These are the questions that most people always want answered. They’re about my own writing but also about how you can start writing and get published yourself. If you don’t find the answer you want here, then post a question in the comment box at the end of the page and I’ll reply as soon as I can. For those of you who’ve written or are writing a novel or screenplay and are wondering what to do next, this is an interesting link:

http://ow.ly/WNwv

Sheila

This question always makes me feel as though I should have woken up one day and decided that I was going to be an author. It didn’t happen like that for me and I’m sure it doesn’t happen like that for most people. From the moment my mother read me my first bed-time story and told me that it was now time to go to sleep, I’ve made up stories of my own. I always enjoyed creative writing at school and would regularly write short stories for my own amusement. In fact I wrote a very Enid Blyton like school story when I was around twelve or thirteen which I used to do in installments; and I bribed my sisters to do my share of the housework by promising them a new chapter every time they took over the vacuuming.

As I got older I sent in a few short stories to magazines. Some of them were published, most weren’t. The whole idea of writing a novel was always with me and I started about a hundred different ones but never got past the first chapter. But in 1994 I bought a computer and suddenly it became easier because I could edit as I wrote so I decided that the time had come to write a novel from beginning to end. Which is what I did.

It’s probably about a year from beginning to end and that includes all the messing about at the start when I’m not 100% sure what I’m writing about as well as the editing process and then reading through the proofs at the end.

Well, if they were I would have been married and divorced by now, have had a number of affairs, moved to Spain, been jilted at the altar…no, they’re not. But of course there’s a part of you in all of the main characters, even the ones you don’t like.

Not any real-life situations that I’ve been through myself although, again, you do draw on your experiences when you’re writing but you adapt them. So I’ve been to the places in my novels and I’ve either done the jobs that my characters do or researched them. One of the great thrills of writing is being able to be a different person to the sort of person you are yourself – so I love writing about tall women because I’m short, or glamorous women because I’m not at all myself. I do like writing characters with interesting jobs because I like to see women getting on in life.

The most pressurized part of it for me was getting up at 6.30 every morning. I am not a morning person! I always think that other people’s jobs sound much more difficult than your own and although there was pressure you could deal with it.  It was very interesting because you needed to know what was going on in the world politically and economically all the time and we were all news junkies.  One of the hardest things about giving it up was not knowing what was happening all around me all the time.

Lots of people tell me that they would love to write but they haven’t got the time. I think that if it’s something you really want to do you will find the time somehow. I used to write late in the evenings and my social life went to pot, but it was something I felt I had to do.

First of all you have to have an idea, whether it’s based on a type of character or a particular plot. And then (sorry for being obvious here) you sit down and you put words on the page. The big thing is not to keep trying to get the first paragraph perfect at the very start – do enough to get yourself into it and then you can go back and polish up what you’ve already done. This was what I was hopeless at at the very beginning. I used to keep trying to get everything perfect before moving on. Now I realise that once I get going and write a bit it’s actually easier to go back and get that perfect opening paragraph.

Based on personal experience I wouldn’t send it to a publisher at all. I’d send it to an agent. This might sound crazy because you’re thinking you want to get it to the people who can actually publish it, not someone who’s going to take a cut of your money, but believe me, it’s good business sense. The publishing industry is a business like everything else and if you don’t know the business you don’t know some of the pitfalls. An agent does. Plus, your agent will know the publishers who are looking for a certain type of book, for example, and will be able to pitch yours to the people most likely to accept it. I was once talking to a guy who said that he’d sent his book to heaps of publishers but had no luck. When I asked about the book he said that it was a science fiction novel. But he’d sent it to publishers who didn’t have a science fiction list. He did this on the basis that they might like to break in to science fiction, but the reality is that most publishers want stuff that they already know how to market! He would have had better luck going to recognised sci-fi publishers. And if he’d had an agent, that’s what the agent would have done. I know that all writers think of their work as their creative baby, but you’ve also got to think of it as something that someone else is going to have to sell.

The Writers & Artists Yearbook is a mine of information about agents, publishers and lots of other things to do with the literary world and well worth buying. You can also subscribe online.

We all hear the stories of publishers’ desks groaning under the weight of unsolicited manuscripts but at the same time they are also always on the look out for new talent. As well as which, they’re also looking for new and original voices. But the fact is that you need to be lucky as well. There are plenty of stories about rejected manuscripts which eventually get published and become mega-selling books. You have to have faith in yourself and what you’re trying to write. One of my favourite quotes is “a published author is just an amateur who wouldn’t quit.” Don’t quit.

Never write anything that you don’t believe in. When I’m writing I honestly do become my characters (a bit disconcerting for those close to me, especially if I’m writing a pregnant woman, for example, and start complaining of back pain!).  I love reading thrillers myself but I know that I wouldn’t be able to keep to a nice, taut plot-line because I’d be wondering what the spy’s mother would be thinking about her involvement in the CIA or something so I know it just wouldn’t work. If you try to write romantic fiction but you just can’t bear dealing with people’s relationships, that isn’t going to work either. You really must write the story that’s most important to you.

I really don’t have a favourite. When I’m writing them, each one is my favourite. Afterwards I panic that I cold have told the same story much better.  I spend most of my time feeling that I have a great idea and then thinking that I’ve never quite done it justice. Later, though, when I look back on them, I think they’re not so bad after all. I get totally involved with all of my characters and I refer to the books by the names of the lead characters rather than the titles. So I call them Gemma and Ash, for example, instead of Far From Over and My Favourite Goodbye.

I enjoy the depth that novels allow me to give characters and the storyline but I like the discipline of the short story where you have to get so much into so few words. There’s also a more immediate sense of achievement!

All authors are supposed to have this mythical notebook! I tell other people to get one. But I’ve never quite got around to it myself. And I’m sure I’ve forgotten great plot-lines because I haven’t got a notebook!

Not working nine to five.

Feeling guilty because you’re watching TV instead of working!