My writing journey: all about Ill Conceived by Catherine Gale

Like many busy people, Catherine (known as Cathy) came to full-scale fiction writing comparatively late in life; admitting in her own words she wrote a novel ‘every summer holiday between the ages of nine and fourteen’ but had no literary ambitions beyond that. Involvement in a creative writing group came as part of the job when she was manager at Chantry Library in Ipswich, with writing then becoming therapy at a difficult time, leading to her joining a writing class.

Cathy hadn’t intended to write a novel, but an exercise at the writing class was to construct an ‘elevator pitch’ for an invented novel (or what you might say if stuck in a lift with a potential publisher). The idea she had was along the lines of ‘after eighteen years a woman walks into a café and thinks ‘that’s my son’.  She initially dismissed this as impossible, but then began to think it through, a process accelerated by the arrival of the COVID lockdown ‘with online writing classes and plenty of time to write’. The central thrust of the plot is loosely based on some family stories, with the author feeling that the interplay ‘between two different stories of identity and loss’ would be interesting.

The book is set in the early 1990s, due to the realisation that with the internet and the modern need for extensive ID documentation it would today be unlikely for someone to reach the age of eighteen knowing as little about their family background ‘as my main male character does’. The author also felt that the early 1990s were near enough in time for readers to understand how the characters felt, while noting differences and therefore engendering nostalgia. She checked lots of details online while also referring to copies of Whitaker’s Almanac and Book of the Year. She noted how the first draft was not planned and was quite episodic in structure; which was corrected in subsequent revisions, with nine main rewrites in all and a number of minor updates. The second draft onwards became much more planned with the use of an Excel spreadsheet to record different character trajectories and keep track of timescales, which take place during an academic year. Cathy was very clear that there would be ‘two equal parts, with the final chapter of part one – the most dramatic turning point - being Chapter 13’. 

Some real East Anglian places and settings were used in the book with pseudonymous names adopted for artistic licence and some places being amalgamations of various settings. I was intrigued when Cathy aired the idea of bringing the University of East Anglia to Ipswich, locating it somewhere near Suffolk Food Hall!  She is wary of basing fictional characters on real people still living, but explained that two of the main figures in the novel were strongly inspired by people who are now deceased. She felt that Mary, the central character, is based on herself at her ‘most scatter-brained’. Much of the writing of the book was interestingly carried out ‘on location’ at the places featured in the novel, but the author now has a separate dining room to spread out with the tools of her trade. She sets aside time in the evenings to write and usually types directly into a laptop, but difficult scenes may be constructed in long-hand first.

Over the years of the book’s development there has been a lot of help from ‘beta readers’, usually fellow writing class students, but early on they were probably too kind.  After draft five Cathy tried the traditional publishing route, with approaches to different agents every month for a year and a single nice but negative reply. Around 2022, she realised that the self-publication route was a respectable alternative, providing an author can pay for and work with an editor. A paid editorial assessment helped a bit, but meeting her current editor and mentor Ruth Leigh at a craft fair was a turning point as Ruth offered to read the manuscript. Small presses and hybrid publishers were avoided due to the risk of predatory sharks in this part of the publishing sector. Cathy says ‘you have to be in the business a little bit to know about the costs of it and how to keep them down’.

Cathy felt that promotion of the book to date has been low key, talking to people she knows, giving them a bookmark, encouraging the posting of online reviews and of course, the inevitable social media puff. She has also made good use of links through her former employment with Suffolk Libraries and has delivered a talk to at least one library-based group. As a keen crafter she has also attended craft fairs and sold the book at the same time as her other creations. Criticism has sometimes been hard to take, but it is valuable if constructive, with the author feeling flattered when people have taken the trouble to read to the end. She finds it awkward when friends and acquaintances purchase the book and say nothing, because she doesn’t know what they thought.

Her second novel is well underway, having been started in 2023 while the first was being assessed. It is a sequel to Ill Conceived, set in 2022 and exactly 30 years after the other book, but can be read as a standalone work. The main characters from the original are present, with the plot exploring social class and the concept of home through the lives of different sets of people in a housing chain. Unlike the initial drafts of Cathy’s debut, this work has been carefully planned every step of the way, with much stiffer feedback received from different beta readers. Her advice to new writers is to ‘write for yourself and enjoy the process’ while noting the importance of ‘taking on the criticism early’ and planning your book.

Janet Bayliss

Book details:

Gale, Catherine (2025) Ill Conceived. Smith Webb and Wilkinson.  ISBN: 978-1068291807.  

Link to Cathy’s website to follow her blog: https://www.catherinegalewrites.com/