When I ghostwrite, it’s a collaboration. The editor, the ‘author’ and various other parties will be involved with it from birth. Together we hammer out the plot. I go to them first with my research questions. We chat about how it’s going. Of course the majority of the work is mine, but by the time I deliver the manuscript it’s as though it’s been written in public.
Writing my own novels is not like that at all.
The first time an agent talked to me about My Memories of a Future Life, it was a surreal experience. I met her in a cafe in Covent Garden, on a freezing cold February evening. We sat outside in the penumbra of a gas heater. As people scurried past on their ordinary way home, a person I had never met before was talking to me, in great detail, about regression to the future. The tangled dynamic between four people. Music and its ghostly role in the book’s world. It wasn’t like any other book I’d written, it was more like a long and elaborate secret I’d been keeping. It was so bizarre I was struck monosyllabic. I still haven’t quite got used to it.
I’m over at Women Writers today, talking about the curious and special relationship writers and readers have with novels. Do join me.
I always feel a tad self-conscious when I get asked to write about what I’ve been up to. Post an entire piece without trying to help, inspire, solve problems…? Can’t I turn it into advice, just a teensy bit? No, said Women Writers, just write what you’ve been doing. Once I started, it turned out I had quite a bit to report for the past few months, so here it is….
Nail Your Novel 