I have discovered that the best way to write a novel is to pretend that you are not writing one.
The moment I sit at my blank computer screen and attempt to write the first sentence it all turns ugly. My characters are two dimensional with the personalities of dead trout and the plot is a money-back guarantee cure for insomnia.
But…. the minute I stop tying to write, the minute I start to do something else ….oh then it is a very different story. Then the characters mill around me, all talking at once, vying for attention like a crowd of hopeful auditionees.
The more I pretend not to listen the more desperate they are to be heard.
I hear all about their hopes and aspirations when I am walking the dog. They confide their sinful, sordid secrets to me as I swim. They distract me when I am driving, they giggle in the garden, glad to have someone to gossip with and if ever I did any housework I am sure they would rabbit on to me then too.
And all the time I feign complete disinterest.
Occasionally, anxious to grab my attention they introduce me to their friends and family who often have a more interesting story to tell and then they are forced to skulk back to the sidelines, cursing their stupidity at relinquishing a main role.
But night time is the worst.
At night they never let me sleep. They prise open my eyelids, they plead with me , they flirt, they try to force me to listen, even the timorous ones gently whisper in my ear.
I ignore their demands and rolling over pull the pillow on top of my head.
And then in the early hours, when I am sure they have given up, when their voices are finally silent I slip downstairs.
Very quietly so as not to disturb them I make myself a large mug of tea with a hefty slug of whisky for good measure.
(OK – so the whisky is a lie but it’s a thought eh?)
I sit down at the table and gingerly open my computer.
I hold my breath for a second and then laugh out loud with joy because the screen is no longer blank.
Just as I had hoped and prayed my characters and their stories are all there waiting for me.They are beckoning to me, urging me to start, even the ones I had relegated are waving from the wings eager to be given another chance to prove their worth.
The screen is alive with possibilities.
My head hums, my fingers itch, my heart beats very fast – I touch the keyboard and the magic begins.
I am of course in no way implying that I am magic – I am talking about the magic of make-believe!


Follow Janie on twitter: @chezcastillon 
www.chez-castillon.com

It has been enlightening to read the previous blogs on this site. Writers who have achieved success are living proof that you can get that deal you strive for. This post is written from a hopeful, yet slightly different perspective…
​
I’ve always thought I had a book locked somewhere deep inside, but producing said tome is proving an incredibly difficult and frustrating task. Fantasy is my preferred genre. So it was that a decade ago I put pen to paper and began to create the world of Peripherealm. Every evening following a day at work, I would write down my ideas and over time the tale evolved. I had no idea where or when the process would end but found immense pleasure in what I was doing. Self-publishing was yet to be developed so when the first book was finished, I printed it off and sat back satisfied that I had achieved what I set out to do. Tick that one off the bucket list along with running a marathon and jumping out of a plane.

A couple of years passed and a chance email led to me attending the Festival of Writing in York. Here I met book doctor Debi Alper and the next step along the road was taken. Thanks to Debi’s encouragement I chose to have the book edited, so the following year was spent shaping my crude first draft.

At the next festival I felt ready to pitch the manuscript to agents, and here I met David Headley. Dave offered to represent me and demonstrated such enthusiasm for his craft that I felt joining his agency was the correct choice.
This was it, the most difficult hurdle for any aspiring author passed, I’d bagged my agent and our combined talent, contacts and savvy would surely mean fame and fortune were just around the corner. I set up a website ‘Peripherealm.com’ with teasers to delight prospective fans, I even put examples of my illustrations on the site (another hobby of mine I’d been told had potential). A Facebook page ready for innumerable ‘likes’ was created and I began to tweet with the intention of more action than the Dawn Chorus. Initial euphoria began to wane as it dawned on me that there was still a very long way to go. There was no time scale to this process.

A number of edits and the 177,000 word original was trimmed to 72,000 words in length. Dave and his team obviously put a huge amount of time into helping me edit, but it was a huge leap of faith and I felt an uncomfortable feeling deep in my gut every time I cut a character I had created and had been a companion in my writing for perhaps years. Some were I felt, worthy original scenarios which were discarded ruthlessly, surely they deserved more? At least I would have a significant back catalogue of ideas!

Manuscript ready, now the publishers would enter into a bidding war to sign me up. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. The book still needed work. I’d begun the next story in the series and found myself editing once more. Crucially, I was still enjoying my writing but it was hard at times when the day job constantly got in the way.

New publishers were approached. No joy. This is when belief in your own work is tested to the extreme. In changing your writing to suit publisher’s demands the danger is you lose what made your writing yours and yours alone. This is a quandary I do not have an answer to. Perhaps I had walked on the wrong crack in the pavement? Perhaps it was simply not written in the stars that my manuscript would make it onto a dusty bookshelf.
​
I would regularly log into the DHH Agency website. Everything in the garden certainly seemed rosy there. A growing stable of writers…or is it gaggle, flock, unkindness? Not sure on that collective noun, but it was evident that something successful was building and I had to hang onto their coat tails. The flip side here was that I realised that the agents had their fingers in more pies than an ambidextrous Little Jack Horner. Patience my dear, patience, your time will come. I would feverishly check my inbox with ridiculous regularity in the hope that someone, somewhere had finally realised what a work of genius I had created. Mere mortals had obviously taken some time to see what had been staring them in the face all the time…MY BOOK WAS WORTHY OF A DEAL!

So it recently came to what felt like a final throw of the dice. A meeting in the famed Groucho Club with Dave and his editorial assistant Harry Illingworth. I’d arrived, members only. I was being welcomed into the writer’s inner circle.

Unfortunately I had not been summoned to be informed of a publisher offering a deal. My resolve was being tested to its most extreme limit. (Lunch on Dave was very nice though). Time to change tack? Dave, whose hard work, honesty and integrity have never waned hoped my style could be adapted for another genre. Thankfully he displays the patience of Job! I have to do likewise, if our mutual goal is ever to be achieved.

So it is that I am currently writing a new manuscript! A thriller based around an idea I’ve had on the backburner for some time. The world of Peripherealm waits in the wings and crucially I continue to enjoy every time I put pen to paper. If this is lost on you at any point on your writing journey then my advice is to put the pen down or turn off the laptop, you’re wasting your time. As the kids on ‘Why don’t you’ famously advised me many moons ago on a rainy school holiday morning in the Seventies, ‘why don’t you go out and do something less boring instead?’ Your writing won’t be worth a spit if you aren’t doing it for the right reason…because you want to!
​
In your pursuit of that elusive deal there will be many hurdles, but keep the faith. In my experience the wheels of publishing turn more slowly than taking a three legged tortoise for a walk…but they do say that the best things come to those who wait!
If like me you are seeking that first deal I wish you the very best of luck.
Keep the faith, it’s your greatest ally.
by Sean Walsh

With the never ending excitement of London Book Fair 2014 this week, I thought it would be helpful to those aspiring novelists out there to give you some advice on how to submit your novel when it comes to that dreaded time. Give your novel the chance it deserves, submitting doesn’t have to be terrifying, but it certainly helps to know what you’re doing.


Follow the rules.
This may sound simple enough, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t follow the instructions laid out before them. Every agency will have its own guidelines, all probably very similar, follow them. If they ask for 10,000 words, send as close to 10,000 as possible. If they ask for the first three chapters, send them. Don’t send what you feel are your strongest chapters. Don’t tailor the rules to suit yourself. You put yourself on the back foot from the word go if you do. Why would an agent want to represent you, (and this is a close working relationship built on trust remember), if you can’t follow simple instructions?


Don’t submit to every agency you find. But if you’re going to, tailor the submission and don’t have a list of recipients viewable.
No agent is going to take a submission seriously that has been sent to fifty other agencies, and all those other recipients are staring at you from the screen of one email. In fact, I guess in some places you’d be lucky to get a reply. At the end of the day I’m not going to be able to stop you sending your manuscript out to as many agencies as possible in excitement at having finished it, but I can tell you this. You can tell when you receive a submission which is just a template for every other one that has been sent, usually because there are careless errors like a different font or font colour for the addressee, or name of the agency. It doesn’t look good. It certainly doesn’t imply that any more care is going to have been taken over the contents of the document. You’re probably not going to receive an offer of representation.
This leads on to my next point…


Find the right agent for you.
It really is better to do your research and find someone, or a choice few, that you think your novel will be most suited to. Don’t send it to everyone in blind hope. You’ve put in the hours writing your novel, now do it justice and try and find it the right home. What’s the point of sending a brilliantly written YA novel to someone who primarily, or exclusively even, takes on literary historical fiction, just because you saw their name online? Even worse, at that very same agency there could be an agent scouring the slushpile in search of the next big YA novel, yet they never even received it. So, check the agent takes on your genre, check their list and see who they already represent, and in your mind see where/if you fit on it. Don’t just send your manuscript out all over the place, carefully select those who will be receiving it. Make sure it is getting in front of the right pair of eyes.


Write a strong cover letter.
Don’t roll your eyes, of course you say, this goes for anything. But when it comes to a submission there’s a ‘right’ way of doing this, and unfortunately a very wrong one. You’d be surprised how many people get it so wrong. Stand up for your work sure, make yourself stand out, but don’t tell us you’re the next Stephen King or Ian McEwan. Don’t tell us your novel is a guaranteed commercial success. We’ll decide that. Inevitably, having compared yourself to a famous novelist is only going to come back to haunt you when your work doesn’t live up to the comparison. (P.S. If you are the next Stephen King or Ian McEwan, please do get in touch…) Be interesting, polite and explain your novel briefly, but powerfully. Mention only what is relevant. This is how you pique an agent’s interest, at the end of the day, your writing will do the talking, don’t put us off before we even get to it.


If your novel does get rejected, don’t give up hope. But certainly don’t reply saying what a mistake the agency is making.
First things first, everyone has different tastes. One person’s trash is the next’s gold. If you don’t immediately succeed, don’t give up. If your work is good enough it will eventually find its place. But if you do receive a rejection, and you do want to reply to it, a simple ‘thank you for your time…’ is sufficient, and personally I welcome the good manners it shows. DON’T reply saying what a mistake we are making, and that we should reconsider. Don’t say you will see us at your autograph signings shortly. Don’t tell us how commercially viable your work is, and that film studios will be all over it. There’s no reason to be rude, the decision has been made and this should be respected. You’d be surprised at the memory agents have when it comes to remembering the names of people who’ve been unnecessarily rude during the submission process.
Publishing looks big and scary but it’s a very small world where word of mouth travels fast. You don’t want to get yourself a bad reputation before you’ve even got off the ground…


In a joyous end to this note though, I do invite anyone who has finished their manuscript to have a browse through our agents, and see which one might fit you best. We are always on the lookout for fresh talent and are ready and waiting to embrace your submission. I look forward to hearing from you.
​
View DHH Literary Agency’s Submission Guidelines here
Follow Harry on twitter: @harryillers