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Writeon
September 24, 2008
I’ve just received an email from Dominic Took, author of ‘Storms of Acaias’ about an arts council project through ‘You Writeon’ to publish the first 5000 writers to apply. I responded, and have been accepted, so if things go to plan ‘Tasting the Wind’ will be available in paperback by Christmas.
The only references so far that I’ve found on the net are from the states. They are asking if it is ‘Print on Demand’ similar to Lulu. It does appear to be so, as the paperback is only available through the website or, if you pay a small fee, from Amazon and certain bookshops.
Significantly, some of their authors havde attracted the attention of bigger publishers, and part of the contract is that you are not bound to Writeon if any mainstream publisher notices you. So I am trying it out. Watch this space.
If you are interested then click on this link:
http://www.youwriteon.com/info/info/welcome-to-youwriteoncom-sponsored-by-arts-council-england.aspx

With a little help from my friends.

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Once upon a time in Fairy Dairy land a man wrote a book. It was a special book because it contained a little bit of his heart and a lot of his soul. He tried to get it published, but no one would believe in the book like he did.

One day he found a bottle, and when he rubbed it a genie popped out, who turned out to be an author. The Genie sent the man's book to her publisher, they published the book, and the man lived happily ever after.

Of course it doesn't happen like that in the real world. I had been reunited with my old friend, Lynn Grocott, who had already published. She got me in contact with her publisher, Lean Marketing, who were very helpful and encouraging, but as a small publishing house only specialised in specific titles and subjects. I got an email explaining that at present they were after books about people making their home in Spain. As 'Tasting the Wind' is about people with learning disabilities and a psychopathic nurse, I couldn't find a single link between it and Spain (although Spain must have its fair share of both,) so gave up on that one.

Lynn passed my details on to several of her contacts in the world of publishing and PR. The publishing contacts didn't handle my sort of material, but I suddenly felt like a serious writer- emailing and phoning publishers and PRs for advice. After the years of writing and rejection slips I was getting quite a buzz from this.

Now for a bit of name dropping.

The networking in which I was suddenly involved was linked to the confidence coaching process (more on this in a later blog.) Lynn told me of a friend of hers who had become a successful author through using the methods she was teaching me.

Soon I was in touch with Andy Cope. Admittedly I had never heard of him at that point, but if you have children you may have done. Andy is the author of the 'Spy Dog' series; he is presently working on Spy Dog 5.

Andy wrote to me with some good advice (again, his agent couldn't help me because he specialised in children's literature, but hey, I'm communicating with another published author here!) and he asked if he could be my 'Critical Buddy.' I sent him a copy of 'Tasting the Wind,' which he is wading through at the moment. His reaction has been very positive and encouraging, although he admits to preferring lighter reading. But thanks, Andy, for taking the trouble.

The main point I want to make here is the value of networking. Writing can be a lonely process, and the struggle to find a publisher can be even more lonely and demoralising. The internet abounds with information from and about writers, and linking up with people who are either travelling your way or who have arrived there can make the difference between carrying on or just lying down in the road.

I was in W.H. Smiths one day. Looking at the childrens' books I picked out the 'Spy Dog,' series. It seemed bizarre that in my pocket was a copy of an email from its author.

I turned around and looked at the adult books. Finding 'M' I made a space.

One day my book will be there.

I am Legend... I was King of Golganooza

These days, thanks to technology, there are lots of things a writer can do when the constant round of sending out manuscripts and getting them returned with rejection slips is starting to become tedious.

At one time if you couldn't get published conventionally there was either self- publishing (which is by no means a modern phenomenon*) or the Vanity Press.
Anyone remember Johnboy, his look of pride as he unpacked boxes of hardbound books with his name on the spine- until he realised that he had to foot the bill?

Of course, we're too sophisticated to fall for something like that, aren't we? The problem these days is that there are other traps for the unwary- but also more opportunities in an alternative publishing world which is still in its infancy.

I will chronicle my forages into cyberspace publishing chronologically, and where possible leave you to make your own judgements.



Occasionally I will rant. Sometimes it takes me that way.

One of the first things I did was enter a competition in the Writers and Artists' yearbook. The prize was publication. I never heard anything, so I didn't win.

More recently I sent my novel to 'Macmillan New Writers.' The advantage of this is that you can upload your entire novel (which they promise to delete from their files if you are unsuccessful.) They say that if you've not heard from them within twelve weeks... now how long ago was that?

One of my earliest attempts to publish via an unconventional route was through a site called 'Golganooza.'

Golganooza came up when I typed something like 'new author wants to get published' into a search engine.

What Golgonooza offered to do was read a large portion of my novel (I think it was something like 25,000 words,) my covering letter and synopsis, and to provide me with a critique from an unnamed professional- who worked in publishing or the media.

It came at a cost,of course, but there was a reward. If your work was deemed eligible for their 'Gold Medal,' Golgonooza would approach publishers on your behalf and represent you.

I next did what I always do when I come across this type of site- I Googled its name. It's always a good idea to do this when you come across any site which seems to be offering a shortcut to publication. Even better, Google its name with the word 'review' attached. There are a lot of helpful people out there, some of whom have successfully used internet services, some of whom have been bitten by them, who have reviewed them for those who follow.

For 'Golgonooza' I was glad to find press releases praising the innovative nature of the scheme.

Another thing to do, especially if a site claims that its methods have led to booksales, is to look for that book on Amazon. In this case I found a genuine bestseller which had been a Golganooza Gold Medal Winner.

So far so good.

To use Golgonooza's service was going to cost about £75.00. For that I would get a professional critique (far cheaper than any comparable service) and possible recommendations to publishers. The idea- and it was a good one- was that if Golgonooza considered something worthy of publishing they would approach publishers and save them from having to wade any longer than necessary to discover your gem in the midst of the 'slush pile.'

(The slush pile, by the way, is a derogatory term in publishing, given to works which stand no chance of ever hitting the shelves. I wonder if this also includes the odd work of rare genius which publishers won't touch because They won't be able to 'move' enough 'units'?)

So I sent off my submission- through the website- and looked every day to see if the 'pending' icon had changed to 'reviewed.'

About one month later, it had.

I found the review quite balanced, encouraging, and professional. But I didn't get a Gold Medal.

After another year of revision I had incorporated all of the Golgonooza suggestions and decided to submit it again.

I uploaded to the site, paid my money, and waited... and waited.

After about two months I sent an email, asking where my revew was. No reply. I emailed again. No answer.

I then had the bright idea of writing on one of their forums. Again, no answer. So I wrote messages under each separate forum discussion, asking if anyone else had not received their review. Eventually I wrote warning people not to subscribe, just to see if this would provoke a response. It didn't.
Then I saw it. The last contribution to be made to the site before mine had been... exactly one year before.

I suddenly felt like a character in one of those 'last man in the world' movies- 'the Omega Man,' or 'I am Legend.'
My words seemed to echo back from the screen as I wandered empty cyberspace corridors.
I went back each day, the loneliness turning to mania. I left posting after posting like some demented graffiti artist:

there's no one there, is there? And I'm going to prove it: I'm going to write ****, and ****, and **** on your website, and you won't take it off, because you never look do you?

And they didn't. Obviously the experiment hadn't worked- either there were not enough people wanting to pay for reviews- or not enough were achieving publication. I don't know, and there was nothing on the website to explain.

But then came the day that I went on to the site... and someone else was there. I felt a rush of incredulity and exctement, like Robinson Crusoe finding Friday's footprints on the beach.

It was a guy called Rory. He thanked me for alerting him to the fact that this was a dead website before he parted with his money. We wished each other well with our books, and went our separate ways.
I continued to leave threats of small claims courts. My friend, Darren, who is a debt collecter offered to track the owners down, but we decided it was too much trouble over £75.

I was about to leave my lonely island forever when someone else left a message. He recommended a new thing called the 'Frontllist.' Another way of getting to a publisher.

So, a little bit wiser and a lot more wary, I set sail for the new site.

About a year later, out of interest, I tried to find Golganooza again. It no longer exists.






* The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield was self published, as were Eragon by Christopher Paolini and The Storms of Acias by Dominic Took. Other well-known self-publishers include: Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, Deepak Chopra, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain.





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Coming Out

So you are sure of who you are, and what you want to do. You know there's nothing wrong with it- you've been doing it for years for God's sake. All you have to do now is to tell someone.

You go over the scene so many times. You are in that familiar living room but the walls seem to press in and each breath feels like you are aspirating in a pool of warm sweat.

You practice the words, imagining the gasps, the incredulity... the laughter.

'Mum... Dad... Sweetheart... I've something to tell you: I'm... I'm... AN AUTHOR!

It's time to unleash your creation upon your first readership- your friends and family, which is not an easy thing to. You have laboured long and hard on this, it is your baby, you've grown attached, and will be upset if anyone tells you it's ugly. But be brave- better a friend tells you than a publisher.

So ask them to be honest, and to make any marks on the manuscript in a different colour to what has been used by previous readers. Ask them to comment on the plot, characters, anything they liked or didn't like. Ask them if they feel that it reads like something they would buy from a book shop, and if it doesn't, why not.

You will be surprised, regardless of how thoroughly you have revised and proof read your work, just how many typos and spelling mistakes will still be found. A spell checker will pass 'there' or 'their' as correct, regardless of its context.

I even say to people that if they get so far in and think that it's drivel to stop and give it back. LIFE IS TOO SHORT.

Fortunately, so far, no one has done that. Remarks have tended to be very encouraging. As I sat watching a football match at the city of Manchester Stadium I got a series of texts from someone who just had to know that her favourite character would survive. As it turned out, Manchester City lost and the texts turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the afternoon.

(Here's an old football joke for you:
Football fan 1: City lost today.
Football fan 2: How do you know?
Football fan 1: It's Saturday...)

Don't feel obliged to make every change suggested by your readers. They, like you, bring their own presuppositions to the piece. But if several people make the same point this probably is a big indication that you need to rethink.

So go through it, making the alterations you agree with, remembering that each one may be keeping you that little bit further away from a publisher's rejection pile. If you think this sounds tedious, how must it have been before the invenion of the word processor?

When you eventually get published (oh yes, positive thinking is essential,) you might want to give the people who helped you a credit.

My book is a thriller, of sorts, so I made a point at first of only asking people who I knew read that genre. After all, they were doing me a service, so I wanted them to at least get some enjoyment out of it.I asked my Wife, my Father and Brother to read it, but not my Mother, as she wouldn't have got past the (necessary and appropriate) strong language. Which brings me onto another difficulty which you might find in sharing your work with people who know you...

What you consider to be your well-written and objective exploration of a neglected corner of the human condition may to someone who knows you come as an appalling revelation that you are a disgusting pervert with a mind like Satan's sewer.Don't laugh- it came as a great shock to Iris Murdoch's nearest and dearest that some of her subject matter was in her head, so it does happen, even to the best of them. I once told a colleague who had read my novel that a great deal of it was based upon real events. She laughed and asked me if I was referring to the scene in the factory toilet (at the beginning of Chapter 3, which you can hear on YouTube.)

So think carefully- is your work a processing of reality through your imagination, or is it a confession of your warped psyche and a series of clues about where the bodies are buried?

Depending on your answer, your next step will be to send a sample of your work to an agent (in the first case literary, in the second, government.)

And you though it had been hard getting to this point...

revijhion... revizeon... revision!

So, you've got something which looks like a novel. Well it's a big bulky wad of paper with words on it

(should be no less than 80,000 of those.)

Once you've worked out that what you're waving around isn't a phonebook, chances are you've got the first draft of your novel. But is it literature? And... will it sell?

Although you will be itching to get your masterpiece into the hands of a publisher, it can pay to put your work away in a drawer for a while before you commence revision. This way you can come to it with fresh eyes.

Approach it like it's someone else's work and be brutal.

This scene which took you months to write, does it move the story on, or develop your characters? If it wasn't there would anyone notice? You may just need to ditch it and not look back.

Is a passage economical?


Sometimes it helps to slow down the pace, to have a brief meditation or 'set piece.' Sometimes the information imparted could be passed on in a line of dialogue.

Does your prose flow? Does it have a natural rhythm? When characters speak,

is it believable that someone would talk like that?

Read your work out aloud. If you find you get tongue tied over a phrase, maybe it needs changing, shortening, or to have the order of words altered. Any sections about which you have doubts, try recording them, or get someone else to look. (Not that I could do that- I can never show my work to anyone until it's as good as I can get it.)

How many times do you revise? I'm with Hemingway on that one-


you revise until the day you go through it and you can find nothing else to change.


I think that this is a common trait of all successful writers, but how they approach this can vary from one to another. Rather than writing a novel then going through it and through it, Dean Koontz writes one page at a time. He will then revise that page thirty or forty times, before he is happy to move on.

I found a real difficulty with my revisions in that some chapters just didn't work in the person in which I had written them. I once turned the entire book from a first to a third person narrative. It didn't work, because my aim in having a first person was for him to be an everyman with whom the reader could identify in an unfamiliar world. I eventually decided to mix the voices. A common criticism of this is that it 'jars.' But several people have now read my text and not one of them- even the most critical readers- has even mentioned this.

A good example of the use of multiple voices is 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin.' There the change of voice is well indicated by section headings. If you are not going to do this you need to

make sure that the voices are sufficiently distinct,

so that from the first line of the new passage or chapter the reader is left in no doubt as to who is speaking.


In 'Tasting the Wind' I have attempted to do this by making Martin's narration a little more colloquial, and having him always speak in the present tense. Have a listen to the Prologue, which I added to the first posting on this blog, followed by the opening of Chapter One (below) and judge for yourself whether or not it works.