Work - it's a four letter word

Last week I spent a lot of money I don't have on miracle products that the hairdresser promised me would turn my hair from Anne Hathaway at the start of the Princess Diaries
On a good day
To glossy Kate Middleton-style locks
Dreamy, glossy locks
Apparently all I needed was an eighties style hot brush and some Moroccan oil, both of which he conveniently had to hand. Now, I am normally fairly astute where sales techniques are concerned - but not where my big, fizzy, unmanageable hair is concerned and I was soon handing over £13 for a tiny phial of oil and rather more for the eighties style hot brush. My hair still doesn't fall in glossy waves, for that I think I would need to be a New York style lady who lunches and book in for blow-drys. Not on my budget nor on my schedule.

What I really want is perfect hair that require NO effort. I want to wash, throw in some gunk and go. No hot brush or blow drying or work. I want it to be easy.

Of course if it was that easy we would all walk around with swishy hair and there would be no need for billion dollar industries promising us all frizz free glossiness. Papers wouldn't need to print pictures of supermodels on the school run to try and persuade the rest of us that we too need a yummy mummy outfit and perfect hair to drop our children off at school (I don't know about you but NOBODY turns up at my daughter's school looking like they are on their way to a photoshoot. Thank goodness). Looking effortlessly good takes a lot of hard work and time that I simply don't have or care enough about to do. Although I will hopefully buy horrendously expensive vials of oil.

Time for rather laborious and extended metaphor

The same applies to whatever you want to do in life. There will always be those who make it look easy, effortless. But just as those Daily-Mail-school-run-yummymummys have to get up obscenely early to work at that casual loveliness most of us have to work at what matters to us. And there are no shortcuts. No amazing vials of oil or hotbrushes to transform our work into something beautiful.

This week on Twitter that was a discussion about paid for editors. There are a lot of ways for aspiring writers to spend their money - conferences, memberships, courses - before adding professional editing in. And does it help? Would it teach you where you went wrong so you do better next time or would you always need the professional gloss put on your work? Donna Alward commented that her learning experience was "wash, submit, rinse, rejection - repeat" until one day she had learnt enough to succeed. But, all the professionals out there chorused, it is hard work. And there are no short cuts.

Any day now the postman will bring me that NWS report and I know that it is full of comments and advice and encouragement - and rewrites. I need to read, edit and rewrite, dig deeper, find that emotional conflict and really make it centre stage. Writing 50,000 words was just the beginning. Now the hard work begins. Meanwhile I have to take the 2500 words already written for New Voices, discard half of them and rework it. I don't want to. I wanted my writing group to tell me it was perfect the way it was, no more work required. Time to relax.

They didn't.

So today is a writing day. So far I have: drunk 3 cups of coffee, 1 cup of tea, read the paper online, rewrote an enquiry letter for friend, copyedited someone else's work, played on Twitter & FB, blogged. Not a bad morning's procrastination. Now I had better go off and do some actual, you know, *whispers* work...

Generous world of romance writing

It is exactly one month since I sent my manuscript off to the New Writer's Scheme. Obviously I made the process as white knuckle as possible, printing it out the morning I was packing to go on holiday - on a camping holiday which means ten times as much stuff to assemble. Cue much panic and yelling: "It's not printing! What's happening?" and much blaming of my husband because it was obviously all his fault I had left it until the last minute.
Then more panic. Where were our self adhesive labels? Why didn't we have any postcards? And (my personal favourite) "I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO WRITE A SYNOPSIS." But, three very stressful and tearful hours later, it was sent off and now I am waiting not very patiently for it to arrive back (looks out window for postman for the tenth time this morning).
What is particularly scary about this is that the NWS reader will be the first person to set eyes on this particular story. The first page was read out at a writing class and discussed with friends, I also gave them a little detail on the back story but since March nobody but me has read it. I wanted the NWS reader to see my plotting, writing, dialogue and characterisation uninfluenced by any crit from outside in order for me to learn where I am going in the right direction - and where I have it spectacularly wrong. A complete contrast to my New Voices entry which has been extensively discussed by my crit partners.
But how lucky am I that this book of mine will be read by a professional who is willing to give up their time to comment on my writing? Romance writers and editors are so very generous with their advice and support through courses, social media and conventions. My twitter timeline has been full of writers from all over the world getting together for conventions filled with workshops and one to ones in NZ, Australia, New York and our own RNA annual convention in Wales. The M&B New Voices page on Facebook is frequented by published writers commenting, cheerleading and blogging tips. Is every genre this friendly or is this as special and unique as it seems? There is information galore for the budding writer, all we have to do is find it, read it and learn from it.
Schemes like the New Writer's ones are very special indeed. I have seen two of the reports sent to other entrants and they are filled with with guidance, constructive criticism and invaluable advice. Thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever is currently reading Summer Fling. I hope the middle doesn't sag too much *cringes* and I am (just a tad impatiently) looking forward to reading your report.

Stuck in the mud

At the weekend my ever-patient other half and I took our 7yo to her first ever festival. It was supposed to be a safe, easy one: just 10 miles away ,easy to come home if things went awry. Of course, we forgot to factor in the great British weather, more specifically the great Yorkshire weather. When it took an hour and a half to advance 10 yards, the rain sheeting it down, steaming up the car, it was evident that if we ever did manage to get the car into the field we were never ever going to get it out again.

The view from our tent



And still the rain came. A brief interlude of sunshine on the Saturday morning enables us to dry out our waterproofs and then the rain returned and the mud deepened.

This was the easy path




But, thanks to towels, babywipes and a strict policy of 'boots off outside please', we managed to keep the tent dry, warm and mud free and some amazing music, food and local cider kept our spirits up. And then, on Sunday, the sun came out. A lot of the mud dried, we could walk without fear of losing our wellies and/or balance and ended up having a fantastic day filled with even more amazing musical talent, topped off with a brilliant performance by The Levellers (if you like left wing, folk inspired rousing tunes, which I do - and so did most of the crowd judging by the reaction).

listening to an acoustic set

Verdict? It was brilliant and please can we go next year says 7yo.

Now, finally home again thanks to the tractor driver who towed me out the car park, preparing for next week when we return to the school routine, I am struggling to finish my New Voices chapter. Partly this is because I want the last part to be in my hero's point of view and I don't know him well enough yet to know how he is going to react. I have my heroine firmly sorted in my head but right now he is an annoying enigma. It strikes me that writing, whether a book, a novella or even just a chapter, is an awful lot like my festival weekend. You start out with great optimism, then it all gets a little bit stuck in the mud. But finally, after a lot of patience and hard, hard work, the sun comes out and you can really enjoy the process.
Or maybe that's just me?

Surviving New Voices with some help from Rufus Sewell

I have just had a stoke of genius! Whilst writing the blog post below I was simultaneously trying to watch a BBC4 Italian crime drama; one term of Italian language lessons nine years ago obviously preparation for multitasking with subtitles,when I suddenly saw the face of my hero – not on the screen but in my head, Anyone see Zen with Rufus Sewell earlier this year Shamefully cut thanks to budgets? Inspiration for an Italian hero if ever I saw one. And who says watching TV is wasting time?

Heroic Zen


Okay, stop daydreaming - back to business: Last year I came upon New Voices somewhat unaware; a post on the Mills & Boon Facebook page piqued my interest, I clicked, noted the rules & regs & posting date and that was that. Completely ignorant of the vast amount of advice, knowledge and help available online I wrote and posted and that was that.

This year is already very different. New Voices has its own distinct Facebook page with over 300 followers including published authors, past participants and new entrants. Three of last year's entrants have forthcoming books with HM&B, many others have found success with rival online and offline publishers, I have taken two courses with the brilliant Jessica Hart and joined the Romantic Novelist's Association New Writer's Scheme (look at all those capitals) and nervously, email-obsessively await feedback.

I will, of course, be entering again. I have written just 1000 words but spent hours thinking about it, dreaming about it (writing and deadlines combining with tents and Scandinavian serial killers in an unsettling combination: may need to change my current reading material and holiday in an apartment in future), characters are beginning to make sense, a plot to develop. My expectations are more realistic this year, my focus on the entire book, not just one chapter. However, if I did learn anything from last year it would be this:

1. Act professionally. If you want to be a writer then every NV interaction is with potential bosses, colleagues and customers...
2. So, be polite, but not over the top! Sycophancy is embarrassing, rudeness even more so.
3. Want comments on your writing? Comment on others, we all want attention but with 800+ entries (based on last year) are more likely to click on those writers who have commented on us.
4. Remember, the commentators may mainly be your fellow competitors but they are also your future readers so treat their comments with respect even if you disagree.
5. Of course you will disagree with some comments but take a deep breath, ignore the urge to be rude about their entry and even more importantly resist the urge to argue. Thank them for taking the time to comment.
6. Even if you disagree, if the same point is made over and over then take it under consideration – remember these are your future readers.
7. It is a first chapter competition. Telling people they will understand when they read Chapt 2, 3, finish the book won't help – they are judging you on what they can read
8. Make sure your comments are constructive. Don't like something? Say it nicely, tell them why and give examples. Help them improve.
9. If you can't say it nicely and constructively then don't say it at all!
10. Market yourself. Use Twitter, FB and forums but remember – there has to be give and take. If it's all “me, me, me” people will ignore all your postings no matter how witty they are!
11. Have fun and good luck!

Recharging those flat batteries

I always knew I was deadline driven but writing over 13,000 words in 3 days, two of which were work days, then printing out the manuscript and trying to write a (forgotten about until the last minute – oops) synopsis whilst packing for a camping holiday and then posting manuscript on the way to said camping holiday was a little white knuckle even for me. It wasn't even the real New Writer Scheme deadline, that isn't until the end of the month, it was the made up deadline I inflicted on myself because I wanted to relax during my holiday knowing I had sent the TS safely off.
And because it is time to think about New Voices.
This year's camping trip was refreshingly free of rain except when we travelled there and packed up but, although my nostrils are filled with the scent of drying out canvas draped over every chair I possess, that is such a marked improvement on last year I can gloss over it, dwelling instead on swimming in blue, blue seas (very cold blue seas), roasting marshmallows on campfires, local cider, cliff tops filled with gorse and heather, no news. Riots? What riots? Safe in our Dorset bubble we had no idea that anarchy and craziness was breaking out across the nation's cities.
Should have been the perfect idea dreaming up scenario. Sun, sea, cider, what else does an aspiring author need? Armed with a freshly sharpened pencil and a very gorgeous A4 notepad from Paperchase I sent husband and daughter to collect fossils on the beach and started to explore the several ideas that had been stirring whilst I finished the NWS book.
They were all rubbish. Contrived, derivative, dull. Was it the writing in longhand? I am so used to typing have I lost the ability to use pen and paper? Looking at the state of my hand writing I am worried that the answer to that question is yes... Or were my batteries simply completely run down by that last, frantic weekend of writing?
So I read instead. I didn't go near romance opting instead for some nice bleak Scandinavian Crime and a touch of Young Adult.
There is just four weeks to go until New Voices launch and although there is almost a month for competitors to post entries – and several finalists did post late on in the competition last year – I want to get in at the start (there's that self imposed deadline again), not just because you get more comments and feedback but because it's fun to be taking part.
So I ran through the five bad ideas with my three faithful friends who very kindly didn't snort with laughter (actually as they are online friends they probably did but had the very good grace not to tell me) and they all quite liked one and helped me work it into something that may just work. If I can sort out those pesky motivations and conflicting goals and all the other ingredients that doth a good romance make. Meanwhile I am returning the favour with definitely no snorting with laughter just awe at their inventiveness and talent.
So now I just have to write the thing, that's the easy part isn't it?

Finding my New Voice

New Voices 2011 is around the corner. In two months time Mills & Boon will be once again giving aspiring authors the chance to get their work out there, for critique, comment, perhaps praise. To ultimately be judged and, for one hard working talent, given a unique opportunity to shine. The first New Voices was last year; I had been playing around with writing for four years or so, managing 40,000 not-bad-at-all words with the talented @nellbelleandme (turned down by at least ten short sighted agents, not that I'm bitter), submitting two partials to M&B and attending one exhilarating day of workshops at the York Festival of Writing. But New Voices 2010 was when I began to take writing seriously.

I wrote last year's entry cross legged in a tent in Devon, listening to the wind and the rain beat down around me (it wasn't the world's greatest holiday), fighting my daughter for the laptop as she rediscovered Monsters Inc in a big way. It was a way of passing time whilst I waited for feedback on what would become Standard R 2. Good feedback from a Mills & Boon editor at the York Festival of Writing had filled me with confidence, maybe a little too much. I didn't expect to win but I'll let you in on a secret, I did expect my entry to shine in some way.

My holiday writing space - in a rare, dry second

It didn't. The first entries on this blog relive that time in all its raw emotion, embarrassing and slightly uncomfortable to read maybe, but honest. The confidence was replaced with doubt, gnawing, gut wrenching doubt that even the many positive comments on my entry couldn't fix. But, for the first time, I had begun to participate in writers' circles online, befriending other writers, on Facebook and Twitter..Writers who were learning from their disappointment and moving on. Right, so I would too. I gritted my teeth and carried on.

I rewrote the competition chapter and a second and put them aside to come back too, along with the 2nd rejected R (the first rejected R is best left alone)
I started this Blog
I did Nano – 50,000+ words
I entered So You Think You Can Write and a Harlequin Valentine's Competition
I joined the RNA New Writer's Scheme
I did two courses with Jessica Hart, sadly not in Tuscany
I gave up editing my Nano (it belongs with the first rejected R) and started on a new book to submit to the New Writers Scheme

Not bad for nine months work, especially as all this is squeezed into those brief moments when I am not parenting, working or at cub camp (at this time of year every week seems to be cub camp).

And I am looking forward to New Voices 2011. I have a couple of ideas, one historical, 2 contemporary to play with the second I get the still untitled NWS manuscript off. I am looking forward to seeing how old writing friends have progressed, meeting new ones, reading all those entries, obsessively refreshing to see if anyone has commented on mine – oh, no. That was last year's behaviour. This year I will be much calmer about the whole process (ahem).

Roll on September
Anyone not familiar with New Voices can still visit last year's website at www.romanceisnotdead.com My unedited work of genius complete with page long intro and flashbacks is brilliantly entitled Revengeful Seduction but sadly comments are now closed.

Put down your books, Women! (unless it v serious & literary)

Another week another controversy.

Yet again we are being told women are far too easily influenced and led by our hormone driven emotions to be trusted to read fiction, especially romantic fiction. It makes us want to be happy you see, makes us want loving equal relationships, possibly even families so we stick with our men, stop using contraceptives and have to have an abortion.

Woman writing for the British Medical Journal say what?!

Yes ladies, close those frothy pink covered books because YOUR reading material leads to unwanted pregnancies, marital breakdown and adulterous affairs. In a Daily Telegraph article published today with the not-at-all-sensationalist headline “Mills and Boon causes Marital Breakdown”
relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam (www.susanquilliam.com - journalist, PR woman, broadcaster wow, multi skilled, she probably doesn’t have time to read – check out her website couldn’t see her research credentials but I am sure they are robust enough to back up such a huge claim) says "a huge number" of problems are caused by romantic novels.

"What we see in our consulting rooms is more likely to be informed by Mills & Boon than by the Family Planning Association,"
"We warn of the stresses of pregnancy and child-rearing, and we discourage relentless baby-making as proof of a relationship's strength. Above all, we teach that sex may be wonderful and relationships loving, but neither are ever perfect and idealising them is the short way to heartbreak. But are our lessons falling on deaf ears when compared to the values of the Regency heroine gazing adoringly across the Assembly Rooms to catch a glimpse of her man.”

Yes, Jane Austen, you may not have written for Mills and Boon but you are clearly also to blame with your breeches clad heroes and romantic declarations. I insist schools stop teaching such froth immediately and replace this woman with some nice Thomas Hardy – Jude the Obscure should do it, no expectations of a happy ending to be found there.
I ranted just last week about how men can, apparently, read all kinds of escapist fiction and yet be trusted not to let it overheat their brains and won’t repeat myself but do find it interesting that it is the right wing press that like to peddle these myths. As a woman what I find hard is not escaping into a novel – of whatever genre – for a couple of hours but the relentless barrage of criticism telling me I am too fat, not fashionable enough, my hair should be glossy, my skin flawless, I must work but not too much or I will ruin my child’s life, must exercise, eat this, wear that, decorate my house this way...

In my opinion the worst and most pernicious influences on women are those drip fed to us by adverts, by magazines, by tabloids, by reality shows, by soaps showing us a world where you have to be pretty and sexy to succeed. Where high heels and glossy hair are more important than a degree, where a cheating lothario of a footballer is a perfect mate. Look at the reality shows and you will see silicon enhanced women making a fortune out of selling every detail of their lives to the papers and magazines, often having babies with multiple partners as part of this real life soap opera. Spoilt heiresses, kiss and tell girls, barely clad pop stars, footballer’s wives (not female footballers, far too sweaty and non blow-dried) – these are the female role models.

Or you could lose yourself in a romance novel where the heroine could be a CEO, a successful baker, run an Art Gallery, a lawyer, a PR consultant, a graphic designer, a computer programmer, a doctor. What kind of ridiculous message is that to teach women? A fulfilling career and an equal partnership with someone who loves you? Clearly fiction. Go get a spray tan and some false nails and hang around a Liverpool nightclub instead. After all, if you get lucky you can always sell your story…