I started this blog 4 months ago, mainly because I wanted to share some of my ups and downs and what I’ve learned from these, during 25 years or so of poetry and novel writing. Before this, I’d not come across many other reading/writing blog sites so it’s been a great delight to find so many informative, and/or quirky, inspiring, reflective, hilarious, challenging etc etc whole new communities out there.

One I came across recently made me laugh out loud, the way it celebrates one of the most common aspects of a writer’s life: REJECTION!.Now that I’ve reached the part of my own story, where The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society was accepted for publication, it seems like the right time to say a bit more about my own rejection experiences.

I haven’t kept any of the letters which came with my returned short stories during my first attempt at leading a writer’s life, nor those which, at first, caused deeper disappointment with the return of my very first novel. It took a few years for me to understand the full truth of the adage, ‘beware of what you wish for’: I’m profoundly grateful for that rejection – especially the one from an agent who said she’d be interested in seeing my next novel (click here to see what I felt at the time!).

That was in the mid-eighties; my next supply of rejections came with each return journey of my children’s novel, The Tide Machines of Mermaid’s Rock.

In the next few years, I had less time for Novel Writing, and focused mainly on Poetry.I had some success with this, but in the late 90s I was back in the firing line again with my novel, In The Lamb-White Days. This generated some truly lovely rejection letters in the course of its circuitous journey to and from agents, publishers and The Literary Consultancy (a genuinely useful organization, which, in a roundabout way, helped me find a publisher for my next novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society).

The letter below is the one with the nicest compliments, and I’ve been amused to see from the Rejected Writers site how the same types of phrases crop up over decades and distances. I particularly like the notion of 150% commitment!
Even so, I won’t deny that did gain encouragement from it, at the time.

I have enjoyed reading In the Lamb White Days. You have captured those wonderful days of innocence beautifully and have created an utterly charming world (though with certain bleak moments), peppered with some interesting characters. That said, it seems to lack that necessary ingredient that really lifts it off the page and make me want to take it any further. We are a very small agency and take on very few new authors each year. We feel 150% commitment to those writers that we do sign up, and we work alongside them to ensure that their books reach their maximum potential. Sadly, while I have liked In the Lamb White Days, I do feel that it lacks that magical indefinable something that I would look for in a book of this type, and with that in mind, I’m going to have to recommend that you approach another agent. You write very well, and tell a good story, but without feeling that passion for your novel, I feel it would be irresponsible for us to take you on. You deserve to be nurtured and treasured by someone who believes in you and can represent you with that vital enthusiasm.

I am sorry to be the bearer of such disappointing news, but we all have to realise our limitations, particularly if it involves someone else’s career. I am sure that you will find another agent very easily and I will watch your rise to stardom with interest.

To see more about my rejection experiences for my now-published novel, click here.

Following on from my post last week (About the most welcome phone call of my life),
when Nikki Read from Transita said, ‘We would like to publish your book.’ here’s what came after the magical words, ‘But our marketing person feels that the title will have to be changed.’

This was a surprise, because so many of the rejecting agents and publishers had been intrigued by the unusual title: The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society. But at that moment I was floating on cloud nine, and the loss of my treasured title seemed a very small price to pay for publication. I soon learned that it was Transita’s Editor, Marina Oliver, who had felt that some people might be put off by the word Euthanasia. She might well have been right, but now, over four years later, I still believe that more people were attracted by it than the reverse.

After my feet had eventually settled on solid ground once more, I attempted to find a suitable alternative title, but anything I managed to think of seemed very weak in comparison, and I became more determined to keep to the original title. I gathered a selection of agents’ and publishers’ favourable comments on the name, including one from Sara Maitland of The Literary Consultancy, and Nikki and her publishing partner, Giles Lewis, were persuaded to keep it. ( I got the impression that they were almost as pleased as I was to have received what turned out to be compelling evidence in favour of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society!

I’ll write in more detail soon about my experience of the various stages between that phone call on 19th February 2005 and the publication date in October of the same year – I’d thought that it would take at least a whole year, (maybe even two years) , but Nikki and Giles weren’t the types to stand around while the grass grew up around their feet.

That April, they brought out their first four novels, and over the following months, they kept up the comet-like pace of publication. They’d already gained their expertise from their other publishing venture: Howto Books, and I’m glad to see that this is still flourishing, in spite of the sad demise of Transita after the publication of thirty two novels in the eighteen months or so of its short life.

But I’m running ahead of myself. I haven’t yet come to the launch of my book – probably the best evening of my life!

My niece’s wedding on Saturday was held in an idyllic setting in the Devon countryside - a beautiful ancient church, accessed by a long flight of steps - you can get an idea of it from this photo

Fortunately the sun shone throughout the whole event - it might not have felt quite so idyllic if we’d all been squelching up the aisle and dripping rainwater all over the pews. Our journey down the M5 the day before had been accompanied by torrential storms, and the skies opened on us again this evening when we got back home.

One good thing for me about long car journeys is that for the last fifteen years or so, I’ve been able to read a book when I’m in the passenger seat. This weekend, my book was the aptly named A Seriously Useful Author’s Guide to Marketing and Publicising Books by Mary Cavanagh. I know I’m going to be dipping into various chapters over the next few months, while I’m working at getting my next novel, Paper Lanterns, into print. (Thank you, Mary, for producing this well-timed book!)

In my previous posts I was talking about my first writing course on the island of Kithera in Crete. There have been a lot of changes in the world of publishing and marketing books since then (about seven years ago now).

I’d say that the ‘real’ start of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society was during that week in Kithera, in June 2001. It was my individual tutorials with Helen Carey that helped me discover my main character’s back-story and her motivations for the future - I already had a general idea of what was going to happen to seventy-five year old Agnes Borrowdale, but it wasn’t till Helen asked a few key questions, that I realised I was focusing too much on the intricacies of the plot, and didn’t yet know my characters from the inside out.

One of difficulties that Helen identified was the relationship between Agnes and her son, Jack, who places her in an old people’s home, from which she escapes at the start of the book. As the main protagonist, Agnes must engage the reader from the start, and maintain their interest and affections to the end. I had to show that Jack himself, though a flawed character, was not unsympathetic. I also needed to show why Jack, and his new partner, Monica, felt that The Harmony Home for The Young At Heart, was the best place for Agnes.

Gradually, these characters, and many more, developed both inner and outer lives of their own, as the action moved to and from Sussex to Nottingham and Birmingham. I had enormous fun in getting to know them all, and extricating them from the various awkward situations I landed them in.

Even now, as I think about them I can see and hear them in my head. They’re absolutely solid and real as the friends and relations I met up with again this weekend at the wedding. And yet at the same time, I’m fully aware of the fact that I invented everyone of them. (And I still regard myself as sane!)

I’ve been working on this blog-site for most of the weekend, and I’m gradually getting my head round some of the weird codes on the admin pages behind the scenes. There’s an amazing difference between these, and the effect they have created on the visible site that you’ll be looking at. Click here, and admire the spaces between the authors’ names - it took me hours of trial and error towork out how to do this!

Anyway, enough of that for the time being - I’m meant to be telling you more about my writing course on Kithera. It was organised by Andy Mullett, the driving force behind The Greek Experience – he used the local facilities, (including the tutor of the Greek course, whose main occupation was running his own delicatessen). The creative writing workshops and tutorials took place on the sheltered terrace of the small hotel, or outside one of the local bars. The art tutor lived in a nearby village, and her course took place outdoors, wherever there was an inspiring landscape, ruined farmhouse or small church.

The students on all the courses were allocated accommodation scattered around the little town of Chora. This itself was not one single place – the old ‘town’ of Chora was up at the top of a hill, and the other part was the harbour front, a long, steep road of at least a kilometre, though when walking uphill it felt like more than double that distance.

Tutors for writing courses came mainly from England. Mine, was a novelist called Helen Carey. I’d sent her parts of the novel I’d intended to work on at Arvon, and also the first few chapters of my new novel. By the end of May, I’d already won the prize of a free read from TLC, so, since I was about to get feedback on that novel, it made more sense for me to ask Helen to discuss the new novel with me. At that stage, I hadn’t got a title for this book which was to become my first published novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society
Helen offered me some useful suggestions, and pointed out some possible pitfalls that I needed to be aware of, if my main character, Agnes was to keep the sympathy of the reader.

The sun shone, the mountain slopes were crisscrossed with narrow winding tracks, the air was scented with wild thyme. The sea was clear turquoise above the flat white rocks. It couldn’t have been more different from the Midlands urban setting of the novel whose characters were beginning to emerge.

It was one of the best (and most productive) holidays of my life. I was lucky enough to have another week there the following year, and that opened up yet more opportunities - but I’ll come to that later.
(Unfortunately, Andy Mullet stopped organising these activity holidays a few years ago.)

Yesterday was the first time since I started this blog that I didn’t add a new post. I don’t even have the excuse of a hard day at work, because I decided to acknowledge the half term break by staying at home, so I’ll have to blame it on the rats.

Yes, rats - the four-legged creatures, not the politicians who’ve been claiming for duck houses or non-existent mortgages.

For several years I’d ignored the very occasional scrabbling sound from the loft of my lovely little study/writing room, a one storey extension that we added to our house about twenty years ago.

Eventually I couldn’t kid myself any longer - that noise wasn’t a flock of giant pigeons doing the can can on the ridge tiles, or the overgrown forsythia tapping on the roof.

The pest control/tree-surgeon duo (who’d come to lop back the encroaching vegetation that was stealing half the daylight from our garden) discovered that the roof space had been infested by rats, and they duly left a dozen or so little red dishes of lurid blue granules.

Yesterday they came back to clear all the clutter that had been stored there for nearly twenty years, and to monitor progress (no sign of rats, dead or alive). I watched as every cardboard box and black bin bag was handed down and taken out to the trailer waiting on the drive.

Good by to Action Man, and his green motorbike and tank. Goodby to Garfield the cat, the Starwars spaceship, the comics and annuals. A long-delayed goodby to my son’s childhood, for which he, at 30, wouldn’t feel the slightest pang.

Getting back now to what I was saying about Clarissa in my last post, A short digression on one of the two Fat Ladies, she and I have always been ‘good at English’ and managed to get top marks for our essays and stories – we boxed and coxed for the English and History prizes, one being first and the other second, then maybe vice versa the following year. So, with her TV career firmly established, the idea of writing a TV sitcom together seemed like something we could both enjoy.

So off we went to Herefordshire for a few days’ break, to see what we might come up with. Sitting in a snug pub in one of that county’s numerous Black and White villages (mainly unsung and tourist-free), devouring some excellent bangers and mash, we mulled over ideas, which I scribbled down in the back of a note book.

‘One Foot in The Grave,’ one of us said. ‘Vicar of Dibley,’ said the other. We both agree that our main protagonists would be anarchic older people, in one way or another. ‘Then we can play ourselves,’ she laughed.

‘We don’t count as ‘old’ yet!’ I said, and we embarked on a deeply philosophical discussion of attitudes and ‘states of mind’, carefully skirting around the boggy territory of ‘The Young These Days’ – wading into that morass being the clearest sign of ‘Being Past It.’

‘So what is this “it” that we might be past?’

‘Anything boring we don’t want to do.’

So far, the sitcom remains, not only un-shown on TV, but as yet, unwritten. However, all was not wasted. A few years later, after I’d achieved my MA and completed my novel, In The Lamb-White Days, I was on the verge of embarking on a new novel, when the idea of an anarchic older protagonist took hold. She emerged as ‘Agnes Borrowdale, 75 years old, a week on Tuesday….’, the heroine of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

(You can see Clarissa’s name, and that discussion, mentioned among the Acknowledgements in the front of that book)