Tag: writing tips

Can an Author Query Too Much?

My special guest on the Creative Differences podcast, Nicola Whyte, debut writer of 10 Marchfield Square, reveals that her biggest mistake may have been querying too much…

TRANSCRIPT

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

NICOLA: Probably querying too much… like, querying a book too much. When I knew the market wasn’t ready. But I kept querying because I was so sure that somebody would see the potential. And then, of course, what happens is the market shifts and everybody’s already seen it, and you can’t send it out again. So I think that definitely that happened to me with a cosy crime novel I wrote in 2019, and everybody was going ‘Cosy? No, we don’t… nobody publishes this. It’s got to be really dark. That’s what we like dark, dark, dark, dark. And I’d sent it to everybody and got the same (response): I really enjoyed this. I love the pitch. I love the title. But, no, we don’t publish this at all. Ooh, Richard Osman? Hello! And I had literally sent it to everyone, so it’s currently in a drawer awaiting its time. 

MARK: Maybe it will have its time at some point. I still think your biggest mistake was not finishing the robot silent witness book, you know?

NICOLA: Oh, you’re gonna love it, Mark.

MARK: I am first in line. First in line for that one.

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Nicola Whyte: The Percolation | Mark Stay’s Creative Differences Episode 11

I had a wonderful time chatting to Nicola Whyte the debut writer of 10 Marchfield Square about how she was inspired by the nooks of London and Douglas Adams’s whodunnits. We also discuss planning the middle of a novel, “soft boiled crime”, designing author websites, and we get nostalgic about the Ottakars book chain and much, much more!

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LINKS 

NICOLA’S WEBSITE

PERSON OF INTEREST

ALL THE LOST SOULS BY AMIE JORDAN 

MASSIVE ATTACK AND TONY COLLIER: LIVE WITH ME

CULTURES

MOTHERING SUNDAY

ROSALINE

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS BY STUART MACONIE 

POKER FACE

THE BOOKS BESIDE MY BED BY PAUL ARMFIELD 

Mark Stay’s Comic Con dates… 

PORTSMOUTH – SUNDAY 22ND JUNE 

TENTERDEN STEAMPUNK FESTIVAL – SAT 28TH JUNE 

BASILDON – SUNDAY 29TH 

LFCC FRIDAY 4TH, SAT 5TH, SUN 6TH JULY 

MIDLANDS COMIC CON SAT 12TH, SUN 13TH JULY 

GUILDFORD SAT 19TH JULY 

For more dates in pop over to https://markstaywrites.com/diary-and-appearances/

Join the Green Room: https://ko-fi.com/markstaywriter/tiers

Sarah Pinborough on Writing in Short Bursts

This month’s special guest bestselling author Sarah Pinborough reveals a great tip for writing in 20-minute bursts…

TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What small thing has made a big difference to your creative process?

SARAH: Cocaine! Okay, that’s a joke. (laughs)

MARK: (laughs) You might have said that a little too quickly.

SARAH: What small things made a difference to my creative process. I mean, it’s not a small thing, but obviously… Oh, actually, I do have one for this! So I use the Freedom app. You know, which turns the internet off. And my friend Harriet Tyce… because I used to just turn it off for an hour and then dick around on my phone. Pointless. But she told me to do it… There’s that thing where you do it in 20 minute bursts. So you set it for 20 minutes, and then you work… because 20 minutes you can work for. And so three lots of 20 minutes, and you’ve done, like, nearly a thousand words. And it’s much more focused. So I do try and do these 20 minute bursts if I’m not feeling it. And that does help, you know. And also I’m not a great fan of the word count thing. You know, people say I must write 2500 words a day. I think it’s better to have a good thinking time.

MARK: Yeah, absolutely. That 20 minutes is that sort of Pomodoro timer.

SARAH: Yeah. That’s the word! Pomodoro. That’s it.

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Not Reading the Small Print, with Nadine Matheson

This month’s special guest Nadine Matheson reveals how not reading the small print led to a big break…

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TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What’s the best happy accident of your writing career?

NADINE: I’d say that not reading the small print when I entered the city university competition, because, honestly, if I’d read the small print, then I would have read that: if you win the competition, you win a £2,000 bursary. And I know definitely back then, if I’d read that it was a bursary of the Creative Writing Masters, then I wouldn’t have entered because I’m thinking, I’m already working full time, you know, being a lawyer. But I was also teaching in the law school and I would do that in the evenings. So, I don’t want to spend any more time in a classroom. I give up my evenings as it is, you know, teaching in a classroom. Why would I want to go back? Why would I want to go back to school to learn how to write? So if I’d read the small print, I would not have entered. But because I did not read the small print, I entered and won the competition, did the Creative Writing MA, I and I wrote the Jigsaw Man, so… Is that a happy accident?

MARK: Absolutely, yes. It is. Absolutely. Fantastic. Yeah. Who reads the small print? Honestly, we all sign up to META and it says in there, you know, 17 pages down, we can steal everything you put up here. So yeah, anyway, enough of that.

Tracy Buchanan on the Creative Differences Livestream

Join me with bestselling author Tracy Buchanan on the livestream that looks at the little things that make a big differences to writers.

Tracy writes gripping thrillers that delve into the darkest corners of family, psychology and forensic investigation. Her books explore secrets, lies and the dangerous choices people make when pushed to the edge.

And, as a child, she crafted stories using cut-outs from her mum’s Littlewoods catalogues! She also runs one of the best writers’ groups on Facebook and is a brilliant advocate for authors. It’s going to be a really lively one, so pop the date in your diaries now!

TUESDAY 22ND APRIL, 2025, 8PM BST

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When to Start a First Draft with Nadine Matheson

This month’s special guest Nadine Matheson shares a great tip for starting first drafts (and let’s take a moment for poor Nick)…

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TRANSCRIPT

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

NADINE: Because I’m a planner; once I’ve done the plan. If I haven’t done a plan and I’m like, well, yeah, it’s like… if there’s no outline, then I wouldn’t be comfortable writing. Because I know what would happen. I would just get to 20,000 words and then that would be it. I’ll just be… I don’t know what I’m doing with the story. But, and I say, it doesn’t need to be a, you know, a beat by beat by beat outline of the whole story. But it’s a general one. And once I’ve got that in place: okay, now I’m ready to start writing,

MARK: It kind of occurs to me, that’s the point in the story where you need to start making serious choices, story choices that have consequences. You know, the first 20,000 words you’re introducing people, you’re having fun, setting everything up. And then it’s like: we can start making serious decisions now. So it’s kind of scary, isn’t it? You don’t know where you’re going.

NADINE: I think that’s exactly it. I’ve mentioned this for my own podcast recently, I was writing this book, and I had a character called Nick. I didn’t have a plan for it. And, you know, the beginning’s, you know, all the set ups, that’s all the fun stuff. But then I got Nick into… Nick got released from prison, and then he went home. Now he’s sitting in his dad’s house, sitting in his dad’s kitchen. And to this day, he’s still there cause I’m like… I don’t know what to do with you now. I don’t know what. I don’t know what to do. So to this day, Nick is still sitting in his dad’s kitchen.

A Tip for Finishing First Drafts from Nadine Matheson

This month’s special guest Nadine Matheson shares a great tip for finishing first drafts…

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TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What small thing has made a big difference to your creative process?

NADINE:  What I do now… Before I just used to write my first draft — and it sounds like a big thing, but it’s not, it’s a small thing — I write the first draft, and then after that, then do the rewrite, brief re-structure, whatever. That’s the second draft. But now I don’t. I write up to act two, and then once I finish act two in the first draft, that’s when I start doing the rewrite. Because now I’m doing the rewrite, I have a clearer idea of how… I’ve fixed everything now, so I know exactly how that last third is going to finish. And I started doing that. I think with… I think I did it with The Kill List, and I think it was just a timing issue I had. Like, a personal time finishing, I thought, I’m not going to get this done if I wait to finish it. I thought, let me just start rewriting it now. When I did that, I thought, this is a better way for me to work. So that’s what I do now.

MARK: And when you get to that two thirds point, you just plough on and get straight through to the end.

NADINE: Yeah, because I’m not thinking… When I’m writing that first draft, I’m already thinking, well, I already know I need to change this now. I need to change this character, put it in a different location, or I’m just going to get rid of that subplot. I just know these things aren’t going to work. And by the time I’ve done the second draft, I’ve already done that. And then I said, that last third is… I can’t say seamless, but it’s a lot smoother. I’m not fixing things.

MARK: Yeah, it’s so weird because I’ve just done that myself actually. You know, I’m talking about trilogies being hard. I got about I was 80,000 words on this, and the ending is there, and I’m kind of thinking, hmmm… And then I’m writing, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s what this is about!’ So I’ve realised, actually, what it’s about. So I’ve had to go back and sort of, you know, make changes. And now the ending just feels so much… Not, like you say, not easier, but I know where I’m going now. I know I’m going to do it. Yeah. 

NADINE: You have a much clearer… There’s no debris in your path. That’s the best way.

MARK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a lot less cluttered, isn’t it? 

NADINE: Yeah, definitely.

Nadine Matheson on Messy First Drafts

This month’s special guest Nadine Matheson reveals the benefits of a messy first draft…

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TRANSCRIPT

MARK: Are your first drafts usually quite tidy and well structured, or are you still making big changes?

NADINE: They are the opposite of tidy and well structured. I will say that structured in the sense that… I stick very closely to that three act structure. So they’re structured in that sense. But in terms of it being tidy: no, they’re so messy. But I always say there’s freedom in the mess because I know that with the second draft I’m going to be fixing things and rewriting and restructuring. So no, that first draft is not tidy. But what I will say, I said it the other day to someone was that what I’ve realized is that my… the first three chapters of my books, they are relatively unchanged from the first draft to what’s finally put on the shelf. They very rarely… I mean, I’ll say I’ve changed a little bit in the editing process, but fundamentally those chapters one, two and three, and if there’s a prologue, they’re pretty much how they are from the very first draft to the end.

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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Writers need to take chances… Nicola May on the Creative Differences podcast

This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals how she got her books into a major book chain…

Listen to Mark Stay’s Creative Differences on your favourite podcast provider:

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TRANSCRIPT

NICOLA: Don’t let anything or anyone stop you
because at the London Book Fair I once and chased after the book buyer of WH Smiths with Love Me Tinder and I said, “Go on, you know, you want to put this in your shop, but it ended up in WH Smiths Travel. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you’ve got to take chances.

MARK: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that. Absolutely love it