Hunting for new book ideas can be tough especially if you don’t have a conveyor belt of shiny new ideas awaiting you. Often social media will make you feel like you are the only writer in the world who hasn’t got a GREAT idea to work on and that can cause you some creative suffering. […]
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This is going to be a bit of a download so stay with me. Blogging allows me to do this and I always feel lighter after emptying my head of thoughts onto a blog post. The unexpected curveball Last week I had an unexpected writing curveball. I got an email to say I was through […]
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If you think being a writer is difficult…think about what your loved one or other half has to endure. Can you imagine how they must feel listening to you huff and puff over the opening paragraph of your first chapter? Ever wondered what it must be like to sit and watch the person you love […]
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To the writer their draft novel is a living thing. It communicates with them regularly, even when they are trying to avoid it. A draft novel senses when the writer is ready to write and it knows when the writer is actively trying to avoid it. Once you start delving into this strange phenomenon of unspoken […]
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This is a tough one and can take some writers several years to come to terms with. You have an unfinished draft novel, sat in a drawer or lounging on top of your writing desk or loitering in your writing file on your computer and the thought of finishing it gives you an uncomfortable gut […]
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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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This weekend will be spent clearing out my dressing table and creating a temporary work desk. As I am working from home in my day job, the teenagers are off school due to half term, my husband is also working from home and we are in the middle of a strict lockdown, I cannot spend […]
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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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It has taken me a long time to accept this. When you start out as a writer, your ego assures you that ALL your stories will, at some point, turn into bestselling novels. You happily fill up an array of notebooks with stories, quietly confident, they will all feature somewhere in your future writing career. […]
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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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