Tag: #amwriting

Titles. THE BANE OF MY LIFE. That is, of course, a ridiculous exaggeration born from spending too long on goodreads.com in a green eyed stupor. The Quality of Silence Our Endless Numbered Days The Girl With A Clock for a Heart How do they do it? How do these guys come up with such good… Continue reading A Serious Case of Title Envy

I have always admired authors. Scrap that; I bloody love authors, they make up the bulk of my hero list. Take my encounter with Sebastian Faulks this summer, for example. I had planned a whole ream of interesting and intelligent things to say to him. What did I actually say? “Will you sign this for… Continue reading Work Hard. That is all.

I was taught a tough lesson this week: self awareness. It may come as a surprise, but I have a tendency towards prudishness. Whereas it’s true that, after a G&T, I can curse and joke like the dirtiest of sailors, when it comes to writing I turn into Mrs Prudish McGee. I find it difficult… Continue reading Killing my inner prude

Sharon Bolton has written a new book (Little Black Lies: I’ll be posting a review tomorrow by the by) It is very, very good. In fact, it so good I am very much intimidated as I sit here pondering my own work. It is needless to say that, in order to write well, you should… Continue reading The ups and downs of hero worship

After last week’s sad mourning over the loss of my first sentence I can now update you all to let you know that I have actually killed off the whole of the first chapter. It has been rewritten and is a lot better. Phew. Where has this flurry of deleting and rewriting come from, you… Continue reading Dear confidence, please come back

Today I am in mourning. I have killed off my darling of darlings, the one part of my novel I thought I would never change: the first sentence.   I have learnt many things about the publishing industry over recent months. The most surprising, and frankly upsetting, lesson learned was that an agent will read… Continue reading R.I.P my darlings

  I try to keep these things below 300 words, but I really only need to use one to describe my weekend: Awesome.   I have just had the time of my life at the Winchester Writers Festival and enjoyed every minute of it.   I hit the road at 5.30am on Saturday and arrived in… Continue reading Putting the Win into Winchester

This week, I received my very first rejection from an agent. The email was brief and politely worded, but a rejection all the same. I had expected to feel somewhat disheartened and upset, but oddly enough I didn’t. I can’t lie to you; it stung; I would have much rather read a glowing email begging… Continue reading The dreaded inevitable

Yesterday I submitted my novel to a selection of agencies in the hope that one of them may represent me. Very exciting, very nerve wracking. Today, I was intending on writing a blog post on how I came to write the book in the first place. But that was before my email was hacked. Earlier… Continue reading Curse you hackers!