Invite to the live launch of Spooking

A Special Invitation

Please come to my launch of Spooking, a paranormal romance for young adults, published by Crooked Cat.  

As well as launching all day on Friday 13 April - yes Friday 13 - my lucky day  - via Facebook, I'll be live online on Friday between 4.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m British summer time and I’ll be circling through the many rooms of the launch site - this blog site, Facebook, my personal email, my Salford University email and my Twitter account.(@gilljames) 

Do come and join the fun.    

There will be cupcakes, champagne and a tiny excerpt from the book. You may get to meet a few new people too.          

Pinning down the Muse

When you first start writing you have lots of ideas. Then, they start to dry up; you use them up or you decide what had seemed good isn’t quite as engaging as you’d thought. Fortunately, as I mentioned the other week, I have the next four or five books planned in my head. Still, I’m not so teeming with ideas as I was when I decided TO BE A WRITER.  

Or am I really not?

Part of my routine is to take a break between edits of my novel by entering a competition or sending something to a small press outfit that accepts submissions at the moment. Often these are pieces of flash fiction or other short fiction. And I find as I drive, iron, wash-up, shop or walk I get thousands of ideas that are like dandelion seeds in the wind: they disappear again before I have time to write them down. As I talk to my first year university class about what they might include in their autobiography assignments I think of snatches of life-writing I might compose – and then forget again before I have time to make a note.

I sometimes have to push my students into finding a muse. Recently we played consequences in class. They did the following:

Created two characters, giving them name, physical and intellectual attributes and an emotional life

Created a setting

Introduced a problem

After each instruction – nine in all – they passed the paper on to the tenth classmate who took that home and wrote a story according to the information they had there. They produced some of their best writing.

Currently, as well as my major works, I’ve just entered a piece of Flash Fiction for a competition. I managed to recall one of those quirky ideas I’d had when I couldn’t get to my note book. It turned out rather well in the end, I think. I’m having less success with a longer piece I had been intending to enter for the Mslexia short story competition – deadline now gone. But it will come right, eventually and maybe that wasn’t really the right place to send it anyway.  

I have enough confidence now that even when I feel devoid of ideas if I sit at my computer I’ll be able to write. I prefer to do that earlier in the day for if I don’t, other tasks sap my creative energy. I’ve frequently noticed on the days I struggle the most, on the days when the muse seems to be in hiding, I actually write better. Just like my students.

What do they say? 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration? I can confirm that.                      

The Final Edit – does it really exist?

My novel for young adults, Spooking, comes out on 13 April with Crooked Cat. I’m currently checking the final edits. This is a combination of accepting – mainly – those suggested by the editor and adding a few of my own. We’ve used Track Changes, but I’m currently reading out loud a “clean” version of the text – and notice that a few new mistakes have crept in – probably because it’s hard to see the text properly with the changes showing.  

Now, this novel has been around a while. I completed it in 2009 and it has gone out to a few agents and editors. I’ve had some positive rejections, including one from an agent who read the full script and said “I liked it but I didn’t love it. If you don’t get this placed, please send us your next one.” Naturally, I’m delighted that Crooked Cat like it. I’ve considered every bit of feedback I’ve been given and in many cases followed suggestions or reworked bits that others thought were not working. And I’m still tinkering. I’ll have to stop early next week: Crooked Cat want it back then.

I have a similar novel, Veiled Dreams, that I also want to get out and am actually making some changes to that in view of the comments made by Crooked Cat on Spooking. An agent recently said she though the narrative voice was a little odd. All of a sudden I’m agreeing with her. This novel has also been tucked away for many months and it was pretty well perfect when I put it to bed, I’d thought. Even my beta-readers had agreed. Yet now I’m making changes.

The latest novel is generally the best and I have high hopes for Potatoes in Spring. I have just a handful of edits to do on this, including the read out loud one. I wonder how long it will be before another one is better?

And so we go on learning. Thank goodness for editors. They save us from ourselves when we get too bogged down with all of this. And if it wasn’t for that deadline they gave us, we’d go on forever. Indeed, I’ve been known to edit as I read out my work at events.    

The inconvenience of deadlines and ideas

I absolutely loved my sabbatical. My employer, the University of Salford, recognised that my work was of value and allowed me a whole five months off teaching, meetings and most of my emails so that I could get on with some research and some writing. And because I am employed as a creative writing lecturer, quite a lot of that time was spent on my novel.

However, there was also a creepy thought at the back of my mind. This is all fine and good, but what next? I was part way through editing another book. So, finish the sabbatical novel (not far off, now actually) and that other book – then what?

I shouldn’t have worried. I now have this To Do list:

Finish the sabbatical novel (in time to enter it for a competition next week?)

Complete the accompanying web site

Complete the associated Power Point presentations

Complete the associated academic articles  

Finish editing that other novel

Get the sabbatical novel and the other novel out there

Research and write the biography of one of the (real) minor characters in the novel

Edit and self-publish two books that have gone out of print

Follow up that idea for a teen novel situated in ancient times on Tenerife

Write a modern day novel about the girl who … ah that’s a secret!

Edit Spooking (by 11 March for Crooked Cat)

Accept Crooked Cat’s edits so that the book can be out by16 March (cripes!)

Get some self-promotion going associated with Spooking.

Possibly all of this came about as I came out of my deep absorption in Potatoes in Spring and got back to normal life. On my To Do list was get Spooking out there. I also have to get Veiled Dreams out there. But that will now have to wait.

It’s great. I’m now bubbling with ideas again. And I have some deadlines that are there because I have had some success.  

The problem is, all of this comes as I’m busy again with teaching – bigger classes this semester – meetings and exchange students. But that is the way it is generally. Deadlines and ideas rarely come at convenient times.                      

Writers and Social Networking

It seems vital today that writers have a presence on some social networking platforms. In fact I am convinced I have made sales and been approached by schools wanting workshops because I have some visibility. My work at Salford University also helps and I note that my pages on various the web site there have had many hits. I maintain several blogs, I have several pages on Facebook but rarely use my wall, I’m on Twitter, I’m on LinkedIn and I’m on E-academy. I’m also quite active in a couple of groups that are supported by Ning.

However, I have noticed a quite disturbing trend, sadly on LinkedIn, which started off being such a professional organisation and on E-academy, which was originally a reliable business network. People join any group that has the remotest connection with what they do and thereby water down the possibilities of that group. Recently there was a whole campaign on Linked in within one sub-group where everyone was invited to like each other’s pages on Facebook. Many of the members of the groups only had the slightest connection with the topic. It wasn’t always clear exactly what there was to like. And frankly, I have better things to do with my time than simply click buttons on Facebook. I’m not saying there wasn’t something there to like – I just hadn’t found it yet.

No, no, no, I say. Let’s be genuine about this.

We have to take a little care that we don’t create an affiliate situation without a product behind it. Crowd-funding is fine as long as people fund because they like the product / project not just because they are friends with the project leader who has a great deal of charisma. Don’t vote for your friend’s story just because s/he is your friend. Vote for that story because it is actually the best.

I personally love Twitter. I treat myself to a look whenever I change task. It’s like meeting at the water cooler. I like the way it finds other people you might want to connect with, how you can show someone you approve of their message by retweeting it and the effect that then has on the way that message spreads, or you can reply to that message and give a bit of value-added. It’s all done in 140 characters so you’re not going to waste a lot of time. Often you can be directed to an interesting blog or a publishing opportunity. I’ve made a few friendships on Twitter – some people I knew before but I’ve got to know those people better and others I  met for the first time there. I keep on top of the local, national and international news and I have some connections which help me with some of my projects.

Social networking is helpful, perhaps essential for writers. It must, however, include genuine connections.