This week on the blog, I’m talking about writer’s block. You may have noticed a pattern that my blog posts address something relevant to my own writing experience. In other words, last week I struggled a bit with writer’s block. Or rather, perhaps more accurately, ‘editor’s block’. This sometimes happens when looking back over my manuscript. Some bits I enjoy going back over to revise. I’m quite happy with how a scene plays out, whether it’s a few lines of description
This week on the blog I’m talking about editing. Editing can often feel like a daunting task. Maybe you, like me, have moments where you just want to send the story out there as soon as you’ve hit ‘the end’. Here’s some reasons why editing first is so important! A lot of what will follow may well sound like ‘teaching grandmother to suck eggs’ – sorry if it sounds like that! However, some of you may be just starting out with
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about making an author business plan. At the start of the year, one of my goals was to make steps towards being able to make an income from writing. Although I’ve focussed a lot on writing goals and tracking writing progress, I haven’t ever taken the plunge of writing a business plan. However, since this year I am starting to dip my toe into things like paid marketing, I decided it was
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d talk about romance this week! Romance is a huge genre in literature. Even more books have at least some element of romance in them, even if that is not their main genre. What makes a romance a romance? Like with any genre, romance has a few tropes (literary devices that mark a story as a particular genre) it has to hit in order to be a romance. Obviously there needs to be a love
This week on the blog, I thought I’d discuss using humour in writing. As is becoming a regular habit for me, I’m basing my post on something I’ve been thinking about in my own writing. It’s become a trait for one of my secondary characters to keep making wry sarcastic comments. This made me wonder about the ways humour can be effective in writing. 1. It develops your skills as a writer Putting humour in your scene is a great fun
It’s NaNoWriMo time again! Where writers from all over the world flex their typing fingers and prepare for frenzied word sprints and quite possibly a few late nights. If you’re unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo (Nano for short) stands for ‘National Novel Writing Month’ where participants from all over the world commit to writing everyday throughout the month of November. The goal is to have a 50k word novel by the end. It will be my fourth time participating in Nano so as you
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about editing – another in my writing craft series. Specifically, at what stage in the writing process to start editing or rewriting your WIP (work in progress). I’ve been controversial about this recently. In the last couple of weeks, I seem to be entering the editing mindset. I haven’t even finished the first draft yet! This might well go against the grain of lots of writing advice. There’s the common adage ‘write
This week on the blog, I thought I’d talk about inciting incidents, the latest in my writing craft series. It’s not a coincidence that I often end up blogging about things I’m trying to work out in my own writing as I look again at the beginning of my novel. What is an inciting incident? An inciting incident is the main event that kickstarts the narrative of your story. It might be your main character receives word that an unknown relative
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been mindful of my characters. Specifically – that it’s getting to be a pretty big cast. I’m writing what will hopefully be my 4th historical fiction novel (More info about my published books here!). It’s partly because I’m introducing a new narrator. My first 3 books in the series are 1st person from Daniel’s point of view, my new project is dual 1st POV – between Daniel and another character, Imogen. This has made
This week on my blog I thought I’d talk about writing groups, the latest in my Writing Craft series. I recently joined one on Google Hangouts, most of whom I ‘knew’ virtually. It’s been great to connect with them and I’m sure my writing is improving already as a result. The other writers are based in the US so while it is mid morning their time, it’s mid- afternoon for me here in the UK. This has worked out really well