So, today, apart from dodging wasps which have plagued the house ever since we did our honey harvest, I received feedback on my romance novel submitted to the Romantic Novelist’s Association New Writer’s Scheme (NWS).
For people who haven’t heard of this, 250 lucky aspiring authors each year can join and gain access to the association’s activities plus have professional feedback on their work in progress. Some people who are eligible for full memberships choose to enter the NWS because of this feedback – it helps them develop as writers.
There’s a scramble for places on January 1st every year. When did I remember I should have been part of that scramble? March. Fortunately, in July a friend told me they had 3 spare spaces. Unheard of! These things are like gold dust.
I and my cheque book were there like a shot. The downside was I didn’t have much time to polish my book – last year’s shortlisted entry for the Mills and Boon/Prima competition. This manuscript has rotted on my hard drive ever since: Mills and Boon are so specific in their wants I really didn’t know what else to do with it.
To the feedback. It was what I expected. The plot let me down. The conflict wasn’t sufficiently complex to be sustained for the whole book. As Kate Walker says in her book 12-Point Guide to Writing Romance, the central conflict needs layers. Mine didn’t have those. It just got tested in a small number of different ways.
Plotting is not my strong point. The anonymous reviewer suggested possible plot options but added that I’ve probably got a lot of other ideas.
Er, no. That’s my problem. If anyone knows how to solve that, I’d be ever so grateful.
To be honest, though, in a lot of M&B romances I’ve felt the author was stringing it out a bit, sometimes quite a lot.
Apart from that, there were a lot of positives including a very short list of editing boobs – I was expecting pages.
In summary, no surprises, but it’s still nice to have your strengths pointed out.
The other thing that happened today was that one of the reviewers for the NWS said she was surprised how few members who submitted manuscripts have a web presence. I suspect I am one of them. Search engines don’t find this blog. They’ll find the other Sue Cook, the famous one, and all sorts of other Sue Cooks selling fireplaces on eBay etc. But not SueCookWrites.
Which leaves me in a quandary. Do I change my name to something less common and already ‘taken’? Sue Berrycloth, perhaps. I found ‘Berrycloth’ on a list of rare surnames. There are some corkers on there. Perhaps I should go the whole hog and become Amanita McCaa.
Maybe not.
It might be easier to stick a made up initial between the Sue and the Cook? But, one worries, what will that do to my blog? I’ll have to change the title to match. Does that mean I’ll never be able to find it because my shortcut won’t work or that all my previous posts will disappear? On this point, I have lots of imagination. All bad. That’s pessimism for you.
But I guess I need to take a leap of faith, probably with my fingers crossed, look on the bright side, even if it is raining and we’ve got a sick duck.
I’d be interested to hear if you’ve had problems getting found by search engines. If so, how did you resolve it?
Sue Cook's Writing Blog 