Tag Archives: #amwriting

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: REINTRODUCING JANE CABLE

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I have been writing for Frost for so long I tend to assume everyone knows who I am, but common sense tells me that isn’t the case. Our readership is growing all the time, so many won’t have the first clue about why the Contributing Editor blathers on so endlessly about writing and books. And. this year, about Welsh writing in particular.

So the first thing you need to know is that I am Welsh. I was born in Cardiff and my formative years were spent in and around the city, although I left to go to college at eighteen and never lived there again. In modern parlance you would say that, despite living in England for so long, I ‘identify as’ Welsh and will do so until the day I die.

With my Dad at the launch of his first book

I was a teenager when I discovered there was a rich literary tradition on my doorstep. My father, Mercer Simpson, was a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Wales and worked with Tony Curtis, and I remember the great excitement in our household when Tony won the 1984 National Poetry Competition. By that time my father had retired and was spending his time reading for the Welsh Arts Council and editing the Welsh Academy of Literature’s magazine so the house was stuffed full of books by Welsh authors.

This may have been my literary heritage, but I eschewed literature, refusing to take english as an A-level. When I was a student Dad and I would debate whether there was such a thing as intrinsically ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the arts and could never see eye to eye, largely because I considered his views desperately old fashioned. Never an academic, my normal reading was romances, women’s fiction and historical sagas. In other words, popular fiction.

My father reviewed books endlessly and became an acknowledged expert on Anglo-Welsh literature. By the time he died in 2007 he’d had four of his own poetry collections published, the last of which he’d worked on during his final illness and his publisher brought the first copies to his funeral.

By then I had started writing too, experimenting with romantic fiction, something he barely understood, but my mother ploughed through my early stories and gave me both encouragement and useful feedback. Instead my father was really proud of the fact I freelanced as a cricket journalist. My mother’s bragging rights came a few years later when, in 2011, I reached the final of The Alan Titchmarsh Show’s People’s Novelist competition.

Mum and her Welsh flag

My mother loved reading but loathed formulaic romances, and her opinion has had more influence that anything over the way I write. I love a love story, but there has to be more. More for the reader to get their teeth into; a hint of mystery, research so good it teaches you something, a broadening of horizons. These are the stories I aim to write.

My career as a published author had a bit of a rocky start, but in 2018 I settled with Sapere Books, writing contemporary romances with a look over the shoulder at the past. The first two books were World War Two influenced, and later this year my debut dual timeline will be published by them, set in Cornwall in 1815 and 2015.

Last year I took another step forwards and signed a two book deal with One More Chapter, a division of Harper Collins. Both will be out this summer, written under the name of Eva Glyn. Eva for my paternal grandmother and Glyn for the Welsh novelist and poet Glyn Jones, a great friend to both of my parents and an emblem of my literary roots.

 

 

 

 

 

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: INTRODUCING JAN BAYNHAM AND HER WRITING

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I was born and brought up in the tiny mid-Wales village of Newbridge-on-Wye and moved to nearby Llandrindod Wells when I was fourteen. Fortunate to have had a very free and happy childhood, growing up in such beautiful rural surroundings has always stayed with me. Although I have now spent more years living in the south of Wales, first in Swansea and then for the most part in Cardiff, I still call Llandrindod ‘home’. For as long as I can remember, apart from a very brief spell of wanting to be a glamourous model or an airhostess, I always wanted to become a teacher, my two main loves being English and Art. Having studied in Cardiff, I have taught in a wide range of settings – from opening and running my own nursery, teaching all year groups in primary school, secondary school English and Art and Pottery up to A level, and teaching art, crafts and pottery in adult evening classes when my three children were small. For the last six years of my career in education, I became a Teacher Adviser for English.

You will notice that I have not yet mentioned writing. I was extremely late to the party and it wasn’t until I joined a writing group at a local library when I retired that I wrote my first piece of fiction. In my job, I was passionate about children’s writing but this was for me, for my enjoyment… and I loved it. I was hooked! Soon, I went on to take a writing class at Cardiff university and began to submit short stories for publication. In October 2019, my first collection of shorts was published.  My pieces started getting longer and longer so that, following a novel writing course, I wrote my first full-length novel. My debut novel, Her Mother’s Secret was published in April 2020, followed by Her Sister’s Secret, a few months later, by Ruby Fiction. The third novel in the three-book deal is due out in the summer.

So, what do I write about? My dual-narrative novels are about families and their secrets. The strapline for my publisher is ‘Stories that Inspire Emotions!” and I hope that my books do just that. They are character driven. I have always been fascinated by long-held family secrets and skeletons lurking in cupboards and these form the germs of ideas to develop into a novel.

Fascinated by the ever-present link between past and present, I try to explore how actions and decisions made in one era have an impact on subsequent generations. In all my novels, I want to tell two stories showing a special bond between mothers and daughters. The daughters’ stories are written in first person and I’ve tried to get inside their heads, feel their emotions and show the reader why they act in the way they do.   In each novel, setting plays an important role, too. There is always a journey to a contrasting setting vastly different from the area in mid-Wales where my characters are from. I hope I manage to transport the reader not only to the heart of Wales but also to Greece, Sicily or France. I’ve also tried to capture the different times during which my characters lived.

Having a lot of catching up to do, I take every opportunity I can to learn more about the craft of writing by attending workshops, talks and conferences. Joining that small writing group in Whitchurch library was the best decision I could have made to start me on my writing journey.

 

You can link up with Jan on Twitter – @JanBaynham https://twitter.com/JanBaynham or Facebook – Jan Baynham Writer https://www.facebook.com/JanBayLit or you can follow her blog – Jan’s Journey into Writing https://janbaynham.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

My Writing Process – Emma Eker.

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I’m a searcher – always have been, potentially always will be. I’ve questioned the status quo from the moment I had the capacity to do so – finding myself dissatisfied and unconvinced with the answers I was given. I mention this so you may understand that I spent my whole life pushing boundaries, rebelling against ‘the machine’ and searching for the Truth. This quest came with a restlessness that ensured I couldn’t stay still for any substantial amount of time, moving from place to place, job to job and person to person for as long as I can remember – I was always trying to get ‘there’… destination unknown. 

What you have written, past and present.

Apart from writing a teenage diary, essays for my psychology training, helping friends formulate emails and blogging through social media, my professional writing CV, up until this point, has been limited! Until recent years, although with a great love for writing, I am not sure that I considered utilising this in any particular way, either professionally or for any paid or altruistic offering – it simply wasn’t in my consciousness awareness to do so.

What you are promoting now.

My book is called “Liberation”. It has been a labour of love and is predominantly a solution-based memoir, highlighting my journey through life – moving through addiction, heartache, temporary loss of Self and many of the trappings of the human experience. I have always been solution-based, always aware that life is magic and benevolent and therefore I could not, would not, write a book relating to struggle without presenting the reader with a solution. Too many books in the mainstream point to the ‘problem’, providing identification but little or no hope for the eradication of that which the reader may be battling with. I believe we are all whole and perfect, but for our belief systems and this is what Liberation allows the reader to see. 

3. A bit about your process of writing.

If anyone is looking for ‘good advice’ from me in this area, they may be disappointed! My writing process has been totally haphazard. Some days / weeks I would be in ‘the zone’, writing flowing, immersed in the creative process and other times, my laptop would be left unattended whilst I found it more important to do absolutely nothing at all! Many a time I have found myself in judgement around my process, but I have come to see that everything happens perfectly and in divine timing. What I will say is this, I have learnt to hear and to listen to the still quiet voice within me that taps gently in order to gain my attention and nudges me in the right direction. When the ‘knowing’ comes knocking, I know it’s time to put fingers to keyboard. 

4. Do you plan or just write?

Absolutely no planning whatsoever. I truly trust my writing process and I go with what feels right, rather than what I could have set out in black and white with regard to a structure. I have never worked logically, despite being thrown into a system that required it. I must be honest and say I don’t think I ever planned any of the book at all. Everyone’s process is different though and we need to find what works best for us which is simply a matter of trial and error. I know that when I sit down in front of my computer with the intention to write, the words will flow through me and if they don’t, I recognise it isn’t the right time. For me, the trick is to take my thinking mind out of it and go with the (creative) flow.

· What about word count?

With “Liberation”, there was no specific word count. I made the decision to self-publish rather than write for a traditional publishing house who may have required a certain length of manuscript.   

· How do you do your structure?

There was no specific structure, although, before I made the decision to self-publish, I was in discussions with a traditional publishing company who had asked me to draw up a synopsis and provide a rough chapter breakdown. I did, on some level, find this helpful to refer to as the writing process began. I held the structure loosely, understanding that the ‘story’ would unfold and become clearer as time moved on. Therefore, the format continually changed as the writing flowed and took on different directions, but it was useful to at least know the direction in which I was headed.  

· What do you find hard about writing?

At many times, thoughts, ideas and words would flow into my mind incredibly quickly and leave just as quickly making it difficult at points (not to mention incredibly frustrating) to grab hold of and capture them. Because I have a perfectionist within me, I would find myself continually editing, editing and re-editing some more which again, can be incredibly frustrating. I have however learnt, that if there is something that needs language which I temporarily ‘forget’, it will revisit me again to make its way onto the page. Moving out of my own way to make way for the creative process has also been a challenge for me, left vs right brain – practice is the name of the game. 

· What do you love about writing?

It’s an interesting question. Is it enough to say that it feels like an extension of who I am? I love putting words together and creating something that touches or resonates with another human being in order to gain identification and understanding. The ‘writing zone’ is a very real thing and I love getting lost in here.

· Advice for other writers.

If you feel there is something you have to offer and have a desire to write, trust it. Do not give up. It does not always feel easy to take what is inside of us and give language to it ‘out there’ and at many times you may feel you are in a battle with and up against yourself, but you must trust your heartfelt desire to do it. For if it wasn’t yours to do, you would not have the desire in the first place. And remember, everything has its ‘perfect’ time, so trust that too!

 

Liberation by Emma Eker is out by Spiffing Covers on 28 January. You can buy a copy of Liberation by Emma Eker via her website or Amazon.

 

My Writing Process Helen E Field

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The Mystery Shopper & The Hot Tub , Helen E Field, writing, writer, how I write. My mother once told me that when I was 10yrs old I informed her I was not going to have a ‘boring life.’ Well, I guess I must have succeeded because according to most people I know, I have led a very interesting life. Important for a writer I think. To me, I’ve just lived it exactly how I wanted – a free spirit if you will. ‘work hard, play hard’ could well be my motto. I started writing funny poems about all my classmates at school from the age of ten and I haven’t stopped writing them ever since. I have a business writing bespoke funny poems for and about people and I used my ability to write these funny poems to publish a range of greetings cards. I also began a journal at ten and nearly 50 years later I am still writing it – I have an old sea chest full of them! At school I was often picked out by my English teacher to stand up in front of the class and read the essay I had written; the one that I recall even now, was entitled ‘The Goldfish Who Could Speak.’  The class were in stitches!

I left school at sixteen and worked in retailing and hospitality. I started my own hospitality training consultancy in 1998, training managers and staff all over the UK, Europe and USA and speaking at conferences. One strand of the business was to design and implement mystery shopper programmes. It was the trigger for my debut novel ‘The Mystery Shopper & The Hot Tub.’

I have three incredibly talented grown-up children and a saintly husband! Pre-Covid, we embarked on some serious travelling around the world – clearly curtailed for the past ten months but we’ll be off again as soon as we are permitted! 

What you have written, past and present.

I have had numerous professional articles published in various hospitality publications over the years. One article in particular when published was deemed ‘an important academic paper’ which thrilled me, given I’d never gone to university. I wrote the entire article in one hit of 8,000 words in one evening and they didn’t change a single word! 

I completed The Mystery Shopper & The Hot Tub last Autumn and am currently writing the second book in the series, which I hope will be out by late Spring.

What you are promoting now.

I am promoting my debut novel The Mystery Shopper & The Hot Tub, for which I also wrote a free download called ‘The Big Dilemma’ that readers can access at the end of the book. It is women’s humorous fiction. I would say that you have to have a sense of humour and not be overly politically correct to enjoy it!

I do not have social media – my choice – which makes promoting a bit more challenging. I’m a face-to-face kinda gal and would much prefer to talk about the book in person or on the radio, but Covid has put a stop to that.

A bit about your process of writing. 

I don’t honestly think I have a process. I just write when I feel like it for as long as I want to. When I’m really in the flow, I can write for hours at a time without stopping. If I don’t feel like it, I don’t write. It’s pointless. When both my brothers were diagnosed with prostate cancer and my mother developed Alzheimer’s all in the same year, I was very flat and exhausted. I just couldn’t write ‘funny’, so I left my manuscript for a year and went back to it, when I felt more in control of things.

Do you plan or just write?

I would say I was more of a ‘seat of the pants’ writer. The only thing I could remotely describe as planning, is that I decide what I want the ending to be and kind of work out how to get there! My stories are very visual – a number of readers commented that they thought the book would make a great TV/film. I often think of ‘scenes’ that I know I want to include – particularly the mystery shopping assignments, which have been based on real life assignments that I have actually done myself or been de-briefed about by an assessor. They are very funny, not least because they have actually happened.

What about word count?

I never even considered word count when I started writing my first book. I literally just wrote it exactly as I wanted. When I finished it was around 120,000 words. I discovered afterwards that that was a lot of words for a book of my genre. I had to do some ruthless editing that made me weep as I removed whole chapters and chunks of writing to get it down – even now it’s around 105,000 and 443 pages long.

This has provided me with a problem I hadn’t anticipated.The print cost of a book of this size is significant, but to sell at a price similar to ‘competing’ novels I will be making very little money indeed on paperbacks.

Big lesson for me for book number two – keep an eye on word count!

How do you do your structure?

I am a story teller and I think my book reflects that. I never sat down and thought ‘how am I going to structure this novel?’ I just wrote the story it as it came to me. I would get to the end of a section and think, OK so what would be really funny to happen now? Then I wrote it. On editing, I made a few changes if I thought that the flow of the story wasn’t quite right, but really nothing major.

What do you find hard about writing?

I really don’t find anything about writing hard. I genuinely don’t understand writers who say they sit at their laptops struggling to get words out. I write so prolifically and easily it’s a mystery to me.

What do you love about writing? 

I love making up stories. It’s a bit like being a child again I suppose. In the real world we can’t pretend, but in stories you can create whatever crazy characters and wild incidents you like. It’s like creating escapism for yourself and for others to enjoy and I do like making people laugh.

Advice for other writers. 

My genuine advice to other writers is likely to get me into trouble from the many organisations that offer writing courses, advice, manuscript assessment etc etc. It is easy to forget that it is in all these people’s financial interests to tell you your writing isn’t good enough. For me there is only one group of people who have the authority to tell me that and that’s my readers. No-one else matters.

I can truthfully say that if I had read all the articles and advice about how to write before I started my book, I would never have written it. I would have been paralysed by indecision over absolutely everything. Never in my life have I come across such contradictions, nonsense rules, imposition of politically correct notions or subjectivity,  in an industry. This became the main reason I decided to go down the self-published route. 

I came across a quote many years ago, which I had printed on cards and gave them to my children as a good rule to live their lives by. It’s not a bad one for writers either.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” 

Leonardo da Vinci

The Mystery Shopper & The Hot Tub is out on the 14th of January and is available from amazon.co.uk

 

 

My Writing Process Alex Knight

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Howdy, all! I’m author Alex Knight — best known for my genre-warping fiction whose popularity commonly crashes global markets. Also, my humility. I used to be a ghostwriter for romance novellas and science fiction novels, but these days I write my own books, primarily in the genres of Fantasy and LitRPG. 

What I’ve written, past and present?

Aside from my ghostwriting work — which I can’t legally talk about — my work includes the Nova Online trilogy, a sci-fi, LitRPG adventure we like to bill as “Halo meets Ready Player One.” If you’re into science fiction, RPGs, and coming of age tales that pit their protagonists against tyrannical, dystopian governments, then you’ll probably dig it. Did I mention it takes place in the real world and a video game? I like to think it’s a lot of fun.

What you are promoting now?

Most recently, I’ve taken a pivot into Fantasy with my debut fantasy thriller, The Far Wild. It’s a classic adventure story about skyships and expeditions gone awry in the most dangerous wilderness known to man. It’s full of beasties with too many teeth, bombastic characters, and beasties with too many teeth trying to eat bombastic characters. Of course, there’s a bit of espionage, too, and no story is complete without a dose of looming societal upheaval, right? I grew up loving Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and The Lost World, and The Far Wild is my love letter to those stories. It’s been released as an Audible Original, which means it’s an audiobook and Audible brought in an incredible cast to voice the main characters. I wrote the words, but my goodness did the narrators bring them to life!

A bit about your process of writing?

Consistent. Simplistic. A gift to all humankind — just a few descriptors I wouldn’t use to describe my writing process. Realistically, writing is a wild process and how I do it changes every couple of months. Some things stay the same (butt in chair, music up loud, world ignored), but I’ve found if I write in one place for more than a few weeks my creativity fizzles up. I like to bounce between writing on a desk at home, on the couch, out on the balcony. Or, better yet, in libraries and cafes. Of course, that hasn’t really been an option with Covid, so I’ve taken to placing a camp chair in different, odd places around the house and pretending I’m somewhere else. It’s amazing how well you can tune out your surroundings with the power of noise cancelling headphones and loud, loud music.

Do you plan or just write?

You know, I’ve experimented with both ways. When I was a ghostwriter, I had to plan ahead of time so the client could understand and write off on the story. With practice, though, I’ve found that planning too much ahead of time stifles creativity in a story. I now much prefer to write out a loose plot, then follow it vaguely as I write and make sure I let my mind go where it’d like. That’s where the magic is found in writing, in my opinion. Right on that line between what you planned and where your creativity wants to take you.

What about word count?

I aim for 2,000 words a day, which is a reasonable, sustainable rate for me, and track my progress via a project tracker spreadsheet. Lately, though, I’ve been finding it easier to simply paste chapters into a manuscript first draft document as I write them. This way, I have it to refer to for an up-to-date word count, chapter word count, and it’s super easy to make control + find changes. 

How do you do your structure?

I learned pretty much everything I know about structure and plotting from 1. reading books I enjoy and 2. K.M. Weiland’s website. There’s a bunch of great resources there and I recommend it for every aspiring author. There’s a particularly useful chart on the site that outlines the basic three act structure most stories follow. I like to put my own spin on this by weaving a lot of questions into the story, then answering them bit by bit as the plot progresses. This helps me keep the story moving quickly and make it satisfying as we’re on a constant drip feed of answers.

What do you find hard about writing?

The desire to do it as well as I can. There’s always that voice inside saying “you could do this better,” or “you should have written this this way.” Silencing that voice is key to finishing, well, anything you write. There’s always a compromise you must find between quality and speed. You could blaze the book out in a month or you could take forever doing edits and rewrites. The sweet spot lies somewhere between those, and finding it is a unique journey for each book.

What do you love about writing?

The act of doing it. Creation. I love nothing more than sitting down, cranking the music, and diving into a fantasy world to find out what happens next. Fingers tapping on the keyboard, cursor flying across the page — that’s what I live for. When you’re at that perfect spot between a tight plot and a loosely planned story, magic happens. You surprise even yourself, watching the plot unfurl in unexpected ways. In that way, I, as an author, get to experience the story in a fresh way. It’s much better than knowing every twist and turn ahead of time.

The Far Wild by Alex Knight is available exclusively on Audible now.

 

SISTER SCRIBES: OVER AND OUT FROM KIRSTEN HESKETH

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My last ever Sister Scribes post – and what a blast it has been!

And, my, what a lot has happened in the two years since the five of us named ourselves the Sister Scribes and banded together as friends and fellow writers. We’ve written before about how we went to stay at a wonderful house – Darcy’s Abode! – in Bath and spent a few fabulous days writing, sightseeing, eating and getting to know each other better. Back then, getting published was just a twinkle in my eye –  a twinkle that I feared might be extinguished at any moment – and how in awe I was of my fellow Scribes with their launches and their multiple deals. Would it ever happen for me too?

Fast forward two short years – and so much has changed. My debut, Another Us, was published by Canelo this year. It came out in in ebook in May and I had the loveliest of Zoom launches, complete with dying my hair red to match the cover and to raise money for Mind. And then, in August, it came out in paperback. I originally had a digital only deal with Canelo and the fact they had enough faith in me and my book to then invest in a paperback in this most difficult of years really was the icing on the cake. Thank you so much, Canelo, you really have been fabulous to work with. As has my wonderful agent, Felicity Trew.

And, basically, it’s been brilliant ever since. Another Us (very briefly) had bestseller flags in the UK, Canada and Australia, which was totally beyond my wildest dreams. It’s been featured in Woman and Home, Women’s Weekly, Woman (there’s a theme here!) More, Pick Me Up, Waitrose magazine … the list goes on. It was longlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was a contender for the RNA’s Joan Hessayon award. But best of all have been the dozens of messages I’ve received from readers all around the world telling me how much Another Us has touched, informed, amused or plain old entertained them. I think that has been the very best bit of all. That and getting to know a whole host of other debuts – including my lovely Sister Scribes – because no one understands quite what it’s like to have your debut come out in a global pandemic than someone who is going through exactly the same thing ….

And now it’s time to look forward. I have been lucky enough to secure a two-book deal with Hodder and Stoughton for a series set in London in WW1. The Post Office Girls follows the experiences of three girls who join the Army Post Office – in a huge, wooden, building which was been hastily thrown up in Regent’s Park to cope with the sheer volume of mail being sent to the various fronts. My grandfather – who himself served in WW1 – worked for the post office in London his whole life – and the first book is dedicated to him. It will be published in May next year and the second book – A Post Office Christmas – follows the November afterwards. I wrote the first 50,000 words of that during Nano (success – hurrah!) and am now feeling deliciously Christmassy – if absolutely exhausted!

So, all that remains to be said is a huge Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Thank you for following our adventures over the past couple of years and best wishes for a safe and happy 2021.

Over and out x

 

           

 

 

 

HOW AUTHOR LOUISE MUMFORD TURNED FORTY AND CHANGED HER LIFE

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Guest article by Louise Mumford to celebrate publication of her debut thriller

You haven’t turned forty until you’ve turned forty at the start of a lockdown during the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic. It certainly added a level of drama: I started a new decade and the world stilled.

Forty is a milestone birthday, whether you get to party with a massive group of friends in your favourite pub or not. For me, it was doubly important because I’d made a promise to myself a few years before: by forty my life would be different.

It was a promise I kept.

I have never been able to sleep well. Insomnia has been my constant companion since I was a child. When I was young, I didn’t really see the point of sleep. Why would people do that and miss out on all the marvellous things that could happen whilst they were dozing? I couldn’t understand it. Fast forward a few years and I would be the one at house parties who would still be awake at 4 a.m. tidying up the kitchen and flicking through the books in an unfamiliar bookcase to keep myself entertained whilst everyone else slept. Now I’m much older I watch the way my husband drifts off to sleep within minutes of putting his head on the pillow and, to me, it is a magic trick I will never learn.

I’ve always thought that this never really affected my day-to-day life. I thought I coped. I was wrong.

In the opening chapter of my new book, ‘Sleepless’, the main character, Thea, has a car accident after yet another poor night’s sleep. They say write what you know. Well, I know that car accident very well. It is mine. I had got through my first day back in the new term as a teacher, a job I’d been doing for around ten years or so, and in the car I’d been congratulating myself about how well I’d coped, despite the lack of sleep. I was smug.

That was when I realised the car in front of me on the dual carriageway slip road had stopped. I crashed into it and another car crashed into me. Miraculously, nobody was badly injured. My own car was a crumpled thing and smoke wreathed around the twisted metal like a bad Eighties pop video. I remember sitting in the ambulance listening to the radio announce major tailbacks because of me and knowing that I had to change my life. I gave myself the deadline of turning forty to accomplish it.

I have always wanted to be a published author. So, I took a deep breath and left my teaching job, a job that was slowly eating away at me due to the early morning starts. My body clock eventually found a rhythm that had probably always been its own, but which modern working life didn’t allow for: a much later bedtime and a later morning. I’m a night owl at heart and, though the early bird apparently catches the worm, I’ve got myself something else, much better. I concentrated on writing and that book will be out on December 11th this year: ‘Sleepless’. I didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

Life begins at forty, so the greeting cards say, and my whole new life has just begun.

 

Louise’s debut thriller ‘Sleepless’ will be published on 11th of December as ebook and audio. Ebook is currently 99p on Amazon, Kobo and Apple. Paperback to follow in February.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MULTI-TALENTED WOMEN’S FICTION AUTHOR CAROLINE JAMES ON MENTORING

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I first started writing eight years ago and one of the biggest things that hit me was how lonely a business I’d chosen. Sitting on your own, hour after hour, day after day, was the most isolating thing I had ever done. I had a very busy time in my ‘other working life’ with lots of travel and constant client meetings. Motivating myself to work alone wasn’t easy, combined with internal fears that anything I wrote wouldn’t be good enough and no one would want to read it. It took me a year to write my first novel and as many authors know, the task of submitting with high hopes and expectation soon becomes humiliation. The manuscript was rejected by agents and publishers time after time.

In those days self-publishing was very new to me and I had to learn fast. It became the life-line that ultimately connected me to the publishing world. But I still found it a lonely experience in cyber space. How I longed to be part of publishing a team with meetings, mentoring and lunches and all the fun that other authors seemed to be experiencing once they’d signed that golden contract and committed to a book deal.

Sitting on your bum feeling sorry for yourself achieves nothing, as my mother always told me, so I decided to do something about it. My debut novel had done surprisingly well and reached #3 in women’s fiction on Amazon. This gave me confidence to contact other authors in my area via social media. We set up a group and met every month and the kindness and help I found there was like being wrapped in a warm writing blanket. My life changed and I moved away but I consider two of those authors as very close friends and we still meet to help each other.

The years have moved on and several novels later I am now both traditionally and self-published and during this time I have mentored other authors, who like me in the beginning, hadn’t a clue where to start. Little did I know the huge importance of for example, editing or of having a social media profile and the zillion things that a savvy author in 2020 needs to get a grip of.

It began with a couple of authors, through Facebook, asking for advice. The hand-holding process began and it felt good to be able to give something back and watch the blossoming process develop as they realised their writing dream and ultimately produced their very own novel. Now, I have put together a group of other like-minded writing professionals who want to give something back and through a small business community we mentor, motivate and give of our time to help authors who are in the very same position that I naively found myself in when I first started writing. It does surprise me that with all the information freely available on the internet that this is something that is in demand. But I know how it feels to be on your own, wondering if you are good enough to write and if you can trust your instincts. Having a comforting virtual hand on your shoulder saying, ‘Yes, you can and this is how you can do it,’ is a very empowering process and I am hugely humbled to be in a position where I can offer help to anyone who asks and has the determination to achieve their writing dream.

 

Find out more about Caroline at https://www.carolinejamesauthor.co.uk/