This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Celia Brayfield is one of those writers whose novels you could read again and again. PEARLS was her first novel and she says, “I did the classic thing of writing the book I wanted to read but couldn’t find, a wide-screen novel with women characters who really take charge of their lives. I think we’re all like Scarlett O’Hara in the sense that times change so dramatically, especially for women, that we all have to discover our own values, which is what my heroines do. I deliberately gave them talents that would take them into male-dominated professions – finance and rock music. And a global setting, because I like big, panoramic novels. But it’s also about family secrets, and finding out that your parents aren’t perfect.“
Pearls, Celia Brayfield's international bestseller, is being published by Bello, an imprint of Pan Macmillan. Pearls follows the story of sisters Catherine and Monty Bourton who both awake one morning to find a priceless pearl under their pillow. The sisters then travel back in time in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the pearls’ appearance in a thrilling, jet-setting journey. Now, Celia has kindly answered a few questions for our Novelicious readers.
Can you tell us a little bit about your average writing day?
I wish I had an average writing day! My university work takes up a lot of my time, so I have to fit my writing around it, which means a lot of writing weekends. I wrote my first novel when my daughter was a baby so I soon trained myself to start early and finish when she came back from nursery, so my prime time is between 9am and noon. I begin by editing what I wrote the day before, which helps me pick up the thread if I’ve had to leave my writing for a few days.
When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration?
Mr Fabulous and Friends, which is about five suburban husbands going AWOL as they reach middle age, was inspired by several families in my community at the time. And my best friend is in PEARLS – I let her choose her own name, which is Swallow. But I’m hopeless at celebrities and never know who they are, so I don’t use them as inspiration.
What is your favourite Women's Fiction book of all time and why?
Gone With The Wind. It’s just a wonderful novel. To me, it’s not a romance – after all, there’s no happy every after. It’s a historical novel and a story about a woman who has to reinvent herself completely when the world of her childhood is swept away by the American Civil War. People condemn it as racist, but Margaret Mitchell, who wrote it, worked all her life for civil rights although she lived in an unimaginably racist society. I think it’s important to understand the historical context of a book and not project contemporary values back in time.
What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many drafts do you do?
My current novel is in its fourth full draft, but I polish my work all the time. I usually make a plan of the narrative first, because I can’t bear having to cut long passages – the legacy of my first career as a journalist, I think.
What was your journey to being a published author?I made all the right decisions for the wrong reasons. Having decided I wanted to be a writer when I was about nine years old, I modelled myself of Robert Louis Stevenson because I liked his books, and planned to become a journalist first. That was the hard part but in the end persistence paid off and I had a column on the Evening Standard. That gave me a good profile and the material for my first book, which was non-fiction and about celebrity culture. Then my publisher, Carmen Callil, who founded Virago, just said, “What am I going to publish from you next?” And I said, “Well, I’ve got this idea for a novel….”
What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?That the writing doesn’t matter. People see poorly-written books being successful (not to name names…) and think they don’t need to bother about the literary quality of their work or do proper research. It’s not true. When you look into it, those authors put in years in creative writing workshops and did enough reading for a PhD for each novel proposal. If their style is dumbed-down, that’s a marketing decision.
What advice can you give to readers who want to write a novel of their own?
Go for it! And write the best book that you possibly can.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve just finished reading the proofs of Writing Historical Fiction, a writing handbook which Bloomsbury will publish in December 2013, and I’m working on ny next novel, The Art of Memory, about an extraordinary young Frenchman who was Mary, Queen of Scots’ biographer and how he fell in love with a young English woman, a passion that changed the course of history.
Celia Brayfield is a novelist, journalist and cultural commentator. A selection of her novels, including her first novel Pearls, are published by Bello and can be purchased at https://www.panmacmillan.com/author/celiabrayfield. Celia can also be found tweeting at performingceel
Thanks, Celia!