{"id":2405,"date":"2014-03-24T08:32:46","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T08:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2405"},"modified":"2014-03-24T11:27:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T11:27:37","slug":"blog-tour-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=2405","title":{"rendered":"Blog Tour Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m privileged to be nominated to participate in the Blog Tour Monday project. I was passed the baton by my ex-MMU MA Creative Writing course mate, Anne Jensen, who blogged this post<\/a> last Monday. Anne has also nominated her writer friend, Deborah Morgan<\/a>, to contribute a stop on the tour in parallel (apparently termed the \u2018other side\u2019).<\/span><\/p>\n

Anne was awarded her place in the relay team by another ex-MMU student, <\/span>Kerry Hadley<\/a>\u00a0(who <\/span>guest-blogged<\/a>\u00a0on Jo Nicel\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>site<\/a>).\u00a0Kerry also nominated Matt Cresswell<\/a>, another MMU alumnus, who also posted a blog last Monday. There is an illustrious line of bloggers who preceded Anne, Kerry and Matt on the tour \u2013 see Anne\u2019s list of links in the introduction to her post.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of the tour is to introduce ourselves and our blogs to whoever chooses to follow the excursion by answering four questions about our writing \u2013 I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll be able to do so as succinctly and wittily as my predecessors. As usual with my writing process I\u2019ve left things right up until the deadline (it\u2019s Sunday night) \u2013 oops that\u2019s straying into Question 4. So I\u2019d better start at the beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

What am I working on?<\/b><\/p>\n

The novel \u2013 what else? I\u2019ve been promising myself for about two years that it\u2019s almost finished \u2013 and that was after starting the book a couple of years before that when I was on the City University Certificate in Novel Writing course. Since then the novel \u2013 called <\/span>The Angel<\/i> \u2013 has nourished a whole MA course \u2013 and then some.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for any Belbin completer\u2013finisher impulses I might harbour, the creative writing course process has given me lots of reasons to do\u2019 just that little bit more\u2019. I completed a full manuscript for submission as the MA dissertation last October \u2013 MMU is one of the few MA courses that ends with submission of a full novel \u2013 but with the prospect of tutor feedback when it had been marked, I decided to wait until January to read the professional verdict (see previous posts on the blog) and make any changes accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taking some of their useful comments into account, I\u2019ve been making what I\u2019m determined to be the absolutely final changes and then to move on to the half-finished novel that I \u2018temporarily\u2019 placed on hold when I started to develop ideas for <\/span>The Angel<\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the novel isn\u2019t everything I\u2019ve worked on recently. I was fortunate enough to have a winning short story chosen by <\/span>Liars League London <\/i><\/a>this month. <\/span>Liars League <\/i>were featured as one of <\/span>The Guardian\u2019s Ten Great Storytelling Nights <\/i><\/a>this weekend \u2013 it\u2019s a fantastic evening out where actors read out the short stories in a brilliant way that the writers would never be able to compete with. A transcript of my story <\/span>Do You Dare Me to Cross the Line? <\/i><\/a>\u00a0and the video of actor Alex Woodhall reading it at the event is currently right at the top of the <\/span>Liars League <\/i><\/a>homepage<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I enjoyed the experience so much I might try a competitions like that again.<\/span><\/p>\n

How does my work differ from others in its genre?<\/b><\/p>\n

Like probably most graduates of Creative Writing MA courses, I\u2019ve always been a bit reluctant to single out my novel as being in a specific genre (which doesn’t help your chances of publication as genre is the first thing agents tend to think about). However, one \u2018genre\u2019 that people might associate with MA graduates definitely doesn’t fit my work — academic literary fiction. I\u2019m probably a bit too lazy (see below) to attempt anything like tricksy meta-narration, post-structuralism and all that \u2013 not that anyone on the MA course was that pretentious .<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore one of the most useful pieces of feedback from the markers of my MA submission was to nail a genre. I was told that ‘at its heart [my novel] is a rather engaging love story’. I guess it is \u2013 in that it deals with a romantic relationship between its two protagonists. <\/span><\/p>\n

Later this year I may find out definitively how my novel differs from others in the romance genre from true experts. It may astonish some people — it certainly does me — that I\u2019m a now a member of the Romantic Novelists\u2019 Association New Writers\u2019 Scheme<\/a> (no mean feat as it\u2019s exceptionally oversubscribed and, no, I don\u2019t think they positively discriminated towards me based on my gender \u2013 I was just very quick to apply \u2013 spaces do almost as quickly as Kate Bush live show tickets are likely to do later this week).<\/span><\/p>\n

The great thing about the RNA scheme is that your manuscript is given a critique by an experienced RNA reader. I\u2019ll have to wait until I get the reader\u2019s report back to be sure but I suspect most of the RNA\u2019s members works won\u2019t feature lots of wanton, late-night heavy drinking, heroines with fetish wardrobes, vicars dwelling on being beaten with metal combs, tattoos with plot significance, illicit substance consumption by canals in Hackney, World War Two re-enactments with condiments and a hero who has a virtual bromance over the airwaves with Jeremy Vine. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do I write what I do?<\/b><\/p>\n

Some of it out of laziness again. My writing is mostly about the contemporary world because it saves me having to do any laborious research \u2013 although I often stray into the Internet nevertheless to check insignificant but seemingly monumental at the time facts like \u2018Do they really offer a PGCE in Art at Goldsmiths University?\u2019<\/p>\n

And I tend to attempt to slip humour into almost everything I write \u2013 even when not obviously appropriate \u2013 perhaps because I need to amuse myself and make up for not being in the pub or doing something more sociable than writing on my own.<\/p>\n

How does my writing process work?<\/b><\/p>\n

Generally it tends to expand to fit the time available \u2013 which is why I like deadlines.<\/p>\n

I can write fairly quickly \u2013 but then I\u2019ll rewrite it \u2013 usually by annotating on paper copy and then again by reading out loud and then I’ll check for overused words against a spreadsheet I use and then print it again and \u2013 see why I like deadlines?<\/p>\n

I write in all kinds of places \u2013 at home, at lunchtimes during the \u2018day job\u2019, on trains, even planes. And I do an awful lot of writing in my head \u2013 when I\u2019m running or just daydreaming \u2013 it\u2019s a good job I get on with my novel\u2019s characters or I\u2019d have been driven mad ages ago. Perhaps I get on so well with them I don\u2019t want to leave them?<\/p>\n

And as for ideas and inspiration \u2013 I just metaphorically shove stuff into my brain cells and hope it somehow all connects (see blog post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n

Now at this point, I should be naming who\u2019s going to take the baton from me and do the Blog Tour Monday next week but, to my great shame, I\u2019ve not managed to line anyone up \u2013 yet \u2013 but not for want of trying. It seems most of my writing blog friends have already just done the Blog Tour \u2013 or something very similar recently \u2013 but I\u2019ll keep trying. Im waiting on a couple of responses.\u00a0If you know me, write a blog and are reading this and would like to take part then get in touch with me asap.<\/p>\n

So watch this space in the run up to next Monday to see if I pull a blog-writing friend out of the bag \u2013 so to speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m privileged to be nominated to participate in the Blog Tour Monday project. I was passed the baton by my ex-MMU MA Creative Writing course mate, Anne Jensen, who blogged this post last Monday. Anne has also nominated her writer friend, Deborah Morgan, to contribute a stop on the tour in parallel (apparently termed the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Blog Tour Monday”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[1088,382,386,484,1090,1089],"class_list":["post-2405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-process","tag-blog-tour-monday","tag-genre","tag-ma-in-creative-writing","tag-manchester-metropolitan-university","tag-writing-process-2","tag-writing-process-romantic-novelists-association-new-writers-scheme"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2405"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2413,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions\/2413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}