Hopeful Healthy Prose

A few weeks ago I posted a blog following an exciting and enlightening day at Penguin Random House’s Write-Now Birmingham event. I had gone straight back to work on my novel the next day, rewriting my synopsis and redrafting chapters to get ready to submit to more agents and to my creative writing peers for their feedback. I used the momentum and thought that regardless of what happened next, I was determined to make a success of this.

However, I received an email just under two weeks ago letting me know that I had been shortlisted from the Birmingham event!  I was at work at the time I read that beautiful email. Anyone who works in academic publishing will tell you how quiet the office spaces can be but I couldn’t help crying out in elation and pumping my fist at my desk. Every writer who wants to be published longs for the day when a publisher asks to see your full manuscript.  I’ve spent over two years on this incarnation of my story, in between my day job and everything else life has thrown at me. It was fantastic enough that I had gotten to sit down with a Penguin books editor who had read my work and was enthusiastic about it but that they believed enough in my ideas and vision to shortlist me just made me feel so much joy and gratitude.

The only minor hiccup was that quite a significant chunk of my text (about a third) was still in notebook form with only about 66,000 typed up – typical Ashley! I have had this real hang up about writing directly on screen, as I feel much more liberated (and creatively productive) with a pen in my hand and drafting on paper. I’ve been making much more of an effort this year to write directly on screen instead but as I’ve been writing here there and everywhere with the novel it’s just been easier to have a pen and pad handy.

For this past week and a bit I have been fervently  typing up and redrafting, sorting out plot points or strands that didn’t go anywhere, in order to get my manuscript in the best possible state to send in for Penguin Random House’s consideration. While I didn’t quite manage to type up the whole last part of the manuscript (about 12,000 words remain) I got it to a point in the story I was happy with, that set things up nicely for the grand finish, and which I was then able to spend time developing and editing. Thankfully, candidates have been told that it doesn’t matter if the manuscript is not complete. I would have been kicking myself if that wasn’t the case and I couldn’t have typed up and spent the time on it that I needed to. But yesterday I submitted! I am hopeful for what 2017 will bring, and I will keep working hard at my craft to make sure that those hopes become a reality.