The best day of the year...

I love Pancake Day.. Apart from my birthday, I really think it is my favourite day of the year. Of course, I have pancakes on my birthday for breakfast but on Pancake Day, you are allowed them for dinner. At least, that's what I do. Every year, the Chardmeister askes me if I'm really having pancakes for dinner and I look at him like the Captain Dufus he is and say, 'well, what else would I be haiving?' Really. 

I don't care for the traditional crepe style pancakes, instead much preferring American style pancakes dripping with salty butter and maple syrup, like zees (minus the bacon tonight):

This Pancake Day, I'm even having proper Canadian maple syrup brought back by my good friend and writing buddy, Liah. It's in a maple leaf shaped bottle. Get me. Also, the stack of pancakes I have tonight will be much taller than the stack in the photo above - it is dinner, after all.

Lady M has had her pancake dinner - 2 good sized pancakes with (unsalty) butter and maple syrup. Don't worry, she had a nutritious breakfast and lunch plus a dose of vitamins just to be sure. Rabbit had some too, at Lady M's insistence...

Having worked on polishing Rock-A-Lillie this afternoon and giving myself a headache in the process, a pancake dinner is just what I need. It'll be back to the edit after dinner - I want to be happy that all the reworked chapters make sense and read in line with the rest of the book. I've changed the entire beginning on the advice of the RNA NWS reader (which does work much better), and now need to make sure there are no continuity issues later on. 

Plus, I recently cut a minor character, so I need to make sure she doesn't appear anywhere in the narrative! Once I have checked it all makes sense, it will be gone off into the hands of two carefully selected agents. Eek!

By the way, if you don't know what the RNA NWS is and you're an aspiring romance writer, then you should!

Every year, the Romantic Novelists' Association run a New Writers' Scheme, more of which you can find out about here. 

It runs from January each year and only accepts 250 people - it's already full for this year but I can highly recommend it for next year if you aren't one of the 250.

For a very reasonable fee, you will get membership to the RNA for a year plus a full critique of an unpublished MS by a published author in your genre. If the reader thinks your MS is potentially good enough for publication, it will go to a second reader who may decide to forward it to an agent. Wowsers! 

My critique was incredibly in depth, insightful and phenomenally useful (as well as being really encouraging). I didn't make it to a second reading but my reader did say with a couple of changes (quite large ones to be fair), it would be submission ready. That's not to say I would be submission ready though!

Anyway, it's time for pancake making... Happy Pancake Day everyone!!

Hail! The conquering hero...

Last night I attended my book group with some trepidation as we were discussing my personal recommendation, Patrick DeWitt's 'The Sisters Brothers'. Actually, I lie. I wasn't at all nervous because I was so confident that many of the group would love it. And love it they did. Out of sixteen people present, fifteen loved it or, at the very least, really liked it. Hurrah! Only one person didn't like it - she found the violence too brutal and didn't think it was funny. At all. Huh. I don't know how a person doesn't laugh at the image of a hardened killer being so enamoured with a tooth cleaning regime or Eli's encounter with a snooty waiter.  I suppose it would be boring if everyone liked the same stuff, right? Would have been nice to have had 100% success rate...

I absolutely loved this book when I read it last summer and have been rather evangelical about pressing it upon members of my family, friends, random people I meet. I thought it was just brilliant. The relationship between the brothers, the dark comedy, the bizarre characters they come across - everything was just pitched so perfectly. The violence is, for the most part, casually skated over and I am in agreement with a book grouper who said she kind of forgot about any brutality because the main focus was the brothers' relationship and Eli's growing conscience.

I admit, I did falter at the idea of reading a Western, as did nearly all of the book group, but it won us all over and, given that the last book I recommended was a complete wash out, I felt vindicated with my choice this time round. A major success - it's the most liked book of any that the book group has ever read!

It's waaaaay too cold to write a query letter

I don't think my brain really functions properly in cold weather. My fingers certainly don't and I can't afford to have the heating on during the day (don't worry, Lady M is dressed up like an Alaskan tree surgeon in the dead of winter). 

 

Still, I have struggled on towards my goal of SUBMISSION. 

I had a list (of course) of submission to-dos:

• write a 25 word hook
• write a query letter pitch paragraph
• write a one page synopsis
• write a two page synopsis
• write a writer bio paragraph (this was woefully short - a sentence. And a short one at that.)
• Print out and do a FINAL edit on first three chapters
• Decide on three agents to submit to

Phew. Note how many have been crossed out - yay me! Just a final run through of the first three chapters and I will be ready to go. Well, the actual physical product will be ready to go, I will not. I doubt that I will ever be ready to go but with my fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed and my hair in a thousand plaits, I will hit the send button on Monday, having spent some of the weekend editing those chapters. 

However, I do have a rather busy weekend ahead of me. I'm seeing Russell Kane tomorrow night, taking Lady M to the grandparents on Saturday to co-host my sister's baby shower (for which I will be spending much of tomorrow baking), spending the night and then coming home early(ish) so that I can go and usher a dance performance at Didcot's Cornerstone Art Centre. Hmmm. That leaves very little time for editing. Better get a move on then really, hadn't I...

Married to a 40 year old...

WOW! The Chardmeister is 40 now!

 We dropped Lady M off at the olds and scarpered to London for the weekend. It's funny how holidays or short breaks are never the relaxing time they are meant to be. We packed a fair bit into the weekend - Friday night dinner at Sarastro's (fabulously fun and garish decor, average food and surly staff - I'm not going to recommend you try this one), Oxford St, the British Museum, Libertys, Fortnum and Masons, Covent Garden, Picadilly Circus on Saturday followed by 'The Phantom of the Opera' at Her Majesty's Theatre (I can't deny it, I loved it. The production was really good, the sets clever and atmospheric and I'm always a sucker for great singing) and lunch at The Ivy on Sunday (lovely food, impeccable service and Jo Woods was there - the only celebrity spot of the weekend) followed by a quick visit to Buckingham Palace. Phew.

With all that excitement out of the way and the Abingdon Writers blog all tidied up and sorted, it's time to use this week to whip my novel into shape and start sending it out. To this end, I have purchased the kindle version of Nicola Morgan's 'How to Write a Great Synopsis' and practically promised a member of Abingdon Writers that I WILL submit next week. 

The Scream by Edvard Munch

The book is currently £1 on Amazon until the end of January - click on the link above to order it! I am hoping that this book plus enough time to get on with writing a query letter, blurb and rewriting my current synopsis plus getting those all important first three chapters as good as they can be, will aid me on my quest to be published.

I have been trawling the Internet for useful advice on submissions (a brilliant displacement activity which easily becomes intense procrastination as you follow all the different links helpfully put up by authors, agents and publishers). I digress - here are some of the ones I think make a lot of sense! 

• http://kate-harrison.com/for-writers/advice-on-agents
• http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/
• http://queryshark.blogspot.com/
• http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/
• http://www.mslexia.co.uk/getpublished/getpublished.php

Of course, you should also get yourself a copy of 'Writers and Artists Yearbook'. There's loads of useful articles in there as well as a complete listing of all UK literary agents. Once you've narrowed down which agents cover your genre, check them out individually too. It's time consuming but worth it.  And then, take that wobbly, angst-filled walk to the post office and force your madly clutching fingers to let go of that envelope. 

The first week of 2012 is already over!

Can you believe it? It's gone by so quickly and already I have completed 1/50th of my Goodreads reading challenge for 2012. Yes, you've guessed it, I've pledged to read 50 books this year. I'm very confident I'll complete it - I'm nearly 1/25th of the way through already (second book half read)! Easy. 

I do feel it's necessary to document my New Year's resolutions and also, as a goodbye to 2011, jot down my top 10 moments or discoveries of last year. The moments are just for fun and posterity but I'm wondering if I make a public declaration of what I want to change this year whether I'll stick to them more than I have in the past.

First things first - resolutions. Now, normally these annually declared good intentions last no longer than what we've already had of this year BUT this year, I am determined that I will keep at least three of the five resolutions I have made, so here they are:

1. Eat less non-healthy food. So far, this isn't going too badly as I pre-empted this resolution and scoffed down all my Christmas chocolates before New Year's Day. Cunning. 
2. Make this the year that we clear the loft and ebay all the stuff that's been boxed up ready to sell for the last five or so years. I really want to keep this one.
3. Take up yoga properly - by this, I mean do it regularly once a week. I'd like to extend my new found patience to people other than Lady M and feel like yoga might lead the way to calmness and serenity. Maybe. 
4. Start writing the journal I meant to begin when Lady M was first born. Now I have over a year's worth of stuff to remember and put into words. I have made a start on this by ordering several rather beautiful Liberty print notebooks. 
5. This one's a biggie - lose some damned weight! This is the year for it. I know it. 

Credit: www.bestdesignoptions.com

I have high hopes of keeping all of them. Except maybe the yoga one. I haven't even begun that one yet. 

Anyway, on to the moments! Ooh, it's been hard to choose and I had to restrain myself to picking only five Lady M related moments. So, here they are. Let's get the Lady M ones out of the way first as I suspect they're what every parent would list.

1. Lady M laughing for the first time. 
2. Lady M walking (well, running as she is wont to do most of the time).
3. Every time Lady M dances - she is her mother's daughter, some fine moves going on. 
4. Lady M's first taste of chocolate and cake on her first birthday - pure bliss! 
5. Lady M giving me a proper two-armed tight cuddle for the first time - she only just managed to sneak this into 2011!
6. Receiving a phone call from Warehouse to say I had won two weekend tickets to Reading Festival - I've never won anything in my life (except a few quid on the lottery a handful of times. Score). 
7. Seeing My Chemical Romance. Twice. And with Brian May the second time!
8. Finding out my sister is having a baby - now due in less than two months!!
9. Discovering Garnier BB cream - it is truly amazing. I will be stocking up on it in case Waitrose ever run out. 
10. Oh yeah, I suppose I'll put this one in although it's not really that big of a deal. Meeting Gerard freakin' Way. No biggie. We talked about babies and stuff. I was not at all star struck and nor did I feel ancient amongst all the fifteen year old girls.

I can only hope that this year will be just as eventful. In January 2013, I hope I'm listing 'getting an agent' as one of the moments and even 'having some people follow my blog' maybe. One should always have hope and dream big. Right? I mean, I did meet the delicious and indescribably beautiful (that one's for you Chardmeister) Gerard Way last year so anything can happen if you want it enough. And I want an agent and blog followers. Make it happen 2012!