How Things Have Changed
My story 'The Unbroken Bond' has been published each day this week on Creative Frontiers. I hope it is shows what life was like for some girls in the sixties compared to today. It explores the love between a mother and her child. It is something never to be broken no matter how much time has passed, no matter how much heartache has been felt. 

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

CONCLUSION

Many thanks to Martin, the editor, for publishing it.

Book Launches
I'm sure many of you will have attended a book launch either on-line or in person and it's got me thinking about how important these are for writers. After all the hard work and the long journey from writing to publication, every writer surely wants to ensure that the book is a success and to present it to as many people as possible. A book launch seems to be a good way of doing that. Through a book launch, we as readers are made aware that there is a new book due out. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are invaluable for informing us of this as well as where and when the event is going to take place. . 

Here are some events which took place in April:

Patsy Collins's 'Over The Garden Fence' on-line launch party was held on 3rd April and the pictures on her blog showed plenty of glasses of bubbly and snacks that we could sample when we attended. We were invited into her garden and the many comments from blog followers joined into the spirit of the virtual event. Patsy also gave us a flavour of the kind of stories we would find in the collection and there was a lovely photo of her garden with Spring flowers in full bloom. 


There is often a theme for the party. I'm sure many of you were tempted to join Samantha Tonge's 'Game of Scones' on-line launch party on April 20th where cakes and scones seemed to be the order of the day. As well as pictures of the book's cover, the photographs of delicious jam topped scones proved too hard to resist together with various other delights including lovely Greek baklavas and even a bottle of my favourite tipple, Baileys.  There were competitions throughout the day, too. As Sam said on her Facebook page, the on-line parties are a special way to make readers aware of newly-published books. Digital authors don't have a physical book to sign as you do if you hold an actual book launch.

  On Thursday evening, I went to the launch of a new short story and poetry journal,'The Lonely Crowd', in Cardiff. I went with two friends, Kath and Gael, from my writing group and you will find an excellent post about the event on Kath Eastman's Blog. I enjoyed hearing the writers read their own work and when I return to the stories and poems in Issue One, it will be their voices that I will remember.


The only book launch I have been involved in so far was that of 'Fifty Flashes of Fiction', the anthology of WorcesterLitFest & Fringe's Flash Fiction competition, last November. I wrote about it in my December 2014 blog and if you click on the link for Linda's Jottings and scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see Linda Daunter's thoughts about the experience too. There is also a photo of her reading her winning entry. The closing date for this year's competition was last Friday and I'm pleased to report that I sent in my three entries by the deadline!

Have you ever held a party or event to launch a new novel or collection of short stories? How did you find it? Do you have any tips or advice for anyone who is thinking of hosting one soon? I would love it if you shared your ideas. :-)

Thank you for reading my blog. You may also follow me on Twitter @JanbayLit or on Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

Back to Writing
This has been the longest I've been away from my blog. I had a lovely Easter break with a houseful of grown up children and two young grandsons. The Easter egg hunt took place in warm sunshine for a change and it was great fun. However, that was two weeks ago so I've no excuse. I have to get back to the computer and get some serious writing done.

I think I've told you before that I work better if there 's a deadline looming. I've been working (slowly!) on an entry for a short story competition where the closing date is May 15th, a whole month away! It's about a little girl who gets lost during a busy carnival when she and her parents are on holiday. It was inspired by the wonderful spectacle we watched on a recent visit to Tenerife in early March. I've written it from her dad's point of view and have tried to convey the emotional roller-coaster he experiences when she goes missing. After the first draft, it's around 2300 words and the word limit for the local competition for which it was intended is 1500 so it's far too long. I took it along when I met with a writing buddy, Kelly, last week and she came up with an interesting point. If I try to cut a third of the draft in order to comply with the competition word limit, wouldn't I lose the essence of the story? Perhaps it would be better to keep it for another competition and write another one. After editing and looking at the story again, I have decided that Kelly is right and so I'm trying to find inspiration for another story. Of course, this means that the deadline is closer now so maybe that will be just the incentive I need to get back on track. 

Remember NaNoWriMo? Back then, I had a definite deadline, November 30th, I wrote 50,200+ words and achieved my goal by the end of the month. Since then, I have been side-tracked into writing short stories and progress has slowed to a halt. With this in mind, Kelly and I set ourselves a goal. By the time we next meet in a few weeks time, we will spend a minimum of six hours a week writing more of our novels. This could be a day or two mornings/afternoons. This may seem a short amount of time but the idea is that we can still write other pieces too. Watch this space!

I'm pleased to report that my story, 'The Curse of the Turquoise Pool', made the long-list for the Nottingham Writers' Group competition on the theme of 'Water' but sadly didn't make the shortlist which was published on the site today. I'll keep trying!

Have you ever taken too long a break from writing? If so, what was the best incentive to get you back to writing? I'd love to hear what worked for you.

Thank you for reading my blog. You may follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit  and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

Points of View
Last week in the blog, I talked about reviews and their importance both to the writer and to prospective readers. When writing a review, we give our opinions or points of view. 

For writers, though, the point of view or POV is a decision we make even before we start to write. That may be just a simple choice between writing in the first person or in the third person. Especially in short stories, you would stick to one character's POV. We have to ask ourselves who is telling the story and whose eyes and voice will we be using. There are advantages and drawbacks to both writing in the first and third person. Writing in the first person allows you to create a very credible character where you know his or her deepest thoughts and emotions. The limitation of this is that you can only describe what you saw and this could set you apart from the action. If you are using the 3rd person, you can still relate the whole story through one character's eyes or point of view. As Della Galton has written in her book, The Short Story Writer's Toolshed, 'viewpoint is very important when it comes to making your characters sympathetic - as readers, we tend to warm to the character whose head we are in.' 

In longer stories and novels, the advantage of the 3rd person is that you can introduce other people's viewpoints and then the reader may know something that another character doesn't. In the Monday evening meeting of WriteGroup, we had an excellent discussion about a member's writing which was written in the 3rd person. We talked about whether the writing was from the narrator's POV or the character's point of view. In the chart, it would be called the 'Objective' 3rd Person and the 'Limited Omniscient' 3rd Person.

Here is an interesting article about what fiction editor Beth Hill calls 'Deep POV' from The Editor's Blog Thank you to fellow writer, Sue McDonagh, for sharing it. I hadn't heard the term before. Beth Hill suggests that with deep POV, 'readers see scenes through the viewpoint character, feel story events as that character does.' She goes onto say, 'Deep POV allows writers to do away with he thought, he felt, he wondered, he saw, all those phrases that intrude into fiction, that unnecessarily encumber the story.' Perhaps we do this when we write anyway and just not label it with the term 'deep POV'.

As writers and readers, which do you prefer - 1st or third person? I tend to write most of my stories in the first person. In my dual narrative novel, Clara's story is told in the 1st person whereas Rose's is in third. Although I'm not in Rose's head as I am Clara's, I hope that by telling the story from her viewpoint consistently, she still comes across as a credible character whose thoughts and feelings are conveyed to the reader through what she says and does. 

How many of you write in the 2nd person? I have only written one story in the 2nd person and feel that the emotion of the piece comes across as it is based on personal experience. It doesn't fit the short story guidelines for a magazine or a competition as it reads more like a monologue so it's sitting in my file going nowhere. Any suggestions?

Thank you for reading my blog. I'd love it if you'd comment about which POV you prefer. You may follow me on Twitter on @JanBayLit and on Jan Baynham Writer Facebook Page.

Reviews

Alfie Dog Fiction is running a new READER COMPETITION where all you have to do is download a paid story during March and send a short review of the story (approx 30 – 50 words). The winner will receive £100 and two runners up will each win one of their short story collection books as either a paperback or ebook as they prefer. The competition seems to be a good way to promote the importance of reviews even for individual short stories. I'd love it if you chose to review one of my stories. You'll find them HERE.

The importance of reader feedback cannot be ignored and could be said to serve a number of purposes:

1. Reviews help other readers choose what they want to read. Your opinion can help persuade or dissuade a reader from purchasing or borrowing a book. 
2. They can boost readership for an author. Review sites can be an excellent way of marketing a new book.
3. Reviews help you analyse a book in a way that you don't tend to do when you are actually reading it. It's the reflection afterwards that helps form your review.
4. They help writers know which parts of their writing are working and what needs to be improved.

Author, Luisa Plaja, gives her top tips for writing a good book review on the Book Trust site. (Please click on the link for the full interview.) In summary, she recommends:

1. Starting with a few sentences about what the book is about but obviously no spoilers.
2. Thoughts and feelings about what you liked about the book and the way it was told.
3. What you didn't like, what didn't work for you.
4. Summary of the review, the type of reader the book may suit
5. Any marks or star rating

A writer friend of mine, Kath Eastman, regularly writes reviews on her blog on Nut Press. This week she reviewed James Hannah's debut novel, The A-Z of You and Me. It's a very positive review that explains why she thinks the novel is successful. She talks about the way that Hannah has written the story and the review is analytical as opposed to being descriptive. 

What about poor reviews? Can a bad review still be helpful?
What do you think about the importance of reviews?

Thank you for reading my blog. It would be great if you left a comment about your review experiences. :-) 

You may follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

To Be Continued...

This week has been a week of cliff hangers if you watched Eastenders and their thirty year anniversary celebrations. Each live episode ended on a point in the plot which left the viewer needing to tune in to the next programme to find out what happened....or some viewers anyway! This got me thinking about what persuades our readers to keep turning the pages and come back for more.

What does make the difference between a story that we can't put down and one that we can read at a leisurely pace or even fail to finish? I would suggest a few of the following:

1. real, credible characters with whom I can fully empathise, their flaws as well as their merits, especially a main character I can really care about
2. a gripping plot that presents me with lots of questions that need answering, keeping me hooked from the very first page
3. language that does not hinder the pace of the writing but adds to the flow of the story
4. vocabulary choices that enhance the images of the story that I am forming in my head
5. chapter endings that make me not want to wait to pick up the book again.

Will I ever be able to write a story like this? A very tall order indeed! I am well into draft one of my very first ever novel and already I can see which points on the list are the most difficult for me. I like to think that readers will be able to relate sympathetically to my main characters, especially Clara and Rose who are the narrators. I'm also very aware of ending the chapters with some sort of hook which will be answered or picked up at the beginning of the next chapter. But what about the plot lines? Will my readers be fully engaged with them to want to read on? Is the pace right? Perhaps, at the moment, it suffers from what Philip Larkin called 'the muddle in the middle'. Barbara Dynes has written an interesting article entitled 'Moving the Story On - the key to a good middle' in the March edition (Issue #161) of Writers' Forum magazine. She writes about tension in a story 'which needs to run along its entire length, and you can build that up by adding obstacles and complications along the way.'  

For me, chapter endings with hooks or cliff hangers are vital to make the reader come back for more. It may be said that script writers of soaps do this to excess, but we do need to think about leaving an unanswered question at the end of chapters or instalments. Readers will then start to form possible answers in their heads before returning to the story to see whether they had predicted correctly. This week, I came across an excellent post on How To Write Chapter Endings That Make Readers Want to Turn the Page on Anne R Allen's blog, October 12th 2014. She invites her readers to match the endings of the first chapters to some book titles from well known authors. This is followed by an excerpt from Jessica Bell's book which gives advice on ending chapters.

My only experience of writing stories as short serials has been with Creative Frontiers. 'I Want Gets Nothing' was posted over five days in November and this week my three part crime story, 'Stalking Diana' was published. You can read each part here:

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3 - END

I tried to end each instalment with something to bring the reader back the next day. I was pleased that some of the comments suggested that readers did want to come back and find out what happened:

Is Diana who I think she is? I’ll just have to keep reading …(Part 1)

This is getting much darker. No idea how it will end. (Part 2)

A really good end to this.... (Part 3- END)

How do you ensure that your readers keep reading? Have you any tips for good chapter endings? I'd love it if you left a comment. Thanks. :-)

Thank you for reading my blog. You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

WriteFoxy Writers' Inspiration Day

Last Sunday, I attended a writing event held in Dudley with a writer friend of mine, Kath Eastman. It was organised by Miranda Dickinson, best selling author of Fairytale of New York and It Started With a Kiss. She promised a 'day for writers to come together, share ideas, be inspired and, most of all, reconnect with a love of writing.'  And it did just that! I came away inspired and wanting to get back to my writing.

First, we introduced ourselves to other writers over coffee. It was interesting to hear how some writers were like me with some short stories published on-line, others had agents and the publication dates of their books were imminent and others were already published. What was lovely was to put faces to some of the names I follow on Twitter and to chat to them about their writing.

Miranda opened the event by explaining the format of the day, including pointing out that there was a room set up as a Writers' Den for our use if we didn't want to sit in on any of the workshops. Needless to say, I didn't want to miss a word from Miranda and her speakers so I didn't venture in! 

She then introduced us to her three presenters: 

- Julie Cohen, best selling author of Dear Thing and her new book Where Love Lies, which has just been shortlisted for the 2015 RNA Contemporary Romantic Novel category. 

- Kate Harrison, best selling author of fiction and non-fiction including The Secret Shopper series, the Soul Beach trilogy, The 5:2 Diet and her new book A Batch Made in Heaven.

- Rowan Coleman, best selling author of The Accidental Mother, Dearest Rose and The Memory Book.

Julie, Kate, Rowan and Miranda

The first workshop, led by Julie, was on creating characters. By the end of the session, we had each created a character not just through a description of his/her appearance and actions. We also looked at how objects used by a character can introduce symbolism into our writing, how a character's conflict may be internal and external and how a character can grow and change over the course of a story. 

After coffee time, it was the turn of Kate. We returned to a room where the lights had been dimmed, candles lit and we were asked to choose a pebble or sea-shell. She led us to think of our emotional blue-print when she asked us to think about the type of stories and themes we normally write about. Thinking about the emotional journeys we were taking in our stories in such a reflective way was designed to make us more confident.

Straight after an excellent lunch, Rowan's workshop was all about discovering your voice as a writer. Something that's very hard to define, yet it's integral to what is unique and distinctive about a successful writers' work. Rowan asked us to think of three words that sum us up as writers and we then had to think about how those words are intrinsically linked with what we want to achieve in our writing.

The final session of the day, 'Writing Against the Odds', was taken by Miranda. It was interesting to hear that even as very successful published writers the four presenters had all experienced disappointments and setbacks along the way. We shared what held us back as writers and the whole session served to boost our confidence and feel positive about our writing. From now on, whenever my writing is not going well, I will leave my computer and adopt my Superman pose! I'll chuckle as I remember eighteen writers all doing that in Miranda's session. :-)

The day had flown by and my head was buzzing. After saying good-bye to everyone and exchanging names of Twitter accounts and Facebook Writer pages, we headed home. 

Many thanks are due to Miranda, Julie, Kate and Rowan for such an inspiring day. If you get the chance to attend a WriteFoxy Writers' Inspiration Day, I thoroughly recommend it;  you'll be in for a treat!

What has inspired you in your writing lately? I'd love it if you left a comment. Perhaps you've been on a WriteFoxy day, too.

Thank you for reading my blog. You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBayLit and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.