Category: Writing

Gareth L Powell “Like Easing into a Hot Bath”

This month’s special guest Gareth L Powell reveals how starting a novel is a bit like bath time (without the rubber ducks)…

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TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What’s the thing that makes you think you’re ready to start writing on a project?

GARETH: As I was saying earlier, it is… sort of things gradually accrete, and sort of clump together and, it’s kind of… there isn’t a single kind of, oh, let’s go! But I kind of write my way into it. So I’ll start, you know, I’ll write the first line, I’ll write a paragraph and think hmm, okay. And then I’ll go back and I’ll rewrite the outline. The outline is usually about a page, just a very brief kind of high level overview of the plot. And I’ll rewrite that about ten times to fix it. And then I’ll start writing a first chapter, maybe that won’t be going anywhere, so I’ll start again. Or realise I picked the wrong character, and I just kind of write my way into the book so that by the time I’m about 5000 words in, starting to pick up steam, and I think: right. I know where we’re going now. So I might chop out the all the original stuff, but yeah, it’s kind of like easing yourself into a hot bath.

MARK: (Noting a listener comment): Elinor says this is the most British conversation ever. Tea and a hot bath. Yes. Brilliant.

Gareth L Powell on Creative Differences

Episode 7 with Gareth L Powell: “Future’s Edge”

Are you Worried about how to Finish your Novel? Here’s a Tip…

This month’s special guest Nicola May has wise words for anyone worried about finishing their novel…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: How do you know when you’re done?

NICOLA: Again, as a writer, do we ever know we’re done? It does annoy me, and I’m going to say this out loud: writers who procrastinate for bloody years over their manuscript, though. I do think get it down, get it to an editor, because what’s the point? Six years, going over this thing. What?  It might not even be good enough. So that’s another bit of my advice. But, once I get to about 70,000 words — because my books are 75 to 80,000 words — I’m so happy to get to the end, thay I think, ‘Right, that should do. For now. The editor can look, then come back.’

MARK: And what do you do once you’ve finished that first draft? Do you sort of step away from it for a particular period of time, or are you straight back into editing mode?

NICOLA: Straight back into editing. To be honest, I’m a bit of a One-trick-Tina. My first draft is actually usually pretty good,

MARK: Right

NICOLA: Yeah.

MARK: Nice.

NICOLA: Don’t get me wrong. No, there’s been quite a few edits for ‘How Do I Tell You? — which I’ll hold up here. Here it is — That have made it much better by the editing team. So I’m not like, oh my God, there’s no edits at all. Of course there are.

MARK: Yeah.

NICOLA: It hasn’t had to be pulled apart. 

MARK: So yeah. So a good sense of structure essentially is (important).

NICOLA: Yeah, I think so.

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Time-Saving Tip for Naming your Characters

This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals a tip for naming your characters that will save you time in the long run…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: So, let’s start with what small thing has made a big difference to your creative process?

NICOLA: I mean, again, I found this quite hard, but what I do do is… all my heroines have very short names; four letters or three letters. Ruby, Avy, Rosa. Victoria’s Vic. Because if you think how many times you type that in a manuscript, it saves you so much time. I mean, if you have something like Everard or, I don’t know, Christopher, you don’t want to be writing that… all those times. Although it’s good for word count.

MARK: I’m writing something at moment that has a character called Michael, and I’m four chapters in and already I’m thinking, I just want to call him Mike.

NICOLA: Yeah. You know, and I bet you you’ll have to go back because you will have so many wrong spellings of that as well.

MARK: Exactly. Yeah.

NICOLA: But it’s a little point, but it’s a good point. And also don’t choose a name that people can’t understand like Niamh, or things like that because there is nothing worse… As a reader, I hate it when I don’t know how to say the name. 

MARK: You have to go to one of those those YouTube channels where they tell you how to pronounce it. Yeah, yeah,

NICOLA: Because I’ve got I’ve got a Joti in my book, would you say Joti or Jotti? And my audiobook narrator… I didn’t think actually to brief her on that.

MARK: I was going to mention this later. I went to the audiobook recording for The Corn Bride yesterday. And once I was in the room with them, they had a list. You know, it’s how you pronounce that? How are you pronouncing that? I. And I was like… (makes a non-commital noise). I don’t have strong opinions either way.

NICOLA: I never want to meet my narrator, because I’ve got one character who has an accent of someone who’s traveled many places abroad. So you don’t know where she’s from. And I put that on the brief. I’m like, oh my God, the poor woman.

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Should Authors be on a Salary?

Should authors be on a salary?

TRANSCRIPT:

I was thinking about Chappel Roan at the Grammies asking the record companies to pay their musicians a living wage and it got me thinking… if a publisher — one of the big five, say — started offering authors a monthly salary instead of an advance, would you take it?

A monthly salary, with a pension plan, health care (very important for our US cousins) paid holidays, maybe even expenses?

You could be on a fixed contract: 3 years or 5, but you have to deliver a book a year. Oh, and you have to write what the publisher wants (which, arguably, is happening more and more in traditional publishing), and you don’t retain copyright or get any royalties (which is kind of what happens in TV). Maybe you get a bonus for hitting sales targets? Would you do it?

Is anyone doing it already? I doubt it as the current system is very much weighed in the favour of the publishers… but if you’re an author, would you be tempted by a monthly salary with all the benefits and strings attached?

Nicola May’s Biggest Mistake: “Don’t Snap at the First Thing…”

This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals the biggest mistakes (sorry… “learnings”!) of her writing career…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your writing career?

NICOLA: Now I like to call them learnings, Mark Stay, not mistakes.

MARK: Okay. Very good, very good. Yes, I like that. Yes. Good.

NICOLA: I’ve made many learnings. One of them, actually I went with W.H. Howes for the Corner Shop in Cockleberry Bay for my audiobook. There’s nothing wrong with W.H. Howes. I was jobbing at the time. I’d given up a big corporate job. I got offered 500 pounds advance. I was like, wow, I’ll take that. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, a big mistake because I now know how to create my own audiobooks. The other three, I’m making a very nice living, thank you very much. Because audiobooks really heightened in the last year. So again, I think the moral of this tale is if you’re just starting out and somebody does offer you something, don’t snap at the first thing because you know you’re good enough. But if somebody big like… or anyone offers you something, so take a step back and think, okay, maybe I should go and look at other avenues rather than jump at the first opportunity with anything, with an agent, with a publisher, because we all get so excited. But I think if someone thinks you’re good enough a lot of other people will. So that’s my little bit of advice on that one. My other mistake, and I shouldn’t really call it a learning, is not to go with one of the top five publishers and be traditionally published. It was something I always dreamt of. I thought, this will make me… I will be a world wide international superstar. I signed a three book deal for the Ferry books. Don’t get me wrong, I was… The advance was incredible, but the marketing wasn’t after, and I felt that I had… I was a million miles away from the people who I was dealing with at the publisher. And I think because I’m such a control freak, being an indie publisher, I didn’t like that lack of control. So it’s almost… I don’t think I actually marketed those books as well as I did in my other books, because I kind of lost a bit of heart, to be honest. So again… but it’s not for me… for somebody it would be the most amazing thing in the world to be with a trad pub, but it didn’t work for me.

Tips for Marketing Romcoms: Nicola May on the Creative Differences Podcast

This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals her tips for marketing romcom fiction…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: (Reading a question from GB Ralph) “How do you reach your rom com readers and market to them? Romcoms can cross so many other genres: romance, comedy, women’s fiction, but don’t really fit into any one of them, which can make it tricky.” So yeah, the marketing of them. Have you identified who your readers are? Do you find that with your different series you’re marketing to slightly different people? Is there any kind of knack to this?

NICOLA: You know what, I’ve had the most scattergun approach to marketing my whole writing career. Sometimes I don’t actually know how I’ve been so successful (laughs), but I think is I just I talk a lot and I share a lot, and I think I’ve had such ground work from when I started out way back in like 2011, when the first one came out, that I’ve just created an audience by being repetitive, because I haven’t even got that many followers on any of my things. And but you know what I will say as well, Amazon is King. Once the algorithm hits, you get you over your 50 reviews once. And I think with KDP, they obviously want you to do well because they do well out of you as well. They will then give you the deals and throw you out there. I have got a mailing list and if I tell you how many are on my mailing list, people won’t believe it. They will gasp… 258!

MARK: (gasps!)

NICOLA: Because when I started out, when I started out with Cockleberry Bay, obviously Amazon just alert people when a new book comes out. So I’ve got a lot of followers on Amazon, but post and I didn’t think that. Now again, one of my mistakes… I should set up a mailing list. I never bothered. I don’t pay now for any Amazon advertising because I don’t know how to do it. I do think… now I don’t know if other authors find it more difficult now, but I could spend £100 and it’s gone within seconds.

MARK: I mean, it’s the thing we’ve shown the Cockleberry Bay, the Ferry Lane, How Do I Tell You? But how many books have you written in all? Was it 18?

NICOLA: I’ve written 18 now. Yeah, so I was writing two a year. Yeah, I’m lazy now. I’m writing one a year now.

MARK: I don’t think anyone’s going accuse you of being lazy. I’ve said this again and again. Resilience counts for a lot in this game. It really does. You’re going to have the ups and downs, the lows and highs. And it’s… you just got to hang in there haven’t you?

NICOLA: Well my motto is persistence over resistance. I’ve had so many no’s, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I think it is… just keep doing little things and keep… just every day and you will get results.

MARK: Right.

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Creative Differences Episode 6 with Nicola May: “Persistence over Resistance”

Nicola May is the author of heartwarming and funny romantic comedies, including the hugely successful Ferry Lane and Cockleberry Bay series, she’s a great champion for indie authors and she’s here to kick off 2025 with another bestseller ‘How Do I Tell You?’ 

We discuss: 

Tips for writing romcoms 

The key differences between self publishing, traditional publishing and digital-first publishers 

Balancing serious themes with heartwarming fiction 

And much more!

LISTEN NOW

LINKS 

Nicola’s website 

The Green Room 

Kinky Boots Musical UK Tour 2025 

Rivals

Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire 

Katherine Priddy and Simon Armitage 

Julian Barr’s Worldbreaker 

American Primeval

Edit by Kai Newton

Production assistance by Emily Stay

Jingle by Dom Currie

GB Ralph: Share the excitement!

In this special festive edition of the podcast I welcome GB Ralph, author of the cozy Milverton Mysteries series!

We discuss:
Slow burn romance
Writing in scenes and converting them to chapters
Chapter word count analysis (it gets nerdy!)
Tips for book launches
Tips for writing on your commute and how Gavin wrote his debut novel on his phone
What he learned from switching from romcoms to cozy mysteries
How he uses deadlines to motivate his writing
And the importance of narrators for audiobooks

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LINKS

GB Ralph’s website
Everyone this Christmas has a Secret
The Holly King by Mark Stay
Only Murders in the Building
Arcane
Mini Metro game
Allie X Last Christmas
Altego Music’s Wham/Chappel Roan mash-up
The Penguin
Beyond the Throne by Kristian Nairn
Rosalie Cunningham, To Shoot Another Day
December will be Magic Again by Kate Bush
Christmas at the Airport by Nick Lowe

Edit by Kai Newton
Production assistance by Emily Stay
Jingle by Dom Currie

How do writers cope with rejection?

Sometimes, only a Hobnob will do…