Re-Published!

Flying (and Writing) by the Seat of my Pants

This is an excerpt from a guest post I made on the blog www.womenfictionwriters.com:

I write my novels flying by the seat of my pants, without a plan or even an outline, not knowing where I’ll end up when I write that first word. I plunge blindly into the story with nothing more than a vague idea of a character, and go along wherever she takes me. I’m often surprised at the results.
Sounds like a recipe for chaos, but there’s a method to the madness, and I quite clearly learned the method back in 1971-72, when, as a very naïve 19-year-old, I left my home in Guyana and plunged into the heart of the Amazon for the adventure of my life. I had no plan, no goal, and very little money; I just knew I had to go. I certainly had no idea that I’d end up learning not only how to navigate South America flying by the seat of my pants, but a whole new approach to life and, several decades later, how to write a novel.

Read the whole article here.

UPDATE 2013

Maybe blogging is the way forward for now.

For the first time in over 14 years I'm not working on a new book, and for a very mundane reason:

I've got a day job!

This means rising at 5:30 and leaving home at 6:45 for a 40 minute commute to my workplace, a hospital in Schwetzingen, Germany, where I'm a social worker. I really enjoy the work and if I ever need to set a novel in a German hospital, well, I'm getting all the experience and a thousand anecdotes! I intend to stay at that job till I retire in early 2017. It's a good thing.

But three years ago, I'd never have dreamt I'd be here. The two long-term plans furthest from my mind were a) returning to Germany and b) returning to Social Work . Yet here I am, and loving it!

Since I'm an early morning writer, that means no more writing for a while, and somehow that's a good thing too. Those who know me, and have read the now-hidden pages of this blog, know of my struggles for the last nine years or so; I've written one book after the other. I've worn my fingers to the bone writing queries, and I could paper my wall with rejections.

 It hasn't been only rejections; I've had four different agents, three of them with major agencies in Britain and the USA;  one of my books was highly praised by a Bloomsbury editor and another made it to the sales meeting of Ballantine, USA. But still: no sale. Seems I don't write the stuff publishers think will sell, and I'm not the type to write for the market. So, no vampires or werewolves or aliens or erotica or whatever the current trend is from me, and I've reverted the ups-and-downs story of that journey, as recorded in the early years of this blog, to draft.

This was originally a LiveJournal blog with a small following of aspiring writers, but I think it's no longer relevant or wise to keep it up. The past is past; I'm looking forwards now, and though I won't be writing anything new, I do have a writing plan of sorts.

The writing I'll be doing is revision.  I can do that on the weekends and, maybe, even in the evenings; it's just for novels that I need to be up early with a clear head. So, I'll be revising all my published novels, as well as the unpublished ones sleeping in my computer, and it's ready-steady-go for the digital age: they're all going to come out as e-books, all revised and polished and smartened up! The first one, Of Marriageable Age, is almost ready to go; just a few little kinks to sort out, and she'll be out there again. The rest will follow...

For me it's a Brave New World, and I can't wait to enter it!

The wonderful thing is that all the pressure has gone. I don't need the money. I don't need a breakthrough. I don't need success. If one person buys my books or 100, it doesn't matter. I don't need a bestseller. I don't need sales. The books can do what they want: if people enjoy them, so much the better. I've written them and my job is over. I'm no longer starving in a garrett and trying to put two kids through school and adolescence. They've flown the coop and I have my steady income. My (disabled) husband is in good hands, and close by. I'm a normal person again with tax taken off my salary (how wonderful, not having to put it aside!) as well as pension contributions and health insurance and what-not. It's so relaxing to be normal!

And yet, I still march to a different drummer. It's all inside me, and if it's ever going to show, well, it will show in my books and not in my external life.

And maybe in this blog, which is all the creative writing I'll be doing from now on.

And when I retire in 2017: well, I've got two books in a trilogy to write. And then I'll have all the time in the world to do so. 

Agent A: Writing down Memory Lane

This is what my first "computer" looked like; this was the late 1990s.

That little green stripe was my screen. I could view maybe three lines of writing at once, correcting typos, exchanging words, etc. I thought it was brilliant; such an improvement on having to type directly onto paper.

I saved my documents on floppy disks. These looked like this. In fact, this is an original of those disks. I am about to have its contents extracted so that I can read them again.

You probably can't read what's written on the floppy; there are 

a few crossed-out items, and then, "Perfidia" and "Die Woche".
Perfidia was the title of that first novel.
"Die Woche" has nothing to do with death. It was an article

I wrote at the time which was published in a German

 newspaper, Die Woche.

Original blog post from 28.01.07, but never made public.

Ten years ago (ie 1996-1997) I wrote my first novel . I'll call it Book A. 

Up to that point, I’d never thought I could do such a thing as write a whole novel. Reading had always been my passion, and making up stories my hobby, but only in my head. I’d never imagined I’d ever have the discipline to actually sit down and put those stories to paper. The very thought of planning a full-length novel gave me a headache, and short stories just didn’t interest me.

But one day I sat down and started, and from that moment I never looked back. The words simply flowed out; characters leaped into life, and even without plotting, all kinds of twists and turns arose unbidden from my imagination. I loved it.

I ended up with 700 pages, a monster of a book, wild and passionate. Let’s call that Book A.
At the time I was living in Germany, in a little village miles from anywhere. I had no computer; I wrote on a Brother Word Processor, a thing like a typewriter with a separate monitor. It had no hard disk, but I could store my writing on floppy disks, which held only a few chapters at a time. To print out a whole novel I had to print one chapter at a time, one disk at a time, and add the page numbers manually. But that was good enough for me.

Once my book was finished I wondered what to do with it. I had no idea about the publishing world. I knew no writers and had read few books on writing; in fact, just one, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer.

And of course, I had no internet, no Google. What I did have was a big book called The Writers Handbook, but that was more about publishing in America, which seems a little out of the way. Somehow I found out about a British writers’ magazine called Writers' News, and subscribed to that. In the very first issue, I read a short article about a literary agent who was just starting out. Let’s call her Agent A.

I wrote to her about my book, and eventually sent her the full manuscript.
A few weeks later I got a phone call. “Can you visit me in London?”
Rookie as I was, I had no idea what this phone call meant, I only knew I had to go. So I said yes immediately.

Nervous as a schoolgirl called to the Head, I went to her home/office in North London. I was convinced she’d called me all that way only to say my manuscript was absolute rubbish and to forget writing for the rest of my life.

The first words she said was: “I think it’s terrific...”
I was so excited I almost missed the end of that sentence: “...but it needs a lot of work.”
Right there and then she went through the manuscript with me. Pages and pages were dismissed with a stroke of her red pen: “That’s rubbish.” Hundreds of pages got that treatment. I ended up with 430 pages (I didn't have a word counting facility in those days, I didn't even know I was supposed to count words!).

She sent me home with some wise advice: take what’s left and rebuild the whole thing from scratch.
That’s what I did, but it still wasn’t good enough.

Another draft, another submission later, she was satisfied enough to start submitting.
Nothing came of it. One or two editors, she said, would be happy to see a revised draft. So back to the drawing board it went. Back to the agent. Back to the editors.
And then a long, long silence.

When I could no longer bear the silence I rang her up.
She told me she’d had no answer up to now, and it didn’t look very hopeful. I burst into tears. I was utterly and completely devastated. I knew it was over. I had put all I had into that book, blood, sweat and tears. It had kept me going through a desperate time. It had been my lifeline... and it was a failure!

But the word failure just isn't in my vocabulary. I'm a lemons to lemonade type.

So I dried my tears, returned to my Brother, and started Book B.

By this time, three years had passed since writing Book A

...to be continued....

Iran imposes media blackout over stoning sentence woman

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani will not be stoned, the regime has said, but family fear she will be hanged

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who has been convicted of adultery in Iran and sentenced to death. Photograph: AP

Iran has imposed a media blackout over the case of a 43-year-old mother of two who was sentenced to be stoned to death and whose fate is still unclear despite an apparent "reprieve".

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still facing execution by hanging after being convicted of adultery, her son told the Guardian today.

Newspapers, agencies and TV channels in Iran have been banned from reporting Mohammadi Ashtiani's death sentence, despite an international campaign launched by her children, which has been joined by politicians and celebrities from all over the world.

The campaign, first highlighted by the Guardian last week, has failed to stop the Iranian authorities from pressing ahead.

Last night the Iranian embassy in London issued an opaque statement saying that Mohammadi Ashtiani would not be stoned to death. "According to information from the relevant judicial authorities in Iran, she will not be executed by stoning punishment," it said.

The statement was not reported inside Iran and neither was the news of stoning death sentences for 15 other Iranians.

"It's not the first time we are banned from reporting a stoning case, but because of the sensitivity over Sakineh's case the censorship for her story is even stricter," said an Iranian journalist from Tehran who asked not to be named.

"We are banned from reporting any details about her case. If they think that it [stoning to death] is an Islamic rule, why are they afraid of it so much? I think that the statement issued by Iran's embassy in London is just to calm down the situation. Once the outrage has cooled off, they might hang Sakineh instead."

Iran has not stoned a woman to death since 2007 when the execution of Mahboubeh M sparked outcry in Iran. She had been forced to confess to adultery.

"They told her that they'll pour boiling water on her head if she refuses to confess that she had sex with another man except her husband," said Soheila Vahdati, a human rights activist in California. "They executed her in secret and we were all informed when her death sentence was completed."

Mahboubeh's story became known only when an official witness of her death revealed that she had been buried alive up to her shoulders while the guards stoned her to death.

A number of men have been stoned to death in recent years.

Mohammadi Ashtiani's son, Sajad, 22, who began the campaign to save her, said the embassy's statement has not stopped him worrying for his mother. "They just said that she won't be stoned, it doesn't mean that she won't be executed. She's still on death row."

A prisoner reprieved before stoning may be hanged, as was the case for Abdollah Farivar in 2008. Farivar, convicted of "illicit relationship outside marriage", was initially sentenced to death by stoning but later hanged when a campaign for his case attracted worldwide attention.

RIP Janet Jagan

Janet Jagan, ex-president of Guyana, died last week. RIP, Janet!

I am her designated biographer. What a great story she has!

Picture this. A prettty and popular and athletic Jewish girl from Chicago. Qualifies for the Olympics in swimming, takes secret flying lessons, studies nursing.

Meets a handsome, swarthy and passionate young dentistry student of Indian descent from a country she's never heard of. They fall in love. Her father threatens to shoot him on sight, her grandmother has a heart attack, but marry him she does and follows him back to his homeland in South America armed with several copies of the Little Lenin Library.

Meets the inlaws, labourers on a sugar plantation who have scrimped and saved to give the eldest son an education.

Cheddi, her husband, opens a dental practice and she works with him as an assistant, but their true passion is politics, and soon they are shoulder-deep in their life work.

The rest is history.

Long story short: Janet Jagan was elected President of Guyana in 1996, the climax of an amazing life dedicated to a people who at first rejected her for being a "white foreigner" and who now called her Ma. Janet has spent her life working untiringly for the Guyanese people: putting her life and safety at risk, spending time in jail, facing the wrath of John F. Kennedy, breaking down barriers of gender and race.

My father spent much of his life working for the Jagans, so I know them personally. In between all her political activities Janet has written and published several children's books. She loved my novels and put me forward for the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2004, but unfortunately I was a German citizen and ineligible.
 Here we are at a reading I gave in Guyana, 2004:

From her Guardian obituary:

"The death of Janet Jagan, who has died aged 88, closes a remarkable and controversial career in Guyanese and postwar anti-imperialist politics, within which she was a central figure from 1946 until her death. She became president in succession to her husband Cheddi Jagan in 1997 and along the way she acquired as many supporters as enemies."

Another Book!

My short story "How Bhoomi Broke her Bonds" has been published in Tell Tales IV, the Global Village.
The launch party was last Thursday, April 2nd. at the Blag Club in Notting Hill Gate. I took my cousin Rod and his partner Jaunita Cox and we had a blast!
I don't go out socially much at all so it was a very good change for me; and I realised how very much I fit the image of Writer in a Garrett... and writing in a garrett just doesn't work in these fast times. People - by that I mean writers - go out, meet other people, (writers), network, network, network. So I decided to join the club, and, armed with a copy of my book, went around the club gathering autographss from as many contributors as I could get my hands on.

I got to meet quite a few interesting people. Not counting co-editor Monique Roffey, (because I already knew her) here's who I met:

Courttia Newland, Tell Talles IV editor. Courttia's name has become familiar to me over the last few months and it was great to meeet him in person, chat, and know that I will be included in some of his future projects! He is very active in the London literature scene and it is him we have to thank for helping to keep the short story alive.

Jeremy Poynting, editor of the Peepal Tree Press, which publishes Caribbean and Indian literature and non-fiction. I've submitted to Peepal Tree Press before, but the timing was wrong... anyway, I chatted with him and got him interested in my future biography of Janet Jagan. More about that later.

So there I was, going around asking people if they're "in the book", and I met this group of three ladies. So I popped the question, and they said, "no, we're agents!" "Oh!" I said, "Which agency?" and they told me but I'm sorry to say I didn't get it and I didn't know how to follow up on that, by announcing, "I've got JUST the book for you, three in fact!"
I'm really quite shy, you know. So I just moved on, with a bright smile. More's the pity.

On the way home we ran into one of the contributors, Catherine Smith, at Notting Hill Gate tube station. Tunrs out she lives in Lewes, which is a stop on my way home to Eastbourne. So of course we travelled together. At Victoria we discovered the next train to Eastbourne would be a 45 minute wait, so we decided to take the Brighton train and then double back to Lewes/Eastbourne. And on the way back Catherine and I became friends. She happens to be teaching a Creative Writing Course at Sussex U. where I am doing my MA and we had quite a few mutual acquaintances, including the indefatigable poet John Agard and his partner Grace Nichols. John is an old friend of mine, which is why I call him Johnny; we were Young Adults together in Georgetown, when he was already a budding poet and I was a budding.... well, hippy, I guess. We worked together at Georgetown's Sunday Chronicle and shared some good times.
And now he's a famous poet, and succesful too, which just proves that you CAN make a living form poetry, if you've got Johnny's talent and spirit. A lovely puckish fellow, and Grace is just as great.

So, that was my round-up for Thursday. More to come...

Book!

This week a parcel came from me... a book! This book!

Brand new; so new it hasn't even been published yet.
It's a proof copy, written by my friend Monique Roffey, who is from Trinidad, a country I spent some time in as a child.
I've started it, and it promises to be a good read. It's also going to be put up for a few prizes, and it's good to have a book to root for.

Playing the Game

I hate parties. Amend that to "I hate parties where I don't know a single soul and there are lots of famous people and I'm just a little nobody and know it." Case in point: the HarperCollins Summer Party 2004 at the Serpentine Gardens. I've never been good at small talk, and once again this not-so-fatal flaw became all too obvious. I stuck to my agent's side as she introduced me to this publishing person and that, only to clam up when it came to conversation. 

I met one famous person: Doris Lessing, whose hand I was honoured to shake. The rest is all a blur. I rememeber lots of elegant literary people walking about the lawn with flutes of champagne in their hands, and everybody knowing everyone else except me. Did I ever mention - I'm shy?

 I did meet one first-time HarperCollins author and we stuck together in our anonymity for most of the party. I even remember her name: Anita Anderson. Luckily, she was quite chatty so I didn't have to speak much myself. I'm always grateful for that. I'm a listener. And of course I met my editor. She immediately drew me aside. The whole party heard the hammering of my heart and stopped to stare. Or so it seemed. I was about to get - The Verdict.

And now a Break for Commercials.

My second novel, La Danse des Paons, was doing brilliantly in France. Here's the gorgeous cover:   

Like its predecssor, Noces Indiennes, it was in the French Top Ten but this time you'll really have to take my word for it because I'm not scanning any more lists. But yes, it was up there rubbing shoulders with books by Robin Cook and Danielle Steele and Stephen King and lots of French authors I've never heard of.

End of Commercial Break.

"I love it!" she said. And my little heart soared. We had a great conversation. I told her that I was now far enough into the story to know where it was going and I was sure I could write a synopsis. I even had a working title: The Cry of the Brain-Fever Bird. She was happy, I was happy, my agent was happy.

Driving home later that evening, light-headed from all the bubbly, I giggled to my agent: "Of course I can play the game! I'll give them their bloody synopsis, if that's what they want!" Oh, the silliness of Aquisitions people! I'd give them a nice little story to get a contract - I was a writer, of COURSE I could write a synopsis! - and then just write my book the way I always did - by following the characters. That's what's called Playing the Game! I was a Professional, and I'd give them just what they wanted! Call it Ecstasy, if you will! Champagne induced ecstasy!

Moving On Again

Well, I've been very negligent of this blog.. that's because of a whole flood of new developments.

Sadly, those new developments have nothing to do with publishing - right now, White Night is on its second round of submissions, out with three big publishers, but no news yet. Would be nice to get some feedback before the summer pause, but right now I'm concentrating on other stuff.

First of all, there IS a piece of good news in the writing division. I've been offered a wonderful job, in fact, a writer's dream job: a Writing Fellowship at Brighton University.

Fellowships are awarded to 30-40 published authors each year, and is funded by Britain's Royal Literary Fund, a charity for writers. Some time back the RLF found it just had too much money and didn't know what to do with it. The money comes from the literary estates of several writers, including famous ones such as Somerset Maugham and A.A.Milne (though the latter was sold to Disney). So, apart from helping writers in financial distress, they decided to create the Fellowship Scheme. Which is just brilliant.

The Fellowship Scheme posts published authors at universities all over Britain. They are given an office by the Uni and a computer, and they have to be present two days a week to help students with their written work - not creative writing, but essays, dissertations and the like. It appears that lost of studenst simply don't know how to write - so that's where we step in.

Isn't that a fantastic idea?

I actually applied for a Fellowship two years ago; I applied for 2006 and 2007. I didn't get the 2006 one, but I got the one starting this September. It's for one or two years.

This means another big move. Another!!! I moved to Germany just a year ago, and now it's back to England. Not only that. I intend moving my family from Eastbourne to Brighton. So right now I'm in the throes of getting our home in Germany ready for sale - it's goodbye for good. If we ever move back to Germany it'll be in rented accomodation.

I'm very excited about the move, because most of all it means I get to be back with my kids. I had to leave the two of them in England a year ago, which just about broke my heart. It was for the sake of my husband, who is ill with Parkinson's. But now I realise that the most important thing is for us all to be together. It's a long and complicated story, but I hope that after a long and cloudy time things will finally brighten up for us all. It's been sooooo hard....

The financial situation will of course ease up now (the RLF Fellowship does pay reather well for only two days), so I can relax a little regarding getting the book sold. And that's a relief!

Anyway, it feels good to have finally updated the blog and I hope to keep it up better in future. I've been rather down in the last few months but I feel things will move upwards from now. I do hope so. Thanks for looking in!

Congratulations!

To Patricia Wood, whose debut novel Lottery will be out in August - and just got a huge spread in the Putnam catalogue!

Here's her blog post about it....

Pat is one of those people you love to love, and I'm pleased and proud to be part of her writing world.

.................................................................................................................................................................

On my submission status:
The Ballantine acquisitions team turned down White Night.

Something tells me it's going to be a long, long wait.
One thing you need a lot of in the publishing world is patience.
Patience, patience, and yet more patience.
Nothing moves quickly.

So the question is: do I regret it?
Do I regret my little private rebellion against HarperCollins?
Should I have written that option novel just the way my editor wanted, taken the advance, and ran?
If I had, would I be big by now, and writing what I really want to write, like she'd promised, back then in the Grand Hotel Eastbourne?
A part of me does have regrets. That's the part of me that is struggling to keep my family above water financially. A part of me that wants to lie down and rest, to just write whatever they want, and to hell with everything else.

I'm tired. My husband is ill; he's contracted Parkinson's Disease, and just when I thought the kids are big enough to be on their own I've got someone new to care for. He's now retired and our income is cut by half. I'm tired of the struggle.

And another part of me says: it's OK. One day, it will be worth it.
One day I'll find the editor who can say a wholehearted YES to my work, and an acquisitions team who'll agree. One day, I know, I'll find my readers.

I truly believe that if I had given in back then, written a book by numbers instead of from my heart, I'd have lost whatever it is that makes writing special for me - a certain magic.
I want to preserve that magic, find it again and again. I want an agent who roots for my writing and wants it to be the best it can be and will help me to get there - not one for whom a quick success is more important than growing into the best writer I can be.
In that sense, all is well.

I shall wait.

I'm back!

A few weeks ago I made this blog private, only visible to those with invitations, and invitations only going to other writers.
The reason:
I suddenly got paranoid. I thought of all the mistakes I've made in publishing, some foolish, some risky, some possible downright self-destructive, depending on how the next few weeks, months and years pan out.
I thought of the editors currently reviewing my manuscript.
I thought of the one who currently loves it (YES!) ; loves it enough to send it to the editorial board of Ballantine, Random House.
That's where it's been ever since.
What if They (They of the editorial board) read this blog? They'll think I'm a loose cannon! So, that's the reason I privatized it.
So if you came here in the last few weeks and found yourself locked out, I apologize (but then you wouldn't be reading this would you? Unless I've invited you back in). It wasn't personal. It was just my paranoia.

And then, things in my personal life weren't going so well.
They still aren't.
I did the equivalent of jumping into bed and pulling the blanket over my head; I more or less withdrew from the blogosphere.
But hiding in a cocoon of self-pity didn't do me any good, so here I am again: that ms is still out there, and news could come at any moment of any day. That news may be good, it may be bad, but whatever it is, I'll just keep on trucking.
What choice have I got?
Welcome back, me!