I recently made a vow to start drafting things longhand.
Continue reading “Think Before You Write”
Writing is a pretty sedentary activity, which is problematic because apparently this leads to IMMINENT DEATH (much like everything else in the world – let’s face it, everybody dies. Still, I will endeavour to address this sensibly..).
Continue reading “Health Warning For Writers”
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This evening I am going along to a literary salon in Edinburgh to talk about 12 books in 12 months as part of a literary blog themed event.
I think this sounds rather grand for two reasons.
- If you know your history or have a Wikipedia tab open you’ll know salons started in 17th century France as a way to gather lots of very bright types to talk about literature and philosophy.
- I have been known to read a few literary blogs, and they are often maintained by very knowledgable people, far better read than I, who discuss worthy books in a sensible way.
Then there’s me, struggling for weeks to get through Life of Pi but cheerfully staying up all night to read George R. R. Martin in a hostel in Ljbljana.
Continue reading “Edinburgh Literary Salon”
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If you are a Facebook user (and I do appreciate it is not everyone’s cup of tea), this post may be of interest to you.
I recently found out via the always helpful Nicola Morgan’s author page that the site now requires page admins to pay them cash dollars to promote status updates to folk who already ‘Like’ something. Essentially, if I don’t give them my money (which I haven’t, because come on) 10% or fewer ‘likers’ will receive 12 Books page updates in their news feeds.
What this means is that you are missing out on some super hilarious memes I’ve been scheduling, like this: Continue reading “Public Service Announcement”
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So, I was re-reading Book Six because in my mind there were sections of it that I might be able to remove and adapt into a story for a magazine submission. It turns out I was wrong – those bits existed in my head, but I neglected to write them down.
Here’s what I discovered on revisiting that draft.
- I didn’t write anywhere near as much of the story as I had previously imagined – which is sad because I thought about it a lot and had tons of ideas.
- Most of what I did write was background stuff that happened about 5 years before the story actually begins. It’s not badly written, but it’s not relevant to the book either.
- About 2000 words of what I did write consisted of a folk tale about an evil brooch, the justification being that one of my characters reads said story at a difficult time in his life and goes a bit wrong.
- I wish I was making that up, but I am completely not.
- See:
Continue reading “Book Six Revisited”
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It’s Thursday, it’s 7.30pm, it’s Top of the Pops Pictonaut Challenge!
This month, The Rogue Verbumancer (or Glempy, if you prefer) challenges the internet to write a thousand words on the topic of going for a walk over a bridge. Or y’know, anything else that springs to mind on seeing this picture… But as you will discover, my brain opted for a fairly literal interpretation.
Thus:
Continue reading “Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)”
