The 12 75-worders of Christmas

As Christmas draws to a close, we drift, sometimes reluctantly, back to work, take down the Christmas decorations and push away the plate with the final scraps of Christmas pudding clinging to it, there is a small window of opportunity to share something with you...In the run up to Christmas, Richard Hearn, who runs Paragraph Planet, put out a plea on Twitter for seasonally themed 75-worders. So, inspired, I took it upon myself to write not one but twelve of them.I am very pleased to say that Richard ran two of the twelve, including a particularly dark one on Boxing Day which pleased me immensely. (I used to blog for NewburyToday and used to write equally dark Christmas Drabbles* - but we fell out a few years ago and they refused to run one, which, having refused to run other blogs I'd written, was the final straw for my blogging for that particular site).So, with 12th Night rapidly approaching I have decided to share all 12 of my 75-worders with you, four a day, until Sunday. I hope you like them!

For the record, Santa didn’t “...come to me and say...” He begged, do you hear me, dropped to his knees, sobbing. That’s right, to me, his first born, the outcast. Yes, I could fly like the rest, but my genetic anomaly was to have a nasal cavity that emitted photons at 630nm. Saved Christmas I did, because I can see in moderate levels of water vapour and the rest couldn’t and they dared call me freak! 

The old man sat down heavily by the fire and patted his distended belly. “One Billion Calories an’ still only a fifty-two inch waist. Ho Ho Ho.” He pulled off his red hat, patting his sweaty brow with it. “I fear the million shots of whisky may have got the better of me this year!” he bellowed, snorting loudly. Thor shook his head and glared. Letting Santa into the Deity Club had been a terrible mistake.

Under the flicker of white flashes and the pulse of blue from the lights on top of their cars the Chief of Police spoke earnestly into the television camera. “It is true that we have arrested an elderly gentleman in relation to the following charges: No CRB check, animal exploitation, breaking and entering, border crossing without a passport and keeping a list of children who are naughty and nice in violation of the Data Protection Act.” (Published on Paragraph Planet site on December 20th)

Father Christmas Inc (FCI), a Division of Santa Claus Enterprises would like to make the following announcement: After the 15th consecutive year-on-year drop in the number of children classified as “Nice”, FCI hereby declare that the following behaviours will no longer be classed as “Naughty”: Not tidying your room, not doing your homework, breaking something (under $50 in value) and not owning up. However, after some boardroom discussion, outright lying will still be classed as “Naughty”.

Right, if that hasn't put you off, there will be four more tomorrow!John* A Drabble is a story of exactly 100 words

Tag! You’re an Author and You’re “It”

You know this game, but you may never have played it this way: Tag! You’re the author who’s “It” so you have to play the game by sharing your Work in Progress (WIP) or it’s straight to bed without supper for you. Alexandria Szeman tagged me, and these are the rules:

• Give credit (including the URL/link) to the person or blog that caught you when you were frantically trying to run away, slugged you on the arm, and thus made you “It”
• Play by the rules – no pinching, kicking, crying, spitting, or throwing tantrums – which includes posting the rules
• Answer ten questions about your current WIP, no matter the genre, because maybe we’d like to get to know you better (actually it’s only 9 questions as far as I can tell, since the 10th “question” is the next step)
• List five other authors or bloggers, with their hiding places (URL/links), so we can chase them down and make them “It” so the rest of us who are done playing can go in,  eat our supper, and check out their other books.

1. What is the title (or working title) of your WIP book?Endless Possibilities2. What genre(s) does your book fall under (or brush up against)?Contemporary-gaming-geeky-love-Story (and if that isn't a Genre - it is now).3. Which actors would you choose to play the characters in the film version of your book? (should you ever get it optioned and actually get lucky enough to have principal photography started, the film made and distributed… well, you get the idea…)I have no idea, there's an awful lot of "me" in the lead character and therefore to suggest an actor to play me, might come across as slightly egotistical. The lead female, who confusingly you don't actually meet "in person" until over halfway through the book is an amalgamation of two of my friends and a young Swedish MEP and therefore she could be played by... actually, I have no idea... I really should have thought about this shouldn't I?4. What is the one-sentence Pitch for your book? A young man hides from his complicated real-world issues inside an online world which promises a huge reward to anybody who can beat the game's designer but when he meets a girl and finds himself falling in love it turns out the real-world and his gaming world are more intertwined than he could ever imagine. [That's a terrible sentence - far too long - it should be edited down - see - the whole novel, I fear, is like that at the beginning!]5. Will your book be Indie published, self-published, or represented by an agency and sold to a traditional publisher?I genuinely think the way I have written it would scare the be-jeezus out of any traditional publisher and they wouldn't know what to do with it. I always thought it would be eBook only, again, because of the way I've written it.6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?Forever. Embarrassingly. It took me two years to write the first 15,000 words, another year to write the next 80,000 and then, after another year gap, only two months to write the last 50,000 words. If you do the maths you will see that I got carried away and wrote a stupidly big first novel. I also became (I think/hope) a much better writer during that year gap. So I'm dreading the mega edit this book now needs - that's why I'm doing things like writing this blog instead...7. What other books in this genre would you compare yours to?See Point 2 - I don't think there is a genre for this - if somebody can identify some other Geeky boy-equivalent-of-chic-lit let me know, I'd like to read some!8. Who or what inspired you to write this book?They say - write what you know - I have a past that involves various Sci-Fi and comic conventions and online gaming, some things happened, other things I heard, other things I extrapolated. In the end though, I wrote a book I wanted to read.9. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?I've hopefully designed the book to be read in 3 minute chunks - so you can read it between Tube stops (this might not make sense to non-UK residents). I also spent quite a lot of time designing the game which underpins, and is interwoven into, the story, because I don't want any of the geeks out there to say "On page X you say dragons have the following abilities, but on Page Y, a dragon does this..." because those things really bug me too! (hence the need for a mega edit!)10. Thank god, I’ve finally run fast enough to catch five other authors (and any who don’t have a blog of their own to answer these questions are welcome to do a guest post on mine):I'm going to cheat - I want the rest of WordWatchers to stop having excuses to not write a blog and to do this one... John

The WordWatchers VERY short story competition

WordWatchers holds two short story competitions a year, nominally one in the summer and one in the winter. Generally, we pick a theme (or if there's a competition out in the "Real World" we'll align with that), give ourselves a month to write the story, a month to score and critique them and then we generally have a little party and announce the winners. We also have a good laugh at how bad we generally all are at guessing which of us wrote what story.However, this winter what was clear was that we were in great danger of not having a short story competition! Unthinkable, but true. So, it was decided that we would have a very very short story competition instead, based on the format found on the Paragraph Planet website. We decided we could cope with that because even if everybody entered there would only be 750 words to read.We were also very fortunate to persuade Richard Hearn who runs Paragraph Planet to act as an external judge. This wouldn't affect our own "internal" scoring but it would be interesting to get the input from somebody who has to pick a new paragraph every day. Richard also wrote us a very nice little blurb (which is included verbatim within this post) about the competition and, to our delight, he also offered to run his favourite three on the Paragraph Planet site.What Richard had to say was:"Thank you to WordWatchers for inviting me to judge their annual writing competition, and I’m touched that the competition has been inspired by Paragraph Planet. (The word count means I'm also very much in my comfort zone!) I’ve been impressed by the strength of your entries and have genuinely struggled to whittle the entries down to a top 3. It’s always going to be a subjective decision, especially when all the authors have really got to grips with the demands of the format. I myself keep changing my mind, and I am sure others will have their own, different, favourites. However, a judge cannot reserve judgement forever. Before announcing the winners, I thought I’d reflect on what makes a good piece of flash fiction. What do I look for? I look for 75 words that work. They somehow need to be working together, towards the same goal. That goal is different for each submission - it might be a mood piece, a mini story, a comedic moment, or, probably the most popular when done right, a twist-in-the-tale - but somehow it’s about all the words working together consistently to achieve their own aim. (Scratch that. ‘Consistently’ sounds too dull. It’s often the jarring word that makes the paragraph. Let‘s just say, the paragraph has to work as a whole in a specific, original, and unexpected way.) I think all the entries from WordWatchers members were successful, but these final three are the ones that I felt stayed with me just that little bit more after reading. It was a close run thing but my top three will go on - in reverse order - on Sunday 2nd, Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th December." So on Sunday 2nd, Richard published Abbie Todd's entry:On Monday 3rd, Richard published Debbie Smith's entry:And on Tuesday 4th, Richard published his winner, the story by Julian Dobbins:What's interesting is that this is quite different from WordWatchers own results announced at our Christmas Party last night (7th).Our own results were as follows:Joint 3rd: Julian Dobbins and John Hoggard2nd: Abbie Todd1st: Mel GerdesAs you have seen Abbie and Julian's stories already, John and Mel's stories are reproduced below.John Hoggard's story:"Poor old Douglas flinched as the squawking voice of his ancient mother, upstairs in her bed, penetrated his thoughts. He poured the boiling water into the teapot and arranged the buttered toast neatly on the plate. He then laid out her vast array of pills, once again swapping her heart tablets for the identical looking ones prescribed to her festering cat. He didn’t know if the exchange was having an effect, but he hoped so."And Mel's winning (as far as WordWatchers is concerned) entry:"It wouldn't have happened if he'd made that one call home. We had an agreement you see, he'd call to let me know he'd arrived safely. But he got drunk and forgot so I spent the night awake, fearing the worst. When he finally walked through the door I lost it - grabbed the nearest pan and walloped him. The trouble was it was Le Creuset. Out stone cold. Sometimes it doesn't pay to buy quality..." It will certainly be interesting to discuss with Richard why we had such differing results (although it could be argued that two stories both featured in the top 3 of both decisions).WordWatchers would once again like to thank Richard at Paragraph Planet for his time and expertise.Merry ChristmasJohn H

75-worder part 2

This is the third seventy-five word paragraph I wrote for Paragraph Planet (they published my second entry, which came as a shock, but set the bar very high - a 50% success rate!). It was inspired, in part, by my eldest daughter who is very dyslexic, but takes after her parents and has developed a love of science and got a school report which certainly indicated she was doing very well in this particular area.It's certainly interesting to see how she copes with her dyslexia, memorising stuff seems to be her weapon of choice at the moment. When she was very young and we thought she was reading just fine, it was because she had memorised all the books we had read to her and she just regurgitated as she turned the pages. It fooled us, it fooled some of her teachers too.Now she's keen on drama and theatre and is finding learning lines is hard work, but if they're read to her, she remembers them, so she may yet crack that particular nut and wanting to read (anything) when you're dyslexic seems to be half the battle won.So, here it is, my daughter inspired 3rd 75-worder:‘“Just as well lungs work autonomously Pike, because I doubt you’d have the brain power to breath otherwise,” noted my Comprehensive school Physics Teacher Mr. Jenkins. Fortunately it turned out I was dyslexic not stupid, but my rage against this man here,’ he said gesturing to the old man sat in the front row, ‘focused me to this! A Nobel Prize for Physics! Thank-you Mr. Jenkins!’ From the back of the auditorium somebody started to clap.

Telling Stories in just 75 words

A few months ago I discovered via Twitter a wonderful Website, with a wonderfully simple premise: tell a story in exactly 75 words. The name of this website is Paragraph Planet and it can be found here.I use this site to practice the art of editing because it's a serious head scratching moment when you've written a story only to find it's not 75 words long but, for example, 83. Trying to edit ten percent of the content out of a story that short is challenging to say the least and makes every word earn its keep. I am hoping that this honing of my editorial skills will come in useful when I return, in anger, to editing Endless Possibilities.To date, I have submitted 12 seventy-five word paragraphs to the site and have been lucky enough to have three paragraphs accepted. They're on display for a single day before they're replaced by another snippet of story-telling concentrate.I'm going to keep submitting stories to Paragraph Planet, but I've decided I like those little nuggets that Paragraph Planet have passed over and I'm going to share them here - one at a time.So here's the first:He whimpered like a kicked puppy, the gag in his mouth prevented him from actually speaking, to whisper his soft lies. He tugged against the cuffs that he had used on her only a few hours earlier. She looked along the barrel of his gun. It was sticky with her blood. Her cheek smashed open while she had been handcuffed. Her fingers reached up and touched the gash. Never again. She pulled the trigger and relaxed.Not sure where this story came from, but the imagery was so strong in my mind as I typed it up that it took less than a minute to create and another minute to tweak to 75 words.If you're on Facebook you can find Paragraph Planet here and if you're on Twitter you can follow them here.

Festival of Writing 2012: Reflections on second albums, real people and flip-flops

I went to York University last weekend for the Writers' Workshop annual Festival of Writing. And, to be honest, I went with a heavy heart - nervous and unsure about why I was going and what I expected to find when I got there.

You see, this was my second time, and last year was brilliant.

This year had all the potential of being the difficult second album or the after-ten-years-in-the-wilderness comeback tour; you shell out good money for it, really want to enjoy it, but somehow, eventually, end up admitting to yourself that it's actually not very good. You wish you hadn't bothered. But it's too late; the damage is done, and the memory of the original is tarnished. You get the idea. Repeat holidays are the same. So are school reunions and re-runs of 80's TV shows.

Part of the reason for the nerves lay in where I was with my writing, working on a difficult scene that has ended up feeling like the shabby hallway I want to rush my visitors through on the way to a beautiful lounge, hoping they don't look sideways and notice the patchwork walls and bare woodwork. Put another way, as I near the end of a third rewrite, I wasn't feeling good about the prospect of mixing with the great and the good of the industry.

Another reason for the uncertainty was the doubt I was feeling about the industry itself. I've seen what it's meant to a number of my friends to become 'published writers', as some reach great success and others wonder why they've put themselves on what feels like the most painful of treadmills, juggling tight publishing deadlines with a life already full to the brim. Coming along to a conference that felt so geared towards traditional publishing seemed to be missing at least some of the point.

But, cutting to the chase, from the moment I arrived, on a sunny Friday afternoon, to the sights and sounds of ducks and geese and writers and agents and publishers and book doctors, I knew it was going to be okay. And so it turned out to be.

The second album was certainly different to the first. More assured. More self-aware. But filled with just as many great tunes and moments of soul searching as the first, and definitely just as much fun.

A few of the many highlights for me ...

• The Friday workshop with David Gaughran and Talli Roland - an independent perspective that gave great balance to what followed, and prompted some lively (and mostly open-minded) discussion about everybody's role in the writing business

• Pretty much everything about Friday evening in the bar, doing the whole 'what do you write?' thing with fellow writers, and meeting numerous agents, who, by the end of evening, had become real people and not industry targets to be pitched to and feared... people I felt actually wanted a partnership with their writers, and with whom I felt I wanted a partnership

• David Gaughran in flip-flops at the gala dinner

• Julie Cohen's 'Character' workshop, conjuring 'real people' (though on this occasion not agents) out of 2 pieces of paper, a coin and a few simple questions

• Coming away from one-on-ones with self-belief restored

All in all, I arrived home inspired, ready to write, ready to dig deep and get the book finished and sent off... and ready to sign up for next year's appropriately named festival of writing.

Potter's Month in Writing August 2012

Where to start. It has not so much been a busy writing month but certainly a productive one. I'm currently gearing up for the launch of my book of short stories titled: Snapshots, a title courtesy of fellow WordWatcher Debbie Smith.Snapshots will feature four short stories written by me. The first three were written in 2006 and have been fully edited this last month. The final short I wrote this month too. I love them all of course and consider them to be a bit good. Each story is about 7000 words long, so technically the purists may consider them not to be shorts at all. They are perfect little reads for commuting and while sipping your Horlicks before bed. The content covers different writing styles I've experimented with in the last six years, namely: Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism and something I'm going to call right now Crime Realism. This last story additionally features DI Boer from Chasing Innocence.The cover art for Snapshots will consist of five drawings in a style inspired by the Corpse Bride, which I'm very pleased to announce are being created by Monika Filipina, who also happens to be the cover model for my fiction thriller novel Chasing Innocence.Snapshots will be available as a Kindle download for under £1 from November. It will also be available for very little money as a paperback from Amazon. If  you're in Newbury leading upto Christmas and are approached by a hopeful looking bloke waving a book at you, it'll either be me or the Salvation Army. I'll be giving away free copies of Snapshots so keep an eye out.There is very exciting news as Chasing Innocence has won ANOTHER International award. There is a chance by October it will have gained at least one more award (maybe), so I'm keeping it all under my hat at the moment. I have spent a very interesting week working with some fellow authors and book promotors in the States: mostly I've been blown away by the whirlwind that is Melissa Foster. If you are trying to find an audience in the digital realm then I highly recommend you check out one or all of her sites. The World Literary Cafe, Fostering Success and her own personal site.I have reached a very important threshold in the writing of TMWWRWs, a monumental threshold. A whole bunch of things came together this month. Anyone that reads this monthly post (yeah you two, I'm looking at you!) will know I've struggled mightily. A friend said to me the other day, if you're winning all these awards for writing like you did in Chasing Innocence, why the hell are you now trying to write in a completely different way?Very good point! See you next month, should be a big one.J.P.

Pong! On an iPad near you now!

WordWatcher Chris McCormack has produced a book guaranteed to delight children with its larger than life main character, Pong, who loves racing more than anything.  Illustrated beautifully by Naomi Lunn, the rhyming book tells the story of Pong's efforts to beat Jake, a boy from Earth with a talent for Maths.Initially available on the iPad, where it comes with voiceover (provided by WordWatchers' own Julian Dobbins) and educational interactive elements about space and the solar system, the book will soon be coming out in printed form.Pong! is available from iTunes for 99p.  

Summer Short Story Competition

It's that time of year again, when WordWatchers turns its attention to short stories.  Every six months, we compete in our own short story competition, submitting stories anonymously, voting in classic Eurovision style ('nil point' for your own story) and then attempting to guess who wrote what.  Given that some of us have been in the group for quite a while, you'd think we'd be able to spot each other's work... but that's not the case, especially with people often using the competition as a vehicle for literary experimentation.Previous competitions have chosen pictures, titles or themes, as you'd expect.  This time, it's the turn of 'song lyrics' - basically, choose a song, extract a few lines to inspire you, and write your story.Entries were submitted at the July meeting, and we're currently in voting mode, ready for the great reveal in September.Tune in again to see who won! 

Potter's month in writing - July 2012

Yikes, it's August.This post really ought to be short as I've done very little but write, or at least toil in the pursuit of writing this month. So here goes.First of all a self imposed word count of five hundred words a day resulted in seven thousand words in ten days. Then I hit a big wall trying to explain the main character's emotions at a key moment in the story. I wrote about the struggle here.While deliberating the emotional conundrum I decided for a whole number of different reasons that have built over two decades, to move away from Microsoft and embrace the Apple ethos. My trusty NetBook was mothballed and I bought a MacBook Air. This got me to thinking about all the different writing interfaces I've used since I first recall writing anything, which was when I was seven. You can read about that here.As a consequence of the emotional mental block I put aside The Unseen and read The Killing Floor and Persuader. Both books are by Lee Child that I've read at least once before. Child's Reacher character is a great reference and allowed the emotional problem to be calibrated and resolved. So much so I went back and filled in many of the details about the main character that I hadn't before, because I didn't know what they were.WordWatchers had a great social night out with the Reading Writers where I drank too much Guinness and came away with a paperback copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, several book recommendations and a great short story written by Miranda Lloyd.In fact now I think about it, it was a pretty social month, for me at least. I also had a great night out with fellow WordWatcher Debbie Smith, that started on the subject of publishing strategies and ended as the floors were being swept and chairs stacked on the tables. I had a headache the next day. I'll let Debbie tell you about her plans for her children's book featuring Alonzo the very entertaining chicken.See, it really was a quick one. I'm off now. The WordWatchers are descending on my house this month I need to get me some hummus and maltesers and work out where the hoover is.Adious for now.

Potter's month in writing - June 2012

Barely, it seems, have I published one of these month in writing posts, when I find myself starting to think about the next one. Fortunately this one shouldn't take too long as it's been a productive writing month. Some exciting stuff has happened too.During May I wrote a post on Writing Craft for the Alliance of Independent Authors, which made it to their website during June. It discusses the importance of writing the book you want and the equal need to edit for the reader. You can read it here.On the 1st July The Kindle Book Review announced the semi-finalists for their 2012 Best Indie Book Awards. I'm very pleased to say Chasing Innocence was on the short-list in the Thriller category. This is a very important award to me because its judges and reviewers are all die hard fans of indie books. They announce the finalists on 1st Sept. Gulp.I had to the end of June spent precisely zero on Marketing Chasing Innocence, this despite having sold over two thousand copies in the first six months. While some great reviews and a lot of Twitter buzz for CI have come from America, I have sold very few copies there. This is probably because there's so much competition. As an experiment I have bought four months of website space leading to Christmas on the above mentioned Kindle Book Review site. This will display the book cover with a link to Amazon US. It cost $140 for the four months and will need to sell seventy books to break even. We will see. I sold five last month in the US contrasted against three hundred in the UK.Which reminds me, I sold my first book in France. How cool. Merci qui que vous soyez pour être la première personne à acheter Chasing Innocence en France.When publishing CI I was very driven by the need to produce a product that matched the quality produced by commercial publishers. In achieving this I worked with some great people, not least Lorena Goldsmith, Katie (editor, copy edit), Richard (design) and Allison (proof edit). I can't speak highly enough of what they did. A few months back Lorena started her own publishing company: Aston Bay Press, and I'm pleased to say I'm teaming up with her to produce the Kindle conversions for the books they publish. I'm very excited about this. Lorena and I had a great couple of hours swapping publishing war stories over coffee in the British Library near Euston.On my blog I started a series of posts about how I write, starting with Interface and Finding Time. During July I'm hoping to add Method and anything else about writing craft I can. As I'm also a top 500 Amazon reviewer (142 as we speak) I thought I'd add one paragraph summaries of my Amazon reviews to my blog, with the rather mercenary aim of drawing people to my blog. The review section is called: 'Recently I...' Towards the back of the month I spent a great night learning about online marketing with Chris McCormack, a fellow wordwatcher, journalist, childrens book author and newspaper managing director. I'm now armed with rudimentary skills in Google Analytics, Adwords and Facebook advertising, which probably makes me dangerous (to myself). It's a steep learning curve although the best advice like all things, was the most obvious. I'll let you know how it goes.After reading last month's American Gods I thought it would be a struggle to find something that I might enjoy quite so much. I did struggle, starting Fifty Shades of Grey as a book club read. In fact I struggled mightily. While my wife was bare knuckle fighting other Tesco's shoppers for the last copy of book two, I was puzzling over Ana's accident proneness - she can only be partially sighted. And goddamn if that girl can blush, about every other paragraph. Not only is it likely she's blind but I'm worried she's on the verge of having a stroke. Someone should warn her. Fortunately my reading picked up with the BRILLIANT Hunger Games. I'm very excited about the sequels patiently waiting on my Kindle. I am currently reading Katherine Webb's The Unseen, the reading of which I can only describe as being like watching the sun reflect off diamonds. I'll let you know next month whether the story matched. I'm reliably told it will.As for Potter writing, it went very well. I am of course racked with the foreboding that it's all a big mess - but then Lee Child confesses to feeling that every year. Oh for the naivety of that first book where I just sat down and did my best to write a thrilling story, and thought it was finished save for a few tweaks after the first draft. Aside from the fear of failure which in part drives me, I'm now really enjoying writing. The characters all seem real and I've got them jabbering away in my head during almost all moments. I got down just over seven thousand words in June and I'm building momentum. Especially now it's the story that needs writing and not the creation of the characters. I'm also not being so precious about the edits. A maximum of five passes through each chapter and no editing at all until I have at least everything I wanted to say in that chapter on the page. I'm expecting the next three months to be 10k plus each, which should leave me somewhere near the intended end of the book. Although, I have been dabbling with writing the whole trilogy in one long sequence and publishing them all a month apart. We will see. At the moment I'm enjoying the process as much as it's possible to enjoy writing the first draft, which I don't. Not really. It's the edit I live for. See you next month.

Critiques – a survival guide

In a WordWatchers’ critique, the group usually reads an entire book and discusses it in detail. The process has been likened (by the wonderfully witty Mel) to being ‘mauled with velvet paws’. Criticism is honest, occasionally tough, but also tactful and delivered with understanding and sympathy for the time and effort invested.Just to chuck my own image in, I reckon critiques are about as easy to take as someone calling your baby ugly. (I say this as a non-parent, so really I have no idea, but don’t you dare call my imaginary baby ugly!)I recently ran the gauntlet of a WordWatchers’ critique by submitting the first draft of my YA novel, Speechless. Here are my top tips for accepting criticism:1. Don't be precious.

• If good old-fashioned publication is your goal, or if you self-publish and do it properly, at the very least an editor and proofreader will get their mucky paws on your manuscript. Once your work begins its journey to publication, you’ll realise that writing a novel is a collaborative effort, and that it’s not just yours and yours alone any more.

2. Think about who you would rather hear it from.

• Trusted friends who can review your manuscript pre-publication and will (hopefully) be diplomatic, caring and understanding, or anonymous reviewers who will, in blissful ignorance of how difficult it was to write the damn thing, tear your published book apart when it's too late to change anything.

3. You don't have to accept all the comments.

• If you take everyone’s advice, your book can start to become something that’s not yours any more.
• Bear in mind that, if your critiquers write for a variety of audiences, it’s possible that not everyone will understand the rules of your genre as well as you do.
• If one person makes a point, it’s just an opinion. If two people make the same point, you might want to look at it. If three people agree on the same point, you have a problem. (Advice from published author Sara Grant at a recent revision workshop.)

4. Choose your critiquers wisely.

• Don't listen to anyone who gushes about your work, tells you it's a masterpiece and is absolutely perfect. Nice to hear, but they're wrong, and this kind of critiquing just isn't helpful.

5. Don't take it personally.

• As much as it can feel like an attack on you/your baby/your dog, it's not. Unless your character is strongly based on you/your baby/your dog and your critiquers hate them. (Yes, this has happened to me – sob!)

6. Ignore your knee-jerk reaction.

• I’m guessing this will be something along the lines of, ‘Oh my God they loathe it. I'm a useless writer and should just give up now.’ It’s so, so easy to ignore the praise and focus on/obsess over the criticism, but resist that urge. It’s not productive.
• Don’t even think about touching your manuscript until you’ve let all the feedback sink in. I mean it! Don’t. Give yourself time and space to filter through the comments and decide which to take in and which to discard. Enjoy thinking up new ideas and getting excited about the next draft.
• Don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed by the extent of the changes. It’s natural. 

7. Remember why your book is being critiqued.

• Because you wanted it to be. You asked for feedback. Try not to be defensive. People have invested time and energy that they could've spent on their own writing. They're not out to get you or put you down. They're trying to help.

8. Understand that critiquing is often subjective.

• What works for some won’t work for others. Expect people to disagree. Respect others’ opinions, but remember that the most important one is your own. It’s your decision. You’re the one who has to answer for it once it’s released into the wide world.

9. Enjoy the attention.

• Strange advice for your typical shy-away-from-the-limelight writer, but actually it’s a perfect excuse to bang on about your book without feeling guilty that you’re boring your other half/kids/dog to death.

10. Get stuck in!

• Try not to obsess over everything that’s wrong with it, and focus on how to make it better. Don’t sink into a spiral of despair and simply give up. If you do, you’re not respecting the time that others have given to try and help you.

So that’s it. My words of wisdom on the tricky subject of accepting criticism.* Now go forth and edit. Be ruthless. Have fun!*Disclaimer: author reserves the right to completely disregard her own advice. 

Potter's month in writing - May 2012

I have been giving some consideration to whether planet earth might be spinning a little faster these last few months. It seems 2012 is flying by. It's June, the jubilee is over and summer is upon us, at least in name. Before we know it the Olympics will be history, Netherlands will be Euro 2012 champions, the nights will be drawing in and Santa Claus's smug red face will be staring at us from shop windows. So lets take a deep breath, slow it all down and revel in the month that was May 2012, from a Potter perspective.The month started with the hiring of my very own writing assistant, who I'm pleased to say spends a lot of time sprawled across my lap. Bella the little black kitten has shown an amazing capacity for knowledge and technology despite weighing less than a kilo. She started her own blog here a couple of weeks ago. I understand more posts are being prepared.In April Wordwatchers member Abbie Todd finished the first draft of her second book, so the Wordwatchers collective proof read it during May. This YA novel was wonderfully imaginative with a mesmerising first person narrative of a young girl negotiating adolescence, loss, love, a young mother and a troubled past.Fellow indie author Jo Price's second Kate Linton mystery was published by Aston Bay Press at the end of May, with the Kindle version created by yours truly. Recreating the look and feel of a paperback printed book on a Kindle is something I enjoy immensely and find the process very cathartic. Of course I also got to read Eeeny Meeny Miny Moe before everyone else. It's entertaining and complex, mixing classic whodunnit themes with the modern detective genre. I'd love to hear what you think of the story and my kindle formatting if you do get to read it.As an Indie author I'm always looking to share information and collaborate. It was to this end I signed up to the Alliance of Independent Authors (Alli) back in April. Alli launched its website during May and I wrote for them a post on writing craft, which detailed the critical difference between writing the book you want and writing for yourself. This should appear on the website sometime during June.In trying to add interesting and entertaining content to my blog I wrote about my experiences this year of the much discussed Kindle pricing. This became the most read post ever on my blog in under 24 hours. I additionally plundered the questions from several Guardian interviews of commercial authors. I arranged these into a pseudo interview with me, that I hope was informative and amusing. I got a lot of positive feedback from the interview which I was very pleased about. It was great fun to do.Wordwatchers as a writing group hold two short story competitions a year, with the first one due in July. As I want to spend all of June making headway with my current book, I decided to write the short story in May. I did and I love it. The theme was to base the story on a song title or lyric. As I didn't want to take my mindset outside of my current book I made the short story a possible epilogue for the book, in an event that may or may not appear in it. Once the short story event is done I'll post it here and make it available for download in ebook formats and as a podcast.Back in April I entered Chasing Innocence into three International Independent Publishing competitions. These cover the whole scope of non-fiction and fiction genres. The first - the Indie Excellence Awards, is very heavily subscribed and judges books on overall quality, not just the page to page. Chasing Innocence was entered to three categories of the Excellence Awards and I'm very proud to say it made the final five in both New Fiction and Thriller fiction. I was hugely thrilled that my UK based book did so well in a US based competition. It gives me the confidence it might compete at the Indie Book of the Year awards which announces its finalists July 1. GulpSo we come to the tricksy topic of the next book. The truth is I'm currently working hard planning Hunting Demons: the second in the Sarah Sawacki series, while writing TMWWRWs: the first of a new three part series. If you can figure the title of TMWWRWs you get my forever admiration. I have struggled mightily writing TMWWRWs for a million different reasons, mostly documented on my Creative Crow blog. Largely it's because my head hasn't been in the right place. Marketing Chasing Innocence has been a steep learning curve, exhausting and time consuming. In reality I have been unproductive because I haven't been focusing. TMWWRWs is a action thriller with a sprinkling of paranormal and romance with a dash of gritty erotica. It's an idea that steadily grew as I closed off the first draft of Chasing Innocence (2009). It has been growing ever since, has some incredible themes if I can make it work, but getting  it written has been like getting proper Heinz ketchup onto a plate. However, something wonderful multiplied by three happened this month.

• The first multiplier was realising that the soundtrack for TMWWRWs most certainly is the sound of the book. It has me endlessly daydreaming scenes. It's not however the creative catalyst for writing the book. Any music by Moby is and was my almost constant companion during CI. Hearing the voices of characters in my head is what allows me to progress story. I have been listening to Moby a LOT this last week and I hear the voices.
• The second multiplier was writing the short story I mentioned earlier, which features Marcus Hangiman, the main character of TMWWRWs. It allowed me to see him in this moment at the very end of the book and really centred how I see him now, approaching the half way point of the book.
• The third and final  multiplier came from the fact I haven't read a lot of commercial fiction this year, mostly because I've been checking out my Indie rivals. As I aim to write novels that are at least commercially contemporary, I decided I need to start reading more commercial fiction. Someone at work mentioned Neil Gaiman after I explained the plot of TMWWRWs. Then John Hoggard - possibly the biggest Gaiman fan on this earth - recommended I start with American Gods. I did. Incredible. It, along with audio supplied by Moby has really kick-started all those neurons that had been either dormant or focused on everything other than creative writing. Importantly, what needs to happen in TMWWRWs now sits in my mind as a multi-layered, interconnected latticework of ideas and threads. I produced five thousand words in just the last week. Importantly the characters are busy chattering away in my head, it frenetic. It's fantastic.

Finally. I received some great reviews this month for Chasing Innocence in both the UK and US, including one from indie author James Viser and another from the all seeing eye of Wordwatcher's own Abbie Todd. My absolute favourite though was by Stauroylla Papadopou, who read a book that isn't written in her first language and then took the time to write a review in English as well. What she thought comes across so strongly. That someone should invest the time and effort means so much.That's it for now folks. See you here this time next month. In the meantime I can be found on Twitter @johnpottercc and am always scheming on content for my Creative Crow blog. If you haven't already read my almost award winning book, you can download and read a PDF sample or choose your preferred Amazon outlet here.

Charlotte Betts in Writing Magazine

We're all very excited here at Wordwatchers - Charlotte's been featured in the 'New Author Profile' in the June edition of Writing Magazine, sharing with its readers her thoughts on "creating realistic worlds for the Restoration characters in her debut."  It's a lovely piece about Charlotte, her book, The Apothecary's Daughter, and how it all started.We're particularly pleased because Wordwatchers gets a plug: "Join a writing group.  I wouldn't be where I am today without Wordwatchers' support and encouragement."  Thanks Charlotte! 

Rewriting: The Art of Letting Go

At the last Wordwatchers' meeting, in April, I shared my efforts of a rewritten first chapter.  'Being mauled with velvet claws' is what we've called it in the past; the wonderful act of sharing your work and then sitting back and listening to a group of people you respect, and trust to be honest, share their opinions.On this occasion, it wasn't pretty.Last year, the opening chapters of my novel got an airing with a small number of literary agents, generating some very positive comments (along with the rejections).  The main issue, it seemed, came from it being something of a cross-genre story - and therefore doomed from the start.  One agent did actually ask to read the whole manuscript, which suggested it might not be as big an issue as I first thought, but when they too couldn't commit, I knew I had to do something.So, I set about reworking it more into the crime genre - after all, the book has always started with my main character being asked to find someone, in something of a classic 'film noir' style.  And this was the new first chapter that the group was reviewing.Many of them had read the earlier version, and all had previously responded very well to the main character.  This time, however, they didn't; they felt he lacked sufficient drive to engage the reader - and there was less to like about him.  The newer members of the group, who'd not met my character before, tended to be more positive, liking my take on a classic detective story, and the overall pace of it.It was then that the penny dropped.I didn't want to write a crime novel.  Yes, there's a crime in it, but I realised that in order to give it the pace required to sustain that aspect of the story, I had stripped out much of my character's depth and in doing so rendered him a lot less effective, and a lot less likeable.But it starts with him getting the case, I thought.  It always has.  And people have always liked that.  How can it start anywhere else?  But although the readers were liking where the story was starting, I knew it was setting the wrong expectation for what was to follow.My book needed a different opening.So, I've spent the last few weeks writing it.  A new opening chapter arrived literally within two days of my velvet mauling, and has since been followed by five more chapters.  And it's feeling so much better - I've learned a lot over the last year about the book I want to write, and realising that is probably the most useful thing I could have done.  Maybe that seems a bit obvious.  But letting go of established truths has never been an easy thing to do, and that's what I was asking myself to do - it's what I needed to do, if this rewrite was going to do anything other than tweak a book that people already seemed to like... but somehow just not enough.