All About The Journey

Image credit: Elliot Brown (via Wikimedia Commons)

Why is it that when you have time to write…you can’t?

I don’t often travel by train, much though I love it. And the idea of two six hour train journeys in rapid succession fulfilled some of my (rather odd) fantasies of being unencumbered. No chores, no distractions. Just time to write.

I got nothing done on the first of these journeys but that was okay. I didn’t have a table seat (though I’d specifically requested one) and in any case there were too many people around having interesting conversations. Some of  them I engaged with; some of them I just listened to, my mind boggling, from behind my paper. (Note to self: always take a broadsheet on the train because no-one can see you listening.) “Deb’s just so two-faced. Even Dad says she’s a bitch. So why does nobody ever listen to me?” Well, I was listening, though I didn’t like to say so.

On the return journey I got my table seat. It wasn’t even crowded. I could spread myself out  bit. This is a writer’s dream world, encapsulated on a Virgin train. I opened up the work In progress, the one that’s been marinating for a month or so and was ripe for revision. Turned to page 1.

Let me tell you something I bet you didn’t know. Northamptonshire’s an interesting place. Pretty wet, like the rest of the country at the moment. But it’s green, too. And a bit of water lying in the fields really shows up the contours of the landscape.

That low sun, too (I was travelling in the late afternoon). It cast just the right sort of shadows, those long low ones. You can see the lumps and bumps in the fields; those are the remains of medieval three field systems. Bet you didn’t know that. It’s an old landscape and for once, from the train, I could see it. And that’s funny - there was a whole field, a huge field, full of caravans. And next to it was a canal basin full of parked narrowboats.

The train followed the canal. Time was too precious to waste as the scenery flashed by. Blink and I’d miss it. I could write when I got bored of the scenery. And if I didn’t get bored I’d write when it got dark.

And so on, and so forth. I didn’t get bored and by the time it got dark (somewhere near Warrington) I was too comfortable to sit up straight.  And anyway, the seat height on these trains is wrong for typing at the table height. Even sliding the mouse around on the table (it stuck, by the way) brought on a tightness in my shoulders which I knew wouldn’t take long to morph into pain.

So I never did get any actual writing done. I just sat back and listened to everyone around me, closed my eyes and did that thing that writers do when they’re doing nothing. I gathered material.

Still, at least I got  blog post out of it….

You’ll find me on Twitter as @JYnovelist, on Facebook, on LinkedIn….

D-Day

It’s D-Day. Or, more accurately, P-Day. That’s P for Publication, by the way, not Pay or Party or any other P. (I’m sure you can think of some of your own.) It seems no time at all since Thank You For The Music was nothing more than an idea in a coffee cup on a holiday in Majorca and now it’s available for anyone with an e-reader, for less than the price of a magazine.

P is also for promotion. These days publishing isn’t enough. I suppose that’s progress, and maybe it isn’t a bad thing. We aren’t in the Victorian era, when individuals published interesting monographs at their own expense and circulated them widely among their friends. There are so many books available now - self-published or otherwise - that if you want your work to be noticed you have to tell people. And we all want our work to be noticed. We want our work to be admired.

Times change and we move with them. To tell l the truth I’m a little bit scared of promotion. There’s Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, and author pages on Facebook and Amazon and Smashwords. There’s blogging. But actually I like blogging; it’s just like writing a diary.

When I stop and think about it, digital media are the way I find out about books I want to read, even if I go into a bookshop to buy. They’re the way I find out about other things that interest me, such as whether my my team conceded the usual last-minute goal or what the current state of thinking is on the rogue wether we’ve been having. And it’s how I find out what my friends are doing too. And if I don’t want to know something I don’t follow it through - but I can’t say it isn’t there if I ant to see it.

In fact, if I want to know something these days, the chances are it’s digital media I turn to first. If I use these sources to pick up information, why not use them to communicate it? What’s left to do but embrace it?

You’ll find me on Twitter as @JYnovelist, on Facebook, on LinkedIn….

Counting Down...

I’m counting down. Right now it’s less than a week until Thank You For The Music is available on Amazon. Five days until I stop being a would-be writer and become a real one. With an author page on Facebook and one on Amazon and, and a book that anyone with access to the Kindle Store can download for more or less the price of a glossy magazine.

I don’t mind admitting that I find that more than a little scary. It’s bad enough putting your darling out to agents and publishers and having them turn it down, even when it’s turned down with rave rejections. (And let’s face it, rejection is the bedrock of every writer’s life experience.) And then the moment comes when someone likes it. It’s as if your little one has won the bonny baby contest, the moment that you know that it isn’t just you who thinks that what you’ve produced is, after all, publishable.

But writers, as everyone who’s ever had to live with one is only too acutely aware, are sensitive souls, insecure to the point of paranoia. We lurch from crisis to crisis, every up followed by a down. Now there’s a new challenge ahead. The public.

Fine, the publisher liked it. The editor liked it. My friends who read the early drafts liked it (or they said they did) and I know without being told that my mum will LOVE the final version, if only because she’s my mum. But what about you, the person browsing the Kindle store for a good holiday read, seduced by the blurb and the cover. Will you like it?

I want you to love it. I want you to settle down on a grey February afternoon or evening, e-reader in your hand and a box of chocs at your elbow like a modern-day version of Jo March from Little Women. I want you to be lost in it, be transported to the sunny climate of the Mediterranean. I yearn for you to agonise with poor jilted Abby, root for her when she has to choose between stable, sensible Edward and idle charmer Rafa. And I'm just desperate for you to tell all your friends how much you liked it and for you - and them -  to keep checking to see when the next book is out.

Why? It isn't vanity, or commerce. The reason writers write is not to make money. It’s because they can’t help it and in order to justify their very existence they need someone to tell them that everything was worth it. They - and I, because now I’m one of them - just want to be loved.

I’ve done my bit. And now it’s over to you...

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My Writing Process Blog Tour

This week I’ve been invited to join the My Writing Process blog tour by my friend Kate Blackadder. Kate writes short fiction and is widely published in women’s magazines: you’ll find her at katewritesandreads.blogspot.co.uk.

I don’t often think much about how I write so the questions the blog tour asks proved very stimulating.

What am I working on?

I’m looking forward to the publication of my first novel, Thank You For The Music, on 20 February (Tirgearr Publishing) and so I’m starting to deal with the promotional and admin side of the publication process - watch this space for a peek at the cover!

In terms of the writing side, at the moment I’m coming to what I hope is the end of my NaNoWriMo novel from November. Tentatively titled No Time Like Now, it’s a romantic suspense - my first in the genre - set in Majorca. The hero is a geologist who discovers something very nasty during the course of his research, and ends up relying on my heroine for rescue. Pity they fell out, very, very messily, some years before…

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m going to say that I think I write about real people. I know everybody says that but I’m trying to move a little away from the stereotypes usually associated with romantic novelists and make my characters a little more real. Of course this runs the risk that they may not meet readers’ expectations of a romance novel, but I’m prepared to take a chance.

Why do I write what I do?

Because I can’t help it! I’m very strongly influenced by places and often find that when I arrive somewhere new - whether it’s on holiday, on business or just by accident - I want to write about it. (I have a background in geography and Earth science and I do some travel writing so perhaps that’s inevitable.) But as for writing what I do - I write pretty much anything. In my life I’ve tried everything from literary fiction to romance to crime, with varying degrees of success. But romance and romantic suspense is where I am right now, and I’m loving it.

How does your writing process work?

Just as the nature of my writing varies, so does the process. Sometimes I’ll spend many months teasing out characters, writing, rewriting and changing my mind before abandoning the whole project. Other times I sit down and write a novel. (It really is as simple as that.) For my current piece, I had the idea while on holiday, when two characters from many years before finally met and found a plot. I roughed out the synopsis, started on November 1 and had the first draft finished within two weeks and revised by the end of the month. Pity it isn’t always this easy….

Who’s up next? 

Well, it’s two of my colleagues from Tiregearr, Troy Lambert and Kate Robbins.

Troy Lambert began his writing life at a very young age, penning the as yet unpublished George and the Giant Castle at age six. He grew up in Southern Idaho, and after many adventures including a short stint in the US Army and a diverse education, Troy returned to Idaho, and currently resides near Boise.

Troy works as a freelance writer, researcher, and editor. He writes historical site characterization reports, software instruction and help guides, and edits both fiction and non-fiction. His true passion is writing dark, psychological thrillers. His work includes Broken Bones, a collection of his short stories, Redemption the first in the Samuel Elijah Johnson Series, Temptation the sequel to Redemption, along with the horror Satanarium, co-authored with Poppet, a brilliant author from South Africa and published by Wild Wolf Publishing. He has stories in several anthologies including the partially for charity Happily Ever Afterlife published by Untold Press. His newest novel Stray Ally will be released by Tirgearr Publishing this spring. 

Troy lives with his wife of twelve years, two of his five children and two very talented dogs. He is a skier, cyclist, hiker, fisherman, hunter, and a terrible beginning golfer. 

Author Website: www.troylambertwrites.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/authortroy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Troy-Lambert/191932724173411?ref=hl

Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/Troy-Lambert/e/B005LL1QEC

Kate Robbins writes historical romance novels out of pure escapism and a love for all things Scottish, not to mention a life-long enjoyment of reading romance. Her journey into storytelling began with a short screenplay she wrote, directed, and produced which was screened at the 2003 Nickel Film Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She has also written and directed several stage plays for youth.

Kate loves the research process and delving into secondary sources in order to give readers the most authentic historical romance possible. She has travelled to Scotland and has visited the sites described in her Highland Chiefs series.

Bound to the Highlander is the first of three books set during the early fifteenth century during the reign of James Stewart, first of his name.

Kate is the pen name of Debbie Robbins who lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada with her hubby, the man-beast, and her two awesome boys, the man-cubs. You’ll find her blog at www.katerobbinsauthor.com 

Not the very beginning – but a very good place to start

I’ve been putting off the first post of my blog for some time, even though the blog itself has been set up and waiting for months. It isn’t because I can’t think of anything to write – I’m a writer, never short of a word or plenty – but rather the opposite problem. I have too many things to say and I want to start with something relevant, even something seminal.

I’ve been putting it off too long, even when I’ve had things to say. (Sometimes I’ve said them elsewhere; sometimes I’ve kept my light hidden). I’ve chosen the title of my blog to allow me to share my thoughts on some of the things I love most. I could talk about what I’m writing and why I’m writing it, what I’m reading and whether it’s worth it. I could go on - at great length - about where I’ve been and the effect it’s had on me. (One thing you’ll learn if you spend time on my blog is that a sense of place is, for me, one of the most important things in the writing process.)

So I’ve decided to start now. It’s Christmas Eve. Pre-Christmas is in progress and there’s plenty to be done – the last presents to be wrapped, the sausage rolls to be made, a luscious, melting brie to be chopped and coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs ready for tomorrow. (Thank you, St Delia, for your contribution to our Christmas tradition.) But they can all wait. I’ve put off my blog long enough.

I understand now that, unlike a novel, a blog has no obvious starting point because writing is an ongoing, iterative process. It’s a journey but it’s one that has (to quote the geologist James Hutton, writing on quite another subject) “no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”. So there’s no point in inviting readers to join me for a trip from A to B. Hop on where you like, hop off where you like. Feel free to join me for a stage of my writing journey or for longer. And enjoy the ride….

My website 

Tirgearr Publishing author page 

Novel Points of View blog 

On Facebook 

Twitter