I do actually have one thing to worry about...

I've been reading quite a lot of comment and comments about how self-publishing is going to destroy the very notion of quality in publishing and that, without the gate-keepers of old, any old rubbish will be competing for the eyes of the public.

The other thing that gets mentioned is that publishers are risk-averse because they're looking for guaranteed profits. So here's my worry. I am a pedant. This book is supposed to be written by a 13-year-old girl with no formal education, at a time when grammar was being solidified in the English language. This means that I can't begin like this.

Excerpt one - common sentence, grammar and language structure.

Dear husband. Three days ago I became the last girl in the world. In 40 pages I will be a woman. My father says that I am bound by tradition to tell you how I 'became' a woman, but Jon Mair - the doctor - says I should use these pieces of paper to write down the herbs, spices and recipes that will make farmers better so they can continue to work.
But I want to tell you about Jenna. You probably know her, but if I don't write down my memories of her, I will forget the way she looks, and the things we did when we played like sisters and friends. Pa says I can remember her just like I remember Ma. But I don't really remember Ma. I forgot her face soon after she died. Now I can't recall her face or hair, or the sound of her voice. Sometimes, when we make tea with lots of honey, the smell makes me feel I can almost see her, but not enough to really see her in my mind.

Excerpt two - my sentence, grammar and language structure.

dear husband. 3 days past i became the last girl in the world. in 40 pages i will be a woman. pa says i sposed to tell you how i turn into a woman but jon mair says i must write down the herb and spice plans to make farmers better. i want to tell you all about jenna. you know jenna but if i dont write her into my pages i will forget how she looks and the things we did like sisters and frens. pa says i can keep her in my mind like ma but i dont have ma in my mind anymore. i cant tell him that when she went to the old island she left my mind fast. now i dont no her face or hair or the sound of her voice. sometimes i will smell the house after a long time away or smell hunnytea and i can see some of her. but not enuff.

(this is draft one, and I've just realised my spelling of 'write' doesn't work. It should be rite (same structure as bite) and also 'anymore' might be a little bit complex). So excerpt two is a little more difficult to read than one, because there was uncommon spellings that work phonetically in the main, no capitals, no commas and no apostrophes. It is the way I would imagine someone writing if they had grown up in a largely oral culture.

Now I could go over and edit the text to make it modern (which is the first thing I imagine an agent would suggest), but then the book would lose its spine. The language develops through the text as the girl becomes more confident, and so to blunt these early chapters would ruin it. It would, in fact, make me hate it.

That's a bit of a dilemma, because if you take chapters 1 - 5 out of context (they're short chapters, I promise), or even just ripped out a single sentence, then you would assume that this was written by one of a million chimps who had just struck the typewriter keys with uncommon luck. When you read beyond chapter 5, things start falling into place (the grammatical progression has been the hardest thing to manage so far, and it still feels a little abrupt at times) and it starts to feel more like a more traditionally written piece.

So. What to do? How do I get people beyond the first five chapters?

Cover concept 2

I think I prefer this one. It has the paper, which is the most important bit, but having it made into a toy is perfect. I think I might need to make and photograph my own boat though, as the paper should have some handwriting on it. I think I prefer the classic looking type rather than the hand-written look of the last one.

More worry about self-publishing (hey, I've got to worry about something, the writing's going well).

I've never read a 'how to write a novel book' before (with the exception of Stephen King's On Writing and George Orwell's six rules) but I thought as I was being serious with the book writing this time, I'd splash out £8 (from a birthday Amazon voucher) on a Writer's Digest book of collected articles on writing and selling fiction. There was some pretty good advice in there about managing outlines and dialogue, as well as rather too much rubbish on how to write 'Christian fiction', but the section on publishers and agents was pretty enlightening. Mostly this:

"The moment the contract was signed, you lost rights and control over how your manuscript will be published." and:

"Similarly, when it comes to your book's title, know that it could very well be changed, and that it's your publishers prerogative to do so."

No thanks. While publishers have distribution channels, they don't appear to involve themselves in significant marketing or advertising for books lower down their lists, instead leaving that to the authors themselves, leaving me wondering why I would need one in the first place.

Here's Anthony Horowitz saying that publishers do provide a valuable service, in making sure a manuscript is edited and ready for mainstream consumption.

As a professional editor, I think that all texts will benefit from a decent edit. But how do I approach this as an author. I might see if I can find a fellow editor who'd work for a percentage. Or I might just do what I did with essays at university and read the pages very closely in a random order and rely on the fact that I'm very, very good at my job.

Flight fiction (Apostrophien short story)

Here's the idea. I took off today from Geneva. 10 minutes into the flight, I was allowed to switch my laptop on. I had approximately one hour before the 'Prepare the cabin for landing' announcement, which meant I had to switch the lappy off.

1 hour = 500 words (1st draft + line edit)
This is what I wrote.

The Last Cows (An Apostrophien vignette)

The last time Jenna saw her parents they were towering over her, concerned and angry as she clung to her stomach and threw up in the garden. Her father’s hand on her shoulder gripped more than it needed to.

“Stuffed with honey again?” It wasn't really a question.

Jenna tried to reply so Pa wouldn’t be so fierce, but her gut wasn’t finished. With a huge, painful burp she threw another load of tepid sick among the stalks of long dead giant daisies.

“I… I didn’t."

Her mother’s sleeve was already damp with tears and small splashes of vomit. She used it to wipe across Jenna’s eyes and flour cheeks. “Somethin' got in there that wanted out.

“And you were with Abigale.”

“No honey! Just felt sick!”

Ma's voice was a little softer. "You'll be alright today won't you." It wasn't a question.

"Yeh. Felt sick."

They left her crying in the garden.

The sick feeling hung around like a grudge for the rest of the day as the girl amused herself looking at pressed flowers and trying to remember the plant poem Abigale sang on the beach yesterday. She put the corn dollies out, tatty now after two seasons of love, and sang to them in voice thick with the second cold of winter.

The play was a distraction. She was waiting. Waiting to explain and fix the injustice of her parents' anger. She didn't touch the honey. Didn't gorge herself. She was eight now, not five. If she told them, they would believe now. Because she was eight.

Eventually she held down cool water from the stream, then ate stale bread as the light beyond the open windows faded, taking the last wamth of the day with it. The stars came out.

It wasn't Paul and Katie Vizard who returned though, it was Jon Mair. The town doctor being guided by a visibly wilting Father.

"Hello," Jenna said.

"Morning missy," Mair replied. "Can we go in." Not a question.

One of the cows had keeled today, Mair told her, and her parents would have to spend 40 days in Crofter's Cottage to be sure they were good and safe. The keeled cow had already been burned, he said, and the other two would be skinned by Hans Rish and then their meat burned.

"Can I go with them?" Jenna asked.

"No," he said. "But don't worry. You'll stay with me until they're safe. You'll all be back 'ere in no time, I shouldn't wonder."

It didn't happen.

40 days passed and Paul and Katie Vizard died, Jon Mair told the girl, in Crofter's Cottage from the same sickness that keeled the cow over.

Five days later the girl stood on the beach with the rest of the town and watched as the burning raft floated out past the surf, orange flames grabbing at the sky and sea like a thousand desperate wishes pressed into a dirty page. She felt Jon Mair's hand land on her shoulder.

"You'll be fine."

Stewart Lee's lesson for concerned writers everywhere

OK. I've never got this far before and I have discovered something beautiful as near the final parts of draft 1 and start thinking about draft 2. There are very definite themes running through the text that I wasn't expecting, and the one I had planned is actually fairly strong already and will require just a little shifting of the POV's thoughts to reinforce things. The beauty is that these have bubbled up organically so (to my ear at least) don't feel forced. It would be easy to make the themes too obvious and contrived, so I have to make sure I haul things back and make sure I don't leave the character's voice behind.

While writing the last four chapters I've been reading Stewart Lee's books about stand up comedy and his attempts to both annoy and captivate the audience at the same time. This, obviously, is not my intention (Radiohead tells us you have to gain an audience before trying to alienate them), but the idea that the audience is willing to follow you through plainly difficult moments if you can reassure them early on that you know where you're going, and everything will come together in the end, is something that I think is easy to forget. The reader needs confidence in the author. If it's your first go at a novel, that's quite difficult to achieve.

Part of the appeal of writing stuff here, I think, is the ability to prepare the reader (look, I'll just assume I'm going to have a reader) for the fact that the beginning is not traditional, but that things change as the story develops. It would be easy to pick up chapter one or two and, because of the nature of the voice, think: 'this person just can't write. Can't even spell!'

Some of the short fiction pieces that I plan to post here (character/event pieces written with a more traditional voice, but within the same history) will hopefully provide this sense of comfort that allows me to take the reader along when things go strange.

The other thing I've done, which makes me very happy, is writing the final line. I know how it all ends.

First cover idea

First cover idea. Designed to look good on the Kindle screen. I like the graininess of this kind of black and white and the title text is supposed to look written with a rough charcoal stick. And a bee because I love bees.

First line audition

The last to join was a girl who called herself Abigale. She had a gun.