Procrastination Tools for Writers #1: Recycling Your Old Manuscripts

Options for procrastination are endless. And yet, there's always time to find some new and exciting ways to put off doing anything useful with your time. Sally Poyton is here to show how you too can put off writing for a whole day longer...

1 Find any loose sweets/nuts/anything else edible in the house and make some attractive boxes for them. Then you can feel less guilty for eating them, because they will look like an extremely expensive and well-presented gift.

2 Try to think of anybody you know who might have a birthday in the next few months and get ahead with your wrapping. Depending how many manuscripts you have lying around, you could even play one-man pass the parcel.

3 Alone in the house? A paper aeroplane can keep you occupied for hours.

4 Not alone in the house? Try making a nice pinata, then arm your child with something to hit it with and watch whilst your manuscript gets beaten into submission.

5 Look around the house. You never know, there may be something that could use a fresh coat of paint. Your manuscript can provide a handy protective layer for your carpet whilst you hone your DIY skills.

6 If there are any small animals around, you may feel they deserve some home-made bedding. It turns out you can spend hours cutting paper into small strips.

7 Spring is on the way. It's time to make sure your plants are well-contained. Don't bother driving to your nearest garden centre - your manuscripts can provide you with something both sturdy and easy on the eye.

8 It's so annoying when you sit down to write and find that the table is wonky. Well, make sure it's stable before sitting down. If you're in desperate need of procrastination, try adding the paper one sheet at a time.

9 Writing can distract you from housework for long periods of time, and mug stains can get out of control fast. You may find you are in need of new drinks mats.

10 Try brightening up the house with some paper chains and bunting. You can never have enough paper chains and bunting. Not even when you've covered every square inch of the walls, your husband and as many children as you can locate at the time. Honest.

11 A bit of fancy dress can make your day. Wedding, anyone?

12 Before sitting down to write, procrastinate a little longer by making sure everyone in the house knows how hard you're about to work.

13 Insects can be a irritating distraction. Before you get going writing anything, it's worth going around the house a few times to take any out with this easily-accessible and lightweight baton.

14 Well you can't write when you're cold, can you?

15 Last but not least, when it all becomes a bit much, you can always dig yourself a little manuscript-burrow and curl up for the winter.

And remember, this isn't exclusive to manuscripts. It can extend to rejection letters, too...

Planning and researching your novel, with Gillian Cross

Because we love our fellow Slushpilers so very much, today we bring you Gillian Cross, and her top five tips for planning and research. Gillian Cross has written over 40 books for children (yes, you read that right!) and has won a couple of prizes along the way, including the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Award and the Smarties Prize. She influenced a generation of school kids by making them even more terrified of their headmasters than normal with The Demon Headmaster series, and then terrified them all over again with urban thrillers including Tightrope. Her most recent novel is Where I Belong.

1. Discover your own way of planning - and how much you need to do in advance - and don't be intimidated by what other writers tell you. I know lots of fantastic planning tools, ranging from drawing a map of where the story happens to working out the whole plot backwards, on little white file cards. They're awesome to think about, but they've never worked for me. I always have to do my planning after I've written the first draft and the sooner I accept that the better I get on. It's always a struggle though, because planning seems easier than actually writing.

2. The key thing is to get the stuff down. Once you've got it, you can revise it, cut it, expand it or alter it out of all recognition.

But you must have something solid to work with. And that doesn't come from the same part of the brain as planning and editing.

3. Remember that people are one of the best research resources, so don't be shy of asking. I'm always embarrassed to ask people for information, but when I manage to pluck up courage I've hardly ever been rejected. Most people are very generous with their time and love being a source of useful information. It's important to work out what you really need to know though, because no one else can guess that. And the difficulty is, of course, that you don't always know what you want to know, until it turns up, because the things that are most helpful are often small, inconsequential details.

This ENORMOUS PILE of books formed just part of Gillian's research for Where I Belong.

4. Don't let research become an end in itself if you want to finish the book. In my experience, the more you learn about something the more fascinating it becomes. Research can go on for ever and sometimes there's a danger of forgetting how little your readers will actually understand unless you do lots of explaining. (Don't!) I once wrote a book about two boys who restore a 1930s motorbike and the story got lost in the details of sandblasting cylinders etc.

5. Don't panic about remembering everything you've found out.

If you try and hold it all in your head, you won't be able to concentrate properly on the story. A moment will come when you need to put the research on one side and write.

You can always check the details later. And a story isn't a research paper. Anything you write will be fine as long as you can get away with it. And that has more to do with storytelling than with correctness.

Slushpile note: If you found that helpful (or even just enjoyable!), check out Linda Newbery's Research and Planning blog here.

Roles in publishing: Bryony Woods, Literary Agent's Assistant

Bryony Woods is obsessed with all things book-related, and is lucky enough to have her ideal job – working in one the UK’s top literary agencies. She started her career working in libraries, where she developed her passion for children’s and YA fiction, before going on to complete an MA in Publishing at UCL. Whilst completing the MA she interned in literary agencies across London, before being offered her current job at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency in 2010.

As a person who has always loved books and reading, I think I might just have the best job in the world. I am constantly surrounded by books and manuscripts, and I love nothing more than finding a talented new writer with a book that’s crying out to be published.

But although many writer-orientated websites focus on this aspect of the job, looking for new talent is only a small part of what I actually do.

It’s not all glamour and cocktail parties.

While I may occasionally get to go out into the world and hobnob with super-talented authors and editors, the majority of my time is spent taking care of all the little jobs that keep a literary agency ticking over – updating the website, maintaining the databases that keep track of territories and sub-rights deals (such as audio, large print and film deals), chasing payments, sending proof copies to sub-agents etc.

I spend a lot of time reading contracts, checking the language used in various clauses and the percentages stated (e.g. royalties). Agents spend many hours negotiating the finer details of publishing contracts on behalf of their clients, so it’s important to ensure that the contract we send to an author for signing is correct.

Luckily for me, I love contracts almost as much as I love books. And no, I don’t think that’s weird. Honest.

The creative side of my job includes writing blurbs and putting together colourful catalogues of our clients and the titles we represent, as well as making up artists’ portfolios for our illustrator clients. This is especially important in the run up to major industry book fairs such as London or Bologna, where we have lots of meetings with editors who’ll be looking to acquire new authors or titles.

I also deal with some of the permission requests that come to the agency. When a person or company – perhaps an editor compiling an anthology, or a revision guide or website – requests the right to print an extract from a client’s work (most often a poem or short story), I will get out my trusty calculator and negotiate the best possible licence terms and fee.

But my absolute favourite part of the job is finding new, talented writers, and wonderful books that we can help turn into a commercial success. I am constantly on the lookout – whether I’m reading submissions at my desk, meeting new writers at a party, even while I eat and sleep.

Reading submissions (aka the Slush Pile) is a full-time job in itself, and everyone in the office pitches in and does their share of reading on top of their other day-to-day workload. We get thousands – yes, THOUSANDS – of submissions, of all kinds: the good, the bad, the truly weird and sometimes the downright ugly.

But every now and then I come across a voice so powerful that it grabs me and demands to be heard, a character that I just can’t get out of my head, or a page-turner that makes me drop absolutely everything else just so I can finish reading it. That’s when I know I’ve found something really special.

Tips for writers:

I’m often asked for advice on how best to approach an agent. But to be honest, the only thing an agent cares about when looking at your submission is that you’ve written a damn good book.

Other than that, I’d simply advise that you check individual agency guidelines, keep your approach smart and professional, and that you’re passionate about your work. If that passion shines through in your covering letter, an agent is more likely to want to pick up your manuscript and start reading.

The best moment so far:


I’ve tried and failed to pinpoint just one moment since I started this job that stands out as the best. It could be the first time I read a submission and fell head-over-heels in love with it; it could be logging on to Amazon just after a book was published and seeing the first fantastic customer review come in; it could be the excitement when a long-awaited sequel was delivered by a client (or maybe the moment during reading where I realised it was even better than the first book); or it could be the any of the times I’ve entered the office kitchen to discover that someone has brought in a cake. As I say, it’s impossible to choose.

The thing that most surprised me about the job:

The thing that still surprises me is the pace. It’s easy to get the impression from various blogs or websites that all agency employees do is lie around reading manuscripts, eating cake* and drinking champagne**.

But the truth is that most days I barely have time to stop and catch my breath.

Even when I’ve reached the end of my mammoth TO DO list, there are still emails to respond to, phone calls to answer, submissions and manuscripts and reviews to read.

*Ok, I admit it – there is quite a lot of cake.
** There may also be the occasional glass of champagne

Sometimes this job is very stressful, and I constantly find myself wishing that there were more hours in the day.

It’s not a job I could ever leave at the office, and my pile of Books-To-Read is usually taller than I am (and I’m not exactly short).

But aside from the perilous towers of books slowly taking over my flat, I honestly think I have the best job in the world. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.
Slushpile note: submission guidelines for the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency can be found here. And OF COURSE Caroline Sheldon is the best literary agent in the entire world: she sold Slated, as reported here. Oops. I'm giving away my secret identity again, aren't I?