Five reasons Helen Monks Takhar dared to dream her manuscript might be THE ONE

Author Image by Sunflowers Photography

“The summer I started to develop Precious You, I consumed best-selling thrillers to understand agent, publisher and reader expectations on things like pace and twists and reflected these in my draft.”

Author Helen Monks Takhar offers five reasons she dared to dream that her novel, Precious You, would get published.

My debut, out this summer, was my fourth manuscript. The three before her were two romances (I suppose, though I never really considered genre, more on this shortly) and a ghost story. The moment I finished number three I saw a rainbow. I took it as a sign, but it wasn’t telling me the ghost story would win it for me, rather the thing I started next would prove the manuscript that by some miracle jumps off agents’ slush piles into a request for the full and then the rest.

Here’s five things that allowed me to hope Precious You might be ‘the one’.

1. I actually thought about the reader

I’d been a journalist for a few years when I first opened a document on my laptop to write a story. Because I was earning money through writing, when I wrote in this document, I was ‘writing for myself’. Though I dreamed of being published someday, I didn’t specifically think about whether or not I was creating a good reading experience. By the time I started drafting Precious You, I thought constantly about keeping the reader with me.

2. I committed to a genre

When the idea of Precious You came to me – a female-led cat and mouse tale starring a troubled fortysomething editor and her millennial intern – I decided it had to be a thriller. Incredibly, I’d never properly thought about what genre I was writing in before (after all, I was ‘writing for myself’). This is, of course, no crime, but it’s not very commercially-minded either, something I realised I needed to be if Precious You was ever going to get anywhere.

3. I read in my genre

Before I decided to write a thriller, I don’t remember ever having read one. The summer I started to develop Precious You, I consumed best-selling thrillers to understand agent, publisher and reader expectations on things like pace and twists and reflected these in my draft.

4. I thought what was going on ‘out there’, not just ‘in here’

Precious You calls on some challenging feelings I experienced as I hit my forties and they hit me right back, but I realised I needed to check I wasn’t experiencing something odd and outlying before mining this seam for the manuscript. I talked to friends, read around the subject of female mid-life crises and realised I was not alone. Around the same time, I could see there was a hate narrative bubbling up around young adults, ‘snowflakes’. If I could smash Gen X issues around ageing into disturbing perspectives on millennials, I believed I might create something others would recognise and the story might catch fire.

5. I kept writing as usual, but realised I had to change something

I knew I had to approach things differently in order to have a fighting chance of getting manuscript number four published, 17 years after I’d opened the document that became manuscript one. I suppose this is the essence of why Precious You felt like it might possibly be ‘the one’ after all those years: it took the three before her for me to really know what I was doing and what I could be doing better.

Helen Monks Takhar worked as a journalist, copywriter and magazine editor having graduated from Cambridge in 1997. She began her career writing for financial trade newspapers in 1999 before contributing to UK national newspapers including The Times and The Observer. Born in Southport, Merseyside in 1976, she lives in North London with her husband and two daughters. Precious You is her first novel.

 

About PRECIOUS YOU:

When magazine editor Katherine first meets her new intern Lily, she’s captivated. Young, beautiful and confident, Lily reminds Katherine of everything she once was – and it’s not long before she develops a dark fascination with her new colleague. But is Lily as perfect as she seems, or does she have a sinister hidden agenda? As Katherine is drawn into an obsessive power struggle with the intern, a disturbing picture emerges of two women hiding dark secrets – and who are desperate enough to do anything to come out on top.

Having trouble starting, sticking with or completing a writing project? Meet your Creative Gremlins! Seven Creative Gremlins is the perfect travel companion for any writer, brand new or experienced, who is embarking on a creative journey. With wit and hard-won wisdom, published author Nicola Jackson and creativity coach Teresa Wilson explain how these Creative Gremlins are the cause of writers’ doubts, fears and stalling strategies – and (most importantly) offer you the tools to help you get past them in order to achieve your writing dreams.

Pick up your copy today for just £1.99 ebook/£6.99 pback