Emilia Hart and Felicity Blunt: 'If the book is brilliant, the world is going to want to read it'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
12th Oct 2023
CBC has been running creative writing courses since 2011. Since then, over 200 of our former students have gone on to get major publishing deals. To celebrate this landmark moment, we hosted two free webinars for aspiring writers giving ticket holders the chance to put their questions to the expert panel.
We’re delighted to share these highlights from the first of our webinars which featured Curtis Brown literary agent Felicity Blunt and her client Emilia Hart, author of the New York Times bestselling historical fiction debut Weyward. Emilia was a student on our three-month Writing Your Novel course in 2020. Plus, we’ve included a link to watch the full event recording for free.
Read on to learn about Emilia's time studying with us and how she worked with her literary agent Felicity to get Weyward ready to submit to publishers. Plus, advice on the writing and publishing process, including how to hook a literary agent.
EMILIA HART ON STUDYING WITH US
EH: The course was really fantastic. The main thing I learnt was how to critique work and how to receive feedback. This is so important for writers because you’ll need to be able to take onboard feedback throughout your career. My tutor Suzannah Dunn had written a lot of historical fiction herself, so she really helped me with scene setting and characterisation in the historical timelines of Weyward. She helped me flesh out my characters and make sure that they weren’t central casting stereotypes. Instead, they seem like living, breathing people.
HOW TO KEEP WRITING
EH: Resilience is so important to anyone who writes, whether you’re unpublished or published, it's crucial because there is a lot of rejection and heartache in this business. If it’s something that you love doing, find a way to keep going.
I also find it so reinvigorating to read. I love writing, but I'm a reader first. Reading is the spark that keeps everything going. Reading is where you'll get new ideas. It will help you persevere. If you can retain your love of reading, you’ll retain your love of writing as well.
FB: If you love to write, you should write. Publishing is separate – writing is its own thing. The first objective when writing is always to write the very best book you can. Have that remain the central challenge to your writing. Think about taking a course or finding a community of writers who will be able to support you with feedback and constructive criticism as well as a morale boost and encouragement when you need it. Do not feel that without a publishing deal you are doing something that is selfish or indulgent. Writers can find it very hard to justify taking the time to write when you have a busy job and or a family. But remember that your writing matters, it has value to you.
KNOWING WHEN TO SUBMIT TO AGENTS
EH: You should work on your manuscript until you feel like you can't look at it, and then you should take a break. Coming back to something with fresh eyes is so helpful. You need that sense of detachment where you could almost pretend that you're reading someone else's work. I would also advise getting feedback from whoever you can at this stage.
FB: First: write the absolute best book that you have in you. If the book is brilliant, the world is going to want to read it. The book will only be brilliant if you have exhausted all the work that you can put into it.
I always tell my clients:
- Work on it until you can't stand to look at it.
- Then leave it alone.
- Then print it out and read it on paper, reading on a screen means you can more easily skim read.
- Try changing small things like the main character's names to startle yourself into reading it differently.
- Do not speed read. Instead try to be aware of when you are slowing down your read, when you are becoming distracted. It’s a sign something that isn’t working.
- Some people read their novels out loud, it’s a very good way of really hearing how the book is working! What adjectives you have unconsciously overused etc.
Do all that work because it's such a precious time, you won't ever have it again. Once you have editors and publishers you will never fully own your writing in the same way. People will be asking when you're delivering, and you will suddenly have such nostalgia for the time where you could just write as much as you want to whatever deadline you wanted.
FELICITY BLUNT ON WHAT SHE LOOKS FOR IN HISTORICAL FICTION SUBMISSIONS
Don’t forget that touch, taste and smell exist as well as what the character is seeing. If you can conjure up what the drains of Victorian England smelled like, then your reader will be transported back there so much more quickly than if you just describe what the street looks like.
WRITING YOUR PITCH LETTER
FB: When writing a pitch letter, the hardest thing to do is to encapsulate your book. It's a real struggle once you have multiple drafts worth of work, and the book has grown to be big and detailed. You had an idea at the beginning – it was one thought that tickled the back of your brain. Go back to that one thought because it was obviously interesting enough to you that you've spent eight months/eight years/eighteen years working on the book. Then see how you can build a pitch around that initial idea.
The pitch should be about one to two paragraphs long. I'm a junkie for books, so all I really want to know is what you're writing about and where you think it might sit in the market. Also, please don't send it untitled. Your title is your first sales arm. So, find a title that feels original and attention catching.
Finally, I believe it's a good thing to start working on your pitch letter and synopsis before you finish the book. It can feel less pressurised that way. You can noodle at it for longer.
ADVICE FOR DEBUT AUTHORS
EH: Enjoy it because you will never be a debut author again. You should savour that moment. Go into the bookstore, find your book and ask to sign it.
At the same time, you should still always have one eye on the future and think about the next project. Keep writing, keep reading, but still take time to enjoy the moment.
FB: As an author you want to write a book; you want to see a book published, but really what you want to do is write multiple books and you want to have a career as a writer.
That really is the ambition. Nobody just wants one book published if they love writing. It's a discipline, it's a muscle, you've got to work at it.
You've got to be as ruthless with yourself as anybody else would be. Ask yourself, is this the right next book idea? Is it the right thing to pour 400 days of writing into?
Continue to interrogate that from book to book and try and make each book better. You’ll learn something from each book.
That is always so exciting to me, like when Gillian McAllister had a massive breakout hit with Wrong Place, Wrong Time – it was her eighth book. That's also the dream – to continue to get better. Don't feel like everything will or should rest on your debut.
This special event is part of our celebrations to mark the landmark moment of 200 former students getting major publishing deals.
Applications for our flagship three-month Writing Your Novel course in London close Sun 15 Oct. Or, if you're looking for expert tuition and advice from publishing professionals delivered flexibly, applications for our three-month online course close Sun 22 Oct.
Weyward is out now!
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.