Are we going too far?

It’s been nearly a year since I got my agent and it’s interesting thinking back to the weeks and months that led up to that fateful day. One thing I did obsessively was scour the net for advice as I put the finishing touches to SHIMMER. I checked agent blogs and articles offering tips. One thing that came through loud and clear was the need for pristine editing.

Get rid of that purple prose!

Edit, edit, edit!

Keep that word count down!

Of course, one of the biggest problems with ‘newbie writing’ (counting myself amongst these!) is that people over-write. But what scares me about all this edit, edit, edit advice is that the passion is being stripped away. Does that make sense?

So word count for example. If you check out writer’s forums such as Absolute Write , you’ll see that writers are a teensy bit obsessed with word count. And I admit, I’m one of ‘em. Is it too long, is it too short? I feel like a teenage boy! Agents will tell you they’re bored of hearing the same old question – what’s the ideal word count for YA / romance / non-fiction etc. But some still provide a guide, usually saying that 50-80k is best for YA. Thing is, if you check out the hot YA picks at the moment, many come in with hefty word counts (I used http://www.perma-bound.com/ as my guide – just search for a book then click on the Reading Information tab and the info usually appears at the top there, sometimes not for newer books). So, for example…

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater comes in at 94,502 words

Going Bovine by Libba Bray at 123,224 words

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins at 101,564 words (and The Hunger Games at 99,750 words)

Of course, there are many examples of wonderful YA novels coming in much shorter (eg. Meg Rosoff stuff usually comes in at around 50k). But what you also notice with these longer books is that stuff that I’d usually cut out (indeed, have been told I ought to by agent blogs) has been kept in. And it’s not like all of them are established writers who can get away with this. Take Maggie Stiefvater, for example, a debut writer. I’m not saying that ‘stuff’ isn’t good, because it is, but it’s not ‘absolutely necessary’ which might go against the ‘only keep in what’s absolutely necessary’ dogma.

With SHIMMER, my first draft (written in 3 and half weeks!) came in at over 90k! I eventually honed it down to under 70k. But with BLISS, my first draft was under 50k. As I said in another post, I obviously learnt a lot about editing during that time. I’m still to see what my agent thinks but it will be interesting… have I gone too far? Have I let the advice take too much of the passion away?

So while others tell you to enjoy going crazy with the red pen, I wonder – are we all going too far?  Do we just need to relax the red pen a teensy bit?

Thoughts appreciated!

(Pic credit: by Mr. Wright)

A lesson on Chinese flying lanterns…

Hey, it’s the New Year. It’s 2010… doesn’t that just look amazing on screen? 20 and bloody 10!

For Christmas, my husband got me a Chinese flying lantern, the type that you light up and send off, floating away into nothingness. I’ve spent the past week finishing Bliss and a flying lantern play an important role. In one scene, the characters scribble messages on them – things they want to leave behind – and then they send them up on New Year’s Eve, all those negative things from the past year floating away, ready for a new year.

So, drunk on New Year’s Eve, a few of us did the exact same thing with the flying lantern my hubby got me. And guess what happened?

It got stuck in a tree and set it alight…

Urm, yeah, ha ha! Anyway, the moral of this story? Don’t light a Chinese flying lantern while drunk…

Christmas has gone to the dogs…

I am SO sorry for being a bad blog mummy… I’ve been knocked over by a bad cold and flu, swept away with the snow storms hitting the UK right now and entrenched in my novel, BLISS, which has taught me how difficult it is to write a thriller / mystery!Am desperately hoping my cold will go in time for Crimbo otherwise I’ll be one grumpy little elf!

I promise to be a better blogger next year (one of my many New Year Resolutions which also includes getting healthier and fitter so I don’t get ill like I am right now; and having a go at writing an adult novel…).

For now, let me wish you all an amazing Christmas and New Year and leave you with the picture above of my gorgeous Jack Russell Archie who reluctantly let me dress him up in tinsel a few weeks ago…

x

First drafts suck

It’s been a busy busy past few weeks… always goes crazy like this in the lead up to Crimbo. There’s been lots of birthdays to enjoy; work to be done and exciting writing news to celebrate (more info in future posts, ha ha what a tease).

I’ve also been working on Bliss (working title of book two). I wrote that first draft in a few weeks and have been mega excited about this one. I really hope Bliss is different from what’s out there right now, a YA mystery / thriller with a fantasy element. Anyway, I left that draft for four weeks and looked at it again, and boy, first drafts really do suck! I’m still excited about it but it isn’t till you leave a draft for a few weeks then go back to it that you  see the holes; the cliches; the mistakes and the weaknesses. But I’m working on this now and even when I get this draft down, my writer / editor friends still need to read it before it goes to my agent so yikes, it never ends!

Anyway, this leads me onto the whole ‘we all have a novel inside us’ malarky. Yeah, sure, I bet a fair few of us do. But actually writing that novel is the bit many people fall down on. And even when you do write that first draft, it’s very very rare that a first draft is good enough to get you an agent / get you published so it’s a case of revising and perfecting.

In other words, writing a publishable novel is hard work. Writing a novel as a hobby is FUN!

Fellow writer Kiersten White, whose wonderful-sounding YA book Paranormalcy will be out next September (with HarperTeen), wrote a great blog post of this so I recommend you toodle along to her blog right now and have a read if you’re one of those people who thinks they have a novel inside them… I retweeted her post, saying writing’s all about bloods, guts and tears and she quite rightly tweeted back saying ‘But GOOD blood, guts, and tears, right?’ and yes, yes, yes it’s allll good ‘cos nothing makes me more happy then working on a new novel. But it’s hard work (did I say that already?)

But have a read and lemme know what you think.

In reading news, am reading the follow up to The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire and will report back when I can. So far, a lot slower going but the pace is picking up so imagine I’ll be rolling around in all the blood and gore and gritty action that Suzanne Collins is just so great at depicting very soon!

Right, I’m off to walk the dog and buy the Sunday papers… Auf Wiedersehen!

x

 

 

I heart Halloween!

I just love Halloween. It’s as magical and scrumptious as Crimbo as far as I’m concerned and each year, I like to do something special to celebrate from visiting Tetbury Castle for an all-night ghost vigil (read about it in this blog post) to making an impulsive and terrifying visit to Clophill Church, an abandoned church atop a hill in the mists of an old village close to my town…  categorically the scariest experience of my life (read more in this blog post).

And naturally, this year is no different. I’m gonna be chased by zombies and pushed from sheer drops during the Thorpe Park Fright Night experience tomorrow. I-can-not-wait. And to celebrate Hallo’ Eve,  I’m gonna watch either The Ring (again! Complete classic) The Last House on the Left tonight (though I SO wish Paranormal Activity was out in the UK right now, looks amazing – see trailer here).

And OMG, did you hear about the 400-year-old witch-repellent found under a UK car park (article here)? It’s what’s known as a ‘Bellarmine’ jar and was found filled with urine, nail clippings and hair *barf* to ward off evil spirits. There’s gotta be a YA novel idea in there somewhere, right Speaking of witches, I interviewed an academic this week about his research into the decline of magic in the 17th century, see the article here. Pretty interesting stuff.

And now onto writing. I am SO inspired by Halloween and am desperate to write a fabulous ghost story one day but just need to come up with THE idea. In the meantime, I was checking out some of the novels I’d started and never finished (when I come up with ideas, I like to experiment with them, write a few thousand words, see if it works for me). And I thought one of them could make a real good short story for Halloween so have been tweaking it. Here’s a little extract, provisionally entitled The laps of angels (hell yeah, I’m jumping on the angel bandwagon for this one ) It’s real rough and ready, written way before I really learnt the tools of the trade and needs some work but hey, it’s all fun, right?

THE LAPS OF ANGELS

The first person I stopped from jumping off the cliff looked just like my dead sister, Mia.

At first I didn’t notice her in the mist, just saw the usual heap of rubbish in the distance –  broken prams and discarded brollies heaped like bones in the misty moonlight, lorded over by the half smashed statue of an angel.

It was my fifth night here since my sister had died, five nights of waiting for the chance to stop someone from jumping like she had; all alone in the dark as I battled with an insane desire to jump myself, the ominous air around me pushing me towards the edge.

But then I saw the girl, standing there in the moonlight like the ghost she wanted to be with her grey clothes and hair so fair it was almost silver. Her arms were spread out against the misty black sky like she was saying to death, “Hello old pal, old friend, old luv, take me into your arms.” And there was something about the way she held herself, the tone of the skin on her outstretched fingers that made me think of my sister.

Could it be….?

I stepped forward, heart pumping. “Mia?”

She slowly turned her head, and the temperature plummeted. I stepped forward, the freezing cold air pressing against me , pushing me towards her; urging me to the edge…

That’s all for now…. xxx

(pic credit: ginnerobot)

Philip Pullman on the borderlands of reading

Philip Pullman, author of the fantastic ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy (Lyra? Daemons? Need I say more?) gave a talk for The Open University 40th anniversary lectures on a) the nature of reading, and b) the relationship between the story and its illustration. And guess what? I attended. I’ve interviewed this fantastic writer a few times and always found him to be passionate, fiery, resolute and charming all at the same time and this was exactly how he was when I saw him talk.

The borderlands of reading

Opening his talk, he told the packed audience: “When we read, we enter a borderland – the space that opens up between the private mind of the reader and the book. Parts of the borderland belong to the book, parts are made up by the reader – of their memories of other books, of real people, what they associate with particular words, the reader’s temperament and so on. In other words, no reader will read the same way.” I found this fascinating – and spot on.

He likened it to what is known as ‘liminal states’, the ambiguous conscious state of being on the threshold between two different existential planes. He also referred to John Keats’ notion of negative capability, ‘when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’ (from a letter written to his brothers George and Thomas on the 21 December, 1817).

Pullman then went on to show the audience a series of paintings, for example Gwen John’s ‘Precious Moment With Book’ which demonstrates how the world around you dissolves when reading, the only clear space left between your eyes and the book you’re holding. He also highlighted how the painting shows the unique mixture of relaxation and attentiveness that comes from reading. Another painting he looked at was Casper David Friedrich’s ‘The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’, comparing the way the man depicted in the painting surveys the landscape before him to the way a reader surveys their borderland.

Illustrations in children’s literature

He then went on to focus on illustrations found in children’s literature, expressing his sadness at how it has become unfashionable to illustrate children’s novels because “pictures in book are like a windowsill.” He used examples from Fritz Wegner’s work, admiring the “romantic atmosphere” he created. Pullman also illustrated the charm of more amateurish drawings, such as those by Arthur Ransome and Tove Jansson (Moomins), and recalled how the “scratchy, swift and confident” drawings of Richard Kennedy swept him into foreign lands such as the working class Parisian scenes in Paul Berna’s A Hundred million francs. Away from urban settings, Pullman highlighted how ‘BB’ Denys Watkins-Pitchford depicts the countryside in Brendon Chase who Pullman with an “honesty and passion”. He also praised Rupert the Bear illustrator Alfred Bestall, especially the end pages of each Rupert manual which depict a landscape, which Pullman described as “full of fancy, lightness, delicacy and charm.”

On the other scale, Pullman went on to focus on illustrators where there is no interest in landscape and more a focus on people. For example, the Thomas Henry illustrations in Richard Crompton’s William books, that “scruffy muddy-kneed schoolboy” as Pullman described him where the focus was very much on the people and not on the “generic middle class England.” Same goes for Walter Trier’s illustrations in Emil and the Detectives – “wonderfully fluid and expressive lines but no background.”

In Pullman’s own books, the Folio Society editions of Northern Lights gave Pullman great pleasure. With illustrations by Peter Bailey, the main character in his trilogy, Lyra, is depicted beautifully (pictured). Pullman also gave an insight into his own illustrations. Before Northern Lights, the first in ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy came out, he illustrated the decorative devices at the top of each chapter and had to illustrate them using heavy black and whites to the size of a postage stamp.

Philip Pullman’s website

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Beautiful. That’s how I’d describe this book. Beautifully written, beautiful characterization, beautiful story.

I really, really enjoyed this one and really admire Maggie Stiefvater as a writer. She’s up there with Meg Rosoff etc and if you loved Twilight but want something a little more grown up, realistic and more beautifully written, I’d strongly recommend this one.

It’s about a girl who falls in love with a werewolf. Okay, it’s about a lot more then that and I would give a more detailed review but I’m discovering lots of new and amazing YA reviewers out there on the web and from now on, am going to find my best review of a book, give my own opinion then link. So here’s the link for this book from the wonderful The Crooked Shelf blogger. I’ve been following Carla (who writes this blog) on Twitter for a while and read a lot of her excited Tweets about Shiver, all proving to be 100 % correct. So, to read her spot-on review, go to her blog.

Enjoy!

Useful links:

Maggie Stiefvater website

The Crooked Shelf blog

When am I happiest?

When am I most happy?

When the new season of X Factor starts? Yeah, pretty happy but na, not most happy

When my dog does something truly dufus, like burying his bone in my mum’s flower pot? Close but not close enough

Trying out the new 5-minute ‘most dangerous chocolate cake in the world’ recipe my hubby brought home the other day (see below)? Hmmmm… na, not quite

Writing the first draft of a new book? YEAH BABY!

Writing a book that sings to my soul makes me most happy.  I had it with Shimmer, Book 1 (finally I name it ). If you look back on past posts, I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and wrote till I had that first draft down in under a month. Not ‘cos I felt like it was some race but because I-had-to-write-Shimmer. I had to write about the two main characters, Tori and Cam. I just had to. Why? As Robertson Davies said (you bored of my dragging this quote out yet?): “There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.”

And now I have it with Book 2, Bliss (working title). It all started 5-6 weeks ago. I had a dream (yeah, sorry, am getting a bit Steph Meyer on ya’ll!) I’m walking up a hill with a girl with long blonde hair. There’s a party or something, candle lights flickering in the dark. Then she yanks my hair back, screams at me. I run, desperate to find someone called ‘Chase’. I get to his house, his roommates let me in, bemused. I wait for him in his room, flick through his music then hear the door click open. I turn, and he’s there, standing in the gloom, skin like sand…

The dream wouldn’t leave me. Chase wouldn’t leave me, the blonde girl wouldn’t leave me and Rose, the girl whose eyes I was seeing the world through, wouldn’t leave me. And then, in the shower (ha ha), the hook for a new YA book just fell into place. So, the past few weeks, I’ve been writing and writing and writing until finally, this week, I got that first draft down.

I love Bliss. It needs a LOT of work, this is just the first draft after all. But I love it. I love how it makes me feel when I write it and read it back. So much angst and emotion. My writing buddy Bertie (check out post below) read the first 3 chapters and was seriously excited about it. And when I read passages, I see how much I’ve grown up as a writer; how much my agent has helped me see things in a different way and make the characters and the story come to life, like they have in Shimmer’s final draft (I hope). Bliss was much most emotionally draining to write, dealing with some intense subjects.

Who knows, it might suck? My agent might hate it, it may never get published. But even if it never sees the light of day, I had to write it…

So what now? I’m re-reading it, adding some new scenes then I’ll give it to Bertie to read. I’ll have some space from it then read it again through fresh eyes, tweak and send to my agent…

Now for that recipe for the most dangerous cake in the world:

Ingredients

* 1 – Coffee Mug
* 4 – tablespoons flour……(that’s plain flour, not self-rising)
* 4 – tablespoons sugar
* 2 – tablespoons baking cocoa
* 1 – egg
* 3 – tablespoons milk
* 3 – tablespoons oil
* 3 -4 – tablespoons chocolate chips
* Small splash of vanilla extract

Directions

1. Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well . Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
2. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
3. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again.
4. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 2 -3 minutes at 1000 watts. try 2 minutes first so its not so dry ok………
5. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!
6. Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
7. EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to share!) but who wants too !!hahaha
8. And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night! …………yikes!!!!!!!!

Find a writer buddy

I think every writer needs a writer buddy. Seriously. Someone who’s opinion you trust above all but your agent (and editor, if you’re lucky enough to get both! And readers if ever you’re lucky enough to get more then 5 of them too!).

I have a writer buddy. I call her Bertie (see our shadows above while on our literary retreat with two other pals this summer). We met several years ago at a company that kept us in a dungeon-like office, toiling away over magazines with ridiculous deadlines and not enough staff. The first thing I said to her? ‘OMG, do you love Tom Welling too?’ after seeing her Smallville screensaver. I think that’s what did it for us – that little spark of connection; an acknowledgment we were both still 14-years-olds living in late-20s bodies

Anyway, when she’d had enough of that dungeon and left, we stayed in touch, our mutual love of writing and desire to GET PUBLISHED drawing us together. We used to meet in The Harvester and walk about our dreams and our ideas and our frustrations.

It wasn’t until she started talking about her own YA book that I started to think, ‘ya know, young adult might be an option for me too’. I think, without her, I might not have seriously considered it at that stage in my life – and Book 1 may never have been written.

Since then, she’s always been the first one to read my stuff; she was the first one I forwarded my first request for a full from an agent to and I think she was even the first one I called when I got The Call from my agent (sorry mum! Sorry hubby!).

Why? Because being a writer – and when I say writer, I mean someone who puts writing in their top 5 of important things in life – has its peculiar joys and it’s very peculiar pains. Only another writer can truly understand the obsession, the yearning, the drama and the tears. Sure, I know other people who write but Bertie’s the real deal, the one who really gets it. Who really understands why I’m still tapping away at midnight at the weekend or why everything else, sometimes, diminishes in the big fat spark of a new book I’m working on.

Of course, people understand and put up with it. My mum, my hubby. But only another writer with the same intense hunger can just get it.

So yeah, we bounce off each other. But also, I really value what she thinks about my stuff. She’s an editor / journalist by trade (award-winning, might I add!); an amazing writer (though she doesn’t believe that yet but I think one day she will and I’ll say ‘told ya so!’) and an amazing reader. She finds stuff others don’t but most importantly, she tells me what her gut says.

So when I send her something, I have that same excitement and anticipation I get when sending it to my agent. And a glowing report from her is honestly enough to make me write like the devil and restore my faith in my writing.

So what I’m saying is – find a writer buddy. They’re more valuable than you can imagine.

I’m also saying thank you Bertie. It will happen. x

‘Thirteen Reasons Why’ by Jay Asher

I just finished reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher and I am just kinda speechless.So before writing about how I feel about it, I’ll give you some background.

The first time I really heard about this book was when I attended a talk by Sarah Davies of the Greenhouse Literary Agency. She used it as an example of a book with an amazing hook. And I think the reason is that you can sum it up in one paragraph and that one paragraph makes you wanna read it. Like, now.

Clay finds a bunch of tapes leaning against his front door. Excited, he tears them open and pops them in his dad’s old stereo. But when he listens to them, he discovers they’ve been recorded by Hannah, a girl who committed suicide a few weeks before and each tape represents 13 reasons – and 13 people – why she chose to take her own life.

Do you want to read it now?

Then I read about Jay Asher, the author. In fact, I read a post by him in the SCBWI forums from three years back with the title ‘Ready to quit’. That says it all, right? He’d been writing for years, getting rejections for years and they’ve preserved that post just to show talented writers out there that you can’t give up.

And this kinda ties into Thirteen Reasons Why because Hannah simply gives up. She gives up on life and for the reader, this is heart-breaking and Clay’s frustration and anger at her for just-giving-up is one of the factors that makes you feel so much when reading this book.

There are many reasons why I love this book. Here’s Thirteen Reasons Why (sorry, it has to be done)…

1. The teenage experiences – the ones that snowball to create one big ball of fury and fear and hurt? The ones that, in this book, drove Hannah to suicide – felt very real for me. I’d been through a few of those, for sure! Jay Asher says he asked his wife and female friends about experiences that had an impact on their lives and you can tell. This kinda stuff happens.

2. Which leads me onto the way Jay Asher manages to delve inside a girl’s head, despite being a boy! Really works.

3. I like the way Hannah’s story is interweaved with the few hours Clay spends listening to it. I think, without Clay’s ‘present life’ interjecting, it could be too much, too emotional. It gives the reader a break, like Clay sometimes needs to take a break.

4. As you follow Clay around, you really feel like you’re on a journey with him – and her.

5. Hannah’s voice is strong. It’s bitter and it’s sad and it’s fun and it’s cute.

6. The setting is vivid. You can really picture the areas Clay visits.

7. The characters Hannah describes match the kind of characters we mould ourselves into when we’re teens

8. The writing style. It’s subtle, beautiful, moving.

9.The depiction of Jay’s mum is good. She’s not controlling, she seems to understand what he’s going through without him having to tell her.

10. It made me angry. I wanted to shake Hannah and scream in her face and tell her to snap out of it. Not just Hannah, the fools who led her to commit suicide.

11. Clay’s anger matches the reader’s anger – shown through small actions like him clenching a fence near the end of the book. Clever.

12. It made me cry. This is always a good thing. Before I Die had the same affect on me and that book has stayed with me for a long time after I read it. I know this one will too.

13. It made me want to write on a weekend when I have major writer’s block!

So go read it. Because this one’s special. And if you’re a writer, be inspired – Jay Asher didn’t give up. You shouldn’t too…

Buy Thirteen Reasons Why

Jay Asher’s Blog