ON BEING A PUBLISHED WRITER

Hello,

Being an author is a strange business. It wasn't that long ago I was a struggling writer with no publisher, no agent and everything I wanted felt so far away. The dream back then was to get an agent and my book published. That felt not only impossible but the pinnacle of my dreams. It was the promised land. Surely, if I achieved that, the worrying would stop.The endless nights lying in bed thinking about it would be over.

But now I've achieved that - and the excitement and disbelief has worn off a bit - I feel like I still have the longest way to go. When I look at the writers ahead of me - the writers I have long since admired and wanted to emulate - it feels like I'll never get anywhere near them. And this is what being a writer is like.

I'm sure J.K.Rowling doesn't feel this way because when she looks at her peers, they're all behind her. I'm sure she has other worries though; little snags in the pattern of her creative life that cause her to have the occasional sleepless night. But for writers like me, just setting out, barely registering their mark on the literary world, scrambling and trying to fight my way to the top, it feels like an impossible struggle.

However, I wouldn't swap what I do for anything. I love writing. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do and I'm so thankful I get to do it for a living. And it wasn't that long ago that where I am now seemed impossible. Maybe one day I'll be looking over my shoulder at more and more writers while the number in front gets a little bit smaller and a smidgen closer. Maybe.

Until next time.

Hugs,

Jon X

PAPERBACK PUBLICATION DAY!

Hello,

Thursday April 25th 2013 is a very special day for me. It's the day the paperback version of my debut novel, This Thirtysomething Life is released. The eBook has been out for a while now and I know most of you have read it, but now it will be available in shops across the country!

This is the culmination of years of hard work - I would say blood, sweat and tears, but it's writing and doesn't involve much blood or sweat, but tears yes. If you see my novel in a book shop, please take a photo and send it to me. It will literally make my day. I hope a few of you will buy the paperback too. My publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, have done a really incredible job with the book and it looks super cool.

That's it for today. I'm going to have a few drinks and bask in the glow of success for one day, before I crack on with my next novel. Thank you again to everyone who has bought and read the book.


Until next time.

Hugs,

Jon X

 

ON A BREAK - SORT OF

Hello,


I thought I'd write a quick blog about what I'm up to at the moment. I'm technically on a two week sabbatical from writing so I can catch up with things like cleaning, gardening and all the boring, mundane things I don't get done when I'm writing. I have also have a few books to read as I never read when I'm writing. I'm excited about the reading.

Firstly, I just handed over the final draft of Happy Endings to my publisher! I started writing Happy Endings last January so it's taken just over a year from beginning to end. I'm so proud of the book. It's the first time I've worked with professional editors and I think they've managed to take my book from being just good to brilliant - not that I'm blowing my own trumpet, of course. They manged to squeeze more out of me than I ever could on my own. I think working with editors is like going to the gym on my own or going to a personal trainer. A trainer will push you far harder than you can on your own and in the end you get far better results. I'm so excited for it to be released in August.

Something else that happened this week was that I sold the Italian rights for This Thirtysomething Life. For those of you who don't know, but the way it works is that my publisher has the rights to my book and they sell them off one country at a time. So far we have Serbia, China and Italy and hopefully the list grows once the paperback is actually out.

That's it for now. I have some reading to do and then I'm going to start writing This Family Life, which I'm super excited about. Until then I'll just leave you with these little adverts I did for Thirtysomething. I like to doodle around on Photoshop. 

OUT APRIL 25TH - MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR COPY!

Until next time.

Hugs,

Jon X

POPPY DOLAN

Hello,

Another week and another lovely guest blogger. This week the wonderful Poppy Dolan, self-published author of The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp. Much like me Poppy has climbed the Kindle chart with her funny, fresh take on men and relationships. You can get her novel for just 77p at the moment and I urge you to do before she gets snapped up by an agent and publisher. I'll be back next week with my own blog, but until then I give you Poppy Dolan.

Poppy hard at work!

Working 5 to 9

Like probably 99% of writers out there, I have a nine to five job. A full time, full on, occasional hair-pulling-from-stress job which I absolutely love. But I also absolutely love writing; the thing that doesn’t pay the bills (sadly). So I work at the office 9 to 5 and then at the wip 5 to 9. Not every day; I’m not a robot (again, sadly). But if I’ve still got the mental energy and enough motivation to ignore The Great British Menu, I power up the laptop and try and bash out a few thousand words. 

Then on a weekend I get to play at Full Time Writer: I head to my local coffee shop (or Terence, as I like to call him, like it’s a rather weird secret affair) order just one pot of tea – and a flapjack, if they’re lucky – and sit myself down for a three or four hour session. I know this isn’t what a full time writer probably does, but I have the ticking clock towards the Sunday night deadline in the back of my mind. If I don’t make the most of my weekend time, Sunday night will roll in again oh so quickly and it’ll be another 5 days before I have the luxury of daylight writing time. 

But I love these weekend sessions – in my sleepy little village, I think someone tapping away at a red laptop in a café is a bit of an interesting diversion from the norm so I have a smidge of notoriety (but then so does the manager of the Sainsbury’s Local). It’s also a lovely long stretch of time to get completely lost in the small universe I’m creating in my novel, throw my characters a few clangers to deal with, write a scene between my heroine and Paul Hollywood (I have actually done this), go misty-eyed over a romantic scene and generally play about. Writing is hard, but it’s also completely fun. Like trying to stay upright on a trampoline. 

I tend to get my ideas from things in my own life. The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp was inspired by, well, bad boyfriends but also by my own tendency to just be a teeny tiny bit controlling. So not only did I put right the wrongs of boyfriends past through my characters but I also gave myself a sneaky telling off for being an occasional nag and a constant know-it-all with a heroine who learns her lessons about having these traits. Writing lets you even out the score in a perfect world (though I bet my other half would still say I’m working on my flaws. Well, he still leaves ALL the cupboard doors open) and I love writing those bits of flirty or funny or angry dialogue that you never actually get perfectly right in the moment, but that come to you in the car or on an escalator. So I save those up from my real life and let my characters say everything they want to, in a way I probably never will. 

I definitely believe in writing what you know. But, more than that, I believe that you should write what you would love to read. I struggled for a while in trying to write what I thought would sell, in a time when people were very down on commercial women’s fiction. But after a few embarrassingly bad attempts at thrillers, I came back to the truth: I love rom coms. Watching, reading and writing. So that's what I intend to do.

Her hilarious debut novel available now

You can say hello to Poppy and share bad boyfriend stories at @poppydwriter and at her Facebook Page, Poppy Dolan Books.

CHRISTINA HOPKINSON

Hello,


Another guest blog and I'm really very excited about this one. For those of you who don't know Christina Hopkinson (where have you been living?)she is the author of the bestselling novel, The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs. Her second novel, Just Like Proper Grown-ups, also just came out in paperback. So if you have an ounce of sense, you'll finish reading this blog and then get both books right away. I read The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs a while ago and I absolutely loved it. It's smart, hilarious, thought-provoking and a real page-turner. As well as writing two wonderful and bestselling novels, she has also written for The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Sunday Times to name a few. And now she is writing for me! I am honoured and proud to introduce Christina Hopkinson.

The lovely Christina Hopkinson

I always find it very self-regarding when those working in advertising refer to themselves as ‘creatives’ (a bit like those on TV who call themselves ‘the talent’). I’m loathe to describe what I do as a creative process. The way I go about my work seems to be far away from any fanciful ideas of muses, inspiration and flurries of frenzied activity. 

My first rule of work is to try to avoid the Internet. Whole days, weeks, can be swallowed up in the rabbit hole of property websites and others even more shameful to mention (does anyone come out well on examination of their browser history? To waste time shilly-shallying around the more trivial depths of the net fills me with both self-loathing and a more general depression. If I can’t avoid the temptations of the web to write a book, then what makes me think that readers should do the same to read one? 

There is are various versions of ‘internet blocking productivity software’ to download to close off access to the Internet but I find a visit to the British Library (luckily only ten minutes’ bike ride away) acts as one giant Freedom program. The wi-fi there is like a patient in intensive care, flickering in and out of consciousness with the overall prognosis as fatal. I can check email on my phone, but I can’t lose myself in hours of non-productive searching for a hypothetical Suffolk cottage to buy with my hypothetical millions. 

Routine is another great aid to creativity. See, could there be a more dull and uncreative word than routine? (The answer is yes, by the way, and I’ll probably be using quite a few of them in this blog, glamorous words like organisation, application, discipline). Again external factors aid me in this in that I have three children, eight and under, who go to school between the hours of 8.55am and 3.15pm. It means if have a very defined working day and one which is ideally tailored to writing. Others may be able to produce great words for 12 hours a day, but my creativity, such as I have it, is spent after three or four. The thinking and the percolating and the marinading of ideas can go on all through the day and night, while I’m stacking the dishwasher or playing cards with my children, but the actual writing needs far fewer hours. 

There are other ways in which I’m more like a production-line worker than a romantic artist. I set myself a word count of anywhere between 1,000 or 2,000 words a day. OK, more like 1,000. Much of these thousand words may turn out to be unusable, a fact that I’m conscious of as I type them. But without words written, there are no words to eschew and I’m convinced that even a few terrible pages are better than none. 

I have a friend, Wendy Jones, who writes great bundles of words and pages, which she carries physically and mentally in a chaotic yet intelligent way and occasionally throws up in the air and re-stitches, never knowing quite where the book is taking her. I’m much more like a project manager, in that I plan meticulously. I know when I start the book where, more or less, it’s going to end, even if I take some scenic diversions along the way. I know roughly how many words I’m going to write to get to each plot point and how it’s going to arc. I do diagrams, a bit like a child’s number line, in which arrows, numbers and word counts pile up and which I cling to in the dark days between 30,000 and 70,000 words. 

If these scribbled diagrams fail to give me succour, then I have other talismanic documents to turn to - the character descriptions, the point-by-point plot summary, the overview. I also try to have a, horrible phrase this, ‘mission statement’ to go back to. It’s very easy to get depressed when you work alone and to keep asking yourself, what’s the point? My one line about the question I’m aiming to answer in the novel staves off any overwhelming feelings of pointlessness (about the book at least...). 

The sports journalist Matthew Syed is very good on the tricks and tics of tennis players, the way they bounce the ball the same number of times before serving or use the towel when not sweating, saying that ‘Wimbledon is less a tennis competition than a giant OCD convention’. I’m not an athlete or a champion, but I think that any career/job/vocation/hobby that requires a large amount of self-discipline and motivation probably also thrives on habits that trick the mind into believing that it’s worth continuing. 

Whether it’s moleskin notebooks, a favourite cafe or a complicated way with post-its, sometimes it’s the ways into prompting creativity that are our most creative production of all.

Her second novel Just Like Proper Grown-ups out now in Paperback
Click HERE to see in Amazon store

Her brilliant debut novel The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs
Click HERE to see in Amazon store


To find out more about Christina Hopkinson please visit her website at http://www.christinahopkinson.com/

ON COMEDY

Hello,


Apart from being a writer of comedy, I'm also an avid comedy fan. I love comedy. It's basically the only thing I watch on television. I also love to watch and read what other comedians say about writing comedy. It fascinates me. It's what I've always wanted to do and probably the only thing I'll ever want to do.

I watched a Ricky Gervais interview recently and he was talking about writing comedy. If you know me, you'll know I'm a huge Gervais fan. The Office is probably my favourite television show of all time and I'm currently watching Derek, which is just wonderful. What I love about his work is the characters. And it got me thinking about my own work and how I see writing comedy and so here I am, writing a blog about it. For you.

I think the most important thing to remember when writing comedy, whether it's a novel or a screenplay, is that you aren't writing jokes. When I was writing This Thirtysomething Life, I knew it was going to be a humourous look at one man's bumbling journey on the road to adulthood, but I didn't go into it thinking, this is going to be bloody hilarious. I just wrote a book about a man who, try as he might, couldn't quite grow up until finally he becomes a father and he feels for the first time like a proper adult. It became funny as I wrote it, but only because of the characters and the situations they found themselves in.

When I'm writing my books, I never think of the audience. The thing I probably admire most about Ricky Gervais is his attitude. In the documentary, he said that he doesn't care if people like his work or not. He isn't bothered by negative reviews because the only thing he wants to do is make work that he's proud of. If people like it, great, if they don't, that isn't his problem. I think this is definitely something that most writers can identify with. We all get bad reviews and meet some literally horrendous people online who just seem to want to destroy us for some reason. It can hurt, but it shouldn't. I don't write for good reviews or to be liked, I write what I want to write for me.

It needs to have pathos. All the best comedy whether it's on television or in books has pathos. The characters need to go through something, they have to suffer and then hopefully come out of it all the better. Going back to my earlier point, you can't just tell jokes. It has to have real depth and it has to say something. In my novel, Harry, is struggling to come to terms with becoming a father. This is a very real fear that I think a lot of men go through.

I'm so proud of This Thirtysomething Life and I think it's hilarious and heart-warming and a really sweet story about love, marriage and growing up. I get a lot of wonderful reviews, but also a lot of bad ones too. Only the other day I got a review that said, 'Boring, sorry, example text.."In the kitchen. Eating toast." seriously?' This made me laugh so much. One of the things I love about the book is that it's so mundane. I left in all the details about his life that other writers may have taken out. I love that Harry describes in great detail the food he eats, the cocktails he drinks, the constant weather updates. These are important to him and are a part of what makes the story unique and I think funny. This reviewer obviously didn't get it and it's fine. I didn't write it for them.

Lastly, as I'm going on a bit, what makes good comedy? It's the question that comes up again and again. What makes people laugh? Well, as I've discovered, it's a pretty pointless thing to even contemplate. We all laugh at different things. Some people love Monty Python, including me, and think their work was ground-breaking and avant-garde, while others just don't get it. Some people love The Office, while some people think it's boring and dull. Comedy, like love, is very much in the eye of the beholder. I write what I think is funny and I hope there are enough people in the world who agree with me. It's literally that simple and that difficult. The only important thing is doing something you're really proud of and after that, it's really out of your hands.




So it's goodnight from me and it's goodnight from him,



Hugs,

Jon X


Ps.Here is the Ricky Gervais interview

STUART AYRIS

Hello,

Another guest blog and this time it's author Stuart Ayris. I met Stuart online and we've kept in touch and helped each other with various things. I think of everyone I've met through my writing, Stuart is the most genuine and humble. He's written a series of novels and one of them, 'Tollesbury Time Forever', was the 2012 winner of the IBB Best Overall Book Award and Best Psychological Fiction Award. So without further ado, here is the wonderful Stuart Ayris talking about his writing and what inspires him.

 

Stuart Ayris

How I write and what inspires me

I guess it’s best to start with what inspires me because without that I wouldn’t write anything. Saying that, inspiration is a big old word which implies some sort of grand achievement, some monumental work of art. I just put one word after the other, often words that I make up, wake up the next morning and invariably smile at what I have written – having forgotten usually that I had written anything at all.

My writing starts I think from the middle of my mind and often when I am well away from any means of writing it down. Then when I get home I’ll turn that sentence into a paragraph perhaps and just keep going for as long as things feel right. I am of the firm belief that writing is a natural process that requires as little interference from the conscious mind as possible. If you force it, it will appear strained. If you think too much it won’t come at all. I try and write about five hundred words a day. Sometimes I’ll manage ten, other times a thousand. And I can go a week or so without writing a single word before plunging into a three thousand word all night session.

In terms of the practicalities of writing, I have two able assistants who are, in my opinion, much maligned – cheap wine and insomnia. I must confess to not having had a sober word pass through me and onto the page in the last five years. I like the quietness of the Tollesbury night and the letting go that occurs as the wine flows. Thinking is magical and writing is magical. There is nothing more magical though than a Tollesbury black sky white star night and nothing more beautiful to me than the process of bringing to the surface something that has been created deep on down in the big soul universe.

I don’t believe I ever have or ever will write anything unique – all I have managed to do is to find a process that enables me to recall to the front of my mind something that has already come into being. I just write it down is all.

With regard to the structure of my books, I always write the final line, then the first paragraph. I then just fill in the part in-between. I have no idea where it is going until I’m about halfway in and then I work my way towards that last line. The only editing I do is to go through a couple of times to make sure different scenes and characters link together. I do a basic spell check but Microsoft Word tends to confuse my made up words for words that aren’t real. So if you don’t mind, I shall end this little post with a copy of an email I received from KDP Amazon:

Hello from Amazon KDP!

The book “The Bird That Nobody Sees” you recently submitted to KDP has possible spelling errors in your converted file. Consider correcting these and resubmitting.

Note: If you need to fix any of these potential typos, please do so in your digital manuscript and then upload the corrected file. We also recommend running spell-check if you have not done so. Learn more.

Here are the errors we recommend you address by correcting your manuscript:

......Fuckle

......blang

......chinkety

......darknight imagebright

......doomphed

......hootly dootly

......dossy

......morphined up

......rambledown

......stiggering

......thoughtdreams

......toppermost

......wowest

You have chosen to ignore these possible errors.

Regards,

Kindle Direct Publishing

Cheers!!!

Stu

TWENTYSOMETHING, HAPPY ENDINGS AND SERBIA

Hello,


It's been a busy old week. This Twentysomething Life was released on Thursday. A big thank you to everyone who downloaded it. I hope you enjoyed it. I've had some lovely reviews and comments on Facebook and Twitter. It really makes my day so thank you.

In other news, I got the first look at the cover for my next novel, Happy Endings. I can't share it yet, but it looks fantastic. I can't wait for it to be released. I do, of course, have to finish it first. It's almost done. It's looking really good though and I'm super happy with it. My editor and agent have done wonders, making it a million times better than my original first draft.

I have some wonderfully exciting news! I sold rights to This Thirtysomething Life to Serbia! This means it will be translated into Serbian and they will design a beautiful new Serbian cover. I can't wait to see the book. When you start writing, you never imagine you'll see your book in another language...especially Serbian!

Lastly, I'm due to get the first paperback copies of This Thirtysomething Life in the mail this week. I can't begin to explain how excited I am to see my book in all its new book loveliness. I'm already planning on taking it to my local bookshop and popping it on the shelf, just to see how it looks. Don't judge me.

Until next time,

Hugs,

Jon X

THIS TWENTYSOMETHING LIFE

I promised you a surprise and here it is. This Twentysomething Life (A sort-of prequel to 'This Thirtysomething Life')! 

This is a short (ish) story I wrote after talking to my editor at Hodder. We agreed it would be really fun to write something about Harry and Emily before This Thirtysomething Life. I knocked around a few ideas, but this one seemed like the most obvious and the most exciting. We meet Harry and Emily two weeks before their wedding and, of course, it's full of typical Harry moments, more Granddad, the stag do and lots of other heartwarming and hilarious moments all leading up to the big day. And the best thing is that it's completely FREE!

From THURSDAY MARCH 7TH you can download this for nothing from Amazon.co.uk. It's my present to all the wonderful, lovely and beautiful people who bought and loved This Thirtysomething Life. I really enjoyed writing this little one-off special and I hope you enjoy reading it too.  

Before I hand you over to the official blurb, I must thank my editor Harriet and my agent Ariella for helping me with this and making another little dream of mine a reality. Also, a big cheers to the designer, who did such a sterling job with the cover with very little time. Okay, here it is, the blurb.






A brilliantly funny, heartwarming short story: essential reading for all fans of This Thirtysomething Life and the perfect introduction to Harry and Emily for newcomers.

Before Harry and Emily were thirtysomethings on the cusp of parenthood, they were twentysomethings on the brink of marriage. Set during the build up to their wedding, this is the story of why Harry started a diary and how – in typical Harry fashion – he almost didn’t make it down the aisle.

Just as hilarious and heartwarming as This Thirtysomething Life, this short story is told with unflinching honesty and laugh-out-loud accuracy and gives an insight into just-about-to-be-married madness in all its messy, human, uplifting, feel-good glory. Though you may never look at your father-in-law in quite the same way again . . . 

I hope you all love this.

Hugs,

Jon X

 

FIONA MALBY

Hello,

Another week, another lovely guest blog. I actually discovered Fiona or F.C.Malby as she writes under, on Twitter. She always posted such interesting and well written blogs, so when I conceived the idea of having guest bloggers, she was one of the first people I contacted. I also wrote a blog for her page which you can see here: http://fcmalby.wordpress.com/. 

Thank you Fiona for writing such a wonderful blog for me about your writing style and inspiration. Please everyone check out her novel, Take Me To The Castle, it's actually free this week on Amazon, so do pop along and snag your FREE copy while you can!

F.C.Malby

  

 

Author Bio

F.C. Malby is the author of Take Me to the Castle. Born  in East Anglia in the UK, she left the University of Reading with a degree in Geography and Education and went on to teach and work as a wedding photographer. She spend time teaching English in the Czech Republic, the Philippines and London before moving to central Europe. She enjoys art, photography, travel and skiing.

Writing Style and Inspiration

Thank you to Jon for hosting today and for allowing me to write a guest post on his fun-packed website. If you haven’t read Jon’s timeline, do! It’s brilliantly written and hugely entertaining. I’m happy to see that Matt Dunn has paved the way for me today!

Readers often ask where you get your ideas from as a writer and how you begin. ‘How do you think of a scene?’ ‘Do you write about your own experiences?’ ‘Do you have the whole book mapped out in your head?’ I have been met with these questions on many occasions.

Like Jon, I’m less of a planner and more of a ‘let’s see how the characters flesh out the story’ kind of writer. The idea of meticulously mapping out each chapter fills me with horror. I don’t work that way, some do but it’s not for me. I start with the characters and the hook, the core tension or issue/s in the story, and build from there. Sometimes an idea strikes and it’s all there ready to go, and sometimes it starts with something I’ve seen – an incident or a conversation, maybe a film. Then it builds with time, slowly, and it gathers enough momentum to be written down.

I think many writers do use their own experiences to a certain extent but the art of fiction is to be able to weave elements of reality into a believable story. You need to be able to pour emotion into the characters in a way that doesn’t sound awkward. It has to come naturally, especially if it’s humourous.

Writers also use their outside passions to inspire their work, whether it’s sport, travel, music. I am an artist and a photographer as well as a writer, I’m highly visual and I like to use images to start ideas. I also create boards on Pinterest of far flung destinations to help with detail. I have written short stories set in Marrakesh and India so I created boards for these to help with scene setting, clothing, and fine detail.

I also find inspiration in film and music and when I write I try to imagine each scene as a film. It helps you to see the points of view from the perspectives of different characters, to imagine how the scene will work, and to think about the detail of the surroundings and the body language of each character, especially in a high tension scene. The aim is to show how the character is feeling or reacting to a situation, either through dialogue or through what they are doing or how they are reacting with their body – arms folded, turning away, moving to another room (or sitting in the shed with the cocktail collection!)

So for me, writing is a fairly organic process, developing out of a theme or an idea and then it evolves. I learned a great deal from writing Take Me to the Castle and I am now writing short stories. These are a great way of experimenting with different themes and styles and I like the impact that you can create in a short piece of narrative.

Blurb

Arriving in Letovice, Jana is trying to escape a personal loss and come to terms with the changes in her country and in her own life. She stays with the Martineks and meets their son, Miloš. When he leaves Letovice and she travels back to Prague, she encounters a deep and shocking betrayal. Jana meets Lukas, a conservator working on the restoration of a mosaic at the Cathedral of St Vitus, Prague. But who is he and what is he hiding?

Take Me to the Castle has been nominated for The People’s Book Awards and is currently free to download this week until 1 March.

Connect with F.C. Malby:

Website fcmalby.com

Twitter @fcmalby

Facebook FC Malby Author Page

Goodreads FC Malby