Where I (Used to!) Write

I've moved house a lot over the years (I think I'm on my 12th house), so the 'where I work' posts on this blog have described several different rooms and views. There was the study that overlooked Snowdonia, the one that looked out over Penrhyn Castle, and then there was the last house, where my study had a lovely view of the bus stop!

In these posts I usually mention the story of how I wrote my first book in a tiny bungalow, with my monitor jammed into a cupboard and my keyboard on my lap.

And then last week I found this photo. Yes, that's me as a teenager, chuffed to bits to have my own desk and my own typewriter, and being A Writer. 

I grew up in a rambling Victorian house that, even shared with my large family, had a room no one else wanted to use. When my parents moved in they decided it would make a great playroom, to keep the kids out of the way of the grown-ups. But my brothers and I convinced ourselves the room was haunted by the little old lady who'd lived in the house ten years before us. We knew she'd used the room as a bedroom, as she'd been too frail to climb the stairs. So we decided her ghost was the reason the door would open by itself (this often happens in old houses) and we even thought we heard a piano playing in the empty room - it was probably a radio! We ignored the cold spooky 'playroom' and played in the garden instead!

Skip forward fifteen years when we'd all grown up, my mother suggested I could have the room for myself. It would be a fabulous place for me and my friends to hang out away from the adults (I'm noticing a theme here), but I was thrilled. Especially when,

Mum: You can decorate it however you like!

Me: I'm going to paint the walls black!

Mum: Absolutely not!

We compromised with grey walls but with my first pay cheque I bought a desk, two bookcases, and a small sofa, all in my favourite black. I probably imagined lying on the sofa and dictating my novel to a secretary, like Barbara Cartland, because that's what writers do, right?

Thirty-five years later (thirty-five!!!), I still have the two black bookcases but sadly the desk was taken to the dump just before Christmas. Although it did have a second life as my daughter's desk for a good twenty years. 

I'd completely forgotten this photo had been taken until I found it last week. As my husband said when I showed it to him (after he'd got over laughing at the 80s fashion), what advice would I give my past self?

Apart from 'Don't wear big earrings around small children'? Probably, 'Hang on in there' because it would take another ten years before I was offered a book contract.

And maybe suggest I get over my obsession with the colour black... 

Related Posts:

A Room of One's Own

Where I Write

Writers Write (or, what I really do all day)

A Very Marley Christmas...

Christmas for the Marley family starts the night before, when we choose a favourite Christmas movie to watch, usually Elf. When the children were younger, I would read them ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and then we’d look out the window to try and see the lights on Father Christmas’s sleigh. We would leave a mince pie out for Father Christmas, and a carrot for his reindeer, and have no trouble persuading the children to go to bed early. Unfortunately they would wake up early too, eager to see what Father Christmas had brought, but now they’re teenagers we get to wake them. I think this is known as ‘payback’.

It snows a lot in Wales...

Because my husband is convinced we’ll be burgled if we leave the presents beneath the tree, he doesn’t put them out until everyone has gone to bed the night before. This means when we come downstairs on Christmas morning, the tree lights are on and it all looks very magical. This is a minor Christmas miracle in itself as fairy lights hate me and I have to buy new ones every year. As we all believe in Father Christmas, including the teenagers (they’re not daft!), we all have Christmas stockings, but we open our main presents after breakfast. While everyone plays with their new ‘toys’, I cook Christmas dinner – accompanied by loud, cheesy Christmas music and a glass of champagne.

Each decoration tells a story...

We have a traditional Christmas dinner, which we always eat at lunchtime – I have no idea why! Afterwards, we force the teenagers to play an old-fashioned board game, usually The Simpson’s version of Cluedo or Scrabble, and then, if they’ve been really good, we allow them to beat us on their new video games.

Four Marleys with three degrees between us, plus one writer -
and this is the best we could come up with...

Of course, Christmas doesn’t always go according to plan. Actually, it hardly ever goes according to plan, but the most disastrous one was when we were snowed in. I’d ordered all the presents online as well as the Christmas groceries to be delivered – and nothing arrived! It was Christmas Eve before the roads had cleared enough for us to inch our way to the nearest supermarket, fill a trolley and skid back home.

Yes, that's me. On a sledge.

 Strangely enough, that Christmas turned out to be our best one ever. Instead of a ‘traditional’ Christmas, we built snowmen and went sledging – and I made a start on writing a snow-themed story that turned into Something Wicked...

This post previously appeared on Becca's Books

Related Posts:

How Grandma Invented my Family's Christmas

Happy New Year!

How do you feel about New Year's resolutions? Do you ever make any? Do you stick to them?

When I was a teenager, I would make three resolutions every year without fail. And every year they would be pretty much the same: (1) Lose weight, (2) Save money, (3) Write a book. Every year I failed to keep them but at least it saved having to think up three more. And if that sounds familiar, I gave the same trait to Marina in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - my first novel, published fifteen years ago this month.

I think it's about time my resolutions had an update! So, what is it that I'd really like to change if I could?

Well, I'd like to

Be more organised ...

As you may have noticed, I'm not the world's most organised person - and then last year my phone died, taking all my contacts and my calendar with it! Disaster! But I've learnt from this! I have a new phone - and I've now got back ups! All my contacts have been updated in a proper address book, everyone's birthday is listed in a birthday book and I have a back-up diary. So, fingers crossed!

Write more ... 

I'm a professional writer, that's what I do all day, right? Yes - along with critiques, reviews, blog posts, guest blog posts and social media for both myself and other authors, somehow the actual book writing is getting very squeezed. JK Rowling talks about how important it is to 'guard' precious writing time, and she is right. What can I do to fix it?

My friend, Trisha Ashley, belongs to a writers' group called The 500 Club with Elizabeth Gill and Leah Fleming. Every day they agree to email each other once they've written 500 words. Isn't that a great idea? It's certainly easier to achieve than 1000 words, and the words soon mount up. I'm going to give it a go - and record my progress in my back-up diary!

Try to leave the house occasionally ...

It is easy when you're self-employed to forget to have any 'me' time. A couple of years back I was working from 7.00 am to 9.00 pm, seven days a week, and all I achieved was to make myself ill. Besides, if I don't meet new people, visit new places and have new experiences, how will I find anything new to write about?

Yes, that's me,
halfway up the Eiffel Tower with my daughter

So there you have it. Those are my resolutions for this year, how about you?

8 Tips for Writing in Cafés

It's the summer holidays, and while my children are no longer at that age where they expect to be entertained every minute of the day, there is that expectation that mum will be the one driving them to where they expect to be entertained every minute of the day. Which is how I found myself working from a café for two mornings last week, instead of my nice snug study.

It certainly brought back memories. When the children were younger I would regularly take them to one of those indoor play centres. They would go crazy sliding through twisty plastic tunnels and getting lost in ball pits, and I'd drink lots of coffee and write. Much of Breathless was written this way - but it did help that I'm the kind of person who can screen out background noise as I work!

But even I was surprised at how much I managed to achieve last week. I'm not sure if it was the coffee, a different environment or just being away from the Internet - probably the latter! So if you feel the need to get away for a few hours, just to write, here are my tips:

(1) Choose a café where you are already known, or one that's part of a large chain where you'll blend in with everyone else.

(2) Go during a quiet time so you're not seat hogging, and sit in a quiet area so you're less likely to be disturbed or asked if you're writing a book - although this is a good opportunity to hone your elevator pitch!

(3) Order plenty of drinks to keep the staff happy enough that they won't turf you out, but don't go mad because it'll get expensive. Preferably, use a café that has a loyalty card scheme - after a few visits you'll get a free drink!

(4) Sit facing the room unless you want people reading your draft sex scenes over your shoulder. There's no greater temptation than an open laptop. 

(5) If you're the kind of person who can't write in a noisy environment, try revising or proof-reading instead. In the old days I used to cart around a huge A4 lever arch file with my manuscript in it, now I copy my work onto a Kindle. Alternatively, just print out a few chapters.

(6) Consider using a (shock horror) notebook and pen. A notebook doesn't need charging, you don't have to worry about it being damaged and it's far more portable. But take more than one pen, in case it runs out, and ensure that it's comfortable to write with.

(7) Don't expect to write perfect prose. In fact, don't expect to write anything at all. Start off writing notes, like a long synopsis. With any luck you'll find the notes will get longer and turn into snatches of dialogue or description and then whole scenes. Before you know it, you'll have drafted an entire chapter.

(8) But if you find writing fiction in a café doesn't work for you, try something else - outline a new story, or write a blog post or article instead.

And if all else fails, get out your camera. You never know when all those Instagrammed coffee shots are going to come in handy ...

Related Posts:

A Room of One's Own
Getting Noted
My Writing Process
Seeking Inspiration
Where I Write (written for Novelistas Ink)


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5 Random Things From My Desk

For this week's blog post I thought I'd write something completely different.    

I should be writing my new novel but yesterday afternoon I ended up tidying my desk instead (expert procrastinator, remember?) and, along with a forgotten bar of chocolate (still within sell-by date: yay!), I found a selection of random objects that to anyone else might seem totally weird.

Reno from Final Fantasy

I won Reno in a competition organised by one of my favourite authors, Anne Stuart. Anne used Reno as inspiration for one of her own characters in a book called Fire and Ice. She's blogged about it here. He usually sits on my tub of paperclips. I love him.

I've also got a Ninja Minion, a glow-in-the-dark polar bear and a large pink frog wearing a crown, but we won't go into that.

Hotel Business Card

This is an advert for the Waterton Park Hotel, where my husband stayed about a year or so ago. He had the  idea the photo would appeal to me because it's of a Palladian house built on an island in the middle of a lake, and he thought I might want to put it in one of my books! It was one of those really strange coincidences because he was unaware I'd just created a similar house (Hartfell) in Trust Me Lie - although in my book the house is a very modern one.

Postcard of Marilyn Monroe

I found this old postcard when I was sorting through some old photographs. It was sent to me over 30 years ago by my school-friend Tracey. She had recently moved away and would write to me every week with a Marilyn Monroe postcard - one of my favourite actresses. I kept all the postcards but this one somehow came adrift from the others and now sits on my desk.



Packet of Forget-Me-Not Seeds

If my friend Sophie Claire is reading this, she will not be pleased with me! These seeds were part of a goody bag from the launch of her book, My Forget-Me-Not Ex. Part of the goody bag included a cute little terracotta pot to plant them in, so I had no excuse not to do so.

Sorry, Sophie! I'll sow them soon, honest!




The English Housewife in the Seventeenth Century

by Christina Hole (1953)

I have lots of modern paperbacks piled up on my desk but this is a book picked up on my most recent trip to a second-hand book fair. I love second-hand book fairs, particularly the really old books with interesting inscriptions and pretty bindings.

But I bought this book because I love history but I don't know much about the seventeenth century other than the events of the Civil War. Here's an extract:

"Cottage women could not afford many candles, and for all ordinary purposes they relied upon rushlights which they made themselves ... The rushes grew wild in the water-meadows and under hedges, and the grease in which they were coated came from the scourings of the frying pan and the cooking pot. They were gathered in summer while they were green and kept in water until the housewife was ready to make the lights. Then the green rind was peeled off, leaving a narrow strip along one side. The next step was  to bleach the reeds by putting them out of doors for two or three nights and letting them soak in the dew, and afterwards they were dried in the sun. Then they were laid in long iron pans filled with melted grease, and when they were thoroughly coated and dried, they were hung in bark containers on the wall."

All that trouble to go to when you consider all we do now is reach out and click on an electric light!

Now, what weird and wonderful things are lurking on your desk?

My desk: The tidy version
(for the untidy version you need to click here)

Related Posts: 

Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

A Room of One's Own

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Trust Me I Lie (or, the true confessions of a writer on social media ... )

I've never been great at lying. If you're worried that your bum looks big in whatever you're wearing, I'm not the person to ask for an opinion. I'm also a blurter, so I've probably let you know before you've even thought to ask. Or, as my husband puts it, 'Louise, you have the subtlety of a breeze block'. It's one of the reasons I prefer the written word. I can go back and check how many times I've put my foot in it before I hit send/post.

Not me, obviously
(I need to have a nice photo here to illustrate
the post when it's auto-shared on social media)

But being a writer means I get to lie for a living. All those characters and events in my books? Totally made up. (You probably guessed that, right?) What a great life I have, drifting around in my pyjamas, drinking endless cups of coffee (actually, it's decaff), waiting for the muse to strike - when I'm not down the pub with my mates celebrating the launch of another book ... 

Me with Novelista Trisha Ashley

Yeah, right. 

Don't believe everything you read on social media, particularly anything tagged #amwriting. Because, obviously, I can't be writing if I'm on Twitter. And if I do have a writing day planned, just putting #amwriting in my status is enough to put a curse on it. I'll have some kind of domestic disaster and, instead of actually writing, I'll be lying in a foamy puddle trying to unblock my washing machine. Or one of my children will get sick (and then we'll all get sick), or something important will drop off my car and I'll have to get it fixed.

My real writing life is opening my laptop at 7.00 am (or earlier) and thinking 'I'm sure I was only here a couple of hours ago', and I probably was if I was on a deadline. My real writing life is having my laptop crash three times while I'm trying to do an essential update to my website. My real writing life is struggling with the tenth rewrite of the chapter-from-hell when I have the kind of migraine that I could quite cheerfully drive a stake through my head if I thought it would help. 

My not-quite-so-real writing life is smugly announcing on Facebook that I've written over 10,000 words that day and isn't that brilliant? Of course it is, I usually only manage 1,000 a day if I'm lucky. But some poor would-be writer will see that update and think I'm writing that amount every day. The same would-be writer who sees a photo of me at a book launch and thinks what a wonderful, glamorous life writers lead. (See puddle story). 

What else do I lie about? Well, there's my bio for a start. I used to have a beautiful view of Snowdon (famous Welsh mountain) from my window - but then we moved house eighteen months ago and now I have a beautiful view of the village bus stop instead. Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it? Although I can probably still see Snowdon if I go into my bedroom, stand on my dressing table and lean out of the window.

Beautiful view of Snowdon!
(one of those blue smudges ... )

Then there is the photo of my desk, which accompanies all those 'Where I Write' blog posts. All nicely tidied ...

Here's what it actually looks like right now (it usually looks worse). But I did dust first - I don't want you thinking I'm a total slob.

And then there's the photo of me, with make-up, looking all glamorous with my hair straightened to an inch of its life by a professional hairdresser. (When I try it, I just burn my fingers).

And here's how I look the rest of the time (taken yesterday on the webcam).

Yes, I really do look that harassed. And this is the first time I've used the webcam, hence the pained expression. And I hate having my photo taken.

So there you go, I'm a writer on social media.

Trust me, I lie.

Related Posts:

Writers Write (or, what I really do all day)

Trust Me I Lie is also the title of my latest book (see what I did there?)

When Milla Graham arrives in the picture-perfect village of Buckley, she tells everyone she’s investigating the murder of her mother who died eighteen years ago. But there’s already one Milla Graham buried in the churchyard and another about to be found dead in the derelict family mansion.

Obviously she’s lying.

Detective Inspector Ben Taylor has no life outside the police force. Even his own colleagues think he’s a boring stick-in-the-mud. But now he’s met Milla and his safe, comfortable life has been turned upside down. She’s crashed his car, emptied his wallet and is about to get him fired.

He knows she’s a liar because she cheerfully told him so.

Unless she’s lying about that too …

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

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Photo credits: Girl with fingers crossed: Shutterstock

Music: Wings to the Mind

'Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything' - Plato

Yes, I know, I'm not usually in the habit of quoting Plato, but he sums up how I feel about music. I love music. My mother once made a comment about how I live my life to a constant soundtrack and she was probably right. (Mothers usually are; mine definitely is). Music follows me everywhere - in the car, at the gym, all around the house - and I always have it playing on the laptop when I'm working. Especially while I'm working.

And this is why:

It's a better class of white noise. You can guarantee that the exact moment I've crafted the perfect sentence, will also be the exact same moment workmen will begin digging up the road or someone's dog will start barking and the sentence is lost forever. Because music is constant, once I get into the story I'm working on even that sound becomes background noise and I don't hear it anymore.

Some people have comfort food, I have comfort music. Writing is my job, so I can't just wait around for some kind of Muse to roll up and inspire me, as appealing as that might be. If the story is going badly and I'm feeling particularly fed up, I'll listen to something loud and kickass to snap me out of it, usually by Pink. Actually, thinking about it, maybe this is why my heroines are usually kickass too ...

Music can help me set the right atmosphere. It's fairly typical (now bordering on traditional) for me to be working on a Christmas story during a heatwave and a summer one after I've been snowed in and the heating's packed up. I've long been in the habit of creating a playlist of about 12 songs for each individual book. What can I say? I'm weird.

The weather was so hot during the writing of Something Wicked, I had to take my laptop out into the garden just to get some fresh air. I was supposed to be writing about a sinister blizzard - while trying not to get sunburnt! I couldn't play Christmas music, because it wasn't a Christmas story, so I dug out some old Halloween tracks instead. People Are Strange (Echo and The Bunnymen) helped me get inside the heroine's head on her arrival in a new village, where the inhabitants, both past and present, are eccentric to say the least. The witchy parts of the story were light-hearted, so another track I had stuck on repeat was Frank Sinatra's Witchcraft - there's definitely no nicer witch than Meg!

Although occasionally the music does creep into the story ... I was listening to a Little Boots album while writing Nemesis. The lyrics to her song Remedy, about dancing with the enemy, was very much how Natalie felt about Bryn. Then, when I was trying to think up a name for the club Natalie visits, it ended up being called Remedy too.

... Randomly ... I was writing a scene for my next book, Trust Me I Lie, when an old Tom Jones track came on the radio and I had one of those lightbulb moments. It would be perfect for the scene - but dare I use it? You'll have to wait and see!

Finally ... Have you noticed how the best songs are, in fact, stories? OK, very short, tiny snippets of someone else's life, but they are proper stories in which you, as the listener, have to do the rest of the work to fill in the blanks and finish it - and perhaps create a whole new story of your own? I can't think of a better way to kickstart the imagination.

Can you?

Related Posts:

Let It Snow
Seeking Inspiration
Keeping It (Un)Real
The Distraction of Silence - a track-by-track list of the songs which helped to inspire Nemesis (a guest post for Roz Morris)

Writers Write (or, What I Really Do All Day)

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you're probably getting a very skewed idea of my life. I drink lots of coffee, I'm always sneaking off for champagne and cake with the Novelistas or shooing escaped farmyard animals out of my kitchen. You know I live in Wales, because I grumble about the weather and Instagram photos of sheep. And, oh yes, apparently I sometimes write books. Look, check the header, it's official: 'Sometimes writes books'.

I am supposed to be a full-time writer but sometimes it does feel like 'sometimes' rather than 'all the time'. So what, exactly, do I do all day?

Let's start with a photo of my desk. It doesn't always look like this. In fact, it never looks like this, which is why I took a photo of it about two years ago. If you could see it now, there are two huge piles of crap important paperwork on either side of me, with about an inch of space around my laptop.

I set my alarm for seven, even on weekends, even on holidays. (It's amazing how motivated you can be when you're self-employed.) While the rest of my family (one husband, two children, one hamster) fight it out for the bathroom (not the hamster; she makes her own arrangements), I switch on my laptop and read newspapers and blogs and link anything I find interesting to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Back when I had a 'proper' job (or, as my son likes to put it, 'when dinosaurs roamed the earth'), one of my roles was to read the morning papers and identify trends. I suspect I spent more time reading up on celebrity exploits rather than identifying trends, but the training came in useful and it's now become a habit.

Where were we? Oh yes, newspapers, blogs, social networking. Followed by chores. I have no staff (excuse me while I roll around the floor laughing) and you can tell how well the current book is going by how clean my house is. Then I stop for coffee, to include answering emails and more social networking. Tip: If you find yourself being sucked in by Twitter, Facebook and all the rest of it, set yourself a time limit! In and out. Think: Networking Ninja. Got it?

After my coffee break and the Networking Ninja-ing, I write until I break for lunch. (I've blogged about my writing process here and how I use notebooks to write here). If the writing is going well, I read someone else's book. If it's not, I'm stuck with reading my own book, emailed to my Kindle Fire. Somehow it looks different on a Kindle and I find it easier to identify which parts are not working. I use the highlighting feature: pink for the parts I need to delete, orange for the parts that need to be reworded, blue for punctuation issues and yellow for everything else. The text-to-speech option also helps me spot the odd missing or repeated word, and stops me falling asleep over my own book.

And then it's back to work. I stop to do the school run and cook dinner and sometimes work into the evening, or into the night if it's really not going well. It takes me a morning to write a blog post or an article, two weeks to a month to write a short story/novella (depending on length) and nine to twelve months to write a book. I also design my own book covers, which you can read about here.

If I leave the house (yes, I do occasionally leave the house) I take my Kindle with me, and when I go to sleep I'm sure you can work out what I'm dreaming about.

So there you have it, that's what I do all day: write books, novellas, short stories, blog posts and articles - and do you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.

Because I'm a writer, and writers write.

Related Posts:

Trust Me I Lie (or, the true confessions of a writer on social media)

You Know You're a Writer When ...

Where I Write

A Room of One's Own

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Writers Write (Part 1)

Writers write.

 

Well, when we're not faffing about on Facebook, making endless cups of coffee and staring out of the window in search of inspiration, divine or otherwise, we write.

 

Because writers write, the assumption is we can write any old thing: novels, short stories, other people's CVs, letters to the council...and blogs.

 

This is my third attempt at setting up my own blog, although I've written guest posts and I contribute to Novelistas' Ink. At this point I should probably be telling you what I plan to blog about but, to be honest, I have no idea!

 

So there may be long periods of silence, either due to a deadline or because I can't think of anything to say. If you can't find me here, try Facebook or Twitter.

I might not have got the hang of blogging, but I'm pretty good at procrastination.