 interview with rachel connor describe your typical writing day i always write best in the mornings so i try to clock up the words in the first part of the day i never used to be a morning person so it s amazing to me now that it has become my most productive time the best feeling is when i can get the writing in early before the rest of the house has woken up i gave up weekend lieins long ago when this happens it feels like a minor victory getting the words on the page before any potential disruptions can derail me i tend to break up my working day with a run or a walk with the dog around lunchtime not only does this give me fresh air and get me away from my desk it allows me to brew any ideas about the project i m working on or to get away from it depending how it s going i juggle writing with lots of other things teaching creative writing workshops freelance editing for the consultancy cornerstones and hosting residential courses for the creative writing charity arvon so i m often squeezing it in around other activities if i have only half a day to write i ll always prioritise the writing to get it done when my energy is at its highest writing can be such an intangible thing it s the first thing that disappears when other things crowd in and take on more immediacy like sick children or domestic disasters the main thing i ve learned over the years is to try to protect that time it doesn t always work but the moment i considered myself to be a writer was the moment i realised that i d never do any unless i actively set that time aside my writing space is in an outbuilding at the back of our house so when i m at my desk i m away from the phone and the doorbell and there s no temptation to get sidetracked doing laundry or washing up i even have a closed sign so the rest of the family know not to disturb me that said i also like to write in cafes and sitting up in bed it s good not to be too attached to the desk rachel s desk do you set yourself targets such as a daily word count to be achieved  i don t aim for a daily word count but i do find it useful to break down the writing into scenes so depending on the amount of time i have to write that day i aim for a whole scene or half a scene i m quite a slow writer for years i beat myself up about it thinking that everyone else seemed so much more prolific than me i ve since learned that a everyone has different writing speeds and the only marker of success is if i feel happy with what i ve achieved that day and b comparison to other writers is pointless destructive and definitely to be avoided we know writing can t always be enjoyable for those times when it s not how do you muster the energy or motivation to keep going till you ve crested the hill  first draft writing is agony i feel i m constantly trying to cut out that little voice in my head that tells me it s boring or not good enough then there s that mismatch between the ideal conception of the idea and the messy reality on paper getting the words down on the page feels like wrestling with an octopus sometimes i wonder about why i have such a drive to do something so difficult on such a regular basis it s quite perverse when i think about it but that said when everything comes together there is no feeling like it once the first draft is done and i reach the revision stage i enjoy that so much more i love that process of cutting and pasting and getting a sense of the whole thing and how it hangs together even better at the very end is the polishing and getting the linebyline writing just right i love that bit i think what keeps me going is trying not to think about or analyse what i m writing in terms of value see above it s about cutting out that critical voice it s just about getting a rough shape for the scene or the chapter to make it workable the best strategy i ve found for getting the first draft down is to write in specific chunks of time what works for me is to write for no more than 90 minutes in any one session and to schedule short five minute breaks each half hour it s my own variation on the pomodoro technique which is a brilliant time management tool  http wwwpomodorotechniquecom   incentives are good too especially when they involve chocolate or cake the other thing that keeps me going is thinking about the audience at the end of it that s something that has changed since i was published and one of the best things i love meeting readers and talking about the book and the ideas in it it feels like a sort of reward for all those months years of isolation and sheer hard graft how do you begin a new writing project do you plan every detail carefully or do you freewheel and see what happens  i definitely need a plan i wouldn t last long at all if i just tried to wing it at the same time though i know i need to allow for the writing to take its own shape i learned a lot from my mentor sara maitland who talked about structure and plot as a sort of jelly mould with a definite shape but flexible and able to change i find it useful to plan each scene before i start writing jotting down details about the setting and so on often the writing surprises me and moves in a different direction from the plan but the little plans on index cards help me make a start if i ve thought ahead and jotted down some snippets of dialogue or objects i can weave in to make the story world feel authentic plus index cards are brilliantly portable your novel sisterwives is your first how difficult was it to find an an agent publisher given that it was your debut  my story is different from most in that i won a competition with a writing development organisation  http wwwculturewordorguk   who published my novel with their imprint press this has been a brilliant thing and allowed me to get my work out there i still don t have an agent i ll probably look for one once i ve finished the next novel what advice would you offer a new writer who is seeking publication  a good agentwriter relationship can be a wonderful thing and certainly in the run up to sisterwives being published i longed for someone else to share the burden of getting it out there particularly when it came to promotion but my main advice would be stay open to the idea that you could do without one there are so many opportunities for writers now through epublishing and small presses i don t think having an agent now is as crucial now as it was say five or six years ago when that was the only route open to emerging writers it s great that these days you can be enterprising about how and where your stuff is published i think it gives writers a lot of possibility and allows a lot more creative control what do you have in progress at the moment  i ve always got small projects on the go whether that s blogging my website is at wwwrachelconnorwritercom  writing short non fiction articles or short stories i don t have a great track record with finishing short stories there are lots of rough first drafts languishing on my hard drive as far as major projects go i ve got two on the boil at the moment the first is a commissioned afternoon drama for radio 4 called the cloistered soul  which is set in an enclosed order of nuns i ve almost finished the first draft it will be recorded in november and broadcast in early 2014 i m also deep into the first draft of my next novel provisionally called the long path to desire  it s set mainly in glasgow and is partly an imaginative reconstruction of the charles rennie mackintosh story and the history of the glasgow school of art after sisterwives  which flips between multiple voices and different time frames i swore i d keep the next one simple it started off that way but now i have three main characters in different eras whose stories are all interconnected it seems i can t escape complexity  interviews rachel connor 