Tag: books

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Let’s imagine you’ve written your novel. You’ve got an agent and/or publisher. The world is your oyster and you’ve got dollar signs lighting up your eyes. You know that a book is a commodity, that sales mean (at least some) money – but where does the money come from? And how else could your book make you money, beyond just flogging copies of it out of the boot of your car?

photo: Gladstone’s Library

The first thing to say is that most authors are not millionaires. So before you start shopping for your luxury yacht, a touch of realism:

Writing doesn’t pay well. Sorry. (If you don’t believe me, check out this info from the Society of Authors.)

Fiction pays slightly better than, say, poetry, but there’s still a lot of disparity within the form, and how much your novel makes will depend on a number of factors, including but not limited to: the genre, whether it’s standalone or part of a series, your publisher, their vision for the book, who reads it and happens to promote it online, whether bookshops get behind it, whether it wins or is shortlisted for any prizes, whether it gets picked up for film or TV (more on that later), your own part in promoting it, and of course, absolute luck.

That said, with fiction, it is technically possible to make a living solely from the books you write. It just isn’t easy.

I’m not saying this to put you off trying (please please don’t let me put you off trying), but just to be honest. (I write an annual blog post about all the various ways I’ve made a living in the previous year, of which the actual writing is only a part.)

But, if you were to make a living solely or even partly from the books, where might that money come from?

Grants & Prizes

Believe it or not, it is actually possible to get money for a book before it’s published, or even before you’ve finished writing it. Highly competitive, yes, but possible.

Generally, this comes in two forms: prizes (a kind of ‘well done, you’re amazing’ for part of the book you’ve already written) and grants (a kind of ‘well done, you’re amazing, here’s some money to write / finish the book’). Different prizes and grants have different stipulations for entry. Some require you to be unpublished. Others require you to have written & published at least two full-length books. Some want you to have finished the book, but not have a publisher (often with these, the prize includes publication and/or agent representation). Some only need to see the first few thousand words.

So where do you find out about them?

A couple of years ago, I put together a twitter thread of resources for writers, which includes places you can look for things like prizes & grants – as well as for residencies.

Residencies are another way to fund the writing of your novel. They don’t all pay, but if you can get one that does, it can be a way to make your book pay even while you’re writing it.

A kitchen table, with a cactus, a lit candle, a notebook and pen, and a mug of coffee

Advance & Royalties

This is the main way most authors get paid for their work, and is the money which comes from books actually being sold in bookshops / online, and is split into two (related) sections: advances and royalties.

Royalties are perhaps easier to understand, so let’s start there.

For every book that’s sold, the author gets a cut. It isn’t usually a big cut, though the percentage you get as a writer will depend on your contract, and whether you have an agent, and whether you’re self-published or published through a traditional publisher. For a traditionally published writer, this tends to be around 10-15%, depending on the edition / number of copies sold.

Self-published writers tend to take a bigger cut, but you also have to do more of the work, and you have to become an expert in multiple areas of the publishing industry. You also don’t get to see any of the money until after copies of the book have been sold. In other words, if you’re self-published, you won’t get an advance.

An advance is one of the big differences between self-publishing and traditional publishing. It’s basically a down-payment on royalties, made to you by the publisher and agreed when you sign the contract. Advances can range from £100 into the hundreds of thousands (though that’s rare), and depend on how much the publisher thinks they can make from your book. What’s its market potential? How many copies will it sell? Will it sell abroad (more on this later)?

Usually, an advance is paid in 3 or 4 chunks: on signing the contract; on delivery of the finished manuscript; on publication (sometimes split into hardback and paperback publication). Then, any royalties the book makes go towards paying off that advance.

Let’s say you get a £5000 advance. Your book costs £10 and you earn 10% royalties – so £1 per book. For the first 5000 copies, you won’t get any extra money, because you’ve already had it in your advance. Once that advance is ‘paid off’, you’ll start seeing royalty cheques. So if your book sells 6000 copies, you’ll be due £1000 in royalties. NB: If your book only sells 4000 copies, you won’t have to pay that extra £1000 back to the publisher. The advance is yours.

Foreign Rights

Books don’t just sell in the UK. If your book is translated into another language (or if it’s picked up by an American publisher as well), then you’ll get money for that, too. How you get this money depends on your contract, and what your advance is for.

When you sign with a publisher, there are two main types of contract: UKCW (UK & Commonwealth, excluding Canada), and World.

If you have a UKCW contract, the publisher can publish & distribute your book in the UK, and in places like Australia & New Zealand, as well as certain English Language bookshops abroad. But they can’t sell the rights for it to be translated. Those rights remain with you – which is where a good agency comes in handy, as the agent (usually a dedicated foreign rights team within the agency that your own agent is part of) will try to sell those rights off individually to foreign publishers. Each time your rights are sold, you get a new advance. For example, you might get a US advance, a German advance, and a Japanese advance, which means you get a new publisher in each of those countries, and a new advance / royalty agreement.

If you have a World contract with your publisher, then the publisher handles all of this instead of the agent. There’s still a new advance each time, but it doesn’t come to you directly. Instead, it goes towards paying off that initial advance the publisher paid you. Think of it like this: the publisher has already paid you a load of money, so they need to make that back before they can pay you any more.

The plus side to this, is that you (or your agent) can demand a bigger advance from the publisher for World rights. The down side is that you only get that payment once – until, as with royalties, you ‘earn out’ (i.e. you earn enough to cover that initial publisher’s advance).

new year writing resolutions: Katie Hale

PLR / ALCS

Royalties aren’t the only way to make money from people reading your book. After all, not every book is bought. Some are borrowed.

Ever wondered about the difference between pirating a copy of a book online, or borrowing it from the library? Well, when you borrow from the library, you’re not only supporting an excellent community-focused service. You’re also paying the author – and at no cost to you. Let’s just stop and think for a moment about how great that is. You get to read a book without paying a penny for it, and the person who wrote it is still getting paid. Wow.

This money comes to the author via PLR (Public Lending Rights). PLR is administered by the British Library, with funding from the Deparment of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Once your book is published, you can register with them as an author, and then individually register your books. Then, once a year, you should receive a small payment, based on how many times your book has been borrowed from the library.

Another annual payment comes from ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society).

I’ll be honest, I understand where this money comes from a lot less. The payment is for ‘secondary rights’ – so, when a school photocopies a textbook, or when libraries outside the UK (and not covered by PLR) lend copies of your book. The important thing for this post, though, is that it’s a source of income for your book. Like with PLR, you have to register your books, and then you get a nice little payment once or twice a year, depending on how much you’re owed.

You have to pay for membership of ALCS – but lifetime membership costs just £36 at the time of writing, and you can easily make that back. Or, if you’re a member of the Society of Authors (which I recommend for all writers), then you get your ALCS membership included.

My writing life - Katie Hale

Prizes (again)

Prizes don’t just happen before the book is published. They also happen afterwards. Think of things like the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize, the Costa Awards. These are a few of the big ones, but there will also be a host of other prizes your book might be eligible for – prizes that are specific to your genre or location.

Prizes usually come with an actual prize, as the name suggests: money, which the winner (and sometimes shortlisted writers) are awarded as a congratulations on their excellent novel.

But this isn’t the only way a prize can earn you money – because prizes also affect sales.

If your book wins the Costa, it’s likely to get pushed closer to the front of the shop. It’ll be on the table near the door in Waterstones, so people see it as soon as they come in. It might be in the window, calling to people in the street. It’ll be on this bookshop e-news, or that recommended reading list. Online booksellers might push it to their front page, or further up their algorithms. If enough people buy it, it might make it onto a bestseller list, which pushes it up these algorithms even more.

More sales = more royalties, which either goes further to paying off your advance, or, once that’s done, means more money in your bank account.

If you’re a traditionally published writer, your publisher will usually submit your book to these on your behalf – though if there are regional / local / particular prizes you happen to know about, you can always mention them to your publisher and request to be submitted.

Self-published books tend not to be eligible for a lot of these prizes – though there are also prizes which are solely for self-published books. The best way to find out about these tends to be sitting down one evening with a glass of wine and google, and making a list for yourself.

A desk covered in bits of manuscript, with shelves of notebooks above

Adaptations

So many writers have that dream: our book is picked up by a big Hollywood producer, it becomes a box office hit, and we make our millions. Extra money, for a book we’ve already written and shelved.

Easy, right?

Not exactly.

For every book you see adapted into a film, hundreds more haven’t made the cut. Firstly, the right person has to read your book and think it might make a good film. (This is where things like sales and prizes come in handy – the more people read your book, the bigger chance there is that one of them will be someone who makes those kinds of commissioning decisions.)

So, let’s say a producer reads and loves your book. Great! Fanastic! Well done you! Usually what happens is they’ll put in an offer for option rights, usually for a period of 18 months to 2 years. This doen’t mean they’re allowed to make the film. What it means is that, for that length of time, you’re not allowed to sell the film rights to anyone else. This then gives the production company 18-24 months to decide whether they want to make the film or not.

Films are phenomenally expensive to make. Seriously – the amount of money involved in making even a small indie film is mind-boggling. That kind of money takes time to find.

At the end of the option contract period, the production company has a choice. They can:

  • buy the actual film rights, which will be a deal with more money attached to it, often a percentage of the film budget (usually with a floor and ceiling amount), or sometimes a percentage of box office take
  • take out another option contract, giving them another 18-24 months to find the funds (with another payment for you as the author)
  • say thank you but no thank you, and walk away (which means you get the film rights back, and, if someone else is interested, begin the whole process again with somebody else)

It’s worth noting that even a film adaptation doesn’t guarantee the big bucks. Joanne Harris is quoted as saying she only received £5000 for the film version of Chocolat. Though it’s also worth nothing that film isn’t the only adaptation. Your book could also be adapted for TV, theatre, radio, game, comic… The options are as many as there are art forms.

As with prizes, an adaptation can also push up sales of your book, as the title becomes something people recognise. Your publisher might release a film-cover version of your book, for example, and this will push a book which has been out a few years back into bookshops.

I bought some fancy coloured gel pens for editing

Extracts

Sometimes, a magazine will print an extract of a book. Or a radio programme might broadcast a first chapter, or an abridged version. Or a section of your book might appear in somebody else’s book (especially if you’re a poet, for example, who might be featured in an anthology, or if you write non-fiction and your work might be quoted).

Because of UK copyight law, all these things mean you would be owed money. Usually, these come in as requests to your agent and / or publisher, but it’s worth keeping an eye out yourself for opportunities as well.

Talks & Book Tours

This one is cheating slightly, because it isn’t just resting on your laurels and making money from the book you’ve already written. You actually have to do something extra for this. I promise you, though, it’s worth it.

How do readers find out about your book? Unless you’re a household name (if you are, then well done, you – and why are you reading this post?) or have a phenomenal social media following, then you need to find ways of persuading people that they want to buy your book. Some of this is out of your hands (reviews in national papers, marketing by your publisher etc), but some of it is much more small-scale, but can have a much higher impact. I’m talking, of course, about book events.

Speaking & reading at festivals and event series can be a great way of getting the message to readers that they really ought to be reading your book – which can translate to sales & royalties, or PLR payments if people borrow it from the library. But you should also be paid for the event itself, too.

The Society of Authors publishes a list of observed rates for things like talks, readings, panel discussions.

Archive

I’ll be honest – I don’t know masses about this. I don’t know how it works, or at what point it becomes an option. All I know is that, during a tutorial at university once, we were told about the phenomenal possibility of a university wanting to purchase your archive.

I’m assuming you need to have more than just one or two books for this to be a possibility – I think you might need to be the sort of writer who has their works studied and read over and over.

All I know is that we had it drilled into us: DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR DRAFTS.

I’m assuming, the more comprehensive your archive, the more a university might offer you for it. As I say, this one isn’t really my area of expertise. But that doesn’t stop me having an attic full of manuscripts in plastic boxes, just in case!

Other Related Work

This last one is vague, but I wanted to acknowledge that you never know where a book is going to take you, or what other work might arise from it. You never know who might have read it, what projects they might have which mesh with yours, what opportunities might emerge. If you have a way that people can contact you (even if it’s just a page on your website, directing them to contact your agent), then the possibilities are there.

It pays (often literally) to keep an open mind.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and found it useful! If you did, then, in the spirit of authors earning money, please do support me by buying a copy of my novel, My Name is Monster. It won’t give you any extra income advice, but it will (I hope) be a good read!

Available from all good retailers, but I have a particular fondness for my lovely local indie, who will ship your order anywhere in the world.

Buy My Name is Monster & support a writer!

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I’m still not sure how we got here. The leaves are turning, and all the summer plants in my garden have started dying back. There’s a chill in the air when I walk up onto the fell, which itself is paling, losing some of its green summer lustre. The nights are drawing close up against the living room window.

And yet, somehow, I catch myself thinking it’s still March. Possibly because of the occasion sunny days that squeeze in through the rain. More likely because I feel as though I’ve been in stasis for the past six months.

But September, at least, has felt a bit different. Things have started moving again.

I won’t say things are back to normal, because they’re not, and there isn’t the same level of work as there was before lockdown. But there have been a few projects which have started to come together.

Cairngorms

September: A Few Good Things

Contains Strong Language:

Contains Strong Language is the BBC’s poetry festival – this year taking place in Cumbria. Obviously, it was an unusual approach to a festival, made necessary by Covid restrictions. But there was still plenty broadcast over the festival itself, and available online afterwards.

I took part in two events during the festival: one was a panel discussion on Ruskin’s View in Kirkby Lonsdale, and on the commissioned poems that four of us had written about it; and the other was an event called ‘Passing Words’, where a whole range of poets each performed six-minute sets. Both of these were broadcast live online (a strange experience, performing to an auditorium almost entirely devoid of anyone other than the production team), and I think there are plans for the events to be made available again on the website in the coming weeks.

(On top of Contains Strong Languague, there’ve also been a couple of other media bits, too – but more on those in the future! After all, I’ve got to keep some secrets…)

Winter Droving film

A top secret project:

And speaking of things that are under wraps… This month, I’ve been taking a little bit of a break from my own writing projects, and working on something a little more collaborative. Which has included a fair few Zoom chats, and even a couple of socially-distanced-masked-up-in-person meetings, which has felt very weird after so many months of very little work with organisations, and certainly none in person.

I can’t say too much about it just yet (oh how I love a good secret!) but I can say that it involves myth and mystery and vlogging and celebrating local places and not-at-all-made-up historical facts. And I’m hoping to be able to reveal what it is over the next few weeks!

beach

Getting away from it all:

Honestly, I think what gave me the energy to work on this new project was a change of scene. Like a lot of people, I’ve spend the past six months not going anywhere. I don’t just mean the usual been-working-too-hard-and-need-a-holiday. It’s been stranger than that. More intense. For months, I hadn’t been anywhere other than my own house and garden, the Co-op and post office (each only a mile away), and walks on the fell within a few miles of my own front door. I hadn’t even been into town to do a ‘big shop’, or into the other town to go to the dentist or get the car serviced. None of the little changes of scene that are so normal in most of our lives that we don’t even notice them.

It was partly this feeling of micro-institutionalisation that inspired my Ruskin’s View poem for Contains Strong Language. And it was also what made my trip to Scotland a few weeks ago both unnerving, and also one of the most refreshing things I could possible have done. A change of company, scenery (and stunning scenery at that), and long walks almost every day were exactly what I needed. I barely thought about writing once – though I did manage to find a few moments in the peaceful heather-filled garden to sit and read. In many ways, the trip was a creative cleanse. It left me physically shattered, but full of mental energy and ready to get back to writing.

Thin Places

The Month in Books:

Ever since the start of lockdown, I’ve been struggling to focus on reading. That’s continued this month, but with a strange sort of imbalance. At the start of September, I found reading incredibly difficult. I was reading the proof of Kerri ni Dochartaigh’s Thin Places, which is a phenomenally beautiful and heart-breaking and also hopeful book, but I was aware that I was reading slowly. Part of this was the desire to soak up every gorgeously crafted word on the page, but part of it was also due to something else. A worry, perhaps. That Covid-related anxiety that’s been bubbling under the surface for so many of us for the past six months or more.

Then, suddenly, I came back from my trip to Scotland, and it was as though something clicked. I started to read again – first finishing Thin Places, and then roaring through four subsequent books as though my life depended on it. Not only was I reading, but I had a hunger for other books as well. I’d stopped looking listlessly at my to-read pile, seeing it as a chore to be accomplished; suddenly, it was back to being a shelf of mysteries, each one silently begging to be uncovered.

The following list might not be the longest ‘books I’ve read over the course of an entire month’ list (and, with the possible exception of a novel in verse, there are no poetry collections on there at all), but it represents somthing else: a kind of re-birth; or, more accurately, a re-falling-in-love, and for that reason I’m proud of it.

  • Thin Places, by Kerri ni Dochartaigh
  • Run, Rebel, by Manjeet Mann
  • The House of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz
  • The Glass Hotel, by Emily St John Mandel
  • English Pastoral, by James Rebanks

And I can’t wait for what the next month of reading is going to bring.

The Month in Pictures:

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There’s a lot of mystery around how a writer makes money. A couple of months ago, I had a great question from a teenager, who heard I was a writer, and wanted to know how many books I’d written. Or, to be clearer – how many books had I earned lots of money from?

Adjusting for inflation (between what counts as ‘lots of money’ to a writer versus what counts as ‘lots of money’ for most other people, and therefore not including my poetry pamphlets), I said, ‘One.’

His response? ‘How can you be a writer if you’ve only written one book?’

It’s a fair question. How can you make a living as a writer if you’ve only written one (full-length) book?

2019: How I Earned a Living (with Pie Charts):

At the beginning of 2019, I wrote a blog post about how to make a living as a writer, compartmentalising the different ways writers (including myself) can earn a living. It wasn’t an exhaustive list, as I don’t think these sorts of lists ever can be – after all, every writer is different, and we all work in different ways to find our own niches.

But it did attempt to break down the various ways that I, personally, earn my income.

I broke my income for 2018 down into sections. I made pie charts and line graphs to illustrate the proportions of these income sections, and to emphasise the inconsistency of earnings month by month. I made the whole thing as clear as I could possibly make it – but with one final caveat: just as a writer’s income is inconsistent month by month, so it’s also often inconsistent year by year.

2018 was an exceptional year for me. I sold the rights to my debut novel, and delivered on my final manuscript, which meant that not only did I receive an advance, but that two thirds of it were paid to me over 2 consecutive months. Cue a big income spike, and a large proportion in the ‘advance’ section of the income pie chart. But the flip side of that was that, as I didn’t publish a book in 2018, it was quite a slim year for readings, talks & festival appearances.

The upshot? The 2018 graphs & pie charts were only part of the picture.

So I’ve decided to break down my 2019 income in the same way – to look at the ways my income was earned in a very different year: one where I didn’t sell the rights to any new books, but my debut novel was released and I had all the attendant income that comes from talks & readings etc alongside that release.

As with 2018, I’ve broken my income down into sections. In 2018, these were:

  • earnings from commissions
  • earnings from running workshops (for young people and for adults)
  • income from competition wins
  • earnings from readings / talks etc
  • money from my advance on my novel
  • income from other arts-related work (mostly, but not limited to, arts administration roles)

One mark of how my income pattern has changed since last year has been the need to add more categories. As my career has grown, I’ve started to get different types of work – which makes sense, when you think about it. So for 2019, I’ve added the following income categories:

  • residencies
  • radio work
  • grant funding

I’ve also had to widen ‘money from advance on my novel’ to include other book sales income, as well as ALCS payments and payments for writing included in magazines & journals.

As becomes very quickly apparent, my biggest income in 2019 came from the 3rd & final part of my novel advance, and from grant funding. This makes sense: a lot of the year was taken up with working on a poetry project, which I was lucky enough to receive an Arts Council DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice) grant to help fund.

The rest of my income, as in 2018, is made up of a combination of other bits and bobs. The ‘portfolio career’ as it’s so attractively called. One interesting factor (at least to me) is that while I did earn some income in the ‘other arts-related work’ category, it was so little as to be rounded down to 0%. For me, this is a good thing, as I deliberately tried to cut down on the paid admin work in 2019, in order to be able to focus more on the actual writing.

But what does the pie chart look like without those two anomalies: the novel advance & the Arts Council grant?

With the anomalies removed, the big changes immediately become more apparent. Let me pop the two graphs (2018 & 2019) side by side here for comparison:

The main changes from 2018-2019:

  • More categories. I’ve already mentioned this, but I’ll mention it again: with the novel coming out, other avenues of work have opened up to me. The two main ones are writing residencies and radio work (both writing & present a programme of my own, and appearing as a guest on others).
  • Increase in readings & talks. From only 2% in 2018, I earned 15% of my (adjusted) 2019 income from giving readings & talks. Again, this makes sense, with the novel coming out. You’re more likely to get readings when you’ve got a recently publish book to promote.
  • Decrease in workshops. This might seem surprising, given that you could expect publication to lead to an increase in workshop bookings. But in 2018, most of my workshops were in schools. The increase in residencies, and being away from home a lot in 2019, meant that I wasn’t around to do as many school workshops as I had done the previous year. An increase in one corner leads, quite naturally, to a descrease in another.

Income by Month:

But what about how my income was distributed across the year? I’ve already talked about how a writer’s income is rarely evenly distributed. As always, this was the case in 2019:

It’s instantly clear that April was a low month – as it was the previous year. In 2018, this was largely because of Easter. In 2019, it was because I spent a chunk of March, and all of April, away in the States, on a research trip (funded by the Arts Council Grant) and on a residency (unpaid). So, while there may not have been any income, there was also basically nothing in the way of outgoings – other than what was already paid for by the grant.

The big spike in June is because of my novel advance. The second-highest point, in January, is because this was when I received the bulk of the Arts Council Grant.

These two anomalies aside, the graph looks more like this:

As you can see, once those anomalies are removed, the first half of the year suddenly starts to look quiet erratic. February and March were pretty good months (thanks largely to a well-paid residency & commission in February, and a good-sized competition win in March), but January & April’s income was non-existent.

But in the second half of the year, after the publication of the novel in June, things settle down a bit. Sure, there’s still a bit of a summer slump, and the standard December dip – but that’s to be expected when you’re working freelance in an industry not directly connected with school holidays or Christmas.

Will things continue in a nicely predictable, secure & even way into 2020? Doubtful. From what I’ve got in the calendar so far, the first half of the year is all over the place – and it’s a bit too far away to make any predictions about the second half just yet. But as long as there’s something coming in (and hopefully a bit of a buffer in the bank account), fingers crossed the electricity will stay on, and there’ll still be food in the fridge.

Ok – so what am I saying with all of this?

I know, I know. This is just a bunch of graphs. Apart from the fact that I quite enjoy making pie charts, what’s the point of all of this?

When I made last year’s graphs, I wanted to point out how unstable a writer’s income can be, and how difficult it is to predict where the bulk of that income is going to come from. This year, my goal is something slightly different.

It can be so easy to assume, once a writer is published, and their book is on the shelves in Waterstones & in your local indie, that they’ve got everything made. A lot of people assume that a cheque comes through every month, with book royalties, and that the writer cashes this in order to cover their bills & food & coffees. I want to show that while, yes, publication has absolutely increased my income, earning a living as a writer still isn’t straightforward. There’s still a need to diversify. There are still months when you can earn almost (if not completely) nothing at all.

Does that sound a bit too doom & gloom? It isn’t meant to. But if you want some consolation, then here it is: sure, making a living as a writer can be difficult, and sure, you can have to turn your hand to lots of different things at once; but the advantage of that variety is that, once something starts to take off, you get to pick and choose, and you get to tailor your work to drop the bits you’re not so keen on, and amplify the bits you love. In other words, you get to create your own ideal job.

*

Read last year’s post:
How To Make a Living as a Writer

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Recently, I was asked to give the keynote speech at my former school’s A-Level awards evening. For me, ‘keynote speech’ always conjures up an image of corporate conferences, sharp suits, and glass tabletops that somehow never seem to show up anybody’s fingerprints but your own.

With that in mind, I decided to do something that was the antithesis of all of that, and to talk about failure. And because I failed to write a blog post for this weekend, I thought I’d share it with you here:

Failing at Your Own Game:

I was a student at QEGS from 2011-2018. I’m now a writer. When you say you’re a writer, something quite off happens in people’s minds – and most people picture something like this:

Or maybe this:

Or even this:

Either that, or they ask if you’re the next J K Rowling, and how many millions you’ve made from your latest novel.

I assume I was asked to come and give this talk because being a published writer constitutes some kind of success. And it’s true that being a published writer does mean you get to do book signings, and occasionally get your book in a bookshop window, or get to go on a writing residency abroad. I’m currently spending a month writing in a medieval castle just outside Edinburgh.

But the reality is that most days are far less glamorous than that. Most of the time, it’s just me, sitting at my kitchen table, trying to hit a word count, and drinking far too many pots of coffee.

So even though tonight is all about celebrating success – and congratulations again to all of you on your A-levels – I don’t actually want to talk about success. Instead I’m going to talk about failure.

I want everyone to stand up.

Take a moment to look at these books. Count how many you’ve read.

Ok. Now I want you to stay standing if you’ve heard of at least one of these books.

Now stay standing if you’ve read at least one of these books (or even seen the film). Two? Three? Four? Five?

Each of these books was originally rejected for publication. So for books that at one point in their lives were considered failures, look how many of you have read at least one of them.

(Ok, sit down now)

These are some of the more famous examples of books that have been rejected, which went on to be bestsellers, and some to become classics. But these books aren’t actually very unusual. All writers get rejected, again and again. I send work off to journals and magazines. I apply for residencies, and grant funding. I submit poems and stories to competitions. The majority of these get rejected. And this isn’t because I’m a bad writer (at least I hope not!). It’s just a normal part of being a writer.

In 2018, I decided to try to apply for 100 things – a mix of residencies, grant applications, competitions, journal submissions – anything that could result either in an acceptance, or in rejection. My idea was that I could then easily find out a percentage of how many applications were successful, with the idea of creating some kind of transparency around how much rejection writers are likely face.

I didn’t quite manage 100 applied, so I failed even in that – but I did manage 87. And then at the end of the year, I made a pie chart.

By the end of the year, over 60% of those applications had been rejected. 19% – less than one in five – had had success or partial success (so, publication, or a prize win or shortlisting). At the time I put this data together, I was still waiting to hear back from 18%, but I can now tell you that only one of those was a success – the rest were all rejections. So the overwhelming majority of my applications in that year were failures.

So my question is: what’s the point? If most applications fail, then why keep doing them? If to be a writer is to be a failure, why even keep writing at all?

The most obvious reason is that not all applications are failures. Some of them (even if it’s just a few) are successful, and of course you don’t know which those are until you’ve tried, so you have to keep throwing out your net in the hope of catching a fish.

But there are other reasons too.

One is that failure is something we can learn from. If I send a poem into a magazine, most of the time it’ll come back as a rejection. But this gives me an opportunity to look at what isn’t working in the poem – to rewrite it and make it better. Each time a poem gets rejected, it’s another opportunity to improve it, and another opportunity to turn that failure into some kind of success.

But I also think it’s worth challenging what we perceive as failure, and what we perceive as success.

To look at this firstly in terms of writing: there’s a great quote from poet Caroline Bird, which is: ‘Writing a poem is impossible and once you realise this, you’re free.’ What I think she means is that, when you sit down to write a poem, you have in your head the perfect image of what this poem might be. (I know not all of you are poets – stay with me here, I promise there’s a great life lesson coming.)

You sit down to write a poem, and you imagine it’s going to be deep and thoughtful, it’s going to be moving, and lyrically beautiful, and full of original and striking imagery, that people are going to be quoting for the next 400 years – and next think you know, you’re winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The poem I end up writing may well have some of those qualities (although I’m yet to be nominated for a Nobel Prize), but it’s never going to be as perfect as the poem I imagined in my head. There’s another quote, by French essayist Paul Valery, which is: ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned’. In other words, there’s always more that you can improve on.

But that’s why I keep writing. If I can never succeed in writing the perfect poem, then in a way, every time I sit down to write a poem, I’ve already failed – because it’s never going to be perfect.

This could be a really depressing way of looking at things – but instead, I find it inspirational. If so-called failure is inevitable, then we need to rethink what success looks like.

I remember the poet Don Paterson talking about the process of getting a book published: how for years and years, you can strive to have a book of poems published, because this is your ultimate goal. You eventually manage to secure a publisher. You spend years sending the manuscript back and forth to your editor. Eventually, you’ve done everything you can. You’ve seen the cover design. The publication date is set. You’ve figured out what you’re going to wear for your launch party and invited all your friends. The box of books finally arrives and they’re beautiful – slim volumes of your poems, with that enchanting new book smell and your name printed on the cover. You open the book, scan your eye over the first poem – and realise there’s a typo on line 3.

You’ve finally reached your end goal – you’ve finally achieved what you thought was success, only for it to disappoint you.

So my definition of success as a writer isn’t about publication, or book sales, or winning the Nobel Prize (although obviously all of those things are lovely if they happen to you). It’s about being able to write, and to keep on improving my craft as a poet and a novelist. To always be learning more about how to write, and to keep on putting that learning into practice.

Once I started thinking of success in these terms, every day that I get up to write becomes a success. Every time I write a sentence that I’m particularly proud of, is a success. Every finished poem is a success. The only failure is not writing, and not engaging with the process of writing.

So ok, you’re not all poets – so what does all this have to do with you? Well, for any of you who do write, this might sound all too familiar. But as I promised, we can extrapolate these lessons out to cover any aspect of life, not just writing.

When I was at QEGS, I was one of those annoying students who was good at both maths and English. What I liked about maths was that there might be multiple ways of getting there, but in the end there was a single right answer. What I liked about English was that there wasn’t.

So what does success look like to you, personally?

It might be running a multi-million-dollar start-up, and having your own private tropical island somewhere. But it could equally be really getting to know that one aspect of something you’re interested in, becoming an expert in, say, coffee production, or the way a painting is put together. There’s no right answer for your life, and no one definition of success. The best bit about your life, is that you get to define what makes it successful.

When I was asked to give this talk, I had no idea what I was going to say to you all. So I asked a load of other people what they would want to tell their 18-year-old selves – and I want to end by sharing some of their thoughts:

  1. Be curious and pursue what you enjoy. Being an expert is safe and boring, and learning is much more interesting. You don’t have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.
  2. Look after with knees, because with luck, you have a long journey to travel together.
  3. As long as you’re kind to other people, it isn’t selfish to also be kind to yourself.
  4. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to do with your life – you’ve got your whole lifetime to figure it out.
  5. The word ‘career’ also means ‘to travel downhill in an uncontrolled manner’. Job titles aren’t as important as you think. Lead with your heart, then let your head figure out how to get there. Remember that all those people who look as if they’ve got their lives completely sorted – they all have doubts and problems too. So resist the temptation to compare yourself to them.
  6. Enjoy the things that are enjoyable – don’t fall for the lie that there’s always a better party going on somewhere else. And if you do want a better party, by all means start your own.
  7. Whatever makes you different can end up being your superpower.
  8. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not capable of achieving your dreams. But make sure the dreams you’re dreaming are your own and not someone else’s.
  9. There are so many ways to get where you’re going; it might be university, or it might be an apprenticeship, or saving up to travel the world, or getting at job in Morrisons. What’s important is your own individual journey.
  10. It’s never too late to change your mind.

And lastly, because I’m talking about failure, I’m going to fail to stick to just ten points, so I want to add three of my own thoughts to finish on:

  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help, particularly when it comes to crowd-sourcing your speeches.
  • Make sure you can cook at least one fancy meal, so you’ll always be able to impress people.
  • And lastly, and most importantly, keep on failing. Failing is a way to remind yourself what you enjoy about something. It isn’t the end result that’s important; enjoy the process. Learn. Develop. In the words of Samuel Beckett: ‘Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’ And I’m going to add to Becket’s words, and say: don’t bother striving for somebody else’s definition of success; find your own definition of success, and fail at that instead.

So congratulations again on the success of your results – and here’s to the rest of your lives!

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Some years just rattle over from one to the next, with very little sense of change or progression between them. Then again, some years are like fireworks, bursting into a glorious array of sound and light, leaving you dazed and slightly dizzy in their wake. 2019 has been one of those years – summarised as best as I possibly can here, in a mix of words and pictures.

Publications:

Let’s start with the big one, which I’m sure everyone reading this is already well aware of, as I’ve barely shut up about it for the past 12 months: my debut novel, My Name is Monster, which was published by Canongate in June.

From the moment I first saw the proposed cover design for the book, I fell in love with it. Since then, it’s been a rollercoaster of proofreading, launches, and two (yes, two!) dedicated bookshop windows! I did a series of events in some of the amazing bookshops and libraries around Cumbria, and appeared at a bunch of festivals, including Cheltenham, Edinburgh Book Fest, Port Eliot & Borderlines.

Seeing the book in print, and even more seeing it on the shelves in bookshops, has been a phenomenal experience. It still feels strange to know that something that started off as a vague idea somewhere in the recesses of my brain, has been made into an actual physical object, that people can pick up and buy and read and take their own thoughts from. It’s like some strange form of alchemy.

My Name is Monster: available from all good bookshops!

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In the poetry department, 2019 also saw the publication of my second pamphlet, Assembly Instructions.

Assembly Instructions was published in March by Southword, after winning the Munster Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. And, because Southword are based in Cork, I got to travel to Cork Poetry Festival to launch it, and to read from the book at Cork Library.

Read the opening poem from Assembly Instructions here.

Residencies:

This year, I’ve learned that residencies are like buses. You spend years applying for them, and then suddenly all the successful applications come through at once.

My first residency was for the month of February, with an organisation I know well, having run numerous schools workshops for them over the past 5 or 6 years: The Wordsworth Trust, in Grasmere.

While I did, of course, write poetry during the residency, what proved most valuable was the time to read, and the time to experiment with poetic practice. These are the things that so often get pushed to the side, in favour of admin and deadlines, so it was hugely important to have that time to focus on the poetic craft, without the pressure of having to ‘produce’ something.

Residency Round-Up: The Wordsworth Trust

I’m certain this time was instrumental in setting me up for the amount of work I produced during my second residency of the year: MacDowell.

MacDowell Colony is a multi-disciplinary residency, set across an area of woodland in New Hampshire, USA. Each resident gets their own studio, which takes the form of a little house or cabin in the woods, and gets their lunch delivered to them in a little picnic basket. Breakfast & dinner are communal meals in the big house.

Residency Round-Up: MacDowell Colony

The main thing I noticed at MacDowell was how much time there was in each day. Having someone else cooking my meals for me freed up way more time than I’d anticipated, and I had possibly the most productive 3 weeks I’ve had all year – rivalled only by my first 3 weeks at Passa Porta.

Passa Porta was my third residency of the year, in Brussels. It was a month-long stay in an apartment in the centre of Brussels, through a partnership between Passa Porta, the National Centre for Writing and the Flemish Literature Fund. It gave me the chance to finish a first (very rough) draft of my poetry collection – and, of course, to eat a lot of waffles!

Each of these 3 residencies had a very different feel, and I learned a lot about myself and about my ways of working by doing them. (I think I may write a blog post about it sometime in the new year. Watch this space!) But in the meantime, I’m just celebrating the opportunity to live and work in such beautiful places, and to meet so many interesting people.

And speaking of beautiful places…

Arts Council Funding:

At the end of 2018, I was lucky enough to be awarded a DYCP (Developing Your Creative Practice) Grant from Arts Council England.

As well as buying me time to write this year, the grant also paid for me to go to the US to research my collection. This was split between 10 days in New York, using the collections at New York Public Library, and around 10 days driving between Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, following the historic route that my ancestors took towards Missouri, and eventually to Kansas.

The opportunity to research the collection in the actual places where so many of the poems are set was incredible. I met some hugely interesting people along the way (and had some conversations that still leave me reeling – some of which have made it into poems), and got to drive through some utterly stunning landscapes. Honestly, I think I’m still processing the trip, and working bits of it into the poems. I’ll probably still be processing it long after the collection is finished.

(Side note: if you’re considering applying for a DYCP grant, go for it! it’s a [relatively] straightforward application, and it’s proved to be invaluable for me.)

Radio:

This year, I’ve also slipped, almost accidentally, into the world of national radio. Specifically: Radio 4.

This started at the end of last year, when I was asked to write & present the Cumbria episode of Tongue & Talk: The Dialect Poets, for independent production company Made in Manchester. The programme was one in a series, exploring dialect poetry in regions across the country, and its continuing impact today. I was given the Cumbria episode, which I used to explore the intersection between dialect poetry, place and identity – particularly looking at what it means to be an ‘offcomer’ in Cumbria. The programme aired at the start of June, just before My Name is Monster was published.

Then, since My Name is Monster came out, I’ve also been on Radio 4 a couple of times to talk about that. The first was on Open Book, from the Edinburgh Book Festival in August, talking about the book in the context of millennial writers / readers. The second was just a couple of weeks ago, on Front Row, which was based around the 300th anniversary of the publication of Robinson Crusoe, and why we’re still drawn to survival stories. An interesting one to talk about the day after the general election…

And the rest:

2019 has also been not a bad year for prizes – though mostly in the ‘almost, but not quite’ category. Still, given the calibre of some of the competitions, and the high quality & quantity of entries, I’m over the moon to be shortlisted, or even longlisted! This is something I’m a firm believer in: there’s so much poetry & fiction out there, that any positive recognition of a piece of work is something to be hugely proud of, whether it wins the big first prize or not.

This year, those successes have included: being shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Mslexia Poetry Prize, and the Bridport Poetry Prize; coming 3rd in both the Magma Editors’ Prize and the Plough Short Poem Prize; and being longlisted for the University of Canberra Vice Chancellor’s Poetry Competition. I’ve also had individual poems published in Magma magazine, Under the Radar, and in Mslexia – which I’ve been tryingt to get a poem into for the past decade!

To add to the other poetry, this year I was commissioned by Théâtre Volière to write a series of poems exploring the history of women in and around Gretna. The poems ranged from the more well-known stories of elopements, to the women who worked at the nearby ‘Devil’s Porridge’ munitions factory during the First World War, to those who worked the land and fished in the Solway. The poems were performed at Ye Olde Mitre pub in London in March, along with music from Scottish fiddle-player Lori Watson. They were then performed again in October, at the RADA studio in London, as part of an event launching the anthology of commissioned work.

I also wrote a couple more commissioned poems for the National Trust this year, as part of their Tables Turned project: a three year participation project, which is all about bringing together community groups, young people, historians, curators and artists in projects that deepen understanding, build new partnerships and inspire creativity.

Having written a poem in response to meeting the miners and listening to them recount their experiences of working in the mines on Cumbria’s West Coast, I was then commissioned to write two more poems, inspired by the work the National Trust had done with other groups: pupils from Keswick School, and members of Glenmore art group and Glenmore creative writing group. These poems were a mix of original work, and words collaged from the work and conversation of participants. The result? Three poems, each then filmed by John Hamlett, which were played as part of the Under Northern Skies exhibition alongside artwork from the groups, at Carlisle Old Fire Station.

So what next?

2020 is already shaping up to be as busy as 2019.

I’ve already got 4 residencies lined up for next year, to continue working on my poetry collection, and to (hopefully) make a start on drafting my second novel: a month at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland; 3 weeks at the Kathrine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in Perth, Australia; another month at Gladstone’s Library just over the border into Wales; and 2 weeks at Heinrich Boell Cottage, on Achill Island in Ireland.

To tie in with the Australia residency, I’m also planning an epic trip in the first part of next year (think multiple countries & continents!), during which I’ll turn 30! It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes ago since I was making my ’32 things before 30′ list, so it’ll be good to look back and see which ones I’ve managed to achieve.

And when I get back? There’s always Kendal Poetry Festival to look forward to (I’ll be orchestrating a guerrilla poetry project for that again in 2020), and a bunch of workshops that are already booked into my diary.

Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough – next year will not only see the release of the paperback of My Name is Monster (with a new & equally beautiful cover that I can’t wait to share!), but will also see the book published in German, as Mein Name ist Monster! World domination here we come…

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just continue working on my poetry and my fiction, and sharing the occasional blog post.

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Hope you’ve had a wonderful 2019 – and all the best for the new year. Happy writing!

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If you’ve glanced at this blog any time over the past few months, or if you follow me even vaguely on any social media platform, you’ll likely have noticed that my debut novel came out just over a week ago. ‘What’s that?’ you yell in mock surprise, a sarcastic hand flying to your cheek, ‘A novel? Well why didn’t you say something?’

Alright, I get the point. My Name is Monster came out ten days ago, and (with the exception of a photo of a giant bee) I haven’t really talked about much else since.

(Not really relevant to the post, but it was enormous!)

What actually happens when you launch a book?

In some ways, not a lot. One day your book isn’t available to buy in shops; the next day it is. This doesn’t always happen on the day you expect it to, either. Unless your book is embargoed till a specific date (think: queuing up at midnight for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), bookshops tend to just put the copies on the shelves the moment they arrive in stock. This could be a few days before the book’s official release date, so that rather than some momentous arrival, they sort of trickle into the public. I didn’t realise this until it was actually happening, so it was a bit of a surprise when people started sending me pictures of the book out and about in the wild, before its official release date.

Books are a bit like elections, in that they almost always come out on a Thursday. Presumably this is due to some social study about us being more receptive to culture, or more likely to spend money, or just in a better mood in general, towards the end of the week. Who knows? My secondary school concerts were always on a Thursday too.

This means that some writers will wait to have their official launch celebration till the Friday, or the Saturday. Some will have it on the launch day itself. I’m not sure it matters really – I think it’s about what’s most convenient for the writer and the venue.

Usually, a launch will consist of a reading, usually in a bookshop or a library, followed by a signing and maybe some wine. This is what I did on the Thursday that my book came out, at Cakes & Ale: the cafe run by the wonderful independent Carlisle bookshop, Bookends. It was a lovely evening, filled with lovely people, and a nice long signing queue! This, I suppose, was my informal formal bookshop launch, and it was a lovely way to begin the process of sending Monster out into the world.

But I remember reading an article once, a long time ago, where someone said: You can do anything to launch a book. 

So of course, I also channeled my inner royalty, and had a garden party.

Obviously, since this is Cumbria, I planned for the rain, and borrowed a couple of party tents from Morland Choristers’ Camp, as well as a bell tent from touring Shakespeare company, The Three Inch Fools. (Who says being well-connected in the arts doesn’t pay off?) It was lucky I did, as well, because although the morning’s torrential downpour had eased off slightly by the time the party got underway, it was still a bit drizzly throughout the afternoon – not to mention cold!

But, weather aside, it was a joyful event: totally informal (although I did do a couple of readings from the book during the course of the party, and I signed a lot of copies). It was an opportunity to celebrate and to drink plenty of Pimms with plenty of friends. I highly recommend it as a way of launching a debut novel!

So what now?

Although the official launch events are over, I’ve still got plenty of opportunities lined up for talking about the book. Most of these are in Cumbria, but there are also a few a little further afield.

This is what I suppose most people would call a book tour – though I always find that term a bit misleading, because when you talk about being ‘on tour’, I think a lot of people imagine you’re away for long periods of time, staying in hotels every night as you travel from place to place. Whereas for me, I’m spending most nights in my own bed and just driving to each event the same way I’d drive to anywhere I was working on a project.

(Thanks to Will Smith from Sam Read Bookseller in Grasmere for this infographic!)

The exception to this is the London bit of the tour, where of course I will be staying overnight:

19 June:
The Feminist Book Society presents: Motherhood – the last feminist taboo // Waterstones, Tottenham Court Road, London, 6.30pm

20 June:
Writers’ Night: Katie Hale & Hanna Jameson // Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London, 7pm

So how do you organise a book tour?

Like everything else when it comes to publishing a book, it has to be done in advance. You can’t just decide a week before the book comes out that you’d like to do some events. I started talking to Bookends about my launch night back in November, and to Cumbria Library Service in about January. This advanced planning was particularly important for me, because I knew I would be out of the country for about 7 weeks in the lead-up to the book coming out, so I had to be on my toes from the start. (When in doubt, I always make lists – and I made a lot of lists in the months leading up to the launch.)

This is also where those contacts I was talking about earlier can come in handy. I already had a relationship with Bookends: apart from being my local bookshop (or one of them), they supported me with a guest slot at an open mic when my first poetry pamphlet came out, and are jointly responsible for Borderlines Book Festival (along with Cumbria the Library Service & Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery), where I ran a poetry workshop last year. Similarly, I had a contact at the Library Service, through a network we both used to sit on when I was working as a project officer for a literary project a few years ago. These sorts of connections aren’t essential, but it always helps if people know who you are before you ask them for a favour!

As for the other bits of the tour, they just sort of fell into place by themselves. The London events, and the Kendal & Lancaster Waterstones events, were organised for me by my publisher, Canongate. And the event at Sam Read Bookseller also came about through a personal connection: the lovely Will Smith & Polly Atkin, who fed me lots of pasta and jacket potatoes (not at the same time), while I was their neighbour as Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust back in February.

How’s it all going so far?

Busy.

I don’t think I realised quite how much of an emotional and physical toll the stress / pressure / need to always be alert and sound intelligent would take on me. And that’s on top of all the worrying about whether people are going to actually like this book you’ve written.

Luckily, I’m starting from a good place. Not only do I have a healthy smattering of events lined up, but the book itself looks beautiful. The cover design is the work of Canongate artist Gill Heeley, and I think that goes a long way towards how the book has been received at a bookseller level. For instance, most places I’ve seen it, the cover has been face out (so that the front of the book is visible, rather than just the spine), and in some cases it’s even been on freestanding displays or on tables. All of these things increase the prominence of the book in the shop, and push towards it (hopefully) selling more copies. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it all continues to go well.

And in the meantime, I have this weekend to catch up on sleep, hoover my kitchen and curl up by the fire with a book – which means that next week, I’ll be raring and ready to try to sound intelligent in book events once again.

10 pieces of advice for launching a book:

  1. Do your preparation in advance. This goes from physical preparation like organising book events, to getting in touch with local press contacts, to writing blog posts etc that will go live on the day. Part of this is about creating some sort of hype around the book, getting people excited, and part is just reducing work for yourself. You want to make things as easy as possible for yourself when the launch day finally comes around. Also bear in mind, you’re going to have to talk about your book a lot, so make sure you know in advance what you’re going to say about it. I worked out my elevator pitch with my publicist back around Christmastime, and I’ve been practising things to say about the book ever since – usually in the car when nobody can hear me!
  2. Take lots of pretty pictures of your book. You’re going to be posting about the book a lot on social media. Whether you’re talking about receptions it’s had, or trying to promote book events, these things always look better if there’s an eyecatching picture to go with them. So make sure you have a stock of these (and maybe keep them in a separate album on your phone / computer for ease), because you don’t want to keep using the same picture every time.
  3. Plan your outfits. This sounds shallow, but deciding what to wear is hard enough even when you’re not stressing about the fact that your book has just been released to the world at large. If you have a selection of outfits that you know you can wear to book events, which you’ve chosen in advance, then it takes the pressure off. Also, these outfits can become part of your ‘look’ as a writer – which I suppose is a way of branding yourself. Maybe I’ll do another post sometime about branding yourself as a writer, as there’s too much to fit into one little corner of this post.
  4. Don’t try to go on a diet in the weeks directly before or after the launch. I know, I know. Even looking at this now it sounds like a stupid idea. Why give myself extra pressure? Besides, when you’re bombing around the county / country doing book events, sometimes you just need to stop on the way back home for late-night chips & gravy.
  5. Don’t try to squeeze writing funding bids in between a full week of book events. Or any particularly stressful work, for that matter. Save your time and energy for promoting your book. And if there are funding applications with deadlines around the same time as your book launch, try to find out about them in advance, so you don’t give yourself a frantic few days of multitasking. That said, don’t forget about the rest of your work life either. Emails don’t just go away just because you have a book out – if anything, they increase. Remember to factor in admin time.
  6. If you have to work on something, make it a creative project. Almost certainly, you write because it’s something you enjoy, because it’s a drive that comes from deep within you and you can’t ignore it, because it’s some sort of unhealthy addiction and there’s a peace to be found in giving in to the urge to write. This might actually be the exact antidote to all that pressure of the book being launched. While you’re writing, you can forget the stress and the hype and the pressure of the book you’ve just launched doing well, and focus instead on the craft of a new project. Lose yourself in something new.
  7. Eat well. Late-night chips & gravy notwithstanding, it’s important to eat well. Don’t skip breakfast. Don’t try to subsist on leftover chocolate cake from launch event number one. Don’t spend every evening valiantly trying to get through the leftover open bottles of wine and prosecco. Honestly.
  8. Get plenty of sleep. Promoting a book is tiring. The physical toll of doing numerous events on consecutive nights is bad enough, but the emotional toll of the stress of it, the worry over how the book will be received, and the mental toll of having to think of intelligent-sounding things to say all the time – all of these add up. Make sure to factor in days off when you can have early nights and lie-ins.
  9. Take time to enjoy it. I’ve talked a lot about the stress and the pressure of launching a book, but obviously it’s also a pretty exciting time. After all, this is something you’ve been working towards for years. For as long as you’ve wanted to be a writer. For a long time, this was your end-goal. Your I’ve-made-it moment. Enjoy it, because it’s going to go quickly, and you don’t want to back on it and realise that you were too stressed to actually savour your own achievement. You’ve produced a book and should be proud of yourself. Take moments to appreciate that.
  10. Give yourself something to look forward to when it’s over. As I said, most likely this was your end-goal for a long time. You’ll be hectically busy, but you’ll also be on an emotional high. But, as every parent-of-a-toddler knows, emotional highs are nearly always followed by an emotional crash. The likelihood is, once your manic couple of weeks are done, you’ll be feeling pretty flat. So give yourself something to look forward to. It could be a holiday. It could be meeting up with friends. It could just be sitting by the fire with a pile of books and an unlimited supply of pizza. Whatever floats your boat.

A Book Launch Week in Pictures:

 

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Last weekend, I went to the Open the Door festival at Glasgow Women’s Library, where I heard (among other people) Ali Smith talking about the books and writers who had opened the door for her. It got me thinking about the writers that did that for me – both for poetry and for prose.

In poetry, I think this is slightly more complex, as a lot of the poets who have opened the poetry door for me have done it not just through their own writing, but also as individual people I’ve worked with. But what about fiction?

I’ve talked before about how Penguin Random House’s WriteNow scheme gave me the confidence to think of myself as a fiction writer in general – but what about the specific novel? What were the books that opened the door to My Name is Monster?

Bookcase bookshop, Carlisle

1 – Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is probably one of the more obvious influences on the book, as in many ways My Name is Monster is a reversioning of Robinson Crusoe. It’s the story of a woman who believes she’s the last person left alive on earth – and then she finds a girl. The book echoes Crusoe’s solitude on the desert island, his quest for survival, and his subsequent finding (and enslaving) of Friday.

I’ve always had quite a complicated relationship with Robinson Crusoe, ever since I had to read it during my first year of university. On one hand, it’s a story that occupies such a prominent place in our culture. It’s amazing how many people know the story (or at least the basic elements of it), without having read the book itself.

It’s also amazing how many of those people think they’ve read the book, even when they actually haven’t. And understandably – on both counts. There are numerous retellings of the Crusoe survival story, from The Martian to Castaway to Bear Grylls, so it makes sense that we think we know it. But the book itself is actually pretty heavy going. There are a lot of pages before Friday even appears (and before the famous ‘footprint in the sand’ moment), largely narrating Crusoe’s religious transformations, or going into very great detail on the mechanics of building a shelter. Despite being a story so many of us think we know, it isn’t exactly a page-turner. At least, not until the pirates show up.

And of course, there’s also the problematic colonial aspect to the book: its positioning of Friday as the enslaved native who Crusoe proceeds to ‘civilise’; Crusoe’s ability to lay claim to the island solely by virtue of his having been washed up there; the problem of his naming of things.

These were all aspects of the book that drew me in, and that made me want to answer it in some way. My Name is Monster is in many ways a reversioning of Robinson Crusoe, but it’s also a response to some of its themes.

bookshelf - Katie Hale

2 – Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

As well as being a retelling of Robinson Crusoe, My Name is Monster is also very heavily influenced by Frankenstein.

Unlike Crusoe, I’ve loved Frankenstein ever since I read it – again during my first year of university. In some ways, the themes of the two classics are quite similar: both deal with one human’s desire to create and control another, and ways of coping with enforced isolation. Both ask who has the power to name a person or a thing.

But whereas Crusoe puts Friday in a position of subservience, Frankenstein presents two individuals with a much more complex creator / created relationship. They are really equal protagonists, and the questions this allows the book to ask are much more complex – questions that have shaped the genre of science fiction ever since, such as to what extent can a created being be considered human?

The question of how much we can truly create another conscious being is one that feeds directly into My Name is Monster – as, of course, does the name ‘Monster’.

Sliding ladders in Topping's Bookshop, St Andrews
Sliding ladders in Topping’s Bookshop, St Andrews

3 – The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

Given that My Name is Monster is set in an empty world, it’s perhaps unsurprising that there’s a post-apocalyptic novel on this list. I first read The Road when I was at secondary school, and it made a huge impression on me.

What I loved about the post-apocalyptic element to the book, was that that wasn’t the story. The story was the man and the boy, and the relationship between them. The post-apocalyptic setting was just the circumstances needed to tell that relationship story. This is something that interests me: the way something huge can have happened / can be happening in the world of the book, but we remain focussed on the central characters, and on the relationship between them.

Of course, The Road is also just a beautiful written book. The prose is so precise that it feels incredibly simple. But, like most things that appear simple, it’s a demonstration of huge writing skill, and an ability to cut away all the details that don’t really matter – something that’s much harder than it sounds in something the size of a novel!

writing prompt - Katie Hale

4 – The Shepherd’s Life, by James Rebanks

The most recent book on this list, The Shepherd’s Life, is only a few years old. It’s a non-fiction book about sheep farming on the Cumbrian fells. It’s a sort of love letter to the landscape I’ve grown up in, and to its agriculture.

When I first moved back to Cumbria after university, I was feeling a bit of resentment. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Cumbria (it’s beautiful, for one thing, and there’s a sense of individuals mattering here in a way that sometimes gets lost in cities) – but it was more that I felt like I ought to have gone somewhere else; this was where I started, and being back here felt like I hadn’t moved forward at all. Like a lot of people who move home / near home, I was worried I would revert to the person I was when I last lived here, aged 18.

Reading The Shepherd’s Life helped me fall in love with Cumbria again. Rebanks’ experiences of Cumbria are very different to mine; although I grew up surrounded by farms and fields and sheep, I’m not from a farming family, so I don’t have the same inter-generational relationship with the land. But the book is so connected to the physicality of the landscape that it helped me to feel connected to Cumbria again. I felt I understood the landscape in a way I’d only ever guessed at before – and that fed into the characters’ lifestyles in My Name is Monster.

My Name is Monster by Katie Hale - proof copy

5 – Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

Probably like a lot of queer people, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit opened so many doors for me, not just in terms of fiction, but in life as well. Like The Road, I read it while I was at secondary school, and it shaped my understand of who and what could belong in a novel.

But it also influenced my understanding of character – the bold details that can make a character leap off the page, till you feel as though they’re somebody you’ve met – and of the unreliable narrator: something that was compounded when I read Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal several years later.

The nods to history and fairytale and mythology in much of Winterson’s work is something that I often think about – something that also captures me in Ali Smith’s writing. I’m interested in the way in which all of this provides intertextuality, and gives the novel breadth, so that it seems to breathe beyond the confines of it’s 200-ish pages. Like in The Road, the focus remains on the character(s) at the centre of the story, but there’s so much more happening in our peripheral vision.

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My Name is Monster is due from Canongate on 6th June 2019, and is available for pre-order from all good bookshops.

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I’m sitting in the back corner of Brew Brothers café in Kendal. It’s just after 5pm on a Friday night. Outside, the street is full of people gearing up for a big night out, or trudging home after a difficult week at work – but in here, it’s warm and bright. There’s a mellow buzz of conversation against the backdrop of music: a mix of people meeting up for post-work coffees, or a pre-dinner glass of wine. One or two other people also have laptops. For me, at this moment in time, there’s just the right level of background stimulus to provide a productive atmosphere.

Writing poetry in a cafe in Grasmere

I haven’t always written in cafes. When I was a student, I found it next to impossible – too easy to be distracted by what was going on around me. But since then, I’ve started to lean towards it more and more. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe something to do with how our brains change as we get older, or the fact I have exponentially more admin than I did as a student, trying to distract me from the creative stuff. I still do the bulk of my writing sitting at my kitchen table – but when your writing space is the same as your living space, sometimes it can be good to take a break.

The seat I’ve chosen in this cafe is significant. It’s in the corner, with a view of the rest of the café. Separate from everyone else, not overlooked, and yet with a view. The other people with laptops have taken up similar seats.

There’s an evolutionary theory that most humans would plump for these sorts of positions, away from the door but with a view of the rest of the room. Prehistorically, it means we were far enough into the cave to be safe and warm, yet able to see the entrance in case a predator should approach. Calm, yet alert.

Like a lot of evolutionary theory, this is probably largely guesswork, but it imitates the state I tend to occupy when I write, halfway between relaxed and on edge. Or, as X-Men: First Class would have it, ‘somewhere between anger and serenity’.

There’s something about being in a café that provides this carefully balanced feeling. But, as with all balances, it can quickly tip one way or the other. I have to be picky not only with the seat I select, but with the café that it’s in. Somewhere with ambient noise, but not too much of it. Somewhere bustling, but not too full. And above all, somewhere with good coffee and cake.

MY TOP 5 CUMBRIAN CAFES FOR WRITING IN

Of course, there are downsides to writing in cafes as well. One is that you’re always dependent on it not getting too busy. Another is that, really, there’s only so much time you can spend in a café, unless you want to spend your money on buying your lunch and a lot of coffees there. (I mean, it’s probably still cheaper than renting an office space if you’re someone who can’t write at home.)

And for some people, any noise while writing is something of an abhorrence. We all have our different practices. The important thing is finding what works for you, or for this particular project, or even for this particular scene or poem or whatever.

Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.

This is one of a number of pieces of advice that I sometimes hand out in creative writing workshops. It comes from the Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules, written by Sister Corita Kent (though often incorrectly attributed to John Cage). It’s a list of ten ‘rules’, which urge the writer/artist to develop a work ethic, and to engage with the world around them.

Finding a place you trust is rule number one.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a café, a pub, your attic, or a park bench. I think the important thing, for me, is that it’s a place that allows for that feeling of intense focus that comes from being both calm and alert simultaneously. And then, once you’ve found it, you have to trust it.

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A couple of years ago, I listened to Liz Lochhead being interviewed on Desert Island Discs. One of the songs she selected was Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Some Days There Just Ain’t No Fish’ – a 1947 song written by Bob Russell & Carl Sigman.

I’ve used a fishing metaphor on this blog before, when talking about submitting work to magazines & competitions, but it applies equally well to the actual creative process, too. The more often you sit down and try to write – the more often you cast your line – the more likely it is that inspiration will catch.

‘Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.’ – Picasso

Which is all very well and good, and a useful maxim for forcing yourself to write when you think you’re too tired / hungover / busy / distracted etc etc. But what about when there’s something deeper going on, that’s in some way blocking your creativity?

I’ve talked a little bit before about what I think are the different types of writers’ block: the ‘I don’t really fancy writing at the moment’ type, and the ‘there’s actually something major that I need to deal with in my mental health that is completely prohibiting me from writing’. (Clue: the first one is much easier to solve, and basically just requires discipline; the second one is much more tricky.)

So what do you do if you’re experiencing that second type of creative block? If you’re turning up to the writing desk / kitchen table / cafe / train commute every day with your notebook and pen, and it doesn’t help? If you’ve found a stack of writing exercises to work your way through, but nothing comes out right? If you’ve been keeping a writing routine for weeks, waiting for that inspiration to come and find you working, and yet you still feel blocked?

This is the sort of thing some writers have nightmares about. When I was younger, I used to be one of them – I saw writers’ block as some mythical disease, like a witch’s curse that could descend on me at any time and leave me unable to string a sentence together. But the truth is, as I’ve got older, I’ve learned a bit more about my own brain, and about how my mind works. And I’ve learned that writers’ block isn’t so much a disease as a symptom of something else.

About three years ago, I started to experience some pretty hefty anxiety. I say ‘started to’, but it had sort of been there all along. I just hadn’t been able to recognise it for what it was – partly because I just didn’t know enough about anxiety, or about my own brain, but also because up until then it had always been a kind of low level burn, like the sound of a waterfall, always there in the background and sometimes louder than others, but never enough to make me stop and pay attention for very long. Then, at the start of 2016, there came a flood, and suddenly I was drowning in it.

For six months, I barely wrote anything. I tried. I really, really tried. I’d just left one of my two part-time jobs to give myself more time for writing, but whenever I sat down and tried to write something, it felt like someone had put a cement mixer in my brain.

Eventually, I went to the doctors, and refused the offer of pills (I knew that wasn’t what I wanted, and while they are absolutely the right course for some people, I knew that I wanted talking therapy instead). I was referred for therapy – or rather, I was given a piece of paper with a phone number on it and told to refer myself. I never rang the number.

(This isn’t a blog post about how the NHS, for all its strengths and qualities, is hugely lacking when it comes to supporting mental health – though if it were, I might point out how I told the GP that the very reason it had taken me several months even to go to him was because my anxiety kept preventing me, and so this tactic of asking me to jump through that appointment-making help-seeking hoop again was highly flawed. But that’s another argument.)

After 7-and-a-bit months, I got over my period of anxiety. No, that’s a lie. I didn’t ‘get over it’ (hateful phrase) – but the flood-rush subsided and the waterfall went back to its normal level, and the words began to return. A number of things helped me with this, particularly friends and books. I read an awful lot during that time, and although I didn’t realise it then, this reading was feeding my creativity. I might not have been producing anything, but the creative process was still going on, under the surface, building my understanding of story, of language, of creative thought.

But the real turning point came that summer, when I travelled to America to do an enormous road trip up the west coast with two friends. We spent three weeks on the road (as well as a week or so either side and my friend’s house in Oregon), and it threw me out of myself in exactly the way that my brain needed at the time.

In his book, The Idle Traveller, Dan Kieran talks about travel as the process of forcing your brain to pay attention. When we’re surrounded by the unfamiliar, our survival mode kicks in, and we’re forced to notice everything around us. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is about assessing the new environment for potential dangers, but it also serves the mind creatively. We have to be switched on. We have to exist in the moment, and to really pay attention to what’s around us. In other words, we have to be mindful.

While travelling up the west coast of America, we stopped in San Francisco. Sitting on a bench on Pier 39, sharing fish & chips with the two wonderful friends on either side of me, listening to the buzz of people and seagulls and the distant slap of water against the docks, I burst into tears. They were happy tears. For the first time in over half a year, I felt happy. Completely and utterly happy. I was able to be absolutely 100% in the moment: that almost meditative state that’s so important for mental health and for the creative process.

That evening in our AirBnB, I jotted down a couple of lines for a poem. Back at home a few weeks later, I started writing the poems that will hopefully form my first full-length poetry collection. A couple of months after that, I wrote the first scene of my novel.

So what’s the lesson here? I’m not trying to tell you how to cope with anxiety or any kind of mental ill-health, because all our minds work in different ways, so that’s going to be different for everybody. But what it taught me is that, whenever I feel blocked in my writing (as in, really truly blocked, not just procrastinating because checking twitter is easier), there are things I can do. I can read. I can go for a walk. I can travel. Not necessarily a long way – even a day trip somewhere local will do, as long as it’s somewhere I don’t know well, somewhere that I have to be fully present in.

So I guess the lesson, if there has to be a lesson, is that it’s ok not to be writing all the time. There are so many other things we can do to feed our creativity. Whether we’re writing a poem every day or just giving our minds a fallow period – as long as we’re stimulating our minds, that creative process never really stops.

And although at times you get a messful
Other days are less successful
Some days there just ain’t no fish

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‘I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.’
L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I love Octobers. I love the excuse to curl up in front of the fire and drink hot chocolate. I love the changing leaves. I love it when the clocks go back and I get to sleep for an extra hour. I even love the darker nights, because they somehow make everything seem closer and cosier. What I don’t love is how my house suddenly becomes full of horrifically gigantic spiders. Urgh.

That aside, I’ve had a wonderful, if very busy, October this year. So busy that I think I blinked and suddenly it’s November. Which means not all that long to get things ready for Christmas… But I’m going to leave that can of worms well and truly closed.

Dove Cottage, home of Cumbrian poet William Wordsworth

A Few Good Things:

There are quite a few things to celebrate this month, starting with my poem, ‘Bugs’, which received second place in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, judged by Kayo Chingonyi. This is one of those poems that I’ve had kicking around for a while, so I was particularly overjoyed that it was selected for this. (You can read my poem, and the other prizewinners, here.)

And speaking of selections: a week or so ago, I also learned that I’d won the Munster Literature Centre’s ‘Fool for Poetry’ chapbook competition! This means that my chapbook, Assembly Instructions, will be published and launched at Cork International Poetry Festival in March next year.

On this fiction side of things, I received the proof pages for My Name is Monster this month, so I’ve been working through those while drinking copious amounts of coffee. But the plus side is that it means proof copies are about to go to print – which means that soon I’ll be able to hold a copy of my novel that looks something like an actual book!

But plenty to be getting on with in the meantime – like the many school workshops I’ve led this month, including a full day at my old school, QEGS in Penrith. Last time I led a workshop there, I blushingly confessed to the librarian that I’d had my first kiss in that school library over a decade earlier, so I was slightly entertained when she introduced me to the students as, ‘Katie: a former QEGS pupil who knows this library extremely well!’ I was even more entertained by the sign that I spotted in the library this time around, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before:

And while we’re on the subject of the past…

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in front of a camera on two separate occasions, filming commissioned poems with an historical twist. The first was a poem written for the National Trust, as part of an oral history project working with a group of former miners in Whitehaven, using their words and mine to create a poetic response to what they told us about their memories of the mines.

The second was for BBC Radio Cumbria, to be aired as part of the First World War centenary commemorations in November. We were lucky enough to be allowed to climb Carlisle Cathedral bell tower to film this on the roof, which was 130 (incredly steep and narrow and slightly terrifying) steps up, but which had a magnificent view across the city. So I’m looking forward to seeing the finished result for both pieces.

I’ve been up in Carlisle quite a lot over the past few weeks, as it happens. Early in October, Carlisle saw the 5th year of Borderlines Book Festival, where I led a poetry workshop on inspiration and ‘Provoking the Creative Brain’, as well as reading at the launch of This Place I Know: the fantastic new anthology of Cumbrian poetry from Handstand Press.

And then on the Monday, I was back up to Carlisle and in the Radio Cumbria studio. For anyone who hasn’t yet listened to BBC Radio Cumbria’s new Arty Show, you definitely should. It’s 3 hours on a Monday evening, with a real variety of interviews / features / music – and they always have two studio guests with them for the duration, discussing their art forms and providing commentary on the programme’s other features. And on Monday 8th October, I was a guest on the show, along with stone sculptor Shawn Williamson.

Cumbria

When I haven’t been hanging out in Carlisle, I’ve been in the south of the county. My friend Jessi came to stay from Edinburgh for a few days, during which we went to a weekend workshop on editing and structure, run by Zosia Wand at the Reading Room in Ulverston. It was such an inspiring and useful weekend, and a wonderful opportunity to focus very specifically on structure for two whole days – though admittedly by the end of the Sunday we were shattered and our brains were completely worn out. I guess there’s a limit to how much creativity you can (or should) pack into a day!

On a more personal note, this month my grandma turned 98, and on the same day my friend Tam got married in a beautiful (if chilly) outdoor ceremony at Arnos Vale in Bristol. And of course there was Halloween, which meant trick-or-treating with my goddaughter; she was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, her mum was dressed as a grandma, which left me to be the wolf. So, obviously, I made my most elaborate attempt at wolfish facepaint – which I then had to wear to teach my youth arts class at The Brewery in Kendal, because I hadn’t had time in between to change.

The Month in Submissions:

As I’ve mentioned before, I originally wanted to attempt 100 submissions this year so I could show how slim the odds are on each individual submission being successful. For a while it was working, and I was getting nice big packets of rejections every month – but October has definitely bucked the trend. For the first time since I started measuring the outcome of my submissions in this way (actually scrap that, I think for the first time ever), I’ve had the same number of successful replies as unsuccessful ones.

  • Submissions made: 8
  • Unsuccessful: 5
  • Successful: 5

Three of these successes are under wraps till further notice (though make no mistake, I will be making a song and dance about them when the time comes). The other successes were coming second in the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, and winning Munster Literature Centre’s Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Not bad, as months go!

The Month in Books:

Only 4 books this month, and one of them was very short. But I’m hoping that November will provide a bit more reading time, as I’m planning to be spending a bit more time on public transport of one sort or another, which is usually pretty good reading time. Fingers crossed.

For October, though, my reading was:

  • playtime, by Andrew McMillan
  • My Name is Leon, by Kit de Waal
  • Create Dangerously, by Albert Camus
  • All the Journeys I Never Took, by Rebecca Tantony

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The Month in Pictures:

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For some reason, I thought things would quieten down once the Fringe was over. I thought September would be a fairly easy month, where I could focus on redrafting the novel without much distraction.

Wrong, as it turns out – though in the best possible sense.

To begin with there was a month’s worth of admin & emails to catch up with, where I’d spent the whole of August concentrating solely on the Fringe. Turns out that coming home to several hundred emails in your inbox does actually take some time to deal with – and catching up on sleep can be even trickier to fit in. But at least once that was all done, September could really get underway.

Poetry Cairn, Lakes Alive Festival

I’ve had a couple of performances this month, the first of which was Lakes Alive Festival in Kendal. My performance took place in a giant teepee in the afternoon, but in the morning I created a Poetry Cairn. Over the course of a morning, I invited passers-by to talk to me about poetry. What does poetry mean to you? People were then encouraged to write their answer on a stone and add it to the cairn, so that by the end of the morning, we had built a cultural landscape marker of our own, marking people’s relationships to poetry.

I was also thrilled to be part of a second festival this month, hosting an Adult Youth Club event at Rheged, as part of Eden Arts’ C-Art Festival. Based on the idea that you’re never too old to have fun, the event featured music from Ekobirds and poetry from the fantastic Loud Poets collective, as well as a quiz, and tables strewn with crayons & modelling clay.

Katie Hale. Photo - Tom Lloydphoto: Tom Lloyd

And continuing on the poetry theme, this month also brought National Poetry Day. This year for National Poetry Day, BBC Local Radio commissioned 12 poets (one from each region) to write a poem based on a local dialect word. The project was called #FreeTheWord, and was run in partnership with the Oxford English Dictionary.

I was selected to represent Cumbria in the project, and wrote a poem based on the verb ‘to twine’ (meaning ‘to moan’ or ‘to complain). The poem is called ‘Ode to Twining’ and you can read it and watch the video here.

Click here to hear the poems from the other BBC regions.

But September has also been a month of fiction. Despite everything else, I’ve also been working on my novel, which is now at the redrafting stage. I think I expected this stage to be easier than writing the first draft. After all, at least I wouldn’t be confronted with the monolithic blank page. But actually I think it’s harder. There’s more pressure when you’re redrafting. Suddenly it starts to matter whether it’s ‘good enough’, whereas before it was just about building up the word count and getting the bones of the story down on the page. Suddenly, I’m having to try to hold the whole novel in my head at once.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable – which is a good thing, as I was worried I’d be less fired up by the manuscript once I’d written how the story ends. Hopefully, this means I’m doing something right. Penguin Random House seem to think so, so that’s encouraging!

Penguin Random House: WriteNowLive Newcastle

And speaking of PRH… Last weekend I was invited over to Newcastle, to speak at the next round of WriteNow Live insight days. This is part of the shortlisting process of the second year of WriteNow, and as one of the first year’s mentored writers, PRH asked me to go and talk about my experience of the project so far, and the impact it’s had on me. Mainly, I talked about how being accepted on the scheme, and having someone champion my work, has boosted my confidence, and help me overcome those internal barriers to writing the manuscript in the first place. You can read the whole speech here, if you fancy.

Then suddenly September is over, October has arrived, and it’s well and truly autumn. Guess I’ll just have to spend those chilly autumn days snuggled up inside & working on my manuscript!

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The month in books:

It hasn’t been a bad month for reading, although as always, I wish I could carve out more time for it. Especially now the nights are drawing in; there’s nothing better than curling up by the fire with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book.

  • Urban Myths and Legends (Emma Press anthology)
  • Often I Am Happy, by Jens Christian Grøndahl
  • Russian Roulette, by Anthony Horowitz
  • Good Bones, by Margaret Atwood
  • Imaginary Friends, by Philip Pullman
  • Room, by Emma Donoghue
  • The Power, by Naomi Alderman
  • The Unaccompanied, by Simon Armitage

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The month in pictures:

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Five minutes ago it was the end of May. Now it’s nearly the end of July.

When I think about it, it isn’t really suprising that the time’s gone so quickly. After all, it’s been a pretty busy couple of months…

Poetry:

BREAKING THE SURFACE: The main thing in my poetry life is that I’ve launched my pamphlet! Yes, that’s right: I am now the author of a slim volume of poetry which actually has my name on the cover and my poems on the pages in between.

Breaking the Surface officially came out at the end of June, but I sort of jumped the gun on that one, and had the launch on 6th June. Well, I say ‘the launch’ – what I actually mean is the first launch, because I had two.

The first was at Penrith Old Fire Station. I read poems from the pamphlet, alongside two members of Dove Cottage Young Poets, who also performed, and who pretty much stole the show: Hannah Hodgson & Emily Asquith. I say ‘pretty much’ because there was also an open mic, and – more importantly – a buffet. Always a good thing at a poetry event! (Or any event, for that matter…)

The second was in Crosthwaite Village Hall. This was a joint launch with Pauline Yarwood, whose pamphlet, Image Junkie, is published by Wayleave Press.

PRIZES: I’ve also had a lucky couple of months (following on from another lucky couple of month before that). My poem, ‘The Selkie’s Child’, was chosen by Hannah Lowe to win the Ware Poetry Prize. A couple of weeks later, another poem (‘Offcomer’) was shortlisted for the Frogmore Papers Poetry Prize.

Fingers crossed the lucky streak keeps going!

ALSO: As well as prizes & publications, there’ve been quite a few performances. (Alliteration – see what I did there?) Some of these were my own (I had a lovely evening as the guest reader at an open mic night at Cakes & Ale in Carlisle, and a trip to Derby to read for Derby Poetry Group).

Some of the performances, though, were other people’s. In particular, July saw the culmination of a schools project I’ve been working on with New Writing North. This year, I’ve been working with three schools across Cumbria (Barrow Island Primary School, St Bede’s Primary School & Monkwray Junior School), to write poems based on New Writing North’s children’s show, Hey Presto! – which toured libraries at the end of last year. The project culminated in the production of an anthology, called All the Things We Would Pull from a Magic Hat, and performances in Monkwray School and Barrow Library. Seeing the children’s pride in performing their poetry for an audience, and their excitement at having their names in a book, was the perfect end to the project.

Barrow Island Primary School - work with New Writing North and Katie Hale

 

Fiction:

The fiction has been largely in a ‘thought’ phase over the past few weeks. This isn’t a cop-out of saying that I haven’t been working on it. I have. But so much of a writer’s work goes on in the mind, and that’s what’s been happening with the novel.

In June, I went down to London for my first WriteNow mentoring meeting with my editor at Penguin Random House. It was such a rewarding meeting: to have somebody look at the first draft of the novel in its entirety and really examine what was working and what still needed attention. There was a lot of very encouraging positive feedback. There were a couple of sections that I wasn’t sure about, which Tom (my editor) highighted as needing work, so it was good to have that confirmation.

Generally, it’s left me with a lot to mull over, ready to start reworking the existing draft in the next week or so.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on…

The Inevitable Quiet of the Crash - a new musical at Edinburgh Fringe 2017, lyrics by Katie Hale & music by Stephen Hyde

Theatre:

The Inevitable Quiet of the Crash opens at Edinburgh Fringe in ijust a few days time! Which means the past 8 weeks have involved a lot of last-minute edits and adjustments as we work towards opening night.

Something fascinating happens when you give your words over to somebody else to work with. Suddenly, the words cease to be yours. Someone else takes them, rolls them around their mouth and delivers them back to the world in a voice that isn’t yours. It’s the closest I’ve been to becoming Frankenstein, literally bringing another human to life.

But of course, working with other people inevitables means changing things. One of the joys of working with actors is that they inhabit the character fully. Of course, this is something I try to do during the writing process, but I’m trying to juggle multiple characters, multiple storylines, and an overarching plot. Whereas for the actor, they focus on the one character and learn to inhabit their skin. They walk in the character’s shoes. They look through the character’s eyes – which means that they spot things that I don’t.

Hence rewrites and revisions.

The result? Hopefully a more rounded and complete show, with truer, deeper characters. Hopefully a successful run at the Fringe!

Find out more about the show and how to get tickets here.

Or read my interview with Gareth Vile, talking about the show here.

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So all in all, a pretty busy couple of months!

Oh yes, and I also went to Iceland with my friend & fellow writer Jess Rich. (The country, that is – not the frozen food shop.)

Iceland

The months in books:

I haven’t actually read as much as I’d like to these past couple of months – probably because I’ve been so busy writing, travelling, and tying myself up in admin knots. But what I have read has been a good mixture of new works (or at least, new to me) and old favourites.

I’ve particularly enjoyed rereading the Harry Potter series. A few weeks ago, Harry Potter turned 20. So that evening, when I couldn’t sleep, I pulled my tatty, dogeared but very well-read Philosopher’s Stone from the shelf and immersed myself. What fascinated me most was how much more I noticed this time around. I’ve read these books several times; I thought I knew everything they had to offer. But this was the first time I’d read them since starting to write fiction of my own, and suddenly I’d become alive not just to the stories, but to the writing itself. One of the message’s in Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel (which I also read recently) is that drawing an object helps you to observe and understand that object; it’s the same with writing. Now that I’ve tried to create my own story, I can observe and understand J K Rowling’s writing process in a completely different light.

  • Confabulations, by John Berger
  • Girl Meets Boy, by Ali Smith
  • The Character of Rain, by Amelia Nothomb
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J K Rowling
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J K Rowling
  • The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma
  • The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton

The months in pictures:

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After a month of writing very little while travelling around Cambodia & Vietnam, May has been full on. Honestly, since landing at Manchester airport at the end of April, I don’t think I’ve stopped.

Finding time to write in London
Finding time to write in London

After the Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize’s award ceremony in Dublin, and the South Downs Poetry Festival weekend residential over the bank holiday weekend, May got into full swing with a couple of days hanging out on London’s Southbank and writing, as well as seeing ‘Consent’ at the National Theatre, and drinking wine with friends (always important).

From there, I headed up to Cambridge for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize award ceremony, held at Girton College. Judged this year by Grevel Lindop & Malcom Guite, the Jane Martin Poetry Prize is awarded annually to a poet under 30, for a group of up to four poems – and this year, I was lucky enough to win it. It was a really fun evening, with the award ceremony taking place in the old library, followed by a delicious formal hall dinner. I spent the night in the college, then headed home the next day.

Which was a good thing, because while I’ve been at home, there have been progressions with all three of my big current projects:

Poetry: This month I wrote a couple of new poems, but more importantly: I proofed my pamphlet. It was an odd (but satisfying) experience, seeing the printer’s proof arrive in my inbox – like spending years growing & nurturing a tree, then coming out of the house one day to find it suddenly in bloom. But that blossom will be turning into something even more substantial this week, as the pamphlet itself finally arrives, ready for the big launch on Friday. Very exciting!

Novel: A huge one this month, as I’ve finally finished the first draft of the novel! Which means that I actually got to the end, with no gaps in the middle which just say ‘write something here’. It may be messy, but it’s still a full complete draft. At that moment, when I plugged my laptop into the printer and pressed ‘print’, I was so excited I actually wriggled – like Christmas Eve when I was a child, and I couldn’t sleep for wriggling. Now, I just need to edit it. (I say ‘just’…) I have my first one-to-one with my wonderful editor on the Penguin Random House WriteNow scheme, Tom, in a couple of weeks, and after that I’ll have a better idea of how to move forward with the manuscript. But still: exciting times!

Musical: I’ve done very little actual work on the musical this month – and what I have done has only been in the past week, as we start to look at shaping this draft up into its ‘finished’ form, ready to workshop it with the cast next month. BUT that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening, because tickets for the musical (called The Inevitable Quiet of the Crash and co-written with composer Stephen Hyde) went on sale! The show runs 2nd – 26th August 2017, at the Edinburgh Fringe, and you can book your tickets nicely in advance here.

And that’s pretty much been my life this month! Lots of writing. Not a lot of sleep. Ah well. Maybe June will be a bit more relaxed…? (I doubt it.)

The month in pictures:

Girton College, Cambridge – Jane Martin Poetry Prize
Bluebells in Cumbria
Afternoon Tea at Sharrow Bay Hotel
Bluebells in Cumbria
Working on the garden, I discovered a bird nest!
Verbalise, Kendal: May 2017
Lake Ullswater, Cumbria
Bluebells in Cumbria
Bluebells in Cumbria
Editing the musical
Reviewing ‘How My Light Is Spent’ for BBC Radio Cumbria, at the Royal Exchange
A Cumbrian sunset
Editing the novel
Bridgwater, Somerset
Word Mess open mic night, Penrith
Verbalise, Kendal: May 2017
Afternoon Tea at Sharrow Bay Hotel
Planning for a trip to Iceland!
In Cambridge for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize
Finding time to write in London
Girton College, Cambridge – Jane Martin Poetry Prize
Printing the first draft of the novel!
‘Consent’ at the National Theatre
The Jane Martin Poetry Prize 2017
Reviewing ‘How My Light Is Spent’ for BBC Radio Cumbria, at the Royal Exchange
Hannah Hodgson performing at Verbalise, May 2017
Word Mess open mic night, Penrith
I bought some fancy coloured gel pens for editing
Bluebells in Cumbria

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Happy New Year!

When I was running Rabbit Rabbit (rabbit) young writers’ group, I used to send the young writers a writing prompt every week. I missed doing it, so I’m going to share a writing prompt as part of my weekly (weekend-ly) blog posts. I’m not Jo Bell, and this isn’t 52, so I’m going to share one a month rather than one a week: the first Sunday of every month.

And because this is January and it’s the first one, I thought I’d share a prompt about beginnings.

writing prompt - Katie Hale

If you think about famous novels, there are probably at least a few whose opening lines come to mind. Which makes sense – the beginning of a book is the part that’s supposed to grab us and make us want to read further.

For me, a good opening to a book is one that draws me in. It’s one that raises questions, or suggests a struggle that needs to be resolved. Sometimes it puts us right in the middle of the drama, straight away.

Take these examples – which, because we’re still within the festive season, I’ve done as a quiz (answers at the bottom of the post):

QUIZ:

  1. ‘It was a cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.’
  2. ‘Marley was dead, to begin with.’
  3. ‘When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.’
  4. ‘He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.’
  5. ‘People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.’
  6. ‘Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.’
  7. ‘When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it’s never good news.’
  8. ‘It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.’
  9. ‘He was afraid to go to sleep. For three weeks, he had been afraid of going to sleep.’
  10. ‘The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away.’
  11. ‘It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.’
  12. ‘The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.’
  13. ‘They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved.’
  14. ‘In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.’
  15. ‘Like most people I lived a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle.’

How many did you get? Answers at the bottom of the post…

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Writing a gripping first sentence is all very well for the opening of a novel, which sets up plot and conflict and character and story. But what about poetry?

I wonder how many of us think about setting up conflict and character and story in the opening of a poem? I wonder how many of us write opening lines to grip people with the drama of the poem, the way we might in a novel?

So that’s my prompt:

Write an opening line for a poem, which sets up drama and / or mystery, and whose sole purpose is to grip the reader.

Then, and only then, you can try writing the rest of the poem.

Here are a few poems that I think grip the reader really well:

‘Here, Bullet’, by Brian Turner

‘Bird’, by Liz Berry

‘Kiss’, by Ruth Padel

Happy writing!

ANSWERS:

  1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
  2. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
  3. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
  4. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway
  5. Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
  6. Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
  7. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
  8. Catch 22, Joseph Heller
  9. Strange Meeting, Susan Hill
  10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
  11. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  12. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  13. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
  14. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
  15. Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

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My Writing Life: Week 12

Well, they do say that things come in threes, and the good stuff has been rolling in this week – on Thursday / Friday / Saturday, just to make it nice and easy.

YorkMix / York Literature Festival Poetry Competition - Katie Hale, Cumbrian poet & writer
YorkMix / York Literature Festival Poetry Competition

Thursday: I started a new job! It’s still for Eden Arts, so not a new place of work, but it’s a new project, and gives me an extra day a week in the office. It’s about helping NHS recruitment to the area, by promoting Cumbria as a place not just to visit, but also to live and work. One of the ways we’re doing this is via social media, with images and captions about what makes Cumbria a great place to live. Not just mountains. Not just lakes. But lifestyle. (Head over and like the facebook page here. Go on, I dare you.)

Friday: I learned that a funding application I submitted was successful! I’ve received funding from the Arts Award Access Fund to work with two primary schools, to deliver Arts Award Discover workshops for over 100 children. I also had a lovely meeting with Zoe at the Wordsworth Trust and a chance to see the Wordsworth Country exhibition, and then spent the afternoon relaxing at Allan Bank (National Trust property), reading a book and overlooking the lake.

Saturday: I went to York, where I read at the awards event for the York Mix / York Literature Festival Poetry Competition. Why? Because my poem, ‘The Raven Speaks’, was Commended! Whoop whoop!

So all in all, the latter end of the week was pretty successful.

Plus, I’ve also been doing some marketing this week for the Three Inch Fools’ production of The Tempest, which will be coming to Penrith Old Fire Station in under 2 weeks! (8th – 10th April, tickets available here, by the way…)

Three Inch Fools The Tempest: touring Shakespeare in Cumbria, Penrith Old Fire Station, Eden Arts

Which has meant lots of whizzing round the county with posters & flyers. Should be a great production – come along for the ride!

Add to that some blue skies and sunshine, a stroll across the fields, spending a morning writing at the Abbey Coffee Shop in Shap, a trip to an independent bookshop, and lots of flowers bursting from the ground, and you get a pretty good week all round.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

The week in books:

Just one book this week: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.

But if you’re only going to read one book in a week, make it this one. I’ve been absolutely bowled over by Atwood’s beautifully evocative descriptive prose. (I tweeted this at her during the week, and got a tweet back saying thanks! Yay!) Every page yielded some turn of phrase that struck me so much that I wanted to make a note of it – which I obviously I had to stop myself doing, or I would never have managed to read the book.

I enjoyed it so much, that when I hit up Carlisle’s independent bookshop on Sunday afternoon, I was determined not to come away without another Margaret Atwood. Just a little something to keep me going…

The week in pictures:

Loo with a view: Allan Bank (National Trust)
Sitting with a book & a view: Allan Bank
Allan Bank, Grasmere (National Trust)
YorkMix / York Literature Festival Poetry Competition
Walk across the fields for coffee
Crocuses in Penrith
The Shambles, York
Wordsworth Trust: Wordsworth Country exhibition
Spring is here!
Meeting in Grasmere
Reading at YorkMix / York Literature Festival poetry competition
Grasmere
Book shopping in Carlisle
Wordsworth Trust: Wordsworth Country exhibition
Amaryllis flowering in the kitchen

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About a year ago, I discovered the work of Nina Katchadourian.

Katchadourian is a Californian artist, who has a series of ‘stacks’ or ‘spine poems’. In these works, she arranges books (usually in stacks, but occasionally side by side) so that the titles create poems.

I thought I would have a go at some of my own ‘spine poetry’, just using the books on my shelves:

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Spine poetry by Katie Hale, inspired by Nina Katchadourian

The Alchemist on Poetry:

The making of a poem
out of danger;
mining for the light
out of the blue
day.

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Spine poetry by Katie Hale, inspired by Nina Katchadourian

Enduring Love:

Error.

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Spine poetry by Katie Hale, inspired by Nina Katchadourian

Frankenstein:

The lovely bones;
heaven eyes;
portrait in skin:

regeneration;

talk of the town.

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Spine poetry by Katie Hale, inspired by Nina Katchadourian

My Brilliant Career:

The accidental
strong words…

…Goodbye to all that.

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Spine poetry by Katie Hale, inspired by Nina Katchadourian

How to Paint a Dead Man:

Gold.
Silver.
The colour purple.
Fifty shades of grey.

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