Linda Gillard
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Posts posted by Linda Gillard
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Icecream, www.rethink.org is the organisation that specialises in supporting schizophrenics and their carers. They have a special carers section on their website.
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Icecream, there are forums you can join especially related to manic depression or other mental illnesses. Carers post as often as sufferers and they get support too.
DEPRESSION ALLIANCE www.depressionalliance.org is a good place to start. Or if you think your OH is bipolar try the Manic Depression Fellowship www.mdf.org.uk
I joined both of these organisations and found them very supportive.
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Icecream, I really feel for you. If I had a choice between suffering from a mental illness or caring for someone who suffers from a mental illness, I would choose to have the illness. The carer's role is, I believe, even tougher. (That was one of the things I wrote about in EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY - the toll mental illness takes on relationships.)
I hope someone is looking after you. Carers need to be cared for too.
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Well, I think it can be done on research alone, but I would say that, wouldn't I, because I've just published a novel (STAR GAZING) written from a congenitally blind "point of view" - and I don't even know anyone who's blind!
(I did get someone who was visually impaired to read it to see if I'd made any gaffes.)Sebastian Faulks didn't fight in WWI (BIRDSONG) and Georgette Heyer wasn't at the battle of Waterloo (AN INFAMOUS ARMY). Stef Penney has never been to Canada. (THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES.) As an ex-actress I'm used to the idea that an actor can be asked to play any sort of role, totally alien to their own life - a paedophile, a prostitute, a serial killer - and they have to find ways of making you believe in them. Of course they do research, but it's really about that imaginative leap that you make to walk a mile in someone else's shoes.
You might be interested to know it was far harder for me as a non-musician to imagine what it was like to be a world-class classical pianist (Rory in A LIFETIME BURNING) than to be congenitally blind (Marianne in STAR GAZING)!
I think the key issue is you need to write with passion, whatever you are writing about. It's obviously easier to write with passion if you are writing about something close to your heart. (But then it's harder to edit!)
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No, it wasn't Michelle, because when I started writing EG I hadn't long had a diagnosis! I cracked up as a teacher and went sick. I was diagnosed as suffering from stress and depression. (I was also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder but no-one diagnosed that.) I didn't get better and the depression got worse despite medication. I did a lot of reading and started charting mood swings. I came to the conclusion my problem was severe PMS and asked to be referred to a gynaecologist. I hadn't been talking to him for more than 10 mins when he said "You aren't suffering from PMS, you're suffering from bipolar affective disorder." (Manic depression.) I was referred back to a psychiatrist who confirmed a diagnosis that my GP, another psychiatrist and 2 community psychiatric nurses had missed!
Once I got a correct diagnosis I was given the right meds and I started to get better. But I was reeling... What I'd always thought was my personality turned out to be a life-threatening illness. (Bipolar has a very high suicide rate.) And biplar is for life, there is no cure. You just have to manage it.
So I educated myself about the subject, did a lot of online research and fortunately found Kay Redfield Jamieson's wonderful memoir AN UNQUIET MIND. (Recommended as a bookclub read - lots to discuss and it's very readable. It's a good companion read with EMO GEO.)
So I made my heroine bipolar because all that was uppermost in my mind. I was also desperately trying to convince myself that there was some sort of upside to bipolar. You aren't always conscious of the big themes when you're writing a book, but I can see now that I was exploring the relationship between creativity and - for want of a better word - "madness".
By the time I'd finished the book I was aware of the level of ignorance about the illness (not to mention the stigma attached to it) so when I knew it was to be published I had to make the very difficult decision as to whether to be "out" about being bipolar. (Before Stephen Fry, almost nobody was. Not many people are now, but it's estimated that as many as 1 in 20 people are affected by it, so all of you know manic depressives - possibly several.)
I decided that I had to be "out", even though I knew that meant readers would assume EG was autobiography (it isn't) and that I was probably a one-book wonder, not a serious writer of fiction. (I dealt with the latter issue by starting my 2nd novel 2 weeks after finishing the first and getting that published a year later.
)Sorry this is such a long reply but it's a big issue and I know Michelle is interested and has read several books lately with a bipolar theme.
Linda
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No. The most money you can make selling a book is selling it on yourself after you have bought copies from the publisher using your author discount. But then you don't get a royalty!
Buying direct from the author is the best way of benefiting the author financially.
Linda
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Another very good question! Lyzzybee has made most of the points already, so I'll just add a few personal comments, if I may.
I have confidence in my "product"! I believe if people read one of my books they are likely to seek out the others. I know from experience that my readers recommend my books to their friends and buy copies for them.
Obviously I wish people would buy rather than borrow, but I'm realistic. I didn't become an author to make money! (Did you know the average author's income is about £4000 a year?) The other important point to bear in mind is that if you buy a copy of STAR GAZING in Waterstones, I make about 50p and Waterstones make £3.50! When you buy books in shops, the bookseller is making the money, not the author. So until you get into selling shedloads, sales are not really a big issue financially. If all the BookCrossers who have borrowed copies of my books went and bought one, it wouldn't make me rich.Or even comfortable. The important thing to me is not to be bought, but to be read and discussed. It's about communication and authors want it to be two-way.
What I would say is, if you've read a borrowed copy of a book and you liked it, make it a point of honour to tell 5 people that you liked that book and why (and write down the author's name for them!)
Linda
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Answering Inver's Qs...
I moved on from Transita with STAR GAZING which was bought by Piatkus. I'm contracted to deliver another manuscript to them by the end of August. I've just finished the draft of that and it's scheduled for publication in May 2009, working title FAMILY SHADOWS.
Publishers expect a book a year. It's a treadmill, but that's what they want and anyone thinking of trying to get published needs to bear in mind that they will be asked to produce a book a year. (This is why there are so many sequels and series - you don't have to start from scratch each time!)
I write fulltime so a book in a year is feasible for me, just about, but if I had another job I don't know how I'd manage. In an ideal world I would like to produce a book every two years, but publishers like one a year so they can build you up into a "brand".
Linda
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Featured Author - Linda Gillard
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By the sea. Outdoors if it's not too cold or by a window overlooking the sea. (I write longhand on a pad of lined A4 so I can write anywhere.) I'd like to be in the Hebrides listening to the waves breaking on a sandy beach and the only sounds being seabirds.
But I don't have to be anywhere special or even comfortable to write. If it's going well, I can write sitting at a bus stop.