Writing workshop with Nicola Morgan

One of the best things you can do for your writing self, if at all possible, is to attend a writing workshop or a conference. Not only do we benefit from the insight of professional people within publishing, but for that day, evening, or hour, we live as writers – we are writers, and everyone around us writes, and these are our people, and this is our industry.

For me, both aspects are equally important. Writers work in isolation – we physically tuck ourselves away to write, and then mentally retreat from real life into the fantasy world of words. It can be hard to keep the flame alive, especially for unpublished folk who maybe don’t have anyone else cheerleading for them – time and again you have to speak against the doubting voice in your head, and it can be hard to convince yourself ‘I am a writer; I will be an author’, especially if the majority of your day is spent being someone else entirely.

Workshops are fab as they reaffirm our ambitions and aspirations. They are even nicer when they are run by someone like Nicola Morgan - a successful published author who clearly knows her stuff and delivers considered advice in a thoroughly engaging way. Readers of her blog, Help! I Need a Publisher!, will know that she holds the number one google ranking for ‘Crabbit Old Bat’, a moniker bestowed because of her honest forthright opinions on writing. What I've also discovered is that self-confessed crabbit old bats are also warm, witty, and incredibly nice people.

I was attending the workshop with Vikki, the writer behind Back to the Castle (and musician / costume maker extraordinaire), and so caught the 4.50 from Paddington up to Oxford. Being a huge Agatha Christie fan I was very tickled to get this train, although I’m happy to report there was a distinct lack of murders.

After a whistle-stop tour of the centre of Oxford, cunningly planned to incorporate a stop for delicious cake, we descended on Blackwell’s lovely bookshop. There was a good sized crowd of people with notebooks already seated as we scurried into place, and a show of hands revealed that we were nearly all fiction writers, with a small scattering of non-fiction amongst our number. Nicola’s talk was everything I was expecting but with added sparkle – she brought characters with her to demonstrate the numerous ways writers can fall into pitfalls, such as the dramatic woman in love with her own prose, the elderly lady who wants to write for children as ‘it’s easy’. This was a really clever and fun way to highlight key points from her presentation.

The part of the workshop I was most looking forward to was writing the pitch paragraph. This is the paragraph that appears in your covering letter – the bit that condenses your novel, the hook that sells your story. I am currently at this stage and so need all the help I can get! We’d been nicely led to this crucial moment - Nicola imbibing us with knowledge, and the red wine served at the interval perhaps giving a bit of Dutch courage. All I know is that for the first time I really seemed to get it – a paragraph fell from my pen onto my notebook, and I really, really like it. It needs a bit more work but the bones are there now, which is brilliant. Not only that, but all attendees got a free copy of Nicola’s e-book, Write A Great Synopsis, which I am halfway through reading and heartily recommend already.

And the best way to end such a magical evening? A glass of wine with friends in a lovely high-ceilinged Art Deco bar. Cheers to Oxford, Blackwell’s, Nicola Morgan, and Vikki! I now have some writing to do. *grins*

A welcome boost (and hook)

A post on Nicola Morgan’s excellent blog ‘Help I Need A Publisher’ pointed me in the direction of a blog called Slushbusters. As well as having an excellent name, the Slushbusters consist of seven children’s writers supporting each other to the top of the slush pile, which for non-writers is the nickname given to unsolicited manuscripts. They also had the brilliant idea of a contest called ‘Polish your Pitch’, and invited people to send in their pitch ideas for critique and feedback from fellow bloggers, no matter whether your book is aimed at children or adults.

So I decided to enter.

The original submission rule was to keep your pitch to three sentences, although this was later extended to up to a hundred words. The ‘pitch’ in this case is the hook with which to tempt the agents and publishers – the beginning introduction to your query letter that will hopefully captivate them enough to continue reading.

My main fear is that I will let myself down at this last hurdle, that I will send a query off half-cocked, that I will miss a typo, that I will under-sell my story, and that I will basically screw up the last two years of work. I have been working on my query letter on and off, but this contest seemed incredibly timely. I’d already been working on a ‘hook’ for the story, and had emailed a couple of ideas to good friend C to get her thoughts. Her feedback was enthusiastically positive, and so I sent off my best idea and then sat on my hands so I wouldn’t obsessively click to refresh the page with my pitch.

Didn’t work. I turned into a compulsive clicker!

Here is the link to my original pitch, and the helpful advice I received. You can also read it below:


The Death and Life of Florence Delaney

Florence Delaney expected one of three things to happen when she died – she would ascend to heaven, descend to hell, or wink out of existence entirely. Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happened – she met Max – he of the shaved head and strange fondness for white denim. And Max had a confession to make…

As well as being heartily cheered by the comments, the main things I took from it was that the words ‘she would’ above could be done better, that pitches are usually written in the present tense, and that my punctuation needed to be tightened (and to change ‘he of the shaved head, to ‘he with the shaved head’). I spent the next day or so playing with the idea of present tense, and gave it to good friend I to read, who instantly agreed present tense is the way forward. So this became another revision:

Florence Delaney expects one of three things to happen when she dies. Ascend to heaven accompanied by soothing music; descend to hell by the prod of a three-pronged spear, or to wink out of existence entirely. Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happens – she meets Max, with his shaved head and strange fondness for white denim. And Max has a big confession to make and quite a bit of grovelling to do…

But I felt it had lost the tightness of the first pitch, and so patted it around Word for a bit longer. Good friend A then took a look, and I asked her what she thought of my idea of combining the two into one solid revision. She was in favour, and so this is the final pitch I sent to Slushbusters.

Florence Delaney expects one of three things to happen when she dies. Ascend to heaven, descend to hell, or to wink out of existence entirely. Instead the unforeseen fourth thing happens – she meets Max, with his shaved head and strange fondness for white denim. And Max has a big confession to make…

And I won!

I am so happy! It has given me a large whoosh of confidence in my writing and my story, and has helped make me focus and think about this all-important part of my query letter. And even better, unconnected to this but again so timely and lovely, someone whose writing I admire has offered to be a second pair of eyes over my query– you can imagine my happiness about that!

All the pitches submitted in the contest sound very interesting – please do click here when you have some time to take a look and perhaps offer some feedback to the pitchers. Even though the contest is now over, feedback is the most important thing – it is what keeps us going and helps us get better!

And do let me know your thoughts regarding my pitch – what do you reckon, does it sound like something you would you like to read it someday?