Newcastle Writing Conference 2015 – Part Two

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about, have a peek at Part One here. If you read that already, help yourself to a biscuit as a reward for coming back for more of my musings.

So, dear readers, I have just been fired up by the keynote, and informed about building a digital presence by the first panel. We had a break, in which Meg Rosoff signed books, and I caught up on my family troubles before resolutely silencing my phone and deciding to mingle. This was followed by the first breakout session – my chosen session was on how to edit because, frankly, I don’t need to be told more and newer creative ways to spend time on the internet, what I need is some discipline and work advice! The session was led by Fiona Shaw, a novelist and lecturer from Northumbria University, and it was both nerve-wracking and motivating.

Fiona’s advice was very thorough, despite only having an hour, and peppered with quotes on the process from notable writers – the most notable of course being Snoopy. The first important piece of advice was to defamiliarize yourself with your work, which is of course very difficult when you yourself have done it so we brainstormed ways of doing this such as reading aloud, changing the format (eg printing it out, putting onto Kindle), and “Most useful of all: put it away for as long as you can. Months would be best!” Fiona also gave advice on finding a reader who isn’t a) yourself, b) over-nice and c) over-critical. I’ll take names of volunteers if anyone would like to do this; you can form an orderly queue, and no pushing at the back, please.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of actually editing, Fiona advised looking at the big stuff first – structure, redundant characters (I particularly like the idea of ‘walk-on parts’, I suspect I have a few characters that exist just to fulfill a single role that I can probably cut), missing or redundant chapters. Look out for ‘stage directions’ – descriptions that add nothing. Fiona observed that these can be vital for a writer trying to visualize the scene as they write but once they’ve done their job they need to be cut.

Cutting is key – murdering darlings left, right and centre. Look out for adverbs and adjectives – use them but make them work. Fiona also mentioned a list of most-used words to look out for and potentially cut.

Finally, the exercise – cutting our words ruthlessly and weighing every one, following the advice of Ursula LeGuin: “Forced to weigh your words, you find out which are the styrofoam and which are the heavy gold.” This really resonated with me and it’s lurking in the back of my mind, ready to be used as a maxim when I bite the bullet and begin editing my current three first draft novels. Anyway, back to the session. I had been asked, on signing up for this session, to bring along two copies of an extract of my work, double spaced. Yes, we had to edit each other’s work (cue dramatic chords). We tried to apply all of the advice Fiona had just given on the poor stranger who happened to be sitting next to us before handing the work back and receiving our own. Before looking over the changes suggested by our ‘editor’, we had to do the same thing on the second copy of our work, then compare the two sets of revisions.

This was really interesting, and actually I was far more ruthless with my own work than the very kind guy sitting next to me. It really opens your eyes though, to see the changes a stranger would make, and to see whether you would make those same changes, forcing you to really think about why you have put something a certain way and how necessary a particular phrase is.

Lunch followed, a packed lunch supplied by the organisers. You went along the counter picking up various components then search for a seat, feeling remarkably like the first day of school. Most people sat alone, casting surreptitious glances around. There are only two likely thought processes going on here: either “I’m supposed to be mingling. Why am I not mingling? They seem nice, maybe I could go sit with them? Or can I make myself look friendly enough for someone to sit down? [apply friendly face with encouraging yet not creepy smile]” OR “Oh god, please don’t sit next to me, I just want to have a think about the conference so far/my WIP/why I couldn’t get the sandwich I wanted. And my head is far too busy to think of clever and witty things to say. [head down, stare intently into paper lunch bag]” Luckily I had already made a friend and she and I and another friendly fella had lunch together chatting about life, the universe and everything writing-related.

After lunch was the second breakout session – this was the real gold dust, the thing I had zoned in on when booking my place. This was a Meet the Agent session, with Jo Unwin, in dialogue with a lady from New Writing North. Jo was incredibly nice and encouraging, and gave us several pieces of good advice. She looks for stuff that is “a bit warm, a bit funny, but with real heart”. She says that agents are looking for work very excitedly, very passionately, but they have a very short time in which to sit down and read submissions, so it really needs to stand out – for example, she will get 30-40 submissions to read in a couple of hours. For this reason (among others), Jo advised researching the agents you are going to submit to carefully to make sure it’s someone likely to be interested in what you write. Google the agency/agent and check out their recent work; have a sense of the kind of book you’ve written and if it chimes with any of their recent signings then it could be a good place to start. She also says that while some agents might be very very busy with long lists, it’s worth checking out their assistants who will be looking to build their own list. Golden tip!

Jo also warned that different agents want different things, so you need to target each submission carefully and give them what they ask for. She also said it’s important to make sure it’s as ready as it can be before sending it, so that if an agent likes what they see you don’t lose that sense of momentum: “very often, if things go well, they go well fast“.

We had the chance to ask questions, and Jo was unfailingly patient and tried to answer all of our questions as well as she could. She also allowed a few brave souls (yes, me included) to approach her after the session; there was an exceptionally brave girl who did a pitch (and was encouraged to submit her manuscript), a lady who tried to give Jo her manuscript to read on the train (pretty sure this would be a no-go for most agents – you could end up with fifty manuscripts to haul around with you!) and me, asking if Jo usually found herself inundated with submissions after doing an event like this and if so, would it be better to wait. Jo said that no, send the work when it’s ready to send – which after this weekend I’m rather more keenly aware that it isn’t…yet.

The final session was another panel event, on what’s hot and what’s not. This featured Jo, Francesca Main from Picador, Anna James from The Bookseller and Rachael Kerr from Unbound (a crowd-funding publisher, exciting!). This was also the point at which my phone ran out of battery so I couldn’t live-tweet. Sob.

A fairly universal opinion was that knowing what’s hot and what’s not is not necessarily that helpful. As Jo pointed out, both now and in her previous session, by the time a book reaches the shelves it’s been through an agent, reworked, gone through the publisher and the whole process could be a couple of years, so basing your writing on what’s hot now means you’re out of date already. She said “be aware of the world around you, not just the publishing world” which I personally think is very sound advice. In a similar vein, Rachael said that publishing is a notoriously copycat industry and successes can be driven by readers rather than predicted by publishers, giving an example of the ‘nice books about nature’ type that are popular now.

Following on from this, Francesca said that “Readers are hot!” She is driven by what she thinks readers want and looks at popular trends more in terms of marketing a book the editor loved instead of ‘hot’. She also said “plot is hot”, which was echoed by Anna who said that “what’s always hot is a good book and a strong voice”. Anna’s enthusiasm for a good book and a strong voice shone this afternoon, and I genuinely couldn’t keep up with the books she was excited about coming out!

Suggestions to help writers were to get peer reviews, for example from Jottify, or the Writers Workshop. There was also general consensus that true stories based on real people were popular; Francesca advised finding something “at once very universal and very specific” for example an event that is specific to one person but draws in bigger universal themes such as grief.

The panel closed with everyone saying the things they were looking forward to this year (too many again to keep up with!) and the day closed there.

Judging by the swells of chatter and noise as people left the venue, I’d say pretty much everyone found the day just as interesting, motivating and downright exciting as I did. It’s now a week and half since the conference and people are still talking about it on twitter with the hashtag #NclWritingConf, and blogging about it (*cough*). Not only did we get to hear from and talk to some incredibly knowledgeable and passionate people in the world of books, but we have gone back to our notepads and computers and we’re looking at our work just a little bit differently, with maybe fresher eyes or new resolutions.

Roll on 2016’s conference.

Newcastle Writing Conference 2015: Do It Yourself Part One.

I went to my first every writing conference at the weekend – Newcastle Writing Conference, arranged by New Writing North at Northumbria University. I jumped at the chance to go because the lineup was just brilliant – the speakers included Meg Rosoff! As it turned out, family worries made the day get off to a shaky start but getting regular text updates reassured me enough to settle down and enjoy the day.

I was tweeting a good bit – with the hashtag #NclWritingConf, if you’re interested – until disaster in the afternoon. My phone battery ran right down. I had stern words with it; I said “Look, I need to tweet this, it’s fabulous and I want to share these nuggets of wisdom”. I cajoled and begged and promised to give it a long lie down in a dark room at the end of the day,  but my phone refused to co-operate and the battery died. With my last tweet I pledged to blog, so here I am. Luckily I scribbled loads of notes, so I don’t have to rely on my scatty memory.

Keynote address – Meg Rosoff. I’ll be honest, I have had a MAD few weeks so in between booking and turning up, I’d sort of forgotten the details. I got in on Saturday morning, scanned through the lineup and choked on my coffee – getting to hear Meg Rosoff talk was a massive treat and a real privilege. Her first bit of advice (after a not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek recommendation to throw the computer away to avoid distraction, very apt bearing in mind the digital focus to the day!) was to not be in a hurry. I’d say that I was fairly middle of the road in terms of the age range attending, being in my mid-30s, so I imagine that advice hit home with many, many people. We do have a tendency to think that “if I’m not a bestseller by the time I’m 16 I’m a complete failure” (or is that just me?!) and it was HUGELY reassuring to hear that Meg didn’t start writing creatively until she was in her mid-40s. Her story resonated very much with me, and in some parts it could have been my story (for example, being a precocious reader as a child and thinking it just isn’t worth writing if I can’t write like [insert idolised author here]).  Other gems of advice from Meg included the fact that there’s never just one story to anything, and this (paraphrased from notes!):

Think of your brain as a colander. Everything that happens to you goes in the colander and 99% of it goes through. Every once in a while something will stick. For example, if people are in a train carriage going through scenery, every single person will take something different from the scenery; some people won’t even see the scenery because they’ll be looking around, or at their phone. The thing you notice from the scenery, the thing that sticks in the colander, none of it is the same as anyone else’s and that is your strength and your weapon.

It’s not who you know, or whether you “know” plot, it’s about what you have to say that no-one else can. She used the example of her first (failed) submission to an agent, to show that it helped her find out how her brain worked and the kind of things that ‘stuck in her colander’ (the pony book with too much sex. You had to be there.). Meg said you have to write for who you are – although she tried to write a pony book, she has quite a dark brain and that was what she had to write – the rest, as they say, is history.

Another brilliant piece of advice comes from her asking her first agent how to write YA, and this is what she relayed to us: forget about the audience and the rules. “Write the fiercest book you can write and I’ll find someone to read it” was the advice of the agent. Forget the rules and write fiercely – I love this. I don’t think I’ve heard ‘write fiercely’ before and there is something very liberating, very energetic and motivating, about the idea of writing fiercely.

Meg’s keynote address had the absolutely perfect effect of firing us all up for the first panel: How to Stand Out In A Digital Age. The panel was Ben Willis from Transworld, book vlogger Sanne Vliegenthart, author Nikesh Shukla (whose video Meatspace is great fun, highly recommended) and book blogger Simon Savidge. The panel had a variety of approaches to the brave new world of social media but consistently the message is “Be Yourself”. As Ben pointed out, there are loads of different platforms, with twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc – find the space you’re comfortable with and do it well. I’ve had a fairly extensive break from twitter and blogging, both of which I enjoy, and this talk really gave me some motivation to re-engage and enjoy these platforms which I like and IMHO I do well.

Authenticity really came across as an important point. Simon recommended, for book reviews, to put some emotion behind them and show how the book connects with you. As I’ve done a few reviews here in the past this was something I’d like to take on board and do better. Nikesh advised using social media as both a user or content absorber as well as having something to promote yourself – use it as if you had NOTHING to promote! He also recommended simplicity – his  Meatspace video he described as “A simple idea that revelled in its own stupidity!” If you can write your idea on the back of a fag packet, it’s worth considering.

Sanne brought a new perspective – vlogging. I’d never heard of BookTube and now I’ve gone and subscribed to a bunch of BookTube channels. She mentioned lots of formats and themes: bookshelf tours, tags,  book hauls. I may have to unsubscribe if I’m being consumed with avarice for all of these wonderful new books. Sanne said she basically wanted to join in the community and started making videos. The importance of community was underlined heavily – basically, people want to engage and be part of a conversation and digital media are offering a whole new world of ways in which to do that.

That brings me to the end of Part One – seriously, this event was far too packed for just one post!

Game Night

We were in Smyth’s toy shop yesterday. Emily had fallen over in the previous shop and bumped her head on the concrete floor so in the classic manner of paranoid parents we were walking around trying to decide if we should get her to hospital or if she would probably be ok. Smyth’s seemed a good place to distract Daniel while we quietly panicked. We decided that Emily was, on reflection, absolutely fine and turned our attention to the toys.

The board games aisle was like a flash back twenty-0dd years. Daniel, being Nearly Five, is right at the age where we could start playing family games and I was looking at what was available. Now obviously there was Cluedo, Monopoly, Scrabble and junior versions of these. I mean, y’know, these are classics. I was more surprised by some of the others. Here’s a few of the games I saw yesterday that had me exclaiming “Eeh, I remember playing that!”

  • Hungry Hippos. My cousins had this and it was played almost every time I went to their house. I never won but I remember shrieking and jumping while pounding the levers frantically to try and get the last little white ball. Which always rolled away to the opposite corner of the board.
  • Buckaroo. Brought out in a million different versions, whether a cheap one trying to be virtually the same and just within copyright limits or special editions (like a Zingzillas one we bought for Andrew’s little cousin).
  • Guess Who. Now in an “Extra” edition. What? Extra what? Sheesh. Don’t mess with a classic.
  • Mousetrap. Not one I actually ever played but I remember it doing the rounds of my schoolfriends. And I vaguely remember a tv advert for it.
  • Operation. Now this was fantastic. One of my primary school friends had this and I was always quite good at it. I think I took it a bit too seriously; I have a memory of trying to remove the poor patient’s heart with utter concentration while my friends were rather enjoying the buzz when they touched the side. I may have shouted at them, I’m not prepared to commit myself.

I don’t really like it when they update the games, as you might have gathered from my comment on Guess Who above. I mean, take Monopoly. Now I’m not against a regional edition as a special; we have a French edition which we love. BUT. Why do we need to make a Monopoly with credit cards? I don’t want my kids getting the credit card habit when they’re eight! Not unless they’re buying stuff for me and paying it off with their pocket money anyway. Ahem. And Game of Life – another one I didn’t actually play but it was everywhere. Now it’s Adventure edition. Like Life isn’t enough of an adventure? Pah.

Of course, that could just be me getting old. We drove on a road that we haven’t been on for a while the other day and they’re completely rejigging the layout. As we passed the sign saying “New Road Layout Ahead” I actually muttered to Andrew “What was wrong with the way it was?” He didn’t reply. He was too busy laughing.

Failure & Finishing

Uh oh. That was a bad start to the A-Z Challenge, wasn’t it? When I realised I’d missed C, I thought I’d combine it with D in a post. Then I didn’t get to do one for D either so I thought I’d try really hard to combine C, D and E (while thinking “Oh crikey me how on earth am I going to do that??”). But yesterday was a bit mad too, so I didn’t get that done. Now, there is no way in the world I’m going to be able to combine C, D, E and F so I’m going to admit failure and consign C, D and E to the great blog heaven in the sky.

Failure is a recurring theme – for me and, I imagine, for most people. Things we haven’t done, or haven’t done as well as we could have. I failed to do many things and some of them I’ve made peace with, some continue to be regrets. Failure can be particularly painful when you suffer from low self-esteem as it reinforces the negative impression you have of yourself. It also tends to be self-perpetuating. You fail at something, so you think “I really must do better next time” and not only do you set up another set of hurdles for yourself, you also put more importance on not falling at them. If/when something goes wrong with this new plan, you’ve failed again, you’ve failed worse, and you’re generally a failure at life. So I’ll start another thing, and on it goes. The achievement of actually finishing something is immense, as when I finished my first draft of Skive which is now thoroughly cooled off and awaiting rewrites. But there are still many, many past and current failures drowning out that little success.

Failure is also very much down to perception. I tell myself I’m a failure because I don’t always complete things, I don’t get done the things that I both want and need to get done, and I have unfinished manuscripts or blog challenges or housework. Beloved Husband thinks I have unrealistic expectations of myself and that I’m doing pretty well to keep on top of the house and look after the kids. I think he’s lovely but biased. Another cycle!

I would love to be able to find a way of changing my perception. I’d love to be able to look at my failures and think “At least I gave it a go.” I’ll give pretty much anything a go, which should be exciting and interesting instead of a quick ticket to “Oops, I Did It (Or Rather, Didn’t) Again.” I think it could be helped a lot by realising that nothing is permanent. Because I leave something to one side for now, it doesn’t mean I’ll never come back to it, it just means that now isn’t the right time. My historical novel has been a Work In Progress for about two years now but it doesn’t mean I’ve failed to write it, just that I haven’t finished it YET because it’s not the right time.

At school I was a languages whizz. It was always what I was going to do, I even did the first year of a degree in Interpreting and Translating. Since I did my GCSEs a million years ago I’ve had two huge dictionaries, one in French, one in Spanish, and a few verb books. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw them away even though I’m no longer considering a career in languages. We had a book clearout the other day and I put the verb books on the pile of books to go. Then I picked them up and thought about one of my big regrets, my failure to finish my degree. Beloved Husband said “You know, you don’t have to get rid of them. You can always take it back up again any time.” He’s right you know, but don’t tell him. I haven’t failed at languages, I just didn’t finish my degree. One of my ambitions is to do an Open University degree in the Arts; I’m keeping my languages books in case some of my modules end up being languages, and I finish what I started.