Don't We All Want to Write Novels? by Rosemary Johnson

I’ve always wanted to write novels, since I was a child with a head full of Enid Blyton.  From the age of ten, I’ve been composing novels in my head, and before I reached my teens I was writing them down, in red Silvine notebooks (about A6 size – totally unsuitable).  Many people reading this have been more successful than I have, because, in my case, other things got in the way, like raising a family, followed by a teaching career. 

Nothing to do with post, but these sheep were cute.

I always have several novels in my head, even when I’m not actually writing one of them, like, at the moment, as I'm doing a lot of web development, for the ACW and for church, and trying to polish and submit short stories.  ‘They’ say you should clear your mind of everything when you get into bed in order to facilitate sleep.  Thinking through a scene in one of my novels soothes and calms my mind in a way that mere emptiness never could. 

Yet serious novel-writing is not like this.  For sure, when you write the first draft, you are letting rip, exploring and leaving it all in there, but in the second, third, fourth drafts everything becomes very intense as you find bits in the plot which don’t quite work and characters which don’t reveal themselves as you thought they would.  I have to admit that some of these novel conundrums I have resolved whilst lying awake in bed.

Over many decades I have found novel-writing to be the most fulfilling activity I’ve ever undertaken, as well as being the most soul-destroying and gut-wrenching.  If publishers were not taking on many new writers before Coronavirus, they are accepting even fewer now.  I know of three publishers who have decided to close their fiction list since lockdown.

However, as Association of Christian Writers Competition Manager, I can reveal that ACW has launched a novel competition.  Only yesterday.  The judges are Tony Collins (recently at SPCK and author of Taking My God for a Walk) and Fay Sampson (author of fifty-five books for children and adults, and the ACW Adult Fiction Advisor).  In the first instance entrants will be asked to submit 2000 words (or the first chapter, if this is shorter), and three short-listed candidates will be asked, later, to submit the whole work.  Novels must be complete at the time of entry.  The deadline is 1 November 2020, just before NanoWriMo.  The first-placed entrant will win £100 and he/she will be interviewed about their novel in Christian Writer.  More information at http://www.christianwriters.org.uk/competitions.

From talking to ACW members over the years, I know that many of you are writing novels.  Do give it a go.

Rosemary Johnson has had many short stories published, in print and online, amongst other places, Cafe Lit, Scribble, The Copperfield Review, Fiction on the Web and 101 Words.  She has also contributed to Together magazine and Christian Writer.  She has also written a historical novel, set in the Solidarity years in Poland.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Suffolk with her husband and cat.  Her cat supports her writing by sitting on her keyboard and deleting large portions of text.