Category: Uncategorized

Thoughts based on my own experience of editing, being edited, reading full and partial manuscripts and synopses for free reads and as a beta reader, my submissions which went horribly wrong, those which went right and stuff which I regard as probably true. Feel free to write and tell me I have this all wrong. Here’s the thing: you have a manuscript you want to place and submissions you want to do and I have quickly put together twenty thoughts on this because I know your work matters a lot to you. Therefore, it does to me.

Anna x

1. Read your work aloud. Only then will you hear and feel the sentences that have gone awry and the rhythm and weight that feel off. You will begin to hear and feel what your reader does. This is not an optional add on, but an essential. It also helps if you print it off and read, but I truly find reading aloud is key.
2. Always use CTRL 4 to identify which words you overuse. These may be particular adjectives or you might surprise yourself here – quirks you had of which you were unaware. (See point 1.)
3. I am not an expert, but I think a major issue – and one which I know I have cocked up myself – is not advancing the plot quickly enough. Pah, you say. I want a prologue and stacks of description. I love that too. I mean, I’d happily roll around in words all day like a pig in clover (or shit – forgive me), but it can grate. You’ve got to hook your reader and there are many ways to do that. A good way to reflect is by looking at the first pages of books you admire – and ideally cross genre. Reading is your finest teacher anyway!
4. Linked to 3 and hooking them. A superb first sentence. Paragraph. Spend ages polishing and refining. Read, read, read for ideas and training.
5. The show don’t tell maxim…I am not sure I am the person to comment on this because I want both, so mix it up. Don’t bore your reader into submission or the recycling bin. Or trash file. Harsh, but I am sure I have been there. Don’t bury your reader in detail and scene setting.
6. Tough love. You CANNOT send out work with spelling errors or sentences that don’t…make sense. Is is clear to which thing your pronouns refer? Can you handle speech punctuation? Again, reading it aloud will help here. Have you misspelt the agent’s name? Or got their gender wrong? God: check. It would be awful if your work didn’t even get a look because you cocked this up. But I do believe that would be fair enough. It’s a tough business.
7. Your synopsis always contains spoilers.
8. Choose your verbs with infinite wisdom.
9. Learn to use a variety of punctuation because it’s gorgeous. I will tell you now, though, that I have to be taken firmly in hand about my very long sentences and over-use of the lovely semi- colon. Take advice because while it’s your book, just as, when you get a publisher, your book is maybe half-way there when it goes to the editor, at submissions stage your writing has to be shit hot. Or close enough. Otherwise I bet you’re going to get knocked out of the water by the other folks who were more attentive.
10. Always take advice. You are up very close to this manuscript. Fresh eyes will be needed.
11. Why are YOU the person to write this book? Strikes me that this is a helpful thing to think about when (well obviously before) sending your pitch – and telling them.
12. Show awareness of your indie press or agent. It’s polite, respectful and shows you mean business and have done the groundwork; that you might be a fit. This is part of the work. Reading their titles is part of the work. I think of it like this: they put in the work and now you have to.
13. My day job is as an English teacher. I am coming at this from two angles now: it is harder to write with economy and precision than it is to write prose larded with adverbs and metaphors. Sometimes (takes a deep breath) learning to write a book may involve relearning (or unlearning) things you have been taught at an earlier stage. Like using lots of exciting metaphors and similes and lots of ‘wow words’. Make the language work; think how you could unpack it and use it judiciously and inventively. Cut. Choose wisely, padwan.
14. Learn to accept rejection and that plenty of people don’t ever reply even though they ought to. Learn that if you make spelling mistakes in your submission and on your submissions letter, arguably you asked for it anyway. Rejection is part of it all and it hurts; the key is to keep going and not to feel persecuted. Sometimes, you cannot learn anything about your manuscript from rejection because you don’t learn anything from a form letter. But review what you have written and also review you. Feeling persecuted is going to stymie your creativity.
15. Back to the manuscript. Ask someone online if they could be a beta reader and offer to read their work, too.
16. If you ask someone to look at your work or you ask for opinion and criticism, reflect and listen. It is too easy to assume it is a difference in taste if they suggest changes. Use this time to reflect on what’s been said instead.
17. Don’t panic about what you should be writing. Write what you want to write, but keep your ideas lively on genre and on who your influences are and, perhaps, on whose work you see yours being like. Because you might be asked.
18. If you are submitting a book – this in on errors again – there’s no excuse for not being able to use an apostrophe. Also, you cannot rely 100% on spellcheck – and I notice this is a particular issue for homophones. Check, check and check again. And. like I said before, read your work aloud because this will also help you to notice spelling errors as spellcheck is not intuitive and cannot master context.
19. Take breaks: between submissions, put your manuscript away for a bit and reflect. New things may pop out.
20. And finally – I appreciate this is not what everyone does – why not work on something else for a while if your work is not getting accepted? For a start it’s refreshing but also, you might find that this new thing is better and furthermore, should your initial manuscript get a look in you can tell the agent or the publisher that you have something else up your sleeve. People like amazing creativity, but graft is cool, too – and it needs to go hand in hand with all that artistry because writing and books are also commerce and best to get one’s head round that early on.

Hello. At some point I will start a regular newsletter, I hope, but in the meantime I will do a few updates here. Let me know if you find any of it interesting. I am off twitter for the time being – with ‘The Team’ (my older sons) in charge of things there. Writing – mainly in terms of getting work out there and prepared to publication standard – relies partly on teamwork. I’d say most if not all things do. Now, we have had a lot of upheaval at home; difficult situations to navigate, some of them complex and some a bit triggering for me. I need to keep a clear head and some things that I have seen on twitter recently have done me no good at all. But we are working together as a family – including my youngest who’s 8. He very sweetly just told me that even if everyone in the world totally hated everything I ever wrote, he would probably still think it was all great. So there we are.

So this week…we have been doing a second round of edits on Famished, which is my first short story collection. This is published by Influx Press in September and is my second book of this year. Influx has a great subscription service for the 2020 titles and you can pre-order Famished there already. Some wonderful events coming up soon, including Adam Scovell with Deborah Levy next week. I am so hoping to get to this! All events are on the website.

OOOH I love my cover for Influx.

Here’s a subscription link: https://www.influxpress.com/subscriptions

In addition to the second round of edits, I have written a new story for the text this week. It’s about potatoes, sex and death. Here’s information on Famished:

https://www.influxpress.com/famished

Something else new and of which I am extremely proud is that, for 2020, I have given a bursary to Birkbeck at the University of London for a Creative Writing Student. This is to help someone flourish who might be struggling with financial constraints. I am told it’s most likely it would go to a postgraduate MA or MFA student, but otherwise an undergraduate. In time, I hope to fund someone completely. Information will be up soon! I did not do an MA or MFA in Creative Writing. It wasn’t the route for me. I am, however, highly aware of how much an excellent period of study has meant to people. It isn’t just the teaching and reading; it’s the community, discipline and encouragement. Also, someone really brilliant may not have had a great deal of formal education post-16. I am a secondary English teacher, tutor and mentor. Writing is not actually my day job. I know a little bit about this. I also know how I felt as a carer, managing multiple bereavement and mental health problems when I was at university. Looking back, I am not sure how I coped. I was mindful of this when working out if I could offer some money to make life a bit easier for someone else. OOH: look http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2020/postgraduate/programmes/TMFCWRIT_C here’s just one example.

Also this week, I have written and presented an interview to the wonderful Lin Webb, who has been my editor at Bluemoose for my forthcoming novel, Saving Lucia. When a book goes to the editor, I suppose I would think of it as about half-way there. You may have different ideas about how finished your work would be, but in all cases the work of an editor is vital. I have learned a lot from Lin about style and structure; things I thought I would be able to see but somehow could not. But also Lin’s warmth, kindness and sense of humour have been one of the best things to happen to me since I started writing a few years ago (I am still a newbie, you know). Publishing is, I have learned, a tough old business. But I tell you there are plenty of absolute diamonds around too – so fear not if you are moving in this direction. I asked Lin about editing generally and also to share a few thoughts on how we worked on Saving Lucia. This will be up after approval from the Head Moosefolk (teamwork thing again). I think the interview might be also be useful for those preparing their work for submission – but you can tell me later on, if you like.

Something else I am working on this week is for a collection edited by Dan Coxon. It’s for Mental Health UK and is a fund raiser; to be published in the autumn by Unsung Stories. http://www.unsungstories.co.uk/ (I am not sure if I am supposed to give the title yet so better not.) This is unusual and, I think, rather special. Because it is using spooky, eerie stories and employing Weird Fiction to explore mental health themes, with a sense of uplift and possible recovery. I know a lot about this because of my own mental health history. Largely as a result of extended and complex trauma, I have managed generalised anxiety, depression, OCD, flashbacks and dissociative episodes. I mean, I am still managing those things. All a bit colourful. But there’s something in Saving Lucia about…about how you need not be entirely fixed or better in order to go out into the world and flourish. If you are managing mental health problems, are reading this, and think that you cannot make things, please let me encourage you to know that this is not the case.

I am spending a little time on the only free read I will have time for this year. It is a full mansucript of a novel – and I do this for those who would not otherwise be able to stretch to editorial or a report from a literary consultancy before they submit. I hope I am able to provide help, clarity and encouragement.

I am keeping in touch with my agent this week about plans and then, between the end of February and September, I am going to rewrite the novel I have been working on for my literary agency. It’s called (I think I am allowed to say), The Zebra and Lord Jones. There’s expansion needed and I wanted to say that I have been incredibly lucky with Kate my agent, because she’s kind, ambitious for me (with me?) about my work, understands the constraints I work under and is really skilled at editorial. So this is great. I have a lot of work to do – but onward: I’ve got great notes.

In June, I have a piece out in a book by Dodo Ink. Here: blimey – look who’s on it. I feel properly shy. http://www.dodoink.com/blog It’s called Trauma: Art as a Response to Mental Health and I just learned my story, ‘In Order to Live’, which is a memoir piece about how I rebuilt my mind with reading, is being edited at the moment. So I wonder what I will need to do? It’s really interesting getting work back. I absolutely love editorial and, although this might be a bit sad, responding to comments and tracking changes really appeals to the nerdy, box ticking, fixing up and list making side of me.

AND FINALLY I understand that information will soon be up about the launch of Saving Lucia. Bluemoose has noted it for you already on twitter, but it is at Mr B’s Emporium in John Street, Bath and on Thursday the 30th of April. This is a wonderful independent bookshop which has recently expanded and the place is a joy. I will share information when I have it.

Anna x

My publisher, Bluemoose, has just announced that the launch for my new novel, Saving Lucia, will be at Mr B’s bookshop in Bath, on the evening of Thursday the 30th of April.

Details soon, but save the date now! Books, drinks, cake, chat and hosted by my dear friend, the brilliant novelist and short fiction writer Lucie McKnight Hardy. Mr B’s is a wonderful independent bookshop. Here: https://mrbsemporium.com/ This will be a ticketed event so do remember to book in advance. If you cannot get to this, there will be plenty more to come and we will announce events about the country all in good time.

‘Violet Albina Gibson, the Honourable, was behind bars, wearing an immaculate black crepe dress, clasping her finest manners and a lovely lacquered pen for letters to Churchill and others…’

How are you? I am mostly okay and that is because I am doing fairly well in thinking of the day only in increments, pausing and limiting stress as best as I can, sitting with and observing tricky things and seeing them, mostly, pass.

I am an English teacher, young people’s mentor, writer and mother. Mental health problems are part of my history and of who I am. I am very open about this in order to make it easier for the next person. But I am autonomous and they do not define me. They may in others’ eyes sometimes, but not in mine: don’t let yourself define YOU if you manage these pesky things too. That makes it easier to tolerate and thus you can begin to ignore anything from others. And don’t ever let anyone persuade you that you cannot write because you have difficulty in corralling your thoughts or emotional life. The industry has its demands, that’s for sure, so go easy on yourself and curate some sturdy self-belief if you possibly can. When rejected, be cross, but don’t brew that awful feeling of persecution that will stymie all creativity – speaking from experience there!

I have written elsewhere about mental health problems. I have a history of them: generalised anxiety, major depression and then OCD in late childhood and adolescence. I have dissociative episodes, which are scary and unpleasant and, from time to time, I wake at night with vivid dreams and flashbacks. That happened at the weekend. Sunday was spent in a jumble of senses and feelings; things become much more acute: words burn – but then so does beauty. I have had some wonderful care, but I am not sure I will ever be entirely better – but that’s okay. I make this point in my next book, Saving Lucia: that you can go out into the world and be creative and do things, though fragile, faltering, imperfect and not entirely well. Human beings are messy and absolute brilliant at failure anyway! I still have to say, lest someone who is really struggling is reading this and thinking that they cannot do this and what a failure they are, that I have had all areas of my working and creative life curtailed by mental health problems. But we carry on – and help each other to. I imagine that if I had been supported and appropriate help found for me in earlier years, things would have been different and could be different now. That’s a bit sad, so I turn it outwards and imagine that perhaps my not being fixable has helped me to be a better teacher or writer – or perhaps better able to help others, especially, young people, in need and distress, or just a tangle. What is more, I distill from problems and from mental health crises some colourful material, a character or two and even a book (my first one).

Now, my situation has recently got a little more complex because one of my older two has not been able to complete school study and another of mine has SEN needs that have been unmet: both are in exam years, so I have additional caring and teaching needs at a busy time. I am just raising from my head from a fog of exhaustion because some of those needs were met during the night for months, and even when I was not needed, well I have been in a state of hyper-vigilance for the best part of a year with little respite. In addition to this, I have lately experienced what is euphemistically described as unhelpful behaviour across my extended family and it had cut to the heart of who I am. Some of it was also triggering because it reminded me on a visceral level of my mother’s worst excesses. My reaction was physical; I was doubled over – my body unable to process what I was hearing and seeing, and finding myself swatted back to an earlier pathology and, with my worries about my older kids who were rather caught up in it all, experiencing grief.

It’s good to keep busy though! How about you? What if you are managing other needs and your own are rattling round and you want to make something, or at least feel better? This is what I do. This is specifically about writing, but maybe some thoughts here are helpful for anything!

1. I have two books out this year and various other short pieces; I have two more things being read and I am rewriting a book for my agent to be handed in in September. Some comments were made last week by a handful of people that I should not be mentioning this level of activity, because it is unrealistic for most people. Well, this is my reality and the thing is, for most of my adult life, I have not had the confidence to do it. I’ve seen things go down the drain and I – I want to say this because I have previously been ashamed – I have twice, because of mental illness, not finished a PhD. TWICE. So any comment I make about what I am doing is in the context of a skipload of failure. Ah – I might have lost you: point 1 is to share your success, whatever it is, and to be proud of it because you’ve done it in extremis. I don’t mean brag, I mean share.
2. That nagging voice in your head that says you can’t write because…YES: there are things in the writing business that quite clearly to change. Obviously there are. But for all else, is the voice in your head yours? Are you putting yourself down all the time? I do it, but have learned to listen and say stop. Challenge that voice because it’s trying it on, frankly. For me, a voice comes in which I think is mostly my ma telling me what a worthless little creature I am. Listen and escort out. Now try telling yourself something different with the voice. When I do that, my shoulders go back and I feel a lift in my energy levels.
3. Write. Just do it. It will probably be awful but that’s because, as I have often said, it’s your Frankendraft; your shit first draft. Your crappy first paragraphs. But this is how a short story or a novel gets started. You are going to cross most of it out but no part of this process is wasted. If you are having a tough day, try to do this. If not, read a bit, think a bit, research a bit. It’s all work.
4. If you are a carer in some capacity, really try to box up a bit of attention just for yourself. Also, if your child is in a hole, do NOT get in the hole with them because you will make yourself ill. I know this because I have. Creativity is one release for you here and I have found, perhaps counter-intuitively, that the fact I don’t have much time forces the words out. Don’t wait for ideal conditions. Just reminding you of point 3 here.
5. Exercise. Step it up. If you can’t afford membership or a class, do it at home and do at least some of it outside if you possibly can. For me, the breathing and discipline of pilates is great and it makes me stronger and better able to deal with difficulty, Loads of free resources online.
6. Find a tribe. That might be online and twitter is a great resource for writers (not the only one; it’s my preferred route), though don’t think any evidence suggests that a lot of twitter activity will shift books – unless you do non-fiction and your social media is all about that, for a platform. So don’t feel under pressure: engage on your own terms, mute and curate as you need to.
7. Don’t feel bad if you don’t write every day. You are still a proper writer and enough of this tyranny already.
8. Observe detail. It’s soothing and stimulating. I take pictures too. Leaves; an interesting hat; the shift of a tree in the breeze to an unusual angle. Buildings, stone, walls, streetscapes, faces, overheard conversations. Be observant and, I do believe that, as well as feeling better, you will find that stories rise up to meet you. Be ready for them.
9. Don’t assume that those who don’t have your problems don’t have any problems. Some people’s lives are easier, maybe. But yours is the only one you have and look at you: you’re a stone cold miracle there. Don’t assume that other people have it sussed. And when you see writing types who seem particularly confident and want some of that, it is likely that they are blagging it or…just maybe…they are a bit cocky and I will wager that this is not the best for writing or the careful lifting up of others.
10. Read. Lose yourself in a book. Read different books. I have built and rebuilt my mind with reading and I hope fervently that it can be this way for you too, if you need it. I wish you love and courage, Anna x

‘But what do you know, who has not been mad?’

So, rather wonderfully, the proofs of my new book, Saving Lucia, are out and about. Bluemoose will be putting its new subscription service into action soon too; do watch out for that because, if you have liked the sound of Saving Lucia so far, as a subscriber, you’d get to read it two months early; in February, rather than April.

There is something I thought I would share with you today, though. As I have said elsewhere, the idea for Saving Lucia came from a chance sighting of this photograph.

Who was this? Elderly and (perhaps?) frail-looking; facing away from the camera; arms in a beautiful pose and look how she is covered with birds! It caught my eye. This lady was a Lady. She was The Honourable Violet Albina Gibson, an Irish aristocrat, and she loved the birds of the air. I found out that there were pouches sewn into her clothes and that these were to be filled with birdseed. Actually, I interviewed one of the nurses (now in her nineties) who cared for her – again because of a chance sighting of an article on psychiatric nursing – and gradually a book took shape. In 1926 Violet Gibson went to Rome and shot Mussolini. She missed, grazing across his nose – but she came closer than anyone else. Imprisoned, then deported, she was certified mad in Harley Street and sent to St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton where she remained for the rest of her life.

I will not say more of her story now, because we, as a team, will reveal and discuss things over the coming months – and of course I hope you will read the book.

But here is the thing I mentioned I wanted to share with you.

The book is about sanity. About madness. Our shifting definitions of what this is.

The book is about the imagination.

About its power and ability to sustain and transform a world. Yes, in the books we read which have sprung like fresh miracle from others’ imaginations, but also in that landscape inside our heads. The stories we tell ourselves and our reveries and daydreams and also the detailed imaginative freewheeling that may occur when circumstances press in on us and circumscribe our physical and psychological freedom. The latter is something I learned in very early childhood and have written about elsewhere: because I did not feel safe in the world I inhabited, I invented a lot of imaginary friends with whom I would have dialogue. This was not madness, but survival and company – and in essence it lasted into adolescence because the impact  of early and sustained experience had catastrophic effects on my sense of identity, coping skills, resilience, responses to stress and on my mental health broadly. So, I have coped with OCD, depression, generalised anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks and dissociative episodes for large parts of my life. These seemed to grow from complex trauma. I feel like I would not have survived these things – and sometimes it has been a close thing; those of you have received crisis care from our mental health teams will know what I mean – without all the worlds inside my head. Stories, reams of poetry, landscapes I would invent and populate.

So you see, Saving Lucia sprang from a chance sighting of a photo. Then I realised that Lucia Joyce, daughter of the novelist James Joyce, was a co-patient of Violet Gibson. And that was someone whose well-explored – and circumscribed, thanks (I am sorry if this is too harsh) to the efforts of the keeper of the Joyce estate – life and truths I longed to ponder. And there were other women, too. And poets, dictators, theosophists, priests, neurologists – and many more I wished to think about.

But there was something else that it sprang from, and this was my feeling about the power of the imagination to provide for us when we are laid low; when we are, in one way or another, confined. That is partly the reason why I have Violet, who has extraordinary adventures in the book, say,  ‘For those who are confined have the best imaginations.’ I didn’t mean it lightly.

Ah well, I hope we can talk a lot more about this book in the coming months. In the meantime, here is the beginning of an essay I have coming out also in April. It’s a book about art and mental health and my focus here, as you see, is on the imagination and very specifically about reading, without which I doubt I would have survived. Trauma: Art as Response to Mental Health, from Dodo Ink edited by Thom Cuell and Sam Mills. I hope you will read that, too.

Anna x

‘Do not read, as children do, for the sake of entertainment, or, like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Flaubert

And read, read, read in order to build and rebuild. Listen, too, to stories; to new words and worlds. This is how it was for me, reading to set the darkness echoing and to know that I was not alone. You may think (as Flaubert) that young children do not feel this way about books, but even as a young child, I read both for entertainment and safety, because I could find spaces with characters, or just linger with the feelings that words gave me when I ate them or jumbled them about in my mouth. I would talk to the characters in books and ask their advice; tell them how I felt. Or read passages again and again for security; they were as a private talisman to me. I think, looking back, that I savoured scansion or the weight of a line for its mnemonic qualities and the comfort that afforded.

In bed, as a kid, I would hear shouting or groaning; diffuse sounds. Arguments. Later, my father whimpering and screaming, because he went mad before he died, though no-one spoke about it. I would hear stertorous breathing and feel frightened, but there was no-one to tell. And I think that the sounds outside my room got mixed up with the sounds in my head. When I was very young, I also began a series of rebarbative and ruminating thoughts, the roots of obsessive compulsive patterns I suppose, in which I imagined that if I thought something bad, then it would happen to something. That if I thought something unkind or even allowed the words egress into my mind, then those words will billow out and do things. This was, I knew even then, because my mother had instilled in me an idea that I was bringing of bad things. Looking back, I don’t know why she did this; I don’t know why she wasn’t prevented. Even now, if I am not careful, I slip into this position if someone is particularly caustic to me because I may struggle to believe, despite the pressing of my rational mind, that it could be them, and not me. I turn to reading. Every time.’