Wednesday will shortly be interview / guest post day again, but in the meantime here are some links of interest. They are predominantly writing related but everyone in the world should watch the video at the bottom.
Advice
I interviewed novelist and comedian ALKennedy for IdeasTap (which is a useful resource with lots of features and funding opportunities).
Continue reading “5 Useful Links for Writers”
The thing about writing a book every month for a year is, it’s not very focused.
I mean, obviously you have to focus on getting words out there. But because you’ve got this thirty-day window to get the story down NOW NOW NOW, you spend the whole time splurging out bits and pieces of ideas at a rate of knots without ever getting the time to really flesh them out properly. Everything exists in potentia and parts that aren’t working yet can be left for much later, after further thought and research will surely have occurred.
All of this is really exhilarating – but then you get to the end of the project and realize now you have to go back and start addressing some of those flaws. Continue reading “How to Focus on One Thing”
I was going through half finished word documents from last year (there are a fair few with beginnings of characters and ideas started then abandoned) and found this. It’s a poem I wrote for my brother in December which I considered making into a picture book before I got into the falcon idea. Maybe I’ll get it done this year, though. In fact, maybe I’ll do a collection of story-poems based on Edinburgh streets and illustrate the whole thing… if you think that idea has legs, please leave a comment!
The background to this one is that my brother and I were crossing Great King Street in Edinburgh and both slipped on a wee patch of black ice. However, the temperature was a balmy 6 or 7 degrees and there was no ice or snow or anything anywhere else – so naturally we got suspicious. Why was that bit icy, when everywhere else was fine? Clearly the answer was magic.
Continue reading “Great King Street”
I have some lunchtime reading for you in the form of February’s Pictonaut Challenge, hooray! This picture screams fantasy, I’m sure you will agree, so I cracked out some silly names and had at it. Enjoy.
“Fancy a bit of banana loaf?” Razir said hopefully. He really wasn’t looking forward to trying to cross the ravine, but the other two were eager to press on. There again, both of them could swim.
“It’s got nuts in,” he added lamely.
Continue reading “Pictonaut Challenge – Faces in the Woods”
And so it is the 28th of February, which means the end of 28 Drawings Later for this year (the clue is in the name, people). What with one thing and another the past few days have been really quite annoying (crisis of confidence during book five editing and Ryanair are the main culprits, here) but it has genuinely cheered me up to look at the photo gallery of other people’s 28 drawings on the facebook page. I particularly enjoyed the dude who just posted about twenty pictures of Pokemon in one go – what a legend.
My last piece is a digital one, a flyer idea for the show. I drew it freehand in the sense that I drew it straight into PhotoShop using my super cool graphics tablet… So it’s not exactly cheating. It’s pretty purple, though.
I have been editing away over the weekend to the extent I’ve pulled my shoulder a bit, but I don’t think my book is ready for that competition yet. The quality of writing is OK but I have reservations about the plot. It needs a bit more time to sit, essentially.
In other news, 28 Drawings Later is nearly finished! Drawings for the last few days are quite quick wee things due to all the novelling, but here they are anyway.
Continue reading “28 Drawings Later – Days 25, 26 and 27”
12 Books in 12 Months 