This is an article I wrote this month for the Get Your Words Out online community: So, you’re fearful of putting your writing out there into the world… Well, you’re not alone. Every writer experiences anxiety about letting other people read their work. Every writer fears rejection and criticism of their work. The first […]
Category: Blog
Really Getting Away
Last week, I took a lovely, four-day trip down to Devon, to attend a residential writing retreat at Stickwick Manor, organised by the ever-awesome Charlie from Urban Writers’ Retreat. It was great to get really away from London, escape the distractions of daily life, and forget all about the stresses and annoyances of the day […]
Urban Writer’s Detox
Charlie, who runs the Urban Writers’ Retreats I go to, also just finished running an online writing programme for four weeks, starting on 2 January. It consisted of a daily email, containing a writing prompt, a suggested amount of time to write (starting at five minutes and working upwards), and either a task to help […]
Less is More
I’ve been thinking about my writing goals for the year, in conjunction with my renewed pledge to write 150,000 words for Get Your Words Out in 2017. And, interestingly, my main goals for this year are actually about writing less, rather than more. 1) Put the novel in a drawer and forget about it […]
The Delights of Scribophile
One of the other writers on the course I attended recently at Moniack Mhor told me about an online critiquing website called Scribophile, so I decided to check it out. I found signing up and navigating around very easy. They have a checklist of all the various things you can do on the site, which […]
Learning About Revision
I spent the whole of last week on a writing course at Moniack Mhor, near Inverness. It was aimed at science-fiction and fantasy writers, with workshops in the mornings, led by the two tutors, Juliet McKenna and Pippa Goldschmidt, and the afternoons left free for individual writing time. I always find these kind of events […]
Measuring Success
This blog post marks a major achievement in my writing. At the beginning of the year, I joined the Get Your Words Out online community of writers. In order to sign up, you have to pledge to write a certain number of words over the course of the year. They also have to be certain […]
Distracted by the Shinies
I’m supposed to be finishing a final polish of the novel, ready to send it to Cornerstones for a professional edit report. My deadline for doing that, set by my wonderful husband who is paying for report as my birthday present, was 2 November. But it’s now nearly three weeks later and I’m only halfway […]
Helping the Crew
I was recently introduced to an interesting way of thinking about the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind, which I’ve found very helpful in working on my writing. Think of the mind as a ship, with the captain steering and looking out to the horizon, and the crew working away below decks, out of […]
Major Milestone
I am learning the inevitable lesson that life as a writer, and interaction with the publishing industry in particular, is unpredictable and sometimes frustrating. There were a couple of months over the summer where everything suddenly felt as if it was coming together. Four of my short stories were accepted for publication, I was offered […]