I am a novelist and scriptwriter of the wishful variety. Although I must boast, I do have a few anthologies and some competition wins under my belt...breathes heavily on knuckles and rubs shoulder pads (that’s the scriptwriter in me).
I began writing six years ago, when I was sitting on the terrace in my French farmhouse (yes, with pool and vineyard. Ahem!) and I decided to write my memoirs. After all, having led a most colourful life (don't even go there), I figured it would be an interesting read.
I completed my autobiography (as I liked to call it) at 15,000 words, but when I googled 'preferred word count', Mr, G informed me I should have the minimum of 70,000 for a decent size book.
So i rang my dad. "Pad it out with lots of 'and's' and 'the's'," he said.
Great idea, I thought. Did the calculation...how many and's is that..? A lot! Still, worth a try, I thought; never the defeatist.
Suffice to say, my dad didn't know what he was talking about, so I had a re-think and put some much needed meat on some much needed bones.
Afterward I figured it was so good, I could easily get it published. I was wrong! They said (the agents) no one would believe my story and besides, I wasn’t a celebrity and Jordon was just launching her first autobiography. I didn’t stand a chance, they concluded.
So, I turned it into a novel. And it was then, at that very moment, everything changed ( I love that line. I often use it in my stories. It's very effective).
Hey! (As our friends across the pond like to say with an 'astonished revelation' tone), I found out I had a bit of an imagination. You can imagine my surprise. I always thought my fantasies were the 'Private. Keep out' variety, considering the content. Turns out, they would have made good stories. Not for children though. Ahem!!
Many months later, there I was with a bonafide novel with...wait for it...110,000 words. (I always tell people that)
I paid an agency (mentioning no names) six hundred smackeroons to read it and give me a critique. They were kind...Let’s leave it at that.
No, let’s not leave it at that.
I never understood why they quoted one of my dialogue lines when they needed to illustrate a point. ‘"You're pathetic". The period goes inside the quotation marks’ they wrote.
Yes, but why that line, I wondered...and even now...
Red-faced and blaming my parents for not giving me sufficient schooling, I took their advice and edited it and that's how it all began...with a lot of heartache and tears, a lot of chocolate and white wine and many occasions when I forgot my children were still in the room.
Until one day they patted me on the shoulder and proclaimed. Ta-da!! (how do you write that? You know, when they have their arms outstretched and big grins on their proud faces). They (five-year-old twins...say no more) took me into the lounge and showed me the task they had been labouring over whilst mummy had been lost in her little world.
A newly arranged room met me, made artistically in the eyes of a child, or in this case two. I couldn't complain when I saw a stack of six cushions with a lamp balancing precariously on top . Not when I'd just completed the most amazing chapter in my ever-evolving novel.
That’s what it’s been like ever since. A roller-coaster ride of creative writing, whilst battling mummanship and travelling that ever-elusive publishing road.
More tomorrow...if I continue to enjoy talking to myself.
