Category Archives: Writing a novel

May 12, 2011 · 4:02 pm

The Albion Writers’ Group?

I don’t know what motivated me to suggest a local writer’s group in Ampthill. The reasons I gave last night were networking, support, encouragement and promotion. Not to mention the greater good of thinking of ways to promote our local bookshop and maybe set our sights on a Literacy Festival some time in the future.

Writing can be a lonely occupation. I only have the privilege of two days at home to write per week and I revel in my isolation, greedy to use every moment fruitfully. At lunchtime I sometimes link up with people on #amwriting on twitter; Great for tweeting and receiving tweets full of empathy, sharing in other people’s successes and frustrations.

I was at a local book signing recently at my favourite little bookshop in Ampthill, Horatio’s and got talking to the visiting author. We chatted for nearly an hour and the idea just popped into my head. What a good idea it would be to get together to share experiences and give real support. He agreed. The virtual world is fine but nothing can beat the real thing!

So, yesterday evening I waited nervously at the bar, peering at people surreptitiously, wondering if they looked like writers and feeling a tad self conscious. One writer hoping to attend had flippantly suggested wearing a flower but in the end we didn’t need them. Soon six of us had gathered, a good turn out for a first meeting.

We had no name,(I’ve called it The Albion Writers’, which sounds suspiciosly like Morris Dancers, because we met in The Albion pub, an excellent place with a back room which the greatest writers of the past would have approved of!) no agenda, just a time to share a bit about ourselves and where we are all at now. Conversation flowed. Each of us had such diverse backgrounds in the ‘writing’ field from and ex editor and published author of non fiction, a successful freelance writer, a man who once worked in publishing and had great knowledge of formatting and design, a writer with a book accepted by a Literary Agent and being looked at by a publisher as we speak, a lady who writes at least two blogs, one of which has up to 300 readers, and myself, a writer of historical romantic fiction (not M & B) with one book published and another completed.

One thought that has occurred to me since yesterday ‘What do other writer’s groups get up to in their meetings?’

 We’ve agreed to meet next month and so we’ll see, but I certainly came home buzzing with positivity.

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April 18, 2011 · 2:51 pm

Choosing a Setting –Real or Imaginary

I chose the title ‘Riduna’ for my debut novel because I felt that the name summed up the magical image of the island of Alderney, which I held in my imagination. So much has been written of the Second World War and the tragic circumstances in which the island became a German concentration camp once the islanders had been evacuated. Certainly, anyone who has an interest in Alderney cannot help but read the amazing stories of how the islanders were dispersed at the beginning of WW2, and how many finally returned and painstakingly rebuilt their homes and their lives.

The story of ‘Riduna’ began in the late nineteenth century and, as many of you know who have been reading my blog, was inspired by the life of my great grandmother who was born on Alderney in 1865. An early blog tells of the real story of Harriet Hopkins, which is as fascinating as the work of my imagination.

I chose the name ‘Riduna’ to distance my novel from the more recent tragic period in Alderney’s history of WWII. Riduna, allegedly the Roman name for Alderney (as Aurigny is the French name; the local dialect up to WWII) spoke to me of a more romantic era, with military presence in bright red uniforms, catching the eyes of the local island girls. It told of a time of innocence (and not so innocent!) when the island was relatively protected from the outside world. (The island still is to a certain extent, although a friend and islander once said that I gaze on them with rose tinted spectacles!)

It is as I have continued to write, moving on to the First World War and beyond, that I have found it increasingly difficult to continue to use the name ‘Riduna’ and have, more than once, wanted to change the name back to Alderney. And yet, using a less well known name has its advantages, in that it allows more of a free reign for my creative juices to flow!

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April 14, 2011 · 4:17 pm

What’s in a name? An honest Blunder

Just a quickie to let you know of a pit I have fallen into with names, not just once but twice.

In the past families have often named son after father or grandfather and it is still commonplace to name a baby after a friend you admire or someone you love. That’s all very well in real life, or if the revered persona is diseased, but in a novel you get into deep water if you fall into this trap.

Before the final proof read in Riduna I had named the father of my hero Jo but also Edward’s cousin Young Joe (I know there is a male and female issue here but in my ignorance I did not think of that at the time) Well, this was all very well when Jo the father was on the island of Riduna but Joe the cousin was on Sarnia. They were different scenes which in those days were world apart. The problem came at the end of the novel when Joe visited Riduna.(Alderney) Oh dear. Then things got very complicated indeed. In the end I solved the problem by calling Old Jo, Joseph. That was all very well but I had also confused my editor who had changed some of the Jo’s to Joe’s thinking I’d made several typing errors and so I couldn’t resort to find and replace and had to painstakingly check right through the manuscript before publication.

Now, you would have thought I would have learnt my lesson. When I was planning my next novel which is both standalone and a sequel to Riduna and I hope to have in print by the end of the year, I returned to my original characters I realised my mistake. I had thought it cute for Joe and Harriet to call their baby daughter after their good friend Sarah Mortimer back on Sarnia. This was no problem because they were in Woolston and Miss Mortimer was in Sarnia. (Guernsey) By this time baby Sarah was now married and early in the novel she visited Sarnia. Pow! A helpful friend said, ‘You can’t call her Miss Mortimer all through the story; it sounds a bit strange.

With ingenuity I came up with a solution, but you’ll have to wait to read the novel to find out how!

On a personal note my mother’s home must have been fun to live in. My mum’s name is Patricia. Her brother, whose name is really Bryan, was nicknamed Pat after his father. Strangely enough his father’s real name was Dennis, but was nicknamed Patrick because he was born on March 17th, St Patrick’s Day. The question is, when my grandma, whose name certainly wasn’t Pat, called out ‘Pat’, I wonder who responded, or maybe no one answered at all!

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