Author: FionaMoMitchell

What’s the Best Book You’ve Ever Read?

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It’s a question to induce frown lines.

How can you choose your number one when every book gives you such different things? It might be a beautifully drawn character, a killer twist, or a pace that turns you into a bionic reader. Picking your dream book is a task that demands you dig deep.

On Saturday, I asked my sunny New Yorker friend Gerry to do just that.

She fanned her fingers through the air, and widened her sparkly blue shadowed eyes. She was about to impart something important.

‘It has to be If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor,’ she said.

This was a recommendation I couldn’t forget. I typed the title into my iPhone and the next day, hunted the book down.

I Tweeted my little find a few hours ago and was met by a swathe of appreciation for it. It’s going to be a good’un, I reckon.

By asking the question – what’s your best book ever? – you’re bound to end up with great recommendations.

Here’s mine: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. It’s an epic story about the biblical character Dinah and is laced with betrayal, infertility, love. I’m not a massive fan of historical fiction, so I wouldn’t have gone for it ordinarily, but a friend gave me my first copy, telling me I just had to read it. It delivers on every count – the writing is enchanting, the landscape vivid and the characters richly drawn. I’ve read it three times and don’t rule out reading it another three. I’ve bought it God knows how many times for loads of friends – because frankly it’s the perfect gift for a friend.

Have you got a number one book? If so, I’d love to add your picks to my list of unbeige books to be read.

15 Surefire Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

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You know those days – the ones when you’ve set aside a stretch of time to write, but the words won’t come. You type The, then press the delete button and start riffling through your cupboard for a biscuit to dunk in your tea. The muse isn’t striking and no amount of Googling your own name or scrolling through Twitter is going to urge it in your direction.

Sweep away the crumbs from your keyboard and stop listening to that deranged voice inside your head saying I JUST CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!!!! because here’s how to reboot your creative streak.

 

1 Write Crap

Everything’s a bit rubbish to start with isn’t it? It’s the editing that polishes it up and turns it into a thing of beauty. Even if you’ve spent three hours on something that reads like a legal contract, hunker down because magic could be about to fly your way. Take it from Maya Angelou. ‘What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.” And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”’

2 Stop Worrying

Okay, so it’s awful, but chill, no one apart from you is ever going to see this first attempt. ‘All writing problems are psychological problems,’ says novelist Erica Jong. ‘Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line.’ So write your first draft as if no one will ever see it.

3 Start in the Middle

Don’t fret over an opening paragraph, start in the middle instead. Write any scene or moment that comes to you. Keep doing that and the beginning and end will arrive. The same goes with plans. Start typing down ideas and plot lines will start sewing together on that previously-blank page.

4 Put Pen to Paper

So the bright, white Word document looks deadlier than a black hole? So get your old notebook out, or even better, a new one. ‘Writing on a computer can be terribly distracting,’ says Zadie Smith. ‘So sometimes I like to use a pencil and paper to jot down ideas.’

5 Create a Space

Nope, it’s still not happening for you. So step away from the screen. ‘Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise,’ says Hilary Mantel. ‘Whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.’ Go refresh that cold cup of tea and dunk another biscuit.

6 Be Inspired by Photographs

Take a look at Pinterest and Unsplash for beautiful imagery that might just spark off an idea. Try creating a mood board for your story or novel on Pinterest. Then write a small descriptive piece about one of the photographs as a way into your story.

7 Go on a Journey

That’s what travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux did when he ran out of ideas for novels. ‘I recommend to people, if you’re out of ideas, go away. Go somewhere. Go look for a story.’ Walk, get on a train, go for a bike ride.

8 Get some Cafe Culture

Get away from your desk, and take up residence in your local cafe. Novelist Elizabeth Day loves going to cafes to write fiction. ‘I find it really helpful to be surrounded by the buzz of other people,’ she told Mslexia.

9 Watch a Documentary

If you’re trudge to the high street hasn’t inspired you, switch on the television and watch something factual. Even if you don’t find a subject you want to write about, you might spot something in the margins of that programme – a person, a feeling, something unexplored.

10 Work on an Ideas File

Read news and features. If a story resonates with you, rip it out and push it into an ideas file. Note down interesting situations or conversations and pop them in there too. Then whenever you’re floundering, you’ll have ideas on tap.

11 Match Ideas

So you want to write about a Chilean fire brigade, but can’t think of where to go with it. Get reading and searching for a second idea and combine the two. That’s what writer Tania Hershman does. ‘What I actively do now is collide two ideas together, very often a scientific one with something else I have been thinking about, and see what results,’ she says.

‘I have been known to read two things at the same time—say, a New Scientist article and an article on something entirely different in another magazine—just to mess with my head and produce something new. Messing with my own head is an intrinsic part of my process!’

12 Read an Excerpt from your Favourite Book

Open a beloved book on a random page and read. Read the opening chapters of a handful of other books too. I keep seven favourite books beside my computer, so I can dip in when I’m stuck.

13 Do Fake Research

For inspiration, Evie Wyld reads up on something that interests her like ghosts. ‘I love real life ghost stories,’ she told Mslexia. ‘I suppose I am trying to understand something primal, what makes us afraid, fall in love, unkind; what makes us human.’

14 Read obituaries

A history of someone’s incredible life? Let it absorb you. Sadly, there’s been all too many of those this year. 2016 has not been kind…..

15 Google

(But not your own name. OBVI) If you have a vague idea turn it into an informed one by reading as much as you can about the subject. Immerse yourself in it then give writing another go.

 

Writing a novel: False Starts and Second Chances

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To be or Not to Be?

Positive, I mean…..

My little old book is almost ready to be frisbeed out into the world of literary agents again.

So when you’re submitting, what sort of mental attitude should you have?

I’m writing a feature on the forthcoming Rio Olympics at the moment, and researching past and possible medallists. I could take the Usain Bolt stance. I’m going to win, no doubt. Or I could be more of an Adam Peaty. ‘It’s not yours until it’s physically around your neck.’ (Hmm, that probably works better with medals than books, although……..)

book necklace

 

Away from the sporting arena, I could go Victor Meldrew. Yesterday, a photographer pal of mine told me: ‘This may sound a bit negative, but I think you should expect the worst.’

Say, what?!

(Note to reader – he hasn’t read the book). ‘Erm, I just mean you should think negatively and then you won’t expect anything.’

Maybe I should adopt this approach.

But just now an email popped into my inbox.

‘I’ve finished reading your book and I have to say it’s looking absolutely brilliant.’ That’s my editor, Sara Sarre.

So, I’m about to walk up to the starting blocks yet again. Prayer position, and breathe….. and back to that feature…..

(Header image unsplash.com patricktomasso.com)

Writers: Why rejection is good for you

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A rejection letter ruins my day. And the closer I seem to get to finding an agent, the more those letters sting.

But rejection has an unexpected edge. It makes your work better.

Every time I get a rejection from a literary agent, I’m crumpled. The words, It’s not fair! kick through my head in a silent, red-faced tantrum. I find it hard to lift a smile. Everything seems heavy.

But my mope always sends me back to the screen. How can I make this thing sing? I try again.

Rejection shakes your work up; it fine-tunes it. It reimagines and reshapes things. It helps you create something a hundred times better than what’s been given the big thumbs down.

But God does it hurt.

There’s a world of difference between the amateur book that I first submitted three years ago. The story is different, the title too. Many darlings have been murdered, but not forgotten. All that telling rather than showing has been rooted out and shoved onto the slag heap.

But it was only by going back to that really rather rubbish book and sending it out again, that it got a new life.

A rejection letter from a literary agent has led me to a brilliant editor and mentor who’s helped me write a book with all the things that were missing from that first attempt. Pace, tension, character arcs – things I hadn’t even realised weren’t there. It was only by sending out my book again and getting rejected over and over that I found her.

She (and me) thinks my book is just about ready – one more scene to write, two more proofreads and then ping – I’m hoping that this book might earn itself a new R word. Representation.

* Post-script – I found representation just a few weeks after I wrote this blog post, and my novel The Maid’s Room has been published by Hodder & Stoughton.

3 Tips to Help you WIN a Short Story Competition

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Short stories can dig deep in you and twist, but what is it that turns them into things of beauty?

You might write something stuffed full of framable phrases, but it just feels as flat as a burst balloon.

Sometimes I’ll finish writing a story, re-read and feel moved by it. I know then that I might have nailed it, because if you’re unaffected you can put money on it that your reader will be unaffected too. So how does a story reach into the guts of the reader?

Well, here’s my three short story must-haves:

1) Get Emotional

One of my so-far unsubmitted stories started off life as one of those flat, empty things. Sure, it had an unusual setting, a starjump of an ending and a sassy young character, but something about it didn’t feel right. I buried it somewhere on my computer. Months later, I didn’t open it again, but simply thought back to it and rewrote it anew. This time it was stuffed full of emotion. Because that’s what I’m hankering after when I write a short; I want emotional pull, a magic that makes the reader care.

As Danielle McLaughlin, author of Dinosaurs on Other Planets, puts it, ‘As I write I am chasing a certain core feeling or hunch that builds around an image or series of images, and it is this elusive thing that I follow through various shape-shifting characters and scenarios.’

2. Take Risks

What I love about short stories is that they don’t have to bow down to being commercial. You can be as literary as you like. They don’t need a happy ending. They don’t need to belong to a genre. You can break all boundaries. Why conform? In last year’s Bristol Short Story Prize, the winning A Week on the Water is such a patient unfolding that it took me two reads to really get it. And boy when I did, I just about tipped off my deckchair. It was a risk, but Brent van Staalduinen took it and it paid off.

As author Tania Hershman says:

‘The nice, neat stories where everything is explained and it all ties up at the end might be all very well, but how do they resonate with someone who lives in this world, this uncertain, complicated world?’

For Tania, it’s stories that grapple with chaos and ambiguity that are truly great.

Resist safety at all costs. Instead invite your reader to get stuck in, to question, to consider.

3. Polish the Ending

Don’t let your story peter out. No one’s looking for And they lived happily ever after. But a story does need a sense of an ending.

Chair of last year’s Bristol Prize judging panel, Sara Davies sums it up:

‘There were a number of stories that kept us reading, only to let us down with weak or inconclusive endings. A good ending isn’t necessarily a complete wrapping up of the story or a top-note finale, but a story needs an emotional resolution of some kind, so that as readers we feel we have reached an insight or understanding we didn’t have when we began reading, that our investment in the story has paid off.’

For more tips on risk-taking, read this.

Should you base your characters on real-life people?

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‘If they’re based on somebody else, in a funny way it’s an infringement of a copyright. That person owns his life, has a patent on it. It shouldn’t be available for fiction,’ said author Toni Morrison in a recent interview with The Paris Review.

Which got me thinking, do I ever copy from life?

I use aspects of things – situations, people’s personality quirks, the way they look. I apply a heavy dose of imagination then write.

To put it the Maggie O’Farrell way: ‘I think all fiction is a patchwork of things you borrow, things you lift from real life and others you simply make up.’

To copy directly would be plagiarism, right? And a tad risky. I mean look what happened to novelist Gregoire Delacourt when a court ordered him to pay actress Scarlett Johansson 2,500 euros for his ‘demeaning’ depiction of a female lookalike in his book The First Thing We Look At.

And although few of these cases get as far as court, writing is a risk. Ablene Cooper, a housekeeper for the family of the brother of The Help author Kathryn Stockett filed a suit. Cooper claimed that her image and likeness had been used without permission for one of the main characters, Abileen Clark. The case was dismissed because the one-year statute of limitations had elapsed.

If my book ever makes it into print, I wonder who’ll be looking for themselves in the margins. My mum is convinced I’ve used her personality for my central character. ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Ya wee devil,’ she replied. I might add that not once does my main woman say ya wee devil. Hailing as she does from the Philippines, it’d be completely out of character. She does however give everyone nicknames (like my mum). A work colleague of my mum’s whose wayward hair failed to stay in a daily chignon became Bird’s Nest. A neighbour became Margaret with the Dug, to distinguish her from the five other Margarets living on the street. Probably best not to mention The Space Cadet or Whhhhhhhy Me????? at this juncture, but the point is, my mum can see herself in my main character.

Some of the people who’ve read earlier versions of the book, reckon my other main character, Juliet, is me. But a couple of months ago, a literary agent, who was admittedly giving me positive feedback at the time, confessed, ‘Juliet’s too wet for me to really care about her.’ Ouch. Out came the drying-up cloth, and in went optimism and some classic lines delivered by one of my best friends. (She’s bound to recognise them). For the record though, Juliet isn’t my friend, neither is she me. I haven’t ever given anyone mouth to mouth resuscitation like Juliet although I did practise on a plastic model when St John Ambulance came to our school once. There was dribble involved.

The few times I’ve tried to write a character based entirely on a person I’ve known, it simply hasn’t worked. Writing like this is a dead end (for me). Copying people is like trying to copy another writer’s style – it just leads to bad writing – oh, and lawsuits.

So best stick to the tried and tested method. Let real events and people send your imagination into a spin, then invention will do the rest of work.

How NOT to write a synopsis

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Writing a synopsis is variously described as ‘synopsis hell’ and ‘the most difficult 500 words you’ll ever write’ – in my case, the most difficult 800.

I’ve just written a new synopsis for my first novel, so thought I’d share my pain, ahem, I mean pointers.

Is a synopsis going to land you an literary agent?

Most submissions require a covering letter, the first three chapters of your book and a synopsis. An agent will read your covering letter, take a look at the first few pages of your novel and if they like what they see, they’ll want to know where the story is going; does it have enough meat on it; will it sell? Move over chapters; make way for the synopsis.

What is a synopsis?

It’s not the blurb on the back of the book; it’s the nuts and bolts of your story. What happens; what’s at stake and how does the jeopardy rise? Is the ending a satisfying one?

Here are some other essential ingredients:

  • Hit the highlights – the bones of the story – beginning, middle and end.
  • Make sure the plot has a true arc – are the conflicts of the main characters clear, and the resolutions to those conflicts?
  • Mention the genre of your book – commercial, YA, book group fiction etc.
  • Include setting – what country, what year?
  • Highlight the main characters. Put their names in capital letters or embolden them when you first introduce them.
  • Include the unique selling point of your book.
  • Make the synopsis 500 to 800 words, and when you get an agent who wants a synopsis of 300 words instead, put your head into your hands and blub loudly. Then dab yourself down. You can do this! Chop, chop – take out another subplot or two and get rid of superfluous spiel.
  • Spoilers – Do include the final plot twist.

What shouldn’t you include?

  • A detailed account of the characters’ personalities. A quick character sketch is enough. Disillusioned science teacher Walter White. The unmarried Frances with an interesting past etc.
  • A blow-by-blow account of every single subplot. Be lean; you don’t have the space for this.

Finally, let other people read your synopsis because if Great Aunt Iris can’t make sense of it, you can bet your life a literary agent will chuck it into the bin faster than you can say Trash.

What it’s like to finish writing a novel

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It’s almost time to send my first novel out into the world again. There’s nothing left to write on its pages.

There was the first draft. Then a literary agent met me and suggested changes. Next, came the second draft.

When the rejection came, I pushed the book into a drawer for a few months. Then somehow the book started niggling at me again. I found the will to push on with the third draft.

Another literary agent liked it, and what happened was this: a major rewrite and a new plot, resulting in draft number four. Cue good reactions from several literary agents, but still an all-round no.

Then one of the agents wrote back to me recommending an editor/mentor, and with her insights I’ve now completed the fifth draft. Let’s hope this draft is fabulous number five.

When Hannah Kent finished Burial Rites, she had a surprising reaction. (Admittedly this was her first draft, not her fifth).

‘I realised I no longer knew what to write. There was nothing more to write. I pushed my keyboard away from me, read the last line over and over, and then – unexpectedly – burst into tears. They weren’t tears of elation or disbelief. I was suddenly, profoundly sad.’

I can relate. Finishing feels like a loss. I’m glad that I’ve got this far, but all those obsessive late nights, all those burnt pieces of toast, all those half-listened to conversations, are gone.

I’m not sad. Neither am I elated; I just feel knackered. I’ve read my book that many times aloud that I sound like I have a forty-a-day habit. During warmer months, me speaking in my characters’ tongues has spilled through the open windows. ‘I don’t want this anymore.’ ‘It isn’t a marriage anyway!’ The neighbours must think I’ve got multiple personalities. Either that or I need a bit of marriage guidance counselling.

And I have to admit, I do feel slightly unhinged. A chapter of my life is now over. This book is just about as good as it ever will be; it’s do or die.

I’m stepping into some new place, some other writing project, something that might give me yet more oxygen. Because writing is like breathing to me: it’s the only way to live.

Do you finish books you hate?

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When I read, I want a story to open up a space in my chest for someone to dance in. I want intensity. I want to feel, to believe. Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns both did the job.

But sometimes a book doesn’t slice my loaf – there are seven of those piled up beside my bed with an empty mug perched on top like an amateur art installation. ‘I’ll come back to you,’ I think. (I lie.)

It’s not like any of those books are rubbish, they’re just not doing it for me.

A couple of weeks ago, an editor asked me: ‘Do you read as reader or as a writer?’

And something has switched over the past year because I now read as a writer. I take notes, and analyse clues and complicated plots.

That’s turned me into even more of a quitter of books I don’t really like. I want to be inspired after all. Reading has become study. Rather than watching a magician do tricks, I’m leaning over to the side, having a good old nosey at where she’s stuffed her ace of clubs.

But I could learn something from my bedside pile. Just what is it that’s not working for me? Is the main character too much of a snooty toff to identify with? Or is it that the plot is too slow, the characters too passive?

Pressing on with a book that makes you groan for all the wrong reasons can pay dividends. I gave up with We Need to Talk About Kevin 100 pages in, but I returned to it a year later, and what a punch-to-the-gut read it was. Similarly, I toiled over the opening chapters of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but stuck with Dorrigo Evans to the bitter, beautiful end.

I had to exercise patience with both books, and boy was it worth it. I felt, I believed. Someone salsa-ed inside my ribcage.

So – oh go on then – I’m going back to my bedside pile.

What kind of reader are you – a quitter or a plough-on-until-the-ender?