The Inside Story

Trying to explain to agents what my novel The Sauly Bird is about has made me intensely aware that it has two parts - the outer story (e.g. accusations, murder, escape etc) and the inner story (love and longing, abandonment, resentment, revenge). It's how these two interact that is fascinating.

I was once taught that the definition of a tragedy was that it was inevitable. That the seeds of a character's end were there at the beginning. Well, if that is true, then it must apply to all characters, whether their outcomes are tragic or not.

This story is not a tragedy, but still I wonder if the ending of The Sauly Bird is predestined by the experience and motivations of the characters?

I think that the answer is 'mostly'.  Although the inside story is not the whole story because of chance events, I think that it is the greater part.

As a writer, you realise that you're not god. Not all powerful, not even in a novel. Your characters are stubborn and they do what they want. The best you can do, I think, is to try and understand them.

I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible to disentangle the outside from the inside, but that it's essential to be aware of both. I can say a little about this in the cover letter but the synopsis is a different matter. As far as I understand, agents want a summary of the plot so the synopsis says very little about the inside story.

It's a nice description 'the inside story' implying that once you are aware of this, then the outside story will be immediately clear and comprehensible.

Lucky

I'm sitting in a room that I like - it's a refuge.

I'm healthy.

People love me - and oh, you dear friends, I do love you, too.

I've got a very comfortable chair to sit in that we bought second hand and a lovely house with a gorgeous husband.who puts up with me through rain and shine - and I've got a guitar and a fiddle.

I can sing.

Spider plants and an orchid joy my life (and outside there are geraniums and a hydrangea that might have survived recent drought and neglect).

The council have started filling in the strange hole that's appeared next to our fence (and I thought they'd never come - it's had warning signs for ages - we thought somebody drunk might fall into it, but no-one has.)

The rose that Chandra gave me months ago has dried into a perfect shape and colour.

Elaine and Diego sent apples and runner beans. Apples..... what more could an apple addict wish for.

Good night, dear people who are kind enough to read my ramblings.

Worse than hard

I've spent all day preparing submissions to different specs. After two hours of getting one submission ready, I sent it off and got an automatic reply saying that submissions were closed - although on the website, it still says they are open until the end of Sept.

Another agency required you to cut and paste into their online form. I did that and all the formatting was lost. My ms was virtually unreadable so I went laboriously through 5 chapters trying to reinstate paragraph breaks but then they were lost again.

I'm giving up for tonight. Can't even see properly by this time. Hope anyone reading this is in a better state than I am.

The hard part

The hard part is submitting your story to agents and publishers! To any of you friends out there who are at the same stage in their writing journey, you will know this, too. Writing the novel is the easy part.

I'm sorry that I confused people with my last post of Pat reading The Sauly Bird. She's a beta-reader. It's not published...... yet (I add hopefully).

I am working through the writing plan that I made for myself. First was to do draft 5 of the ms. I did that and read the whole thing out loud - but there are still things that could be improved. Maybe there always will be... Reading it out loud is helpful because you can hear when it sounds wrong. The rhythm is so important. I still think that every piece of prose should be a poem.

I've had excellent feedback from my favourite beta-readers (I mean the very best ones who are brutally honest and who always give me useful feedback - I only sent it to these people this time). Age range is from 19 - 71 yrs, three females and one male.

I've written a cover letter and a synopsis.

So now I get to the next task on the list which says - submit to agents and publishers. Deep sigh. I've put this off for several days but today I've managed to submit to one agent and one publisher. It's taken hours. I had already written both the cover letter and the synopsis but I started to change them again. Then I worried about whether a pdf or a docx would be better. I worried about everything.

In between things, I have to do some rehearsing for the gig we've got on Wednesday. I've decided to ditch the fiddle tunes I was going to play because I don't play them well enough. I'm particularly sorry about After the Wedding  - a Polish tune which slides up to some thrilling top notes.  I've just looked for it on YouTube so I could include it here, but I can't find it. You'll have to imagine!

Later on, I'll have a go at submitting to a few more agents and publishers. What are you doing? Hope you're dancing and singing with never a care in the world about whether to send a docx or a pdf - or whether the synopsis properly reflects the story - or most of all, whether the cover letter explains why you feel so excited about what you've written. Dance on.

Oh joy - my friend reading The Sauly Bird

It doesn't get better than this! My nineteen-year-old friend read The Sauly Bird on her phone in a matter of hours. Started yesterday afternoon and finished this morning. Look at her smile!

Her name is Pat. She's a music student and one of my beta-readers - always gives me honest feedback and she said she really liked it.

She came with her father from Austria on a visit.  I'm so grateful to her and it was so good to see both of them - just too short. But hey ho - so good.

Perfect Days

Yesterday I went to my writing circle meeting and we sat in the sunshine at Goat Ledge in St Leonards right on the beach with the sun shining, the sea sparkling and a blue September sky. The coffee was hot and strong and I did no writing at all for the whole two hours because the conversation and just being there was so good - the people are lovely, every one of them (as well as talented and all....).

After that, I went to lunch with a friend and we talked for the whole afternoon in a cafe by the sea.

And today I almost did the same thing all over again. Two days off. Sitting by the sea in the sunshine drinking coffee, talking.

I hadn't been looking forward to today because I had to go to the dentist (also in St Leonards) but Paul came with me because he had things to do at that end of town - and we had lunch together afterwards. (It's Paul in the photo, taking pics as we walked to St L.)

This evening I've finished my final draft of The Sauly Bird so I'm ready to send it off to agents and publishers. That's good - can hardly believe that I've finished it so quickly.

My fiddle playing isn't good but that's my fault and not a disaster. I'm wondering whether to leave out the fiddle tunes when we do our gig next Wednesday. I've got a new bow coming tomorrow but nothing will cure the bad playing except for more practice than I've got time for. Never mind - I can play the fiddle at home and use the guitar for the gig.

And tomorrow night two friends are arriving from Austria - so yes, as John Revell would say, my cup is full.

I hope that every one of you who ever reads this will have perfect days sitting talking to friends with the sun shining on you.

Going round in circles

Do you ever do that? Go round in circles? I suppose you never quite get back to the same place.

This is all about The Dani & Esme stories.

I started rewriting Book 1. Abandoned it. Got it out again. Retitled it. It's now called - Esme's Bundle of Joy. It will be a short novel about 30,000 words. I was going to call it a novella but apparently, novellas are unfashionable nowadays and are seen as substandard novels. Oh well.

• Book 2 will also be retitled - Be quiet now - currently just over 70,000 words. This one only needs checking ..... (ha ha)
• Book 3 will have the same title as previously - Daniela Hoffman is not stupid  (about 86,000 words) - but I'm going to rewrite Dani from 1st person into 3rd person (phew!).
• Book 4 will keep the same title - The Third Father (about 90,000 words). I'm going to rewrite Dani from 1st person to 3rd person if it works for Book 3.
• Book 5 - still in the planning stage. Tropical Heat (and for the time being it can stay there ).

How long will all this take? I'm now anxious to get back to Don't you remember me? and the sequel to The Sauly Bird. I wish I were faster, faster, faster....

I've written this so that I can see where I'm going. Do you make lists? Do you think it helps? I read yesterday that with the introduction of written language, people's power of memory has massively diminished. I don't quite believe it. It sounds logical but I still don't believe it. I'll have to investigate.

I've spent all day doing 3 posts for HOT (Hastings Online Times) - one published, the other two still not quite ready. It's nearly 7 pm.

And I need to send off The Sauly Bird to look for a publisher. But before that, I need to proofread it one last time. At least I've written the synopsis and the cover letter. I'm rambling on. Sorry, this is a very rambly post. Look at all these novels - if I ever get anything published, it will be a miracle. But I'm trying. Should get some marks for persistence.....

As I write this, I have to say that I've got a very comfortable chair to write in - but if I sit here much longer I shall be moulded into place. I shall be chair-shaped.

Had better get up and play the fiddle. Hope you are all good, all you friends out there.

Unfinished business

I understand why I can't get on with Don't you remember me? It's because the Dani and Esme stories are languishing in a drawer (actually they're languishing on a memory stick next to my bed).

I had almost got to the point of self-publishing. My friend sent an email with a quote in it that said a poem was never finished, only abandoned and I went to look at the story files in preparation for looking for cover pics and asking my friend to help me go through the self-publishing process.

But oh no - when I got there, I was drawn in once more and I decided to have one last go at rewriting these stories. My aim is to balance the voices. I would like Esme's voice and Dani's voice to be equally appealing but maybe it's not possible. Anyhow - one last try.

[Here's where I was worrying about these stories before - Never Alone.]

If I do go ahead with this final rewrite, it will take a while. The rewriting of three novels can't be done in the blink of an eye.

Apart from thinking about all this, I'm practising my fiddle ready for the gig that's coming up in a couple of weeks time. We're going to a session tonight to try some of them out. With the Eastern European ones we do it once round slowly and then once round fast. I hope we don't go so fast in the first place that I fall off.

What are you doing?

Plotting

Plotting and planning - is it worth it?

You make your plans then life happens.

You devise your plot then the story happens.

But art is not life. Art has a nice clean shape. Life doesn't.

I'm supposed to be in charge of the art part, the story. I'm writing it so I ought to be able to control both the events and the characters. But I can't. It feels as though there is an inevitable road that I can neither see in advance nor avoid.

Both life and art have unexpected twists and it's in the unexpected testing of people that you learn about them (and that we learn about ourselves). It's where heroes and villains (and everything in between) are revealed so I have to watch and learn. Don't understand how it happens but I'll keep on writing and I'll keep on thinking about it. Is it the same for you? People write in different ways.

For my first novels, I did some planning and then watched as the characters went their own way and the stories unrolled, sidelining the plans.

For the current novel - Don't you remember me? - I thought I'd try to devise a plot in advance. I thought it was about time now that I'm learning about how to structure a novel rather than writing it first and then hoping that it's got a good structure by the time that I've finished it.

But I'm failing! From this point in the story of Don't you remember me? I can't see the end so I'm giving up.

I'm going to set the characters free and follow behind. So far, Hannah, the main protagonist, is as baffled as I am by what's going on but I'm sure it will all become clear. Gradually. I'll keep you posted.

Hope your stories are unfurling as they should (however it is that you plot and plan) and bringing you comfort along the way.

The rain falls - writing a synopsis

I wake up to see the rain falling. It's been another title night but I'm still with The Sauly Bird. So many things happen in this Papua New Guinea story but Aulani can't help thinking about where the dead go and the bird focuses these thoughts.

I spent three hours last night writing the synopsis for The Sauly Bird. It's not easy to condense a whole novel into a page and make it read well. I think I've condensed it OK. I've used the format we got in the workshop last Friday.

para 1 - Main character & status quo
para 2 - Protagonist's goal & initiating incident
3,4,5 - main crises
para 6 - All might be lost
para 7 - Overcome obstacles
para 8 - Resolution & new reality (what character has learned)

I was surprised to find that the format worked. I haven't got 8 paras because one or two were combined but I've got all the points. What is missing is a nice 'feel' to this writing. It's a fairly dense, brusque summary. Must need some more work....

The next thing will be the query letter.... a different thing altogether.

Last night I reread a previous query letter I'd sent and cringed with embarrassment.

Have to start my day, see people, do things but tonight I'll be back in one of these other worlds.

What are you doing wherever you are? Will you write to me one day? Tell me about the stories that you are writing. Or reading..... take care.

Never Alone - The Dani and Esme Stories

This is an impossible picture. A child is never alone on the journey into life. Somewhere - not far away there is a mother, just possibly a father, but definitely a mother hovering in the background. And if the mother is not there physically, then her spirit is - to be alone without the child, she's had to tear off a bit of herself or bury it somewhere.

This is the point of The Dani Stories. Originally they were the Esme stories but in reality they are the Esme and Dani stories. Together Forever in the most awful sense.

I'm going to consider each of the novels in turn.

1 - Talking, can you hear me?

This story originally started at Dani's conception - from that point on, Esme is no longer alone. She has no choice - the child is there forever. And in my final version, the child is talking right from the beginning.

After extracting a small part of it and rewriting it into  a short story, I read it to  my writing circle and got the comments that it would be misconstrued and used for political ends i.e. against mothers in the anti-abortion campaign. It was a dialogue between the unborn child and the mother who was contemplating abortion. (see Writing is Dangerous and Be Fearless). I sympathise with mothers wanting abortions but it was not possible to write the dialogue and make the unborn child express any emotion other than wanting to live.

That first dilemma remains the dilemma throughout. Whose rights take precedence? The mother's or the child's?

This dilemma makes choosing the main point of view problematic. I wrote this story first of all from Esme's point of view (the mother) and then changed it and rewrote it from Dani's point of view (the child). The result was that my readers sympathised either with the Esme, the mother or with Dani, the child, but I found it impossible to make readers sympathise with both at the same time. I experimented with both tense and voice and I couldn't weave the stories together to make readers like both Dani and Esme at the same time.

The only way to make readers like both the mother and the child would be for there to be no conflict between them and in my experience, that is impossible (and it means there is no story to tell).

(In the first draft of these stories, I got as far as the 4th book before Dani shouted that she had been sidelined so I went back to the beginning and rewrote the lot to include Dani's voice.)

2. Daniela Hoffman is not stupid & 3. The Third Father

These books now appear to be Dani's stories because they are told from her point of view, but in the first place, these two were just one book called Man from another country and it was Esme's story.

When I discussed Daniela Hoffman is not stupid with the literary agent, she could not understand why I thought this book might be for adults. She thought it was clearly for young adults - but she had only read the first chapter which was Dani speaking in the first person. The book switches between Dani first person and Esme third person to tell the story.

My beta-readers tell me that these two books work like that.

relating to all the Esme and Dani stories
What I wanted to do was to have two main characters with equal voices but this seems to be impossible. I've got to choose one or the other. When I choose one or the other, the problem of target readership disappears - it's clearly either YA or adult, but somehow I want it to be for an adult audience whether it's Dani talking or not.

Solution - Since I want both points of view to be heard - or put more simply - since I want both Esme and Dani to be loved (and forgiven for all their sins), then I will have to give them a story each.

It looks like this project still has some way to run.

Part 2 - considering the context

I accept (and value) the information that stories set in the '60s to '80s are unfashionable to the extent that they won't sell, but if I rewrite these stories in a contemporary setting they will become different stories. How different and whether or not it's worth trying is something I need to think about for much longer.