This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
1. Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
I try to write about 1,000 words a day. I suffer from RSI so have to monitor my time at the keyboard by taking regular breaks and limiting my word count. I have a gorgeous Springer spaniel who demands two walks a day and we also have 6 ex-battery hens to take care of so taking breaks is very easy!
We’ve just moved house – swapping the London suburbs for rural Suffolk and I have my own study at last which is bliss! I like to get up at about seven and get a few hundred words written before taking Molly on a good long walk around the fields and woods. I then take care of the hens and settle down to more writing before lunch. After lunch, I write until about five o’clock when it’s time for the second dog walk of the day and, if the word count hasn’t been reached, I’ll work on into the evening. All this is punctuated by visits to Facebook and Twitter, of course!
2. When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration?
I sometimes ‘cast’ an actor or actress as the characters in my books. In The Perfect Hero, my handsome blond actor, Oli Wade Owen, was based – just a little bit – on Rupert Penry-Jones and there’s a lovely actress called Rebecca Night who would be the perfect Molly Bailey in Molly’s Millions. But I mostly create my characters from pure imagination. There might be the odd quirk borrowed from myself or indeed from friends but I’d better I’m not saying what!
3. What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
Can I have two, please? I’m really torn between Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and Rosamunde Pilcher’s Coming Home. I Capture the Castle is a delicious novel about a family who live in a crumbling old castle. It’s wonderfully funny and romantic with midnight swims in the moat, handsome gardeners and an incident in which the hero thinks that the heroine is actually a bear! Coming Home is a great big sprawling comfort read about a young girl who falls under the spell of the glamorous Carey-Lewis family and their home, Nancherrow in Cornwall. The characters are so real and the settings are so vividly described. Rosamunde Pilcher is a magical writer.
4. What is your writing process? Do you plan first of dive in? How many drafts do you do?
I write down a very brief synopsis and then dive in. I usually spend ages thinking about my books first before anything proper gets written. I have ideas for at least three or four at a time and like to juggle ideas about and make notes until I’m just bursting to start writing. Once started, I try and charge through the first draft as quickly as I can but I do reread and mess around with each chapter once it’s complete. I then go back and reread the whole manuscript, making notes for my own personal big edit. Then my editor gets hold of it and the whole process starts again so I guess that makes at least three drafts.
5. What was your journey to being a published author?
A very long one littered with many rejections! I completed my first book just after leaving university and went on to write four more before finding a publisher for a novel called Flights of Angels about a young widow who has a group of tiny guardian angels to take care of her. Bizarrely, my first publisher was in Germany where my book was part of a bidding war between five publishing houses. It was then made into a film and two more books were taken on but they’ve never been published anywhere else (but they are now on Kindle!)
My first novel to be published in the UK – Molly’s Millions – was published in 2009 by Allison & Busby. I didn’t have an agent for that deal but I now have a lovely agent who paired me up with Avon, HarperCollins who have signed me for five books.
6. What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?
That it’s easy. Everyone thinks that they could write a book if only they had the time. Well, it’s not just about the time – it’s about dedication and will-power and a burning need to tell a story, and there might just be a little bit of room for talent too.
7. What advice can you give to our readers who want to write a novel of their own?
Go for it! Set aside lots of time and ask yourself what it is you want to write. Is there a genre you particularly enjoy? Publishers are very specific – they want to know how to market you but don’t worry about that to begin with. Write the novel you really want to write and that passion will shine through. Don’t do it because you think it’s an easy way to make money because it isn’t. Most writers do it because they have to tell stories. They’re compelled to write.
8. What are you working on at the moment?
I’m about half-way through writing my next romantic comedy for HarperCollins. It’s about a plain Jane who becomes irresistible to men after making a wish on a statue of Aphrodite. It’s a lot of fun and I have a gorgeous Greek hero called Milo. I’m also publishing my collections of short stories on Kindle (One Perfect Week and The Retreat) together with the third book in my Austen Addicts Trilogy – Mr Darcy Forever.
Victoria's latest book is The Runaway Actress