Week Forty-Two: The Art of Collaboration, plus a Q&A with Viki Meadows

I recently published a romcom novella under the name Beth Good, written collaboratively with a writer I know personally from Romantic Novelists Association events, Viki Meadows. It was the first book I've written with another author, and Viki herself is quite a new author, so neither of us knew what to expect when we started. By the end though, I think we were both pleased with the result, and would happily recommend collaborative writing to others.

The idea came to me while watching a television interview with the hugely successful thriller writer, James Patterson. He has a great franchise with his novels, but found he simply couldn't keep up with demand. So he began working with other writers on stories he had originated, editing and shaping them into Patterson-style novels, with those writers getting credit on the cover - and no doubt having a fantastic experience working alongside Patterson himself.

I was in a similar position with my Beth Good romcoms. I have a good readership for them, a (largely UK) fanbase who buy all my romcoms under that name. But with contracts underway to write thrillers as well, and several other projects in hand, I simply couldn't manage to write as many Beth Good stories as I wanted. So I rather cheekily decided to try the James Patterson approach myself, and enlist the help of another writer to work on a novella I had already plotted out in detail from beginning to end. 

That story became the delightful CHRISTMAS AT THE LUCKY PARROT GARDEN CENTRE, and I hope that it will be the first in a series of romcoms with this Yorkshire garden centre setting. 

I had known Viki for some time through the RNA, and always thought her prose marvellously smooth and well-written. I'd edited her manuscripts before too, and we had communicated well. So she was a natural first choice for this project, and I was thrilled when she agreed to give it a try.

I started out by talking to Viki about the plot and the characters I'd devised. After all, she might have hated those elements, and that would have made writing our story even more of a challenge.

Luckily though, she loved them, and indeed ended up infusing them with a wonderfully natural colour and vivacity, not to mention striking verisimilitude, being Yorkshire-based like the heroine of the story. 

After the success of her first chapter, we continued on like that, with me talking her through the plot in close detail - mainly to get the pace right - as she had never written such a long piece of fiction before, and then editing and consolidating at every stage. As the book grew, so did Viki's confidence, and it became a very enjoyable and easy-going process. After she had finished her part, I then shaped the novella, concentrating on pacing and tone initially, and then added my own contribution. It was vital that the book was recognisably a Beth Good romcom, that readers would sense that and enjoy it as much as any other Beth Good story. So that was my focus. But of course Viki's voice is very distinctive too, and that comes through in the writing.

Overall, I thought this kind of collaborative effort was not only a wonderful way to mentor a new writer, but a learning process for me too. I learned a great deal about structure from having to explain it, and I was pleased that my reputation in certain quarters for being a prickly pain-in-the-butt did not seem to impinge on my working relationship with Viki! 

Looking back, I consider our partnership to have been a brilliant success, and I certainly hope it won't be the last book I write collaboratively. Together we have ended up producing an exciting, fast-paced, and thoroughly entertaining romantic comedy that feels as much like a Viki Meadows story as a Beth Good!

Despite being busy with her own new writing, Viki Meadows has very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the collaborative process too, and this is what she has to say ... (Viki's responses are in italics)

Can you describe how the collaboration process started for you, and your first steps when you began writing?   

My collaboration with Beth Good/Jane Holland began when I was on a writing high. I'd just got a mark of 81 for an MA assignment when I was contacted by Beth asking if I'd be interested in working with her. 

After the first excitement had worn off, I started thinking of what it would really mean. The plan was for me to work off her plot / outline and of course this raised all sorts of considerations and potential problems, but it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up, especially based on nebulous fears.

I said yes, and knuckled down (sort of) to try and do it. Because of my concerns, which included things like, would I be able to write to someone else's plot, could I write humour, would the author like my work, I asked if I could do a one-chapter trial, after which, if there were problems, we could both pull out with no hard feelings.

Once I started writing I quickly engaged with the story. At times it was a bit like a puzzle. Working out how to make something happen when it needed to required ingenuity and mental agility, and I particularly enjoyed it. Beth seemed pleased with my work, and that approval motivated me and kept me going. Working with such an easy-going person was great. I felt supported without having someone breathing down my neck. I think it was helpful that we are both quite laid back. If one of us had been more uptight it might have been more challenging to collaborate like this.

What was the most difficult part of collaborating for you, and why?

I had all sorts of preconceived ideas and fears about my ability to complete the project, and so my biggest challenge was squishing those doubting voices. I also needed to be disciplined. It’s all too easy as a writer to slip into writing when you’re in the mood or feeling inspired. Even though I knew that wasn’t a good way to approach a writing career I’d never really developed a regular writing habit and for too long I’d been hit and miss. When Beth approached me about this collaboration, she took a risk on me, and I really didn’t want to let her or myself down. So I had to be professional and disciplined, and this was also a major challenge.

What do you think you've learnt from this that will be most useful to you in future?

That I CAN finish a project to an acceptable standard, that I can write MUCH faster than I thought, and therefore I now have NO excuse not to produce a lot more work.

I also learnt a lot from the way Beth took the raw material and turned it into a polished end product. The way she knew what to exploit and how to exploit it to make the story funnier and more focussed was fascinating and the mechanics of how she did that provided a real learning curve. I’ll certainly be trying to apply some of her techniques during rewrites on my own work.

Would you recommend collaboration to other writers?

Yes, for sure. I’ve mentioned some of the many benefits above but writing can be such a solitary thing to do and collaborating with another author made it more social and much more fun. There was a great feeling of satisfaction in creating something together rather than on my own, and a sense of companionship as well. I loved seeing the project take shape and how another author’s input could transform it in ways I hadn’t considered.

What are your writing plans for the future? Do you have a new story of your own lined up, for instance?

I’m feeling quite fired up and excited. I’m writing the first draft of a new novella and also trying to finish rewrites of a romantic suspense novella. Beth’s output and professional, disciplined approach to her writing is keeping me motivated and giving me something to aspire to. I’m also working on an MA in Creative Writing which takes up a fair bit of time but also helps keep me writing regularly. 

*** 

Now, why not read the free sample on Amazon of  

CHRISTMAS AT THE LUCKY PARROT GARDEN CENTRE?

Christmas is coming to the Lucky Parrot Garden Centre near Whitby. And along with those first flakes of snow comes a tall, dark, and highly tempting stranger ...

Hannah is a sensible, hard-working Yorkshire lass, and her heart is set on a career in landscape gardening. Not on falling in love, not even with a man as drop-dead gorgeous as Daniel Elliott. He's a film producer, for goodness sake, more used to Hollywood parties than stomping about in muddy wellies.

But as the evenings draw in and the snow thickens, can Hannah resist the warmth and sparkle of this very unusual man? And if she can't, what's to say Daniel won't disappear every bit as mysteriously as he arrived?

The first in a brand-new series, this cosy, festive romcom is the fruit of a collaboration between popular author Beth Good and romance newbie Viki Meadows. Perfect for fans of Jane Linfoot, Jenny Colgan, and Milly Johnson.

 

Guest Post: Su Bristow on the writing of SEALSKIN

This week, novelist Su Bristow shares with us the mechanics and mystery behind the writing of her debut novel, SEALSKIN.

SEALSKIN: Amazon UK

SEALSKIN

What happens when magic collides with reality?

Donald is a young fisherman, eking out a lonely living on the west coast of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous ... and makes a terrible mistake. His action changes lives - not only his own, but those of his family and the entire tightly knit community in which they live. Can he ever atone for the wrong he has done, and can love grow when its foundation is violence?

Based on the legend of the selkies - seals who can transform into people - Sealskin is a magical story, evoking the harsh beauty of the landscape, the resilience of its people, both human and animal, and the triumph of hope over fear and prejudice. Rich with myth and magic, Sealskin is, nonetheless, a very human story, as relevant to our world as to the timeless place in which it is set. And it is, quite simply, unforgettable.

Su Bristow: Hi Jane, and thank you for the invitation to write a guest post for 52 Ways To Write A Novel.

My debut novel, Sealskin, came out in February this year, published by Orenda Books. Does that qualify me to talk about how to write a novel? Of course not! All I can do is tell you how I wrote this one. The process will certainly be different next time; for a start, Sealskin took years to write. I don’t think I’ll ever match your speed, but it won’t take quite so long the second time around. I’ve learned – I hope! – a thing or two along the way.

But I do have a day job, so writing happens when other things don’t. And a lot of the process, for me at least, happens when I’m not sitting at the computer. Bits of plot fall into place, characters develop, and whole passages of dialogue unroll themselves while I’m walking, or gardening, or driving; anything that doesn’t need full concentration. The actual word count doesn’t tell anything like the whole story.

That’s true for most people who write, of course, but I gather it’s quite unusual not to have blizzards of post-it notes around your desk, or time-line diagrams, lists of characters and so forth. All of that was inside my head until I actually came to write it down. Is it more or less efficient that way? Well, I did try writing notes now and then, but I never looked at them again, so they were pretty much redundant.

Author of SEALSKIN: Su Bristow

However, Sealskin is a retelling of a legend, so the basic structure of the story was already there. I knew how it started and how it ended; my job was to colour in the picture, add some twists and turns, and make sense of the huge moral anomaly at the heart of the story. For those who haven’t come across it before, the story comes from the west coast of Scotland, and it tells how a young fisherman witnessed a marvel one moonlit night: nine seals came ashore, took off their skins and became young women, dancing naked on the beach. He hid one of the skins, so that one of the selkies – as they are called – could not go back to the sea, and he ‘took her home to be his wife’.

And there’s the problem. Is this really a sweet, sad, romantic tale? It’s usually told that way, but the selkie woman has no choice, and certainly does not consent. She mourns for her lost life, and when the chance comes to return to the sea, she does not hesitate, even though, by then, she has human children whom she has to leave behind. As a younger woman, I might have told it as another example of how women can be used by men, tricked into servitude for sex, domestic labour and childbearing. But these days I’m more interested in how people find their way through the traumas that life deals out, and how getting it wrong at first can teach us, if we’re willing, how to get it right for ourselves and for others. After all, I’ve spent most of my working life helping people to do just that.

So I decided to tell the story from the point of view of Donald, the young fisherman. How did he come to do this dreadful thing? And if he came to regret it and tried to make amends, how would that work? I told it in deep third, so that we are always inside his head.  That was partly because Donald himself – at least at first – has trouble seeing things from other people’s point of view, but also because I wanted to follow his emotional and spiritual journey as he slowly, painfully, begins to grow up through his love for Mairhi and his desire to atone for his crime. There is no omniscient narrator: we see the way people change through Donald’s own eyes, and through what they say and what they do. And as Mairhi herself never speaks – or at least not in words – we have only her actions to give us clues to her inner life. Like Donald, we have to learn to interpret what we see and experience. Showing, not telling, was definitely the name of the game.

I won’t say too much about the twists and sub-plots in the novel, for those who haven’t read it yet. But as I arranged it into the short chapters that some people have commented on, I had in mind the action of waves on the shore: most of them small, only changing things a little, and from time to time a bigger, more dramatic one, that leaves the landscape different and sometimes almost unrecognisable. Each wave brings something, and takes something away. Land and sea are joined in an eternal dance. They can’t be united, but there is mutual dependence. That’s one of the major themes of Sealskin, played out through all of the characters in the book.

Thanks for those insights, Su! 

I very much enjoyed reading Sealskin, and can see why it has capitvated so many readers. 

Don't get concerned about your way of working though. Some novels I've written have required complex timelines on whiteboards - mostly multiple point-of-view historicals - while other novels, like the psychological thriller I finished writing today, had nothing down on paper except a 2-page synopsis from which I strayed quite far at times. The notes happened in my head. 

So it may be down to the book in hand. Not necessarily a process we choose, or one which is good or bad, or more problematic than any other, for instance, but a response to the task we set ourselves when we write the first line of a new novel.

Best of luck with your next project! - Jane

SELECTED PRAISE FOR SEALSKIN 

‘An extraordinary book: original, vivid, tender and atmospheric. Su Bristow’s writing is fluid and flawless, and this is a story so deeply immersive that you emerge at the end, gasping for air’ - Iona Grey

‘An evocative story, told with skill and beauty, that held me spellbound until the very last page’ - Amanda Jennings

‘Sealskin is the most exquisite tale of love, forgiveness and magic. Inspired by the legends of the selkies, this gorgeous novel is a dark fairy tale, an ode to traditional storytelling, a tribute to the stories we loved hearing as children. But be warned – this is no happy-ever-after tale. The language is just glorious, poetic and rich but precise. And her characters – oh, they will remain in your heart long after you’ve closed the last page. Mairhi – especially since she never really “speaks” – is a beautiful mystery, but one who haunted me when I was between chapters. If this is her first, then I can’t wait to read whatever Su Bristow bestows upon the literary world next’ - Louise Beech

Buy Sealsin on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sealskin-Su-Bristow-ebook/dp/B01MSUB9W6

 

   

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 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.