As most writers know, finding time to sit and write as you have a great idea is unlikely. Keep a pen and notebook with you AT ALL TIMES and you can jot down any particular inspiration or sentence/line that you have thought of. You can then refer back to your notes when you have a [...]
A great writing lecturer once told me that, in order to write your best work and effectively edit and take criticism, you have to be fully prepared to kill your babies.
What he meant (rather than brutal child murder), is that your favourite line in a poem, or paragraph in a story, or chapter in a [...]
If you were a high quality editor, who got sent hundreds of manuscripts a month, or even a week, which ones do you think you’d reject without even reading? None – do I hear you say? Rubbish! Why waste the time of reading event the front page of someone’s work, if they haven’t been bothered [...]
Most full time authors (think J K Rowling, Margaret Atwood, Bernard Cornwell etc) will tell you that they have to treat writing as you might any other occupation: you need to have work time, and home time. Obviously if your writing doesn’t pay the bills (and, given you’re reading this, I presume that means [...]
It may be a cliché, but it is still valid advice. You need to give your readers some credit, and let them do the work: imply and suggest without blatantly spelling everything out. Your readers won’t enjoy reading your work if it seems as though it is written for people with two brain cells.
Try [...]
