I’m writing this whilst on a family holiday to Scotland. My room with a view for the week looks out across the Beauly Firth at Inverness. Stunning views, inspiring scenery, I’d like to pack it in my bag and take it home with me. So how do I create the next best thing, and make my own mini retreats and inspiration without having to leave home?
To start, you need to find a place at home or in the garden that that you find comfortable and can write. You might find different areas make you more productive.
Once you’ve found a place you’re happy with make it your own. It could be classed as your office, your creative space, whatever you want. Mine is a corner of my bedroom that faces the front garden, so it’s definitely a room with a view! I love to have a view while I write (or stare vacantly at clouds and passing birds!) I found a great old writing desk in a charity shop for my writing corner, well worth checking second hand shops for bargains.
I’ve personalised the space with all sorts of bits and pieces that inspire me: a Wonder Woman figure, various Professor Snapes, a dandelion paperweight, fairy lights (I find these lift my mood and make it look magical), keys (I’ve got a bit of a thing about keys!), not to mention the multiple pots with a myriad of stationery items. Have things around you that make you feel happy or inspire you.
My favourite things in my writing space are postcards. I’ve got ones people have sent me and ones I’ve got for myself blu-tacked to the wall beside my table. I find them both therapeutic and inspirational as they help me visit places or imagine locations and settings without ever leaving the comfort of my writing nook.
To really transform your writing space into a mini writing retreat at home follow these simple steps…
1, Prepare plenty of snacks and quick meals to keep you going with minimal distraction from your writing.
2, Have all your notebooks, stationery, laptop, writerly stuff all there and ready to use so you don’t spend time searching for things during the writing time.
3, Invest in a kitchen timer. It’s a great way of pushing yourself to just write and not think too much about what you’re doing.
4, Probably the hardest step: turn off the Wi-Fi! Or only let yourself have 5-10 mins on social media for every 500/1000 words you write/edit.
5, Set aside designated writing time. It could be an hour, a day or more. Put it on your calendar, in your diary, tell your family, ignore the phone/door, this is your time!
6, Treat it seriously. Treat it like your own writing retreat. You’ve set aside this time specifically for your writing so don’t start checking your Facebook newsreels or watching videos about world’s most scary places on YouTube… just write! And enjoy time doing something you love. ❤️
Stuart, thanks for hosting my cover reveal! Being a mentor for #WriteMentor has not only been fun, it’s been an honor.
Now, without further ado . . .
After five years of work, I’m so excited to officially reveal the cover of my debut novel, ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST, to the world!
About All the Walls of Belfast
The Carnival at Bray meets West Side Story in Sarah Carlson’s powerful YA debut; set in post-conflict Belfast (Northern Ireland), alternating between two teenagers, both trying to understand their past and preserve their future. Seventeen-year-olds, Fiona and Danny must choose between their dreams and the people they aspire to be.
Fiona and Danny were born in the same hospital. Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood.
After chance brings Fiona and Danny together, their love of the band Fading Stars, big dreams, and desire to run away from their families unites them. Danny and Fiona must help one another overcome the burden of their parents’ pasts. But one ugly truth might shatter what they have…
ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST will be released by Turner Publishing Company on March 12th, 2019.
Check out my book trailer:
What input did you have on the cover and what symbolism does it incorporate?
Most authors spend months or even years imagining what their cover might look like, but when it’s finally time to design it . . . ah! When it was officially time to design mine, Turner’s creative director asked my input on general cover ideas. I tried imagining ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST on a bookshelf, asking myself what might draw a YA reader in. I don’t feel the title sounds explicitly YA, so the image had to clearly convey that, which was why I wanted Danny and Fiona holding hands. The peace wall separating their neighborhoods is, in some ways, a character in and of itself, so I wanted at least a hint of a wall in the background.
The creative director then sent me three cover comps from the cover artist. Cover comps are just general, vague ideas for covers. I picked the one I liked best and specified how I wanted the characters to look and dress. In the end, I love Fiona and Danny being somewhat indistinct on the cover because it allows the reader to fill in the blanks as they read. The color choices for the background capture the frequent rain of Northern Ireland and a certain sense of foreboding, but the umbrella Danny and Fiona share suggests hope and shelter they may find in one another.
I also wanted to subtly incorporate the colors of the Irish flag – orange and white in the title letters and green in Fiona’s coat. The tricolor has symbolism rooted deep in the island’s complex history, which I don’t think many Americans realize. Very simply put: green represents Roman Catholics of Ireland, orange represents the minority Protestants, and white represents the hope for a lasting peace and union between people of different traditions in an independent Irish nation. ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST explores the lasting impact of the sectarian violence of the Troubles, which has its roots deep in that same legacy in Irish history, on the lives of two teens long after it officially ended.
What inspired you to write All the Walls of Belfast?
ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST was inspired by a trip to Northern Ireland I took back in 2011. Prior to that, I had vague memories of hearing about the Troubles in middle school but forgot about it. On this trip, I was shocked to find that, while the vast majority of Northern Ireland has moved on, some working class Protestant Loyalist and Catholic Republican communities in Belfast were (and still are) separated by massive peace walls and many children from these communities may go their entire childhood without talking to someone from the other religion. I found a story to tell.
How long was your writing journey for All the Walls of Belfast?
It took about five years, largely because of the research that went into it: taking three trips to Belfast and visiting all setting locations and exploring history and different perspectives, recruiting Belfast readers, studying the Troubles and the long history leading up to them, daily tracking of current events in Belfast and Northern Ireland, researching both British English and specifically Northern Irish dialect through mediums such as novels/movies/shows, Google Maps streetviewing everything, among other things. It also took some time (and many re-writes) to find the heart of Fiona’s story, as well as her voice. Which is kind of ironic, since she’s the basically American character. And then there were the many, many re-writes.
Who will All the Walls of Belfast appeal to?
Readers who enjoy being challenged by complex themes like forgiveness for egregious past mistakes, rising above the burden of the past to forge a new future for yourself, and challenging the notion of “other” ingrained in you by adults. And anyone who might enjoy a dash of star-crossed romance.
And now a few random questions.
What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done?
Definitely hiking the Routeburn Track on the south island of New Zealand. It was a three day hike through a mountain pass where we faced both freezing temperatures and flooding. They shut down the trail and started evacuating people after we finished! In addition to the steep hike carrying a thirty pound pack with all my stuff, I had to climb up a water fall and may have almost fallen off a narrow path with a hundred foot drop off. But the whole hike was absolutely beautiful in a way that words and pictures cannot capture, and the feeling of pride and accomplishment when we reached the end was absolutely intoxicating. I felt completely alive.
If you could tell your teenage self one thing, what would it be?
Study Spanish instead of German. Seriously, after studying it five years, I’ve only used German like twice. I could be using Spanish daily. I know you said one, but . . . also, do things that scare you. Force yourself to take risks.
Chocolate or gummy bears?
Gummy bears every time.
ALL THE WALLS OF BELFAST is now available for preorder:
I just wanted to share some of my thoughts and intentions with setting up #WriteMentor. I’ve always been an advocate, through my time as a school teacher, of peer learning. Much more effective than a didactic lecturer, IMO.
I’ve been involved in little peer contests over the last year and a half with my writing buddies @ScribblersBlog and we set up #PeerPitch – a small, but lovely initiative where writers help each other hone pitches and openings. But I want to give more.
For nearly a decade I have been writing seriously (by that I mean putting in the hours each week equivalent to a part-time job). I have put a lot of time into reading about craft, but also trying to apply it to my work. And I still have loads to learn. We all do.
I have been extremely fortunate during this last 10 years in meeting and working with so many talented, generous and kind mentors/editors/CPs/writing buddies. Without their input I’d still be writing LOTR rip-off stories. Trust me, you do not want to read them!
Anyway, the goal for me is a purely altruistic one. Pass on what I have learned. Ask others to do the same. Help writers with less experience to learn quickly. The mentors will all have experienced LOTS! Every experience is a new lesson for someone else.
Rejections from agents, multiple drafts, rewrites, failed manuscripts, rejections from publishers, failing to SL or LL in a contest, or getting SL or LL. Many have editing experience, or critiquing as part of a group. But everyone has something they want to pass on.
It is the Jedi way… “Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, hmm…but weakness, folly, failure, also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”
#WriteMentor will also encompass so many other Jedi values… Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force. We are all Padawan, still learning, but we are also Jedi Masters…in some ways.
Our #WriteMentors will be looking to pass on their knowledge, while acknowledging that none of us are Master or Apprentice, but that if we each help other in, purely altruistically, with no agenda, we all become enlightened and better writers and people. Both the mentor + mentee.
So #WriteMentor has been developed from a place of kindness and sharing and helping each other. It is the soul of the people I want to be involved and it is the way we hope that the programme will be delivered and received.
I want to help raise others up, beyond even myself. It is the role of every good teacher and I hope that #WriteMentors will be able to do that for all the unpublished and learning writers who apply to our programme.
