Still on holiday in Italy where, right now, it’s pouring with rain and the lavender is dancing. Since some of you will also soon be on holiday, if you are not already, you will be taking photos or videos of your happenings. In the dim and distance past, photos were called snaps. Black and white … Continue reading Places not People.
We have jumped the gun a bit and have escaped to a warm and sunny place in Italy. I’m not saying how we did it but we have. No longer physically in lock-down seems to have unlocked my brain too so here I am writing a new post for my blog. Before we left London, … Continue reading Style Proofs
For most of us the thing which keeps us going at whatever we do is the day-to-day stimulation of real life. Not a fake imitation of living, as this lock-down is. I understand that some kind of regulation which hopes to limit the damage and the death is essential. However, we must not forget that … Continue reading This Petty Pace
For now, at least! Here is the situation. I published The Baby Box through Matador Publishing Co. Enjoyed the experience; learnt a great deal. First on the learning curve is that I probably ordered too many copies, asking for 500. For sure the books are still selling and opportunities are still presenting themselves to me, … Continue reading Last Thoughts on Self-Publishing
I have been invited to design and give a 2-morning workshop on writing memoir. Brilliant. I've been wanted to workshop writing memoir for a while now. Easy, I thought. After all I've written my own memoir. Then I read someone else's memoir and then another and then a book which was really bio-fiction, which took … Continue reading Memoir – What Exactly Is It? (1)
By now your New Year resolutions have been made and broken. It is the time for writers of all kinds to think about those wonderful weeks or weekends away at special places called writers’ summer schools, festivals or just plain tuition centres. I’ve had experience of 2 different residential writing courses but not the third … Continue reading Writing Away
My New Year’s Resolution is to achieve more with my writing, ie put more writing out there. Remember school timetables? We produced work on English grammar, English Literature, History, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Religion. That’s 8 academic subjects. In a five day week of 6 hours a day. My writing life takes place over … Continue reading New Year, New Resolutions, New Puzzle
To begin on a positive note – cos I’m working towards writing about the dreaded synopsis – earlier this month I had a story in a short list of 6 writers in a competition run by Henshaw Press. That heart-stopping moment when you see your name on the screen is one every writer deserves to … Continue reading The Writer’s Life
I've had several emails telling me that new readers are following this blog. Which is fantastic but makes me guilty. For I'm aware that I haven't been faithful to my promise to post a new blog page each Saturday. OK, I've been away picking olives and when you're on a treadmill to get those olives … Continue reading A Writer’s Jigsaw Puzzle
Autumn is here and winter around the corner. We rub our hands in glee as we encounter cold and rainy weather, confining us to being indoors with plenty of time to write. My plan was to re-read sections of my novel set in the 1950s, to arrange them in a funky way with more spaces … Continue reading The Writing Timetable
