The Chesil Apothecary

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book fair, books, Dorset, fiction, flowers, writing

Just a final reminder for those of you  here in Dorset, that I will have hand-bound copies of The Chesil Apothecary available for sale at the Crabchurch Book Fayre this Saturday. I’ll be there from noon til 4pm. Meanwhile, for everyone else, I shall be serialising the book, with illustrations, on this blog over the next few weeks, starting this Thursday. I hope you enjoy it!

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Writers Together

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authors, books, Crabchurch, Dorset, writing

One of the nicest aspects of the writing life is getting to know other writers. My writing friends are a huge source of support, inspiration (and sometimes commiseration), and encouragement. I don’t know what I’d do without them. I belong to two writing groups here in Weymouth (Dorset), and they have now begun to work together as a single entity to sell our books at book fairs and other events.

Selling books is hard for most of us, but working together we can help sell each other’s books, which is a little easier. We can keep costs minimal by sharing a stand at an event, and take turns to be ‘on duty’ with it, too. We call ourselves Weymouth Writing Matters & Friends.

The Crabchurch Weekend book fair in Weymouth at the end of February is only our second try at this collaboration, so we’re still learning. Bit by bit we are accumulating a portable display kit (including some heroic upcycling of an old dresser top into a book stand by my husband), adding lights, colour and information. We’ve distributed posters online and around the town to publicise the event, and we hope that the public will come in and enjoy browsing our books for sale. We’ll be delighted to see them. We can only pray sincerely for reasonable weather! So if you’re in Weymouth on 29 February, do drop in and say hello. We’ll be there from 12 noon til 4pm.

 

Time for Art

Tags

Ageing, Artwork, creativity, opportunities

I was watching a fascinating TV programme recently, on the subject of gene therapy. It offers hope to people with genetic diseases, and, of course, opens up a whole range of ethical issues, too. One of the experts they wheeled on, a gent in his sixties, said it had taken him a lifetime to feel fully trained in his work, and yet he feared he was all too soon to be ‘recycled’ as he put it, before he could fully use what he had learned. If a little genetic tinkering could give him an extra thirty-odd years of healthy life, what might he not achieve?

I had to smile at this. Anyone of his (and my) age will recognise the feeling – must the culmination of a lifetime’s experience and gained wisdom be lost to slow decline and eventual snuffing out? It’s a vexed question, of course, but I couldn’t help asking myself what I would do with an extra thirty years of healthy life, knowing all that I now know, if I had the chance? The answer came back without hesitation. I’d do what I should have done when I was young. I’d go to art school.

A few years back I was participating in a chatty online thread where everyone was asked what they had wanted to do when they grew up. My answer was that I had wanted to be a wildlife artist. It caused me a pang or two at the time I can tell you; wasted opportunities, insufficient encouragement – I could happily blame myself or others for the fact that I never did this. Regrets are fairly pointless, I suppose, and I’m making up for it as best I can now by illustrating my own books. But oh, for the energy (and eyesight) I had thirty years ago!

Is it too late to go to college (there are online opportunities) and study art? Maybe not – but it is probably too late to get the best and fullest use out of what I might learn there. And, of course, there are now many other things I want to do with my time. So if I were offered an extra thirty years of healthy life, would I take it? You bet I would. Bring it on. I’ve already got the plan mapped out…

Writing Outside your Comfort Zone

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books, romance, writing

It takes a bit of courage to break out of your usual writing style. The familiar phrases, your favourite words – even the construction of the piece – may all be wrong if you dip into another genre. It’s difficult, but it’s also good for you as a writer. I often feel rather sorry for writers who are locked into a successful series of books where the pressure from readers, and perhaps a publisher, are for more, more, more of the same. I would hate to be stuck writing about the same characters for years on end.

So I think it’s good for your development as a writer to break out of your usual style now and then. There is so much to learn from writing outside your comfort zone. You have to consider the needs and preferences of a different tranche of readers, give a different heft to your plotline, take an alternative view of the kind of ending that might be expected.

I tried this a couple of years back. I set myself the challenge of writing a romantic novella. I’m not really a reader of romances, but for some years now I’ve been a volunteer reader for the Romantic Novelist’s Association. This means I read and assess three or four novels a year that have been nominated for RNA awards. If nothing else, this has given me a good idea of what the modern romantic novel looks like, so I felt reasonably prepared when I tackled one for myself – just to see if I could do it.

As you might expect, it wasn’t as easy as it looks. Romantic scenes make me distinctly uneasy, but my goodness I learned a lot about how to cope with them. It was, as they say, a baptism of fire. I thought carefully about the necessary ‘ingredients’ for a romantic story, from the names of the characters, to the like/dislike/like construction, to the proper sort of ending. For all that, I loved creating the characters, enjoyed describing their tangled emotions. I put them in a setting I know well – the Dorset coast – so it was easier to give the story an air of reality. It’s a short novella at just 20,000 words, but I romped through it in a matter of weeks, and I learned a lot about writing in the process.

The result was Summer at the Sea Poppy Café, and I published it under a pseudonym since it was so different from my other books. But I think it’s recognisably mine – a bit quirky. The worst anyone had to say about it was that it wasn’t long enough, and they wanted to know more about the characters. Well, I can live with that!

Will I write any more romances? Probably not. I have many other things I want to do, writing-wise, and I would hate to get locked into a series – but I won’t shy away from the romantic element in future stories. For now I’m busy writing a little murder mystery, something else I’ve never tried. It’s challenging, but fun. So my advice to writers is – work outside your comfort zone now and then. It’ll be a revelation, and it’ll make you a better writer.

 

If you’d like to see what I made of the challenge of writing a romantic novella, you can buy the e-book for just 99p here. I’d love to know what you think of it.