86 MARCH 2020 http://www.writers-online.co.uk
KITTY’S TOP TIPS- Be disciplined, because a book will
not write itself. Set aside time and sit
down and write. - Read, then read some more. Your brain
is absorbing more than just the story. - Don’t be precious. No-one writes
perfectly every day. But, as long as
you write now, you can erase later.
If you indulge in getting angst-ridden
over every single word, it will take you
a lifetime to write that first draft. - Edit, edit again and, when it’s
polished, put it away for a bit. Then
edit some more. - Learn your market and learn the
realities of publishing. It’s a tough
industry and authors are not as well
paid as you might think.
AUTHOR PROFILE
KITTY WILSON
The rom-com novelist tells Margaret James about the joy and
hard work that goes into creating her Cornish village communitycomedy, and that Rosy, the central
protagonist in my Village School
series, would be a head teacher who
wanted to ensure her private life never
crossed over into her professional life.
‘The first novel in the series, Breaking
the Rules, is the story of Rosy’s two
worlds colliding as she battles to save the
school from a forced merger. Before I
knew it, a whole community was born,
and the series had sprung into life.’
How difficult or easy was Kitty’s
journey on the road to commercial
publication?
‘When I sent out my first-ever
book, half of me was amazed when
I didn’t get letters of gratitude from
publishers and agents – merely silence,
or standard letters of rejection,’ she
admits. ‘My dreams of bidding wars
and film rights disappeared. But the
pragmatic part of me accepted that
it was a process, and that I couldn’t
reach the finishing line before I had
even started to run. Now I look at
that first manuscript and wince.
I really didn’t have a clue. What
I thought was a polished edit was
really an overwritten early draft.
‘At a writing conference, I heard
that it took an average of four books
before you were picked up for
publication, so with my second one
I was deep in the mindset that the
first four books were for practice,
and that included the submission
process. So I was remarkably Zen as I
sent my manuscript out, hoping for a
personalised rejection as a marker that
I was on my way.
‘When the email came through
offering me publication, I was so over
the moon that I ran to my friend’s house
in floods of tears, and he assumed some
horrendous family tragedy had hit.
‘However, something in me told me
not to sign straight away, so I held my
potential publisher at arm’s length
and used their offer as leverage
to get myself an agent. I am still
amazed that I did this, but I did. It
worked. My agent went on to get
me another offer, and I was in theK
itty Wilson’s Cornish
Village School series has
been a huge hit with lovers
of romantic comedy,
but what route did Kitty
take on her journey to becoming a
traditionally published novelist?
‘I have always wanted to write,’ she
says. ‘I can’t remember a time when
it wasn’t an ambition. I was an early
reader (although probably not at the
age of two, as my mother claims), and
I have always made up stories in my
head, if only to escape the stif ling
boredom of enforced childhood walks.
‘My mother is both an artist
and an art teacher, and has always
been terribly creative. As a child, I
remember one woman at Brownies
sniffing and saying: “Of course, your
mother is very arty, isn’t she?” in that
dismissive way some people have,
implying that creativity was not a
Good Thing. It was the first time I
thought to myself: oh, do sod off.
‘I write romantic comedy because
I’ve discovered this is my natural
voice. All those years thinking of witty
comebacks two weeks too late have
finally served a purpose. I love the fact
that the more I giggle at my work,
the better it usually is, but one day
I would love to try writing historical
fiction. We shall see.’
Novelists are often advised to
write about what they know, so is
this the case with Kitty?
‘I actually was a teacher in a Cornish
primary school,’ she says, ‘This meant
I always felt a little inhibited when
I was out and about, as if I couldn’t
be fully me. Wherever I went, I
was inevitably bound to bump into
someone I taught, their parents or
their grandparents. Yet I loved the
support and warmth of a strong
community. I was also fascinated by
the different characters that make
up a school – the pushy parents,
the teachers under pressure, and the
children themselves – and I wanted to
explore them in my fiction.
‘I knew I wanted to write romantic