WIPpet Wednesday

Following the lead from my good friend Kate Frost, I've decided to showcase the first 13 lines of my current work in progress - as it's the 13th today - in line with the WIPpet Wednesday rules.  WIP stands for work in progress and the idea is to post a section of your current work in relation to the date.  So here they are:

‘That’s the last of them.’ Melissa looked at her friend with a relieved expression on her face.  Anna grinned back.
      ‘I’m so glad you’re staying,’ she said.  ‘It’s been pretty awful really.’
       Melissa put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed.  ‘Well it’s all in the past now.  It’s a new start for both of us.’
       Anna nodded and followed Melissa from the hallway full to the brim with suitcases and bags into the relative tidiness of her front room.  The world is your oyster, she told herself.  Or the oyster is your world as Elliot used to say.  Elliot.  She frowned. 

The story is as yet untitled, but it's going well.  I've done well over 7000 words since the middle of January, so I'm pleased!  I think things like WIPpet Wednesday are great opportunities to show each other work that we're in the middle of, to share ideas and to encourage each other.  I hope your work is coming along well too - but even if it's not, don't be afraid to share your vision of how you would like your writing to be.

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Thank you to the very lovely Kate Frost for nominating me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award!  I have to confess I hadn't actually heard of it before now, but I'm very grateful nonetheless to be nominated.

I've been given some instructions for what I should do now I've been nominated.  So here goes.  Firstly, 7 facts about myself:

1. I was born and grew up in Hampshire.  On visits to Winchester, I would often walk past the house where my literary heroine Jane Austen died.
2. My favourite novel is (you've guessed it!) Pride and Prejudice.
3. I went to university in Winchester to King Alfred's College which has since been renamed as the University of Winchester.  I much prefer the old name; it's a lot more unique.
4. I met my future husband when I was involved in a Norman reenactment society.  We reenacted Norman battles at castles around the country.  I say we - I declined to fight, preferring instead to stand on the sidelines watching dressed as a Norman lady!
5. I moved to Bristol after my husband Ian and I got married.
6. I love living near to Bath - what a wonderful city!  Shame Jane Austen hated it!  The Roman Baths have to be the best historical site I've ever visited.
7. I'm currently preparing my novel for self publication with the help of my husband.

So that's me.  I'm not sure I can follow Kate's instructions to the letter and link to 15 other blog sites, but I'll certainly link to a few.  Here's some I really enjoy:

Sinead McKenna
Martin Lake
Kerry Letheby

I wish you all the best with your writing and hope that you all have people who inspire you to keep on ploughing away at it.

From first plan to first draft

A couple of weeks ago I started writing my new novel.  I'm really pleased with how it's going.  I'm making good progress with it.  This time around I seem to be sticking a lot more closely to my plan - which is unusual for me!  Often I find that my imagination roams free and far from what I'd initially envisaged.  This time however - so far at least - I'm managing to more or less follow the line of what I originally planned.

Of course even this time around I've deviated from the plan a little.  But I think that's an author's prerogative.  As the story develops in our minds, it's bound to chop and change somewhat and so it should.  At the end of the day it can make for a more interesting story.  I have to say that with this particular story I'm writing, I'm quite surprised that I'm writing it so quickly, because compared with my last story there was more planning to do.

My previous story was loosely based on one of Jesus's parables, so I kind of knew the general arc of the plot.  This one, however, is all my own work and I've done at least as much planning as I did last time if not more.  So it's quite heartening to me that I've managed to plan this new story so completely and to have an end in mind.  I'm not always that good at ending a story though, so I will have to see how it goes.

What are your experiences with transferring ideas from plan to page?

New year, new story

Well it's a new year and what better time than to start planning for my next story.  Having finished my previous story, a novel which I'm hoping to self publish at some point this year, I was keen to start straight away on a new one.  So at the beginning of December I began planning.  I don't know about you, but I find it good to always have a story in the works, whether it's at the planning stage or being in the middle of writing it.

I kind of feel like I'm raring to go, to get down to the nitty gritty of writing.  Having spent weeks editing my final draft of my previous story, it feels great to be able to let my imagination roam free.  I'm really enjoying scribbling away in my notebook at the moment, fleshing out my characters and bringing them to life.  I'm also thinking quite hard about the plot - right now it's not that cohesive, so I want to make sure that as I continue in the planning and writing of it, it doesn't become too disjointed.

I think I actually find the planning stage one of my favourite aspects of writing - if not the favourite.  You're at the stage with your story where anything is possible.  You can make decisions about your characters and plot and then change them at will, which can be harder to do further down the line when they're already established in the story and in your mind.  And isn't it amazing how characters sometimes seem to take on a life of their own?  You want to change them, but somehow you can't - they are what they are.  Like real people, I guess!

However much I enjoy the process of planning, at some stage in the not-too-distant future I will begin translating what I've been planning into a (hopefully!) coherent story, one that will unfold more or less as I intended.  As a story this one is quite different from the one I've just written.  As far as my writing goes, I want to write about what I want to write about!  I find it hard to put my writing in a box and label it as a specific genre.  But writing for me is exciting partly for that very reason - that it's not neccessarily easily defined as one type.  And you could say that planning is the bedrock for the whole process of writing.

Whatever stage you're at in the writing process, I hope you all have a happy year of writing in 2013!

Insecurities

I don't know about you but I tend to oscillate between feeling good about my novel and what I've written, and being very insecure!

Generally when my story is on the screen in front of me and I'm working on it, I'm fairly confident that what I'm writing is pretty good and readable.  I feel fine about it.

But often, especially lying in bed at night, I become plagued with insecurities about my novel.  I worry that it's too far fetched to be believable, that it's too short , possibly too simplistic in style for an adult novel and that I haven't got the sex scene right!

I guess most authors probably have similar feelings sometimes.  Perhaps it's how we respond to these feelings that can make or break us.  For myself, I'm just continuing to edit my novel, trying to make it the best that I can.  I think for me part of the problem is that no one's really seen what I've written so far.  Some people have read the opening chapters (via the youwriteon.com novel-sharing website) and my husband looked at part of it for me, but that's about it. 

So I'm a bit unsure of how it rates as a story, how well written it is and whether people will actually be bothered to read it.

I guess to use an age old saying, the proof of the pudding is in the eating:  once I self publish and promote it I'll see what the response is!

Do any of you struggle with insecurities about your work?  I'd be interested to hear.

Renting or buying?

It occurred to me the other day that in some ways it's possible to compare self publishing versus traditional publishing with buying or renting a house.  Let me explain what I mean.
 
When you rent a house you pay a monthly price for it.  The house is not yours.  Often as a tenant you're allowed to decorate and alter the house to some extent to get it to be how you want.  But often you're not able to; part of the contract says that you can only do certain things with the house and much of it must be left alone. 
 
I think that being published in the traditional way is similar.  You provide the work i.e. your novel and the publisher keeps it up for you.  That is to say the publisher negotiates with you a fee for your work and will then provide a cover for your book, edit, promote and distribute it etc.  Of course as hte author you expect to be kept in the loop at all times regarding your work.  But in the same way that a house you rent is not yours, similarly although the story you've written is your own (as is the money you give to your landlord) a lot of things to do with actually getting the book out there have to be negotiated and may not always prove satisfactory to you.
 
Self publishing can I think be compared to buying a house.  The work you've produced remains entirely yours.  You have to spend the money, time and effort to get it to the point at which you feel it can be shared with the world via Amazon or whoever.  But you are a free agent; you don't have to answer to anyone except perhaps your audience/critics who may not like what you've produced.  Admittedly self publishing is nothing compared to taking on a mortgage!  However, as with maintaining a house, the onus is on the author to make sure their work reads well, that the spelling and grammar are correct and that the cover of the novel is appealing.  One of the most important aspects of self publishing is that the author must rigorously promote their work, a little like forking out for that mortgage payment each month.

I am planning to self publish my novel and I'm currently editing it.   I'm very aware that I need to make sure it reads as well as possible, with no grammar, punctuation or spelling mistakes.  Some people have suggested I hire a proofreader.  Personally I feel at the moment that's too expensive an option for me and I may not see a return on that sort of investment, but I do feel it is very important when you're self publishing to ensure that your work is of the highest standard possible.

Of course there are many benefits to being published by a bona fide publisher.  There can be nothing like seeing your novel in print and holding the final published book in your hand.  But there are certainly many advantages to self publishing and perhaps in the future it will enable authors to have a better deal when it comes to negotiating with a publishing house. 

As always it would be great to hear your views.

The final stretch?

Well I'm still hard at it, beavering away on my novel.  I'm still editing.  It's going well, but starting to get a little tedious now!  Some weeks ago now I printed out what I'd written to read through and make corrections.  I don't know about you, but I find it harder to take in what I'm reading when it's on the screen compared with a paper copy in your hand.  Also it was quite nice to see it in a physical form.

So I read through that, making corrections and a few changes, and now I'm about half way through reading on the computer again.  I'm not sure how most writers go about their editing.  It would be interesting to me to know if there are certain things that writers do/don't do or try to avoid when editing.  I'm just trying to go through it as much as I can - though saying that I'll probably stop when I've done this read through and then print out another copy/copies to give to (kind) friends who wouldn't mind reading it for me!!

After I've done that and taken on board what people have said about my story, then I guess the time will come for me to seriously start looking to self publish on Kindle and possibly Smashwords as well.  I do need to do some research before then, but I have a secret weapon (ie my husband!!) who is very knowledgeable when it comes to computers and has even said he can design my cover for me! 

This is quite an exciting time for me as I've never been published before.  I realise that technically I'm self publishing, but as many people on Twitter tell me, it may well be the way things are going in the future.  It seems obvious to me that more and more people are going to self publish.  It's so much easier to get your work noticed and as I think I've mentioned before on this blog, if you self publish and lots of people look at your work, it has the potential to lead to publishers getting interested and taking a look as well.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.  As always, please send me your comments.  I'd love to know what you think about the writing process.