At the beginning of the year I set myself four goals: track my daily wordcount, write a minimum of once a week, “sort out Resilience” and “submit my manuscript to someone by July 1st.” So, January is over, and it’s …
Knowing the Landscape
Last week, I sat on my bed writing some completely new scenes to Resilience. These are essentially first drafts, and yet I sat there with two reference books, google and twitter open. Despite the fact that I tend to whiz …
On Connecting with Other Writers
When I think of a “writer”, my mind instantly pulls up an image of a man sat at a wooden desk by a window, drinking a bottle of wine and looking out at a lake outside. Perhaps it’s just me, …
Discovering Writing Weaknesses
Every writer has strengths and weaknesses, and we learn what these are as we write. At some point, we realise just how many skills we don’t yet have. Sometimes we recognise a weakness in our work: “oh, I need to …
WFC Panel: How to Write that Difficult Second Book
This was the final panel I attended at the convention. As someone who has actually started eight novels, including a sequel in a planned trilogy, I thought it would be really interesting to find out how others found writing after …
Restlessness
At the end of December I printed off Planes Shifter. It’s 411 A5 pages double-spaced. And having hole-punched the lot, I put it in my writing binder and pushed it out of sight. I gave myself a minimum of three …