Speakers

NWC Programme for the Year

 

7^th March 2012 - Andy Smart

A journalist with the Nottingham Post giving a talk on 'How to Impress an Editor'.

 

2^nd May 2012 - Carol Burns

Editor of The Leicestershire Magazine and others.

 

6^th June 2012 - Roy Bainton

Catching up with his usual witty banter.

 

4^th July 2012

To be arranged.

 

5^th September 2012

To be arranged.

 

3^rd October 2012

To be arranged.

 

 Previous Speakers

 

February 2012
Avril Joy

Author spoke about her journey to publication.

 

January 2012
Chris Nickson

Making History Live Nottingham author of detective series set in the past.

 

October 2011
Carl Felstrom

Carl had been due to speak to the club in July 2010, but the tragic shooting incident taking place in Cumbria meant he'd had to cancel.

Though Carl is now a freelance journalist, he started out in regional newspapers and worked his way up until he became News Editor at the Page One Press Agency.

During his time in the regional press an obituary report of a soldier named Grant Mann led Carl to Croatia in 1992 (in the middle of a war zone) and arrest for two days as a Serbian spy. It was many years later before the truth surrounding the death was revealed. Carl said he was "trying to make sense out of chaos" to get the facts over.

Journalism today is global and Carl felt it was "almost too fast" with "no time for analysis"; research is easier with available databases and the electoral role to search for people on.

This led to an interesting discussion on 'hacking' and some of the reasons that he felt had led to the situation: laziness from having so much information available digitally, so journalists have lost the connection with the community (which was essential in pre-digital days) and the celebrity culture becoming more important.

Carl talked about the problems his book, Hoods, had created for him. The book was about organised crime but became linked with the person on the cover photo, making it personal, when Carl had no say in the cover choice and the implications for him.

He is researching a second book (unconnected to his first) but will go with self-publishing, probably as an e-book, this time.

It was a lively evening of discussion which carried on into the Q&A session.

 

September 2011
Alex Davis talking about Publication

Alex has worked for years in different areas of publishing and is well known for running the Alt Fiction annual event in Derby.

He started his talk with 'I thought I knew about publishing but I was proved wrong.' He then shattered ten publishing myths.

1. As an author I can take as long as I like on my book.
   Only for the first one. After that you will have tight deadlines, and you'll probably only have 3 to 6 months to write for a publisher.
2. Nobody gets to make changes to my books.
   Publishers employ copy editors and proofers who will make changes.
3. As an author I have the final say on changes.
   No, the publisher has the final say on how the book goes out.
4. I can change from my synopsis if I like.
   If you say you're going to write a book in a certain way, you must write it that way. Minor changes are okay, but anything major you have to discuss with your publisher. Negotiate as you go along. Future synopses must have more details and are usually about ten pages long. The publisher needs to know about the book they will put their name to because this affects marketing. Small press works differently as they usually want to see the whole manuscript.
5. As an author I have a key role in the book cover.
   You have no say except in the early stages. This is a job for the marketing team.
6. If I'm running late, I'll keep quiet.
   This is the biggest way to upset your publisher. Being late is bad enough. Not telling them is worse. Everything is deadline driven and publishing is a business like any other.
7. A lot of people expect quite a lot of money for their first book.
   Most people don't make a great deal. Usually about £2,000 to £3,000 advance. The massive advances go to people like JK Rowling and they get into five figures.
8. I expect my publisher to do all my marketing and publicity.
   These days authors are expected to do most of their own marketing as the publisher's budget goes to their big names. Get a website, go on Twitter, Facebook and in person at events.
9. I don't have to do events if I don't want to.
   Yes you do, it's expected. You have to go out there and talk about your book(s) - at readings, conferences and literary festivals.
10. my publisher needs me more than I need them.
    You won't believe the arrogance of some people. Publishers receive thousands of manuscripts, they have the pick of the writers and they can do a lot of things you can't.

After your first book has been accepted ...

• Covers - these are a curious business. They will follow successful trends and probably won't reflect what's inside the book.
• Fees - an advance, and if the book does well enough to recover that money, the author will then receive royalties. They usually start at 7.5 per cent and the good thing is they rarely run out. PLR is not increasing this year and there is now talk about phasing them out.
• Copywrite - this always belongs to the author.
• Series of books - publishers like books in a series to always go out on the same month in the year as this is what readers expect.
• Pitching - one to two pages. If a publisher likes this, they'll ask for a synopsis which is about ten pages. This will go through a lot of re-writes until everyone is happy.
• Genres - the line between genres is very hard. Authors don't like to be put in a box but it's important for the publisher because it decides where it will go in the bookshops and on websites such as Amazon. And if you work in different genres, best to use different pen names as you will usually be working with different publishers. The genre, Dark Romance, didn't exist until the Twilight books came out.
• Deadline - keep to it and keep the publisher sweet. You may get less than six months as this depends on the publisher's plans.
• Payment - a first book is paid for on completion and acceptance, after that you may get paid on production of the synopsis.
• Editing - big edits are done by an editor with the author. Once these are agreed, the copy editor will check continuity, grammar, spelling, facts and use of language. After this the author gets the last chance to make small changes.
• Copies - when the book is out, the author will receive early copies and about a month after that it should be on the shelves.
  Once this has happened, get on with the next book!

Alex gave far more information that it's possible to write here so I hope the above is as useful to those reading as it was to the ones listening.

 

July 2011
Jeremy Duffield

Jeremy has been Chairman of Nottingham Poetry Society for many years, and is a talented poet himself, but he is also a successful author and playwright. On 6th July he led an enjoyable and fresh short story writing workshop, attended by about twenty members.

He began by emphasising the importance of character in the building of a short story - indeed, many writers begin with a character, or maybe two, and allow them to shape the story as it is written. The often quoted saying 'my characters took over the plot' proved to be true for Jeremy, even though he had doubted its veracity at first.

So our initial writing exercise was to think of the various qualities which might define someone. For example: name, age, social class (education, occupation, how do they speak and how does this change depending on who they are talking to), their habits, their politics, where they live, etc.

We were then given a postcard depicting a person and had to invent a character from the picture, using the qualities we'd listed. It was quite a challenge to build a complete character in fifteen minutes, but then we had to swap our cards with someone and invent a second character for our story.

Strangely enough, after I'd acquired my two people, it seemed easier to imagine them moving forward and interacting. But after we were given another postcard with a picture of the 'setting' for our story, things changed! This was proving to be more difficult than it seemed.

After the break - where to find ideas for stories? Sources could be news reports, variations on traditional tales and films, and the themes given by competition adjudicators.

Jeremy was very keen on the latter, and urged members to enter club competitions - an activity which had proved fruitful for him.

Finally, a valuable list to remember.

DO

• Make good use of a set theme
• Set your story in a short period of time - hours or days
• Keep it simple - not enough space in a short story for too many plot twists
• Read your story aloud - you'll see its faults more easily
• Decide on a viewpoint and stick to it.

DON'T

• Use too many characters
• Use a lot of description or add unnecessary verbiage
• Write a preamble - it will put the reader off

So the message was - just get straight into the story, which is what we did in the workshop and, hopefully, what most of us will continue to do at home.

 

June 2011
Carole Coates

Carole says that she has a distinctive slant on life drawn from a somewhat unusual mixture of social experiences - working class background, exclusive convent school education, 1970's feminism, an academic career, etc. - and her poems reflect all this.

Carole started writing in her forties and writes autobiographical poems using inspiration from all of the above. Her childhood living in a Catholic house with a powerful mother and grandmother who told her that 'little girls should not sit around reading books'. She had no toys and many of her clothes were hand me downs which Carole wasn't bothered by, and some of her earliest memories were of bomb damage and rationing.

The Catholic school where she was educated by nuns and often in trouble for asking 'rational questions', and on to university where she studied English Literature. She was the first person in her family to go.

She suffered from anorexia in the sixties which was a time when it wasn't recognised, and many of her poems such as Falling Down and High are taken from this period.

As her poems are taken from her life, she thought that diaries would be a great source of inspiration, but they weren't, so she relies on memories. Her poems work on rhythm rather than rhyme and she has had several anthologies published.

After the break, Carole gave us some useful writing exercises to try.

• Take the initials of your name and write a list of words that come to mind.
• Directed free writing - take a word and spend five minutes writing anything that comes into your head about that word. Don't stop to make proper sentences, punctuate or anything - just write. Do this every day.
• Take something you love be it sweets, books, TV shows or films and list as many as you can think of in five minutes.
• Clustering. This is a non-linear way of generating material and getting to grips with a subject. Start with a word in the middle of a page of paper. Draw a line from it to a space and write a related word. Draw another line, write another word and so on until you've filled the page.
• Draw a floor plan of the first house you remember. Place an X on a room and talk about it as if you are the guide pointing out its features and history.

This was all a lot of fun and made the time fly by.

 

May 2011
Peter F Hamilton

Peter (the one on the right) had a different way of giving a talk. He brought along his friend, Neil, to ask questions which he then answered. It was different and fun, and the audience got to ask their own questions after the break.

He says he's not popular because his first book was accepted by the first publisher he sent it to, a man who'd read one of his short stories. He got a three book deal out of that. That first book was Mindstar Rising.

These are big books, with a total of approximately 1.2 million words (although he didn't set out to make them that long) and he thinks his readers probably appreciate being able to read these on Kindle. Books will be as long as the story needs them to be, and take a lot of time to write.

He starts each book with an idea - often from the New Scientist magazine - then creates the world and characters. They have to be completely real to him, because if he doesn't believe in them, how will anyone else? He always starts with the idea and the plot and characters come out of that and makes extensive notes before starting the novel so writer's block is never a problem. And it's proved lucrative. A book of such notes has been published and it paid for a holiday in the Maldives.

Peter finds that every story has its own length and he can tell from the nature of the idea how many books it will need.

Re characters, Peter has more fun writing people who have opposite opinions to him. Bad guys don't have to be bad, but they do have to have reasons for what they do. He also loves writing about people he hates but secretly envies.

When asked about his own reading, he admits he does very little now. He's a slow reader, usually while on holiday, so it's only about three books a year. He's also careful about the books he recommends as a good read, especially to his younger audience as the sci fi classics that inspired him would now seem very outdated. Who under the age of about 20 would understand what a valve is?

When it comes to including technology in novels, it's best to keep it simple and not go into details. That way the story is 'future proofed' because whatever you think you've invented will one day seem very old fashioned. He once thought he'd invented a great communication device called a cyber fax - it's now called a Blackberry!

People have a romantic idea of writers, that they work for a couple of hours then spend the rest of the day in the pub. Peter wishes he could, but in fact he works at least 8 hours a day and structures his time around his children. He has a nice office, is his own boss and breaks for lunch when he wants.

He starts each writing day with going over the work from the day before. He edits and polishes in the morning, and in the afternoon writes on. Some days nothing gets written and on others the words flow but considers himself in real trouble if he can't come up with a single idea.

Most of the time he meets his deadlines, but not always, and if there's a deadline looming the eight hours a day increases to as many as he needs to get finished.

Peter goes each year to Eastercon because he says 'It's good for me to get out in the real world.' He gets feed back which he usually ignores because he writes for himself not a particular audience. Writing for what's popular doesn't work because good writing comes from inside.

There's a degree of literary snobbery about sci fi but it doesn't bother him. Besides, accountants love the genre because it's popular and it makes money.

Peter says writers have to have three things: the ability to build a story, ability to write prose and they have to have discipline. Many have two out of the three. The ones who have three, you'll find in Waterstone's.

 

March 2011
Maxine Linnell, Novelist and Psychotherapist

Maxine has been writing since age four and took it up seriously in 2004. She writes young adult fiction, poetry and short stories, and is a member of the Leicester Writers' Club.

She's read avidly since she was able and used the library all the time. When she'd finished all the children's books, she moved to adult fiction because, back then, there was nothing in between.

Maxine studied English Literature at University but in those days it was simply about reading and studying what was written in 19th century. There was no actual writing involved, and she was left with the feeling of 'what's the point?'. She couldn't compete with these great writers and there was nothing she could say better than they did.

Instead of books, she wrote a couple of short stories for Radio Bristol and was paid the princely sum of £2 for the global rights! She also wrote short stories and poems.

In her early twenties, she wrote a book for children, but when the publisher she sent it to suggested she wrote for older children, she took this as a rejection and gave up.

Maxine trained as a psychotherapist because she's fascinated by people and wants to understand how they operate. While doing that she wrote studies, reports and essays. Her ambition was to be a writer but wasn't writing what she wanted to.

It took 18 months of illness to make her realise that there was no time to lose so she told her mum she was going to do it. Mum replied, 'Can't you wait until you retire?'

Maxine ignored her and her first book, Vintage, was published in May 2010. It's about two teenagers who swop lives, one from 1962 and the other from 2010. So many experiences are packed into the teen years, and they have a great interest in love and sex which has to be included. She used short chapters and swapped between the two girls in the different time zones. Writing for this age group, Maxine can't help but be influenced by TV and film.

She writes in first person as she finds it helps her to get completely inside character's experience and gives a feeling of intimacy.

Her work as a psychotherapist gives her insights that help write her books but, for ethical reasons, she can never use the actual stories she's told.

Her second book, Closer, is about a family where there was abuse. This was actually her first book but when she was told by an agent that it wasn't publishable, especially for a first novel, she took this as rejection rather than helpful criticism and gave up writing it.

Maxine found writing a lonely business. She needed support and structure so took an NTU masters' degree and joined the Leicester Writers' Club. The degree forced her to write and club members gave her good criticism, help and support. She can't praise this type of club enough.

During the NTU course, she wrote Closer. She sent it to lots of agents, got a total of 19 rejections but the club told her to keep going and Penny Lane in Leicester liked it. However, she felt it was too edge for a first novel, and encouraged her to write another.

She met Penny who wanted to work with her which was very exciting. They went through ideas and Penny liked the time swop one.

Vintage took a year and a half to write and happily Ross at Five Leaves accepted it. Ross, her editor, is very thorough which Maxine appreciates as she wants feedback. She wants her books to be the best they can be.

Maxine then went back to Closer because she had faith in the book and wanted to get it published. Happily, Ross liked it and it's now being published.

 

February 2011
Michael Sylvester
Writer, business mentor and sales trainer

Michael stepped in at two days' notice when our original speaker, Carol Burns cancelled, and talked about how he came to write his book, 'Don't Upset Renee, the discovery of emotional oppression'.

At school, Michael was told over and over 'you could do better' so it was no surprise that he left school at 16 without qualifications. He is dyslexic and didn't learn to read well until he was 50. But despite this, or maybe because of it, by age 30 he was manager of a transport company.

Not long after he was sacked, probably as a result of the giant ego he'd developed, and became unemployed.

Unemployed led to long-term unemployed and then unemployable. He didn't know what he wanted to do and discussed this with Anne, his wife.

The turning point came when he went on a government scheme at Ilkeston College and discovered he enjoyed developing peoples' skills.

Michael realised he liked listening to people, helping them to understand themselves and how they could develop their skills in the workplace. He started his own company in 1986 and it is now in its 25^th year.

The book came about through a difficult relationship with his mother, who was only too happy to also tell him he 'you could do better' in many different ways. He wrote it in a state of anger and, through it, discovered his own emotional repression. He found writing it all down was therapeutic as he was able to work through his traumatic childhood and break the cycle of bad parenting.

Then he put the manuscript on a shelf.

He was told 'get it published!' so he paid to have it edited, which he regrets because the work wasn't done and he never got his money back. Eventually it was a client who helped him put the book together and he found a publisher, Troubadore.

Michael asked for it to be released on 1st April 2010 because that was exactly a year after his mother died. This was achieved with a few minutes to spare and Michael and his wife went to collect the boxes, and, on the way home they went to a pub for a celebration drink.

Michael read out a couple of chapters during the evening and it made fascinating listening as the relationship with his family unfolded.

As well as the book, Michael also now writes poetry - something else he thought impossible - and he also read out a couple of these.