Anatomy of writing that first book

Ashbourne WI

OUR monthly meeting was held on Thursday 8 July - it was once again a Zoom video meeting and this month we thank committee member Laura Wilson for setting up the meeting.

The speaker for the evening was Chris Baker who gave us a thoroughly fascinating look into successfully producing a first novel and all the research, rewriting and hard work that goes into such an enterprise.

Chris Baker is an astrophotographer who has always been interested in space and after a decade of photographing deep space objects he decided to turn his work into wall art and in 2015 Galaxy on Glass was born.

However, in 2018 Chris has a dream which led eventually to the publication of his first novel entitled The Girl Who Sewed Parachutes.

Chris read us several extracts from his novel which is the story of a young lady who was 19 years old in 1941 and who lives at home with her parents and works in a parachute factory. In early life she suffers a tragedy and the drama comes as she seeks revenge.

Chris described the book as a love story with a twist. It explores the friendships and relationships the women had who worked together in the factories during the

Second World War – whether it was the parachute factory or the munitions factory.

The book follows the life of the young lady, Daisy, and her friend, Vera and gives a flavour of the life of the women working in factories and the friendships they formed.

Chris never found the writing process difficult but needed people to discuss his ideas and eventually went on an Arvon book creative residential writing course – a week in Devon – following which he rewrote the whole book, hired a literary agent and to improve what he had written even further, engaged a successful write to help with character development and restructuring.

The book was published on Amazon last June and Chris reported that it is selling well.

There will not be a meeting of the Ashbourne WI next month although we are planning, weather permitting, a social gathering outdoors on Thursday, August 5.

More information on that event please send a mail to ashbournewi@yahoo.co.uk.