DO YOU HAVE TIME TO THINK?

Over New Year I spent time in South Africa with a very good friend. I’ve known her for far longer than I like to remember – long enough to have shared a flat with her when we were at university in Cape Town many many moons ago. She now lives in a beautiful house near the Kruger National Park, where you can sit on the deck and watch warthog wander by and see the red African sun setting over the distant Drakensberg mountains (see pic). It was lovely to see my friend and her family, to spend time catching up, to enjoy the bliss of sunshine in December – but most of all it was wonderful to be away from my own busy life and have time to think.

I once bought a book by the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman called ‘Don’t You Have Time To Think?’, purely for the title. I did read and forgot more about quantum electrodynamics than I’ll ever need to know, but what struck me most was his interest in contemplation. It obviously worried me then, and it worries me still - how little time we have to think. There is so much doing going on, so much rushing around with work and children and socialising, how many of us dare to give ourselves time to just – think? Even time spent writing is not spent thinking. And sometimes you need to think before you can write, and in between bits of writing.

It strikes me that if you’re not thinking you losing something, some part of yourself, some way of grounding and being sure of your place – where you are now, where you want to be. If you do have time to think, really think, then it makes you a better writer. So when things are frantic and you’re trying madly to prioritise, remember to put on that list: Time to Think. (And if you get the chance, go on holiday to Africa.)

THE PLACES WRITING TAKES YOU!

Well, I was there.....at the fantastic RoNA Award ceremony at One Whitehall Place in London yesterday.
Venue was awesome......wonderful building - right by the London Eye - with those revolving doors I so love and wish I could swish in with an entourage behind me and lots of cases. Busts of political luminaries and paintings of same everywhere. Marble, curving staircases with ditto railings which made me wonder if there is any marble left in Greek quarries at all! Loos had a dressing room - no less - and a chaise longue and individual towels after the washing of hands. Very dark, polished wood everywhere....lots of columns clad in ceramic tiles - an interior decor touch I'd not seen before.....probably ancient and worth squillions!
And the reception room - well! No less than five chandeliers almost as big as my 5' 2". Walls covered in murals of Greeks in various stages of undress. Pink champagne running like a river. In the middle of the room were plinths each with the category of book up for award. An hour of chat and meeting and greeting and admiring of outfits and shoes and lots of photographs taken for the Romantic Novelist's Association archives before the event.
And what an event - hosted by the lovely Jane Wenham-Jones resplendent in a silver, backless ballgown and a figure to die for. Peter James - thriller writer - gave a speech which elicited much laughter and he obliged with that heart-stopping moment.....'And the winner is ...'
So. The winners.

Harry Bowling Prize
Natalie Lloyd-Evans

The RoNA Rose Award
Sarah Mallory

Young Adult Romantic Fiction
Caroline Green

Historical Romantic Novel
Christina Courtenay

Outstanding Achievement Awaard
Karin Stoecker

Romantic Comedy Novel
Jane Lovering

Epic Romantic Novel
Rosie Thomas

Contemporary Romantic Novel
Katie Fforde

As Jane WJ and Peter James did their stuff we clapped and clapped when the writers' names and their book covers came up and the clapping got louder the more pink champagne (buckets of it on ice at each table) was consumed....and a few tiddly but delicious canapes - which didn't quite soak up all the alcohol -but hey! it was a great afternoon.

Now, I have a vested interest in the event because I have my debut novel coming out with Choc Lit in June, and Choc Lit authors picked up two awards - Christina Courtenay and Jane Lovering made excellent speeches when they went to collect their gongs. But that wasn't all - Choc Lit had a third writer shortlisted - Kate Johnson, who can now say she is second only to Katie Fforde for contemporary romantic fiction.....and Kate's book, Untied Kingdom, is a wonderful book, too.

I was so excited to be there that my photos aren't the best. And it was VERY dark in the library - a mile of leather-bound tomes with a galleried landing holding even more. But here are a few photos to give you a taster of what it was like.

Christina Courtenay is the lovely lass in lilac.....boots to die for....sorry for chopping her head off a bit.
Jane Lovering - before she picked up her gong - across a champgane-laden table dimly.
A view across the reception room.....Katie Fforde in bottom left-hand corner.
And moi.....in my coat of many colours.....:)

FROM GUEST BLOGGER JANEY FRASER'S POINTS OF VIEW

About ten years ago, when I was still trying to get my first novel published, I received a surprise phone call from an editor at Orion. She liked my book, she said, but wasn't able to publish it. Would I like to come into her ofice and she'd explain why.
"You need to understand about viewpoint," she said, sitting me down at her desk which was piled high with books and manuscripts. "It's like this ..."
For the next ten minutes, she explained something which I hadn't thought about before. And when she'd finished, my eyes were open. Never again would I see my own writing - or anyone else's - in the same light.
I didn't realise in those days, that it was highly unusual for a high profile editor to take the time to explain a complex writing technique. And I am very grateful to her. Now I make it a staple building block both in my own novels (I've had eight published since that conversation) and also in my writing courses.
The very word 'viewpoint' tends to send shivers down would-be writers. But it doens't have to. Imagine you are standing in someone else's shoes. Anyone's. It could be the man next to you on the train who is reading your paper.
If you were writing a story from his point of view, you might say something like: 'John craned his neck to scan the headline. He knew it was rude - normally he hated it when someone tried to read his paper. But this was different. Surely the journalist had got it wrong?'
Hopefully, you will be seeing this scene as though you were John himself. I personally feel rather worried for him. Obviously, he has thrown good manners to one side because this story in the paper has a special significance for him.
However, if I described the scene from the point of view of the woman whose paper was being read, it might look something like this. 'Janey could feel herself seething! The man next to her was leaning so close that she could smell his breath. And it wasn't pleasant! "Excuse me," she said, turning to him. "Do you mind?"'
Now I'm in Janey's position. And so hopefully are you! That's because I've tried to write as though I'm in the her head. But if I ran those two paragraphs one after the other, the reader might feel confused. Why? Because in the first, we are being asked to see the world from John's point of view and in the second, from Janey's.
"The trick," explained the editor all those years ago, "is to stay in one character's head so the reader knows whose story they are following. If you want to change viewpoints, you need to do so by having a line break in the text or a row of stars or start another chapter.
And that's when the lights came on for me! That was the moment when I realised that my natural 'voice' was a multi-character viewpoint one. If I wrote a novel in which three or four main characters all had their own viewpoints, it would move the plot along by allowing me to get close to a wide cast.
I started - rather ambitiously - with seven characters all on the same route to school. My book was called The School Run and was a best seller. The first chapter was from Harriet's point of view. The second from Evie's and so on. I soon discovered that if you could find a setting which was a stage for lots of different characters, it allowed me to cover lots of different problems. And as we know, problems are great on the page because they lead to conflict, tension and eventually resolution.
Since then, multi-character viewpoints have become my trade mark. My latest book The Playgroup, written under my new pen name Janey Fraser (published by Arrow £6.99) has three main characters. The first is Gemma (chapter one). The second is Ed (chapter two). And the third is Nancy (chapter three). Then we go back to Gemma's world in chapter four. And so on.
The best way to understand how this works is to read novels that are written in this way and analyse them carefully. But if you want a taster, visit my website www.janeyfraser.co.uk where you can read the first chapter free! Do let me know if you enjoy it. Meanwhile how about standing in someone else's pair of shoes? Just for practice ...
http://twitter.com/janey_fraser
www.facebook.com/janeyfraserauthor

Fashion

I am sorry to disappoint you if the title has prompted anyone to expect a dissertation on ladies clothes or footwear, fascinating though the subject may be. The following is merely my opinion on the changing fashion of books and what readers, writers and, most importantly, publishers seem to prefer at the present time, compared with one hundred years ago, or even thirty. I may be wrong in my conclusions, and limited in my experience of publishers, so I shall be interested to hear what other people think.
 
 Recently we have been celebrating the birth of Charles Dickens in 1812 so perhaps we could start with his style of writing. My mother was a great lover of Dickens’ novels because she felt he made the people and places seem so alive and real. Due to her influence I started reading them when I was at school and I enjoyed them then. I am not sure whether I would have the patience to read some of them now. There is no doubt that he painted very real pictures in our minds with his (often lengthy) descriptions of scenes and characters. He made us share the dread of poverty and the possibility of the workhouse. We heard the clatter of horses’ hooves as they drew the wealthy in their carriages. The stench of the gutters seemed to invade our nostrils and the moorland mist with the lurking of an escaped prisoner (in Great Expectations) created an atmosphere of tension and fear. He was equally good at drawing his characters, making us like some, and loathe others, share their satisfaction and anticipation, or disappointment and grief. Neither he nor his publishers shied away from life in the raw.

Most readers today want to experience the emotions and see the settings in their mind but do they have the time and patience to read through several paragraphs of scene description? Many prefer to jump straight into the story discovering the “who”, “when”, “where” and “why” in the first paragraph. “Aim to grab the readers’ interest in the first paragraph” is advice now given to new writers. In spite of all the modern gadgets which are supposed to make life easier time often seems too short. Also there are so many other distractions in the form of television, Sunday shopping, football matches and other sports, to name but a few. Many people still enjoy a “good read” but curling up for a few precious hours of peace with a good novel no longer has the same appeal in busy lives. Some read in snatches while travelling on the train, bus or tube.Recently one author, with over forty published novels, was preparing her early stories for uploading as digital editions for e-readers. She was surprised to find she had been so verbose when she began writing and she is determined to change them. `Why did my editor let me get away with it?’ she asks. This is what I mean by changing fashion. Longer descriptions and a scattering of adverbs and adjectives were perfectly acceptable thirty years ago. Today many publishers, including mine, have very set rules about the length of novel they will accept. Is this changing fashion due to the influence of readers who prefer shorter novels and short story collections? Or is it the economics of production and cost of storage? Paper is expensive and we are all under continual pressure to consider resources and the future of the planet.
 
What do other people think? Do fashions change when it comes to books?