Lucy Hooft: 'You need to throw down the clay of the first draft then sculpt it into a book in the editing process.'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
15th Dec 2022
Lucy Hooft studied on our six-week online Write to the End of Your Novel and Edit & Pitch Your Novel courses in 2018. Her debut The King’s Pawn (book one in The Sarah Black Series) is out now with independent publisher Burning Chair. We spoke about the lifelong friends she met on our courses, her love of thrillers and her journey to publication.
You took our Write to the End of Your Novel and Edit & Pitch Your Novel courses – Online in 2018. How did your time studying with us impact your writing journey?
These courses were such an important part of the process. They were the first time I had been exposed to other writers and provided a source of huge inspiration in reading other people’s work and giving and receiving feedback. The course content was excellent. Anna Davis is full of brilliant advice and I still use her ‘rewrite doctor’ approach every time I get to the end of the first draft. I was lucky enough to win a tutorial with Norah Perkins from Curtis Brown who gave excellent feedback on my work and advice on what to focus on next. This recognition helped bolster my belief that the idea and the writing were worth sticking with, which was essential to see me through the long journey to publication that lay ahead.
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met during the course?
This was hands-down the most valuable part of the course, even though it was online and I was on the other side of the world from most course participants. Course member Daniel Aubrey introduced me to the VWG (a virtual writing group on Twitter who found each other in responding to the #WriteCBC monthly prompts) and they have been the most fantastic support throughout the writing process. Four years later, I’m still in touch with several people I met on the CBC courses and will finally be able to meet some of them face to face in December at the launch party for The King’s Pawn.
Your debut novel The King’s Pawn (book one in The Sarah Black Series) is out now with independent publisher Burning Chair. It’s been described as an action-packed espionage thriller with a strong female lead character. Can you tell us a bit more about the novel and the inspiration behind it?
I joined the Foreign Office straight after university and soon afterwards transferred to the Department for International Development (DFID) and was sent off to the South Caucasus, China and Sierra Leone. Everyone always assumed I must be a spy. The books began as a way of imagining what that life might have looked like.
As I started exploring more widely in the genre, I was surprised to find how few female spies there are in the world of contemporary spy fiction. There are some great female spy wartime stories, but most contemporary spy fiction tends to be gritty, dark and male. I wanted to revisit the Ian Fleming world of spy stories – exotic locations, outlandish baddies, car chases, horse races and explosions – but to bring it into the 21st century with a believable, relatable, female heroine.
It’s safe to say that you love an adventure! From joining the Foreign Office straight out of university, to travelling the world and living in a jungle camp in Gabon. How much of your protagonist Sarah Black is based off your own experiences?
Sarah is NOT me (a point I’ve been having to make repeatedly with friends and family who are reading The King’s Pawn!), but she definitely shares many elements of my experience. When I started writing, she was based much more closely on me and I found it difficult to write her as a fully-formed, well-rounded character. I was too self-conscious delving into the emotional life, weakness and flaws of my protagonist. I felt too vulnerable putting myself - warts and all - onto the page. As a result, she became rather featureless and dull compared to my secondary characters. It was only by making her not me and giving her different character traits and history that I was able to bring her to life.
Could you tell us a bit more about your journey to publication? How did you know that Burning Chair was the right home for The King’s Pawn?
My journey to publication was a long one (you can read the full epic story here). The recurrent theme, both in signing with an agent and then in finding a publisher, was that people were not sure where it ‘fit on the shelf’. I have always thought of the Sarah Black books as ‘spy novels for people who don’t like spy novels’. They have all the classic features of the genre, but the tone and style are lighter, more female, more fun. To me this is a positive thing, but for sales and acquisition people it is apparently a problem. A big problem. So, lots of enthusiastic editors came back with disappointing answers.
Throughout this long journey I had considered self-publishing, but I knew I would struggle to do it all on my own without losing confidence. I could not be happier that my agent recommended Burning Chair. Working with an independent publisher gives a very human face to the whole publishing process. There are no mysterious acquisition boards to say no to things, just people who love books and who work very hard to get them out into the hands of readers. The whole process - from development editing through to cover design and marketing - has been brilliant fun and I have been extremely grateful for their advice, support and input.
What does a typical writing day look like for you? Any tips or tricks to share with our readers about how to get into a good writing routine?
None of my days are ever that typical – I have three young children, a puppy, am setting up a school in a remote location in Namibia and have several different roles in my husband’s start-up company to grow giant kelp. Writing is something that has to be fit in among other time commitments. I think the best thing that helped me to make this busy balance work was to realise that writing something, no matter how small, is better than writing nothing. I used to try and write 1,000 words a day while working on a first draft which is a great target if you have the time to do it. But I found that if I didn’t have enough time and head space to be able to focus for that long, I would not write at all. During lockdown, while home-schooling children in Dutch (my Dutch is very bad!), I realised that even if I only wrote 100 words a day, that would still give me 3,000 words in the month that wouldn’t otherwise have existed. You need to throw down the clay of the first draft then sculpt it into a book in the editing process.
Finally, what can you tell us about book two in The Sarah Black Series?
The story follows directly on from The King’s Pawn. Sarah, still inexperienced but significantly tougher with the confidence of a lucky start behind her, strikes out on her own in wartime Sierra Leone, hungry for revenge. It is a work of fiction, but based closely around the historical events that led up to the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone. The Head of the Snake comes out on the 30th of March 2023 and is available to pre-order now.
Buy your copy of The King's Pawn here and pre-order your copy of The Head of the Snake.
Find out more about our Write to the End of Your Novel course and our Edit & Pitch Your Novel course.