DO YOU NEED TO GET OUT MORE?

I know I do. I know this somewhere deep inside, but I forget it when I'm overwhelmed by deadlines. Because things like going for walks seem like luxuries when you're really busy. Which I am: coming up to Edinburgh Book Festival madness, with six* talks to prepare from scratch, two events to chair, an AGM to plan and chair; and I'm organising a hot-ticket party for 200 in one of the festival marquees - and yesterday I was called for jury service. For August. Oh. My. God. A breakdown looms. Or jail, if they don't let me off.

(* thought it was five but realised I'd not put one in my diary)

But all that pales into insignificance when you're trying to get a novel started. As I am. Desperately, because it would have been so great to have the first chapter written before August came and then it could mull away in my brain and I'd be ready to leap back in in September. But it's not working. The voice isn't coming. Why? Because I'm simply not ready. I haven't had enough time (or the right sort of time) to let the characters, particularly the main one whose voice it will mostly be, grow inside me and begin to talk.

Thing is - and here's my learning point for this post - you should never write until your characters are clamouring to get out of your head, till they're pestering you day and night, rattling their cage, till they start to force your hands to move over the keyboards, till, in short, they absolutely demand that their voices are heard.

In fact, Howard Nemerov said that writing was like the relationship with your bowels (stay with me): "First you can, then you can't, finally you must: only then should you reach for the paper ..."

I've talked about voice before - see here. Voice is not something you can order about. Voice has to come somewhat mysteriously, at least partially of its own accord. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. But you have to get it right and you have to nurture it very, very subtly, in a hands-off kind of way - though with utter ruthless control, too. If you don't get it right, your fabulous plot is stuffed. To be honest, in my case I don't have a fabulous plot either, but that's because for me voice comes first, plot follows; because the plot depends on the characters' actions and the characters' actions depend on their voice and the book's voice. I know, you'd think it was the other way round - but think about it, play with it, and see what happens to your relationship with your book when you do. Does it become more real?

So, what's this got to do with getting out more? In the words of my favourite film**, a lot.

I've noticed for a long time that different environments make me more or less creative. You've probably noticed the same. It's not surprising or rocket science. But there is some science behind it. This article in Sciam Mind is pretty eye-opening: it suggests that we are more creative in rooms with higher ceilings, for example. The article mentions research in which two groups of people were given a task. One group was in a room with an 8-foot ceiling and the other was in a room with a 10-foot ceiling. The second group came up with more abstract, imaginative and creative ideas.

In terms of ceilings, what greater ceiling can you have than the sky? I know that when my writing is stuck the only answer is to go for a walk, not to stay at my desk. "Environmental psychology" now explains it. And there's even a word for the tendency of people to work better when they can at least see a natural scene instead of a brick wall - biophilia. Love it! I am a biophiliac, not a drifter who keeps going outside instead of "working".

So, since I'm throughly blocked, writing-wise, I'm going to take Nemerov's advice and not reach for the paper yet. I'm going to get out, outside, out of my study, out of myself, into the biggest ceiling I know. I know from experience, and therefore have to trust, that this will work - ideas will come when I give them space. I'm going to stop trying to force this character to speak before she's ready; she must grow slowly, and one day, soon probably, she'll hit me between the eyes with her power and reality; she'll start yelling to be heard.

I just hope I'm not in the middle of doing an event when she does it. Pretty high ceilings those book festival tents have ...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my husband (the one on the left) "standing and staring" beside a statue. The plaque in front of them is the first verse of that fab poem by William Henry Davies, titled Leisure. Obviously, I can't print it all here, or I'd be breaking the laws of copyright (by one year ...) but I think that "fair use" allows me to quote the first two lines:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Of course, if I were to be imprisoned for not doing jury service, I may have quite a lot of time to stand and stare. Mind you, I could get a great novel written.

** Pay attention at the back: Life of Brian. Could it be any other?

And while you're still with me, and talking about getting out more, I thought I'd show you this photo of the results of my minor gardening escapade during which I created an "alittlement" some weeks ago. These are the beans growing in two pots. Jack, where are you?

And finally, after writing this blog post, I decided I would practise what I was preaching and get out. So I did, and all the way up to my favourite hill in Edinburgh I walked. Considering I live in the middle of a city and it only took me twenty minutes to walk here, I think it's pretty inspirational for a writer to have that on her doorstep. No excuses for crappy writing, I'd say. The shot at the end is Edinburgh Castle - which you need me to tell you, as you'd never guess. I suggest you play it with your sound off - it's damned windy today (which is why I am wobbling a lot).

DEFINE A TEENAGE NOVEL

OK, so two posts in a row about teenage fiction is hardly balanced, but then I never made any claim to be balanced and any time I'm asked to walk along a white line I find myself becoming suspiciously unbalanced. Besides, your comments and interest in the subject were really all the excuse I needed, if I needed any excuse to talk about one of my pet subjects, which I don't.

Do we need to define a teenage novel in order to write one?
Some teenage authors whom I respect claim not to be able or wish to define or even particularly think about what a teenage novel is when they write one. Others are with me, enjoying trying to pin it down without restricting it, and trying to reach a level of understanding that helps us identify with our readers as perfectly as possible. The former authors prove that you don't have to. But I think those authors are very few and far between and happen to write books which happen to be teenage in tone simply because those happen to be the books they want to write.

For the rest of us who dare to tread the tight-rope between writing a great story from the heart and writing a great story that will hit specific readers in the heart, and for those of us who want to understand our market, we need some analysis and some knowledge.

PLEASE NOTE: a teenager, like any other reader, is perfectly entitled to read and enjoy ANY book. When I talk about "teenage novels" I don't mean "novels that teenagers often enjoy". I mean "novels aimed specifically at teenagers" (but which other readers may indeed enjoy).

It would help if you first read my last post - COMMON MISTAKES WHEN WRITING FOR TEENAGERS. In fact, without it you won't understand what I'm about to say, especially about safety-nets. Yes, safety-nets - essential tools for writing for young people.

A perfect illustration
If you are prepared to borrow or buy three books, I can show you with absolute clarity what makes a teenage book a teenage book. A quick read of the first few chapters of these three books will illustrate all I am about to say. Without reading the books, however, you'll still get a pretty good gist of what I mean from what follows. All three start with a young person being bullied or set upon at or near school, which is one reason they make a great comparison:

Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson
Malarkey by Keith Gray
The Illumination of Merton Browne by JM Shaw

Bad Girls is not a teenage book - for a start, the protagonist is too young. The language is simplifed, with short sentences and gentle vocabulary, and there is a great deal of protection by adults. You can see the mesh of the safety-net. It's not particularly relevant to our topic except that it's when you then read Malarkey that you see the great leap that the reader must take, both in terms of topic and safety-net distance, to go from one book to the next. Bearing in mind that the reader of Bad Girls may well be 10 or 11 but that an 11/12 year old could easily be reading and enjoying Malarkey, and you see the leap the reader has made in a very short theoretical time. The main character in Malarkey is 16ish, which, according to the "rules" of writing for young people means that our intended readership is up to 14/15.

But then consider The Illumination of Merton Browne. There is a level of violence (extreme domestic abuse) which goes beyond what we'd be able or probably want to offer teenagers. There's a total absence of safety net. There is a great deal of swearing. The age of the character is interesting too - at the time of writing he has left school and is thinking back to his childhood, relating events which happened mostly around his eleventh birthday, and much of the initial action takes place as he arrives at secondary school, aged eleven. A teenage book would not normally be this retrospective: it would normally take place during the relevant teenage years of the reader (although earlier episodes might well be related) and in fact cover a very small part of those years. So, by having the main character an adult looking back to being mostly eleven, we already skew it for the teenage reader and make it not a teenage book.

However, it's a book which many older teenagers might like - if they could get their hands on it, which they won't in a school library in the UK or US or Australia or anywhere else I can think of. unless the librarian really wants to lose his/her job.

Why have teenage books anyway?
Ooh, I could write a whole post on this, and have already written about it in the Scotsman, but I see they have put it very annoyingly onto their "premium pages" and I'm sure you don't want to pay for it. Anyway, maybe another day. Consider simply that some people still argue that teenage books are unnecessary because readers should do what "we always did", ie go straight from kids' books to adult books. Thing is, (amongst other things), adult books have changed in the last 20-30 years and you simply cannot go from Bad Girls to Merton Browne. Or at least not without experiencing severe trauma on the way.

What you said
Some of you posted comments about eg whether Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books were teenage or not. DanielB and anonymous / tbrosz were talking about whether something was "quite right" / felt properly teenage in those and other stories which we might have thought were teenage. I haven't read those Pratchett books but I have always thought of him as one of those writers who isn't a teenage writer but who writes books that many teenagers love. I'm guessing that it's the "adult perspective" of the story that you are referring to and have noticed. Yes, in my view this would be something which would make them "not deliberately teenage books". And it's once you've identifued the "teenageness" or otherwise that (I think) you can fully understand what teenage really is. And you clearly have!

Another one to think about is perhaps Doctor Who - much loved by teenagers for generations but (you'd agree??) not exactly "teenage"? Like Pratchett? And Children of the Stones?

Which I guess brings me to my attempt at a definition, granted that all definitions break down when you start to pick at their edges, and that there will be exceptions, and that books are just books forchristsake and why should they have to be pigeon-holed ...

The "definition"
I see a teenage novel as a story with a teenage character(s) at the centre, written from a teenage viewpoint, which explores a situation which teenage readers often fear, aspire to, dream about or experience, and which provides an emotional connection to themselves as teenagers now. It has no visible boundaries or safety-nets and may be frightening, cutting-edge, brutally honest, shocking or sad, (but doesn't have to be) but in fact there are boundaries of acceptability and hope:

"it takes them to the edge but will not throw them over."
That's my definition anyway.

Of course, I can't shut up when I should so I feel obliged to give a few extra "rules", some of which I touched on in the previous article but which bear repeating:

• the teenage characters find their own solutions because the story is about them and not the adult secondary characters. Get the adults out of the way. Kill them if necessary (preferably before the book starts, or at least before we get to care)
  
• though some teenage novels are deep and some are shallow (as with adult books), the language does not patronise by trying to be simple
• although the voice is teenage, this does not mean you have to sound like a teenager - see my post on voice. The voice has to be appropriate, a voice they'd like to listen to. ie not a teacher, parent, middle-aged person, sad git, kid
• the protagonist is usually a bit older than the intended readership (this applies to writing for younger children too)
  
• no message, remember - or at least not an in your face one. You're a writer not a teacher.
  
• the pace is likely to be faster and tighter than in adult writing
• a teenager (see my book Blame My Brain for a defence and explanation of the details of this, and for an entertaining read, and to save your sanity if you happen to share your living quarters with a teenage specimen) may be 11 years old, but by the age of 15/16 is off your readership radar
  
• the writer must be aware that the level of literary criticism of plot, structure, language, themes to which the book will be subjected by the young reader will be intense - if you think you're writing for kids and that kids don't know how to tell you what's wrong with your book, you're in for a big shock!

So, Amy-Jane, I don't know if this answers your questions, and the others who contacted me off-blog! In my opinion, yes, you do need to know whether your book is for teenagers or not, but you could be lucky and have pitched it perfectly anyway ...

Daniel and Jane - re the 70s series the Children of the Stones, it's worth remembering too that teenage fiction really had only just got going at this time, all in the US - with SE Hinton's The Outsiders and Paul Zindell's The Pigman (God, that's brilliant and devastating in a simple way that only teenage writing can be) both in the late 60s, and then the fabulously dark Robert Cormier - OMG I am The Cheese* - from the 70s. He, incidentally, was edited by my main editor. (Main? See, I'm so rubbish I need more than one ...). Anyway, I guess the rules and possibilities of teenage / YA fiction were so new by that time that adults still very much ruled the roost. Whereas now, we know who's in charge, don't we?

*title of book, not an existential statement

One other point - teenage or YA? YA is more a US term, though we often use it in the UK too. To be honest, no difference is usually implied between the two terms, though sometimes YA refers to a slightly older teenager, but I think this distinction makes it too complicated and unnecessarily pigeon-holey. Outside the book world, young adult refers to 18-25s (eg in medical terminology) so it can be confusing for people outside when we talk about YA.

In the last post I said you had to be able to reel off at least ten favourite teenage authors or books and some of you enthusiastically came up with your own lists (full marks to you). Well, of course, I have a few more because you can't keep a keen reader down:

• John Marsden's Letters from the Inside
• Alice Kuipers' Life on the Refrigerator Door (though you'll need a lot of chocolate to get your life back on track after either of those)
• Adele Geras' Ithaka - nothing to do with the fact that she reads this blog; I'd just forgotten how much I'd liked it and it's very different from the dark cold ones on my previous list. Adele writes books for many different ages but Troy and Ithaka, which fit my criteria for teenage novels, are my favourite.
  

And now I'd probably better stop talking about teenage books before the rest of you disappear. Next, we'll have How To Be a Lovely Publishable Author. Or something. And relatively soon I'll be able to tell you what topics and dates I'm doing talks on in the Edinburgh Book Festival. You never know, I might just be doing one on teenage writing, so then I'll be able to rabbit on for a whole hour. And there'll certainly be one on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes ... Just think, you could actually come and see my boots in real life.

Have a lovely weekend. I had a near death (not exaggerating) incident on the motorway yesterday and made my first ever 999 call, from a stationary and exceptionally vulnerable position in the middle of an intersection between the UK's two biggest motorways (yes, I know, nothing compared with US motorways but they are Big To Us), having been hit by a lorry which didn't stop to see that it had knocked us off the road. So I am planning to count my blessings for being alive. I think wine and chocolate may well be necessary in extra quantities to get me back to a normal mental place.

By the way, if you ever see a car stopped in an incredibly stupid place, risking being smashed to pieces by speeding cars from six lanes of two motorways, I would ask you to consider that it might not be there on purpose. Some of the drivers that passed us clearly had not worked this out, judging from the way they hooted their horns at us and shook their fists.

Pah! Give me teenagers any day.

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.

TIPS FOR SUBMISSIONS: PART 2 - COVERING LETTERS

Having written a previous post with a title containing the words Part 1, I suppose I set myself up for having to write Part the Second, didn't I? Actually, it being such a gorgeous sunny day here in Scotland and the recessionary gloom engendering an unaccustomed what-the-hell type abandonment, I'm going to lay my head on the line or stick it above the parapet or something and say that I am sure there'll be a Part the Third. Scary stuff.

For readers who have recently joined this journey to success, I do suggest you read Part 1 first, because I will otherwise blithely assume that you are up to speed. You will remember that I banged on about how important the covering letter was. Well it is. And this post is going to focus entirely on it.

Oh and by the way, I should warn you: I am majorly in crabbit-old-bat mode today, despite the afore-mentioned sunshine (about which I was in fact lying).

1. Why is the covering letter so important? Surely it's the sample material that's important because surely it's the book and not me that's the main thing?
But if you can't write a brilliant letter, how come you think you can write a brilliant book? If you care so little for your book that you would send it out dressed in thin rags, why should a busy editor/agent care more about it? Or if you think it's so damned fantastic that you need say nothing about it, then why don't you self-publish it and see what happens when you can't persuade anyone apart from your parents to buy it?

Your covering letter is your shop window - it's the only way anyone's going to see what you're selling. Would you walk into a shop that had a load of rubbish in the window? Or a shop that gave you no idea what was in it? Or the wrong idea? And, for crying out loud, it's a FREE shop window. What's not to use? Trust me, only a complete idiot would not try to do the very best covering letter possible. Or someone who didn't fully appreciate the power of words. And if you do not fully appreciate and also bow down in abject worship of the power of words, then you don't deserve to be published.

If you don't believe any of that, believe this: many publishers and agents simply will not read on if you have not a) impressed them and b) whetted their appetites with the beauteousness of your covering letter. So, write a rubbish letter, and your utterly astonishing novel will never be read. Write me a rubbish letter and I will simply refuse to open the first page of your utterly astonishing novel. Your novel can be as secretly astonishing as it likes: I won't be reading it and, anyway, there are many other genuinely astonishing novels waiting for me to read, written by authors who care enough to spend a bit of time writing a little letter.

OK, I think I've made my point. And it's still freezing cold outside so the crabbit mood continues. Why don't I live in Australia? (Ebony, was it Melbourne where you said your chocolate-loving writing group hangs out? I have been known to reduce my already-reasonable speaking fees for warm climates.)

2. What should I put in this amazingly brilliant covering letter then?
You should put you in it, that's what. And your book. The covering letter should be the essence of you and your book, in fact. Distilled, purified, perfect, alive, compelling, capturing you both. My agent told me that another agent told her (sorry, brain frozen and have forgotten name but will get it to you when the sun comes out in a few months' time) that the covering letter should contain the book, the cook and the hook. (qv in COMMON WORDS YOU SHOULD KNOW)

If you look on the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook website (see list on the right somewhere) and click on the advice section, you'll find a sample covering letter. Because the W&A Yearbook is a serious, straight-down-the-line book and because they are giving very general advice, this letter a) technically ticks most of the boxes but b) lacks inspiration or "voice". To be honest, if I was a busy agent or editor I would probably find a surprisingly large number of much more interesting things to do than reply to it, let alone hang around waiting for the postman to deliver a synopsis / sample of such an unzingy-sounding novel. I might find myself suddenly desperate to enter a cream cracker-eating competition or something equally fun.

Good points about that letter: it's short; it's addressed to an actual person; it gives useful facts (eg length) about the book; it identifies what sort of book it is (contemporary, characters downmarket of Joanna T - hmm, sounds fab, I don't think - where was that cracker-eating comp?); it's polite; it tells the recipient a bit about the writer (incl that she has two other novels in mind, which is a useful place to keep them).

Bad points about the letter: it gives absolutely no reason to suppose that the writer can write (other than the ability to string some words together and spell/punctuate - which is a good start but only a start); there's no character, no voice; it makes it far too easy for the editor to ignore it and have a cup of coffee, during which time I am 100% convinced he/she will forget it and go off to find a cracker-eating .... Yes, I know, I'm labouring the point.

I urge you to read this recent post on the excellent and expert Behlerblog. In fact, you should have the blog on your regular reading list. In that particular post, you will see exactly what I mean by voice in a covering letter and a very good paradigm of how not/to do it.

3. Hang on a sec - didn't you once say we were supposed to send sample chapters + synopsis as well as covering letter? That's not what the W&A Yearbook letter is saying ...
Yes. Or even possibly no. Again, the W&A is trying to be very general and careful and to follow all the rules. My more specific and daring advice is that you should either a) follow exactly the guidelines of the specific publisher / agent whom you are approaching, if you are a rule-follower and/or like the rules they give or b) otherwise not. My advice on this is clear: all rules are there to be broken if you are clever and bold enough. Picasso didn't get where he is today (yes, I know, he's dead, but at least he's dead famous) by following rules. So, what I'd do is follow this clear 4-step plan:

1. Closely research which publishers take the sort of book you've written
   
2. You need two envelopes. One bigger than the other, but the smaller one big enough for 30 pages of A4, unfolded. In the smaller one, which has your address and sufficient stamps, but is unsealed, you place the first 30ish pages of your brilliant novel, and the brilliant synopsis (which is ideally one page long and never ever ever more than two - and no cheating by using tiny print).
   
3. You put this smaller envelope inside the bigger one.
4. You also put the brilliant (yep, you're getting the hang now) covering letter inside the larger envelope. This covering letter is so brilliant that it makes the recipient drool and gasp and cry out for more. The letter includes this : "If you are interested in reading my work, please consider opening the enclosed envelope, in which you will find a synopsis and the first ___ pages. However, I do understand how busy you are and that your list might be full - if so, I would be very grateful if you would post the envelope back to me." If your covering letter is brilliant enough and if you have targeted an appropriate publisher/agent, the smaller envelope WILL be opened.
   

4. For those of you who like rules and templates, here's mine: short para saying why you are contacting her/him; para selling/describing/distilling your book; shorter para saying who would the readers/market be, eg "readers who love Sophie Kinsella / Ian Rankin / Steven King (no, NOT all three); short para about you, including only info relevant to you as potential author - eg anything you've had published, other things you've written, how long for, whether any other ideas; snappy end para which shows that you understand the system and how busy the editor/agent is, thanking them etc etc etc and being polite and professional.

5. Are there some things I really really mustn't do in this covering letter? I'm so glad you asked that. Yes, indeedy, there certainly are. First, please do read COMMON MISTAKES and THINGS NOT TO SAY. From that, you will learn, for example, about not being arrogant ("I've written an astonishing book"), or naive ("my grandchildren laugh out loud when I read it to them and are always saying, Oh, please read it again, Grandad"). Essentially, you mustn't be long-winded, boring, old-fashioned, hectoring, whittering, sycophantic or unnecessarily and irritatingly funny, though appropriately and delicately witty is fine if that's what your book is like. You mustn't negatively criticise published writers (unless you are the non-writing celebrity who apparently said she wanted to write a children's book because she thought children's books were all rubbish - and you wouldn't beLIEVE the slating she got on author message boards. If vitriol could be bottled ... Anyway, don't let me get carried away.)

Oh, and although it IS helpful for the editor / agent to know what sort of book / author is landing on the desk, here are some other things which do not go down at all well (except when the agent/editor meets up with other agents/editors and they all fall about laughing while regaling each other about the extraordinarily useless submissions they've received):

• Some people have compared my writing to that of Norman Mailer.
• My novel is Moby Dick meets On the Road meets Lord of the Rings. With, I feel, the occasional hint of an early James Joyce.
  
• This could be the next Harry Potter. But even better.
  

That just about covers covering letters. However, it's really important that you've also read THINGS NOT TO SAY. And I'm betting some of you haven't. No, I'm not psychic but I used to be a teacher and I am a crabbit old bat who is still in quite a bad mood because of the cold weather and chapped skin which makes me look older and drier and grumpier than I'd like to. So, if you wouldn't mind, please go and read it now if you haven't already and then, as a reward for your diligence and patience, you can have some chocolate.



Sorry, not much left, but for me it's a case of Chocolate in a Cold Climate.