Not a Write Off vol: 7

The one where I am still editing my novel, I realise what I'm good at, and the baby starts to talk

Mar 12, 2024

In a recent post, paid subscribers voted for the topic of this quarter’s mini-workshop. Therefore, at 20:00 GMT on Sunday 14th April, I’ll be hosting a live 40 minute workshop on How to Outline your Novel. Tickets are £15 and can be purchased here. Paid subscribers will automatically be added to the guest list for free.

If you haven’t come across one of these posts before, let me give you a quick tour. It’s the less polished recap of the past month, a bit like a diary entry. Imagine I’ve pulled you into the closest chair and split a cinnamon bun with you whilst I garble about the past few weeks. Links to recent posts, workshops, and mentoring opportunities are at the end.

I write this from the bottom of a coffee cup. My second, to be precise. I started the morning with a standard oat milk flat white, which I usually make at home to save money, but today I can’t be at home. It’s a phrase that is so practiced that it tumbles out of my mouth in one syllable. Ohmilkflawyte. The caffeine hit, I redrafted a chapter of my novel (word count down from 3,000 to 1,600 – we’re trimming fat), and then the slump kicked in. Thus, I ordered another one with coconut milk instead because it’s the afternoon and feels like a treat. Friends, I have spent almost £8 on coffee today and one day I will learn to fill a Thermos before I leave the house.

The past month has zipped by and I can’t remember a single thing that happened. I need my Google Calendar to help me out here.

Okay… here we go. I took the train to Norwich with my baby and realised that it’s only a matter of time before she is too big to rock to sleep in a sling, her hot cheek pressed against my chest as the fields and lonely oaks zip past the window. She stuck her hand out of one side and touched every seat as I paced her to sleep, like Beyonce in her 2011 Glastonbury show.

It was pancake day, which is An Event in my house. Writing as someone who grew up as a ‘Get Her Into a Good School’ Catholic, this is less about choosing something to give up and more about finding the pure joy in eating dessert for a main meal. I don’t believe in giving anything up that you enjoy, unless it’s stepping on snails or hiding someone’s walking stick. Christ, as a parent trying to work / write / feed everyone / make money / have a life, I have given up enough, so I’ll enjoy my pancakes without the crushing weight of Catholic guilt, thank you very much.

My mum came to stay for a week and we took the baby to a butterfly house, which made my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Well, this was up to the point where the baby almost swiped an Atlas moth into her sweaty little fist and I almost passed out from 90% humidity whilst wearing a 90% wool coat.

I went to my cervical screening and watched Macbeth (not at the same time). The cervical screening was actually quite a laugh, which sounds positive, but it turns out that giggling is not conducive to the insertion of a speculum without risking it torpedo-ing across the room. Macbeth, on the other hand, was entirely captivating. This is saying a lot for a woman who hasn’t slept a full night in almost two years. I was on the edge of my seat. Quite literally, because I was located on the back row, as always. One day I will be able to pay for a seat closer to the front. Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow.

I have been surprisingly busy with mentoring. I don’t know why I still feel like is a surprise, because I have been mentoring writers for a couple of years now, and yet every time a new writer contacts me about their book I feel a tiny pang of ‘Oh! Me?’ I love this kind of work. I love helping writers understand the mechanics of their stories. I love it when they leave with renewed excitement for their novels. A writer I work with described me as a ‘book midwife’ and I really liked that. I am working on books that I just know in my bones will find readers who love them as much as I do. What a treat, to be trusted with such stories.

The novel…

My own writing has been undertaken more sporadically, which isn’t what I had hoped for this stage. I wanted to power through my edits, but as you’ll know from reading this post, my plan to redraft is taking longer than expected as I translate my manuscript into a completely different POV.

When I get tunnel vision on my book, I can clearly see the story it is supposed to be, the dialogue I need to cut, the jokes I wrote towards and as a result, aren’t very funny. I feel like Mrs. Sweeney, slicing chunks of fat from the book. It’s painful at points, but I know it’ll make for a more delicious read. Never before have I had the time to really, meticulously rework my manuscript before sending it to my editor, such is the nature of my publishing schedule. It’s a new addition to my process. This is what it looks like:

Read chapter at pace.
Highlight passages that are no longer relevant/boring/confusing/overly descriptive in red. Those will be deleted. On average, this is around 25% of each chapter.
Highlight passages that contain relevant information/details that need slight tweaking in orange. These will be rewritten, clarified, and made better. On average, this is around 35% of a chapter.
Highlight anything that is staying the same in green. On average, this is around 40% of a chapter.

Onwards, we go. Ten chapters down. Twenty-five to go. Eek.

The baby…

I’m not sure how much longer I can keep calling the baby The Baby. She is so desperate to walk, but she has inherited my double-jointed knees and doesn’t trust them to hold her weight. She circumnavigates the room like a thirty-year-old who reinvents their personality by taking up bouldering. She loves eating with a fork. Toast. Stuffing. Pancakes. I encouraged this by saying ‘stab!’ every time she picked at her food and now, she copies me. It would make mealtimes quite sinister, if it weren’t for her airy little voice. I brush her hair into pigtails that stick up like fountains. She likes watching Riverdance on YouTube. She dances with two pointy fingers tracing lines in the air like a conductor. She is, as ever, a joy.

Finding joy in…

After the marathon that was Fourth Wing, I didn’t think I’d feel ready to tackle another 500+ page book, but something about The Bee Sting by Paul Murray caught me, which is odd because the blurb doesn’t shout ‘exciting!!!’ It’s an epic, over twenty-five hours long. It’s got that excellent, dark Irish humour and despair that balances on a knife-edge. After listening for almost five hours in one day, my thoughts were in a Dublin accent. Loved it. I’m now listening to None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, which is a thriller that I’m loving equally for entirely different reasons. I wouldn’t say I found joy in Holly Bourne’s You Could Be So Pretty because it made me so angry. Christ, what a powerful book. If every teenage girl could read it at fourteen or fifteen they would be a force to be reckoned with. Oh, I also went to see Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, which was so so so good. Pure joy.

My Not A Write Off win this week:

I went to a café and wrote and rewrote until I got thumb strain, which isn’t something I’ve managed to do in months. There’s always something ready to interrupt, but not this time. It’s a lesson to get out of the house when I feel like my attention is being pulled in ten directions. You can’t do the laundry in a library (although as a frequent library dweller, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone tried).

💡 Mentoring

From May, I will have one slot opening for mentoring. In the past year one of my writers has secured publication and another is currently speaking with literary agents, which is very cool. If you think pragmatic, one-to-one support is something you’d benefit from, drop me an email and we can chat. All my rates and testimonials are on my website.

Mentoring

If you’d like a one-off Plot Cloudbusting session to break through a specific project barrier or want to get a query package looked at in Submission Surgery, I have space for those too.

You can read more of my writing by picking up my novels, either from any decent bookshop or through your local library (never feel bad about this - I actually make more money from a library loan than a Kindle purchase). The Lonely Fajita (2021), The Sister Surprise (2022), or The Wedding Crasher (2023). My books have sold nearly 20,000 copies and I am so grateful that people like my dark lil’ sense of humour and fish-out-of-water heroines.

Reviews of my work:

'‘I relished this witty, tender story of loneliness, growth and friendship. Mann has a fabulous knack of finding the funny in life’s small detail’ - Pernille Hughes

‘Heartwarming, charming and witty’ - Sophie Cousens #1 bestselling author of This Time Next Year

‘The perfect blend of warm and witty you can't help but smile (and laugh) throughout’ - Helly Acton, author of The Shelf

‘Had me laughing all the way through, and I got weepy at the end’ - Sara Nisha Adams, author of The Reading List

‘I laughed the whole way through and cried at the end. The perfect smart, escapist read’ - Freya Sampson, author of The Last Chance Library

‘As comforting as putting on your cosiest sweater and fuzzy socks. I loved every moment of it’ - Jesse Sutanto, author of Dial A For Aunties

‘Yet another hilarious and touching book from Abigail Mann, with a cast of great and terrible characters and a setting full of Succession-esque glamour and drama’ - Lex Croucher, author of Gwen and Art are Not in Love

‘Abigail Mann is at her absolute best . . . she skillfully uses comedy alongside other more serious topics’ - Holly McCulloch, author of The Mix Up