YOUR WIP IS DEAD - LONG LIVE YOUR WIP!

After my last post (excuse the pun), you all shared so much about your dead / dying / comatose books (and I loved Donna's image of divorcing her WIP, citing irreconcilable differences!) that I thought I'd reply in a separate post and pick up your points.

First, though, Bookmaven - thank you for your flattering suggestion that I turn the blog into a book. I have sometimes thought about it a bit but have pretty much decided that I love the blog format. (Shame I can't earn any money through it ...) Penny Dolan made the point too. Thing is, I feel that this blog is more than just my words or voice - if this blog is any good at all it's all your voices that have helped make it that way. I think the quality of commenting on this blog is outstanding. I'm delighted to have well-known authors such as yourself (Bookmaven, for those who don't know, is the very successful Mary Hoffman), as well as editors and agents, and a fabulous standard of unpublished authors who seem to be doing all the right things to propel themselves towards publication. I think that blogs sometimes have the edge over books - the sacrilege! - because they are moveable and malleable and mutual. More like a guided group sharing thoughts and knowledge than a figure on a stage lecturing and then disappearing without taking questions.

(Candy - of course I need your comments, and not like a hole in the head! And yes, I know I haven't replied to your email - I'm on the case. Thank you!)

So, no plans for a book (though I wouldn't turn down a fabulous offer ...) but I am thinking of doing some talks around the country. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who'd like to set something up. Crabbit Old Bat on Tour? Crabbit Old Bat Comes to a Town Hall Near You? (Note to self - could be an excuse for serious investment in shoes. Definitely tax-deductible. Note to Penny Dolan - jealousy is an occupational hazard of a writer so if you're only jealous of shoes, you've getting off lightly).

Meanwhile, your excellent comments on 222ing books.

I am in awe of how you've all taken positivity from rejection. (As Caroline said, rejection is information. I like that.) Your thoughts are worth quoting from. And literally everyone was positive.

So, Ebony McKenna (recently published - yay!):

"I finished six manuscripts (and didn't finish others) before I found my groove with Ondine. Two of those manuscripts *might* be fixable, but if they never see the light of day, that's fine with me. They were not a waste of time because I learned so much in the process." Exactly!

Juliet Boyd:

"I find the best way to deal with it [rejection] is to quickly open the envelope and see reject. Then put it away for a week to let yourself accept the rejection. After that, you can go back and read the feedback given with a rational mind and if you're honest with yourself, you will often agree with what is said." Juliet, If you can put it away for a week, you're a stronger woman than I am ...

Iain Broome said...

"I've been lucky so far and managed to get an agent at the fourth or fifth attempt, but I know plenty of people who have struggled and struggled with their novel. I think it's made all the more difficult because our work came out of our time on a Masters programme (Sheffield Hallam), so the investment, in a sense, has been financial as well as emotional, time-related etc." Iain, I wonder if it's not so much the financial aspect but the fact that going on an MA course is a fairly public statement that "I am going to be a Writer" so any "failure" to achieve that is a more public failure. When I was struggling to get published, I didn't tell many people so the anguish was more private.

Donna expresses it perfectly, even though she hasn't got to the point of submitting, let alone rejection! Great attitude, Donna. She says:

"... I do understand the reality that maybe, just maybe, this best book that's ever been written in the history of the world may not ever be published. Do I have the strength to sign a DNR form? Probably not. But I think I could bring myself to sign divorce papers (citing irreconcilable differences, or course). That way, I can officially move on... but I can entertain the dream that maybe a long way down the road we can reunite. It's a slim-to-none chance, but I'm the kind of person that needs the "slim."

The important part of Andy Duggan's experience is highlighted in red:

"I've been through all this as well, but maybe I can give some figures that might help: I've got a collection of approx 50 rejections from agents and publishers. In spite of this, my novel 'Scars Beneath The Skin' was eventually published by Flambard Press. There was a major rewrite somewhere amongst those 50 rejections, though - prompted by constructive criticism from a writing group."

Focus on the red high-lighted parts of Suzie F's comment, too. This is what I mean by the quality of comments. Her point about self-doubting voices is crucial - these are the voices we have to learn to listen to. They so often speak sense. (Except that she had doubts about whether to write at all - the more important doubts are the ones about THIS book, Suzie. Always continue writing if you love it enough - though if you're not good enough, you may not be published ...) Suzie says:

"Today's post hit home with me as I'm currently facing the fact that my current WIP isn't going anywhere. Well, maybe somewhere, like a deep, dark desk drawer. This is actually the second time - my first attempt at a novel was dropped at approx. 10,000 words but I was heading into NaNoWriMo with a fresh idea. ... I was infatuated with my two MCs but got myself into a plot jam. I've been stuck ever since. Then the self-doubting voices began whispering in my ear and I struggled with whether or not I should continue writing at all. Instead, I decided to use this WIP as a learning experience. Editing, rewriting, tightening, researching and reading a ton of books in my genre (MG and YA). I love the process so much and am starting to develop two new ideas." Hooray and triple hooray!

David Griffin gives an insight into the anguish of the writer, and many of us will identify:

"I had the services of an agent for just over a year, quite a while back now. And because the agency were unable to place my novels, we parted company. ... Since then I've tried only a handful of agents over the years, in a sort of half-hearted fashion, really. (i.e if one reputable and well-known London agency didn't want to represent me anymore, why would any other? Silly, I know, but it's taken a long time to get over that thought)." David, silly but understandable - thing is, you are probably a better writer now, writing different things - perhaps you are more publishable now. You have to try.

"So in a way, lacking confidence and motivation in trying other agents, I've attempted to "smother my children" by simply not getting them out there." God, we're into murder now! Eeek, what did I start?

"I'm developing habits of a writer who is committed to writing now, writing every day .... I'm going to try agents with determination and give it up to maybe 20 rejections. Only then will I occasionally read from the POD versions of my novels, with the odd sigh, knowing that not many other people will read them; and try the third one (when it's finished). "Grief, who would be a writer? (Millions of us, I know)."

Indeed ...

DanielB said...

"I have had to "slap a 222" on a novel in the past when the publisher who I thought would be "my publisher" (a reasonable assumption, as they'd published two of my novels) turned it down. ... It's still in cryogenic suspension, awaiting that revolution in medical science. Parts of it have been siphoned off and used for stem cell research to grow bits of other novels." So, not wasted at all. Excellent! And I'm partly including your comment because it's interesting for people to see that even successful writers like you can have temporary probs with publishing and [see next para] with writing ... "That's the second situation Nicola mentions - and I am a little worried that I may also now be facing the first as well! Damn it, I'm supposed to be one of those "experienced writers". It isn't meant to happen to us..." Ah, yes, unfortunately it does, but I am confident that you've spotted it earlier and stopped yourself sooner than if this was your first. For info of others, the second situation Daniel refers to is when you're halfway through a book and you become aware that it's going towards a dead-end fast.

Sue Hyams and Rebecca Knight seem delightfully happy at declaring the deaths of their beloved works. They say, respectively:

"Oh, how timely! Just yesterday I decided that 222 was the only way forward - only I didn't have a name for it then - for the novel I've been working and working and working on for the past 18 months. The decision had been whacking me on the back of the head for some time but I tried to ignore it. Now, it almost feels like a relief. Almost. Great post - thank you!" And:

"This is a fantastic post ... I've had to do this with my book, and it was all for the best :). I received two rejections that got me thinking, stopped querying immediately, and got to work! I can safely say that what I have now is 10 times better than my previous book, and all because of the criticism I received. Thank God for rejection!"

To be honest, I'd say thanks to the writers who take rejection so constructively and leave God out of it, but I know what you mean ...

I want to finish by referring to Catherine Hughes' comment. I'm not putting it in full here because this post is already long enough. Do go back to it on the post below this and see what you think because she's asking you all a question. My instinct is that she should be writing another book, because she has been told she can definitely write, but this vampire book (even if it is really really really different from other vampire books) has not been taken. I think we deserve better than another vampire book and I think Catherine can do it!

However, I also want you to notice that Catherine discovered (from the rejections and feedback) that she has a fatal flaw in her writing: not knowing at which point of the action to start the story.

I have two things to say to that:

1. I'm going to do a post about starting stories. (Catherine, you will have discovered from your search that I haven't talked about this yet). It's a great idea for a topic.
2. I have good news for the patient: this is not a fatal flaw. There is a cure! Hooray for illnesses with cures!
   

Catherine (and others who may be tempted) - you want to revoke your 222. I suggest you don't, at least yet, but I do suggest you take DanielB's suggestion and opt for cryogenic suspension. You may still eventually decide to turn off the life-support but on the other hand a) you may find the cure in time and b) vampires may be back once more. Yes, I do think the agent is referring to you writing something else, but yes you should also hang on very tightly to those words of praise. They don't come often or easily.

Meanwhile, you and we all simply need to remember the most important point of my orginal post, and one which none of you commented on substantially: that whether our WIP is curable, mildly rheumatic, terminal, comatose or cryogenically suspended (or awaiting divorce proceedings) we should be doing one thing regardless: writing and falling in love again.

Because that's what being a writer is.

CERTIFYING THE DEATH OF YOUR BOOK

Recently I noticed that my blog has 222 followers (now increased, which slightly spoils the point but please don't go away). I noticed because it's a cute number but then it got me thinking. "Not for 222" is (apparently) the medical code for a hospital patient so close to death that he should not be resuscitated in the event of heart failure.

It got me wondering how a writer decides his beloved book is "not for 222". How many times can you allow it to be rejected? At what point do you decide there's no possibility of life? Is your unpublished book terminally unpublishable?

Strikes me there are two situations where you might have to make the dreaded 222 order on your book.

1. Your Work in Progress (WIP) is not progressing. It's stuck. What started with an appealing idea and hook has ground to a halt. You have begun to force the plot-line; you know that it all now hangs on an episode which doesn't completely ring true, even to you, but you're determined to make it fit and you pile in more and more things to force the reader to believe in your story. You're starting to bite your nails in your sleep. There are bits of your book that you love and you keep reading them aloud to yourself, marvelling at the gorgeousness of your talent, but you know in a secret and painful part of your heart that your book has been built on sand.
   
2. Your finished book has failed (and failed and failed and failed) to find an agent or publisher. Some have given glimmers of hope, which you have clutched at and possibly exaggerated in your mind; your friends and family love your book (duh) but no agent or publisher seems to care about that; your writing group keep telling you to carry on trying - they mop up your tears and tell you you are brilliant and that publishers don't know what they're talking about or are "only in it for the money". (Well, yes, actually, if you mean that they can't afford to make a loss on every book they take on and they do have to eat like the rest of us.)

In each of these cases, a brave decision must be made.

Situation One is an occupational hazard of writing. It's an often fatal illness that happens much more often to books written by inexperienced writers. As you become more experienced, you'll spot the symptoms earlier and treat the cause before it becomes terminal. I have just done this with an idea that I was utterly gripped by until I began to look ahead and think the plot through. I foresaw fundamental problems in motivation and development, so I killed my baby before I'd developed a relationship with it.

(Note: we talk about the importance of "killing our babies" in writing and it strikes me that killing babies is a lot easier than killing adults. Metaphorically, I hasten to add. If you let your book grow and invest huge amounts of time in it, it's much harder to let it go. Whereas, spectacularly unlike real babies, an idea being stillborn is just a pinprick, something you have to get used to. Apologies for the unpleasant analogy.)

Situation Two
"How many rejections should I accept before giving up?" I was recently asked after a talk on how to get published. It's not the first time I've been asked it. Obviously, there is no answer, or not in terms of a number. In theory, you could send it to every agent and publisher who takes that sort of book, which might only be 20 or it might be 100.

But there are two more useful questions you should ask:

1. How many rejections should I accept before doing some radical re-writing of my work?

Answer: not very many, frankly. IF you have submitted your book to the right people (ie you have researched carefully and only sent it to agents and publishers who handle this sort of work) and IF you have followed all the guidelines so far given in this blog and the submission guidelines of the agents and publishers you've approached, and IF your writing is good enough and IF your book is sellable, then it is likely either to have been accepted or to have attracted some specific feedback, even if not an acceptance yet. So, IF the feedback has alerted you to a problem, you should be re-writing now. IF the feedback has either been inconsistent or has suggested nothing, you should consider getting (perhaps paying for) a professional critique of your work. But be careful to research very carefully the "professionalism" of this critiquing ... (Future post topic.)

What do I mean by "not very many"? Well, you ask me for a figure and figures don't really figure in this game. But let's say, for the sake of argument, not more than ten. No, eight. Seven?

"Only seven? Or even ten?" I hear some of you say. Ah, I don't mean you'll only send it to 7-10 agents/publishers; I mean you'll only send it to that many before taking a long hard look at what you've written (another long hard look because of course you've already given it dozens of long hard looks - I mean a long, hard, critical and objective look). Somehow, you must get a good opinion as to what's wrong with your book which means that you haven't yet hooked anyone.

Thing is, if you send it to 25 and they all say "no way" and then you decide you could have written it better, that's 25 publishers you can't really send it to again when you've improved it ... Well, you can, but it's tricky and needs some careful handling.

But I said there were two more useful questions and the second one is even more useful:

2. What should I be doing while my book is out there being read by an agent / publisher / anyone?

And the answer to this is dead easy: you're a writer, aren't you? So you should be writing. You should be throwing yourself into your next idea. If you're not, you're no writer, just a one-book wannabe. And no agent or publisher wants a one-book wannabe. No reader wants a one-book wannabe.

So get writing. Be fickle - turn your back on your beautiful slaved-over book and fall into bed with a new lover.

When you do that, you learn several important things:

• that your first book may not be as good as you thought it was
• that you can fall in love again
• that the death of a book is not the end of you as a writer
• that being a writer is about striving to be better all the time and that this happens with practice
• that if your first book is not good enough you actually don't want it to be published
• that actually you can postpone the 222 decision and wait for new technology to come along (in the form of your new knowledge gleaned from writing the second book) which might cure the disease
  
• that if at some point you decide to slap a "not for 222" on your first book, this will be a positive moment in your career as a real writer. And that you will (I promise) get over your apparently tragic loss.

Don't get me wrong: it's tough, it hurts, and even grown men cry. But if you have another WIP, it's not so bad. And you will not regret it. Ever. I don't know a published writer who hasn't got unpublished work in a drawer. And I don't know a published writer who really wishes that that unpublished work was published. God, I'm glad mine wasn't.

And a happy corollary that comes from all this is that resurrection and reincarnation both exist in a writer's world: it can sometimes happen that an idea or a book that died can rise again, later, when you are grown as a writer, and become something so much better and stronger and more beautiful than it first was.

We have to love our books with a passion but sometimes we have to let them die; or leave them lying in bed while we look ahead to the next one to love. Call yourself fickle, call yourself callous - it doesn't matter as long as you are writing.

If you have more than one book in you, let's see it. If you don't, give yourself a 222.

IS THIS WHY YOUR MS WAS REJECTED?

A lazy post today but why expend energy when someone else has done the work? (But please note: that is NOT an excuse for plagiarism, because there is no excuse for that. Plagiarism is copying or stealing and passing off as your own writing. Linking to other blogs is right and proper.)

Take a trip here and see if any of these reaons could apply to you.

IS YOUR WRITING HOT ENOUGH TO LIGHT FIRES?

I read this Very Useful Post on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog last month and now is the time to draw it to your attention if you didn't read it at the time. It gives a wonderful insight into the mind of an agent and what mental processes they must go through before saying yes to your magnus opus.

I believe that if you fully understand this, it will do two things for you:

1. help you when you are rejected, especially after those rejections which are accompanied by a message along the lines of "I liked many aspects of this but in the end I feel I have to pass"
2. encourage you not to submit your work until you are as sure as you possibly can be that it is as compelling and perfect as you can make it

Rachelle's blog contains frequent gems of warm and important advice. Bookmark it - I guarantee you won't regret it.

And if you're thinking maybe she's fussier than other agents, think again. All good agents and publishers make equal demands of the books they agree to take on. There's so much uncertainty in the world of reading that if there isn't passion and certainty in the agent and editor's hearts, then how can they possibly throw themselves behind a particular book? And if they don't throw themselves behind it, it'll be doomed.

Some other blog posts that help explain reasons why your book my be rejected:

• common-mistakes-of-unpublished-authors
• deciphering-your-rejection-letters
• big-mistake-1-slip-of-voice
• big-mistake-2-problems-with-pace
• big-mistake-3-show-not-tell-let-me-tell-you-how
  

But actually, none of those tell it as clearly as Rachelle's post because in the end it's all about hooking the reader. You can follow all the rules you like: if your writing doesn't have the necessary spark and perfection in the right places, it won't light any fires.

I've now had lots of submissions for my Submissions Spotlights, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of them is good enough to be published - yet! - though a few contain potential. But you can't expect agent / editor to see through the imperfections to the potential: they need more than that because they simply can't spend the time training you up. All the training and all the practice have to come from you. You can't afford to send anything less than the best.

Hot? It needs to be boiling point before you send it anywhere. Anything less is failure.

TRUTH HURTS - SO UNLEASH YOUR HIDDEN MASOCHIST

For a writer, there are sensible ways to take feedback and there are foolish ways to take feedback.

I won't add (much) to the vitriol hurled from and at two writers who got themselves into the news this week as examples of extreme(ly bad) ways to take negative criticism. Alain de B and Alice H will make up their own minds how to react to the feedback to their feedback to the feedback (aka reviews) to which they took such exception. Published writers must learn that some people will hate their books and must work out which negative crits they respect and which they think are rubbish. And how best to react. (Answer: not.)

But what of unpublished authors? What of the feedback that you get, if you're lucky, when you send your precious oeuvre to agent or editor asking for an honest opinion? I know, you don't really want an honest opinion, unless the opinion is "Brilliant! How much do you want for it?" But the fact that so many unpublished authors react unpleasantly to the more unwelcome honest opinions is partly what stops many agents/editors from giving any feedback other than "Sorry, I don't have room on my list." I know agents who've been told to rot in hell after saying that a piece of work wasn't up to scratch. Why should they put up with that when they're not paid and not likely to be paid if offered work that's crap?

Thing is, if you send your oeuvre to an expert, someone you plan to trust with your work during publication, you must accept his/her honest expert opinion when you get it. That doesn't mean you crumple into a heap and blindly make every change suggested if you don't fully believe or understand it, but it does mean that you consider closely what they say and accept that they know what they're talking about. Otherwise, why did you approach them, you deluded idiot? (Crabbit old bat is back.)

The author who does not listen properly to feedback from trustworthy sources (i.e. agents with a track record, publishers with a track record, writers with a relevant track record, and select readers who actually know what they're talking about, and NOT your relatives, friends, pets or even most members of your writing critique group unless they fall into the first category) is a fool and does not deserve to be published. Thing is, if a publisher happens to be taken in by your inferior writing and actually publishes it, readers will not be so forgiving: trust me. They will rip you to shreds on Amazon and your book will die horribly, messily and painfully. And you will be gutted and quite possibly throw a hissy fit. (In private, please.)

The aspiring author who, on the other hand, behaves like Jen Campbell, bravely and open-mindedly laying herself bare (not literally) and allowing herself to receive feedback in public from a host of people she has never met but has decided to trust on the basis that if they read this blog they must kind of slightly know what they're talking about, deserves publication and success.

The aspiring author who does all this and then generously gives me chocolate, just because I allowed her to be publicly judged, deserves to be published thrice-fold (or more) and then to win all the prizes going. Jen, thank you so much for the gorgeous Coco chocolate, pictured below - you honestly shouldn't have, but I'm very glad you did!

Vanessa's bookshop now seems to be the depository of presents for me. In case any of you need to know, for any reason of a donatory nature, her shop can be found at 219 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10, and delicious chocolatier Coco of Bruntsfield is conveniently close by. Vanessa is also opening a grown-up bookshop soon, and I am equally happy to receive chocolate or sparkly wine there too. I am sure Vanessa is quite delighted to look after things for me.

Jen, you're amazing, even without the chocolate - you are an example of how to take feedback properly, maturely and constructively. There's no reason why you should follow it all but I believe what you're doing is seeing your work through the eyes of others and you know much more clearly what you might do to make it gorgeously and perfectly publishable. When you get there, let me be the first to know and I will give you chocolate too.

I also take my hat off to others amongst you who have submitted work to the Submissions Spotlights, either for children or adults, and especially those who sent their work in even after seeing the intensity of the comments that Annie and Jen so wonderfully dealt with. Congrats to Annie too - her response to the feedback for her children's submission was also wonderful.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing another spotlight on July 13th or thereabouts, and I haven't completely decided which ones to pick so do keep your submissions coming. Please follow the same rules as before. I was really pleased with how it went - I learnt from it too.

Thank you all for being such excellently contributory blog readers. You are restoring my faith in unpublished authors: see, I confess that before I started this blog I thought most of you were completely hopeless nutcases and that, on top of that, if that were not enough, many of you were also deluded idiots. Nutcases and idiots among you are obviously keeping quiet, which is quite the best thing for you to do, letting the sane and potentially publishable have their voice and show good author behaviour. Having so many published authors, agents and editors reading this blog is also an enormous help - thanks, one and all.

I can't send you chocolate (otherwise, of course, I would) but I can show you Jen's chocolate and the lovely Coco bag.

DECIPHERING YOUR REJECTION LETTER(S)

I found that each time I got a rejection letter, I would actually groan. The sound slid out as if someone had physically squashed me. It's horrible. I guess I'll get no disagreement there. At this point, you have some choices:

1. be delusional - take the view that you're brilliant and they don't know a thing
2. be crushed - take the view that you're crap and they're right and you are not worthy to lick the stamp on the next submission
3. be practical - work out why you were rejected and do something about it
   

Most rejection letters fit into one of these categories:

1. No.
2. No, sorry, but our list is full.
3. No, this is not the sort of book we publish.
4. We thought about this carefully and it has many qualities, but we don't feel strongly enough about it.
5. We thought about this carefully and it has many qualities; however this, this and this are not quite right. We would be happy to see it again if you were to think of re-writing with those points in mind.

There is a subtext behind each of them. Sometimes, one rejection letter of a particular sort is not enough to go on. Several in the same vein should tell you something. 700 rejection letters of any sort should tell you a great deal ... (See the Behlerblog for this extraordinary story of idiot delusion.)

1. The subtext behind "No" is "this isn't a book we can publish/sell." There are many reasons why this may be the case.

• you may not be a good enough writer
• you may be a goodish writer or even a very good one, but your book is not right
• either because it doesn't fit a pre-existing category, or because it's not original enough (yes, I know - contradictory reasons there, but this is the real world, not Narnia); or because it's old-fashioned, or because it doesn't have a USP / hook / anything about it which will make it easy to sell in enough quantities to cover costs
  
• but, whatever, you have not grabbed them sufficiently for them to bother to encourage you
• (very often they are terrified of giving detailed feedback of any sort because far too often authors retaliate with vitriol
• but also because of the sheer size of the slush pile)
  

2. The "list is full" excuse is usually a red herring. Yes, the list may be full, but if your writing is good enough and it is the sort of book they'd have wanted if the list wasn't full, the publisher will not lose you in such a cavalier fashion. So, the subtext behind this is "this isn't a book we can publish/sell, and your writing isn't great enough for us to want to snap you up anyway." So, your book is not good enough - even though (and remember this) you may be a good enough writer; you just haven't shown your writing skills well or, perhaps more importantly, provided the vehicle of a good enough story.

3. The third category (the "not the sort of book we publish" one) indicates one thing: you're an idiot - you should have done your research and sent it to the right publisher. So, please go to the bottom of the class.

4. Obviously this one (the one about good qualities) is more positive. They wouldn't say this if it wasn't true, so pin it to your board and cover it with sparkly things. But, clearly, it's still a rejection... As briefly as possible, here are the things you need to consider.

• this is not about whether your book is better or worse than half the rubbish that IS published, so don't trot out that old chestnut. This is about whether a human being who is also an expert in selling books LOVES your book enough to fight for it in all the meetings that will have to happen before your book gets to market. See my post here and here and Lynn Price's here.
• it has to be not only a book the editor loves and believes in, but also one that fits the lists and the plans of that particular publishing company at that time.
  
• although "worse" books than your rejected one are often published, understand why I put "worse" in quote marks. It's not about "better" or "worse": it's about being right for an intended group of readers. Readers of chick-lit want something different from readers of Margaret Atwood. If a publisher sold chick-lit readers a Margaret Atwood, the readers would say it was crap and wouldn't recommend or buy it. So, your book might not be as "good" as a Margaret Atwood and therefore not "good" enough to be literary fiction, but much more "literary" than a chick-lit novel, and therefore not "good enough chick-lit". You have to know exactly who your intended readers are and write for them. So, you may well have written a "better" book than some of what you consider to be published drivel, but it's still not the right book for the right market.

5. The last one (the "re-writing" one) is obviously also very positive. Take it extremely seriously, but be sure that you understand and agree with the suggested changes before you do anything. If you don't agree, you won't be able to do it properly. However, be careful about pestering editors at this stage, since they have to deal with existing projects and the last thing you want to be is needy-seeming or irritating. It's fine to send ONE briefish email to check that you understand what they're saying, but after that you should keep quiet until you've done the work, unless they say they're happy to correspond more often. Often, a suggestion by the editor is a light-bulb moment, when you suddenly realise what's wrong with the book. A light-bulb moment is a wonderful thing and even if the publisher later turns you down, you will have improved your book.

Essentially, behind all these rejection letters is one message: you got it wrong. Sometimes you were just unlucky. But most often, it's simple: your writing is not (yet?) right.

If you want to do know just how hard it is and how hard you have to work to write better, I recommend the blog of a writer who is so close to having her novel published in that hardest of markets, literary fiction, that I am holding my breath for her. Sally Zigmond, who writes the wonderful and wonderfully-titled Elephant in the Writing-Room blog, understands all of the above perfectly. She has a quiet and determined belief in what she does, knowing that the responsibility for perfecting her work is in her hands alone. Sally deserves to be published, and I'm not just saying that because she has generously reviewed Deathwatch, both on her other blog and Amazon, and has even used a bit of it as a writing lesson. She knows that publication is all about the writing, that we can't carry on making excuses or ignoring advice, and that the best thing an aspiring author can do is spend time honing those words until readers are dragged into and then trapped by the story.

We too often think about getting published as a means to acquiring readers. But we should see it the other way round: think of your readers first, because if you don't, you won't be published. (Subject of forthcoming post.)

Motto for the day: getting published is not about wowing a publisher; it's about wowing readers. The more clearly we believe that, the better.

ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE, de dum, de dum de dum de dum

(NB You need to be a Life of Brian fan to get your teeth round all those de dums)

I may be too busy and fraught to bring you a carefully researched and ruthlessly perceptive blog post at the moment, but I'm never too busy and fraught to bring you someone else's carefully researched and ruthlessly perceptive blog post.

So, I do recommend, for your edification, education, and simultaneous hilarity, this post from literary agent Rachelle Gardner.

Now, those soul-shredding rejection letters which you open and weep over in the privacy of your own garret suddenly don't seem so painful, do they?

And lest you think I am above telling you about my own bad review, I thought you might like to put yourselves in my admittedly gorgeous turquoise boots when I read the shocking review of my novel Fleshmarket, on Amazon. Somewhat weirdly, the reviewer claims to be Bob Geldof, but I don't think this can be true because a) BG has better things to do and b) there's no swearing. All I can do is to remind myself that a) the reviewer is delusional b) the other reviews are good c) the poor sod had probably been forced to study Fleshmarket in class, which is a nasty thing to have to do when you'd rather be out kicking a football / pulling wings off flies, and I apologise to him for causing him distress d) he could well be right, but I can't change it now. I'll try to write betterly next time. Or e) it might be the surly shop assistant I was rude to the other day, getting his own back. And who can blame him?

Which brings me to the real moral of the story: remember that when you are published, you will no longer be able to be rude to anyone and get away with it. It's a crying shame.

BEWARE OF PRAISE

Praise is very like chocolate:

• it tastes great at the time
  
• too much of it is (regrettably) bad for you
  
• it (regrettably) needs to be balanced with the sensible stuff
• once tasted, you want more and more of it
• people give it to each other to show love, to bribe them, to make friends, and because giving and receiving are linked
  
• you should sometimes reject it
• it has been scientifically proven to be beneficial to mood

Pause to go and eat some , just so's I can remember. Method-writing again.

Anyway.

So, we all need it. Praise, I mean. But actually, it's not like chocolate because ALL chocolate is Truth Incarnate (except mint flavoured white chocolate, which is pure evil and doesn't deserve to be called chocolate) but some praise is False and Must Be Rejected Forthwith.

And I don't mean that it's false because the person delivering the praise is lying. Just that they're wrong, irrelevant and not worth listening to. Sorry. No really. I am. I don't like saying this. But believing that sort of praise is the worst favour you can do yourself as a writer. Would I lie to you after all this time?

Praise from someone who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about is worse than mint flavoured white chocolate. Or those pale ones from Marks & Spencer that have absolutely no chocolate in them at all and make me gag. Oh and omigod M&Ms - I nearly walked out of the cinema when my husband was eating M&Ms. All that vacant crunching and crappy plastic smell and not a hint of genuine cocoa. Am I showing myself up as a chocolate snob? Well, in that case fine, but maybe I 'm a praise snob too.

You should become a praise snob. If you really want to hone your writing and get published, learn to do two things with praise:

1. store it in the cosy bit of your brain to boost you when you have no chocolate
   
2. analyse it, judge it, assess it, and be HONEST about it (Is that 4 things? Call me generous.) And sometimes, reject it.
   

Here's my fool-proof guide to assessing praise, in the context of "Is This Praise That Is In The Slightest Bit Relevant To My Getting Published?" Of course, praise about your hair-style, dress sense, new lipstick colour or new car is entirely outwith the remit of this blog, and I would have to charge a fee for such extension of my adjudicatory powers. Essentially, all writing-related praise should be thoroughly - if reluctantly - discarded (after, of course, thanking the kind donor politely and not actually saying that you've been told to ignore them by a crabbit old bat from Scotland) if it emanates from the mouths (or keyboards) of the following - oh, and may I emphasise that as individuals these are all often perfectly lovely people, just that they're not qualified to praise your writing in any kind of practical sense, though they may be accidentally correct?

• your parents, grandparents, children - other blood relatives may very occasionally give acceptable advice, but only if they are not:
• members of your writing group - oh god, I'm sorry, now I've really blown it. Sorry, guys: it's that you've got issues that get in the way. Like, you're really wanting to boost the self-esteem of the writer, and it's lovely of you, it really is, but you're too psychologically, morally and ethically connected, (and you may be actually in their house and drinking their wine) and it's not possible for you to be objective (unless you're really cool, and I don't mean cool-trendy); OK, I relent: occasionally your writing group may have a point but ... will you know when that point arrives??
  
• other unpublished writers, unless they have publishing credentials, in which case listen to them (unless they fall into the blood-relly category)
  
• anyone who doesn't have publishing credentials or some other reason to Know
  
• especially the above if they're sober - alcohol is a great honesty boost
  
• your friend
• your dog
• anyone on a blog
• anyone on Amazon
• anyone posting an anonymous review, as it's probably your friend, dog, parent, publisher

Look, I know you hate me now - and we were getting along so well. I KNOW praise is important - god, I'm delicate enough that I need it too. I'm absolutely not saying ignore all praise: I'm saying assess it. I'm saying be honest with yourself. Some praise is fab but some is simply air. Poisonous air at that.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. Does this person actually genuinely know what they're talking about?
2. Is this person giving the praise entirely out of the blue and not because I happen to have put them on the spot by asking them for an "honest opinion"?
   

This post has come about because I see people being held back from publishing potential by clutching at empty praise and ignoring the much rarer really constructive criticism, which could actually improve their writing and pull them towards genuine success. Of course I love it when people say nice things to me but I grow much more from the negative points - the girl who asked me why I wrote such long chapters, the comments from readers who didn't like a certain ending - and then the praise from the specific people who I most respect because they KNOW and they are HONEST and I DIDN'T ASK THEM FOR AN OPINION.

There are people I know who are renowned for being honest in their criticism and those are the ones I work hardest to please because I know they won't say it's good if it's not. I so respect people with the guts to be honest - and I admit that I'm not one of them. (You surprised??) I know that occasionally when a friend has written something I didn't really rate, I've said some nice things. That's the problem, it's so hard not to. People say, "Be honest," but they don't mean it ...

The worst places are some online communities and forums. You see people going on-line and off-loading and everyone piles in with all the oh dahlings, and poor you, and don't worry WE know you're fab, dahling. When they haven't even read the thing that's been rejected. And of course it's lovely and kind and generous and right in lots of ways but in terms of becoming published it's so so so detrimental.

I feel really bad after this, but I'll have to steal myself and click "Publish". I really don't mean you to reject all praise but a) don't go seeking it because if you ask for an honest opinion from a friend/colleague/equal it will be highly unlikely to be entirely honest and if not entirely honest then somewhat pointless (except in a chocolately sort of way) and b) when you get praise, consider this: that if you accept praise, logically you should equally accept the negative stuff. Such as the rejections by professionals ...

And now I really am going to wimp out: you're all fabulous, dahlings. Think about it - how does that sound?

Perhaps I should more constructively say: hold all praise briefly to your heart and then let it go and focus on improving your writing.

Before I go, I should also pass you over to a post on How Publishing Really Works a while back, which illustrates this very beautifully and much more pithily than my typically over-long rant has. (Oops, Jane, that sounds like praise.)

NEGATIVE REVIEWS - SHHHHHH

You know how the Norwegians (I think it's Norwegians?) have hundreds of words for snow? Well, in Scotland we have numerous gorgeous words for the various things that we like a lot, such as insults. I notice we also have a lot of words for bad weather and being drunk, but I can't think why that should be - I can only think that an English person wrote the dictionary and was introducing outdated cultural stereotypes. But there's one beautiful and useful Scots word which doesn't fit into any of those categories: stushie. A stushie (sometimes also known as stromash) describes an argument held in public, which a whole load of people get themselves involved in. (This is something we never actually do but we often observe south of the border, of course, which is why we need at least two words for it.) It's the slightly more civilised equivalent of a street brawl. And there's one going on here right now

Essentially, a self-published author who was lucky enough to be reviewed in Scott Pack's blog but unlucky enough that the review wasn't 100% brilliant, (and why should it be? It's a review, not an advert) has not done the sensible thing (stay silent and understand that no one will notice, especially since it wasn't a particularly negative review ) but the unwise (but, I argue, very human and understandable) thing (react, thereby ensuring that everyone will notice it and only remember the negative bit.) Sorry, too many brackets there. (I think I have a serious bracket habit. There are worse faults.)

And while I agree with the general tenor of the messages, which are mainly telling him how silly he is, I actually want to do two things here:

1. Sympathise with his feelings (although I would certainly have advised him not to respond) because it's horrible to get a negative review. It goes to the very core of oneself as an author and is the type of public humiliation which most other people don't have to deal with (though they don't get the public acclaim either.) My sympathy is limited in this case because actually it was a very anodyne and perfectly valid review - but I'm extending my sympathy to encompass all recipients of negative reviews, generous person that I am.
   
2. Use it as a useful cautionary tale for you, to prepare you for that moment which is a rite of passage for published authors, and self-published ones if they are very lucky, when you read a review that is not quite as glowing as the one your mother would have written for you.
   

Sympathy for recipients of negative reviews
It is rawly, utterly, searingly gutting when the work you slaved over and made as brilliant as you could is received negatively, in public. The fact that the negativity may be slight cannot initially register with the author: one drop of lemon juice on a cut feels no less painful than five drops of lemon juice. The author in this case is also self-published - this means he is having to deal with "No one wanted to publish me" along with "and now a reviewer doesn't think I'm the bees knees either". You can't not take it personally. Rationality goes out of the window. People such as me telling you that you're lucky to get a review, that it's "just one opinion, right?", that there'll be good reviews, that no one will notice or remember - none of that makes sense in the early moments of reading that bruising review.

In the old days (ie before the internet) a bad review disappeared with the rubbish the next day; no one who hadn't read it would ever see it again. Now, of course, it's THERE FOR LIKE EVER. It is googlable and forwardable and printable and cut-and-pastable. Schoolkids will find it when they do a school project on you. People will blog about it and link to it and really they might as well just put you in the stocks and throw rotten tomatoes at you.

But, somehow, for your own sake and no one else's, you have to avoid reacting, at least in public. Oh, in private, no problem: stick pins in the review (or wax model of the reviewer), burn it ceremoniously while chanting ancient spells, flush it down the toilet. But in public ... rise above it. The moral high ground is a damned fine place to be and the view is spectacular.

The lesson - learn, remember and store up for future use:

1. Be grateful for ANY review, especially on a well-respected blog or newspaper. MOST books get no reviews except when the author's mother writes a thinly disguised one on Amazon. (And it has been known for a publisher to do this too - don't trust Amazon reviews. Oh, and by the way - don't post any anonymously yourself: there was an incident a few years back when all the anonymosity disappeared from Amazon Canada's reviews, causing a few blushes amongst some well-known authors ....).
2. Recognise that not everyone can like your book, or like the same aspects of it, and reviewers should be allowed to say so, as long as they do so with integrity. A good book will get a variety of responses. You can choose to ignore any review, especially if you don't respect the reveiwer or if you feel that his/her taste is simply different from yours, but you might actually learn something from the content. That's up to you. It's your right to ignore it or believe it, though there's a school of thought that says if you believe the good ones you should believe the bad ones ...
   
3. Focus on the positive bits (supposing there are some) - I know an author who had a review which went something like, "this is an inferior book from the author of the utterly suberb *****" and she used the "from the author of the utterly superb ****" on her website and other places. A negative review is a bit like falling off a horse except that you don't break your arm. Pick yourself up and carry on. Perhaps someone else will leap to your defence on Amazon/wherever - fantastic. But if it's your mother, do give her some lessons in disguise.
   
4. Don't react. I don't know: go and buy some shoes or something. Wine and chocolate are two other justified and proven strategies. Of course, you have the right to respond, but you'd be foolish to: it will get you nowhere. And for goodness' sake, if you write an email or blog post, don't click Send. Sleep on it and then bin it. I tend to stick pins in less than mother-like reviews and imagine the reviewer dressed in huge pink underwear with a tea-cosy on his head. This is very helpful, I find.

Everything's a phase. Believe it or not, your negative review will fade from your memory like a bruise. In fact, the person who gave me my only really bad review is now a friend - we never talked about it and I haven't a clue if she/he can even remember writing the comments that had me spitting tacks (privately, of course - moral high-ground, not clicking Send etc etc). And sticking pins** in a wax model doesn't seem to have done any harm either. Well, not that I can see. Mind you, the pink frilly underwear could be covering that up.

**PS For those of you who are sensitive to ideas of modern witchcraft, I am not nor have ever been a witch, nor have I never stuck pins in anything other than a pin-cushion, nor could I be bothered to. I was speaking merely metaphorically. I do a pretty effective line in cursing though.

IT'S JUST ONE OPINION, RIGHT?

This is what you and your friends / writing group say to each other when you are rejected by an agent or publisher. Because we all know that you'll never get a room full of people to agree about the merits of a published and multi-award-winning book, let alone an unpublished one.

So rejection doesn't mean you're not good enough, because it's just one opinion, right? And it's a rubbish opinion, right? And it's just someone who happens not to like this style of book or be on the right wave-length, right? In fact, your only mistake was to pick this particular rubbish agent / publisher and if you'd picked a different one everything would be all right, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is not just one opinion: this is an expert opinion.
Yes, still an opinion, and it is possible that another expert might disagree at least in the detail, but it is a much more important and likely-to-be-right opinion, and certainly needing to be listened to. It is an opinion based on an understanding of the market and a proper, trained knowledge of how a book works and what ingredients it needs to propel it to its readership and critical acclaim (more expert opinion). A book is not just a lovely idea wrapped up in some passionate words and tied with a pretty bow. A book has structure and rules (which may be broken but only when you know how and why) and a shape, with patterns which are far from random. There are shapes and tricks and pitfalls and techniques and absolute no-noes, any of which you may not know but all of which the good agent, editor and (usually) published author have learnt.

This, really, is where the "everyone has a book in them" idea falls on its face. Now, it is possible that everyone has an idea in them which a writer might turn into a book, but it is absolutely not the case that most people have a book in them. Woolly nonsense that everyone deserves to be a writer is what keeps the slush pile clogged up with drivel. No, everyone does not deserve to be a writer any more than everyone deserves to be an astronaut or a opera singer. Some people simply don't have the necessary talents to be those things. I certainly don't, much as I might wish I had, or even be prepared to try.

It's a bit like the "everyone deserves to pursue their dreams" thing. Yeah, okay, everyone has the right to pursue them - just as I have the right to pursue a dream to be a world-famous singer. The fact that I'm useless at singing just means I don't have the right to succeed. And I certainly don't have the right to demand that a professional singing teacher gives up time to offer a detailed critique of my crapness or become my agent without any hope of earning any money from me.

To succeed, I'd need talent, followed by very very very hard work, and the ability to listen to a great and EXPERT teacher.

Of course, I am not meaning to say that you're useless at writing - of course you're not. Many of you are likely to be very talented and full of potential and will doubtless become published - in fact, many of you are already and I'm delighted to have some seriously successful authors reading this blog. Really, I'm just riding my hobby horse into the sunset. But I'm also making a point about talent and opinion and how every type of art has certain skills and talents, with experienced professionals who have expert opinions about those talents, opinions which are valid and must be listened to. Argued with, possibly, but listened to and not dismissed in favour of your mother's opinion. Even if your mother is a publisher, frankly. Being a mother tends to get in the way of things.

But the rejection letter is not necessarily saying you don't have the talent. It's saying that your book hasn't sufficiently revealed that talent; or possibly that it does reveal potential talent but that there are too many things wrong with this particular book. (I am going to do a whole post on "What the rejection letter means" so I'll do that in more detail then.)

Back to the "just one opinion" thing.
There's a TV series in the UK called Masterchef. You may have it in other countries too, though I guess with different presenters. Anyway, it's a competition for seriously good amateur cooks and the standard is incredible. The judging is done by these two guys, professional and well-known chefs, and they taste all the food and judge it. Now, clearly with food, it is literally a matter of taste. But when they judge, they are able to transcend any thoughts such as, "Hmm, I never was particularly keen on mushrooms - slimy things at the best of times," or "Tarragon - a hugely over-rated herb, I always think, fit only for cows." They have an expert and objective view of what "notes" should be in a dish; they can tell you that yes, each flavour is perfect but that there are too many flavours on the plate; they can say that the lemon is over-powering the rose and that a tiny whiff more cinnamon would improve it, even if they personally don't go for cinnamon in the first place. They will talk about the shape of the flavour, the balance, the mouth-feel, the warmth of the salt, what it's doing to each part of their tongues. Now, you can call it pretentious if you like, but these guys know how to judge food by its taste without letting personal predelictions get in the way. It is a genuinely expert opinion, as objective as possible.

And that's what a good agent or editor gives you when herehe or she rejects or accepts your manuscript. (Granted that there are some other elements - do read ARE PUBLISHERS EVER WRONG for some very good reasons why publishers may reject a perfectly good book - and it may just be the wrong book for them, or they've just taken on another too-similar book. But in that case they are likely to say something that suggests this. Though, of course, they may not suggest this, since agents and publishers can be the masters of obscurity. PS: in fact, by pure coincidence, Jane at How Publishing Really Works was obviously writing a piece giving very good reasons for that while I was doing this current post - read it here.)

So, be very careful when you go down the "what do they know?" route to dealing with rejection. They do know. (Well, unless they're rubbish, which they occasionally are but if they are then you don't want them to accept you anyway because their editorial judgement will be lousy, their copy-editing cheap or non-existent and your book will end up being published in a form which is embarrassingly not as good as it should be and you will wish they'd turned you down or you hadn't been so desperate. Trust me.)

If you choose to believe your mother, partner, kids or writing group, rather than the professional who actually knows enough about all this to make a living out of it, fine. But you're risking missing a much more helpful truth: that in some way your masterpiece is not yet good enough and that you need to improve it.

I aim to go one by one through the possibilities of what the imperfections might be. We've done voice. The next one is either going to be pace or over-writing. Or possibly monotony in sentence structure. All of those things will really drag down your writing, even if you do have underlying talent and potential.

Mind you, that's just my opinion.

BIG MISTAKE 1: A SLIP OF THE VOICE

I hope you are sitting comfortably, and that you have your most studious faces on because today we are going to get serious. Here begins a series of pieces about the most common things that stop a potentially publishable book being as good as it needs to be. Or as good as you think it is.

Let's assume you can organise words in a better order than a drunken monkey given unwise access to a keyboard, and that your book actually does sound pretty damned fine when you describe it pithily, using a well-crafted hook. Perhaps you've got to the stage of sending off your submission and you've swottily followed all my rules about approaching agents/publishers - including not putting toffee (or even chocolate, even Green and Blacks, in answer to the plaintive but valid question by "Emerging Writer") in the envelope. So, we're saying you really have been a perfect student, that you have even stretched yourself to being polite, charming and modest, and that a quietly intelligent potential emanates from the page of your crystalline covering letter.

Let's suppose that despite all this, a terse rejection letter wings its way all too speedily back. Because it usually does. It may give you very little information, other than the "not right for our List" variety. Yaw-n. Or, if you're lucky, it may tell you a tiny bit more, like "has some merits, but ultimately we did not feel sufficiently strongly about it." Now, that is only a tiny bit more but it's quite an important tiny bit more, because it does actually mean that there were some merits. They're not going to tell you what the merits are, oh no - because that would be foolish of them, opening the door to the torrent of your eager follow-up* letter: "Oh merits, THANK YOU so much for noticing my merits - could you now list those merits, in writing, and preferably capital letters and then I will use them to entice other unwary agents and publishers with the fact that you, O glorious one, think I am utterly brilliant?" And you would then be doing your well-known impression of agog, blushing in anticipation of the glowing praise you about to receive.

(* NO! No follow-up letter! Just crawl back into your hole, lick your wounds, and prepare to try again.)

And no again because what your book's merits are is irrelevant, except as a panadol for your bruised ego. You need to know its crucial rubbishnesses, not its merits. Trust me, you do, even if you don't think you do. You must find its faults, somehow, or you will languish in a state of toe-curling unpublishedness for so long that your toenails will have grown into something like those slinky springs that used to keep me amused for 15 seconds when I was a child.

Them "not feeling strongly" means that the book is not (yet?) good enough in some secret masonic aspect which will not be revealed to you. Because if it was, they'd have to kill you. So, let's begin to extract the answer, which we will do by guesswork because they have offered no clue. Given that you can string some better-than-monkey sentences together and that the hook was so damned brilliant, there are, thankfully, only a small number of things it could be.

The first one of these is Voice.
I'm starting with voice because I hadn't a clue about this when I first wrote a book with a damned good hook that actually did end up being published. One of the early conversations with my agent, as she was signing me on the basis of the first draft of a very imperfect novel, went something like this:

A: Of course, we'll have to deal with those voice slippages.
NM: Oh yeah, right, of COURSE. (Exit far left to find nearest access to Google).

(At this point you may legitimately be asking, "Huh, so how come your rubbish voice control still got you published? How come that agent saw through your huge faults but agents and publishers are rejecting me in their droves?" Well, I can only think that voice was maybe the only mistake I was making and that the agent could see that it would only take a little bit of work to put the slippages right. Agents don't expect you to get everything first time but they have to see potential, and potential can shine through a thin haze but not through a swirling fog.)

A few things about voice:

• When you know about voice it's obvious. It's one of the easiest faults to correct in your writing, if you really have control over your words - all you need to do is LISTEN. And I mean that literally. Read it aloud.
  
• When you make a mistake with voice, it's incredibly obvious to the reader. It jars. It stops the reader engaging with the story because the reader starts to hear you the author, which is not** what he/she is there for, unless it's your mother ...
• Being able to use voice skilfully is one of the things that can mark you as a special or interesting writer.
• But it is also possible to do nothing at all clever with it, and still tell a perfectly good story.
• Voice is equally important in non-fiction. Same rules, same techniques.
• ** I said that the reader doesn't want to hear the author's voice - I don't mean that an author can't develop his/her own distinctive voice that shines through each book, especially the books of a series. I mean that the author's own voice mustn't suddenly slip in incongruously - it's the voice of the book that comes first, foremost and only.
  
• Well what the hell IS it? Aren't you going to tell us?

Yes, voice is just that: voice. Take me - not in that sense: I'm happily married - and you. When you and I speak, our voices sound different and our friends recognise them. We use different words and phrases for a start, but they also sound like no one else except ourselves. The only time my voice might change is when I've got a sore throat or I've mistaken the wine for Ribena. Sometimes (rarely, darling husband) my voice is angry; sometimes (often) it's tired; and sometimes (most of the time) it's really crying out for unparalleled adulation. But whatever my mood, it's my voice.

A book has a voice too. The narrative voice. And this is what we're talking about, over and above the more obvious different voices of each character within the book. It may have several narrative voices if you want and if you follow certain rules. But it will only have several voices for a reason and the writer will control those voices so brilliantly that the reader will instantly know which voice he's listening to and why. A reader, even a reader who knows nothing technical at all, will notice if you make a mistake with voice, even with one word or phrase. So, voice slipping is highly likely to be something that the agent/editor who has just rejected you has noticed, meaning that he loses confidence in you and loses touch with the story. Imagine you're watching an actor on stage and he keeps slipping out of character - you'd be tense and you'd stop focusing on the story. Then you might start to rustle your sweet wrappers or throw eggs.

Let's look (or listen) in a bit more detail. Some books have very distinctive voices. Distinctive voices are the hardest to do - hardest to keep consistent and hardest not to annoy the reader. My current WIP (work in progress) uses a very distinctive voice, which I have to be extremely careful with: it's present tense, 3rd person, letting the reader entirely into its confidence; it's sardonic, ironic and philosophical, occasionally deliberately pretentiously so. Those are all major things to deal with, and to keep it going for the whole novel without becoming irritating or overdoing it. All of my redrafting is focused on controlling and honing the voice.

A novel that comes out this June (shameless double plug alert - it's called Deathwatch) mixes voices: three times we have a chapter where the main character is seen through the eyes of the adult stalker, and at those times it's present tense, slightly off-kilter, slightly obscured, very dark. Most of the rest of the time it's a straightforward*** 3rd person narrative, with more of a modern teenage feel, since the main character is a teenager.

In another novel, Sleepwalking, (crikey, that's three shameless plugs - I am excelling myself today and surely deserve an advance-rise) sometimes I slipped (deliberately, of course) into an internal conversation in an angry girl's head. To make it crystal clear, I used italics for those parts. You can't do that too much - either italics or internal angry dialogue - it gets boring for the reader.

*** But nothing is EVER "straightforward narrative"
Every narrator has a voice too, even if the narrator isn't an actual character in the book. And that's the tricky point about voice: your narrator, even if never identified, exists. In fact, this narrator is what most gives the book its voice. So, when you say "It was a dark and stormy night", (even though you don't, unless you're being ironic, because it's a cliché) you the writer must be aware of who is telling us it's a dark and stormy night. What is the voice of that narrator? Is the narrator on the side of the reader or one character or several characters? Does the narrative voice take the reader into its confidence, speaking to the reader, or is it more detached? How old do we think the narrator is? If you were to do a study of the narrator (even when 3rd person and invisible), what would the characteristics be?

When you read a published book, you won't be thinking of any of this, because you don't get voice slippages in properly-edited published books. (You do in self-published books because self-published authors almost never pay for proper editing, which is absolutely the most stupid omission.) But where you mostly get voice slippages is on the slush-pile. The slush-pile is a veritable morass of voices oozing and sliding all over the flipping place. And there you will languish amongst all the other greasy spaghetti.

How deliberate should my choice of voice be?
Sometimes, when you start a book, the voice doesn't come immediately. It's not easy to begin a new voice, unless it's been in your head for a while. Sometimes it comes naturally, which is the best way, as it will be easiest to maintain. Often, the voice that comes when you start your book is quite different from what you expected. In that case, you have to decide whether to go with it or change it and start again. Often when a new book feels as though it's sticking, it's because you haven't got the voice right. I have an idea for a novel now and I have loads of the characters in my head, several scenes and a whole load of detail, but it has no voice yet, and so it can't even be started. I have no desire to start until a voice is bursting to get out.

In the Passionflower Massacre - omigodIdon'tbelieveit: another plug? - the voice came out exactly as I'd visualised it. Every single other novel I've written has come out differently from the voice that had been speaking in my head. That doesn't matter, as long as it works and is consistent from beginning to end (except, in those places where you have chosen a new voice for a good reason.)

Now, some exercises for you. See, this is not your average blog that merely asks for comments - this is SERIOUS WORK. Oh, and by the way, mark them yourselves, class. I'm on my coffee break.

1. Take the book you are reading and the book you are writing. For each, analyse the voice(s). You may need to start by taking just a couple of paragraphs in Chapter 1. Ask: is it one voice or several and, if several, what tells me when they change? Why do they change? How would I describe the narrator's character simply from the tone of the narration? How old is the narrator? Which of these words apply: light, serious, chatty, modern, fresh, cheeky, sardonic, pessimistic, optimistic, damaged, hurting, survivor, angry ...? Is the narrator my friend? Can I trust him/her? Does the narrator know everything or only some things? (This is partly a matter of POV - Point of View - which is somewhat but not totally different.)

2. Pick one of these characters: tired old lady, bereaved man, baby, toddler in buggy, grumpy man/woman, harrassed teacher, school truant, homeless person, bench/seat, road-sweeper, pigeon, cat, mother with three children, lost child. Then imagine yourself in a crowded place and write a single paragraph in the voice of that person, without actually describing yourself or giving obvious clues as to who you are. Give your piece of writing to a friend and see if they can say what your character is.

3. Now, look again at your WIP - and examine it minutely for voice slippages. If you find any, be for ever in my debt, because that could indeed be at least a major part of why the editor/agent "didn't feel strongly enough". In fact, maybe the rejection letter is a less messy way of throwing eggs.

Later, we'll do the other things that stop a novel being as good as it needs to be. Meanwhile, that has been such a very serious lesson that I really do plan that the next post will be that story of hilarious ineptitude. Well done and give yourself a round of applause!

Meanwhile, a smaller funny story to end on, though an irrelevant one.
I had an email from a teenage reader once, saying, "Dear Nicola, I'm reading the Passionflower Massacre and really enjoying it, even though it's not what I was expecting because I actually thought the title was the Passionflower Mascara." Yeah, and the title is really quite important, in that there is no mascara but quite a substantial amount of massacring ...

Oh, and another one from a school visit, and this identical thing has happened to me TWICE, because I'm stupid and don't learn:

Nice Girl: I really love your books.
NM (swelling with pride as this doesn't happen often): Oh really? Thank you. Which one do you like best?
Nice Girl: Sorry?
NM: Which one do you like best?
Nice Girl: Er, I don't know really. I don't really mind that much.
NM (realising that actually the girl was just being kind and hasn't really read any of them): Well, do you like Fleshmarket or Blame My Brain or ... ? (That's six plugs in one blog.)
Nice Girl (Looking at me as though I'm a total idiot): NO, I like your BOOTS.

Can you believe this happened twice?

Mind you, this is Scotland and we obviously can't speak like normal people. And here are the boots in question.

IN DEFENCE OF AUTHORS, AND ABOUT TIME TOO

First an apology: this is not the Thursday light relief that I promised. That story of extraordinary and hilarious incompetence is coming, I promise (something for the weekend?) but I have a need to offload something that is seriously bugging me first.

Warning: crabbit old bat in major full swing. But with a difference. Today, I’ve had enough of criticising my fellow authors, unpublished and published - because we’re all in it together, dahlings - for things like “Inexcusable Ignorance” and general tawdry and unprofessional behaviour. I think I even perhaps once mentioned drunkenness and unpleasantness and possibly arrogance. How could I? Anyway, I’m going to turn the tables. Yes, I am. Now it’s the turn of you nasty mean editors and other forms of publisher, and even booksellers. Because you just don’t understand us, you really don’t.

I feel that in the very few weeks that this blog has been in existence, I have had many approving noises from (wonderful) publishers and (gorgeous) booksellers and I’ve accepted them all like the pathetic, insecure gallery-playing author that I am. And I would not be surprised if you fabulous, long-suffering, aspiring authors were not sitting there weeping quietly and bravely at the crap I’ve been dealing out to you, allowing yourselves to be flagellated by the likes of me. (Please don’t get too excited by that concept - it’s really not nice and, anyway, I mean it only metaphorically.)

So now I say, ENOUGH! Let’s hear it for authors, and let me send a message to those powerful, cruel publishers and booksellers who hold us in their thrall. (Just what is a thrall anyway? I don’t know, but it sounds like a very nasty thing in which to be held.)

I should start by saying that of course I know, and have said before, that very occasionally an author lets the side down by behaving as though he (or even, more occasionally, she) has a brain the size of mouse genitalia, an ego in inverse proportion to said genitalia and an alcohol habit to match the inverse proportion. Occasionally, it must also be said, authors are exceptionally rude and crass and many other unacceptable things. But APART from those few, we are simply misunderstood. And the sooner that editors and agents and booksellers understood this, the better for world peace and various other useful things.

So, let me, on behalf of my suffering writerly colleagues (to whom I apologise for all previous cruelty and mockery - though I don’t take it back, because it was entirely justified most of the time) enlighten those professionals who take such pleasure in berating us for our failure to understand the errors of our ways.

1. It’s a real bugger being an author, sometimes. Honestly, it’s over-rated as a holiday destination.
   
2. We suffer constant insecurity. (Most of us. And we hate the others, so that’s OK.) Well, how wouldn’t we be insecure, when people regularly tell us we’re rubbbish, even once we’re published? And if anyone says nice things, they’re most likely to be a) our publicity people b) our parents or c) deluded (which includes our parents).
3. Would you like it if your work was reviewed negatively and those negative comments were put on the internet for like EVER? Would you like it if your audience went on message-boards and said a load of rubbish about your oeuvre? The fact that this ignorant rubbish is often written by people who should be asleep instead of messaging crapness at 3 in the morning, and that they can’t spell, doesn’t make it hurt less. Actually, it makes it hurt more to think that such a stupid person would care enough to have gone online to over-share - I mean if the book was just mediocrely awful, wouldn’t they just have ignored it and watched re-runs of the X-Factor?
4. Some unpublished authors absolutely and utterly deserve to be published and have a glittering career in front of them - perhaps far in front of them but distance is like size: not everything. No one should assume that because an author has failed to be published (yet), they are rubbish. Lynn Price of the phenomenal BehlerBlog was kind enough to be fabulously, well, kind, about my writing - which is a) wonderful of her and for me but b) confusing because in that case how come I was unpublished for so almost-soul-destroyingly long? The point being? The point being that for very many painful years I had regularly and horribly assumed that I wasn’t good enough and for that long I was the person that published writers (including me, until now) and editors and booksellers often knock: the wannabe no-hoper, the deluded idiot who really should just keep on with the day job because everything else - the dream - is nothing more than a dream.
5. We work for years and years and years (and in my case years) before we earn anything at all from our writing, because we love it are and drawn to it and driven to it and yet some (most) of us will never earn anything approaching a decent salary for it. No violins, please. And OK so some of us don’t deserve to earn anything from it, but we lay our heads and hearts (and actually sometimes lives, though I can’t claim such bravery myself) on the line in our belief that what we produce is art and matters. And what do we get for that? What we get is 96% of the world never having heard of us, 3.9% of the world messaging at 3 in the morning to say what rubbish we are and the remaining 0.1% being either related to us in some way, or pathetically undecided.
6. We cringe in abject mortification (and some) when we go into a bookshop and our books aren’t there and 99% of the time we slink out (after buying something we didn’t want, just to make us feel there was a point in being in the shop in the first place) and the other 1% of the time we pluck up courage to ask the busy and godlike bookseller if by any chance they might consider - pretty, pretty please - stocking our book because it’s quite a good book and it’s had some lovely reviews which unfortunately you, o glorious bookseller, don’t seem to have seen but if you were to consider stocking my humble little book I promise I will come in and give up my time - free, because of course my time is free since no one’s sodding well going to pay me for it - and do an event for you to bring five people into your shop because I’m such a loser (cue more cringing embarrassment and mortification), four of whom are related to me and the other one of whom came in looking for a birthday present for his mother but got forced or confused into listening when you locked the door. Trust me, it’s AWFUL doing the “how to help bookshops sell your book” thing, unless you have a monstrous ego, which I just don’t, so I apologise in utter shrivening abjectness to every bookseller whom I have failed to help sell my books. And they are many. Oh, how often I have slunk away, worm-like, and how often you have never seen me. I have never put my books face out (yeah, I know, I’m really rubbish as an author - please don’t tell my publisher /agent /editor /daughters / dog and everyone else who relies on me to earn some money for them) or done anything remotely annoying or in-your-face - and more’s the pity, according to my publishers and my royalty statement. I am sorry, so sorry, and please forgive me and please stock my next book because it will be much much better than anything I’ve ever done and has a gorgeous cover, which you always say is the MAIN thing.
7. It’s a real bugger being an author sometimes. Frankly, it sucks. But you know what? We love it. So forget your violins and take back your sympathy because I’m changing nothing. Sorry, but I just can’t do enough to help you sell my books because I’m too shy and pathetic and actually, you know, I am supposed to be WRITING. And you are the bookseller and that’s why you do it so brilliantly and kind of that’s why I would like to think I’m the writer in this deal and you’re the bookseller / editor / publicity person / EXPERT. And yes I KNOW I am supposed to help but please just let me go home and write. Where the hell is that garret I dreamt of for so long, and that delicious loneliness??

So anyway, calming down slightly (but not much) in the spirit of almost Valentine’s Day (omigod, better go out and buy something for him - maybe a BOOK, and if so then certainly and absolutely from Vanessa’s fabulous bookshop) let’s show a bit of a loving understanding for all those misunderstood authors out there. Yes, sometimes we're rubbish but we are trying not to be. We're doing our best to overcome our paltriness.

Yep, it’s a real bugger being an author sometimes. Which, to be honest, is why we eat chocolate. It gives us courage to brave all you scary, scary professionals. Chocolate is the only known antidote to insecurity. That and shoes.