hasn't been without its mistakes and she grows as a person during her brief tenure as the New Marilyn (and not just because her agent keeps feeding her junk food to fatten her up, either!). She could very easily have been a generic good-girl in the hands of a less skilled writer, but Talli manages to create someone gentle, shy and kind without turning her into a Mary Sue or the sort of fictional dullard you want to shake.

The secondary characters are also very strong - no surprise to anyone who has read The Hating Game, which also had a brilliant supporting cast. The village of Belcherton also comes right off the page. If I saw a tourist brochure for it, I wouldn't be surprised.

A great second outing from Talli - this book definitely doesn't disappoint and I can't wait for her third book, Build A Man, in December 2011.

Getting Ideas

2011-09-28T10:58:00.000+01:00

Some lucky feckers out there (*cough* Paul Anthony Shortt *cough*) seem to get a new book idea every fifteen or twenty minutes.

Some of us (*cough* me *cough*) are not quite as fortunate, but feel blessed to have found we finally have something in common with the coolness that is Hannah Moskowitz (she says, in her FAQ, "Some writers have too many ideas. I never have enough. I spend a lot of time shaking my head really hard and hoping something good comes together [ . . . ] It's definitely the hardest part of the process for me.").

Around this time of year, I'm always on the lookout for an idea for Nanowrimo. Some years, I start with avery vague picture in my head. Last year, this picture was o a young woman chasing supernatural creatures through a rainy city at night. The rainy city became Dublin, the supernatural creatures became fairies and my heroine never once chased them at night. Funny how these things turn out :)

And sometimes I start with far more detail. Oddly, these years tend to work out badly compared to the years when I start with a single idea, image or remark.

But when I start looking for ideas, I find that they're everywhere. Last Friday was Culture Night, when cultural institutions all over Ireland stay open late and don't charge admission. I finally made it into a certain landmark (a personal ambition - I'd had no idea it was so easy) and that sparked an idea. A throwaway comment on TV sparked another idea.

Suddenly I have two book ideas pending. This never happens.

I may even need to buy a notebook for them. OK, at the moment there will only be two pages filled. But it's something! I'm surprised how many ideas appeared once I started looking for them.

What's the weirdest way you've ever gotten an idea?

This Could Save Your Life

2011-09-26T10:10:00.000+01:00

I was mulling over what to blog about today when I spotted Kiersten White's annual PSA.

Kiersten is a NYT-bestselling author and a mother-of-two. Three years ago, she almost died from an ectopic pregnancy.

Every year on the anniversary of her emergency surgery, she posts about what happened, to raise awareness.

Ectopic pregnancy affects one in 50 pregnancies, so I think it's worth taking a day out of my own blog schedule once a year to help out.

Please take the time to read Kiersten's post. It may save your life or someone else's.

Is Blogging Worth It Anymore?

2011-09-23T11:26:00.000+01:00

Roni Loren, who is fab, has posed the question 'Is Blogging Dead?'

Wendy Lawton has a good post about marketing books, in which she suggests that blogging to gain a following and ultimately sell books is not effective. Wendy writes:

"I wouldn't recommend a writer start blogging in order to publicize his book in today's climate. It would be tough to picture a scenario where the outcome would justify the means."

She's probably right. I've been blogging for two years or so and have 204 followers.If I published a book in the morning, would all these posts equal 204 sales? Of course not. I'd feel honoured if 10% of you guys bought my book. Hell, I'd feel honoured if three of you did (Zoe and Paul have to, you see, because I knew them pre-blog, so we can assume at least two).

Wendy essentially feels that blogging is not an effective way to stand out, and on this she's right too. Everyone has a freaking blog.

Roni goes on to say that the blogosphere is 'glutted', that she's noticed herself skipping more and more blogs as the legions of writing-and-book bloggers are, naturally enough, producing very similar material.

She goes on to say:

Does that mean I'm giving up blogging? Hell to the no. I love blogging. It makes me happy and I feel blessed that you guys are still reading me after two years, lol. (Thank you!) And I really do love reading others' blogs.

That's how I feel about it. At his point, I have read probably dozens of posts about writers' block, making characters likeable, balancing writing with family/work, self-publishing vs. traditional. . . but I keep coming back.

The reason why? You guys. I read blogs because I like the blogger's voice, whether they're personal, detached, funny, engaged, highbrow, lowbrow, giggly or serious. When I meet up with my friends, we don't sit around producing new 'content' in the form of new and exciting topics. I don't think 'Ooh, coffee with Writer Friend later, I hope to hear lots about something completely new!' or 'Oh great, Paul is online, maybe he can tell me something amazing about South African politics.'

Nope.

When I meet up with my friends, we talk about the same things over and over - our lives, work, writing (some of them talk back about this, others listen politely while I drone on about it), hobbies, whatever. But I don't go to them for innovative new subjects.

I go to them because I like them, regardless of what we talk about.

Likewise, I read blogs because I enjoy them. They may not always give me fabulous new insights, but I like knowing how you guys are doing, even if we're not sharing anything deeply personal. It's about connection, and it's about enjoyment.

Derek has an excellent post about how blogging connects us, which is an excellent take on a subject that's really doing the rounds at the moment.

By contrast, and as is so often the case, I have nothing much new to add today. I'm not contributing to the sum of human knowledge here, I'm not creating enormously valuable content. I'm just saying 'Guys, I'm here because I like to be here. And I enjoy reading what you all write.'

I'm not here to market myself, or build a following. I'm here to write, to read and to enjoy both. And it's going really well, regardless of how saturated the blogosphere is. Depending on your intentions, blogging has different things to offer and different levels of benefit. For me, it's fulfilling exactly what I want.

Why do you guys blog? Has the answer changed since you started? :)

Assuaging My Conscience

2011-09-19T10:12:00.000+01:00

I have talked to some people recently who hate and distrust my Kindle (Writer Friend, usually in favour of the written word in any form, eyed it suspiciously on first meeting it as though it were a large growling dog. It took them a while to learn to get on).

I've heard that Kindles and their ilk are killing 'real books' (I have read tons of books on the Kindle at this point and the only one that felt like a fake book was, well, my own). I've heard that as a writer, I shouldn't own one because I should want 'real books' to survive.

My usual answer to this is 'I have bought over 100 books this year, for my Kindle, and I've only had it for seven months. How many have you bought?' If the 'but they're not real books!' argument continues, I tend to say 'This year I've managed to give royalties to more authors than I ever have before. And they get a higher royalty rate from my purchases than yours. I don't see how this is a problem?'

Depending on whether or not I'm doing my Scary Voice, most people back off at this point. You should never mess with a short girl who likes books - she will have honed her sarcasm skills.

But there is one thing I feel bad about, and that is bookshops. I love bookshops, and I am very aware that the money I have spent on books this year has benefited authors and publishing houses. But not bookshops.

I don't believe print books will die anytime soon. There are far too many well-read and intelligent late adopters of technology. I live in a country that doesn't have universal broadband availability yet (#firstworldproblems), which will no doubt affect uptake as buying books online is a headache with slow speeds.

That said, I am concerned that, as a young city-dweller, bookshops may die out in my own environment soon. This year, Dublin lost Waterstones. Who knows who it will be next year?

So what is a broke, Kindle-loving bookshop enthusiast to do?

Well, my mother's birthday is next month. I'm buying her a book. And for the dreaded C-word of which we do not speak, I usually buy books for at least a couple of relatives. This year, I'll be making an effort to buy as many books as I can (there are no Kindle/Nook/iPad owners on my gift list - well, there is one iPad-owning uncle but he prefers print books).

Have your book-buying habits changed? Do you make an effort to buy any kind of book (new releases, special editions, etc) to support the retailer or the industry?

Back from Abroad - Looking Ahead

2011-09-16T11:25:00.000+01:00

I've been in Budapest for a few days, so I'm sorry I've been so quiet on the blog. I was really sorry to miss Talli's launch party and am delighted so many of you enjoyed my post. The weekend here is shaping up to be pretty wet and miserable so it's good to have plenty of interesting blog posts to read when I curl up by the fire :)

I'd also like to say thanks to you all for taking the time to read, follow, comment etc. over the summer. I've done quite a bit of travelling and have been fairly crap at keeping up with everyone in Blogland, and yet I'm gaining new followers. . . So thanks to you all for sticking around.

I'll be sticking around myself for a while now. I'm out of annual leave and money so the next few months will be rather more Irish than the last few have been.

There is nothing like end-of-holiday blues to make you think about your life. This time yesterday, I was sitting in a heatwave, drinking spiced tea, and thinking about coming home to Dublin.

Where it was raining. It's always bloody raining.

And I thought 'Oooh, Nanowrimo is starting in six weeks! I get to meet tons of new, cool writers and write for the sheer fun of it for 30 days! And Draft Three of Becky is going well. And I'd really like a Dairy Milk . . .'

All in all, I was happy about coming home. It was a nice feeling, knowing that I loved all of my travels this year but that I was still looking forward to getting back home.

How is the rest of 2011 looking for you guys? Any fun plans coming up?

Watching Willow Watts - If I Could Be Anyone, I'd Be. . .

2011-09-14T12:36:00.000+01:00

The utterly fab Talli Roland has a new book out! And if her last one is any indication, it'll be a cracking read. I'm dying to read it but in the meantime, I'm chuffed to be participating in Talli's online launch party.

Talli's new novel, Watching Willow Watts, is about a girl who becomes an overnight celebrity when she is filmed impersonating Marilyn Monroe, and someone spots Marilyn's ghost in the background. And in keeping with the theme, Talli is throwing a virtual costume party, where we all come dressed as the person we'd most like to be.

After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided to come as Dorothy Parker. I'm not sure I want her private life, which was troubled by bad relationships, suicide attempts and addiction issues, but in spite of her personal demons, Dorothy is still inspirational, both as a writer and as a person.

Quite apart from the volume of short stories and poems she left behind, Dorothy had a formidable reputation as a wisecracker. When President Coolidge died, she asked 'How can they tell?' She said that Katherine Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. She assured us that if all the girls who attended the Yale Ball were laid end-to-end, she wouldn't be a bit surprised. Google 'Dorothy Parker quotes' and watch twenty minutes disappear in a cloud of giggles.

But her contribution as a political activist is often forgotten. She campaigned Her short story, Arrangement in Black and White, is a brilliant satire of racial issues among the 'smart set' during the 1920s. Dorothy Parker was passionately pro-civil rights.

When she died, aged 73 - not, everyone was shocked to hear, by her own hand, but from a heart attack - she left everything she owned to Martin Luther King Jr. When he was assassinated, her literary estate passed to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, which continues to benefit from her sales to this day.

However, her friend and executor, Lillian Hellman, was evidently a bit miffed that she didn't receive any money, and after a protracted legal battle, she refused to claim Dorothy's ashes. No one, in fact, claimed them, and they sat in a filing cabinet in her lawyer's office for twenty years.

Yep. Twenty.

Eventually, someone realised this and the NAACP built a memorial garden to her in Baltimore. Her epitaph, in spite of the many jokey ones she suggested for herself, is simple and fitting for a woman who was a finer character than anyone (herself included) gave her credit for:

"Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Humorist, writer, critic, defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested "Excuse My Dust". This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind, and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people."

So she was pretty cool, and an inspiration. But she was also a right laugh at parties, so for today, I'll pour a Martini and relive a few of her wisecracks :)

'I don't know much about being a millionaire but I bet I'd be darling at it.'

"This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

"If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you."

"I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money."

Electric Picnic 2011

2011-09-12T10:53:00.001+01:00

I'm away for a couple of days this week guys but have scheduled a few posts because I don't want to miss Talli's launch party :) I may not be responding to comments as much as I'd like though, so apologies for that! - Ellen

Last weekend I went to Electric Picnic on Sunday. I mostly went to see Pulp.

When I was a teenager, I wasn't very happy (I gather most teenagers aren't). I read a lot. I wrote. I told myself I was unhappy because I was an artistic genius, but I believed that I was unhappy because I was a gigantic pain in the face. The latter was closer to the truth :)

And I listened to music.

I have the musical equivalent of dyslexia. I cannot sing to save my life - my tone of voice isn't unpleasant but I can't hit a note. I am tone deaf. But I love music. I don't get it, and I never will, but I trust it to work its magic.

I still listen to music a lot, but the artists that I loved when I was a teenager, dreaming of being anyone else but me, will always have a special place.

I saw two of them at the weekend.

There was Bob Geldof, who I loved first as the frontman of the Boomtown Rats and later as a solo performer. The Rats were making music long before my time, but I found Geldof's autobiography in my parents' bookshelf and read it. I enjoyed it so much (although it doesn't pull any punches so it's not for the easily shocked) that I sought out his music.

I bought Loudmouth, a compilation of the Rats and Geldof's solo work, in a pound shop one town over from where I lived. There were two tapes with very similar track listings. One was five pounds and one was ten - I tried to buy the five pound one but the owner claimed he couldn't find it. I didn't believe him, so on principle, I didn't fork out the extra fiver.

I went back a week later. I had to know what these songs were like.

And it turned out that I loved Geldof's literate lyrics, and his Irishness. A young man who hated where he was from, and grew up to be first an artist and then an activist. He couldn't but inspire me.

My grandmother used to play the Rats' 'I Don't Like Mondays' on the piano. Hearing the opening notes of that song on Sunday night, in a tent, surrounded by people older than my parents and younger than my neices, was quite something.

Then it was time for Pulp to close the festival, and they were amazing. It was their last gig on the reunion tour and they have no plans to play together again. 'This may be the last time we all gather together to hear this song. . . ' Jarvis said, before the last song, '. . . and maybe someday our paths will cross again. Thank you all.' Then they played Common People, and the whole crowd roared, sang and danced like children - no one trying to look good, no one posing, no one caring.

Pulp seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they toured again. If they do, I'll be there.

The first time I heard of Pulp, I was about 11 or 12 and I decided to watch Top of the Pops on the BBC so I'd know a bit about the music that everyone in school was talking about (I was a weird kid. I liked soul and blues, which gave me feck all to say to people my own age). Pulp's single, Misshapes, was the first song they played. I don't remember anything else. I just knew I liked it, and that when someone asked me what music I was into, I could honestly say 'I like Pulp.' I don't remember buying their album, but their lyrics, their stories, their songs became the anthems that carried me through those years.

Pulp became a part of me, and dancing stupidly to Common People in a field in Laois was a far more amazing moment than you might think.

What music has been important to you? What music gets you through the tough times? What artist would you cross an ocean to see play live?

Guest Post: Michelle Moloney-King on Social Networks

2011-09-09T10:11:00.004+01:00

The lovely Michelle Moloney-King is stopping by today to post about her experiences on Twitter. We hear so much about how writers should use Twitter for networking, promotion, making friends, etc., that it's interesting to hear something about the possible early pitfalls :) - Ellen

There I was, new to Twitter, getting blog hits on my new blog and loving it. Apart from two kinda disturbing facts. (1). I was getting very strange DMs from men. (2). Worst of all, people were calling me “nice.” Now, if you know me IRL, you will know that I am not “nice”, I don’t do nice. I like to hear interesting stories, be entertained, have a laugh, be quiet when it suits me, spread my little bit of wisdom, listen to my friends when they need it. None of this is being nice but being a good Christian person. Treat others as you would like to be treated, that’s my philosophy. The “nice” thing was ticking me off. I made a decision to be helpful but no longer to add smilies, to give people links to helpful sites and not spoon feed them, I even stopped following new people, especially men!

But it made me wonder, was I doing something to sncourage all of this strange behaviour? Was I encouraging guys to be too familiar, people thinking it was OK to pester me into favours.....was I being too “nice”?

I started to tweet random things, I blogged about whatever took my fancy and I stopped caring what people thought of me. I stoped being fake, pretending to care, and being too helpful. The “nice” thing stopped. My new image was complete. I was now being referred to as “cool.” Now that, that I do.

The one thing that didn’t stop was the overly familiar DMs and MTs.

I concentrated on my interviews for writing.ie and my writing course. The editors of writing.ie asked me for a profile picture, I took a new one, liked it and used the black and white one for my Twitter profile. All of a sudden the strange DM’s and MT’s stopped, the men stopped saying weird things like “so nice connecting with you babe, add me on Facebook” or “I know you sent me your Facebook fan page, but I want to be your FB actual friend.”

The black and white image worked, my Mona Lisa half smile told them all to “FECK OFF!!”

Twitter is a strange world, men seem to think it is ok to send you kisses, pester you into being their Facebook friend, other people calling you nice, people pestering you into sending a RT (I love doing RT’s for my twitter friends, so get to know me then ask...but just cold call DM me. It. Is. Rude.)

My advice to Twitter users:

Stay cool,
Guys - don’t send kisses,
Don’t hit people up for favours until you have exchanged at least 20 tweets,
Be yourself,
Have fun
Only spend 15 mins on twitter, any more than that and you are an addict! (now I gotta go and tweet, read tweets, follow peoples conversations (without joining) and do some promo form my blog...on twitter!!

Michelle Moloney King grew up on a farm in Co. Tipperary. Her lullabies were tales about banshees and fairy forts from her banjo-playing poetic father. His last words to her (“you won’t remember me, you're too young,”) started her penning down his stories and thus began her creative writing. She has a Bachelor of Science in IT with University of Limerick and recently completed a Post Grad in Primary School Teaching with Hibernia College.

She started a blog in April 2011 where she shares stories about teaching, the IFSC, creative writing, flash fiction, ICT, art and much more.

Contact:

https://twitter.com/#MoloneyKing

http://TeacherMoloneyKing.com

https://www.facebook.com/#!/MichelleMoloneyKing

Insecure Writers' Support Group

2011-09-07T09:24:00.000+01:00

First of all, I want to say hi to all my lovely new followers since Karen's BBQ. I've visited so many great blogs in the last few days and I have a growing list of great things to read, and in return I . . . missed my usual Monday post.

I'm usually more diligent than that.

Anyway, today is the first day of the Insecure Writers' Support Group, brainchild of the fantastic Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Now, I am an insecure writer, so I've blogged about insecurities before - how tough it can be to share your writing and being scared of success, for example.

My main fear as a writer is quite simple. 'Is it rubbish?' I get halfway through a sentence and think 'Is this rubbish?' I get ready to email a draft to my beta readers and I think 'Is this rubbish? Am I wasting their time?' I read anything that an agent has ever posted and I think 'Will they think what I've written is rubbish??'

I've only ever found one trick for getting around that terror, and still managing to get words on the page.

I tell myself 'No one but me ever has to see this. I'm writing this for me.' And off I go.

Stephen King says we should write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open. In other words, the initial draft is for us, for our eyes only. When we get to the rewriting stage, that's when we let people in.

It works for me. I hope it works for some of you guys!

Hooking a reader, and going it alone

2011-09-02T10:31:00.000+01:00

I found a couple of things that I just have to share.

First of all, anyone considering self-publishing should check out the lovely and super-informative Catherine Ryan Howard's blog on writing.ie. She's also on Twitter as @cathryanhoward and is definitely worth following.

In other news, Mooderino has an excellent post on hooks: how to draw your reader in, how to pose a question, and most crucially, how to pose a question so that the reader may in fact care about the answer and thus read on. Definitely some food for thought there and great examples of what works versus what doesn't.

Apologies for being a great big boring person and posting links instead of content but today is one of those days where what I have to say is less important than telling what these guys are saying - all I have to say is 'yay, weekend!!'

Zombifying the Book Industry

2011-08-31T10:14:00.000+01:00

Is zombifying a verb?

I guess it is now.

I was busy refuting some of Ewan Morrison's points earlier this week, and I made a point of doing so without once mentioning JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking, John Locke, or any of the other self-pubbed ebook runaway success stories.

But I'm always interested in Konrath's points - I don't always agree with him but he's always interesting - and his response to Morrison's article is worth a look.

One point that Konrath makes is that Morrison is of the belief that writers have a right to make a living wage for their work. Konrath disagrees - he insists hard work and talent are necessary.

I'm with Konrath here. We don't have a 'right' to very many things in this world. We have a right to our basic human rights. We have a right, I feel, to make a living. We have a right to some choice in how we do that.

But we don't all have a right to make a living doing something we absolutely love. If we did, there would be about 500 million teenage popstars and the world's supply of lipgloss, tooth whitening kits and cropped tops would vanish overnight. A world where we all got paid for our passions would be a world that didn't work.

Hypocritically, of course, I want to make my living doing something I love. But I know I'll have to work for that.

And if enough people like what I do, I will get there. But people have to like me, ie I have to achieve a certain level of excellence.

This is the same as any non-artistic day job - I won't be a rich lawyer unless I'm good at what I do and people choose to give me money for it. I won't be a rich doctor, even, if I'm crap.

It's no harm to raise awareness that pirating books may damage an author's ability to write full-time, or reduce their hours at their day job, and thus may result in fewer books for everyone to enjoy. That's grand.

But the world doesn't owe me a living. And it doesn't matter whether I write books, paint houses or verb nouns. I have to get good.

So now to get on with getting good. No one mention Draft Three, it has become a diry word around here :p

The End of the Book: Or, How Scared Should We Be?

2011-08-29T10:30:00.000+01:00

Ewan Morrison's arguments at the Edinburgh Book Festival have caused quite a lot of talk. You can find them here, but before reading them I recommend lining up a cup of good quality tea, a quantity of your favourite food treat (be it milk or dark) and arrange for someone to give you a hug afterwards. I didn't do any of these things and ended up trembling uselessly at a blueberry muffin.

There is some scary stuff in there, and Morrison makes some very interesting points that it's hard to disagree with.

Then I got thinking.

Morrison's main point is that, since ebooks are outselling print and the current generation of consumers are unused to paying for news, music, content, etc., we are ultimately moving towards a world where writers will be trying to sell a product to people who want it for free. And that internet-based providers, like Google and Amazon, will be concerned about making money from advertisers rather than from book sales. So how on Earth will writers get paid?

Morrison writes:

But let's leave the survival of the paper book alone, and ask the more important question: Will writers be able to make a living and continue writing in the digital era? And let's also leave alone the question: why should authors live by their work? Let's abandon the romantic myth that writers must survive in the garret, and look at the facts. Most notable writers in the history of books were paid a living wage: they include Dostoevksy, Dickens and Shakespeare. In the last 50 years the system of publishers' advances has supported writers such as Ian McEwan, Angela Carter, JM Coetzee, Joan Didion, Milan Kundera, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Norman Mailer, Philp Roth, Anita Shreve, Graham Greene, Muriel Spark and John Fowles. Authors do not live on royalties alone.

A fair point. Lots of writers - lots of amazing writers, including some of all-time personal favourites, are on that list - have emerged from a system where writers lived off their advances until their royalty cheques came in. And now, even successful writers are advised not to quit their day jobs until their backlist supports their living expenses.

And advances are dropping. Or disappearing.

And of course, the garret is not romantic if you have kids, and need health insurance and a car and food and clothing. No quibbles here about writers needing cash.

But. . .

(and I promise I have a counter-argument that doesn't mention JA Konrath even once)

. . . only 40% of self-described 'professional authors' were earning their living solely from writing, according to figures published in 2005.

So these arguments only affect the 40% of professional authors who did not already depend on a second income stream.

Which sucks for them, of course. If we do end up in a world where writing for a living becomes harder and harder, those 40% will find it tough. But if they're smart enough and talented enough to be in the higher range of earners, I'm guessing they'll find a way to diversify in a changing market.

I agree with Mr. Morrison that writers should be able to live by their work.

But the reality is, right now, not that many writers can.

So there's no sense saying that the sky is falling when half of the people who live under the sky are already walking on it, and finding ways to cope.

Ebooks are selling. Yes, they're more vulnerable to piracy, but they are selling. People are paying actual money for them.

And storytellers have been making money since before we invented paper. We may not be able to see the future, but I'm confident that there will be one. There is no sense in fearing a future that sounds so much like the present.

Trying to be Nice

2011-08-26T10:43:00.000+01:00

I broke with my usual posting schedule yesterday because felt very strongly about an issue. I joined a Facebook group against the use of the term 'frape' and I found that some of the comments I read in the group saddened me a lot and I wanted to address that.

I also felt that joining the group may have been seen as hypocritical, since I am passionately pro-free-speech and have been known to tell some pretty bad-taste jokes myself. And in mulling over the issue, I realised why I feel that trivialising rape is wrong, in spite of being, generally, a very difficult person to offend.

So I decided to write about it. And I didn't post it to the relevant Facebook group, because I didn't especially want to argue with a bunch of strangers who are as entitled to their viewpoints as I am to mine. I don't enjoy arguments.

But I did not want to write my post in anger. I have occasionally written posts in an absolute fit of passion, when I have to consciously slow and soften my typing in case I smash the keyboard :) And I don't like doing it - it's such a pain to re-read the post over and over to make sure I'm not being unfair.

This is my blog so I feel I'm allowed be angry on it. But I don't ever want to be unfair.

I feel strongly about yesterday's topic. I also feel strongly about feminism (which, by the way, I view as a position that empowers both men and women with choices, not - as many people seem to assume - a label for women who dislike men), racial equality, voter turnout, recycling, availability of shoes in unusually large and small sizes, the statement that slim women are not 'real women' (what on earth is a 'real woman' anyway? I'm pretty sure I'm one and I never had to pass any tests. Was I off sick that day?), marriage equality, transgender recognition and the superiority of milk chocolate over dark. Not in that order, obviously.

And I know not everyone who reads my blog is going to agree with me on all of them. I may never post about most of those issues (the chocolate thing is probably going to come up again, though).

I will, however, always try to post about them with the best manners that I can. And if anyone ever wants to argue, I'll respond with my cool head on.

Have you ever tackled an emotive issue on your blog? What kind of response did you get? How do you feel about issue-based blogging?

Against the term 'Frape' - Language and Lines

2011-08-25T10:49:00.000+01:00

I use Facebook quite a lot and recently came across a Facebook group against the use of the word 'Frape' - a portmanteau of 'Facebook' and 'rape' used to describe someone hacking into your account and posting as you.

I joined it.

This was a big moment for me. I'm evangelical and slightly nuts when it comes to free speech. And I believe anything is permissible if it's art (although that begs the larger question of who decides what is or isn't art. . . ). In an online discussion about classic novels recently, more than one person suggested that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita should receive far less critical attention because it's told from the point of view of a paedophile. I think Lolita is a msterpiece, a work of genius and it's one of my favourite books of all time. Yes, it's about a morally reprehensible monster. But it's a good book.

So if Nabokov is allowed to write about Humbert Humbert's desires, why shouldn't a teenage guy in Dublin be allowed to type 'DUDE TOTALLY FRAPED LMAO!!' on his friend's recently-hacked Facebook?

Well, he should be allowed to! Of course. It's a word, and we can't ban words. That's just daft.

But he should also know the implications behind it, and he's not going to know unless the people who find it offensive tell him. And then he can choose whether or not he wants to go on using the word. And I will salute his right to do so, although I won't like him for it and may make nasty gestures at the computer screen when I see it.

Paul wrote an excellent post recently on the challenges of writing about a multi-ethnic society while living in an almost mono-ethnic state. He said that he doesn't want his writing to do an injustice to other cultures. But how can Paul possibly know what every single ethnic group, nationality or tribal group in the world will find offensive?

He can't, of course. None of us can. So being open and non-crazy about what we find offensive is a way of helping everyone to learn more.

This post is my way of helping. No need to thank me guys, honestly, although I am partial to milk chocolate and peach schnapps.

I find the term 'frape' offensive. Here in the West, we live in a society where sexual assaults are not taken seriously by the judicial system, where the conviction rates for rape and sexual assault are criminally low, and where TV shows and movies continue to use rape as a plot device to denote love, or as a source of comedy (especially true of female-on-male rape).

Culturally, we dismiss sexual assault. And here in the West, folks, we have it easy compared to some countries.

If we lived in a society that treated rape as seriously as it should be treated, I don't think I would find the term 'frape' any more offensive than the phrase 'I could have killed her for taking my last pink teabag.' We take murder very seriously, so that phrase is not offensive. It is not an expression of an underlying hostility in our society. It's just another example of hyperbole, and if we took rape seriously, I would likely have no issue with the term 'frape.'

But 'frape' is just another way for us as a society to say 'Guess what? Sexual assault is funny! It's also comporable to someone playing a harmless prank!'

It's not.

And the people I see using the term on Facebook are probably not bad people, and they're not necessarily people who would condone sexual assault (I'm qualifying those statements solely because I haven't met everyone who uses the term and surely some of them are bad people by the law of averages! But use of the term doesn't make them bad people). Perhaps they just don't see that it offends people.

Well, it does.

If you're going to use a word that people find offensive, make sure it's a conscious decision. I don't have to like that decision and no one has to like the words and ideas I choose to use, either. But if we unthinkingly use words that trivialise something serious, like rape, or if we use derogatory terms about people because they're 'funny', we send out a message that these issues and these people do not matter.

I don't believe that and I don't think most people I encounter on the internet do either.

Language is how we express our thoughts. If we use lazy and offensive terms without thinking, our language is expressing something we don't believe. Frankly, if someone has access to a computer and knows how to use a social network, they're smart enough to make sure that what's in their brain and what's on their Facebook page match.

My fear is that they already do. But that's another blog post and it makes me incredibly, incredibly sad.

Duck Soup: Writing and Terror

2011-08-24T10:16:00.000+01:00

When Paul and I were in college, sometimes he would talk about how he saw his future as a writer, or how he saw Book Three of his trilogy ending when he had only started Book One that week.

I used to say to him 'Paul, how do you make duck soup? First, kill the duck. Write the book!'

I would then talk about my own future as a writer, or how I saw the sequel to my second book ending when I hadn't even written the first book yet.

Paul would smile and nod, because he is a nicer person than me. He never mentioned duck soup.

But he finally got his revenge last night. I told him that I was putting off my third edit of Becky. I hope this will be my final full edit and that the next steps will be sending it off to gamma readers (the betas have already had their input), a brief polish based on their comments, followed by querying.

'I'm terrified,' I said. 'This is the last step before I have to think about putting the book out there. It's so scary that I don't want to start the last edit.'

Paul typed back 'Duck soup.'

He's right. I should just edit the book and see how I get on. Maybe the edit will throw up more problems. Maybe I'm still four edits away from querying. I won't know until I start.

But it's bloody scary. Every step of the journey takes me a step closer to querying.

Of course I'm scared of rejection. But that's not the whole story.

I'm also scared of succeeding.

Yep, I'm scared of the very thing I've wanted all my life. I'm scared of an agent liking my book, signing me, and selling it. I'm scared of being published.

Because when I get published, I want it to be right. I want it to be the right book, the right time, the right agent, the right publisher, the right marketing, the right sales - all leading, ultimately, to the right career. And I have virtually no control over that. I can't write the book that would be best to launch my career - I don't know what that is. All I can do is write the best book I can and hope.

And I can let go.

This book may never see the light of day. I'm prepared for that, and I'm OK with it. And I've read a lot about how other writers have handled publication, so I think I'm - well, not prepared for that, because no one ever is. But I'm prepared for how unprepared I am. And I have some idea what's required.

It's still scary. But my job right now is to put that aside and write the best book I can.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a duck to kill.

Is There a Doctor in the Book?

2011-08-19T10:01:00.001+01:00

I am a big fan of doctors in books.

I'm a hypochondriac, so I'm a big fan of doctors in general. I know some hypochondriacs hate them, because they associate seeing a doctor with being ill. I love them, because I associate doctors with making people better rather than with illness. And with discovering new illnesses I can worry about. And with giving me good news ('You're still not dying, Ellen, now don't trip on the way out. . .').

But I especially love doctors in books. I rarely read books with a medical setting though, so most of the fictional doctors I like aren't busy being doctors. They're doing something else novel-worthy, and quietly doctoring away off the page (presumably telling people like me they aren't dying).

So why do I love fictional doctors so much? What does a doctor in your book represent to the reader?

We make more assumptions when we hear someone is a doctor than we do about any other professional. A doctor, we believe, is capable. They have undergone a long and difficult course of study, so we assume they are likely to be intelligent, hard-working and dedicated. They are qualified to do things that virtually no other human being can do, so we feel respect, some awe, some envy. They've probably been trained to handle emergencies quite well, and - crucially - we assume that they are compassionate people. We respect doctors, we trust them.

All of which makes for a very interesting contrast if we're reading about, say, a doctor who makes poor moral choices (like Nicholas Garrigan in Giles Foden's The Last King of Scotland) or a doctor who is a horrible old git (like Gregory House) or a doctor who is a serial killer who eats people (Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs). Can there be anything more scary than a doctor - trusted, respected, and knowing more about how your body works than you do - who turns out to be evil?

But leaving aside scary doctors, who chill me more than almost anything else in fiction, what about all the other doctors in novels, who don't eat people? They're still really interesting. To make a character a doctor is to force your reader to jump to certain conclusions automatically, and once a reader has their expectations in place, it can be a great deal of fun to challenge them, or to reinforce them, or to completely subvert them.

In Paul's novel, his main character, Nathan, has a helpful doctor friend named Cynthia Keller. She finds herself plunged into a world she doesn't understand, but always, in the back of my mind as I read, I'm thinking 'Cynthia is a doctor, if anyone gets hurt she can help!' Which means that I have a heightened sense of fear - if anything happens to Cynthia, it weakens the people around her more, because she has the capacity to help more than the next person does. She is an interesting character to have around - but she's a very interesting character to potentially lose.

What professions do you like to read about? Do you have any favourites?

Watching Willow Watts Wednesday!

2011-08-17T12:06:00.000+01:00

Talli Roland, hot on the heels of her Take On Amazon Blogsplash last year, has come up with a really fun way to launch her new novel, Watching Willow Watts, which will be released as an ebook on 14th September.

Talli is hosting the 'If I Could Be Anyone, I'd Be. . . ' party - post a picture of the person you would most like to be (if you weren't your amazing self, obviously) and explain why. There is a prize draw for all participants and it looks like it'll be good fun.

Personally I'm torn between choosing someone with an amazing professional life who made a great contribution to the field of art, or literature, or music or rocking a pair of brown eyes, or someone who may have rocked less but also enjoyed a good personal life, strong relationships, and pronounced lack of tendancy to die prematurely and alone.

Obviously I want to be the second person, and combine major achievements with lots of hugs and cupcakes and giggling fits at market stalls when someone picks up something covered with gold sequins and says 'Ellen, this is totally you.' (I have at least two friends who do this to me, and I worry more may follow). But this is a fun exercise, and I also want to pick someone who is simply great, and deserves to have a blog post - with accompanying photo - dedicated to how fab they are. even if their personal life didn't always go right.

So, we have a great new book, a fun blogfest and a chance for me to get all introspective while I frantically Google famous women and muse 'She's cool but I'd prefer to be someone with a better facial bone structure. . . '. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

On Why People Are Brilliant

2011-08-15T09:17:00.000+01:00

I'm back from parts far away! I had a fantastic time, and it was lovely to come back and see so many new blog followers who had followed my guest posters here. So hello, new followers! I'm looking forward to checking out all of your blogs :)

I also wanted to say thanks to all of my fabulous guest posters - Zoe, Derek, Rosemary, Misha, Paul and the elusive and blogless Writer Friend :) It was lovely to know that the blog wasn't just sitting inactive while I was away and I loved collating and reading the guest posts, so very much appreciated guys, thanks!

On the writing front, I'm starting my third draft of Becky this week and will be posting things like 'Tearing out hair!' and 'How do I make someone more likeable???' with increasing urgency over the nexy few weeks. I also did a lot of reading while I was away so I'm sure various thoughts about books will come up too. But for the moment, I wanted to say that I missed my blogging/tweeting community while I was away. It's lovely to be back and to catch up on all your blogs, and to welcome new followers and find new blogs to follow myself. So my only point today is - you're all great. Have a good week!

Guest Post by Paul Anthony Shortt: One Author's Road

2011-08-12T13:31:00.000+01:00

Paul is joining me to talk about his journey to publication and why he made the decisions that he made along the way. He blogs at http://paulanthonyshortt.blogspot.com - Ellen

There's been a lot of talk in online circles about the best road to publication. Certainly, there has never been more options open to writers in how to pursue their careers. Self-publishing is the new big thing. The success of authors such as Amanda Hocking and J.A. Konrath have inspired a digital gold rush. Everywhere people are discussing the merits of self-publishing compared to traditional publishing.

Well I'm not here to debate which option is better. I believe there's room in this world for all forms of publishing to find their place, and it is up to each author to choose the road that is best suited to them.

I want to talk about the road I chose, and why it's the best road for me.

It was January this year when Ellen, who invited me to guest post on her blog, pointed me to a contest that WiDo Publishing were holding. The prize was to be considered for a publishing contract. Up to three people would be considered. At the time I was querying my manuscript to agents, figuring that was the best course to take*. Still, I knew Karen Jones, the person on whose blog the contest was announced, fairly well. She had, in fact, been one of my first followers when I started blogging about my work. I did some research into WiDo and was pleased with what I found. A small house, sure, but one with a business philosophy I found appealing. And, it was the best opportunity I'd found yet to get my book published.

I had completed the first draft of my novel, then titled Locked Within, about 9 months previously, and finished my revisions later in 2010. I wasn't having any luck with agents, so I felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I was told in April that I was the winner of the contest, and was being offered a contract for my novel. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, and I haven't looked back since.

So what did WiDo have to offer that I couldn't achieve through self-publishing? Well, for one thing I have enjoyed the services of their managing editor, Kristine Princivale, who has already been invaluable in the work of improving my book. Having the professional, and objective, perspective of an editor means I can find problems or weak areas in my novel that I would never have spotted on my own. Without WiDo, I would have had to pay for such services myself. I can already feel a strong partnership growing with Kristine and I'm looking forward to where we can take the book together.

Then there's the simple fact of seeing a physical book on shelves. Through WiDo's distribution, my book will be available in the USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK & Ireland. All it takes is for a bookstore to place the order. On my own I would never have the resources to match that level of distribution. This is in addition to my book being available online both in print and ebook formats.

WiDo are big on the author promoting themselves through an online platform. This is something I've really enjoyed. It has given me real motivation to become a part of the online writing community and to connect with potential readers. I like that they offer a measure of influence over how my book is published, something I would likely not get from a larger publishing house. I believe that this is the future of the industry for new and mid-list authors. More than ever, audiences want to feel connected to artists. They want to build a relationship, not simply buy their stuff. It's up to every author to provide that opportunity themselves, and I'd rather be on that train now, at this time, than trying to catch up years down the line.

And of course, in the most selfish terms I can imagine, there's the joy I got when I was offered my contract. I've dreamed of being an author since I was a child. I wasn't even twelve years old when I first started scribbling down stories and inventing fantasy worlds to tell them in. from that early age I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Receiving that e-mail from Allie, WiDo's acquisitions officer, was that dream come true. I could never have felt that from self-publishing. Now that I've achieved this, I have to work to keep it, and make the reality even better than I dared to dream as a child.

It's an exciting time to be a writer. The industry is developing and changing so much, there'll be so many ways for an author to find the road that suits them. I am grateful every day for finding my road. To any aspiring writers reading this, I wish you every success in finding yours. Keep searching, and you will find it.

*I still believe that finding an agent is an important step for every first-time author intending to deal with a publishing house. I was just fortunate enough to land a deal I was happy with even without the aid of one.

Bio:

Paul Anthony Shortt is an avid reader and lover of music and film. He lives in Ireland with his wife and their dog, Pepper. His first novel, which is still undergoing title edits, is due to be released by WiDo Publishing in 2012.

Guest Post by Derek Flynn: Poetry In Motion

2011-08-10T12:42:00.004+01:00

Derek is stopping by today to talk about his writing process and to make me terribly jealous - read on to see why! Ellen

Virginia Woolf said that to write, one must have a room of one’s own (Granted, she was referring solely to women, but I like to think of it as a unisex quote). I have a room of my own, but I often find that, to write, I need to leave the room.

I don’t know how many other writers find this, but there’s something about movement that gets the creative juices flowing. When I’m out walking, I find that I start to write in my head in a stream of consciousness way. I carry an MP3 player with me which has a microphone and a record function (or if I don’t have that, I just use my phone). It’s a very different way of writing. There’s no editing involved as there might be when I’m sitting at my PC. In that situation, I might tend to stop and look back over what I’ve written. I can’t do that when I’m walking. There’s no way of looking back over what I’ve written. I have to keep moving forward. There’s also little time for pausing. If I stop for too long, I’ll forget where I was. So, there’s no time to go off goggling how accurate my description of 16th century headgear is (only to wind up, two hours later, looking at Lady Gaga in a Philip Tracy hat).

But I’m lucky. This is where I go to walk when I want to write:

It’s a long stretch of beach so when the tide is out, you can really get a stride going, and that’s when I find the words will start to flow. If the tide is in, I like to sit on the rocks and listen to the sound of the waves as I dictate. One particular day, I was so enthralled by the sights and the sounds that I sat there for about an hour. In the end, I texted my wife – half-jokingly – to tell her she needed to come down and physically remove me from the beach.

Now, of course, all of this is not without its disadvantages. The most obvious being – “Why is that man talking to himself?” Okay, I’m not actually talking to myself, I’m talking into an MP3 player, but to some people this amounts to the same thing. But, as I said, it’s a long stretch of beach and if you walk down far enough, you can usually get away from the madding crowd. It looks like this:

(In the wintertime, when it’s dull and grey and there’s a mist hanging over the water, it looks like some kind of alien landscape.)

Imagine sitting in this exact location, no one around but birds, waves and serenity. I’ve heard many writers talk about the myriad of different ways they come about their inspiration. For me, all I need is this lonely stretch of beach and the sound of the ocean.
And my MP3 player.

(Oh, and the title is slightly misleading because I don’t write poetry. But it was the only clever thing I could think of. Sue me.)

Derek Flynn is an Irish writer and musician. He has an Honours Degree in English Literature and Philosophy. His writing/music blog – ‘Rant, with Occasional Music’ – can be found here: http://derekflynn.wordpress.com and on Twitter, he can be found here: http://twitter.com/#!/derekf03

Guest Post by Misha

2011-08-08T12:27:00.002+01:00

Misha is visiting today to talk about how her life - which sounds far more interesting than most! - influences her writing. Visit her at her always entertaining blog, My First Book - Ellen

One of my best friends asked me how my everyday activities influence my writing. It sort of left me gaping. I mean, it sort of follows that my activities will influence my writing.

But it’s more complicated than that. I mean, I do and have done a lot of interesting activities (to me anyway) from ballroom to solo singing to fencing to French and Mandarin. But… none of my characters are dancers. None speak any of my languages. None fence.

The only time that one of my fun activities went into my writing was when I did swordsmanship, dagger-work and grappling… as research.

Does it mean that nothing that I do goes into my writing? No… it just means that the details are finer. I use my language back-ground to build fantasy languages. My fencing experience reminds me of the rush you feel right before you decide to move.

But most of all, it’s the human interactions that give me the most fodder. I don’t put whole people in my stories. Don’t even base characters on people I’ve met.

Rather, I sort of pick up on things, like an aspect to a relationship. Or what I call character twitches. Those little things that goes contrary to what we expect from a person, given what we know.

The fears, the hope. The voices used. I breathe those things.

I take those little bits and wait for my muse to mix them together to make magic.

So that’s how I let my life influence my writing. But I’m more interested in how you do it. What do you find makes its way into your writing more than most? How does your life influence what you write?

Guest Post by Rosemary: Adventures and the Galway Arts Festival

2011-08-05T13:00:00.004+01:00

Today's guest post is from Rosemary, a college friend who blogs about having adventures. If my blog is a slice of life in Dublin, Rosemary's blog is a cake made from the west coast. Visit her at http://shedoesstuff.blogspot.com and see if you love her voice as much as I do - Ellen.

My name is Rosemary and I am an adventuraholic.

This summer has been a little crap for adventuring, what with it pissing rain constantly and being colder than a penguin's nipple. As a result, my adventuring, what little I have done, has been more indoors than out. Meanwhile it is Festival Season in Galway (April to October) which means we're all too drunk to notice the rain, and happily stand in puddles sipping from our plastic glasses idly begrudging some Canadian juggler, escapologist, or magician the applause they so vocally crave. Don't ask me why they're all Canadian.

Unfortunately, it is currently Race Week, which is the one which Galwegians have the most mixed emotions about. Sure, its great for our faltering economy: the pubs are heaving, the guesthouses are booked out despite their higher than usual rates, and the street sweepers have fierce colourful mornings, but you also can't get a fucking pint in the city for love nor money, and winking at your favourite barmen just pisses them off. So we stay in our houses and sulk for a week, letting the out-of-towners overrun Ballybrit, and then Quay Street in their suits and fascinators. A close friend resolutely refuses to leave her house for a full 24 hours every Lady's Day. She told me earlier that unless its pouring torrentially she won't budge. Why leave the house if its pouring, you may ask? "To see those dozy bitches with their wet feathers and flat hair stumbling around town in the afternoon."

Personally, I take the week to catch up on my work, visit the charming but oft-neglected public houses of Salthill (Oslo and The Cottage are favourites), and reflect on the amazing Galway Film Fleadh, and Arts Festival.

In all honesty I'm unqualified to reflect on the Film Fleadh because I have never, I repeat never attended an event. Which is odd, because I'm excellent at getting off my ass and doing things. I have an entire blog based on my capacity to simply stand up, go somewhere, and do something fun. So why have I not, in the five full years I've lived in Galway, attended a Film Fleadh event? I honestly don't know. Its a self fulfilling prophecy now, the same as the Aran Islands: I've never visited those either. Its partly financial. Did you know the ferry to the Aran Islands is €32? Unless you travel with a local, in which case its free. I'm waiting to befriend a local. I digress. The Film Fleadh directly precedes the Arts Festival and I much prefer theatre, dance and live music to film. That's just me. I'm waiting to befriend an actor/director. Then I'll go.

The Arts Festival was much stronger on theatre and visual art this year than music. The music thing kind of ticked me off. We had Blondie again, which is awesome; I mean who doesn't love Blondie? But she was also here in 2008. Can anyone name a song Blondie has released in the last three years? No? Exactly. The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble was another one. They opened for De La Soul and were reportedly awesome. However they are playing a free gig on Friday 31st as part of the Rosin Dubh organised West End Street Party (presumably a sub-festival of the racing festival). Sickener for those who paid €32.50 to see them in the Big Top last week...

The Absolut Gallery was in-freakin-credible. Just stunning. Hughie O’Donoghue's work in progress, The Road, brings together text and image. Resembling a book, each panel has a leaf from Gramina Britannica, the Victorian book of British Grasses, along with an image. The images are called Anabasis, and represent O'Donoghue's father's war journey. Anabasis is Xenophon's fifth century version of the Odyssey. Yes, I had to Wikipedia that. It is a hugely ambitious work, speaks volumes (ba da bum, ching) to children of emigrants and is a bibliophiles's wet dream. One can even read (ba da bum, ching! I'm on fire!) a subtle argument in the e-book debate, Book Vs eBook: Papyrus with a Vengance.

Arcane, a street show in Eyre Square, was an acrobatic spectacle performed by two Frenchmen who must have been made of bamboo and kryptonite, so strong and bendy were they. I make a point of attending an acrobatics or dance show every year, so was distraught to miss the Controlled Falling Project which, judging by how quickly it sold out, deserved a much larger venue.

But this is really all just preamble. The jewel of the festival, the performance everyone was talking about, was Misterman and I, ladies and gentlemen, was lucky enough to attend the final show. That was three days ago and I'm still struggling to formulate a response. It was everything it was hyped to be. Cillian Murphy (who, by the way, is a short arse), was energetic, ironic, and so enthralling one quickly forgot his Hollywood status. Personally I only imagined him fleeing zombies for the first few minutes. The play is choreographed like a Swiss watch, with props dropping from the sky or being produced by the solo performer not just at the right time, but on the right syllable. It is very very funny, but with Enda Walsh's signature sadness, a few laughs at what is fundamentally a deeply, deeply tragic story. The state of Thomas Magill's mental health is open to interpretation. Are the characters he mimics real, alive? Or is he an agoraphobe, locked in his home and his own mind, doomed to perpetually live out his day, groundhog style, until he gets it right. And ultimately doomed to get it wrong every time. Is he in an institution? Is he in hell?

I have a friend, a member of the Fregoli theatre company, who has a rant about standing ovations. She once told me that everyone is too quick to leap from their seats after a show. "When the cast bows, you sit down and clap. When the cast comes out again, you stay seated and continue to clap. When the directors comes out, if you physically cannot keep your ass in your seat, if you have been so moved by what you have just seen that the muscles in your legs come alive independent of your cerebral process, acting solely on the strength of your emotion, propelling you upwards, then, and only then, you stand."

She was out of her seat before the lights had fully dimmed.

What Is A Bloomsbury? Guest Post by Writer Friend

2011-08-03T12:00:00.000+01:00

Writer Friend has agreed to drop by today to share with us the pain of finding a Bloomsbury in your book. You may remember Writer Friend from Amsterdam or from my posts on beta-reading. Writer Friend is editing the final instalment of an utterly excellent rural fantasy trilogy set in Scotland, which I trust you'll all get to read inside proper covers someday - Ellen

I tend to go off on tangents a lot (so if anything in this seems tangential, just skip down until it starts to make sense again), and I also find it quite hard to see these tangents as I write. Particularly, as I have discovered, with the trilogy I am currently working on. After I had finished writing it, I laid down my pen and handed it to Ellen to read. She read it, enjoyed it and came back to me with many positive comments. But one of the first was ‘I like Ms. Bloomsbury. Why is she there?’

I said ‘Because…!’ And I paused, marshalled my thoughts and said ‘Because…!’ Ellen looked at me eagerly, waiting for this surely breathtaking explanation. I took a deep breath and said ‘Because…!’ then mumbled something. Ellen looked perplexed and said ‘Sorry, what?’

I repeated myself: ‘I don’t exactly know.’

And I didn’t. I had, half way through the first book of three, come up with a character I could really get a feel for and just pitched her in, headfirst. Unfortunately, I pitched her into a totally separate story that really couldn’t squeeze around to accommodate her.

As Ellen and I read on, we both realised that this was not unusual for me. In each of the other books, this situation had arisen at least once. We gave it some thought, and came to the conclusion that it happens more regularly than you might think (this is to reassure us both on those dark nights where you end up looking at your screen in bafflement and wondering if perhaps you took a heap of drugs and have completely forgotten the experience).

Just picture it –you’re holed up in your room, writing frantically and you feel like you’re on fire…the ideas are pouring in, you can’t contain yourself and you certainly can’t write fast enough to encompass all of them. They just keep on coming, names and faces…places that don’t exist and places that do and all you can do is let it happen and do what you can to record it.

And then you get what I have decided to call a Bloomsbury. A full-blown character or a storyline that may be both appealing and believable, but have sadly taken a wrong turning from some other potential novel in your head. And removing them hurts, it feels like you are somehow killing them or sending them back to some dungeon dimension until the time when you may – and its only a may – have a place for them.

Charlaine Harris has a book called A Touch of Dead which consists of several short adventures involving her character, Sookie Stackhouse. None of these adventures have made it into her best-selling Southern Vampire series, and I cherish the hope that they are, in fact, Bloomsburies (in this case, the storyline kind rather than the character kind) and that Ms. Harris has managed to let them see the light of day.

It gives me hope, anyway, that poor Ms. Henrietta Bloomsbury will not be consigned to the scrap heap of my desk forever more. I am endeavouring to keep future Bloomsburies in a seperare notebook, to be reviewed at leisure as a potential cure for writers’ block. But that sounds far too organised to be realistic. I’m sure, when ideas strike me at half eleven at night, I will be much too concerned about just getting them down somewhere to go looking for the lovely notebook I bought just for that purpose. But that’s a thought: as an excuse to buy stationary, Bloomsburies could be top of the list!

Guest Post by Zoe Faulder: Book Fairs

2011-08-01T12:30:00.003+01:00

Today Zoe will be sharing her experience of attending her first book fair. She blogs about life in the publishing world in Ireland at http://apples-bananas.blogspot.com

Book Fairs: The London Experience

Question: Should you go to a book fair?
Answer: Only if you know why you’re going.

In April this year I went to London with the purpose of experiencing my first book fair. I may not have known it at the time but that was pretty much the sum of it. Yes I met people, yes I went to seminars, yes I attended digital presentations and yes I came away wide eyed and brimming with ideas (and business cards) but I get the feeling that the first book fair is more about the experience of it than anything else.

I can say this because in May I went to my second book fair, Book Expo America – a very different kettle of fish I might add.

I stayed just off Baker Street with my sister and her boyfriend in a lovely little flat with a kitchen and a bathroom down the – communal – hall. That first morning I woke, got smartly dressed in items raided from my sister’s wardrobe (she’s far more fashionable than me) and had a lovely little breakfast made for me (yes, my sister is awesome). I then pulled my handbag over my shoulder grabbed my bag, of books and paraphernalia I intended to sneak on to the stand, and stepped out to become a London commuter!

Well… sort of.

I can barely call Edgeware Road to Earls Court commuting.

As I got on the tube I quickly recognised the publishing folk around me with their Kindles, iPads and giant bags of exhibition extras – The bags rather than the gadgets being the signifiers here.

Stepping off the tube I may as well have slipped into a querying author’s wet dream – I was literally swept up by the mass of publishers and carried towards Earls Court to be deposited neatly by the exhibitors entrance.

In I wondered and with in moments I had my badge and was heading towards the stand – far more efficient than I had been expecting!

Upon arriving at the stand it soon became clear that I would be holding on to my little bag of books – I had been thwarted by the organisational skills of the staff. There was no extra space for me to sneak my hidden books into and so they stayed with me – a heavy, awkward reminder of my failed attempt to stick it to the man.

After the first quick hellos I was off! There were stands that needed exploring, seminar rooms that needed finding, optimal lunch kiosks that needed selecting and, had I been more experienced, wifi enabled stands that needed befriending.

Monday was chock-a-block with seminars I wanted to attend – most of them on at the same time. I had my colour coded schedule with me the whole time and quickest routes mapped within the first hour – alas I still only attended 40 percent of them.

I found it very useful having my net book with me, even if I did evilly eye the iPads that seemed the dominant form of note taking. It turned out finding a nice patch of floor with near by wifi made typing out notes on each seminar and meeting allowed me to retain a great deal more information than I normally would have – unfortunately due to laziness time constraints this practice only lasted the one day.

About 40 percent of my meetings were pre-arranged, and only one was nearly missed due to timing confusion - It is important to remember to have contact details for everyone you are meeting with you on the day you are meeting them; it will make life so much easier. The other 60 percent came out of exploration and milling around.

I did meet with a few foreign language publishers, but most of my meetings revolved around digital services and certainly helped me get a clearer view of what was available, how it worked and what kind of prices were standard. Not all the meetings were fruitful and not all yielded the expected results, but from most of them came new ideas.

I learnt a lot at the London Book Fair and thoroughly enjoyed my experience of it. I met a lot of people and gained a library of business cards.

If you plan on going next year I’d suggest:

Knowing what you want to get out of it
Having a plan
Being organised
Allowing yourself some time to wander
Being sociable
Being open minded
Bringing a netbook or equivalent
not expecting a wifi connection
Enjoying yourself

Oh – and having an awesome fashionable sister that lives in central London is helpful too.

Photos and Guest Posts

2011-07-29T10:20:00.000+01:00

I mentioned on Monday that CreateSpace very kindly offer every Nanowrimo winner a free printed copy of their book wth no obligations or shipping costs or anything else nasty. It's rather like getting a present from a large corporation.

Quite a few people wanted to see photos so here you go - CreateSpace deserve the free advertising and I also hope this may nudge a few potential Nano-ers over the line :)

First of all, I had to think of a title on two days notice and I am - and I really cannot stress this enough - CRAP AT TITLES. The title came from a poem, A Call of the Sidhe, by George William (A. E.) Russell (am I the only Pratchett fan thinking of A. E. Pessimal?). So the awful title is a placeholder and will be changed as soon as I discover some hitherto unsuspected title-thinking-up skills.

I was very impressed by the quality of the printing. I chose the font for my interior title page and my chapter headings poorly (as a font-obsessive, this is a major blow to my sense of self). The capital letters overlapped with the lowercase letter directly after them, which was most annoying. But as no one apart from myself and few friends will ever see the book, it doesn't matter.

Below is a picture that shows the spine, which may be my favourite part of the whole thing. The quality is lovely and the font reminds me of a book I adored as a child called The Summer of Lily and Esme, which is never a bad thing :)

Apart from the 'I have a cool souvenir of the time I wrote faster than I can think' factor, it's also been interesting to read the book in print as opposed to on a screen. It made a lot of my errors more obvious because reading it as an actual physical book made me judge it as though it was a real, published book. I was - for possibly the first time in my life - able to approach my own book as a reader and not as the writer, and I was able to see the moments where I, as a reader, would have put the book down.

I can definitely say that getting my souvenir proof copy was worth whatever loss CreateSpace incurred in sending it to me :)

As I'll be away for the next couple of weeks, rather than let the blog go silent, I have rounded up a selection of guest posters to keep you all amused while I'm away.

So you can expect to hear from, among others, an adventurer, a publisher, a writer/musician who lives near an exceptionally beautiful beach and my beta reader extraordinaire,Writer Friend, whom you may remember from some other posts.

I hope you all enjoy the guest posts and have a lovely couple of weeks :) I look forward to have a great backlog of posts to read when I get home!

- Ellen

The Perils of Kindle Ownership

2011-07-27T13:34:00.000+01:00

I am always especially glad to own a Kindle when I'm going on holidays. No more lugging emormous, heavy piles of books everywhere! Now I'll be bringing my guidebook, my phrasebook and a light, easy to carry Kindle on holidays with me.

Ahem.

I decided to buy a few holiday books. As you do. I logged on to the Kindle store, downloaded a few, and sorted them, and a few other recent purchases and new releases, into a category so I could find them easily.

Turns out I have 14 of them.

This seems excessive, even to me. My Amazon account hasn't started to actually weep euro coins yet, thankfully, but it's a matter of time.

I am a fast reader, I admit. But I am not that freaking fast. Nor am I one of those busy people who catches up on their reading on holidays. There is no way I am going to get through 14 books.

Since we're on the subject, what are your favourite holiday reads? I've bought Kiersten White's Supernaturally, and am trying to save it for the airport. My best-ever holiday read was either Catcher in the Rye, which I read on a flight home from Liverpool when I was 15, or Forever Amber, which I read while sitting on an airport floor.

Tell me your holiday reading stories! And in return, I will tell you just how few of the books in my digital stash I manage to get through. . .

PS On Friday I'll let you know what the blog will be doing in my absence. I think it may throw a party and invite a bunch of other blogs and drink all my booze and I'll come home to find three drunk blogs passed out on my living room floor.

Nanowrimo and CreateSpace

2011-07-25T14:48:00.000+01:00

Last year, CreateSpace (an Amazon subsidiary) offered a prize to anyone who finished Nanowrimo. Free of charge, they would print and ship a paperback proof copy of your novel. Or whatever novel you chose to upload.

Mine arrived a couple of days ago. I barely got it submitted in time, so I didn't get a chance to design a decent cover - I went with one of their stock images, but it's actually a reasonable fit for the novel (which wasdifficult - I wanted something natural and pastoral but because the book was set in Ireland, I also didn't want green. I know green may seem fitting but trust me, when your country is exclusively associated with a single colour, using it for a book cover just looks cheap and easy!).

I also didn't have time to check if I could get cream pages instead of white, so the book now flouresces a little on its shelf.

But it is very pretty, and it is a rather cool keepsake to have. And there will only ever be one like it, which - in most cases - automatically makes it cool.

I wish I'd left myself enough time to actually design a cover - hopefully the offer will be back next year and I can do it then :)

In other Nano news, I have once again applied to be a Municipal Liaison for the Dublin region, so if you're a Dublin Nano-er and fancy a chat, please get in touch!

Know Thy Readers

2011-07-22T10:08:00.000+01:00

Who are your target readers? Who do you want to see reading your books?

Livia Blackburne is tackling that question today on her blog. John Locke, the first indie author to sell a million ebooks on the Kindle, apparently builds an detailed profile of his target readers and writes for them. Livia has done the same today, and it's a very interesting read, so I've decided to do the same for my current book.

Obviously these are not the only people that I write for - the first person to read Becky was male, and now that I come to think of it, I haven't actually given it to any women to read yet. Audience-targeting fail detected in the Dublin region.

My target audience is mostly female, late teens through to late 30s. They like urban fantasy - with the emphasis on urban rather than fantasy. They like to read about real women with real lives who happen to encounter unusual or paranormal things. They wonder how high-fantasy heroes paid their bills and kept themselves fed, and if they're going to read about a woman who can kick arse, they want to know how she handles her friendships, her relationships, her home, her family. It's not enough being able to handle a supernatural being of immense power. They're interested in how people make difficult decisions, when the right thing to do feels completely wrong. They like it when cool stuff happens but they want it to feel real.

Who are your target readers? What do you reckon they're like?

PS: I've been largely offline for a few days and I missed Wednesday's usual post I was attending Paul's son Conor's funeral service. I decided not to try and schedule a post because it simply didn't feel right to me.

Being offline cost me a few Twitter followers but not a single blog follower - so it seemed like a good time to say thanks to all my followers for always being lovely people!

A Few Lines

2011-07-18T10:18:00.000+01:00

Apologies for my unscheduled silence on Friday, I'm sure many of you will know why I decided to stay quiet for a day.

I find myself with very little to say this morning, so instead I'm going to share the opening four lines of a novel I've been toying with for a while.

At the moment, there is no more novel (I wrote this for a blog challenge) but I plan to return to it once I'm finished with my rewrites. Anyway, hope you find the following mildly diverting!

I stopped the car outside my uncle's house and stared at the dashboard, trying to collect my thoughts. Uncle Fitz was now the last surviving Finnegan, the only remaining member of my mother's family who had been born bearing the Finnegan name. He was now the only one who could activate the Finnegan Curse.

My job was to convince him to do it for the first time.

FYI

2011-07-13T14:31:00.002+01:00

Hi all, just in case you didn't see it on Twitter, Paul Anthony Shortt has asked that people stop sending any messages to him for the time being as he and his family need a little time to themselves. They appreciate your continued good wishes and prayers for his son Conor's recovery and Paul will let us know when he has any further news. Thanks.

Sharing Your Writing - Becky and Book Covers

2011-07-11T13:00:00.000+01:00

At what stage do you share your writing with other people? How carefully do you choose the people you share it with? How soon are you able to handle - gasp - feedback?

I ask because I sometimes struggle with sharing my writing.

As some of you may have heard, because I may have had it skywritten over Dublin, London and several American state capitals (hello Bismark and Albany!), I finished the second draft of Becky recently. I wrote the final 15,000 words in three days, with one day off in the middle for good behaviour.

I did this because all Nanowrimo winners last year were given a code to get a free proof copy of their novel printed and shipped by CreateSpace, and I wanted mine. My coupon expired on June 30th. I had to submit my book by the 29th.

I remembered this on the 25th. At 10pm.

You don't read this blog for my smarts, do you?

During those days of frantic writing (all both of them), I took the ending of the book in a few new directions. I had already decided on the substance of my ending, but the final climax changed quite a bit, some new things happened, and I killed off a character that I miss now and regret killing.

I was writing at such a pace that I didn't have time to go back and ponder whether or not something worked. I just kept going and hoped.

When I finished, my feelings about Draft Two would be best described as 'raw'. I was afraid that if I re-read it, I would become so ashamed that I would have to hide under my bed, potentially for weeks. I submitted the text to CreateSpace for my proof copy, designed a cover using their templates (no time to design one of my own) and decided that no one but me would ever have to read the contents.

But then I realised that, while I may have had no idea about the quality of the ending, I had enjoyed writing it. I liked the characters, and I wanted to go back to it. I wanted to start work on Draft Three and I wanted to start soon.

I needed feedback, so I sent it to a trusted friend and asked that feedback not be sent til I asked for it. As it happened, I asked for it as soon as my friend had finished reading, and it was really helpful. I've since asked for more feedback from others.

But I needed a few days to get some distance from what I'd written.

On the other hand, I know writers who can share as they write.

Where do you fall on the spectrum? And why? Do you love feedback as you write so you can incorporate suggestions early, or do you need space before you can think critically yourself? Share :p

News & Request for Guest Posters

2011-07-08T09:42:00.000+01:00

Today I had planned to talk about sharing your work with others. And I will, but I have a few things to touch on first.

Natalie Whipple has just signed a contract for her novel Transparent, and is running a contest to celebrate! If you read Natalie's blog (and if you don't, I promise it's worth checking out), you'll know what a bumpy road she's had to get to this point. She's had an agent for years (first it was blogland celebrity Nathan Bransford, then Anna Webman when he left the industry), and has been on submission for quite a while, but her sale was a long time coming. She has blogged honestly and openly about this - what can really happen after you achieve the first dream of landing an agent - and I can't think of another writer who deserves this good news so much.

In other news, I am looking for some guest bloggers! I'm going away for the first two weeks in August and would rather the blog didn't go silent. I'm open to any topic (I pride myself on my ability to diversity - READ: inability to focus), so please email me at ellen.brickley@gmail.com if you're interested.

I'm going to leave it there for the moment, because sharing your work is a big topic and I don't want to keep you guys reading all day. Certainly not on a Friday! Have a great weekend :)

A Confidence Boost

2011-07-06T09:48:00.000+01:00

I'm going to be a little lazy today and direct you to a post that really boosted my confidence today, just in case anyone needs it. Rachelle Gardner has posted extracts from editorial letters she has written to agented, published or contracted authors.

I felt great after reading them. They reminded me that a book doesn't need to be perfect to get published. It just needs to be as good as you can make it without help. Some of the issues Rachelle mentions (especially the first one, where she is 1/3 of the way through the novel and still doesn't feel excited about what's happening, nor has the core conflict been revealed) seem absolutely huge. But evidently there was something else - characterisation, writing style, whatever - that elevated this book.

I'm not saying that Rachelle's post means it's fine to write something half-assed and send it off. But when I see the huge gap between my drafts and the finished novels I read, I remind myself that the finished novels had the help of professional eyes. And that it's entirely possible that 'the best we can be' is enough.

Provided it really is the best, if course. Expecting people to read work you know to be substandard is just bad manners!

Talking of confidence boosts, an early reader of my second draft of Becky thoroughly enjoyed it :) I'm delighted not only because it bodes well for the third (and please please please final!) draft, but because this person voluntarily gave their time to read it and I'm glad they felt the time they spent on me passed enjoyably.

I'll be talking a bit more about sharing work on Friday. In the meantime, any confidence boosting stuff you want to tell us about? Have you received any nice compliments lately? It's a rare sunny day here in Dublin - spread the positivity!

Novel Back-Up Day!

2011-07-04T11:04:00.000+01:00

I spent half of the weekend ripping up a novel written by one of my best friends. It's OK, I was asked to :)

The novel in question was originally written by hand, and photocopied in case the first copy was damaged. Now that the novel has been typed up, the new, edited version can be printed, saved to a disk key, backed up online, emailed to the author - whatever. It is thoroughly safe. The older version, which is now obsolete anyway because changes were made during the typing process, can be safely ripped up and recycled.

Every year, Nanowrimo designated a certain day in November Offical Back Up Your Novel Day. Yesterday, as I was tearing up the second copy of a handwritten novel, I was reminded of how important back-ups are. My novel is currently saved in the following places:

two computers
one disk key
one email account belonging to me
one email account belonging to a friend
and one online storage service.

That may be a touch excessive. But if your novel isn't backed up, please do it today! Google Docs, Dropbox - whatever. Just make sure your work is safe!

Once More With Feeling

2011-07-01T15:07:00.001+01:00

Camp Nanowrimo is upon is. Think of it as Nanowrimo-Lite - you still try to write 50,000 words in a month, spurred on by the knowledge that many other people are doing the same thing. But the meet-ups don't happen, Municipal Liaisons like myself have nothing to do, and it doesn't have the same massive impact as November.

I can't decide whether to do it or not! You can choose to participate in July, or August, or both. I can't do August so if I'm going to do it, I have to start soon.

PROS

I just finished Draft Two of Becky, which involved a major sprint. I'm in The Zone.
It is fun. Nano always is.
I'm trying to save some cash this month and Nano has to be the cheapest way to pass time EVER.
Have I mentioned that is it fun?

CONS

I don't have any ideas to work on. Literally. There isn't even a back-of-the-head idea that I can birth prematurely. I have no pending projects.
It involves doing lots of writing when I occasionally prefer to merely sit.

I suspect I'm going to do it anyway. I also suspect that I'll be asking my blog readers, and probably Twitter (see right hand side of blog), for emergency character names and plot points.

Either way, I'm about to hand my life over to the writing gods for a month. Again. YAY!!

Interesting Interview - and a good cause

2011-06-30T10:56:00.000+01:00

I'm a big fan of JA Konrath's blog. I have described him as a self-publishing evangelist, and whether or not I ever wind up self-publishing myself, I love that there is someone out there talking about the alternative paths that are opening up for writers now. For many authors, self-publishing is the way to go.

Today, he interviews Scott Doornbosch, a newly-Kindle-published author who is going through a rough time. Because of his personal circumstances, legacy/traditional publishing wasn't the best path for Scott to take. Apart from the fact it's a good interview and Scott's book sounds like a cracking read, this is a very poignant reminder that the conventional routes to success aren't for everyone.

Please take a few minutes to read the interview and if you like the sound of Scott's book, spread the word! Passing on a link to the interview doesn't cost anything and may help to generate more sales for Scott, so I'm hoping some of you will consider doing that. Also, it serves as a reminder to authors who may be short on time or energy that there are other options out there.

If you are interested in buying the book, UK Kindle users can do so here, US Kindle users can do so here, Nook users can go here and people who love print copies can go here.

NOTE: I use the Amazon Affiliates program for occasional links to books, but as I couldn't find out whether my referral fee would come from Amazon's earnings or from Scott's, I decided not to take the risk and I will make nothing if you buy via these links. Also, I felt earning a referral fee from a book I'm plugging partly for compassionate reasons was a little like taking advantage of my readers' good nature, so I am categorically not making anything from this.
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Finished Draft Two!

2011-06-29T12:14:00.000+01:00

Last night, I finished my second draft of my urban fantasy novel (which we will call Cheesy Working Title from now on, because that is what it has). This is the novel starring Becky, whom you all met on Friday.

I am beyond chuffed. Not with the book - I re-read it, and it needs work. So much work. As far as I can tell, 80% of my book involves people talking to each other. I think I compressed the whole plot into the last four chapters.

But for now, I am finished. I can take a few days off to do radical things like drink tea and meet people. I can let it sit for a while, go back to it and decide what can be salvaged.

And then I can start Draft Three.

Today, however - pink tea for all!

Small Changes

2011-06-27T10:19:00.000+01:00

I tend to get minor illness a lot. Nothing bad, just coughs and colds, but since my day job involves talking on the phone, a sore throat or a cough is one of the most awkward illnesses I can get!

Also, as one would expect, feeling like crap so frequently isn't nice.

I do a lot of things right - I always dress properly for the weather, I take vitamins, I drink lots of water. But my diet isn't great (sugar junkie!) and I hate exercise.

I've had a head cold/cough for two weeks now and I have decided that I'm going to take some steps to get healthier. Once the real desire to hibernate goes away (I'm at that stage. . .) I'll look at the exercsise question (anything to put it off, really. I can't express how little I like it). But for the moment, I've decided to look at breakfast.

For breakfast, I usually eat sugar with sugar (sugary cereal with milk). And I'm starving again by the time I get to my desk, when I have a sugary snack. For the rest of the day I'm usually OK, but the mornings are where I fall down.

So my first small change is changing breakfast. I'm off to the supermarket after work to buy fruit and sugar-free natural yoghurt (yes, I know fruit has sugar, but I'm assured it is somehow better than the sugar in the cereals I like!). And eggs and wholemeal bread. And my plan is to alternate both breakfasts - which will be less boring than what I currently do! - depending on whether I fancy something sweet or something filling.

Massive lifestyle changes generally don't work for me. I have quite a busy lifestyle and anything that involves finding large chunks of time generally doesn't happen. But I already eat breakfast. I'm just going to take take either an extra two minutes to chop some fruit, or an extra five to scramble two eggs. Surely even a lazy cow like me can manage that, right? :)

Have you guys ever tried to change your lifestyle, one small step at a time? How did it go? What are your small steps?

PS - oh, feck, this is a book blog. I'm currently reading Changeless, the second novel in the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger, and it's fab. More on it anon. Alexia would never consider compromising her breakfast preferences, although I'm sure if her famous robustness was threatened, she would take the appropriate action with the minimum amount of fuss.

Late to the MC Blogfest Party!

2011-06-24T11:05:00.002+01:00

I just came across this on Alex's blog, and it looks like so much fun that I just had to sign up! If you're interested, pop over to Elizabeth Mueller who is hosting, add your name to the list and ask your MC the following questions.

I asked Becky, my fairy-hunting Dubliner, and I asked her at the start of the book. By the end, her answers would have been quite different.

Question 1: What is your greatest fear?

Hmm. . . well, given what I do for a living, I guess my greatest fear is that my boss will finally let me help with a direct, face-to-face hostage negotiation with a Fairy Court, and that I'll balls it up so badly that not only will they refuse to return the kid, but they'll curse my entire office to spend eternity in their Court, dancing til our feet actually wear out as far as the ankles.

I also hate bugs and driving in thunderstorms.

Question 2: What is your biggest accomplishment?

When a child gets taken by the fairies, I tend to be the person who is sent to keep the parents company while the real employees do the real work. I've gotten pretty good at being honest but optimistic with them, and more than one couple have told me that I really helped them get through it.

My biggest accomplishment, though, was when a single mum's child was taken last year. She had no partner, no family to help out, so I had to stay with her almost 24/7 with no idea whether my colleagues would manage to get her child back. Being there for her, even though I couldn't do anything constructive apart from cook and make tea, was definitely an accomplishment. It made her life a teeny bit easier at its lowest point.

Question 3: What is your biggest regret?

It's hard to say - I'm sorry I didn't study psychology the first time around in college. I wasted quite a few years working in dead-end jobs, saving up to go back.

And my mother died three years ago. I don't know what I regret about that, or about her, but I regret something. I feel like I should have done more, been with her more - I don't know. Can I say I regret my mother dying? Or does that sound too much like I killed her?

***

If you decide to take part, please let me know in case I miss your entry!

Switching Narrators in a Trilogy

2011-06-24T09:05:00.002+01:00

As I may have mentioned a couple of times, I just finished the final book in Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy.

From Sarah's blog:

The Demon's Lexicon series has always been a bit of a changeling in the crib. About family in a Time of Great YA Romance, changing narrators every book ('what is the woman thinking? Is she mad?'), a hero of great jerkitude who does not have being in love to excuse him, gay characters, having the word 'demon' in the titles, and full of many other weirdo bad-marketing decisions I have made.

Today I want to talk about how the narrators change for each book, because it's not something I've seen much before and as a reader, I could see clear pros and cons. There will be no spoilers!

There are three narrators - Nick, Mae and Sin, in that order. Each book is told with a third-person limited point of view. We spend the entire book viewing the world from the perspective of the character, but they aren't speaking to us directly.

The first book simply had to be narrated by Nick - someone who knew this world of magic, was in the thick of it, had suffered all his life because of it. But Nick, well, he is the 'hero of great jerkitude' and doesn't like anyone much. Although I think the trilogy could have followed Nick's point of view and still been very good, he is not the kind of guy to talk about things that don't concern him. While some characters could be involved enough with their friends to keep track of what they were up to, Nick just . . . wouldn't. So an entire trilogy from Nick's point of view would have necessarily focused heavily on Nick, to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

Mae, on the other hand, was new to the world of magic, but by the time she starts narrating she has learned enough that she isn't completely green. She's intelligent and insightful and was definitely a good choice to narrate a book that was essentially about getting to know the world better and handling the aftermath of Book One.

However, in Book Three (The Demon's Surrender), Sin, a minor character in Book One and a supporting player in Book Two, takes over the narration. I loved Sin, but she was somewhat outside the core foursome of Nick, Alan, Mae and Jamie that dominate the first two books. She provided an interesting new perspective and was a joy to read, but as the auther herself has said, it was difficult to write a book where Sin truly cared about the eventual fate of, say, Mae's brother.

As it happens, I feel the third book pulled it off very well - it pulled all of the elements together in a way that didn't feel forced. I imagine it was tough to do, but it worked brilliantly for me as a reader.

As a writer, though, it raises some questions. By having a different narrator, you gain a different insight. But it has to be weighed against what you lose. It may be harder to tie up lose ends. There is a risk that loyal readers won't enjoy the new voice. And it requires far more skill to keep a consistent storyline across three books with different narrators.

The Demon's Lexicon trilogy succeeds, and is definitely worth checking out if you plan to switch narrative voices. But I think it's a big decision, and a very big undertaking.

Writing Romance

2011-06-22T10:21:00.000+01:00

I mentioned on Monday that I always wanted to try writing romance - I have always loved the character-driven aspects of books the most, and the idea of an entire genre that's character-driven (because, really, what else can you call a genre that's all about two people figuring out how to be together?) appeals to me a lot.

For anyone who feels the same, Kate Walker has posted some tips for writing category romance over on Sally's blog. Even if you don't write romance, several of the tips are useful for other genres (I especially liked No. 11, the Intense Black Moment).

Ms. Walker has written successfully for Mills & Boon for many years. I admit I have only read one Mills & Boon book, which came free with a magazine (so I didn't even generate income for a publisher - oh, the shame). I read it when I was 14 or so, and in spite of the fact it didn't have Holden Caulfield in it, I found myself enjoying it. The premise was especially mad - from what I gather, it was madder than most M&B novels - and involved a woman ending up in the wrong room on her honeymoon (well, not really a honeymoon as the wedding had been postponed). She slept with, and later fell in love with, the guy in the wrong room. By accident.

So not the most realistic premise. But I cared.

I cared about the characters. Their situations may have been far-fetched, but the quality of the writing was strong and the characters sympathetic. Based on my one experience over ten years ago, Mills & Boon - and their writers - do their job well.

It drives me nuts when I see people patronise genre fiction - any genre, whether romance of sci-fi or mystery or crime. There are many readers who have a particular genre they love, and they read widely in that genre (sometimes exclusively, sometimes not). They are not undiscerning - they are the exact opposite. They are experts.

And you can't fool them with pretty language or literary tricks. They know what works in their genre, and what doesn't. They know when your idea isn't original, when your character is a secret rip-off/homage, and when your plot twist doesn't ring true. They get all your in-jokes. Such readers consume a genre extensively because they love it, and they expect your book to keep that love alive.

No pressure.

Now, I'm not saying that the book about woman who ended up in the wrong hotel suite is an overlooked work of high art. But it's not surprising to find that the writing and the characterisation were strong - it was written by someone who was writing for a genre audience.

Do you write genre fiction? What's your experience been like?

Versatile Blogging

2011-06-20T13:33:00.001+01:00

The lovely Christine at Digging Out Of Distraction has given me the Versatile Blogger award :) Many thanks, Christine!

Award Rules:
1. Thank the person who bestowed the honor on you. Done!

2. Share seven random facts about yourself:

My first ever ambition was to be an air hostess when I grew up.
I went blonde for six months when I was sixteen. My natural hair colour is very very very dark brown (see profile picture). I haven't dyed it since (in spite of wanting to try going red), because I feel that I am a brunette in some fundamental way.
I have never owned a pair of combats (fatigues for US visitors!) and really want some!
I am not quite tone-deaf but incredibly close.
I have a BA in English and an MA in American Literature, both from UCD.
I absolutely cannot stand tomatoes in any form. Including ketchup, pizza sauce, puree. . . if it's not the dominant flavour I will live with it but I can't stand them. This makes my desire to travel to Italy kind of problematic. . .
I write literary fiction and urban fantasy, but I am dying to try romance and YA.

3. Pass it on to five other deserving bloggers!

OK, it's difficult to choose five, but I will do my best :)

1. Misha at My First Book, as I always enjoy her posts.
2. Paul Anthony Shortt, because he's a friend and since he started introducing food to his writing blog, he certainly counts as 'versatile'
3. Mooderino, who always leaves very smart and thought-provoking comments!
4. Paula Martin, because I always enjoy her blog.
5. Wanton Redhead Writing, for just being all-round interesting!

Looking Forward

2011-06-17T09:54:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday, I blogged about how the first book of a trilogy should end. Luckily, the cliff-hanger ending of The Knife of Never Letting Go won't affect me too badly, as both of the sequels are already in the shops so I can read the second instalment whenever I like.

I spent yesterday reading the third book of one of my favourite trilogies - The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan (I promise no spoilers). I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was told from an unexpected point of view - Sin, who was a minor character in The Demon's Lexicon and a supporting character at best in The Demon's Surrender, but she was always an attractive and compelling character and I was keen to see how she stood up to more page-time. The answer is very well, and she's now tied with Mae for the position of my favourite character.

/end gushing.

Anyway, my longing for the final book in the trilogy has now been satisfied and the list of books I am eagerly anticipating is now shorter by one item. Which got me thinking - what books are you guys looking forward to? And why? :)

Have a great weekend!

First of Three: How Should the First Book of a Trilogy End?

2011-06-15T10:21:00.003+01:00

On my flight home from New York (had a fantastic time! On the trip, that is, not the flight), I read the first book in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking).

At the same time, I was eagerly looking forward to the third book in Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy, The Demon's Surrender. Haven't managed to get it yet - if you have, tell me nothing!

I was ploughing through Ness's book, which is action-packed and focuses on a character making a journey, so it constantly propels the reader forward to a destination, an end-point. In the food court of Terminal 4 in JFK, I could see that destination and was moving happily towards it.

Without spoiling, I will just say this: Ness ends with a cliffhanger. It is a conclusion but it isn't an ending. The main questions of the book have been answered but immediately, another much larger question is posed.

In spite of the fact that it isn't my usual type of book (it's quite dystopian), I am very keen to read Book Two. The quality of the writing is good and I like the characters, so I probably would have considered Book Two anyway. But the cliff-hanger ending is such that I feel I have to read on, whether I want to or not.

By contrast, Rees Brennan's first book ends with a major twist but no cliffhanger. My desire to read Book Two came from my curiosity about how the characters would handle the revelation medium-term, and again from the quality of the writing and the characterisation.

I feel The Knife of Never Letting Go can't be read as a stand-alone book. I feel the story is unfinished, and if I was to leave the saga there, I would feel unsatisfied,as though I had put the book down halfway through and never discovered the ending. The end of Book One wasn't a logical place to bow out, should I have wanted to. Put it this way - I wouldn't buy this book as a gift for someone because I would feel I was obliging them to spend their own money on the sequel.

However, if I bought someone The Demon's Lexicon as a gift, I would think 'OK, if it isn't their cup of tea, they can leave the trilogy there and still have read a self-contained story, albeit one that has a sequel.'

Has anyone here read The Knife of Never Letting Go? Did you feel satisfied by the ending or driven to go on?

How do you think the first book of a trilogy should end - a gotta-know-more cliffhanger, or a self-contained ending that's open for a sequel?

Why YA must Speak

2011-06-05T12:51:00.006+01:00

In my last post, I started to outline my views on the WSJ's Young-Adult-fiction-is-too-dark debacle.

I have a second point about it, but I wanted this one to stand alone.

Recently, I found the book that I needed to read as a teenager. It was Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson.

I didn't share most of the difficult and painful experiences of the protagonist. I was never traumatised, but as a young teenager, I was deeply unhappy at school. Like Melinda, I played silly and childish mental games to cope with it. Like Melinda, I found an outlet in creative art (since I can't draw a stick-man, I wrote. Badly.). Like Melinda, more than anything, I wanted someone to hear me, to see me, to know me. Finding someone who might like me wasn't even as important as finding someone who might understand me.

I wasn't an unusual kid. Looking back, I think a lot of people felt like I did. Natalie Goldberg writes brilliantly - as usual - in her memoir, Long Quiet Highway, about being an invisible kid in high school, of wanting someone to see, and to know.

Guess what, kids? Laurie Halse Anderson saw. And she knew. And she understood.

I found her book twelve years after my life changed and I no longer felt like Melinda. I enjoyed the book, because it was so well-written (and the award for Understatement of the Day goes to Ellen Brickley . . .). It still felt wonderful to know that someone understood - that there was a writer somewhere, thousands of miles from me, who would have smiled at the terrified and troubled kid that I once was and said 'I get it.' Even as a 27 year old woman, finding the empathy I needed half a lifetime ago moved me almost to tears. Happy ones, because there was someone out there who got what kids needed, whose book could give hope to the next wave of scared kids trying to fight their way to adulthood unscathed.

And I didn't have it half as rough as a lot of kids do. I had two parents. I had a house. I had enough to eat and enough money to be comfortable.

If I had found Speak as a teenager (if it had in fact been written then, which it wasn't), it would have made a real difference to my life.

There are YA books that deal with violence, rape, murder, bereavement, self-harm. That's because there are teenagers who deal with violence, rape, murder, bereavement and self-harm. Laurie Halse Anderson wrote a poem about the responses she received from readers of Speak and it's worth listening to. Those teens need books to speak to them. They need to know they are not alone, and that someone, somewhere, understands.

Who are the WSJ to decide that the experience of those children is too distasteful to be the stuff of literature? That the privileged among us have the right to remove that empathy from the lives of troubled kids because it is upsetting?

Which is more important - that a child reaching for a razor blade every night finds a book that speaks to her and comforts her, or that her happy and contented classmate not feel a few minutes of discomfort after she rejects a paperback she doesn't wish to read and moves on to the next shelf?

Heinrich Heine wrote "Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings." What he didn't say, but I am sure he knew, was that when we reject books, when we censor books, we are rejecting and censoring human beings. We are designating human experiences as unworthy of our attention.

And I will never be OK with that.

A Haitus from Haitus

2011-06-05T12:22:00.003+01:00

New York has been amazing so far (and I've only been here for half a day, that'll tell you how great my hosts are!). I woke up crazily early this morning and decided to pop on to Twitter to see what was going down.

Turns out the Wall Street Journal has run an article about how YA literature these days is too 'dark' for children, dealing as it does with self-harm, rape, incest, abuse, violence, kidnapping, etc. Whole article is here.

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I, ahem, may have somewhat 'gone off on one', and I decided to break my blog haitus. It's early in the morning here and I have some downtime.

I don't believe that it is the publishing industry's job to minimise children and teens access to material they'll find upsetting. It's up to their parents, because each child/teen will find different things upsetting.

For example, my mother read Stephen King's Misery when I was ten. She loved it and was keen to talk about it, so one night on a family holiday, she told me all about the plot and suggested I read it. I did, and it remains one of my favourite books. Another ten year old may not have relished the chainsaw scene as I did.

Frankly, I kinda hope they wouldn't . . .

I watched Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs when I was 11. Loved them both. My parents clearly knew their kid.

Of course, there were things I found traumatic to read or watch. I didn't really need to be steered away from them, because I don't enjoy feeling upset and wasn't going to chase down things that would get me there, but my parents also knew not to buy me books about heroic animals dying horribly, orphaned children, or parents dying in front of their children. They were my triggers. Yours may have been different.

The point is, it wasn't the world's job to stop Old Yeller existing. It was my parents', and later mine, to stop me accessing it.

Article on Writing.ie - Halves and Steps

2011-06-03T13:00:00.000+01:00

I have an article appearing on Writing.ie this week. It's about half-siblings, Irish schools in the early 90s and explaining things to daft teachers. I'm sure most of the people reading this can identify with that last one at least, particularly those of you who are actually teachers and don't get to say goodbye to your daft colleagues forever once summer comes. . . . :)

This isn't just a shameless plug (but if you've ever wondered what I look like outside my profile picture on Blogger, here's your chance to see. And yes, I always wear that much black). Well, it isn't just a shameless plug for me. Writing.ie is a great site, and regardless of the Irish domain name, it isn't just aimed at Irish writers. It has lots to offer everyone and is well worth bookmarking - especially the forums, which have great lists of submission opportunities and contests.

They also accept pieces like mine on an ongoing basis - there is one up there courtesy of Barbara Scully, whom some of you know from her blog, From My Kitchen Table.

I'm flying to the States in the morning for a week's holiday so I'm taking a short blog hiatus. I had planned to schedule posts to run while I was away, but this week was insanely busy and time just got away from me, so I'm afraid there will be nothing but pink tea and silence here til June 13th.

Hope you all have a lovely week and I'm looking forward to catching up with you when I get back :)

Courtney Milan and Going It Alone

2011-06-01T09:41:00.000+01:00

Romance writer Courtney Milan has announced that the third book if her Turner series of novels will be self-published.

Her announcement is very measured and well-written, and it certainly doesn't stand as a rejection of traditional publishing - quite the opposite. Ms. Milan is very positive about her traditional publishing experiences and has said she isn't turning her back on the world of traditional publishing at all. Her decision is solely based on the fact that the ebook royalty rate and the 'in print' clause in the deal offered by her publisher was inadequate.

I wonder how many more writers we will see with two-lane careers - traditional and self-publishing running alongside each other at a comparable speed, each fulfilling different functions for the writer's career. So far traditional publishing has been very mature about welcoming - or trying to welcome - self-pubbed superstars into the traditional fold.

Maybe there is room for everyone. It will certainly be interesting to watch how many more writers make this move in the future.

Draft Dodging

2011-05-30T09:55:00.002+01:00

I mentioned last week that I couldn't decide whether to continue with the second draft of my current work-in-progress. I need to make some major changes - the villains need to be badder, the main character needs to be more likeable (I always have this problem!) and a few secondary characters could be fleshed out more.

It's very tempting to scrap Draft Two and just start Draft Three (now with more evil and cuddliness than the next leading draft!).

Anyway, I've decided to finish Draft Two. Draft One had a rubbish ending. People talked. A lot. Remember the ending of Breaking Dawn? Like that, without the vampires. I've always been fascinated by the subtle art of diplomacy and negotiation but jeez, there is a limit.

Draft Two was largely to fix the ending, which involved making the MC more active and less inclined to sit back and be the 'new girl', 'audience stand-in.'

That has been addressed, but I'm still missing something. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, my complications have all happened and my MCs are in a great big mess. All that's left is to somehow resolve the great big mess and end the book.

It's so tempting to skip it and go back to perfecting my opening.

But I'm not. I'm going to stick with Draft Two, write my ending and then, in the immortal words of Samuel Goldwyn, at least I'll have something to change.

How do you guys handle multiple drafts?

Books About Writing

2011-05-27T09:53:00.002+01:00

Talli had an interesting post the other day, entitled 'Why I Don't Write About Writing.' It's a great post, and worth a look. Not every writer wants to discuss their own writing techniques and Talli provides an interesting perspective on this.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I like posting about writing, but my own method (if you'll pardon the overstatement) is still very hit-and-miss. I'm currently on Draft Two of Becky and the need for Draft Three has just hit me in the face. I'm trying to decide whether to finish Draft Two (I'm weak at writing endings so could use the practice), or just start Draft Three (some of the changes I'm planning will make writing the ending far easier). I'll let you know what I decide, but I don't think I'll be able to argue conclusively that whatever draft I choose to work on is the 'best method', even for myself. I'm still learning what works for me, so I don't feel I can even speak with authority about my own methods. My methods are changing constantly as I learn more.

With all of this in mind, I was delighted to be sent a link to a list of 50 Books That Will Make You A Better Writer. I'm betting none of them directly handle my Draft Two problem, but I love reading books about writing. Some of them have advice I take on board, some don't. But the message I take away from them is almost exactly the one Talli discusses in her blog - everyone is different.

I'm halfway between a plotter and a pantser (I just would be, wouldn't I?). I tend to have a vague idea of an overarching plot, but as the characters reveal themselves, I deviate. Sometimes a lot. I'm a writer who needs to tell herself the story in order to get it moving and enjoy it. When I was writing my novel about Rosie, I had meticulously plotted it (I had to, I had two intersecting timelines and I was trying to span over 90 years). And once I knew exactly what was going to happen, it was tough to make myself sit at my desk. The fun and the discovery was gone.

And it's nice to know that some other writers feel the same, that no method dooms one to failure.

Do you like writing about writing, or reading about writing? Any favourite methods? What books on writing do you recommend?

Blogfest: Letter To Future Me

2011-05-24T16:00:00.005+01:00

Kristin has come up with a great blogfest idea - letters to our future selves :) Go here to sign up and read other entries.

Dear Future Me,

I hope this finds you well. I hope you're alive, healthy and happy. I hope you've been published and have almost everything you want - but not everything, because life is more fun when you want something. I hope life has been good.

That's what I'm about right now - hope.

I hope for so many things. I hope this little rainy country gets stronger and more honest. I hope to travel more. I hope to write. I hope for so much.

But most of all, I hope you don't forget me. Or any of the versions of me that came before either of us.

No matter what happens, remember how it felt to work for very little money, or to have no work at all. Remember feeling that the whole country was voting against your interests, and don't vote against the interests of the weak, even if you are no longer one of them.

When you can afford to hire someone who can help you evade tax - DON'T. I know you're tempted. I don't like propping up some aspects of this country either. But at 27, the idea of doing it would have disgusted you. Don't do it now.

Remember being unpublished - remember how hard writing seemed, how hopeless all your dreams sometimes looked. But remember how great it felt to try new genres for fun. Remember the freedom to drop everything for Nanowrimo every year, and how to felt to sit over tea with friends for hours talking about books and writing and everything in between. Remember how great it was to be unpublished too, the fun and the freedom of it as well as the uncertainty.

Remember, whether you're published or not, that writing is brilliant fun and that's why you do it.

Remember living in a cold, damp flat, listening to Amy Winehouse and wondering what else your generation might create.

Remember listening to President Obama's speech the day you saw your best friend for the last time before she emigrated. Remember sitting in her house for the last time, knowing she was embarking on a wonderful new chapter and wondering what new chapters were ahead for you. Remember President Obama saying 'Is féidir linn!' ('We can!') and remember how you believed him.

If you have more than I do, please be grateful for it. If you have less, be grateful for what you had.

I hope I remember. Good luck.

From Present Me

New York - Book recommendations wanted!

2011-05-23T10:32:00.005+01:00

I'm going to New York in less than two weeks. Any sensible person would be looking up tourist attractions, changing her euros to dollars and turning down the corners of pages in her guidebook.

I'm not. I'm looking for books.

I have a seven-and-a-half hour flight over and I'm looking for books set in New York, about New York or otherwise involving New York to keep me amused for the flight.

My classic New York books are The Collected Dorothy Parker, The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey. But I can't find any of them on the Kindle and I'm loath to bring paperbacks that I've already read - nice to dip in and out of, yes, but probably not worth the extra luggage weight (the complete Dottie is fairly thick).

The blogosphere is very smart, can it help? :) Any genres accepted as I'll read anything once!

What Is A Bookshop Worth? Fine Examples of their Genre

2011-05-18T09:56:00.000+01:00

I visited a new bookshop last weekend.

It was lovely - well laid out, with some magazines and gifts but not too much. There was a coffee bar, a seating area and the obligatory minor celebrity chef in the corner doing things with some noodles (which sadly prevented me from checking out all of the books that were trapped behind his workstation thing).

Anyhoo, while I was there, something caught my eye. Instead of the usual massively discounted table covered with pink-tinged bestsellers and a couple of Orange Prize nominees, they had several small tables, each with a display of a single book - Book of the Month, Non-Fiction Book of the Month, etc.

But there was also a 'Minority Book Recommendation' table. This month's minority recommendation was a history of Paris.

The idea of the minority recommendation was simple - if you like this type of book, the selection is an especially good example of its genre. If you're not interested in this kind of thing, well, never mind. Better luck next month. They also offered a full refund on the minority recommendation if it wasn't to your taste.

(Effectively it was the Miss Jean Brodie table - 'for those who like this sort of thing, this will be the sort of thing they will like.')

I thought it was a fantastic idea. The subject area wasn't quite mainstream enough for a blanket 'this is fab!' recommendation, but the book was good enough to merit highlighting. I wish more bookshops would do this!

Many people claim that readers make perfectly good 'gatekeepers' for quality writing - that we don't necessarily need agents and publishers and bookshop buyers to make the decisions for us. A fair point. And yes, I can choose novels with reasonable confidence, because I read them a lot.

When it comes to a history of Paris, though, I might need a little help, and that is where a good bookshop comes into its own.

It was great to see a bookshop that was doing an excellent job with the resources it had, and that reminded me of all the best things about bookshops. When bookselling is done well, there is definitely a place for it that nothing else can fill.

Am I Screwing Over Writers? - What Is Writing Worth Week

2011-05-12T09:29:00.003+01:00

Before I start this post, I want to say thanks to all my followers! I've just reached 151 and it's lovely to have all of you guys around! :)

This was supposed to be the final post in What is Writing Worth Week (otherwise known as W4), but Blogger decided to crash on Friday so I've delayed it until today. And I spotted something over the weekend that is slightly related but not quite, so I won't be leaving the subject of ebooks, print books and the relative cost of each behind just yet.

Anyway, in the meantime I have decided to return to my Irish Catholic roots and examine some guilt.

All over the internet, people are talking about the death of the traditional publishing industry, in spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of books sold are still print books rather than ebooks. I think 'dying' is too strong a word to describe where publishing is. 'Worried sick' may be more apt.

I've talked before about how my book budget goes further on the Kindle. I feel this is good - more authors get to rack up a sale, and as I'm the kind of person who recommends, reviews and retweets obsessively, they also benefit from word of mouth. Low price points give me the chance to try new authors in genres I don't usually read. It seems win-win to me.

But.

I love bookshops. I love that they exist, I love browsing in them, I love buying from them. And my buying habits are apparently driving them out of existence. Naturally, this feels quite crap, because ten years from now, I don't want to be visiting a London without Foyles, a New York without the Strand or even living in a Dublin without Hodges Figgis.

I still try to buy print books. But they no longer represent value for money.

However, there is another way to look at it. The difference in price between a print book and an ebook is either:

a) the premium you pay for a luxury item

b) a necessary cost because I want a book that isn't available on the Kindle, or is priced too high on the Kindle (this comes up a lot!), or

c) a charitable donation to sustain businesses that I like to support, similar to the extra money I pay in order to buy Irish, shop locally or shop ethically (I do all of the above when I can, which is not as often as I'd like)

I don't begrudge the extra cost, and I'm happy to continue spending the extra money on print books for a book I really want, a book I want to lend people or a book I can't get any other way. Sadly I'm not in an economic position to do it every day, for reasons of storage space as well as money. I consume lots of books. I have gone from depending on the library and the charity shop to supplement my habit to depending on the Kindle.

And there we've hit on the nice guilt-assuaging part. If we began with the Catholic guilt analogy, this is my confessional, right here.

A good chunk of the money I spent on books wasn't reaching the publishing industry anyway. I was paying library fines (seriously, do not ask what my current balance is with the local library, I may cry), or I was buying second-hand or borrowing from friends. If we assume I had a monthly book budget of, say, twenty euro, let's say ten of that was reaching the publishing industry and ten was going to Oxfam or Chapters or whoever I was relieving of tatty paperbacks.

Now it's going to Amazon (and Oxfam are getting some of my clothing budget - swings and roundabouts). It's going back into the publishing industry in most cases (I don't buy many self-pubbed Kindle books), and it's allowing debut authors to rack up sales. It's allowing me to spread the word about debut authors. It's nice.

It's important to try to support bookshops. But there is space for both, and in the world of low price points, it's important to remember to support bookshops. We are in danger of losing a lot.

But we're gaining a lot, too.

What is a book worth?

2011-05-11T09:38:00.001+01:00

Are books worth more than two pints of Guinness? I wouldn't usually recommend asking this question of anyone of Irish extraction, but Adrian White has written an interesting piece about why he values his latest book at $9.99.

I am, as most of you know, a total Kindle convert who still loves paper books. I embrace the ebook revolution, but I am still doing my bit to make sure print doesn't die (I picked up three paperbacks at the weekend, one gift, two for myself. Long live print and digital!). Part of the reason I love the Kindle is that I can now buy more books and support more authors, because the books are cheaper - my money goes farther.

Adrian White priced his first book at $4.99, because he was told the story was strong and unputdownable, and his second at $2.99 because it deals with self-harm and was likely to appeal to a narrower market. Now, I would have suggested pricing the unputdownable book at $2.99 (get them in the door) and the less widely-appealing book at $4.99 to maximise the revenue generated from people who bought it expecting more of the same. But evidently Mr. White is both nicer and smarter than me, and thus has some hope of retaining his readers for Book 3, which is priced at $9.99.

A few commenters on his original post have remarked that value is determined by the customer, and this is true. The Irish understand this better than most - a few years ago, our housing market was such that horrible little houses in poorly-serviced areas were worth hundreds of thousands of euro more than they were ten years earlier, because people were willing to pay that. They aren't any more, so prices have dropped.

I haven't decided that the value of an ebook for me is less than a chai latte (I don't drink Guinness so we'll just have to live with my cost of living indicators for a moment). I will happily pay over $9.99 for a book by an author I really like. But for me (and that is the key phrase), it's too much to spend on an ebook for an author that isn't one of my Top 20. I'd rather take my $9.99, add another few quid to it, and use it to support a bricks-and-mortar bookshop.

From his article, Adrian White's books sound as though they are each quite different from each other. I have some sympathy with this, as I genre-hop like a bunny on acid in a great big genre field. But it makes me even less likely to spend $9.99 on an ebook, no matter how good the author says it is, because if I have read and liked his previous two books, it doesn't follow that I'll like the third. This is true of every author, of course, but more so for an author whose books differ drastically from each other.

I admire Adrian White's decision. He knows it may cost him sales and yet he is refusing to undervalue his work, and I respect anyone who shows such courage in their convictions. But the market is currently geared towards the idea that ebooks are cheap and cheerful, and print books are endangered luxury items we must fight to retain. I don't know if there is space in such a market for an ebook at almost a print book price - right now, I think the market wants either value for money or a comfy bookshop with knowledgeable staff, a thriving arts-n-culture program and an in-store Starbucks (we're back to chai lattes again - lord, does every road in my life lead to chai lattes??).

We want the best of both worlds. At the moment, we can have it. This may not last, and if it doesn't. . . then maybe consumers will get a little more comfortable with paying $9.99 for an ebook.

What's the most you guys will pay for a book? Print, digital, paperback, hardback, audio (the forgotten stepchild of the publishing industry), debut author, favourite author, bestselling author, small press, indie, self-published. . . whatever! What's your magic price point?

What Is Writing Worth? Part One - Blogs

2011-05-09T10:29:00.001+01:00

Irish writer Catherine Ryan Howard has made her blog available on the Kindle. Or rather, Amazon have done it some time after she asked them to :) Amazon have a service that allows readers to subscribe for a fixed amount per month, and have blog content delivered straight to their Kindle.

I am confused.

Before I even start this, I want to make it super-clear that I have no problem with people who choose to offer their blog on a platform that generates income. We're all trying to monetise our words here, and I'm not going to judge anyone who is trying to find legal and non-evil ways to pay the bills.

However, I am not mad about the idea myself.

I have no idea why anyone would pay to read content that I am making available free. You may think my posts are worth paying for (if so, thanks!) but they are free to read. I am willing to pay for chocolate - I'm willing to pay a lot for chocolate actually - but I don't volunteer money when I'm given free chocolate (my day job gives us all a free bar of chocolate every Thursday, so I have handled this conundrum in real life).

As a blog reader (I was a blog reader long before I was a blogger) I would be willing to pay to read most, possibly all, of the blogs I follow. But I follow tons of blogs, and I couldn't afford to pay for all of them, and since I can read them for free on my computer, I'm not likely to pay to read them on a different device. Why would I?

But as a blogger, I have even more concerns. We all coast a little on our blogs sometimes. I've made entries that were a bit rubbish, badly thought out, or poorly written. If someone has paid for content and I'm not delivering what they expect, they'll be annoyed at me in a very different way than if they have just spent two minutes of their time on me. I don't want to introduce that kind of dynamic into blogging - I feel that it's the spirit of sharing common knowledge that makes blogging so much fun. Introducing commerce to that relationship makes me uncomfortable.

Also, if you're going to spend money on stuff for the Kindle, I'd rather it was being spent on books.

How do you guys feel about paying for blogs? Would you ever? Would you ever make yours available at cost?

A Treatise on Compelling Characters, or 111 Bangable BritLit Boys

2011-05-06T10:16:00.000+01:00

This list has been doing the rounds.

I am trying to be all coherent and highbrow and bookish about this but I'm not sure I can. I got as far as Number 3 before bursting into print (I burst into print a lot. It's most undignified).

First of all, well done to the compilers for not putting Mr. Darcy first. Mr. Darcy is wonderful and all, but jeez, he's everywhere. Real people and fictional characters (Bridget Jones, I'm looking at you. . .), they all love him and it gets dull.

However, he's been pipped to the post by Aragorn (OK, I get that) and Mr. Big-Liar-With-Mad-Chick-In-The-Attic (not so much).

And Jeeves appears above Wooster (seriously, is anyone surprised Jeeves is above Wooster. . .?). But Gussie Fink-Nottle creeps in at 106. Sorry, but Gussie Fink-Nottle is only even a tiny bit appealing if there are no other fictional characters left.

In spite of my earlier comments above, Darcy has many positive attributes - kindness to his younger sibling, ability to get Lizzie's younger sibling out of trouble, helpful tendancies, cool eyebrows. In my head, he wins the Best British Bloke award.

I still feel Yossarian just about edges him out in the overall stakes, though.

What fictional characters would you must like to. . . ahem. . . be stuck in a lift with?

Twitter - Is It The Best Word To Have In Your Post Title?

2011-05-04T10:44:00.001+01:00

I've been reading The Onion too much, hence the subject :)

Recently I've started tweeting - I've even added a little Twitter thingy to my sidebar and the tiny blue bird aesthetic is looking ever more appealing.

I am looking for new and interesting people to follow, though, and since there's already tons of interesting people in blogland, I thought I'd ask if anyone here is on Twitter - if you are, I'd love to follow.

Do any of you guys tweet? How do you find Twitter compared to Facebook, blogs, etc.?

A-Z Blogging Challenge - Reflection Post

2011-05-01T19:28:00.002+01:00

As I said yesterday, it's been an interesting month!

I absolutely loved the A-Z Challenge, and I'm sorry I didn't have more time to go through all the participants and visit them. I did discover some great new blogs though and look forward to finding more :)

Also, recently I've been having some doubts about blogging. There are lots of unpublished writers/book nuts out there, and I don't know what I have to bring to the table that isn't already being said, and said well, somewhere else.

Then April happened. This month I posted entries about the sea, memories of my dad, Dorothy Parker (whose writing I have barely mentioned on my blog, which is weird because her work is one of my great passions), feminism (which I am sometimes afraid to mention in public because I belong to a generation who consider it 'unsexy'), and panic attacks.

I enjoy blogging about books and writing, but I also like the occasional deviations. This month has been a lot of fun, and I have loved the opportunity to step back from my usual subjects and blog about other things that are important to me. I guess April taught me that everyone has something to bring to the table. I'll certainly be pulling up a chair and staying at the table for a while yet.

Happy May everyone!

Zeitgeist - A-Z Blogging Challenge

2011-04-30T09:16:00.001+01:00

Guys, we made it! 26 posts later and I think we've all earned a few cups of pink tea :)

And it's been quite a month - one of my oldest friends got a book deal, which was wonderful news, and Talli's blog vanished, which was not.

But I still have one entry to go, and I want to talk about zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist is a German word that literally means 'time spirit', or the spirit of a particular time period. (I include this fact just to underscore how great the German language is for coming up with new, compound words to explain concepts we all understand but can't name. Schadenfreude, anyone?)

Anyway. We all recognise a book that captures zeitgeist when we see it. I've written a post before on how naming specific kinds of technology - websites, models of mobile phone - can age a novel very obviously. It's a fine line between capturing the reality of our lives today (the existence of mobile phones has done a huge amount, both good and bad, for plotting) and having someone read your book two years from now and think 'Huh. Bebo. So five minutes ago.'

But no one wants to read colourless word-soup with no identifying features either. And people now do Facebook and blog and YouTube and flagrantly use nouns as verbs. It's just how we roll.

In November, I took part in Nanowrimo and hit on an ingenious way to shamelessly pad my wordcount (well, ingenious for me. Every year on the Nano forums, the dirty tricks posted are phenomenal in both number and cunning). I set the book in real time. That meant when I got stuck, I could throw in references to what was in the news that day.

Luckily, November 2010 was an interesting month in Ireland. Our economy was bailed out by the EU because the country was headed for insolvency, and we experienced freak weather.

And when I re-read the novel in 2011, I found that it read like a period piece. Already, so much had happened - the days where we were wondering if there would be a bail-out felt like a distant memory now that we were living with the reality of it.

I also found a ton of stuff that made no sense and had to be cut out. But I left in more than I expected - I explained the situation better, and had characters make fleeting reference to it rather than actually have conversations about it. And I left enough detail that someone who had never heard of the Irish bail-out deal could follow it and see why the characters cared.

It was a very difficult balance but I think I may have got it right. Only my beta-readers will know for sure once I get Draft Two to them.

Personally, I found it helpful to imagine a reader trying to make sense of it in fifty years. We may not use typewriters or telegrams anymore but we can easily understand their function in a story. And fifty years from now, I doubt anyone will care about the IMF bail out - they certainly won't remember the details. We also probably won't remember what Facebook was.

But if we get across the essential nature of something - whether a means of sharing information and communicating publicly, or an economic threat to a small island shaped like a teddy bear - then it shouldn't matter if the nuts and bolts are dated.

If you made it this far - well done! It was wonderful to meet so many new bloggers this month and I'll be popping back to the lists of participants to find new people to visit :)