It’s a Sunday in a different form of lockdown – more of an ‘I could go home, but why should I?’ lockdown. We’re staying in a house surrounded by farmland, with narrow, unmade-up tracks leading to the few dwellings in ‘our’ part of Tuscany. We’re between two villages, small towns really as each village is … Continue reading The Upside of an Extended Lockdown
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
As I've told you all before, I'm re-writing my 1950s novel for the 3rd time. I wanted a fresh perspective, new ideas and masses of encouragment. I'd heard writer Emma Darwin (http://www.emmadarwin.com) speak more then once and met her for a chat at an event at Bell House, Dulwich. http://www.bellhouse.co.uk. The decision to work with … Continue reading Outlines and Timelines
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
Well, I’m not doing a graph – yet. So far I’ve made cards for each scene I have print-outs for, which take me to the end of the first draft of the novel, but I've at least two new scenes to write. See featured image at the top of this blog. The first page gives: … Continue reading Writing the Outline
I have been charged by my writing mentor to produce an outline of my novel – not a synopsis – for our next meeting scheduled for the last week of May. Let’s ignore the aggravating possibility that this discussion might have to take place courtesy of Skype or might be cancelled altogether. There are two … Continue reading Lock-In = Write Outline
You’d think that this lock-down would be the writer’s best friend. Hours and empty hours of time to think, perchance to dream and then to write. This isn’t happening in my life and I get the feeling that it’s not happening in other’s writing life either. When I’m not cooking with whatever we have, ie … Continue reading Writer’s Block in Lock-down
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 wrote a memoir. I’m not a celeb. Why would any commercial publisher be interested? I self-published. It used to be the fact that the face of self-publishing had mud all over it. The more realistic description of the method of publishing your own book was Vanity Publishing, a term which is now extinct. … Continue reading The Respectable Face of 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)
