Tag Archives: Cornish Village School

SISTER SCRIBES: A LAST WORD FROM KITTY WILSON

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As this is my last Sister Scribes post I thought I would use it to update you on where I am now in terms of my writing career and what I have learnt along the way.

When the Sister Scribes started writing for Frost I had just published my second book in The Cornish Village School series and signed a contract for three more. Truthfully, it still hadn’t sunk in that I was a published writer.

Now two years on, all five books in the series are published digitally, available on audible and the final book, Happy Ever After, will be joining the others in paperback next month. I have loved writing this series although am still a little stunned that what began as a simple experiment in my living room – writing what I knew – has taken on a life of its own and spans five books.

I have spent this year writing a new romantic comedy, centred around the city of Bristol where I now live. Currently I am tweaking it and don’t know what changes will be made once my editor has read it but I do know that I was worried that the strength of community I had created in Penmenna would be hard to recreate in a city. I am so pleased to have been wrong. Community is alive and well in the area in which I live, and I hope I have managed to do it justice.

This book is for a different publisher with a brand-new editor and I am so excited, though I can’t tell you who just yet. The Cornish Village School had three different editors and I have learnt that each one has different ways of working, different priorities and will therefore teach you something new. Each one helps you to refine your writing and being published is the start of learning to write professionally. I think so many aspiring authors see publication as the end goal, I certainly did, but it really is a beginning rather than a finish. I feel that my writing has improved with each story and I hope it continues to do so.

There are many things I wish I had known or been more secure in with my first book. But I am forever telling my children that we aren’t born knowing how to do things, that it takes time and patience and practice and the same is absolutely true of writing. I enjoy studying the craft and think it’s important to maintain. I am currently working my way through John Truby’s The Anatomy of a Story and whilst dense it’s remarkably helpful. For those starting out I highly recommend Emma Darwin’s This Itch of Writing blog and Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel. Every other profession has Continuing Professional Development at its core and I think writing should be no different.

The other thing to learn is that writing is a business. You have not been published because people want to be your friend or are being kind, you have been (or will be) published because a publisher can see potential profit. Thus, rejections aren’t personal they are professional and the same applies for contracts. Make sure you recognise your own value and don’t put your success down to others just being nice. I’m giggling as I type this because I do it all the time. Maybe I’ll get better at that one in 2021.

 

Merry Christmas everybody, thanks so much for supporting all of us at Sister Scribes, we’re wishing you all a very happy 2021.

Kitty x

 

 

 

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON ON HANDLING DIFFICULT TOPICS IN LIGHT HEARTED ROMANCE

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I had planned to write about Happy Ever after for this month’s post, the last in my Cornish Village School series and out last Thursday.

However, I had a lovely review today that has changed my train of thought. The reader kindly said that she really liked the way I handled difficult topics in an easy way. And this made me want to write about that…handling difficult topics within the confines of light-hearted feelgood reads.

And I ram them in.

So far across five books I have dealt with all sorts of real-life issues, including coercive relationships, maternal loss, war, marital breakdowns, parents with addiction issues, neglect.

I will forever remember my editor’s reaction when pitching the second in the series I dropped into conversation that I wanted to bring in the South Sudanese Civil War. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. I had to reassure her that yes, I was still writing a light-hearted romcom set in Penmenna and that she could a) trust me b) gamble knowing she could always edit it out later.

Why have I insisted on featuring these things? How do I justify including such things in feelgood books? The answer is simple. I love the romance of a romance novel, the sighs, the highs, the hopes and desires and the guaranteed happy-ever-after. But I also like real and relatable characters, people I can empathise with, bond with and enjoy writing about and then reading about (honestly, we have to read our own books so many times before they come to you). And the truth is I don’t know a single person in real life that hasn’t had to deal with trauma in one way or another, and many people who have to deal with far more than their fair share. Therefore, I need my characters to reflect the people I know and love in real life. Bad things frequently happen to good people, they just do. And whilst I love writing about a fictional village that features the best of Cornwall – beautiful beaches, picture postcard cottages and strong community I do need a smattering of something to balance that out. In the county I love we have all those things but it doesn’t mean that behind closed doors that life is as perfect as it is pretty.

My poor children have always had it rammed home that it’s not the things that life throws at you that are important, it’s the way that you deal with them that counts. And that has to be true in fiction as well. We need to see how our characters respond to real-life situations, to the tough things that real people have to face every single day. I want to recognise when I write that everyday people are as heroic and wonderful as characters in books, that they too have to deal with the most dreadful things and, apart from an occasional understandable wallow, they get up and keep going.

On the flipside are the joyful things about life, the big stuff – people we love, personal achievements and the everyday stuff, the hedgerows and the birds, a good book and delicious things to eat, or whatever your little joys are. The happy keeps us going when we have the awful, the awful makes us appreciate the happy.

I hope by bringing these subjects into my books, I am reflecting this balance and also acknowledging the heroic nature of what people have to deal with every day, and how I am in awe of the sheer resilience and goodness of human beings and life in general.

 

All love, Kitty.

SISTER SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON ON WRITING A SERIES

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When I wrote the first book in The Cornish Village School I had initially intended for it to be a stand-alone. The thought of turning it into a series wasn’t something that had occurred to me, not for one moment. But my publisher suggested that this was a great idea and I happily agreed. Being a self-flagellating writer type – many of us are –  I was astonished at the suggestion that readers would want to read about Penmenna School more than once but was very willing to do as I was told (such a good girl). I was worried though about what I would write about, how many single teachers can one small school have?

I am currently finishing writing the fifth and final in the series and have loved every minute of my time in Penmenna. It has expanded from a tale of a headteacher to a series that has embraced the highs and lows of a whole community and I am saddened that this is my last foray into the village. It was my choice but is bittersweet all the same. On the other hand whilst it feels odd to be on the brink of creating a brand-new world – I have inhabited Penmenna for the last three years – it’s exciting too. A whole new blank sheet to fill with whatever and whomever I want.

As a reader, I read the most when I was an adolescent, before the responsibilities of adult life caught up with me and I loved a series, then they were often trilogies. I devoured everything I could find on my mother’s shelves, the Jalna books come to mind, Norah Lofts, and R F Delderfield.

Why did I enjoy reading these books so much? With a series each book feels like returning to good friends. The start of a new book within a series is both comfortable and exciting, you have created a bond with the characters, feel you know them, where they’re going, and it’s exciting willing them on. The end of a book often feels as if it’s come around too soon, you want more time with them, you’re not ready to say goodbye.

The same is true when it comes to writing. Currently I am finishing up Marion’s story. She began in the first book as a velociraptor draped in Cath Kidston and was the ultimate baddie, loathsome. Having a series means I have been able to develop her and turn her into a heroine. I am fully rooting for her now and really hope readers will do the same as her story finishes.

But it’s not all been plain sailing. The tricky thing with writing a series, unless you plan every last detail (and I am a planner), something will come back to bite you. I have had so many plot possibilities pop into my head, have written chapters and then realised I can’t use them because they contradict something miniscule I wrote in one of the other books. So, whilst you know your characters better – a bit like real people – certain things have happened in their world which prevent them from moving on in a way that would be helpful to your current plot. And you have no-one to blame but yourself.

Do keep your eyes peeled for the cover reveal of the final book in The Cornish Village School series, it will be coming on Valentine’s Day and I cannot wait to share it with you.

 

 

SISTERS SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON ON STRUCTURAL EDITS

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Hello, it’s lovely to be on Frost again and I thought I’d take the chance to tell you what’s happening in my writing life right now.

It’s been a busy couple of months for The Cornish Village School series. At the time of writing this I’m working through the structural edits on book three, have signed off on the cover for the audio release of book two and received my first copies of the paperbacks for book one.

Structural edits are the first thing that needs to be tackled once you’ve finished and polished the first (second, third, umpteenth) draft and bitten the bullet and sent it off to your editor to see what they think. Because the author tends to be so close to the book, these edits are a vital, objective view of what needs to be tidied up, changed and possibly cut, possibly extended. Chapters may need to be moved or restructured and it usually involves ‘killing your darlings’.

For me, waiting for these is the most terrifying time; I somehow expect them to receive, read and critique my draft within the first fifteen minutes. I fill that quarter of an hour by biting my nails and opening up Indeed.co.uk and looking for jobs. I could definitely be a cast member in the Disney Store (as long as there is no singing required), perhaps that job negotiating exit from the EU would be simpler than any edits I will have to do (this job was advertised during my last panic browse. I considered it). Then I give myself a good talking to about rational behaviour and decide that I could do some housework, change my mind (no need for desperate measures), panic a bit more and start the next book in an attempt to distract myself.

The starting of the next book thing is a jolly good move. It’s my favourite bit of the process – that time where the world is full of possibilities, deadlines are so far away they may as well not exist and you can make anything happen. Once I’d written the first chapter with a vicar (my new hero and I’m already in love with him), a guerrilla yarn-bombing octogenarian and a secret underground dungeon, all was right again in my world. In fact, I was so enthused I almost forgot the dreaded edits. Which were made even more worrisome this time around by the fact that I have a new editor* and I am a little oppositional to change (I still have the screws to my bunkbed that my mother dismantled when I was eight).

When the structural edits did come in I read them, had a mini meltdown and it took a couple of days before I processed the words in front of me – all of which were fair, true and actually very positive. In fact, there was nothing at all that warranted the seismic earthquake of stroppiness I had engaged in but which is, apparently, a natural part of the process, because only after that could I start working my way diligently through her fairly short list of suggestions.

The next phase is the line edits and the proofread, all of which I’m hoping will be completed by the time you are reading this and I should be well on the way to finding romance for my handsome vicar. I enjoy these, or at least I think I do. If you’ve heard screaming bouncing across the British Isles recently then there’s a good chance I was kidding myself. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

All love, Kitty.

*who’s proved to be lovely btw.

 

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