Doing things that terrify you Once you become a writer, once you have a certain degree of ‘success’ (note the inverted commas, because they are important), you start to relax a bit. You begin to believe that you know where you’re going, that your writing muscles are going not only to get you through the […]

Minor neurosis emerging Today has been pen quest day. Pen quest is one of those slight but aggravating signs of obsessive/compulsive behaviour that I try to hide from people, especially other writers. My neuroses are—as you know—rare. You might think I’m protesting a bit too much. You’d be right. I am a touch neurotic about […]

Posted by on Mar 3, 2009 in literary agent, writing neuroses | 3 Comments

This is not what I planned to write about But this is what happened, and it dovetailed into what I was going to write about which is one of those things that happen and no writer could get away with letting them happen in fiction because it sounds too beautifully coincidental. Last night, well 2 […]

Identification, writing and empathyFollowing on from my last post, and having emailed to and fro with a couple of wonderful writers who are either languishing or writhing in the throes of the issue of ‘am I writing like me, or am I writing like somebody else’ (and they know who they are and which of […]

Posted by on Nov 27, 2007 in radio plays, writing neuroses | 2 Comments

The Play Wot I Wrote On Saturday we had a workshop with actors (real actors!) reading scenes from our plays. Having decided I was going to be sick with nerves I actually got up feeling fine, ate a huge breakfast and walked the dogs before heading off to Brighton for the readings – at which […]