RG: When I began writing, many of the poems were based on my background, growing up in a village in Co.Tyrone, N.Ireland. As I developed as a writer the themes widened to encompass ‘literary greats’ of the 19th and 20th centuries. The majority of poems conveniently fell within these two categories when thinking of publishing a collection.

TCW: What first attracted you to the theme?

RG: As a Christian I specifically targeted writers who have a Christian or spiritual dimension within their work or lives. I was interested to find out how they lived, as a kind of parallel with my own life.

TCW: How did you go about selecting the title? While it certainly alludes to the ‘literary’ nature of the poems, it suggests a volume of love stories, which isn’t the case. Do you think readers might be misled by this? And if so, does it matter from a marketing perspective? 

RG: It took a long time to finally decide on a title. A friend read through the collection and suggested that the literary lives were the ‘strongest selling point’ of the collection, and advised beginning with these poems. As the Tolstoy poems predominate within the first section, it seemed logical to choose a title containing the name.  Some people might be misled by the title, but I felt that many readers will be  attuned to the idea that a poem from a collection, used as a title, may not necessarily be representative of the whole collection.

TCW: Did you consciously play on a reference to Shakespeare in Love?

RG: No, but one or two people referred to the Shakespeare connection when I had published the work.

TCW: For me the most satisfying thing in reading this volume was the way you get right into the skin of your characters. Do you have any tips on how developing poets can do this?

RG: A very helpful book is, Writing Poems, by Peter Sansom. It includes a number of useful exercises which get the reader to examine a subject from varying points-of-view. [I can also recommend this book - Ed]
 
TCW: I loved the way you play with point of view, shifting between subject and viewer. In ‘Tolstoy in Love’, for instance, the great man tells us of his love for Sonya. Then in the next poem, ‘Sonya Tolstoy’, you shift to her POV which is very different from that of her husband’s. We then feel compelled to re-read the first poem in light of the second. Is writing from a poetic character’s point of view something that has always marked your work or is it distinctive to this collection? What interests you in playing with POV?

RG: For many years I used to write only from my own perspective. However, on finding the possibility of writing from other viewpoints, I was able to write through Tolstoy’s voice, his wife’s or other characters. This can, if successful, give a multi-layered picture of the main character, his strengths and flaws, his inconsistencies.
 
TCW: When changing POV you also change the ‘voice’ of the poem. Could you explain to new writers what an editor means when they refer to ‘voice’?

RG: I suppose each person has a unique voice, but there are certain characteristics which we have in common with other people, background, job etc. A medical doctor, for example, has to sound authentic, particularly if you place him in a medical situation. You don’t need a doctorate in medicine to get the voice right, but it does require some background reading and research if you propose to speak in his voice.  

TCW: The second section of this collection is entitled ‘An Emotional Map of Belfast’ and while similar in style is very different in subject – your personal reflections on your own life and relationships in Northern Ireland. In a sense you become the ‘writer’ as subject and viewer. Why did you decide to have what John Wakeman describes as ‘two books for the price of one, both worth having.’? Did you ever consider that they should be separate collections and whether or not readers would feel the two should not be together?

RG: I suppose I could have waited and developed the work into two separate collections. However, as I was trying to get a full collection accepted for thirteen years, this did not seem an option. Writing about characters, at a distance, in the first section, perhaps allowed me to address the reader through my own voice in the second section.
 
TCW: You started gaining attention as a poet through winning competitions. How important are compeitition wins? Should new writers enter them? Can you recommend some competitions to Crafty readers?

RG: The winning, or in most cases, being short-listed or commended in a poetry competition can help to promote your name in writing circles, but I would always look to see the judge of the competition. Is he a recognised poet whose judgements you can respect? For example, last year I entered a relatively small competition held in Wells, because the judge was Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate at that time.

I think new writers might try small or local competitions first, but the small press magazine is a better option at the start to help build a good CV of publishing credits to eventually work towards being published in pamphlet or book form.

The new writer is probably best advised to steer clear of poetry competitions which offer prizes such as £5,000 to the winner. An example would be the annual National Poetry Competition, organized by the Poetry Society. As it attracts upwards of 10,000 entries, many by established poets, your chances are virtually zero. (You might be better putting the exorbitant entry fee on the 3:30 at Wincanton!)

There are dozens of competitions each year, some specialist (focused on a particular form or line length) or perhaps on a theme. It might be best to research these and see if your poems fulfil the criteria, such as ‘poems under 30 lines’. Two of the best online guides to competitions (and poetry magazines) are: The Poetry Kit and The Poetry Library.

TCW: Thanks Ray. We wish you well with the sale of your book and strength to your pen for the next collection.

Related posts:

1. The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print
2. Atrocious teenage poetry
3. Poetry: are you listening carefully?

Lullaby

this is the arm that held you
this is the hand that cradled your cold feet

these are the ears that heard you
whimper and cough throughout your brush with light

this is the chest that warmed you
these are the eyes that caught your glimpse of life

this is the man you fathered —
his voided love, his writhen pride and grief

(By Andrew Philip, reproduced with permission.)

TCW: The Ambulance Box is a very personal collection of poetry, largely in response to the death of your first child. Many people write poetry to help them psychologically ‘process’ their lives. What is it that separates a poem that is purely personal to one that is fit (dare I use the word) to enter the public domain?

AP: Craft. And the indefinable something that brings the language alive. The quality of the poem as a poem – however you measure that – must be paramount. Even if that isn’t the case at the outset, it must become the case at some point in the drafting process. In fact, if there is a drafting process, it probably means you’re thinking more poetically than therapeutically as it is.

That’s not to decry the value of writing as therapy. The poems about Aidan were certainly part of my grief work, and I was always conscious that they might not make the grade for publication. I assumed nothing in that respect, but it was probably impossible for me not to work on them as I would any other poems. I was relieved and delighted when it transpired that other people found them worth hearing and reading.

TCW: But The Ambulance Box is not just about grief. What criteria did you use to select poetry for this collection?

AP: First and foremost, I wanted to include my best work, but that’s not necessarily easy to define. I took account of what was best in the opinion of people I respect, but it had to come down to my instinct in the end. Thematic considerations came after that and influenced the order rather than the content.

TCW: Did your editor at Salt Publishing influence the final ‘cut’?

AP: No. I’d spent a considerable amount of time polishing up the manuscript before I submitted it. My friend Rob A Mackenzie was putting together a collection at around the same time. We swapped manuscripts, as readers of my blog will know well. That was extremely helpful. Chris Hamilton-Emery, my editor at Salt, made no changes. In fact, when he accepted the book he said, “There are no duds.” Chris tends to be a pretty hands-off editor anyway, but his comment was very gratifying, as you can imagine!

TCW: Are there any poems you regret didn’t go in?

AP: Not really. Some good poems from Tonguefire, my first pamphlet, didn’t go in because they didn’t seem to be quite good enough or to fit with the rest of the work in the book. If any of those had been top-drawer pieces, I would have found space for them. I also like the fact that people who own the pamphlet – which is sold out – still have something more worth reading in its own right.

TCW: About a third of the collection is written in Scots. [a tip to Crafty readers: if you read it out loud, you can just about understand it in English with a Scots accent! - Ed]. What marketing challenges does this raise when targeting an international readership.

AP: This is a funny one, because non-Scots speakers sometimes like the Scots poems best. It could actually be a marketing advantage because it helps to distinguish the work from other poetry coming out of Britain, even out of Scotland. The Scots diaspora is considerable, after all. The overseas market for things Scottish is generally interested in writing in Scots.

Writing in Scots is quite widely accepted in the UK poetry scene now. Some of the best-known Scottish names in the generation above mine – WN Herbert, Robert Crawford and Kathleen Jamie, for instance – have written work in Scots. Even John Burnside has turned his hand to it for a recent anthology, New Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

TCW: Would you ever bring out an entirely Scots / Gaelic collection?

AP: It’s unlikely I’d ever publish an entirely Gaelic collection, simply because I doubt whether I’ll ever reach the fluency necessary to write a book entirely in Gaelic. I’m more interested in bringing the three languages – Gaelic, Scots and English – together in different ways within poems. It seems to me that the aesthetic possibilities of that approach haven’t been fully explored.

That said, I could envisage myself bringing out an entirely Scots book. It just depends on having enough material. That’s something that feels like it’s beyond my control to an extent because it’s a matter of which language the poem wants to be in. For instance, “Berlin/Berlin/Berlin” started out in English but I soon felt that it would work better in Scots. It quickly became clear that that was the case. “Waukrife” and “Coronach”, on the other hand, were in Scots from the earliest drafts.

TCW: In terms of sales, what would constitute a commercial success for your publisher?

AP: It takes 400 sales in the UK over three years for Salt to break even on a book, so I suppose anything above that would be a success. The Ambulance Box is already into its first reprint. The initial run was, I think, 250 hardback copies and the reprint 100, so here’s hoping we hit the magic number!

TCW: Salt Publishing has recently gone public to announce that it is in financial difficulty. It has launched the Just One Book campaign to try and kick-start sales. What impact does this have on you and other new writers?

AP: It’s obviously very worrying. Chris and Jen [the owners - Ed] assured everyone that the backlist was safe, but it looked very much at one point like the frontlist – the books planned for publication for the rest of this year and beyond – would have to be to abandoned. I’m glad to say that they found a way round that.

I’m even more glad to say that they have started commissioning again. However, things are still pretty precarious and the Just One Book campaign continues. Griff Rhys Jones has thrown his weight behind it and my cover, as well as a few others, appeared on screen in Newsnight Review!

TCW: The schools market is obviously the biggest money spinner for poets. How does a poet go about getting into school anthologies?

AP: Good question. How does one get into any anthologies? My only appearance in a school anthology was the Scots-language book The Smoky Smirr o Rain, which came about because I was working with one of its editors – Matthew Fitt – on something else and showed him some of my Rilke translations. He also suggested me for 5PX2: Five Italian Poets and Five Scottish Poets. So I suppose the answer is that you have to be known to whoever is editing an anthology. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to know them, but it obviously helps if you know lots of poets and they know your work.

Probably a bigger source of income than anthologies is doing workshops and writing projects in schools. That, too, is about visibility and building relationships with teachers. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. If you do good work, people will recommend you.

TCW: You published two pamphlets before The Ambulance Box collection. What is the difference between a ‘pamphlet’ and a ‘collection’?

AP: Size, price, binding and visibility. That’s all, really. Full collections get noticed more, but pamphlets have become much more visible in the past six or seven years.

TCW: Would you advise new poets to try their hand at self-publishing?

AP: Self-publishing isn’t something I’ve any experience of, although I considered it at one point. ‘Tonguefire’ and ‘Andrew Philip: A Sampler’ were published by Helena Nelson’s HappenStance Press. Publishing with a small press means you have the validation of someone else sinking their time and money into your work, as well as the benefit of an editor’s input and another person working to sell the publication. Self-published pamphlets don’t have that.

I can see that self-publishing is particularly useful if you’re doing non-mainstream work that more commercial small presses won’t touch. For instance, Stephen Nelson self-published a pamphlet of visual poems, The Faithful City, which uses colour, layout and fonts in ways that would put off most small presses.

Helena’s pamphlet guide How (Not) to Get Your Poetry Published includes a good discussion of this topic. There’s a lot of good advice in there.

TCW: What other advice would you give to new poets trying to get their work noticed?

AP: Read, read, read poetry and write, write, write it because that’s how you’ll get as good as you can. Read as broad a range as you can, historically and stylistically, but you must read contemporary poetry. Seek out informed criticism, take it on board and learn to sift out what elements of it are right for your writing.

Once you’re into the swing of all that, send out your work to good print and online magazines. If any editors take the trouble to give you notes of advice – or any notes at all – pay attention to what they say and keep sending to them. Magazine publication is still crucial to building a reputation in print. Look at the acknowledgements in your favourite contemporary poetry. Where do these poets publish? Aim for those magazines. In addition:

• Go to poetry readings. Become involved in running them. Read and comment on blogs.
• Maybe even write a blog, but don’t put all your poems on it. (Why would an editor take them if they’re all online?) [For advice on how to start your own blog see the Crafty Writer's Beginner Blogging for Writers series - Ed]
• Read at open mike sessions.
• Write reviews. In other words, become a player.
• In addition to Helena Nelson’s pamphlet guide mentioned above, there is excellent advice in Chris Hamilton-Emery’s book 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell.
• Claire Askew’s blog One Night Stanzas , which is where this tour stops next (on 23 June), is a good source of advice too. It’s aimed at new and, particularly, young poets.

TCW: Thanks Andy, and good luck with the tour (follow the rest of The Ambulance Box Tour here).

Related posts:

1. Poetry: Tolstoy in Love
2. Atrocious teenage poetry
3. Creative Writing – poetry

Choosing a genre: so what kind of animal is it?

I worry a lot about genre. My first novel, Charity's Child, proved difficult to classify. I couldn’t even decide whether it was aimed at young adults or fully-fledged ones (happily, people across a wide age-range have told me they liked it). With my second novel, Low Tide, Lunan Bay, I decided to go for something easier to pigeonhole. It was going to be hen-lit … forty-somethings looking for love.

But I decided my heroine needed to lose ten years, which meant it was no longer (quite) hen-lit. What’s more, my third draft introduced a mystery element I hadn’t foreseen at all. Instead of finding true love second-time-around online and all being (eventually) rosy, Abbie, my heroine, meets an apparently wonderful man called Bill and then her eleven-year-old twin daughters start to cause concern. Could her new relationship somehow be responsible?

Adding a mystery

A mystery element was now present. I found myself writing about my own anxieties – how do you balance children with new love and who (online and offline) can you really trust? When things go wrong, how far are you prepared to go to protect yourself and your loved ones?

My publisher, Robert Hale, liked the story but asked me to shorten it. In the final version, the mystery element became more prominent. A reviewer said it “plunges the reader into unexpected thriller territory” (Kay Green, Circaidy Gregory Review, May 2009), which I rather like.

Crossing genre

One way to describe Low Tide, Lunan Bay is as a mix of two genres, romance and mystery/suspense. I’ve been asked whether this poses problems for marketing (which shelf does it go on in the bookshop?), but it seems not. Romantic suspense has become a well-established genre of its own – and goes back, when you think about it, quite a few years. Daphne du Maurier’s books have been classified that way, as have those of Mary Stewart. More recent authors of this mixed genre include Linda Howard and Nora Roberts.

Knowing the genre conventions

I’ve told you how I did it – now let me try and work out how it should be done. At the very least, try to get clear from the start what genre you intend to write. Don’t (as I did) change your mind halfway through. Study the conventions of your chosen genre. Romances have a hero and a heroine (if they are heterosexual romances, that is) and usually (though not always) a happy ending. Suspense novels contain mystery, probably a false trail or two, an element of danger and someone to solve things in the end.

How you weave these elements together is up to you, but they all need to be there in some form. The same applies to whatever genre (or genre-mix) you are writing. Be aware of the conventions so that, if you decide to break them, at least you’ll be doing it with your eyes open, fully aware of the risks. Remember, readers like (up to a point) to know what to expect.

Keeping an eye on the market

Keep a close eye on the market. Find out as much as you can about what’s selling, what publishers are looking for (though the trouble is, fashions change quickly and by the time you’ve written your book it may all be different). Find out all you can … but when you sit down to write, shove it all away to the back of your brain. It’ll still be there, subtly influencing what you do, but your imaginative, creative side will be in control, as it should be.

Writing the first draft

I write my first drafts with no clear end in sight, allowing my characters to take me where they will. I like John Braine’s advice from his wonderful book: Writing a Novel (Methuen 1974). All that matters about the first draft, he says, is to finish it. (Actually I think he attributes the advice to Hemingway, but whoever said it first, it’s kept me going on many a word-jammed morning.)

When the first draft is finished, I leave it for a while… then I read it through and extract from it the synopsis of my story. It’s not set in stone at this stage, but it will guide me as I start my next draft. I also find it useful to get hold of a diary or calendar for the year(s) in which year the novel is set. It’s a good way to keep track of Easter and other breaks, the progress of pregnancies and so on. If you leave such things too late, you’re in a mess.

The fun bit of your research is to read, read, read. Focus on your chosen genre but don’t restrict yourself to it. All sorts of unexpected influences can nourish your work. Good luck and have a thrilling time!

Related posts:

1. Writing love scenes that sizzle
2. Writing Fantasy Fiction
3. Legal thriller by name, but not by nature?

TCW: You won the Fay Weldon section of the BBC’s End of Story competition in 2004. Would you say this was your major break?

RSD: It was a huge stroke of luck. It was what spurred me on to finish the book, although not in the way you might expect. The BBC were thinking about making a follow-up, so they interviewed the winners about their writing plans. Somewhat desperate, I blathered on about a Roman novel I’d started. ‘Great,’ they said as they packed the gear away, ‘We’ll come and see you in three or four months to find out how it’s going.’

What I hadn’t dared tell them was that in the long gap between sending off the competition entry and finding out the results, I’d decided to give up writing. The novel was hopelessly stuck – but if I didn’t do something with it before they came back, I’d have to admit how useless I was on national television. So I dredged it up and for the next three or four months, I wrote like crazy. By the time I realised the BBC had changed their minds and weren’t coming at all, I was three quarters of the way through.
 
TCW: So Ruso wasn’t written before you entered the comp?

RSD: Not really. I had completed a couple of other novels which weren’t very good. Some of the early ‘Ruso’ material was created for a Historical Novel Society competition to write the first three chapters of a historical romance. I didn’t have anything suitable, so I drew out two characters from the backstory of one of the failed novels. On reflection, they were always more interesting anyway.  The ‘start’ was printed in the magazine and I was a bit taken aback when people seemed to think it was worth finishing.
 
TCW: Did you have an agent at this time?

RSD: An agent got in touch when she read it and, bless her, she stuck with me over many unproductive years until I finally finished something saleable.

TCW: Would you advise writers to enter competitions? What are the benefits?

RSD: Definitely! Working to a deadline and a specific word count is a good discipline. The occasional win of either money or kudos helps to convince your family that you aren’t just hiding behind the computer to avoid the washing up. Even if you don’t win, the worst you usually get is a long silence. Very rarely do you hear the depressing thud of a rejected manuscript on the doormat.

TCW: Did Penguin approach you or did you approach them?

RSD: I’m a complete wimp and rarely approach anybody. No, the good folk at the agency did all the selling. The people who say you have to be brave and tough to be a writer obviously haven’t met me.
 
TCW: Was Ruso always going to be a series?

RSD: No! I couldn’t imagine getting one book finished and published, let alone several.
 
TCW: Why historical fiction?

RSD: I did History to A level but it  never occurred to me to base any fiction in that period (1815 to 1939). Oh, apart from one very bad Western. I don’t know where it is and with luck nobody will find it in a drawer after I’m dead.

I wasn’t grabbed by the past till much later, when we took the children to Hadrian’s Wall. The discovery that Roman soldiers weren’t allowed to marry, but they were allowed to have relationships with local women, sparked all sorts of questions for me. What happened to the women if the men were moved on? What about the children? My parents are of the generation that can remember the GI’s being here in the War, and there seemed to be lots of parallels.
 
TCW: Was your decision to do a Roman detective novel based on market awareness or was it simply something you wanted to do?

RSD: I wanted to do something set in Roman Britain, using the tension between the occupiers and occupied. To be honest, I had no clue at the time what would sell or what other people were writing.

Later on, of course, I discovered that Lindsey Davis had been writing a fabulous Roman detective for years (the Falco series) and there were several others. Then, having half-produced a love story, I was firmly told that my novel had to have a crime in it. I thought very hard about that one, partly because other people were doing it and partly because crime wasn’t something I would naturally have chosen to write about. However, it seems to have worked. Having a mystery to solve helps to ground the plot and curtail its tendencies to meander about.

TCW: How important would you say market awareness is to as yet unpublished writers?

RSD: I know you’re supposed to study the market, but I think it’s crucial to fall in love with your subject first, because it will be renting a room in your head for months or probably years to come. I’m lucky in that both the Romans and Crime seem to have had a long spell in the sun recently. I managed to miss the Gladiator boat completely, so I was very surprised when my own novel sold several years later.

Maybe you do have to be a bit clued in, though. I work in a library, so I have some idea of what’s being read, and I do love to wander round bookshops (whilst trying to restrain the urge to see if they’ve got Ruso). From this I conclude that you’d have trouble selling a Western right now – but if it was utterly brilliant, who knows?

TCW: The Ruso novels are historical crime fiction. How important is it to have an awareness of the appropriate genre conventions when writing?

RSD: You probably need to know them even if you don’t intend to adhere to them. I’ve suggested having the bad guy get away with it or the good guy commit the murder for a change, but so far this hasn’t met with resounding enthusiasm from editors and agents. On reflection, I can see why. I think if you want to do that sort of thing you have to be either very well established or you have to decide to call it ‘literary fiction’.
 
TCW: What would you say about the statement: ‘If history doesn’t serve the story, change the history’?

RSD: There’s not much known about Britain during the period in which I write, but I do try and construct the stories around the documents and the archaeology we have. I think I’d say be very, very careful. It worked for Gladiator, but for people who knew that the Emperor Commodus didn’t die that way, the end must have been seriously strange.

Besides, sometimes when a story doesn’t go the way you want it to, facing the problem head on means that a new and better idea will emerge to solve it. On the other hand, I think you do have to choose what to use and what to leave out. The truth is invariably complex, and rarely leads towards the sort of satisfying conclusion you want for the end of a novel.
 
TCW: I’ve read many historical novels that are weighed down by too much historical detail. How do you achieve a balance between plot and background?

RSD: Hm, so have I! Perhaps coming to Roman Britain from a position of total ignorance wasn’t entirely the disadvantage that it seemed. I try not to use words that I wouldn’t have understood when I started. I don’t want people to have to pause during a chase scene while they try and remember what a Praetorium is.

I guess I try to give a few details that offer a flavour of a background and set the reader’s imagination working, rather than going into lots of description, because it’s boring to read and frankly, it’s boring to write, too. But I never really know whether the balance is right. Something what seems fine when you write it can look terrible the next day.
 
TCW: By the end of the novel, it’s clear that you are making parallels between ancient and modern sex trafficking. As a writer, do you believe it’s appropriate to impose modern morality onto a historical period? Why or why not?

RSD: That would be like going to somewhere that has an exotic cuisine and insisting on eating your own tinned soup, wouldn’t it? Obviously there are plenty of things about the past that we find unacceptable (witch trials, bear-baiting, hanging a child for stealing a sheep, etc.), but that’s part of its fascination.

I try not to put 21st Century views in the mouths of 2nd Century characters. But of course we all write from our own perspective and we don’t necessarily see the distortions we make. Fortunately not many people are offended by Romans who make racist remarks about the Ancient Greeks. I do slip in the occasional anachronistic joke, but I’m not sure if anybody notices. There’s a medic in the second book who’s heard that you can cure people’s problems just by talking to them – but as Ruso points out, that’s nonsense.

The sex trafficking thing interested me because there’s evidence that although abolishing slavery would have been unthinkable, the Romans were constantly tinkering with the system to make it more humane. One of the adaptations made by Hadrian (who was in power during the time I’m writing about) was to restrict the rights of an owner to sell a slave to a pimp or to a gladiator trainer unless they had been shown to deserve it. If Hadrian were around today he’d have no time for sex traffickers either.
 
TCW: How does this affect your characterisation and plotting?

RSD: I suspect most historical novelists reach some sort of compromise whereby the worst tendencies of the past tend to be displayed by minor characters while the hero looks good by comparison – less misogynist, racist, violent, cruel to animals or whatever.

My lead character is an Army doctor so he’s usually trying to stitch up the wounds rather than inflict them. If I’d given him the job of being the man who trains lions to eat Christians, I’d have had a worse problem. But of course he does have to face the ruthlessness of his age, and when violence erupts between the British and the Roman Army, both he and his British partner Tilla have to face up to the cruelties that their comrades are prepared to inflict. Both sides, of course, think they’re ‘right’, which provides for the sort of tension that writers love to play with.

TCW: How many more Ruso books will be in the series?

RSD: There are contracts in place for four. I’m currently proof-reading the third and writing the fourth. After that, it’s up to the publishers!

Well we’ve enjoyed having Ruth here so much that we’ve invited her to do a ‘how to’ series on writing historical fiction in April. So sign up to our RSS feed to keep informed. In the meantime, she’s offering Crafty readers an opportunity to buy a limited number of signed hardback copies of the first Ruso book at paperback prices.  Contact her via her website for further details.

Related posts:

1. Writing historical fiction 1 – creating your historical world
2. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research
3. Writing historical fiction 3 – using fact in fiction

Eleanor Patrick

Sue Brownless

TCW: Why did you decide to co-author a book?

Sue: We both wanted to write a children’s book around a mix of fantasy and reality. When we met at a course and found we could spark ideas off each other, it was a natural step to try and use that. In the midst of a ‘well why don’t we’ moment we decided to write a book for a competition Eleanor had just read about. It gave us a deadline. That book was ‘Farlkris’ and it was joint runner-up for the Kelpies Prize in 2005.

Eleanor: We had the idea jointly while drinking coffee and hearing workmen outside opening up the pavement, from where the sound of dragons lurking in the depths seemed to emanate. There didn’t seem to be a problem about writing a dragon story together – though of course, we hadn’t tried at that stage, so it could have seemed rather a naive decision in retrospect. Luckily, it wasn’t.

TCW: What are the advantages and disadvantages of co-authoring?

Sue: The main advantage is that there are always more ideas, someone else to ask, the story isn’t just in one person’s head, and it helps you through those writers’ block moments. One of us always came up with a line of thought that tweaked the plot and solved the problem. Having someone waiting for the next bit to arrive is good, too. No dodging deadlines or slipping out of tricky bits. The biggest disadvantage is the logistics of getting two people to write together. We don’t live near each other and it was all done electronically.

Eleanor:  The advantages are clearly two heads instead of one on the tricky business of inventing a good plot. Out of lots of options at each stage there are two people coming up with possible additional ways to deal with the event or a better alternative to brainstorm on. That has to be good, so long as you have respect for each other’s abilities, which we do. The disadvantages were mostly technical – sending sections back and forth for reading, agreement, correction and editing; making time in busy schedules to meet together for planning and decisions; agreeing the way forward for marketing and other post-publication dilemmas.

TCW: Which one of you came up with the Scordril concept?

Sue: Scordril was a character in the first Lothian Dragons outing, ‘Farlkris’. He was such a great character, with personality, he just had to have a central role in the next one.

Eleanor: It was a joint idea at the time of the other Lothian Dragons book, which we wrote first. The Kelpies Prize for a book set in Scotland had a deadline about five months after we were discussing the ‘dragons underground’ idea, so we set the book in East Lothian and proceeded from there to meet the deadline. Those Scottish visits fuelled the plot ideas for both ‘Farlkris’ and ‘Scordril’.

TCW: Did you do some preliminary work to see whether or not you could create a single voice?

Sue: We’d had a try at it with ‘Farlkris’ so it was easier and more intuitive with ‘Scordril’. We’d considered the need for a single voice that time and we even had a style sheet of things we had to remember, such as the mind speech and ‘tone’ of the dragons being different to overgrounders. But it gelled quickly and we didn’t need to keep that. The characters found their own voices and that helped us enormously.

Eleanor: No, but most of the teething problems were sorted for the first book, which is being published second, as it follows on chronologically from ‘Scordril’. For that, we wrote a style sheet to make sure we were in agreement about certain things – all stuff we do automatically now.

TCW: Is the ‘voice’ closer to Sue’s or Eleanor’s ’solo’ voice or is it a new creation?

Sue: It is a new creation. Naturally, there will be elements of each of us in there as we write, but by the time we reached the editing stages we realised we had forgotten who wrote some of the individual passages, and genuinely couldn’t tell, so the answer to that must be no.

Eleanor: To start with, you might have deduced who wrote what – though this was not divided between “dragon” and “human” as some thought it might be. We both wrote our fair share of both events. But after editing together, there was no difference in the writing anyway. I was always staggered by Sue’s good ideas (we only had the plot outline on cards) and she was always impressed with my bits. I guess our individuality might show in which ideas we thought of as we wrote, but that isn’t a style thing so much as content.

TCW: How do you actually work together?

Sue: We look at plot – talk it through, bounce the ideas around, and a structure forms. Once we have a plot summary for the whole novel we write it on cards (full set each) so we can rearrange the order if needed and write it separately, bit by bit. We take turns throughout and both write dragon and human bits. One of us would write and then email it on for review and mark-up on screen with coloured text, then suggestions would be made where we differed or had an idea. We’d meet up with our hardcopies in hand to discuss it over a coffee, somewhere, and reach an agreement. One of us recorded the outcome in the master copy and then it was safe for the other to set away writing the next bit. That took a lot of controlling.

TCW: Did you employ an independent editor? If not, how do you maintain editorial quality control?

Sue: No, we didn’t need to. Eleanor is an editor with years of experience, so I was happy to let her have main editorial control on the grammar and such. Also, our process meant that by the final editing of the draft anyway there’d been two pairs of eyes to pick up typos our spell checks would miss and inconsistencies in plot, say, as we went along.

TCW: Is Kelsey Drake going to write other books?

Sue: Well there is ‘Farlkris’, which Kelsey wrote! We’re hoping that will be book two. Now that we know the dragons really well we’d need to tweak that a little for publication. We’ve also ensured the underlying characters/plot are pointing to a third book, with a working title of ‘Yordis’.

Eleanor: Book 2 was written first and just needs revising and editing. After that, who knows?

TCW: Are either of you working on solo projects?

Sue: I’m working on a children’s novel. It is very near to completion of the first draft. I started it when I did my MA Creative Writing at Northumbria University and it is another blend of fantasy and reality. No dragons though!

Eleanor: I am plotting a book for children set in Seahouses – I like locations that readers can visit. That’s why we wanted Lothian Dragons set in places that exist, rather than writing a pseudo-medieval fantasy. This mix of reality and fantasy does make it harder for agents and publishers to see which slot it should occupy on the shelves of bookstores – though Borders does not seem to have a problem, now Scordril is published.

TCW: From a business perspective, who handles what?

Sue: We share the publicity. Eleanor handles school visits and arranging book signings. I tend to liaise with the publisher about ordering print runs and quantities, keeping an overview of the financial aspects, and book numbers. (FYI, Sue is a qualified accountant and internal auditor - Ed)

TCW: With author percentages already so low, is it financially viable to co-author a book and split royalties in half?

Eleanor: Some years ago, Hamish Hamilton published one of my children’s books called ‘Splat!’ which was illustrated by Paula Martyr. I’ve always been sad about the splitting of proceeds (royalties and PLR) but recognise that the book was not viable without the illustrations. With Scordril, the book would not exist without the impetus of both our ideas, so yes, income is halved, but better half of something than all of nothing. We are more concerned with breaking even and getting the book out there and enjoyed than becoming millionaires at the moment. That can come next.

TCW: You’ve chosen to self-publish through Matador. This of course will give you a higher author percentage than with a mainstream publisher. Was that one of the motivating factors?

Sue: It was a conscious choice to self-publish with someone that Writers' and Artists' Yearbook were prepared to recommend; we liked the look of them and their process. The higher author percentage was a factor but that is offset by the cost and risk that we as authors have to bear, and may be eroded anyway by the route the book takes to the reader.

Eleanor: No. We simply didn’t like the constant “this is a great book”, “I love the characters”, “I’d love to take this on but the market is so difficult at present” kind of replies that we were getting from agents and authors. Time was passing inexorably without us getting the deal we wanted and felt the book deserved. And it’s much more acceptable to self-publish nowadays, though it’s harder work. In retrospect, there was the plus of commissioning our own cover – most publishers consult but overrule. In one bookshop, the events manager took one look and said, “At least you’ve got a brilliant cover.”

TCW: What marketing campaign do you have planned?

Eleanor: We have done all the usual things: leaflets, flyers, phoning, showing, contacting bookshops, libraries etc, telling people with whom we’ve had connections in the past, and arranging to give talks and author visits. To keep track of all this, we set up a shared Google document, which we can both add to and comment on as we go. We also have a website and blog.

TCW: What criteria will you use to judge the success or otherwise of the Scordril project?

Sue: We’re already getting good feedback from readers and that has to be one criteria. We’re also selling well and have had to have more books printed, twice! We aim to at least cover our costs.

Eleanor: Oooh, that’s a difficult one. From my point of view, that’s writing a book that people read and enjoy as we hoped they would. In which case, even to date, that’s what we’ve done. Finishing the writing of a good book is definitely a success not to be pushed aside. So is publishing it, if you don’t lose money you can’t afford to lose. But actually connecting to readers who say how much they loved it, well that’s the fire in the dragon’s mouth. For a short time, the readers have lived what we’ve lived, and seen what we’ve seen – and that’s something you can’t put a price on.

TCW: What would you tell Crafty readers who are considering either self-publishing or co-authoring a book?

Eleanor: If that’s what you need to do for any particular project, go for it and solve the problems as you find them.

Eleanor will be signing books on Saturday 20 December at Borders, Fort Kinnaird, Edinburgh; and Sue will be joining her on Saturday 17 January 2009 at Borders Silverlink in North Tyneside, 12-4pm. Drop by and say hello. Apart from a great read, you might just pick up some tips on how to market and promote your own book.

Related posts:

1. Legal thriller by name, but not by nature?
2. Book Club: The Book Thief
3. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective

TCW: You mentioned that there is a growing niche market for fiction aimed at crafters in the US. Could you expand on that? Is it just limited to mysteries or are other genre represented too?

JCS: I’ve been told that craft cozies are flying off the shelves in US bookstores. The reason is simple: there are more crafters than readers of mysteries here in the States. This offers a huge growth market. Since the bulk of marketing and promoting is the author’s responsibility, it’s very effective to target a secondary niche market such as crafters.

TCW: Were you aware of this market before you wrote Paper Scissors Death or did you just write a mystery and then slot it into a market?

JCS: I knew that to break into the world of fiction I had to give a publisher a compelling reason to look hard at me—and a great manuscript is only part of that offering. Terrific books get turned down by agents and by editors every day. I knew scrapbooking inside and out, having written seven “how to” books on the topic. So I spotted that “hole” in the market, a place where I could take my experience and shine.(BTW, Joanna is already an established non-fiction writer – TCW).

TCW: Did you get an agent or did you send your manuscript directly to a publisher?

JCS: I pitched my book to my agent, and then I walked right over to pitch it to my acquiring editor. (I was at a writer’s conference that I’d attended expressly to do these pitches.) First the agent said, “Yes,” and then the editor did, too.

TCW: How has your background in scrapbooking helped you in marketing and promoting the book?

JCS: Of course, my knowledge of that special niche – scrapbooking – with so many potential readers is important, but also my contacts in the industry, my understanding of how the industry works, my relationships with vendors who can open doors for me, my reputation with reviewers and industry publications, and my knowledge of the craft are all of value to my publisher. And I have a fabulous publisher Midnight Ink who really believes in me and gives my promotional suggestions consideration.

TCW: Did you mention this as a USP when approaching publishers?

JCS: Absolutely. I included a marketing plan in my book proposal. After all, if given the choice between two authors – say, you have one who is willing, able, and dedicated to promoting her own work, and one you have to teach about the process – which one would you choose?

TCW: For those who haven’t read the book yet, there are non-fiction style elements included in the narrative as nearly every chapter ends with a scrapbooking tip list. Is this characteristic of ‘craft cozy’ fiction?

JCS: There are six sets of craft tips at the end of chapters, and 43 chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue. Including tips or techniques or patterns is characteristic of craft cozies. (And most scrapbookers would say there aren’t enough tips!)

TCW: I must say, as a non-scrapbooker, I found myself skipping those sections to get back to the ‘real’ story. Did you realise this might be a danger with promoting the book outside the scrapbook ‘ghetto’?

JCS: As a writer of this series, I straddle the two worlds: scrapbooking and non-scrapbooking. My goal is to write books interesting and rich enough to appeal to non-crafters. My litmus test is readers like you. I want scrapbooking – and the tips to be laignaippe. My fundamental philosophy is “always add value.”

TCW: How much of the ethos behind writing the book is evangelistic in the sense of trying to ‘convert’ readers to scrapbooking?

JCS: None. I love scrapbooking, and perhaps after learning more about it, a reader might decide to give it a go. But that isn’t my goal. I am simply being true to my character, who is overly-enthusiastic about the hobby. If I had portrayed her as anything else, she would not be who she is.

TCW: There is some fairly overt product placement in the book. Again, is this characteristic of craft cozy fiction? Do the named products and services pay for inclusion? Do they contribute towards publication costs? Or do they simply buy ad space?

JCS: I wrote the book using product names for credibility’s sake. They are somewhat of a code that tells scrapbookers, yes, the author really does scrapbook. When I say, “She’s not the sharpest craft knife in the Cropper Hopper,” any scrapbooker would chuckle and know EXACTLY what I mean. No one paid for inclusion.

TCW: Some writers would see this as selling out your editorial independence and artistic integrity. Others would see it as a realistic approach to finding commercial partners to help publish work. What can you contribute to this debate?

JCS: I would never sacrifice my integrity or my story for the sake of inclusion. However, given the choice between purposely not including names, and including them, why not? Isn’t avoiding inclusion a type of selling out? After all, you are letting an outside force determine what you write. You are “writing around” (that’s what we called it in journalism school) the brand. That can strain credulity as much as over-inclusion.

TCW: At the end of the book, you keep the door open for a sequel or even a series. Did you consciously set out to do this or was this a decision made with your publisher after they accepted your manuscript?

JCS: I pitched the publisher on writing a series. I loved the characters, believed they could grow, and that I would be happy spending time with them.

TCW: Do you think you may try your hand at other genre in the future? If so, which?

JCS: I still love non-fiction, and I’d like to write something with a historical bent. I am a writer. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. That’s how I process the world. I just love to write. I’ve worn the letters off my keyboard. I can’t imagine a day without writing … it’s too bleak.

TCW: If writers would like to explore the craft cozy fiction market further, can you recommend any websites or other resources?

JCS: I suggest they visit my website. They can also check out the blog I share with other authors of craft cozies – killerhobbies.blogspot.com.

TCW: Thanks Joanna! Happy writing.

Related posts:

1. Writing for children: mysteries and thrillers

TCW: When and where did you get your first professional staging?

JH: My first production was “A Little Crazy”, at the 2002 Orlando International Fringe Festival.

TCW: How long had you been writing plays before this?

JH: This was my first play. In the fall of 2000 I was told by Canadian author Douglas Coupland (“Generation X”) to leave the short fiction field and write plays. It took about a year to write, produce and get this play in front of a paying audience in response to that advice.

TCW: What made this script a success?

JH: At that point I didn’t have any unsuccessful scripts (or any others at all) … in fact I can say that with only two short exceptions every play I’ve written (ten to date, with way too many more in progress) has been produced somewhere. I make my living as a writer, so for me the concept of “unsuccessful” simply means it hasn’t been seen by the right person yet – I never give up.

TCW: When did you first submit work to UK theatres and when and where was your first staging?

JH: “Crazy” had a reading in 2001 by Eyewitness Theatre in Manchester; my first full production was “A God in Aspect” in 2004 from the Charade Drama Group in Bristol.

TCW: Have you ever written anything with a specifically British audience in mind?

JH: No. I did have to amend “God” for some British cultural references at the request of the director.

TCW: In your experience, how do British and American audiences differ?

JH: UK audiences actually get “smart” (not a reference to the dreadful movie out now). They read, they’re willing to come along for the ride, regardless of where you take them; they’re willing to climb two flights of stairs to see a reading of something they’ve never heard of in someone’s flat. American audiences like safe and familiar.

TCW: In your opinion, are American theatres open to British writers and vice versa?

JH: I don’t really have an answer for that. I certainly enjoy British writers …

TCW: What are your three top playwrighting tips?

JH: Only 3?

1. Listen. Go to a park, sit in a diner late at night, ride a bus. Listen to people talking, learn the rhythms of real speech.
2. Listen. Read your script out loud, at every opportunity. Begin the day by starting from Page One and reading it out loud. Make cuts, changes, read it again. Aloud.
3. Listen. Buy a bottle of wine and invite some friends over to read your script, cold. They don’t have to be actors, but that’s nice too. Pay particular attention to mistakes they make, words that get transposed or left out. Odds are, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
4. (I couldn’t resist) DO IT YOURSELF. Buy another bottle of wine, invite a lot of friends over, and stage a reading. Rent a hall, convince a restaurant it would be a great use of their empty back room, talk to your neighborhood librarian, get a space, invite people, DO IT. You’ll never know if a script works until you hear how an audience reacts.

TCW: Can you recommend any websites, online resources or books for playwrights?

JH: Cough cough, all you’d ever need to know can be found at The Burry Man Writers’ Center, the resource website my partner, Jennifer, and I have run since 1997; freelance jobs, fiction markets, tools for building a website, where to find an agent, what books to read, and submission details for several hundred theaters willing to look at new scripts. Ten thousand people visit us each month, which, considering it is a website solely for writers and we don’t advertise anywhere, is pretty good. Last year we started a social network for creatives (writers, musicians, artists) called Inked-In which just welcomed its 397th member.

TCW: Is there anything else you would like to share with The Crafty Writer?

JH: Between The Burry Man and Inked-In, I get dozens of letters every day from working, would-be, wanna-be and won’t-be writers, and I tell them all the same thing … Do The Work. Nobody is going to knock on your door and ask for a script, you’re not going to be “discovered”. Theaters aren’t going to open their stage to you if you haven’t sent them the best possible piece you can write, and that doesn’t come easy. Do The Work.

TCW: And thanks for Doing The Work here, Joseph!

Related posts:

1. New Writing for theatre
2. Play festivals and competitions
3. Writing for Television

Julie Compton practiced law in St. Louis, Missouri (the setting for Tell No Lies) before moving to the East Coast, and most recently worked as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in Wilmington, Delaware. She now lives in Florida with her husband and two daughters, where she writes full time.

TCW: Tell No Lies is billed as a legal thriller. How aware were you of the genre conventions when you started writing it and which, if any, did you consciously build into the text?

JC: Not at all. I was never a big reader of genres, and I certainly did not intend to write a legal thriller or even a mystery (and I’m still not sure I did!). When I sat down for the first time to write what eventually became Tell No Lies, I had a scene in my head of two lawyers arguing about the death penalty over lunch. I knew they were attracted to each other and weren’t supposed to be, and I knew their mutual attraction would cause them problems both professionally and personally. I knew the death penalty issue would somehow come into play. But I had no idea at the time that one of the lawyers would be accused of murder or that the other would misrepresent his beliefs to win an election. Those plot lines grew as I continued to write and the theme of the novel crystallized in my mind.

Some people have asked me why I placed the murder in the middle of the novel, but I think asking that question gives me more credit than perhaps I deserve! I had no idea I was writing what would eventually be deemed a legal thriller, so I never thought in terms of, “Oh, I’m supposed to put the murder at the beginning, but I think I’ll do it differently and see what happens.” The fact that a murder occurs at all is because the story and the characters spoke to me as I wrote and told me it needed to happen.

TCW: As an ex-attorney, do you intend to continue writing legal thrillers or do you feel this may restrict you as a writer?

JC: There are no ex-attorneys. Once an attorney, always an attorney! We just become non-practicing and then when our kids start college, we find ourselves pulled back into it by necessity …

Seriously, my next book is not a legal thriller (though I suspect it probably qualifies as a suspense novel), but I don’t envision myself writing any novel with the intent to fit into a particular genre. It’s just not how I work. Perhaps I’m just sabotaging my writing career because everyone always says you should know your audience, but I write the story I need to tell and I enjoy telling, and then I figure out who the audience might be. Having said that, I do think the audience for each novel I write will most likely be similar, simply because of the type of stuff I write. Tell No Lies might be billed as legal thriller, but the heart of the story isn’t about solving the murder, it’s about the relationships between the people and the psychological explanations and motivations behind their actions. And I think (hope!) this holds true for everything I write. I believe it holds true for my second novel.

TCW: What do you believe are the pros and cons of writing to genre?

JC: Pros: From the start, you know there are certain elements to the story that you have to include, and for a writer who likes to plan and outline, those elements can provide a sort of guidepost for your writing. I envy the writer who can work this way – indeed, needs to work this way to be successful – because it probably makes the whole process a bit more manageable. But I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work for me. If I think I have to follow a certain path, my mind shuts down and the ideas don’t flow the way they do when I just let the story and the characters take me wherever they want to go.

Cons: I’m reading a book right now by John Truby called The Anatomy of Story, 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. In the book, Truby talks about what he calls “genre plot”:

Genres are types of stories, with predetermined characters, themes, worlds, symbols, and plots … [T]hese … plots lose some of their power by the fact that they are predetermined.”

To some extent, I agree with him on this point. I think with genre, many writers run the risk of their story feeling “mechanical,” as Truby calls it in his book, as opposed to organic. For the truly masterful storyteller, it probably doesn’t matter. The story will transcend the genre. But for those of us with more average skills, writing genre might be an even tougher task because you start with an additional obstacle: how do you stay within the confines of your genre with its predetermined elements and yet still write something fresh?

TCW: Obviously having a knowledge of the US legal system helped you sketch the background for your book, but, in earlier drafts, did you find that it threatened to weigh down your plotting or characterisation?

JC: No, if anything, it made it easier. I had been away from practicing only about a year or so when I started Tell No Lies, so writing about lawyers and the legal system came easily. It’s what I knew. If anything threatened to weigh down my plotting or characterization, it was my propensity to write and write and write without necessarily knowing how and where (or if) what I wrote would ultimately fit into the story. The earliest first draft was epic length! It was my first novel, so I think I needed to do this, but I’ve since learned how to avoid this problem somewhat.

TCW: This is your first published book. Have you written any others before this? If so, why do you feel this got commissioned and not the others?

JC: This is the first one I ever finished. I’d had other novels I’d started but stopped when I hit dead ends. The road that led to Macmillan buying the novel is a long and convoluted one, but I’m convinced the long hours I spent revising, editing, and continually going back to the novel to see what needed fixing is what enabled it to finally sell. I felt I’d written a publishable story, and that’s why some part of me refused to give up on it, but I most definitely put a lot of sweat into it before it was ready.

TCW: Did you approach an agent first with your manuscript or did you go straight to a publisher?

JC: Oh boy, here’s the long and convoluted road I mentioned above! Yes, I approached many agents, but I did so at first before it was ready – a common rookie’s mistake. I knew I was heading in the right direction when I started to get personalized rejections and constructive criticism. At some point I started approaching smaller publishers directly as I continued to search for an agent, and I was eventually offered a contract by a small publisher here in the States. It had been released (with a different title) for only a couple of months when an acquaintance staying at a rental property my husband and I own found a copy in a drawer, read it, liked it and gave it to someone she knew at Macmillan. They expressed interest, and fortunately, I was able to get my rights back from the first publisher. The rest, as they say, is history.

TCW: How long did you ‘tout’ your manuscript before it was taken up?

JC: Off and on for about three or four years, but I was also continually editing it during much of that time.

TCW: How long did it take to write?

JC: I spent about three years writing the first draft and another three or four editing (and that doesn’t include the time spent editing it even more with my editor at Macmillan). But I didn’t think of myself as a “writer” back when I started the book; I was just someone who liked to write and was “working on” a novel. So, even though there were many days when I wrote for ten, twelve hours at a stretch because I was so into the story, there were also many days when I didn’t even sit down in front of the computer. Plus, I wrote very, very slow.

I’ve become a much more disciplined writer, and I’m also a bit faster now. My second novel took about sixteen months to write. Quite a difference.

TCW: Are you working on anything new?

JC: I just turned in the manuscript for my second novel to my editor at Macmillan. In a nutshell, it’s the story of a guy – a biker – whose girlfriend is severely injured in a motorcycle accident and mysteriously taken from him without so much as a goodbye. In his quest to get her back and literally save her life, he ends up figuratively saving his own, too.

I’ve recently started working on my third novel. I wrote the synopsis and about ten pages when the idea first came to me, but because I was in the middle of the second book at the time, I had to set it aside. I’m excited to turn my attention to it again.

TCW: Your publisher describes you as a cross between Jodi Picoult and Scott Turow. Would you agree with that comparison?

JC: I think it’s a good description for Tell No Lies. Indeed, that’s how I described the novel when I queried agents and publishers (though I might have used Grisham instead of Turow). I think it’s the shorthand way of saying what I said above: the story has lawyers, murder, suspense, etc., but it also has the psychological and relationship issues you often find in Jodi Picoult novels.

TCW: Which writers have influenced your style?

JC: Hmm, well, I guess I’d better say Jodi Picoult! Really, I read such a wide assortment of books, but I think it’s the writers of novels in which the relationships and dynamics of people are the focus, whether it’s families, spouses, siblings, friends, etc., that have influenced my own writing style the most. I’m not even sure how you categorize them, but writers such as Picoult, Sue Miller, Anne Tyler, Anita Shreve, Tom Perrotta, Charles Baxter, Ian McEwan … I could go on …

TCW: What are you reading right now?

JC: In addition to Truby’s book mentioned above, I just started The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coelho. He’s one of my new favorite writers. I’ve loved everything I’ve ever read by him.

I also just finished a novel called Isabella Moon, by Laura Benedict. Laura is a debut novelist and fellow member of International Thriller Writers (who, like me, also didn’t think she was writing a mystery!).

TCW: Do you have any advice to give yet unpublished writers?

JC: First, don’t give up if you really want it. It’s a tough industry, so you have to grow a thick skin and believe in yourself when no one else does. Find a mentor who believes in you, also, for those times when you don’t believe in yourself.

Second, don’t send anything out until you are absolutely sure it’s ready. Just because you finished the first draft doesn’t mean it’s ready. Moreover, don’t trust your friends and family members to tell you when something is ready. Find someone who will give you brutally honest feedback and don’t get mad at them when they give it to you. Be willing to learn.

Related posts:

1. Independent publishers – an author’s perspective
2. Writing Romantic Suspense – When Love Gets Mysterious
3. Co-authoring: when two become one

I think we can learn a lot from ‘eavesdropping’ on other writers – we learn more about Wordsworth as a writer in his letters to Coleridge than anywhere else. What writer’s correspondence have you read that brought their work into perspective? What do you think of the Zusak / Bartoletti series?

Related posts:

1. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 1
2. Writers in residence
3. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 3

Live Theatre is a 160-seat theatre located on the Quayside in Newcastle upon Tyne. Following extensive renovations in 2007 the theatre also boasts a small studio space and extensive writers’ facilities. It specialises in new plays and has produced the work of Lee Hall, Peter Flannery, Alan Plater, Julia Darling, Sean O’Brien, Karen Laws, Peter Straughan and Joe Harbot, among many others. Its New Writing department offers a reading service and various development and writer education initiatives as well as hosting writers’ groups, a bi-annual New Writing Festival and multi-platform projects with partners from other theatres, radio, film and television companies.

TCW: Are theatres in the UK actively seeking new writing?

JH: Yes, because writing is the life blood of a few organisations, Live Theatre included.

TCW: Is it true that regional theatres like Live will only commission ‘regionally themed’ pieces?

JH: No, it is not necessarily true but there usually has to be some local angle: i.e. that the writer is from, or based, in the North East. Generally the play has to have some relevance to the theatre’s constituency but that doesn’t mean it has to be literally set here or thematically tied down.

TCW: What is a commissioning director looking for in a new play?

JH: Originality of voice, technical skill, plausibility and relevance to its audience.

TCW: Are there any themes, genre or styles that a new writer should steer away from?

JH: I would hesitate to put a limitation on any writer’s work. As a small producing theatre we would struggle to find resources to mount a first-time unknown writer’s work if it is too large a scale – i.e. if it needs more than four or five actors. However it would be delightful to have to break that generalisation: to do so the work would have to be of an extremely high standard.

TCW: Would you advise a new writer to work on ’shorts’ or one-acts before attempting a full-length play?

JH: Yes I would. Writing a full length play has so many technical demands that it seems that the best way to ‘graduate’ towards that is by exploring character and theme and dialogue in a more controlled way. You learn by doing it, so the more completed work you produce, the more you can learn. There is a great deal to be said for a high turnover at the early crucial stages in your career.

TCW: What is the current ‘market’ for shorts and one-acts?

JH: I don’t think there is a market in the fiscal sense as such. It is hard enough earning a living from full-length plays. The virtues of short form pieces are what you as a writer can learn from them.

TCW: Let’s say a new writer catches your eye, what process takes place after that?

JH: A meeting/conversation trying to understand what makes them tick, whether this material is a one-off, whether the writer has the art and ambition to create some worthy work and how they and the theatre might benefit from a development process, and what the nature of that development process should be.

TCW: In your experience, are new writers aware of how collaborative the process of taking a script from concept to stage can be?

JH: They become aware in the natural course of events. A lot of new writers have fun learning that the nature of the process is essentially collaborative and after the loneliness of writing the thing in the first place, that is often a great relief.

TCW: Could you explain the role of a dramaturg to Crafty Writer readers?

JH: Not really, as I don’t quite understand it myself. I think Dramaturg is a common role in the European theatre and as I understand it there is a great deal of work done between the dramaturg and the writer before a director gets involved. The British tradition that Live Theatre embodies – and that I first encountered working at The Royal Court – is much more based around a literary manager in the first instance and then a two-way relationship between director and writer. Whenever I have worked with a dramaturg I found that my role with the writer was confused by having another person in the mix. But that was only once and on a brief week-long workshop.

When it comes to ‘dramaturgy’ on any of the productions I’ve worked on I have brokered that relationship with the writer myself and it has involved giving perspective to the writer by trying to reflect back to them what they have actually written as well as offering suggestions as to how to improve the delivery of what I understand to be their vision.

TCW: What is the role of the director in shaping a new script?

JH: It depends from director to director I suppose, but my philosophy is basically outlined by the previous answer. It is important to state however that these roles and relationships are different every time, depending on several factors including the personalities involved and how they mesh, the state that the script is in, the contribution of the producers or the artistic director of the producing theatre. I know that some directors are very authorial, and some are laissez faire; it all depends on the particularities of the project in hand.

But in short: the role is highly significant, and I would encourage all writers to make the choice of their director very carefully. Any good theatre will give you the right of veto over the director – trust your instinct as you will have to work extremely closely with this person.

TCW: How useful might a playwrighting group like Live Writer’s be to a new writer?

JH: It might be very useful if the writer chooses to make it so.

(TCW: As a member of Live Writer’s I can tell you that the benefits of joining a group attached to a New Writing theatre are that you regularly have an opportunity to submit scripts for staged readings with professional actors and directors which, if you’re any good, will get your work noticed. Collaboratively, you and your peers can spur one another on. You can also see shows and discuss them with fellow writers. So contact your nearest New Writing theatre and find out if they run a group).

TCW: Could you recommend some online resources for new writers of theatre?

JH: We are developing an on-line course at Live Theatre. Other resources I’ve found useful are:

• www.royalcourttheatre.com is great for education resources, interviews with writers and podcasts and things.
• www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting has free Playwriting Seminars, which are an easy way to start thinking about playwriting.
• Writernet is good for opportunities and critiques.

TCW: Is there anything else you would like to share with The Crafty Writer?

JH: The best tip I can give you is to read and see as many plays as you can. Read Chekhov, Ibsen, Williams, Pinter, Churchill. Then, after that, the next most important thing is to simply write. As Hemingway said: “The first draft of everything is shit.” Just concentrate on finishing it and then at least it exists and you have something to make better. It might take you years but keep going: even the most successful and seemingly brilliant writers struggle to stay sane, so if it’s important to you, keep that faith.

TCW: Thanks Jeremy, we appreciate you taking time out to speak with us.

Books on Playwrighting:

Jeremy recommends: Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov is an occasionally comic novel about a first time writer working at a thinly fictionalised version of the Moscow Art Theatre. It is a very amusing warning to all would-be playwrights.

The Crafty Writer recommends: The Crafty Art of Playmaking by Alan Ayckbourn, The Art and Craft of Playwriting by Jeffrey Hatcher, The Playwright's Guidebook by Stuart Spencer and Stage Writing by Val Taylor. Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2009 also has some excellent resources for playwrights.

Related posts:

1. When Theatre Crosses the Pond
2. Play festivals and competitions
3. People’s Play Award