What a turn up!

The following interview orginally appeared on the WriteMentor Blog in December 2023.

Meet our 2023 Novel-in-Development Award winner Melanie Whitmarsh who describes her experience of the award, her winning book, and the mentorship prize

How did you feel when you read the winner announcement? Incredulous. Shocked. Blood drained from my face. I couldn't understand why Stuart White’s email was headed Congratulations. I read and reread the email, searching for a catch. Then I burst into tears of happiness and ran to tell my family.

How did you celebrate? I went to the bookshop, of course! I like to write in books, and wanted something to commemorate the manuscript’s win. I chose Javier Marías’s Written Lives, Eric Newby’s The Last Grain Race, and Barry Lopez’s Horizon. I like that these copies now have a personal history. Later that night, my family and I celebrated in a local Mexican restaurant and ate Mole poblano de guajolote until we popped.

Tell us a bit about your writing journey to date. I’m a corporate copywriter, magazine columnist, and travel writer. As a copywriter, I’m used to collaborating with teams of writers and designers on long projects. The focus is always on clarity, relevance, and brevity, and not individual egos. I think this is good preparation for any future author-editor relationship I may have.

As a travel writer, I love observing and interviewing people at work; replicating dialogue, and creating a sense of place on the page. This is all useful stuff for fiction. But can I tell a story? That’s what I’m learning now. I’ve spent the last two years studying writing craft with Golden Egg Academy, and am now finishing my manuscript with WriteMentor’s Spark Mentoring.

Tell us more about the winning book, The Nighthawk Detectives. It’s an upper middle grade contemporary adventure: Ernest Shackleton meets Bear Grylls meets Nancy Drew. It starts in Spain, ends in Antarctica, and has at least one secret staircase.

What inspired the idea, The Nighthawk Detectives? When I moved to Barcelona I was struck by the number of private detective agencies there are here. They’re everywhere. It got me thinking. Then I read Harriet Whitehorn’s Violeta y la Perla de Oriente which prompted my heroine’s name. And then lockdown hit.

In Spain, it was strict: children couldn’t leave the house at all. We had no balcony or outdoor space. I stared through the window, longing to be far away. I read Melissa Harrison’s The Stubborn Light of Things which got me thinking about nature in children's literature. I raced through some old Hammond Innes thrillers . . . Ideas emerged. A maritime detective. A search for family. Formidable and invasive nature. Friendship, wildlife, maps. Humour in the face of danger. Clues in books, codes to crack, a villain to vanquish.

What was the WriteMentor Novel in Development Award experience like for you, as an entrant? Excellent. The rules were clear, the process smooth, and the tone encouraging and frank. The feedback exceeded my expectations: it’s worth entering for this alone.

I was also mightily intrigued by the work of the two runners-up, Sophie Clarke and Gavin Crippin. I set up a mini chat group so we could swap chapters and talk writing, competitions, and strategy. It’s been a pleasure making their acquaintance.

The Novel in Development Award prize is one year of Spark mentoring. Why do you think mentoring is so important for writers who are developing a novel? Funnily enough, I’d just joined Spark Mentoring before the winner’s announcement and had requested Lindsay Galvin as my mentor, so I was thrilled that Lindsay Galvin turned out to be my prize!

As for the usefulness of mentoring: firstly, accountability. The monthly deadline gives me a concrete goal and encourages discipline. It makes me work forwards through the manuscript, preventing me from endlessly fiddling with the start.

Secondly, it’s feedback from a trusted, impartial source. Strike that: it’s feedback from an expert. And because the process is monthly, feedback isn’t repeated. It’s like on-the-job training: my weaknesses are being tidied up as I go, and my strengths amplified. Now when I’m reviewing a chapter opening or action sequence, I ask myself: what would Lindsay say? And I find I know the answer and can incorporate it before sending.

Thirdly, it’s a window into a working author’s world. Through our emails, I’m learning about my mentor’s school visits, experience at literary festivals, writing headaches, books being read, works in progress, thoughts on craft, and much more.

Finally, I’m not entirely alone. Though my mentor may not see it as such, I like to think I’m now in a team of two. And I draw some strength from that on the days when things feel bleak.

What advice would you give other writers when entering writing awards in the future? I think it’s strategic to look at where the entry ends: to not necessarily use the full allotment of words, but to end the excerpt at a tantalising moment.

And read the entry aloud before sending.

Any general writing advice for writers of children’s fiction? Lots! Read Lauren Child’s Clarice Bean Don’t Look Now. Ask yourself why you’re in tears at the end, and how Child achieved that.

Listen to Molly McCowan’s Effective Editing.

Edit hard. Make every sentence shorter.

Find a few trusted writer friends and offer yourself as a reader. The process of considering someone else’s work is surprisingly instructive, as is the framing of feedback.  Though the writer gets the feedback, it’s the peer reader who learns most from the exchange. It’s also a real joy to watch your buddy’s manuscript develop and then go on to be listed for awards, etc.

Join Libby, the online library app.

Think of the white space on a page.

Know your audience. It’s worth remembering that the child may be reading somewhat against their will. How can you lessen the chore? How can you elevate the experience? Similarly, read deeply in your genre. Notice sentence length and chapter length. Read with a highlighter. Use page tabs. Reread striking paragraphs.

Read the acknowledgements at the end of a book. Start to get a sense of the children’s publishing world.

What’s next for your writing? Any new projects on the horizon? I want to create an iconic detective next, something with a technical puzzle that requires real intelligence or hard graft from the hero to crack. And I have some broad sketches for a second Nighthawks book, in case there’s appetite for it. I’ve also recently joined the WriteMentor Hub and am looking forward to exploring the archives, working through Vashti Hardy’s Advanced Novel Writing course, and meeting my fellow peers there.