The Writing Coach

How NOT to get published -

I'm delighted to welcome Writing Coach consultant 

Sara Bailey to write this, the second Guest Post on the Writing Coach blog.  Sara will be running two courses for The Writing Coach over the summer including 'How Not to Get Published' and 'Plan your Novel Day' at Shane Global, London (pictured).

Sara is a lecturer in Contemporary Fiction and Screenwriting at Solent University, Southampton and is one of my most trusted consultants.  She writes:

We've all read those books offering advice on How to Write and How to get published – here are some a few tongue in cheek pointers on how NOT to get published.

How NOT to get published - 10 top tips

• Send your manuscript in accompanied by full-length photograph, or indeed any photograph.  In fact if you send in a glamour shot, your chances of not being published will decrease, unless of course you are a glamour model, in which case you just struck gold.
• Send your manuscript in with fancy font and if possible coloured paper, if you can add in some sparkly confetti all the better.
• Do say in your letter that this is not so much a cross genre novel, as a new genre, where you have taken several different well-established genres and bonded them together.  No one likes to pigeonhole an author’s work. 
• Do remember to add in all the testimonials and quotes from your family - obviously if they loved it then the reading public and possibly the Booker Judges will adore it too.
• Don’t worry about finding out the name of the agent.  Best to just send it to the agency and let them fight over it.
• Do remember to make sure your manuscript is well over 400 pages or under 100.  Everyone knows a book is sold by weight.
• Don’t bother to check the spelling or punctuation; otherwise the editor won’t have anything to do.
• It is perfectly acceptable not to number the pages.  The story will be so compelling they’ll easily find the next page
• Tell them that this is your final draft and that you won't change a thing.  You are after all an artist and this is your perfect baby.
• Finally - it is fine to call the agent within the week to see if he has made you an offer.
  

Of course, if you really want to get published, Sara would love to welcome you along to one of the courses she is running this summer in London at Shane Global, South Molton Street, W1.

The 'Plan your Novel Day' runs on Saturday 11th July from 10am - 5pm. This one-day course uses the techniques derived from Nanowrimo (Novel in a Month) to help the writer bypass the internal editor and get to the brilliant story waiting to be told.  You will cover the basics of technique and storytelling and find a way to combat the blank page on a daily basis.  

The 'How Not to Get Published' course runs on Saturday 1st August from 10am-5pm.  This is a one-day course on presenting work to Agents.  The course will show you how to find an agent and the best way to approach them.  You will learn how to write a synopsis and covering letter.  We will look at some common mistakes and some alternative approaches. Bring your first ten pages and a sample synopsis.

The fee for each course is £80 or you can attend both courses for £140.  Both courses are limited to 12 places.  

If you'd like to book a place on either course, please fill in the contact form on the website here.

9 ideas to improve your productivity as a writer

In July I hosted a free teleclass on the subject of productivity for writers and at the end of that session, I asked the participants to outline their key learnings from the class, as well as the commitments they would make as a result of the class.  The class was a rich learning environment and it was such a pleasure for me to witness the sharing that occurred during the hour we spent on the phone together.  I wanted to share my own thoughts on the subject of how writers can be most productive, but the class also provided a great opportunity for people to talk about their experience to date and to learn from one another. 

Now it's my turn to share some of the class learnings with you.  These are the key 'take-aways' that the participants reported - in no particular order.  What follows are direct quotations from participants who fed back to me,.  Occasionally I also summarise to make the point more clearly:

Forget your limitations (or what I brought back from Barcelona)

The two paintings that accompany this post illustrate the most important learning I brought back from my recent holiday in Barcelona.  They also serve as a reminder of the most precious moments that I spent there.  The paintings are by my children, aged 11 and 7 respectively and for me they are testimony to the fact that creativity is inherent in all of us, regardless of any notion of 'inborn talent'.  When we are not held back by the limitations of our own thought, we can all produce interesting and vibrant work.  Sadly, as adults, those limiting thoughts so often get in the way.   In the words of Richard Bach in the marvelous 'Illusions'  (one of my favourite books as a teenager):  Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours".

When in Barcelona, we spent some time at the apartment of a good friend of mine from University days.  We visited him after a wonderful day at the Miro Museum.  Even after that treat, at my friend's house, we all admired the fabulous display of oil paintings he had in a cabinet.  Having visited him before, I was in on the secret, but my husband David was not and asked who had painted them.  The answer was that he asks every guest who stays in the apartment to use the canvases, oil paints and brushes that he keeps there to paint a picture, preferably abstract, that he can display.  The work was stunning and none of it was painted by professional artists.  Indeed most of the paintings were done by people who had not picked up a paintbrush since school.

Productivity for Writers - a free teleclass

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. . . . Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." E.L. Doctorow

This quotation echos my beliefs about the organic process of writing.  It also says something important about the need to get words down, if we are to really 'be' writers.  Productivity is such an important part of the process, yet why is it that so many of us procrastinate so endlessly about putting pen to paper or 'getting black on white'?

If you would like to become more productive as a writer, please join me and a group of fellow writers, next Wednesday at 8.30pm UK time.  I will be running a free teleclass on the subject of productivity that will touch upon:

• Passion - how passion for your subject affects output
• Focus - how to achieve it
• Boundaries - saying 'no' to other demands to allow time for our writing
• Time Management - how to prioritise our writing in the midst of a busy life
• Habits - how regularity breeds success
• Commitment - how do we achieve it?
• Fear - that nasty little blighter
• Confidence - we don't write if we don't believe in ourselves, so we need this stuff!

I'm so looking forward to connecting with you on this call.  Please do e-mail me  if you'd like to attend and I will forward you details of how to dial into the line. All are very welcome and the class is totally free and obligation-free and it is a great opportunity to connect with fellow writers who are facing the same challenges in relation to getting productive and inspired. 

Those who wish to take this class further may consider signing up for the Creative Vision Writers' Group.  This group launches in September and is limited to 12 places.  Others may wish to join the Writing Coach group on Facebook which I have just made open to all.  Some great conversations will be starting there shortly and I'm sure it will provide a good way of keeping in touch with those that you meet on the call. 

I look forward to 'meeting' you on the call next Wednesday. 

Ten Tips for finding time to write when you have no time

This blog relaunches this weekend with an interview with poet, novelist and coach Fiona Robyn, one of our new consultants at 'The Writing Coach'.  But whilst you're waiting, enjoy these ten tips for finding time to write when you have no time, a classic from the Writing Coach archives.

1.        Set aside a regular time each week for your writing and make it sacred.  Even if you can only find a single time slot, for example Sunday evening, put it in the diary and make it A FIXTURE. Tell everybody you know that you’re busy and honour this time.  It may seem a small step, but it’s a way to signal to yourself and others that you are committed. 

2.    Write only what you love. Nothing is going to make you write if you are not passionate about what you are doing.  When considering a writing project, ensure it is something you really WANT to write about.  If you can find the passion, you are halfway there.  Your desk will draw you like a magnet.

 

On visiting Derek Jarman's Garden

There are times, I think, in every writer's life, when inspiration feels in short supply, when everyday events take over and fresh input is needed if we're going to thrive creatively. I hit this point a week or so ago and we took a decision to get away. We are now staying in Rye, on the South Coast of England, a town I last visited as a child of eight years old, a place that held strong personal memories. My family is sleeping as I write.

I knew, when we set off, that I wanted to visit Derek Jarman's garden at Dungerness, a pilgrimage I've desired to make for some years (yet have always somehow put off). So it was a thrill, today, to finally visit the landscape that I'd first read about eight years ago when researching my novel 'Bluethroat Morning'.

I've long admired Howard Sooley's photos of Jarman's garden. For those not familiar with the garden, the British filmmaker Jarman called his garden 'Paradise' yet it was planted in a landscape that some might consider more of a hell than a heaven - in the 'flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle that faces the Nuclear Power Station in Dungeness, Kent'. Spurred on by a true personal vision, his painterly eye and strong ecological conviction, Jarman tended the garden from 1986 until his death.

It is difficult to begin to express the intensity of my experience today, on visiting the garden. Suffice for the moment to say that it has strengthened my conviction in the necessity and power of art, of beauty and the individual vision of each human being. I am, I admit, in pensive mode right now. How could I not be? I've begun each day of the school Easter holidays by remaining in bed with Louis Fischer's 'Life of Mahatma Gandhi'. It is difficult not to question one's own motives, the values of one's own actions, when considering a life as meaningful as Gandhi's. The effect of Jarman's garden on me, however, has been to remind me that one does not have to change the world in huge ways to make an important impact. Jarman's faith in nature, in beauty, in the power of the human spirit, in love, in poetry - all these have a huge impact on anyone who visits this garden or simply reads Jarman's words and views Sooley's photographs in the book 'Derek Jarman's Garden'.

Cross-over

I recently finished reading Philip Pullman's 'The Subtle Knife' to my ten year old son and now we've moved onto the third book of the trilogy 'The Amber Spyglass'.  The experience of reading the book aloud has given the book a fabulous extra dimension for me.  We've read slowly, relishing the words, dramatising the scenes.  Pullman has done such a wonderful job of revitalising children's fiction.  I find myself more drawn to the idea of fantasy fiction as a result of reading this book and already - as I'm at that stage of wondering what the next book will be - I'm toying with the idea of a 'cross-over' book.  But then, toying with ideas is what I always do and although I'm not yet ready to commit, I have, I think, discovered a new possible avenue for research which may bear fruit.

Hmmm, that phrase 'cross-over' is quite an interesting one for me at present.  Of course, in Pullman's case we're talking about the cross-over between adult and children's fiction.  And it's a shame, in truth, that books don't 'cross-over' genres more often.  I have just written a 'commercial' novel, but am more often known for 'literary' fiction.  It may prove problematic.  We shall see.  However, what matters to me, most of all right now, is the desire to get to the heart of writing what I love.  When I think about my next book, I think about finding subject matter that I can truly dive into and become absorbed in.  I guess that's why I love writing historical fiction, it's the sheer pleasure of doing the research, uncovering new connections.  Rose Tremain, in a favourite essay of mine, 'The First Mystery' quoted Graham Greene as saying (in relation to research and experience) 'It's yours to remember and mine to forget'.

Eat the Frog

"If you get up every morning and the first thing you do is eat a live frog, you can have the satisfaction in knowing that it is probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day."

I found this wonderful quotation and related wisdom the other day on the blog of my first ever coach Nancy Morris.

Nancy says,

"You see, your frog is the task or action that is the next step in creating your success. It is your real priority that often gets shoved under day to day schtuff.

Most of us busy our day with legitimate but non-frog activities. So at the end of the day, we often feel frustrated or discouraged. Even though we may have done a lot of things, we have not spent time with our primary priority that contributes to our long-term success."

And you can guess what the frog is for us writers, can't you?  Hmmmmm

Inherent Creativity

This photograph of my daughter making a sand painting on the walls of the old town of St. Malo in Brittany reminds me not only of a wonderful moment, but also of the truth of the idea that 'we are all creative'.  Why is it that we don't all start daubing sand on a bare wall that is simply asking for it?  What stops us from believing that we're good enough to do it?  What makes us wonder whether we'll make any money from it?  What makes us fear the outcome?  What causes us to procrastinate and eat a cheese baguette instead?  There were many occasions on this holiday where I just had to stop in awe to admire what the children were doing. 

When we went to visit the ancient standing stones at Carnac, my daughter crouched down and began making her own miniature standing stones in the dust, using sticks and pebbles to imitate what she saw.  There was no self-consciousness, no questioning 'why', just the pure inspiration which she took from her environment. Carnac is awesome.  Thousands of stones, lined up in the fields, placed there by neolithic man, for who knows what reason.  The scale of it is astonishing and I was unprepared for it

Inspired by a book of photographs of the stones, accompanied by haiku, I was determined to snap away and was pleased with the result.  As ever, I'm more inspired by new places than by any other single stimulus.  In St. Malo in particular, ideas for a new novel were coming faster than I could jot them down.  In fact, I find myself, at the moment, struck by 'next book' syndrome, which is actually rather inconvenient, because I'm so full of new ideas at a time when I need to keep my focus strongly on the work in hand - that being completing the current novel by Christmas.  My intention is begin each day by writing, before the other concerns of the day break in.  I'll be writing full time two to three days a week and coaching/running the business on the other two. 

Incident in the Picasso Museum

Two years ago, shortly after I completed my third novel, ‘Boundaries Road’, I had a lunch meeting with my agent.  We’d had a difficult time with that novel and it was time for a fresh start.  I had a few ideas, two of them revolving around art historical subjects, both of them based on tragic themes.  It was a happy time in my life, yet I was drawn to tragedy.  In my second novel, ‘Bluethroat Morning’ I’d explored the theme of suicide and it was a subject that continued to resonate with me.

I also knew that I wanted to write about art; a biographical piece about a period I’d always been drawn to, the Modernist movement in Paris in the early twentieth century.  Like many people, I’m fascinated by the vibrant creative energy of that time and place.  I had several ideas:  to write a biography of the artist Modigliani - it had been some years since a biography in the English language had appeared; or to write a novel about his lover, Jeanne Hebuterne, who committed suicide shortly after his death.   But there was another idea also, one that had been growing for some time:  a story concerning Picasso.   One tale about a friend of his had particularly intrigued me and I wanted to follow it up, to see where that story might lead me.