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Category Writing

B – Books, how long should they be? A wordcount guide

I write novels. Or do I? My first novels were 50,000 words long – because that was the word length given as the minimum to win Nanowrimo. But how long should a novel be, really? How about a short story?… Continue Reading →

A – Antagonists and how to make them

This post is part of the April blogging AZChallenge.  Today it’s A. I struggle with antagonists.  Almost all of my early stories have no antagonist at all. Or rather, none that is embodied in a handy walking, talking bad guy on… Continue Reading →

PaperRules for creativity! What I learned from PaperWeek

Firstly, sorry if you saw a bizarre empty blog post email earlier. I pressed a key by mistake… doh! The Poem a Day blog post is coming soon. Meanwhile, onto today’s post: I spent a week focusing on paper for… Continue Reading →

PaperWeek – use paper to increase creativity

I hereby declare PaperWeek. This is a week where I make efforts to do as much of my reading, writing and planning on paper – and generally to engage with paper a lot more than I engage with my phone screen…. Continue Reading →

Persistence – conquering story craft

I’ve been teaching myself SQL – Structured Query Language, for databases – this week, because I have to give a training course on it next week. I’ve become fairly familiar with creating some queries with SQL (which I now pronounce… Continue Reading →

Alphabet challenge – the AZChallenge and structuring your writing practice

One of the things that can hold a writer back from a regular writing practice, is the lack of a way to structure the output. Perhaps you write every day, aiming for a target of 100, or 500, or 1000 words…. Continue Reading →

The Gripping Climax – an ingredients list

After five solid months of writing, some of it even on the work in progress, I now approach the crucial moment in my story: the climax. Here is where all the foreshadowing I’ve been doing over the last 100,000 words must… Continue Reading →

The DIY-MFA: how thrifty writers can still further the craft

I’ve been reading about the ‘DIY-MFA’ this week, and wondering if such a thing is achievable or worth it. An MFA (Master of Fine Arts) roughly translates, for those of us in the UK, as a PhD for the arts:… Continue Reading →

Editing: KonMari your writing and declutter your prose

Tidying the house is exhausting. It’s physically tiring because of all the running up and down stairs with items which need relocating from room to room. But more than that, it’s mentally exhausting because of all the small KonMari decisions you… Continue Reading →

Book Blog: The Voyage of the Dolphin – truth and lies in memoir

Life writing can take many forms – but how much truth, and how much fiction, do you put into a novel inspired by real events? What details do you put in, and what can you leave out? How do you… Continue Reading →

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