ARE YOU REALLY REALLY READY TO BE PUBLISHED?

I am about to disappear again for a few days, this time to Paris - yeah, I know, being an author with a book to promote sucks - and I am also aware that a) I have been dilatory with your edification recently and b) I am about to enter a phase of being even more dilatory, as I have to hurl myself into more promotional stuff AND there's been (still is) the bloody Nanowrimo (sorry, Elen, I mean incredibly wonderful Nanowrimo which you kindly organised) and some guest blogs I've promised to do and a list of tasks the length of several arms. No mountains though, or only metaphorical ones.

So, until I come back from Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) I thought I'd leave you with an excellent website full of sound advice and a particular post within it, which I thought was apt to all of us.

The website (and you should bookmark it, as I'm about to) is Casting the Bones, and thanks to "Sarah" for pointing it out. Robert Gregory Browne is the no-nonsense, successful author and I recommend his advice. I also hope you will look at the craft-honing articles BEFORE the "how to get an agent" ones ... I think he would agree.

The article I want you to think about is Are You Ready to be a Published Writer? There were so many lines in it that had me silently cheering but I particularly liked this: "So don’t be so anxious to get published. Be anxious to hone your craft. Expand your understanding of the process. To write stories that will have editors and producers thinking they have no choice but to buy it." This is exactly the drive of my blog.

We've all had that moment of finishing something and being desperate to send it off NOW because it's FAB and we're WRITERS and need to be READ, NOW, or SOONER if possible. But a) when we look at it a few days later, we should be very glad we didn't send it and b) it is almost certainly not as brilliant to a reader as it felt to us as its writer. When we step back, if we've learnt anything, we'll see those faults and know that there are also more faults that we haven't seen.

We must work to find those faults and improve until our writing really is the best it could be. And also good enough to be read and enjoyed by our intended readers, however many they may be.

This leads on from the interesting conversation in the comments on my recent self-publishing post, because there's so much I didn't have time to say about that, and calm though the opposing reasoning was, I simply wasn't persuaded by it and its sieviness. The reason it leads on is that this time to hone, this need to understand about not being ready to be published, this vast chasm that too often exists between how you are writing now and how you could be writing given good direction, is precisely why self-publishing is a very poor answer for the author in that position. (But a good answer for some other authors.)

Self-publishing tempts the unpublished author to bypass that crucial honing and improving and growing stage - unless you really think that your self-published book is only a practice run and you really don't care whether it's the best you can do, or indeed good enough - and if you don't care, well, er, good luck to you because possibly I don't too much care about that sort of writing or writer either ....

The only sort of writer I care about, and the sort of writer this blog is written for, is the sort of writer who will go to the ends of the earth on hands and knees with a cactus strapped to his back to become a better writer, the best writer you can be. Because nothing else is worth doing, as far as I'm concerned. And granted that "better writer" or even "best writer" is not a finite or objective or box-tickable target, it's the only one I am aiming for.

Yay, crabbit is back! And now is going again ...

From Saturday morning till next Wednesday night, I will be unlikely to get online much, not because they don't have the innernet in Paris (did I say that was where I'm going?) but because I am going to be expected to be working for my baguettes; I've seen my programme from the schools and no minute is left untended, believe me. Even the bits that are not work (and to be very fair, there are many, as they have a decent pace of living over there) are occupied by things like "walk in such and such beautiful garden" or "have coffee in such an such café" or "drink champagne in..." No, sorry, got a bit carried away there: there was no mention of champagne.

Oh, by the way - funny question in one of the school-talks I did this morning (from an eleven-year-old boy, remarkably): "Why aren't you wearing blue boots?" My fame precedes me, clearly.

Au revoir.

ANTI-GUFF RANT POSTPONED BY PLEONASMS

The best laid plans, etc. There I was, all set to have a good old rant about the guff spouted by arts organisations, and along comes something from an arts organisation that is actually useful and to the point. My guff-detector was rendered silent.

Honestly. I was sent some info about a project or three by an organisation called Hi-Arts (Hi = Highlands & Islands - as in "of Scotland") and found myself quickly shunted onto their website, from which I seamlessly garnered some crystalline and - pause for astonishment: after all, this is public money we're talking about and usually that means it's headed drainwards - practical resources for writers. Not a whiff of waffle.

Depending on who you are, you will have different needs and interests, but surely all of you fall into one or more of these categories:

1. You want to know how to write a great covering letter and synopsis and you'd like a leading agent (Jenny Brown) to tell you how.
2. You're a Scottish author interested in having a FREE, anonymous and professional critique of your WIP. (Are you still there? I know, it's hard to take in without hitting your head on the ceiling. But you do have to be Scottishish ...)
3. You're trying to break into the children's writing world and want some fab advice from leading literary agents and general founts of all knowledge of the genre, Fraser Ross Associates.
   
4. You are a writer of any sort and want to make sure that you're not littering your writing with pleonasms and really want Allan Guthrie to explain it to you.
5. You don't know what a pleonasm is ....

Links to clear guidelines on all these things are to found here, on a single page. Yes, an arts org that doesn't hide its info deep in the recesses of a labyrinthine website designed to fool anyone with a normal brain and less than four years to find the right page.

It really is quite remarkable. And now I'm going to lie down in a darkened room and work out how I can justify a major rant about arts organisations. I will find a way. They will not defeat me.

And please don't analyse this post for all the pleonasms. This is a blog, not a literary novel, and besides, I'm self-publishing it and it's well-known that self-published work has a tendency to be less rigorously edited than other work ...

CAN YOU LEARN TO WRITE?

WARNINGS:
a) this is a big one: get coffee and some of your Easter chocolate
b) there are very few bits of coloured font. You'll discover why soon.

So. Learning to write?

Thomas Huxley first posed the monkeys and typewriters thing - that if enough monkeys tapped at enough typewriters for long enough, you’d eventually get Psalm 23. In 2003, scientists at Paignton Zoo in Devon gave six monkeys six weeks to come up with the goods and at the end of it were presented with mostly the letter S. Nothing even approaching a small word. Though I suppose S is one third of the word She, which is the first word of Henry James' The Wings of a Dove, so they were getting there.

OK, so the scientists weren’t trying to teach them to write - they were trying to show the difference between machines and animals. As the project designer said, “The monkeys aren't reducible to a random process. They get bored and they shit on the keyboard rather than type." Which real authors would never do. Another similarity with real writers: distractions. "There's loads of stuff for them to do in there, they've got climbing frames, ropes and toys." See, even monkeys do Work Avoidance Strategies.

Now, I know, you’re jumping up and down wanting to point out the obvious flaw in this as an experiment: the researchers should have kept half the monkeys there crapping on keyboards and sent the other half on a Creative Writing MA. Then we’d have seen some serious creativity going on. We could easily have got some Ts and Bs along with the Ss.

OK, we haven’t got all day to monkey around so let’s get to the point. Can you teach someone (human) to write? As in not just spell and stuff but really be a writer. If so, what can you and what can’t you teach?

There are plenty of books and courses out there, and plenty of people going on them, so a lot of people think you can. But aspiring writers should be very careful not to infer from this that a course (of any sort) can turn a non-writer into a writer. Unless by writer you mean someone who can do no more than pen some crappy saccharine greeting card fodder. Which you don’t.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, partly because I’m involved in an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (sorry, have to use full EIBF title - corporate branding blahdy blah) called Monkeys and Typewriters, in which we’re going to discuss this. And I have a good friend, Sam Kelly, who’s heading up a brand new Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University. And I used to be an English teacher, during which time I attempted to teach some little monkeys to write. Moreover, I was recently contemplating (until sanity returned) offering an online tuition course.

So, do I think you can be taught to write? In a monkey-nutshell or three:

1. A good course will take someone who already has the required talent and will improve his/her skills so that said talent can be revealed to all - ie become worth reading.
2. If you already have the required talent, a course can show you what you are doing wrong.
   
3. A course is not the only way to improve your skills and show you what you are doing wrong, but it can be a good one. Or it can be a seriously rubbish one. Not much better than sitting in that zoo with those monkeys.

What do I mean by “required talent”?
The bit you can’t teach. You’ve got it or you haven’t. It includes inspiration, originality, imagination and the desire to write. If you could invent a talent detector, it would analyse neural activity at that moment when the idea in your head transmogrifies into the words your brain comes up with to express that idea; before the internal editor is kicked into gear. Give a hundred people a topic and ask them to write thirty words about it (which I am about to do to you ... Be patient, please) and you’ll get a hundred different responses, and not just different in small details - what went on in the head of each person as they came up with the chosen words is the mysterious bit that can’t be taught. In a way, all that can be taught is the subsequent editing of those words by the writer. (And then how to take them to market.)

So, I am saying that a course can teach you to self-edit. Which is a damned fine thing and a very good raison d’étre for good courses.

I asked Sam Kelly (Edinburgh Napier CW MA - pay attention at the back, please) to give a couple of aspects of a writer's craft that she thinks can and can't be taught. “The key term here is 'craft' …. Craft, in any area, is the set of practical skills that you can acquire. Everything else is what you can’t teach: talent, originality, energy, commitment, intellect, etc, etc. But seedling talent can certainly be grown, through the judicious application of challenge and encouragement." (I said “couple”, Sam - see, she can write but she can’t read. Like a lot of writers …)

I agree, apart from the seedling bit. I think you need something a lot less weedy than a seedling to start off with if you want to grow into any kind of half-decent tree. And the bigger and stronger the seedling at the start of the course, the mightier the resulting oak. Sam told me “We want students to come up with amazing original ideas and be able to write brilliantly.” Quite, and you don’t get amazing original ideas from just anyone, nor can you teach just anyone to have amazing original ideas. Forget seedlings, Ms Kelly - I’d say the Edinburgh Napier MA is certainly looking for pretty damned sturdy saplings for its course.

Two good pieces about Creative Writing MAs: Jenn Ashworth's brilliant piece of educational satire and Tom Vowler's equally useful but serious one.

One interesting USP of the Edinburgh Napier course is that it is “replacing the traditional workshop with one-to-one mentoring, because we believe this is the most effective way to develop individual talent.” That will be interesting to those of you in critique groups. I’ve long shuddered about the advice sometimes given by unpublished writers to other unpublished writers. (See Jane Smith’s excellent piece here). It’s too difficult to be professionally and constructively critical, when a) you haven’t proved that you’re not making lots of mistakes yourself b) you know that the person may be upset and c) you know that that upset person has also got to critique you.

My own preference (and this is really personal preference, though the bit after the "and" also constitutes advice), would be for one-to-one mentoring by a professional, and I’d want it to be someone who’d had proven knowledge and success, as an editor, agent or relevantly published and respected author. But I wouldn’t believe everything I was told - I’d constantly critique the critique too. (God, I'd be annoying ...)

For those of you contemplating critique groups or writers' group workshoppy things, (and yes, of course there are good ones, and some very good ones) first read this.

As for other writing courses, obviously there are good examples at all levels - Daniel Blythe teaches one. (I mention it because a) I’ve heard good things about it and b) he’s probably reading this post. Oh, and c) he says sensible things and earns a living as an author so he knows what he’s talking about). Always check the credentials of the people teaching you and remember that no course will make you a writer if you don’t have the talent already.

I asked Sam what she thought were the greatest misconceptions about MA courses. (And her answer equally applies to other types of course, imo). “The most grievous delusion is that it will make you a writer. It won’t – it will make you someone who’s been on a course. If you have talent, choose the right course, and use the opportunity wisely, then what you learn on an MA programme can definitely increase your chances of success out there in the world. But there are no shortcuts: you still need to work on your writing for as long as it takes.” How true. And you noticed, I hope, the phrase “If you have talent” …

Talent is the sine qua non and there’s no course on earth can teach it to you. Please write out 100 times.

But a course is not the only way to learn the necessary skills. You can also learn from:

• Comments from other writers - recently, Tom Vowler very delicately and charmingly pointed out that I use colours a lot in my blog (too much, methinks he was suggesting). Notice anything today? Really restrained on the colour front, don’t you think? Whether it’s an improvement or not, I await confirmation. Or not. But the point is, I heard, I listened, I thought he might have a point, and because I write for my readers and not for my own self-indulgence, I reacted. Did I have a hissy fit? Of course not. I analysed and decided I trusted him. Even though I liked the colours ...
  
• Comments from readers - a teenage reader once asked me why my chapters were so long. I hadn’t a clue - I’d never thought about it. But her wish was my command and I drastically reduced them. She was right. Big improvement in pace.
  
• Practising, reading, writing, growing up.
  

Now, that was a long (and almost colourless - thanks, Tom - she ungrits her teeth with difficulty) post so I’m rewarding you with a COMPETITION. Remember I talked about that moment between the idea and the writer’s brain coming up with the words to express the idea, and how the (teachable) internal editor would trot along afterwards to hone the editing of the words? And I said that 100 people given a small writing task would all come up with different words and approaches?

Well, let’s do it.
By lucky chance, while I was writing this post, I nearly had a heart attack. Honestly. Thing is, a pigeon exploded through my window. Lightning may not strike twice in the same place, but clearly pigeons do: this is the second time this has happened to me while writing erudite stuff in the last few months. (See my other blog, Ghostlygalleon). They never come crashing through the window when I'm out, only when I'm sitting trying to work. It's the magnetism of my writing, clearly. Either that or I smell like birdseed.

Anyway, so, a few minutes ago, this exocet pigeon attacked again. (Not the same one - the first one died.) It’s remarkable that you didn’t even notice, but such is the extent of my self-control. Such is the degree of my husband’s self-control that he came padding through in bare feet - funny, I never had him down as one of those glass-walking transcendental meditators but he is a man of many talents - and said, “Take a photo and use it as an inspirational creative writing task on your blog.” Excellent idea, young man. He now wants to enter the competition but I think I’ll get him to judge it. Much fairer. And less chance of marital discord.

The prize? Er, sorry but it’s a copy of my next book, Deathwatch. Which, since it’s not published till June, only has one review, and modestly doesn’t permit etc. But you can probably find stuff about if you’re that interested.

Anyway, please study the photo below and write no more than thirty words inspired by it. I am going to give you no guidance at all, except to say that it must be in English. And you are supposed to be showing that unteachable talent, coupled with that teachable editing craft.




No emails - all answers in comment box. As many entries as you like. Feed off each other, be influenced or be genre-busting - up to you.

The deadline is whenever I decide. And then my husband will train his talent-detector on you. Once he's finished bandaging his feet.



Sorry for such a long (monochrome .... yeah yeah, one day I'll get over it) post - I promise my next two will be short, partly because I feel guilty about keeping you for so long and partly because I'm starting a NaNoWriMo tomorrow. Oh foolish woman. The point of a NaNoWriMo (apart from nothing) is to learn to switch off the internal editor. So today's post was my last supper of self-indulgence.

And finally, here’s Flannery O’Connor: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." Sorry, you probably wish someone had stifled me before I woke up today.

Everything you need to know about getting published

Not quite sure why I blog at all when there are blogs as good as James Moran's around. If you're an unpublished author, wondering what you're doing wrong, please, please, read it and follow the advice in it. Your future fame, fortune and everything else depend on it.

The only things he fails to mention are boots, chocolate and sparkly wine, but I reckon he has all the other publishing essentials down there. Oh, and he forgets to tell you not to put toffees or photos of you naked in with your submission, but he's probably never met anyone stupid enough to do that. Whereas I have.

Thanks to Daniel Blythe for pointing me towards James' blog. Daniel is another writer who knows what he's talking about. He earns a living as a writer, so he must be doing it right. Gestures of admiration.

Well done, guys! See, you don't need to wear sexy boots to give writing advice. On the other hand, maybe you do wear sexy boots. Wouldn't like to make gender-stereo-typical assumptions.

OK, woman, quit while you're ahead.

WORST QUERY COMPETITION

How bad could a query be?

Think you've got the hang of how NOT to sell your book idea to an agent or publisher? Think you've absorbed all the cringe-making "don'ts" from the pages of this blog and others? Think you're now so good that you could be really really bad? Want to have a bit of constructive fun?

Well, here's your chance.
The prize (don't get too excited): a signed copy of your choice of one of my books, which I will generously post anywhere in the world. (Note to pedants: by this I mean a book that I wrote, not one that happens to be sitting on my shelves, written by someone else.)
The task: to produce the worst query letter about an imaginary book (as judged by a totally partial committee of my friends).

Now a "query letter" is like a covering letter but shorter. (Common practice in the US and getting more common here, and a topic I need to cover soon.) A query letter is what you would send on its own, to persuade an agent / publisher to agree to receiving a submission from you. So, you won't be including any material such as synopsis or a sample of your writing: you are simply trying to make the recipient desperate to read your masterpiece. So, you will be selling your masterpiece as a masterpiece and yourself as an author of masterpieces.

A good query letter does that, throwing a fabulous hook to catch the person you want to catch. A good query letter is a letter that tantalises and convinces and tempts and produces insane drooling in the receipient. But a bad query letter ... well, there are so many ways it could be bad. But how bad can you be?

THE RULES

• all entries should be emailed to me at writingtutor@hotmail.co.uk (How cool is that address? It's the one I created that weekend when I was planning an on-line tuition course.)
• I will acknowledge receipt of your entry but not enter into any discussion about it. (I have to maintain my crabbit old bat status.)
• one entry per person. (Do you think I've got nothing else to do?)
• any comments or questions should go in the normal comments bit below, not emailed.
  
• I will not be berated for mistakenly not judging you to be the worst, even if you are really bad.
  
• no money instead of glorious prize will be considered - how could you possibly want money instead of one of my books? Unless you've read them all, in which case you've definitely won already.
• the deadline for entries is 12.00GMT on Sunday 29th March
  
• I promise not to do anything nasty with your entry (like pretending it was a real query letter and sending it to the Bookseller with your name).
  
• by entering this competition you agree to be bound by the above rules blahdy blahdy blah.
• oh, and you agree that the three winning entries can be published on this blog, without payment to you (or me, obviously) and without you losing your moral rights and copyright. Though why you'd want moral rights to a piece of rubbish, I have no idea.
• I think that's about it but I may think of something else while I'm walking the dog.
  

Have fun!

WHY WASN'T I PUBLISHED FOR SO LONG?

What, you mean apart from the fact I wasn't good enough?

Well, time I explained this, I suppose, after several weeks of appearing to know it all. Because the truth is that once I knew a lot less than I do now. Obvious, really.

First, for those of you who have missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more than half my life, and certainly all of my adult life. Yes, ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure. And bruised I was. Badly. It affected my health and happiness and my sense of self. Luckily (for them) few people knew about my constant attempts at fame and fortune. Unluckily (for him) my husband did. He's still here. Still waiting for me to earn a lot of money, I guess. I'm trying.

OK, I did get some "stuff" published during that time, but it wasn't enough. Home learning books (which have done very nicely financially and which allowed me to say I was a published writer) and stacks of magazine articles. Oh, and talking of doing nicely financially: I regularly get money from a magazine I wrote for ten years ago which keeps using my articles and pays me every time, with me sitting at home doing sod all - would you believe that today I actually sold "36th rights" for three articles?? This means they have used them 36, yes 36 times. God, who needs to be a novelist when you get paid 36 times for something you can't even remember writing?

And there was the odd moment of relative success (relative to abject failure), like appearing in Reader's Digest with my photo and actually being recognised on a bus, and a story winning an expensive pen in the Ian St James awards, and a couple of times almost making it through an aquisitions meeting. But almost is not really good enough, is it?

Anyway, reasons for my abject failure:

1. I thought I was better than I was. I just didn't know what mistakes I was making. This was in pre-blog days, when people like me (as in me now, not me then - me then would have been pretty useless) weren't sharing and there were few relevant books and nice helpful things telling me what a load of shocking errors I was making.
2. I wasn't thinking of my readers. Couldn't give a toss about them frankly - yep, it was all for me. Moi, moi, moi. Self-indulgent beauteous prose, right up my own backside, just gorgeous (but over-written) plotless stuff that gave me shivers of gratuitous pride, and gave any potential reader a severe case of "where the hell's the plot gone or going and I mean why should we CARE about your drivellingly unlikely character who murdered her husband just because of some arcane psychological problem to do with Samuel Johnson which we are supposed to guess through the boring fog of your however-erudite turgidity?
3. I hadn't written the right book. As in a book with a concept which would grab the agent / publisher with its stupendous hook, draw them into a tightly-written and either original or genre-specific plot, written by an author exuding wisdom and knowledge of the market. (Actually, I thought woman who murders husband because he's fat was quite good hook-wise, but hey, that was then.) See here for my post on this topic. (Not murders of fat husbands: I mean writing the right book.)
   
4. I wasn't even following the rules of submissions to publishers, despite the fact that I roll my eyes at you lot for sending toffees to agents and being similarly foolish. In fact, once I even .... but no, I can't tell you that. It's too embarrassing. (For rules for submission, see the Writers and Artists Yearbook, publishers' websites and relevant labels on this blog. There is no excuse for not following these rules - there wasn't then, and there isn't now. Well, unless you actually want to beat my 21-year record.)
   

And so followed the rejection letters. Because yes, I've had a few. There were the occasional ones that said lovely things but which gave suggestions contradicting previous ones (like "we feel it's too short" after "we feel it's too long" and "the plot is somewhat avant garde" after "the plot is somewhat traditional"); there were the "not right for our list" ones (unhelpful but true); there was my favourite (though not at the time) which consisted of my rubbish covering letter with the word NO! scrawled across it in pencil and returned to me in an envelope without a stamp even though I HAD included return postage; and there was the one which arrived back the day after I'd posted it, something which defies the laws of both postage and Newtonian motion and I can only assume that the postman was an Orion employee sent to destroy the slush pile before it occurred.

So, if you are now in the position I was in then - one of soul-searing awfulness, when you feel that life will be utterly meaningless if you don't get that contract, when your whole belief in yourself is shaken daily - I feel your pain, I really do.

That not being good enough thing? In a way it's true, I wasn't good enough. And maybe ... sorry ... you aren't either. But maybe, by listening and learning and improving, you can become good enough. But remember too that it's not just about being good enough - it's about writing the right book at the right time and sending it to the right publisher at the right time. I know, I've said it before. I could even become boring. (If you're new to this blog or need a reminder, use the label "right book" on the list of labels to the right.)

The trick, and the one which this blog tries to help with, is to work out whether:

1. you are good enough but haven't written the right book yet
2. you are good enough and have written possibly the right book really beautifully but haven't sent it to the right person in the right way
3. you aren't good enough but could become so, with time, practice and/or help
   
4. you aren't good enough and won't ever be published satisfactorily
   

Thought for the day: actually, a lot of published writers aren't good enough either. Some of you may well be better than some of them. It all boils down to what a publisher thinks will sell. And I've already done a post on Why is crap published? But you're not writing crap, are you? Please say you're not. Though I have to be brutally honest and say that if you ask any agent or editor they will tell you that the vast bulk of the slush pile is absolute utter crap, of a meaningfully finger-in-the-throat boggingness.

After that bit of brutality and after all these weeks of listening to me seem to know it all, you deserve to know that embarrassing thing I did. I think I can trust you now. Please don't laugh.

Here goes. Deep breath. Will you still respect me? I was young then. Young and really stupid.

The thing is ...

I
once
wrote
a
covering
letter
in
rhyme
...

People! Don't do it!

NOVEL STRUCTURE - AN EXPERT LESSON

Bit of a lazy post today but when someone else says something useful, what's not to link to? So, for any of you wanting / needing advice on basic aspects of structuring a novel, take a look at this helpful blog by Linda Sandifer.

First, though, remember that there are different types of novel and you'll see from her website that Linda's novels fall within very specific genres and work within certain formulae (judging from brief descriptions and covers). So, this post is for those of you perhaps working within the same genres.

If you write what is generally termed "literary fiction", you will be following some different rules and working towards a different end. Crime fiction, too, has some special conventions. However, it's always worth being reminded of the basic rules behind story-telling. And if you don't know the basic rules, you don't know what to break and why or when.

When I've got time, I'll look for some other blogs or sites which take novel structure from the viewpoint of a more "literary" angle. Meanwhile, this is all you'll get on such a sunny day when I need to a) get some of my own novel-structuring done and b) go out into the beckoning sunshine.

So many people think a novel is little more than telling a story in clever words. But there are rules to follow (and then perhaps break, if you really know how and why - and often that's where lit fic comes into play) and techniques to master and many finer details of novel-writing that too many authors just don't know or think about.

And not knowing or thinking about them is a pretty sure-fire way to:

1. be rejected
2. and not know why

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Being rejected is not a problem: it's just a glitch, a hurdle on the way to improvement. But if you don't know why you've been rejected, the glitch becomes the story of your life.

PICTURE BOOK PERFECTION

Writers of grown-up books, stay with me: picture books have a lot to teach the adult novelist. They are, when done well, a perfect illustration of structure, pace, voice, word choice and engagement with the reader.

Besides, poor old Bev J has been patiently looking at this blog EVERY day, waiting for me to honour my rash promise to say something about picture books.

And another besides, last night I was at the launch of a new picture book by the wonderful Catherine Rayner, "Sylvia and Bird", and it got me thinking. A couple of glasses of fizz later (well, ok, maybe two and a half but Malcolm was very persuasive and Vanessa had got the sparkly stuff in just for me so I felt obliged) and I was thinking with the extra perception that only comes from sparkly booze.

You should have been there. You'd have seen a room full of adults utterly engaged by a story. We were right back at kindergarten. Honestly, we were asking to sit cross-legged on the floor and I'm sure I saw several people suck their thumbs. Dewy-eyed we all were and if someone had come along with that Valrhona chocolate with the little gold bits that Jane Smith keeps telling me about, we'd have hissed at them to shut up and go away with their boring brown product.

You see, a good picture book has everything that any reader or listener needs:
shape, structure, voice, pace, character, setting, and the reader's desperation to know what's going to happen. And isn't that the point about novels? That the reader must want to know what's going to happen? Must in fact be relentlessly driven on by that urge. Otherwise, why would a sensible person sit around listening to a made-up story?

That's why, in my humble etc, a picture book has such a lot to teach us all.

Here are a few other things to know about picture books.

• writing a picture book is way way WAY harder than it looks. Why do you think I've never tried? Oh, apart for some Thomas the Tank Engine books, but that was so painfully difficult that I never plan to do it again. Unless I'm tortured and/or paid a lot of money. Which, by the way, a) I was (paid, not tortured, though there was a bit of that) and b) you almost certainly won't be for an original picture book (paid or tortured).
• do not - oh please please do not EVER - consider writing a picture book because you "want to teach young children" anything - eg "how to share things", as a highly unlikely-ever-to-be-successful aspiring writer said to me recently, shortly before I removed myself from such a pointless conversation. Why? Because there is only one reason to write a picture book:

The Only Reason To Write A Picture Book:

You have a lovely story you want to tell.

Nitty gritty bits:

• a picture book works to a format of a fixed number of pages - usually 24 or 32. Go and buy / borrow some to see how this works. Once you've decided your format (depending on age - as in age of reader not your own age ... - and bearing in mind that shorter is easier to sell, as it's cheaper), work your story around it, remembering that the number of pages includes the "prelims" (the beginning couple of pages where the title and other info comes).
• note that the first page and the last page are single pages, with everything in between being called "double spreads". Keep this in mind as you plan how your story will divide over the pages.
• note how few sentences appear on each page. That's one of the reasons it's so hard - it's incredibly difficult to tell an engaging story in a few words. Even if you start with such a fascinating and engagingly likely character as Thomas the Tank Engine ...
  
• a pic book story must have a shape, just like any other story. So you might start gently, build up, have a setback, build up again, build up more, reach an exciting outcome, and settle down into a feeling of satisfaction. It is a rounded whole and creates an expectation of resolution followed by a small flutter of worry about resolution before the resolution arrives.
• it must have a rhythm and a flow - this story will have to be read by an adult again and again and again. So, read it. Again and again and again.
• unfortunately, you need to avoid or at least be cautious about rhyme, unless you are someone fabulously successful like Gruffalo creator Julia Donaldson - someone else whose launch I've been to and where I've seen grown adults dribbling. Actually, more than that, we acted it out the story for her, with sounds and silly faces and very embarrassing things and we LOVED it. It was fizzy wine again, I admit, but even so.
  
• (btw, the boring reason for avoiding rhyme is that it can't translate easily into foreign languages and publishers usually need to be able to do this.)

Extra nitty gritty bit: Jane Smith just directed me (see comments below) to a REALLY technical and good Editorial Anonymous lesson about pic books here. Way too technical for me but if I was actually writing a pic book ....

What about the pictures?

• If you are a trained illustrator who has written a story, offer yourself as an illustrator who has written a story. In other words, send text and pics.
  
• If you are a writer who happens to be pretty good at drawing, just offer the story - you are welcome to include sketches, just to give an idea, but you are highly unlikely to be taken on as the illustrator. The publisher will find an illustrator - this is not your job and you'll be wasting your time.
• If you are a writer who can't draw for toffee, don't. Just write the story. The publisher will find the artist.
  

About the submission:

• send the whole thing, not just a sample
• but if you are the illustrator, there'd be nothing wrong with only sending some of the finished artwork (but with complete text), with perhaps some sketches for the rest, as long as your style and consistency are absolutely obvious alongside your incredible talent
  
• if sending just text, make sure you indicate how the text will be split between pages
• you won't usually need a synopsis, as your covering letter should give all that's necessary. But a short (obviously!) synopsis on a separate sheet would not go amiss to show you've understood about structure etc
  
• if you are an illustrator, you could send a sample of your work as well as anything you send for this project - you could be taken on as an illustrator for someone else's story
• whatever, you must show a long-term commitment. Simply having written one pic book story on a whim won't be enough. Mention some other ideas you've had, say whether you've written anything else, and give some idea (eg in a CV / resumé) that you have a relevant background and a future. Too many people think that a pic book is easy and a way to get a foot in the door - it's neither of those things and a publisher or agent needs to know that you are worth investing time and money in. One pic book on its own is harder to sell than a potential pic book star author.

Now, if any of you have any technical questions about submitting artwork, please don't ask me, as I haven't a clue. I'm no artist and have absolutely no technical knowledge of that side of things. And I'd be delighted if any experienced pic book writers would add comments to fill in any gaps or add any insights. As I said, I haven't written any pic books and anything I know comes from being interested in all forms of writing and from listening to other people's experiences, including many Society of Authors members.

All I know, and what I really want to emphasise, is that writing a picture book is a real art in itself and that writers for older readers of all ages should read, analyse, inwardly digest and ultimately respect and learn from the best picture books around. And here are three of my favs to get you started.

Think of an Eel, by Karen Wallace - the most magical writing. Perfection.

Sylvia and Bird by Catherine Rayner - beautiful simplicity

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson - deservedly a classic

Meanwhile, I'm going back to Vanessa's shop to buy a copy of Sylvia and Bird, because I ... er ... forgot last night. Well, I was having too much fun listening to a story.

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.

WRITER'S BLOCK AND AN APOLOGY

Apologies to those of you who lovely people who commented or contacted me personally to say they really liked my idea of doing online one-to-one tuition: I'm afraid it's not going to happen, or at least not in the foreseeable future. I was going to do it, really: I spent the weekend planning it, creating a new blog to give you all the info, working everything out in huge detail. The blog was all ready to go live. Just needed to click a button, though first I was going to ask lovely Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works to say what she thought. While I was doing it, I admit that a major part of me was screaming NO! You see, although I love teaching and would have enjoyed so many aspects of this idea, I have a habit of doing too much, spending too long at my computer and not enough time getting a life, and I know that I am supposed to be writing books, doing talks, and all the other paraphernalia of being an author (including this blog, which I really enjoy doing), all of which would be enough even if I didn't have a husband, dog and occasionally two daughters. Not to mention the chocolate habit.

But I wanted to do it, and I'm an idiot, so I was ploughing on. Then, yesterday evening, my husband and I were going to the cinema, just about to leave the house, when the phone rang. It was a friend to say that a good friend of ours had died. Just like that. Out of the so-called blue.

I don't believe in signs, but I do believe in listening to yourself. And my first rational and coherent thought was a cliché: life's too short. Then another one: you only get one life. And finally a line from my favourite film, The Life of Brian: "Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it."

But life isn't a piece of shit - life's good, mostly. Life is for living and loving and so I'm going to live it and love it, and that means making time for myself, family and friends, chocolate, novels, the best words I can produce in the best order I can design. And that means no new and possibly exhausting projects like an on-line writing school, at least for now. Even though I'd have got a lot of satisfaction from it, it's not what I know I should be doing and I know this is the right decision. I hope you understand.

What I will do is include some posts about the various things I'd have taught you if you had signed up for my mad idea. This blog started as purely advice about getting published, but since the most important step towards getting published is writing the best possible book, I should and will include some advice about that, and I'll focus especially on the most common things people do wrong in their writing.

Meanwhile, I am myself learning the brutal reality of writer's block. It does feel as though something physical is sticking there, that if I tried to get back to the novel in progress today it just wouldn't work. Creativity needs space and there's no space in there right now. If I sit at my desk and stare at the screen, nothing will come and the more nothing comes the worse it feels. So, I'm going to switch the computer off and I'm going for a long walk with the dog. She won't be pleased, as it's raining and she's not stupid, but we're going. Walking and fresh air - even wet fresh air - always work for me.

Normal service and "crabbit old bat" sense of humour will be resumed. Just don't go away and please do take care.

A TIP, AN ODD THING, AND A QUESTION

THE TIP: Creating Dramatic Tension
As I'm sure you'll agree, it's important to give your readers subtle clues to suggest there's something really exciting about to happen, but keep them hanging on as long as possible. But not so long that they get really hacked off with you. Don't give them the answer too soon, in other words. Or too late.

This is why for about a week now I've been telling you (OK, telling is not so subtle, I agree) to expect a story of hilarious ineptitude, the funniest day of my life as an author - and then not giving it to you. See what I mean? It just guarantees you'll hang around a bit longer. And you are only slightly hacked off with me but not too much so. If I keep you waiting too long, on the other hand, you may just disappear and go and read something much more exciting, like the contender for last year's Diagram Prize (a prize for the weirdest book title) the possibly life-saving How to Avoid Huge Ships. Fact-fetishists amongst you might like to know that previous winners have included Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers and the seminal People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It. One previous winner, the Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, contained a whole an education within the title, or at least to me. However, the very first winner of the prize was probably unbeatable: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.

Don't worry: I haven't forgotten about the story. I'm just keeping you hanging on - creating dramatic tension. Call it a demonstration in the cause of your education. I am sure it will improve your writing.

THE ODD THING: my 50th "follower" on this blog is a dog. And, weirdly, the dog can write as well as follow blogs. It's truly a blog-dog. I am not sure I am qualified to advise a dog on how to get published, though I have often been tempted to tell a human writer that he/she is barking up the wrong tree.

Here is my dog, by the way, to say a virtual hello to the blog dog. Apologies for the wine in the background - it's just in case I have guests round. Although this rarely happens, I feel it's best to be prepared.

THE QUESTION: it has occurred to me, following rash suggestions by a couple of people, that it might (or might not) be a good idea, or at least a not entirely stupid one, for me to offer online tuition for a few writers who a) want to get published and b) are good enough to be promising and c) are the sort of writer I feel I could help. So, a completely personalised "writing towards publication" course, tailored to the specific needs of the writer and covering whatever areas of weakness I find. (And believe me: I will be looking. I wasn't an English teacher for nothing.) I would only take a very few pupils, and they would have to fulfil certain criteria, but it could work. I'd cover a whole range of things, from writing style, voice and specific techniques, to pitching your material to agent/publisher, and each selection of topics would be made in consultation with the victim - sorry, no, I mean client - depending on what stage the writer was at.

I would also take groups - for example a writing group could sign up for group feedback and exercises.

So, my question is simple: what do you lovely people think? (I should add that it won't be cheap, as a great deal of chocolate will have to be consumed by me while I spend some months preparing perfect materials. And I don't function well on cheap chocolate.)

Oh, and if you say it's a good idea, don't worry: I won't then assume you want to sign up, honestly! I will be rubbish at the hard-sell. I just want to know in general what you think.

NB: I'm not tutoring the dog, but I'm very happy to continue reading his blog. Though I confess I do feel rather silly doing so. On the other hand, I'm beginning to think the dog may have some help from a human as he is rather competent and I just think those claws would get in the way of effective typing.

The next post will be the story of incompetence. Probably. I have actually written it, honestly - just haven't seen fit to click the relevant button. Oh, the power!

Must dash - got to see a blog about a dog.