Author: Amanda Brooke

DAY 3: I have pages…with words on them!

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Remember all of those empty pages?  Well not any more.  I’m now on day three and I’ve already completed nine pages.

As I mentioned, I’ve broken the story up into eight sections, allowing 2000 words per section which gives me a little bit of wriggle room if I need to extend some sections.  Amazingly I’m on track and have finished the first section.  The hardest thing has been to switch my mind from the characters in my third book (which was originally The Bench but now has a more imaginative working title of The Lonely Swan).  In The Lonely Swan, my main character Maggie is blind so I’ve spent months describing surroundings and situations in a completely different way, concentrating on sounds and smells rather than visual descriptions.  It’s a hard habit to break but the more I’m writing, the more I feel like I’m getting under Elle’s skin.

I can’t wait to carry on with the story but tomorrow there will be no time to write as I’m at the Albert Dock in Liverpool for an author event with Jane Costello and Erica James (Blue Bar 6pm – 8pm).  Drop in and say hello if you’re nearby!

What happened next

DAY 1: Pencils at the ready!

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My short story is still in the ‘planning phase,’ but not for much longer.  I have the synopsis I sketched out a while ago and I’ve now split it into eight sections.  That way I have a bit more of an idea of how to pace the story…it’s not a full length novel I keep telling myself!  One of the hardest decisions I find at the start of writing a new project is picking names for my characters.  I always seem to fall into the trap of plucking them out of thin air, thinking that I’ll revisit them later on only to find that I’ve become so attached to the character that I couldn’t possibly consider rechristening them.  I have a feeling I’ve fallen into that same trap again…

Along with names for my characters, I’ve been trying to picture them in my head and I’ve listened in on little snatches of their conversations.  There’s Elle who is thirty five and married to Rick and they have a six year old son called Charlie.  So far it’s the conversations with Elle and Charlie that are capturing my imagination so that’s where I’m going to start the story.  I already know how I want the very first scene to play out and what they’ll say to each other.  Now I just need to start writing before I forget everything!

By my estimation, if I’m aiming for a story length of 20,000 words then that’s 80 pages…80 so far blank pages.  Gulp!

Well they’re not getting filled while I’m messing about with this blog, are they?  Bye for now!

What happened next…

How to write a short story

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I’ve been tasked with writing a short story and I’ll have to admit it’s a bit of a challenge.  Apologies if you’ve opened this post expecting me to tell you how to do it…I’m afraid the title of the blog is more of a question than a statement!

If I’m honest, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d read a short story when I was asked to write one myself but despite my initial reservations, I’m actually starting to come around to the idea.  By short, were’ talking about one fifth the size of a full length novel.  It’s not exactly something I can whip up in a couple of days but still, it’s not the mammoth task of starting a novel and it won’t need to be as complex.  I don’t have to think about sub-plots or develop lots of different characters and when it comes to the inevitable rewrite and restructuring once my editor’s seen it then surely it’s going to be easier to deconstruct and put back together.  There, I’ve talked myself into it!

I’ve already gone through some story ideas with my editor Kim Young at HarperCollins and we’ve agreed on one that I’d developed a while ago as a future project which she thinks would make a good short story.   It’s about a married woman who has spent the last ten years trying to emulate her parents’ marriage but is failing miserably.  The story begins shortly after her dad’s funeral.  He died of a broken heart, unable to deal with the loss of his wife a couple of years earlier.  As well as leaving my heroine feeling alone, it has also emphasised how devoted her parents were to each other.  But there’s the issue of her dad’s pocket watch and the little bronze key hanging from the chain.  It might open up a door to the past or a can of worms…or both.

So with the storyline agreed, Kim and I had to negotiate the word length.  I had it in my mind that 10,000 words had been the original idea, Kim thought it was 30,000.  When we checked the contract, it was slap bang in the middle at 15-20,000 but given that it’s going to be an e-book, I think she’s happy for me to make it longer if necessary.

So why am I telling you all of this?  Well, ready or not I’m about to start writing it and I’m going to post regular blogs over the next few weeks to track my voyage of discovery.  There, I’ve committed to doing it now and there’s no going back!

What happened next?

What’s your problem?

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I tend to approach any TV drama about bereaved parents with a sense of trepidation.  There is of course the fear of resurrecting all those awful memories and emotions of losing Nathan but there’s also a sense of dread that yet again, a bereaved parent will be portrayed as someone to be feared, a shadow of humanity that goes on to commit unthinkable acts in the name of their dead child.

Only rarely do I come across a drama that ‘gets it,’ and I’m glad to say that Mary and Martha shown on BBC this week was one of them. Written by Richard Curtis and with outstanding performances from Hilary Swank and Brenda Blethyn, it’s about two mothers who have lost their sons to malaria while visiting Africa.  The story is intensely moving and has been produced unashamedly as part of the Comic Relief campaign to raise awareness for the prevention of malaria but at the same time it also gives a great representation of being a bereaved parent.

There was one particular scene that really encapsulated how perceptions of the world around you changes after losing a child.  Hilary Swank’s character Mary returns to ‘normal’ life after losing her son and she’s listening to her friends complain about their daily lives and problems which clearly aren’t problems at all, not to someone who has just witnessed the needless loss of children’s lives in Africa.

Losing a child not only changes your perspective and your priorities but it changes you.  For some bereaved parents, getting through the day is a challenge and in our darkest hours we look for hope.  We find inspiration from those who have been through the same kind of loss and have gone on to do extraordinary things.  Mary and Martha may only be fictional characters but they represent an army of parents who have fought many different battles but with the same objective, to prevent other parents from suffering the kind of loss that they have suffered.  These are people who see beyond the trivia in daily life and want to make a difference so the world is a better and safer place.  They are a force to be reckoned with not to be feared.

If you haven’t see Mary and Martha yet then please watch it and I dare you not to be moved by it.  The drama is packed with heartrending statistics and you will most definitely want to support the Comic Relief campaign.  It will move you and it serves as a good reminder to us all that too often our so-called complaints aren’t complaints at all. So I ask again, what’s your problem?

A Step Back in Time

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Even though I’m immersed in the rewrite of The Bench at the moment, I’m very aware that the publication of Yesterday’s Sun in America is fast approaching and I’m suddenly distracted by all of those images I conjured up of the gatehouse, the place where Holly comes face to face with her future in Yesterday’s Sun.

The house itself was part of the Hardmonton Hall estate, all figments of my imagination that can be traced back to countless old houses scattered across England that have now become detached from the larger estates they once guarded.  The imagery of the garden however was created from memories a little closer to home and while the rambling and overgrown grounds of the gatehouse where Holly finds the moondial is deep in English countryside and looks out over an orchard, the feel of the place lies deep within my childhood memories of my grandparents’ garden.  Lynn Chris and Mandy Garden

I was brought up in a terraced house in Liverpool so my Nan and Grandad’s garden a few miles away drew us kids like magnets.   And now you’ll have to indulge me because I’ve managed to dig out some family photos.  They don’t do the place justice but if nothing else, they give a good sample of 1970’s fashion.Chris Garden

The garden didn’t have an orchard, only an apple tree grown from a pip my mum had planted when she was a child.  A homemade swing had been hung from one of its branches and we always fought for turns on it.  Unsurprisingly, that’s one memory that appears in Another Way to Fall (which isn’t going to be out in the UK until September 2013 now but I hope you’ll find it worth the wait). Lynn Chris Mandy Neil Garden

You wouldn’t have found a large workshop in the garden either but there was my grandad’s shed.  It had a strong smell of creosote and all kinds of tools crammed inside.  My granddad was a shipwright at Cammell Lairds and was a skilled craftsman.  I never realised until later that he had made some of the wooden toys we loved to find in their house, remnants of my mum’s childhood.

It’s funny but whenever I think of their garden, the sun is always shining and all the memories are good.  But enough of my reminiscing, I must get on with my writing!

PS.  If you must ask, I’m the younger girl but please don’t get confused – not all of the long haired kids are girls.  My brother Chris did have such beautiful curls though!

The Perils of Research

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When it comes to writing fiction, there’s only so much you can draw from personal experience and knowledge before you have to start knuckling down to research. It’s a necessary evil that sometimes slows down the writing process but then there are certain subject matters where you can only count your blessings that you don’t have firsthand experience. Another Way to Fall is about a young woman with a brain tumour and as well appreciating my own good health as I built Emma’s world around her, I also felt a huge weight of responsibility. I had to do justice to my heroine and more importantly the real life sufferers of this insipid disease. I had to put the research hours.

Now I’m the first to admit that with my fledgling career as a writer and a full time job, finding enough hours in the day can be a struggle so it’s a godsend when I can enlist the help of others and with my second book I was lucky enough to find a wealth of information and advice from someone who surely had better things to do with her time than answer my endless questions. Natalya Jagger set up BT Buddies (www.btbuddies.org.uk) after her friend’s daughter was diagnosed and later died from a brain tumour. She is undoubtedly an amazing woman with a generous spirit which she extended to me. We certainly agree on one thing, the story of someone battling a brain tumour should respect the harsh realities and not trivialise or twist facts. That being said, I have to accept that my account will be flawed. I don’t know if writers are meant to admit to that but the truth is, even with the best research, I still can’t know what it’s really like for sufferers, I can only imagine and I hope I’ve achieved what I set out to do, to create a story that will be inspiring and not depressing, to reflect the inner strength and bravery that can be found in real life and to give some insight into a family dealing with a cancer diagnosis, something I do have experience of.  More than anything I want readers to admire my Emma rather than pity her and to love her as much as I do.

Continuing on the subject of research, I should confess that it’s not all as onerous as it sounds and sometimes it can broaden horizons. In Another Way to Fall, Emma gets to create an amazing life for herself and amongst other things, explore the world. In the first draft this included going off to Iceland and it was only when I started researching the country that it became one of my own dream destinations. Sadly, Iceland didn’t make it to the final cut although to counter this I did make reference to New York which was where I took my daughter Jess for a celebratory holiday after getting the first book deal. But where fiction failed, reality succeeded and at the time of writing this blog, I’m on the flight home after an absolutely amazing week in Reykjavik. I didn’t get to see the northern lights but maybe next time…and I really do want to go back…the mountains, the volcanoes, the geysers, the lava fields, the thermal pools, the waterfalls, the glaciers, the blue lagoon…I could go on. It was all breathtaking and I wasn’t deterred in the least by the driving rain, low cloud or lack of daylight – it’s only given me an excuse to go back again during summertime.

I’m sorely tempted to bore everyone with tonnes of photos but I hope these two reflect the two extremes of my experiences on holiday.

Blue LagoonGullfoss Waterfall

I know I’m in danger of sounding like I’m working for the Icelandic tourist board but it really is an incredible country and even though there’s a lot to be said for blazing sunshine and sandy beaches, this is one holiday I won’t forget in a hurry and one that might just make it into another of my stories one day.

Phew! Thank goodness that’s over with…

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It’s the 21st December tomorrow and the end of the world as some would have us believe.  I don’t mind admitting that I’ll be waking up on Saturday morning with a certain sense of relief but it has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar.  Friday is also the shortest day of the year and even though the worst of winter is still ahead of us, there’s something reassuring about knowing that the days are beginning to stretch out again.

I have a north facing garden and come October, the shadow cast from my house begins crawling down the length of the lawn, creeping up the back fence and within weeks, the whole garden is plunged into shade.  But after tomorrow, that shadow will start to withdraw and by March, the sun will finally hit the ground at the bottom of the garden and spring and summer will be within reach.

My obsession with the seasons has managed to transfer itself onto the page and it’s only as I’m writing this blog that I’ve begun to realise how much.  In Yesterday’s Sun, when Holly is propelled forward in time, the first thing she notices is the change in her surroundings but because she’s always in the same place, in front of the moondial in the middle of her garden, that change is in the environment.  In one scene she’s transported from a garden bearing autumn fruits to one shimmering in the night with springtime blossom and then in another scene she moves from a balmy summer’s night to a wintry snowstorm.  In Another Way to Fall the focus on the seasons is more pronounced.  We meet Emma in late autumn but she, like me, is longing to see the spring.  She wants to see the trees explode into bloom because she interprets this as nature’s demonstration of survival.  So she too would be looking forward to getting past the shortest day of the year.

So why do I focus so much on the transitions from one season to another?  I suppose it has something to do with the sense of constancy it brings to an otherwise unpredictable world.  I can agree with the doomsters on one fact, none of us can take tomorrow for granted.  Neither can we cling onto the good times forever or stop dark times descending without warning but we can draw some comfort in knowing that there’ll be a few minutes extra daylight on 22nd December and a little more light each following day for the next six months.  So despite the unpredictability, I for one am planning on hanging around and hope you’ll join me in a collective sigh of relief on Saturday if only long enough to prepare for the chaos that Christmas brings.

Merry Christmas everyone 🙂

A Time to Pause

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November is a difficult time for me, a time when my mind draws me back to the past.  I’m reminded of all the reasons my life, my perspective and my priorities have changed so much in the last six years but mostly I’m reminded of the little man who went through such awful things and who taught me so much.  My son Nathan.

But even as I stand still and reflect, the world doesn’t stop with me.  Everything moves on and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I haven’t moved on from the death of my son, I’m not ‘over it,’ but I have accepted that life has continued and that I’ve been swept along with the flow of time.  So as I stood still for a little while this month, life has continued at a pace and with a deep breath I’m back in the present catching up with all my author duties.

That oh-so important contract for books three and four has now been signed although there was a little surprise in there for me.  As well as two new books, HarperCollins would like me to write two short stories.  Gulp!  It’s most definitely a new challenge and after the initial shock I’m starting to quite like the idea of working on something that should take shape much more quickly than the year-long process of finishing a full length manuscript.

So what else is new…the dates for publication have so far been confirmed as 14th March 2013 in the UK for Another Way to Fall and 12th February 2013 in the US for Yesterday’s Sun.  I’m also thrilled that along with Yesterday’s Sun, Another Way to Fall is also going to be published in Germany.

As I write this I’m on my way home after another trip to London where yesterday I met my new editor Kim Young who’s covering maternity leave for Sarah and to top the day I was invited to the Harper Fiction Christmas Party at the Ivy.  I had an absolutely lovely time and it was really good to get to know more of the team at HarperCollins as well as meeting some pretty fab authors too.  Writing can be quite a solitary profession so thank you to Harper for arranging this festive group hug!

And now I take another deep breath…I’m looking forward to another exciting year knowing full well how privileged I am to have good friends and family around me who help me look to the future without ever losing sight of the past.

What would your word be?

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The page proofs for Another Way to Fall have arrived and it’s so exciting to see the words I’ve written (and rewritten) transformed into something that resembles a book if only on the screen.  But at the same time it’s also very scary because this is my last opportunity to make any changes and hopefully I won’t pick up any major errors as I’m only supposed to be making minor adjustments now.

This run through is probably as close as I can get to seeing the book from a reader’s perspective.  I’m actually reading my story now, not writing it.  OK there are two streams of thought as I read, one still asking if a sentence is flowing properly and picking up on repetitions or inconsistencies but the other part of me is enjoying the journey that my characters have embarked upon and yes, I am enjoying it.  I can only hope that others will feel the same when it’s published in February next year, that part’s scarier still!  Emma is the focal point of the story, holding onto her dreams whilst her cancer tries to yank them from her grasp.  But it’s not just Emma’s journey I’m following, it’s her family and friends’ too and of course it’s Meg, Emma’s mum who I can relate to most and there’s a part of me speaking through that character.

There’s another character who pops up from time to time in the book and he’s clearly made an impression on me because I had a dream about ‘the shopkeeper,’ the other night.  I won’t say too much about him but in my dream I was in his shop and he directed me towards a special room and told me I had to choose a word, one that would be with me for the rest of my life.  I’m the first to admit that it was a pretty weird dream even by my standards but frustratingly I woke up before going into the room and picking my word.  So of course I’ve spent the last few days trying to decide what word I would choose.  There were no rules, the word could be anything…something inspiring, funny or completely random.  There’s only one restriction and it’s a tough one, it has to be a single word.  It’s taken a while to decide but I’ve settled on my choice and my word is…smile.  It sums it all up really, enjoying the moment, doing things that make you and your loved ones happy, appreciating what you have and if things are tough then it’s a gentle prompt to find something to smile about, even if it’s only summoning up precious memories of happier times and the people you miss.  Smile…and everything else will follow.

So….what would your word be?