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What can I expect from a book doctor session?
Book doctors will read your work in advance of the Getting Published event. They will give you realistic, honest and constructive feedback - aiming to cover all the following questions:
- Is your work well-designed for the current market?
- Is your prose style strong enough?
- Does your opening chapter do enough to grab the interest?
- Will your covering letter interest an agent?
- Does your synopsis look OK?
- What are your recommended next steps?
You will receive a page of comments, and you will have 15 minutes to discuss those comments with your book doctor. A book doctor session is no substitute for a full-length & considered editorial appraisal of your work (go here, if you want the full monty), but you will come away knowing if your work is ready to submit to agents or not.
Either way, we'll be focused on giving you immediate, practical, realistic advice on your next steps. If your work is in shape to present to agents, then we'll do what we can to help on that front - and our record at placing work is second to none.
Choice of book doctor
We've introduced all our book doctors below. You will be asked for your choice of book doctor when you come to make your booking - and it's first come first served, of course, so sooner is better than later.
Do note that while we expect to give everyone their first or second choice book doctor, we can't 100% guarantee that. But since all our book doctors are hugely experienced - as writers, editors and tutors - you'll be in the best of hands, no matter who you end up seeing.
For those who feel a mite nervous ...
We know some people get nervous when submitting work. You honestly don't need to be - it's fine if your material is not yet polished and perfect! The point of the book doctor session is to help you plan your way forward from wherever you are right now: whether you're a keen beginner or heading straight for the booker Prize.
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How to send us your work
Please send us your work by email to our main email address (info@writersworkshop.co.uk) by September 22nd. Your work should be in a single file, and be in either .doc, .docx, .pdf or other widely used file format. You should include:
- A draft covering letter to an agent
- A synopsis
- Your opening chapter (up to 4000 words)
You will get a short response acknowledging receipt. Please also make sure you bring a paper copy of your work with you to the event.
If you want help with writing a synopsis (something most writers struggle with) you can get it here. If you want suggestions on a covering letter, then you can find advice here. And if you've got questions, then just ask.
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Debi Alper
  Debi has written four novels. Her first, Nirvana Bites, was described by The Big Issue as: “A quick-paced and witty trawl through London’s sub-cultures.” Her second novel, like Nirvana Bites, “is set in the downtrodden areas of South London she knows well, areas of desolate high rise housing and vibrant street markets.” She has worked as a finance officer, a photographer, farm labourer, life model and wig maker over the years but it was after her children were born that she wrote her first novel, “in the evenings in long hand lying on the settee and then typed it up in chunks using borrowed laptops.”
Debi’s novels are about the grim lives of desperate people told with love and humour. She lives in London.
Emma Darwin
 
Emma's first novel The Mathematics of Love (Headline Review) was published in 2006, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book and Goss First Novel awards, longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year, and has been translated into seven languages.
Her second novel A Secret Alchemy came out in November 2008 (Headline Review). It was written as part of PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Emma is also a short story writer, with among others a Bridport prize winning story to her name.
She now lives with her children in south-east London.
Jeremy Sheldon
  Jeremy is
is the author of a collection of short stories, The Comfort Zone, and a novel, The Smiling Affair, both published by Jonathan Cape.
Besides this, he has worked as a script consultant specialising in adaptations for a number of film production companies, including Miramax Films, Working Title and Icon Entertainment. He currently works as a freelance script-editor and also teaches as part of Birkbeck College's M.A. in Creative Writing programme and on behalf of the Arvon Foundation.
C M Taylor
 Craig has published two literary novels (as C M Taylor), Light and Cloven, a dark take on 2001's foot and mouth disease outbreak. Under the nom de plume Ed Lark, Taylor has published Grief, a dystopian fantasy which was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Book of the Year, 2005. The BFSA wrote, "Grief is a magnificent novel… Ed Lark is certainly a writer to look out for."
C M Taylor's journalism has been published in the national press, including The Guardian and The Telegraph.
He took a Cambridge first in Social Anthropology and lived in India, Belgium and Spain, before recently settling in Oxford with his wife and canoe. He is currently working on a non-fiction book about allotments and a novel.
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