Giles Diggle on Twitter @50oakwoods

Monday 31 October 2011

Nutrition for Novelists: The Importance of Leftovers

What do you do when you've been away for a long weekend? The house is freezing, no food in the fridge. Buy a takeaway or grab something quick; gradually get going again. Easy solutions off the shelf.

A book can also grow cold after three days of neglect. How to get started again? Could be a nerve wracking Monday morning ahead.  Maybe go out for an early morning of birding - put writing off until the afternoon? Have another day off; leave the book until Tuesday?

No such thing! Take a tip from your mother. Remember your childhood. Leftovers are the thing for a Monday. Heat them up or eat them cold. Same with writing a book. Never consume your thoughts all at once - leave a little on the side for later.

Easy then to pick up where you left off; add something a little tasty to make it fresh.

Tuesday 25 October 2011

What's good enough for a Coal Tit is good enough for me.

All's well in the garden. A Robin has set up a winter territory and a Coal Tit has taken up residence. There was a Wren in the bird bath this morning; House Sparrows shuttle back and forth in the hedge. The feeders are busy. Seems like the habitat is right - maybe it is going to be a long cold winter.

I am into a rhythm of writing too. I have a habitat that suits, made up mainly of bits of Beethoven and Chopin... and Debussy too. I play the same pieces every day as I begin to work. I have a playlist in iTunes called Writing - all lyrical pieces (tho' lyrics are banned until the writing is done).

The music has a purpose: it cuts out background noise. But more important, it provides continuity, linking sessions at the keyboard that might otherwise become disjointed. It is a signal to begin work - without all the downsides of a factory hooter.

Do I ever change the music? No. Because day after day it seems to work.

Monday 24 October 2011

Jackdaw Dawns - Still Chattering to Myself

Writing before dawn is a good way to start the day, and it's something I can only do in Autumn and Winter. There is little possibility of working this way in the Spring & Summer, because the birds are up long before me, and then they beckon me outside.

Today I started with Jackdaws streaming from their roost against a charcoal sky. And from there the words flew. Easy writing - dialogue. It can delude you into thinking you are writing well, just because it comes in great quantities. Loose words have a price.

That cost can be the stagnation of the story and of course lengthy revision. Writing dialogue, like good conversation brings with it a feeling of well-being. But dialogue an be tricky like a chatter on the phone. It can lay a false trail. It can be broken and incomplete.

Dialogue can strike a wrong note if it is divorced from the body language of the story.

Thursday 20 October 2011

Bubblegum is the Muzak of My Elevator Pitch

I never liked Bubblegum music. Sugar, Sugar! So why was it in my head last night, zinging around behind my eyes - odd harmonies, a medley of sixties radio plays? Like winding down a car window on a different time.

A 17.21 email from the well-known publisher!

Oh Honey, Honey! Hoping has become hopping up and down. Having another p is so important...particularly at my age. (I have turned into Adrian Mole).

My letter was mislaid - in fact I had addressed it to the wrong person (2012 Writers' & Artists' Year Book already out of date - kind ageing friend.)

A letter lost is more potent when it becomes a letter found. The Key to Finlac will at least be looked at and I have come over all adolescent exclamation marks!

Bubblegum loses its flavour, but I shall keep it on the bed post over night. Or even for a week or two.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Too old to be feeling like Adrian Mole

Four hours working on the new book this morning. Not all writing. Quite a lot of fiddling and mapping, sketching out characters, plot and sub-plot; all a bit hazy. A school yard imagined - scenes taken from then and now. New people. A slightly different way of working for me and in between time delving into Scrivener for target word-count features; things I pretend will make me write to a deadline.

And then this afternoon, I turn my attentions towards agents. A new honed-down synopsis. One side of A4. A simpler autobiography. An email of introduction. (I love me, I love me not).

Three times I revise the package; three times I send it off. It's going so well, I send a fourth. Never get carried away by the moment!

The fourth email with attachments (Version Two) wings its way to a charming, unsuspecting person I have sent version one to four weeks before!  I end up flustered (like the numbers in the previous sentence) and send an apology hard on the heels of my first email. "Just ignore me!" it says. Red faced. Hot under the collar.

Why do I feel like Adrian Mole trying to seduce Pandora?

Monday 17 October 2011

Life in a Heart-Stopping Moment

A loud ping just a moment ago and an echo of the Thank You Experiment. Even though it is not much, it is heartening.

Seven weeks ago I emailed my attachments to a well-known Literary Agency and just now my post was acknowledged. Albeit a pro-forma text, it was from an email address that included a person's name. Bless her.

Same story. Hundreds of submissions; very few taken on each year. Up to three months to say no or begin to take things further. (Or is that three months from now?)

I have warmed to Literary Agents. I would rather sit at my desk than theirs. They must dread the ping - such a complex sound.

Sunday 16 October 2011

At Home with the W's

My untried agents list is complete. As many as letters in the alphabet. All warranting an email or an envelope.

I have reached down into the W's. Or up depending on which way you want to look at it, particularly if you are standing on your head or looking back through your legs, being confused by M's and more M's.

W authors are often hard to find on the bookshelves, but they are always worth a look - Walt Whitman for example, a fine double doubleyou, which ever way you look at him. Leaves of Grass is a volume I shall never throw away.

Nor shall I discard Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a reminder that the best books are timeless. They stick in you mind even though lesser books take pride of place on the bookshop shelves.

W is a good place to be. Look back; reflect and enjoy. The exotic world of x, y & z is not far ahead.

Wednesday 12 October 2011

A Tall Person Blind to the Obvious

Being a tall person, I sometimes don't see what is at my feet. In fact I often don't look. I'm too busy staring at the horizon, wondering what might be on the other side. And being a birder, I spend much of my time looking up into the sky - blue or otherwise. Sometimes I fall over.

The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, with its gleaming traffic-light red cover has been my guide in recent months. Useful, but wearying at times like a back seat driver, and for my purposes somehow incomplete. It is easy to transfer blame to a friend for the rejection one sometimes feels.

But there is another volume I have overlooked, even though it is in its eighth edition. The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. It is brim full of useful addresses and advice I am not too proud to receive. I have been away too long. The cover is an encouraging green.

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Writing Not Decorating

Back to writing today. Oddly for me in the afternoon. Only 59,495 words to go before revision. I forced myself to sit down. I was going to write a synopsis. I abandoned that idea after three words. Then I thought I'd do some character sketches. I gave up on that idea too.

So I did what I always do. I started writing. My character found a name. Now she has to find other characters to meet - I now have four - and a story to tell. That story has begun. A fifth character waits somewhere at the end of the garden, maybe. This is the how I work. The only way I can invent is to write, then sort it all out afterwards. Risky? It's the only method I know.

I enjoyed it (just as well) trying to scare myself with the story rather than the daunting nature of the task. My character is off and walking about, already troubled, feeling a little alienated, claustrophobic and perplexed. Female this time - a new departure.

The girl is temporarily or permanently called Lorraine (for reasons unknown). A wide world is ahead of her. And that's the whole point about children's fiction.

Monday 10 October 2011

Indecision is the Mother of Invention

Two weeks ago I wrote in this blog: "Across the fields, I can hear a voice tempting me down another fantastical road." Well, that voice has been nagging at me ever since and I've followed the cake crumb trail back to where I started.

This morning I began to outline the direction of the more outlandish of the two children's books I have had in mind. A third prospect still looms at the crossroads, but I don't think I'll go there for a while, though I always have a sense of that path in the back of my mind.

I've been doing a lot of fidgeting in my chair today, but I have at least sat here for two hours, staring beyond the screen. I shall sit here for two hours tomorrow and the day after... and so on until it is done. I have made some notes, if not written the first sentence. I know where I shall begin.

As for the other book, who knows? Indecision is sometimes the mother of invention.

Friday 7 October 2011

You Can't Get Down Until You've Eaten Your Greens!

Tie me with a silk scarf to my Herman Miller chair. A great chair (acquired for about forty quid) doesn't guarantee a great book, but unless you sit in it, nothing is ever going to be written. It has been a restless week full of distractions, mostly happy.

Not good enough. And nothing to do with hearing from agents and that well-known publisher I approached four weeks ago with a tentative enquiry and an SAE. Zilch on all counts. Nil points; no response. More pings and the clattering of the letter box next week, hopefully.

There's a lot of greens involved in writing a book. Sometimes they taste sweet and tender; sometimes it's a tough and tasteless chew, full of stringy bits. It can be all toothpicks and embarrassing shreds caught in your teeth.

But you have to sit there till it's done. There's no pudding until you've eaten your greens.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Up There With Elvis

How many million words have been written about Steve Jobs today? Here are a few more. Not really about him, more about what he has done for me. He hasn't made me more creative, but he has created a better space for me to work.

I love all the gadgets - I have two iPods and a MacBook. A small collection. But what I love most is the iMac sitting on my desk. I have had it for four years. It has never gone wrong. It is the only place I am really tidy; it seems to reorder itself every time I mess with it.

What I like about the iMac most is that I can barely see it. It doesn't get in the way. It is almost invisible. That is the magic of Steve Jobs.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Waving Not Drowning

Tidying things up today after a weekend away. Five more packages in the post, four publishers and one agent. Looking at my list, I see that I have three or four tentative enquiries still to make. This stage of the adventure is nearly over.

When I had finished my first manuscript, which became Inside the Glasshouse, I approached thirteen publishers directly and received twelve rejections. It was my long-shot and the last publisher I approached, Faber & Faber, that pulled me from the slushpile.

To say that it was Faber & Faber is probably misleading. It was one person, Christopher Reid, who saw a spark in my MSS. Had the MSS landed on another desk things might have been very different and my book sunk without trace. So much is down to chance. I'm sure many better books go a begging.

But I don't think it is really any harder now than it was twenty years ago. The adventure goes on. There are new landscapes to explore.

Words are a gift and a price says nothing about their value.

Saturday 1 October 2011

When was the last time you had a second delivery?

Six down, three to go in the agent hunt. Another pro-forma rejection today from a large agency, but it was worded nicely and someone had taken the trouble to write my first name after Dear and a real person had signed it. These are nice touches.

What have I learned from today's post? It is clear that the type of material I submitted was not suited to this particular agent's list - I probably misinterpreted their entry in the Writers' and Artists' Year Book. Secondly, what I suspected. They receive up to 300 manuscripts per week.

Unusually, there was a second post today. My replacement black ink cartridge has arrived. I shall use it to print off six sets of submissions to send to the only six publishers I can find who will accept unsolicited MSS.

That leaves me with a total of nine chances. My spirits remain high! (Sounds like someone on a desert island writing a message in the sand.) I have plenty of food and water.