I was at a 40th birthday in London recently and I got talking to the band – lovely Scottish lads called The Holy Ghosts.
They have been working their wee socks off, playing gigs and parties all over the UK and Europe. They’re super, their lead singer has buckets of charisma (and an amazing voice) and I know they’ll make it because a/ they’re determined b/ they’re damn good and c/ they’re putting in the hours.
I told them the story about The Beatles playing in Hamburg that I first read in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book Gladwell explains the 10,000 hours rule – how if you put in the time and work hard, success will follow.
In a nutshell The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960 to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time. According to Gladwell the hours and hours that The Beatles spent performing live shaped their talent. He quotes their biographer Philip Norman who said ‘So by the time they returned to England from Hamburg, Germany, they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.’
Gladwell also talks about Bill Gates and how …
I’ve just finished writing the first draft of my new book for children in The Wishing Girls series. It doesn’t have an official title yet, but I’m calling it Mollie after the main character.
It’s a book that I really wanted to write, and luckily my agent and editor were keen on it too. But sadly this isn’t always the case in the publishing world. Sometimes you may be gently nudged (or blatantly asked) to write a book that is outside your comfort zone.
Depending on the market you may be asked to consider trying a vampire romance, issue based romance/popular fiction (think Jojo Moyes or Sinead Moriarty), ‘mummy porn’, a misery memoir . . . And even though your heart may not be in it, you might be tempted to give it a go. And if you do, and you can make it work, and even enjoy the experience then good on you. And let’s be honest here, maybe you really need the money and that can be a strong enough motivation in itself – many fine authors have written to pay the bills, nothing wrong with that.
But my honest opinion is this – life is too short to …
- Martina Reilly
To plot or not to plot? That is an interesting question. Over the years I have realised that it very much depends on what type of person you are.
If you are a planner – if you pack days before going away, if you know exactly where your passport is before travelling, then you’re a planner and you may need to plan your book.
If you pack the hour before leaving for the airport, if you hate planning anything weeks or months before it happens, than you’d probably think planning would kill your book’s spontaneity. And for you it might do just that.
So if you’re a planner like me – you need to plan. I’ve also interviewed a writer who is not a planner – the wonderful Martina Reilly – so you have both views.
So first, Martina’s answers:
Martina, how much planning do you do before starting a book?
I do no planning at all. I tend to get an idea of what I’d like to explore. In my next book ‘What If’ I had a few things I wanted to write about. The first, a moment where a life is changed forever (a …
I’ve been writing this ‘Yours in Writing’ blog for many years now, and I would like to thank all of you for the fantastic feedback and regular comments both here and on Facebook and Twitter. It means a lot to me.
To say thank you, I’d like to address some topics that YOU have asked me to cover. The first – and yes, probably the easiest – is my writing routine. When do I write? How many words? Computer or long hand?
Over the next few weeks I will tackle the other questions I’ve recently been asked – on planning books, getting published for teenagers, what editors are looking for right now and other subjects. If there is something that you would like me to cover, you only have to ask.
So – my writing routine. And thanks to Claire Hennessy for the question, a very experienced writer herself.
Here’s a map of my writing day:
7am Rise (groggily) and get the kids to school.
8.30am Get home and start thinking about what I have to do today.
Potter around the house avoiding work, ‘tidying’, opening mail, checking emails, Twitter and Facebook (terrible I know but best to get it over …
