Posted by on Feb 13, 2007 in narrative structure, novel writing | 5 Comments

Writing a novel Seems to me to be a three stage process. The first stage is when you get an idea that refuses to fit itself to a smaller scope than the novel. It won’t agree to be a short story, nor break itself into a series of stories to serve as a collection – […]

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Posted by on Dec 23, 2006 in clairefontaine, notebook, novel writing | 4 Comments

Clairefontaine I wasn’t going to post again until after Christmas, being somewhat in the doldrums, but yesterday I went shopping in Brighton and came home with a Clairefontaine notebook – buff faux leather cover, (that’s buff as in hue, for Americans who think I think my notebook has a sexy body) stitched pages, ruled … […]

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Posted by on Dec 19, 2006 in indian sweets, novel research, novel writing | No Comments

Better days … My Indian sweets arrived – the pera are wonderful but I haven’t opened the others yet so the photo will have to wait, if I dared to unseal all the boxes now I would have stuffed myself stupid by evening, and I have to go out to dinner tonight (pooh! Business, who […]

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Posted by on Dec 8, 2006 in agents, novel writing, submissions | No Comments

What am I doing again? One of the biggest problems for any fiction writer is getting their head above the daily issues of making a living to fix on their long term ambitions. Most of us want to get a novel published. That desire has three concrete steps. Write novel Edit novel Send novel to […]

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Posted by on Nov 22, 2006 in nanowrimo, novel writing, research | 6 Comments

How far would you go? I’ve never thought of myself as an adventurous person and the idea of living in a tent, eating unknown animal parts and travelling huge distances off the map are all terrifying to me, which is why being accused of being ‘research rabid’ has come as a bit of a surprise. […]

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Posted by on Nov 21, 2006 in nanowrimo, novel writing, writer's block | 2 Comments

The value of compression Writing a novel in a month is a daft thing to do. It’s a lot of fun and it teaches you a great deal about the process of writing a novel which comes in useful when you step back to write a real novel in a sensible time-frame, but it’s an […]

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Posted by on Nov 14, 2006 in nanowrimo, novel writing | No Comments

The Panic Jar One of the things I’ve instituted for Brighton (and Hove actually) NaNoWriMo this year is the Panic Jar. At meetings, the writers put plot inspirations into the jar and when anybody gets stuck, I take one out. So far only one inspiration has been used ‘One of the characters loses something valuable. […]

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