Featured Author - Linda Gillard

[Michelle]

Linda Gillard

 

Website

 

Introduced to me by Inver, Linda is the author of three books, two which I have read, and one I hope to get to very soon!

 

Emotional Geology - Review / Book Ring

A Lifetime Burning - Review

Star Gazing - Review

 

Welcome to Linda, who will around during to month to chat to us.

 

[Michelle]

Let's kick things off by starting at the beginning! Is writing something that you've always done? Did you write as a child, or was it something that came later in life?

[Linda Gillard]

Hi Michelle (and everyone in the forum)

 

Thanks for inviting me to participate.

 

I suppose I have always written. I've certainly always made up stories in my head! I used to be a big letter writer too. I worked as a freelance journalist and as an actress so words have always been my thing.

 

I wrote my first novel many years ago when I had 2 small children and was quietly going mad at home (as you do). I tried to get that one published but after 2 years of rejection slips I gave up. I cringe now when I think how awful that novel probably was, but there were some interesting characters in it which I "recycled" in my 2nd novel, A LIFETIME BURNING. I think because I'd lived with those characters for about 18 years, it gave ALB a sense of depth and I was able to write about those lives in some detail. (ALB covers a period of 58 years in one family.)

 

I didn't try for publication again until I'd turned 50. By then I'd abandoned a career as a primary teacher after a breakdown and long period of illness. I'd taken up writing fiction just as something to do - for pleasure and as a kind of therapy. The novel I began then eventually became EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY, my first published novel. I'd joined a writers' e-group and they encouraged me to try to get an agent. I didn't think I'd stand a chance because EG was such a quirky book and had a 47 year old romantic heroine and this was in the heyday of Chicklit, so I sent off the manuscript with no expectation of success. But I found an agent who loved it (actually I think she loved my hero ;-) ) and then we found a publisher. So I began my 5th career (if you count motherhood) at the age of 53 when my first novel was published. It's never too late for a new start! (Which is one of the "messages" of EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY.)

 

Linda

Edited June 1, 2008 by Michelle
merged for you :)

[madcow]

Hello and welcome Linda, do you get time to read for pleasure? and if so who are your favourite authors, genres etc?

[~Andrea~]

Linda what an encouraging story. Sounds like perseverance was key for you.

 

Welcome to BCF

My question is: How do you find inspiration to sit down and write? I mean how do you stimulate your creative juices?

[Karen1]

Hi Linda, welcome to BCF.

 

A lot of writers seem to come from either a publishing environment or have worked as a journalist before, do you think your background as a journalist helped when it came to trying to find an agent and publisher?

[Linda Gillard]

Hi Jules

 

I don't read that much for pleasure for a variety of reasons and this is a source of great regret. I write fulltime and I tend to work long days. I like to watch DVDs to relax. Reading when you're writing can be very distracting stylistically and I tend to read anything but the contemporary fiction I write. If it's good you get depressed, if it's bad you get depressed ("Why is this selling in shedloads and I'm not?!"). So I like to read historical fiction (esp. Dorothy Dunnett whom I re-read all the time) and biography (I loved M Forster's biog. of Daphne du Maurier) because there's no overlap with my own work.

 

The other kind of reading I do is for research and I will always have a stack of books sitting on a table which I dip into, eg I read 3 autobiographical books written by blind people when I was researching STAR GAZING. For the book I've just finished drafting I read a biography of Enid Blyton. (Fascinating!)

 

But I do read some contemporary stuff. I recently discovered Sophie Hannah whom I'd recommend if you like psychological thrillers. I really admired Stef Penney's TENDERNESS OF WOLVES. My favourite read so far this year is MR PIP by Lloyd Jones which I thought was brilliant. I also loved the Victorian detective romp, SILENT IN THE GRAVE by Deanna Raybourn.

 

Linda

[Linda Gillard]

That's a very interesting question, Andrea.

 

I think my problem is not so much trying to discipline myself to write as trying to make myself do something other than write! I'm a workaholic really and there's nothing I'd rather be doing. But in the early days it was harder, I think because I lacked confidence in what I was doing and thought it was a bit ,well, mad, getting so involved in these made-up stories and falling in love - no, really - with these heroes that I'd created. (My 22 year old son refers to my writing as "playing with my imaginary friends".)

 

My books are also quite ambitious and I didn't know if I could actually do the things I was trying to do, so I think I often needed a confidence boost and an energy boost. I've always used music for that. (Springsteen is great for making you think you can achieve anything!) I have a kind of playlist for each book. I lot of writers do this. Music will take you directly into the world of the book the way scents allow you to access memories.

 

The other thing I do which helps me get into the world of the book and get down to work quickly is that I collect pictures - mostly photos of people - which represent places and characters in the work-in-progress. So above my PC there are a lot of photos clipped out of magazines or printed off the internet representing the characters in my current book. A character doesn't really take off for me until I have found a visual real life equivalent. Their personality doesn't have to resemble my character's, just their face.

 

I teach creative writing occasionally and I find that mostly what stops people writing is fear. Fear that it won't be "good". But if you stop trying to write "well", but just tell the story, the writing flows more easily. You have to get that critic off your shoulder, the one who sneers, "Whatever makes you think you can write?" I don't ever worry about writing well now, I just try to say what I want to say, in the way that I want to say it. For me, that's good writing. :-)

 

Linda

Edited June 2, 2008 by Linda Gillard

[Linda Gillard]

Hi Karen

 

Another good question! You're right - a disproportionate number of authors are ex-journalists. Publishers like journalists. They have a proven track record, a writing CV. They are used to being edited. They understand marketing. They meet deadlines. They are full of ideas. Perhaps most importantly they know people, they listen and research for a living, so their work is likely to have a certain depth.

 

There is also the factor that journalists are social animals and will have made a lot of contacts and publishing is a small, incestuous, back-scratching world where networking is an essential part of getting on.

 

None of this applied to me however! I was a freelance living in East Anglia and was never on the London circuit even though I wrote a column for IDEAL HOME for 12 years. And when I was trying to find an agent and a publisher for my first novel I was living on the Isle of Skye, my current home, so there was no London/journalism factor operating in my favour then. But I think being a journalist taught me how to write concisely, how to edit and how to think about marketing myself and my books.

 

As a journalist you are trying to write so that the casual reader will read to the end of your article and not turn the page in search of something more interesting. You are constantly aware of the need to entertain and inform. I think this training pays off when you come to write fiction. You know that you absolutely must not bore your reader which means you mustn't waste words and you must maintain their interest.

 

As a writer of fiction I aim to make it almost impossible for you to put my books down. As a journalist I wanted your eye to travel smoothly on till it got to the end of the piece. It's the same aim and you use some of the same techniques.

 

Linda

Edited June 1, 2008 by Linda Gillard

[Linda Gillard]

Can I ask a question now?

 

What makes a book "unputdownable"? What makes you read on? Is it just wanting to know what happens next? Or is it that you don't want to leave the characters? Or that a book is just easy to read?

 

As an author I'd love to know what this quality is, not least because I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of readers "complain" to me that they were up into the small hours, finishing one of my books because they just couldn't put it down. (Now when I sell books at author events I warn people not to start them late at night. ;-) )

 

But I don't know what this unputdownable quality is!

 

A certain fluency of style does it for me. Vintage Margaret Forster (I'm not so keen on the more recent stuff) is just so easy to read because it's beautifully written. (Don't start SHADOW BABY late at night!)

 

Linda

[Michelle]

Hmm.. for me it used to be the storyline, because I read a lot of horror, and then thrillers/crime. If it was particularly scary/mysterious/interesting, I'd want to keep going.

 

More recently though, it's been the characters, and the lives they lead. With the books that I find hard to put down, if often because I've 'clicked' with one or more of the characters.. I may really like them, or it might be dislike, or it may even be that I see something of myself in them, or someone I know. The key, however, is that I start to care about them, and NEED to know what happens next.

 

That was especially true of A Lifetime Burning - those characters came alive for me (if that doesn't sound too clichéd!), and they lead amazing lives.. I just had to keep reading, to know what was going to happen next, and how they were going to deal with it!

[Linda Gillard]

Some of those characters really did have a mind of their own! That was the first book I wrote where I had a distinct and weird sense of taking dictation. I might plan a certain scene and then the characters would say "No, that's wrong, it was like this" and I'd write it differently from how I'd planned.

 

In the creative writing How To books they tell you to plan your books chapter by chapter and that you should be in control of the characters and know everything about them. That's certainly not the way I work. I think a character has taken off if s/he starts arguing with me and doing surprising things. For me that's like a real live person.

 

One of the tips I give students is that if you're a bit stuck with a character, if they are seeming a bit dull, make them act out of character. People do it all the time! I think some of the most gripping moments in fiction are when people suddenly act out of character.

 

Something I say to my students (and myself) is "Never give in to the temptation to simplify." Life isn't simple. People aren't. And characters shouldn't be.

 

Linda

[Michelle]

I think youhave a point there.. people acting just as you expect would make a boring book.

 

It's an interesting question, and I'm looking forward to finding out if others agree with me, or if there's something else that makes them read into the night...

[Icecream]

Michelle, I am just like that. I used to love books for the stories, for example, I read Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban in one night because it was scary and mysterious and I had to get to the end of the story to find out what happened. Now though, I am wanting to read books to find out what happens with characters, how characters are formed, and how they interact with each other and grow through time. I NEED to know what happens with them, because I often relate with them in some way and have to know how they handle things or how they evolve.

[Linda Gillard]

I mentioned Dorothy Dunnett earlier. The sequence of books I've been re-reading for more than 20 years now is The Lymond Chronicles, 6 long books about one man, Francis Crawford, a gorgeous 16thC Scottish (anti-)hero who develops in the most complex way over the course of the six books. The books are full of action, complex plotting and a host of vivid characters, but the real hook is Francis, what happens to him, wondering what he is going to do next. I don't know of a more complex, fully developed or satisfying hero in British literature. He surpasses both Darcy and Mr. Rochester for me - by a wide margin!

 

The first book in the series is called THE GAME OF KINGS. I wrote an article for a blog about Dunnett (now dead sadly and much missed by her fans) and I then put it on my website. If you're interested in reading more about her (and Francis) see http://www.lindagillard.co.uk/further-reading.php

 

I think believable characters must be the key to a good book - characters you can get involved with. I think plot is of secondary importance. (Although I also think character is plot.)

 

Do you have favourite book heroes? I adore Heathcliff, although I know a lot of people think he's loathsome! WUTHERING HEIGHTS fascinates me and my 2nd novel, A LIFETIME BURNING was an attempt to write something like a 21stC version of it. I've no idea if I succeeded but the anti-hero Rory certainly divided readers. Some loved him, but mostly they disliked him. (I loved him, despite his appalling faults.)

 

Linda

[Linda Gillard]

When it comes to female characters, do you always need to like them?

 

Some editors drive authors crazy by insisting that female protagonists must be instantly likeable. They also don't like them doing things that readers won't approve of. I had arguments with an editor over a heroine of mine who drinks - not to excess - when pregnant. We both acknowledged that some women do drink during pregnancy, but for some reason my heroine had to be better behaved than average. Editors worry a lot about readers not liking central female characters.

 

I don't like goody-two-shoes heroines! I think intelligent readers will forgive a lot, so long as the character isn't boring. Jane Eyre isn't instantly likeable. Nowadays we'd describe her as spikey I suppose.

 

My author friends all say the same thing: that they have met strong resistance from editors if their heroines are difficult, unattractive or behave in an immoral way. (It's a genre issue. You can get away with this in literary fiction, but not popular fiction!) So you can see why I never expected to find a publisher for EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY which features as its heroine a 47 year-old manic depressive with a colourful sexual history. ;-)

 

Linda

Edited June 3, 2008 by Linda Gillard

[Inver]

Hello Linda.....remember me Lovely to see you featuring on here (big boss lady did listen to me and got you here....lol.)

 

Looking forward to reading Star Gazing via a bookring on Bookcrossing. How much research did you manage to get while you visited Aberdeen (when I didn't manage to meet up with you)? Have you visited anywhere else interesting when doing your research?

 

To answer your what make a book unputdownable. For me it is something that makes you imagine where the story is taking place and if it has a feel good feeling about the story I just want it to last a lot longer than the last page. Obviously likeable characters and not ones that irritate.

Diane

[Icecream]

Well Linda, Emotional Geology sounds great to me, when you put it like that! If females characters were all great looking stereotypes with no depth, they would be very boring in deed. Who is like that in real life? And show me a woman who has not drunk any alcohol whatsoever in pregnancy. OK, so maybe there are a few who have managed it, but what I am trying to say is that life is never so perfect that anyone can be goodytwoshoes all the time, and books are supposed to be an escape, but not dull. It is these things that make characters. I don't like characters that don't do anything but what is expected. I'm sorry if this response seems cut a little short. The baby is crying and I can't think, so I must go and see what the children are doing to each other.

[Linda Gillard]

Hi Inver! Thanks for recommending me to BCF!

 

When I was in Aberdeen I talked to some BookCrossers about the Piper Alpha disaster and I went to Hazlehead Park to visit the memorial. (That's where a key scene in STAR GAZING is set.) I spent a lot of time there taking photos and sitting on a bench, trying to absorb the atmosphere, the sounds and scents (because I was going to have to write about it from a blind "point of view".) I hope the experience of being there and noting those details will give readers an idea of what the garden and the memorial are like and I hope the gravity of the setting lends an extra poignancy to the final scene in STAR GAZING. (Can't really say any more for fear of spoilers!)

 

I don't travel a lot for research as I live on Skye and it's a bit of a mission getting anywhere. I tend to make stuff up and then research afterwards to see if I've got it right. ;-) Research can sometimes inhibit you, stunt your imaginative thinking. A treehouse features prominently in STAR GAZING. I'd never been in one before and I had to write about being in a treehouse in the depths of winter - and from a blind point of view. Difficult to research that! But recently when I was visiting Alnwick Garden where there is a famous treehouse, I realised that what I had imagined was pretty much how it was. I didn't think I'd missed anything. In fact I thought I might have written about the treehouse more vividly because I'd had to imagine it.

 

Linda

[Michelle]

I don't necessarily think that characters have to be likeable, but they do have to be believable. If a character does something that I personally disagree with, I need to be able to see why they did it.. if that makes sense?

 

I would actually imagine that a likeable female character makes writing a little easier.. is it more of a challenge to write character that won't necessarily be liked, because you have to make them believable in the way they act?

 

Also Linda, do the editors only get that way about the females? Are they quite happy to have the men misbehave? (I'm quite sure the answer to that will be yes! lol)

[Linda Gillard]

I think it's a genre issue again, Michelle. In popular fiction heroes need to be wearing white hats too. Publishers don't seem to like ambiguity.

 

In STAR GAZING I was asked to cut a ref to my single, commitment-phobe hero (a 42 year old oil worker who travels a lot for his job) having had an aids test. They thought this made him seem promiscuous. I argued that he was a responsible single male! In the end I found a way to cut the ref, but I wasn't too happy about it.

 

Likeable characters probably are easier to write but bad boys and girls are much more fun! EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY was very much a feel-good book where most of the characters were nice to each other and looked out for each other, as people do in remote communities. When it came to planning my 2nd novel, A LIFETIME BURNING, I felt I wanted to write something less clear-cut with more moral ambiguity. I also wanted to write about a "mad, bad & sad" woman - Flora, the black sheep of the family who was misunderstood.

 

This was challenging but I discovered that I love my bad characters just as much as my good characters. You love the sinner not the sin.

 

Linda

Edited June 21, 2008 by Linda Gillard

[~Andrea~]

Thanks for your response to my 'inspiration' question Linda. That was really interesting and helpful.

[Linda Gillard]

Are you a writer yourself, Andrea?

 

I don't recommend many books on writing but the most useful and accessible one I've found is ON WRITING by Stephen King which IMO says it all. I really rate it. Down to earth, practical advice that works. I quote him in my creative writing workshops and have him on the reading list.

 

Linda

[Inver]

How long did it take you to get pulished and how did you end up at Transita? Did you find them or did they find you?

[Linda Gillard]

The 2nd part of your Q is easier to answer than the the first, Inver.

 

I met the editorial director of Transita at a writers' conference and told them about EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY. They were actively looking for manuscripts then with mature female protagonists (they aren't any more) and they asked me to send them a few chapters. Then when they'd read those, they asked to see the whole thing. Then they offered to publish it and I was on my way.

 

How long did it take to get published? It took me years to write EG because there was a long break in the middle when I moved house twice - to Inverness and then to Skye. But once I had finished the book it only took me a few months to find an agent and then a few months more to find a publisher. I had a few rejections for EG along the way, but some of them were encouraging and told me not to give up.

 

My story is not at all typical! You can be rejected for years. (Mark Haddon's agent took 4 years to sell CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME because publishers weren't sure how to market it. Was it children's fiction or adult?) More typical perhaps is the story of my latest book, STAR GAZING which did the rounds and was turned down by 7 publishers before it was enthusiastically taken up by Piatkus.

 

You have to just ignore rejection and keep going. You also have to accept that even if your book is good, it might not be commercial. And if publishers don't think they can sell it, they won't consider publishing it. (There's writing... and then there's publishing. It's best not to get the 2 confused. )

 

The important thing is to find an agent who believes in you, who loves your work. Publishers won't normally look at work unless it is submitted by an agent.

 

Linda

Edited June 4, 2008 by Linda Gillard