Interviews Archives - The Writing Coach

An interview with Antony Johnston, author of ‘The Organised Writer’

October 2, 2020 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Inspiration, Interviews, Motivation, Productivity, The writing life Leave a Comment

Our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse is delighted to interview Antony Johnston, author of The Organised Writer, published by Bloomsbury, 1st October. As one who’s fairly obsessed about productivity for writers herself, she was intrigued to find out more about Antony’s viewpoint.

1. What led you to write ‘The Organised Writer’?

My own life and career, first and foremost. When I became a full-time writer I assumed I could just bash out words, send an invoice every now and then, and never have to worry about anything else. How wrong could I have been?

After a few years I was drowning in unfiled paperwork, lost notes, and — the cardinal sin, to my mind — missed deadlines. I knew I had to get myself organised, and it wasn’t an easy journey. That’s what led me to start writing about productivity in the context of being an author, and eventually expanding it all into a book.

2. Tell me about your own writing life – I’d love to hear a little about the type of projects that you typically work on or are currently juggling?

My career has been one of accumulation, in a way — I started out writing magazine articles, moved onto fiction and web comics, then broke into graphic novels before also writing videogames, becoming a regular public speaker, getting into podcasting, and most recently focusing on screenplays and thriller novels. The thing is that whenever I pick up a new strand, I rarely leave the old ones behind!

So, what am I juggling right now? I recently completed the rough draft of a novel, and just this week outlined another. Last month I finished almost two years of working on a big videogame script, and I’m in talks to start on a new game. I have a screenplay doing the rounds in Hollywood, and I’m working with several producers to pitch other screen projects; a couple of movies, a TV show, an animated series. Earlier this year I wrote and directed a short film, and I continue to host and produce two podcasts. Then there’s my work with the Writers’ Guild and the Crime Writers’ Association, both of which I serve as a committee member.

3. Were you always organised?

I was, until I wasn’t, and then I was again! I spent ten years in graphic design, where I was very organised and on top of everything. But as I mentioned, when I became a full-time writer I thought I could leave all that behind, and so became very dis-organised. Realising that was a mistake is what led me to devise the Organised Writer system.

4. There’s a lot of material about productivity out there. How much have you utilised systems you’ve learned from others and how much have you invented systems to suit your own needs?

Learning from other systems, most notably David Allen’s Getting Things Done, is how I started. And there’s some great stuff in GTD, but one of the most valuable things it taught me is that traditional productivity systems don’t work for a writer, or in fact any creative worker.

So I returned to first principles, and challenged myself not to just tweak an existing solution, but to answer more fundamental questions of what I was trying to achieve, and what I as a writer needed from a productivity system.

5. Is this a book only for professional full time writers?

Not at all. That’s my perspective, of course, and it’s how I use the system myself. But it’s ‘modular’, to use a geeky phrase, so you can take different parts and slot them into your existing work practices.

All improvement requires making changes, but if you’re, say, a parent with young children, of course I understand that you can’t spare four hours every day to write. But using The Organised Writer’s principles ensures whatever time you can spare is spent focusing on writing, not worrying about everything else going on in your life.

6. What kind of difference might your systems make in the typical writer’s life? Can you give an example or two?

Two of the biggest problems busy writers face are scheduling and distraction.

Scheduling in the Organised Writer system is about planning ahead while remaining flexible. It helps you create ‘breathing room’ to deal with obstacles and unexpected problems while still hitting deadlines.

Distraction, meanwhile, is a problem in all walks of life but particularly so for writers. We rely on using our imagination to conjure words — but words are also what we use to remember tasks we have to carry out, and things we need to remember, that have nothing to do with writing. When these things clash in our minds, both sides lose. Part of the system is about helping you ‘offload’ non-writing things from your mind so you don’t have to worry about them while you’re working.

7. Tell me more about the concept of ‘clean mind’?

‘Clean mind theory’ is my term for what happens when we can clear our mind of all the non-writing tasks we have to do, enabling us to focus on writing and using our imagination to its fullest.

Sitting down to write with half a dozen tasks preying on our mind — things we need to remember, chores we need to carry out, and so on — is a huge distraction. One of the biggest benefits I myself get from the system is knowing I don’t have to worry about all that stuff when I’m writing. It’s liberating.

8. You write about ‘job sheets’ for projects – what are these and are they useful for writers at all stages of their careers?

I first came across job sheets working as a designer, and since bringing them back into my life as a writer they’ve been a godsend. They’re simply a printed form which you use to keep track of a project’s status; ticking off stages like research, notes, rough draft, revisions, and so on. They enable you to see at a glance exactly what stage all of your projects are at.

They’re useful no matter where you are in your career because it’s never too early to develop a good habit. Veteran writers juggling multiple projects will find them immediately valuable, of course. But even if you’re a beginning writer with only one or two projects, learning to use job sheets now will pay off later as you take on more work.

9. What suggestions do you have for writers who are reading this whilst sitting in an office surrounded by piles of unfiled papers and chaos, wondering how on earth they would begin to become organised?

Take heart, because I was once like you! As I say in The Organised Writer itself: read the book, take a weekend to sort out your workspace, then get back to work and follow the system.

I know that might sound easier said than done. But if you’re prepared to make the effort, and committed to getting organised, within weeks it’ll become second nature.

10. Does being organised affect the quality of the art in your view? For example, let’s imagine Francis Bacon’s painting studio – a supreme mess, yet still the working environment of a genius…

But was that mess inspirational to him? Or was it simply a byproduct of his lifestyle?

In a way this is an impossible question to answer, because we can’t make a direct comparison. I can say without a doubt that I’ve done my best work since using the system. But I acknowledge that I can’t know whether that might have still been the case even if I was disorganised.

What I do know, again without a doubt, is that since using the system I’ve done more work than I otherwise would have… while conversely being much less stressed.

11. Your book also covers aspects of productivity. If you could share one piece of advice here relating to the act of writing itself – what would that be?

‘It’s easier to revise anything, even the worst writing in the world, than it is to write it in the first place.’

That’s a mantra I’ve both preached and practised for years. Again, it might sound easier said than done, but it’s absolutely true. So when in doubt, just write — because you can always come back and revise it later.

12. How can your book help writers who are working on multiple projects?

That’s the core of the first part of the book. Scheduling, task management, memory offloading, job sheets… it’s a holistic way to help you stay on top of your workload.

If you’re in control of your schedule, you know what to work on next; if you have an overview of every project’s status, you know what you need to do next; and if you’re not distracted by chores and tasks, the work you do will be better and allow you to finish each project sooner.

13. You write about organising money as a writer. What about those who are not yet making money from their writing – could your book help that move towards becoming professional?

Yes, absolutely. Talent may be the most important factor in a writing career, but hitting deadlines is a very close second. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, editors love knowing they can rely on a writer.

But besides that, getting a grip on your finances is another good habit worth developing as soon as you can. Start keeping accurate records now so that when you take on more work, and find yourself sending and chasing multiple invoices (and bills!) every month, those good habits will already be in place to help you stay on top of things.

14. What differences have you seen in the writing lives of others who have used your systems to date?

Mainly an increase in productivity and a decrease in stress. One novelist friend didn’t need help with her writing per se, but she took the calendar and scheduling system and adopted it completely to help her stay on track. Conversely, a comics writer friend was already good at juggling projects, but took clean mind theory to heart to help him write more every day.

The Organised Writer is a system that rewards good behaviour with the ultimate writer’s high — knowing you’ve done enough for the day, and can now relax. Every writer knows there’s no better feeling than that.

Thanks so much Antony – I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to explain your system and it’s been an absolute pleasure to read your fascinating book! I know many of my clients and blog readers will benefit from your ideas.

Readers of The Writing Coach blog can buy the book at a discount from Bloomsbury using the code ORGANISEDWRITER20, here: www.bloomsbury.com/theorganisedwriter (codes expires on 30th November)

Creativity and Leadership – A Guest Post by Trevor Waldock

July 15, 2019 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Guest post, Inspiration, Interviews, Literary Consultancy, Self-publishing, The writing coach, The writing life, Uncategorized, Writers 1 Comment

We are delighted to share this guest post by Trevor Waldock. Trevor is one of the best-known, and best-respected, executive coaches in Europe and has worked at the most senior level in organisations across all sectors. The author of Doing the Right Thing – Getting Fit for Moral Leadership, he is also the founder of Emerging Leaders, a charity, which aims to bring the best of leadership development to the poorest of communities in sub-Saharan Africa.

I have struggled for years with being a writer. Am I a writer? How do I know? How do I judge the answer to that question? I write. Yes. But do I write well and how do I make an honest assessment of myself? I recently published my sixth book on Amazon Kindle Doing The Right Thing, so you could say that makes me a writer. But do the four books published on Amazon Kindle carry the same weight as my books that were published by ‘real’ publishers on real paper? Is Amazon Kindle cheating? I’m sure that every writer has to wrestle with their own demons and these are just a few of mine. One of the great tensions that I have battled to resolve over the past years is the need, the desire, the urge to write, on one side and the fact that I run an international charity on the other side. In my book Jericho & Other Short Stories, I wrote a story called Poets & Engineers. It captured something of this tension. My job often demands me to be an engineer – issues of structure, details, processes, boundaries and delivery – yet by heart, I am a poet.

How to resolve such a tension? One way was to write about my work in developing leaders in both the first and third worlds, in The 18 Challenges of Leadership and To Plant A Walnut Tree. While I was writing about aspects of leadership – like my latest book Doing The Right Thing – then I could tell myself that my writing was part of my job. That way I could justify carrying on leading and carrying on writing. But that doesn’t explain my book about travelling around Rwanda with my son 11 years after the Genocide, or my short stories books, or the short book Am I Really Tired? which could be seen as work or maybe not.

The tension came to a head for me in a dream that I had a few years ago. I was trying to get back home and came to the High Street but a police line cordoned it off. As I tried to find out why I could not go down the normal route home, I discovered that someone had died there. A murder or death of some kind. So I had to find a different way home. The scene then cuts to me talking with my dad who was asking me about my writing and I was telling him how much I wanted to write. He was so overwhelmingly supportive and said he would do anything he could to support me financially and that I should just get on and write. (In real life my dad showed zero interest in my writing. I’m not sure I even told him of my aspirations). The dream was one of those shocking dreams that you know you have to listen to. The meaning of the dream, for me, is summed up by a scrap of paper that I wrote soon afterwards, which still sits on my desk. It simply says,

“Write or die”

So I made some tough changes in my daily routines. Firstly I decided that whatever the risks to my leadership role I had to write and so I set aside each morning to write and read things that would fertilise my writing. The next thing I did was talk through my ‘real’ job with a coach. What he helped me see was that I had segregated the idea of leader from that of creativity. It had become an either-or, in my mind. He came up with this idea that my strength was as a creative leader. Creativity can show itself in coming up with ideas, shaping strategy, forming new ideas and… writing about them. Reforming my identity in this way led me back to the definition of leadership that I love most and use across the world.

“Leadership is the ability to create a story that affects the thoughts, feelings and actions of others ” (‘Leading mind’ – Howard Gardner, 2011)

Leaders are authors. They create stories and they can do that with thoughts, with actions, with inventions, with innovations, with imagination and vision and with words.

So, armed with these liberating insights I am trying to be kinder to myself. To embrace the totality of who I am as a writer, rather than segment myself in someway. Writing has become like a thermometer or warning light. When I’m not writing and caught up in the operational realities of leading an organisation (the engineer) then I know that I am out of balance and very soon I will feel the ‘soul death’, as I call it, creeping upon me. So when I see that happening I stop and I write (the poet). This is no theory for me. I write this on the first afternoon of three days vacation that I’ve taken. Taking the vacation was a last minute decision, made only the night before, because I knew I was out of balance. So I stopped and I’m writing and I feel some new blood flowing through my veins today. I write because it’s who I am.

Sarah Dickinson, author of ‘Plenty Mango’ speaks with Jacqui Lofthouse (Part Two)

March 20, 2018 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Inspiration, Interviews, Marketing, Reading, Self-publishing, The writing coach, Writers Leave a Comment

Sarah Dickinson was our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse’s first proper ‘boss’ when Jacqui began her career as a graduate in 1988. Here Jacqui interviews Sarah and they reminisce about ‘the old days’, about their relationship and on the nature of business and being a writer.

Sarah Dickinson – author of ‘Plenty Mango’

Sarah, when we first met, I was a twenty-two year old graduate fresh out of university and you were a successful businesswoman, running a media training company and a radio production house. I know how impressed I was by you and all you’d achieved. I was also rather terrified of you! Dare I ask, what were your early impressions of me?

I remember you bounced into the office, fresh, eager and intelligent. I tended to rely on intuition when I hired someone and certainly in your case was proved right. Anyone who started asking me about holiday entitlement, pay or career opportunities early in the interview was unlikely to find a job with me. As for being ‘terrifying’, of course, I find that hard to believe! I like to think I led by example, not fear.

Of course, when I looked at you, in those days, all I saw was the power (who’ll ever forget our 1980s shoulder-pads!) and the success… You made it look so easy. Was it?

No, it wasn’t easy, but then it wasn’t hard either. Obama hadn’t come on the scene yet, but his ‘yes we can’ catch phrase could have been invented for me. I realise now that I’m very much a start-up kind of business woman. I seemed to have had the ability to spot a gap in the market and went for it. Hence we were the first independent radio production company in the UK, one of the first to offer media and presentation training, and way ahead of the game with TV cookery shows. Too ahead, I suspect, as we didn’t manage to get our pilot show commissioned – but we had a great time producing it.

One of the things I loved about working for you was the fact that you trusted me to do important jobs and plunged me straight in at the deep end. I edited a radio interview with Edna O’Brien on my first day in the job and was straight off to meetings with top-level corporate clients. Was it intentional, that trust – or just a necessity of getting the work done? One can certainly learn something from that ‘deep-end’ approach I think…

It was Edna O’Brien was it? I’d forgotten. Perhaps a little naively, I simply assumed you could do it. You reminded me, when we last met, that it took you nearly a week to edit. I trusted your ambition and desire to learn. In an ideal world, everyone should be given the opportunity to learn and develop in their work.

I’ll confess, I was in love with the glamour of it all too – the fridges full of Chardonnay and Perrier, the luxurious radio studio, the celebrities wandering through the door and the Christmas treats – dinners at the Groucho Club and Mosimann’s… Was that just the world you moved in, or did you cultivate a sense of glamour?

God, that Chardonnay! It looked and tasted like yellow turpentine! Something to do with the wine having been matured in oak barrels, but both us and the clients loved it!

I never ever saw The Groucho Club or Mosimann’s as being ‘glamourous’, just fun places to be. Also, because I was the main person bringing in the work, they were seductive environments for prospective clients. I remember one time at The Groucho when I was pitching for a contract, Joanna Lumley & Dawn French were lunching together. That didn’t go unnoticed by my guest. We got the job.

One thing I particularly learned from working with you – that has remained with me until this day – was the importance of a good list. I’ll never forget the regular meetings and your words ‘Jacqui, come in here and bring your list…’ Are you still a lister?

I’m still an inveterate ‘lister’, relishing crossing things off and moving unfinished tasks to the next day’s list. Psychiatrists have a name for this obsession, I’m sure.

Perhaps I also learned ‘dress for success’ – I’ll never forget the time you bought me a suit – I had £100 budget, which I spent in Jigsaw on my first proper business attire…

A 100 pounds – a lot of money then and a lot of cheek on my part. I’m not sure you were entirely comfortable though in being power dressed. Nor that the corporate side of the business was for you, but you went along with it.

Down to more serious matters (remember, I see all this through the lens of an excitable twenty-something) – looking back at it, I feel very privileged that my first boss was a woman. Was it hard to start your business in what must very much have been a male-dominated industry in those days?

This probably sounds either arrogant or foolish, but I never thought ‘how can I do this, I’m a woman’? I knew I had drive and tenacity and a wafer thin reputation as a broadcaster, but the main motivation was the desire to work in such a way that I could spend time with our two young boys as well. Ironically, of course, I probably worked much harder building up my business than if I had been employed. But the control was in my hands, and that was very important to me.

Thinking further about a ‘male dominated’ sector, although we now know there were, and apparently still are, wide wage discrepancies between men and women, the media is certainly no longer a male dominated world. I never felt in competition with men.

Jacqui Lofthouse and a former colleague back in the media training room at a recent reunion

Without doubt, working with you helped my early ambition as a writer. I was lucky enough to produce your interviews with many authors and I remember seeing the mention of the UEA Creative Writing MA in one of the publishing catalogues that landed on my desk. That definitely changed my life… as did the opportunity of hearing so many writers talk about their work. Did interviewing them influence you too?

This is the one moment in our relationship when I initially felt let down. If I’m honest – envious. I would have liked nothing better than to have waltzed into writing heaven with Malcolm Bradbury at UEA. There I was, poor little Cinderella, hacking away at the coal face. But I got over that pretty quickly and was genuinely pleased when your first novel was published.

As for interviewing authors influencing my writing ambitions, I was so preoccupied with running the business that, no, they didn’t. But I loved helping them express themselves. Edna O’Brien, about whom we talked just now, opening up her soul, and Peter Carey describing how he felt an electrical charge through his fingers when he’d find the right phrase or word.

As a small business owner today, I remain in awe at the ambition of your business – that when you set it up, you had such beautiful premises and permanent staff. What advice do you have for women in business who have similarly ambitious plans?

Find something you really like doing, be brave, be enthusiastic and be prepared to work night and day. Hope that your staff respect you, but don’t automatically assume they will like you. Always make time for feedback and constructive criticism and appreciate that no-one stays forever.

‘Plenty Mango’ by Sarah Dickinson

Now you are a writer, of course, and your book ‘Plenty Mango’ has recently been published. We speak about this in our first interview here. How did your life in business prepare you for life as a writer?

Well, in business you are writing all the time – treatments, scripts, proposals, reports, staff appraisals. It teaches you how to write clearly, how to judge tone and the important role played by grammar. Or am I being old fashioned? I still find the informality of e-mails surprising. Now that I have more time, writing has become my main focus – as you know only too well.

What general advice would you give to women looking to lead in business? Do you have any particular ways of working that others could learn from?

I think we’ve already touched on this but, if you were to ask me the one most important quality needed to lead, it has to be courage. Courage to develop, courage to delegate and, although it happens rarely, the courage to fire someone.

Jacqui (left) and Sarah (centre) with colleagues at a recent reunion.

In 2015 we had a reunion, which is how you and I met again after many years. What was it like, seeing everyone again after so long? Was it odd to see your protégées grown-up or did we seem just the same? I know that for me it was a strange experience returning to that place only as more of a grown-up and being able to talk to you in a very different way…

It was wonderful. A kind of levelling. None of us had changed (we all lied about not having aged) that much. What fascinated me the most was how differently we all remembered things. Memory is an unreliable witness, isn’t she?

‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ by Sarah Dickinson is available via either Amazon.co.uk/books or Amazon.com/books in paperback, Kindle, Audible and iTunes formats.

You can read the first part of Sarah’s interview with Jacqui, about her writing of the book Plenty Mango here.

Sarah Dickinson, author of ‘Plenty Mango’ speaks with Jacqui Lofthouse (Part One)

February 9, 2018 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Inspiration, Interviews, Marketing, Reading, Self-publishing, The writing coach, Writers Leave a Comment

It is with great pleasure that I introduce a new book and Audible recording, Plenty Mango: Postcards from the Caribbean by Sarah Dickinson. This is a very special one for me as Sarah was my first ever proper ‘boss’ after I graduated from University – aged 22, she offered me a role as a radio producer at her company Ladbroke Radio. The full story of how I met Sarah and what I learned from her as a female business-owner way back in the mid-eighties will form Part Two of this feature. But in the meantime, let’s dive into the interview and find out more about this tale of life on Montserrat and living through the volcano years.

Sarah, when I was in my early twenties, I remember working on your first book ‘How to Take on the Media’ as your researcher. How do you remember the experience of writing that book?

And a very good researcher you were! The abiding memory is of acute physical pain. I’d slipped a disc and could only get comfortable either by standing upright or flat on my back, so the physical act of writing was challenging, to say the least. But the thinking, mapping and ordering of the content was exhilarating.

I knew I ran the risk of being labelled ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, as I was revealing the tricks in a journalist’s arsenal. But I genuinely believed then, as I do still, that an interviewee has a right to know the so-called ‘rules of the game’.

Apart from being verbally mauled by Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4’s Start the Week show, the gamble paid off.

In those days, I mainly knew you as my boss, a businesswoman and a radio producer/presenter. But have you always been a writer?

From about the age of 6, I have always wanted to write. My first favourite author was Monica Dickens (no relation sadly) whose witty series ‘One Pair of Feet’, ‘One Pair of Hands’ made a big impact. Won a few writing prizes at college, but then had to earn a living, a need which occupied me, as well as bringing up a family, for many years. It’s only in the last ten years that I have the luxury of time to write continuously.

Your new book ‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ tells the story of your experience of the Caribbean island of Montserrat – how did your relationship with that island begin?

As with so many things that change the course of our lives, it was serendipity.

One summer, many years ago, I was driving through Northern France with my husband John. We were on our way to Switzerland and at one with the world. It was one of those typical straight French country roads with white ringed poplar trees on either side. Nothing coming the other way, I signalled to overtake two cars in front of me. All was well until I was alongside the first driver who decided to overtake the car in front of him. There wasn’t room for the three of us, so I ended up hitting one of the poplar trees while they drove on. John somehow got me out just before the car exploded. He saved my life.

Despite being grateful for being alive, come that winter, we couldn’t quite get over the enormity of what could have happened. So, to cheer the soul and warm the body, we headed for the West Indies, unknown to both of us, eventually finding and falling in love with Montserrat. So much so that John, who is an architect, decided to follow a dream and find some land on which he would build a group of contemporary West Indian style villas. We did find that land, 27 acres of tropical hillside overlooking sea, beach and mountains. We re-mortgaged everything we had to pay for it.

We only needed to build one more house to almost break even. And then the island’s volcano re-awoke after 400 years …..

That was in 1995 wasn’t it? I assumed everything changed for the island?

I can tell you the exact date .. Tuesday, July 18^th. I remember it was one of those glorious tropical days, bright sunshine, cooling breezes, our two teenage boys glued to their Walkmans, working on their sun tans. I was dozing on a sun lounger when it suddenly felt as if someone was trying to tip me out of it. I shouted at the boys to back off. When they looked up at me from the other end of the pool, I realised my mistake. Something very strange was happening. I learnt later that I was experiencing a tectonic earthquake, one of the indicators that a volcano is ‘waking up’.

I devote quite a few chapters in Plenty Mango to the devastation caused by the volcano and the impact that it has had on the economy and the lives of Montserratians. Tragically 19 people lost their lives, more than half the island’s population (5,000) left and those who stayed had to endure years of uncertainty.

Today, albeit very slowly, life on Montserrat is returning. I’d like to say ‘returning to normal’, but that wouldn’t be strictly true. I still jump when the 12 0’clock siren rings across the valley, and the especially adapted radio tuned to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, in case of an emergency, is never turned off. But, and I include John and I, we’re a resilient lot and we all still say of our precious little island ‘still home, still nice, still paradise.’

Sarah hard at work in the Caribbean

How did ‘Plenty Mango’ come into being?

For 40 years I have written a Christmas report on the activities of the Renton family during the past 12 months. Not surprisingly, Montserrat had a starring role. It wasn’t until about 3 years ago, when I was invited to give a series of illustrated talks ‘Living Under a Volcano’ on one of Fred Olsen’s cruise ships, that I dug out the letters. And what a valuable history they provided. At the end of each talk, I read directly from some of the letters and was surprised and gratified by how well they were received. ‘You should put them in a book’, several people suggested. So I did! Obviously, Plenty Mango is very special to me, but I think what gives it an added attraction are John’s wonderful, quirky illustrations. We have this catch phrase between us ‘I do the words, he does the pictures.’

What’s the essence of the book?

I suppose Plenty Mango is a kind of love story, between two people who share a love for a tiny island in the West Indies which, despite the ructions of a volcano, is home to about 5,000 people who care about each other and are proud of their heritage. Incidentally, it’s astonishingly beautiful.

I’ve structured the book as a series of illustrated postcards – word portraits about its history, traditions, myths and, most importantly, its people.

I believe you still live part of the year in Montserrat? How has your experience of the volcano affected your life and relationships there over the years?

There’s that quote by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ‘that which does not kill us, makes us stronger.’ As I think I was trying to say just now, the hardship has brought us all closer together and made us more determined to make Montserrat a real tourist destination. John hasn’t given up on Isles Bay Plantation and hopes, one day, to build some more villas. The British Government seems to be still hanging in there, providing much-needed aid and more and more people are returning. Of course, we’d all like things to move much faster, but we know we’re still dependent on the whims of the volcano.

It’s the characters, of course, that we remember after reading your stories …

And they are all people I know! I’ve changed the names of one or two, but not many. I’m relieved that the book has been very well received on Montserrat.

I’m often asked, do you have a favourite? Of course not, but I am forever grateful to a lovely old man, never seen without his white wellingtons, who is a dab hand at clearing storm drains. I was waiting for John who had gone in search of a particular type of screw (no mean feat on a small island) when the old man came up to me and said ‘I jus seen your Daddy, an I tole him I clean dem drains soon.’ Who needs botox with compliments like that?

Do you see the book as journalism or creative non-fiction or short stories. Did you think about ‘genre’ when writing?

I really dislike this pigeon-holing ‘genre’ thing but, if pushed, I suppose it would fit into ‘travel’.

What made you self-publish?

How long have you got? Despite knowing lots of publishers and agents and receiving some very encouraging feedback to Plenty Mango, that depressing conjunction BUT kept appearing. ‘We’d love to publish it, but travel is such a tough market’, ‘Love the text and the illustrations, but all that colour would make it expensive to publish.’ Those are from people who bothered to reply; there were an awful lot of who didn’t. So, self- publish it was.

What has the experience of self-publishing been like compared to traditional publishing?

It’s much harder! You need cash, time, determination and, in my case, a technical guru. First of all, John and I set up a small publishing company called Tamarind Press (just in case we needed it later on). Because my media background is as a reporter/presenter, I decided, initially, to record all the stories and try and get them played on radio or on some of the airlines flying to the West Indies. It meant finding a producer and hiring a radio studio but, as I’d been in the business for some time, that wasn’t difficult. I’d also heard of an organisation called ACX who operate as an intermediary for Amazon’s audio imprint Audible and iTunes. There is no upfront charge and, once satisfied with the quality of your submission, will add it to their catalogue. ‘Look no further,’ I thought. Another lesson to be learned. Always read the small print.

What I’d failed to notice was that Amazon won’t publish an audio version of your book until it is available either as a paperback or in Kindle – which leads me to the Kindle Direct Publishing site which urges you to ‘Self-publish e-Books and paperbacks for free with Kindle Direct Publishing, and reach million of readers on Amazon.’ Sounded good to me and because my technical guru was right by my side, I didn’t have to worry about such things as JPEGs, or page and line breaks. My job was to proof read the final manuscript before pressing SEND. You know, I swear I spotted every ‘typo’ and slightly confusing edit but, (there’s that but again) as I suppose is inevitable, I have spotted a few since reading the published version.

The great thing about publishing with Amazon is that it’s a ‘just in time’ outfit. Someone orders a copy and, if it’s an e-book or audio, it’s instant, if it’s a paperback, could be with you the next day. No remainders this way.

How have you found the marketing side? What advice would you give to others going this route?

I compiled a data base of about 400 people and e-mailed them all INDIVIDUALLY, letting them know about Plenty Mango and the formats in which it was available. I kept the price of the e-book very competitive. The paperback version, which had all John’s coloured illustrations, didn’t offer me such lee-way, and Audible charges a fixed price. I have to warn you that the royalties are pretty small.

Word of mouth is, I’ve found, the best marketing tool and, to this end, I have become very active on Facebook. It’s quite hard work, as I’m not one of those people who post photographs of my last meal, so it tends to be news, at the moment at least, about the book.

I’ve also got a website sarahdickinson.net – which is proving to be a useful communication tool.

I’m thinking of commissioning a PR specialist as well, but haven’t as yet done so.

The book, I’m happy to say, is doing well. Not ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ – well, you understand, but well enough.

You recently took part in a literary festival in Montserrat – what was that like?

Hard work, but great fun and it’s a wonderful experience being asked to sign copies of your book. Have written a piece for the book’s sequel

‘PLENTY MORE MANGO’.

When we met recently, you told me about your regular journaling and that was very inspiring. How has writing regularly changed you as a writer?

It’s like exercise, the more you do, the easier it gets. I write in Moleskines – good size for carrying around and protected by a hard cover. Anything and everything goes into them – funny things our grandchildren say, rants about politics, the beginnings of stories. A word of advice – always date everything.To-day’s entry will be about this interview!

‘Plenty Mango – Postcards from the Caribbean’ by Sarah Dickinson is available via either Amazon.co.uk/books or Amazon.com/books in paperback, Kindle, Audible and iTunes formats.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience Sarah – I can’t wait for our second interview about our early days, though I’m slightly nervous what you’ll say about the younger me…

An interview with novelist Stuart Warner

September 21, 2017 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Books, Guest post, Inspiration, Interviews, Motivation, Self-publishing, The writing coach, The writing life, Writers 2 Comments

In this post, our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse interviews her former client, the novelist Stuart Warner, author of The Sound of Everything. They discuss his transition from poet to novelist.

Novelist and Poet Stuart Warner

When we first met, in your writing life you were primarily a poet. What made you want to transition to novel-writing?

I recall telling friends how much I admired people who’d shown sufficient determination to write a novel. I’d written hundreds of articles, as well as the poetry, so I knew I could write fluid prose. I set out on the first draft as an adventure to see whether I could produce a story of 80,000 words or so – whether I had the persistence to do so. That was my initial goal: simply to produce a first draft.

Did you have an initial impulse that prompted you to write the story that you chose? Did you begin with a story premise or just an image or an idea for a character…?

My decision to write a novel came first. I then had to decide what to write about. Having read Stephen King’s On Writing, I’d decided not to make a detailed plan. I took a few days off work and, on day one, I sat down at my desk, fountain pen in hand, and wrote a single page of notes. It was about 300 words. Rereading it now, I’d call it a rough synopsis. It contained several ideas, which carried through to what became The Sound Of Everything. Mostly, it was about the protagonist: the pickle he’s in and what he wants instead. After writing those 300 words, I turned to a fresh page and started chapter one. Interestingly, the first sentence I wrote had nothing to do with my initial notes, yet it drew on an image I’d been carrying round in my head for a while, a location which plays a major part in the novel.

It’s interesting to me that an image was central to your beginning – as I too, often work from images and strong hunches. I’ve noticed the importance of landscape too in your novel… what role do you think a sense of place plays in your writing?

Place is very important in the novel and it has been in my poetry, too. The Sound Of Everything is set mainly in a small town on the Welsh border, though there are also a couple of hill-top scenes. Certain locations – or types of location – seem to resonate with what’s going on inside us. For example, someone might feel the freedom of the wide-open spaces on a beach or a mountain, or a sense of being trapped by their daily routine in an urban environment. For someone else, I guess the opposite could be true. For me, there’s some sort of interplay between what one might think of as the magic and the mundane: what we see with our eyes, what we feel inside and, perhaps, what we experience beyond the five senses. Writing about different landscapes helps me access that interplay.

Beyond the five senses – you’ve sometimes described this, I know, as ‘spiritual fiction’?

I’d say it’s a small-town mystery with a spiritual aspect – spiritual in the sense of questions we might sometimes ask ourselves, such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘What am I doing here?’ or ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ Going back to your previous question on place, while my initial 300-word outline related to the external plot, the image that came through in the first line I wrote – sentence one, paragraph one – was concerned with the protagonist’s internal exploration. It was only when I came to working with you on the second draft that I delved down deeply into that exploration – the feelings the protagonist experiences when he starts to open to that side of himself. It was difficult to decide what Amazon genre the finished novel fitted into, but I plumped for visionary and metaphysical. Spiritual seemed to me to be too much associated with Christian fiction, whereas the novel resonates more with Eastern ways of thinking – yoga, for example.

That’s fascinating, that the mentoring process allowed you to delve deeper into the protagonist’s inner exploration. Is that what you expected?

When I found your website, I wrote an email to you to enquire about your one year mentorship programme. Here’s what I said: ‘I’ve just finished the first draft of my debut novel and so I’m a beginner as far as novels are concerned… Completing the first draft, regardless of its merit, has given me a huge confidence boost. I now feel ready to commit to learning the skills that I will need to become a published novelist. ’ I had no idea what to expect from working with you, but I figured it made sense to learn from someone who’d already achieved what I was setting out to do, particularly as I’d never studied creative writing.

One of the key points you made in our first meeting, having read chapter one, was that I needed to show why my protagonist acted as he did, by describing what he was experiencing from his point of view. I’d done that in a few places but, generally, the point of view I’d used was too distant. I know now that you were teaching me a technique to improve my writing, but you also opened a door for me, one which helped to strengthen the bridge between my writing of the novel and the way I’d approached my poetry.

I’m so glad that the new closeness in point of view has revealed a link between your fiction and your poetry. For those who might be considering working with a mentor, what in your view, have been the main benefits of the work we’ve done together?

Just to explain how it worked, I’d send you an extract – 6,000 words or so – about a week before our meeting date. You’d then read and mark up the extract before we met. In meetings, which were on the phone as we live 250 miles apart, you’d give me feedback. We’d discuss what you said and we always ended the meeting with an action plan for the next month. Three or four weeks later, I’d send you a new extract ready for our next meeting. Meanwhile, you’d post the marked-up extract back to me. This went on for a year.

The regular schedule was superb because it enabled me to put in a renewed burst of activity every four or five weeks, trying to put into practice what we’d discussed. I’d have to work hard to produce the next 6,000-word extract – sometimes, the same extract as the previous time but substantially rewritten. Then, I’d send it to you and receive almost instant feedback on how well I’d achieved my goals. Rather than slaving over a whole manuscript for a year and then sending it to a beta reader or agent, I’d get ‘mini-reviews’ of my work every month. I believe that accelerated my learning process.

While you were always very positive in your feedback, you always encouraged me to go further. I would usually feel that I’d made huge strides forward each time and you always liked what I’d done. But, after every meeting, I felt I could delve even deeper, because that’s what you asked me to do. That was the bridge with the poetry. When I wrote my poems, I was expressing my truth, as best I could, in a few short words. With the novel, your mentoring helped me to dig down to that same depth in a much longer written work. Of course, I also learnt much in the way of technique. Probably the most important point was the need for the protagonist and other main characters to act in a way consistent with what would be going on in their head: psychological realism you called it, I believe. Why would they act that way after what happened in the previous scene? What was their motivation?

What has changed for you in your writing life in the last year?

The biggest change is that I’m now working on my second novel rather than my first. This time last year – June 2016 – you were mentoring me on revisions to what would become The Sound Of Everything. A few months later, in August, I sent the manuscript to a couple of professional beta readers, followed by further edits and more beta readers in October. Then came the publishing process and a few months brainstorming ideas for the next book. Eventually, I started to write again at the end of April and now I’m 30,000 words in.

Back in summer 2015, when I’d just completed the first draft of The Sound Of Everything, I wondered whether I’d be better to ditch that project and start a different story from scratch. Then I read somewhere that you learn a lot more, about writing a novel, by editing rather than starting afresh. I think that was great advice. My whole experience with that first novel has given me a lot more confidence this time round – that my rough first draft will evolve in a way I’m happy with.

You decided to self-publish ‘The Sound of Everything’ – what was behind that decision?

When I started to read about the importance of genre, I figured I might find it difficult to find an agent. Also, I’d already been down the self-publishing route with my poetry. When I raised the idea with you, you suggested several websites I could look at. One of these was Joanna Penn’s. I found her advice very useful, and I started to realise that many writers now self-publish from choice, particularly if they plan to write several books. It’s a long-term strategy, with less emphasis on the initial book launch and more on building a following.

Can you describe ‘The Sound of Everything’? Tell us about the book…

The book involves two quests: one internal, the other external. I wanted to write a story, which was a bit of a page-turner but also had depth to it – the spiritual aspect we discussed earlier. It’s told from a single viewpoint and includes quite a bit of internal dialogue. It starts with Jack, the protagonist, dashing into an Indian gift shop. What happens to him there, changes the course of his life. Below, I’ve copied extracts from two kind reviews I received on Amazon. I’m sure the book isn’t for everyone, but the extracts are in line with the feedback I’ve received from most readers I’ve heard from.

‘You are drawn into the story from the first page. You gradually learn more about Jack, the main character – why he has moved back to Drimpton, the town where he lived as a young child, and how he adjusts to working there and dealing with the many different characters he soon meets. There are surprises and twists, warmth and touches of humour and wisdom – it is thought-provoking, you don’t want to reach the end, and when you do, you find your mind returning to explore the unfolding themes.’

‘It is beautifully woven from a number of threads relating to the current and past of a town and some of its people as they are discovered by the main protagonist over a few days where he is trying to work out the answers to a number of different (and interesting) issues. It also covers the growth of that lead character as he tries to work out how to move forward from a position in life that he has arrived in because that is where he thought that he would like to be, and then isn’t 100% happy with now he’s got there.’

To find out more about Stuart Warner’s work, visit his website here.

Words Away Salon: ‘Be Your Own Writing Coach’

June 25, 2017 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Community, Confidence, Events, Interviews, Motivation, Networking, Productivity, The writing coach, The writing life, Writers Leave a Comment

The Words Away salon is on Monday, July 3, 2017
7:30pm – 9:30pm at The Tea House Theatre, Vauxhall

Do you need some inspiration and motivation tips to get going and keep going this summer? What’s stopping you from finishing that book? Do you start but never quite finish? Would you like to be more confident in your approach to writing?

The Words Away Salon

This month, our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse is delighted to be the July guest at the Words Away Salon – the topic for July is ‘Be Your Own Writing Coach’.

The Tea House Theatre, Vauxhall

Words Away creative writing salons concentrate on the writing process. Run by writers Kellie Jackson and Emma Darwin, who every month invite a guest author to join you, the audience, in discussing a particular topic in writing, a genre, or a question of craft.

Emma and Kellie say:

Over tea, cake and a glass of wine, we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities, the difficulties and joys of writing, and the reality of being a writer. We hope you’ll come and join us. The Salons are held once a month on a Monday evening, 7.30pm at the Tea House Theatre, 139 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5HL.

The Be your Own Writing Coach event is on Monday July 3rd and the guest is Jacqui Lofthouse, our Founder, a novelist, writing coach and literary consultant who has a wealth of experience and ideas for making the most of your writing time. The July literary salon is the last before the summer break and should equip you with some new ways to a more productive writing life.

What is Words Away?

Words Away aims to bring writers together in a creative environment to explore the writing process. They hold monthly salons at the Tea House Theatre Cafe, in London and host creative writing retreats at Rathfinny Wine Estate, East Sussex. Through their Salons they offer a focused exploration on a particular topic with a chance to exchange ideas and ask questions in a friendly setting.

Jacqui Lofthouse, this month’s guest at Words Away

Be inspired. Develop and nurture your craft. Meet other writers. Please join us, all welcome.

If you’re looking for other literary events in London, do take a look at our event at Waterstones, Gower Street on Wednesday 12th July: Literary Fiction, a panel discussion where Jacqui Lofthouse will be interviewing authors Roopa Farooki, Miranda Gold, Alice Jolly, Clare Morgan and Charles Palliser.

An interview with playwright Stephen Brown

November 27, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Inspiration, Interviews, Literary Consultancy, playwriting, Writers Leave a Comment

I’m delighted to welcome playwright Stephen Brown to The Writing Coach team as a mentor for playwrights. Stephen is now available as a consultant through The Writing Coach. Stephen was my own tutor in playwriting, so it gives me particular pleasure to welcome him. I interviewed Stephen about his approach to playwriting and mentoring and do hope you enjoy the interview.

Stephen Brown is a playwright, dramaturg and creative writing tutor. His adaptation of Rory Stewart’s bestselling memoir Occupational Hazards will have a major London production in 2016. He is currently working on a commission for the National Theatre.

Jacqui Lofthouse interviews Stephen Brown

Jacqui: Stephen, can you tell me what led you to playwriting as a career?

Stephen: I could scroll back and say I started writing plays when I was a teenage boy, about 16 or 17 years old. I’d always been writing short stories and poetry. But I loved the theatre and something happened to me aged 16 or 17 in a way I’ve only much later understood. I was really drawn to the particular writing challenge of writing a play. I think that’s to do with there not being, in a play, unlike in a novel or a short story, a single voice – and what I like about the play is this 360 degree fractured world in which different voices clash and fight for their interests, their wants and – yes – just that essence of the dramatic of these different viewpoints and worlds colliding. In retrospect, that’s what drew me to playwriting: a love of dramatic conflict.

It became something that I got paid for about a dozen years ago. I didn’t set out to have a playwriting ‘career’, I set out to write and try to get paid for that and have had some success – although the playwriting world is not awash with money. I didn’t think ‘let’s have a career’, I thought ‘let’s write what I want to write, let’s work with people I want to work with, let’s bring my vision to the stage, let’s try to get these things produced and write them as best I can’. And then I’m lucky that various theatres and production companies have really wanted to work with me and pay me to do that.

Jacqui: I’m interested in what you say about the fact that you chose playwriting over prose. We’ve worked together and I’m primarily a novelist. Do you find that people who have written fiction and then come to playwriting have any particular challenges?

Stephen: Not necessarily. There are some notable authors who have had success as playwrights, like Michael Frayn or Mikhail Bulgakov who wrote The Master and Margarita but also wrote some terrific plays – and you can see in the work of some novelists, that they have a strong dramatic sense, like Dickens for example who was obsessed by the theatre and became a one man theatre show traveling round Britain and America as well performing semi-dramatised extracts from his novels. It depends what kind of novelist you are. If you’re a novelist for whom punchy, exciting dialogue scenes come relatively easily, you’ll find the leap easier than one whose strengths are more to do with the continuity of an individual authorial voice for example. The two forms are very distinct.

The nature of a play is really different – the degree of the difference surprises people. In a play, you’re watching people’s behaviour in worlds, essentially externally, and you’re seeing a piece of live performance, actual bodies on stage in front of you interacting. It is so different from the much longer form of the novel, which is like a private voice whispering in your ear, which is creating something in your imagination. As a writer writing a play, you’re writing a set of instructions for another group of artists, for them to go away and explore those and out of them create the final work of art, the performance. It’s such a different beast. I’ve generally found the students I’ve worked with who have written novels… some of them are the best students I’ve worked with, so it’s not like I think ‘oh, novelists, they’re going to have difficulty.’ But it IS a different world. Henry James was obsessed with the theatre and desperately wanted to be a playwright but made a total hash of it… it can be a tricky transition for some people.

Jacqui: I’ve worked with you on your course at The Rose Theatre and you are now also available as a mentor to playwrights via The Writing Coach. But can you outline your approach, in relation to how you help beginners to first get something down on the page?

Stephen: Confidence is key. Something I say to all my students is that writing is partly just about the management of fear. Creativity is about the management of fear. Creativity brings up in us its shadow side which all the fearful negative carping voices saying ‘you can’t do that, you’re not good enough, somebody’s already done it before.’

I seek to create a safe and creative space where the basic rule of conversation and how we receive each others’ work is that we say ‘yes’ to the points that people are bringing forward and the work they are offering and perhaps add something more or bring something out or add a suggestion for the next stage of development. I do exercises that are about unleashing creativity in structured ways, getting people to write quickly. In the first lesson I talk about the word ‘playwright’ – the first part relates to playfulness, the unleashing of the imagination, the second part, the word ‘wright’ suggests craft or craftsperson, so it’s not just creating a positive environment and splurging and learning to trust that the unconscious will reach a hand-up from the murky depths and offer something interesting. But we also work through the technical and structural ideas and ‘rules’ of what is a scene and what is dramatic conflict and how do we develop characters and how do we put subtext into dialogue etc. Part of the challenge for all writers is to hold in balance our technical understanding of what a play is with our dreamworld, our imagination, which we need to unleash when we sit down at our desks and allow ourselves to write.

Jacqui: That makes a lot of sense. In relation to that technical side, for example, dramatic conflict – can you elaborate on that and how it relates to writing scenes? Does it become more instinctive the more you write?

Stephen: I do think it becomes more instinctive. I also think that if you just set two people talking, very often something like dramatic conflict will begin to emerge. I start talking about it in the very first lesson. We look at the beginning of two plays, a Greek Tragedy and a more contemporary comedy and look at how the same thing is going on – what emerges from that is that drama is this thing that happens when people with different wants come into collision with each other and through how they behave and what they say, they push and pull to negotiate, trade, seduce, persuade, threaten – all those things that people do in order to get people to get what they want. It might be getting you to lend me a thousand quid or do more for the care of my mother.

In the Greek tragedy, Antigone effectively says ‘will you help me bury the body of our brother, break the law of the city and help me?’ I put it in stark terms like that, that’s a simple version. In plays as they develop, it becomes very complicated: you can have more than one conflict happening at once, more than two people in a scene, some of the conflict happening in subtext. In a love scene for example, what exactly is at stake in that conflict won’t be the same in a seduction scene or a break-up scene. What’s at stake in that conflict won’t be said, but the central point is that in drama, people are on different vectors coming into collision. They need something from each other. The stakes are always high. There’s no low stakes drama. Drama is about pressure, those moments when we’re on the back foot , when we are forced to make difficult decisions, when we realise that actually ‘oh, I don’t know which way to go.’ Another fundamental experience of watching drama is dramatic internal conflict, watching characters wavering and wrestling with their inner decision making process – like Macbeth – ‘do I murder the king?’

Jacqui: That question ‘what’s at stake?’ is something that has really stayed with me, even as a novelist and when I read manuscripts for clients. I had a sense of it, but it was a strong thing for me, to think ‘what is at stake here?’ If there’s no dramatic tension, the scenes fall flat – in a novel it’s easier to ‘get away with it’ effectively…

Stephen: Yes, novels are different and there are lots of parts of novels that are not in a simple sense dramatic scenes. I’ve just re-read Moby-Dick and there’s such richness of language – and it gives you a picture of this entire extraordinary world in the 19th century, but there are also some really strong dramatic scenes, scenes of conflict between Ahab and Starbuck where they really are wrestling with what to do – or there’s a scene where Starbuck thinks about murdering Ahab to save the crew and it’s very much like the scene in Hamlet where Hamlet is considering murdering Claudius when he’s praying, and he has this extraordinary doubt, this uncertainty. But that I think is one of the injunctions – it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master: always be dramatic. Understanding what that means, but you know, beware the bit where people are just giving people information. There are always forces at play within a dramatic scene, forces of tension.

Jacqui: I wanted to focus now on the individual attention you give to people in terms of what you offer to people that you mentor. Tell me about your approach to feedback.

Stephen: I tend to give pretty extensive feedback, as you know. I usually read through what a mentee sends in a couple of times, I’ll do some local notes, picking up on particular issues in a particular line, on a particular page. But really I’m looking to enter into where you’re at in the creative process. I will identify at the beginning of the feedback what is working well so far and then I will enter into some detail under a number of main headings where I think you have things you need to resolve and I’m definitely somebody who, giving feedback – I’m less about saying ‘that’s not working’ and more about firing at you five suggestions about how you might develop it. And none of those suggestions may be the right one but my hunch is that generally by thinking through those five, you will lead yourself to whatever is the right answer for you – to enable you to make those choices and discoveries.

I try to give the kind of feedback that I’ve found most useful as a writer. One of the things about professional writing is that professional writers still need feedback, seek out feedback, find their good readers, themselves have mentors… We all need from time to time those good readers who reflect back to us the things that we perhaps know a lot of the time…’hmm, that’s not quite right, but I just can’t see beyond it’ – and you can send it to somebody else and they offer you new possibilities. My feedback is detailed, extensive, creative and positive. So it’s definitely the feedback of a fellow writer. I’m trying to push you too, I will quite happily say ‘well, maybe the character will do this’ – which is not me trying to do your work for you, but to jog you in different directions and explore ways out of whatever is blocking you at the moment or whatever the next stage of development is.

Jacqui: I also wanted to ask you whether there were particular traps that people often fall into – or notes that you often give.

Stephen: Yes, there are quite a few. Having said it’s a central challenge to always be dramatic – I often say ‘Is there enough conflict? Enough of people seeking thing?’ The note against inertia! And what is perhaps, on the scale of the whole story or whole play, the corollary of that is, ‘is there enough happening, is the script moving forwards?’ I often find myself saying ‘choose a protagonist’ – quite a few people perfectly reasonably start off not quite knowing who the protagonist is and they may change their mind about that.

People get themselves tied up in knots with exposition, feeling as if they need to lay out things about the characters and the world, get them established – yet you can just plunge an audience into the action without any explanation and they will really enjoy running a little to catch up. Obviously you can go too far with that – and we miss the dramatic force because we don’t understand it. But usually it’s in the other direction. Drama is a compressed form, time limited, partly just by the endurance of the human buttocks . That’s one of our great controlling factors. When people are sitting there, they need the piece to move forwards. A novel is 10-15 hours of peoples’ lives, often in half hour bits. In theatre, compression is key.

Those are common notes that I find myself giving, but there’s a pretty big range of notes. Writers I work with come with a really wide range of issues, people struggling to get their story moving, struggling to shape a scene, struggling with dialogue. I find myself giving notes right across the whole subject area.

Jacqui: To finish, I don’t know if you’re able to reveal what’s next for you in your own work as a playwright?

Stephen: Yes, I can say some things. I have a play which is based on a true story by a guy called Rory Stewart which is a memoir based on his story as a young British diplomat being dropped into a province in Southern Iraq, aged 30, in the chaos post the invasion of 2003. It’s about him being dropped into a very chaotic and uncertain political situation, in a city where there are gangs of criminals stealing all the copper electricity wires and things like that. It’s about someone trying to create the beginnings of a democracy and trying to get the lights working. I say it’s like the West Wing with Kalashnikovs and that’s going to be at the Hampstead Theatre – probably late 2016/early 2017. I have a couple of other projects, one I can’t say anything about in development at the Bristol Old Vic and another script I’m handing back into the National, commissioned by them, and we’ll see what they make of that. So yes, a number of different things going on.

Jacqui: That sounds very exciting. I look forward to seeing the play at the National and more beyond that. Thank you Stephen.

Stephen is available through The Writing Coach as a mentor for writers. Please contact us directly if you are interested in working with Stephen as your mentor.

Literary Friendship: Louise Doughty and Jacqui Lofthouse

March 25, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Community, Inspiration, Interviews, The writing life Leave a Comment

This month, the novelist Louise Doughty and I are delighted to feature on the blog Something Rhymed being interviewed there about our literary friendship.

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Jacqui Lofthouse, centre in black and Louise Doughty behind her in polka dot dress for the celebration of 25 years of the MA Creative Writing course (in 1995)

Louise and I first met in 1995 at the celebration of 25 years of the MA Creative Writing course at UEA, when we both featured in the anthology Class Work, edited by the late Sir Malcolm Bradbury.

The blog Something Rhymed is a wonderful site, run by friends Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney who met over a decade ago, at a time when they were both living in rural Japan – working as English teachers by day, and scribbling stories in secret by night. Their blog profiles a different pair of female writer pals each month, with Emily and Emma Claire challenging themselves to complete an activity based on a prominent feature of that particular friendship – adding a celebratory note to today’s resurgent feminist conversation.

Louise Doughty and Jacqui Lofthouse at Kew Gardens.

To read the full text of my interview with Louise, do hop over to the interview. We’re happy to be published in relation to Elizabeth Bowen and Iris Murdoch. You may also enjoy the interview with another of my writer friends Liz Jensen with her friend Polly Coles profiled in relation to the writers Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth.

In my novel The Modigliani Girl I satirise a group of writing friends. But in real life, literary friendships are vital to me. In the coming weeks I’d like to acknowledge other literary friends here, to celebrate the importance of literary community, as a central part of the writing life. You can also acknowledge your female friends with the hashtag #somethingrhymed as suggested by Emma Claire and Emily.

Alice Jolly’s experience of working with Unbound, a ‘crowd-funded’ publisher

January 8, 2015 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Authors, Confidence, Interviews, Markets for your work, Publishing, The writing life 1 Comment

When I first met novelist and playwright Alice Jolly, she was between projects, uncertain about her future direction as a writer. We worked together only briefly, but I have been so delighted to witness her recent success, winning the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize – and also to see that she is so close to having her memoir ‘Dead Babies and Seaside Towns’ published by Unbound. This is her story, of how the book came to be written and her experience of working with Unbound, a ‘crowd-funded’ publisher; I do hope that you will find her responses to my interview with her as fascinating as I do.

1. Alice, your memoir ‘Dead Babies and Seaside Towns’ will be published by ‘Unbound’ books. For those unfamiliar with Unbound, can you explain how this works?

If you are a writer and you want to be published by Unbound you first need to send them your book and see if they want to work with you. It is not necessarily easier to have your book accepted by Unbound than it is to get your book accepted by a mainstream publisher. If you are accepted, then Unbound make a film about you and post the film, and other information about your book, on the Unbound website. You then start trying to raise subscriptions / pledges. This means that effectively you have to persuade people to buy a copy of your book before it exists. The money raised from the subscription period is then used to finance the production of the book which comes out both in hard copy and as an e-book. As the author you receive 50% of the profits, as opposed to the 10% you would receive through a traditional publishing deal.

2. When we worked together, you were at a crossroads in your writing career. What has happened in the intervening years?

Mainly I’ve just kept writing. Some things I have tried to do have worked out and others haven’t. The writing life is hard because it is, beyond all else, unpredictable. Sometimes you submit some work and you think, ‘I’m bound to succeed with that.’ But you don’t. Then something you never thought would happen does. I think, in a way, the most important thing is to find a certain steadiness in your mind. If you get too caught up in the external fluctuations, you can’t write. I do get too emotional about failures and I wish I didn’t.

3. What made you choose to take this publication route?

I knew that the memoir would be difficult to publish. The subject matter (part of the book is about a stillbirth) is not commercial. As soon as I spoke to Unbound I liked their approach. Everything about them felt dynamic and positive. I have such admiration for what they are doing. For years we’ve needed someone to find a new way of publishing books. I don’t know how well Unbound’s approach is going to work but I find it exciting to be part of something new and positive.

4. Tell me a little about your memoir and why you wrote it?

Originally I never really had any interest in writing about my own life. But then I lived through such a series of sad and bizarre experiences (a stillbirth, miscarriages, surrogacy) that I decided I had to put the story down on paper. Those experiences had come to feel like a road block. I could only clear the way ahead by writing. Also I wanted to tell my family’s surrogacy story because, in general, surrogacy is very poorly understood. I don’t expect people to support surrogacy but I would at least like them to have proper information.

5. What were the challenges of writing memoir rather than fiction?

Actually, I found writing the memoir relatively easy. It was hard to go back into painful periods of my life but the actual writing wasn’t difficult. The book had been in my head for some years. Fiction is so difficult because you’ve got to make it up. With the memoir I just asked myself, ‘What happened next?’ However, I do think that, without even thinking about it, I did use many novelistic techniques in writing the memoir. I probably couldn’t have written the memoir if I hadn’t written the novels first.

6. You have a beautiful, precise and poetic prose style. Reading the opening to your memoir, one might have thought it would be easy to find a mainstream publisher, especially given your publication history. What have you learned about traditional publishing during this part of your journey?

I think traditional publishing can work well for books which fit a clear genre or format and for books which will obviously be commercially successful. If you look at what is being published in the mainstream, it is the same kind of book again and again. I teach as well as write and I’m often really destroyed by seeing my students’ work being rejected again and again. It’s not bad work. It’s very good but it’s experimental, challenging. It needs a publisher with courage to take it on – and sadly they are in short supply. Often an editor in a publishing house really wants to take a risk. But editors don’t make decisions. The sales and marketing people do – and they are naturally conservative.

7. What have you learned through working with Unbound?

Unbound has been an amazing experience. I’m naturally rather reserved and I don’t like anything to do with publicity and marketing. However, in order to raise the subscriptions for the book I just had to get rid of all my inhibitions and take any promotional opportunities that arose. I thought I would hate using Facebook and Twitter but actually it has put me back in touch with old friends and also bought new friendships. I wish we lived in a world where writers could just spend all day writing – but sadly we don’t.

8. Articles about you have recently appeared in major National newspapers and you also won the V.S. Pritchett Memorial prize. How are you feeling about your commercial and literary success?

I think that people who are not writers themselves misunderstand the writing life. The idea is that you get your first book published and then its all onwards and upwards all the way from there. The reality is very different. I’m often shocked by well-known writer friends who have had a lot of success but then find themselves dropped by a publisher or an agent or unable to publish a book. I was absolutely thrilled to win the V.S.Pritchett Prize. I think that could change many things for me. It certainly gave a huge boost to my confidence. But the reality is that I still have a novel sitting in a drawer which took eight years to write and which I can’t publish. That’s hard but not uncommon at the moment. As I said, it’s just so many ups and downs. All you can do is keep going. Right now I feel confident about the memoir but nothing can be certain.

9. Your story is an incredibly inspiring one. What do you hope to achieve with your book?

Mainly I want to raise money for Sands who are the Stillbirth and Neo-Natal Death Charity. It is so important that they continue to raise awareness about stillbirths. This country has a really poor record for maternity care overall and I just find that unacceptable. I’m also interested in opening up the debate about surrogacy. I don’t want to say whether surrogacy is right or wrong but just to provoke honest discussion. Also, I suppose, for myself I hope that if the memoir succeeds then it will make it easier for me to publish another book.

10. What advice would you give to other authors considering publishing with Unbound or other similar publisher?

I suppose my main advice would be, ‘Go for it.’ I think as writers we’ve got to be prepared to try new approaches. However, I do think you need to ask yourself whether you can raise the subscriptions. It isn’t easy to do that. But that’s the only real problem with crowd funding. I’m still uncertain how the Unbound experience is going to work out for me. But I think it is very possible that it will prove better than the mainstream approach could ever have been.

If you’d like to read more about Alice Jolly’s memoir, you can read this article in The Independent.

Alice’s novel is now 90% funded! Do consider helping her to gather the last 10% of funding by pledging to buy a copy here. All supporters get a copy of the book (digital or ebook, depending on your donation) and their name in the back of the book.

Publishing success story – from the ‘virtual drawer’ to glitzy launch party

August 11, 2014 by Jacqui Lofthouse Filed Under: Confidence, Interviews, Motivation, Publishing, The writing coach Leave a Comment

We often hear of the novel that sits ‘under the bed’ for years, and in most cases, that is where it stays. I know that I have one of those (it really is under my bed, it’s called ‘The Age of the Fish’) and whilst mine got me an agent and was read by publishers, I have no idea if it will ever make it out into the real world as a book. But in Sharon Zink’s case, that novel sat in a ‘virtual drawer’ (that is, on her computer’s hard drive) for many years. However, it was this novel that led to her eventual publication by Unthank Books and this glowing reference in last week’s Guardian newspaper, as Zink was a close contender for the longlist of the Guardian first book award. Her novel is Welcome to Sharonville and no one could have been more delighted than me (or OK, perhaps Sharon) to see it published.

So how does a novel that has sat in a virtual drawer for years finally make it to publication? I’d like to explore how this happened for Sharon and to break down the elements of her publishing success story so that all writers can learn from her experience.

I first met Sharon online when she approached me via this site, seeking a mentor. I remember reading about her background and being immediately impressed with all she had already achieved. Zink describes the early stages of our working relationship beautifully in her recent article on the Unthank site: Everyone needs a Yoda – or why mentors matter. I am of course very flattered to be Sharon’s Yoda (not least because I’m currently enjoying re-watching the Star Wars films with my teen daughter and like to think that the force is with me) and the comparison always brings a smile to my face. If you’re interested in the mentoring process, do read Sharon’s article or check out how I work here.

So what can we all learn from Sharon’s success – what did she already have before we met and what did our work together enable?

Firstly, Sharon already had talent. At some level, she must have known this. Aged seventeen she won Shell Young Poet of the Year with her first collection ‘Rain in the Upper Floor Cafe’. Since that time, she had gone on to study for her M.Phil. at Cambridge University and to complete a PhD under Lisa Jardine in London. She had already written her novel, at the time simply entitled ‘Sharonville’. But why had ‘Sharonville’ been in that virtual drawer for over two years?

When I first spoke with Sharon, I don’t think she really believed that we would one day be standing outside ‘The Writers’ Place’ in Brighton, celebrating her launch – but it’s certainly an outcome that she would have wished for.

So why did publication of her novel seem like such a far off dream?

Well, like most writers, Sharon had already had her share of rejection. In her own words, the novel

“had languished in the notorious metaphorical drawer for over two years after contradictory editorial advice, knock downs from agents and various life events had beaten my confidence in it to the ground.”

Sharon had got to the point where sending out her novel had become difficult. Part of our work together was about enabling Sharon to truly believe in her own talent. As Sharon’s article explains, I was pretty impressed with her work! (I compared it to the work of one of my heroes Paul Auster.) This is a remarkable novel and one that I urge you to read.

This book contains an interview with John Fowles, which hugely influenced me as a young writer.

However, in our work together, Sharon and I discussed ways in which the novel could become stronger still. Sharon is a brilliant prose stylist, but this was such a powerful character piece that I felt sometimes we lost the thread of the story, so I encouraged Sharon to make several judicious edits to ensure that the storyline remained compelling.

If you’re wondering how you know which edits to make, given that you may receive contradictory advice, I’d say that in the end, you have to go with your own gut – ask yourself what advice resonates with you. Sharon was close to being ready to submit (in terms of the quality of the work) but there’s no point submitting before you are absolutely certain the work is as good as it can be. In Sharon’s case, there were twelve years between conception of the novel and her final publication, so it’s important we don’t kid ourselves that this is an easy journey. Rather, I believe it is vital that we take our writing and our development as writers seriously. It may not take you twelve years, but I do suggest that all writers take every possible opportunity to learn their craft, through creative writing classes and groups and reading great books about the process, including writers’ ideas on their work. I was lucky enough to hear some of the interviews in Writers in Conversation Vol.5 live when I studied creative writing at UEA and many of these ideas have stayed with me throughout my writing career.

So what did Sharon already have, besides genuine talent? In fact, though she might not have recognised it, she was already good at the persistence game. She had lost some confidence, yes, as many of us do along the way. But she had completed the novel, she had asked for editorial advice – and now, despite the hiatus, the urge to bring her work to a readership remained. She took another step and approached me as a mentor. Somehow, inside, she knew that her work and her identity as a writer mattered to her and she couldn’t let it go. In order to succeed as a creative artist, you have to have an absolute tenacity that never deserts you even when you have setbacks. You have to have a hunger to be the best you can possibly be and also to tell your story, to get your words out into the world.

In terms of our work together, I’d say I did three things for Sharon. Firstly, I expressed my true belief in her talent. If I’d felt she still had a long way to go with her writing, I would have told her that too and explained what she needed to do in order to improve. Secondly, we worked on the novel to make sure it shone – we looked at the importance of a compelling narrative, something that Auster excels at. In The Red Notebookhe writes,

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything else must be sacrificed to it. All the elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go. It’s all in the voice. You’re telling a story, after all, and your job is to make people want to go on listening to your tale.

Auster’s wisdom about writing is beautifully captured in this series of interviews and essays.

Finally, I got tough with Sharon about self-belief and the importance of submitting, submitting and submitting again. As my writing buddies and I often say to each other, ‘it only takes one’. Or two, perhaps. One agent, one publisher. Two people need to ‘get’ your work and want to put it out into the world. And if we hadn’t found those two people? I would have encouraged Sharon to self-publish brilliantly. These days we can take ownership of publication and make a huge success of it. If you are getting rejection letters that praise your work, you know you are getting close. Do they contain advice? Anything you can work on? An encouragement to return to that person with your next work? One of my clients famously declared that she intended to paper her bathroom wall with rejection slips. Suffice to say, she got some serious agent interest early on.

I am no stranger to literary jealousy and I’m sure that Sharon isn’t either. In this digital age, we are constantly bombarded with images of other people’s success. It is vital, however, that we see this successes as inspiration. Sharon waited twelve years for this launch party and damn well deserves to enjoy it. I wish I could have shown her this picture of the two of us hugging at her launch on the day that we first started work together. I couldn’t. But here it is.

I hope that it inspires you to do your best work, to believe in yourself and to persist with those submissions.

What is your dream for your own creative work? What do you need to do to make your work as good as it can be and to get it out into the world? Do share in the comments: I’d love to hear your thoughts.

An interview with Antony Johnston, author of ‘The Organised Writer’

Creativity and Leadership – A Guest Post by Trevor Waldock

Sarah Dickinson, author of ‘Plenty Mango’ speaks with Jacqui Lofthouse (Part Two)

Sarah Dickinson was our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse’s first proper ‘boss’ when Jacqui began her career as a graduate in 1988. Here Jacqui interviews Sarah and they reminisce about ‘the old days’, about their relationship and on the nature of business and being a writer.

Sarah Dickinson, author of ‘Plenty Mango’ speaks with Jacqui Lofthouse (Part One)

An interview with novelist Stuart Warner

Words Away Salon: ‘Be Your Own Writing Coach’

The Words Away Salon

What is Words Away?

An interview with playwright Stephen Brown

Jacqui Lofthouse interviews Stephen Brown

Literary Friendship: Louise Doughty and Jacqui Lofthouse

Alice Jolly’s experience of working with Unbound, a ‘crowd-funded’ publisher

Publishing success story – from the ‘virtual drawer’ to glitzy launch party

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Sarah Dickinson was our Founder Jacqui Lofthouse’s first proper ‘boss’ when Jacqui began her career as a graduate in 1988. Here Jacqui interviews Sarah and they reminisce about ‘the old days’, about their relationship and on the nature of business and being a writer.

The Words Away Salon

Find out more here

What is Words Away?

Book for the July Salon here

Jacqui Lofthouse interviews Stephen Brown

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