From Tags to Twitches

Ever been glue-eyed in Google? My eyelids are twitching. I have been stuck with meta tags for most of the morning. Like the burrs that attach themselves to you when you strike off into the long grass, I hope my tags will stick in the search engines. Google, hallowed be thy name.

I've been trying to optimise this blog with meta tags so the web crawlers can find it; friends and relations can only take so much - but thank you anyway.

Tomorrow my website should go live, hosted by Godaddy, which seems apt as my parents bought me my first typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32, forty years ago. (In which move did I lose it?)

I learned to touch-type on the Olivetti - sort of - with five fingers from a little yellow and black Pitman's teach yourself manual. If only Google had such a thing!

As for the website, www.gilesdiggle.com, I've had to meta tag that too. It's been uploaded. Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will appear.



For mega tag advice: www.bloggertricks.com

Why do authors need a sun tan?

When do you become an author and when do you stop being an author? Not having published a book since the early '90's - before the turn of the century - I sometimes feel like an ex-author, a bit like Monty Python's ex-parrot. I am certainly a writer; this blog proves that and I managed 95,000 words last year (The Key to Finlac). But am I still an author?

Does it matter how I feel about it or what I call myself or how other people regard me? Fifteen months ago, I was a Local Government Officer, a Senior Adviser. Now I am an ex-LGO, no doubt about it. In 2010 I had a job description and most of the time I managed to follow it. Then they gave me an acronym, VER (maybe you should Google it?) That sort of defines me too.

So why does this 'author' thing matter? Well, it's a question of confidence and self-belief - a bit like standing up in your Speedos on a Mediterranean beach (not that I've ever done that kind of thing). Returning to authoring is like baring your chest when everyone else already has a tan.

The Goodbye Book Hello-Goodbye Agents Blues

What do you do when you've finished your book? How do you know you've actually finished it? After 19 years I finished The Key to Finlac. In the last year I produced four drafts. I spent two weeks proof-reading. I'm sure there are still one or two typos. I just had to let it go.

I was first published through the Faber "slushpile." That shows you need luck as well as talent. And past good fortune and previous performance does not guarantee future success, which means I have to measure success as enjoyment of the creative process. Write because I like to and because I must.

I let The Key to Finlac loose two weeks ago. This time around, I am looking for a literary agent to represent me and the book. I sent a synopsis and the first three chapters off to four establishments. I like my book. I live in hope, but I won't lie to myself. These are tough times in publishing; I think it always has been so. Agents receive hundreds of manuscripts a year. The J K Rowlings are few and far between, and even they get rejected.

In the meantime, each ping of the email makes me jump!

Where did I go?

What do you do when you have been remaindered? Deleted. You keep on writing. In the meantime, you reassess your place in the material world.

I went back to a part-time day job. Then as the characters in my fourth book lost their way, I made the day job full-time. My characters needed a break too. They had to find their story. As the day job grew into a profession, the time for writing became less and my other interests took over. My characters wandered off into the distance and were lost from sight.

Nineteen years later, they reappeared with new tales to tell. Experience had made them more rounded and with them they brought the prospect of a new adventure. They were able to show me where they were going. All I had to do was follow and record what happened to them on their journey with the Key to Finlac.

Writing is like that. If you don't shadow your characters everyday, you lose sight of them and the chance to tell their story. Then again, sometimes they just need to wander off. Next time it happens I trust it won't be for nineteen years.

Try to keep your characters close; never let their trail go cold.

Where am I?

What happens when you have published three novels for teenagers with Faber and Faber? You get very excited for a while and then try to write a fourth. And while you are attempting the fourth, you try some other projects - writing for a younger age group for example - unsuccessfully in that your publisher doesn't want them. Then your editor leaves the company and you feel abandoned.

But there is hope. Your editor has joined another company and calls you about writing something for emerging readers. You give it a go, but it doesn't work out. Woe and double abandonment.

Meanwhile, you carry on with the fourth novel and a year has gone by. Then the news comes that Faber are deleting your books from their list. Suddenly you are out of print. That was 1995.

Two weeks ago, 19 years late, I finished that fourth book - I am quite pleased with it. It is called the Key to Finlac. You are the first to hear the title. This blog will record my journey on the road to being published again...and all the joys and tribulations that go along with writing.

This is my story and the next chapters are entirely in my hands. The future is on the tip of my tongue.