Before I begin, can we just give a quick shoutout to this AMAZEBALLS weather we've been having?? Ugh. Just gorgeous.
Anyway...
Last week kicked off with an absolutely brilliant Visiting Speaker Session with Sheila Crowley, a literary agent from Curtis Brown and Maxine Hitchcock, a publishing director from Michael Joseph (an imprint of Penguin).
I was already very much looking forward to meeting Sheila because as well as being an agent whose interests in the fiction she represents compliment TPB, one of her clients is Jojo Moyes, one of my favourite authors. I read The Last Letter From Your Lover when it first came out in, I think, 2010. I remember looking everywhere for it in the book shops in Ealing, where I used to live with Mum, and couldn't find it. Refusing to buy it online - as bookshops are literally my favourite places on earth - I ventured in to central London to the flagship Waterstones in Piccadilly and got one! Happy Days!
I remember buying it, settling myself down in one of the shop's comfy leather chairs and tucking in. As well as not being able to wait to read it, it was coming up to rush hour and I used to try and avoid that like the plague (though saying that, every hour is rush hour in London now isn't it?) so thought what better way to kill time than curl up with a book in Waterstones (which sometimes I like to pretend is my own personal library... *one day*).
In fact, this book was one of the inspirations for TPB - although I didn't know it until I sat down after I typed 'The End' and thought about what it was that had inspired me to start writing it in November 2012.
I would recommend Jojo's books to anyone and was utterly thrilled to meet her agent. So thrilled that I barely said a word for fear of looking stupid!
Maxine was equally lovely and encouraging and gave us a brilliant insight as to what her world at Michael Joseph was like. It publishes highly commercial fiction (as well as popular fiction and non-fiction) and the few agents who have read the opening chapters of TPB have remarked that it has a high commercial appeal which is encouraging.
So you can see that this was the week that really spoke to me and I took down tonnes of notes which I am trying to sit here and sift through (for the life of me I can't work some of them out, I must have been scribbling so furiously).
In fact, both ladies' enthusiasm and passion for the industry was a bit like a drug and I immediately went home, powered up Mac (that's his name - I'm so original and inventive, no?) and wrote like a demon, which I haven't done for a while because work has been so busy that I've just fallen in to bed when I got home. But this was something else - I was bouncing about on the bus, writing notes on what it was I wanted to get down once I got in, noting ideas for new books. I felt very refreshed (okay, tired but happy) when I woke up the next morning.
On to Thursday...
Last week's class was based around P.O.V (point of view). This was fascinating, and not because it was a lot to take in but because I had no idea that there were other ways to tell a story other than, really, first and third person. Yes, that can seem slightly ignorant but the books I read don't tend to come written in many other ways - not that that's a bad thing - and so it opened my eyes to a new world.
I actually really like writing in third person as opposed to first, not least because it allows me to see other things my protagonist may not if I were writing in the first. This was shown in the homework Erin gave us, which I actually found very challenging: we were tasked with taking a segment of our book and turning it from the P.O.V it was written in to the complete opposite. So, for TPB, I chose a part where my female lead meets a handsome jazz musician in Ronnie Scott's. It's all about her perceptions of him and how she feels in that moment, but from an outsider's view and doing it originally in third person allowed me to see the things Belle (my girl) may not take in to account when spotting a gorgeous, sexy acoustic guitarist. For instance, the third person may remark that the noise coming from Piotr's (sexy music guy) guitar were "caramel-smooth" but I know for a fact that Belle doesn't talk like that, so would have to use something else. It's quite difficult at first but once you get the hang of it, much easier.
Though I still say I like writing in third person, at least for this book, the point of the homework isn't necessarily because it will definitely work for us all but to provide us with an extra feather to add to our quill should we choose to use it and I am so glad to have these techniques to call upon if the need arose.
Next week we have a three-person VSS with an author, an agent and an editor - exciting!!
Have a lovely rest of the week you scrummy lot.
EG xx
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