Motivation and Spiders

On April 29, 2010 · In This Writer's Life

Motivation and Spiders

This morning I was up a ladder with a sweeping brush, attacking age-old cobwebs that have happily lived on our wooden ceiling for years. But today it bothered me.
OK, that’s a lie. Today I was looking for something to do that didn’t involve sitting down at my desk.

It hasn’t been a great week writing-wise. I squeezed out 500 words on Monday; Tuesday was bit more successful, but yesterday I gave up altogether and spent the day doing other things.

And I had a great time – chatted to Ryan Tubridy on his radio show live from the Dead Zoo (opening again today – hurrah!), read the new Patrick Ness (best yet – Monsters of Men – amazingly fab book) in bed in the afternoon, met some book friends in the evening for an early dinner.

And then. AND THEN – went to see Rufus Wainwright in the Grand Canal Theatre. Quite the showman. Very strange first half – Rufus in a theatrical coat with feather ruff and 17 foot train, very jaunty and touching second half, complete with lots of stories and asides. What a sweet, funny, talented man he is.

Anyway, today I have …

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A Writer’s Manifesto

On April 20, 2010 · In Children's Books, The Writing Coach, This Writer's Life

According to my Oxford Concise a manifesto is ‘a public declaration of a policy and aims’.

I’m currently planning a tour in October for 3 teen/tween writers – 3 days, 3 cities, 3 remarkable writers – title yet to be decided, but we have some pretty nifty names already. The writers involved are Judi Curtin, writer of the fab Alice and Megan series, Sophia Bennett, writer of the equally fab Threads series set in the London fashion world, and moi!

And I came up with a tongue in cheek manifesto:

No vampires
No werewolves
No boys that go bump in the night

Real girls
Real drama
Really amazing stories straight from the heart
Prepare to be pinked!

We all write books for age 9/10+ with characters who are in their early teens. We all deal with real life issues – family drama, friendship problems, bullying – hence the no vampires, no werewolves bit.

So it got me thinking – maybe I should have my own writing manifesto, a Sarah Webb Manifesto. A ‘public declaration’ of my writing intentions.

So here goes:

I guess my most important aim is to entertain.

First commandment of popular fiction of any kind is (as …

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Another Word on Editing

On April 7, 2010 · In Editing, This Writer's Life

A Word on Editing

Humble apologies for the lack of posts recently. What with Easter and friends visiting, it’s been pretty hectic the last few weeks. At the moment I’m working away on the edits of the third Amy Green book – Bridesmaid Blitz (out in Oct). I had an email from my editor today and I’d like to share it with you as it’s lovely.

Writers work away in this funny vacuum, not knowing if what they are producing is hitting the mark. I am very lucky to have two editors in Walker Books, both of whom really know their stuff. After a pretty stiff and thorough rewrite – after a very frank editorial meeting in London with both of them – I submitted Amy Green 3 mark 2 nervously, hoping they would like what I’d done.

I’d hacked the middle out of the book. It was veering away from Amy’s story and I had to bring it back and the only way I could do this was to rewrite a good chunk of the main plot. So I got rid of about 1/3 of the book (about 17,000 words) and created lots of new scenes.

There were a …

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