This week we’ll be taking about editing. Once you’ve finished the first draft, then comes the hard bit, the edits and the rewrites. Yes, plural. The first draft is just the beginning. Have patience. Rewrites make the difference between a published writer and an unpublished writer.

Before you even think of sending your book out to an agent or to a publisher, you must make it as good as you possibly can. Some people are excellent at editing their own work, others need help. Here is how I edit a manuscript before it goes anywhere near my agent or editor:

I print out the whole manuscript, read it and make notes as I go along in a (yellow) notebook. If you read this blog on a regular basis, you’ll know that I’m addicted to yellow legal pads.

Some authors suggest waiting a little while before reading. William Trevor puts his writing in a drawer for a year before taking it out to work on it again, and although it…

Sometimes writers get to around 30k or 40k words and then they hit a wall. They say ‘There is so much more to write, so much more work involved, I don’t think I can do this.’ It’s important to note that all writers have off days or weeks, published or unpublished, and it’s important to develop a ‘writing habit’ if you want to finish a whole book. As Clare Dowling says in this week’s excellent writing tips (below) ‘writing is a craft and the best way to learn it is to practice.’

But how do you stay motivated?

All writers find writing a book tough going. The average novel is 100,000 words long after all. I often hit a difficult patch roughly half way through a book, knowing that I still have a lot of work ahead of me. It’s perfectly normal to feel a bit overwhelmed at any stage of the writing process. You are writing a book after. And if you are a huge reader like me, you have…

The first question I am always asked regarding plot is how do you come up with a story in the first place, and the second question is how do you plan a book, and indeed, should you plan at all?

I’ll answer the second question first – there is no right or wrong way of plotting a book. Many writers – the crime writer James Lee Burke for example – never use plot outlines. They just write blind. At the other extreme the author Jeffrey Deavers outlines are almost as long as his books, and J K Rowling spent months planning each Harry Potter book carefully. For most people, plotting is a process of trial and error and it may take a while to find what suits you as a writer. Using a plot outline is a method that works for many writers starting out.

What’s a plot outline?

A plot outline is simply an outline of how your story is going to progress. There’s no need to stick rigidly to your…

My Latest Book (UK, Sept)

 So now we’ve reached week 3. The question is, have you been doing your homework? Good! If you’ve just joined us, it’s probably best to read weeks one and two before going any further.

In week 1 we dealt with motivation and starting to write, then we covered ideas and settings in week 2. This week we are dealing with characters. If you cannot write vivid, believable characters, then you cannot write good fiction, it’s as simple as that. Characters that linger in the mind long after you’ve read the last page make a book truly memorable. Think of Rachel Walsh in Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes, a highly flawed character, but a character readers identify with; or Bridget Jones in Helen Fielding’s wonderfully funny book (and film). Like her or loathe her, Bridget certainly continues to touch a universal nerve.

Creating believable characters is one of the most exciting and rewarding elements of being a writer. To write great characters you must know them as well as you know yourself. In her excellent book, From Pitch to Publication, agent Carole Blake says ‘To…

If you missed week one (and I’d recommend reading it before you go any further – you can find it on this blog), we talked about motivation, making the time to write, and ‘genre’, or the kind of book you’d like to write, for example: romance, romantic comedy, family/relationship drama, historical fiction, saga, crime, thriller, science fiction or fantasy. These are pretty broad genres and within each one there can be many sub-genres, like paranormal romance (Twilight). This course is useful for anyone who would like to write a book, but is most especially suited to those who are interested in writing popular fiction. I have published ten popular fiction novels, the latest being The Shoestring Club (out on 1st February in Ireland, UK in September), as well as many children’s books, so it’s a genre I know well.

While you are thinking about book ideas this week (more on that in a second), I would also advise you to get reading the best novels in your chosen genre, the award winners, the ‘word…

Week 1: Getting Started
It’s terrifying, isn’t it, staring at a blank sheet of paper or a blank computer screen? The writer Gene Fowler once said ‘Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of…

1/ To put 100% into my work every single day. To hold nothing back for another day or another book. To use it all, straight away.

One of my favourite writing quotations on the topic of putting everything into your writing every day is this gem from the American writer, Annie Dillard:

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

She’s so right.

2/ To write scenes…

I recently gave a six week workshop on writing. On the last day we talked about book proposals, and how to ‘sell’ your book to an agent. I explained that a book (and I was talking about popular fiction here, but it goes for pretty much any fiction) must have a very strong, original story and brilliant characters to make an agent sit up and take notice.

Exactly how strong and original, they asked? How about a sweet story that’s nicely written, will that cut it? Absolutely not! I told them. It has to be brilliant.

To illustrate this I pulled out some of my old ideas that never made it – because the plot or the premise or the characters weren’t strong enough. It seemed to help them understand, so I’ve copied some of them…

So your first book is coming out in 2012. First of all, congratulations! It’s a huge achievement. But no doubt you are rather nervous about what exactly is going to happen once your book is finally published.

Will it be available in Italy, America, Poland?
How much will your publisher do to promote it and how much will I need to do?
How does the whole publicity thing work? Do I wait to be asked to do things or do I make your own suggestions? Will my publishers get annoyed if I visit shops on my own? Should I move books around in the shop? Ask why my book is not in the window?

And these questions I’m sure are only the tip of your own personal book-related iceberg. And I will try to answer them honestly. If you have any other questions do ask in the comment box below.

Here goes – Let’s start at the beginning:
 
What happens on publication day?

The honest answer is not much!

The pr person in your publishing house may have contacted you some time in advance of publication to talk about your media contacts (if you have any…

The secret – and yes, there is a secret but like most things it’s this – hard work, organisation and determination. A lot of work can be done behind the scenes months before your book reaches the bookshop shelves.

When I started out in books, I had no experience in marketing or publicity, I just used my head, so what I did, you can do too.

But before that some general points.

First things first, don’t worry about any of this unless you have written a book worth promoting. Put your time and energy into the writing first and foremost.

1/ Marketing – Marketing means promoting your book to the market and in the marketplace, ie the shops. It means getting information about your book to the relevant buyers and booksellers, backing up that information with display material – such as posters and bookmarks. And keeping the bookshops informed of any publicity you have lined up for the book.

In general, your publisher should be on top of the marketing, but if they don’t intend to do posters or bookmarks – say for example…