Blog | Alison Morton Author

Getting help: the writer’s dilemma

Okay, you’ve done your first draft, you’ve edited it, your aunt Mabel who taught English has checked it, your mate Bev says ‘It’s great!’. You’ve left it for a few weeks, come back, tightened the manuscript, checked for shockers and you’ve even written your synopsis. You’re on the starting blocks for publication, fame and fortune(!).

But….

A tiny nagging doubt is furkling around in between the two halves of your brain. No, it can’t be better, can it? Yours is better written than loads of books you’ve read (And you have been reading a lot of books in your genre/field, haven’t you?). But is it good enough?

I learnt a depressing statistic the other day from Nicola Morgan at Pen2Publication: the average reader buys only 6 books a year. So why should yours be amongst those six?

Hmm. Perhaps you’d better get a professional opinion on the quality of your book and whether it’s publishable before you start submitting to those important gatekeepers: the literary agents. Does your novel have PTQ (Page turning quality)? Are the pace and structure right? Are you characters appealing and your voice original and enticing? Is it a genre that sells? Will it appeal to a broad mass of people? Will it be likely to be placed where the public can buy it?

I’m a mere tyro, but I know experienced, tough experts who can help answer these questions. But first you must do your research, find out the basics of getting published and work out exactly what help you need. For starters, have a look at How Publishing Really Works blogger Jane Smith’s notes from her recent talk ‘The Writing Business’ at the Edinburgh Literary Festival. Nicola Morgan’s blog is bracing, refreshing and a source of gold nuggets (metaphorically speaking!). And I hope you read Carole Blake’s From Pitch to Publication while you were still writing your first draft.

Most importantly, you must be ready to accept what they say….

Expertise is out there, some better than others: I have only listed those sources I have found particularly helpful. You have to find the one you feel will help you most. But using the wisdom and experience of such experts not only saves you many a pratfall, but will probably save you time, money and heartache.

My RNA box of books – my reviews (Part Deux)

Here’s the next batch of my mini-reviews on books recommended to me by fellow members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. I asked them for the ‘book of their heart.’ All are romances, but oh so different in subject, range, tone, pace and language.

Jean Fullerton very kindly sent me a signed copy of her fabulous book A Glimpse at Happiness. It certainly brought me a lot of happiness! Not only was I rooting for heroine Josie and both terrified and exhilarated by the evil Tugman family, I also learnt a hell of a lot about the Victorian East End. Full of authentic detail, this was a complex romantic story with strong dilemmas and personal conflict. Josie is a loving sister and daughter, but nobody could accuse her of being soppy. The deft touch of the author cuts through sentimentality to make the characters warm and genuine and the setting so realistic. Loved it!

Sophia’s Secret which author Susanna Kearsley also signed with a personal message, took me to Slains Castle, north of Aberdeen, the ancestral seat of the Hays of Erroll. Two stories, one narrated in the early eighteenth century and written down by Sophia’s twenty-first century descendant, Carrie, intertwine in a rich, atmospheric story of the 1708 Jacobite conspiracy. Carrie’s modern love story is described in clever, but never heavy detail. The two pairs of lovers (or perhaps it’s the same pair?) got my sympathy from the very beginning, with Sophia/Carrie smart and intelligent and Moray/Graham a clever, determined and constant hero. If you love a cracking story, evocative settings with history, this is for you.

With only a sketchy idea of Lancashire and between the wars settlement in Australia, I approached Anna Jacobs’ Freedom’s Land with a open mind. I was plunged straight into Norah’s story, at the tragic point of her father’s death. Within a few pages, I was in there with Norah despairing how she/we would get out of it. A lovely heroine: resilient, willing to work hard, but warm and loving. More than anything, she cares. Making a marriage of convenience with Andrew so that they can take up a government scheme of free land and farm in Australia, she comes to respect and love him. A happy ending, sure, but a story of how ordinary people face and overcome obstacles that most of us would blench at. Never weighted down by being over-descriptive, the prose is deceptively simple, but paints a comprehensive picture. A riveting read.

I have one or two more to read, so watch this space…

My RNA box of books – my reviews (Part Un)

Before I moved to France, I asked my fellow members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association to tell me which of their works was the ‘book of their heart.’ The answers flooded in and some even sent me a copy of their book – signed as well! I’ve read six so far and enjoyed them thoroughly. All are romances, but oh so different in subject, range, tone, pace and language. Here are three of them.

Sarah Duncan’s ‘A Single to Rome‘ made me laugh and cry. I felt for Natalie as she struggled to emerge from the loss of the love of her life, Michael, a toad of the first water, IMHO. Losing her job was the last straw. I was so engaged with Natalie by then, I wanted to report her senior partner to the Law Society. Natalie did recover from emotional devastation and found a true and caring love, but she also learned to take and embrace risk as she became enmeshed in the the Italian lifestyle. Accepting help and focusing on her own needs helped her mature. Even her strange but comic new role as a jumper-outer gave her fresh insights. Easy to read language, emotional depth, high page-turning quality.

Clare in ‘Clare’s War‘ by Anita Burgh was an entirely different kettle of fish. I wanted to shake her at the beginning, but what a sensible, mature woman she grew into. I was so sad for her when she was let down badly by the the fascinating, destructive and self-centred Fabien and when her other Resistance lovers were killed, but delighted and relieved for her when she discovered Karl was alive. Compelling in its characters who lived under impossible situations, I was gripped all the way through. The action scenes played out very realistically. The light burned late on at least two nights as I couldn’t wait to find out what had happened next. But as well as being a tense, gripping story, it illustrated the pressures ordinary people had to live under, pressures which applied to those on both sides. A feast of period detail, warm and believable characters, gripping story.

Kim’s dilemma in ‘An Old-Fashioned Arrangement‘ by Susie Vereker was heart-wringing. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Although quiet and sensitive, the heroine is practical and makes an arrangement that goes against all her pinciples and instincts in order to secure her son’s happiness and future. That her sugar-daddy has appalling relatives, her not-so-dead scoundrel of a husband returns and she risks losing the kind and strong man she comes to love make this an intriguing and compelling story. An authentic diplomatic setting in Geneva, slightly nutty secondary characters and her husband’s sinister employers’ machinations add further layers of flavour to a great read.

Part Deux to follow!

Weird, or what?

Driving back from swimming today, I was carefully navigating the narrow road between old stone buildings in a village on my route, when the road gently rose to the level of the railway crossing. It’s an unprotected level crossing, from the road user’s point of view perched on a rise in the road. The barriers were up, the red warning lights quiet and unlit, but instinctively I glanced sideways down the railway line as I crossed.

I saw a portal into another world. And of course, it is. When we go from A to B by car, the landscape we pass through is entirely different to the one the train zooms through. Instead of houses, front gardens full of flowers or old fridges, shops, garages, street signs and people trudging or bustling along the pavement, from a train you see marshalling yards, industrial estates, wide open countryside, peoples’ back gardens, some intimate, some tatty. And it is a glimpse into another world.

So when these two worlds collided this morning on the country level crossing, I had one of those moments. Was I having an insight or am I completely bonkers?

Golden lessons from rejections

I count myself very lucky to have an occupation where learning and change are crucial parts. I’m referring to writing (of course!). Not only do you have the hard sweat and joy of bashing out your story, but the endless hours of lovingly trimming and tightening to get it into some kind of presentable shape.

When you are completely sure you cannot make it better ( or when you’re sick to death of it), you gear yourself up to send your precious baby out to an agent. You make a cunning plan – not for me the endless waiting for replies one at a time, you cackle to yourself. I’ll send twenty out at a time.

Big mistake.

I understand agents are realists these days and expect writers to submit their manuscript to a few agents at a time. Three to four, perhaps a maximum of six, seems to be the norm. Twenty, no.

Think about it. When you get the first two or three rejections back, you have the opportunity to reword your letter, to re-jig the synopsis, to read through those vital first chapters and tighten them up again. Perhaps you’ve been on a course or to the RNA Conference since you sent the first one out and have learnt a little more about the first paragraph hook. Whatever, as my heroine often says, it’s sure to have helped.

You have a golden chance to re-work it. Your submissions package evolves as you work down your list of selected agents. You’ve gleaned a little feedback, sometimes contradictory, sometimes helpful , sometimes trite, but you can work these lessons in for the next two or three.