Category: How To and Tips
Creative-Hyphenate?
‘What do you do?’ I used to say ‘I’m an author’. Now I’m not sure. The challenge for many free lancers in the creative arts is to describe their occupation. Usually they have several skills in their portfolio for artistic challenge, variety AND in order to pay the bills. Last week, a 4 year old […]
How to Avoid Writing Burnout
Writing is hard work. We all know that, right? We take an idea, move it along, push it this way, that way, leave it alone, return to it, and sometimes scratch altogether. Once we’ve got something substantial, we tear it all apart and put it back together again. We offer our pages to the world, […]
How I published Four Books in Two Years
For several years I wrote novels that didn’t get published. I wrote them, sent them to my mother or a friend to read, and then put them away. They weren’t strong enough; that’s what I told myself. And in retrospect, I was probably right about those early books. Two of them are collecting dust in […]
Making Time for Writing
My life is full. I like it like that, mostly. So how do I find time to write? The fact is that the busier I am, the more I am inspired. These days the job that pays the bills is a job-share. I’m “half-time” GP / family doctor in Cambridge. I try hard to squeeze […]
To Be or Not to Be Agented, That is the Question
I never asked this question. Instead I asked how quickly I could get myself an agent. Unagented authors aren’t taken seriously, I reasoned. You can’t approach big houses without one and I wanted readers and a big contract. Getting an agent was the only way to achieve this goal. So I sent out queries, alphabetically, […]
How to Tackle the Writing Wall
My first encounter with the running menace known as “the wall” happened at 1:00am on a humid July night in Wakefield, Massachusetts. My sneakers were slapping sandy pavement littered with discarded paper cups. The taste of the twilight summer gnats thronging Lake Quannapowitt was still fresh between my teeth. In the sixth hour of the […]
How to Plan a Box-set
Late last year, I collaborated with six other members of the Alliance of Independent Authors to create a limited edition box set of novels. While collaborative efforts like this have been fairly common among genre fiction authors, we were not aware of another multi-author collection of contemporary novels. Why? The idea was simple. We wanted […]
Planning the End or Ending the Plan?
Incredible what a tweet can do. On 18 April Barbara Bos of this esteemed site posted a quotation from Rose Tremain, “In the planning stage of a book, don’t plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.” I raised the query whether this was clever, or just poor […]
Mindfulness and Writing
You are probably familiar with an image that has forged its way through social media. It outlines the creative process as follows: This is awesome This is tricky This is shit I am shit This might be ok This is awesome I am going to walk you through each stage of the process with useful […]
Seven Fiction Writing Rules
Overwhelmed by fiction-writing advice? Me too, and I’m an editor as well as a writer. Everyone and anyone who has a blog or website seems to be keen on throwing in their penny’s worth. A lot of it is genuinely good advice. But what works for them won’t necessarily be right for you. Want proof? […]
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