Category: How To and Tips
A Life-Changing Illness that Inspired a Story Filled with Hope
A life-changing illness that inspired a story filled with hope My most recent novel, Take A Moment, is more than a warm and witty romance: the inspiration for it came from my own life-limiting illness. It’s my way of giving a glimpse into the experiences of people with debilitating chronic conditions – because no one […]
Among Thieves: Inspiration
Since the deal announcement for my debut novel went out a little over a year ago, I have legitimately lost count of how many times I have been asked what inspired me to write AMONG THIEVES. The super fun thing is that every time someone asks me this question, I suddenly forget every single word […]
The Enduring Lessons that I Learnt at the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-Writing Course
It’s nearly ten years since I attended the novel-writing course at Curtis Brown Creative, and it’s not too bold a claim to say that those three short months changed the course of my professional life forever – helping me to subsequently find an agent and a publisher, and now have five published novels to my […]
The Zigzag Path of Writing a Novel – Rebecca Hodge
The writing universe abounds with how-to advice: write daily, write on-the-fly, plan everything, plan nothing, be sure to buy a special pen, a special notebook, the one and only brand of tea. The only thing we can all agree on is the fact that there’s no one-size-fits-all pathway to creating a novel, and indeed, what […]
On Writing “The Swing”: Reflections of a Reluctant Memoirist
By Susan Dennis I am the widow of a passionate black and white landscape photographer. I fell in love with him on our first date and our twenty-four years together flew by. I buried him with two rolls of film, one in each pocket and carried a favorite camera to his funeral. After he died, […]
On Writing Love and Fury: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft
I know the look by now. You tell someone you’ve just written a book about Mary Wollstonecraft. Their eyes light up but then there’s a flicker of self-doubt. “Not the daughter,” I jump in, “The mother. In fact, not just the mother of Mary Shelley, but feminism itself!” I know the look because I did […]
Finding Cecily
Finding Cecily I can’t remember not being able to read. I know Mum taught me, long before school started. It wasn’t that she was a pushy mother. Just that she loved stories and wanted to give me a key to unlock them. We soon left children’s books behind. By 10 or so I’d just read […]
On Being a Writer and an Accountant
On being a writer and an accountant by Gill Darling You may not be surprised to learn that accountancy is not a subject covered much in fiction. The novel that springs first to mind is Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry by the avant-garde novelist BS Johnson, published in 1973. Christie, young and disaffected, hits on […]
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason: House of Music
Seven brothers and sisters. All of them classically trained musicians. One was Young Musician of the Year and performed for the royal family at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The eldest has released her first album, showcasing the works of Clara Schumann. These siblings don’t come from the rarefied environment of elite music schools, but from a state comprehensive in Nottingham. How did they do […]
Women’s History In The Past and Today: Writing The Accidental Suffragist
Women’s History In The Past and Today When I decided to tackle the huge yet impassioned task of writing a novel, I immediately gravitated to historical fiction. It’s my reading genre of choice as it allows us to be inspired by what really happened and get the back story in an engaging mode. The historical […]
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