The Write Lines: A message from Sue Cook

Last Sunday evening Sue Cook phoned me. I was being interviewed for her new radio show, The Write Lines, a programme that I feel will be of interest to so many of us writer folk. Here’s what Sue has to say about it all:

“We’ve all got a novel in us, so the saying goes. I’m not sure all of us have, but certainly there seems to be an incredible amount of interest in the whole business of writing at the moment.

Creative writing courses are oversubscribed, writers’ retreats in the countryside report record bookings. There are local writing groups springing up all over the place, the internet is alive with authors and publishers blogging for each other and the number of books published each year has risen to 115,000.

And of course for every one successfully published book, ten are turned down.

The writer’s journey is a bumpy one. Even when you’re published and your baby is brought alive and kicking into the world, you can’t expect it to SELL necessarily. There’s a complicated relationship between publisher and bookseller working an alchemy of its own there. I should know - I’ve had two books published myself in the last 3 years.

So - it’s a minefield. a lottery. From the first tap of the keyboard to bookshop and beyond. But you can get there. And this series, The Write Lines, aims to help you get there. In the studio over the next four Sundays I’ve got experts from every aspect of the publishing business, all aiming to shine a light and show us the way along the dark and rugged pathway; to make sure we’re on the Write Lines.

This Sunday’s show starts, appropriately enough, with The Blank Sheet of Paper - and talks about the writing process itself. Round the table with me this Sunday will be Jacq Burns, former commissioning editor, agent and co-founder of a great resource for writers - the London Writers Club; Will Atkins, Commissioning Editor MacMillan’s New Writers imprint; Carla MacKay who is one of the book reviewers for the Daily Mail and as such wields an enormous amount of power as far as authors agents and publishers alike are concerned; and - two cracking authors - crime writer Mark Billingham who has just had his third novel published by Little Brown - called In the Dark and the first one not to feature the country-and-western loving detective Tom Thorne , and Marie Phillips whose first novel, the comic fantasy ‘Gods Behaving Badly’ has been a huge hit since it came out in 2007. She’s busy writing her next book and also runs a creative writing workshop or two in her spare time. We’ll also be hearing from authors Caroline Smailes, Elizabeth Chadwick and Roisin McAuley.”

You can tweet (@the WriteLines) any questions, comments or experiences of your own to the experts in the studio. So do join Sue Cook and guests, 9 till 10 every Sunday evening for the rest of November on BBC Radio Oxford 95.2 fm.