Writing a book is never as simple as you think. In this article, debut novelist Stuart Blake explains the long journey his book went on between inception and publication – and how writing courses helped him along the way.
I have always admired William Ryan’s writing, and when I saw him speak at a Getting Published Masterclass in 2017, I vowed I would join his creative writing course when he ran one. My chance came in 2019 with a ten-week face-to-face course at Writers & Artists in Bloomsbury. Our group gathered in a subterranean room, listened to Bill’s presentations, and workshopped our stories. Bill offered an excellent grounding on everything, including structure, POV, theme, character arcs, obstacles and goals, and the dreaded synopsis. He’s also good on maintaining tension – vital for my genre, thrillers.
Right at the start Bill gave feedback on extracts from our stories. I was working on my previous book about people smuggling. His comments were forensic. One of the points he made was: if a reader stumbles, perhaps because something doesn’t make sense, they may drop out and never return. Reading mine, Bill was stumbling big-time. At the end of his comments he must have noticed my expression. ‘You’ve written the whole thing, haven’t you?’ he said.
You can imagine how I felt; I’d invested a great deal emotionally by the time I completed my draft. I was hoping for praise. Instead, it was time to go back to the drawing board. Bill doesn’t let you get away with anything.
One of the best things about this type of course is the group of aspiring authors who emerge at the other end. Bill encouraged us to keep in touch and provide positive feedback on each other’s work. I found this invaluable, not only because I find it hard to be objective about my own writing, but also critiquing other people’s work helps you develop your critical faculties.
Bill must have recognised I’m a sucker for punishment when I enrolled in a second W&A course with him in 2022, this time online. I was working on a thriller about a father daughter relationship. It would become the book I’m publishing now. Back then, the title was Father’s Day. As I continued to pick up rejections from agents, I mentioned to Bill that I was thinking of writing a sequel (spoiler alert: Father’s Day ended with a major tragedy, and I wanted to write the story about my protagonist seeking revenge.) Bill said, ‘If an agent doesn’t pick up your first book, they won’t take the sequel.’ Why bother? Yes, he’s good at logic too.
But one of my afflictions (or perhaps strengths) is I don’t like to give up. I told him the book wanted to be written, so he said I’d better get on and write it.
Soon I was into another course at Writers & Artists. This one was about editing, run by Alex Hammond. At the end of the sequel, I told Alex it was too low on word count. I explained about the first story, and he suggested I put the two together to make one book. Good idea, except the overall word count was now far too high!
I persevered and used what I learned on that course to edit the story down to its current length.
I’d spent too many years hoping to smash through the agent barrier and publish conventionally. I think most agents receive around 12,000 submissions a year from which they might pick one or two new clients. You could wait several lifetimes to hit that jackpot. I also know authors who have won agents, only to lose them later. Those who are published traditionally must defer to other people for book titles, cover design, and marketing decisions. Publishers are more likely to focus their investments and attention on their roster of TV celebrities than an unknown debut author.
There had to be a better way. I took a leap of faith and decided to self-publish. One of my friends from Bill’s first course – Paul Birch – had done it and seems to be succeeding. I enrolled on Self Publishing Launchpad run by Mark Dawson and James Blatch. A whole new world emerged. Turns out, publishing a book is as hard, maybe harder, than writing it!
But I’m getting there. I found a brilliant designer on Reedsy.com – David Prendergast – who has designed the cover and social media assets. I’ve gone back to school, reading Fiction Blurbs by Phoebe J Ravencraft – yes, a complete book just on the art of writing a blurb.
I have a website at stuartblakeauthor.com with a link to bookfunnel.com from where I can distribute a free first chapter of the ebook in return for signing up to my newsletter. I also used bookfunnel.com to distribute the book to my ARC readers before publication.
Get your copy of Father Daughter Killer here.
Explore W&A writing courses here.
Stuart Blake spent many years as an actor before switching to the events industry. Here he forged a career as an award-winning writer for sectors as varied as pharmaceuticals and defence. In addition to many corporate and government events, Stuart wrote theatrical experiences such as the Blitz Experience in the Imperial War Museum, the Trafalgar Square 200 national event for the Royal Navy, and performances to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Mayoralty for which he was awarded Freedom of the City of London. International work includes a travelling exhibition to bring to life the Big Bang, particle physics and the Large Hadron collider for CERN; and Health Futures for the World Health Organisation, one of the top attractions at Expo 2000. Father Daughter Killer is his first novel.
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