I’m in the NaNoWriMo trenches and it’s been a tough weekend. At one point things got so challenging I started procrastinating about how the life of a writer feels very similar to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Here are the similarities with Lord of the Rings and being a writer: Your story is the ring […]
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The idea for this post came to me after I was reading an article on Medium about the phrase overnight success. I have always been intrigued by the term and the notion that success JUST happens to authors. Surely there is more to overnight literary fame than meets the eye? Once you type this myth […]
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It’s not easy being a writer. We find ourselves drawn to tweed based outfits, berets, Twitter, book shops and attractive notebooks. We stare into space a lot, walk around with pencils permanently tucked behind our ears, get excited over word counts, cover our walls in post it notes and lose ourselves while reading books. One […]
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As a fortysomething writer with a full time (non-writing) day job, a husband, two teenage children (who are well into the socialising stage), a dog, three cats, a house that is never tidy (no matter how many times we clean it) and hormones which change daily (sometimes hourly), life can feel a little chaotic. My […]
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You have been working at the literary coalface for months. Your latest draft novel has taken far longer than you expected. At times working on your draft novel has felt more like going to war than embarking on a wonderful journey of creative discovery. You know far too much about your characters and after spending […]
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This post is for writers like me that write a lot and shelve a lot. Some writers I know rarely give up on a story and stay with it until the bitter end. Sadly I am not one of these writers. Underneath my writing desk I have boxes of notebooks filled with half finished, shelved […]
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This post for anyone out there who has always secretly dreamed of writing a book and has spent a lifetime putting it off. You can try to ignore it all you want. Feed yourself silly excuses like you have never written a book before. Deny you want to write a book. Tell yourself it is […]
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Have you ever had to inflict pain and suffering onto one of your much loved fictional characters? Have you ever reluctantly tipped a bucket full of life crap over two characters who have just found true love and as you you were doing it felt like you were betraying two old friends? Have you ever struggled […]
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The idea for this blog post came to me whilst cleaning my bathroom. I’d just finished Bettina Hunt’s fabulous romantic comedy; ‘A Tempting Trio‘ and all I could think about (with my head bent over the bath and scrubbing like mad) was who I’d want to see cast in the leading male roles if Bettina’s […]
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A few days ago I was reading an article about the 5 stages of relationships. This is how us romance authors like to roll in our spare time. I was supposed to be thinking about constructing fictional relationships but by the end of the article I was telling my uninterested loved ones, (who now can’t […]
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