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
I'm re-writing my novel set in the 1950s, written during my 2 years on the MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University. The story started out with one narrator, a child, who then had a mother with her own history and then an uncle. His experiences took the reader back to WWII and then there … Continue reading Researching World War Two
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
You know the difference between a memoir and a novel but what about the difference between memoir and autobiography? Would you like to write your own story? Have you begun and are stuck? How about joining a workshop on London's South Bank? You will be part of a group of five writers who will receive … Continue reading Memoir or Novel?
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
With Chiswick Book Festival over – it has been fun – @W4BookFest – it’s a return to this autumn’s main task. To polish and submit short stories. The question of finding publishers of short stories came up more than one during the Festival’s sessions. There are 2 main destinations for short stories: competitions and submissions … Continue reading Short Stories – where to send them
Hello and Good Evening. Most of you here lived through the 1960s and some of you didn’t. So here’s the story. The 1960s was perceived as the swinging 60s and the permissive society, with the Beatles singing Love, Love Me Do. And we did. We loved each other. But behind the pop songs and the … Continue reading Chiswick Book Festival 2019 : The Full Pitch
