How to make the most of a writing retreat

This is the third and final post I will be writing about the retreat I went to on 9 May. The answer to the above is not eating most of the below (our table of cakes). Yes, I did eat a fair amount of them.

I am talking about writing. Not just what you take to the retreat to write, but how about where you are staying? Last year, I picked up a leaflet about the history of the place and its founder. I thought, this would make great articles. Perhaps I could get more info about them next time. So, this year when I got there, I asked the staff there, mentioning I was going to write articles, if they had more info I could have. They showed me a folder which had a chapter about the family. They also gave me two thick wads of info about the founder and the place. All useful fodder for planned articles. So, in the afternoon, as well as writing a bit on a couple of main projects I had with me, I researched articles in the magazines I had with me, and drafted out three travel articles. The last morning there, I finished drafting the third article, so gave back the two wads of papers to the staff.

That is what I mean when I say make the most of a writing retreat. Where you go, does it have a history? Can you write articles about the place? About the person who owned it? About the food there? Don't forget to take lots of photos when you're there. I did. I took photos of all round the house and grounds, in case they are needed if your work is accepted.

I emailed the first article with photos this morning. Have to wait now to see if it is accepted or not. Two more to type up in the meantime. Watch this space...

Retreat Part 2 - What I learnt

This is part two where I talk about what I learnt at the retreat. There are three different ways I learnt: about plot, about one of my characters in Charlie and about myself.

I didn't learn that much about plot, but what I did learn was that you can write a book in verse instead of prose, the traditional way. Eg Robert Paul Weston's first book is in rhyming verse. You can do it as diary format, either by journal, blog or text. This was in Elizabeth Wein's second talk during the weekend. We did exercises, and it was doing one of these where we had to write the first scene in the pov of another character that I learned a bit more about Charlie's little sister, Wendy. I learned that she cared about him, which doesn't come across in what I had already written. So I am going to add a scene where Charlie faints and sees her looking at him concerned.

So that is what I learnt about plot and one of my characters. About myself: I learnt that although I'm an Aspie, if I want to find out something from someone or connect with someone for a reason, then I will go and do it. After I had the one-to-one with the agent, who suggested I try writing to niche publishers, I remembered that a couple of the others were primary teachers. Would they know about reading matter for special needs children? I approached one of them, Zoe Boyd-Clack, whom I recalled was a primary teacher, and she kindly phoned her brother, whose partner works with special needs children to ask about what books they read, to find out which publisher the books are by. I have yet to hear, but I do hope I do. So, that is what I mean by when I want to do something, I do it.

If I hear any news about that, I will let you know. It was a great weekend. I got a lot of writing done (more on that in the next post), made contacts and got ideas on where to send my Asperkids series to.

RNA workshop/retreat day on 15 Feb 2014 - and what I learnt

Last Saturday I made my way on bus to Holborn to go to the RNA London/SE workshop/retreat day. I passed where that car was smashed in by falling bricks from a building. Horrible. Feel so sorry for her family. Anyway, I got there in time to get a good seat.

It started at 10.15 with Julie Cohen and her talk about learning structure with Pixar films. I've not seen it before and thought it was great. We watched the beginning of Wall-E, and I got a new take on it. It's about a lonely robot who finds love in a deserted world of rubbish. I liked the underlying message about recycling more or the world can be like this. We also watched a clip of Finding Nemo, where the main plot and the subplot meets. This is what I learnt: plot structure is structure of the emotional arc. We were given the three act structure of the film Cars. Backstory at the start of the story can be used in the setting as in Wall-E, where we see papers on the ground about trash covering Earth. Pixar starts their films with emotional arc. They have repeated motifs eg in Wall-E, holding hands means love. The subplot - thematic plot. More plot and add to character. Cars has a circular structure where the ending reflects the start of the film - the main character is in a car race, which is how he began the story.

After Julie came Laura Longrigg and Laura Gerrard, Jean Fullerton's agent and editor. They both said that it is the voice and USP being great is what they look for. If you are a member of the NWS, you can mention this in a query letter to them. Also, add a section about you. Your background, why you wrote the story, what you like to read etc.

Then came the '10 Common Mistakes that authors make' and this is where I learnt a lot and came to a decision.
Plotting - know your characters inside and out. Never forget your readers are interested in relationships. Start at a critical point in the story. Work in any backstory subtly. Don't put in mundale details such as making cups of tea. Know your market and readership. Know your publisher requirements (I will check the few publishers I have in mind for a romance I will shortly be working on). If it has a saggy middle then the story hasn't been thought through properly. Have a satisfying ending. Make your characters likeable. The reader has to ID with them, so the story has to be believable. The hero - the reader has to desire him, and want the heroine to want him too. Understand where you want the story to go before starting or the characters won't progress. Don't make the plot entirely driven. In an edit, you can highlight the external and internal conflicts to work this out).
POV - don't head hop unless you're Nora Roberts. Tell not show. Get POV right and experience what your character is feeling. Use emotion and feeling not reportage. And get your punctuation right for speech.

What I learned from that last talk by Melanie Hilton, the NWS organiser, was to make your story believable. In the romance novel that I plan to work on later this year, I was going to have a ghost in it, but I now feel that won't be believable so what the ghost was going to do will be done by the young male neighbour, who falls in love with a librarian, who happens to be the granddaughter. I can't wait to rewrite the book now, but have two projects to work and complete before that.

SCBWI Retreat - What I did; being brave

I forgot to say in the last post that on the Saturday afternoon I had a one-to-one with Lucy Christopher. I told her that I'd now added a new angle of the main character, Billy, being autistic. We talked about it all for 20 mins, and I had an encouraging chat with her about it. So encouraging, that the following morning, when I found myself sitting next to Rebecca Frazer of Orchard Books in the bar, I approached her about Billy. I asked her outright if she took submissions for 7+. She said yes, they concentrate on series fiction. Then I talked to her about the book and what I'd planned. She was v interested in it. I was heartened about it, and decided that weekend I wouldn't self-epublish first but query it with publishers again. We did writing in the morning. I drew family trees and shop layouts for the village Singleton. It helped me flesh out the series more.

In the afternoon we had a talk by Lucy Christoper and how she writes her books. Then more writing. By that time, my head was going a bit fuzzy so I decided to do some highlighting of Life instead of writing. Much easier on the brain.

We had dinner in the evening, which was gorgeous as ever. I think I had vegetables with cous cous, but added new potatoes and veg with it. I had fruit salad for dessert, and was the only one.  I have to say that the food they provided was delicious, and very helpful to me and my dairy intolerance. So much so, that during the afternoon when I asked if they had dairy free biccies, they took out some nice Freefrom ginger cookies, and later on some choc chip ones.

That night, we had a pj party. A few of the others did change into their nightwear. In a circle, (I was on the outer circle so I could sneak away), we had to read out something that we'd written that weekend. I read out a dark magic piece where the trees and the weather got rather windy when the character went through them to go to work.

Monday morning, and last day there. I worked on Billy, starting to get it ready to email to Rebecca. Then Rebecca gave a talk about Orchard Books. She told us what they did, what they were looking for, and what interested me was someone asked if they were interested in taking on authors with packaged series ideas themselves, and she said yes. After that, I told Rebecca my pitch for Billy, which I had just worked out, and she told me to send it to her when I'd finished it. So that is what I've been doing this week, and plan to email the synopsis, 3 chapters and outline for series next week.

All in all, I had a very heartening and successful retreat. Although I know others didn't.