Hooray!

This week I finally sent of my first novel, Balancing The Scales to an agent!

Its been a long time in coming.  The original spark came when my boys were small (I did say it was a long time) and after dropping them off at nursery I would arrive at my full time job feeling as though I had already done a day's work.

From there I fleshed out the characters, gave my main character some obstacles, and then threw a few more at her for good measure.

I joined a correspondence course with Writing Magazine and my lovely tutor, Sue Johnson, guided me through the first few chapters and eventually I completed the first draft.  Then I edited, once twice and several times more for good measure.

After receiving a critique from the Romantic Novelist's Association New Writer's scheme, I redrafted again and sent to my writer's group. And yes, you guessed it, edited it again (who said writing was easy).

Now my novel is as good as I think I can get it - for now at least.  So I researched likely agents, wrote my letter, synopsis and CV and finally sent it winging on its way.

So now I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I doubt that my first arrow with hit the target but you never now, and its certainly got more chance out there in the big bad world than languishing on my hard drive.  And in the meantime I've got plenty more projects to be getting on with.

Here's a blurb:

To the outside world Alison Williams has it all: a successful career; handsome husband; two adorable children and a large house in a leafy suburban village just outside Manchester. But Ali is a woman on the edge, trying to hold everything together and failing miserably. When her husband, Rob, chucked in his job and become a student, he also abdicated all his other responsibilities. Now, no matter how much she tries, Ali just can’t get through to him.

If her home life isn’t complicated enough, Ali has the boss from hell who is trying to push her out. When Graham refuses to let her bid on a project which would be good for her career, she goes over his head and sets off a potentially devastating chain of events.

Ali begins to wonder if things can possibly get any worse. And then, one day, they do.  Somehow Ali has to dodge the obstacles that life seems to be throwing her and learn how to balance the scales of her life.  

Fingers crossed!

I Want That House!

As mentioned in a previous blog I'm currently working on an old work in progress for the RNA's New Writer's Scheme.  It's a novel I started on a few years ago, and I have a rough first draft.  In fact, the beginning chapters are more or less right, because I wrote them while I was completing a Writer's News Home Study Course. My tutor was the lovely Sue Johnson who gave me no end of encouragement. 

What I loved about this course was rather than writing random assignments, you were asked to send completed chapters to your tutor who gave you feedback.  It helped so much that after I finished the course, I paid for an extension so that I could continue.  After that I completed the draft, but somewhere along the way I lost the plot which is what I hope to rectify over the next few months as I work towards my submission.

My first task was to read through what I had already written and figure out what works and what doesn't.  I had quite a lot of paper and decided to get rid of what had been either duplicated or superseded, and along the way I came across a file I had put together when I was in the first planning stages of the novel.

The file was a compilation of photos and descriptions of the house where my heroine lives.  I remember spending hours trawling estate agents websites  to find the perfect pictures so that I could visualise each room as I was writing.  Probably not the most effective use of my time, if you were costing it out by the hour, but it was fascinating to see what I had created.

In fact, I think I've actually created my dream house, and each night when I come home from work, I'm a bit disappointed to remember that I live in my house and not my heroines.  Does that make me weird?

I only hope that I can translate the pictures in my file and my head into the novel, and maybe one day I will find my dream house.  Who knows, you can only dream can't you?