Ah, NaNo. Highlight of my writing year…and my husband’s least favourite month, like, ever. For the uninitiated; NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) is a challenge to write 50,000 words during the month of November, which works out as 1667 words a day. Basically, it’s a month to pull your finger out and get typing. And to ignore other people. And to swing wildly between elation and extreme grumpiness. And write something that I print out and put away and never look at again. And that’s my problem. And precisely why I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this year I absolutely must do something with what I write during NaNo or else I’m never allowed to participate again. I can’t say I blame him. During November, the boxsets rack up on the Skyplus, we eat a lot of oven pizzas, I lock myself away in my study only to be found three hours later still down on my word count surfing the forums. I’m not nice to live with and he doesn’t want to go through that again for me to come out of it with nothing.

So, I’ve accepted his challenge. It comes at a good time for me, I’ve had a rubbish year and would like to finish something and get a sense of achievement. Feel like I’m in control of my writing destiny and all that blahblahblah. So I’ve been planning. Normally, I’m a pantser (or one who wings it, with no particular plan) but this year, I’ve got a synopsis already. And not just in my head, but actually written down on paper. I’m actually going to type it up and work to it. I’ve met my characters. I’m not one who has to know everything about them, but I know enough to get started. I need to leave some surprises and hope hope hope that I’ve got the balance right, enough to keep me structured and excited both at the same time…we’ll see. Ask me in January and we’ll see if I’m editing, or divorcing, or something…

p.s if you’re doing NaNo and want to be my buddy, my username is Miss Bells and I’m writing a YA story tentatively titled A Clockwork Heart

Helen Johnson-Isaacs currently works as a Communications Executive, which is a fancy way of saying that she writes and edits a magazine. In her spare time she likes eating sweets, stockpiling books on her kindle and thinking about writing. She sometimes writes short stories, starts longer ones and is about to embark on a journey into YA fiction. An occasional tweeter, you can follow her (or not) @bijouraconteur She blogs here.

Take the first line of a book, or take a look at these websites which list some of the more well-known ones. Write for 20 minutes from that first line without stopping or editing. You can write poetry or prose.

How did the first line shape where your writing went? Did you know the story that it came from? Did that matter? Feel free to post your ideas in the forum once you’ve edited them.

So everybody shortlisted for the Bridport prize has now been contacted. I didn’t get a phone call. Or an email. Or anything.

Whenever I send my stories off there is a wonderful moment of hope – perhaps this one is the one. Perhaps this time I’ll win, or come close, or something. It always takes a while from the closing date to the winners being announced, especially in the bigger competitions. You’re looking at a few months, easily. At least once a week I think of my story, mentally spend some of the prize money or plan an outfit for the prize-giving ceremony (because I am a brilliant writer). At least once a week I think of how to rewrite my story (because I am a terrible writer who has submitted the worst story in the world). At least once a week, I think of where I can send it next (because surely if I throw enough balls at enough coconuts, sooner or later I’m bound to win a fish).

I don’t necessarily want to win. Well, obviously I do, of course I do but I think it would be good for the soul to know how close I’d come. Did my story get past the first round of readers to be seen by the judges? Was it just shy of the long/shortlist or was it miles away? A rejection with a note, your story was 398^th out of 5000 stories would be nice. Or not, depending on where I’d placed on the leader-board. This is why I’m a big fan of competitions with feedback. Ages ago I entered a competition that was judged by Della Galton. Long story short, I didn’t win but in the feedback I received, Della said:

“You have made Frank very sympathetic – which is extremely skilled, considering the subject matter. I felt very sorry for him at the end – and I was on his side totally. Well done for tackling such an emotive and difficult subject.”

In this story, Frank is a paedophile, and sympathy was the look I was going for. Although I hadn’t won, I felt like I had because I’d done what I set out to do and received some positive feedback. A lot of the big prizes don’t offer feedback (quite rightly, it would probably take them years to do it the amount of entries that they get) but some of the smaller ones do, and so long as it isn’t too expensive, I always go for it. Getting that response with needs work but has potential sometimes gives me the push I need. It isn’t easy to keep re-writing the same stories and sending them out over and over. Submitting stuff sometimes feels like I’m banging my head on a wall. But I keep going. Perhaps because I’m stubborn. Perhaps because I’m stupid. Perhaps because I know how exciting it is to receive that email telling me I’ve won/had something accepted (thank you Mslexia, Writers’ Forum, Word Gumbo) and that gives me just enough confidence to think that maybe, just maybe, one day I might win the Bridport Prize…

Helen Johnson-Isaacs currently works as a Communications Executive, which is a fancy way of saying that she writes and edits a magazine. In her spare time she likes eating sweets, stockpiling books on her kindle and thinking about writing. She sometimes writes short stories, starts longer ones and is about to embark on a journey into YA fiction. An occasional tweeter, you can follow her (or not) @bijouraconteur She blogs here.

Ekphrasis, or the dramatic description of a work of art. This week, browse the fantastic online gallery of the National Gallery of Scotland. Find an artwork that appeals to you, for whatever reason, and get writing. You could try writing as one of the characters in the picture, or write what happened before / after the action captured in the picture. Or perhaps it is a more abstract piece that inspires a mood.

Post in the comments your writing and which piece of art inspired it. Or if you prefer to keep it private, post in the forum for feedback.

‘WRITING BRITAIN’ EXHIBITION AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY

The British Library’s major summer show brings together pieces from its collection that celebrate the landscapes of the British isles and show how those landscapes have shaped the writing its authors have produced. There are few writers who could say that their surroundings have no influence on their writing, and I’m sure an equally successful exhibition could be mounted based upon the literature of many other countries. Instead, what the exhibition tries to demonstrate is the variety of possibilities the British landscape offers writers, from the rural idylls of Laurie Lee’s childhood to those satirised in Cold Comfort Farm and from the imagined suburban nightmares of J G Ballard’s fiction to the true grind of urban poverty on The Road to Wigan Pier.

Some of those landscapes have passed into the annals of literary greatness: Wordsworth’s Lake District, the marshes at the opening of Great Expectations, the Yorkshire moors roamed by Heathcliff. The latter, in fact, proves a rich source of material, with audio praise from current chronicler Simon Armitage providing an illustration of how the exhibition allows links to be built. Perhaps the largest single contributor to the collection is Ted Hughes, for whom Yorkshire was also integral to his writing.

Some, like this, are implicit, others more explicit, such as panels from Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel Tamara Drewe, which owes a debt to Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. Others were less well known, at least to this visitor, such as Chesterton’s extraordinary vision of a future Britain in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, a possible influence on Orwell’s later imaginings.

The exhibition breaks its subject down into several areas. ‘Rural Dreams’, the first, contains a picture by JRR Tolkien that lends credence to the theory that his writings portrayed a metaphorical battle between the countryside and encroaching industrialisation.

This smoothly links into portrayals of industrial landscapes, titled ‘Dark Satanic Mills’. Although initially embraced by writers, the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution came to be regarded with suspicion by many British writers, as Hard Times so well demonstrates in Dickens’ first appearance in the exhibition. The clanking sounds of a cotton mill rumble in the background of this exhibition, which might be a distraction to some. Its here as well that the exhibition briefly steps outside literature, displaying John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for the Beatles’ In My Life.

Re-iterating some of themes of the first section of the exhibition, ‘Wild Places’ takes us away from the city again to places such as Seamus Heaney’s Station Island, Jamaica Inn, and the moors surrounding Baskerville Hall.

Baskerville Hall’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was a great proponent of suburban living, as extracts from an 1890s magazine article that would fit snugly into this week’s edition of Hello show, and it is on the fringes of the city that we stop next, and not just London, as Jonathan Coe’s celebration of 1970s Birmingham, The Rotters Club, is acknowledged. Charles Pooter and Betjeman also inevitably appear here, as does a first draft of the first page of Ballard’s Kingdom Come, from which only the first sentence survived.

The exhibition then dives straight into London, with a broad historical span from William Langland’s 14^th century poem Piers Plowman to the Asian textspeak of Gautam Malkani’s 2006 novel Londonstani via Sweeney Todd, William Blake and Jekyll and Hyde.

Finally, the exhibition takes visitors to Britain’s waterways and coastlines and celebrates the windswept coastlines of Fowles’ French Lieutenant’s Woman and the Victorian Thames of Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

The exhibits largely consist of first editions of various books, plus some manuscripts, far more illuminating to those wanting to see the writing process in progress. There’s some audio too, with authors in interview or reading from their own work. However, perhaps inevitably for an exhibition devoted to books, visitors spend most of their time reading lengthy panels explaining what they are looking at.

Of course, what the exhibition doesn’t do is show how foreign fields have shaped British literature, so the likes of the poets of the first World War are omitted, for example. Some more pedantic viewers may also question the inclusion of Ulysses, a work not particularly associated with the British owned parts of the island of Ireland, unlike Heaney.

Nevertheless, this is a comprehensive survey of nearly a millennium of British literature (the earliest item dates from the 12^th century), and most should emerge from the exhibition knowing something they didn’t when they went in.

by Graham Mathias

Ideas… by Helen Johnson-Isaacs

Ideas. Ah! I love ideas. I have the best ones. Honestly. My ideas are original. Genre-defying. Fan-bloody-tastic. The characters are well rounded, ready to be beloved. My ideas are award-winning, career-making, six-figure-book-deal ideas. They are, in short, the best ideas ever.

The problem comes, for me, in turning those ideas into actual words. What was a series of novels suddenly only has enough words to be a short story. My well-rounded characters become two-dimensional and clichéd. Six-figure-book-deals are actually “has potential but needs work” responses from writing competitions. My ideas when they leave the comfy confines of my head are not actually my ideas, but dull pastiches of other people’s ideas. Other people’s better ideas. So a lot of the time my ideas stay just that. Where they can be perfect, and I can bask in my own brilliance.

I love my ideas. I’m lucky that I can do a lot of planning in my head, remember things about plot and characters and build it up so it’s quite complex and makes sense. It just loses something when I write it down. It’s no longer perfect, it’s fallible and other people could see it and tell me its rubbish. I might not be able to find the perfect word, or the right description, or convey what I want to. I might not like it. But surely that’s writing, isn’t it? That’s what makes it difficult. It’s why not everyone does it. Surely finding the right word or description is half the fun..?

What happens next is my ideas start to turn up. A book here, a movie there. But that was my idea! Yes, yes it was. But I didn’t do anything about it so someone else has thought of it. Because they can. Because I can’t claim ownership on something so secret I haven’t even dared to write it down. It would never stand up in court.

So, I’ve had this idea. It’s really good. I know where it’s set, I’ve met four of the characters, I can see the opening scene and one significant event that happens near the end. I have a working title. I like my main character, I think we can be friends. I have a subplot. I know which genre it will fit in. I’ve picked my agent. I’ve mentally spent the riches I’ll amass when I become the new JK Rowling. Now all I have to do is write it down…

Helen Johnson-Isaacs currently works as a Communications Executive, which is a fancy way of saying that she writes and edits a magazine. In her spare time she likes eating sweets, stockpiling books on her kindle and thinking about writing. She sometimes writes short stories, starts longer ones and is about to embark on a journey into YA fiction. An occasional tweeter, you can follow her (or not) @bijouraconteur She blogs here.

Today we’re working on descriptions. Take a few minutes now to grab the nearest thing to hand – your coffee cup, a photo of your nan, a battered notebook, your slipper. Really look at it, touch it, see it with fresh eyes. And then write a few phrases that describe it. Here’s the catch – use no cliches. You must make up your own metaphors / similes to describe the object in an original way. Really look at the colours – is that green cup really the colour of grass or can you find a better description?

Feel free to post your descriptions in the comments.

Sock puppeting, or assuming a false online identity with the intention of deceiving. It’s becoming rife among writers – either writing favourable reviews of their own books on sites like Amazon, or less-than-favourable reviews of competitor’s books, not in their real name of course. There have been many scandals of well-known writers being caught / owning up to sock puppeting, the most well-known possibly being historian and Birkbeck University professor Orlando Figes. Figes posted pseudonymous critisicms of other historians’ books on Amazon, whilst praising his own.

More recently, the crime writer R.J. Ellory has apologized for inventing online reviews of his own books, and criticizing other crime writers. But why do writers feel the need to do this? Ellory in particular had already had a glowing review in the Guardian describing him as a “thriller writing of the very highest order”, so why would he want more?

I can understand writers giving favourable reviews to their writer-friends, something which has presumably gone on (although using their real names) for years and long before the internet. Is it just that it is easier to do it online, easier to get away with just typing a fake name into Amazon in the privacy of your own home?

In response to these recent apologies from writers such as Ellory, fellow crime writer Jeremy Dunns has gathered a group of writers (including Mark Billingham, Tony Parsons, Stella Duffy and Christopher Brookmyre) to write an open letter on why they are against sock puppeting of online reviews.

But do online reviews really matter that much? Do they really make the difference between a potential reader buying or not buying a book? We all say that we’re not affected by reviews, we make our own minds up. But I’ve done it myself, Ive read the blurb, and then, still undecided, I turn to the reader’s reviews to sort of  ‘finalise’ my decision. I can’t think of an example of a bad review that swayed my decision, but to be honest if a book had mostly bad reviews, I am sure I would think twice. This phenomenon is interesting, mainly because the people who we assume are writing Amazon reviews are in no way ‘experts’. They are not literary critics writing for the broadsheets. But perhaps that is what gives them such kudos, the fact that they are readers ‘just like us’, not ivory-tower academics who probably read books in a different way and for a different reason.

And even if we don’t take notice of the Amazon reviews, the Amazon set-up means that without a 4 or 5 star rating, a book doesn’t get picked up in the Amazon algorithms for things like “also bought” suggestions, literally placing the book under your nose. So you can understand that perhaps for this reason alone, the temptation to help this process along is too much for some writers.

But like so many other things online, we must rely on folks being honest, hence the no sock puppets website. And like so many other things online, there seems no way of policing this, other than an individual’s own conscience.

Absolution – by Lynne Hunt

I have a confession. My name is Lynne and I have abused my beta-reader. And not in a profit-swelling 50 Shades kind of way either. I gave him my unfinished novel to read and left it on a cliff-hanger. It got read. It came back. I wrote a few more chapters, reworked it a little. Realised the cliff hanger would work better further on in the novel and sent the whole shebang back to him – ending on the same cliff-hanger. Then I convinced myself it didn’t have the legs to be a full-on fantasy novel and shelved it. For three, whole, years. He was not a happy chicken.

You don’t really needs to know all that. You just need to know that I fully deserve what happened next. Three years of subtle (and not so subtle) sniping about waiting to find out why my heroine’s ex-husband wants to strangle her (OK, this time it’s in a profit-swelling 50 Shades kind of way) and I snap. I sit down and, over the course of a month filled with more caffeine than sleep, I finish the damn thing. Four hundred pages of pantsing, JFDI, love and sex and death, all from inside my head and it feels good.

All I have to do now is hand it over and look smug. Then I get cocky. How much nicer would it be, I think, if I gave him an actual book? I look it up. There are sites that’ll let me do it in three easy steps: upload a PDF of your novel, choose a cover and proof read it. Easy? Yeah, right. Easy as naked Twister. You know how it should go in theory, but the reality is all missteps and awkward hesitation and scary things that are just plain wrong.

Step one should be a breeze. Then I discover my PDF conversion program no longer converts but only reads. No idea why. Maybe it thinks it’s being funny. Cue side-trip #1 as I Google my way to a new program that does what I need. Of course now, when I try to print anything it automatically converts it to a PDF file but you can’t have everything and it’ll save me a fortune in ink.

So I have my PDF file. There’s even a box on the screen I can paste it into. While it uploads, another helpful little window pops up to tell me it’ll take a while and would I like to pick my cover while I’m waiting?

My cover. I like the sound of that. This bit really is easy. Nice, atmospheric picture of a mountain, glossy black background, swirly title: done. No – hang on – they want a blurb for the back cover. Side-trip #2 has me pulling out every similarly-genred novel from the shelves to see how they did it. Twenty minutes later I have my blurb and, wonder of wonders ,the PDF is done!

The next box pops up: ‘what size book do I want?’ Side-trips #3 (looking for a ruler) and #4 (measuring the books from side-trip #2 still piled up on the floor) generate the answer but throw up another problem: ‘your text does not match this format. Please reformat and upload another PDF.’ No helpful suggestions on how, you’ll notice, not even when I shout the question at the monitor. I discover a little vein running down the side of my right eye. It’s beginning to throb.

Eventually I work it out and upload another PDF. The same little box (whose perkiness is now getting on my nerves) tells me that this will take a while and would I like to pick my cover while I wait? You know, the cover I forgot to save last time? The vein goes into overdrive and sets off a twitch in my eye. Banging my head against the desk seems to relieve the pressure. I’m not stupid, so I aim for the wrist rest, but it’s the thought that counts.

My second cover attempt is done (and saved!) just as the PDF finishes loading. My husband comes home and sticks his head around the door and I tell him I’ll be “Ten minutes”. We both know this is code for “Give me an hour and then bring caffeine.” If he finds me face down on the keyboard after an hour he knows it’s not gone overly well and he should bring up chocolate and a sleeping bag. Or possibly a sleeping bag made from chocolate.

By the time he’s gone another little magic box appears to tell me the format is now OK but I need to proof-read it because it’s found a couple of errors. I check and suddenly there’s text halfway off the page – WHY is there text halfway off the page?!? It’s not like I was even physically capable of writing it that way in the first place, I mean, one sheet of A4 is very much like ano….. I remember it’s not A4 any more and begin swearing viciously as I slowly correct every error. Some of the curses are quite inventive and side-trip #5 notes them down for future use.

Finally the whole mix of graphics, text and tears comes together into something that looks remarkably like a proper book. I hit ‘submit’ and realise that, in wanting to give a surprise present, I’ve gotten so much more in return.

I’ve always been in awe of those writers brave enough to self publish. To be their own editor and have the confidence to say ‘this is ready’. To proof-read, to advertise to sell and not go bugnuts along the way. What I hadn’t realised was that even the basics could be so hard, but when the first copy of my book hit the mat and I held it in my hand, I couldn’t even breathe.

I keep getting emails from the publishing company telling me I haven’t OK’d the book for distribution and I won’t because, tempting though it may be, it’s nowhere near ready yet. I know there’s a ridiculously long way to go before I do this for real and that, along the way, naked Twister is going to be the least of my worries. I I’ve had a little taste of what it could be like, though and the memory will linger for a long, long time.

Oh, and dibs on the patent for the chocolate sleeping bag.

Lynne’s first job was as a Christmas party organiser. Three months, two hundred turkey crowns and six thousand drunken office workers later, she quit. Since then she’s been screamed and sworn at in offices and call centres all across the country and mistakenly believes writing has kept her sane. Bizarrely, she still loves Christmas. Read her blog here.

‘The Bell Jar’ with Jo Bell

Last chance to sign up!

Our online course ‘The Bell Jar’ with Jo Bell runs for 6 weeks from Mon 10th September 2012 until Sun 21st October. The course is sent out to you in weekly email lessons, containing things to read /listen to, and homework exercises. You will have access to an exclusive private area of the forum where you can discuss the course and the readings with other participants, and get feedback on your work. You will also get feedback from the tutor Jo, and will receive an end of course report on your poetry.

The course costs £117 for six weeks.

Participants from the last ‘Bell Jar’ course with Jo Bell said…

“I began the Winning Words poetry course “The Bell Jar” without any experience of having been on a poetry/writing course before. I was a bit daunted at the thought of a forum and at posting my work for others to see/comment on. However I found the forum the best part of the course. The feedback and support from the other writers was great and gave me a lot of confidence.. I also loved reading everyone else’s work which was very helpful. The tutor Jo Bell was really down to earth and honest and I felt that she understood what I was trying to do with my work. I found her comments and criticism invaluable and I feel I have progressed a lot through her feedback and the challenging exercises. All in all doing the course was a truly positive experience and one which has set me on the road to serious poetry writing. I would recommend this course to anyone, especially those who need confidence in their writing or those who would like to learn different techniques.. An excellent course.”

“A well structured, interesting and constructive course with a very supportive tutor. I have written more poems in the last six weeks than I usually write in a year. Thanks for a great experience.”

“I can’t speak highly enough of this online course. Jo Bell has produced a perfectly pitched poetry masterclass! The exercises were stimulating, the feedback constructive and excruciatingly honest.”

“This was an inspiring, friendly course. I think the quality of my writing really improved over the six weeks. And I loved it!”

“Before the course I was feeling stuck, uninspired, under-stimulated and my output was about a poem a month. During the course I was producing 3/4 poems a week, feeling supported, encouraged, stretched and incredibly stimulated. The feedback from Jo and from other people on the course was direct, honest, focused and practical. The solidarity was very real and I learnt what my strengths and weaknesses are and how best to use the skills I have and how to build new ones. Jo’s fantastic exercises were multi-faceted, combining practical techniques with encouragement to go off in any direction. I can honestly say it has been life-changing for me !”

About Jo:

Jo Bell is a poet and literature development worker, whose projects take her across the UK. Formerly an industrial archaeologist, she lives on a narrowboat in the NW of England. She is the director of National Poetry Day, and her poetry has been published in journals including Magma and Iota. Her latest publication Bugged brings together writers such as Stuart Maconie, Ian Marchant and Jenn Ashworth, in a collection of work based on overhearings. Find jo at www.jobell.org.uk or on her blog, www.belljarblog.wordpress.com.

The Small Print!

Course participants must ensure they have basic computer proficiency (nothing more than using a word-processor, using a web forum and opening email attachments). Technical support for using the forum/ website is available.

Participants are responsible for submitting their work to the tutor on time. Tutors are not obligated to give feedback for work submitted after the course has finished.

Refunds will only be issued if the course is cancelled by Winning Words or by the tutor.