Category: How To and Tips
When Did You Start To Write?
One of the most common questions we writers are asked is ‘when did you start to write?’ and for me this question always raises a smile as the answer takes me back to my childhood when I used to write songs at a very young age and show them to my mother for her approval. […]
From Dream to Reality – My Six-Month Plan to Becoming a Writer
Ten years ago I had just begun an undergraduate degree at Oxford in Mathematics. My days were spent solving differential equations and making linear algebra summary pages. So if you’d said then that in ten years time I would be writing this blog post on publishing my debut novel Puzzle Girl I would probably have […]
2017: THE YEAR TO END MALE BIAS IN THE LITERARY MEDIA … HERE’S HOW
Women buy two thirds of books. Women writers dominate the best seller lists and came out blazing in the 2016 Costa shortlists. So why doesn’t the literary media give us the editorial space we deserve? Two years ago, VIDA conducted a survey of some of the key literary titles in the UK and US. Its […]
Why Writing Blog Posts Makes Me Queasy
Since I’ve become a published author in 2014 I have been pressured by mavens of the publishing universe and author friends to participate in blogging—a seldom-welcome avalanche of words. Maybe my ten years at the computer, writing, have turned me into a recluse, but I have to admit that I rarely appreciate the barrage […]
Why Would a Woman Write a Male Protagonist?
A few weeks ago, I found my carefully honed work/childcare balance compromised when some emergency editing came up and I had to take a (generally preserved for mothering) Friday to do it. A woman I had not met before stepped in as babysitter and at some point asked about my novel. ‘Is it about […]
How to Prevent Your Characters from All Sounding the Same
At the start of my career I had a book rejected because the commissioning editor didn’t feel my characters were ‘coming across’. I think she was trying to find a polite way of saying they were flat and dull – ‘cardboard’ characters, if you like – which is about the worst thing you can say […]
Yoda Versus The Muse
Let me get to the guts of this right away: I don’t believe in the Muse. Or in her more earthly cousin, Inspiration. I’ve written four novels (I sold three and used one for parts without showing it to anyone), and not one was powered by any outside force. I spent no time staring at […]
When The Words Won’t Come
Sometimes I can’t stop writing. Sometimes the words tumble out of me like some writhing, living beast that refuses to be contained. Where the story emerges, almost unbidden, and it’s all I can do for my fingers to keep up with the rapid pace of my mind. Suddenly the dreaded white page is covered in […]
How Your Day Job Can Help Your Writing
I’m lucky to live in a writer’s city, full of writing friends. Every so often we meet, drink cheap wine, bounce ideas around, and complain about our day jobs. We apply together for writing fellowships, arts grants, writing sabbaticals, writing retreats. All in quest of the time to write that our jobs, just ruining everything, […]
Nonlinear Narratives – Tips & Tricks
Have you ever finished a chapter in one character’s point of view only to find the next chapter is written from somebody else’s perspective? Me too, and these mini cliff-hangers compel us to keep reading. Nonlinear narratives – stories where events don’t happen in chronological order – do this too. They are extremely useful for […]
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