From News Release to Novel 

by Susanna Beard

When I was about seventeen years old, my father asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I said: “I’d like to write novels.” 

His response was less than encouraging. “It’s really hard to write a novel, you know,” he said. “You’d need to do a considerable amount of research, and that’s not easy.” He went on to say that, in essence, people like us didn’t write novels. 

I was a little deflated, I have to admit. But, to be fair, my father had a great respect for authors. He really did think you had to be extra-special to become one – though I’m sure he wanted me to get a ‘proper’ job and that was at least partly why he said what he did. I don’t blame him for his response: in those days, not many people became authors and there wasn’t the huge range of entry points – novel-writing courses, MAs in creative writing – that there are now. 

So, anyway, what was I going to do? I went off to university to study a subject I was inspired by, Linguistics, and I continued to nurture my love of language with no clear idea of what I was going to do with it. In those days (further off than I care to say!) you studied the academic subject you wanted to, with no imperative to attach any long-term plans. You enjoyed yourself as much as you could, with a little learning thrown in. 

The careers advice I got was lamentable, no direction offered whatsoever, so I (misguidedly, as it turned out) went off and took a secretarial course, thinking it could lead me into a variety of different experiences, from which I could choose a career. I absolutely hated secretarial work, though the touch-typing has always stood me in good stead! I was no good at it, and I wanted to be the boss, doing the interesting stuff, not the person at the end of the line like a machine, churning out other people’s work. I didn’t last long. 

Luckily I landed a job at a small advertising agency. I was a graduate with ambitions and a strong sense of my own abilities, so when a male graduate was given a more senior role than mine, I made my point very robustly, let’s say. I became an account executive – and because the agency offered its clients broader marketing services as well as advertising (mostly business-to-business and trade, at the most boring end of the industry) – I took myself off to do a certificate in Communications, Advertising and Marketing. 

There I learned about public relations (PR) – the editorial end of communications, where you create and promote awareness for your clients via news releases, articles, columns, features in the press and on broadcast media. Nowadays that would include social media and the internet too. And I started to write as a result. 

Every day for many years I wrote, edited, researched and pitched ideas to the media on behalf of clients from a range of industries, from toys to veterinary laboratories to risotto rice. 

I learned many things from my PR career. I learned about a huge range of businesses, about people, about writing, about broadcasting and publishing. I ran my own company for many years, employing up to twenty people at any one time, had enormous fun and no regrets. And every day I wrote. 

But something was missing. Though many of my clients needed creative input – ideas that would raise their profiles, new ways to reach their audiences – the writing itself was always ‘to a brief’. In other words, I was writing in the style needed by the media, on the subjects important to the client, in a format that would get the best results. 

What was missing? True freedom, creativity, release from the bonds of having to write what others needed – those things were missing. And in the back of my mind, ever since that conversation with my father, I’d wanted to write a novel. 

So I had a ‘now or never’ moment. My job had changed: I was no longer office-based, with many staff to whom I had obligations and responsibilities. I was working from home, with a few stable clients who I liked and enjoyed working with. My children were grown and soon to be away, and I had a little more time to think. 

Being the person I am, I decided to jump in with both feet and to see if I could do this thing before it was too late. I enrolled on a short course at the renowned Faber Academy in London. I’d already had an idea for a novel, but I was uncertain how to take it forward – but after that week, I wrote another fifty thousand words. Then, inspired by the progress I’d made, I signed up for Faber’s six-month ‘Writing a Novel’ course. 

I finished my first novel while still attending that course, and within a few months I’d found an agent. I was on my way! After many ups and downs and rejections (like almost every novelist I know), my first book was published in 2017, about three years after I first started it, and my second in November 2018. I’m now focusing on my writing: I have another two novels in the pipeline and the idea for a third agreed and ready to go.

There are many ways in which my career in PR opened the door to becoming a novelist. First, the practice of writing every day was familiar, even though it wasn’t creative a lot of the time. The writing ‘muscle’, so to speak, was being used. Second, my broad experience in the agency environment has contributed to my understanding of people’s characters, their insecurities, their instincts, their dialogue. 

Third, and importantly, I understand what makes a ‘story’. Admittedly, in a newspaper or on a TV news report, the story is concertinaed into a few hundred words or a ‘sound-bite’, but these are still stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s always a lot more to a news story than what we hear or see, which perhaps explains why many authors trawl the media for inspiration for their novels. 

Fourth, my background in marketing means that in a broad sense, I understand what’s needed to market a book, and I’m not scared of doing it. It comes naturally to want to reach an audience with a message. And nowadays, I’m passionate about the message, when perhaps I wasn’t so much when promoting a shopping centre or a brand of biscuits.

More and more, authors are expected to support their books with their own campaigns: building their ‘author brand’, connecting on social media, writing blogs of their own or as a guest writer, contributing to relevant magazines, speaking at events, signing books. All of these come fairly easily to someone who has been involved in marketing for years.

Though it took a long time to realise it, I’m grateful for my career in PR. It supported me when I needed it, offered me a huge range of experience and led me to realise my dream of becoming an author. 

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About Susanna Beard

Susanna is fascinated by human relationships. She can be found people-watching wherever she goes, finding material for her writing.

Her passions include animals — particularly her dogs — walking in the countryside and tennis, which clears her brain of pretty much everything. 

Susanna’s debut novel, Dare to Remember, was published in February 2017, and her second, The Truth Waits, launched on 1 November 2018. Both are psychological thrillers, published by Legend Press. She aims to keep writing, and never to get old.    

Visit Susanna at www.susannabeard.com, email her on info@susannabeard.com, like her page on Facebook: @susannabeardauthor or follow her on Twitter: @SusannaBeard25

@legend_press

THE TRUTH WAITS

Anna has everything worked out—a successful company, all the comforts she needs, and no ties. But when she stumbles across the body of a young girl on a deserted beach in Lithuania, everything changes. Anna is compelled to uncover the story behind the tragedy, despite concern from her partner, Will. Everything points towards sex trafficking, but as she searches, her own deepest secrets start to surface.

When Will disappears without a trace, Anna is pulled further into the murky world of organized crime. Time is running out for them all, and there’s a killer out there who will stop at nothing.

Beard enthralls the reader in this fast-paced psychological crime thriller. Anna serves as the perfect power-house protagonist, her daring escapades leaving the reader questioning: how far should one go to solve a murder?

Category: On Writing