June

How to finish writing your novel (and when to give up)

Hello hi hey there

I hope everyone had a good June. I had a great June because I have been working on the first round of edits for Book 5, and I am miraculously still enjoying it. I can’t wait to share more with you, but I can’t yet because of Marketing Reasons, but that’s okay because here’s a newsletter instead!!

This month I made my good friend Donna chat with me about what it’s like working for The Booker Prize Foundation (fancy) and what it’s like working as a content editor. I’m slightly obsessed with Donna because she always dresses really neatly and has lovely hair, so I was delighted she didn’t block my number once I reached out to her.

I also do a deep dive into FINISHING YOUR NOVEL (or at least how I finish my novels). This was the winner of a recent Instagram poll about what everyone wanted to talk about, so we will take a look at that. 

Okay, enjoy!!! xoxo

News and Updates

Nothing big ngl? I’m just editing my book and staying hydrated (important).

But my editor also agreed I can write a little Holiday Romance short story in advance of Book 5, so look out for that later this year. Speaking of Holiday Romance, it’s getting translated into a bunch of languages, and covers for those books have started popping up online, and I am OBSESSED WITH ALL OF THEM! Here’s what we have so far:

Yes, I *did* create that graphic all by myself I am extremely talented

I initially started this newsletter because I wanted to discuss publishing and the writing process, but then I started to second guess myself because I have imposter syndrome even though people are literally creative writing professors because they wrote a poem about the small hand of a child and published one book about someone having an affair twenty years ago that sold thirty copies. These people are usually men. Anyway, importantly for this newsletter, in the last two years, I have written and published four books, and they’ve all done PRETTY WELL, so going forward, I’m going to try and go back to talking about writing and what works for me and hopefully it might help others!

Here we go!

How to finish writing your novel

For those wanting to get published and just starting out on their journey, actually finishing a novel is the first big hurdle. This is because writing a novel is difficult. Let’s say that right now. It is not easy. And when you don’t have a book deal? When you don’t have ANY assurance that your project will ever be published, and you are a single mom who works two jobs who loves her kids and never stops?? It’s nearly impossible.

This newsletter is specifically about finishing that first draft. Not editing it, not polishing it, not publishing it. Just the nitty gritty. Just you and your page and putting one word after the other. Let’s start with the most important thing.

Time (or the lack of it)

It’s cliché at this stage. The ‘I wish I had more time to write’ line. I get some variation of it every time I tell people I’m an author. Most writers do. And it’s funny/annoying because most writers didn’t have time when they started writing. Most did it around full-time jobs, families, friends, and looking after themselves. They didn’t magically find extra hours in the day. They took them from somewhere else, and that’s all there is to it.

How much you take is up to you. It might be an hour of sleep in the morning. It might be your walk at lunch. It might be evenings after work or saying no to brunch on the weekend. Maybe in six months, you want to have a book finished, in which case you need lots of time right now. Maybe you don’t really care when it’s done, but you want to do it, so you only need short bursts of time when you can. There is no right or wrong way. But I truly believe that however much time you choose to devote to writing, you have to commit to it.

This is where most people fall first. Writing a book is fun for about a week, but then you’ve got to go to that wedding next Saturday, and you’ve got a date on Friday, and you’re tired on Monday and had a hard day of work on Wednesday, and your friends invited you to go bowling and what are you going to do? Not go bowling? I need work/life balance, you cry! I’m not going to sacrifice my social life!

But you kind of have to. Not all of it and not all the time. But you do. And if you keep pushing writing down your list of priorities, then that’s where it will stay. Some days, it has to come first. (And to be brutally honest, some days will need to be most days for at least a portion of the process).

So pick your time and stick to it. It’s a lifestyle change. It’s a habit. Like eating vegetables or using retinol. You are now someone who gets up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour. You are someone who goes to a coffee shop every Sunday morning to finish your chapter. You don’t catch up on Netflix until you’re up 500 words. It can be as big or as small as you want it to be (everyone has a lot of opinions on this, but only you can decide), but something in your life has to move to make way for this new thing because once you start hitting the slumps that every writer hits, you’ll need to rely on that time to get you through.

And if you thought finding time was hard, boy oh boy, wait until you hit those slumps.

Pushing past the pause

Pushing past the pause is kind of self-explanatory. It means that when you hit those natural pauses we all hit when it comes to ideas and brainstorms and anything creative, we push past it. Not to sound like an Aquarius, but we do this by FREEING OUR MINDS. This is especially useful when you hit that dreaded slump in the middle of your novel. When you’ve written all the fun stuff that’s sitting at the front of your mind, and now you have to dig a bit deeper. Everyone has their own way to do it. This is mine.

Every time I hit a natural pause in my writing process, that moment when the words stop flowing, and I go uhhhhhh, I acknowledge it immediately. I’ve written enough now to know that even in the easiest of books, they will strike. I will get over them. But only if I work through them.

So let’s assume you’ve made some time and you’re committed to your project. How do you get over these slumps? A lot of advice will tell you to step away from the manuscript and give yourself a break. This is a little dangerous to me. Fresh eyes are a brilliant thing, but stepping away when you want to makes it difficult to come back. A few days, sure, but a few days can turn into a few weeks, and then a few months, and just like that, you’ve lost any momentum. Personally, I like to keep working.

Sometimes I’ll skip ahead to work on another scene and trust my subconscious to figure it out. (I love my subconscious). Sometimes, I do need to take a day or two away because I’m tired and my brain is mush. But sometimes, I just don’t know what to do. Sometimes I’m stuck. And that’s when I need to push past the pause. To do this, I stop worrying about making sense or about being perfect. I remind myself that the first draft is just for me and is allowed to be the stupidest thing in the world.

And so I write the stupidest things. I often talk about writing a trash draft. Where my writing and story are allowed to be as terrible as possible. Getting over these slumps is part of the trash. I go off-path completely. An alien lands in the garden. My characters take a trip to the zoo and fall through a portal. One of them is a MURDERER. I also write more normal things. Maybe someone gets betrayed by someone they thought was their friend. Maybe they adopt a dog. Maybe the circus is in town, and they can get up to hijinks there. All I need is a spark, a catalyst for more. Something new to help me look past the old.

For example, in Holiday Romance, I hit a pause in my first draft where my two main characters reached their almost final destination. I needed to get them home, but the pacing was off. It felt anti-climactic, and I didn’t know what to do. For days I pouted at my laptop, trying to figure it out until I knew I needed to introduce something else. A disrupter. So I opened a new document and wrote down every random scenario I could think of. They get on a plane and are accidentally sent back somewhere else! Someone loses their job! There’s another storm and they’re trapped! Someone is pregnant!

Someone is pregnant.

And just like that, an entirely new subplot appeared.

The pause is when the majority of people give up on their novels. This is because it’s when novels stop being fun. The more you write, the more you will learn the best way for you to get over them, but most people are just too frustrated to keep going. It would be so much easier, after all, to work on the exciting new idea they’ve been thinking about. The one that they will also face multiple pauses in but convince themselves that this time they won’t.

Starting something new is always easier than finishing something old, and until you learn to get over the slumps, you’ll never finish a project.

(But sometimes. Just sometimes. You’re not supposed to.)

Knowing when to quit

So with all that in mind, it’s important to learn about how sometimes those slumps are more than slumps. Sometimes they’re your gut telling you to stop. Maybe forever. Maybe not. Maybe you’re not a good enough writer yet to tell the story you want to tell. Maybe you’re a better writer than what the story is.

I truly believe that the worst thing you can do besides giving up on a project too early is sticking with it for too long.

I had a friend once who had been working on a thriller for four years. For four years, they’d been writing it and editing it. They paid a lot of money to go to writing classes and workshops. They paid to attend fairs where agents gave them feedback. They worked and they worked and they worked, but they couldn’t finish the book. They had lost all passion for it, but they couldn’t stop. They told me once that it would feel like a giant waste of time if they gave up now, which is INCREDIBLY STUPID, and I told them so. No time writing is time wasted. But I think this friend was scared that if they started something new, they’d never be able to get as far as they had with this one. It wasn’t that they had confidence in their book, it’s that they didn’t have confidence in themselves.

I’ve quit on multiple projects over the years. Some a few thousand words in, some tens of thousands. Sometimes I know early on that my love for it isn’t where it needs to be. The ideas aren’t flowing, the characters are stilted and false. Sometimes it takes me almost 60% of the way through before I realise that while I have words on the pages, there’s nothing there. It is meh. And meh isn’t good enough.

You’re allowed to quit. Always. All the time. Quitting is healthy and good for you. But what’s important is to figure out if you’re quitting because it’s hard or if you’re quitting because deep down in your heart, you know that it isn’t the one. If it’s the right project, you’ll be able to finish it. It might not feel like it at the time, but you will. Your subconscious knows. You know. So don’t be afraid to gently close one door to open another. It’s still practice. It will still stand to you in the long run. But in prioritising your time, you have to be careful not to waste it.

(BTW my friend did eventually stop. Last year they started working on something new. They finished the first draft in eight months. I am very proud of them.)

Other Advice that is probably much more helpful:

1.    Figure out how you write. This will only come with time and practice. It took me a few years to embrace my chaotic trust the process life. Plotting never worked for me. I don’t need notecards. I don’t need colour codes or family trees or maps. I don’t need mood boards or playlists or fake movie casts. For some people, these help enormously and spark creativity. For others (me), they don’t do anything. I know I work best when I just start writing, so that is what I do. The rest is noise.

2.    Know your ending. Know it. As I said, I’m not a plotter, and I still know my ending. Yes, it’s easy for me. The couple get together. Florals for spring. But I usually have a setting and a grand speech in mind. It’s what I always work toward. Always know your end goal, or you will get lost.

3.    Silence the doubt. Have you ever picked up a book and gone… seriously? This got published? This piece of shit? We have all been there. I pick up books all the time, and I’m like, how? Sorry to be bitch, but I do! I’m sure people think that about my books. It’s fine! It’s normal! Use it. Scoff. Hate. Roll your eyes. ‘I can write a better book than that’ – so do it. If they can, so can you.

4.    Fake deadlines. This won’t work for everyone, but it works BRILLIANTLY for panicked eldest daughters like me. If I don’t have a deadline, that baby is not getting done. Might I suggest threats? A friend of mine often gets texts from me explaining how the world is going to end horribly unless I send her chapter twelve by five p.m. tonight. Back before my first publishing deal, I would send queries to agents to make myself finish the book. And it worked. This is obviously TERRIBLE advice, and agents and editors will be like, ‘Do not do this,’ but it totally works, you guys. Nothing like a good jolt of panic to get you over the finish line.

5.    Snacks.

Okay, that’s it, good luck!!!

5 Questions with… Donna Mackay-Smith

Look, you guys, I have a lovely accent. It’s one of the many great things about being raised in Ireland. It has served me so well over the years. Everywhere I go, people are like ‘yes’.  All Irish people are aware of how great we sound. Which is why it might blow your mind when I tell you Donna has a better accent than me.

Gentle lilting Scottish, girls. Like a babbling creek on a warm summer’s day.

Donna was made to sit beside me for almost a year when we worked together in London. She lives in Edinburgh now, and when I visited a few years ago, she met me in a small pub that just so happened to be near a stop on the walking tour I went on that same day, so I immediately told her all the facts about sewers I had learned mere hours before and she was all ‘why are you like this?’ She is also one of the few people I know who can pull off a beret.

As well as all that, she’s an incredibly talented and experienced content editor. She’s worked for lots of big brands and knows her stuff, and as we move through all the different parts of the publishing world, I really wanted to get her on to talk about her own journey.

Here's Donna!!!

Hi Donna! To kick things off, can you tell us a little about you and how you got into working with books?

I’ve always worked in the arts and entertainment, and after a 5-year stint at The Walt Disney Company working across digital content, I moved into a digital editorial role at Penguin Random House. Initially, I worked on children’s heritage brands, but throughout my five years at PRH, my remit expanded to include adult titles and then more focused interest brands, including commercial fiction. After that, I moved to The Booker Prize Foundation. 

I’m probably one of the few people who will say I came to this industry accidentally, and I did so later than most. It wasn’t my intention to 'work in publishing', nor really my desire - if I’m being honest. I was passionate about storytelling and literature, and it was always key for me to work for brands with integrity whose values aligned with mine, and I saw that in PRH when I began working there. Before I ended up in the industry, I didn’t know ‘working in publishing’ was such a… thing. But now I’m here, I get it, and I expect to be here for the foreseeable future. Everyone genuinely loves books, and it’s the passion and dedication of the people within it that drives it forward and keeps those wheels turning. It’s pretty nice to be a part of that. 

2. Can you explain what a content editor does? (I genuinely sat beside her and I still don’t know. I’m a bad ex-colleague.)

My day-to-day is often wild and varied, but, in a nutshell, as a content editor, you’re responsible for creating, editing, and commissioning content for digital platforms. My heartland is, and always has been, longer-form content for websites, but I can and do cover editorial or copywriting for other platforms too. Some days I’ll be writing reading lists or a news feature for a prize, others, whipping up a newsletter for Substack or compiling questions for an interview with an author. I often liaise with publishers and agents to organise content around their authors and titles. I have always worked in small teams, and with that, spinning lots of plates is to be expected, so proofreading, plenty of production work within the CMS, and briefing designers are par for the course. There's a lot of crossover with other platforms and formats, so I tend to work hand in hand with our social team and video product leads, too.

3. What advice would you give to people thinking about getting into content editing?

Read as much as you can, and write as much as possible. You can learn so much from simply reading other people’s work, paying attention to style, tone, and structure. Developing a portfolio is key so write where you can - even if it’s for your own blog. You need to have something to showcase your ability, creativity, and ideas. But most crucially, pay attention when being edited - look at the changes your editor has made, and take those learnings with you into the next piece you write. You can learn a phenomenal amount just from tracking edits and understanding why they’ve been rolled in.

4. That’s actuallly pretty good advice for novel writers as well! You're currently working with one of the biggest prizes in the literary world - The Booker Foundation. Can you tell us about the importance of prizes in publishing?

Of course. Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that The Booker Prize Foundation is a charity, whose purpose is to promote the arts and literature for the public benefit. To fulfil this charitable aim, it runs two prizes a year - The Booker Prize and The International Booker, both of which set about to reward and champion the finest work of fiction from that year, with the latter being awarded to a work of fiction translated into English (and published in the UK or Ireland). 

The objective of both prizes is to highlight world-class fiction to readers across the world. And the importance of the prizes lies in their ability to transform a writer’s career - winners and shortlistees can expect a huge increase in book sales, as a result of the spotlight each prize brings. At the heart of this all, a prize in publishing is ultimately just looking to connect readers with great books.

5. We always end with books, because obviously. Have you read anything recently that you'd recommend? Tell us immediately.

I’ve just finished Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter, which I picked up after it was recommended to me. I mostly read recommendations these days, otherwise, I end up with myriad partially thumbed books scattered in my wake, and really, who has the time? Anyway, this is a gorgeous little thing - odd and soul-crushingly sad, but in a good way. It will make you hideously aware of your own mortality - I could barely see the last fifteen pages, blinded by my own uncontrollable tears. 

Before that, I read Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. There was a lot of buzz around this book last year, and rightly so - it’s a creepy little novella, part love story, part horror. I’m a big horror fan and would love to see more of it in a guise like this, away from the conventional tropes of the genre. 

Next on my list is Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. I adored Shuggie Bain - as a working-class Scot who grew up pretty poor, it’s quite rare to see your world depicted in fiction. Douglas Stuart captures a people with such grace and authenticity while avoiding caricatures. I so feel at home in his writing. 

Thank you to Donna!! I had another fun fact about Donna, but she was like if you put that in, I will literally kill you? So dramatic. Anyway, the girl knows her stuff. If you’re interested in reading more about The Booker Prize (why wouldn’t you be? Did you not just meet Donna??), you can find out more on their website here and sign up for their newsletter here! Yay!

What I’m reading

1.    I really loved Sara Gibbs's debut novel, Eight Bright Lights. It is a very festive, very funny Hannukah rom-com and is out in November in the UK!

2.    Coming a little closer than November is Kristen Bailey’s, Sex Ed. It’s out in July and is as hilarious and as big-hearted as she is.

3.    I stayed up until the early hours finishing J. Bree’s new fantasy, The Crown of Oaths and Curses. She is one of my favourite authors, and I left SEVERAL voice notes to friends about how mad I am that I have to wait months until the sequel. MONTHS.

4.    I downloaded a twenty-five-hour audiobook about the rise and fall of ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner because I love shit like that, and I was like oooh great, for about two hours until I realised I had already read it on Kindle several years ago but nbd enough time had passed that I’d forgotten everything. It’s called DisneyWar, and I’m still working my way through it (they haven’t even made The Little Mermaid yet), but my lord, do I love reading about the film industry. I don’t want to work in the film industry I just want to read about it. It is ENDLESSLY FASCINATING to me. If you too would like to become a film industry girlie, might I suggest this book OR another great Disney book – Robert Iger’s The Ride of A Lifetime, which is a really brilliant memoir by (you guessed it!!) Robert Iger, who was also CEO of Disney and then he stopped and now he’s back again. Buy me a glass of wine and I will spend two hours telling you all about both it and the history of sewers in Edinburgh.

Until next time. C x