There’s been a lot going on in my writing life recently so I reckoned a bit of an authorly round-up was due. As mentioned in a previous post, I’m a member of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club and as such I’m eligible to enter their annual competitions. In that previous post I reported that I came… Continue reading Competition and Conference Success and Other Writing News
Some writing success: I’m a member of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club and yes, living in the Scottish Highlands, I certainly take the definition of a ‘country’ membership to its limits. I originally joined the club about seventeen years ago when I lived in the city, and when I relocated up north I wanted to keep… Continue reading Writing News: January 2017
November is turning out to be a busy month for me. There’s lots of writing and writing-related work to be done. And I’m really looking forward to it all. So what’s on? See below… As well as the final push to complete the first draft of the novel-in-progress, I have both teaching and author talk… Continue reading November Writing News
It’s all about the story… When I start writing a novel, I’m not sure where the story is going to lead. But, as an author of both adult and children’s fiction, I do at least know which audience the novel is aimed at. Other than that, once the seed is planted, I wait to… Continue reading Writing Fiction: The how, the what, and the why of what works for me
A Fictional Hierarchy There seems to be a consensus which says that literary fiction is first and foremost about themes and that commercial fiction has character, plot and setting at the forefront. There also seems to be an apparent hierarchy to the above elements of fiction which places themes above the other three. And… Continue reading Themes: Not Just for Literary Fiction
A question that’s been concerning me of late: should I, as a writer, take the wide landscape view when deciding what to work on, or should I zoom in and maintain a tight, close-up focus? Yes, the above sentence is a metaphor. Hey, I’m a writer. What do you expect? But seriously, the wide view… Continue reading Maintaining Focus as a Writer
Writing a Book is the Easy Part Writing a book can sometimes seem like the easy part when it comes to establishing yourself as a writer. Building a readership is much more difficult. It is a hard but necessary slog. For all published writers, the marketing of their work is crucial in getting their books… Continue reading Book Marketing and Being Mentored
From the upheaval of loss to insight, acceptance and love This is the second of two posts where I share a bit about why I chose the theme of displacement for my novel of the same name. In the first post I talked about physical displacement – displacement from home and country. In this post… Continue reading Displacement: The Novel’s Emotional Turmoil
The reasons behind the plot and settings of my second novel When I wrote Displacement, I wanted to explore what knocks people’s lives off course, what pushes them out of their normal place and space. I also wanted to examine the consequences of both physical and emotional displacement. In other words i wanted to look… Continue reading Displacement: From the Hebrides to the Middle East and back
Source: In The Chair 42 I’m interviewed over at Jan Ruth’s blog today. It was fun to do and I hope you enjoy reading it. You can, amongst other things, find out which character I fell in love with whilst writing him and can you guess my favourite word? Thanks Jan for having me.
