Not a Write Off vol: 9

The one where I about to start a Big New Thing, a Fellowship, and the toddler calls me a 'silly sausage'

Sep 15, 2024

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. I’ve got a giant croissant and have ripped it in two. You take half, I’ll take half, then I’ll catch you up on the past few weeks whilst trying not to spray you with pastry flakes.

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Oh, this is a hefty one, pals. In the most September-y of Septembers, I am starting some Big New Things and am grappling with some Big Hefty Decisions, the dust having not yet settled on some of those. I’ll don my rosette for a moment and apologise in advance for talking like a politician dodging Emily Maitlis interview questions, but whilst some things are still up in the air, I’ll be intriguingly vague, if you’ll allow it.

The last time I wrote a Not a Write Off volume, I was punching the air in triumph that I had finished my current draft of the book I had been working on for almost 2.5 years. I had a tunnel vision on that book. Getting back to it after pausing at 73,000 words to ‘quickly have a baby’ turned into a meandering, self-doubting journey of rediscovery that sounds very woo-woo but in reality was me teaching myself how to Do It again in the midst of my brain plasticity changing to ensure I was in the best position to nurture an infant. Writing that book has been a huge challenge for me and if you’ve been following it’s development since the start, you’ll be well aware of that. It hasn’t been easy, or smooth, and the milestones that have led me further towards completion have been hard fought, mentally as much as anything else. That book still isn’t ready for an audience. A lot has changed since I started writing it. I will be able to talk about this whole process in greater detail at some point, but for now, I will equivocate away…

The Big News

Gosh, this feels like a long time coming, but I am unbelievably delighted to have been chosen to take on a Fellowship with the Royal Literary Fund at the University of Greenwich for the next two academic years. You know a few months ago when I mentioned that I was going to start my dream job? Well, this is it. I am going to be spending part of the week on campus at the University of Greenwich to support students with their writing and I honestly could not be happier about it.

I love academic settings. I miss being a teacher. I love the energy of students and seminar rooms. I particularly love that I now have an opportunity to use those many hours of tapping away at the keyboard to help students have confidence in their own writing. It’s not just creative writing students, but nurses, engineers, architects, and anyone else who needs and wants to write.

It’s funny, because I have been taking baby steps this way and that way to move my working and writing life into a place that feels sustainable and good. Balance is an illusion most of the time, but I know that writing for the whole of a working week isn’t what makes me happy—I need to see and speak to people—and teaching full-time didn’t make me happy either. The world of publishing and creative arts can feel brutally difficult to those trying to do what they love whilst also needing to… pay for things. The Royal Literary Fund have known this for years. In my experience, they deeply understand writers and see the value in what they can offer others (they also have a Substack, which has some excellent essays and interviews with writers from all kinds of disciplines).

The Royal Literary Fund have been around since 1790 and have supported writers like GCSE anthology super-start Samuel Taylor Coleridge and OG Goth Boy Bram Stoker and now I have something in common with both of them in addition to getting a little weepy eyed whilst staring at the moon. This Fellowship has given me the stability to make some choices about the projects I’m going to work on next. I will soon be heading into KNUCKLE-DOWN mode. I have new school shoes on, so to speak, and am on a mission to wear them in. I blame being in a university for the number of extended metaphors in today’s newsletter. You can take the English student out into the real world, but put her back in a Department of Humanities and the need to throw language devices around like confetti is triggered ten-fold.

A Content Change

Because of the above, I’m shaking up the cadence of posts and have adjusted my paid subscriber benefits. From now, a paid subscription has gone down to £3.50 per month or £30 annually to reflect my need to scale down. Historically, I have not been very good at anticipating the scale of projects. I am still doing a little private mentoring, but I’m not able to lend the 3-4 hours a week it takes me to put posts together. This newsletter will become a once a month occurrence instead, which I hope doesn’t fill you with despair! I am writing—just elsewhere—but I am getting better at realising when I need to hunker down and allow a project to take priority and I sense that time is now.

I will still be doing a quarterly Q&A for paid subscribers to answer your writing questions with as much detail as possible. There is also a bank of resources that includes:

List of books about writing that are worth you money
Writing CV template
Novel planning template

Here’s what all the options look like now:

The writing

I have been planning something new and the outlining process has been so… smooth? God, I don’t want to curse it, but it feels good. I started fleshing out this idea in the way I always do, by using the snowflake method to keep expanding (I wrote a really detailed step-by-step guide to using this method here) my initial thoughts until I had something that resembled a story. It started off as one sentence, then a paragraph, then three pages with some character backstory added in, then six pages, then ten pages. I wrote a few bullet points down to capture the backgrounds of three or four characters that will feature and then organised all this into a chapter-by-chapter outline. The last thing I did was open a Google Sheet template, then I took this document and chopped it up into 42 separate chapters, which left with me with a handful of gaps to fill—so much less than normal—which either means I’ve forgotten something major or… the two years I’ve been thinking about this story has made it easier to outline. Who knew! Time! It does wonderful things! Now I need to find a way to get over blank page syndrome. My empty document is a goose and I need to scream ‘BOO!’ at it. Any advice will be gobbled down!

(If you’d like a free Google Sheet chapter-by-chapter template, it’ll be a resource included in my Beginnings and Endings Workshop on 29.09.24)

The toddler…

Oh, she is strange and chaotic and funny and angry and gentle and so, so curious. This week we spent two hours in the same patch at the park because the leaves have turned crispy and brown, crunching under her glittery trainers. We picked them up. We tossed them in the air. We picked them up. We tossed them in the air. Her cheeks went pink. She asked for a snack on the way home, a breadstick, which was sucked and tossed on the floor. She flails like a squid if she’s cross. She is fiercely independent and shouts ‘OWW!’ if you try and help her when it’s not wanted. I told her the other day that sometimes when people really, really enjoy themselves they close their eyes whilst they’re doing they’re favourite thing and now she’ll walk across the room with her little bunny tucked by her ear, eyes scrunched tight.

Finding joy in…

I’ve been reading more than usual, possibly because I’ve been writing less that usual. Just yesterday I finished Holly Bourne’s So Thrilled For You, which isn’t out until next year, but you’re going to want to bump that one to the top of your list. Imagine the craziest gender reveal that you’ve accidentally stumbled across, turn the events of that day into a dark comedy, and have each attendee slowly picked off as possible culprits. Truly, if you’ve ever wanted to scream in frustration at how difficult the infant years of parenthood are and scream again at how insanely cultish pregnancy messaging is, you will feel seen reading this book.

I also tried lino cutting out for the first time, which is surprising as I have since learnt that this was a very popular lockdown hobby. Alas, my lockdown hobby was drinking too much wine and spending forty quid on mushroom spores that slowly turned into a bag of inedible mould. Anyway, I loved it. It’s tactile, delicate, but not too difficult. If I have your address, you will be getting a handprinted Christmas card from me of middling quality.

My Not A Write Off win this week:

I have realised that all the work we do—all the writing that doesn’t make it in front of an audience—floats above the pages of a book that does find it’s way to a reader. Back at the start of my career, I felt incredibly precious about everything I wrote and hated ‘wasting’ time on something that didn’t go anywhere. I could certainly be blamed for using the language of productivity to describe a process that can’t always be quantified. No one reads a book and says ‘it had a really excellent word count’ or ‘I heard the writer had a productivity hit ratio of 8/10’. This week, I was able to see how a big project has moved me on in quiet but significant ways. It isn’t a headline, but I’m proud of that.

💡 Beginnings and Endings September Workshop

I am running my last workshop of the year on Sunday September 29th from 7-9pm BST.

The focus is on Beginnings and Endings in fiction (as voted on by Not A Write Off subscribers) and we’ll be covering:

First and last lines
How to use tone and setting to set up reader expectations
The entrance and exit of a protagonist
Establishing and resolving conflict
Reading and critiquing beginnings and endings from literature
A 30 minute 'office hours' style Q&A

I always include prompts so you’ll leave with some writing and answers to any questions that you might have so that you keep writing after the session. I have seen over 100 students in my workshops and—personally—I charge very reasonably. £30 for two hours. I hope to see you there!

Tickets

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