What Not To Do At An Online Writing Conference! By Jacqueline Miller

What not to do at an online writing conference! 

Well, like a lot of other people, I attended the recent online writing conference, in a virtual sense, of course.

To be honest, at first I didn't really understand what it was all about, although I had attended one before. I recalled that it had been helpful. Everyone had had their query read by an agent, and mine said she needed to know more about what my central character wanted and the story reminded her of Ella Enchanted.

So when I received an email, last week, telling me about the two day event, I thought, "Why  not have a go? You're not going to get published, yet, but it'll be interesting and you might even learn something."

First of all, I had to enrol. Luckily, I remembered my name ( ha, ha) and password from last time.

The conference had a new format: you could write a query in 250 words, then the first 250 words and first 5 pages of  your manuscript. You could also comment on other people's posts and edit yours whenever you wanted. Mind you, it took me a while to work this out. And I never managed to find out how to link all my posts at the bottom of my profile. It also took me until nearly the end of the second day to work out how to load a photograph for my avatar and it was so small you could hardly see me.

First I had to post a query (which means a kind of summary of your book) in 250 words for a literary agent to read. I decided to submit my work in progress, known as my WIP, and once again wondered what the plot was. Don't get me wrong, there is a plot, but it's long and complicated so that what started out as a simple book about a student magician with an aged mentor, had now developed into an epic tale with loads of characters, back stories and time travel. Yes, my little fantasy now included Steam Punk. My cp's didn' t see that one coming! (For the uninitiated, cp's are Critical Partners.) Mine usually are happy to read whatever I write and rarely criticise. 

I had to decide what category to post the WIP under. Last time I posted it as Young Adult, (YA), but a friend, who's studying for a creative writing degree, had said it's definitely Middle Grade (MG). She said it's  funny and not dark enough for YA. I was inclined to agree, as lots of 10 year olds had read extracts and said they love it. The problem was that I wanted my protagonist to be 16 so, for the purpose of making it MG, I lopped a couple of years off her age.

Then I  had to summarise it for the query. I figuratively chewed my pencil, (it tasted better than the mouse), and came up with a simplified aspect of the plot that hardly referred to the aged mentor. By then the Forum had started and there were hundreds of entries online. After numerous attempts, each worse than the last, and leaving out nearly all the plot and characters, I wrote the required 250 words. I managed to post it by typing it all out again on the form as I wasn't sure how to copy and paste. Rather annoyingly, every time I did something I had to log in again.

Of course what I wanted to write was,

"Dear Agent,

My brilliant book is  influenced by The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Lost Horizon, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Witches, Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, The Time Machine and the Narnia books. Also, Frankenstein, I Robot, Snow White, Mallory Towers and every book I've ever read. Although it's derivative it's also highly original. I'm not sure what genre it is, but I call it Fantasy. If you like reading any of the above mentioned books, or indeed, any book, you will enjoy this!

As adults and ten year old children enjoy reading my book, I hope that you will too! I think it is MG and YA. I would just like to add that several old people with dementia have enjoyed reading it lots of times.

Yours sincerely etc"

But then, there would have been no room for the plot.

To my surprise, I actually got a couple of comments on the thread. One asked if it was about magicians or wizards. The attendee was confused because I had referred to a missing magician whose disappearance was reported in the "Wizards' Gazette". If it was wizards, that would be bad, she wrote, because no one wanted to read or write Harry Potter any more. Agents would think it was just fan fiction. And why was I using both Wizards and Magicians? It was confusing for the poor reader. I pondered this: I had both wizards and magicians in my book. I thought the WIP was very different to Harry Potter but some CP's said it does have a Potter vibe. I saw it more as Ghormenghast.

I edited my query, and changed "The Wizards' Gazette" to "The Magicians' Gazette," although I wasn't convinced.  By the end of the conference I'd altered it to, "The Magicians' and Wizards' Gazette", and I was teetering on the brink of closing the magazine altogether!

Then I decided to post  the first 250 words of my WIP. Well, by now as you've probably guessed, a bit of back story had recently become a Prologue, featuring the missing wizard/magician, (or shall we just call him a person who does magic.) So I posted that, and a few people looked at it. It was rather a boring chapter as everything of note happened after the 250th word. No one left a comment. Then I read somewhere that Prologues are not good. They are frowned upon. Agents hate them. So I deleted the post, which took ages as I had to keep logging in. Instead, I posted my original first chapter, which is in 3rd person. I had changed it from 1st person when I started working on the second draft of the book.  This is the scene where my main character pulls a duck out of a hat instead of the expected rabbits. 250 words is not much, and had run out before the main protagonist could say much.

Now I received a few comments of criticism. My first line stated that my central character was feeling depressed. Oh, no! You mustn't write that! You are telling not showing. An agent will not read past that first line, wrote the attendee. I think it probably was an agent in disguise who told me that. Another attendee agreed with her. My dream of being the next JKRowling was already over...

I deleted the first line. I had to log in several times...

Another  attendee wrote that my description of the teacher merged with the next sentence, so that it suggested that the duck was looking glamorous in a blue satin dress and a long purple cloak. Hmmm...I reread the sentences. She was right. More edits, more logging in.

Every time you edit, your post goes up to the top of the list, so it was being read a lot, but not many people left comments.

Another attendee was confused because I had referred to the teacher in three ways: Miss Blank, Miss First Name Blank, and just her First Name. How do you resolve that if she's a main character? I mean she's a person as well as a teacher. But maybe it was a bit much to give her three forms of address in only 250 words...

However, everyone said they would want to read on, which was encouraging. The most helpful comment advised me to delay the producing of the duck from the hat: "She reached in and produced...a green and brown duck?" Apparently the dot, dot, dot, and the question mark made it dramatic: dum, dum, dum, and here comes a ...duck! ?!?

Then I read some other people's posts as the  rules of the conference stipulated that you have to make comments on at least 5 threads for each of your postings. This is hard because you don't want to be mean if you think the writing's awful: "This is terrible but good luck with it anyway!"smiley face.

As a teacher, I tend to mark my own pupils positively.The lowest mark they get is an A-. If it's reasonable they get an A. If it's good, they get A+. If it's brilliant they get A++++++ to infinity. In my experience, no one gets encouraged by getting D-. They just give up!

On my thread, I replied to all the attendees who left comments on my 250 words and thanked them. They were all very helpful and correct. If you are reading this blog, thank you again.

I began to take their advice and change things. At one point, I started to worry that there would not be many of my original 250 words left.

I traced the threads of the people who had commented on mine to read their queries and extracts, and comment on theirs. I was kind and said I would love to read their books and wished them luck.  Probably not that helpful, then?

Other people seemed able to reproduce a whole passage and comment on it in different colours, line by line. How did they do that? How did they know what to change? Some people had so many red highlights and crossed out bits from different attendees that they rewrote their whole 5 pages. Then one attendee returned and commented that she preferred the original version after all.

I decided to post my first 5 pages and spent several hours laboriously typing and editing it onto the form. At last, around midnight, it was done. I pressed the button to post it and ... I expect you've guessed what happened next? Yes, I was asked to log on again and when I did ...the whole 5 pages had disappeared, just like the rabbits in the hat! I later found out, I should have ticked  the "remember me" box. As I was working the next day, I did not get time to post the 5 pages.

However, I have learned so much from this. My first 250 words now are polished and brilliant. I've had to think about how to address the teacher.  I've made the difference between wizards and magicians central to the plot. I've discovered that people enjoyed the bit they read and one of them guessed that the teacher was evil because she "croaked". YES!

I 've also learned to hold back and  not give too much information to the reader. Let them discover things slowly as the story progresses. Make each chapter exciting.

I also learned a lot by watching all the videos of the agents reading YA twitter pitches on vlogs and saying which ones they'd like to see. The agents seemed really nice and friendly, but with strong opinions. It all seemed amazingly fun and arbitrary and I tried to guess which queries they'd like. They were munching pies while they decided. I liked the decor of their office and the fact that a small child could be seen wandering around in the background.

I learned that writing is a business but no one really knows for sure what is going to be successful and sell.

The main thing I learned is that you can't please everyone. You can listen to advice and then try things out, but ultimately it's your book and you make your own decisions. I also learnt that there are really kind, intelligent people out there, who adore books and writing. They will take the time to help you, but are desperate to get their own work published. Overall it was a positive experience and I'm grateful to the organisers and hope they do more of these events.

Today, I'm rereading the WIP. Tomorrow, I will continue writing the second draft and I will be asking my CP's what they really think...

Jacqueline Miller

How To Turn Your WIP Into A Novel - Or Not! by J S Miller

How to turn your WIP into a novel- or not!

So far this blog has contained a few photos of flowers, some sunsets and sunrises, a couple of early chapters of my work in progress, (optimistically abbreviated as "my WIP") and some drawings for the latter.

When writing my WIP, I found I wanted to illustrate the scenes and discover what my characters looked like.

The drawings started by being drawn crudely via Paint for windows using a mouse. Very hard to do, you should try it.

Then my daughter who is also one of my CP 's (critical partner) a term I learned via Twitter, gave me an Apple iPad. This was nice but then I discovered you have to put things called Apple apps on it. I kept looking for something that was similar to Paint but couldn't find anything. I searched for free Art apps and found that there were loads of these, but then I discovered that when you download them you actually only get three colours and a fat paintbrush, so you have to pay for the full app.

After paying for several Art apps and trying them out, I came to the conclusion that they were all complicated and none of them were as good as Paint. The only advantage was that you could use your finger or a stylus to draw, which was easier than using a mouse. Having visited the Apple Store frequently and spent lots of money on something that Windows gives you for free, I now decided that I had enough apps. Sadly, however, none of the Art apps allow you to write text, so then had I to email the final drawing back to the computer, download it, write text using Paint and email it back to myself.

Eventually, I found a nice children's app which was fantastic until the iPad told me to update everything. I pressed the button and after the update the app was terrible: the felt tips were huge and watery, and the oil paints just smudged. I tried to complain via a review, but apparently Apple does not endorse any of these apps and there's nothing you can do.  I learned a lesson here: if you like an app DO NOT UPDATE IT! It will put bugs in it and will never work again.

The WIP started as a "Write a Novel in November" project. The idea is you write thousands of words every day in November and at the end of the month you find that you have written a novel. It sounds easy, doesn't it? I told my daughter I was going to do this, at which point she fell about laughing hysterically and replied:

"What about the novel you started LAST November?"

With this encouragement I decided on a compromise: I would start writing a novel in November, but not write every day, nor upload it anywhere either for a word count, but send it to my CP's and continue it in December, January, February etc however long it took before it turned into a novel.

Then I needed to decide what to write. I had a plan for a chick lit book which I'd started about a female stand up comedian: a light hearted, funny romance. I wrote out my chapter plans and plot and sent it to my CP's who all said it was brilliant and I should write it.

So instead I started writing a fantasy novel about a girl called Ruby whose first chapter I had already posted on my blog as it was just a writing exercise. Nothing was planned and I just had the first line, something like:

"My teacher was really ancient: she was 172 years old and worked at the Academy of Magic. She wanted to retire but the Government said you have to be 180 years old before you can get your pension."

The first line came from a lesson where I had to teach my ten year old pupil the difference between old and ancient. I said a civilisation can be ancient but a person can only be old. Then I thought, “Why can't a person be ancient?"

 I wrote the story in the first person and I hadn't got a clue what it was about, but it was fun.  Lots of characters kept turning up asking to be auditioned for the book. It looked like there was going to be a cast of thousands and it was funny. There were elements of the Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Witches, Lost Horizon, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Rebecca, Gone with the Wind, The Time Machine and the Narnia books. Also, Frankenstein, I Robot, What Katy did at School, Malory Towers and probably every book I've ever read. Apart from being derivative it was also very original. :D

  CP's who are journalists said they liked it; 10 year old children liked it and were inspired to write their own magic stories; middle aged male friends liked it and said the chapters were too short, and they wanted more, which I took as a compliment. Everyone was asking me to email them the next chapter faster than I could write it.

Then my daughter decided to be critical:

"Mum, it's very good and you are up to chapter 12, but where is the plot?"

She is certainly a critical, critical partner I thought, angrily, but then I repeated: "Where is the plot?" and there wasn't one.

  I reread the WIP and noticed that all the characters were hinting about the plot. The plot was definitely there, I just had to find it. Then I thought about all my literary influences, wrote them down and suddenly I had plenty of plot, masses of it. It came pouring out.  Now there were enough plots for several books, a trilogy, a whole series in fact. It was going to be epic. There were back stories, books on magic, evil enemies, a quest, historical research, a few love stories, parallel universes, everything! The plots just flowed and flowed. I drew maps for the Academy. I outlined how the Academy worked. I wrote the back stories, the founders, the conflicts, the magic. I researched historically what this ancient teacher had experienced in her 172 years.

All I had to do now, was write it.

But then writing in the first person seemed very limiting, so I started chapter 13 in the third person, and suddenly another evil character and a couple of wizards turned up. It was brilliant. It felt as if the book was just writing itself.

Now I will go back to do the second draft and write it in 3rd person.
I just have one more problem: is it YA, MG or just Fantasy? My protagonists are 16 and 172 years old. For MG don't they have to be younger than 12? But Ruby is definitely 16. She has a boyfriend and has attitude.

One of my journalist CP's, who is an editor, said it also may be too literary for MG. What does that mean?

The bottom line is I enjoy reading it and I love writing it. The drawings are fun and it is a way of escaping from reality. The CP's are reading it and finding it entertaining, and when it's finished I will see about publishing it.

I am writing the type of book I would like to read. Isn't that the best advice you can give anyone?

Jacqueline S Miller

Flowers in the garden: is Spring coming soon?

In London, the temperature tonight is one degree below freezing and there were flurries of snow during the day.

Yet only a week ago, the weather was sunny and warm. Here are some photographs I took of the flowers in my garden. I hope they will be able to survive the frost!

I like the way the sun reflects on the petals of the yellow crocuses in this photograph.

Yellow crocuses and white snowdrops.

Note the different shades of yellow inside the heart of these crocuses.

These beautiful purple crocuses have an orange centre.

Flowers in a garden have the power to heal and to make you happy!

Prudence, Henry and the Wizards Illustration for Ch 13 Ruby and the Ancient Teacher by Jacqueline S Miller

Prudence, Henry and the Wizards.
Illustration for Chapter 13, Ruby and the Ancient Teacher by Jacqueline S Miller
 23rd February 2013. Copyright J S Miller

 Prudence is on the way home from her tour but has been intercepted by Henry, who is being followed by two wizards. Prudence briefly turns Henry into a rabbit (unfortunately brown and green) to help him escape. However, the wizards, who are from a high order, detect the spell and continue to follow them, managing to catch up with them in this cul de sac just as the spell wears off. Henry, an agent, has given Prudence a ransom note and a photograph of a certain missing person, which she is showing to the wizards in this picture.

In the back of Prudence's car are cages of birds and animals used in her magic act.

I used Apple apps to produce this picture from imagination. I like to know what my characters look like, so draw illustrations after writing a scene.

Ruby and the Ancient Teacher is a  Fantasy Novel which I hope to publish later this year.

Ruby, Darren and Clarice

Ruby, Darren and Clarice.

Illustration for Chapter 7, Ruby and the Ancient Teacher

by  Jacqueline S Miller  (Copyright)

20th February 2013

Snowdrops in the Garden. Spring is coming! Hurrah!

The snow has melted away. When I ventured into the garden today, I saw the first Snowdrops of Spring.
Flowers always make me feel happy so I thought I would share this by posting some photographs of the Snowdrops on my blog. Enjoy!

Fabia (The Ancient Teacher) and Ruby. By copyright Jacqueline S Miller

Illustration: Ruby and Mitzi by copyright Jacqueline S Miller

Illustration for Ruby and the Ancient Teacher Chapter 1 by Jacqueline S Miller

Instead of her two rabbits, Ruby magicked a duck out of the hat!
Copyright Jacqueline S Miller 1st February 2013

The Mysterious Stranger by Jacqueline S Miller

                                   

The Mysterious Stranger

Who will live in our house
When we are not there?
Who is the mysterious stranger
Climbing up the stair?

Who will sleep in our room,
Watch our new tv?
Who will stay in our house
While we are at sea?

Who will lie in our bed,
Wash in our bathroom?
Who will eat our biscuits,
Sweep up with our broom?

Who will mow our garden,
Sit down in our chair?
Who will live in our house,
When we are not there?

Who is the unknown stranger,
Whoever can it be?
Could it be the person
We lent our spare door key?



By Jacqueline S Miller

                             




25th January 2013.

Snow: Before and After

Miss Poppyseeds and the Giant Cheese

This is an illustration for Chapter 2 of Ruby and the Ancient Teacher by Jacqueline S Miller 

Miss Poppyseeds, the cookery teacher, is having to use a magic spell to destroy the enormous cheese that Ruby has accidentally caused to grow and grow and grow. Meanwhile, Ruby has also used magic to hatch all the eggs in the cookery kitchen's larder into chicks who now think she is their mother! 

Ruby and Jenny visit Darren's room. Illustration for Chapter 7 Ruby and the Ancient Teacher by Jacqueline S Miller