Category: Writing

  • Rollercoaster Rides

    It’s a good metaphor: the writing life is full of ups and downs, as well as being occasionally terrifying, sometimes exhilarating, and feeling largely out of control much of the time. This week, I’m delighted to say I’m on a breathless whoosh downhill as the words for my brand new WIP pile up. For once,…

  • A Life Well-Edited

    Social media is often lamented for providing a stream-of-narrative, unexpurgated account of what’s going on in people’s heads (for some reason, people Tweeting what they had for breakfast is the most-often quoted evidence of this). I won’t argue that social media does allow for a sizeable degree of over-sharing, but I would take issue with the…

  • Book Lovers Rock

    Okay, so we all know that books are fabulous and the people who read and write them are brilliant, too. This isn’t something new, I’ve just been particularly reminded of it recently. Firstly, I’d run out of things to read. Yeah, I know, my TBR pile is always huge, but nothing on it leapt out…

  • Plotting in the rain

    It’s the first weekend of the school holidays, so naturally the weather is disgusting. All thoughts of walking along to the castle and enjoying an ice cream in the sun have been shelved. It’s exactly the sort of day to stay in and read a book – or write one. Choosing the latter, Offspring and…

  • A sense of community

    When you read this I will be very happily miles away at the RNA’s utterly fabulous summer conference. I will meet friends I haven’t seen for a year and speak more in three days than I do the entire rest of the year. Writing is ordinarily a very solitary activity (well, if you don’t count…

  • Who are you writing for?

    A meme popped into my Twitter feed the other day: A good writer always thinks about their reader. At first glance that looks like sage wisdom that’s hard to argue with, but my hackles immediately rose. Always? No, I really don’t think so. Maybe at the editing/polishing stage, but at the writing stage I think…

  • So long as you know what you need to say, the words don’t matter (yet)

    I’m in the middle of revising. I enjoy revising. And I hate it. Other writers may feel the same – or differently. *For clarity – revising is what I call the editing done by myself. Editing editing is done in consultation with a real, live editor who hasn’t lived through the development of the book…

  • Seasonal energetic disorder

    I love the long days of spring/summer. I’m sure I’m not alone in that, but it’s not so much the sunshine, or watching the flowers come into bloom that makes me smile. It’s the amount of stuff I get done. The only things I’ve ever read about the seasons and the affect have on people…

  • The Fussy Reader

    If you’re a writer, you must read. That’s the one piece of advice that’s universal – every writer you meet will tell you that reading widely is key to developing your writing skills. And I completely agree. What you aren’t warned, though, is that reading to improve your writing can make you an incredibly fussy…

  • Variety is the spice of life

    I have been writing like a demon this week. Deadlines are rushing towards me with the speed (and I fear the impact) of comets, so I have been bum-on-seat to hit word targets, sustained by chocolate when necessary. This approach works, but it can also be wasteful (and unnecessarily like to cause Type II diabetes).…