The first draft is freedom
The first draft is freedom. Let me rephrase that – writing a first draft of a novel can feel freeing. After all, you are free writing – downloading your ideas out of your mind and turning them into the first words and sentences you can think of and typing those words onto the screen. (I […]
What if writing a novel is a series of thresholds to cross?
What if life is a series of thresholds we have to cross? Like, one thing happens, and then another thing happens. Or we make one choice and then another. Things that just happen because, well, life happens. And things that happen because we choose them and then do them and then, hopefully, celebrate when they’re […]
Character, Situation, and Plot
Building a story is more than Character or Plot. At the heart of it is the Situation that the main character is in before a plot can unfold (or needs to be developed if an idea for a plot has already been thought of). I heard somewhere that Alice Walker spent a year with her […]
Releasing some words into the world
Why do I fear stepping into the limelight and releasing my writing, my words, my voice into the world? I’ve delayed the launch of my novel ‘The Alien Eve’ from October last year and every step of the way I’m fighting with myself to just do it. Filled my time with studies, doing Nanowrimo for […]
Meet my character Blog Tour
In the eternal battle of character versus plot, I reckon no one wins. Why? Both of them are vital to a novel, and have to be developed together, because without either of them a story falls, meanders without reason. Plot or situation forms and shapes the character and, equally, a character, their personality and background, […]
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 […]
Editing: Where to start
I was about to start editing a colleague’s work recently and it set me thinking about what I look for when I’m editing my own work. I made a list but I know there’s so much more and as a friend said ‘but rules are made to be broken’. That’s true but you need to […]
Finishing and the writing diet
Stephen King was right. I was re-reading his book ‘On writing’ and he talked about getting the first draft of a novel done as quickly as possible and in one go because the longer it took, there would be loss of momentum, loss of attachment with your characters and their plight and everything would become […]
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 […]