Lessons from the journey
I drew the line in the sand in my diary on the evening of Thursday 23rd December 2010 and decided I was going to write a novel. I’ve learned since that the writing life is a continuous journey of learning the craft of writing and learning to live as a writer. It will never stop […]
Writing a third novel and still doubting
Imagine that you’re writing your third novel and still doubt that you can be a writer. Last September I completed a novel. Not just a first draft, or a second structural draft, or a third draft tightening everything up, but the final, read it all aloud, every single word, draft and I have three chapters […]
Struggling to finish
I remember doing one of those personality tests years ago and I remember ignoring the results. It was something like…I was good at starting and investigating things but poor on completion i.e. finishing. So when I struggled to finish the second draft (second attempt at second draft) of my second novel (note: first novel still […]
Tying up loose ends
I’m terrible. I keep changing things constantly as the story progresses in my novel and thinking ‘ooh, that’s a better idea now, I’ll use that’ and then I have to make note of the change and go back through chapters to introduce the idea or cut out the previous idea from scenes as I feed […]
The mind of a writer
Something popped into my mind the other day and I think I need to expand my idea of the mind of a writer because behind the skill of learning to be a writer I think that there are three aspects that get developed: our creative side, our ability to write and to edit the work. […]
Getting over the initial fear
Getting over the initial fear of putting pen to paper, placing my fingers onto the keyboard, opening up the last draft, checking my notes, starting the corrections, adjustments, editing my work, working on the millionth (it feels like it) revision of a chapter or a scene, some days feels like the hardest thing in the […]
The second draft edit
As we weave our way through the process of trying to get at least one novel published, many options are presented for editing that we try out to determine if they will work for us. I watched a video about editing and in it an author said that you will have to cut out half […]
Struggling to revise
Revision is tough. I’ve done very little over the last week, couldn’t write at all for four days. Felt bad. Tried to be positive. Did not work. I’d decided to aim for a target of 10,500 words to be revised every week and I’m not making that target. My aim was to complete the second […]
Scene intentions: or what I should have written in the first place.
Twenty thousand words into a second draft and I feel myself faltering. I look at the next chapter and think – what is the point of it? Honestly, what is the point, what is the intention of this scene, this chapter, what is supposed to be happening? Scene and chapter intentions are critical. When I […]
Write. Learn. Repeat.
I was on the phone recently with a new writer who was stuck at 3,500 words of their novel and was hesitating to write further because they felt that they didn’t know if they could. It reminded me of how I used to be at seven years ago, at six years ago, and then I […]