Tag: Writing

  • Out and About

    I spend an awful lot of time inside my own head. That’s okay – I know my way around and I’m quite safe there. But it does have the effect of making me marginally unsettled when I have to leave my imaginary worlds and interact with real people in the real world – unlike my…

  • Share the love

    Books are wonderful things. I love reading them, I love writing them, I love enthusing about books, and over time I’ve grown to love reviewing books, too, which I do with other YA-loving friends on the Paisley Piranha site, as well as posting to Goodreads and Amazon. I read an interesting piece this week (Jenny…

  • Who cares?!

    I’ve read several articles this week about the importance of a book’s beginning and how to write a compelling first line. This is interesting to me as a writer because I (naturally) want to captivate readers, and it’s fascinating as a reader because I absolutely agree that the opening of a book is crucial: if I’ve liked…

  • Call in the Professionals

    The thing is, until someone who does know points it out to you, you often don’t know what it is you don’t know. Using experts – and/or the perils of not doing so – is a common theme in self-publishing discussions. Most people agree that not paying for professional help in editing and cover design…

  • Becoming a writer

    This week I visited the Write Romantics’ blog, where they discussed what they had wanted to be “when they grew up”. The blog was titled “life before writing” and they all had very different careers in mind. I was fascinated by this, because for me there wasn’t a life before writing – all I’ve ever…

  • Lie to me!

    Lie to me!

    I write (and read) fantasy, which is perhaps the most obviously “made-up” of fiction genres, and suspension of disbelief is key to spinning a successful fantasy tale. Suspension of disbelief can perhaps be summed up as ‘don’t allow a little reality to get in the way of a good story’, but it’s more subtle than that. From…