23.06 and all's well

For the first time since I started Big Words and Made Up Stories, I gave myself a day off last week. Sorry about that. I’ve been inundated with phone calls, texts, WhatsApps and hand-written notes shoved through the door pleading with me to fill in that missing week.[1]

I did have a very good reason. My first ever novel, the Diary of Isabella M Smugge, is being published by Instant Apostle next March. I started writing it just after 10.30 in the morning on 7^th May and my deadline was 30^th September. I took a fairly relaxed attitude throughout the sunny months of lock down. Some days, I’d write nearly a whole chapter, others, I’d allow my ideas to marinate before the next burst of activity. It was fun, making someone up. My heroine is a snob, quite selfish, looks down her nose at people and has little if no self-awareness. She and her family (banker husband, three children, Latvian au pair) have just moved from London to Suffolk, and she thinks that everyone will be delighted to see her. However, her perfect life is about to unravel.

Writing her story, I found that she’d had a pretty grim childhood, lots of abandonment issues and was a child of divorce. One of my favourite sayings is, “Everyone’s got a story” and Isabella certainly does. It was fun to write it, albeit a bit weird. Who was this woman? How come I was suddenly making up hashtags and writing authoritatively about Instagram? I found myself trawling through Pinterest for annoying quotes (I found plenty).

Along the way, I made up a whole cast of supporting characters. For some reason, I really enjoyed writing the horrible ones. I suppose because my entire writing career has been about interviewing people who are good, generous, philanthropic and compassionate, I never get to talk to the villains. Ex-cons, yes. Unreconstructed bad folk, no. So, it was fun to create a hideous agent called Mimi Stanhope, married four times, smokes like a chimney and is rumoured to sleep in a banana leaf coffin. She drinks coffee constantly, has blood-red nails and her third husband ran off with a traffic warden. She’s a great agent but not a very nice person.

Isabella’s mother is also a bit of a moo. We don’t find out about her background until the end of the novel and it goes some way towards explaining why she’s been such a hands-off mother. I wrote a fight scene which erupted over some value sausage rolls. Someone microwaved a Girls’ World head. I made up some imaginary bloggers.

As I may have mentioned on a number of occasions, all I’ve ever wanted to do is write. And now I am and it feels amazing. Writing fiction is a new departure for me, however, and I’m surprised how exhausting it can be. You wouldn’t think that tapping away on a laptop while sipping tea and gazing out of the window would be that onerous. But you’re going to have to take my word for it. It is.

Last Wednesday I should have written my blog. I spent the entire day writing the final chapter and sent it off to the publisher at 23.06 pm. I was drained, a limp rag, worn to a frazzle. I thought to myself, “Ruth, will the world stop spinning if you don’t write your blog tonight?” I decided it wouldn’t and fell into an exhausted slumber.

So, now, we’re at the editing stage. This is about as much fun as cutting your own toenails with a blunt pair of shears, but it must be done. I suspect that chocolate will help a lot. Also tea. The fun bits, like talking to the publisher about the cover design and writing the blurb are yet to come. 

Isabella and her world have become very real to me. I don’t want to leave her, so I have already written the first page of the sequel. The last four and a half months have been wonderful, a chance to do what I always dreamed of doing, creating a world and peopling it with characters. You could say I’ve come full circle since I created this blog. The novel has quite a few big words and it’s one giant made up story. I like it and I hope you will.

If you want to pre-order a signed copy, please let me know via Instagram or Twitter (ruththewriter1), in the comments on this blog or in any other way you can think of. Only another six months and my self-centred aspirational blogger will be launched upon the world. #livingmybestlife.

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[1] I haven’t. This is all made up.

Hereinafter called the Author

As I told you in my very first ever Big Words and Made Up Stories blog on 5^th November last year (https://bigwordsandmadeupstories.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-i-became-writer.html), I’ve never wanted to be anything except a writer. And for the last twelve years, I’ve been one. I even get paid.

I’m a freelancer, which means that someone gets in touch, asks me for six hundred words or so on a topic in three weeks and I do it. I’ve got a roster of clients ranging from charities to florists to builders to radio stations and I write blogs, articles and content for them as required. It’s taught me how to write succinctly, clearly and to a brief and I’ve learned loads along the way.

My life since we moved to Suffolk in 2006 has been centred around children (mine), school and work. And Mr Leigh, of course, who is a wonderful and deserving man, without whom Ruth the Writer would not be the woman she is today. I picked up my first freelance writing contact in the summer of 2008 when I was gigantically pregnant with child number three. Slowly, very slowly, I got a few more. I tootled along with three for many years until there was a sudden burst of activity a couple of years ago. Then I started my own content writing business, Contentability, and I got some more.

Picture me then in March this year, just as lock down hit. I had so many clients that I decided to start a waiting list. Hooray! And then, just like that, about 75% of them disappeared. This was no surprise as many of them were small businesses, just like me, and had to put all non-essential work on hold. Others, like The Highbury Centre in London (a guest house) had to close. The long and the short of it was that I was left with about three clients again.

I’m an optimist. At this point, I had two choices.

1.    Wail, rend my garments and plead for sympathy.

2.    Get on with it and come up with a Plan B.

I went for option two.

Lock down for me meant not having to get up for the school run, dash about from pillar to post and try to cram a quart into a pint pot. Suddenly, endless days stretched ahead of me. One day, halfway through “Pride and Prejudice” (always a go-to book), I had a thought. I wrote my thought down and it turned into a short story. I wrote six more. Creative writing. Hold that thought.

As well as this blog, I write for More Than Writers, the blog for the Association of Christian Writers. It’s a great group which has taught me huge amounts and introduced me to some delightful people. For my April blog, I decided to write a funny piece about a very annoying smug writer who brags about her success on social media (I bet you can all think of someone like that). Staring out of the window, I tried to think what this woman was called. She had to be smug, so her first name would need to start with an I. And so, Isabella M Smugge (I Am Smug) was born. If you want to read that blog, you can click here: https://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-utter-joy-of-ones-craft.html.

People seemed to like it. I didn’t give Isabella another thought until it was time for my May blog. It was a more serious piece, but I thought I’d put her in there again. That was on 7^th May, a day I’ll never forget.

I was sitting up in bed with Mr Leigh sipping tea and reading the comments. Quite a number of people said they’d love to know more about Isabella. A couple suggested that I might write a book about her. I laughed. She was just a fun, throwaway character – I wasn’t going to take her any further than that. 

Suddenly, in came a message. It was from a fellow ACW member who works as a literary agent. He agreed with the comments and asked if I would like to send him two sample chapters and a story arc. He would then pitch my book to publishers for me. I nearly choked on my tea while nearly falling out of bed. All my Christmases had come at once. Tea cooling on the bedside table, I replied that of course I would be delighted to do this.

So, I did. I sat there and wrote the first sentence. And I wrote and wrote until I’d written those two chapters which was at tea time the next day. My jokey, annoying character had turned into a real person with a back story, a family and a story arc. I was as surprised as anyone.

After a few rejections, which are only to be expected, Tony emailed me to let me know that my book had found a home with Instant Apostle, a small independent publisher which specialises in new authors. People talk about dreams coming true, don’t they? I never understood that, but now I do.

Isabella M Smugge (as in Bruges), her husband Johnnie, her three children, her au pair Sofija, her awful mother, horsey Davina, her hideous agent Mimi Stanhope and a cast of supporting characters have sprung into life. I’ve got three more chapters to write and I’m done.

At the risk of sounding sentimental, becoming a published writer has been my dream since I was six. And now it’s here. I would say words fail me, but you know me well enough by now to know that’s not true. I’ll finish with the words of the contract which I must have read fifty times just in case they vanished into the mist.

Agreement – this contract made between Ruth Leigh (hereinafter called the Author) and Instant Apostle Ltd (hereinafter called the Publisher).

Hereinafter called the happiest woman in Suffolk. I’ll keep you posted.

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a freelance writer. She is married with three children, four budgies, eight chickens, six quail and a kitten. Her first novel, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge, has just been accepted for publication and she has another one on the go. She is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She blogs at @bigwordsandmadeupstories, covering topics as diverse as King Zog of Albania, a Christingle plagued by punch-ups and tummy upsets, and the inevitable decline of elderly parents. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life.