Writing Magazine - December 2020 UserUpload Net

88 Pages·2020·73.03 MB·English

BESTSELLING | HELPING YOU BECOME A BETTER WRITER
WRITING MAGAZINE

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DECEMBER 2020

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MAGIC

* Blending the real
and fantastical in
magic realism

How to be a ul
happier, more
productive writer

* Conjuring tricks to
enthral your readers

‘PLUS

4 O ideas to try
right now

, 7 author success
stories

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4 770964 916266

‘STAR INTERVIEW

STUART TURTON
Upping the stakes in

MODERN
MYSTERIES
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Writers’
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CONTENTS

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: WRITERS’ NEWS

: 68 Your essential monthly roundup of competitions,
: paying markets, opportunities to get into print and
; publishing industry news

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INTERVIEWS AND PROFILES

14 Star interview: How Stuart Turton writes mysteries for the
modern age

24 My path to publication: Angie Lake’s unconventional start

32 Shelf life: Romantic novelist Ella Allbright shares her top five reads

39 Circles’ roundup: Writing groups share their news

40 Subscriber spotlight: W2/ subscribers’ publishing success stories

62 New author profile: Matthew Ross turned from comedy to crime

85 My writing day: How Quentin Bates manages three different
writing identities

CREATIVE WRITING

10 Treading a fine line: How Nydia Hetherington blends the real
and the fantastical in her circus-set debut

12 First lines for fiction: Techniques to achieve that elusive opening
line hook

26 Beginners: Give your scenes added value

34 Under the microscope: A reader’s opening passage critiqued

46 Fiction focus: Set writing goals for the year ahead

48 Masterclass: Conjuring tricks you can use to enthral your readers

56 Writing for children: Writing non-fiction for children

58 Fantastic realms: How to use — or avoid — tropes in horror

WRITING LIFE

22 So you want to... Make an audiobook

30 Free your mind: Advice to make you an organised writer
36 Talk it over: Writing doesn’t need to be routine

37 Under the covers: Notice debut author Gillian Harvey!
60 The business of writing: Are free ISBNs really a benefit?
86 Notes from the margin: Writer (not) unmasked

ASK THE EXPERTS

8 Writers’ voice: What if... my publisher goes out of business?

9 From the other side of the desk: Make ‘em laugh

21 Ask a literary consultant: Struggling to research in lockdown?

64 Research tips: How to creative effective surveys to help your
research

65 Behind the tape: Get the details right in your crime fiction

POETRY

51 Poetry launch: Enter WM/s open poetry competition

52 Poetry winners: Winning entries from our acrostic comps

54 Poetry workshop: A bird poem from a nature-themed collection
55 Poetry in practice

COMPETITIONS AND EXERCISES

27 Enter W's latest writing contests

28 Short story winner: Read the winner from our twist competition
38 Writers’ circles: Writing group exercises

50 Free-range writing: Tree-themed creative writing exercises

REGULARS

4 Miscellany: The wide world of writing
6 Letters

18 Editorial calendar

73 Going to market

79 Novel ideas

83 Travel writing know-how

WELCOME

What's your writing routine? It's a
common question in these pages,
and for good reason. Finding the
ight environment, setting, time of
day, even equipment, can make all
he difference between settling down
or a cracking session and gazing g
into a blank page of despair. For ;
some, it’s rigorously defined and full
office hours. For many, it’s snatched
minutes while the kids/dogs/spouse
are occupied elsewhere. This month's
star interview author Stuart Turton
even decamped back to the UK from Dubai because the
mood wasn't quite right there. Several articles touch on
this topic this month, with many of us looking for more of
a routine with the gradual acceptance that lockdown isn't
going anywhere. Whatever your approach, there's great
advice from Antony Johnston (p30) to help ensure that
when you do get writing, you can make the most of it.
Ultimately, there is no right answer. Whether it means a
certain pen, a certain window, or just the right pants, as |
so often say in regard to other aspects of writing, just find
what works for you. But if you need help figuring that out,
you've come to the right place.

Jonathan Telfer
Editor

neLpiNa YOU BECOME A BETTER WRITER

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DECEMBER 2020 3
. THE WORLD OF
WRITING

Bad endings, Booker bustups, matchbook collecting and a risk-taking career

change, with a singing robot soundtrack, in the wide world of writing

Cornwell's Gambit

Mega-selling Sharpe creator Bernard Cornwell
became a novelist as he couldn't get a green card.
He had left his job as the BBC’s Northern
Ireland head of current affairs to move Stateside
in pursuit of his future wife, telling her, ‘Don’t
worry darling, P’ll write a novel.’ a
Reflecting on the incident to Alison Flood for iS
the Guardian, he added, “You know as well as I
do, journalists all think they can write a novel.’
He secured representation by hassling, literally
begging, an agent he met at a party, Toby Eady, who got him a seven-book
contract within a few weeks and remained his agent until he died in 2018.
‘T look back on it and I think this was insane, Bernard continued. ‘One,
moving to America without a job, and two, throwing myself on the mercy
of writing a novel. But here I am forty years later. And Judy and I have been
married forty years now, too, so it seems to have worked out all right.’

A LIFE LIST

Life in Miscellany Manors is often one of finding
joy in the little things, so the arrival of a press release
with even a nugget of interest can cause unexpected
ripples of excitement. Sometimes, it’s the eagerness
of an over-enthusiastic PR or the avalanche of purple

praise (no, this analysis of doily fashions 1958-1975 Collected

is not ‘zeitgeist-defining’). eee

This month, it’s august poetry publishers Carcanet
who have tickled us, with the announcement of an
anthology we're actually rather keen to add to the
library, the Collected Poems of Anthony Burgess. For
those unfamiliar, they outline the achievements and
interests of this author’s author, with a curious order
of priority: ‘novelist, composer, teacher, drinker,
linguist, husband, rebel, journalist, diarist, extrovert,
family man, cook, smoker, art critic, literary critic,
television critic, television personality, collector of
matchbooks’.

Always more of a drinker than a husband, that Burgess, but below all
else, he was a collector of matchbooks.

The collection is out on 10 December, if anybody’s wondering what
to get a much-loved hack, miscellanist, procrastinator, cheek-tonguer,
unicyclist, list-maker, for Christmas.

4 DECEMBER 2020

For years, we've been told AI has the potential to take the
livelihoods of writers. Unless you write paranoid SF of course,
in which case Al is the richest seam since the Cold War.

Al efforts so far have not always been that convincing,
although there are fun minutes to be had with the likes of
Botnik’s Al-generated Harry Potter (https://botnik.org/
content/harry-potter.html).

Now, an Argentinian data scientist has come up with an AI
to generate song lyrics, as tech website The Next Web revealed.

‘Sometimes I have a few ideas that I want to turn into a
song, but I’m too lazy for that, so I thought it would be cool to
make a program that generates lyrics from isolated keywords or
phrases,’ creator Mathi Gatti told them with admirable candour.

He trained the AI on pop music lyrics from the late 20th
century onwards, so its tendency towards repetition, cheese
and cookie-cutter imagery is not a flaw in the system itself.

The tool is available for all at https://lyrics.mathigatti.
com, with a ‘creativity dial’ that allows you to adjust how far
the AI strays from the keywords you put in.

And of course, Miscellany Manors has been ringing out
recently with some of ‘our’ ‘creations’ (all in the name of
science, you understand). From the keywords “How to fill
Writing Magazine’, our first try elicited the unforgettable,

I came into this world

And met a pretty girl

And then she turned to me

And then I did quite a surprise to her

So sweetly she smiled at me

with at least one phrase we'll be using elsewhere, and the
poignant and possibly passable,

If you ever feel the night getting colder

Romeo loved Juliet, never wanted her to cry

And he took his love for granted, but he never forgets

And hes still angry, even though he’s dying

Hell always smile through tears.

All together now!

www.writers-online.co.uk
The Booker Prize organisers
have never been shy of
controversy, from tossing
coins, judges voting for their
partners, or leaking closed-
door comments, to hedging
bets by having joint winners
in 2019, but this year seems
unusually provocative even
by their standards.

This year’s winner is
due to be announced on
19 November, from a
shortlist of: Diane Cook,
The New Wilderness (USA);
Tsitsi Dangarembga, This
Mournable Body (Zimbabwe);
Avni Doshi, Burnt Sugar
(USA); Maaza Mengiste,
The Shadow King (Ethiopia/
USA); Douglas Stuart,
Shuggie Bain (Scotland/
USA); Brandon Taylor, Real
Life (USA).

In some ways, this is a list

<<<

EN
a \

MISCELLANY

authors? Does it help if we
point out the British one,
Scottish-born Douglas Stuart,
has dual citizenship and lives
in New York?

UK commentators were
still vocally sulking about
the snub and its perceived
cultural impact when
American pundits decided
they weren't happy either:
the awards ceremony was
moved to 19 November
to avoid clashing with the
headline-grabbing release
of Barack Obama’s memoir,
A Promised Land, due out
on the 17th. The problem
is that this leaves the US
National Book Awards stuck
on the 18th, its original date,
and now no doubt doomed
to be third placed in the
literary news cycle behind
former President Obama and

to be celebrated. Four of the six are published So can you guess why UK commentators
by indies rather than the industry-dominating are upset about such a forward-thinking
Big Five; four are debuts (upsetting some who and inclusive selection for the formerly

hoped Hilary Mantel would complete her

the Booker pre-match discussion. Crown,
an imprint of Penguin Random House, are
initially printing three million copies of A
Promised Land, and the title is due to be
its policy in 2014 to include any international _ published in 25 languages.

Commonwealth-only prize, which changed
triple); four are women; only two are white.

‘And finally...

We all know the frustration, after putting in the hours and investing in the characters

and plot, of unsatisfying endings, from gradual fadings out in litfic to unresolved

cliffhangers in thrillers.

No doubt you'll have your own personal miss-list, and honour demands that we don’t

name the author whose Booker-nominated novel leapt to our lips in discussing this

problem. Online bookshop OnBuy.com have come up with a few suggestions though, after
trawling through their shelves and Goodread reviews for the twenty books with the most

disappointing endings.

It seems YA series are likely to suffer, with fans apparently more invested, and presumably
with a more concrete idea of how a particular saga should end: the concluding parts of
Hunger Games, Twilight and Divergent all feature in the top (bottom?) twenty, and Harry

Potter gets two showings, for Deathly Hallows and Half-Blood Prince.

Other disappointments included Atonement, Lord of the Flies, The Time Traveller's Wife and Bridge

to Terabithia. Perhaps most controversial, however, was the number one, with 57% of reviewers

i objecting to the ‘bad’ ending. Of Romeo and Juliet. What were they expecting?

Romeo and Juliet:
Should have ended it there

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DECEMBER 2020 5
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

We want to hear your news and views on the writing world, your advice for fellow writers
- and don't forget to tell us what you would like to see featured in a future issue...

Write to: Letters to the editor, Writing Magazine, Warners
Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds
LS1 5JD; email: [email protected]. (Include your
name and address when emailing letters. Ensure all

letters, a maximum of 250 words, are exclusive to Writing
Magazine. Letters may be edited.)

When referring to previous articles/letters, please state
month of publication and page number.

& STAR LETTER &
What it’s all about

I felt truly inspired after reading the feature on

George Lester in November’s issue of WM (How I got
published). Vd been in a slump after a run of rejections
and had completely fallen out of love with the writing
business. However, the words Write Your Joy which
George has adopted as his mantra really struck a chord,
reminding me why I started writing in the first place.
Yes of course I'd love to pen a bestseller, and I will never
see that goal as unattainable — but we shouldn't have to
give ourselves permission to ‘indulge’ in something we

GEORGE
LESTER

love just because it doesn’t produce a profitable result,
after all my other half plays golf and doesn’t aim to be

a championship golfer, I also knit, but have no plans to
sell my woolly creations. Publishing is very much market

led and trying to write to a specific market can stifle creativity. It’s very easy to lose

your writer’s voice. After reading George’s article I felt a new spring jump into my

step. I’ve picked up my current WIP and am putting no pressure on myself to write
anything other than the book I want to read — and that really has
put the joy back into my writing.

ROSIE TRAVERS
Hythe, Southampton

The star letter each month earns a copy of the Writers’ &
Artists’ Yearbook 2021, courtesy of Bloomsbury,

AAA Tai Clete latelelait ii Merom el 4

(— )

RESECTION RELIEF

I had given my manuscript the necessary ‘time in the drawer’ several times over. Finally,
satisfied I could improve it no more, I submitted my story to a competition, eagerly sitting
back awaiting results. Every few weeks I'd reread my manuscript, imagine my name on

a shortlist, published in an anthology... Then, horror, I started spotting errors — clumsy
repetitions, cliché, poor rhythm. How come I never saw those before? When I heard I hadn't
made the shortlist so wouldn't be in the anthology I felt nothing but unimaginable relief. No
one would be seeing my imperfect writings in print. Blushes spared! Never did I consider a

rejection could feel so good.

HELEN GAEN
Oxford

www.writers-online.co.uk

6 DECEMBER 2020

XQ 4

STILL IN THE
GAME

I’ve read a number of articles recently both in
WM and elsewhere about the lack of diversity
in publishing. To summarise some of the
articles, a working assumption is that many
who decide what books to promote are white,
middle class, ex-university students, members
of the “metropolitan elite” etc.

The argument goes, therefore, that their
choices are unlikely to reflect ‘normal people's
choices; and their awareness of diversity issues
is likely to be limited. Or, in the case of age,
simply absent.

I would guess that many WM readers and
contributors aren't young. Some will be silver
haired, if they have hair at all. Many came
to writing after leading ordinary lives, with
ordinary jobs, having raised children. And, they
live in villages, towns and cities beyond London.

Like everyone, I applaud the efforts invested
in diversity and want to see those efforts
redoubled. But, within this, spare a thought for
those somewhat more mature aspiring authors.

KEV EDWARDS
Nuthall, Nottingham

After reading the article Age Concerns (Free
range writing, WM Oct) I had a lightbulb
moment. I had been sitting on for many
years — fifty to be exact — some very real
prompts and potential material, my boxes of
diaries gathering dust. I had over the years
contemplated bringing them into the digital
age and typing them for my own records.
What last month’s article inspired me to do is
turn them into a work of fiction. So perhaps
one of the few advantages of being a mature
writer is we certainly have a body of work and
maybe have a good story to tell.
GRAHAM COWLEY
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
@ e
Green-fingered wordsmith

Sue Woolley (WM, Letters, August) makes an interesting point quoting George RR
Martin’s gardening analogy. I’ve always seen myself as a discovery writer, yet when I
stepped back recently, I realised that, like Sue, ’'m something of a landscape gardener.
Quite apt considering it’s a job I fancied doing a few years ago. Interestingly, I’ve never
really been a plotter with my stories, preferring so see where things go, but in the same
letters page of Writing Magazine, Jenna Barrett notes how her love of writing appears
to be being passed down to her younger family members. I work part-time in a school
and this year have loved their English lessons. They're reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit but
creating their own versions of it. The work they are doing to enable them to produce
great work is via some very careful plotting and constructing. I’m seeing the benefits

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

as their stories, which are full of alliteration and onomatopoeia, bring ideas to life. I find my

newest project is now being planned carefully. So, in the true gardening sense, with the help of their teacher (and dare I say an over-enthusiastic
learning mentor), we are helping sow the seeds for future writers — it’s exciting. All they need is the right nourishment to grow, and I’m only too
pleased to be able to give it. Too many clichés? If anybody needs me, I'll be in the greenhouse... cultivating my next story.

Finding your folk

After years of toying with an idea for a novel, I finally

started writing in earnest last year whilst on maternity
leave with my second child. I wrote most days for

a few months and got up to 47,000 words — I had
written half'a novel, something I never thought I'd be
able to achieve. Then came the lockdown. Suddenly I
found myself with two kids at home full-time and the
spell of regularly writing was broken. That, coupled
with crippling self-doubt, had brought my writing to
a standstill.

In WM’s October issue, I came across the Picture
Book Prize 2020 competition. Wanting to try
something different, I revisited two children’s stories
that I had started a while back and have since
completed them ready to submit. Having a deadline
and a purpose gave me the motivation to write,
stirring the embers of creativity again. Then, when I
came across the star interview with Andrew Michael
Hurley in WM’s November issue, I felt these embers
ignite as I recognised where my novel ‘fit’ in the folk
horror sub-genre. Now my inspiration is all fired-
up; my fingers are itching to get to the keyboard.
Sometimes all it takes is to see someone else doing
what you want to do — and succeeding — to stoke your
creative fires again.

MELISSA BRANNLUND
Cirencester, Gloucestershire

ROY PEACH
Oxford

WRITING A LIFE

I'm a long-time subscriber, and now more than ever I’ve looked forward to it dropping
in my letterbox. The article by Helen Stockton on creative non-fiction particularly
spoke to me this month.

Over the last twenty months I’ve been writing an almost weekly blog, purely about
creativity and my experiences of it on all levels. I thought I may run out of things to
say, but time and practice have developed my voice and I’m now over eighty posts in.

A diagnosis at age 46 of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last November threw a slight
spanner in the works, having six months of chemo, but I ploughed through, grateful I
had the passion and purpose of writing my blog to see me through.

During the pandemic, I’ve witnessed the rise in creative practice and so I thought,
why not try and create a book from my blogs and make it semi-autobiographical
about my relationship with creativity from childhood, up until how it has helped me
through my cancer journey?

I'm 15k words in and happily relaying vivid, unusual personal memories as well as
sharing what I’ve learned through blogging, realising now that this is in fact creative
non-fiction.

It feels comforting knowing this is not only a genre in itself but there’s an increased
appetite for this too, so thank you WM for giving me the added boost to keep going
with it, particularly as I have another slight hurdle of radiotherapy to complete, before
hopefully getting the all clear.

JULIET THOMAS
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

e
On the write path
I discovered Writing Magazine in WHSmith back in 2014. I had just started university
and I was curious to see how my writing hobby could become a potential career. Indeed,
many of your articles have made me realign my writing with the aim to reach publication.

Writing Magazine is one of those rare publications to stand by its promise to offer
“News you can use’. I have always perused the options available. Yet I never considered
any of them until the time that the lockdown came into place.

When everyone warns you off writing you rather feel as if you have no other choice but
to try other professions. Each time I tried though, I found that I was never quite the right
fit. I then decided to enrol on one of the courses advertised in your magazine — the Creative
Writing Comprehensive course offered by the Writers Bureau.

Writing has always been my safe haven. So, with this course I hope to achieve my
lifelong ambition of becoming a published full-time writer.

VICTORIA MERCEDES SARA GALINDO
Kings Langley, Hertfordshire

DECEMBER 2020 7

www.writers-online.co.uk
WRITERS’ VOICE

What if...my publisher

goes out of business?

Martin Reed of the Society of Authors looks at what happens to authors if their publishing
company can’t survive the health crisis

s the health crisis continues
to take its toll on all sectors,
including publishing and the
creative industries, many writers
are contacting the Society
of Authors to find out about the potential
implications for them. They often have a
single question in mind. What can I do if my
publisher ceases trading? A simple enough
question. The short answer is, ‘It depends’.
The full answer is too long and complex to fit
onto a single page. In this article, we'll take a
quick look at some of the basics to consider
— timing, how the contract you have might
affect your rights, and what might happen to
money owed and existing copies of your book
if your publisher goes into liquidation.

For further reading, you can find a more
detailed guide on our website. This is a very basic
introduction and only covers the laws in England
and Wales (the law in Scotland and Northern
Ireland has some significant differences) and
shouldn't be taken as specific legal or professional
advice — so if you have any questions or queries,
do get in touch with us here at the SoA or speak
to a lawyer or qualified professional.

Spot the warning signs — don’t
leave it too late

Timing can be critical if your publisher is in
financial trouble, because things inevitably get
a lot more complicated once they have ceased
trading. But there are a few things you can
consider if you believe your publisher might be
struggling financially.

Chase any overdue payments as soon as
possible. This is important at the best of
times, but if your publisher ceases trading you
will have very little chance of securing those
payments. There’s a guide available from our
website on tried and tested approaches for
chasing payments.

Think hard about continuing with
a commissioned work in progress for a
publisher if they owe you money. Don’t put
yourself in breach of your contract with
them, but don’t carry on work without
mentioning the late payments in case it seems
as though you arent concerned.

If you sell copies of your own books directly,
accepting copies for free in lieu of monies

8 DECEMBER 2020

owed can work for everyone. Getting hold of
this stock after a publisher ceases trading may
not be straightforward.

What are your rights?

Your rights if your publisher goes into
administration, ceases trading, or is taken
over by another company, depends on the
precise wording of your contract with them
and how that relates to what is happening to
the publisher.

If you, under your contract, have licensed
rights to your publisher, but have not assigned
copyright, there may well be a clause in your
contract that addresses the possibility of the
publisher's insolvency. It might mention
the reversion of rights to you in the case of
insolvency — but the precise wording is critical
here, and the full guide to insolvency covers
many of the situations that are likely to arise
and what they mean for you.

Even without such a clause, most contracts
will terminate automatically when the publisher
ceases to exist, where you have not assigned
copyright, so your rights in your work will
revert to you.

However, if under the contract you have
assigned copyright, the default position will not
be that your rights, even if your publisher ceases
to exist. For your rights to revert to you, you
would need a clause specifically saying as much.

Your money
A company becomes insolvent when it can
no longer pay its debts — so by definition the
likelihood of any payments being made to
anyone at that stage are minimal. Authors are
considered ‘unsecured creditors, which means
you will come at the back of the list of those
who are owed money. This is the case even if
you have paid towards the costs of publication.
In practice, it is rare for authors to receive
any money from a publisher which has gone
into liquidation. That said, you should register
your interest as a creditor at gov.uk/register-
creditor-bankruptcy so the Court is aware
that you are owed money and to ensure you
are updated on payments being made as the
process unfolds.
In rare cases, if you contributed to the
cost of publication, it is possible that your

www.writers-online.co.uk

SOc
CIETYo
oN AUTHORS

Find out what the SoA could do for
you at www.societyofauthors.org and
get 15 months for the Price of 12 with

the code WRITINGMAG

contract might make you partially liable to the
publisher’s creditors. It is always worth checking
your contract for this and talking to us if you
in doubt.

Your books

When it comes to existing copies of your books,
there is a little-known provision of copyright
law that can have a major impact on your
earnings. In short, no third party, including

an administrator or liquidator acting for your
publisher, or a new company that has acquired
its assets, is permitted to sell copies of your book
that have not been previously released to the
market without your consent.

Those books cannot be treated in the same
way as the company’s other assets, so you should
draw attention to it as soon as possible — those
copies cannot be sold without your permission.

However, if your publisher has already sold
the stock before it goes into liquidation — for
example to bolster its finances it might sell the
stock to a remainder dealer — your claim for a
share of the incomes generated from that bulk
sale will be against your failing publisher. That
stock can rapidly appear on Amazon as second-
hand ‘new and used’ copies for which no further
royalty will be due. So again, it’s important
to check your contract to see if it includes an
embargo period on remaindering or gives you a
first refusal on any stock to be remaindered.

It depends

As with anything in publishing that affects your
rights and your control over your work, so much
of where you stand comes down to the contract
you signed in the first place with the publisher.
What rights you licensed to them. What they

do and dont need to seek your permission for.
How they can treat existing stock. Of course,
when it comes to a situation like insolvency there
are many unknowns that will be beyond your
control. But this is precisely the sort of situation
that we aim to prepare you for when we vet your
contract before you sign it.

As I said, you'll find a more thorough
overview of things to consider if your publisher
is in difficulty in the free guide on the SoA
website. And if you are concerned about the
financial health of your existing publisher, do
get in touch to see if we can help.
From the

OTHER SIDE

Piers Blofeld reminds the industry that even though dullness is the order
of the day in lockdown, its job is to entertain as well as inform

ne of the least obviously
important, but strangely powerful
effects of the Covid pandemic is
the way it has stifled gossip.
Publishing is an industry which
has always thrived on gossip and with a nearly
endless stream of lunches, launches, parties and
booze as well as a bountiful supply of needy creative
egos, the opportunity for bad, indiscreet behaviour
and the gossip that goes with it was voluminous.

Now, it must be said that things were already
vastly different from the end of the last century
where behaviour was tolerated that would lead
to summary dismissal now. One idle friend who
worked in the publicity department of a mid-sized
house had a deal with his boss that he would be
allowed to snooze under her desk for an hour
between 2 and 3 if he kept watch for the previous
hour when she and the sales director would meet
in the stock room for umm, intimate moments.

Another friend started her career as the assistant
to a flamboyantly gay agent who liked going to a
particular fetish club night of a Friday and her last
job of the week was always to talc up his rubber
gimp suit,

While these tales are in their way rather
reprehensible it is worth pointing out that the
young woman in question remained close friends

— with the agent until his death.

The morality of these things is never entirely
clear cut — what is-clear cut though is that good-
quality gossip is both fun and a very healthy
reminder that human behaviour never fits all that

“neatly into recognised social norms — and never

has. The realisation of this is part of growing up.

But the fun also added to the creative energy
that publishing, like any creative industry, feeds off
and the fact that its supply has been choked off by
the inevitably duller lives we are leading in 2020 is
taking its toll.

That, paradoxically may turn out to be a good
thing. The new puritanism of the age has sunk its
claws deep into publishing — with good reason in
many ways: publishing does need to try to be more
representative. But it also must never forget that
it is showbusiness’s plain, blue stocking cousin.
Worthiness is all very well, but our bread and
butter as an industry is the ability to entertain.

The negative side of all the parties and the
gossip are the cliques, the exclusivity and self
congratulation to which the industry is also prone
and these too are diminished in the absence of all
the social side and that may allow for a little more
space for stories which perhaps offer less in the way
of virtue signalling and more by way of being a
damn good read, because looking round the tables
in bookshops I do sometimes wonder if that gets a
little bit forgotten.

)
PO er nae
OW OT Y AER ws

Nydia Hetherington on the power of imagination and

blending the real and the fantastical in her circus-set debut

t almost seems
too obvious to
state that writing
fiction is a way

to tap into the
very depths of human
imagination. But for
me, this is the ultimate
truth. And I’m in good
company. From William
Blake to Einstein to Freud the imagination
has been considered the revered lifeblood
of creativity, of science and the mind,

even of life itself. Yet, as anyone who has
ever sat at a desk and stared at a blank
screen or trembled at the sight of a fresh
page in their notebook knows, using our
imaginations as a foil for fiction, is not as
simple as it might sound.

We may have all our linguistic
contrivances honed, our skills of syntax
and phrase sharpened and at the ready
(and rest assured, they are our tools and
will stand us in good stead), but without
that untouchable, unseeable thing, that
sometimes all too fleeting fancy, the page
remains blank, or as good as. So, we need
to find a key to unleash the stories. We
must, in short, free our imaginations.
Like most things, the above-mentioned

10 DECEMBER 2020

key is to find a strategy. The one that
works best for me is to simply get
writing and, importantly, to magnify
every detail as I go. In what might seem
a strange dichotomy, particularity and
thoroughness are best friends to that
most flighty of beasts, the imagination.
Paradoxically, if I am to tell a story, it is a
beast that needs to be tamed.

blade of grass; the slight tremble of the
ground as an aeroplane soars through

the sky above. To capture the setting of
my book then, I needed to describe the
sharp and blunt things, the dry and wet
things, the sweet, bitter and salty things. I
found that breaking these elements down,
examining them in their smallest detail,
created a portal into the story. Being a

We need to find a key to unleash the stories.

We must, in short, free our imaginations.

I’m often asked, for example, how I
captured the setting of a travelling circus
in my debut novel, A Girl Made of Air.
Words like earthy have been used to
describe the feel of that part of the book.
The answer? It’s all in the detail.

A place is more than just topographical
features. Of course, smell and taste play
a big part in breathing life into the world
of a novel. That’s just the start, though.
There’s more detail to be found, yet.
Every place has its unique (yet utterly
universal) feel, and I mean that in a very
visceral, physical way. The touch of air
on skin; the sensation of earth underfoot.
Yet more still: an ant scurrying up a

www.writers-online.co.uk

many layered novel, it would have been
impossible for me to tell all the stories
contained within A Girl Made of Air,
without first anchoring them down like
this. That’s what I meant by needing to
tame the beast of imagination, which

is so big and sprawling at times that it
threatens to run off with all the stories,
leaving me back staring at that blank
screen. To avoid this then, I need to first
chain everything down, with detail. I have
to admit, it’s a time-consuming process,
but one which I’ve found reaps its rewards
further on down the line. With the world
of the novel, the setting, so intricately
described, there’s now a solid framework