The Wrong Handle by Sheena Wilkinson

 Writing is so weird. 

This time last year I finished a book. Nothing weird about that; I'm a writer. My agent sent it on submission. Nobody bit in the first round – sadly, nothing weird about that either, these days. But this wasn’t the usual ‘it’s too quiet to be commercial and too accessible to be literary’ verdict. Instead there was a suggestion that the book lacked something more fundamental; people didn’t even like the pitch.

I wasn’t thrilled, obviously: in my mind I had written a fine historical novel, women-centred, gritty and heartfelt. Exactly the kind of book I – and, I thought, thousands of women, liked to read. But that didn’t seem to be what editors were picking up on. My agent was keen to pull the book from submission rather than flogging a dead horse. I was working on three something elses – True Friends at Fernside and Miss McVey Takes Charge, which came out in the second half of last year, and an untitled and troublesome dual timeline, so the fiction-writing-and-editing part of my brain was not idle.

Sometime, my agent and I agreed, I would have a good look at the abandoned book and see if I could rejig the pitch to make it more appealing/commercial. I didn’t envisage having to do a major rewrite. 

And then, on retreat in December, I read the book again for the first time in months. Not only did I now agree that there was something fundamental missing; I knew was it was. Not only that, but all the ingredients to make the book hookier, tenser and darker were already there. Always had been. There was even – something new for me – a murder. Or rather, there was a death which I – the writer – hadn’t realised was a murder. As for the murderer? Well, she’d been there all the time too. 

my view on retreat 

I’d love to say that I rewrote the book quickly, that my agent fell upon it with glee, that six editors went into battle for it and that it sold at auction for squillions and became the book that revolutionised my career and my fortunes. I mean, that might happen; if I didn’t believe that such things were possible I wouldn’t still be a novelist. So far, after that wonderful week on retreat when so much revealed itself to me, it’s been a matter of trying to steal an hour here and there in between mentoring, teaching, report-writing and school visits.

the kind of thing that stops me writing all day every day 

But every few days I realise something new about the story – sometimes I even wake up with it in my head, and I feel so glad of the chance to remake it. I’m reminded of Cousin Helen’s advice in What Katy Did. Not everything saintly Cousin Helen says has stood the test of time, but her idea that ‘Everything in the world has two handles… One is a smooth handle. If you take hold of it, the thing comes up lightly and easily, but if you seize the rough handle, it hurts your hand and the thing is hard to lift’ fits in very neatly with my book.

I had got hold of the story by the wrong handle and I couldn’t grasp it easily. Now I have the right handle and it’s only a matter of time. 

There's still hope for those squillions! 

 

THE PROCRASTINATION THINGY by Penny Dolan

Today is the first of September, bringing the turmoil of the start of a new academic year. Stationery stores are full of eager acquisitive children and concerned parents. Shoeshops are busy with purchasers. Even the weather is in a quieter mood.

Meanwhile here, at home, we are co-ordinating diaries, calendars and life for the months to come and then the troublesome thoughts start to arrive . . .  not only Where's that red Pomodoro timer? but the more serious worries: What have I achieved? What did I actually complete? And the follower-ons such as What am I going to do now? What writing do I want to work on next?  

There are plenty of ideas and stuff: the never-ending tome that I really would like to finish, a short story project, a collection of poems that needs fattening, some non-fiction titles I need to research and fiction I must read, as well as a monthly blog, and the daily journal and . . . and . . . and . . . and then there’s the eternal problem.

 PROCRASTINATION!  

I, by way of procrastination, read a bit about that subject, so I'm start by focusing this post  on the aforementioned Tome, which has been hanging around for too many years. I have more questions to ask.

What level of priority does this manuscrip have in my life? Am I avoiding the m/s because of its complexity? Am I having problems choosing what work needs to done on the m/s?  Do I need a more sensible, well-structured completion of the plot? More research about historical aspects of the setting? A deep analysis of the structure? A culling of words and scenes? And on and on. 

Alongside, with a loud metallic clang in the mind, comes my worry about managing that overwhelming list of tasks - as well as the fear that I no longer have the skills to do what must be done, or even to create a story worth reading. Is there honestly any urgency about this Tome, this fantasy, Penny? No publisher is interested. 

Do I actually have the energy for self publication? Or even the personality needed for such an idea to succeed? Why am I even spending time on it in the first place?  

For a while, I persist, and a few happy past author experiences creep into my mind. I remember working on projects and events that went well, and where I made genuine progress. Then I start to think of the times when - for many reasons - things didn’t work out or went wrong. Is it honestly worth starting on something that will be failure, that nobody will want or care about? Who have I thought I am, anyway? A writer, no. An imposter, yes. And a moaning groaning one at that. Where’s the joy? The belief?
 

And this is when I, the procrastinator, any procrastinator, sitting at the desk, is in danger. There is, a voice inside me suggests, a feel-good alternative to working on this wretched writing. Surely, there must be something smaller and easier to spend my time on? Some action or activity that will actually be of use to society, that will please people and be better worth the time than – sshhh! - this wretched dragged-out thing that I am half-bored with already?  

In that unsettled moment, the ideas come roaring in: all the distracting, dangerous, doing-good rewarding alternatives. The washing still stuck in the machine. The shopping that needs doing before the rush. This domestic task. That domestic task. A good home-made cake that will be higher up life’s scale, surely, than a boring unwieldy manuscript, Penny?  

Then the small distractions start muttering at me too. The phone on the desk, bringing news, breaking the tension? Those Whatsapps I heard pinging in? The various emails that really do need reading, and maybe responses too? Suddenly I hear the chattering of social commitments that need my attention: arrangements that need doing for others, not simply for my own sake. Now I am feeling anxious, imagining the host of people who need to be contacted, spoken to, visited, and to whom, mostly, my writing work has no relevance or value. Surely this writing lark deserves to be discarded?  

And, at this point, in sneak more hard words and sad feelings. You vain imposter, you feeble creature, you upstart crow, you witless podge of a garden pigeon – and, of course, now you’ve mentioned it, there are all the birds in the garden with feeders to fill before the evening meal so I’d better . . .  on and on

But, golly gosh, with all this wittering about my work and procrastination, I’ve only just remembered a blog that I simply must write, now, today. The wretched task has been hanging about at the back of my mind for ages, and it’s certainly higher priority than any of my own writing ideas . . .
 

Enough, enough. So often the dance in the head goes on like this, mental patterns of procrastination going round and round, like one of those Rolodex rotating files from the offices in old films. But I know there are better days as well and my pattern is not always this. I’m hoping, by recognising these thoughts as they arise, to push back at all the distractions and temptations, to organise my days better, and have a more useful Autumn. 

 See you in October. By which time my project will be well on its way. Won’t it?
Penny Dolan.
 

NB. This personal account of the ‘cycling’ nature of procrastination came about from information in the book ADHD UNPACKED by Alex Conner and James Brown, which I was reading out of more general interest. I did start on a straightforward post about procrastination, based on the analysis in the book, but the version above seemed more truthful and recognisable to me. Conner and Brown are the Founders of the ADHD Adults Podcast.

A Different Kind of Juggling, or The Terror by. Sheena Wilkinson

I’ve often written on here about the juggling nature of the freelance writing life – the workshops and talks; the zooms and the travel; the admin and the hussle and the endless this-invoice-is-now-overdue chasing. It can be a struggle to find time to write, though not, I admit, anything like as hard as it was in the days when I had a day job. 

But what’s exercising me this month is a different kind of juggling. Juggling writing projects.

Right now I have four books at very different stages of development, and though I try to concentrate on one book at a time, that’s not always practical. If I get a last-minute proofing query about the book that’s being published in September, I’m not going to tell my editor that it’s not my week for that book because my mind is in a different one. Just as, if I had four children, and I was helping one with her homework and another one popped in to tell me her leg was falling off, I wouldn’t tell her to wait her turn. 

Of course I need a different mindset for each project. Here they are, in reverse order of finished-ness:

The almost-ready-to be-published book 

True Friends at Fernside, the sequel to First Term at Fernside is due out in September from O’Brien Press. The cover (another cracker from the wonderful Belfast illustrator Rebecca Elliott) has been finalised, with recent emails saying things like, ‘Please just check the colour of all the girls’ eyes’ and ‘which leg has the puppy lost?’ We’re planning meetings for publicity and marketing, and I’m also making plans for the launch. It’s one of my favourite stages of book production, though there’s always the Terror: what if we miss a proofing error? What if nobody likes it? What if nobody buys it and the publisher won’t commission a third book in the series? I can’t quite relax. 

The first-foray-into-self-publishing book

Miss McVey Takes Charge, the sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is being published in November under the auspices of Writers Review. I won’t go into details as last month’s post was all about it, but that’s also at an exciting stage, as I’m meeting with the wonderful freelance editor later this week to talk about all the finer details. She’s also going to be a doing a fair bit of hand-holding as self-publishing is so new and scary to me. I’m excited and thrilled to be taking control of getting this book out to all the people who loved the first one, and hopefully to many more, but there’s always the Terror. What if self-publishing is too hard? What if nobody buys it? I can’t quite relax.

The out-on-submission book

A historical novel is with an editor who expressed great interest in it as an unfinished project at last year’s Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written – a 1920s school story from an adult perspective, less jolly than Mrs Hart but a real celebration of women’s lives and friendships. It’s exciting to be at this stage – but scary. What if she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would? What if she loves it but nobody else does? What if she wants big changes that I’m not on board with? It was great to have a genuinely interested editor as a first port of call for this book, but there’s always the Terror. I can’t relax at all and my tummy goes funny when I think about it. 

The first draft

Hooray for the first draft! It’s messy and complex and I may have overreached myself. There are two timelines and I’m not (yet) sure how well they work together. Sometimes I think it’s fresh and funny and zeitgeisty (my contemporary heroine is a novelist with Opinions); other times I worry it’s banal and clichéd. It requires a different energy from the other books: they are all finished or more-or-less finished, and any further work is very much about refining and making them the best versions of themselves. Whereas here, though I have planned the story, I surprise myself every day – or the characters do – with things I hadn’t planned for, but which instinct tells me are ‘right’. This morning, for example, I woke up realising that my protagonists’ parents aren’t dead: they’re in Spain! And at this stage, it’s easy to bring them back to life and send them off to their retirement in the sun. Anything can happen. 

It's like cleaning an old painting; you think you know what’s under all the dust and grime; you unearth a little at a time, but it’s only when you clean off all the dirt, and then give it another wipe and maybe another still, that you can see the true image below in all its brightness and detail. 

So what about the Terror? 

The Terror always lurks, but for me, when I’m deep in a first draft is the time I can most easily hold it at bay. When it’s not about editors and deals and small details; it’s all about the story.

Because at the end of the day, that’s why I do it. 

Happy New Year 2025 by Penny Dolan

Happy New Year

and warmest wishes 

for you and yours in 2025

from all the writers of the

Awfully Big Blog Adventure.

Earlier today – New Year’s Eve – someone in the family wondered what resolutions we were making for the year ahead. The mutters showed that any resolutions are for tomorrow, and not of any concern right now. I said nothing but I have, however, slightly started planning.


During December, my mind filled up with list after list. Things to do, or get, or sort or arrange or . .  or . . . or . . . . My head, inside, felt like the arrivals and departures board of a busy train station. No sooner was one list of tasks done and cleared, than another  long list flickered into view. I gave in. Apart from a quick exchange with an editor, and lots of frantic card-signing, writing was forgotten.


However, now, even as a Procrastinator-Superior, I have work and words I would like to get done in the New Year. For a while, for medical, eyesight, and other reasons, I have got into the habit of taking the days as they come. Letting the busy weeks pass by so often I've lost track of my writing time. 

I began to recognise that something does have to happen for me to break this block. I may have found an answer. Nothing very original, just a trick that can even starts with a ruler and pencil.

When January starts, I am going to note down my real-life week and weekend schedule on a sheet of paper. I will note down everything I do do - book-groups, library story-times, clubs & classes, house & shopping, daily meal-times, time with friends & family, etc, etc, and so on. Get those hours down on paper, mark them as they pass.

Then, once I’ve seen what’s there, I will block out some solid, reasonable and regular times when I can work on my art, on my writing. Will this plan work? I don’t know, nor how my timetable will fit into our IRL at home but it’s all negotiable, even paying back a missed ‘art slot’ with an extra session.

When the shops are open, I might get some gold stars to stick on my time table if and when I succeed. And I won’t get too disheartened if it doesn’t work: it’s my timetable and a moveable plan. I can adjust it whenever I need to. The important thing, right now, is to commit to getting art done, not letting the days drift as they were late last year.

I want to get hold of 2025, and make it work for me.

Hope the year works for you as well!


Penny Dolan

Art versus Commercialism Part I - Rowena House

The title Art versus Commercialism Part 1 is a declaration of intent.

Next year, I’m going to work out something worthwhile to say on the subject. I’d wavered about whether to have a go at starting on it today – it’s such a massive (tired?) topic – but then I read this by Lynda Waterhouse in her Art Matters post here on ABBA on Dec 12:

“I also encourage ‘slow looking’ at art; an almost meditative process of paying attention and noticing. We are bombarded by so many images that we are in danger of not really taking the time to look around us.”

And I felt that this was so true it seemed serendipitous, a prod to begin my journey of slow looking at writing as art at a time when life – real and online – seems overwhelmingly commercial and the craft of storytelling a conveyor belt supplying an increasingly homogenised product.

Lynda’s words fell on fertile ground since I’d been primed to think about Art with a big A by several things I read this week, including advice by Sol Stein in his (rather dated) guide, Stein on Writing, that the entire point of fiction is to elicit an emotional response from readers.

Frankly, it was the last thing I needed to hear since these days, for most of us, readers will only be found via the tortuous time-suck of self-marketing whether we are trad or self-published. As I’m still leaning towards trad for the C17th witchy WIP, finding readers will also mean the stress of enticing another agent to represent me (the lovely Jane Willis having retired from United Agents this year) and then finding an editor who shares the agent’s opinion about the commercial viability of my work, a sales team who’ll back the editor’s judgment, and a publishing director who’ll agree with the sales people, and then, if I’m tremendously lucky, a contract – with or without an advance – and, fingers crossed, something akin to a marketing budget.

I mean, what has any of that got to do with writing, let alone art? TBH, I’d rather put the manuscript on a thumb drive and send it out to sea in a bottle, AKA the Devon version of Kindle self-publishing.

But enough of cynicism. Sol Stein was an editor first and foremost and therefore represents a corner of the book industry. Writing is about more than raw material for publishers. It is a gift and a privilege. We should cherish gifts and be conscious of privilege.

Perhaps, then, this is the debate I’m having with myself – and hopefully also here on ABBA: why be a writers if our readership is likely to be limited to a few hundred people? Is one reader enough? Fifty? And what other outcomes might justify years of research, thought, practice, experiment, experience, and the application of imagination?

So, yeah, what is the point of it all?

I’m aware this question strays into the old art for art’s sake debate: does a work needs any purpose beyond itself? And I don’t want to go down the purely personal psychological route either, as that seems too self-referential. Yes, creativity is self-enriching – or self-escaping – but that’s equally true of cross-stich or photography, and I’d like to consider writing as something unique.

Part II of Art versus Commercialism will therefore need to define parameters for these posts and set out a less dull question than ‘what’s the point?' I hope the answers might spiral off wildly and bounce around and return to beginnings like stories used to be able to do before ‘they’ told us the right way to do it.

It may be a huge waste of time, of course, and as purposeless a fiction writing, but hey, I’ve got a creative writing PhD thesis to write next year. All contributions welcome.

Happy Christmas. 

Rowena House Author on FB

@HouseRowena on Musk’s hellhole

rowenahouse.wordpress.com for lots about The Goose Road

Notes from an unpaid hobbyist, unless getting paid once counts - Rowena House

 

According to The Guardian’s report on last week’s welcome by the Royal Society of Literature of its 2024 cohort of fellows, RSL president Bernadine Evaristo said she was inspired to talk about readers, “for whom most authors, one assumes, are writing – and the importance of nurturing and engaging with them in the literature ecosystem.”

So far, so good. Then...

“Without readers, writing would be an unpaid hobby...”

Seeing red yet?

“They [readers] are our supporters, interpreters, the customers without whom there would, in fact, be no publishing industry.”

So writing, according to her argument, is a hobby unless the product of that process is bought by customers of the publishing industry.

Way to go, Ms Evaristo.

I haven’t time to analyse this properly, nor can I find her full speech which might put these comments into context. Perhaps The Guardian was being mischievous.

If not, it is shocking to me that the RSL president should sound exactly like an inner critic who belittles our creative selves and disparages our work unless and until we get paid for it.

I mean, how much money makes us professional writers rather than hobbyists? Three figures, four, five, six? Must our books pay for our mortgages as well as our groceries? Is art for art’s sake a thing of the past, and the publishing industry the very habitat within which the “literature ecosystem” exists?

This month, again – you’ll never guess – I’m grumpy about writing. My rhino hide is thin, time is scarce, and the fulfilment of turning thoughts into words elusive. Hopefully, next month things will be mending.

Meanwhile, well done all the 2024 RSL fellows. May you inspire both readers and writers.

 

 

 

WELL-FILLING TIMES by Penny Dolan

It's the first of March, already? 

 

Looking back, this last month has been a quiet re-filling of the well: the getting of experiences - smaller or greater - that can help mind and imagination when too, too much has drained away. None exotic or far from home, some alone, some not, some unexpected but useful even so.

                                           

 

A piano recital dazzled with powerful pieces by Bartok and Ligeti; an EoS film about Michelangelo showed the huge weight of his life and work and then, at this year's first Salon North, three speakers talked about life and happiness - and the books they had just written on these themes. I am now learning about Aristotle who, when banished, did not drink hemlock and leave his family to whatever destitution followed like Socrates, but went quietly away from fame and lived his last couple of years attending to his own family and farm in the country: there's public life and there's real life.

                                       
 

Then came a smaller delight, but usefully timed, in the form of a couple of Joanna Trollope's novels that saw me through some insomniac nights. One was a book group choice, the other suggested by a librarian, so both titles were a given not a selected pleasure. Trollope's calm, competent storytelling matched my three-in-the-morning need, along with their sunshine and comfortable lifestyles, and a bit about family troubles not my own. Her writer's skill certainly improved my night's watch, and though other books are available, for this time and place, these novels just fitted.

                               

More excitingly, there was a trip across to York Theatre Royal to see Bluebeard. the latest production from Emma Rice's 'Wise Children' company. Though her dark fairytale links into recent violence against women, the performance is a joy: fiercely full of movement, music and song, dramatic stage effects and wry and angry humour. Sometimes the notes, voices and scenes that you need are full of noise. lights, action and even an array of theatrical stage traditions, such as that wierd sawing-a-woman-in-half trick. Here's a pretty pink Bluebeard image, very unlike last night's show.

 

                                                

 

Most of all, maybe, there was the NTLive Vanya, a new version of the Chekhov play, co-created by the actor Andrew Scott, writer Simon Stephen, producer Sam Yates and Rosanna Vise, stage designer.

 

                                                     

 

 Scott plays every role, lightly moving between characters,  using subtle changes of voice, telling gestures and a few props to reveal the different energies of each person. He became Vanya, keeping the estate going; Michael, the despairing doctor; Sonia, the housekeeping daughter, desperate for love; Alexander, the vain, elderly, ailing film director; Helena, his beautiful second wife, and a couple more. Scott was amazing, moving between one portrayal and another. In one scene, where two hands wrestle over an emptying bottle, I felt I 'saw' two people, as well as scenes between Michael and Helena.

                                                   

For a moment, as I saw Scott move, alone, through all these characters on screen, I thought about all the writers who do this trick too. 

 

Alone in their minds, writers shift their focus from one character to another, secretly changing the sets and scenes and lighting in their heads as they work on, as it comes into their mind. Not as astonishing or as noticeably as Scott, of course, to anyone, but definitely not a nothing of a skill.

 

So, if you are a writer, keep acting on inside there, in your own quiet way - pen to paper or key to screen - and I hope your march will be a useful one.

 

 

Penny Dolan

 

ps Apologies! A draft section of this post appeared below. I am hoping that it is now fully removed.

A Decade of Words by Sheena Wilkinson

It’s exactly ten years since I left my day-job (school-teaching) to be a ‘fulltime’ author. For several years I had been juggling two jobs – teacher and writer (as well, of course, as all the other, unpaid jobs women do) and I thought life would be easier, if much less pecunious, with one. 

The reality, as any writer knows, is that I now have lots of jobs, all connected with writing in some way or another. None brings in enough to live on – publishing books least of all – but between the jigs and the reels it somehow works out in the end. I thought, to celebrate a decade of doing it alone, I’d have a look at some of the numbers.

If I started to add up all the other jobs – the Royal Literary Fund gigs; the school visits and residencies; the university teaching; the Arvon courses; the festival events, and all the other little gigs that present themselves, we would be here all day, so here is the last decade in terms of WRITING.  

Between 2013 and 2023 I have –

Published six novels for young people, three contemporary and three historical.

Published one historical novel for adults, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau. 

Published a handful of short stories and personal essays.

Written 113 ABBA blog posts.

Written 33 History Girls posts.

Written two adult novels which died on submission.

Written books, stories and essays which won awards, and some which didn’t.

Written 50,000 of a memoir that’s currently resting because Making Things Up is more fun.   

Written the first draft of a sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, which is also currently resting, waiting for its moment. (For ‘moment’, read ‘contract’.)

Written 19,073 words of a New Secret Project, for which I do have a contract, but which is too New and Secret to talk about – believe me, you will hear all about it when I’m able to share it.

 

When I look at the list, I find it easier to answer the question I sometimes ask myself – what do you do all day? This is what I’ve been doing all day for the last ten years.

Who knows what words and stories the next decade will bring?