Ration your research

By Susanna Beard, author of psychological thriller, Dare to Remember published by Legend Press

Research can be fun! Yes, you read that right. It may be daunting at first, when you need to get going from a standing start and you really don’t know where to look, but researching for a novel can add real depth and interest to your story – and it’s deeply satisfying, too.

Some people absolutely love the process of researching their story idea. They might start online, as I did, and soon find themselves deeply immersed. It’s easy to get side-tracked. Some writers, anxious about getting down to the writing, spend a huge amount of time researching, delaying the moment of putting fingers to keyboard. Their research might be stunning, but it’s no good if they struggle to get to the writing.

I prefer to do it the other way round – I start writing, and when I reach a point when I need to research, I do it then. But even then I don’t let it take over from the writing. I might go back and add to the research later, but as long as I’ve confirmed that the key elements of my story are believable, I plough on.

Let’s assume you have, broadly, your idea for a novel. The story comes from your imagination and your personal experience and has a beginning, a middle and an end. (Well, possibly not an end – yet - if you’re anything like me. Or even a middle!). The research adds to and enhances the story, and you’re gathering knowledge in addition to your own to give it authenticity.

Without authenticity your story will fall at the first hurdle. That first hurdle comes when your reader stops believing in your character, event, place, business, historical period or theme. Your reader will be turned off the story and may never finish. So you need to research the facts around your story to give it depth – to make it believable.

Even if your story is a fantasy, it needs authenticity, through character development, a sense of place and time, and consistency. Your research might involve how people react, or how a material, like wood for example, might behave. It won’t matter if your monsters from outer space behave like humans but it will matter if your humans – all of them - behave like monsters from outer space. Our imaginations can soar, but our stories need to be grounded by (some) research.

If your character suffers from depression, you need to know about it. You need to know how she would look and speak, what her thought processes might be. My protagonist in my debut novel, Dare to Remember, Lisa, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, and she has therapy throughout the book. I researched this by reading about depression – case studies were particularly useful – by talking to therapists, especially those with experience in PTSD, and by listening to their language. It’s all in the book.

But at the same time, it’s not all in the book. One of the big dangers of researching for your novel will be that you’ve put all that time and energy into finding out the facts around your story that you don’t want to waste it. You feel compelled to put it into the narrative. Don’t. The danger is that it will change the pace of the story, bring the reader up short and look like you’re trying too hard to prove you know all about your subject. As a reader I can see when a writer wants to demonstrate their knowledge – about language in a historical era, about the geography of a place, about a real event from the past – and I tend to skip over it.

We need – as writers and as readers – to inhabit our stories. That means, as writers, we need to absorb our research, bringing it in to the story with a light touch and only when it’s appropriate. It needs to be an integral part of the backdrop of the story.

A simple example: my therapist, for example, in Dare to Remember, has a certificate on his wall, showing that he was qualified. I knew he would, from my research. I also knew what he would have needed to do to gain his qualification. But I didn’t need to tell my readers all that – it would have been too much information. All they needed to know, obliquely, was that he was ‘proper.’ He became more real because of that small detail.

So research is important, yes. It gives you credibility and confidence, and your story authenticity. But it needs to be handled with care, woven into the story where it can demonstrate its value in subtle ways. Your readers won’t even notice it, but they will believe your story.

Writer’s walk

By Susanna Beard, author of psychological thriller, Dare to Remember published by Legend 

Press

For me, walking has always had a therapeutic quality. There’s something about putting one foot in front of the other, even if you’re plodding along with your hood pulled up over your head and your eyes on the ground, which helps the mood. And since I’ve started to write novels, walking has become a crucial part of the writing process.

There is a time-honoured link between long-distance running and writing - Joyce Carol Oates ran every afternoon, Louisa May Alcott felt that she "must have been a horse or a deer in some previous state" because she enjoyed running so much, and Murakami said his “real existence as a serious writer [began] on the day that I first went jogging.”

I’m not a runner – it hurts too much, in more ways than one. But walking, for me, clearly has the same effect as running has for these authors. As a writer, it’s when I walk that I wrestle with the twists and turns of a plot that won’t settle down, or the traits of a character who just doesn’t seem real.

Sometimes the walking just clears the mind; sometimes it offers the creative jolt that a new story (or a stuck story) needs.

Even when the weather’s out to get you – when it’s cold, wet and blustery, when the wind brings tears to your eyes and you can barely move your feet through a sea of mud, walking is ‘worth it’ time. The process of wrapping up against the elements, leaving the house and heading for the countryside (or a park, or a quiet lane) is in itself, I believe, good therapy for an overcrowded mind.

And if you add good weather, the countryside, wildlife, birdsong and air untainted by diesel fumes – then even better. Nothing raises the spirits as gently.

Except, of course, the presence of a canine friend or two. The unbridled, unselfconscious enthusiasm of a dog on a daily walk, the excitement of seeing another of the species - or quite often, just another human - repeats itself daily. Same place, new smells, sounds, dogs, people. Cats and birds. Squirrels! Such delight in the routine. It’s infectious.

It was on one of my daily walks by the Thames a couple of years ago – I’m lucky, I can get there in less than ten minutes – that I bumped into another dog-walker, a little late on her daily perambulation. When I remarked on this, in a friendly, dog-walking way, she replied that her husband had died in the night. What a shock! Of course, I did my best to comfort her, offering to tell people I saw who I knew to be her close friends, and went on my way.

When we parted, though, I couldn’t get the incident out of my head. The fact that she was walking on the morning after this terrible thing had happened to her fascinated me. Of course, when you have a dog, it needs walking. But it was more than that – it was the beginning of her recovery from the trauma: telling friends, getting out of the house, exercising, the fresh air by the river. The idea of walking as therapy struck me as a good theme for a novel.

I didn’t want to mirror my friend’s experience in my story. So I needed to come up with a reason for my protagonist’s need for therapy. Was there something in her past which needed to be resolved? It went from there. I wanted to explore the idea of a dog, and walking, helping to bring someone back from the brink, creating a new, safer world for that person.

That’s where my debut novel, Dare to Remember, began. It went through two working titles, some interesting critical discussions with my writing group and many drafts before I felt that it succeeded in doing what it was supposed to. But all through the novel my protagonist is supported by walking, and by her dog, Riley. The dog gets her out, meeting new people - however reluctant she is to talk - while the walking gives her space, room to think, to ponder over her life, to recover from her trauma.

I value my daily walks with my dogs, both for my health – physical and mental - but also as a way to continue working on my stories. I clear my head, problem-solve, get descriptive ideas and make friends at the same time.

Almost always I return with a sense of purpose for my writing as well as muddy boots and pawprints in my hall.

Self-publishing: a creative choice, or a last resort?

by Terry Tyler

Most writers, whilst penning their first novel, have fantasies about submitting to a major literary agent and being accepted by a traditional publishing house. This fantasy becomes reality for one in a million, if not fewer. I started writing long before Kindle; back in the days when I occasionally submitted novels to agents I gained some interest, but it amounted to 'yes, like the way you write, but can you change the content according to what is currently in vogue, so I can sell it to a publisher?'

I wrote nine novels in the 1990s, then started writing again in 2010. I submitted the first to an established agent, and received the same response. My book was from multiple-first-person points of view, which was not popular at the time. Then someone told me about self-publishing on Amazon, and I decided to go down that road, instead—which was when I discovered that some see self-publishing as a last resort on which to fall back after being turned down by agents, mainstream publishers, and even the smallest independent presses. It isn't. It is, in many cases, a creative choice, for the writer who doesn't want to follow grip lit thriller with grip lit thriller, or remove a whole character because she must conform to the romance formula as laid down by her publisher.

Yes, of course, self-published books on Amazon range from the brilliant to the efforts that inspire you to write emails asking for better quality control on the site. The desire to stand apart from the stigma of self-pub and 'be a published author' leads many to sign with the first independent who says 'yes', or, worse, with the rip-off vanity presses—in case you don't know, this is where they flatter you until you sign the contract, then hit you will a huge bill for editing, proofreading, etc. Often, they masquerade as trad pub. They will accept anything as long as you pay their exorbitant fees, and their editing and proofreading usually leaves much to be desired. I was recently asked to review a book published by a well-known vanity press. It had three errors in the blurb alone.

As far as independent publishers are concerned, they range from the very good, who will promote your book, present it professionally, seek out book bloggers and placement in bookshops, etc, to the bad, who don't recognise slack editing and will let books go out with too many errors in them (I've read independent press books with American English in an English historical, waffling narrative that should have been cut, etc), to the ugly, who just want a cut of your takings and will have your books 'edited' by someone who doesn't understand basic grammar. According to blog posts I've read, some writers who've chosen to go with an indie press find that they end up with all the restrictions of the traditionally published: losing royalties, and control of content, timing of publication, price, with none of the advantages (books in high street shops, paid Amazon advertising, sales, etc).

A few years back, a writer friend told me that he'd felt so excited when Kindle publishing was first introduced, but became disillusioned by the reality: wannabe best sellers bunging up any old rubbish on Amazon, thinking they were going to be the next EL James/GRR Martin. This has added to the bad name self-publishing has had since the days when vanity was the only option available, and not only with book bloggers and the reading public. The writers' hierarchy lives on: some who sign with small presses consider themselves superior to the self-published, and indeed make scathing remarks about them, not realising that the standard for acceptance by these companies may be more, shall we say, 'relaxed' than for literary agents/trad pub. Some writers do not even realise the difference between a traditional publisher and an independent publishing company (the latter of which can be set up by anyone), and believe themselves to be among the 'chosen few', and thus vastly superior to the self-pub.

When a writer says they self-publish 'by choice', it means they don't submit their books to publishers in the first place. It doesn't mean they've been rejected by lots of publishers but have come to terms with it. Acceptance by a major publishing house should not be seen as the only affirmation that your output is of merit; such large companies exist to make money, first and foremost, not to nurture the artist, so money invested has to be a safe bet. Saleability to the masses (and investment from large corporations) does not necessarily indicate creative brilliance; it's fair to say that creativity and making money do not go hand in hand.

But what about validation of your talent? Doesn't such acceptance give you that? Not necessarily. I've heard, straight from one horse's mouth, that being taken on by an agent doesn't necessarily mean that you're an amazing writer, just that you've produced a product that can be moulded to have mass appeal. If you want validation, wait to see if readers buy more than one of your books. Rejoice in your genuine reviews from book bloggers and the reading public.

Terry Tyler's latest, psychological thriller, novel

I've been described many times as a 'supporter of self-published authors', but I'm not. Some are dreadful. I'm a supporter of good writers, however they're published. I read a great deal; that some of my favourites are self-pub is neither here nor there. An equal amount are mainstream or small press. A book is a book; while we keep making the distinction, self-publishing will always be seen as the impoverished, embarrassing relation.

It took me a while to realise that I actively WANT to be self-published. A few readers and book bloggers have expressed surprise that I don't have a publisher, and one writer friend keeps very kindly suggesting publishers I could submit to, but I don't like the idea of anyone having control over what I produce. If you have the necessary basic talent and understand the importance of good editing and proofreading, if you realise you will have to do all your own promotion, and accept that creative freedom doesn't mean darting from sweet romance to horror, to cowboy comedy to Plantagenet history and back again, you can do well with self-publishing. Once you stop worrying about writing synopses and what-the-hell-agents-are-looking-for, or getting yet another rejection email, your writing life gets a lot easier—and you can spend your time producing novels, instead of query letters.

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Donkeys and vodka: the mad science of proofreading

by Perry Iles, Chamber Proof (www.chamberproof.moonfruit.com)

Proof readers, proofreaders or proof-readers? We can’t even agree on how our job titles should be written down. What total bellends (bell-ends or bell ends) we are. But then no two proofreaders think alike anyway, because we’re all maverick geniuses, frustrated novelists and deeply flawed garret-dwelling paupers with nothing better to do than use our combination of OCD and Asperger’s Syndrome to pick apart the work of others. And we’ll never get it right because there is no right. Language is fluid—especially English, because the world’s greatest superpower speaks it all over the globe. There are those who think that America has dragged the English language kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, and there are those who think that America has dragged it into a dark alley and beaten the living crap out of it. Who in the hell ever thought to use the word “disrespect” as a verb? It wasn’t one of our chaps, I’ll bet. Either way, an assault has been mounted, and the proofreader’s job is to defend a book against the slings and arrows of error and change. Which of course means that while I’m fending off mediaeval English weaponry with a stout oaken shield, some American in a sharp suit and sunglasses will pop up in front of me and shoot me in the face. While dictionaries and manuals try to pin down the elusive butterfly of correct prose and grammar, off it goes in a different direction, raising either two fingers or a middle digit at you, depending upon which side of the Atlantic you’re on. Language flows elegant and smooth like a glacier, changing shape and form as it goes.

Which means that for some words there is no right or wrong. When you get into your car, do you put on a seat belt, a seat-belt or a seatbelt? When you can’t be arsed to cook, will you have a take-away a takeaway? There is only consistency, which is the First Rule of Proofreading. Be consistent. Check the preferences of your author. It’s their book after all. Maintain an open channel at all times, dash off query emails. They’ll love you when you find a spelling error or some missing punctuation, but they’ll hate you when you overrule their preferences with your own when rules don’t apply. It takes only a moment to ask an author if their main character eats hash browns, hash-browns or hashbrowns.  

And don’t even talk to me about punctuation. Go talk to Lynne Truss, she knows it all. She’ll tell you when to use the Oxford comma and when to eschew it. Read Strunk and White, they’ll tell you when to use colons and semi-colons instead of full stops. Then try to act on what they say in a real life writing situation. Often you’ll find they’re talking bollocks. Or they’re trying to be clever buggers by shoehorning correct grammar into a sentence that needs changing anyway because it hasn’t been written right in the first place. These books are to writing what the Highway Code is to driving. They’ll tell you the rules, but they won’t make you a good writer. They’ll just teach you to run over fewer people, rather than less people. So here’s the Second Rule of Proofreading: If you’re stuck on the punctuation, the chances are the wording is wrong, because if the wording was right, you wouldn’t be stuck on it, would you? There you are, happily proofreading away without a care in the world, and then you get to something that stops you in your tracks with one of those comedy skid-noises they use when Fred Flintstone brings his car to a standstill using his feet. Here:

“Honestly, darling, I went to Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Marks and Spencer’s but I couldn’t get those socks you like; perhaps you should try shopping on-line.”

The author (and the proofreader) is all in a lather about the use of semi-colons in dialogue, Oxford commas, possessive apostrophes, the double-use of “and” and that unnecessary hyphen in “on-line”, when they should be worrying about the ghastly dialogue instead. You could proofread that sentence until your brain started dribbling out of your ears. Go on, knock yourself out. But rather than just checking the grammar, the proofreader should offer a gentle nudge and tell the writer that people don’t really speak like that, and that it might be better to re-write the sentence along the following lines:

“Listen love, I went to every bloody supermarket in town and none of them had your socks. Try online, OK?”

There, that’s better, isn’t it? A good proofreader would underline that first sentence and suggest rewriting it a bit more like the second, because that sort of light copy-editing is part of a proofreader’s job. It’s part of mine, anyway. And when punctuation stops me in my tracks, re-wording the sentence will improve matters nine times out of ten. So before you start dicking about with the semi-colons and the fiddly shite, read that sentence out loud in front of a mirror or a loved one. Chances are you can say it better and more simply without, as Cormac McCarthy puts it, “peppering your writing with all those unnecessary marks”. Think about what punctuation actually is. It’s not writing, it’s not poetry, it’s not great literature. It’s instructions. Stop here, pause there. Add emphasis! Are you asking a question? Oh gosh, someone’s about to say something. Here come some speech-marks, look! In good writing, most of these things come naturally anyway. Punctuation should be light, unobtrusive and minimal. Punctuation tells the readers what your writing should be showing them. You don’t need exclamation marks. Get rid of them. All of them, unless you’re writing children’s fiction. Adults know when someone is shouting, and it’s your job as a writer to show people being angry, not tell us they’re yelling their heads off. Get rid of colons and semi colons in fiction. They’re horrid little nasty half-hearted things anyway. They’re not big and they’re not clever. They are to punctuation what adverbs are to prose. Write your way round them and your writing will be better for it. Declare war on commas, use “and” more often. Write shorter sentences. Write longer sentences. Free your prose. Let it dance about without being tied down by unnecessary punctuation. Be more colloquial. Be free. You’re a writer. It’s fun. You’re dancing with the wind in your hair, not tapping out two-fingered sludge.

Proofreaders are there to polish your little red wagon, to make sure your book doesn’t go out into the world with its skirt tucked into its underwear. We do that not only by finding errors, but by making suggestions—small, light and often. Editors will tell you to make structural changes, to write out unnecessary characters altogether, to revise entire chapters. Proofreaders won’t do that, they’ll just buff up the details and offer a light copy-edit. They aren’t there to check out the shape of your forest, they’re there to examine the bark on the trees. And even then, there will be errors. There WILL be errors. I bet there are errors in this article if you look hard enough, and if there aren’t errors, there are things you’d have written differently. I once wrote and self-published a book in which it got cold in my car so I turned the heather on. This was doubly embarrassing, as Heather is my wife’s name (she was not in the car at the time. We were not dogging. Honestly, officer. Look at the moon, my mother would have understood…) The point there is that you read what you want to be there. You read what makes sense. As an author, I not only wrote that error, but on the dozens of rewrites and re-reads I let it stay there until it became encysted in my head, part of the manuscript. A friend read it once, after I’d published it, and said “You’ll never guess what you’ve written here…” so I had to kill her. A simple proofread and that poor woman would still be alive today.

Which also applies to names, by the way. Rule whatever (I’ve lost count) of proofreading is to google every single one of the fictional characters’ names in the book you’re working on, just in case the author hasn’t done that first. That way you’ll be able to check that they aren’t the same as famous people in fields you’re unfamiliar with, or a name you perhaps heard on the news and has stuck in your mind to re-emerge seven years later as the name for your baddie. You may not be familiar with football, movie stars of the 1930s or death metal, but some of your readers will be. Remember that the bad guy in Double Jeopardy was called Nicholas Parsons and that a book by English romantic novelist EV Thompson had a leading character called Tom Hanks in it. So before you use a cool name like Harry Styles or Matt Bellamy or Frank Black, go and google it, or people will point at you and laugh.

Your book is the God to which its creators bow down. The author is the prime creator, but there is a host of others who help dress your book up and make it look nice. The proofreader is but one of many, he’s the final polisher, the one who buffs the lacquer on what Stephen King calls your little red wagon. But proofreading is an inexact science. Pinning the English language down into a static form is like a pin-the-tail-on-a-donkey game in which you’ve been rapidly spun ten times and then force-fed a pint of vodka. And the donkey is real and moving and wants to kick you very hard because some cruel bastard has cut its tail off. The best you can hope for is that your book is enjoyed, recommended, critically acclaimed and sells by the warehouse-load. But one day, when you’re relaxing on your yacht in Monte Carlo harbour surrounded by women made of silicone or men with abs you could bounce marbles off, you’ll come across an error in your latest manuscript and suddenly you’ll feel like Madonna falling downstairs at the Brits, and your screams will echo from the mountains that surround the bay, and the head you’ll call for will quite possibly be mine.

128 Words to use instead of "VERY"

Inside the Mind of an Author: with Richard Beard, Emma Healey and the National Academy of Writing

by Catriona Troth

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I attended my first Public Edit with the National Academy of Writing (NAW).

NAW was set up to give writers the chance to learn directly from other writers. It is not linked to any university, and does not issue degrees or certificates. But it does offer an exciting range of events and courses of varying lengths. This particular event – run in conjunction with Writers & Artists and held at the London offices of Bloomsbury Publishing – was my first taste of what they had to offer.

NAW Public Edit

We had been invited to submit short pieces of writing, of which two would be selected at random for editing. But what sort of editing were we in for? Presumably it would be more than just an exercise in proofreading, but would we just be given a lecture of the overuse of adverbs, or would this go deeper?

We had all been sent the selected texts in advance, so we could read them through and form our own ideas. The person guiding us through the edits that evening was novelist and Director of NAW, Richard Beard. I was impressed that he immediately focused on the type of work it was – its genre, in the most specific sense – and then examined the issues that arose from that, with concrete examples from the texts presented.

The first text selected was the opening chapter of an intriguing piece of speculative fiction by Felicia Yap – whose book I am now eagerly awaiting.

Beard identified two key issues for speculative fiction. First you have isolate the essential difference between your world and the normal world, push the consequences of that difference to the limits, drilling down and asking all the questions a reader might ask. Secondly you must be wary of raising other types of questions, especially early on, because the reader will have enough uncertainty to deal adjusting to this new world. If you achieve both things, the reader will sense your confidence in your world and trust you to lead them through it.

The second piece was a more straightforward contemporary short story, written in reportage style. Here the issue Beard skewered was the danger of letting a character, ‘look away,’ ‘say nothing,’ or ‘have no idea.’ All of those, he said, are lazy writing that make a character look weak or passive. Much better to get inside the character's head and work out what idea they DO have.

POSTSCRIPT: Very excited to hear that the UK and Commonwealth rights to Felicia Yap's book have been snapped up by Headline’s Alex Clarke ahead of LBF2016. Not a bit surprised, after reading the 'taster' here.

A Glimpse inside Emma Healey’s Notebooks

The second part of the evening was truly fascinating. How much would you give to have a peek inside the notebooks of one of your favourite writers? Well, that was that opportunity we had, as Emma Healey, author of last year’s Costa First Novel Award winner Elizabeth is Missing, opened the doors to her writing process.

And yes, I do mean a literal peek inside her notebooks. Despite what you might expect of today’s computer born generation, 23 year old Healey is still wedded to physical notebooks, for collecting notes, for sketching drafts, and for organising her editing. She showed us snapshots from those treasures, and even handed round copies of her colour-coded and hand-annotated planning charts for Elizabeth’s dual timeline.

Intriguingly, those notebooks included plans of Maud’s house, in the present and during the war, and a town plan made, apparently, from cutting and pasting a map of Bournemouth to bring things closer together.

Plans of Maud's House (photo oourtesy of Clare Povey)

Healey confessed to being a disorganised writer, whose daily writing routine rarely matched the idealised one she set herself. She is also clearly a very visual writer, who uses pinboards full of pictures to inspire her and give depth to her descriptions.

“The picture might have nothing to do with your story, but they might suggest colours or textures or the way someone sits ...”

She is a squirrel, keeping a ‘commonplace book’ of photos, newspaper articles and other things that have caught her attention, and writing down snatches of overheard dialogue wherever she goes. And she is also a great believer in physical research. For Elizabeth, she not only spent time talking to people in care homes, but with impressive attention to detail, also put an advert in the Bournemouth local paper to make sure that she knew both the process and the physical surroundings.

When it came to editing, Healey described her processes, which included:

• Reading it over and over
• Reading out loud
• Reading it at one sitting (even if it takes all night)
• Printing it out so you’re not just reading on the screen
• Asking questions
• Creating timelines and checking against them

And then, of course:

• Independent proofreading and copy editing

Inside the cover of one of her ‘editing’ notebooks, she had pinned a list of things to check for.

• Prepositions (something she is inclined to overuse, apparently)
• Repetition
• Texture (how to add it)
• Observation (ditto)
• Linking back (to earlier scenes via objects etc)
• Misremembering (Elizabeth’s)
• Uncanniness
• Physicality
• Progression of symptoms (of Alzheimer's)

Healey’s willingness to reveal herself was refreshing and inspiring. If other guest authors are as frank and entertaining, I can highly recommend booking yourself onto another of these events, should the opportunity come your way.

Weaving Stories with Just Write

Just Write at the launch of their second anthology

by Catriona Troth


Many writing groups have produced anthologies of short stories, and many of those have had common themes running through them. But the members of the Just Write group, based in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, set themselves a far more intriguing challenge.

All twenty stories in Spilling the Beans take place in a single day in the same coffee shop. And each one, from 'Ristretto' to 'Hazelnut Steamer', has the title of a drink served in the shop. More than that, the same characters weave in and out of the stories, brushing up against one another’s lives – sometimes colliding, sometimes barely noticed.

In many ways, this anthology has more in common with serial novels such as Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street. Many of the stories are not self contained. They leave tantalising loose threads, some of which are picked up later, while others trail out of the coffee shop into a future we are invited to imagine. Taken singly, this might make for frustrating reading, but the pleasure in this anthology comes from the way the stories weave together into a satisfying whole.

Their second anthology, Delayed Reaction, based on the same principle of interlocking stories (this time focused on passengers trapped on a delayed train) was published in November 2015. And they are now in the process of planning a third. I joined them to find out how the original concept was born, and how they go about planning and executing such a complex project.

The germ of the idea came from the creative writing class (led by author Sally Norton) where the Just Write group all met, explains Lesley Close.

“Sally had given us an exercise to write about one scenario – a theft – but from the point of view of different witnesses. We thought this would be a fun idea to recreate during the first long summer holiday out of class.”

The idea for a subject to tackle then grew out of a story by group member, Liz Losty.

“Liz wrote a great story about an elderly woman coming into a coffee shop, asking for ‘a cup of coffee’ and then being bamboozled by the array of strange sounding options she was confronted with.”

That seemed to spark something. That same day, the group came up with a list of drinks you could buy at a coffee shop and divvied them up between them. As all the stories would take place in one day, moving from opening to closing, they also worked out a timetable for when the drinks would be ordered.

After that, each writer was free to decide what sort of character might order that drink, and to develop their stories wherever their imaginations led. A certain amount of back story was permitted, but as little as possible outside the door of the cafe, and nothing beyond the single day. Once the stories were written, they were submitted to the group for critiquing and to ensure that the stories all work together.

“You must be flexible,” author Emma Dark says. “There has to be a willingness to tweak your story to fit in with others.”

Even with so much preparation, they soon realised even more advance brainstorming could have helped.

“One author came up with a vivid description of the shop, which then had to be incorporated, to a greater or lesser extent in all the other stories.”

That was a lesson they took to heart when it came to planning Delayed Reaction. Before starting to write, they fixed the day and date for the event, chose a genuine train service (15:08 from King’s Cross to York), and decided exactly where the train would stop. Close did a recce to provide a description of the train and of the landscape through which it would pass. They even spoke to a railway engineer to iron out technical details.

From brainstorm to publication, each anthology takes many months in development. After brainstorming, they write their stories through the winter, giving themselves a final deadline in May. The combined manuscript is then edited over the summer, and with the first manuscript proof delivered in September. They then go to press in October, ready for Christmas sales.

When it came to the publication of Spilling the Beans, they wanted to raise money for charity, and a close connection of one of the writers to a patient at Royal Marsden Hospital made it the obvious choice. This undoubtedly opened a lot of doors for them and the anthology is now stocked in various locations (including two local hotels, who keep copies in every bedroom). As a result they have, to date, raised £1k for Royal Marsden, and helped to purchase a special ultraviolet room steriliser for the hospital. That connection has continued with Delayed Reaction.

For their paperback copies, the group has chosen to use short-run printing, rather than print-on-demand. Short-run printing is often out of the reach of a solo self-published author, but as a team, they can split the cost, and know that they can each shift a certain number of books themselves.

One of the strengths of both the anthologies has been the unified design of the books, the work of group member Stuart Tennant, who has a background in design, and his colleague Oliver Payne. It shows in details such as the line drawing of a cup or glass that opens each story in Spilling the Beans, and the little pattern of coffee beans that closes them. That book even finishes with a ‘Closed’ sign rather than ‘The End.’

It is this sort of attention to detail, together with impressive planning and organisation and a willingness to cooperate and function as a team, that has led to Spilling the Beans winning Writing Magazine’s Writers’ Circle Anthology Award 2014.

Read my review of Spilling the Beans on Book Muse UK.

How to fix Blogger Facebook image and description

This has annoyed me for months. When I share a blog post on Facebook the images within the post usually appear as a thumbnail beside the link. As of a few months ago I would share a post from my blog and get a random image from the site instead - sometimes the site logo, sometimes a social media icon that appears somewhere on the blog. And the description underneath the blog post title would be a random piece of info from the site such as the privacy statement.

So I went in search of a fix ...

Image Issues

I found several posts on the internet. This is the code which worked for me and I'll provide some step by step instructions below.

<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='http://www.yourdefaultimage.jpg' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>

Copy and paste the code above into Notepad and replace http://www.yourdefaultimage.jpg with a URL to an image that you would be happy displaying next to your blog link on Facebook if you HAVEN'T included any images in your post. For example, it might be your company logo, or a generic image. If you have your logo on your website simply right click and copy the image address, and paste it into the code above.

Next you need to add the code to your template. NOTE, always back up your blog template before making any changes, just in case anything goes wrong.

Go to your Blogger blog>Template>Edit HTML.

Hit Command>F and search for /head.

Next, copy and paste from Notepad the code from above having changed the URL to an image you would like as a default, and paste it directly above the

tag.

Hit Save template. 

This will work for all future posts. You can force old posts to work by using Facebook Debugger https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/object/ but I've found this to be temperamental and doesn't always work for old posts. And it can take a little bit of time for the changes to filter through.

Note that images within a blog post generally need to be over 200 pixels in size to be picked up by Facebook.

Description Issues

Now onto the problem of random descriptions appearing underneath your Facebook blog post links.

Go to Settings > Search preferences > Description. Select 'Yes' and then enter a default description you would be happy to have under your posts. This description will appear under all posts where you don't follow the next step. 

If you want a specific description, go to your individual blog post and click Search Description. This is a really Google friendly place to enter a description packed with keywords. This description, if completed, will appear as the description under your posts on Facebook. 

Happy blogging!

Question Corner - February 2016

Lorraine Mace answers a plea for reassurance

George from Somerset sent in the following plea for reassurance: I have been writing for a few years, but have never managed to get anything published. The only people who read my stories are friends and family. They all say they enjoy them, but if they really are any good, why can’t I get them published? I started writing a novel last year, but feel so disheartened I don’t think I’ll ever get round to finishing it. I often feel like giving up, but I really enjoy writing, so don’t want to do that. How can I get my stories published so that I’m not just writing for people who know me?

I receive similar emails every month. So many writers worry they will never be published and hover on the brink of giving up. Some do, of course, but the majority continue because they cannot imagine a life where they no longer write.

In your case, you at least have family and friends who read your work and encourage you to continue. Some writers don’t even have that kind of support system. I know that doesn’t answer your question, but I wanted to make the point that true writers never give up and the fact that you have sent in your email shows you are a long way from throwing in the towel – even if you think you’re close to doing so!

The most important point in your email was that you enjoy writing. So why not take a moment to look at why you write. We all want to be published and strive to fit publishers’ guidelines, but ironically we are more likely to be successful if we write what makes us happy – prose or poetry that makes our own hearts sing stands a better chance of being chosen than something written to conform to rules.

So, having accepted you are not going to give up, what can you do to ensure a greater audience than family and friends?

Be self-critical

You are getting despondent because you haven’t yet had success and fear you’re not good enough, but are you sending out work too soon? How many times do you rewrite your stories before submission? No matter how good a writer you are, first, second or even third drafts are unlikely to be polished enough to win prizes or be picked for a magazine.

Put your work away for at least a week between drafts and edit from a hard copy, not on the computer. It is much easier to spot clunky sentences, repetitions and plot holes on paper than when reading on a screen.

Get critical feedback

One of the problems with friends and family is that they are unlikely to tell you the truth about things they don’t like and will only mention the good points. This is not helpful in the long term. Are you a member of a group where you receive feedback from other writers?

If there isn’t a group in your area, or the timing doesn’t work for you, join an online group. If only one person mentions a problem it’s still worth thinking about it, but probably not something to worry too much about. However, if several mention the same issue, you need to find a way to correct the flaw.

Read, read, read

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to read the works of others. I don’t mean to copy their style or content, but simply to immerse yourself in good writing. If you read well-written books, you will subconsciously absorb the things that make the writing stand out for all the right reasons.

Start a blog

Pick a subject that interests you and write a short piece on it each week. You may not have many readers at first, but if you pick up even twenty followers, that is twenty more readers than you currently have.

Try to word the ending of each post so that you invite comments. Imagine how thrilled you will be when perfect strangers engage you in conversation about something you have written.

Invest in yourself as a writer

If success remains elusive, it could be that you are not yet ready to be published.

Read books, blogs and magazines on writing. Think about taking a writing course – either online or in the real world. Attend a few writing events where you get to listen to established authors giving the benefit of their experiences. Go to festivals where agents and publishers are talking about what excites them.

Never give up

The important point is that you should never give up. Many authors achieve success after years of rejections. Imagine where some of the best-known names in literature would be today if they allowed a few rejections to put them off?

Real writers never give up and your cry for reassurance puts you firmly into the real writer category. Good luck!

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and head competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, short story and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, has now been followed by the second in the trilogy, Vlad’s Quest (LRP).

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of four crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes, Call It Pretending and Looking for a Reason (Crooked Cat Publishing).

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass February 2016

with Ayisha Malik, Managing Editor at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

Each issue, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy explores and critiques a reader's opening page. If you would like to participate in their Opening Page Mini Masterclass, send your opening page (400 approx words) as a Word Document attachment to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject ‘Cornerstones Masterclass’. Pieces for critique are chosen at random from those submitted to Words with JAM.

Rosette by Cindy Rinaman Marsch

1888 DAKOTA TERRITORY 

Rosette – Dissolution

Still quick and slim, still well turned out at fifty-eight. With shine to my hair—when I can dress it—and light in my eyes. But suddenly cut off, with the flourish of a pen, the run of a press. I sit here still, in this dark sod shanty, my granddaughter outside chattering, her mother Lillie dragging the dusty wash off the line. We’ve scraped the earth—or my son DeWitt has—and we women have tended the children and labored long days to feed us all. In the quiet the babe is asleep in the cradle beside me, in the spot where the sunshine pries through—and the wind in winter. A generation ago DeWitt was the babe in my lap—and his father Otis chopping trees to clear the farm near my folks in Michigan. Now my son breaks the bones of the earth to farm here—to coax food from the soil and beat back the vermin that race us to harvest.

That little waver of afternoon sun flickers down on the letter in my lap. It’s just a line or two from daughter Ella, folded round the notice in the newspaper. Otis has sued divorce on me. Two years’ absence and I have deserted him, the law says. So be it—I will not answer for it.

I rode the train here two years ago, rumbling out west, then north, to whatever might be here for me, for my eldest son’s family. A young family ought to have help from their folks in homesteading, as ours helped us. And so I came.

But, truth be told, moreso I left. I left what had long since shriveled and died. I left the oppressive eye of Otis’s old mother waiting to be served and watching to quaver at me. I left Otis’s deranged brother drooling and wild-eyed, gaining strength in middle-age. And I left my last babe, Percy—twelve then, fourteen now—who sees no wrong in Otis. So it is with the boys—they see their father’s muscled arms and callused, scarred hands. The gleam in his eyes they mistake as ambition for the farm. Always something new he longs for, and better—better than I, for certain.

Most sad of all, I left the girls to the daily care of that menagerie. Ella writes of her suitor, and soon will fly into his arms. Her sisters have yet a few years. Among them they can keep the house, their routines set. The rhythms of the harvests will well enough provide for them all. I am grown too old—no matter I can still turn a reel at a dance—to bear it any longer.

Critique by Ayisha Malik

This is an intriguing first page. It has a great sense of setting: dusty terrain, struggling with the labour and harvest, and the author’s imagery gives a tantalising taste of this. The Voice is strong, which helps to reel the reader in and the author has seeded in some key details of the character’s life, which brings a sense of Tension to the story. Note that this tension does not just leave the reader to ponder what happened – which to a large extent, might not be that important – but rather what will happen. Here, I think, the author could bring in a greater sense of foreboding.

I’m not sure how the story will unfold, but it seems that the author is filtering in a sense of jeopardy through the Conflict of the character’s marriage and the decision she made to leave her husband and family. Otis has been roughly sketched as a kind of brute, and we are prone to believe the narrator, but what the reader is left to wonder is how this might play out as the story progresses. The author could do more here to Show us what Otis was like in order to heighten this sense of tension and mystery. For example, the character might have a flashback of the life she left behind, giving us a glimpse of her husband and even her children.

This might also help to gain reader sympathy. As mentioned, the voice is strong, but the decision to leave an entire family behind, including children that are fairly young, could be construed as selfish. This didn’t hinder my opinion of the protagonist but might be something that prevents the reader from sympathising fully with her. A flashback might help to flesh out Characterisation and give us a better idea of how we should feel upon reading that Otis has asked for a divorce. Right now, it seems as if it is a good option, which actually diminishes the conflict. In fact, a greater feeling of emotional conflict would help here. This relates to having a strong Emotional Arc for the main character, but also should help the reader sympathise with her decision to leave. Right now it seems she is rather too at peace with her choice.

There could also be a better sense of clarity in terms of place and what she’s left behind­. For example, when she receives a letter from Ella could it be clearer that she is living with DeWitt, on her son’s farm, and Ella is with her father and the rest of her family? The information is already there, but it could be clarified. This can sometimes happen when we’re introduced to too many characters without them being in the actual scene, so the author could think about how each one is filtered in. I also wondered about plausibility: with her being fifty-eight and the youngest being fourteen she felt quite old, considering the time they’re living in. This might be answered in the rest of the story but is something to consider when thinking about issues of believability.

Generally, the Style felt strong and leans towards the literary genre but there were times when certain sentences jarred for me, which contributes to the lack of clarity sometimes. For example, the all-important opening, ‘Still quick and slim, still well turned out and fifty-eight’ read a little awkwardly and it might be worth paying attention to that. Also, ‘…the babe is asleep in the cradle beside me, in the spot where the sunshine pries through—and the wind in winter’ ­– the latter part of that sentence feels forced and awkward. The style should underpin the story, allowing the reader’s eye to sweep over it and be caught up in its world, not struggle with it. Some tweaks should help to give the writing more fluidity so the reader isn’t forced to pause over, or re-read, anything.

Overall, the opening has real promise. If the author could think about some of the issues I’ve highlighted, focusing on Style, Characterisation and the Emotional Conflict, giving a heightened sense of foreboding, developing these aspects and Showing a little more to the reader, this should make the narrative more involving. A better sense of clarity in terms of who is who – the people the character has left behind and where she is now should also be beneficial.

I wish the author the best of luck with this confident piece of writing. 

Your Point Is? By Anne Stormont

Make sure your readers get the whole picture, give them a leg up and point them in the right direction...

I see things differently from my husband. I don't mean we have major disagreements or irreconcilable differences. But as I'm only five feet tall , and he's six foot two, we do differ in how we perceive the physical world. In our youth, when attending rock concerts or rugby internationals (before stadiums were all-seated) I would perch on his shoulders in order to see the show or the match.

More recently we were on a road trip and we stopped at a designated lookout to take in some stunning mountain scenery. My husband took some photos. Later when looking at the photos, I was surprised to see not only the mountain range, but a lake situated at the foot of it. I hadn't seen any lake when we'd stopped at the viewpoint. The trees at the foot of the slope, in the foreground above the lake, had obscured my view. Whereas my husband could see it no bother. Two people at the same viewpoint came away with two quite different points of view.

This interaction between viewpoint and point of view in the real 'out there' world can also apply to the internal world of the mind when a reader processes the written word. And it's something writers should bear in mind as they write. Writers are communicators after all and we want to convey the whole picture, not just give a partial view.

Any author who's ever had their work reviewed by several reviewers will have found that the point of view arrived at by readers can vary widely regardless of how unambiguous the author thinks they were in their presentation.

A writer presents their story, article, feature or review from a viewpoint, from a particular stance, at a particular angle, and that will have a big influence on the opinion or point of view formed by the reader. We  need to take our readers to the viewpoint, take them to the source of our story, poem or article, hoist them up onto our shoulders if necessary, and ensure they can see the lake beyond the trees.

There is, of course, another even more subtle tweak that authors of fiction can give to viewpoint and that is in deciding who will tell the story.  It can be a first person, third person or even a second person narrator. And let's not forget the omniscient narrator, who is not present in the story at all, but has access to all the action and thoughts of all the characters. That choice of narrator is one of the most crucial that an author has to make. And having made the decision we must then be consistent and remain true to that narrator's view. Each type of narrator carries its own implications as to viewpoint and  point of view for both the characters and the readers.

So, there's a lot going on with point of view. It's both subtle and complex. It has both cause and effect within it. Understanding it is crucial if your writing is going to be effective. And that's true for all genres.

For readers, when forming an opinion about what they've read, a lot will of course depend on their own experiences and prejudices, but what's crucial for authors to do is give a clear and unobstructed view of what it is they're presenting in written form. 

Words are an author's currency, but get viewpoint and point of view wrong and that currency becomes worthless.

Postscript:

While writing this article, the most recent awful events in Paris and Beirut have taken place.

And my awareness of the implications of viewpoint has therefore been heightened. I believe there's a responsibility upon writers to choose our words carefully and deliver them in as honest and clear a way as possible.

The deeply felt reactions to these ghastly happenings have been expressed both verbally and in writing, on TV, radio and in the newspapers. But nowhere more so than on social media. Social media has made writers of us all of course, but I think there's an onus on those of us who call ourselves professional writers to be careful, considered and calm in all our posts, articles, poems and stories.

Yes, we should write with passion and feeling, yes we should express our opinions and give our own point of view. However, we must be mindful of and transparent about where we are coming from. We shouldn't deliberately obscure or distort what can be deduced from our viewpoint.

We should be both true to ourselves, but also honest towards our readers.

Words are powerful .Writers can be a force for good or bad. We can affect another's point of view. We can provoke thought and action. The pen can truly be mightier than the sword.

So, whether we write newspaper articles, biographies, poems, short stories, crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, literary fiction, children's books, cookbooks... Whatever! We can offer enlightenment, entertainment, solace, or challenge. Please let our points of view be a force for good, for the furtherance of liberty, equality and brother-and-sisterhood.

In the words of Martin Luther King 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.'

So let all of us who are writers in whatever format or genre treat our words as candles; candles that illuminate our viewpoints and the points of view of our readers.

---

Anne Stormont is an author-publisher. She can be a subversive old bat but maintains a kind heart. As well as writing for this fine organ, she writes fiction for adults – mainly of the female-of-a-certain-age persuasion – and for children, when she goes by the name of her alter-ego, Anne McAlpine. She blogs at http://putitinwriting.me  – where you can find out lots more about her.

Websites at: annestormont.co.uk  and annemcalpine.co.uk

Question Corner

Lorraine Mace answers questions on writing plot outlines – and just getting down to writing!

Nigel from Edinburgh is getting grief from his online writing group because he writes from the seat of his pants. I am the only one of my group who admits to not having a plan for my novel. I started it with an idea and a character and sort of know how I want it to end, but haven’t a clue what’s going to happen from one chapter to the next. Everyone says that’s the wrong way to write a novel, but really, how necessary is it to have an outline for each chapter? Also, if it is something I really need to do, could you give an idea of what should go into an outline?

Writers come in two basic categories (although there are probably hundreds of subcategories) – plotters and pantsters – and both believe their way is the right way. In point of fact, in writing there is no one size fits all. What works for one will be the literary kiss of death for another.

For my crime novels, I tend to have the characters in place, know what the crime is and who commits it and can visualise the ending. As I work through the first draft, I write outlines, but only for what is coming up in the next chapter. If my characters take over and do things I hadn’t planned, I update my chapter outline to reflect that. So I suppose that puts me in the subcategory of panster with control freak tendencies.

If you want to work with an outline from start to finish, there are a few things you need to decide upfront:

• Decide if you want to write the story in first or third person
• Which characters (in addition to the main ones) are going to appear in each chapter?
• Create a list of characters to fill these places
• Know exactly how you want the story to end, so that you have a goal to work towards

This is the minimum you need before you start. The more you know about the story you want to write, the easier it is to compose chapter by chapter outlines. In each chapter you should have a beginning (the hook), a middle (story development) and an end (a cliff hanger to make readers turn the page).

Chapter outlines will help you to remember scenes, without having to read through everything you’ve written so far to find out where and when you last mentioned someone or something.

As you write, you’ll probably move things around, so will need to update your notes, but I find my outlines invaluable as the novel progresses. (I know, I’m writing the outlines at the same time as I’m writing the novel, but I did say there was no one size fits all.)

Here are some pros and cons of outlining the complete novel before writing it.

The Pros

• You will always know what to write. With a plan in place, every time you open the file you will know where your characters are going and what they need to do.
• You can easily spot flaws and plot holes and fix them before they rear their ugly heads.
• If you come up with a brilliant idea, you can slot it into the relevant chapters fairly easily because you will know where and when to insert additional scenes. This is much harder to do if you’ve been writing without planning, or noting what happens in each chapter.
• You’ll get the first draft written much faster than if you didn’t have an outline to follow.

The Cons

• It can (for some writers) take away the creative fun. If you are one of those, why not give my way a try? You can be creative, but also organise notes as you go along.
• You might spend hours, days, weeks, or even months, meticulously planning a novel and then realise it isn’t what you want to write after all.
• It cramps your writing style – you simply want your brain to free flow the novel into being.

Bottom line? Use whatever works for you and ignore any well-meaning advice (including mine) if it doesn’t chime with how you want to write.

Felicia from Sutton is finding it hard to knuckle down. She writes: I know it’s a cliché to say I have a book in me, but it’s true. I have all the ideas, know exactly what I want to write, have even written out a plan of the novel, but just can’t seem to get down to writing it. Setting aside time to write is almost like asking my brain to go on strike. I am so overwhelmed by the thought of having to write 90,000 words that I can’t even start.

The answer to this is simple. You don’t need to write 90,000 words all in one go. Why not break the task down into smaller chunks? I’m quite sure you could write 500 words without feeling overwhelmed. If you did that every day for six months, you would go over your target by 1,250 words. If you wanted to keep weekends as writing-free zones, it would still only take 36 weeks to reach your target by writing 500 words a day Monday to Friday.

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and head competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer’s ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, short story and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, has now been followed by the second in the trilogy, Vlad’s Quest (LRP).

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of four crime/thriller novels featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes, Call It Pretending and Looking for a Reason (Crooked Cat Publishing).

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

www.francesdiplino.com

The Importance of Goal Setting

By S.BEE

We all need to value the importance of goal setting. This simple technique can help, encourage, motivate and support us to produce high quality regular results. Here, I outline ten steps to get you started on the goal setting path.

1 Why we need to set goals

Goals keep us motivated, it offers us structure, plus it forces us to be disciplined and organised. We can actually finish projects instead of having lots of ideas hanging about cluttering up our hard drives, our minds and our notebooks!

It doesn't matter if your first idea isn't very good – we can go back to it at a later date. The important thing is that you've stuck to your goal of seeing an idea through - eg carrying out research and starting a first draft of that article, story, play or novel.

2 Decide what your goal is

It should be something you really, really want to do. Last year (2014) I decided that I wanted to attempt a chick- lit novel. I gave myself a rough time limit of a year to start it, finish it, edit it and sub it. However, I still have small daily goals too eg: to start the first of a fresh batch of magazine stories, because my other goal is to see my fiction published in more magazines.

3 Goals prevent the 'blank screen' scenario

Every day, when I sit down at the computer, I have pretty good idea what my goals are and what I can realistically achieve in my time limit. If you find yourself facing a blank screen, ask yourself questions. Eg: How do I begin my journey of launching my own blog?

The first step on that journey is to make a list of new interesting blogs. Then read them and take notes.

Grab a pen and paper, write your goal down and place this note on your desk.

It doesn't matter if there's just one small item on the list.

The next day, you can crack on with that project straight away – no more time wasted staring at blank screens - in your mind or at the PC. If you adopt this method, you'll never get stuck, because your goal is already there facing you.

4 Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals

You can set goals for every day, every month or every year. If this sounds too much like hard work, that's because it is!

Professional writers, novelists and freelancers actively choose to work in their own specific areas of employment.

If they don't work, they don't eat and they can't pay their bills either.

My one big goal for this year (2015) is to finish my chick-lit novel. My goal after that is to edit it and adjust accordingly. Then - and only when I feel ready - I'll sub it to agents and publishers.

If it's 'no' from everyone, I won't hide myself away and sob in a dark room (Well, perhaps I will, but just for a few hours!)

I have other long- term projects I can work on. Starting and finishing at least one of these projects and submitting it, is one of my goals for 2016.

5 Have more than one goal

There's nothing wrong with having several goals. In fact, I would actively encourage it. I know of people who can only work on one project at a time – others, like me, relish the variety of different projects. However, I would say complete one project before you start work on another, because your mind set may change with each piece project.

6 How to Keep Motivated

You shouldn't have any problem keeping motivated if you have set your goals clearly. If you've run out of goals, simply set some more!

Reflect on your past success and think 'I did it then, so I can do it again now,' or tell yourself 'There's no reason at all why I can't produce my own high quality story and sell it to the highest paying magazine.'

You really need to push yourself. Grab any opportunity you can, because any kind of experience soon adds up!

7 Goals must be realistic and achievable

I feel that my goal of producing a commercial chick-lit novel is both because:

a) I've had several stories published in national UK magazines

b) I enjoy reading the chick-lit genre very much

c) I've had practical working experience of my MC's occupation and

d) Hopefully, my novel will fit nicely alongside certain author's work on the shelf in the book shop.

Remember, ideally, your goals should be realistic and achievable. If they're not, think about how you'd get from get from A to B.

For instance, if you wanted to write a political thriller (I realise that your goal may be something completely different, but please bear with me) and you've spent twenty years working on a farm, I'd research the details of your idea first.

Interview as many politicians as you can. Don't simply make it up and think it's going to be okay. It won't.

Talk to your friends about your project and listen to their suggestions.

8 Struggling? Set yourself a different goal

If you're struggling to start or complete your goal, it's perfectly okay to put it on the back burner for a while. Perhaps it's not the right time for it, or perhaps it's a big project and you don't feel ready. Maybe you need capital to launch your product, and there's a lack of spare funds.

It's a waste of time and energy to force yourself into something, so write down your idea and save it on a document on your computer (because you might want to return to it one day - that's another goal for the future) and switch your focus to a different goal instead.

9 Give yourself a reward

You need to know one very important aspect of goal setting. It involves treats. Lots of them, in fact!

Reached the project basics? Fix yourself a coffee – oh and have a biscuit too. Researched a pricing range? Treat yourself to a hot chocolate and a small cake!

Now I'm not suggesting that you stuff yourself silly with sugary sweet stuff all day, but there's nothing wrong with rewarding with yourself after you've worked hard.

If snacking ain't your thing, vow to get your nails/ hair done or buy that new book by your favourite author. You could ask your partner to prepare the evening meal or request a massage to ease your aching shoulders.

Little treats like this gives us something to look forward to when we're in the midst of despair.

10 Keep going with those goals!

Regard goal setting as standard for your working life. It's kept me on the straight and narrow.

When I was an amateur unemployed writer, my goal for the next day was to visit the local library, log onto a computer, type my work up from my longhand and save it to a floppy disc. The disc was stuffed full short stories.

The fact that I wasn't a published paid writer didn't deter me one little bit.

I didn't listen to others who put me off achieving my goal - and neither should you.

The reason why I felt my goal was a realistic and achievable one was because I'd had my work assessed by an agency who'd said my material was 'spot on' for the magazine market.

I had set my goal and I did everything within my power to achieve it.

And finally, I did it.

My fiction was published in a national magazine and I actually got paid! I was so proud. I've since gone on to repeat this success.

People with no goals simply drift along with no real purpose in life. Misery can breed very quickly if we have nothing to aim for.

So go on - set those goals today!

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S.BEE is my writing name. My proper name is Sharon Boothroyd.

Since 2010, I've had a wide range of letters,opinion pieces, poems and stories published in national UK magazines. As well as running my own online writing group, I edit and co- own a small non- profit e-magazine. www.kishboo.co.uk

My own site is: www.sbee.orgfree.com