Your First Novel

On Monday I went to the Southbank Centre for the Your First Novel conference which was being held in the Purcell Room. It was all very swish-looking and fancy - felt like a proper grown up attending a proper conference and everyfink!
   The panellists were Kate Mosse (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, The Citadel), Emma Healey (whose debut novel Elizabeth Is Missing came out last week), Felicity Blunt (agent at Curtis Brown), Charlotte Mendelson (When We Were Bad, Almost English) and Sarah Waters (Tipping The Velvet, Fingersmith). What a group of women to gain advice from, eh?? Even though I had bought and paid for a ticket myself, it felt like I'd been specially invited in to a secret group of writers who, for 90 minutes, were privy to some wonderful thoughts and anecdotes that no one else was allowed to hear! 

I managed to grab a sneaky snap of the Purcell Room's Stage before it started...

There were some lovely flowers on either side of the panellist's seats, which were in aid of the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction which was to be held in the same venue later in the week. 

  

It was a fantastic evening with some sage words being doled out. Felicity Blunt's tips about approaching an agent were thus:

• Give your book a catchy title
• Be sure to have a well-written cover letter
• Write an interesting synopsis
• Don't rush over the letter & synopsis (!!)
• Think about what inspired you to write the book in the first place

In order to be a writer, there were certain things you have to have in your toolbox, which all the ladies agreed on:

• Hard work
• Passion
• Conserve your willpower (this was Emma's tip actually: so if you're thinking of starting a diet, have another project going on, either focus on that or the writing. It's too hard to do both and really commit / stick to it)
• Once you've finished a project, leave it for a while before coming back to it and looking at it objectively
• Have great plots (an obvious one but so important)
• Be disciplined with your work (grammar, spelling, punctuation etc.)

Charlotte Mendelson is also an editor and answered a misconception about them, which was that they were not there to change your work but to point out any problem areas and let you get on with fixing them. Most authors can get nervous about sending their work off to an editor because they think it means they'll get their manuscript back with big red marks all over it. According to Charlotte (who was also so witty I found myself LOL-ing on more than one occasion), that isn't the case at all; an editor is purely there as a guide to make your book the best it can possibly be. It serves them for it to be as perfect as possible so there is little point in making their author feel like their work is crap by "massacring" it. The important thing is to approach any feedback the editor has with enthusiasm and an open nature. More often that not, your feelings won't be spared as there isn't really time. Just get your head down, and work on the things you need to in order to make your book as wonderful as it deserves to be.

   Likewise with agents, they are looking for new work and want writers to be successful. It serves them for their clients to be successful and are always on your side, even if it might not feel like that all the time. 

   If I'm lucky enough to land an agent one day, I hope that I can have an open and honest enough relationship with them where they can say to me "this is not working, it needs to go" and I can accept it and see where they're coming from rather than thinking they're just being unfair and not "getting it". 

   Kate Mosse was also very forthright about it and said anything that fails to serve the story or isn't telling anything needs to be taken out, simple as that. Harsh, yet true.

Then it was over to the audience for some questions. I was too shy to ask anything but there was one in particular that blew my mind. One lady mentioned that the winner and runner ups of last year's Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction were all really pretty and "model-like". Her friend, an aspiring author, had therefore wondered whether or not it would be a good idea to get some plastic surgery to make herself more aesthetically pleasing to potential agents / publishers. The look on the panellists' faces was a picture: I think the best way to describe it would be WTF?! And rightly so. It's quite a thing for actresses to think that they need plastic surgery to break in to the showbiz world as their face is their fortune, but for writers? That's one of the best bits about it. Your work speaks for yourself, bollocks to how you look! Though it was a feasible question, because sadly people can be discriminating in every medium. 

   That is something I truly love about the literary world. Something that I could never quite come to terms with, with regards to acting. Having a strong to obsessive interest in reading and writing like I do, I find it incredible that I can have access to agents, publishers, authors on social media sites such as Twitter but with actors, it's a different ball game. They're "untouchable" somehow, whereas the these people, whose world I so badly want to be in professionally, I am able to reach out to and ask advice of them. Something I would never be able to do with actors, directors or casting directors, if I didn't know them personally. It's so much more down to earth and real. I love it. I'm not slating the acting profession in any way - it's just a very different world, and one where, as someone on the creative side as opposed to the admin side (like my actual job), I feel I belong. 

Before we finished, Kate Mosse asked each panellist to give their one top tip:

• Emma Healey: fear is not a bad thing
• Felicity Blunt: just have faith / be open to trying new things (she also said the fact that we were there and were writing already was something to be immensely proud of)
• Charlotte Mendelson: guard against cynicism
• Sarah Waters: show your work to someone you trust
• Kate Mosse: don't talk about writing. DO IT.  

So there we have it! My time at the Your First Novel conference. It's one of the first times I felt like a real writer - I hope one of many to come. 

EG xxx