Posted by on Mar 29, 2007 in perspective | 4 Comments

Perspective These are hellebores, from my garden. Lovely aren’t they? That astonishing velvety almost-black one in the middle is helleborus niger. Now, to see the hellebores in their natural state, on the plant, you’d have to stretch out on your back under the shrubbery, which is not fun in March, with slugs and damp and […]

Posted by on Mar 27, 2007 in new venue | 2 Comments

Here’s fun … a former colleague is involved in this and send me the details – it seems like a very good idea, and – as far as this writer can see – doesn’t harm your chances of subsequent publication elsewhere. LIARS’ LEAGUE CALL FOR SHORT STORY SUBMISSIONS(DEADLINES APR 20, MAY 25, JUN 22) Love […]

Posted by on Mar 22, 2007 in novels, writing coaches | 9 Comments

Be careful what you pay for … I’m in the middle of a sad and complicated email conversation with a writer who has recently had a rotten experience. He’s been badly burned, and feels both embarrassed and angry, so he asked me if I would blog about his experience to help others avoid the same […]

Posted by on Mar 20, 2007 in Uncategorised | 10 Comments

Dealing with fears – the myth of the curve Vanessa asked about the insidious voice, a personality that emerges from the ‘inner editor’ and tells us that we’ll never write something so good again, that we fluked our last success and really, deep down, we know we’re not good enough to sustain our publication record. […]

Posted by on Mar 15, 2007 in finishing fiction, writing as therapy | 5 Comments

When you can’t finish your story because you’re afraid … Well are you? Fear comes in two basic forms – performance anxiety and subject anxiety. The first is the fear of failure, or even, the fear of success! Suppose you finish it and send it out and everybody hates it? Suppose you finish it and […]

Posted by on Mar 13, 2007 in finishing fiction | 2 Comments

Getting to the end of the story … If you’re one of those writers who doesn’t seem to be able to finish a story, and it’s not because you’re revising as you write, so that you’re interrupting your creativity with analysis as discussed previously, it’s possibly because you are one of those writers for whom […]

Posted by on Mar 8, 2007 in Uncategorised | 3 Comments

You’ve started … but will you finish? I would guess that a third of the people I coach have issues with finishing work and/or writer’s block. It would be a lot higher, but I limit my exposure to these problems, as they drain the coach more than anything else, and it affects my writing if […]

Posted by on Mar 6, 2007 in coaching, editing, good writing, revising | 8 Comments

Rushing to judgement When I finish working with a coaching student, or teaching a class, I’m quite often asked, what is the one piece of advice I wish writers would remember? ‘Don’t give up’ springs to mind, but much more important, to my mind, is ‘don’t rush to judgement’. It’s the judging, more often than […]

Posted by on Mar 1, 2007 in Uncategorised | 4 Comments

The virtues of organisation Earlier this week I had a submission returned through the post. Apparently I had sent it to the wrong address, although it was impossible to tell as the recipient had stuck a nice big label over the address area, and when I tried to peel it off, the envelope tore. By […]