Macmillan New Writing Week
Day Seven
An Interview with Eliza Graham
What started you writing? How long have you been writing for?
I started writing teenage journals about the usual angst (boys, appearance, friendships). I put my pen aside for some years during university and early working life. Then I dabbled in writing for a few years, producing my first 'novel' during my first pregnancy (too many hormones, perhaps?). This effort was so dreadful I simply flipped each page over and used it as fax paper. Then I didn't write again until 2002. I was moaning on about someone I was at university with whose novels were all over Borders in Oxford Street. My husband told me to either write a novel myself or stop complaining. So I did. That novel eventually became my second published novel, Restitution. It took about six years to complete and it was my teacher. I changed tenses, POV, structure, characters. I re-wrote it once a year, learning something each time. Restitution feels like my first-born. In between drafts I wrote Playing with the Moon, eventually to become my first published novel.
Why MNW?
Having already had two agents for books that didn't sell (one an early version of Restitution) and having failed to find a third for Playing with the Moon, I was jaded with the agent-hunting process, which felt like a glass door I couldn't get permeate. So when I saw an internet article about MNW and how you didn't need an agent and you didn't even need to mail it to them because they accepted email submissions (rare in publishing at that time), it seemed such a straightforward way to submit a book that I was very interested. I emailed them Playing with the Moon but without expectations of success. When I received the email from Will Atkins four months later my eye was so accustomed to finding the last sentence saying '...but we wish you luck in the future' that I didn't even work out that it was an expression of interest for about five minutes. I worked with Will on some parts of the book that he wanted me to rethink and then it was accepted for publication. It was an amazing time. I will never forget the excitement. After so many years of trying to get a book into print it was one of the highlights of my life.
Has anything about the publishing process surprised you? Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known right at the start?
'Hurry up and wait!' is the way to sum up the way everything moves. It often seems that months go by without hearing anything from anyone and then everything happens all at the same time. Three books in I'm beginning to understand the rhythms of the process a little more now, but it's not like any other industry. I also didn't understand about the power of the big chains: Waterstones, W H Smith, Tesco, etc, and how much say they have on matters such as cover design. And the need to persuade the sales team that your book is one they want to go and push to the stores: it's so important that they really feel they can go out and bat for you. And then there are other teams of people like the rights department who can be so very significant in a novelist's career. And marketing and publicity... there are so many cogs.
What do you do when you’re not being a successful novelist?
Clean the house, walk the dogs, act as family taxi service. I also have an occasional editing freelance job, which is great because it exercises different writing muscles and keeps them honed.
In terms of your literary career, where do you go from here?
I still have another book under contract for Pan Macmillan and I'm writing at the moment for delivery in October. After that, we'll have to see!
Tell me about your book(s)!
My first (published) novel is Playing with the Moon, set in a Dorset village evacuated in WW2 for D-Day landing practice and telling the story of a black GI who goes AWOL and is hidden by a group of teenagers with disastrous consequences.
Restitution is set in eastern Germany during the last stages of the war and is my version of Gone with the Wind meets Cold Mountain meets Doctor Zhivago. Not that I was being ambitious or anything.
Jubilee, which comes out in June, is set locally to me in the Berkshire Downs and is the story of the mysterious disappearance of a young girl at a Silver Jubilee party, and events occurring twenty-five years later around the time of the Golden Jubilee in the same village.
And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice to aspiring authors in one sentence?
If you're feeling blue, cheer yourself up by imagining the day the courier knocks on your door and hands over the author copies of your first novel, smelling of crisp print, feeling smooth beneath your fingers, a beautiful picture on the cover; keep this image in your mind and it will help you push on.
I started writing teenage journals about the usual angst (boys, appearance, friendships). I put my pen aside for some years during university and early working life. Then I dabbled in writing for a few years, producing my first 'novel' during my first pregnancy (too many hormones, perhaps?). This effort was so dreadful I simply flipped each page over and used it as fax paper. Then I didn't write again until 2002. I was moaning on about someone I was at university with whose novels were all over Borders in Oxford Street. My husband told me to either write a novel myself or stop complaining. So I did. That novel eventually became my second published novel, Restitution. It took about six years to complete and it was my teacher. I changed tenses, POV, structure, characters. I re-wrote it once a year, learning something each time. Restitution feels like my first-born. In between drafts I wrote Playing with the Moon, eventually to become my first published novel.
Why MNW?
Having already had two agents for books that didn't sell (one an early version of Restitution) and having failed to find a third for Playing with the Moon, I was jaded with the agent-hunting process, which felt like a glass door I couldn't get permeate. So when I saw an internet article about MNW and how you didn't need an agent and you didn't even need to mail it to them because they accepted email submissions (rare in publishing at that time), it seemed such a straightforward way to submit a book that I was very interested. I emailed them Playing with the Moon but without expectations of success. When I received the email from Will Atkins four months later my eye was so accustomed to finding the last sentence saying '...but we wish you luck in the future' that I didn't even work out that it was an expression of interest for about five minutes. I worked with Will on some parts of the book that he wanted me to rethink and then it was accepted for publication. It was an amazing time. I will never forget the excitement. After so many years of trying to get a book into print it was one of the highlights of my life.
Has anything about the publishing process surprised you? Is there anything you know now that you wish you’d known right at the start?
'Hurry up and wait!' is the way to sum up the way everything moves. It often seems that months go by without hearing anything from anyone and then everything happens all at the same time. Three books in I'm beginning to understand the rhythms of the process a little more now, but it's not like any other industry. I also didn't understand about the power of the big chains: Waterstones, W H Smith, Tesco, etc, and how much say they have on matters such as cover design. And the need to persuade the sales team that your book is one they want to go and push to the stores: it's so important that they really feel they can go out and bat for you. And then there are other teams of people like the rights department who can be so very significant in a novelist's career. And marketing and publicity... there are so many cogs.
What do you do when you’re not being a successful novelist?
Clean the house, walk the dogs, act as family taxi service. I also have an occasional editing freelance job, which is great because it exercises different writing muscles and keeps them honed.
In terms of your literary career, where do you go from here?
I still have another book under contract for Pan Macmillan and I'm writing at the moment for delivery in October. After that, we'll have to see!
Tell me about your book(s)!
My first (published) novel is Playing with the Moon, set in a Dorset village evacuated in WW2 for D-Day landing practice and telling the story of a black GI who goes AWOL and is hidden by a group of teenagers with disastrous consequences.
Restitution is set in eastern Germany during the last stages of the war and is my version of Gone with the Wind meets Cold Mountain meets Doctor Zhivago. Not that I was being ambitious or anything.
Jubilee, which comes out in June, is set locally to me in the Berkshire Downs and is the story of the mysterious disappearance of a young girl at a Silver Jubilee party, and events occurring twenty-five years later around the time of the Golden Jubilee in the same village.
And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice to aspiring authors in one sentence?
If you're feeling blue, cheer yourself up by imagining the day the courier knocks on your door and hands over the author copies of your first novel, smelling of crisp print, feeling smooth beneath your fingers, a beautiful picture on the cover; keep this image in your mind and it will help you push on.
Thanks to Eliza for answering my questions and ending on such a stirling piece of advice - one which I indulge on a regular basis! Eliza's website can be accessed here and her blog here.
And thus ends Macmillan New Writing Week! Huge, huge thanks to the seven authors who took part and didn't once complain when I had to reshuffle the scheduling of their interviews. I wish all of them the best of luck with their careers, and have added those titles that I haven't read yet to my increasingly daunting pile of "to read" books.
I hope all the blog readers got something out of this, especially those of you who, like me, are yet to be published but are trying to find out everything that you can. I was pleasantly surprised at how positive an experience MNW had been for all the writers interviewed here, despite how different the goals, aspirations and expectations of the different MNW authors appear to have been. The sense of camaraderie and support evident on the Macmillan New Writers blog is lovely to witness, and the positive attitude of the writers themselves quite refreshing.
If these interviews have inspird you to try submitting to MNW, then please go and check out their website and submission guidelines over here. oh, and make sure that you come back and let me know if they take you on as a result - I'm always a sucker for a happy ending.
4 comments - thank you!:
Thanks so much for hosting me, Gemma.
Eliza - thank you, and all the other MNWs for taking part in interviews for this week!
I wish all of you loads of luck in your writing careers and look forward to hearing from future MNWers as they embark on their careers too!
Just caught up with your blog after a manic work week. Great to read all seven interviews in one go. Really interested in MNW - I never knew about them before reading the blog. Thanks so much for all your hard work.
Hi Eliza, I really enjoyed your interview. I am waiting for that courier right now (in the next few weeks anyway!)
And Gemma,I have enjoyed all the interviews, so many thanks to you for hosting us.
And there is now a handy place to refer people to if they want to know anything about MNW!
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