Week Forty-Five: Making Use of Fabulous HOW TO WRITE Resources!

Sometimes, even experienced writers need to take an overview of their writing, research how to move between genres, or just take a breather and look at how other writers build their careers.

For new writers, learning how to do things professionally, or getting hints and tips that prompt fresh writing or help them shift up a gear career-wise, can make the difference between finishing and giving up, or getting a book ready for publication. (See below for a list of fab 'how-to-write' research books, all ON PROMO right now!)

I am a bestselling author who writes in several different genres and publishes with some of our so-called 'Big 5' UK publishers. Yet I frequently consult 'how to' books, and in some cases would never sit down to plan a new book without checking some of my favourite 'how to' manuals.

My mother, Charlotte Lamb, published over 170 novels during her 30-year writing career and was a global million bestseller. She absolutely adored 'how-to-write' books and bought every one that she found on sale. She had a whole bookcase devoted to those books near her desk in her study.

My mother was adamant that good writers never stop learning. She loved sitting down in her spare time to study such manuals and make notes, even for genres she didn't write in. And she passed that obsession on to me ... :)

As for me, I not only write bestselling fiction, but also 'how-to-write' books!

In fact, I have several Writing Prompt books available for Thrillers, Romances, Poetry, and How To Write A Novel In A Month.

Look, my 'how-to-write' book is only 99p this week!

 

Best of all, one of my top-selling 'how-to-write' books is on a 99p promo right now, along with some fellow writers with their own writing books, all at reduced prices!

My 99p book is '21 Ways To Write A Commercial Novel' and is based on this very blog, containing huge amounts of writing tips, plus various industry anecdotes about being a professional writer - not just from me, but also from a range of other novelists. 

Bursting with up-to-date information and entertaining anecdotes from the world of writing and publishing, this guide also features helpful comments on writing from both new and established writers, including Rowan Coleman, Katie Fforde, Judy Astley, Lesley Cookman, Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Alison Morton, Elizabeth Moss and many, many others.

A goldmine of advice for writers from an author of over thirty commercial novels under various pen-names, including an award-winning novel, WITCHSTRUCK, and a UK number one Kindle bestseller, GIRL NUMBER ONE.

Why not check out some of these fab 'how-to-write' or publishing industry books below, all on promotion this week?

Or see this wonderful 'how-to-write' page from Rhoda Baxter, displaying all these titles with covers and Buy Now buttons.

Nina Harrington - How to Write Short Romance	https://www.amazon.co.uk/Write-Short-Romance-Kindle-Books-ebook/dp/B00UDP3XBU	B00UDP3XBU
Liz Fielding - Little Book of Writing Romance	https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fieldings-Little-Book-Writing-Romance-ebook/dp/B006YQCE5I/	B006YQCE5I
Kate Harrison - Pitch Power	https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pitch-Power-discover-makes-irresistible-ebook/dp/B081HDC6F3/	B081HDC6F3
Liam Livings - Marketing the Romance	https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DW9R6GJ/	B07DW9R6GJ
Jane Holland - 21 ways to write a novel	https://www.amazon.co.uk/21-Ways-Write-Commercial-Novel-ebook/dp/B00TRPN8I0/	B00TRPN8I0
R Baxter and J Lovering - How to write Rom Com	https://www.amazon.co.uk/Write-Romantic-Comedy-Rhoda-Baxter-ebook/dp/B07RL6YR7W/	B07RL6YR7W

Writers' Conference 2015 Podcast

I have started a series of podcasts over on Spreaker!

My very first podcast episode was for my own personal writing show, called AD HOC. As the name suggests, this is a short 5-7 minute show where I chat informally about what I'm working on at the moment. and any thoughts I have on writing or being a writer in general. Not sure about the frequency at the moment, but it would be nice to make it weekly.

My second podcast episode is a more epic job, and well worth a listen if you enjoy listening to writers 'out of hours' and with a glass of wine in hand. It's the first in a new podcast show called TYPEFACE, which I'm hoping to produce monthly, on or around the first of every month (this first one is a little early as I have a busy weekend ahead). TYPEFACE will feature interviews, news and general chat about the world of books and writing.

But I thought I'd kick off the series with a very special podcast, composed almost entirely of interviews on the hoof with writers at a conference last summer.

Here's how it came about ...

At the Romantic Novelists Association Conference, London 2015 - which was a lively event and very hot, with plenty of outdoor drinks and mingling in the evenings - I ventured forth with my trusty iPad and took recordings of writers chatting.

Announcing my intention to record as I approached, I grabbed snippets of conversation, interviews, ran informal question and answer sessions around the packed benches, and generally tried to capture the excited buzz of a writers' conference. After all, this is a writers' conference where (mostly) women who work alone in a room all year get out to meet other writers, exchange news and information, gossip freely, and generally let their hair down without any kids or significant others around to dampen the fun.

Writers recorded include:

 Milly Johnson, Katie Fforde, Talli Roland, Alison May, Kate Johnson, Ruth Frances Long, Rhoda Baxter, Hazel Gaynor, John Jackson, Jo Gilliver, Cal Andrews, Adrienne Vaughan, Lizzie Lamb, Joan Fleming, Rosemary Gemmel, Jan Jones, Roger Sanderson, Liz Fenwick, Brigid Coady, Jane Eastgate, Imogen Howson, Jenny Barden, Janet Gover, Carol Townend, Liam Livings, Fiona Harper, Frieda Lightfoot, Jane Lovering, Lucy Wheeler and many others ...

This unofficial podcast - THE RNA CONFERENCE 2015 PODCAST - is the result.

RNA CONFERENCE PODCAST (photo: Talli Roland)

Enjoy!

Please do FOLLOW my Spreaker account if you enjoy listening to writing podcasts - for there will be more to come this year.

Also, click LIKE to show your appreciation, leave a comment under the podcast, and/or share the link on social media.

It all helps!

Disclaimer: I am no longer affiliated to the RNA. This work is unofficial and not sanctioned in any way by the RNA.

Week Fourteen: Four-Point Commercial Checklist

"Murder will out," they say, and many in publishing still claim to believe the same of good books. "Great writing will always find a market," we are told as writers, along with that golden oldie, "All good authors will be published eventually."

This sop to our vanity is no longer true, if it ever was. Or it can be true if we are prepared to self-publish.

Not every writer will get their books into the shops. And the journey to get them there - and keep them there - is more complicated and fiendish than anyone outside commercial fiction would ever believe.

Commercial publishing is shrinking, and author lists are shrinking with it. More rapidly than ever. There is every possibility that you will write a good book this year or next, perhaps even a great book, yet be unable to place it with a reputable publisher. Or you may have talent and a reasonable track record, yet fail to attract a publisher willing to go to contract on the strength of a proposal alone. Meanwhile the bills have to be paid ...

It's tempting to assume that every book taken on is now a major risk for publishers, except new work by the very top names - or complete unknowns. Yes, dear new writers with good books, you are not in too bad a position in terms of attracting publishing deals. New writers have not yet 'failed', so you will always be more attractive to the money people whom editors have to convince when they decide to acquire a book. But woe betide if your debut sells less well than expected. Because it's all about sales these days. And I can perfectly understand why publishing is fast becoming a closed shop. In this culture of fear, risk-taking is akin to professional suicide. Far better to give a flat no - or offer the most meagre terms possible - than lose money on a book deal and face the firing squad yourself.

So what's the answer to this narrowing of the publishing arteries?

As I see it, there are several courses open to writers in this position. You can resign yourself to diminishing advances and precarious contracts, and maybe even shift into self-publishing, or you can change what you're writing to become even more commercial, in the hope that this will save you from the graveyard of good writers that has become mid-list publishing.

Literary writers will, quite rightly, reject that last idea. Literary fiction has always been a precarious medium - and anyway, out there on the razor's edge is the best place for experimental fiction to thrive. If you expect no money, and are happier with a small publisher who understands what you're trying to do and will support you with that, you will not miss earning your living by words alone.

"I'm not compromising my creative spirit to churn out a blockbuster. I love this garret."

Mid-list authors keen to explore the freedom and adventure of self-publishing may shrug off traditional publishing at this point and find a new path through these dangerous waters, and good luck to them. I have paddled there myself and know it can be very liberating to self-publish, not to mention lucrative.

For truly commercial writers who do not wish to self-publish, however, adapting to the demands of this brave new marketplace is the only viable response. Nobody wants to drag themselves to the desk every morning feeling like a dinosaur, reading their sales figures with a heart sinking as rapidly as the numbers.

But what does it mean, to write more commercially?

The answers change in specifics according to each publisher and genre, but in general you need to ensure this simple Four-Point Commercial Checklist applies to your manuscript, at least to some degree:

Strong or high-concept story, preferably strikingly original in some elements, but not so original that it won't fit into current book categories. Check it can be described in a simple phrase - or better still in the title itself.

High stakes action. Start with life and death, then work upwards. The more people potentially affected by your story, the higher the stakes.

Accessible, cleanly written prose. Your book can be as complicated plot-wise as you like, but it must be written for as broad a readership as possible. Keep sentences uncluttered, say what you mean, be elegant if you wish - but save your deathless prose for your literary alter-ego.

Larger-than-life characters that keep a reader turning the pages. (You may think you write these anyway, but it's a fair bet you don't. Think larger. No, even larger than that. You need characters a reader will never forget.)

As you can see from that list, writing more commercially is nothing to do with writing in a popular genre or following trends or writing longer or shorter books. It's about making your books memorable without becoming melodramatic, and simple without becoming simplistic.

It comes down to being a great storyteller. And above all this, you also have to believe in your story and not write in in a cynical, 'this will get me published' way.

Tough, huh?

"Jim knew he only had thirty seconds to save the entire universe ..." Are your stakes high enough?

If you knuckle down and do all those things, and still can't get a publisher to take your book, let's face it, you're screwed. But don't worry. There's always self-publishing. More on that in another post.

Oh, and my latest novel WITCHRISE is published today!

QUESTION: What do you think makes a book commercial these days? And would you ever change the way you write just to keep being published?

Week Nine: Juggling Pseudonyms

Increasingly, writers are being asked to split themselves in two. Or three, or four. Or five.

Writing as schizophrenia: the freedoms and hazards of the multiple-pseudonym approach.

I'm not talking about being a writer and also having to develop the skills of a marketing and promotional campaign manager, public speaker, social media guru and whatever else lies ahead for us in this increasingly beleaguered profession. I'm talking about the need to write different genres under different names.

For the uninitiated, this may seem like nonsense. Stick to one name, and publish whatever you like under it. Well, it's an option. But because of the way the human psyche works, or perhaps because of the way publishing has worked for the past few hundred years, a writer tends to be associated with a certain kind of publication. So let's say you have always written crime fiction, then suddenly produce something different - say, historical romance - under the same name, you are likely to land yourself in trouble.

Firstly, you will annoy your loyal readership by producing something that nonplusses them. Secondly, you will annoy your new readers who, loving your fabulous romance, order some of your backlist only to find themselves reading crime fiction.

By Joanne Rowling, aka J.K. Rowling, aka Robert Galbraith

This may be one possible reason J.K. Rowling chose to publish her new crime novels as Robert Galbraith (the fact that male writers often reach a wider readership and are more likely to be nominated for literary prizes and win them is a whole other kettle of publishing fish).

So you say, right, my writing name will be Jane Acrostic for crime, and Jane (or Joe) Bloggs for romance.

Then you realise the awful truth.

Because it doesn't stop there, at the choice of a pen-name. All writers are now expected to promote themselves wildly and without shame, like people who leave saucy business cards in phone boxes. If they don't, and subsequently fail to sell, or even if they do and subsequently fail to sell, they may end up without a publisher.

So both these writers - Jane Acrostic and Jane/Joe Bloggs - need separate Twitter accounts. And Facebook accounts. And probably email accounts. And blogs. And reader lists. And marketing plans. And bloggers to reach out to.

Some writers plough on and write in other genres under a third or fourth pseudonym. The sky's the limit if you are a flexible enough writer, and have the time and patience to tweet and blog under a gazillion names.

You could keep stories under each pen-name in separate notebooks or doc folders, to avoid confusion.

In this cannon fodder-rich, advance-poor world of books, you may find yourself split another way: between traditional publishing and self-publishing. You may be an established traditional novelist with flagging returns who chooses to self-publish their rights-reverted backlist. Or you may be unable to make ends meet on the advance offered by your traditional publisher, so have to moonlight as Juliet Boobs on Smashwords or Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, tossing off a quick sexy read every few weeks to draw in a few extra pounds to feed the electricity meter. Or maybe you got funnelled into writing one kind of book early on, and have always yearned to write something totally different.

So let's say you choose to go down this route, writing in several different genres. How might it work?

I have done this myself, writing historical and YA fiction as Victoria Lamb and steamy historical romance as Elizabeth Moss, both for traditional publishers, not to mention a few other names that collectively bring home the bacon. My brother tells me this is known as a 'portfolio career' in music, which is his field. I know how it works for me. But everyone is different. I shall describe my own experience here, and hope others may comment on this post to share their experiences too.

By me

Also by me

First, you need to discuss a change of genre with your agent and/or editor, if you have one. They will probably be resistant; it's hard to establish a writer's name in the first place, let alone TWO names. But let's assume your first name is flagging a bit, and they are less hard to persuade. Or you are 'between publishers' and free to relaunch your career. Unless you plan to self-publish - in which case you might want to consider making writerly friends within the new genre and finding someone who might advise you on a quid pro quo basis - then you will probably need to produce a large sample of the proposed manuscript and a synopsis, to indicate ability to work in this new genre. You may even need to produce the entire book before a contract will be agreed. (Some hard grafters do this every time, though I try to avoid it at all costs. There's always another bill waiting to be paid ...)

Once a change of genre is approved - and this is far from certain, publishers being shy of change at the moment and inclined not to take risks - you will need to discuss your new name.

Yes, this is by me too

Some writers - like Iain Banks/Iain M. Banks - have chosen to use the same name, but stuck an initial in the mix for the new genre. I personally find that confusing, but that's just me. You might want to use another related name, or something personal to you - Lamb was my mother's pseudonym, Moss my first married surname, and Victoria and Elizabeth are my middle names. Or you could be totally cynical and choose something that fits the new genre: something hard or sinister for crime, something sexy and enticing for romance. Never forget, your mission is to build an entirely new persona, and your pseudonym will be at the forefront of that effort.

By my mum, Charlotte Lamb

If you find it hard to juggle several writing names, get organised. Use whiteboards or corkboards, and list projects, accounts and contacts under each name. Be careful with online passwords for email/blogs etc; you're supposed to have different ones for each account, and not keep a written record, so make sure each password is memorable for that name, or use some Master Password software to help you. I frequently use Twitter on iPad, which allows me to keep all my Twitter accounts permanently logged in and switch between them with a couple of flicks, so I can post easily on different accounts within a space of seconds. TweetDeck also allows this, though I find it unwieldy with more than three or four names, as it lists accounts horizontally instead of on separate flickable pages. You may want to see what works best for you.

Develop a solid persona for each name, and stick to it wherever possible. I tend to leap between names on social media, as so many people know I have several, there's no point hiding the fact, plus I find it amusing to troll myself under another name. But you may prefer to draw a strict line between them. Certainly it is less confusing for readers if you keep each pseudonym in a separate 'box' and never mix them up. I find it a touch dishonest to create totally new biogs for each name, but that's only because so many people know who I really am in person. If you're keeping them separate, and will never meet anyone in the flesh, you can invent a whole new life for your biog. Just make sure you don't 'come out' later and risk alienating people who only read your books because they wrongly believed you were from Basingstoke, or a former concert violinist, or a devout Anglican.

By - you guessed it - me!

If you choose to do a public event under one pen-name, and are reasonably well-known under another, be aware you may be exposed at that point. People take photos, and innocently blog or tweet them, unaware of your guilty secret. So if you don't want your trad publishers or your jam-making Quaker romance fans to know you also wrote that smutty tale of swinging couples, don't turn up at the London Fetish Fair to promote it - unless clad in a concealing gimp mask.

Decide early on how much promo you can manage for each name, and which name will benefit most from each kind of promotion. Book marketing is not 'one size fits all.' To sell in a new genre, you usually need to do some research: find out where your main readership is likely to be hanging out on social media, or sites like Goodreads, then target it. Make as many friends as you can, insinuate yourself into groups, copy what other writers do. Yes, it's a bit creepy. But you can relax somewhat once the initial push is done. You just need to get your new pseudonym known and accepted in the best places for your book, and after that, you can concentrate on the new books you're writing and on building a career in that genre.

And if you think all that sounds like bloody hard work, it is. Welcome to my day.

QUESTION: Do you have more than one pen-name, and how do you cope with the separate promo? Or do you have a question about writing under more than one name?

Week Eight: Dealing With Rejection

Dear Novelist, your book sucks.

This week I have decided to talk about how writers can deal with rejection. I've written about this before elsewhere, so here are my expanded thoughts. I hope they're as useful to anyone facing this situation as they have been to me. Please do join in and comment afterwards!
 

Why does it hurt so much to have a novel rejected? 

By the time you’ve finished a novel, it’s become a part of you. To have it rejected by an agent or publisher can feel like a personal affront. And indeed sometimes it is personal. A novel is an extension of who we are, yes, but when a book is rejected, occasionally it's not because the book sucks: you may not be the most marketable person around, and these days publishers want authors they can sell, not shy types with odd histories. They may pass on a reasonable book from someone with no social media presence, or whose track record makes them nervous.

The first is fixable. Get yourself a Twitter and Facebook account, and learn how to blog with the rest of us poor promo-monkeys. The second is more insidious. You may need to be equally sneaky if earlier books have bombed and no one will touch you. Send out your book under a different name, and remember to create a whole new persona to go with it - including new social media accounts! (There's no escape from it, is there?)

Yet rejection is an intrinsic part of the publishing business. We can fix these problems, but we still go through it at some stage, and sometimes it’s the quickest way to improve, to get a feel for what's currently good and what's not. 

So, how to cope with the hurt of rejection, and still keep writing and believing in yourself?

Stay professional (even if it kills you). Allow yourself some natural moments of pique - throwing darts at the rejection letter used to be a favourite of mine, before everything became electronic - then get yourself in hand again. Rejection is horrible. But you can’t please everyone all of the time, and you can never be entirely sure why a book was rejected, so you might as well shrug it off and move on. It’s as simple as that. 

Learn to shrug off rejection and keep writing. There's always the next book.

Still seething? Okay. Ask yourself, was your rejection justified?

Consider whether your work was less polished than it should have been, missing some vital element that would have made it more successful, or if it was on the wrong track altogether. Then act on your findings. This should not be an emotional decision. If advice or feedback came with the rejection, take some time to digest the hurt, then sit back and assess it coolly. Not all advice is helpful. Some of it may be plain wrong. Perhaps you simply sent your book to the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong time. We all know of famous novels that were rejected and became bestsellers. We all know - or should by now have started to understand - that an editorial judgement on your novel is not the word of God.

People can be wrong about a book. Even en masse. 

On the other hand, few novels spring fully formed from a writer’s mind. Even a rejection note may be useful if it spurs you into action that may get your novel accepted elsewhere.

If you choose to revise, submit again to different places. Be brave and send out your work as soon as any changes have been implemented. Be sure you target the right people. Check that the agent or publisher handles your genre. Sometimes a rejection has a simple explanation like that and is no reflection on your work. One example of an ‘unseen’ disadvantage is when a similar book or writer has already been accepted, so they can’t commit to yours because of a potential clash of interests. This may seem incredible when you've written a niche book for a niche market. But in fact it happens quite frequently. Subjects are up there, in the ether, and people pluck them down at the same time with astonishing frequency. Then it becomes a case of who writes the damn book first. If you were too slow, you may have missed your window.

Or perhaps the publisher is feeling worried about a particular genre or sub-genre, and has decided to stop accepting it for the time being. This also happens. Genres have trends. They become wildly fashionable, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Then abruptly, sometimes for no obvious reason, those books crash into obscurity. The market is saturated and nobody wants them anymore. Again, don't be slow if chasing a bandwagon. They can move with surreal speed.

This happened recently to erotica. In the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey, everyone wanted to write S&M adult novels. For months, there were whole bookcases, not just shelves, devoted to erotic tales in otherwise prudish high street stores. Straight novels could not get a look in. Then suddenly, BANG, the rows of generic grey/black erotic covers vanished, almost overnight. To find them on the high street now, you'll have to search a few dusty high-up shelves somewhere between Fiction A-Z and Romance. S&M erotica is back where it came from: the dungeon. So again, act swiftly or not at all. By the time you notice it's a popular trend, and start to knock out your own bestseller, the bandwagon may have tumbled into a ravine.

Forget that book, and write something new!

This can be the hardest advice to follow when you’ve pinned your hopes on one particular novel, one wonderful group of characters, one high-concept plot that cannot fail.

I initially wrote THE EARL & HIS TIGER for Mills & Boon Historicals. They rejected it. I self-published and have sold over 36,000 downloads so far. That's one way of dealing with rejection.

But as with so many things, the battle-cry for writers these days is, 'Diversify or die!'

If you feel you can't rewrite that book anymore, and are unsure where else to send it anyway, then put the rejected ms aside and write a new story. Knuckle down and do the best job you can. Always finish what you start. Then send the new novel out again to publishers or your agent. If you can demonstrate that you’re more than a one-book writer, it tends to work in your favour, especially with agents who need to keep believing that you are worth representing. New writing also allows you to create much-needed emotional space between yourself and a rejection. It spreads the load, if you like, of emotional angst. Now you have TWO novels to worry about, not one!

However, don’t keep starting new stories rather than improving work that’s been rejected. You should always take the time to fix a story if several people have told you it needs attention and you truly believe it can be salvaged. But don't get hung up on this. It takes most writers several years - and at least three or four novels - to really get into the swing of this novel-writing lark.

It's a complex and often mysterious process, writing a novel, and rejections only serve to underline that point. NOBODY knows for sure what's going to work for readers, what's going to be popular, what's going to sell. You may feel sure your book will sell, but in fact, it's a lottery. If there was some kind of clear criteria to tell us which books are sure hits, and which will bomb, we would have more millionaire writers. As it is, most writers exist in a kind of twilight zone, somewhere between broke and just pulling even. They sell enough to be worth publishing, but not enough to get a poster advert in an underground station. And even they get rejected sometimes. You are NOT alone!

GIRL NUMBER ONE was rejected by over a dozen publishers. I rewrote it, self-published it September 2015, and in its first ten weeks it has sold over 15,000 copies and had 1.5 million page reads on Kindle Unlimited. The moral of this tale? Editors are not infallible judges of saleability.

Besides, getting used to shrugging and starting again is part of an essential process of hardening up that writers need to undergo. So when that unpleasant rejection letter arrives, you can pull a face, eat some chocolate cake, then remind yourself, ‘There’s always the next book.’ 

QUESTION:  Have you found a good way to combat rejection?

Week Four: Rowan Coleman's 'Letter To A New Writer'

This week, I'm handing over my thoughts on novel writing to an excellent, prolific and very popular novelist, Rowan Coleman.

Rowan is writing a series of 'old-fashioned' letters this year - 52 letters, in fact, by eerie coincidence!! - and has agreed to team up with me this week by writing a letter to a new writer. Her letter will be posted simultaneously on both our blogs, through the magic of writerly synchronicity.

This week's letter is addressed to Sarah Callejo, a writer known to both of us through the marvellous Romantic Novelists Association, where Sarah is a member of their much-coveted New Writers Scheme.

Rowan Coleman, who is writing 52 Letters: One Letter, Every Week, For A Year.

Rowan Coleman grew up secretly longing to be a writer despite battling with dyslexia. After graduating from university she worked in bookselling and publishing for seven years before winning Company Magazine Young Writer of the Year in 2001. Her first novel Growing Up Twice was published in 2002.

Rowan has gone on to write eight novels for women including the bestseller The Accidental Mother, The Baby Group and The Accidental Wife, and eight novels for children and teens including the paranormal adventure novels Nearly Departed and Immortal Remains under the name Rook Hasting.

You can peruse Rowan's many novels on her website or here on Amazon UK and US.

 

Rowan Coleman's letter to Sarah Callejo - and any new writer - on how to approach writing a novel.

  

Thank you, Rowan!

This week's question is on the art of procrastination mentioned by Rowan in her letter: what excuses do you make when you put off writing your novel? (Or are you the dedicated type who never flags?)

Answers in the comment box below, please. Any comments for Rowan also very welcome!

Week Three: The Impossible Idea

Novelists heading for the Pick 'n' Mix Ideas Counter at Woolies. 

(Photo credit: SecretLondon)

'Where do you get your ideas from?'

This is one of the most common questions writers get asked. Non-writers are constantly intrigued by the mysterious - to them, and sometimes to us - process that is novel-writing. My prolific mother, who in her lifetime published over 150 novels, was asked on a regular basis where she got her many ideas from. Deadpan, she would look people in the eye and say, 'Woolworths.'

But on a serious note, where do we get our ideas from as novelists?

Novelists work in many different ways, so there are multiple answers to this question: historical accounts, snippets of conversation overheard on a bus, a clipping from the newspaper or something seen on a documentary, a real-life experience, a close friend's story, an unusual anecdote told in the pub or office, meandering thoughts jotted down in a notebook, then perhaps forgotten about for months or even years, until something else comes along to light the blue touchpaper ...

The word 'novel' means 'new', of course. It always reminds me of the old wedding day rhyme:

Something old

Something new

Something borrowed

Something blue

There is something in this simple piece of traditional advice we can take away as novelists and re-use for our own purposes. Something borrowed, in particular.

Novelists are the ultimate Borrowers. (Thank you, Mary Norton.) Writers were recycling and re-using long before it become an important and necessary habit to save the planet. Chaucer lifted his impressive 'Canterbury Tales' structure from Boccaccio's Decameron, and Shakespeare kept a much-thumbed copy of Holinshed's Chronicles under his straw mattress. (Or so I like to imagine.) But don't get me wrong; I don't consider these to be instances of lazy writing. Borrowing is as much about the way our brains work, leaping at a tangent from idea to idea, as it is about needing impetus for a new story. We can all agree, I'm sure, that Shakespeare was no slouch in the imagination department. Yet he constantly borrowed - a far nicer word than 'stole' - story ideas from history or other writers so he could keep writing at what must have felt like an insane pace, feeding the insatiable monster that was the Tudor taste for theatrical extravaganza.

Shakespeare's imagination was caught by the fantastical suggestion, noted in Holinshed's Chronicles, that Macbeth was influenced by witches. "Ching!" Into his basket it went.

So borrowing an idea or two that's already been done can provide a shortcut to your own story idea, and even a shortcut to your own brain and the way it tells stories.

That's why we like some writers better than others. Some writers - however popular with others - may leave us cold. Others fire us with excitement. That's because we recognize something of ourselves in their work: the way they write, the way they see the world and tell their stories, connects to our own beliefs and identity on a deep level. We say, 'Yes!' when we read them, and feel they are speaking directly to our own experience. That mental click is what we reach for as writers when we begin to scratch about for a new novel plot.

This is not plagiarism, of course, which is something no self-respecting writer would do. You do not take work wholesale from other people. That would be theft and is against the law. Just saying.

 Death by Stickies ...

Instead, you might keep an 'ideas' notebook on the go, plaster a wall with Stickies, scribble on a whiteboard in the kitchen, or pack your own 'teeming brain', as John Keats put it, with possibilities. Then, when you're ready to write a new story, you cherry-pick from this chaotic jumble of ideas and images, and put them together in a brand-new way: that pub conversation about the successful businessman who jumped to his death - and no one knows why - may fit neatly with that drama you saw on television the other night where the wife accidentally intercepted a blackmail letter, and maybe your own loose floorboard may give you the hiding-place for those incriminating photos.

So we cobble things together. Our own ideas, our own lives, a mishmash of things we've seen or heard or read or experienced. We tear things up in our mind and stick them together again in a new order. We recreate Dr. Frankenstein's monster each time we plan a new book. We may take something that existed in another form or universe, and breathe fresh life into it, make it new.

There's room for everyone's novel: even yours.

And an idea may feel new to us. Flushed with the triumph of imagination over torpor, we tell ourselves a plot has come straight out of the ether, that it came clean and true and unrelated to anything else, that it owes nothing to anyone. But really? 

At the heart of it, there is something a little bit shady about the idea-generating business. The novel idea. Because 'novel' does actually mean 'new', remember? And we have been told since antiquity - Ecclesiastes - that there is 'nothing new under the sun.' So finally we have to turn and face the dreaded word we have been trying to avoid all along.

Originality?

As novelists, we are always told to make it new, to be original. Agents clamour for it - to avoid selling the same old stories to jaded editors. Publishers demand it - to avoid being sued. Readers hope for it - to avoid being bored. And we ourselves - to avoid professional embarrassment, if for no other reason - hunt for originality like the Holy Grail, even when writing in a self-limiting field like series fiction. In fact, novelists being grandiose types, we want our latest idea to be the most original idea in the history of novel-writing. (And if we can't quite stretch to that, then we will reluctantly settle for the best idea we've come up with so far.)

But here's the thing. The truly novel idea is impossible. So just do what you can, and don't sweat it too much if another writer - or indeed several other writers - have books out the same month that echo yours. (This happens uncannily often.) Novel-writing has a lengthy and respectable tradition, and your novel is adding to that, like one of those chain poems where everyone contributes a line. You cannot be read out of context and so should not feel you need to write out of context.

What can be original and new in all this borrowing and cobbling is you. Your narrative voice. Your treatment. Your unique way of seeing things and putting them together. You are the magic ingredient that makes it new. So when you're stirring the pot, don't lose confidence because there are thousands of other blackmailed husband and betrayed wife stories out there. None of those stories are like yours because they were not written by you. (Hopefully! I'll deal with writers who repeat themselves or have 'favourite' themes in a later post.)

Question: where do you get your ideas from? Answers in the comment box, please. Join the debate!

So yes, the idea for a novel is always impossible, because it is never simple, never original, and almost never turns out exactly as you intended at the planning stage. But just remember that your idea cannot be seen out of its context in the grand parade of novels that came before - and will come after - and that you yourself are the magic ingredient that makes your hotchpotch of characters and ideas into something novel, something new.

Week Two: Fake It Till You Make It

When I was young, my mother was a writer, my father a Fleet Street journalist. My older sister started publishing Mills and Boon romances when she was about twenty-one. There was never any spoken expectation that I would write too, nor any overt encouragement - frequently the opposite - but writing was always there in my head as the default profession, in much the same way that the sons of miners once inevitably followed their fathers down the pit and became miners too. (A fate my own father escaped by taking a job at fourteen as 'tea boy' on the Folkestone Herald.)

Newbies, always discreetly check the credentials of people offering you writing advice. (See My Novels, in case you're wondering.) People who have never published a book, or only published one, or whose entire oeuvre is digital erotica, may not be best placed to help you.

However, feeling 'born to be a writer' does not make you a writer - or so conventional wisdom tells us. Most people would agree you have to write something and get it published to be a writer. Vast swathes of dewy-eyed attendees at Creative Writing courses would argue the opposite, of course, insisting that you can be a writer without ever being published. After all, a staggering number of Creative Writing students have tutors who are new, unpublished or obscure writers, so it is probably a doctrine they learn early on. That you should fake it till you make it.

Evangelical mission strategists have a catchphrase for this progression from outsider to insider: 'Belong. Believe. Behave.' That is, the important thing is not for you to be a brilliant writer from the outset, but to join other writers and learn to self-identify with the group. This very act of belonging, of membership, rapidly leads new members to believe in what the group represents as a whole, and consequently to behave the same way as all the rest.

In other words, if you tell yourself you are a writer, socialise with other writers, and most importantly join writers' groups and organisations, then apart from all the insider knowledge you are soaking up, you will be better placed to believe that you are a writer, and produce something of publishable quality.

And so we're back to publishing. I apologise, but you really can't get away from it as a writer. Whatever those lovely CW teachers may have told you.

To publish means to make one's work public, for your novel to be read beyond your little circle of intimates or the other students in your class. In most cases, the very act of being read changes the way a writer sees themselves, and that's a big step towards becoming a professional novelist.

I'll come back to that issue in a future post.

It is my personal view that you need to publish a novel in order to be considered a novelist - whether traditionally or digitally is less important, so long as it is for sale - and therein lies the rub. Because publication is not easy.

It's not easy to be a novelist. But at least you're not a poet. They have it REALLY hard.

It's not easy to write a novel, but if you manage it, that's just the start of your journey. It's not easy to get an agent. It's not easy to get a publisher. It's not easy to persuade a retailer to stock your book (bizarrely, this can be the case whether you're with a big five publisher or a small press). It's not easy to get signings and publicity. It's not easy to write a second book after the first. It's not easy to keep writing novels and settle into a strong mid-list position as most novelists have to if they are to continue paying the bills. It's not easy to keep publishers interested if one of your books - the last one - sells poorly, even if those poor sales had nothing to do with you but were the result of marketing or promotional choices, or other external factors.

It's not easy to be a novelist. You're getting that, right?

But if it's still easier than everything else in your life, if you still sit down to your latest manuscript with steely-eyed determination and the occasional flash of excitement, despite all the setbacks and disappointments, then it's probably what you're meant to be doing.

For some lucky souls, becoming a novelist happens magically. They write a novel, find an agent like falling off a log and garner a huge advance after a bidding war for their debut novel. All of which is followed by media interest, mega-sales, film deals, with yet more contracts to follow. Some have the Midas touch, it seems.

And here's another question for you. You can leave your answer below, if moved to join the debate.

QUESTION: does belonging to a writers' group or professional body - such as the Romantic Novelists Association, pictured here at conference - make success in publishing more likely, for published and unpublished alike?

So to add to the complicated business of writing a novel, if you lack the Midas touch, you must possess certain qualities instead to make it as a novelist: speed, competence, stamina, grim determination, flexibility, a bombproof disposition, more than usual cunning - and of course charm.

Never underestimate charm. It will serve you far better in the publishing world than haughty reproof or a hissy fit, even when faced with the most startling incompetence. After all, we have all been guilty of that on occasion.

And those huge advances? (I know you're still thinking about them.) If you don't sell enough copies to earn out what they gave you up front, my starry-eyed friend, I hope you have a nice alternative career lined up. Something with a pension plan. Because you're going to need it. There's only one prospect harder to sell than an unknown would-be author, and that's an author who didn't earn out their advance.