Wendy Reakes talks about...
That ever elusive road to publication
How it all began....
I am a novelist and scriptwriter
of the wishful variety. However, I can boast some competition wins and a few published
anthologies - 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 decided to put some much needed meat on some much needed bones. Afterwards, I figured it was so good I could easily get it published. I was wrong! They said (those a-gent people), 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 assured me. 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 traveling that ever-elusive publishing road.
If you want to keep up with my journey along that elusive road to publication, click Blog Slog if and when you come back.
.Check out The Brit Writers Awards.
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 decided to put some much needed meat on some much needed bones. Afterwards, I figured it was so good I could easily get it published. I was wrong! They said (those a-gent people), 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 assured me. 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 traveling that ever-elusive publishing road.
If you want to keep up with my journey along that elusive road to publication, click Blog Slog if and when you come back.
.Check out The Brit Writers Awards.
