How to write a plot - novelist MJ Hyland's advice

A staggering 150,000 books were published in the UK last year – yet thousands of us yearn to add even more to the pile.

Writing’s a long, hard, solitary business so I’m always looking for ways to escape my office. On a sunny autumn morning I came up with the perfect plan and drove 40 miles through the stunning Cotswolds countryside to attend a Writing a Good Plot workshop at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Tickets to the three-hour event cost a hefty £25 but the session was so stuffed with good advice I reckon it’s the best money I’ve spent in a long time.

The 30 or so of us who’d signed up were an eclectic bunch, ranging from a showbiz agent to a couple of education publishers to a young A level student. Some had written novels, short stories and poetry galore, while others were just thinking about getting started.

The workshop was run by MJ (Maria) Hyland, who’s no slouch in the novel-writing stakes herself. The author of three novels – her second, Carry Me Down, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker prize – she also teaches at the Centre for New Writing at Manchester University. I’m deadly envious because she’s got the next-door office to one of my all-time favourite writers, Colm Tóibin. If you haven’t read Brooklyn yet by the way, you’re in for a treat.

Sitting cross-legged on a chair at the front of the class, Hyland deftly led us through her tried and tested ways to plot a novel. She offered such constructive, achievable advice, particularly for procrastinators like me, that I scribbled page after page of notes. Here are some of her tips for writing that tricky first draft:

1. Turn the internet off and put a sign on the door saying “go away, I’m writing.”

2. Write as though no one will ever read it. “The best writing I have ever done is when I forget the world and forget that it’s ever going to be read,” said Hyland. “I am just sitting and telling a fictional truth.”

3. If you can bear it, try writing the first draft with a pen. Writers often faff about choosing fonts that look pretty, changing margin widths and looking at word counts. If you do use a computer, said Hyland, “choose an ugly font. Then you’ll see what’s really on the page.”

4. Begin each writing session without looking at what you wrote last time. “Don’t get bogged down by what came before.”

5. “Don’t think about the 100,000 words you’re writing. Write your novel scene by scene. Make it work as a moment of drama and move the characters through the drama scene by scene.”

6. Most writers begin with an idea that obsesses them. “It’s got to be something that you care about, something that fascinates you and will fascinate you for a long time to come.”

7. The three main components of a plot are conflict, setting and characters – although interestingly, Hyland pointed out that sometimes the setting of a book may be so strong “that it takes care of the plot.”

8. The plot must be controlled and tight. “Don’t go on about anything that doesn’t feed the story,” said Hyland. “Make sure stuff needs to be there. Avoid summarising – ask yourself how information can be enacted or shown on the page in the moment.”

9. Lots of us assume that the plot is of a novel comprises a series of events but Hyland declared a plot can be built on themes – for example, loyalty, breach of loyalty, unfaithfulness or a search for the holy grail.

10. If you’re stuck it’s a good idea to read lots of non-fiction. As Hyland said: “There’s no better place for ideas.”

PS: There's a brilliant interview with musician Noel Gallagher in today's Times. It relates how he was watching TV earlier this year when his long-term girlfriend (and mother of two of his three children) Sara MacDonald said to him: "Just so you know, I'm not getting married when I'm past 40." Gallagher glanced up and asked: "How old are you now?"

PPS: In fact MacDonald was 39 and a few months, and they duly married this summer. As Gallagher added: "... you can't keep introducing your other half as 'the girlfriend' when you get to Rod Stewart's age."

FRIDAY BOOK REVIEW - Comfort & Spice by Niamh Shields

I’m addicted to cookery books. My children make fun of the rows of brightly-coloured tomes lining the kitchen shelves and joke that I only ever cook four recipes, all of them completely made-up. But even so, just looking at my cookery book collection instantly whisks me into a world of milk and honey, where everything is perfect and nothing ever sticks to the bottom of the saucepan.

My current favourites are Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Alice’s Cook Book by Alice Hart, but another contender sneaking up the ranks is Comfort & Spice by Niamh Shields. Like thousands of other readers, I discovered Shields through her fantastic blog, Eat Like a Girl. The Times named the London-based Irish ex-pat as one of the world's top ten food bloggers and this week she won Best Food Blog in the 2011 Observer Food Monthly Awards.

I bought Comfort and Spice, her first book, the minute I spotted it in my local Waterstone’s and it’s proved every bit as good as I hoped. From relaxed weekend brunches to hearty lunches (I’m getting more vegetarian in my tastes and can’t wait to try the lentil shepherd’s pie), it features simple, unfussy recipes that look and taste absolutely delicious.

I love Shields’s unstuffy, confident approach to food and the fact that she calls herself "an enthusiastic home cook" rather than a chef. Self-taught, apart from home economics lessons at school, she insists right from the start that “food doesn’t need to be complicated, nor does it need to be fussy. Recipes can take hours, or they can take minutes. The end result can always be wonderful food.”

As I said, Shields is my kind of cook.

Comfort & Spice by Niamh Shields (Quadrille, £14.99)

My short-lived teaching career and Kelvin MacKenzie's explosive speech

My teenage son’s trying to decide which universities to apply to. The only trouble is that after poring over countless websites, they’re all starting to blur into one. Neither of us can remember which university boasts 22 Nobel Prize winners or which has a library with four million books.

But one thing I know for sure is that my university ambitions are over. I learned my lesson the hard way a few years back when I was mad enough to sign up for a teaching course. I can’t for the life of me think why, but on the spur of the moment I foolishly decided to ditch the day job and retrain as a college lecturer.

Within days of registering it was obvious I’d made a terrible mistake. After years of working as a solitary freelance I loved being with other students all day but I couldn’t stand the endless paperwork. We all had to practise teaching our fellow students, which seemed perfectly reasonable. But then we had to fill in reams and reams of forms – everything from what teaching principles our lessons demonstrated (I mostly didn’t have a clue) to whether the class seating plan was up to scratch.

Because we were teaching over 16s, we had to explain what we’d do if students texted, swigged alcohol, spat, swore, took drugs or even pulled a knife in our lessons. Eeek! They wouldn’t do anything like that, would they?

I lasted precisely six months before I threw in the towel. And no, I’m glad to say I never taught anyone who carried a weapon or a flask of whisky in their back pocket. But the experience wasn’t entirely wasted. I don’t get fazed at speaking in public any more, I can do a PowerPoint presentation and my admiration for teachers knows no bounds. Trust me, it's an awful lot harder than it looks.

PS: Newspapers are in the news again after an explosive speech from Kelvin MacKenzie this afternoon. The ex-editor of The Sun never minces his words (that’s putting it mildly) and sure enough, during his appearance at the Leveson inquiry he turned on everyone from David Cameron to former News International boss Rebekah Brooks. Years ago I was on the receiving end of Kelvin’s straight-talking style after I was offered a job at The Sun. I’d just joined a Sunday paper and when I pitched up at Wapping to meet Kelvin (no one ever calls him Mr MacKenzie) his first words were “you haven’t had much in the paper yet, have you?” I couldn’t argue. He was dead right.

PPS: I'm not usually a fan of herbal teas but I’ve just discovered Summerdown’s delicious peppermint tea (above). I'm so hooked that I'm on my third cup of the day.

Retail guru Mary Portas and her Pret-a-Portas code

“Avoid dressing like a teenager, edit your trends, work with your proportions, keep it low maintenance and don’t buy crap.”

These are the no-nonsense words of the inimitable style guru Mary Portas – or as she calls it, her Pret-a-Portas code to buying clothes. Mary Queen of Shops talks such retail sense that I reckon I should have her advice stamped across my wallet whenever I go shopping. If I'd done that, I might have avoided some of my worst sartorial disasters. And yes, there are quite a few lurking at the back of my wardrobe.

I’m gripped by Mary’s new TV show, Mary Queen of Frocks, which follows her progress as she designs her own range of clothes for women over 40 and sells them at House of Fraser’s flagship Oxford Street store. She embarked on her quest because middle-aged women, she reckons, only have two choices when it comes to fashion – “dress like teenagers and flash the flesh. Or it’s cream and beige, beige and cream.”

Her new fashion project makes for entertaining TV (the second part is on Channel 4 tonight) but I’m not convinced by Mary’s clothes. The trouble is that she’s a tall, stick-thin size ten and while her trademark leggings, cinched in waists and sky-high heels look fabulous on her, her style would look ridiculous if the rest of us tried it.

One of the seven key pieces she’s designed is the “no-brainer dress,” an above-the-knee tunic which costs £135. Mary calls it’s “a clean and contemporary look,” but I’m sorry, to me it looks like a shapeless overall. Her shoes, on the other hand, are divine. She’s teamed up with Clarks to create a gorgeous range of ankle boots, courts and bar shoes. Not only that, they look like shoes you could actually walk in. And watch out, too, for her Home collection, which is perfect for Christmas presents.

PS: Mary’s hit the headlines again today by castigating the women in David Cameron’s cabinet as “an ugly bunch.” She told Heat magazine that she’d love to restyle the lot of them and “put a bit of sex and glamour in there.” If you see an army of women politicians trooping into Number Ten clutching briefing papers and wearing bright purple tunics, you’ll know who's responsible.

PPS: It was my turn to host my book club last night so I rushed out to buy some non-alcoholic drinks for the drivers. When I spotted Belvoir’s new elderflower presse at the supermarket I snapped up three bottles. Why? Who could resist a bottle that says “you’re lovely” on the label?

Working the night shift - and memories of Fleet Street

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I wake in the grey light of dawn, fretting that my student daughter has got home to her flat all right. She’s working weekends in a chic Shoreditch bar from seven pm till six am and I can’t help worrying. Actually, I didn’t even realise bars stayed open till six, but then again I don’t think I’ve been inside one since about 2002.

The upside of the job is that by the time she’s finished serving drinks, stacking glasses and clearing up, it’s daylight and she’s on her way home. The downside is that she misses half the weekend because she’s asleep.

Nurses, doctors, security guards, DJs (a big shout-out to Radio 2’s lovely Alex Lester – the only person capable of making listeners laugh at three am) all know what it’s like to work through the night. A friend of mine who worked for breakfast TV said her body clock got so mixed up that she found it difficult to eat. The answer, she found, was to live on cereal - the only food she could face eating at any time of the day or night.

Years ago I used to work night shifts as a young news reporter on the Evening Standard. For one week every three months I’d pitch up at midnight and toil till eight in the morning, manning the news desk phones, commissioning copy from foreign correspondents across the globe and sifting through the morning papers in search of stories to follow up for the first edition.

One of the worst tasks was having to ring some poor hapless reporter when a story broke unexpectedly at two am and telling them to get out of bed and drive to the other end of the country – er, like, NOW. It could be an apocryphal tale but a night reporter once answered the phone in the early hours to find a drunken hack at the other end. “I’m in a hotel overlooking a river - but I don’t know where I am,” he garbled. Slowly and patiently, the night reporter embarked on the tricky task of helping him work out where the hell he was. And more to the point, why.

The best part of doing nights was the moment the bright-eyed day staff arrived for their shifts and I could run down the office stairs, out of the door and jump straight on the bus back to Battersea. Those days are long gone now, but even today, just smelling stale coffee in a Thermos flask or strolling past the posh offices that were once home to Fleet Street’s finest, takes me back to those far-flung times.

Bicester Village - like Bond Street in the country

When I moved to Oxfordshire a few years back I was amazed to discover we had the out-of-town equivalent of Bond Street on our doorstep.

Bicester Village looks like a quaint New England street, all white clapboard shop-fronts and tasteful landscaping, but in reality it’s a shoppers’ paradise just two miles off the M40. The 130 or so shops include all the names fashionistas worth their salt dream about, from Vivienne Westwood and Anya Hindmarch (above) to Dolce & Gabbana and Versace. They stock clothes, bags, shoes, you name it, from last season at knock-down prices - perfect for these tough economic times. Reductions range between 33 and 60 per cent but eagle-eyed shoppers make a point of watching out for “further reduction” periods, when some prices drop by a staggering 70 or 80 per cent.

The place attracts more than four million bargain-hunters a year from all over the world and is virtually always packed – so much so that a couple of years back they had to build a vast second car park.

If you want to take a break from shopping and treat yourself to lunch there are loads of tempting restaurants, including Carluccio’s, Villandry and Jamie Oliver’s Fabulous Feasts, while at Christmas the Bicester Village staff organise late night shopping evenings, complete with carol singers, mince pies and mulled wine.

Armani, Gucci and Superdry have all arrived in the last couple of years but my favourite shops are Mulberry, where I bought a gorgeous Bayswater bag at half price, Jack Wills (my stylish 19-year-old daughter says it’s too preppy for her but the staff are delightful), All Saints and L’Occitane for heavenly lavender bath foam that reminds me of Provence.