Posted by on Feb 29, 2008 in erotic writing, writing about sex | 2 Comments

Erotic Writing – the course Last night was the first night of the five week course, which has a couple of week’s break in the middle for Easter and stuff. I have five truly awesome students and we are meeting in a quite unbelievably kitsch hotel. Only in Brighton … Next week I hope to […]

Less about me – more about writing After all the hoo ha of the past couple of weeks, I’m bored with myself. I think that’s a fairly common condition with writers and may perhaps be the saving grace in a profession that’s otherwise like something out of the masochist’s charter. We have to: • Thrive […]

From the Lochaber News: “The John Muir Trust has announced the winners of its 2008 prestigious Wild Writing competition at this week’s festival. First prize of a place on a writing course at Moniack Mhor went to Kay Sexton from Sussex for her piece, Cleft, a tale about a challenging climbing incident and the relationship […]

Writing fiction for a living: radio stories I’ve just sat in on the recording of my radio story, which will be broadcast in the week of 10 March. What can I tell you? Well, I’m not unfamiliar with recording studios, having friends who are musos or music producers, but I’ve never sat in on a […]

Making money from fiction – erotica I’m pulling together the final elements for the five-week course starting on 28 February. It prompted me to go and have a look a the contribution that erotica made to my income last year, but I’m going to keep you hanging (possibly in a dungeon, with guttering candles, a […]

Dealing with writing rejection (aka on robustness) A former student emailed me to point out that I might have sounded less than empathetic in my last post. While it’s true that I think you must be robust to cope with life as a fiction writer, I’m not unsympathetic (at least I hope I’m not) to […]

Willesden Herald finale People keep emailing me, and even calling, to ask if I’m okay. Guys, I appreciate your support, but actually I’m great! There’s a great line in Cool Runnings (the film that is a ‘sort of’ recreation of the true story of the genesis of the Jamaican Bobsleigh Team) where the team captain […]

Willesden Herald Following the interesting developments in the Willesden judging, I feel I should post again, to put my viewpoint. Yes I was one of the infamous ten who ‘were not good enough’. For those who haven’t followed the story, ten of us were short-listed, but nobody won. There won’t be an anthology and nobody […]

Posted by on Feb 5, 2008 in Uncategorised | 6 Comments

The perils of success There’s little preparation offered to the average writer in terms of what happens when things go right. Nobody much talks about how to deal with the offer to publish your book, how you’re going to feel if you win a big prize, and what it means to be heralded as a […]

Posted by on Feb 1, 2008 in editing, rewrites | One Comment

Approaching rewrites in the right way Over the last couple of years I’ve discovered that January is rewrite month. There are a several reasons for this: it’s when most of us decide to finally, finally, send out that novel that’s been sitting around for ages, and it’s when that indie publisher decides to go for […]