Our Articles

Last weekend, I went to a friend’s birthday party. The friend’s husband works in the music industry, as band leader for a number of very well-known pop acts. He’s toured everywhere and played at every stadium and venue you can imagine. The result, inevitably, is that the standard of live music at the party was insanely high. Also inevitable: the number of genuinely cool people at the party was insanely high. Also inevitable: I was not amongst that number. A short housekeeping digression begins … I’m going to talk more about Cool People in a moment, but a couple of spots of housekeeping first, if you don’t mind. Number one, next week, on 21 February, I’m introducing a webinar, hosted by the good folks from the Self-Publishing School on How to Write the Story You Were Meant to Tell. The presenter, Ramy Vance, started writing seriously in 2014, and has since published over 60 books on Amazon. That’s a bewilderingly huge number, of course, and it made me realise that we at Jericho have really very little experience of that kind of high volume writing and publishing. So partly I wanted to hear from Ramy about how that experience works for him. But also, and mostly, I want to know whether this is an area that you guys are interested in. If you are, it’s an area we’ll develop in the future. If not, we’ll leave it mostly to one side. More details in the PSes. But if you’re even half-interested in that model, then do show up. I’m going to be intrigued to hear what you think. That one point. The other is that we’re in the process of hiring a new marketing whizz. If you whizz and market, and can do both things at the same time, then please take a look at the PSes to see more about the position and the applications process. Thankee kindly. And ends. Right – back to the party. I suppose the very first marker of Cool is what people are wearing. My wife is cool in some strange way that’s at complete right angles to what anyone else wears, so she rocked up in a vintage 1960s dress with white fur cuffs and white fur collar and a general whiff of Marilyn and Jackie and Audrey and Dusty and all that. I’m just a middle-aged bloke with no depth of cool at all. So I wore nice jeans, a clean pink shirt, some nice shoes. Done. Things I did not wear: A pork pie hat A shirt that looked like it was made of cheesecloth Jeans that looked like they had been shaped for some quite other person A tweed waistcoat, worn open Actually, any sort of waistcoat, worn any way at all Jewellery A shirt unbuttoned to the mid-chest Exotic facial hair Glasses that looked like installations from a design museum I wasn’t all that fussed about my lack of hats / beards / waistcoats / cheesecloth. In fact, I thought the opposite. I tried to imagine myself as these others were, supposing I had access to the exact right kit. Not a new tweed waistcoat, but one aged and worn to the exact right degree. The right kind of shirt. The right trousers. The right everything. If I’d had all that stuff, and worn it – I still wouldn’t have passed for one of the Cool Hordes. I wouldn’t have moved right. I wouldn’t have spoken right. Honestly, and this sounds daft to say, I don’t think my face would have been right. There was one person there in an old blue shirt worn over a T-shirt and a pair of vaguely sculptural glasses. I do have shirts in my wardrobe much like the one he wore, so I could in theory have rocked that look. Except, his face said, “I am at home with gigs like this. Indeed, I have a huge stock of gig-experience, a world of knowledge and a depth of understanding. When I move my head gently to the beat, I do so in a way that betokens deep music wisdom.” I’m not saying that with any sarcasm. He did have that experience and I did not. I couldn’t have faked that sense of being at home in this world. Now, none of this bothered me at all. On the contrary, we had a nice time at the party and came away happy. As we drove home, I said to the missus that I thought I was probably the least cool person there. She said – and these are the words of wisdom on which this email centres – “It’s not what you wear. It’s whether you wear it with confidence. That’s what being cool is.” And she was right! She always is, bless her. She always is, damn her. And in fact, it made me realise that the clothes have nothing to do with it. Those music industry types weren’t cool because of the clothes they wear. They just are cool. They are, roughly speaking, the group that our culture uses to define what it is to be cool. The equation, in fact, is roughly this: These people are cool; they wear what they wear; the result is that people think that those type of clothes are cool. But in the end, what appeals to people is a kind of centred confidence, that has nothing whatever to do with dress. OK And the relevance of all this to you, your manuscript, your anxious pen? It’s simply this. You can’t fake what you’re not. You shouldn’t even try. The trying and failing is way worse than not trying in the first place. So let’s say you want to write a thriller. You think, yep, Lee Child is as good as it gets. His style is pared back. His hero knows everything about guns and military techniques and police procedures and all that. So I need to write like that. And, OK, maybe. That’s one route to a good thriller, for sure. But is that your style? Or your imitation of someone else’s style? If it’s yours, then fine. Thrillerland is easily big enough to accommodate a few Lee Child type series. But what if that style isn’t really you? Then you’re making the mistake of being a Nice Pink Shirt wearing type rocking up to a party in a look stolen from somebody else. You won’t suit that look. Somehow, in ways you can’t even describe, you’ll betray it. At some surface level, it’ll look like you’re ‘doing Lee Child’, but you’ll never fool the reader. Not for long. At that party, I wasn’t one whit uncomfortable in what I wore. People would have looked at me and thought, “He’s clearly not a music industry type, but he looks completely confident in his own skin.” That’s what you want to aim for. When I wrote my Fiona series, I was obviously very conscious of what other crime writers were doing. But as often as not, my crime series turned its back on their choices and happily did its own thing. That wasn’t dissing their choices – simply they weren’t mine. I think, roughly, that’s the model for how any writer needs to write. You need to know your landscape. You need to know what the classic books of the genre are. You need to know what’s being written today. You need to know something of what’s going on in your genre’s nearest neighbours. But then you put all that aside and Just Be You. If that’s a pork-pie hat and a beard, then be that person. If it’s a Nice Pink Shirt and Proper Shoes, then be that person. The full confident expression of your vision will always work better than any attempt to imitate someone else. That’s not a licence to break the rules. You still need an elevator pitch that appeals. You need to understand where you fit in the market of today. Your plot still needs to cohere. Your witing needs to be strong, or not less than confident. (Why do I feel the need to add that caveat? Because we still get manuscripts that are clearly unmarketable for one or all of the above reasons. When challenged the writer often says, “yes, but this is how I want to write. This is my personal vision.” And, OK. It’s your personal vision. But you’ll never get published.) That’s it from me – your very own Mr Cool. Til soon. Harry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PS: That Ramy Vance webinar. It’s titled “How to Tell The Story You Were Meant To Tell Without Taking Years to Do So (or Compromising on Quality).” But really, for me the bit that’s intriguing here is the scale of Ramy’s output. He’s been writing seriously since 2014 and he’s authored, or co-authored, over 60 books. Clearly, my own output is nothing remotely like that. But no question, that high-output, self-publishing approach is a proven way to make a good living as an independent writer. It’s not an area we know a ton about. Ramy does. And I’m really looking forward to what he has to say. I’m introducing the webinar. Self-Publishing School is hosting it. The webinar kicks off at 6.00pm London time, 1.00pm EST. If you want to register, the link is here: selfpublishing.com/jerichowriters And if you attend, do please let us know what you think. I’m intrigued to know whether you think this kind of model we should be exploring more than we do. PPS: We’re hiring a new marketing manager. If you’re interested, there’s more information here: https://jerichowriters.com/jericho-writers/about-us/meet-the-team/#current-vacancies We’re a damn nice bunch to work with, and we look forward to welcoming the right candidate on board soon. PPPS: If you’d be interested in being Cool at some parties – we have TWO face-to-face meetups happening in the coming months. The first takes place in London on April 21st, the second in Leeds on April 28th. Both run from 18:00 to 23:00. More information here.

Forty years ago, A British TV network produced a major TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The show was named after and centred on a family living in a vast stately home. The series was an international smash hit and regularly features on a list of greatest TV shows of all time. A dozen years ago, the same network brought Downton Abbey into the world. It was also an international smash hit, earning a record 27 Emmy nominations in its first two seasons. That show is also named after and centres on a very large house. (Highclere Castle is the real-life Downton. When asked how many rooms it has, the countess of Carnarvon, whose home it is, says, “I’m not sure. I suppose if you know how many rooms you’ve got, you haven’t got a very big house.” So, there you go, you small-house-owner, you.) Now obviously, Brits are good at wandering around giant houses in corsets. Quite obviously, the rest of the world likes watching Brits wandering around giant houses in corsets. That’s hardly an end of the similarities. Both shows had a kind of love for their big house, and for the community and continuity it represented. Both shows made much of their love stories. Both shows had a basic decency to them: a sense that the people at the top, however flawed and fallible, fundamentally wanted to do the right thing. Yet I think there is one very telling difference between Brideshead and Downton, and one that really does tell us something about our changing cultural landscape. The issue I have in mind is this: Downton’s interests were essentially romantic, social and psychological. It was happy to ask emotionally searching questions about (say) the Lady Mary / Matthew Crawley relationship. It was perhaps even more nuanced and careful in piecing together the Mr Carson / Mrs Hughes one. The landscape of servants and served in a changing Britain was carefully and intelligently done. Now, Brideshead was hardly idiotic in psychological terms, but it was strikingly less inquisitive. The most memorable relationship in Brideshead was between Sebastian Flyte (young, beautiful, wealthy, drunk, gay) and the Jeremy Irons character, Charles Ryder. Ryder was young, not as beautiful, infinitely less rich, and infatuated, for sure, but not gay. Was there a struggle for Ryder in this relationship? Well, if there was, it was hardly shown. What underlay that relationship? Why did Ryder fall where others didn’t? The show paid that question very little interest. Why was the gifted Flyte a confirmed drunk? It would be easy to say that being gay in a homophobic age was hard, and surely it was. But we didn’t see Flyte struggle with the issue at all. It wasn’t raised. Instead, Brideshead presented the relationship of its two central male characters as more or less a done deal – “it just is”. Flyte’s challenges weren’t analysed. They just were. Neither the book nor the show made any real attempt to provide an explanatory architecture behind those things. Instead of psychology, Brideshead placed something else at its very centre: God. Or perhaps not God exactly, but morality, honour, soul, religion – a broader and deeper sense of the Good than anything Downton cared to offer. Indeed, the story at the heart of Brideshead is, in today’s terms, almost perplexing. Without giving away too much, Brideshead turns on the fact that Mr X loves Ms Y, and Ms Y loves Mr X, and there is no earthly reason why they shouldn’t live together and be happy forever – except that God says no. The result is that both parties end up renouncing their happiness for essentially religious reasons – and one of the two wasn’t even religious. You could perfectly well imagine some story like that appearing on Netflix today. You could imagine scripting, for example, a drama about a romance in the New York orthodox Jewish community, in which the two principals refused to marry for essentially similar reasons. But that Netflix drama would inevitably focus on the psychology lying behind that refusal. (Parental pressure? Fear of commitment? Fear of exclusion?) Brideshead doesn’t give a damn about the psychology. What it takes seriously was the religious morality lying behind its refusal. If you want to characterise the shift that’s taken place, it’s from soul/morality to psychology. And no, I don’t mean that there weren’t psychologically focused and highly intelligent dramas before Brideshead. And no, I don’t mean that there aren’t any soul-focused dramas now. But for all that, I think the shift is a real one. We now have a tendency to think that psychological exploration just IS the point of higher-end fiction. And it isn’t. It’s one possible purpose of higher-end fiction. There are others. In my own fiction? Well, I don’t know. Mostly, I just like writing the best entertainment I can. But on that soul versus psychology issue? Well, I probably lean as much towards soul as I do towards psychology. Soul may not be a fashionable theme, but Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and the rest are beyond fashion. They’re forever. And Brideshead vs Downton? Brideshead is better. Til soon. Harry

I see plenty of query letters over the course of a year, and (though they’re much more boring) a fair few synopses too. Lots of these are absolutely fine. A tweak here or there, and they’re good to go. But many of them – maybe half or more – make mistakes that you just don’t need to make. So let’s get them right. In particular: Let your synopsis be a synopsis Writers are, naturally, extremely averse to giving away all the good bits of their story. But that’s what a synopsis is. It’s not a blurb. It’s not a sales pitch. It’s just a neutral, unsexy summary of your story’s plot. Really, that summary should include the final denouement too. (“Ryan finds the explosive and removes the detonator, thereby saving the stadium.”) But if you really can’t bring yourself to do that, you can cheat a very little bit, and only right at the end. (“Ryan arrives at the stadium, where the dramatic final act takes place.”) Let your query letter define your query (1) Agents get lots of emails about lots of things. So make it clear why you’re writing. You don’t have to be clever here. Just use the following sentence with the appropriate bits altered: “I am writing to seek representation for my debut novel, Return of the Killer Kitten, a 180,000 word geopolitical thriller, set in Ukraine, Berlin and Stockholm.” Let your query letter define your query (2) Yes, you are a fabulously creative person with ideas pouring out of your lugholes. But shut up about it – for now. Right now, you are seeking to retain a salesperson (ie: a literary agent) to sell a product (your manuscript) to an investor (your publisher.) Focus on the task at hand. Talk about the product you want to sell now. Yes, you can introduce yourself a bit, but remember that your book is the main attraction here. So you should spend the majority of your (short) covering letter talking about your book. If, in addition to your geo-political thriller, you wish to write Young Adult fantasy and non-fiction about collapsed civilisations, then fine. But don’t talk about it now: you’ll simply reduce the pool of agents who want to take you on. Once you have an agent on board, you can explain more what you want to write about, and you can explore how broadly your interests match. But for now, just find the agent who wants to sell this book. That agent is almost certainly the right agent for you now. Shut up about yourself I reckon you have a maximum of a paragraph to talk about yourself and, if I were writing a query letter today, that paragraph would probably be a short one. You are not the main deal here; your manuscript is – so focus on that. That said, if you have an extensive and relevant past, by all means include a ‘Creative Resume’ or something similar as part of the package you send over. If I were seeking a new agent today, I’d need a list somewhere of my past books with a note of publishers, rights sales, TV options, and the like. That would be useful background for any agent, of course, but you want to keep it out of the query letter itself – because you want the query letter to keep its focus relentlessly on the manuscript that you’re seeking to sell. Don’t shut up about yourself Ah! You’re writing non-fiction? In that case, please ignore the ridiculous advice given just above. If the non-fiction book you’re selling depends heavily on your authority (your proven expertise) or your platform (your ability to reach readers via social media and so on), you need to talk about that at length. It’s all part of the package the agent will be looking to sell. Don’t shove the synopsis into the query Your query letter is a query letter. Your synopsis is a synopsis. Don’t ram the second into the first. Yes, of course your query letter needs to talk about the manuscript. But it needs to do two things, neither of which involves a full plot explanation. It needs to: Explain just generally what kind of book yours is. Your first sentence has probably given some data (“a police procedural set in the Scottish Highlands”, for example), but you need to flesh that out a bit. So, to take that example, you might expand on the nature of the crime being investigated, who the investigator is, and so on. You’re just trying to give the agent a basic orientation so she has some understanding of what this book is. Explain why this book is sexy. This is the elevator pitch part of your pitch. If the thrilling thing about your police procedural is that the bad guy is a ghost, here’s where you say it. You don’t have to be too clunky about that. (“My elevator pitch is: the bad guy is a ghost.”) You can rely on the agent to pick up on the hints you scatter. (“But as DC Finlay closes in, he starts to realise the perpetrator is not entirely of this world.”) If you try to replace either of these elements with a bald plot summary, your letter will feel a lot less appetising than it could be. Think of it this way: your synopsis is meant to be a rather bald, functional document. If it’s fun to read, you’ve got it a bit wrong. Your query letter on the other hand is about seduction. You need a glitter of the unknown, the lure of temptation. If you don’t feel that tickle of excitement in your query letter, you need to redo it. *** All that sounds sensible, but there are also some areas where the answers are a little less clear. For example: How many agents to query? My normal rule of thumb is that you should approach 10-12 agents that you’ve selected with reasonable care. (Our own AgentMatch service is ideal, but whatever tool you use, make sure you are contacting agents with some basic interest in the kind of material you send.) After that, if you don’t get serious interest (ideally, an offer of representation, but at a minimum 2-3 full manuscript requests), then you don’t need to query more agents. You need to write a better book. Yes, there are examples of people who just knocked on more doors and got lucky. But they’re not the rule. Really, the overwhelming reason why manuscripts don’t get picked up by agents is: they’re not good enough. So, if the signs aren’t promising after your first round of submissions, go back to your manuscript and make it better. Sometimes the actual submissions process itself gives you clues about what to do. Other times it’s worth getting a paid assessment (like our spectacularly good ones). But either way, if agents aren’t taking your book, then fix it. That’s more important, by far, than simply knocking on more doors. Why this agent? Do I really need a marketing plan? And look: there’s a ton of advice there which recommends extra ways for you to add work into your life. It’s very common to see advice which says you need to tell each agent why you’ve picked them specifically. It’s getting more common to see advice which says you should include a draft marketing plan to prove that you’re up for the commercial struggle. But – really? In the end, you’re sending your book to a dozen agents. There might be two or three of those that you’ve picked for some strong reason. The rest are probably just there because they handle books in your genre and they don’t seem obviously mad. My advice: if you have a meaningful reason for picking a particular agent, then say so. Otherwise, just send your book. A plumber doesn’t expect you to flatter them when you get them to quote for a new bathroom installation. Why should an agent need that special flattery, when you’re just asking them to do their job? Don’t waste your time. Same thing, really, with a marketing plan. If you feel inspired to put one together, great. If not, don’t worry about it. I know quite a bit about marketing books, but I certainly wouldn’t put a marketing plan together when approaching agents. Marketing is a publisher’s job. It’s not mine, and not an agent’s. Again: don’t waste your time. *** That’s it from me. Sorry about the BORING PRACTICAL theme this week. Honestly: anyone would think these emails were actually trying to be useful. I do hereby solemnly vow to do something a bit more madcap next week. Or – probably vow. Truth is, I write about whatever happens to be in my head at the time. PS: Here\'s what\'s on the way for Premium Members next week (as always, Premium Membership is a click away, right here): Live Event | Building a Writer\'s Reputation Panel - Thursday 24 November, 19:00 GMT | 14:00 EDT Townhouse | The Writing Room - Tuesdays 16:00 GMT | Thursdays 18:00 GMT Set aside an hour (or two) to write in The Writing Room. This week will have a special focus on setting. Townhouse | Harry\'s Office Hours - Thursday 12:00 - 14:00 GMT Based on the exercises in Tuesday\'s Writing Room, I\'ll be asking you to describe a setting with the five sense and feeding back. Townhouse | Polly\'s Office Hours - every Friday 13:00-16:00 GMT Next Friday, Polly will also be giving feedback whether your settings come to life.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m a Man of Steel – I have a blood condition which means I accumulate iron. Fridge magnets stick to me. I clank when I walk. In rain, I rust. The solution to this is regular blood donations: they just take my iron-rich blood and either discard it or offer it to someone else. And yesterday, I was in the hospital – again – for one of these draws. Usually, the process has been fast, efficient and largely painless. The needle they use is a real whopper, but I’ve got big bulgy veins and I’m not squeamish about needles, and it’s all been fine. Yesterday, however, I got a rather nervous trainee nurse, who made a real mess of things. She scratched around painfully inside my arm and constantly fiddled with the needle, while, all the time, blood was dripping off my arm, because she’d made a mess of the original insertion. It wasn’t a lot of fun – and then once I’d filled my pint-bag of blood, the trainee realised she’d forgotten to take any blood samples, so we had to go again in my other, less battered arm. She kept saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry”, which didn’t really help my declining faith in her competence. Also: for some reason, I don’t know why, my body absolutely hates having blood taken from it, and I always feel wiped out afterwards. After yesterday’s shenanigans, I feel extra flat. For that reason, this email has collapsed into a pile of fragments: it’s like a flat-pack email for you to assemble at your leisure. I haven’t counted bolts and screws, though, so I’m not even sure the whole thing will hold together. I’ve listed the part numbers, but they may be in the wrong order. Oh yes, and some parts are heavy, so please lift carefully, using your legs not your back. Oh yes, and the theme is Nanowrimo. So, um, you’re building a Nanowrimo kit. Or something like that.   Part 1: Nanowrimo Stands for National Novel Writing Month. Except that the thing is international, isn’t it, so it should probably be World Novel Writing Month, or Wornowrimo.   Part 2: November The first frosts. Late-fallen apples. A last-blooming rose. And – yes, a freshly-baked novel. One smelling of roasted chestnuts and spiced pumpkin. Nanowrimo takes place in November, so this email may only be a pile of pieces but it is at least perfectly timed, no?   Part 3a: Brave New World A Wiki-style blog about the origin of the 50,000 word target reports that, “The 50,000-word goal came to be when NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty chose the shortest novel on his shelf (rumored to be Brave New World), did a rough word count estimate, and came up with 50,000 words.”   Part 3b: Brave New World again Brave New World is actually 64,575 words long, so the 50K word count is much less than the shortest novel on Chris Baty’s shelves.   Part 3c: Because you have to mention The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is about 48,000 words. It is essential to record this fact in absolutely any discussion of Nanowrimo word counts.   Part 3d: The real world In the real world of trad publishing, 50,000 words is way too short for any novel at all, except for really exceptional literary novels and, even then, ones mostly produced by literary writers who have already secured acclaim and, with it, the right to break the rules. It’s true that those rules don’t quite apply to self-publishing and, for example, the romance market may see some quite short novels. But for the most part, commercial novels start at about 70 or 75,000 words and go up from there. I think all my novels are over 100,000 words and often well over. The reason why word counts hover at this sort of level is that it turns out that’s what readers find satisfying.   Part 17: Housekeeping Please don’t forget that, every Thursday, I’m going to be buzzing around Townhouse looking at your work. I’ll be focusing especially on the work of Premium Members, but I hope we get a good peer-to-peer vibe going no matter what. I’ll be mostly busy from 12.00 to 2.00 GMT, but if you are in Singapore, or California, or just too busy battling brigands in the Atlas Mountains, then upload your work for comment beforehand and check in again afterhand. Yes: I know afterhand is not a word, but it ought to be. Yes: I know that Part 17 should not logically follow Part 3d, but have I at any point promised you logic? I have not.   Part 4: Raoul Silva There’s a Bond movie, where the bad guy, Raoul Silva, says, “Do you see what comes of all this running around, Mr. Bond? All this jumping and fighting, it\'s exhausting! Relax. You need to relax.” So that’s one school of thought about Nanowrimo, the Raoul Silva school, which says simply: forget it. Why work hard to produce a novel that’s definitely too short? And, since you’re producing it under pressure, that first draft isn’t likely to be much good anyway. And relaxation is nice, no?   Part 5: James Bond / running around Pretty obviously, James Bond doesn’t relax and does do lots more running around. Pretty obviously, Nanowrimo people do the (writing equivalent of the) same thing. Oh yes, and James Bond always wins in the end, except in the most recent film, obvs, except even there he sort of wins, he just gets exploded. This last fact may not be relevant.   Part 6: Habits Yes, but. Habits.   Part 7: Replacement part Some users have pointed out that Part 6 is not in fact usable. The little metal stick thing that’s meant to screw into the hole doesn’t in fact fit. And there isn’t even a hole. Users are therefore advised to replace the current part 6 with the following replacement part: The thing about good habits is that you want to reinforce them. The thing about bad habits is that you want to shatter them – and keep them shattered. Nanowrimo can do both things. The sheer pace demanded of you requires you to destroy the bad, retain the good. Do you procrastinate for forty minutes before you start to write seriously? Do you have a social media app open and active while you are theoretically concentrating? Nanowrimo’s beautiful brutishness can cure you of those habits. There’s something about writing a lot of text fast that gives you a kind of proof of concept. This hard thing is doable. This mountain can be climbed.   Part 8: Craft I talk a lot about craft – writing technique. I have a feeling that this part belongs somewhere in this email. I’m not sure where, and I can’t find any instructions.   Part 9: The first draft The 50,000 words you write as part of Nanowrimo? They are not likely to be good.   Part 10: WELL, THEY’RE NOT THE POLICE, ARE THEY? No. The Nanowrimo non-profit organisation is definitely not a police force. And if they were, they’d be the sort that let’s would allow you to swap hats with a police officer and take selfies. They wouldn’t be the sort to beat you to a pulp, then charge you with resisting arrest. I think the purpose of this part is simply to say that if you want to switch the rules around for yourself, you can. I suggest you keep that 50,000 word count target, because that’s kind of the point of the whole thing, but I also suggest you don’t think of that 50,000 words as a novel, because it won’t be that.   Part 11: Planning Ah, yes. This part should probably have been bolted down first, but I’ve only just found it. Really: your Nanowrimo experience is going to go better if you have some kind of rough plan for what you’re going to be writing. If you just plunge in – well, you might end up with a book that’s as poorly planned as this email.   Part 12: Editing Every first draft is good because all it has to do is exist, right? Writing = delivering stone to the site Editing = putting them in the right place   Part 13: Bonus part, not needed for final assembly I knew a writer who was given a ridiculously short deadline by her publisher. I urged her to produce 100,000 words, delivered in alphabetical order, starting with 652 repetitions of the word “a”. I said she should say to them that here were the words they wanted; she just didn’t have time to put them in the right order. She did not take my advice.   Part 14: A cup of coffee with a friend I’ve just had a cup of coffee with a friend. The friend did an MA in creative writing (that would be an MFA in American.) In the course of the MA, her longest extended piece of writing was 17,000 words and what’s the point of that? In a way, the thuggishness of nanowrimo is its best thing. Just do it. Change the scale of what you think you’re capable of.   Part 15: having kids vs nanowrimo I have never done Nanowrimo and I never will. I edit as I write, and I’m a fidgety, perfectionist editor, so I never accumulate a lot of text fast. That’s just not my thing. But – I did have four kids in less than two years and if you want to shift expectations fast, that’s not a bad way to do it. Uninterrupted thinking time? No. A just get on with it approach? Yes. Advantages of Nanowrimo: less costly, less smelly, less crying, fewer night feeds. Advantages of having kids: um …   Part 16: the bit where I say bye bye Bye bye

It seems like an age ago already – two or three British Prime Minsters back – but last week we talked about how even novels that aren’t about spying are nevertheless about deception and false-surfaces and subtexts. I want to talk a bit more about that in a second, but first a couple of bits of housekeeping. First, AgentMatch. Yes we know this isn’t working for some users. We’re working on a fix right now. Second, site speed. Especially for logged-in users, the site is way too slow. Again, we think we know where the issue lies and we’re working on a fix now. And third, I’ve been having a merry old time this week and last working on your elevator pitches in preparation for a Meet Your Match day [when?]. Link? It’s really enjoyable to be part of this, and I’ve watched some pitches really blossom through the process. See what’s been going on here. I’ll be dropping back over the weekend to give more comments. My own comments are restricted to those of you who are Premium Members, but there’s a lot of really useful peer-to-peer interaction too. So, either way, come along and see what’s happening. As I say, I’ve been loving it. Right. Back to deceptions and subtexts. One classic-classic example of a novel founded on just such an idea is Pride & Prejudice. Take, for example, the first Darcy / Lizzie Bennet proposal scene. He says he’s prepared to marry her, despite her terrible family. She refuses, heatedly and proudly. But what’s really happened here? Is he truly as arrogant as he appears. (Answer: no, clearly not.) And is she correct in thinking she could never love this man? (Ditto.) The joy of the scene, and the book, is our ability to unpeel the layers from the clues Jane Austen provides. A similar and classic-in-a-way example would be the whole love triangle in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Who will capture Bridget’s heart – the charming bounder Hugh Grant, or the stiff and apparently aloof Colin Firth character? Again, part of the reader’s joy is teasing apart the clues that reveal who each man really is. And, to be clear, this clue-building is HARD. You have to: Paint a plausible picture that paints Man A – let’s say Jane Austen’s Darcy – as arrogant and cold; Offer clues that he’s not only that; Do a big reveal which shows a man that you could really, really fall in love with. (And no, the reveal can’t just be a country house that’s twice the size of Buckingham Palace.) Make sure that the whole thing feels plausible and true, not just tricksy. The last element is – for me, at any rate – particularly important. Over the past decade, there’s been an upsurge in psychological thrillers, where the general theme is something like: Sweet nurse Betsy seems like the person everyone turns to in a crisis but, because of [insert concealed childhood trauma here], Betsy is really a [insert nature of horrible crime here.] Sometimes, of course, that structure works just fine. But very often, it feels OK at a mechanical level only. So yes, you can, in theory, get your head around the idea that someone who (let’s say) was kicked by a horse in childhood might want to secretly harm horses today. But that works better in a theoretical way than a practical one. Loads of people hang out with horses as kids. Inevitably, those people get kicked from time to time. The ones I know in that category are still potty about horses and certainly aren’t animal abusers. So a non-mechanical version of that story has to layer things in a way that we can see the shape of the first character (nice, sweet Betsy) in the shape of the finally revealed one (evil, animal-killing Betsy.) Sometimes, that clue-development is sheer genius: the prime modern example is Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Other times, as I say, the whole book ends up feeling like rusty cogs turning against each other and no real human insight. But it’s a mistake to think only about the big elements of plot here. This theme of readers figuring out a character happens all the time in good fiction. Teasing out text and subtext is a huge part of why readers read. (And if that process involves a nice romance, or a few good corpses, or a first-rate terror plot, then so much the better.) I was searching around for a good example. I wanted something where we felt subtext plucking at the text all the time. I looked at a few books and, in the good ones, that text/subtext tension happens pretty much all the time – certainly when any two people are encountering each other. Then I realised that I had the perfect example on my own computer. Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Fiona Griffiths series reports Fiona’s interview for the South Wales Police. Nothing happens. Nothing. She has applied for a job. By the end of the interview, it’s clear that she’s going to get it. All that “story = conflict” stuff just doesn’t make an appearance. At no stage during the (very brief) interview is it remotely suggested that she should not get a job. At a surface level, the text isn’t kinetic at all. There’s no glimmer of story, or not until the very final line. You could argue that the chapter doesn’t obey any of the classic rules of story-telling. And yet? The book had multi-publisher auctions in multiple territories. In the US, my editor – one of the leading names in crime – told me that she knew she had to buy the book after a couple of pages. So something was happening, and it wasn’t story. It was text vs subtext. That’s it from me. I think it’s probably my turn to be Prime Minister soon, or at least Home Secretary, so my next email will come from a very shiny desk somewhere in London. ____ THE FIRST CHAPTER FROM TALKING TO THE DEAD  - The first FG story Interview, October 2006 Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park. One blue, one yellow, one pink. Their shapes are precise, as though stencilled. From this distance, I can’t see the lines that tether them, so when the kites move, it’s as though they’re doing so of their own accord. An all-encompassing sunlight has swallowed depth and shadow. I observe all this as I wait for DCI Matthews to finish rearranging the documents on his desk. He shuffles the last file from the stack before him to a chair in front of the window. The office is still messy, but at least we can see each other now. ‘There,’ he says. I smile. [fake smile - we already feel it. Matthews hasn\'t done anything to make her smile.] He holds up a sheet of paper. The printed side is facing him, but against the light from the window I see the shape of my name at the top. I smile again, not because I feel like smiling but because I can’t think of anything sensible to say. This is an interview. My interviewer has my CV. What does he want me to do? Applaud? [Aha! We were right about that fake smile. Here she is thinking sarcastic thoughts about a senior police officer.] He puts the CV down on the desk in the only empty patch available. He starts to read it through line by line, marking off each section with his forefinger as he does so. Education. A levels. University. Interests. Referees. His finger moves back to the centre of the page. University. [Hmm. We\'re wondering if there\'s a big reveal here. This is the first time this wandering narrative seems to have had found a centre of interest.] ‘Philosophy.’ I nod. ‘Why are we here? What’s it all about? That sort of thing?’ [ie: The pop version of philosophy. Not a very testing question. We don\'t quite get what the interview purpose is here.] ‘Not exactly. More like, what exists? What doesn’t exist? How do we know whether it exists or not? Things like that.’ [FG instantly corrects to a more technical definition of academic philosophy. That\'s giving us a clue that FG is probably smart - but it\'s also waving a flag to say that the nature of existence is at play in this book. It\'s promising some depth. You couldn\'t sensibly have a start like this and then dive into a James Patterson novel.] ‘Useful for police work.’ [Again, not much of an interview question, but we do feel as though something\'s beginning to move here. This non-interview interview is beginning to generate data.] ‘Not really. I don’t think it’s useful for anything much, except maybe teaching us to think.’ [Is this conflict? Not really. But it\'s interesting that the first thing that even resembles an interview question is just batted away by Fiona. She\'s being given an opportunity to sell herself here, and declines it. Why? And again, the emphasis on thinking: this tells us, doesn\'t it?, that Fiona is smart and cares about things of the mind.] Matthews is a big man. Not gym-big, but Welsh-big, with the sort of comfortable muscularity that suggests a past involving farm work, rugby and beer. He has remarkably pale eyes and thick dark hair. Even his fingers have little dark hairs running all the way to the final joint. He is the opposite of me. [Wow! What a thing to say. I mean, of course there are ways that big-man / small-woman are opposites, but Fiona\'s surely saying more than that? We probably don\'t quite have enough data to figure out what\'s going on, but \"opposite of me\" probably means the opposite of \"comfortable muscularity\" and \"farm work, rugby and beer\". So what is the opposite of that? We don\'t know, but our subtext monitors are sucking this stuff up trying to build a picture.] ‘Do you think you have a realistic idea of what police work involves?’ [First actual interview question] I shrug. I don’t know. How are you meant to know if you haven’t done it? I say the sort of thing that I think I’m meant to say. I’m interested in law enforcement. I appreciate the value of a disciplined, methodical approach. Blah, blah. Yadda, yadda. Good little girl in her dark grey interview outfit saying all the things she’s meant to say. [First actual interview answer, but we sense Fiona\'s lack of interest in what she says. She doesn\'t in fact even bother to tell us.] ‘You don’t think you might get bored?’ ‘Bored?’ I laugh with relief. That’s what he was probing at. ‘Maybe. I hope so. I quite like a little boredom.’ Then, worried he might feel I am being arrogant – prize-winning Cambridge philosopher sneers at stupid policeman – I backtrack. ‘I mean, I like things orderly. Is dotted, ts crossed. If that involves some routine work, then fine. I like it.’ [Ah! So this is interesting. We were right that Fiona\'s smart - she\'s won philosophy prizes at Cambridge. But she really wants the job. She\'s stressed about it. Hence the relief. Hence the anxiety to make the answer right.] His finger is still on the CV, but it’s tracked up an inch or so. A levels. [Why an inch? British teenagers do A-level exams at roughly age 18. What happened then?] He leaves his finger there, fixes those pale eyes on me and says, ‘Do you have any questions for me?’ I know that’s what he’s meant to say at some stage, but we’ve got forty-five minutes allocated for this interview and we’ve only used ten at the outside, most of which I’ve spent watching him shift stationery around his office. Because I’m taken by surprise – and because I’m still a bit rubbish at these things [Still, why still? What is she referring to?] – I say the wrong thing. ‘Questions? No.’ There’s a short gap in which he registers surprise and I feel like an idiot. ‘I mean, I want the job. I don’t have any questions about that.’ [Is this the first completely authentic moment from Fiona/ It feels like it. His surprise and her feeling of idiocy sort of confirm that. Why does she want the job so much? She\'s very bright. She could do anything. Why this?] His turn to smile. A real one, not fake ones like mine. [Confirmation that she has been faking for most of this process.] ‘You do. You really do.’ He makes that a statement not a question. For a DCI, he’s not very good at asking questions. [Except - he IS good, isn\'t he? He\'s teased out truth from someone disinclined to offer it.] I nod anyway. ‘And you’d probably quite like it if I didn’t ask you about a two-year gap in your CV, around the time of your A levels.’ I nod again, more slowly. Yes, I would quite like it if you didn’t ask about that. [Wow! What was that about? We don\'t know. Neither person seems like they want to divulge more.] ‘Human resources know what’s going on there, do they?’ ‘Yes. I’ve already been into that with them. I was ill. Then I got better.’ [A very empty, non-informative answer.] ‘Who in human resources?’ ‘Katie. Katie Andrews.’ ‘And the illness?’ [That\'s a real question.] I shrug. ‘I’m fine now.’ [And that definitely doesn\'t answer it. This door is nailed shut.] A non-answer. I hope he doesn’t push further, and he doesn’t. He checks with me who’s interviewed me so far. The answer is, pretty much everyone. This session with Matthews is the final hurdle. ‘OK. Your father knows you’re applying for this job?’ [Weird question] ‘Yes.’ ‘He must be pleased.’ [Ditto. Why the repetition? Why is he asking this?] Another statement in place of a question. I don’t answer it. [Another closed door. Another refusal to divulge.] Matthews examines my face intently. Maybe that’s his interview technique. Maybe he doesn’t ask his suspects any questions, he just makes statements and scrutinises their faces in the wide open light from the big Cardiff sky. ‘We’re going to offer you a job, you know that?’ [Huh? What? At one level, nothing has been asked or answered. Or rather: the only thing that actually has been asked & answered was about her really, really wanting the job.] ‘You are?’ ‘Of course we are. Coppers aren’t thick, but you’ve got more brains than anyone else in this building. You’re fit. You don’t have a record. You were ill for a time as a teenager, but you’re fine now. You want to work for us. Why wouldn’t we hire you?’ [OK, fair enough. Maybe this interview has been reasonably rational after all.] I could think of a couple of possible answers to that, but I don’t volunteer them. [More non-disclosure. What does behind those doors? We want to know now.] I’m suddenly aware of being intensely relieved, which scares me a bit, because I wasn’t aware of having been anxious. [She\'s scared by being relieved? That\'s a bit much isn\'t it? Another clue to tuck away for later.] I’m standing up. Matthews has stood up too and comes towards me, shaking my hand and saying something. His big shoulders block my view of Bute Park and I lose sight of the kites. Matthews is talking about formalities and I’m blathering answers back at him, but my attention isn’t with any of that stuff. I’m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead. [OK, those last two sentences do give us a waft of story - finally! The penultimate sentence says \"Don\'t worry, readers, this IS going to be a crime novel.\" The final sentence says - what? We don\'t know. She can\'t have been dead, because she\'s alive now. But we do now want to know what lies behind that statement - the subtext beneath the text. As far as I can see, that text/subtext battle is the only reason that someone might want to read beyond this first chapter, because it offers essentially nothing else. And even on the text/subtext thing, it mostly shows us doors that feel completely closed. And, funnily enough, this text/subtext opening is true to the book itself. Yes, there\'s a traditional crime mystery here. (Corpses, investigation, solution.) But the real mystery is Fiona herself and we don\'t fully unlock that until the very end of the book.]

In 1963, a thirty-year-old ‘diplomat’ – in fact, a junior-ranking member of the British secret services – wrote a book. The book was about spying and it was more or less the opposite of Bond. Unglamorous in the extreme. Intelligent. Laceratingly cynical. The young man who wrote it was in a state of (in his words) ‘intense, personal stress’. The novel was written very fast and ‘in extreme privacy.’ Now, for obvious reasons, any book written by members of the British secret services has to be vetted before publication and, again for obvious reasons, those services weren’t about to let any deep secrets be exposed. So, contrary to a lot of press commentary over the years, it was only the young man’s lack of experience and access that allowed his book to be published at all. Although he was technically a spy, he was junior enough that he knew more or less nothing about his own profession. But the book was published – and it was a sensation. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold became an international bestseller and is frequently cited as being among the 100 Best Novels. If you want the gist of the story, it’s something like this: Alec Leamas believes that he’s on a secret mission to destroy the brutish Mundt, head of the East German secret service. In order to do that, he poses as a double-agent, is interviewed by the #2 East German spy – a good and idealistic man named Fiedler – and imparts scatters information that would tend to implicate Mundt as a double-agent working on behalf of the British. Except – it’s more complicated. Because the man running the British operation (George Smiley), pays off Leamas’s mortgage and gets his communist-inclined girlfriend to join an exchange of party-members to East Germany. To Leamas’s surprise, the girlfriend pops up to (innocently, but completely) destroy his testimony. So if Leamas is lying, then why is he here at all? It must be that Leamas has been sent to East Germany in order to frame Mundt, so the East Germans now realise Mundt must be loyal to them, right? They happily arrest Fiedler, who will probably be shot. So, the British operation looks like it’s failed completely. Except – it’s more complicated. Because why did George Smiley pay off Leamas’s mortgage – a sure signal to the East Germans that Leamas was still a paid-up British spy? Hmm. It must be that George Smiley wanted to destroy Leamas’s testimony. And why would he want to do that? Well, since the destruction of Leamas’s credibility in East Germany resulted in the death of Fiedler and the protection of Mundt, it must be that actually Mundt was a British double-agent after all. The whole purpose of the operation – to which Leamas was not privy – was to destroy Fiedler, who all along had suspected Mundt. Got that? Well, yes and no. The brilliant thing about any really good spy story (or any tangled crime story) is that as you read it, you follow the logic and everything makes sense. But as soon as you put the book down, the logic has a habit of disappearing. If a friend asked you, half an hour after you’ve finished reading to explain the plot, you’d struggle to do so. The reason for that struggle is that you’re being asked to keep track of logic-chains like these: Leamas realises that Smiley pretended he wanted to destroy Mundt (who was pretending to work for the East Germans, but was really working for the British), so Leamas – who thought he was lying about payments to Mundt etc – was in fact telling the truth. That’s head-exploding. It’s a big part of the cost of reading the book (the mental effort), and a huge part of the reward. Now all this seems like maybe it’s only of interest to people who write spy thrillers and perhaps crime thrillers. But it’s not, it’s not! It’s of interest to YOU. Why do we read books at all? I mean: it’s all made up, right? Alex Leamas didn’t exist. Lizzie Bennet didn’t exist. Harry Potter (sorry, kids) isn’t real. A big part of it is simply this: Humans aren’t particularly honest. That dishonesty might be big and consequential. (Fiedler does or doesn’t get shot, depending on how Leamas does his job.) Or it might be minor: you saying “Yes, I’m fine,” when you’re definitely not. Dishonesty might happen in the context of actual or potential violence (as in spy stories.) Or it might arise in the context of actual or potential romance. It might be wilful, careful, pre-planned dishonesty (anything to do with George Smiley.) Or it might be utterly inadvertent (for example, Jane Austen characters confused by their own emotions: Lizzie Bennet saying she definitely isn’t attracted to sexy Mr Darcy, for example.) This dishonesty – or, rather, the gap between explicit and implicit, surface and hidden, text and subtext – is of passionate importance to us as humans. Let’s say you’re dropping your kids off at the school gate and the head-teacher asks you to alter something about (let’s say) the way you deal with your child’s homework. You’ll unquestionably walk away trying to figure out if there was subtext there. Not quite on the level of “does he/she think I’m a crap parent?” perhaps, but you’ll be searching to see if there was a concealed reproach. You’ll check out your own actions to see if you can see a flaw. You may well ask other parents to see what they do. (Are you the only one who’s been singled out in this way? If so, what does that mean?) We carry that behaviour into fiction. It’s instinctive. I think it’s probably true to say that fiction trains us. That is: the more we read, and the more we think about our reading, the more sophisticated we become at parsing these real-world encounters. But it’s also true that the real-world habituates us to fiction. The more we deal with these issues of subtext in the world, the more we bring those same practices into reading. A huge part of the pleasure of fiction lies in precisely this kind of puzzle-solving. Why is Lizzie so insistent that she isn’t attracted to the handsome, rich Darcy? Surely because she partly is. In Where the Crawdads Sing, there’s a courtroom-style mystery in play, but there’s also a coming-of-age emotional unveiling at play. Both mysteries are compelling, but there’s probably more long-term depth and interest in the latter. And that takes us right to one of the central puzzles of fiction. The more we make the reader work, the more they like it. Some sorts of work are bad, of course. If your sentence is unclear and your reader has to puzzle out your meaning, that’s a fail. If you let that happen too often, the reader will just put the book down and never pick it up again. But giving complicated and multi-layered data to a reader about your characters? That’s perfect. That’s when your reader gets highly involved, teasing your clues apart like a hungry gossip. I’ve gone on too long as it is, but next week I’ll take a look at some examples of complicated clue-giving – some challenges to a reader’s capacity to figure things out.

I’m going to talk, in a moment, about the worst-best experience of my writing life, and the lessons learned. First, a couple of words on Townhouse. You’ve been signing up in your 100s since our launch last week. Hooray for that. I hope you’re enjoying the experience. Secondly, yes, we know, we know: the site is working far too slowly. We have some site speed specialists working on that problem right now. We’re hoping to have a fix in the next two weeks or so. And third, it’s just brilliant to see the variety and wisdom of the discussions that are taking place. If you want a peer-to-peer critique, then get involved. Or the “all about writing” forum is already crowded with conversations about (among other things) creative writing degrees, points of view, the use of foreign words, child characters who do bad things, writing contest submissions and more. There’s loads more too. As Townhouse fills up and speeds up, the quality and depth of those conversations is only going to increase. But now, let’s talk car crashes. What if you have a writing car crash? A complete and total failure? And, by the way, we need to be a bit careful to define terms here. If you’re writing your first novel and you make some plotting cock-ups, that’s not a failure – that’s just writing. If you complete your work, edit it hard, then come to us for a manuscript assessment, only to be told that there are still a lot of issues, that too is not a failure. It’s just writing. Same thing, indeed, if you go through the whole process, and send your stuff out to agents, and get some agents wanting to see the full manuscript only, ultimately, to say no. That’s disappointing, of course, but really, that’s a success. You wrote your very first novel and got it good enough, on that first outing, to have serious agents toying with the idea of taking you on? How is that not impressive? So, yes, I have high standards for what constitutes a car crash. I think the key ingredients are (A) your work is way below the standard to be expected from someone of your experience – plus, (B) you’re completely in the dark about how bad things are. If you have the first element without the second, you don’t have a car-crash, you just have an unresolved editorial problem, and we all have those. Again: that’s just writing. But, even on a strict definition, I had a total car crash early in my career – my only really bad experience. I’d already sold my first book, via a highly contested auction, and the book went on to be a bestseller. So: good outcome, right? Better still, I’d delivered the draft of my second book before the first was even launched. So: good author, right? The trouble was that second book was AWFUL. I haven’t kept a draft of it and never re-read it, so I now only have a nightmare-style recall of what was in it. But – plotting, bad. Elevator pitch – worse. Writing – subpar. Characters – patchy and (yeugh) a bit icky too. The draft was so bad that I got called into HarperCollins’ nice London offices for an editorial discussion. My editor and publisher, both very nice humans, told me – gently – how bad the book was. I didn’t need a lot of telling. I wasn’t defensive. As soon as they started to talk it through, I realised they were right. Luckily, I had plenty of time to do a re-write. So I got home, copied the document into a Drafts folder that I could plunder for paragraphs here and there, then selected the whole document and hit delete. This bestselling author had just deleted his second novel. My redraft was about a million times better than the version before, and it was still the least good thing I’ve ever written. But it’s also where I really learned to be a writer. My first novel had just come too easily. The core idea had been a good one. My delivery was fine, or more than fine. But the absence of struggle had also meant an absence of knowhow. I’d read nothing at all about the craft of writing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might need to do so. (We all know how to write, no? You just glue enough sentences together.) That second novel was a wrestling match, start to finish. I read every book I could find on craft. I didn’t agree with everything I read, but even the process of disagreeing made me more reflective, more considered. And that second book didn’t do badly. I got a sort-of film deal for it, which admittedly never quite materialised. The book was shortlisted for one of the big annual writing prizes. It sold a plump five-figures number of copies. I still don’t love the book, but it did OK. My reasons for offering you this story is threefold: Car crashes happen They’re not terminal. Don’t fret. Move on. Use them to learn I’m a huge believer in the importance of craft. Writing technique is the sword and shield that protects you from disaster. It won’t protect you from mistakes – nothing does. But the better your basic writing craft, the quicker you’ll pick those issues up and the more rapidly you’ll solve them. Protect yourself The best way to avoid major problems, however, is to stop making them in the first place. The single strongest tool you have for doing that is a powerful idea for your book. The stronger that idea, the better your delivery is likely to be – and the less any errors of execution are likely to matter. Dan Brown is the ultimate exemplar here. He is a poor writer – but his Da Vinci Code idea was (for his particular market niche) one of genius. You could, I guess, say the same about EL James and Shades of Grey, except that her writing is even worse. The reason I called my own personal car-crash a worst-best experience is because it made me a far better writer. It was the single biggest learning development of my writing life. My first book was gifted to me. The rest? They were all worked for. And if I’m technically competent now, that’s largely because of the kick in the pants I got from that terrible second novel of mine. *** That’s essentially it from me, but, as it happens, we have a “Meet Your Match” pitch session later this month, where you all get to pitch your ideas to agents – either via Townhouse or Twitter. Agents have requested full manuscripts following these sessions in the past. I’m sure they’ll do so again. If you’re a free member of Townhouse, I strongly encourage you to get peer-to-peer feedback on those pitches before you put them in front of agents. Just put your pitch out there, and ask for input. If you’re a Premium Member, then by all means get peer-to-peer feedback, but additionally, I’ll be looking at your elevator pitches from 12.00 to 2.00pm UK-time next Thursday. We’ll also point you to some great video resources on what a great elevator pitch looks like – and how to create your own. For pitches that impress us, we’ll have some free literary agent 1-2-1s to give away. Hey ho. What a week. I’ve promised to take the kids out mushrooming this afternoon. My wife is always terrified that I’m going to feed the kids toadstools, but I’ve not lost a child yet. Till soon, old buddies. Till soon. Harry  PS: This post appears on Townhouse right here  Best way to get a response from me on the issues raised – chat on Townhouse, of course! Let\'s have an after-party. PPS: At the end of this month – the 27th – we’ll have a “Meet Your Match” pitch session with literary agents on Twitter.  In preparation, on the 13 October (next week), I’ll be using my \"Office Hours\" to run an open elevator pitch session on Townhouse. I’m going to help out any Premium Members who want input before the big day. I hope there’ll also be lots of peer-to-peer interaction in addition. During these “Office Hours” I will also be keeping an eye on the Premium Member group for any non-elevator pitch questions you have to ask me. Just hop along and tell me what’s on your mind.  But that\'s not all! On the 20th of October (and thereafter), my colleague Polly Peraza-Brown will also be helping you all in the lead up to Meet Your Match with Twitter etiquette, how to use hashtags and all that. The Meet Your Match preparation group can be found here.  PPPS: Hate writing? Love arboriculture? Don’t actually know what it means, just like the sound of the word? Pah! Unsubscribe, you brute.