Growing as a writer (and as a person) I am doing something this weekend that absolutely terrifies me. Sketchcrawl is worldwide activity but in Brighton, at the Jubilee Library, at midday on Saturday 21st November, it will be happening to me! I am a terrible sketcher (getting better, but very slowly) and my urban sketches […]

October – a writing Indian summer? Right, final reminder for Fear of the Dark – should be a night to remember! Tickets are £5 or £4 for concessions available on the night or in advance from the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton or fearofthedark.eventbrite.com Apart from that, I’m suddenly full speed ahead on Year of the Ladybird […]

Swine flu and racism More pigs. I seem to have a bit of a pig phase going on this month. OH has swine flu and anti-viral treatment and I have a headache … whether it will turn into swine flu I have no idea but I do know there’s nobody to go and get me […]

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 […]

Who do you write like? Or even, like whom do you write? When we start writing, we often do so in a more or less conscious imitation of a writer we admire. For some of us it’s because we’ve read everything that writer has written (and if they’ve died, everything that will be published by […]

These are better days …Largely thanks to Montezuma’s chocolate (their dried banana and milk chocolate turtles appear to have a wonderful effect on my mood), good friends and running. Okay, the good friends bit – thanks to everyone who emailed or posted comments. Knowing that all writers (or all creative types generally) have these wheel-spinning […]

Why Writers Hate Boilers (and other distractions) There’s a problem with our boiler. It keeps cutting out surreptitiously, leaving a cold house and a disturbing smell of gas that can’t be traced. As a stay-at-home, full-time, writer, I’m the recipient or the endurer of this process and it is simply, honestly, categorically, driving me insane. […]

Could a writer get away with this scenario? Here’s the synopsis. A sea eagle and a buzzard are found dead. The police investigate and discover over 30 pieces of poisoned meat and a dead hare sprinkled with poison on a pair of Scottish estates. Backstory: the sea eagle was hatched as part of a government-funded […]

Posted by on Sep 12, 2007 in agents, novel writing | 6 Comments

Requested Material There can’t actually be many happier words that a writer can write. The End is good, but Requested Material is better. It’s what you put on the outside of your parcel when you send your manuscript off to an agent who has asked to read it. Yes.Again. No. I’m not saying which agent. […]

Posted by on Sep 6, 2007 in novel writing | 7 Comments

Over the hill I’m forty-five today. My grandmother is still going strong at ninety-six (well, she’s completely gaga mentally – but physically going strong) and my great-grandmother made it into her nineties with a glass eye and a love of the horses that made her the spitting image of the gradma in the Giles cartoons, […]