Category: How To and Tips
The ‘Difficult’ Second Novel
Writing a first novel is easy. Of course that is a big fat lie, but in comparison to writing a second novel, it really is. First time round, you can take as long as you like, you can write whatever genre you like or no genre at all. You may choose your own writing style […]
Second Person: Why I Used You In My Novel
Second person address, “I-to-you,” is a fascinating and effective literary device, the most intimate point-of-view there is, but writers avoid it like a death knell. Most editors reject it. Not only that, it isn’t easy to pull off, especially in novel length stories. So why use it? Why have the narrator tell her story to […]
Having an Affair With Your Writing
Recently I completed my first young adult novel. As anyone writing a book can attest, it was a long slog. Personally, I wouldn’t have been able to complete it were it not for two creative sources of inspiration that rocked my world in a major way—Broadway’s Hamilton and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. Let me back […]
Never Jump From A Moving Novel
Novel writing is a journey. We authors are the advance team who scout locations before the readers make an appearance. But we’re travelers first and foremost – into foreign lands, if we’ve the nerve to leave the familiar landscape of memoir. When I began writing, agents and editors cautioned that the craft had strict rules. […]
Reading Out Loud: Tips on Public Readings
I am currently crowd-funding a book of short stories called In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes (Unbound Publishing.) Publishing a book this way means that I have to get people interested in the project before it is published rather than after. One way of letting people know about a book […]
On Openings
After digging deep into the recesses of my mind and pouring out of ideas on a blank page or screen, what next? The gestation period is not completely over. I continue to create characters and plot as I write. That continual creative experience is vital to the way I work. For many writers, after this […]
Five Unique Ways to Market Your First Book
I gave birth to a book recently. It may sound cliche or ridiculous, or both, but to me it was real. Every stage of writing the book, from conception to publication, I likened to when I had my own babies. I felt the rollercoaster of emotions: excitement, anxiety and the flat out exhaustion to point […]
How To Find “The End”
I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. – Erica Jong Starting things is easy, right? Relationships, diets, runs, New Year’s resolutions – we dive in, full of enthusiasm. Of course we’ll stick to it. Of course we’ll see it through. Sadly, the finishing bit […]
Tips for Author Blogs
Last year, I wrote a column with three golden rules for author blogging. Here they are, in order of importance: (1) create relationships, (2) entertain your readers, and (3) sell books. The first rule is, by far, the most important. (Most of) Your blog posts must have as their main goal to create relationships with […]
Five Negative Traits a Writer Needs
Some years ago now, the Bookseller printed a cartoon about the writer’s life. The first ten frames were identical: a figure hunched over a computer, alone. The eleventh showed the same figure at a signing mobbed with people, a camera-flash going off in his face, a microphone thrust under his chin. In the twelfth and […]
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