Wait for it……………………….wait…………………..wait……………………wait, OK maybe not!

 It would be nice if the next time we wanted to write we could just sit down and have a dozen ideas of what to write about, right?  Maybe not in the clairvoyant way you are thinking about but with an open mind you can have many ideas at your finger tips.

 I am more of a non-fiction guy.  I like the idea of learning as I write and the time frame to right short pieces appeals to me since I don’t know what I’ll have going on in six months. So my ideas tend to be more geared toward a magazine article or a blog post.  But what I try to do is cultivate as many ideas as I can think of when my mind is rolling in that direction.

 For the past week I have been traveling through the southern portion of the US taking my daughter to some sports camps while she is on holiday from school and when I travel I love to use that time to generate ideas.  I don’t know if it is the change of pace while on vacation or the many new things you run across but I always try to keep my pocket journal and pen handy while traveling.

 While a brilliant idea can be just a scribble away that great idea can flash right by us like a passing car if we let it. Our job as writers is to keep our coffers full of great ideas and cultivating them is a talent anybody can learn.  It’s also a talent that can truly be your own, because nobody has your particular perspective. For example my ideas tend to be family oriented since I am always traveling with kids, you perspective may be more towards how to go it alone on vacation. 

 Whatever your view use the times in your life when you get out of your day to day routines to take a step back and say “I could write about that”, as a writer it brings more fun to your trips and helps give you that endless source of ideas that you can pull out when you have time to write but the ideas are not flowing.

 Let your mind go back to the moment when the idea came to you and cultivate the creativity within you.

 Some of my ideas I jotted down over the last few days are listed below.  Look at the perspective I am coming from and think about how your view may differ.  Also, notice that the ideas range from vacation tips, to points of interest pieces and I even had a few fiction ideas.

 Happy travels!

 Non-Fiction Ideas:

How to pack light in your new small car

Or How to get your Mini Van into your new Compact Car

Are we There Yet? The American Road Trip

How to find a nice hotel –one was nice one not so nice

Eating healthy while traveling

Your Fall Back Plan – Enjoying your vacation when the weather does not cooperate

The Pirate House

The First Garden in the USA

Five for your Five Year Old – things to do in Savannah with your Kindergartener

Best treatments for sunburn

Home Grown Savannah Writers

The Legend of Black Beard

 Who’s buried in Bonaventure Cemetery?

The Red Neck Riviera

Drunk and Stoned on the Georgia Coast – Not a great family vacation spot

How to save for retirement

Where do you want to live when you retire?

How to eat Cheap While on The Road

How to Eat Cheap and Healthy on the Road

Ghosts of the Pirate House

America’s First Planned City

Fiction Ideas:

The Ghost of Forsyth Park

Little Girl of the Fountain

Bonaventure

Yamacaw Bluff

Sothern Hospitality

A Pirates Code

Eastern Seaboard

Cotton

Late Jan. 2011

At a recent literary festival, Sophie Hannah talked about the importance of being on board with your Agent. This is a critically acclaimed author and poet, her work has been recently televised on the BBC in the UK, who was revealing how she had been compelled to part ways with an Agent when they couldn’t agree the changes to her first crime thriller.

Turning my book into a marketable product was proving to be a compromise and I wasn’t sure how far I could, or indeed needed, to go to meet my Agents requirements. It wasn’t that he wasn’t approachable; he had seemed like a great guy when we had met a month earlier. But this was a new relationship and we had never worked together before. As a potential debut novelist, I didn’t want to upset the apple cart, but I also didn’t want to lose sight of my original vision for the novel.

I methodically worked through the points that he raised. Some were incredibly astute, great ideas, others I struggled with, slept on, mulled over.

Eventually I decided that I must be true to myself. If I really believed that an event, a character, a sub plot, was vital to the whole story then I politely argued its case. I bent as much as I could but I wasn’t prepared to break. So I made changes where I felt the book would benefit and, on the areas that I couldn’t agree, I gave my reasons why.

Then I sent back my revised manuscript and waited with bated breath…

Jane Isaac is very much a Newbie, she doesn’t even have a website yet (one day…) and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication – hopefully!

Mid Jan. 2011

At a recent launch of the new James Bond novel ‘Carte Blanche’ Jeffery Deaver read out a page of narrative he had written for his next book. Like most of his writing, it sounded gripping, compelling, a real page turner. Then he read out his re-write of the same passage. It consisted of a couple of sentences. We all laughed, applauded heavily, but it left its mark; most writing is re-writing, honing our work to get the message right.

Rosamund Lupton, author of the debut 2010 UK bestseller ‘Sister’ (well worth a read by the way), recently spoke of the importance of her editor. How she keeps her ‘on track’ with her current book. As Newbies, most of us don’t have the luxury of editors to call on. We re-write, try to make every word count, but how do we know if that is enough? It appears that it is difficult enough for an established author, so how do we approach it?

Many of us ask friends to read our work, family even. Another pair of eyes can add so much. But how objective can they really be? My husband is my harshest critic but, having discussed plot lines with him before, during and after writing, asking him to read the book in parts, then later in its entirety (when it is not even a genre he chooses to read), and still expecting an objective view is probably asking a bit too much.

Some turn to writing groups for reviews of their work. Unfortunately, in my area they meet in the daytime, so this was not an option for me. Needless to say, when I submitted my completed novel for consideration it was in the best possible condition – I had checked and re-checked grammar, spelling, plotlines etc. to the best of my ability.

A good Agent will pick up a manuscript and help the writer to turn it into something marketable, something to submit to a publishing house. You might call my book a rough diamond, waiting to be cleaned up. So it was with trepidation that I opened his first editorial email.

The first tranche of editorial notes were general. Looking individually at my characters, he advised me to write a biog. for each one and go back through the book to ensure there are no contradictory factors. Then my plotlines – he suggested areas where I may extend them. As I had, in retrospect, decided to write the book as the first of a series, I needed to expand my main character slightly. Although it sounds major, these were really all quite small issues in the context of 80,000 words.

Basically, this was an expert pair of eyes, somebody familiar with the thriller genre, helping to improve my work. But was it all correct? Writing and reading are subjective. This is one opinion. How much should I take on board, and how much should I change?…

Jane Isaac is very much a Newbie, she doesn’t even have a website yet (one day…) and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication – hopefully!

Early Jan. 2011

How many of us personalise our writing?

In my day job, as a buyer for an engineering company, I spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds a day on products, handle £50,000+ accounts. It is one big negotiation; strictly business. I go to work to pay the bills, look after my family, fund my lifestyle, be able to write. It’s reasonably enjoyable, but the fact is that if I won the lottery, I probably wouldn’t turn up for work in the morning. But I would still write.

Maybe because it’s a hobby, something I enjoy (most of the time!), something I choose to indulge instead of washing the kitchen floor, doing the ironing, spending hours preparing a tasty meal (rather than rustling up a quick pasta dish).  A ‘no brainer’ of a choice you might say – but everything has to be fit in some time. Actually, when I sit at the computer, even the dog lays down and breaths a huge sigh.

As writers we bare our soul. Some might say there is a piece of us in everything we write, whether it is in style, content, experience even. I used to do some freelance in my spare time, writing nonfiction articles. I loved the thrill of coming up with ideas to query, receiving a commission, working to a deadline. But I was writing about something specific for in order to meet an Editor’s set requirements. With fiction I find it more difficult to detach myself. And that was my first mistake.

After much correspondence, I had to turn the first interested Agent down. It went against the grain. This was an industry that I wasn’t familiar with and I felt lucky enough to get some interest in my work. Quite simply, I just wasn’t sure how to do it.

The literary world is subjective, some might say fickle. I may need this contact in the future; maybe my current agreement wouldn’t work out, possibly even with for my next book. So I considered what I would do in my ‘real’ job and sent a very polite email – thanking him for his interest, explaining that, in the absence of receiving a contract from him (which was apparently in the post), I had signed with another Agent.

I literally cringed when the reply came through the following day, envisioning bridges burning in my mind. Surprisingly, he was very magnanimous, apologising for my not receiving his contract, said that he respected my decision and wished me all the best for the future.

My first lesson learnt. Whilst my book may be personal to me, it is business to an Agent/Publishing House, a product from which they are looking to earn. It was now time for me to think of my writing in a business context.

Then I received my first set of editorial notes…

Jane Isaac is very much a Newbie, she doesn’t even have a website yet (one day…) and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication – hopefully!

Late December 2010 – The Christmas holidays for me proved to be a real roller coaster ride. The first Agent came back and said that he had enjoyed my novel and wished to represent me. I was to look out for an agreement in the post! Another dance around the lounge called for (luckily, the house was empty apart from my Labrador, Bollo, who looked at me as though I’d gone quite mad).

Then, towards the end of the Christmas holidays, the second Agent said he wanted to meet up to discuss the novel further. He was from a larger, London based Agency. I was on the horns of a dilemma.

Oh, don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t complaining. This was a dream for me. But to have a choice? I am just a wannabe novelist. What do I know about the workings of the publishing world?

Oh, I am not naive. I am aware that multiple submissions are acceptable. But multiple acceptances certainly are not. When you have signed, you are bound. But I hadn’t signed, or even received, an agreement. So, I swallowed my conscience and finally agreed to meet up with the second Agent.

I’ve always found London thrilling. I travelled down by train and across on the tube to their Kensington offices where I was made coffee and escorted into a room lined with bookcases showcasing their authors. Even the coffee table in the middle of the floor was glass topped, with novels by famous authors that they represent, peering out from beneath.

We discussed my manuscript; how they would help me edit it so that it was ready for submission to publishers, support me along the way. I signed with them the very next day.

Ever heard the phrase, ‘too good to be true?’…

Jane Isaac is very much a Newbie, she doesn’t even have a website yet (one day…) and with a day job, a family and a very demanding black Labrador, she squeezes her writing into every spare moment she gets. Join her on the rocky road from pen to publication – hopefully!

Ernest Hemingway was known for his short to the point sentences, a trait that helped to solidify his writer’s voice as one of the most distinctive in American literature.  In The Old Man and the Sea he uses direct language that makes us feel as if the fisherman were telling us the story firsthand.

This use of technique and tone is a great example of voice in writing.  I know as new writers we find some of these terms like “voice” perplexing and we wonder what exactly everyone is talking about.  Myself I interpret voice simply as characteristics of a person’s writing that distinguishes it as their own. 

Similar to someone’s accented speech, a writer inflects his personality into their writing. While their accent is a product of regionalism in most cases, there writing can reflect the writer’s exposure to teachers, parents, and experiences. Word usage, tempo and punctuation also lend to a writers tone and through that tone emerges their distinctive voice. 

Where the concept of voice becomes more confusing is the point at which it becomes more than just your own particular writing style.  Like an adolescence whose actual voice changes as they age, a writer’s voice changes as they grow as artists and wordsmiths. So voice as a concept is both your own personal influence and what you learn as a writer and how those factors come out in your work.  

So, do you have a voice, absolutely? Take some time to pull out some of your old work and compare it to something more recent.  Look for reoccurring words, inflections of humor, or even punctuation similarities. All of this is YOUR voice.  While you can belabor all these factors and try to influence your voice, and you can certainly do that, when you are first starting out do not sweat it.  Just let the words flow and your voice will be heard.