You can't assume that someone who takes a day to write six words must be a finer artist and greater writer than someone who writes sixteen thousand: after all, would you say that Yeats is a greater writer than Dickens? And, indeed, you'll know how valuable I think the NaNoWriMo approach to first drafts "building up without tearing down" can be. And then friend recently pointed me to this post. Rachel Aaron explains how, with a new baby, and some very tight deadlines for a new novel, she had to re-think radically how she worked.

I approached it rather sceptically, because she's not talking about NaNo and shitty first draft stuff: her deadline was for a properly written and finished novel. But none of us have enough writing time, so thinking about how you might put what time we do have to the best use is always worth doing: I kept reading. And so much of what she described I recognised in myself that her post began to make enormous sense to me.

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On the third day of Christmas, I only managed 947 words of the 3,000 word target. It was not through lack of effort, or want, but merely through distraction.



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On the second day of Christmas, I hit my 2,000 word target in at a shave under 2 hours, averaging 1,000 words an hour. I sat in my reclining armchair which is much more comfortable than the kitchen table, with telly off , laptop on lap, and husband out at the pub.

The first hour the words flew as I got into some unexpected dialogue between 3 of my characters which actually worked well, the second hour was definitely harder and I every so often I counted my wordcount to see how much further I had to go. I ended up at 2,034 words. No partridges or turtle doves (can anyone tell me what a turtle dove is, I have no idea), but plenty of words down.


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On the first day of Christmas, against a target of 1,000 words, I managed to cross the finish line at a modest 1,150 words. I sat at the kitchen table, with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice for company, and took 5 minutes to roughly plot out the structure of the next few scenes, before getting down to it.


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I’m sure you didn’t watch this year’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Did you? I'm sorry to say that I wasted many hours watching various ‘celebs’ Facing Up To Their Fears.

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This morning, with my short story near to completion, I knew that I'd have to motivate myself to pick up The Curse where I left it, at around 16,600 words. And then I realised that we only have 12 days till the eve of Christmas, and a challenge formed in my mind.

It started with a very simple concept - 12 days until Christmas, 12 days of writing. And then I thought if I used this opportunity as a countdown to Christmas, using a daily multiple of 1,000 words, i.e. producing 1,000 words on day 1, 2,000 words on day 2 and so on until day 12 itself with a target of 12,000 words, I could well have myself a rough first draft by Christmas. In twelve short days I could accomplish a wordcount of 78,000 words, and adding that to what I've already done, I'd end up with a first draft of around 94,000 to 95,000 words.

Sounds exciting in principle, right?

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Three out of my four St Petersburg novels are on sale in ebook form on Amazon for just over £1.50. The Cleansing Flames and A Gentle Axe are priced at £1.52; A Vengeful Longing at £1.59. The third novel in the series, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, is being sold at £3.99.

I believe a cappuccino at Costa Coffee costs £1.79, so you can get some of my books for less than the price of a cup of coffee. Now I like coffee as much as the next man , but even the best cup of coffee only lasts – what? – ten minutes, half an hour max. When you look at the relative purchases in terms of pleasure hours, one of my novels offers far better value.

I’m not trying to diss coffee. I’m just trying to point out that those ebooks are ridiculously cheap.

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Whilst still banging on the door with my first novel, Delve, I thought what better way to take my mind off the painfully long submission process than to start a new novel. I knew it wouldn't stop me checking my email every half an hour, or ringing my husband from work to ask if anything had come in the post, but it would provide some form of distraction.

And so whilst I knew that Delve in my mind was the first novel in a series, what I couldn't predict was whether it would be successful or not. Not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I started out with a completely different kind of project. Not another young adult novel, but an adult horror with supernatural undertones. And not first person POV, but multiple person POVs.

Little did I know how much a challenge The Curse (working title) would prove to be.

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A consistent theme in writing books and blogs is the advice to seek out honest feedback. It’s a pretty straightforward argument — if you’d thought there was a problem in your prose, you’d have fixed it, right? So, any remaining problems are problems you cannot see. You cannot fix problems you cannot see, so you recruit...

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Wrestling with elastic bands, the disappointing thud on the doormat of a returned manuscript and that: ‘From Pitch to Publication’ plug shamelessly inserted into agent Carole Blake’s rejection letters.


For me all the above sum up the self-flagellatory process that typifies the book submissions’ process.


It’s been a while since I’ve done this – in fact it’s been nearly eight years. I recall the routine the first time round. It was gruelling and exhausting. It did eventually involve me being signed up to an agency and riding that rollercoaster of false hope. It ended without a book deal and the realisation that if I wanted to pay my mortgage and raise a family then I’d better put aside such a foolish dream.

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