Heather Lawson's Blog

I juggle a lot of things in my day to day life – my part time job, my Open University study, my writing, my editing, my freelancing… it’s a wonder I have any free time at all really! And yet, I always seem to find time to procrastinate for several hours a day and end up doing nothing productive (unless you count watching multiple episodes of Criminal Minds productive).

As this has been my on-going problem over the last week I am now in last minute panic mode for my final assignment of my current module for my OU course. I have today and tomorrow to write a 1,500 word essay about Charles Dickens’s dramatisation of themes of class and something else (see? I can’t even remember the question!). Needless to say, it’s not going well and I’m panic writing to try and get it done.

Because of this I haven’t even looked at That’s Charming in the last few days, let alone edited any of it. So this is going to be a very short update on my current projects. They’re all going nowhere right now until I finish this essay.

Well, strictly speaking that’s not true. I paid my editor on Saturday for her to start working on Ashlyn yesterday, so at least someone is making progress with my work.

It’s not editing, but I did manage to gather a few children volunteers to read a sample of That’s Charming, so hopefully I can get some positive feedback from them (or at least learn what I could do better).

Anyway, I can’t spend anymore time writing blog posts when I have an essay to write.

Happy Tuesday guys!

Today is the first of many posts to come that will have a list of writing competitions that any of my fellow writers might like to enter. Below the cut is a list of Flash Fiction, Short Story and Novel competitions, organised by closing date and entry fees.

Flash Fiction

Unfortunately I could not find any Flash Fiction competitions with February deadlines. Be sure to check back next week for some March deadline competitions.

Short Story

Tales of Eltham

Entry Fee : Free

Conditions : 300 words, must be set in Eltham (London SE9 catchment area), must be suitable for all ages

Deadline : 21st February 2014

Prizes : £25 for first place, £15 for second place, £10 for third place

BBC National Short Story Award

Entry Fee : Free

Conditions : Must be a UK resident of 18 years or older, short stories up to 8,000 words, must have a record of prior publication of creative writing in the UK

Deadline : 28th February 2014

Prizes : £15,000 for first place, £3,000, £500 x3

Novel

First Chapter

Entry Fee : £4.00

Conditions : Must be the first chapter of a novel

Deadline : 27th February 2014

Prizes : Publication on website

AWP Prize for the Novel

Entry Fee : $30 ($20 for members)

Conditions : Novels of at least 60,000 words. Online submissions only.

Deadline : 28th February 2014

Prizes : $2,500 and publication

Not many competitions today, but then again, we are almost halfway through the month already so a lot of the competitions have already closed. Be sure to check back next week when I’ll be posting competitions with deadlines in the first week of March.

Happy Thursday everyone!

I really should have made this a Thursday thing – Tips & Tricks Thursday’s got a nice ring to it. Nevermind! Today I’d like to talk about query letters, the end of the line in the writing process. At least, it’s the end of the line for where the writer can take themselves, after this point it’s all down to the agents who receive the queries to take you further.

There’s a lot of advice on the internet about what makes a good query letter. What works for some agents might not work for others. If you google ‘query letter dos and don’ts‘ you can get some 62 million results. I’ve looked at every link on the first page of google results and here is a condensed version of what they all say.

1. Know the Agent

By this, I mean don’t address your query with ‘To whom it may concern’ or ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. That is the first thing they look at, and most likely if that’s what you’ve put then they won’t look much further. Make sure you put their name. Be professional and polite. Don’t be overly familiar in your greeting, unless you happen to know the person.

Make sure you’ve researched both the agent and the agency thoroughly. There’s no point in submitting your Epic Fantasy novel to an agent who deals exclusively with Romance. Make sure that they’re the right fit for you and your book.

2. Grab Their Interest

After you’ve gotten past the incredibly difficult opening of ‘Dear Agent’, you need to grab their attention with an interesting hook for your novel. A rule that is in almost any ‘dos and don’ts’ list is don’t put questions in your pitch. ‘What ifs’ are not the way to go when writing your query.

You should put the relevant information about your protagonist, antagonist and plot (but not the ending!). A couple of paragraphs is all you need for this. Think of it as the back cover blurb for your novel. It needs to be exciting enough to get people interested, but not reveal everything (that’s for the synopsis).

3. Leave Everything That Isn’t Necessary Out

First of all, this means any arrogant attitude you may carry towards your work. You might think that your baby is the next bestseller, but if you include something along those lines in your query it is more likely to put an agent off. Be polite and courteous, any and all accomplishments you have that are relevant (meaning books published traditionally or short stories published in magazines) should be included after your pitch. That’s the small area for bragging.

Another thing that some writers do, that agents don’t like, is waste a couple of sentences telling the agent that you value their time. Agents know they’re busy people, they don’t need us to tell them.

4. Make a Check List, Tick it Off

Basically, these are the essentials that you need to have in your query letters.

-You contact details (apparently we’d be surprised at how many people DON’T include this!)

-Information on how you met the agent (if applicable, if you’ve never met them before you leave this blank or mention why you’ve chosen them as a good fit for your manuscript)

-Your hook and pitch (this should always come immediately after the ‘Dear Agent’ part)

-Your novel’s information (target audience, genre, word count – very important. If your novel has won any competitions or been long listed/short listed, include that too)

-A brief biography of relevant information (they don’t need to know your age, where you live, your dog’s name and your hobbies – only include relevant writing related information)

By the end, you should have a query that is in this format (This example is taken from here):

Left justify:

[date] (return twice)

person’s name

person’s address

person’s phone #

person’s e-mail
 (return twice)[for snail mail. Some agents still do snail mail ONLY or you have a better chance if you do.]

Dear [form of address][surname],

[How you met said agent... if you didn't leave this out. Some agents prefer this with the novel info.]

[Your hook, which does not exceed 3 paragraphs or make the query letter 2 pages.]

[Why you are qualified... unless you have some short stories published, or if you have a related degree in the field, leave this area blank. This is not the place for your autobiography! That comes later.]

[Title] is a [#] word [genre]. [Any inclusions or attachments?]

[What you'd like done with the manuscript. Return or dispose?] Thank you for considering my novel. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

(return twice, don’t forget to put your signature here if you’re doing snail mail. I’ve done this a few times…)

[your name]

Your address

your phone #

your e-mail 
(returned twice)
Encl: Manuscript and SASE (Don’t forget them!) [If by mail]

It’s a good example of how a query should be set out. For more in-depth information on query letters, this site has numerous links for writing a query letter, polishing it, researching agents and submission etiquette.

Happy Wednesday!

I didn’t make new year resolutions, but I think if I did keeping this blog updated would be my number one. Having said that, this is the first post of my new blog schedule. For the time being, I’m only posting on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – I do a post on my blog on my website on Monday and Friday. The posts on my site are what I would call ‘update’ posts. They’re little windows into what I’m working on that day. The posts here will have a more structured schedule to them. Tuesdays will be general updates on all my current WIPs. Wednesdays will be any tips and tricks that I’ve learned through my many, many mistakes in the writing ‘business’. Thursday will be any competitions that I stumble upon on the interwebs that I think any fellow writers would be interested in. I’m hoping to eventually add book reviews and a few other things to this blog eventually, but for now I’ll keep it simple so I don’t get too stressed out trying to keep things running. So, with that out of the way, back to the post!

I got a lovely new desk for Christmas last year so that I would have an organised space to do all my freelance and writing work. At the moment, my desk is not visibly for the masses of piles of paper that cover it. This could be seen as a bad thing, but it’s not. Those piles of paper are the printed version of That’s Charming, so it’s a productive mess.

That’s Charming is coming along nicely in editing, if I do say so myself. I recently split all of the chapters into two or three smaller chapters as they were really too long for a middle grade audience. I’m about a third of the way through with my own editing – about to start on the major rewriting of scenes (woo!) – and then I will send it off to my lovely new editor who will turn my lump of coal into a shiny diamond.

The plan is to submit to agents – probably during the summer – and hope that by winter one of them says yes! It’s a big dream, but I’m hopeful that it will work.

Speaking of editors. I have a different editor looking at Ashlyn and the Lost Prince. Since it’s release in February of last year, Ashlyn has done relatively well considering my lack of promotional skills and social media savvy. With 916 copies sold (at my last count), it’s done way better than I thought it would. Granted about 900 of those sales were free copies through the Kindle Select Program. I’ve still made about £20 royalties from it overall and I am pleased as punch about that!

I’m hoping to re-release Ashlyn in April this year, so my editor will be going over it as soon as she can (she has guaranteed that it will be ready before my deadline!). I’m excited to see how she helps me with it. Ashlyn will be re-released using Smashwords for a wider distribution, so hopefully this will help my sales a bit. If not, at least she’s out there in a better state than my hardly edited version that I released the first time.

I still need to outline and plan the rest of her series so I can get cracking on the second book, Ashlyn and the Sea Voyage. I did want to release one a year in February when I released the first one, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ll think of a new schedule when I’ve got a few more of the books written.

Last but not least, The Daisy. People would probably tell me to give this old story up as a bad joke, but I just can’t. After already going through a major rewrite to become ‘better’, The Daisy is still… well, crap, if I’m honest. I’ve put a lot of work into it though – more than any other novel I’ve written. The Daisy has maps, a royal family tree (30 generations worth of back stories!), and a sequel that’s actually 25,000 words long! It needs a lot of work, but I have the determination to get it done.

Having said that, I’m under no illusion that any agent will want it. At least, not in its current state. I’m still on the fence about whether I want to self-publish it or not, but I’m confident that it will one day reach publishable standards. I’m still many, many edits away from that though and right now it’s the last on my list to focus on, sadly.

So, I’ve rambled on about my works for long enough I think. There are, of course, many more stories on my back burner but these are the three that I’m focusing on at this particular moment.

When the time comes, I’ll be posting giveaways for free copies of Ashlyn, so keep an eye out for that.

Happy Tuesday!

I have been an absolutely horrible blogger with this site and I am ashamed that I seem to lapse into silence for so long only to surface for a few days and repeat the process. To hopefully stop this from happening in the future I have set up a blog schedule which I will strictly adhere to in the future. I’ll eventually get around to giving this old blog a face lift and putting a few pages up so it looks lovely and full – and will be lovely and full by the time I get some content on it!

Watch this space.

I’ve spent the last month and a half on a hiatus from writing and all things writing related. The reason? I lost a lot of my motivation for it and was feeling pretty down about my writing as a whole. After a month reflecting and thinking about the path that I had wanted to head down, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really missed writing.

With the deadline for the Hot Key Books competition coming up – they announce the long list some time in early November – and me with an incomplete novel, I thought it might be best if I at least finished writing the novel so I would have a finished draft by November whether I get through in the competition or not.

Speaking of November, I’m still contemplating whether or not to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. If I do participate it will be to write the next book in my Ashlyn series which has been troubling me for a while. I’m hoping that by sitting down and really thinking about the series as a whole I’ll have a better chance of beating off my mental cloud and getting some work done for the series.

Hot Key Books have also announced an exciting new ebook section to their company and they’re currently looking for a new writer to write a romance novella for them. They’ve mentioned that they’re going to be expanding it for different genres and fantasy will be the next one in the new year. I’m looking forward to seeing what their brief will be for that story. I’m most definitely interested in writing it for them already without knowing anything. Fantasy is my favourite thing to write for definite.

Another thing that I have been neglecting lately is my promise to review books for other authors. I actually have two that I need to write up, since I got through them during my holiday last fortnight. I’m hoping to have all the books read and reviewed by the end of this month but I have a feeling it could run into November.

Still, I will get them done. I guess I have a lot of things that I need to get done before the end of this year!

On Saturday 24th I attended the Edinburgh Book Festival with my mum to hear Neil Gaiman talking about his latest children’s book Fortunately The Milk. I guess I’m a strange Neil Gaiman fan in the fact that I haven’t actually read his work yet, but am a fan of him as a person. I wasn’t entirely sure what the talk would be like, but I was excited to see one of my literary heroes in person.

It was very informative. He told some stories about where he gets his ideas from-apparently stolen from his children when they were four years old-and read a bit from his newest book. The questions at the end of the session were all asked by the children in attendance, and they were fantastic questions.

With it being more than a couple of days ago I can’t remember much of what was actually said (my memory is not the best and I didn’t have a notebook with me at the time). One thing I do remember is that Neil said it took him 10 years to write Coraline. As I am currently struggling with my current novel, I found his advice of writing just 50 words before bed to be a great idea for conquering the writer’s block and it was encouraging to know that even the more experienced and established authors struggle every now and then too.

The Book Festival is a great environment for a writer as well as a reader. When perusing the book shop I found a lot of the books had bent pages-like someone had folded the front cover and sat down to read-and upon looking around further, I found many children sitting in chairs and on the floor reading the books. Even though they eventually put the books back on the shelf, it’s encouraging to know that children aren’t just interested in xbox and playstations.

I only managed to attend once this year, but I have a feeling that next year I will be attending the festival more often.

Wishes are powerful things, if you belong to the MacClarity clan. You can ask Ernest for anything and he’ll make it come true, even though he’s been dead for nearly a hundred years. Puppy MacClarity doesn’t take the rumors about Ernest too seriously. But when he’s had enough of his teacher’s harassment, Puppy asks Ernest to take care of Miss Pritchett for him. Ernest does and family secrets start to surface like magic. During a summer filled with both fear and fun, Puppy begins to realize that Ernest isn’t the only special thing about his family, and their oddities aren’t just skin deep. Too bad he didn’t know sooner.

I began reading this novel back in June and was instantly gripped by the characters and plot. It Started With A Whisper is a fantastic YA book about a boy named Puppy and his very weird family.

Puppy has had a horrible year at school with his teacher ‘bitch’ Pritchett. Puppy’s family – the MacClarity’s – always turn to their ancestor Ernest in times of need, and that’s just what Puppy did. He wanted Ernest to take care of his teacher. When the family goes to Camp for the summer strange things start to happen. Puppy discovers a strange, dangerous man on Ernest’s land and his fun-filled summer turns into a scary nightmare.

There were so many characters in this book with big personalities it was a little hard to keep track of them at times. Although the book is long – 900+ pages – I was never bored. The plot moved along at a good pace. There are strange ravens, a vengeful llama, magic and mystery – everything that makes a good book great. There’s a great twist at the end too. I was left with a very satisfied feeling once finished. Would definitely recommend this novel to others.

My rating : 4 stars.

I know, I know. I’m barely a couple weeks into my book review posts and I’ve already missed one, but in my defense my dearest brother gave me a nasty cold that had me bedridden and sleeping all weekend. So, I am currently a week behind on my reviews but I will catch up somehow.

I seem to have a problem with structures and schedules. For example, I like to write out To Do lists almost every day and I usually end up giving up on the tasks after I’ve done one or two. But, I swear you guys, I’m going to try my hardest to make this blog worth reading. I even came up with a schedule that I’m going to stick to (or die trying!).

Sunday : Book Review

Monday : Self-Publishing Advice/Tips

Tuesday : Competitions for Fiction

Wednesday : Traditional Publishing – My Experience in trying

Thursday : Social Media – How I Try (and fail) To Engage An Audience

Friday : General Updates On My Novels

Saturday : N/A (I need a day off, right?)

As you can see, I’ll be running a Sunday-Friday blog and I hope that the topics will be interesting enough. For the most part, it will be my personal experiences laid bare. I’m not claiming to be a great self-published author who makes hundreds of thousands each month – heck no! I barely made £10 with my book sales since February. But I firmly believe that if we all share our experiences then we can see what works and start making positive changes for our own marketing skills.

So, there you have it. My new schedule which I will start this coming Sunday when I will definitely get a new review out. I hope you guys will like it

Young Writers Prize 2013.

Definitely think I’m going to enter this again this year, That’s Charming got me all the way to the shortlist last time so I’m feeling good about my chances. Just need to decide on which story to submit…