Luan Goldie My Writing Process

Luan Goldie

•             What have you written, past and present?

I’m an author and short story writer. My debut novel Nightingale Point follows a group of characters living in an east London tower block on the day of a plane crash. My second novel Homecoming is a love story about university friends and is partly set in Kenya. My novels have been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.

My new novel These Streets is a family drama set against the UK’s housing crisis. I wanted to write something which shows how easily a normal family could end up homeless. While it deals with the huge issues of homelessness and gentrification, it’s really about aspirations and who gets to have them.

•             Tell us a bit about your writing process

I like silence, tea and a good internet blocker. I love to get lost in my writing and allow the characters to take over. I’m not easily distracted (especially when the writing is going well) but force myself off the laptop to do other things, like go to a dance class or watch some K-Pop on YouTube.

•             How do you structure a book?

I don’t. I just have my characters and a very, very rough idea of what might happen. Then I go for it.

•             What do you find hard about writing?

Structuring!

•             What do you love about writing?

Getting completely lost in it. It’s an awesome hobby (turned career) and I’m very lucky to do it.

These Streets by Luan Goldie is available now in paperback from HQ, £8.99.

My Writing Process Rebecca Raisin

What have you written, past and present?

I have written eighteen romance novels over a period of about ten years. At the moment I’m writing a book set in Venice and it’s been a joy exploring all the hidden gems albeit with the help of travel blogs and google images. It’s always a lot of fun to research a location to bring it to life in my stories. 

  • What are you promoting now?

My latest release, Elodie’s Library of Second Chances is about the power of stories and second chances. Elodie escapes the family media empire to take the librarian job in small town Willow Grove. She hopes to save the library but with limited funds and resources she’s fighting a losing battle. Until she stumbles upon some real-life stories that need sharing. She decides to lend people to share their stories in the hopes the community will be more accepting of those on the periphery. Everything is going well until her own past gets scrutinised and people find out she’s not who she portrayed herself to be. But don’t we all deserve a second chance? 

  • Tell us a bit about your writing process

I write the first draft fast with a brief outline to guide me. I don’t like to plot in too much detail as I prefer the characters to guide me when they come to life on the pages. In saying that, I do a full character profile for the main characters before I start. I start with their physical descriptions and then dive into what sort of person they are. Do they cry in sad movies? What kind of laugh do they have? What do they want most in the world? What are they scared of? And that gives me a wide scope to work with when it comes time to add some conflict into the story and know how they’ll react to certain situations and where to push them that little bit further. 

  • How do you structure a book?

Every book is different depending on the goal of the heroine but I usually start with a hook, a catalyst that changes her life and forces her to act. The character profile comes in handy here because I will already know what she doesn’t want, or what she fears so I will then move the plot forward by making her face those fears. I use the general idea of what is her goal? Her motivation? What conflict can I add to the mix to make her work for what she wants ahead of the resolution. I also focus on friendship as well as romance so these factor in too but for my heroines the priority is always about them finding their own way in the world. 

  • What do you find hard about writing?

Deadlines! They creep up so fast! It feels like I’ve got all the time in the world and then two minutes later the book is due. Luckily, I love editing, so once I get the first draft done, I enjoy the editing process a lot more. 

  • What do you love about writing?

The best part of writing is when a story comes together in such a way that those characters are in your heart and on your mind and you know you’ve connected to the story on a deep level. The Venice novel I’m writing now feels that way, almost as though they’re real people and not inventions of mine. It’s the best feeling when that happens! 

My Writing Process Tetyana Denford

I remember when my mother called me, because the weather had been mild and the air smelled of the coming Spring. It was 2015, and we were living in the UK, so the 5 hour time difference meant that it was already late in New York when I heard her voice on the phone. Her tone was tender, and not a little bit numb and distant, and I would soon understand why: a family secret.

I had grown up in a relatively standard Ukrainian family: I was raised within the language, the traditions, and as I was an only child, my parents would make sure Ukrainian was the world that I knew and flourished within. We lived with my maternal grandmother, Yulia, and whilst her stories of wartime Ukraine were harrowing, nothing was ever out of the ordinary.

And then, we all learned something about her past that seemed more like a movie script than anything we’d ever imagined in real life. For me, my status as an only child, and a writer, meant that it was up to me to write the story down, for the family, for myself, and for my children to know our family story in detail. But could I do it justice? The impostor syndrome was very real, as most writers can attest to on their best days.

The first thing that I learned about writing a book is that the first few drafts are always the story, not the ‘book’; chronological, sometimes painful, but always the purest form. Once I started researching Ukraine, World War II, passenger lists on post-war ships heading to Australia, and New York in the 1960s… the book started coming to life. I’ll admit it felt like it took a solid two years to finish the first few drafts because at the time, my three children were all under eight years old, and my husband was travelling for work constantly, so I had very little time to write apart from very early in the morning or very late at night. It wasn’t easy, but I knew in my bones that this story was an important one to memorialize, because if I didn’t, it would disappear with the passage of time, like so many other family stories.

My grandmother was still alive and still had a semblance of memories stitching her life together in her mind whilst I was writing this, so old photographs and conversations were priceless for me to be able to place myself in her mindset when she was living through all of these painful periods in her life, and what fascinates me now, looking back, is that the current newsreel detailing the war in Ukraine runs in stark parallel to what she and generations of her family had lived through and fought against in the early 1900s and all through the second world war. And we are reminded now that history has a long pattern of repeating itself, because no one seems to remember how hard people fought for their sovereignty.

And now, now I feel proud of knowing that as a younger generation Ukrainian, I have written a story, a whole book, of what people are discovering about Ukraine and its people: their pride, their loyalty to the country that made them, their generosity in standing up for any people who are marginalized and forgotten, their fierce love for their family and friends, and their stubborn refusal to ever back down in their music, their art, their willingness to hope.

I am not an anomaly: there are so many Ukrainian writers and authors and translators who are now taking up the fight and using their voices as a war effort, when they are living all across the world worrying about their friends and their families in danger. We are the future, our stories begin with emotional phone calls, our writings are stitched together with anger and hope, and our platforms are flooded with calls to action from not only Ukrainians but anyone who chooses to stand on the right side of humanity and amplify the stories that make us who we are.

Our words are the weapons we choose to affect the hearts and minds of the entire world, not just to support Ukraine but to remember that all of our family stories are the threads that bind us and remind us to wish for a better future. 

Author Bio

Tetyana Denford grew up in a small town in New York, and is a Ukrainian-American author, translator, and freelance writer. She grew up with her Ukrainian heritage at the forefront of her childhood, and it led to her being fascinated with how storytellers in various cultures passed down their lives to future generations; life stories are where we learn about ourselves, each other, and are the things that matter most, in a world where things move so quickly.

Her debut novel, Motherland was self-published in March 2020 to critical success and longlisted for The Readers Digest Self Published Book Awards. It was based on an incredible family secret that was revealed by her maternal grandmother, Julia, only recently, and has been described by people as ‘haunting’, ‘powerful and devastating’, and ‘a fragile and hopeful story of an immigrant family’. In March 2022, Tetyana signed a 2-book deal with Bookcouture, an imprint of Hachette, and Motherland will be re-released in July 2022 with a new title and cover.

She also works with Frontline News as a translator, has been featured in The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Flock Magazine and Mother Tongue Magazine, and speaks several languages. She also hosts a YouTube show called ‘The Craft and Business of Books’ that helps writers understand both the creative side and the business side of the book world. Her series of ‘conversation books’, collections of poetry and prose about Grief, Motherhood, and Love, were published in 2021.

Tetyana currently lives in New York with her husband and three children.

About the Book

Ukraine, 1940. She cups her daughter’s face with her trembling hands, imprinting it on her mind. ‘I love you. Be brave, ’she whispers through her tears, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces. Sending her child away is the only way to keep her safe. But will she ever see her again?

When war rips their country apart, Julia is sent away by her tearful parents in the dead of night, clutching her mother’s necklace and longing for one last embrace. But soon she is captured by Nazi soldiers and forced into a German labour camp, where behind a tall fence topped with cruel barbed wire, she has never felt more alone.

Just as she begins to give up on all hope, Julia meets Henry, a young man from her village who shares her heart full of dreams. And when she feels a fluttering in her belly that grows and grows, she longs to escape the camp and begin a new life with their child. But then Julia is forced to make a terrible choice. A choice no mother should have to make.

New York2011. With her heart shattered and her life changed forever by the shadows of war, as the years go by Julia thinks she will never be whole again. For decades she has been carrying a terrible secret with her, her every moment tainted by tragedy and loss since those dark days of the war.

But when she receives a phone call in the middle of the night, far away from the home and family she lost in the war, will Julia finally be reunited with the missing piece of her heart? Or is it too late for her wounds to heal?

Based on the incredible true story of the author’s grandparents, The Child of Ukraine is a breathtakingly powerful tale of love, loss and family secrets, perfect for fans of The Four WindsThe Last Green Valley, and The Nightingale.

 
This novel was previously published under the name Motherland.

My Writing Process Lexie Elliott


What you have written, past and present
I’ve written three stand-alone psychological thrillers, and my fourth will be coming out in February of 2023. My first novel, The French Girl, was published in 2018, followed by The Missing Years in 2019. How To Kill Your Best Friend was published in North America last year, and will be out in paperback in the UK in July.

What you are promoting now
How To Kill Your Best Friend. It’s a psychological thriller, told through the eyes of Georgie and Bronwyn, who have been best friends with Lissa since they all met on their college swimming team—but somehow, despite her swimming prowess, Lissa has drowned off the coast of the remote island resort she was managing with her husband. Brought together on the island for Lissa’s memorial, Georgie, Bron, Lissa’s grieving husband and their mutual friends find themselves questioning the circumstances around Lissa’s death—and each other…

A bit about your process of writing
I used to write solely outside of my home (because otherwise I would find myself distracted by cleaning or laundry or really just about anything) but the pandemic lockdowns taught me to write at home; now I find I write there more than half the time. I don’t necessarily write every day, but I write most days (including weekends); I usually exercise first thing and then sit down to work after that. I stop either when my youngest son comes home from school or when I’ve simply run out of steam.

I find I write very slowly at the beginning of a new project – sometimes only 500 words in a day— because I’m having to make structural decisions at the same time; at that stage, it’s very useful to have a daily target to aim for to try to maintain momentum. By comparison, the words seem to leap out at the end of a project: I can write 10,000 or more in a week, and daily targets become unnecessary. I always seem to suffer an enormous crisis of confidence at around the 20,000 word mark, which by now is probably very boring for my lovely agent Marcy, who has to talk me down from it every time! I start each writing session by reviewing and editing what I wrote last time, before cracking on with the next section; consequently, my first draft is very clean, without many typos or grammatical errors. My first reader is always Marcy, who gives incredibly insightful editorial notes, and after that, the manuscript will go to my publishing editor.

Do you plan or just write?
I plan; I produce a four-to-five page outline before I start writing. Partly this is because my publisher requires it of me, but I would do it anyway: I’ve learnt that it is far, far easier to make progress when you have some well-thought out guidelines to keep you heading in the right direction. Which is not to say that everything is set in stone before I start writing—far from it. Many elements of the finished novel can and do deviate from that outline, but I tend to find that the beginning and end of the finished product match quite closely with what I had originally intended—it’s just that the middle might take a different route!

What about word count?
The aim is around 100,000 to 110,000 words in the genre of psychological thrillers. It’s not something I worry about particularly—I’ve always come out roughly in that ballpark in the first draft, and anyway, that can be finessed in the second draft if need be.

How do you do your structure?
I know some authors follow a rigid plan with a three-act structure or a save-the-cat beat sheet or something similar, but I’m not one of them. The outline I mentioned before will of course have a particular structure in mind, and those early chapters are crucial for putting in place the scaffolding that will provide the framework for the entire novel, but once I’m past that point, I’m generally more concerned with getting the pacing right.

What do you find hard about writing?
It’s very solitary. You have to persevere on a daily basis without any colleagues to encourage you or reassure you that you’re on the right track. I really notice the difference now that I’m writing fulltime; until last year, I was also juggling a part-time job in fund management, which gave me plenty of professional social interaction for at least three days a week. But now, given that I’m in London but my agent and primary publisher are in the US, if I were to throw an office party it would basically involve me dressing up to drink a glass of wine in a room by myself…

I also find the social media requirements that are part of being a writer in this modern age quite difficult. I’m not a natural self-promoter—I’d really rather just get on with writing!

What do you love about writing?
A lot, actually. On a practical note, it’s an incredibly flexible profession—you can genuinely do it anywhere, and, looking to the future, nobody is going to force you out of the workplace when you reach 65! I also love the interaction with readers. It’s a real privilege that anyone would choose to spend their money and time on my novels, and I’m always incredibly touched when readers reach out to tell me they’ve enjoyed them. I received some particularly poignant correspondence during the pandemic from readers who were struggling and found some escape in my books: a lovely reminder of the power of books to connect people and allow them to experience a temporary sanctuary.

But the main thing I love is the writing itself. To me, language is a delightful sort of magic, and the fact that a story can be taken from one’s head and transported to the page with words is nothing short of alchemy. Every once in a while I get a sentence just right, and it feels like I haven’t so much written it as stumbled across words that were just waiting to be uncovered—that’s a very special feeling.

Mark Ellis My Writing Process


Q1: I took up writing when I sold my computer services business in the early 2000s, having always had an ambition to be an author. I have so far written 5 books in the DCI Frank Merlin World War 2 detective series. The four published books are Princes Gate (set in January 1940), Stalin’s Gold (September 1940), Merlin At War (June 1941) and A Death In Mayfair (December 1941). Merlin At War was nominated for a CWA Dagger in 2018. My aim is to continue to follow Merlin’s adventures through to the end of the Mark Ellis, author

Q2: The book I am promoting now is the 5th in the series, Dead In The Water, which will be published by Hachette (Headline) on May 19th. It is set in August 1942 and revolves around two artistic masterpieces stolen from an Austrian Jewish family before the war and which end up in London with fatal consequences.

 

Q3: As I am writing a historical series set in a specific period, my principal framework is the timeline. As you can see above, all books are separated in time by 6 to 9 months, so when I finish the latest I know roughly when the next one will be set.When I’m starting work on the new book, I focus intently on the exact time slot of the story. I research that heavily and that process often prompts plot ideas. I am already working on Frank Merlin 6, which I have decided to set in Spring 1943, and plot ideas are beginning to occur to me. When I have roughly formulated what ideas to pursue, I just start writingand see where they take me. I usually do not know who did what until I am about two thirds of the way through the book. I write a first draft straight off without stopping to edit. Then I do many edits before sending the manuscript off to the publishers. I did about 15 edits of Dead In The Water which is about the norm.

 

Q4: As is clear from above, I am not really a planner. I rather think of myself as a sculptor, except that I don’t have a piece of stone or marble to work with. My first draft is the working material. Once I’ve created that I start chipping away.

 

Q5: The word count of the new book is approximately 110,000. The word count of my first draft was over 200,000 so you can see a significant editing job was done. My plots tend to be quite complex and I don’t think I could manage anything much shorter but I think 110,000 to 130,000 is a good length for a thriller.

 

Q6: I am conscious as I write my first draft of teeing up various characters and situations but as I say don’t formally plan a structure in advance. After a while, I tend to find everything comes together in its own way. I seldom make major structural changes when I get down to editing.

 

Q7: I find writing the first draft very hard work. Also waiting for comments on the submitted manuscript is tough.

 

Q8: Editing is good fun. Also I love creating a fictional world all of my own and then sharing it with my readers.

Dead In The Water by Mark Ellis is out now in paperback by Headline Accent, £9.99.

 

 

 

T. Orr Munro: My Writing Process


My Writing Routine

I write Mondays to Wednesdays from 9am until around 4 or 5pm. Occasionally I’ll write at other times but I find the distance of just a few days useful for honing ideas.

 

A bit about you.

I live in North Devon where I also grew up. I’m a freelance journalist, specializing in writing about policing, but, a long time ago, I was a CSI or Scenes of Crime Officer as they are also called.

 

What you have written, past and present.

I’ve a rather eclectic back catalogue! I’ve written a YA novel, ghostwritten the memoirs of a Battle of Britain pilot and a children’s history of Devon. I also have around five unpublished novels in my bottom drawer! I’m currently writing my second crime novel.

 

What you are promoting now.

Breakneck Point is my debut crime novel out in April about CSI Ally Dymond who is redeployed to a Devon backwater after blowing the whistle on police corruption, but the sleepy coastal town of Bidecombe doesn’t turn out to be quite as quiet as she anticipated.

 

A bit about your process of writing.

I’m quite disciplined about writing. I think it comes from being a journalist and having to sit down and write even when I don’t always feel like it. I’m a ‘reviser’ rather than someone who aims to get it right first time which means that it is sometimes hard to know when to stop.

 

Do you plan or just write?

I’m a planner. I try to plot the entire book out before I start although it invariably changes. However, it means that I tend to know what I’m going to write before I switch my laptop on. I don’t write linearly either. I’ll often write a scene in a different part of the book because I’ve had a particular idea or I’m in the mood to do it. My head has to be in the right place to write difficult scenes, usually 3.00am in the morning when I can’t sleep.

 

What about word count?

I don’t set myself daily word counts. It’s too much pressure! I’m also one of those writers who underwrites and struggles to get enough words down on the page rather than one that writes too many and has to cut back. I dream of writing too many words! It’s a constant challenge for me. I blame starting out as a print journalist where I would constantly look to strip out words so the story would fit the page. Old habits die hard.

 

How do you do your structure?

My books often just start with an image which I then work into a story. For instance, I’m writing book two in the CSI Ally Dymond series and that began life as a single scene which happens towards the end of the book. I do use various reference books. I’m a bit of a magpie, taking the bits that work for me, but I find them helpful for getting me over a plotting blip. I regularly dip into Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland. Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody is good for checking that I’m on the right track and I quite like the approach taken in Book Architecture by Stuart Horwitz.

 

What do you find hard about writing?

Finding myself hurtling down a blind alley! It’s that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know something isn’t working, but you can’t work out what and you’ve already written thousands of words that you also know are probably going to wind up in the trash. It’s when I come closest to giving up altogether.

 

What do you love about writing?

As soon as I learnt to read I was utterly enthralled by words and how they could be used to transport me to other worlds. When I learnt to write, I realized I too could use words, but to create my own worlds. I get to play god, basically!

 

Catherine Yardley My Writing Process.

As a little girl my nose was always in a book. I would even read a book a day when I was ill. I loved Enid Blyton and Judy Blume. I started writing song lyrics because I was in a band when I was younger and then I changed the song lyrics to poems. I sent them off and one of them ended up in an anthology when I was eleven. It was the start of something for me. I also had a very good English teacher who really encouraged me and told me I could be a writer. All a young person needs is for someone to believe in them.

I have been writing since I was in single figures but I let it slide for a few years to go off and work in the film industry. I started again when I had children and I am so glad I did. I got taken on by one of the first agents I contacted and then I got a traditional publishing deal too. All from the first batch of submissions I sent off. I got offered two different publishing contacts for Ember and I decided to go with Pegasus. They have been amazing. I cannot recommend them enough.

What you have written, past and present.

I have written non-fiction in the past, as well as a lot of articles and such. I have been a travel writer, a restaurant critic and a theatre critic. Ember is my debut novel.

Ember, Catherine Yardley, author.

What you are promoting now. 

Ember is a story about a family who’s father left them on Christmas day when they were kids. Thirty years later the younger sister is getting married and that brings their father back into their lives. The story revolves around Dr Natalie Holmes and her boyfriend Rob in the present day, and her parents Tim and Jacqueline in the past.

Natalie goes off the rails when her younger sister gets married and pregnant before her, and her father comes back into their lives. She dumps her boyfriend on the side of the road and drives off in his car. The book is about love and family. A part of the book is about whether or not we should allow family in our lives if they have been left wanting. Can a family that has been torn apart ever heal their wounds? Will Rob and Natalie get back together? Read it and find out!

Here is the blurb:

A family torn apart by their father’s infidelity are forced to confront the past thirty years later. As Natalie’s younger sister, Amanda, prepares for marriage and impending motherhood, her plea for the family to reunite uncovers pent-up tension and animosity. Can they forget the past and become a family again?

Natalie’s life begins to unravel as their father starts to creep back into their lives and family tensions resurface, affecting her relationship with her boyfriend, Rob. Will the couple find their way back to each other, and can a family that has been torn apart ever heal their wounds?

Can you ever walk away from someone you love, or do some fires never die out?

A bit about your process of writing. 

This was my first novel which I wrote simultaneously with another novel. I would wheel my son around in his pram until he fell asleep and then I would write 2000 words on my iPhone. I always try to write the first draft as quick as possible. I like to keep up the momentum and the same energy. I do 2000-3000 words a day. Editing is always tough but I am as relentless as the editing. Ha.

I have three kids so I have to write whenever I can and focus on it. Having kids has trained me to be ruthlessly efficient when I need to.

Do you plan or just write?

I just write. Total panster. You need an idea and a handle on the character. Then just let yourself fly.

What about word count?

I do 2000-3000 words a day.

How do you do your structure?

My agent, Susan, says I have a great sense of structure and it is one of the nicest things anyone has said about me. I think it is because I read so much. I am with Stephen King. To be a good writer you need to both write and read a lot. Reading teaches you to be an excellent writer.

What do you find hard about writing?

Finding the time.

What do you love about writing? 

Everything.

Advice for other writers. 

Get on with it. Don’t give up. Write and then rewrite. Submit endlessly. Don’t let the rejection get you down. You have to be able to take rejection if you want to be a professional writer. Just take the feedback on board, edit and then send away somewhere else. You can do it!

Ember is out on the 31st March and is available from WH Smith, Waterstones, Amazon and The Book Depository.

Tim Sullivan My Writing Process

tim sullivan the patientI’ve always written. I wrote and directed my first short film at university and the writing followed on from there. I began writing screenplays with some success, starting in the late eighties with an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust starring Kristen Scott-Thomas, James Wilby, Judi Dench and Alec Guinness. This was followed by an adaptation of EM Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread starring Helen Mirren, Helena Bonham-Carter and Judy Davis. I then wrote and directed Jack and Sarah with Richard E Grant, Samantha Mathis, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins. This led to a screenwriting career in America where I worked with many producers including Ron Howard, Scott Rudin and Jeffrey Katzenberg. I spent a year writing the screenplay for Shrek 4 before the studio decided to go in a different direction with the movie. My last two produced movies were Letters to Juliet starring Amanda Seyfried and Vanessa Redgrave and last year My Little Pony – A new generation. I’ve always wanted to write novels, specifically crime and finally found the time. My series centres upon DS George Cross a socially awkward and sometimes difficult but brilliant detective. He is based in Bristol and has the best conviction rate in the force. His third outing The Patient is released by Head of Zeus on March 3rd.

tim sullivan the patient

What is your writing process?

I’m a morning writer. I find I get my best work done then. Ideas seem fresher and I have the energy to get going. I tend to re-read and edit in the afternoons.

Do you plan or just write?

With screenplays I definitely plan. You have to. But with crime novels I start knowing who has died and who’s done it, but I have no idea how to get there. This can make things complicated and it’s easy to lose faith when you’re not sure which way to go. But I think it means that George Cross, the audience and I are all discovering things at the same time. I think this gives the narrative a more convincing and interesting path.

What about word count?

This varies enormously. I write everything long hand in fountain pen before it gets anywhere near a computer. So, a minimum of 500 words and a maximum of around 2500.

What do you find hard about writing?

The beginning of a book is hard. Until I’ve reached 20,000 words I’m not really sure whether it’s going to be a book at all. I enjoy it a lot more after that. I find it hard not to write long meandering sentences but thankfully I have an eagle-eyed editor who keeps me on the straight and narrow or should I say within the margins.

What do you love about writing?

I used to find the solitary nature of it hard but now it’s possibly what I love about it the most

I love creating characters and relationships. Writing things that move me or make me laugh. 

It’s amazing how many times as a writer you can surprise yourself.

Advice for other writers.

Find the confidence to do it and sit down and write. Write for yourself before you write for anyone else. Sketch down ideas and scenes. Write clutches of dialogue as they come into your head. Don’t sit down and try and write a complete project. Play around a little.

And enjoy it. Everyone writes better when they enjoy what they’re doing.

www.timsullivan.uk

Instagram @timsullivannovellist

Twitter      @timjrsullivan

Facebook   @timjrsullivan

Tim Sullivan is the author of The Patient published by Head of Zeus 3rd March, £18.99