Today’s advice to aspiring writers is by Hazel Gaynor the author of the New York Times Bestseller The Girl Who Came Home, and the forthcoming novel A Memory of Violets.

• Finish the book. Seriously. It is the only way you will ever get to THE END, the only way you will ever have a full manuscript to send to your dream agent when they ask for it and the only way a publisher is ever going to make you an offer.
• Finish what you started. Stop hopping around from one idea to another. We all reach the dreaded ‘This is Rubbish’ phase at 30,000 words. A better, brighter, more commercial idea will always hit you at exactly the point when the plot of your work in progress starts to peter out. No cop outs. Finish what you started. It’s the law.
• Don’t ask your partner for their ‘honest’ advice on your work in progress. Ever. They will tell you, honestly, what they think and they will make you weep for a week. Or is that just me?
• Don’t torment yourself by reading the Twitter updates and Facebook status updates of all your writing friends who have just signed a mega deal or have a bestseller on their hands. You will start to hate and despise them and collapse into a Heap of Despair at your desk. Again, perhaps that was just me?
• Write what you love and can’t stop talking about. Don’t jump onto a literary bandwagon. The publishing process takes a long time – that bandwagon will have moved on. Write about the thing that stirs your soul, the thing that you will still be excited to talk about in ten years’ time when the movie of the book comes out.
• Be kind to yourself. Be your biggest fan. Reward yourself for achievements: completing a tricky scene, moving beyond Chapter Three, cutting those 10,000 words of nonsense in the middle.
• Remember that THE END is actually the beginning. Your first draft (even if you’ve been editing along the way) is really just your first draft. When you write THE END walk away, pour a large G&T and leave it for at least a month (preferably longer). When you return to the manuscript, you will be far more objective and will be able to edit and polish far more effectively. I promise.
• Do your homework. If you are looking for agent representation, start to find the agents who might be interested in representing your Read the acknowledgements section of books you love and are in a similar genre to yours. Who is that author’s agent? Read about the agent on their website. Follow them on Twitter (not in a stalker-ish way). Go to events, conferences and workshops. Meet people. Understand the industry.
• Do your homework. If you are writing about the Titanic (ahem), read everything you can about the Titanic. There will be someone, somewhere, who is just waiting to point out your inaccuracies in their Amazon review in three years’ time. While some little errors might slip through the many rounds of edits and copy edits, do your absolute best to get your facts straight. If in doubt, leave it out. Better still, don’t ever be in doubt. Just know your stuff.
• Be tenacious. You are an aspiring writer: what a fabulous and terrifying thing to be. Never lose sight of your goal, despite the rejections and disappointments that will come your way. It is all part of the path to YES (and will be a rich source of anecdote material to draw on in future author interviews). Permit yourself half an hour of abject misery when necessary, then go for a walk, pour the coffee and get on with it. Tomorrow might be ‘the day,’ but you’ll never know if you send everything to the shredder and run to the writing hinterlands of I Give Up. Bum on seat and back to it. Yes, you can bring chocolate.

About the Author

Hazel Gaynor is the author of the New York Times Bestseller The Girl Who Came Home, and the forthcoming novel A Memory of Violets. She is also a freelance writer, writing regularly for the national press, magazines and websites in Ireland and the UK.

Her writing success has been featured in The Sunday Times Magazine and Irish Times and she has also appeared on TV and radio. Hazel is a guest blogger and features writer for national Irish writing website writing.ie for which she has interviewed, among others, Philippa Gregory, Sebastian Faulks and Cheryl Strayed.

Hazel was the recipient of the 2012 Cecil Day Lewis award for Emerging Writers and appeared as a guest speaker at the Romantic Novelists’ Association Conference and the Historical Novel Society Conference in 2014.

Author Links:  Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Title: A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London’s Flower Sellers by Hazel Gaynor
Release date: February 3^rd, 2015
Publisher: William Morrow

Synopsis

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Hazel Gaynor comes a beautiful historical novel about Tilly Harper, a young woman who finds the diary of an orphaned flower seller who was separated from her sister in Victorian England, and her journey to learn the fate of the long lost sisters. Gaynor’s research into the events that inspire her novels is outstanding, and the world of the Victorian flower sellers on the streets of London in the late 1800s is utterly fascinating.

In 1912, twenty-one-year-old Tilly Harper leaves her sheltered home in the Lake District for a position as assistant housemother at Mr. Shaw’s Home for Watercress and Flower Girls in London. Orphaned and crippled girls wander the twisted streets with posies of violets and cress to sell to the passing ladies and gentleman, and the Flower Homes provide a place for them to improve their lives of hardship.

When Tilly arrives at Mr. Shaw’s safe haven, she discovers a diary that tells the story of Florrie, a young Irish flower girl who died of a broken heart after being separated from her sister Rosie. Tilly makes it her mission to find out what happened to young Rosie, and in the process learns about the workings of her own heart.

Purchase A Memory of Violets: A Novel of London’s Flower Sellers on Amazon | Barnes | iTunes | IndieBound

Giveaway

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