WRITING FEATURES V. WRITING STORIES

Walking v. galloping and weaving v. unravelling

I was looking at the timeline of the publication of my books. I wrote the first five Sprite Sisters books in 30 months. The stories were each around 55,000 words – so 275,000 words in total. That was fast going. The most words I wrote in any one week were 6,000, followed by 4,000 and another 4,000 – 14,000 words in three days. I couldn’t think at all for a few days after that.

As a journalist, I was used to working to deadlines, but I’d never written more than 2500 words for a feature when I began writing The Circle of Power in May 2007. I had three months to work out and write that first story for Piccadilly Press. The other four Sprite titles I published with them followed at a similar gallop.

Then things slowed down. It took me a year to write the sixth Sprite title, The Boy With Hawk-like Eyes. It was partly because I was tired and partly because I didn’t have a publisher behind me, giving me an unmoveable deadline. It took me around nine months to write the seventh title, Magic at Drysdale’s School.

My point is that that sometimes your writing will gallop along and sometimes you need to take things gently.

Then there’s the difference between writing features (wearing my journalist hat) and writing stories (wearing my author’s hat). I find the two processes are entirely different.

With a feature, you do the interview, you do the research and you have a sense of the shape of the article before you begin. You know the length required. You know the angle and the tone the magazine is after because that’s what they’ve commissioned. As you write, you have things to draw on – quotes to insert, facts to note. Because your research is around you, the piece exists before you actually write it. You, the journalist, shape it and give it form. As you write, you draw in the elements together. Writing a feature is almost like weaving, as you pull together different strands and build new layers.

For me, writing a story is a completely different process because it exists only in my head. Having got my outline idea, I work out the general shape of the story and break it down into three parts – beginning, middle and end – then chapters. In that, the process is something the same, but where writing a feature is like weaving, creative writing is allowing something to unravel.

A story is something you have to follow. Despite knowing the concept and having an overall shape, I don’t know what will happen until the image or words drops into my mind – till I hear the characters speak them. That doesn’t happen until I get to precisely that part of the story – it’s one step at a time. Hence allowing the story to unfold.

If the part you are writing doesn’t come to you, there is nothing to write – so you can’t gallop. That’s where experience helps, as you know then to slow down and walk your idea.

And it will come – just in its own time.

Magic at Drysdale’s School, the 7^th Sprite Sisters story,

is available now as an e-book and will be published

as a print-on-demand paperback on 21^st June 2013

WWW.SHERIDANWINN.COM

SELF-PUBLISHING = SPEED

If time is of the essence in reaching your readers then take the alternative publishing route, but don’t cut corners.

There’s something exciting about being able to create a product – for your book is that – and get it to market at a good lick. It used to be a year, sometimes two, for a book to make its way through the publishing channels and out to the shops.

Nowadays, once the text is edited and formatted and the jacket illustration approved, e-publishing takes a matter of hours and print-on-demand a matter of days. It’s so darn simple. No doubt in a year or so it will be done in the blink of an eye.

The flipside, of course, is that you’re not featured in a publisher’s catalogue, so your book is unlikely be purchased by the library service. Your print-on-demand book is just that – so you are unlikely to find it on booksellers’ shelves. If customers find you, they will have to order your book. And any publicity will be all your own doing.

But – if agents keep a weather-eye on up-and-coming e-book authors, what’s the point of wasting months sending them your precious manuscript, unless you are known to them or have some kind of connection. Sending an agency your manuscript blind is the literary equivalent of cold calling – and the hit rate is miniscule. The chances are your book will join the slush pile and you’ll wait months before you receive a rejection slip.

In those months, and the months that follow as you send it out to another agency, you might as well have published it yourself. Then you can send the paperback to the agent instead.

But be warned. An independent bookseller friend told me he would never take a book that didn’t have a good jacket – even if the writing was okay. We live in a visual society, so get the best illustrator and designer you can afford (and that’s after the best editor – and a formatting expert is not an editor, whatever they will tell you).

You can publish your book for peanuts or you can see it as an investment. The global market is a big place and your book could be out there a long time. It might, even, get picked up by a top publisher. My advice is to get it out there, but don’t cut corners.

BRITISH WEATHER AND CREATIVE FLOW

Greetings blog readers from a warm and sunny Norfolk!

How long will this wonderful weather last we all wonder? This year we have waited so many months for the sun. Who knows? It could all change tomorrow. Britain is an island nation and our weather is forever changing. Subject to numerous variables, none of which is in our control, we tend to wait, anxiously, for things to improve.

Sometimes I think the British weather is like creativity. You can’t guarantee it will be there when you need it and most often it is not. I find my creativity comes in waves, and diminishes when I am tired or stressed. Some days I can write for hours. Some weeks I cannot write at all. It is not laziness, nor lack of application. I find if there is nothing to say, then there is nothing to write. As soon as I know what to say – the next piece of the plot is in my mind – I write.

One of the things I have to do when writing is to stop reading. Fiction is a no-no. Newspapers, crosswords and the odd television programme I can cope with, but other people's stories scramble my ideas. If I want to write, I need a clear head and a quiet mind.

A week ago, having finished the 7^th and final Sprite Sisters story, and in a burst of creative energy, I sat down to write the first title of a new trilogy that has been in my mind since 2006. I have made copious notes and written numerous chapters for The Earth Stories, but the ‘right time’ had not come. I had been too busy with the Sprite Sisters to engage in another big project.

Having got out the box file and looked through it, I typed, ‘The Earth Stories – Book 1 deadline Autumn 2013’, printed it out and stuck the piece of paper on the wall in front of me. I like to have a deadline.

But something surprising happened. As I sat there, staring at my new deadline, the words ‘Boudicca’s Daughters’ kept ringing in my mind. Boudicca’s Daughters, Boudicca’s Daughters . . . The words would not go away. This had been the intended title of the second volume of The Earth Stories, but I had often wondered if it would make a better stand alone novel for young adults.

So, as with the British weather and guided by some invisible force, I went with the flow. I got out a second box of notes and writing that I had done on Boudicca’s Daughters in 2010, and was surprised to see how much I had completed. Okay, I thought, I’ll write this book first.

I peeled the deadline for The Earth Stories off the wall, typed and printed out another. Now the words, ‘Boudicca’s Daughters’ stare at me from the wall, with the deadline of October 2013.

Much like our island weather, I set out to do one thing but found the pattern changed quite suddenly. I am back in ‘lock-down mode’, shutting out as much of the world around me as I can, while Boudicca’s Daughters makes its way on to the pages of my new book.

Outside the sun is shining, but I am sitting at my computer going with the creative flow.