Helen Glynn Jones

Planning Ahead

Happy New Year!

I’ve blogged about this before, the way it feels when the gorgeous child goes back to school, the quietness in the house, the change in the air as I write uninterrupted and how I miss her so. The wheel of the year has turned once more and we’re back into a new term, the seasons swinging slowly towards the promise of summer. And so now I’m back at it, sitting at my desk and planning ahead, editing and blog writing and projects underway, the house (reasonably) clean and tidy so I can concentrate on words for a little while.

This year I hope will bring the publication of my first book, Oak and Mist, with the next two instalments all ready for editing and publication as well. I’m also planning to explore the blogosphere a bit more, hopefully to find new voices with with to connect, new work to read. I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve learned so far and the confidence I’ve gained in sharing my writing with others, simply from doing this blog. I also plan to get back to regular posts again, weekly at least if not more often.

If you’re already following me, thank you so much! As I say, there will be more news and musings and writing bits as the year unfolds, so thanks for being on the journey with me. Thanks also to all of you for the likes and comments – feedback is always appreciated.

xx Helen

Every Day Scribbles

Hello everyone! Hope you all have had a chance to relax and celebrate over the past few days – I know I’m slowly recovering from an overdose of chocolate and good food, the glow of spending time with family still warm within me.

But I haven’t stopped writing.

Even though I’ve been staying with family and enjoying a lovely Christmas, I’ve still been writing notes, scribbling in my notebook, ideas coming to me as I sit at dinner or walk the snowy streets, held like precious candle flames in my mind, sheltered by an imaginary hand until I have the time to sit and write them down, then I can let them go.

‘I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except Christmas, the Fourth of July and my birthday. That was a lie. …. The truth is that, when I’m writing, I write every day.’ Stephen King in On Writing

I read On Writing quite some time ago, and I was struck by King’s observation that he writes every day. Because I think I get it. The act of writing, at least as I see it, doesn’t have to mean actually sitting down at the keyboard and knocking out pages of prose. For me, the process also includes thinking and scribbling notes and working out plot tangles as I walk or iron or cook or am in the car – my mind is always, on some level, working on my current story. This is something for which I’m extremely grateful, for I know there could come a time when the idea mill dries up (although hopefully only temporarily). So that’s why, when the ideas come, I let them through. I guard them and turn them over in my mind, honing and polishing and keeping them safe until I can convert them into black and white. A notebook and pen are usually with me or, failing that, the Notes section on my phone comes in very handy. Because I don’t want to lose them, these ethereal wisps of thought and memory.

However, I am very much behind on my reading. A pile of books, half of them started, sit next to my bed waiting for me to join them. I am also woefully out of date on the blogs I follow, unread emails sitting on my machine, comments to be made, feedback to be given. So that is my plan, this coming week. To catch up on it all. To (hopefully) be able to reconnect and read. I do find it more difficult to read while I’m writing, so it’s something I plan to focus on in the New Year. For after all, as writers, part of how we learn our craft is by reading the work of others.

So on to a New Year. All being well, Oak and Mist will be published by the end of January. The cover design is almost done and will be revealed forthwith, the final edit underway.

I wish you all a fantastic New Year and a happy 2015! xx

Celebrate

This is just a short post to wish all of you, near and far, a wonderful holiday season! However you choose to celebrate, may it be full of love, light and laughter.

To all of you who chose to join me on Journey To Ambeth this year, thank you so much! Thank you for the follows, the likes and the comments – they are appreciated and enjoyed.

Here’s to an exciting 2015 for us all…

xx Helen

Keep Pushing

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer,The Help by Kathryn Stockett, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

All best selling books. All repeatedly rejected by agents and publishers.

Each author handled rejection differently, some opting to self publish, others to change agents. But the key thing is that none of them ever gave up on their work and, eventually, they found success.

Writing at times can feel like chipping away at a mountain, trying to get at a little nugget of gold hidden right at the centre. Trying to find an agent or publisher is much the same feeling, although you’re also climbing the mountain at the same time using a rapidly fraying rope. But as long as stories come to me, I’ll write them. It’s so subjective a process I cannot take it personally if someone doesn’t like what I’ve written, so I’ll keep pushing on, searching for gold and sharing the journey with you all.

This post really is just to say hey, if you’re going through rejection hell at the moment, keep on going, because you will come through the other side. And you’re not alone.

If you’d like to read more on this topic, visit http://www.literaryrejections.com

I discovered this site when I was just starting to get my first few rejections and found it really helped to keep me motivated.

And, a little tease…

I know I had hoped to have a cover design to share this week. And I do have one – it just needs the text adding and some very slight tweaking. But I love it. At the same time, I don’t want to share it until it’s complete and ready to roll, so please bear with me.

But here is a little peek, just to keep things interesting…

I’ll share the completed design as soon as it’s done. Thanks as always for reading! xx

Extend Yourself

‘Beyond The Fields We Know.’

I’ve always loved this phrase. It comes from the works of Lord Dunsany, a nineteenth century writer said to be a major influence on the works of J.R.R Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin (among others), who used it to describe the location of the border of Elfland in one of his short stories.

To me it is something wonderfully evocative, speaking of that feeling I get when I’m somewhere new, whether in the looming Welsh mountains or on a dusty coast road in Morocco. I’m always interested in what lies beyond, what will be revealed in the next turn of the road or behind each misty peak.

I also think it can be applied to any situation in life where you are striking out towards something new, taking a risk. I believe a desire for discovery helps us stay vital as we grow older, keeping our minds working and tuned into the place from which ideas come, essential for any writer of fiction.

This carries on from my previous post where I discussed, briefly, the idea that we as writers are often told to ‘write what we know,’ the idea being that we can convey with greater accuracy those things with which we are familiar.

But I think that’s only the beginning. Of course it’s easier to write about a culture or surrounding you know well, but if all I wrote about was my own life and experiences, the books would be fairly short and possibly not that interesting, plus I’d run out of ideas pretty quickly. The challenge for me as a writer lies in taking steps beyond, building, as I said, on the foundation of what I do know to imagine a place I don’t, to immerse myself in a character and their surroundings as I tell their story to an audience.

So whether you’re starting out as a writer and are unsure about the journey ahead, or whether you’ve had an idea about a place you’ve never visited but are suddenly compelled to write about (whether real or fantasy), take the first step and see where it leads you.

Then, you are truly beyond the fields you know.

PS I hope to have a cover design for Oak and Mist to share with you all next week! Very excited…

An Observation, Part 3

It’s January 2001 and I’m backstage at the Big Day Out music festival, Sydney, Australia. We’ve been backstage most of the day, hanging out, avoiding the heat and crowds and filthy bathrooms, having a couple of beers and pretending like this is all cool, that we do this sort of thing all the time.

By we I mean myself and the man who will be my husband – at this point we’re still cheerfully living in sin, the engagement a few years away, but we know we’re going to stay together. So now we’re walking along a tarmac road at the back of the huge main stages, warehouse type buildings all around, and we’re following the band System of A Down who are about to go onstage.

‘Hey, it’s System of a Down’ says a teenage boy in awed tones as we wander past, his eyes resting briefly on us as we tag along behind, no doubt wondering how the hell we got to walk with his idols. Up ahead Darren, the guitarist, has his arm around Casey Chaos, the lead singer of Amen– they are obviously bonding, swapping stories. Just in front of us is my brother, tall in black jeans and leather, dyed black hair shining in the hot Australian sun. He’s the guitarist for Amen and they’ve already played their gig on the main stage, one of the first acts to go on. But it’s still the main stage and the crowd of appreciative kids kicked off, screaming and slamming and singing along, enjoying the spectacle. He came out to see us, afterwards, and we had to wait while several awestruck fans asked for autographs and took photos while he smiled, always happy to see them, the ones who love music like he does. And I just watch and smile, pleased for him that he’s doing what he loves.

So that’s how we find ourselves walking along hot tarmac and then up metal stairs to the back of the stage. System go through first, then my brother and Casey, easily through, obviously part of the scene. But the security guy shakes his head at the two of us, despite the sparkly laminated passes we’re waving around and, for the first and last time ever, I am a bit of a diva. I call for my brother and he comes back. ‘They’re with me,’ he says, all smiles, and the security guy has to let us through, though he’s not happy (after the set we hear they ban all non-musicians from being onstage). We find a spot standing stage right behind a muscular giant who, despite looking like the fiercest of Maori warriors, is a totally nice guy, smile wide as he kisses me on the cheek in greeting. His girlfriend is petite and blonde and gorgeous and equally friendly. Then System take the stage and the crowd of 50,000 plus goes completely wild. ‘Chop Suey’ has just gone massive and the guys are one of the most popular acts on the tour. And I have never felt anything like this.

Serge is laughing as he moves towards the back of the stage, microphone in hand his face incredulous and joyful and hilarious all at the same time – he obviously can’t believe this. And neither can I. Beside me I hear my brother choke out a laugh on a breath as though someone has hit him in the chest. And that’s what it feels like, like a slam to the heart, the power and energy of the crowd pulsing back to the stage. It is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced. And these guys get to do it every night.

As writers we are often told ‘Write what you know.’ It’s a useful tool when creating reality for the reader – putting in details that are true to life and familiar or describing something you know so well so it becomes familiar, drawing the picture in the reader’s head. So now I know what it’s like to see a crowd from the singer’s vantage, how it feels to be on the stage and feel the pulse from the crowd, power surging up and through you, easy to extend my viewpoint to that of the artist.

All of us who write bring something of who we are to our work, which is why it can feel so confronting the first time you share it with others, like opening a little window into your soul. I’ve had some pretty interesting life experiences, been fortunate enough to meet wonderful and annoying and interesting people, each year bringing with it new events from which to draw references. In my NaNo novel I describe one of the worst dates I’ve ever been on, substituting the lead character for me, her emotions a reflection of how I felt on the night. All of my work so far has little pieces of me in it – my Ambeth heroine lives in the house I used to live in, for example. And for those things I haven’t done there is research, the Internet bringing places and cultures and ideas from around the world into one place, information on just about anything I can think of just a mouse click away.

But when you write fantasy, as I do, you have to extend even further, into the realm of dreams. I don’t know what it’s like to be dead or keep dragons or find a hidden world in my local park, but I do know what it’s like to be a bullied teenage girl, looking for a job or how an advertising office works. So on the foundation formed from things I know I build worlds that I do not, discovering along the way how they work and passing on the details to my readers, hoping to take them on the journey with me.

‘An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soils of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.’ JRR Tolkien

Into The Woods Once More

It’s December. The year is drawing to a close, light and music and celebration against the growing darkness of the days, frost on my breath and in my garden – it’s a lovely time of year.

And November is over.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I just completed my first NaNoWriMo and, all things considered, it went pretty well. I hit my 50,000 words with a few days to spare and managed to write a few blogs as well. My family were kept clothed and fed, my house (reasonably) tidy and I even did a few small client pieces. At the time it really didn’t seem strange to sit down and bang out 2,000 words a day, images and conversations from my story coming to me so quickly it became a race to get them on the page.

But now I can’t look at it at all. It’s not that I don’t love the story I wrote – I do, and I believe once it’s finished it will be a fairly decent piece of writing. But it was as though when I hit the 50,000 word mark, whatever was feeding me the story switched off in my brain, and I didn’t want to know about it any more. I did print out some pages from it in a half-hearted effort to start an edit, but I put them down after a few minutes. I guess what I’m saying is that NaNo was a more profound experience than I’d considered it to be at the time, and I’m being shown I need time to step back and recover before I revisit the story again.

So I’m back in the woods with Ambeth instead. The other strange thing was, as soon as my brain switched off Patsy’s Journey (the working title), Ambeth reappeared. Sure, there had been a few things that slipped through in November, some hastily scrawled notes concerning timeline issues I’d been having in books 5 and 6. But this is full character conversations coming through, their voices speaking to me as though they’ve been waiting in the trees all month, ready for their stories to resume. So that’s nice. I love the characters and it feels great to reconnect with them once more. It has made me consider how I feel when I’m writing, where my ideas come from. I’ve always felt as though I’m tapping into something far bigger than me, pulling the thread of a story clear and spooling it onto the page, weaving around plots and characters to make a whole. And I do find it interesting that my brain is able to switch between stories like that – often when I read I have several books on the go, so perhaps this is something similar.

In my latest W&A blog I wrote that NaNo forces us to be writers, meaning that during the challenge we have to find the time to write every day whether we want to or not. But on further reflection I think it can also mean that NaNo forces our brains to think like writers. Personally, in the last month I feel as though I’ve made huge progress in my comprehension of what works on the page. I opened book 4 of Ambeth the other day (last opened 31/10/14), meaning to continue with an edit in progress and found so much more that I could amend when compared to my previous notes. It was as though writing so quickly and intensely for a month had changed the way I see my work for the better. It reminded me of a time many years ago when I was training for my black belt. I was at the dojo six days a week doing teaching hours and extra classes (all around my university work). After a while of training at this intensity the movements become second nature, fights slowing down so you can see the next move, everything crystal clear. It seems to me that NaNo works in a similar way – that the act of writing a huge amount of copy every day is like intensity training for the mind, leading us towards a place of effortless effort where the story becomes clear.

Perhaps I’m just waffling on here – after all, I just did some writing. I haven’t changed the world or cured cancer or solved the mystery of the Pyramids. I suppose I approach every experience in life with the idea that I can learn something from it, and NaNo was no different. How did you find your NaNo? Did it change the way you write? Or put you off writing forever? (I hope not).

Xx Helen

Giving Thanks

It’s Thanksgiving in the US this weekend and it made me consider that, despite the fact we don’t do Thanksgiving here in the UK, it might be a nice time to practise gratitude as well.

I do actually say thank you most days. I know I’m pretty fortunate and so I like to acknowledge it and remind myself that I can’t take anything for granted in this world. That life is here to be appreciated. When it comes to writing I do have days where I find the whole thing frustrating, days when I’ve been hit with the rejection stick one too many times, or when the words just won’t come the way I want them to. So I find it helps to sit back and think about why I’m grateful.

Grateful that I have eyes to read, fingers to type, a mind with which to think and the time in which to do it.

Grateful for my beta readers, who love my books and can’t wait for the next one, whose enthusiasm and support and constructive criticism drive me forward to produce the best work that I can. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know that I would have the confidence to self publish.

Grateful that we live in a time where the option to self publish is available to authors, each of us having the chance to publish our work and share it with an audience, no matter how small.

And I’m grateful to all those who read and like and follow this little blog of mine. It’s been quite something to connect with people from everywhere and it reminds me that this world of ours is quite small. I’ve had some wonderful comments on this blog and I would really like to say how much I appreciate those of you who’ve taken the time to share your thoughts.

Thanks everyone – hope you all have a great weekend, wherever you are!

PS My latest guest blog is live on the Writers & Artists website – here’s the link:

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/2014/11/how-s-your-nano

Telling Tales

I was pondering the other day and it came to me, as it often does when I’m out walking, that perhaps we, as humans, are built to be storytellers. That it’s in our DNA, some vital part of us that cannot be denied.

From the dawn of humanity when people gathered around campfires or in sacred spaces, taking their turns to add their voice to a tale, we have always shared stories. Before written word it was how we kept records of our ancestors, of our people, of the things that happened, weaving them into songs or epic poems or tales for the dark nights as winter drew in. We painted pictures on cavern walls, blew bright ochre onto rock faces, describing happenings and visitors and successful hunts, religion and family and daily life. Then the paintings became carvings and pictures became words and we kept telling stories, about commerce and battles and dark fantasies from the past, using words to frighten people into submission or to uplift them to their best selves. Bards became a class of their own, keepers of the stories, each one adding their own pieces to the puzzle, carrying our ancestors’ deeds forward in time.

And now, in this modern age, it seems we still have stories to tell. Agents are inundated daily with manuscripts, thousands of writers are, as we speak, working to produce their NaNo novel by the end of the month. Writing clubs and online communities abound, and competition to be published is fiercer than ever. I cannot count the number of people who, when I tell them I’m a writer, say ‘I’d like to write a book as well.’ Apparently in Iceland one in ten people will publish a book and most people will write one – an entire country of people with stories to tell.

So what is it that has caused this apparent upsurge in writers appearing, a generation of storytellers born anew? I wonder if social media has something to do with it, giving us all a voice, a chance to share our life with the world whenever we choose to do so. Every person has a story – now with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and blogging all you need is a phone or a tablet or computer to share it with the whole world. We are encouraged to write every day, to post new statuses, update our stories as they happen, 140 characters to tell of each unfolding event. Small wonder then that this daily writing exercise may have inspired us to do more, awakening the urge to weave a bigger, better, more exciting tale and get it down on paper (so to speak).

Macquarie University scholars have recently deciphered a 1300-year-old Egyptian Spell Book, something which I find completely fascinating.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/ancient-egyptian-spell-book-deciphered-by-macquarie-university/story-fnjwl1aw-1227132727219

It made me wonder, in this digital age, whether our words will be around to be deciphered a millennia from now, or if the ephemeral nature of electronic files means they will simply fade away, a forgotten crackle of energy. Personally, I still enjoy holding a real book in my hand and, when I publish, I plan to do so in a format that allows readers to order a paperback as well as the Kindle version. And perhaps some scholar, centuries from now, will hold a copy of it in white gloved hands (or maybe it will hover, unsupported, above a pristine surface) to be read, my words analysed for whatever secrets of this present time they may hold.

Interesting to consider, isn’t it?

Oh, and here’s a little update on my latest story telling efforts:

Yep, hit 50,000 words today! Very happy. Though there’s still work to do to finish this latest novel, I think another 15,000 words at least plus editing and polishing, it’s been a fun story to write and I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes out there in the big bad world of publishing.

Until then, thanks for reading as always xx

Point Of View

I have a few favourite authors whose books I read regularly, and I recently bought the latest offering by one of them, excited to join the cast of characters once more and find out what they were up to as well as looking forward to having a break from all the writing I’ve been doing.

My book was delivered, I sat down with tea and biscuits and a sense of anticipation and started to read. Half a dozen pages later I put the book down, frustrated. There are quite a few characters who feature in these books, each with their own distinct personalities, but what I found frustrating was watching the point of view dance all over the page, to the point where I couldn’t read any further and had to put the book down. On one page alone I counted four POV changes within a single scene.

Despite my frustration, I found this interesting for several reasons:

This is an author whose books I enjoy, who enjoys a fair degree of success, yet for the first time ever I had trouble reading their work
I realised that the author’s style had influenced my own work, as several of my early Ambeth beta readers had called me out on the POV changing within a scene, rather than each character getting their own clear section (as it should be)
I wonder if this means I’m improving as a writer, if I’m able to see this so clearly when I wasn’t before

So, I’m not going to try and explain the ins and outs of POV here – I’m no expert and Kristin Lamb, who knows far more about this than I do, wrote about it wonderfully well in her recent blog post:

Point of View—What IS It? How to Find the Perfect Voice for YOUR Story

I realise there is a POV called omnipotent, whereby the narrator can see into each character’s head, but the writing in this particular book felt to me like head hopping (I love that term), in that no one character remained in focus for long enough and the whole thing became very confusing. I am pressing on with it, as I love the characters, but I’m finding I can only read a short section at a time.

However, I’m wondering is there a wrong or a right way to approach POV in our writing? Surely the voice that comes to us is the one we have to write. Can we become so caught up in the rules that anyone who does something different is seen as being wrong? Is this sort of writing pushing the boundaries, some sort of anarchic statement, or is it just annoying because it’s difficult to read?

OK, so this blog post is shorter and possibly less legible than normal, but that, I believe, is because NaNo is eating my brain. I’m 36,000 words in plus am still blogging and a doing bit of work for clients, so it’s been a busy month, what with trying to keep the family clean and fed and to school on time as well. However, my NaNo novel is going really well, I love the character and, unusually for me, know exactly where the story is going and how to get there – I just have to write it.