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I love writing romance, but I enjoy much more about the subject than that. Reading Romance cheers me up when I’m feeling down. The research I do is a big part of my working life.

Better Than…

…writing Romance is discovering how many people enjoy reading it. Last week I wrote about the release of my first Pocket Novel, The Wishing Tree. Lots of people have written lovely things about my debut Pocket Novel, and I’ve been really touched.

I didn’t think things could get better than that. Then EsCeeGee responded to a request in my newsletter (you can sign up for that here). I asked for shelfie photos of my new book baby. They sent me this photo of an empty Pocket Novel hanger in W H Smith. Every copy of The Wishing Tree had been sold!

The story I originally wrote to cheer myself up has found a much bigger audience. Don’t worry, EsCeeGee, I’m sending you your very own copy of The Wishing Tree.

…Reading Romance?

When I was commissioned to write my first non-ficton book, Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol, I discovered the joy of research. I enjoyed diving deep into the archives of Bristol so much that I was disappointed when that research came to an end.

A visit to the University of Gloucestershire in 2018 took my mind off that. My son was considering a course in computing, and it was my turn to do the Uni Open Day Run with him.

Technology really isn’t my friend, so while he was busy at a computer keyboard, I got talking with a tutor from the Humanities department. I told him I’d always regretted leaving school at sixteen. He suggested I should become a mature student. You can read more about what happened after that on several of my blog posts, starting with this one.

The moral of that story, which ended with me achieving an MA (with Distinction!) in Creative and Critical Writing, is Say Yes to Every* Opportunity . Don’t give yourself a chance to have second thoughts. You never know what you can do until you try.

If you’ve read Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol, which of the real-life women’s stories included in it would you like to see expanded into a full-length book? I would love an excuse to spend a few more months in the Bristol Archive!

You can find out more about me here, and see some of my books here.

*Legal!

We’re now seven weeks into 2022, so the New Year isn’t so new any more. I don’t know about you, but my resolutions are already pretty dog-eared. “I will stop snacking between tea and bed” was the first one to go, closely followed by Tech Sabbath.

My willpower is non-existent when it comes to dipping into the biscuit tin before bedtime. The obvious answer is not to make or buy cake and biscuits. The problem is, I keep telling myself it’s not fair to deprive the rest of the family when I’m the only one with no willpower.

I have a great set of dog-walking waterproofs which fitted perfectly before lockdown, but I can now barely fasten them up. That is a powerful incentive to sit on my hands each evening, but will it be enough? I’ve decided to definitely give up snacking for Lent so pancakes on Shrove Tuesday (1st March) will be my last foodie treat until Easter. I hope…

For better or worse I get my news from the BBC World Service, or Radio Four. I don’t need to trawl the internet. But then, there’s always some cute cat video, or “celebrity” gossip popping up online that the BBC is far too sensible to cover. That’s why a Tech Sabbath (switching off my computer at 5pm one day per week and not switching it back on again for twenty-four hours) is very hard for me to achieve. I really need to know about all the local houses for sale, even if I’ve got no intention of ever leaving Tottering Towers!

One resolution I have managed to keep is to write every day. My target is a thousand words, and so far I’ve managed to complete several short stories already this year. I’ve also tried writing Flash Fiction for the first time. I’ve been helped to achieve all this by the methods set out in The Organised Writer by Antony Johnston. You can find out more about that book here.

If you’ve signed up for the Romantic Novelists’ Association‘s New Writers’ Scheme this year, you’ll know the deadline is 31st July. It makes life a lot easier for Janet Gover, the scheme’s co-ordinator, if you don’t leave it to the last minute to submit your manuscript.

As a Reader for the New Writers’ Scheme, I’m keen that everyone’s entries are submitted in plenty of time. It’s lovely to read new stories and discover fresh voices, so please try and have your work ready for submission long before the end of July. You’ll need to spend plenty of time editing to make sure your work is as good as it can be, so the polishing process should start in early summer.

The minimum word count needed for the New Writers’ Scheme is 10,000 words. That may seem a lot, but if you were to start with a blank page this morning and write only a hundred words per day for the next fifteen weeks, you’d have a first draft of at least 10,500 words by 4th June. Then you could spend a whole month editing your work, and STILL make Janet smile by getting your entry in well before the closing date!

When I started university as a very mature student (you can read about that here) my daughter gave me an invaluable tip about deadlines: make a diary note well in advance. Try and get everything done by that date. Then you’ll never get caught out. If your work is finished early, great. If you hit a snag, you’ll still have plenty of time to put it right.

If you want some motivation, I’ve got some advice for kick-starting your next writing project here.

I began my writing career by producing photographs and non-fiction articles for national magazines such as The Lady, and the Royal Horticultural Society’s The Garden. Then I was seduced by romance, and started working in the genre. Twenty-one novels later I’ve sold nearly three million books, which have been translated into lots of different languages. On the right you can see the cover of the recently-released Manga version of my Harlequin Modern Romance, Weight of the Crown.

For the past few years I’ve been acting as a reader for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme. Members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association who are unpublished submit their work to be assessed by professional authors like me. Graduates of the scheme include a fellow member of the RNA’s Marcher Chapter, the lovely Jan Baynham. As an unpublished author, Jan submitted her novel Her Mother’s Secret to the NWS. It went on to be published, and Jan’s career took off.

You can find out more about joining the Romantic Novelists’ Association here.

If you want to write romance, start by reading everything in the genre that appeals to you. Once you’ve got a feeling for the type of stories you like best, three letters will help you craft your own romantic novel. They are A.C.E:

Audience and Atmosphere

Characters and Conflict

Expectation and Experience

A is for Audience. Always keep your reader in mind. Reading romance is an escape, so whether your story is historical, contemporary, conventional, or alternative, give your audience what they are looking for — a story with plenty of Atmosphere. The swish of skirts and glitter of candlelight against silverware sets the scene for an historical novel. Sun, sand, and champagne sipped on a yacht supplies the glamour every contemporary romance needs.

C is for Characters. Focus on quality, rather than quantity. When it comes to romance, the fewer speaking parts, the better. Bring in other people only to enhance the reader’s understanding of your principal characters, or to deepen the Conflict between them. In this instance, the word conflict refers to the dramatic tension between how a character feels and the public face they adopt. For example, Pride and Prejudice has a whole raft of characters, but each plays a vital role in exposing the real Elizabeth and Darcy. Those two central characters are confined within the rigid class structure of their era, while their strong emotions create the inner turmoils which drive the plot.

E is for Expectation, which brings us back to your audience. Anyone choosing a romance to read is looking for a central character they can relate to, who is swept off their feet by their idea of a perfect lover. There’s no satisfaction for your reader if the path of fictional true love runs smoothly, so make it a roller coaster of Emotion (another E!) and Experiences. Let your central characters be faced with situations that test them in the same way your readers are tested in their own lives. Readers love to follow the journeys of heroes and heroines as they come to terms with hardship, pain, separation, and every other kind of disaster before finding their Happy Ever After.

Love conquers all is a cliché, but it’s perfect in this situation as it describes what readers like to read about. Your job as a writer is to give them what they want.

Next time I’ll be talking about how you can avoid the three common mistakes that get a manuscript rejected without being read. Subscribe to my blog by using the button above, so you don’t miss out!

…and I’m finding it VERY hard to settle down to any writing work. April here in Gloucestershire was dry, bitterly cold, but mostly sunny. Although I’m working on a new book (you can find out more about that here and here), at this time the natural world has a powerful pull.

Wild cherries in the wood are hung with snow, as A.E.Housman put it, and here in the orchard the Morello cherry is an absolute picture. It’s about twenty feet high and almost as wide, and when I took this photograph it was humming with all kinds of bees and other insects.

It produces tonnes of fruit each year, but we’re lucky if we get to eat more than a few kilos. The tree is far too big to net properly, and the birds love those cherries as much as we do!

Morello cherries are too sour to eat raw, and we like them best cooked gently for a few minutes with sugar and a little water. This makes a delicious sauce to pour over warm chocolate brownies, or vanilla ice cream…or you can do as we do, and top a brownie with a scoop of ice cream, then drizzle warm cherry sauce over the whole lot. That’s a really indulgent treat!

Yesterday I went to check the greenhouse at 6am and disturbed a sounder of eighteen boar and their piglets, who were grubbing about in the wood which lies on the other side of our boundary fence. They scampered away through the trees, leaving behind ploughed earth where yesterday there had been a carpet of bluebells.

It’s such a shame the boar are so destructive as now there are few free-roaming sheep to eat the local wildflowers, orchids, ladies’ smock, primroses and cowslips were beginning to seed themselves around. They won’t survive for long with the concentration of boar we have here now. The medieval wild boar only had piglets once a year. The creatures running wild in the forest now are hybrids, which have been developed to breed all year round. With no natural predators, their number have exploded.

That’s why my garden is surrounded by a good fence, with barbed wire buried at the base to stop the pigs heaving up the wire and posts to get in. It means I can grow all sorts of things without worrying about finding the place trashed at regular intervals.

The heroine of my current work in progress loves growing plants and when her family hits hard times has to find a way to turn her hobby into a business. I’m off to the greenhouse now to do some detailed research. Well, that’s my excuse!

Last week I told you about how I was trying to create a fictional English village as the setting for my next book. Lots of readers contacted me, either here or on social media and gave me ideas for features to include in the perfect fictional English village. The things mentioned most often were:

• Pub
• Church (which surprised me, as rural congregations have dwindled over recent years)
• Somewhere to sit and watch the world go by (preferably with ducks to feed!)
• War memorial (another surprise, although the popularity of soldier silhouettes probably explains it)

Lots of people suggested things other than buildings that went to create a village atmosphere. As a writer, I found those ideas equally useful. The things that cropped up most often were:

• Local characters – there’s at least one in every village, ready to give you the gossip, or a long-range weather forecast
• Peace and quiet, interrupted only by…
• Birdsong
• Dark skies with no light pollution, perfect for romance under the stars

and two of my favourite benefits of country living,

• A little local shop
• Friendly locals (rather than the more unusual characters)

We have great examples of both right here in the middle of our village. Pip’s shop really is open all hours, and shuts only twice a year: on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. It’s within walking distance so you don’t need to bother with the car, and it’s saved my bacon (and milk, and tea bags, and coffee!) any number of times when there’s been a last minute call for school cookery ingredients or bits for science project.

Pre-Covid, our village shop was a meeting place as much a shop. It was somewhere you could find out all the local news even quicker than it featured on Facebook! All that changed with social distancing and face masks.

It’s very sad. I hope things can get back to something close to normal soon.

I wrote here about planning my next book, which is going to be set in my adopted home county of Gloucestershire. For the sake of the plot I’m not setting it in one identifiable place, but instead I’m picking buildings, shops, and settings from several of my favourite villages to create somewhere that plenty of things can happen to my fictional family.

Here is St. Endec’s church, where the grandfather of two of my main characters is a member of the band of bellringers.

It’s actually a photograph of St Giles, Maisemore, taken from the lime avenue which I think was planted as part of celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 (I’m sure somebody will put me right on that if I’ve mis-remembered!). This lane makes a sweet-smelling stroll during the summer. With Maisemore apiaries only half a mile away as the bee flies, the place is buzzing during June and July!

Here’s the local pub my characters use…

Although this picture is of the Red Lion in Avebury, the pub in my book is called the Bear and Ragged Staff (or “The Bear “for short). When I was young and single, the Red Lion was about half-way between where I lived, and the home of the man I thought was my Mr Right. When I discovered how Wrong he was, I dropped him like a red-hot bar meal and have never been back. That’s a shame, because it used to be a great place for an assignation!

Here’s the village duck-pond, which is actually part of the mill in Lower Slaughter…

The Cotswolds was only an hour’s drive from where I was born in Somerset, but the countryside and cottages are completely different in character. As I child I thought the villages of Upper and Lower Slaughter must have been the site of terrible battles but the truth was much closer to my soggy Somerset home than I realised. The Slaughters are named after the old English words “slough” or “slothre”, which means muddy.

My heroine’s sister lives in one of these cottages in Arlington Row, Bibury…

Like many beautiful Cotswold settings, these cottages have appeared on all sorts of chocolate boxes, calendars, and postcards. That complicated roof-line and all those hundreds of little roof tiles give this row another claim to fame. If you have a British passport, it’s one of the (hopefully) impossible-to-forge watermarks inside.

I’ve squirrelled away all these photographs in the images file of my in the Scrivener database I talked about here, but I’m still looking for things to include in my identikit Cotswold setting. Can you help me pack my fictional village with all the right things?

When you think about the countryside, what says “England” to you?

My series Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity ended with From Inspiration to In Print, which followed my short story Catch Me if You Can all the way from the ideas stage to publication in The People’s Friend. This blog post skips through my writing career from first moments to first big disappointment.

I’ve always wanted to write fiction, but until I sold my first book I earned money by writing non-fiction articles and producing photographs for magazines such as The Lady and The Garden. Among other things, I wrote monthly gardening tips, and pieces on how to keep poultry and pigs.

Once I began to get articles commissioned on a regular basis, I could afford to go back to writing fiction. At first I wrote short stories, as they fitted in well with my non-fiction writing schedule.

I love listening to the radio, so trying to produce some radio drama was an obvious move. During my first year as a full-time writer I was shortlisted for the BBC Young Writers’ Competition with an historical drama, but found writing stories and novels much easier than producing a script!

How I came to be published in book form for the first time is a saga in itself. One morning on Woman’s Hour, a writer was interviewed about her new historical novel. It sounded like a great read, but in those days OH and I were poverty-stricken newly-weds. Unable to justify buying a hardback book, I ordered it from the local library.

I can still remember how indignant I felt when I read the opening sentence, which went something like this…

The beautiful heroine looked down from her vantage point on the top of Toghill at workmen busily building Bath’s Royal Crescent….

That was written by someone looking at a map, not a view. I was born only a few miles from Toghill. For anyone to see Bath, let alone pick out workmen on the Royal Crescent, they would need to be about twenty metres tall and blessed with the eyesight of a hawk! There is a great view from the top of Toghill, but it is in the direction of Bristol, not Bath. On a clear day, you can see the Severn estuary. The city of Bath is not far behind you, it’s true, but because of the lie of the land the city is invisible until you travel several kilometres south east from the top of Toghill.

I decided then and there it would be a poor show if I couldn’t write something a bit better than that. Taking the script I’d written for the BBC, I reworked it into an historical novel. This was in the days before the internet, so all my research had to be done during trips to Gloucester library.

During my many visits, I used the library’s copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to find a possible publisher for my book. That was disappointing. Only one of the publishers would accept work direct from writers. All the others dealt only with agents.

The single publisher that would accept unagented manuscripts was Harlequin, under their Masquerade imprint. Just before Christmas one year I sent off the first three chapters and a synopsis, as requested in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. In January I got a lovely letter asking me for the rest of the story. I sent it off straight away, together with return postage (as Snail Mail was the only way in those days).

I didn’t sit back to wait. I kept busy, creating and submitting more articles and photographs on gardening, which is how I fill my time when I’m not writing. At the beginning of May I opened the letter every writer dreams of getting—Knight’s Pawn had been accepted for publication!

The first thing I did was to check out the most impressive-sounding literary agents in the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. I wrote to them, saying I’d landed a contract to write historical novels for Harlequin Mills and Boon. I got a reply from one of the biggest agents in the country almost by return, inviting me up to a meeting at their headquarters in London.

I was shown into a plush office where I was given tea and cake by a lovely guy who said it was his first week in the job. He sweet-talked me into agreeing to become his client, and said he’d get a contract couriered to me as soon as it had been drawn up.

I was so excited, I spent the journey home from London working on the first draft of another book. A week passed, then ten days, but no contract arrived. I was climbing the walls with excitement until the awful day two weeks after my trip when a slim white envelope arrived.

It was an apology dictated by the head of the firm. It was their policy not to take on clients who wrote historical fiction for Mills and Boon, the letter said. The Harlequin contracts were pretty much “boilerplate”— that is, there was little if any room for an agent to negotiate different terms. The man who interviewed me hadn’t been fully aware of the circumstances, the letter said, and so with regret they didn’t feel able to offer me a contract after all.

It was tough, discovering I was that new agent’s first big mistake, but this cautionary tale just goes to show that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

That was years ago and I never did find an agent, but it doesn’t seem to have done my career much harm. I may have missed some opportunities and I’d love someone to take control of my writing calendar, but I’ve always had plenty of work, and I get to keep 100% of my pre-tax profits. If I had an agent, I’d lose 15% of it, in their commission!

What’s been the biggest excitement in your writing life?

Part Eleven: From Inspiration, to In Print…

This week, I’m using one of my own short stories as a real-life example of all the steps—from motivation to publication—that have appeared in this series.

In 2018 I took my seventeen-year-old-son to a university open day and ended up signing on for a Masters course myself. There had to be a story in that experience. To answer the question Why Write? posed in Part One of Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity, I wanted to satisfy my creative instinct, capture my experience of going back into education as a mature student, and do it in a way that would entertain others.

Readers like to relate to characters, and giving the people in my story everyday worries would make them convincing. Part Ten of my series included the top concerns of people today, two of which are ageing, and work-related worries. That pair of posers certainly kept me awake while I was trying to decide whether or not to sign up for university. I worried that I was too old, and that my poor school record (I left at sixteen) might mean I couldn’t keep up with the other students.

Projecting my fears onto a fictional character and making sure she overcame them might persuade others to become mature students, too.

In real life, it turned out that I was worrying about nothing. There were people of all ages on my course. One of them had children older than me! I survived all the coursework and assessments, and emerged at the end of two years with lots more life experience, and a distinction.

My short story project was always going to be an optimistic piece, so The People’s Friend was the obvious choice when it came to finding my audience, as discussed in Part Three of Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity. That magazine’s combination of upbeat fiction and articles, crafting, cooking, and beautiful illustrations has kept it popular for generations. The People’s Friend has exacting standards but provides lots of information to help potential writers— see here for details.

Parts Four and Five of my series centred on inspiration, and using your own experiences as a starting point. I decided my short story would be built around a woman wondering whether she was up for a huge challenge. Every other day, I face a struggle of my own like that. I’m built for comfort rather than speed, but I force myself to use a treadmill for the good of my health. I may not be fast, but I keep going! In contrast, one of our friends is a workaholic. His doctor is always telling him to diet, stop smoking, and take up exercise. He’s never got around to doing any of that, although he did try walking rugby…once!

Those two contrasting real-life people gave me the basis of my central fictional characters. I then needed a theme for my story. Waving my last “baby” off to university was hard, but it led directly to me having a great time there myself. That idea of turning a bittersweet experience into an advantage was something I wanted to share. It proves that life doesn’t end when your children move on. Finding something which keeps your brain active, gets you out of the house, and involves meeting other people can help fill the gap in your life.

Part Six of my series dealt with turning thoughts into a manuscript. As I was only going to be writing a short story rather than a novel, I didn’t use Scrivener for this project. I used the prose template I have on my computer, which automatically creates manuscripts in 12-point Times New Roman, double spaced, with wide margins, and numbered pages.

I typed my notes straight onto my computer, saving my work regularly both as a document and onto a thumb drive. I named my file Restart_Short_Story, as that working title plays on the heroine’s aim of restarting her life. It also suggests a change in her relationship with her husband, and gives a nod toward running, which is central to the plot. The word Restart formed the header on every page of my manuscript, keeping me focussed on those core themes.

Some of Restart was written during sourdough-making sessions. My recipe requires the dough to be worked four times, with a ten minute break between each burst of kneading. The kitchen timer would go off just when I’d got into the swing of writing a scene. That meant I couldn’t wait to get back to it (once I’d scraped the dough off my fingers). Two more important writing tips: never get flour on your keyboard—and the best time to end a writing session is when it’s going really well. That way, you’ll be raring to go next time you start work.

Gradually my story Restart took shape. I kept Part Nine‘s Four C’s of Creative Writing (Character, Contrast, Charisma, and Conflict) in mind as I worked. Quiet housewife and mother Sue is a foil for her boisterous, workaholic husband Malcolm. He can be annoying, but his charisma is balanced with charm. Sue is keen to pick up the ambition she abandoned when they had a family. I made use of contrast in my writing as well as in my characters, so there’s internal monologue as well as dialogue, and the settings vary between a car interior, and out in the fresh air.

As well as my central middle-aged couple, an elderly lady, and a teenager also appear giving contrasts in age, too. I wrote the story in the first person, from heroine Sue’s point of view as—while this story is complete fiction, and this couple definitely aren’t me and OH— her hopes and worries were based on my hopes and worries. I really did write this story from my heart!

The internal conflict which is vital to keep readers hooked is introduced right at the start of the story. Sue secretly wants to investigate the university course but she is afraid she is too old, and keeps quiet. She knows Malcolm will laugh at her dream, because he never takes anything seriously. Malcolm has an inner conflict of his own. He hides his worries about what will happen now they’re rattling around in their family home alone by covering it with humour.

Once I had those characters and their hidden concerns in place, I added some external conflict to add excitement. Sue and Malcolm witness a mugging. She chases the thief and catches him, which convinces her she’s fitter and more determined than she thought. Malcolm’s pride and confidence in Sue’s ability is obvious, and by the end of the story they have reaffirmed their love for each other. Sue decides to sign up for university, while Malcolm is going to look again at his attitude to work, and his health.

In Part Two of this series I wrote about finding people to support you in your writing ambitions. I usually use workshop sessions organised by the Marcher chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, although the first outing for this short story was a university workshop. A well-run workshop is a brilliant way to improve a piece of work. You can learn a lot by helping other writers, too.

A good workshop is one where only constructive criticism is allowed. As novelist Joanna Maitland puts it, offer three stars and a wish. That is, aim to give three pieces of praise before you make a suggestion for improvement. It’s a classic example of do-as-you-would-be-done-by!

When I had finished the workshop revisions, I went back and checked the length required by The People’s Friend. Restart would fit nicely into one of their 2,000-word slots, so during the editing process I made sure the word count didn’t go over that figure. When I was happy with the result I saved it onto a thumb drive again, then sent a copy by email to my beta reader. I copied myself in on the email, so I had an insurance copy safe in my inbox.

Once the story was returned to me and I had made the revisions suggested by my reader, I added a front page which set out the working title Restart, my name, the word count, and had my full contact details at the bottom. I copied those, and pasted them onto the last page of my manuscript. After adding the word END and the word count below the final paragraph of my story, I sent it off to The People’s Friend.

Every publisher receives thousands of submissions every year, so waiting for them to respond can be frustrating. Keep writing while you wait. It makes the time pass much more quickly, and means you’ll have more pieces to submit.

Although I called my story and computer file Restart, I never assumed that would be the title of the published work. They are almost always changed for publication, and Restart duly became Catch Me If You Can. There are a number of reasons why publishers change titles. They may have already used that one in the past, their house style may require titles that consist of more than one word, or it has to be a certain length to suit the layout of the typeset page, for example.

That’s the story of my story, from initial ideas about Restart, right through to its submission and eventual publication as Catch Me If You Can. Like everything worth waiting for, success in creative writing takes time but every second is a pleasure, and it’s an amazing feeling to see your name in print.

I’m taking a short break from blogging about writing to get my PhD schedule sorted out. If there’s anything you’d like me to cover in this blog in future, or if you’d like to read Catch Me If You Can, contact me and I’ll see what I can do.

Stay safe!

Part Nine: The Four C’s of Creative Writing

The four C’s of creative writing are Character, Charisma, Contrast, and Conflict—so here’s what you need to know about them…

Character

Every human being on this planet is the sum of all their past experiences. From princes to paupers and everyone in between, the way they were treated as a child, their birth position in their family, education, health, work (or lack of it) and every other life experience comes together to create a unique person. We’re all works in progress!

Your past is what makes you, you. It’s the same with fictional characters. To make the life they live between the pages of your book feel real, give each of them a past. The very best characters capture the imagination of readers so well, it feels as though they will have a life beyond the end of the story.

Kate Walker provides a great template for developing your characters in her 12-Point Guide to Writing Romance. I adapt her idea by adding some questions of my own about background and circumstances each time I start a new writing project. This creates a database for every new fictional character, tailored to the story I’m writing.

Some of the most interesting questions to ask yourself about your characters concern their childhood. The position of children within their family is a fascinating subject, and important. The upbringing of an only child will be very different from the life of a youngster who is the middle one of three (potentially bossed around by the eldest child, and invisible if their younger sibling needs attention). And what about twins? How much of their character depends on nature, and how much on nurture? Perhaps their mother saw one as “good” and the other as “attention seeking”. The treatment you get as a child has a lasting effect.

I’ve never been a believer in horoscopes but when the poet Paul Groves gave me a book on Zodiac Types, I had to admit that there were eerie similarities between my own character, and those of my birth sign. After that, I compared the personality types of all my family members and friends with the book. It scored more hits than misses, so I’ve used it ever since to help me create characters. Whether or not astrology actually affects our day-to-day life, the way this book lists linked traits of personality, body type, suggestions for ideal careers (or jobs to avoid!) and other details provides exactly the sort of information to kick-start anyone’s imagination.

Charisma

Whether they are heroes or villains, the best fictional characters have charisma. This is much more than simple charm. It’s almost indefinable, but it’s obvious when you see it, or read about a character who has it.  

Charisma is a combination of confidence and determination, together with an ability to communicate, and inspire. Charismatic people aren’t always “nice”. Some of the most charismatic people in real life aren’t liked by everyone. Eva Perón and Donald Trump are both examples of charisma in action, but that doesn’t mean you’d automatically vote for either of them.

In fiction, Pride and Prejudice’s Fitzwilliam Darcy is charismatic: George Wickham is charming. Darcy gets the job done: Wickham basks in admiring glances. The best type of fictional hero combines drive and determination with charm and intelligence. Create characters your readers can recognise, then tune their individual facets up or down to make them either more or less heroic, depending on the part they will play in your story.

Contrast

Keep contrast in mind whenever you are writing. If all your characters think, speak, dress and act in similar ways, it will be difficult for the reader to see them as individuals.

Use different types of setting—interiors, exteriors, town, and country, to add variety to your work and keep your audience interested. Use the weather as shorthand, but avoid slipping into cliché.

Shakespeare set the standard for using weather—imagine how different the opening scene of Macbeth would be if he met the witches on a sun-warmed beach at midsummer! Play with the idea of weather setting the scene by turning the idea around— contrast the furious revelations that end a marriage with the beautiful peace of a summer evening, to highlight how poignant relationships can be. Alternatively, have your lovers brought together by a thunderstorm rather than being torn apart. That idea worked beautifully for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in the Isn’t is a lovely day? routine in the film Top Hat.

Within your story, vary the length of your scenes and chapters. Contrast is also useful in pacing your story. Follow some languid scene-setting with lines of punchy dialogue, or let a violent incident result in a tender love scene, for example when Jack slips away in Titanic.

Conflict

Once you’ve created a great character, give them something to kick against. In the memorable image first used by an anonymous nineteenth-century theatre critic, you need to chase your protagonist(s) up a tree, then throw rocks at them. There’s a time and place for introspective fiction, but at times of stress or boredom most people don’t want to read about Jo Dull from Beigeville. They’ll grab an Ian Fleming, ready to follow James Bond across oceans to exotic locations.

If your hero chases villains around the world leaving a trail of destruction behind them, that’s what is known as external conflict. Plenty of successful books and films rely on little more than that, but including an element of internal conflict adds depth to both characters and storyline.   

External conflict is the sort you see in news bulletins (or Bond films)—war, natural disasters, accidents, fights, financial panics, and so on. Internal conflict is the struggle within a character to reconcile their opposing emotions. They may feel inadequate while trying to live up to the expectations of others, or struggle with the contrast between their public image and private reality.

Internal conflict is the engine driving your character to act in the way they do—guilt, shame, fear, and secret love are some good starting points.

This isn’t the place to discuss the contrast between our contemporary liberal values and the moral strictures of Victorian England, but Holman Hunt’s painting The Awakening Conscience is the perfect example of inner conflict. The painting is packed with the popular imagery of its time and repays careful study, but here’s a quick 101—this unmarried couple are living outside of society (like Lydia and Wickham in Pride and Prejudice). He has been playing the sentimental tune Oft in the Stilly Night. The lyrics of that popular Victorian song are chock-full of longing for the past, and memories of friends and family who have been lost.

She leaps to her feet in a torment of inner conflict: the life of a mistress at this time was shameful and short. It almost always ended with pregnancy, a sexually-transmitted disease, a descent into prostitution, or a combination of all three. Brought up at a time when everything not permitted was forbidden, this woman’s childhood would have been spent listening to Sunday sermons about wickedness, and veiled hints about the fate of adulterous relationships (don’t get me started on A.L. Egg’s Past and Present, Numbers 1, 2, and 3 or we’ll be here all day!) Her family will either have disowned her when she ran away, or she has been too ashamed to make contact.

Holman Hunt has caught her Will I ever see my family again? moment of inner conflict. Should she stay, or should she go? As with all the best internal conflicts, there’s no easy answer. Should this woman continue her life of present comfort with its almost guaranteed future pain, or abandon it in favour of possible humiliation and rejection if she tries to be reconciled with her family?

To return to the work of Jane Austen: think how much shorter and less captivating Pride and Prejudice would be if the first time George Wickham’s name was mentioned Darcy announced, “He’s a rogue who should be horsewhipped!”. Wickham would be cut from polite society in an instant — end of story.

Instead, Darcy struggles with concealing what he knows about the man. Despite his charisma, Darcy has already been shown to be a judgemental stuffed shirt. If he exposes Wickham as a shallow rogue and compulsive gambler who tried to elope with Georgiana Darcy, he would seem bitter, vengeful, and as big a snob as Mr Collins. More importantly, it would wreck the good name of Darcy’s sister.

The four C’s of Creative Writing will help you put in place the scaffolding that a great story needs. Next time I’ll be writing about how writers can help readers find solutions to problems in their own lives by examining popular themes in their work.

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Part Eight: Plan of Action

In this series we’ve talked about imagination, capturing it, and then turning your ideas into words. Putting all that together to create a novel takes patience and concentration. I’m about to start a new writing project, so this week I’ll show you how the hints and tips I’ve shared come together in real life.

Last week, Jean Fullerton of the Romantic Novelists’ Association hosted a panel about writing sagas. I’ve written stand-alone historical novels (you can discover my other books here), and was curious to find out more about sagas. I’d never thought of writing one myself— until I listened to Jean and her panel of best-selling authors.

I learned that sagas have changed in recent years and no longer have to be enormous tomes covering decades. The word count for individual sagas within a series can be as low as 80k—or as long as it takes you to tell that segment of the story. Sagas today don’t have to be all clogs, shawls and trouble at t’mill, either. Readers particularly enjoy novels set in Victorian times, but they also love Second World War stories.

The more I listened to the RNA panel, the more I felt like writing about a time of uniforms, silk stockings, and air-raids.

While I was researching Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol, I came across lots of fascinating real-life accounts of life in the city during the Second World War. I only had room for a fraction of them in the published book. For example, a bomb blasted this heavy iron tram rail high into the air and sent it flying toward the famous church of St Mary Redcliffe. It just missed the houses of Colston Parade, and buried itself to half its length (it would have been about six feet long) in the church grounds. Imagine the carnage if it had landed on the houses…

The rail was left where it fell, and a commemorative stone set beside it.

After looking again at the notes I have on file about life in Bristol during the twentieth century, I’ve decided to incorporate some of them into a saga.

One of the many things that going to university as a mature student taught me is that it’s not only important to make lots of notes—you need to be able to find the right bit of that research instantly, before inspiration vanishes.

This is where Scrivener comes in really handy. I talked about it in Part Six, and opening this new project is a way to show it in action. Here’s a screenshot of my first moves this week on Scrivener (to see a larger version, right click on the image):

As soon as I start work on documents within each folder, the appropriate card you can see in the main part of the screenshot will begin to fill with text. The beauty of using this system is that if, for example, I decide one book will cover the period from August 1939 to January 1941 all I need to do is point and drag all the relevant documents into the 1939 folder, and rename it Sept 1939-Jan 1941.

Below the list of dated folders on the left, you’ll see my list of characters. That’s where I’ll file all the details about them such as their age, position in the family, appearance, mannerisms, and anything else that comes to mind. None of this will appear in my finished manuscript—it’s simply a way of keeping all my ideas, research in one place rather than having my notes scattered aorund the house in any number of individual devices and notebooks.

This isn’t to suggest that the lives of my characters Wilf, Mary, their son Arthur, and daughter Sally are in any way based on Gandalf, Mother Teresa, Dean Martin, or Isadora Duncan! All I’m doing is collecting some visual cues for a patriarch, matriarch, party animal, and a free spirit. These will create an instant reminder for me…although I can’t help wondering who would come out on top if Gandalf and Isadora Duncan were involved in a “domestic”!

I’m not a planner, but would rather write “into the mist” as author Joanna Maitland puts it. However, because I’m setting a story in a defined period of history I’ll need to keep tabs on what is happening elsewhere. Writing about my characters munching steak at a time of rationing, or playing floodlit tennis during the blackout is not on.

I started my research for Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol by opening a spreadsheet with the columns representing the one hundred years covered by the book. I then used rows to represent International events, National events and Local events. I filled it in accordingly so that for any year I could see what was going on generally, and see which events might affect Bristol and its women. As you can see below, I’ve done a similar spreadsheet for SAGA_WW2_NURSERY.

At this early stage I’ve filled in only the basic details of major international and national events that might affect my characters, using nothing more than good old Google. If in the future I decide to refer to any of those incidents in my novel, I will do more extensive research but for now all I need is a flavour of Autumn 1939.

The Local Events row will involve much more detailed research from the moment I start writing, to help me keep my story true to time and place. I haven’t even begun to think about that yet! I have, though, included an extra row at the bottom of the spreadsheet for details obtained from the Met Office archive about the weather.

Including small details like that will help create a believable setting for my story. After all, what’s the first topic of conversation when any English people meet?

Next time, I’ll be looking in more detail at how to create characters. Sign up to follow this blog below, so you don’t miss Part Nine!

Part Seven: Start As You Mean To Go On

Whether you are going to self-publish your writing, or send it to an industry professional, at some stage your work needs to be set out in a way that makes it easy to read.

If you create a dedicated template on your computer at the beginning of your writing career, it’ll save a lot of time. Just open a new document from that template, and start typing. All the details you’ve stored such as margin and type size, page numbering and font will be applied automatically.

Very few firms request submissions to be made as a paper copy, but as I explained in Part Six, submitting your work in .doc or .docx form is almost universal so start by opening a document in Word. If you don’t use a Windows computer, you can find out more about Word documents here.

Any typed submissions need to be on A4 size paper in portrait orientation. Set up the document on your computer in the same way, and you can be sure it will print properly should you need to run off a paper copy.

Set a good margin all the way round the page— I use 2.5cms—by moving the tabs on the rulers set at the top and left hand side of the blank page. Editors often print out pages of text to read while away from their computers, and this allows them room to add comments.

You’ll need two near-identical templates, one for manuscripts, and one for synopses. This is because, while all the other details remain the same, manuscripts are traditionally double spaced (again, to allow room for written revisions) and synopses are single-spaced.

Set up the line spacing on each template to “2” and “1” respectively, but always check before submitting whether the firm you are contacting is happy with those settings. Some have different requirements. The information will be included in their guidelines for submission so check and be ready to change your spacings if necessary. CNTRL A will highlight a complete block of text, so you can alter the look of your whole document in seconds.

Next, set headers and footers. On my computer this is done by clicking on “Insert” then choosing “Headers and Footers”. I put my name, and the title of my piece in a header, and use a footer for the page number. This means every page of work can be easily traced back to its original document, and its position within the manuscript. That’s important in case an editor prints out only part of your work, as mentioned above

I always use Times New Roman font, 12-point size for both headers and text. You’re not obliged to use Times New Roman, but along with Arial it’s one of the industry’s preferred fonts as it’s easy to read and universally recognised. Steer clear of anything else. If your work uses an unusual font which isn’t installed on your recipients system, a document that looks perfect on your screen might be unreadable when opened on their computer.

Always use black type. It’s easier to read, and looks professional.

Before submission, your work will need a title page which includes your name, contact details, and the word count. Once I’ve set one up, I copy and paste it to act as an end page, too. Then the reader won’t have to scroll right back to the beginning of the document to find my email address. It’s all there on the last page, ready for them to dash off a congratulatory message (I hope!) the second they’ve finished reading.

Once you have created a blank document with wide margins, an acceptable font and print size, set the spacing, and included placeholders for the heading, hit File >Save As, and then select “Template” from the drop down menu and give it a descriptive name such as Prose or Synopsis. Then all you need to do is select whichever option you need, each time you open a new document.

When your work is finished and you’re ready to submit, go through the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to find somewhere suitable to send it. Even if you rely on the latest edition, personnel in the publishing industry regularly take on different roles, or change firms. Approaching the right person in the right company and giving them their correct title shows you’ve done your research. Cross-check all details with the company’s website, which will give you the most up-to-date information, and precise details about the form in which your work should be submitted.

Make sure you send exactly what is required, and if you are asked to send a printed copy, don’t forget to include return postage. Publishing professionals receive hundreds of submissions each week. They don’t have the time or money to waste on printing out address labels, and calculating individual postage rates. If your work doesn’t appeal to them, it will be shredded unless you include an envelope with your name and address on it, and enough stamps to cover return of your work.

Next time, I’ll be giving details of what agents and publishers are looking for in a submission. Sign up below to make sure you can read Part Eight of Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity as soon as it is published!

Part Six: From Notes to Manuscript

In Part Four, I talked about always keeping a notebook with you to capture your thoughts. That’s perfect when you’re writing a journal and don’t expect to show anyone else your work. If you have ambitions to see your name in print, then you’ll need to organise your thoughts into manuscript form. At the very least you’ll need to turn your notes into a computer file. Not many agents and publishers insist on typed scripts these days, but once you’ve created a document on your word processor you can turn it into any form requested.

Handwritten manuscripts aren’t acceptable to the publishing industry. Whether you intend to self-publish your work or approach agents with a view to conventional publication it’ll save you a lot of work if, right from the start, you get into the habit of creating a computer document from your notes, set out in such a way that it’s ready for submission.

I’ll be looking at how to set out your work in more detail in Part Seven, but the most important thing at this point is that you need a computer capable of creating Word documents, which is the format usually required by the publishing industry. If you have a Windows PC but don’t already have Word (usually as part of Microsoft Office) and you don’t want to pay the subscription for it, then there are free Windows packages such as LibreOffice that can save their files in Word format. I use a Mac (that’s because I rely on my brilliant husband, a systems analyst, for all things technical. If anything goes wrong, he can fix it!) and this comes with Apple Pages which in theory also can save in Word format but in practice not perfectly. I would recommend getting hold of Office for Apple if you can; if you’re a student you may be able to access Word for free via your educational establishment, or get a reduced rate when subscribing.

Once you’re up and running with a system that will produce your work in Word form, you’ll need to transfer your notes onto it. There are various speech recognition computer programs such as Dragon Dictate , which I mentioned in Part Four. These are a way of reading your work into words, rather than typing them and are available in both Mac and PC versions. I don’t use them myself, although lots of people find they work very well.

If you have a scanner then you could get hold of a package to convert scanned documents to text but none are 100% perfect, especially with handwriting, so you’d still have to check every word in the file it creates.

When I was working on Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol, I typed most of my ideas and notes straight into a Neo. This was essentially a computer that ran a built-in, basic word processing package and automatically saved as you typed. You typed, it saved your work, and that’s it. Sadly, the Neo isn’t made anymore. That’s probably because of the very feature that made it so valuable to me—its lack of internet connectivity—which meant I couldn’t waste writing time by surfing the net, looking at adverts, and buying online. All you could do with a Neo was type and then upload your file onto a conventional computer.

Much as I love writing, the temptation to surf the internet as a break from puzzling over a tricky scene is irresistible. I wouldn’t be without my Neo, so if you (or someone you know) has the technical skill to maintain one of these little treasures and you happen to see a second-hand one for sale, snap it up. It puts an end to online time-wasting!

While I always send my finished work off as a document created in Word, if I’m working on a long article in several sections or novel, I use a package called Scrivener to help me. It stores all the notes and images I’ve gathered in the same place as I create my text. Each new project has its own file, which Scrivener calls (handily enough) a Project. This is described as a digital ring-binder. There’s somewhere to store everything you need to create your book.

I took some of the photographs which illustrate Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol, and stored them within my Struggle Project. There was also a file for the intricate timeline I developed which consisted of three strands: international events, national events, and local events. There was no need to lose that brilliant idea I jotted down on the back of a receipt while out and about somewhere—I’d take a snap, then upload it into the relevant .scriv file on my computer.

I opened a new chapter for each topic I wanted to cover (education, work, daily life, etc) gave it a snappy title such as Fun and Games or Firebrands and Fixers, and set to work. I could view my work in all sorts of ways, a scene at a time, or the whole document as a rolling scroll, for example. Creating the project within Scrivener was half the fun! Click on the badge above to find out more.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that technology is definitely not my friend, but Scrivener is so user friendly I managed to install it myself, and the tutorial and video included with the package are straightforward. There are loads more videos on YouTube, both by Scrivener’s creators Literature and Latte and by keen users of the system, so whatever your question, somebody has it covered. If, like me, you learn more easily from books, I highly recommend Gwen Hernandez’s Scrivener for Dummies. There is a slightly more recent version available on Amazon, but I have this edition and haven’t bothered getting the newer one as I like Gwen’s style. Both her book, and her online tips are really helpful.

One of the great features about Scrivener is that if you want to self-publish your work, with a couple of clicks it will turn your manuscript into a format that can be uploaded straight into your chosen publishing platform. That means you can do almost all of the work of producing your book yourself, although to make your book the best it can possibly be you should still employ professionals to edit it. Creating your cover is another job that should also be left to a professional, unless you are completely confident with not only your artistic skills, but in your ability to design something that works well at thumbnail size. Those two talents don’t always go together!

No piece on using computers would be complete without a reminder to save your work, and save it often. You can set your computer to save automatically—mine does it every thirty minutes. Don’t just rely on that, though, in case your computer goes wrong and you can’t access any of your work. Save it in at least two other places. I use flash drives (dongles), and email. I don’t bother with cloud storage systems such as Dropbox, but that’s only because I have quite enough passwords to remember already!

I have one flash drive for each day of the week, and plug the appropriate one into my computer each morning. I can then save my work to it each time I take a tea break, or when I stop for lunch. In the event of some technological disaster, at most I’ll only have lost a couple of hours’ work. My other six flash drives hold the week’s previous drafts of my work, so I can always go back and rescue anything I may have changed, and then had second thoughts about.

At the end of each day I email the latest version of the document I’m working on to myself, as well as saving it to flash drive. That way, everything is covered.

Next time, I’ll be talking about how to layout your manuscript, so sign up below to follow my blog and you’ll be sure to see it the minute it’s published.

Part Five: Let the Sunshine in…

Now you’ve found your inspiration, you can set to work. Get ready to shine a light on all those subjects that have been waiting for your unique voice to bring them to life.

I’ve found that clearing my diary and desk before beginning a new project works like magic. Without the shadow of appointments or deadlines, or distractions such as my towering To Be Read pile and accounts waiting to be updated, I can sit down with a clear conscience and start writing.

Let the smell of the furniture polish and screen wipes you use when making that clean sweep act as stimulants, but don’t allow procrastination to lock you into an endless loop of housekeeping. There’s a limit to the number of times pencils can be sharpened before they disappear!

Only you can fully understand the motivation behind your need to write. Writing for pleasure, profit, or posterity are all equally valid reasons. I know many of you are using writing to help you through the anxiety of illness and lockdown. Hard though your accounts may be to write, they will fascinate future generations and offer insights into the ability of human beings to adapt to any situation.

Regardless of your reason for starting to write, it should always be a pleasure. If you write from the heart, your enthusiasm will shine through. It doesn’t matter if nobody else ever sees what you’ve written. Translating your thoughts into words, seeing them on a page or screen and then refining them is an achievement in itself. Millions of people think about doing it, but only a small number actually settle down and put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

While I’m lucky enough to earn most of my living from writing, I have always looked on any payment I receive as a bonus. I enjoy writing so much I’d do it for nothing—and that happens more often than you’d think! I’ve been involved in projects that started well but somehow never gelled, others where I’ve loved every minute and poured my heart and soul into the work, and yet it wasn’t picked up by a publisher. Most frustrating of all, I’ve had a novel accepted by an independent publisher which—so far— has never managed to get as far as publication.

Writing is always worth the trouble, although your work is unlikely to be snapped up for a six-figure advance. In these days of shrinking budgets and growing costs, getting paid any money at all before your book has been on sale for several months is rare. Payments may continue to trickle in for years afterwards, but to begin with you’ll become richer in writing experience than in hard cash.

That experience will help you to help yourself, and others. In good weather, our house is a lovely twenty-minute stroll through the woods from the nearest main road. A few years ago, we were completely marooned by snow for several weeks. Collecting our deliveries and groceries meant a tiring half-hour trudge through drifts almost up to the tops of our boots, before hauling our goods home on a sled. That was fun the first few times, but the novelty soon wore off.

During that season of snowstorms the electricity was cut off quite often. The weight of snow kept bringing down branches onto the power lines running through the wood. As many people in this rural area were in the same predicament, we often had to wait for a long time before we were reconnected to the power supply.

Although our isolation then was nothing compared to the current crisis, keeping a journal about our day-to-day life kept me busy by giving me something to focus on. Looking back on the entries I made then is fascinating. It reminds me to double check our supplies of candles and torch batteries. Not to mention Calor gas, staples like flour, yeast, and the one thing I can’t live without—tea!

You don’t need to live in interesting times to create something that will fascinate future generations. The Mass Observation Archive, which is held as part of the University of Sussex’s Special Collections, originally started in 1937 as a national life-writing project. Submissions from a cross-section of British people supplied accounts of lives that now exist only between the covers of history books. The difference is, contributions to the Mass Observation Archive have been written by people like you and me, rather than professors of politics and economics.

The most well-known example of a contributor to the MOA is probably Nella Last, whose journal entries have been published as Nella Last’s War, and were adapted by Victoria Wood to create the TV drama Housewife, 49. Nella’s life is a world away from how we live now. Things are bound to change in the future—why not leave a record of your own life for posterity? Imagine giving your grandchildren, and their grandchildren, a written example to follow (not to mention an endless source of material for school projects!). Start writing today. Your family, as well as future historians, will thank you for it.

Next time I’ll be talking about the ways your ideas can be turned into a manuscript that’s ready for submission. Make sure you sign up below, so you can read Part Six the minute it’s published.

Part Four: Inspiration—Find It, Catch It, File It!

Whenever I get to the end of a talk and ask if anybody has any questions, I can guarantee that where do you get your ideas from? will crop up. That’s easy to answer—anywhere, and everywhere. As journalist and author Nora (‘When Harry Met Sally’) Ephron’s mother told her, everything is copy.

When I worked as an office junior, my bus ride to and from central Bristol each day was a Pandora’s box of half-heard conversations, and scenes glimpsed in passing. The tricky part is turning all that raw information into something useful. To do that, you need to capture and store it in a way that can be easily traced. That last step can be the most difficult one of all.

A lot of us have to make do with daily walks instead of road and rail journeys at the moment, but everything we see and hear while we’re outside provides some great starting points. If you can’t get out, books, magazines, TV and radio can all provide inspiration. Imagine what the characters in your favourite novel were doing immediately before they appeared in the published story, or after they left it. George MacDonald Fraser did this memorably with the Flashman Series. These books gave the bully from Tom Brown’s School Days another lease of life as an anti-hero.

Don’t trap yourself within the cage of fan fiction—let your mind wander to new settings, and invent new names for your characters. All you are looking for is a launch pad for your thoughts—you don’t want to be accused of plagiarism.

Browse Quora to see what ordinary people are asking the hive mind. Give one of those popular questions to your characters, and see if they can solve it. If lots of people are interested in the question, they’ll be interested in your fictional solution to it, too.

Writing competitions often give prompts, which can get your creative thoughts moving. Writing magazines are a good source of these competitions. Once you’ve been inspired by the topic and completed your entry, check the rules to see if you can submit it to other competitions while you’re waiting for the result. If there are no restrictions, you’ll have a piece of work all ready for submission to competitions such as The Bridport Prize and The Bath Short Story Award, which don’t specify a theme.

I always keep a notebook and pencil to hand. They are stashed all around the house, and even in the glove compartment of the car! That way, if inspiration strikes when I’m in bed, watching TV, or stuck in a car park waiting for somebody, I can start writing on the spot.

I can’t walk into a stationery store without buying a new notebook. I have them in all shapes, sizes and colours but this red Moleskine is my current favourite as it was a Christmas present from my daughter. She knows I love to keep one of these in my bag to channel my inner Hemingway while I’m on the move, and all my other general Moleskine notebooks have been black. They aren’t too easy to find in my huge, black-lined mathom-hole of a bag, but this one is very easy to spot!

The open notebook in the photo is the one I use for non-fiction projects. It’s divided up in a similar way to the Cornell note-taking system, and turned out to be perfect for my university work. There’s space at the top for an overview of the subject, margins for headings and then space for notes. Unlike my many Pukka Pads, the pages of this particular Moleskine are numbered, so I can fill in the index at the front easily (if I remember!).

You can use your phone to make recordings of your ideas as they happen, or use a dictaphone. I’ve tried both, as well as Dragon Dictate for transposing my thoughts directly onto the computer, but I gave up on all those methods quite quickly. I much prefer the process of writing on paper, with a pencil.

The advantage when you make notes on your phone is that you can snap a quick photo at the same time. That will act as a visual reminder of the geography of a setting, the texture of fabrics, or a particular colour scheme.

If you take photos of people, get their permission first. According to Avon and Somerset Police there’s no law in the UK against taking photos in a public place—even photos of other people’s children, strange though it may seem—but many people don’t like it. Respect their feelings.

Get the landowner’s permission before taking photos. Photographing people anywhere they might reasonably expect to be private, such as inside their house or garden, is very likely to breach privacy laws.

Make sure you give each of your pictures a unique, meaningful title when you upload them. That will make it easy to find them again. I have a main folder on my computer for Photos. This is subdivided according to general subject such as food, plants, animals, birds. Each subject is then further divided into cake, flowers, poultry, Alex, for example.

Each photo then gets a unique identifier, so the latest one I took for Instant Lift has been given the name Catkins_Home_12012021. This means I can search for it according to subject, location, or date. If I’m short on inspiration or I’ve been commissioned to write something on a particular subject, I can then go to the top level folders and browse all the content for ideas.

I use a similar system for each writing project I begin. Everything from initial ideas to character descriptions and timelines are stored in a single folder with an obvious title, such as Thriller. I then add the date I started it, so it becomes Thriller_Jan 2021. Within that main folder, the individual documents are called Characters_Thriller_Jan 2021, and so on. That way I can find things easily, and I know how long a project takes from beginning to end.

Next time I’ll be exploring some of the ways writing can help your family, your mind, and even your bank balance. Sign up below to follow my blog, so you can read it the minute it’s published!

Part Three: Finding Your Audience

Finding your audience and giving them what they want to read is a big part of becoming an author.

The most important member of your writing audience is you. Never forget that, because if you’ve enjoyed creating a piece and you’re happy with the result then you’ll have satisfied 100% of your audience. Your enthusiasm will shine through your work, too. As the old saying goes, if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life—but if you want to get published, you’ll need to keep a wider target audience in mind.

Some authors create detailed profiles of their ideal reader, right down to their likely politics. Others write for themselves, then submit their work to publishers of the things they read for pleasure. That’s how I began my professional writing career. The first article I sold was to The Garden magazine, which is the monthly journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. I’d already been a member for long enough to absorb their house style, and had a detailed knowledge of the kind of article—its subject matter, length, and approach, for example—they would be likely to accept.

When I was making my living by writing articles for magazines, it helped that I could supply my own photographs. I could offer a complete package, the publication’s production team didn’t have to worry about sourcing illustrations and I was paid for each picture. That meant everyone was happy!

There aren’t as many opportunities to sell short stories to magazines as there used to be, but those which accept submissions offer detailed guidelines so make sure you follow them. You would be amazed how many people miss out this vital step. Do your research by reading plenty of back copies to get a taste of what the editor is looking for. Don’t send a story about a serial killer to The People’s Friend, for example.

Visit any publication’s webpage and you’ll find a link to their guidelines for submission. It’s usually right at the bottom of the page, close to “contact us”. Study them, and you’ll be able to make sure your work won’t be rejected because it’s unsuitable.

When it comes to non-fiction, there are more opportunities to see your name in print. Letters to the editor, or short, accurate articles written from personal experience make useful fillers for magazines and newspapers. This is where my memories of how things were done before the Internet Age will find a home. Again, study the publications which might accept your work for several weeks before submitting.

Editors love to see something similar to, but different from, the things they already publish. They’re looking for new angles and new voices on topics that are already popular with their readers, so give them what they want. Whatever you write, make sure it has a snappy title. Why did King George V Say ‘Bu**er Bognor’? is more likely to get a second glance than What I Did On My Holiday in West Sussex (I’ll leave you to argue what His Majesty did or didn’t say on his deathbed!).

If you want to write novellas, full-length novels, or non-fiction books, luck and fashion are almost as important as literary brilliance. You can improve your chance of acceptance by finding out exactly what type of book literary agents and publishers are looking for by studying a reference book such as the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook 2021.

If you haven’t found your writing tribe yet, you’ll find the Writers’ and Artists Yearbook invaluable. It’s packed full of information, with details of writing competitions, magazines, newspapers, literary agents, and publishers but make sure you use an up-to-date copy as contact details within the publishing industry change frequently.

Once you’ve made sure you aren’t sending your novel to a professional who doesn’t accept fiction, or your autobiography to a firm that only deals with poetry, whether your work is accepted doesn’t only depend on how well-written it is. An editor might enjoy your work without feeling the surge of endless enthusiasm needed to see your project through the months of editing and promotion needed to produce, and then sell, it.

Competition is so great for the limited number of publishing slots available, my advice is to write the book of your heart—a project that you would work on for free. Throw all your enthusiasm into it and that will show in the quality of your writing. If you are completely committed to your project, your conviction will see you through the submission process until you are successful, no matter how long it takes.

I’ll be covering book submissions in more detail in future parts of Writing for Pleasure, Profit and Posterity, so make sure you subscribe to my blog using the form below. That way, you won’t miss a thing!

Writing competitions give you an important incentive to get a piece written and polished before the closing date. Use an easily readable font and type-size—Times New Roman, 12-point is a good one if the competition doesn’t have a specific requirement.

Make sure you study the rules. You don’t want to be disqualified because your work is too long, or you’ve missed the closing date. When I became a mature student at the University of Gloucestershire, my daughter (an alumna of the University of Reading) gave me a handy tip regarding assignment deadlines which works well for writing competitions, too. Put a note on your phone or calendar for a week BEFORE the closing date. Finish your piece by then and you’ll still have a whole seven days to refine it, instead of cramming all your checks and edits into the last frantic hours before the deadline. During my recent university career I had reason to thank my daughter lots of times for that suggestion!

Comb through the small print before submitting anything to make sure that by entering, you aren’t signing away your rights to send the same piece to other competitions.

In Part Two of this series, I suggested that you should find a writing community to support you. Whether you belong to one of the big writing associations or a smaller local one, they will be able to give you lots of information about which publications are buying work, and news of competitions.

There are also lots of Facebook groups which can help. Just key “writing groups” into the search box. As with all online content it pays to be cautious, so make sure you’re a good fit with other members. There are always some people who like to take charge and they can be intimidating when you’re just starting out. Whether you join a virtual writing group or a real one, don’t be afraid to leave if you’re not finding the help and support you need.

Part Four will cover where to find inspiration for your writing, and how to capture it. To read the next episode of Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity as soon as it’s published, subscribe to my blog using the form below.

Goodbye, 2020, you won’t be missed. The past twelve months have been so bad for everyone, I’ve decided to do what I can to stop the rot. Voltaire is supposed to have said that although life’s a shipwreck, we can at least sing in the lifeboats—so I want to get as many people on board my lifeboat as possible, to try and raise everyone’s spirits

Never give up hope. The winter days are short and gloomy here in the UK right now, but we’ve got nine minutes more daylight today than we had on 21st December because the sun is setting a little bit later each day (check here if you don’t believe me!). And while the pandemic is raging everywhere, the fight back against Covid is gathering speed.

Back in the 1990s, I was right at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. Our house was mortgaged, interest rates were above 10%, my husband’s job was in danger, and I was living in the deep shadow of postnatal depression. The day I realised we had less than £2 to spend on food for the week, it was the exact opposite of all my Christmases coming at once.

We survived, but it wasn’t easy—so this year my blog will be dedicated to sharing the tips and wrinkles that have helped me through disaster, debt and depression. The world turns right round in twenty-four hours, and sunrise always follows sunset. Good times are bound to be around the corner—a lucky break, a chance encounter, a medical breakthrough—so hang on, and have faith in yourself. You can do it, because you are stronger than you know.

My blog focuses on writing, gardening, and cooking, as these are the things that have helped me through bad times and given me ways to celebrate good times.

Next week I’m starting a new series here. It’s called Writing for Pleasure, Profit, and Posterity, so make sure you catch Part One by popping your email address in the “Subscribe” box below!