Dissolving into words I don’t know how writing affects anybody else – but when I’m writing and it’s going well I vanish inside the piece I’m working on. It’s great, because the dialogue of my characters is more interesting than my own, and their situations are generally much more fascinating (and perilous) than mine. But […]

Posted by on Dec 22, 2009 in blogging, ideas for novels, writing novels | 5 Comments

Sorry, sorry (but not that sorry) The thing is, I’m whelmed by something – an idea, or a project or possibly (whisper this) even a novel. And I believe that if you’ve got an inchoate idea you should focus on it, follow it around, play with it, but not talk about it. Never share it […]

Posted by on Aug 18, 2009 in twitter, writing novels | 5 Comments

Good Writing Days and Bad Writing Days At the moment my writing companion is Twitter – I log on, use the #amwriting tag to tell people what I am aiming to achieve that day, and slog on with the task. If you’ve had a few days (or weeks, or months) off writing, it can be […]

Researching novels – when and how I have quite a neurosis about researching novels. Actually I probably have two. The first is the fanatical introverted Type A personality neurosis about getting everything right. This involves months of reading around a subject, and – where possible – visiting locations, finding foods and fabrics that appear in […]

Not a Writing Neurosis but a Writing Indulgence For years I resisted the Moleskine notebook, believing it to be the preserve of the poseur writer (and I’m not wrong about that, but it’s not the SOLE preserve of the poseur writer, that’s the point) but a clever friend gave me a Moleskine and immediately I […]

Still Sleepless in Brighton Being a writer introduces you to many new experiences. I’m having one right now. Excellent Agent (hereinafter EA) wants revisions to novel #1. Good revisions too. Novel #2 has gone off for a bursary read to a literary consultancy. Novel #3 is around 35,000 words. Normally (if anything is normal in […]