Diary of a Writer – May Prompt

Many delegates of the upcoming RNA conference in August are currently selecting the agents/editors/publishers they would love to have a 1-2-1 with. Who, I was asked at a zoom meetng earlier this week was I targetting?

Mnm!

I did sell Courting the Countess at an RNA conference so I know how useful these 1-2-1s can be. However, I also know that I am much more stressed at conference when signed up for an interview than I want to be. Also, the writing I’ve been most engaged in in recent years has been for a specific market – DC Thomson’s People’s Friend magazine and their My Weekly pocket novels. Three of the novels, A Debt for Rosalie, Christmas at Maldington and A Maid and a Man, are now in library editions and so enjoying an afterlife.

How, you’re thinking, does this translate into a writing prompt which ought to be positive?

I do have three drafts active at present – 2 regency novels set in Scotland and the idea for a short story which popped into my head while I was on holiday in Bavaria recently. So, Courting the Countess is acting as a prompt because I know I can achieve completion of works in progress. The RNA conference is a huge prompt because, firstly, there’s an internal writing competition for one of their trophies and, secondly, hearing all about writing from your peers whets the creative appetite.

We all work at a different pace. Pop over to Capital Writers where you’ll find Cecilia Peartree drafting novel 27 in one of her series and discover that Jo Allen can draft a 27 chapter detective story in 2 hours. I think I might need a wee lie down.

So, will I/won’t I? Apply for a 1-2-1? Come by next month and find out. Meantime, remember stationary stationery reaches no editors. Keep Writing.

A wee PS At the time of writing A Maid and a Man is out on loan through the South Australia library service. Yay! And Courting the Countess is free for kindle – duration of the offer not known.

Anne

Diary of a Writer – March Prompt

TABBY ROYCE has been trained as an apothecary by her late papa. On Papa’s death, her brother and his new wife, turn her off and she has to find any work to survive. This in due course leads her to Edinburgh where she becomes embroiled in the activities of a medical household where the master and his steward, CAL MORRISON, are anatomists.

So, what greater prompt can there be than one of Ulverscroft’s fabulous covers. This is from the library edition of A Maid and a Man which is published on 1st April and I’d be hugely pleased if you were to pop into your local library and place an order.

PLR payments will be made in March and may I also thank all the lovely library borrowers who’ve made mine worth receiving. I notice that of my four books currently in the system, Courting the Countess was the most popular. Maybe I’ll get into the Edinburgh regency sitting in my files and finish it!

As some of you will know the PLR site was compromised, so I’m not able to add either Christmas at Maldington or A Maid and a Man at the moment. Even so, if you do borrow or reserve either, I hope you’ll enjoy.

Meantime I’ve sent off a summer short story, a non-seasonal short story and I’m working on a Christmas one. At least I don’t have to hire in a snow blower/maker.

Literary trivia for March: On a walking tour of Exeter many years ago, I picked up a meaning of ‘Living on a shoestring’. People incarcerated in the local debtors’ prison would tie their shoelaces together and lower them from their cell bars. Outside family or friends would tie bundles of food and other necessities to the shoestrings. The felon would haul them up.

Anne

Diary of a Writer – January 1st 2024

Happy New Year, dear readers.

It’s cold in Edinburgh although that doesn’t represent the kind of cold many people experience. My husband and I aren’t big Hogmanay enthusiasts so life is quietening down after a happy and enjoyable Christmas break. We saw family and friends and were introduced to several new faces.

On Christmas day, the capon cooked beautifully, the starter and the alternative pudding arrived on schedule and the tree didn’t fallen over. On Boxing Day, we met other members of the family and attended the one drinks’ party we’ve been invited to this year.

Are drinks’ parties out-of-fashion? Are we just becoming too old to be expected to stand for any length of time?

We held our usual family cards’ party, however, and a great time was had by all. There are leftovers. Yay! Regular readers know how devoted my catering is to the creative re-imagining of the leftover.

Tonight I’ll be cooking a trout caught by my son-in-law. Baked in butter with copious amounts of garlic and toasted flaked almonds to garnish – what could be better?

Following two+ weeks without heating, I’ll be doing some more charity knitting in 2024. Being cold is no fun.

Anne

Diary of a Writer – Out and About

Capital Writers 4/5

Anne – Jane – Kate and Cecilia will be staffing a stall. There will be writerly chat; sweeties, stocking-filler books, sweeties and piles of People’s Friend mags to leaf through.

Jennifer, we’ll miss you.

See you there?

Anne

Courting the Countess

Round Robin – November 2023 – Settings

Setting the Scene: Or as one blogger has suggested: Your scene is a sketch, not a photograph.

I thought for this one I’d do a compare and contrast.

“Tracy sat very, very still. Her hair straggled out of the bobble she’d picked up two days ago and tickled the skin around her ears. Impatiently, because she knew there was a lot of writing ahead of her, she tugged the strands of hair and wrapped them with the fraying elastic until she could hear again. The cottage was quiet. Her dad wouldn’t be back for at least an hour and her ma would be taking the chance of a bit of sleep before he came.

She slid her hand down the side of the sofa bed and caught hold of her squeezy torch. It was a nuisance and a Godsend. She couldn’t make up her mind which, but it had meant she’d finished the last lot of Maths problems and handed them in on time yesterday. If only there was more time at the after-school homework club.

She breathed in the familiar smell of damp plaster and worse – from the bucket in the corner. She was not going to spend the rest of her life in another dump like this one. No! Tracy Craig was going to be a teacher.“

“Eloise yawned. Write five hundred words on the theme of personal achievement was the latest homework assessment. Could that teacher think of anything more boring?

She shrugged out of the velour onesie Daddy had brought back from his trip to Paris. Wouldn’t the rest of them give something for this, then? She ran her fingers over the embroidered logo before dropping it on the floor. Why have a maid and hang things up yourself?

Dropping her silk nightie over her head, she sank into bed and drew her tablet across. Nothing much on her socials. Oh well, maybe this once she’d do the homework on time. Now, where was that site? The one her cousin had shown her that did all these boring essay jobs and put in a couple of mistakes to make it look real? Eloise Mack was going nowhere near any University. Her personal statements would be done in person.”

I hope I’ve given you the physical situation of each girl but also the emotional one. I think the reader can see the characters and the obstacles each faces when striving for a future. I believe they’re sketches and not simply photographs.

Anybody in West Edinburgh this morning, Saturday 18th Nov? I’m talking as part of a ‘local authors’ panel’ in Colinton library. Our slot begins at 12 noon and runs, with time for questions and mingling, till 2pm. Thorburn Road.

Below you’ll find a list of other Robins. Hope you’ll pop over to their sites for a nosey.

Anne

Dr. Bob Rich  https://wp.me/p3Xihq-33K

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Diary of a Writer – November Prompt

It’s always a prompt to see a past title re-emerge in a different imprint. Today is publication day for Christmas at Maldington, large print, from Ulverscroft.

Please enquire at a library near you.

Anne

Round Robin – Sagging Middles

This month’s topic from our organiser, Skye, is ‘How to Fix a Sagging Middle’.

I imagine every writer has been there. Things are going along just fine when you realise that is a problem. The protagonist needs things to be going from bad to worse in order to retain reader sympathy, empathy and interest.

It’s occasionally the moment when my brain says something on the lines of:

“That’s why she didn’t open the garden shed!”

It, my brain, was building in a little foreshadowing. At the moment of writing the sentence about not opening the garden shed, I would likely have been wondering what it had to do with anything so far written about but, Bingo! its moment has come.

However, such luck cannot be relied on so how does one deal with a sagging middle?

One can introduce a new character. Obviously, this new person will have a position that makes their arrival appropriate or even inevitable. Perhaps your story is set in an hotel and the premises have just received their annual certificates of fitness to function. How about having the character who’s been pacing the boundaries arrive and ask whether your central character knows the bridge leading out of the village to the hotel’s drive is to be closed for three months for repairs?

One can look closely at the scenes just completed and wonder whether they would be more arresting if written in dialogue.

One can go right back and see whether there are any narrative strands that have had less attention than some of the others that made it through. This is similar to the luck of remembering some foreshadowing but involves the writer in consciously inserting foreshadowing or reinforcing a passing reference.

The solutions found by my fellow robins are on their blogs, accessed below.

On 1st November Ulverscroft large print publishers will be releasing a library edition of Christmas at Maldington. Here’s the cover:

Anne

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-322

Anne Stenhouse https://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Diary of a Writer – Speaking about the Craft

A wee head’s up to those in the Edinburgh area. I’ll be speaking in Colinton Library about writing The Long Serial and The Short Novel on Saturday 18th November. This is as part of a group of local authors:

Jenny Robertson, Sarah Byrom, Chikamso Kanu and me, Anne Stenhouse.

My slot is 12.55.

The Pentlands Book Festival has been going for some years now and spreads out to several venues. All the details are on their website

I do hope you find something to suit.

Anne.

Diary of a Writer – Christmas is Coming

Just found the brilliant cover is up in Ulverscroft’s catalogue. Thought I’d share.

May be coming to a library near you.

Genni Kilpatrick needs peace to recover from the shock of witnessing someone die in front of her on her television programme. Can Maldington House provide that peace? How about local electrician, Paddy?

ROUND ROBIN – POINT OF VIEW

What is your favorite POV to write and/or read and why? This month’s question gets a lot of people hot under the collar.

Writing mainly in the romance world, my favourite Point of View (POV) is third person and of the female protagonist. But, in novel length work, I will have a few chapters, or part of each chapter, written in the POV of the main male protagonist.

Why do I choose this one?

Okay, for centuries (since time began) other people have told and will tell you what you think. It drove me crackers as a child without agency and in a male dominated world that has been very slow to change, it continues to do so.

Enter the writing habit. Why would I want to silence my female characters by having their world viewed in the omniscient author voice? Why would I want to use the second person which always strikes me as being a description of happening more suited to journalism? Why would I want to use the first person which leads to all sorts of tangles trying to get enough information onto the page?

This is not to say that I haven’t read and admired many works written in both first and second person – it simply isn’t my choice.

Holding the POV steady is challenging. When I taught creative writing, it was one of the issues many people found very hard to get a handle on. There is a temptation to allow other characters to make observations on their circumstances rather than allow the protagonist to tell us so that we understand what she thinks about them.

“Mary-Jane knew that if she turned the cake plate she could choose the meringue as it would be nearest to her.” is fine but: “Alice watched Mary-Jane turn the cake plate. They’d been told by their mum to take the cake nearest. Alice knew Mary-Jane would grab the meringue again. It was so unfair, but mum never seemed to notice.” Let’s us into the world of two siblings vying for their mum’s attention (and meringues).

Introducing some space for the hero allows the reader to support the heroine but also to see how she might be misunderstanding the guy. It enrichs the overall text by allowing us to see how the hero rounds out – what he’s like among his friends, family, colleagues.

Now, is Georgette Heyer my favourite historical romance writer? Could be. Does she change POV to the extent she might be accused of head-hopping in some places? Could be.

Ah well!

How do you do POV?

Only a few robins chirping this month but I’m sure they’ll all have interesting points to make.

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

A.J. Maguire http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_th