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I love being a writer, still walking up, ten years after I wrote my first short story, delighted to find I am published.
But, the last month has been fraught. So fraught that I offloaded my October blog, and forgot to do this one. It is 8:40 and I am about to share with you, as though it's Writers Anonymous.
In HACKED, the book published by Piccadilly Press yesterday, I casually mentioned, somewhere near the end, that the shadowy figure from the deep web responsible for the almost-tragedy was an eighteen-year old girl whose mother was Welsh and her father Yemeni. It was a whim, in that I could have picked anywhere that the US fly armed drones, so Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and any European country, as she needed to be of dual heritage.
Anyway, that whim is now a second draft of TURNED, because the publisher was interested to hear her story. It should have been delivered seven days ago but is still a word doc on my computer, because I have been struggling.
TURNED is a circumquel, beginning before and ending after HACKED.
I am guilty of not planning, or planning in such a helicopter fashion that the detail is impossible to see. That has not helped me this time. I can normally wander off to wherever the moment takes me, but as the books are parallel I have to make certain elements fit. This has been tricky. But not the trickiest part.
Aaaarghhhh!
I was worried that going over the same period of time would be boring for those who had read the first book, so I decided to use a structure where the chapters alternated between the past and the present. All was going quite well until I read aloud to my writing group and watched their faces. I'd been doing that ostrich-thing, kidding myself that it worked when it was in fact confusing. It took a couple of days of riding my bike and baking to summon the courage to deconstruct my 45 000 words and put it back together chronologically. A short feeling of relief followed.
Oh no!
Naively I thought it would all flow, but of course you write differently if you're constantly switching time. The chapters didn't link.
I emailed the publisher, asking for an extension. The first deadline I've ever missed, and started to rewrite, in a panic.
Back at writing group the faces didn't look much more encouraging.
"Have you actually got to the end yet?" asked Eeyore.
"No," I said, fretfully.
"Just forget rewriting and do the end and come back," she ordered.
I obeyed.
I wrote, I hope, a scorching finale. Allowed myself a small smile.
Regroup.
I am back rewriting. I have three weeks to go. I am worried about the voice, still concerned that there is too much overlap between the books, and eating a gargantuan number of biscuits.
Help!
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By:
tracy alexander,
on 6/6/2014
Blog:
An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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As I contemplated cracking on with my novel this morning – I’m only on Chapter Three – I had a comforting thought. The exact words in my head were Synopsis as friend. My mind’s circuitry led me straight to a case study from my long gone life as a marketer. The subject was dog food.
For ten years I was a proper PAYE employee, selling the likes of frozen food, tennis shoes and booze. For the next ten years I was freelance, selling money in the form of mortgages and investments. At some point I was invited to give a guest lecture at the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Given that I was seven months pregnant, I probably should have declined. Instead I pulled on a pair of black trousers with an oh-so-attractive stretchy panel fetchingly topped by an elastic waistband (for that little known waist that is in fact directly beneath your breasts), buttoned the matching black maternity waistcoat (what joker thought of that) and drove to Cookham.
I wasn’t nervous, until I opened my mouth and realised that my lung capacity, whilst adequate for conversations where you only have every other turn and the person is close by, wasn’t up to the job. I cut short my introduction, offering the delegates a chance to say a little about themselves while I recovered my composure.
My subject was segmentation. Bread and butter stuff. I had all sorts of examples from the world known as FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), from retail and from financial services. All I had to do was teach the theory, show examples – the brilliant dog food slides were ready and waiting – and then relate it to the fields they were working in. I could do that with or without oxygen.
The first attendee mumbled her name and said that she worked on treated mosquito nets. My mind gave a sarcastic ‘yippee!’ Never mind. The others were bound to be working on cars, shampoo, biscuits . . . something I could relate to.
The conch was passed round the room. My confidence ebbed. My smile became as fixed and unresponsive as my twenty-something pupils.
It turned out that I had a global monopoly on marketers of mosquito related products.
Inside I did the equivalent of a refusal at Becher’s Brook.
Whether it was the peppering of the content with irritating little breaths, the hideousness of my maternity waistcoat or my lack of engagement with the mosquito market, by the time I got to the segmentation of the dog food market, I’d lost them. A shame, because it was my favourite part.
Here’s the gist:
Categorising dog food in terms of form – dry, wet, raw – or flavour – lamb, rabbit, chicken – didn’t help marketers understand how to make their products attractive to dog owners. Nor did using the breed, age or size of dog. Research showed that the most meaningful way of sorting the market was by looking at how dog owners thought about their dogs.
Four segments were identified that most influenced the type of dog food chosen:
Dog as grandchild – indulgence
Dog as child – loveDog as friend – health and nutrition
Dog as dog – cheap and convenient.
My audience woke up slightly. Proof that a pet can always be relied on to liven things up, be it in business or school visits. We had our first interaction of any length, a welcome reprieve for my pulmonary gas exchange. The treated net marketers had never considered the relationship between dog and master.
Had they not read The Call of the Wild? Seen Bill Sykes mistreat Bull’s Eye? Or Hagrid berate cowardly Fang? Timmy was surely as much a friend as Anne, Dick, Julian and George.
They eagerly volunteered product names and quickly slotted them into the four segments.
Cesar Mini Fillets in a foil tray – Dog as grandchild
Asda Smartprice Dog Meal. – Dog as dog
Pedigree Chum Chicken – the clues in the name . . .
In what was overall a pretty grey-with-clouds lecture, I enjoyed the little spell of sunshine. Motivation wasn’t something mosquito experts thought a lot about. They thought about geography and insects and shelter and disease and mosquito net fixing kits. They didn’t think about what might be on the mind of the traveller, setting off alone to try and find traces of the Hairy-nosed Otter in Borneo, or maybe the traveller’s nervous father, buying the very best treated mosquito net for his passionate but impractical son.
Marketers often end up segmenting by demographics e.g. age, gender, income, despite the power of psychographics like motivation, personality and attitude. Perhaps writers should lecture at the Chartered Institute of Marketing instead . . .
Quite why my inner voice chose the words Synopsis as friend, inextricably linked in my hippocampus to Dog as friend, who knows, but it made me reflect on my changed relationship with synopses.
My first few books grew in a free spirit sort of way, meandering towards a vague nirvana shrouded in uncertainty. The synopses written afterwards, if at all.
This was: Synopsis as bureaucrat.
My new book,
Hacked, out in November, was the product of a synopsis I HAD to write because the publisher, Piccadilly Press, was interested in an idea I’d mooted and wanted it fleshed out.
This was: Synopsis as unwanted dependant.
I developed the beginning, middle and end of the story, my lovely publisher made a few suggestions and then I forgot about the four-page plan until there was a problem, at which point I reluctantly referred to it.
The synopsis for the sequel, however, is printed out and has its own space on my desk. It feels reassuring. Trustworthy, but not prescriptive.
857 words in, with 50 000 ish to go, I’m glad that I’m not alone.
This is: Synopsis as friend
I even enjoyed the discipline of writing it.
Tracy Alexander
By:
tracy alexander,
on 3/6/2014
Blog:
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My first post on this site,
Sliding Doors, told the tale of how I started writing, thanks to a poster in a bookshop. So for my World Book Week post, I’m going to describe the journey from winning a short story competition to my name on the spine of a paperback. It’s in shorthand, because it took some years! Along the way I got into the habit of collecting ‘ticks’ , because the odds against me seemed so huge it was the only way I could stay motivated. ‘Crosses’, I tried to bury.
I started writing a ‘book’ almost as soon as I heard that I was a PWA. (Prize-Wining Author – my family’s idea of a joke.) The idea was easy to come by because like all experienced marketers I ran a brainstorming session, inviting my kids, then 10, 8 and 6. (Interestingly I didn’t make a conscious decision to write for children, that was taken for granted somehow.) Two sides of scribbled-on sheet of A4 later I began my summer 2005 project. And loved it. I wrote every morning from about 6 to maybe 11, and the kids watched non-stop telly. Brill. Then we ate our bodyweight in three-course breakfasts. As the word count grew so did my determination for it not to languish on slush piles. (I’d bought the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook by then so knew the jargon.) Keen to speed up the learning curve, I applied for a place on the University of Bristol Creative Writing Diploma.
Tick!
I shared my enthusiasm with a stranger at a party. The wrong person as it turned out. She said, ‘I’m a librarian and my husband works at Waterstones, but I can’t get a children’s novel published so you’ve got no chance.’
Cross.
I shared my enthusiasm with a published children’s author. She said, ‘everyone thinks they can write.’
Cross.
I submitted my first assignment at Uni.
‘Unvarying in prose style. No sense of time or place and some format problems.’
Cross.
Sometime around then the marvellous Show of Strength – a Bristol theatre company, announced a competition to write a monologue for a show of rolling performances. Wonderful idea. My monologue, It’s My Party’ was brought to life by Lynda Rooke (most recognised from Casualty). I stood in the audience and as the piece drew to a close I noticed the grey-haired man next to me was crying.
Tick!
Excellent, because more crosses were on the way.
I sent the first three chapters of my finished children’s book to an agent.
‘I love it, rush me the rest,’ she said.
I could see my future – hardback, paperback, film, Oscar ceremony . . .
Tick!
‘It’s got everything – drama, pathos . . . Can you come and see me in London?’
Tick!
She wanted a few changes. I obliged.
Time passed.
I let it – not wanting to be annoying.
Eventually I chased her.
She appeared to have forgotten about me, sending an email the essence of which was - ‘I didn’t like it that much after all.’
CROSS!
(In retrospect, approaching several agents at once might have been sensible, but I was terribly optimistic, so only contacted one at a time.)
The next response was something like, ‘it’s a ludicrous idea . . .’
Cross!
The next.
‘Too like Percy Jackson.’ (It really wasn’t.)
Cross!
Surely time for some good news? Yes!
Bruce Hunter at David Higham invited me for a cup of tea and agreed to represent me.
Tick!
Now, it would all fall into place.
Not.
The book was rejected by everyone.
Umpteen crosses over ten months (he too sent things sequentially).
In summer 2007 I wrote another book, which my agent loved. Was this the one?
No.
The book was rejected by everyone.
Umpteen crosses over eight months.
Cue Piccadilly Press, inviting me for a meeting.
I didn’t know what to wear. What do authors look like? Stupid thought.
They loved my book.
Tick!
But didn’t want to publish it – too quiet.
Cross!
Did I have any other ideas?
That morning (just in case) I’d had another brainstorm with the getting-older kids (12, 10 and 8). I regurgitated the rough idea of a gang of children called Tribe – who they were, what they did.
I was dispatched to write a short synopsis.
‘A paragraph will do,’ the publisher said.
Three paragraphs later (I didn’t want to under deliver), I had a contract.
TICK!
This October my fifth book will hit the fresh air. It’s about how one small act changes everything that follows. We’re back to Sliding Doors.
Five Fervent Wishes from Ruth William
of Piccadilly Press
I'm a commissioning editor at Piccadilly Press – a small independent publisher of children's books from picture books, through to young and middle fiction, and young adult. Piccadilly was founded by MD Brenda Gardner in 1983, so we will be celebrating a big birthday in the new year!
On the fifth day of Christmas, I hope the
Piccadilly Press has bought a time-travelling young adult romance story, which will be a lead title for autumn 2012.
Managing director Brenda Gardner bought world rights to two books in the Timedance series from Bob Markel. The first book, Neptune's Tears by Susan Waggoner, will be published in September 2012. Set in the future, it is about an "empath" and the patient she falls in love with, who is a time traveller. Publication details for the second book have yet to be confirmed.
read more
Piccadilly Press has signed two separate book deals, one of which is a title tying into next year's Olympic Games.
read more
Okay, this could be the start of a writing exercise.
The other day, I received a little orange tickets in my mailbox telling me that there was a package waiting to be picked up at the local post office. The next day, I went down and presented my ticket to the man at the counter. After a few minutes, he returned plopped a large heavy blue sack on the counter. Ummm, really? for me?? The bag read, "Royal Mail - Great Britain" and it was held closed with a heavy plastic tie. There was a customs tag fastened to the bag. Yep, that was my name and address on the tag. I jokingly asked the man if there was something alive inside. Deadpan, he said, "dunno, but whatever it is, it's yours now." When I got home, I cut through the plastic band and inside was...
Well, luckily it wasn't alive. But it was still something exciting. It was advanced copies of the new book I illustrated, "Don't Panic, Annika!," written by Juliet Clare Bell and published by
Piccadilly Press of London. Sadly, this book is not being sold in the US at this time. It's available in the UK through Piccadilly Press and it's also being published by
Koala Books in Australia and De Vries Brouwers in the Netherlands.
"Don't Panic Annika" written by Juliet Clare Bell and illustrated by yours truly is now available on Amazon UK in hardcover and paperback. I was pleased when Piccadilly contacted me to illustrate this book because a story about a little worrier was near to my heart.
Unfortunately, the book isn't available in the US yet.
Here's a little peek at one of the inside illustrations...
"Don't Panic Annika" written by Juliet Clare Bell and illustrated by yours truly is now available on Amazon UK in hardcover and paperback. I was pleased when Piccadilly contacted me to illustrate this book because a story about a little worrier was near to my heart.
Here's a little peek at one of the inside illustrations...
I have been feeling heartsnipped lately. Heartsnipped is a sand sprite word for when you feel as if a bit of your heart is missing and you can never feel completely settled or content. This feeling comes over me when I have to go into to school meetings and talk about ‘Impact and percentages of progress towards meeting targets’ rather than about children.
The pain eases when Chantal Joseph our dancer teacher comes in each week and I watch the children dance. Everyone is included and the children work hard and literally stretch themselves. Children who have additional needs and struggle with language or dyslexia suddenly become fluent and expressive. Experiencing the joy and delight that dancing brings inspires me too and has a big influence on my Sand Dancers series. It got me thinking about how I could turn dance into words. The results so far are exciting and I am developing a blog called danceintowords to share the ideas. During the last literacy session I ran with a year three class there were only two instructions; write or dance your idea if you are stuck for words. The boys in particular loved this and one boy produced four pages of lyrical writing expressing his feelings about being caught in a sandstorm.
Last Friday Chantal and I were invited to run a ‘Dance into words’ workshop at the fabulous WriteAway Annual conference which was called, ‘Read, play, think, create: generating delight in learning. I was nervous at first. What if the group refused to dance or no-one came? As is says in the sand sprites guide book, The Sands of Time,
‘A Sand Dancer is never afraid
Of facing the music and dancing’
The session went well and afterwards I realised that my heart was feeling much less snipped. The second book in the Sand Dancers series is called Blue Moon Ballet and is available now.
I hope you get what you're looking for! Happy Christmas to you and everyone at Piccadilly Press (and Anne who's just left). All the best, Clare.
Wow! What a diverse list. May you get all you wished for in a big Santa slush pile.
What a wonderful list. Happy Christmas to you all and Happy 30th birthday next year to all at Piccadilly Press
I hope you get what you wish for - I suspect you just might after announcing your list here!
I love the sound of Letters From an Alien Schoolboy so there's another on the wishlist! Thank you, Ruth.
I like deliciously spooky stories as well - I hope you find one!