I know that true writers - obviously not me - should be able to write at any time of day. I can't do this and I have tried.  For me the best time is between 9am and 2pm.  After that and my brain slows down so much that I am only capable of slumping, drinking coffee, reading The Sun (because it's easy to power through whatever the politics, I don't care.  I can make my own mind up).

So obviously, in the last ten years, I haven't written ten novels.  I've written two completely, one partly, one just the first three chapters and the most recent, only in my head - and I'm already getting bored with it.

I need to go to an office everyday to write.  Not my shed as isolation causes all manner of grief.  Just two hours a day and then two hours in the pub (my own pub, but not behind the bar as I am incompetent and scared of the sea of expectant faces), someone else's pub with a couple of girlfriends would do just fine.  After that a little lie down and then a walk with the dogs. Perfect - oh and a day a month shopping for one item of clothing.  Partly that's all I can afford and partly it's good discipline.

How do you do it all you  writerly, arty people?

There's firsts for everything in life - first kiss, first baby, first bereavement, first fight...first fight? Me?

It started on Sunday evening.  I'd gone to my local where a band was playing. The music was so loud, your ears fizzed and right in front of the speaker danced a man and his dog.  The little terrier's dance was one of pain.  His ears lay flat against his head and he kept jumping up at the owner,  a small, thin man so drunk his eyes looked like those of a corpse. 

Every knows (don't they?) how a dog's ears are up to 10,000 times more sensitive than a human's so the pain that small dog was going through can only be imagined.

The owner and I exchanged words.  He was angry with me and I with him.  But It wasn't him that I fought. A woman who I'd been friends with came up to me and demanded to know why I'd unfriended her.  I walked away into the night but before I'd reached my house, this person, her husband and a pack of her mates surrounded me and my partner.  It was frightening and annoying at the same time.  I'm upset just remembering it so I will write about the fight tomorrow...

They say trauma bonds people together; a rail crash, being held hostage, surviving a natural disaster…

That June, the hot one of 2015, the six of us, women of different ages, class and creed slumped or stretched out on huge sofas in the L- shaped living and dining room.  It wasn’t yet dark but we’d closed the curtains – just to be safe, just to be sure. 

Of course all the windows were closed and locked.  Outside the refuge, our cars lay like sleeping monsters under dark covers. The house was set back off the road, discreetly hidden behind tall trees and hedges but even so, number plates must not be glimpsed.

Somehow the soft roe scent of the estuary crept in and the calls of men and women, who had their freedom, rose up into the heady night to compete with the soulful songs of owls and foxes crying for a mate.

I think that was the night we watched Sleeping with the Enemy. I didn’t see the ending because the staff confiscated the next day the video in case it re-traumatized us.

In her usual corner of the brown faux suede leather, Sonia curled up in her pajamas next to her make up bag, wiping off the mascara framing her large green eyes as she giggled at messages on her mobile, a mug of tea balanced dangerously on her knee.  This was her nightly ritual, except that the tea wasn’t tea, it was wine and this was a dry house. Eviction was too high a price for the rest of us.

What did bond us together?  Fear, anxiety and self esteem so low it grated on the floor and danger…I’d read that two women a week get killed by their abusive partners.  Domestic Violence so bad that we had to be hidden far away from all friends and family for many months.  Some of us knew our chances of being murdered were very high. 

I was one of those, but none of the women that night knew how long it might be before the Grim Reaper, aka the men who loved us to death – the irony of it not lost on us – found us.  And the punishment for leaving them could be our own deaths. Or worse, our children’s.

 DEADLINE!!!

Are you always wishing for time to write?
Having found some of these precious minutes/hours to write. Do you find, you just can't?
I do. I go on Facebook, check emails - again, make another cup of coffee, start new groups, pages and think up sales campaigns for a book that I have yet to complete.

The only time this didn't happen was when I had a deadline for a non-fiction book, 'How to Start and Run a Petsitting Business.' I'd promised the publishers, I would have it ready in six months. I did nothing for four and then worked 24/7 to complete. That was in 2008 and it's still selling well.

So that's it - a deadline.  A timetable within that deadline.

This is mine:  If I don't complete a near publishable first draft of my thriller by Christmas day, I give £100 to the Legion.  If I do complete it and it sells, I will give 10% of my sales to the Legion.
--> How about you guys. how do you motivate yourselves?

Life after Depression, Domestic Violence and losing the ability to create pictures from words.

I think I may be back.

It's been nearly six years since a nervous breakdown stole every day from me since my last post here.

I've been to the edge and felt such fear.

Everything about everything has changed for me. I am now single, live far away from my past life, studied Creative Writing at uni, been through domestic violence and yet made some good friends and learnt a lot about the world and my little place in it. Oh, and set my hair free to be its curly self.

Three years ago, at uni, I managed to write a few stories. This year I've felt well enough to write novels again. Slowly, slowly - as my therapist keeps saying.  And she's right - slowly, slowly...

I've missed you all, especially Lane Mathias, Helen Hunt, Cally Taylor, Lucy Diamond, Flowerpot, Karen, all the Kates, Captain Black and all the other 'Novel Races,' How well you've all done!' Proud of you.

Mafia Mother

I don't often blog these days, but I had to put something up because I'm sick to death of seeing my knackered hand rising up in a lady of the lake pose. Instead of Excalibur all I have is a frayed and grubby bandage.

You might be forgiven for thinking this was Kraytwins@blogspot or the lesser known film, The Godmother, but it is only the sons and me getting into the festive mood before a party.

I must clarify a few points.  I am not fat, the boys are way too thin.  I am not short either, they're both nearly 7ft.

On the writing front, I've plotted a new book after spending ages building characters who might just be believable. Might. I struggle with this.  Perhaps a book with just one character would be the thing?

Writers Hand

I've discovered a cure for writers block. 

I haven't been able to type properly for months but had my carpal tunnel op last week so perhaps in another couple.

Of course I now have lots of writerly thoughts but they get lost with the slow tap, tap, taping of my left hand.

Wonder how many of you out there have had self inflicted injury from extreme writing? I am available to make comforting remarks in sympathy.

Gone Fishing

Just for a few weeks while I try to find motivation for a third rewrite of my novel  - aka the demon on my shoulder.

I'll still be flitting around the blogs so stay in touch.

Out with the Son

I thought he knew what to ask for in the barbers. 
     'Two on the side and four on top,' his brother, twenty one and King of Cool, had said. And where were his manners? Fifteen years of my going on about please, thank you and making small talk to put people at their ease, seems to have been erased by puberty. Fifteen and he can only grunt at the sad eyed Polish girl, her bone coloured hair startling against her black T (scooped low enough to make the son blink rapidly.). She wears stilettos with those metal bits on the bottom, clip clopping on the tiles like she's been shod.

     'How you like?' she lisps, and the son's red slapped cheeks in the mirror tells me we're thinking the same thing. Is she offering him a sexual favour?  But my lad manages a grunt and makes circles in the air with his hand. She gets it, whatever style he's describing, and sets to.

      Behind him, on a plastic chair, tacky to the touch, I'm invisable. Men come in from the Reading damp and hang their jackets to the left,right and nearly on top of me. 'Oh, sorry,' I say. Sorry for sitting in the chair provided.

      On the chair next to me lie two newspapers, yesterday's Mirror and today's Sunday Sport. I've never read the Sunday Sport but I've always wanted to. Can anyone really walk upright with such big boobs? Did a man from Norwich really have sex with a gorilla and be living in California with her and their three children? I have to know and being invisable, no-one will notice if I pull out my glasses and have good look, will they?

     Of course I don't. I stare at a stain on the wall by a well thumbed calender. Miss Winter looks chilly in the snow with only scarlet fluffy mittens and a reindeer pom pom hat to keep her warm. Technically it's not winter, it's still Autumn but I mustn't be pendantic. It's my one vice.

     Twenty minutes later and with precisely three words being uttered by the son, the Polish girl is brushing at his neck and blowing - blowing! - rogue hairs away. He scowls at me but what can I do? 

     Time to pay. Hurrah because I have ceased being invisable. A couple of other mothers have come in with their grunting sons. The women know each other and have been whispering and glancing in my direction. It must the cardi/jacket. I bought it a few weeks ago at a car boot for two pounds. I tried to haggle but the seller wouldn't budge. 'It's Hobbs - Hobbs!' She said, almost crying at my ignorance. It must have been made by Hobbs! a long time ago, it's bobbly, the hem droops and brown is so not my colour.

     Clutching the son to stop myself going A over T on the rain slicked cobbles, I shout into the wind, 'I need a new jacket.'

     The son squeals to a halt.'What a brand new jacket?' As in not Ebay or boot fayre new.

     'What about next week's food?' He worries. You can't hide much from kids. 

     'Only joking,' I say.

     He laughs.

     Me too.

Welcome Cally Taylor!

Meet Cally Taylor, author of Heaven Can Wait which is hitting the book shelves as we speak.

Cally is doing a blog tour where she explains how she wrote Heaven Can Wait, edited it and found a top class agent too.

As my guest today,she’ll be showing in detail, how she wrote her query letters.  Do ask any questions for Cally in the comments box and I'll try and catch her for answers.  She has more dates in her tour of the blogs so look out for her.

Cally Taylor:

When Fia asked me to write a guest post on finding an agent I thought, I can do that. I’ll write about how I opened the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook, put a star next to the agents who represented chick lit and/or women’s fiction and chose six that represented chick lit authors I admired.

I can finish up the post by talking how I ended up getting signed to the Darley Anderson agency.

And then I realised I’d already included all of that information in an interview I’d answered for Caroline Smailes!

Uh oh, I thought. Now what?

That’s when I realised there’s something I’ve never revealed to the internet before – the cover letter I sent to Darley to accompany my synopsis and first three chapters!

Before I started subbing to agents I scoured the internet for examples of cover letters. There was so much advice out there – much of it differing – that I came away feeling more confused than before I’d started searching.

I’m not claiming that my cover letter is the perfect, or best, way to write a cover letter but it worked for me. From the six submissions I sent out to agents I received:

·        two requests for the full

·        two personalised rejections

·        one form rejection

·        one agent I never heard back from!

The breakdown of my cover letters always followed this structure

• Greeting
• How/why I decided to choose the agent (if they represented an author I was a fan of I’d say so. It shows the agent you’ve done your research and not just fired off the same letter you send everyone!)
• A short paragraph about my novel, giving the word count and a few details (I chose to use a blurb style to try and gain the agent’s interest. My synopsis contained the full details of the plot)
• A couple of lines describing the readership the book was aimed at
• A paragraph about the potential market for my book (I have no idea if this is a good idea or not but as my book was very different from anything on the market I felt I needed to try and convince the agent that it might sell! If you’ve written normal chicklit – i.e. not paranormal – you won’t need a paragraph like this because an agent already knows it sells!)
• A paragraph about my writing background
• Very brief paragraph about my second novel (I inserted this to show the agents I’d already started work on a second book in the same genre and that I wasn’t a one-trick pony!)
• What I was enclosing (this depends on what the agent asks for in the W&AYB or their website)
• Goodbye

Okay, so that’s the theory. Here’s the letter:

ADDRESS

DATE

Dear Darley

I am looking for an agent for my chick lit novel Heaven Can Wait, complete at 80,000 words. I decided to approach you after seeing your entry in the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook and discovering you represent chick-lit. I’m also a big fan of Carole Matthews and particularly enjoyed  her last book, “The Chocolate Lovers’ Club”.

Heaven Can Wait is an 80,000 word supernatural novel about Lucy Brown, a twenty-eight year old woman who dies the night before her wedding and ends up in Limbo. Lucy is desperate to become a ghost so she can be reunited with her fiancé Dan but before she can attain ghost status she must return to earth as one of the ‘living dead’ and find love for a total stranger in just twenty-one days. Can Lucy complete her task on time or will her best friend Anna get her clutches into Dan first?

The novel would appeal to women in their late teens to early forties who enjoy chick-lit and films like Ghost and Just Like Heaven. 

The supernatural seems to be extraordinarily popular at the moment with television programmes like The Ghost Whisperer, Supernatural, Most Haunted and Dead Like Me achieving huge viewing figures. I’ve also noticed a big market in the States for paranormal women’s fiction and a gap in the UK market for this type of fiction. I’m hoping my novel could fill that gap.

I have been writing fiction for three years and have won five short story competitions and placed in many others including the runner up prize in Woman’s Own magazine’s in 2006. Take a Break Fiction Feast and My Weekly have also published my short stories. Full details can be found on my website www.callytaylor.co.uk

I am currently planning my second novel [BRIEF DETAILS OF NOVEL 2]

I enclose my synopsis, the first three chapters of my novel and a stamped addressed envelope.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my work.

Yours sincerely

Cally Taylor

encs

Okay! So that’s it. I hope at least one person reading this guest post found it useful! Thanks for reading.

Cally

Blog: http://writing-about-writing.blogspot.com

Website: www.callytaylor.co.uk

Author of “Heaven Can Wait” (published by Orion paperback, out now!).

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