Writing ELLIE AND THE HARPMAKER

It must be possible, I thought. One dream had already come true. Not without a good deal of stress and struggle, and it had taken years longer than I’d imagined, but still: I was a harpist! I’d managed to get myself a harp and learn how to play it. It was lovely and rewarding and very, very worthwhile. So how about that other dream – the dream to write a book?

I was much older than I wanted to be and too many years of my life had gone down the drain due to illness, so I was determined to make the most of what was left. I’d already attempted a novel once (it’s still sitting on a memory stick somewhere, being ashamed of itself) and I knew it would be hard. I’d only manage it if I wrote about what I loved, what would keep me totally inspired and involved. So that’s what I did.

Harps have a uniquely romantic appeal and the sound of a Celtic harp is nothing short of magic. A lot of people come up to me after performances and declare: “I’ve always wanted to play the harp!” I try to encourage them to follow that dream – if I can do it, so can they – but I know life has a way of throwing problems into the path of dream-chasers. These thoughts were going round in my head as I was taking a walk in my local woods and wondering what to write about.

As I walked, I found that the plot of ELLIE AND THE HARPMAKER was beginning to unfold. A harp-maker would be an interesting main character, I decided. He would literally be somebody who could make a dream come true. He had to be lovely; but he also had to be wilful and very quirky. Then there needed to be a person with the dream who had all sorts of difficulties pursuing it.

The harp-maker in my story has materialized as Dan Hollis. He lives in an isolated old barn on the moor. Handsome and kind though he is, he feels awkward in social situations and prefers to spend time immersed in the countryside. One of his eccentricities is that he counts everything – from the steps of his staircase to the mushrooms on his daily walk. When he isn’t obsessively making harps he obsessively makes sandwiches. The other main character, the one with the dream, is Ellie Jacobs.

She has always lacked the courage of her convictions. She doesn’t quite realise how much she could do with her life if only she wasn’t held back by her controlling husband, Clive. When she meets Dan all that changes, though. Her newly found love of harp-playing leads her to an important discovery. But should she reveal the secret that will disrupt all their lives? A series of dramatic events follow…

Never a great fan of computer screens, I wrote the first draft of the book sitting in a field with pen and paper. My accompaniment was birdsong and a trickling stream. If I came across a plot problem I’d go for another walk, and it invariably helped. The countryside was my muse and I do feel that Exmoor has filtered into the whole fabric of the story.

Once I’d completed a very rough version I abandoned my novel for a whole year. I planned to go back to it eventually, but my spare time got siphoned into writing short stories instead. I’d won some national story competitions and thought this was probably the way to go. Short stories were so much easier to finish, after all. One prize was a free place at Swanwick Writer’s Summer School, and that was a huge leap forward. I met a wonderful support group of fellow writers and one of the teachers became my writing guru.

After exchanging a few stories, I finally plucked up the courage to send him the first chapter of my book. I was gobsmacked when his feedback was: Don’t change a single thing! You are a novelist. Not convinced, I sent it to two other writer friends. They were equally enthusiastic.

Much encouraged, I entered my first three chapters for the Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition. I was delighted (and quite teary) the day the letter arrived saying I’d been long-listed. But it also informed me that the complete, finished novel had to be printed out and sent off within ten days! I hadn’t even typed it up, let alone edited it. That was some week! At times I thought I’d explode… but I did manage to do it. My book was subsequently shortlisted not only for that prize but also in three other novel competitions. This led me to believe that maybe, just maybe, somebody might consider publishing it?

I was lucky to find an agent pretty quickly… but then lost her again. Shocked and devastated that this could happen, I felt I’d invested far too much time and energy to stop trying. So I stubbornly sent my submission out to the top agents in London. How happy I was when Darley Anderson himself rang and said he loved my novel! Thanks to him I am now an author with Penguin Random House both in the UK (Transworld) and the US (Berkley) as well as gaining several foreign language deals for ELLIE AND THE HARPMAKER. And book two is well on its way.

Writers, please keep going. Write from your heart and guts and the depths of your imagination – and never, never give up on your dream!

—

Hazel Prior is a freelance harpist and author. She has had several stories published in literary magazines and won 9 prizes in national writing competitions. Ellie And The Harpmaker is her first novel and she is working on her second. She lives on Exmoor, in south west England, with her husband and a huge ginger cat.

ELLIE AND THE HARPMAKER

MEET ELLIE. She’s perfectly happy with her home and her husband and her quiet life. Happy enough, anyway. Which is why she’s so surprised to find herself drawn to an extraordinary stranger who gives her a gift – and a fresh perspective.

MEET DAN. He thinks that all he needs is the time and space to carry on making harps in his isolated barn on the moor. But the last thing he expects is for Ellie to whirl into his life, bringing a string of surprises to his ordered existence.

Sometimes it takes a chance encounter to discover what your life can be . . .

This heart-warming, funny and quirky love story features . . .

86 plums

69 sandwiches

27 birch trees

a 17-step staircase


a pair of cherry-coloured socks

and a pheasant named Phineas

“Ellie and the Harp Maker is a beautiful love song of a story, wonderfully told with a warm heart and much hope. Hazel Prior’s writing is a lyrical delight.” —Phaedra Patrick, international bestselling author of The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, and The Library of Lost and Found.

Buy the book HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing