Writing and reviews with an environmental, science fiction, and fantasy touch
Questions help you find out about your characters; lists of them can be found everywhere on the internet. Try these from NaNoWriMo (Googledoc). I first found out about question sheets in my Creative Writing Course. When I did a workshop
Losing the plot… something I seemed to be up against over the Easter weekend. And then again the following weekend. And as for last weekend, well I spent a goodly part sorting out important things around the house… As you
Fate… how much of my writing is left to it? It was fairly difficult to come up with a topic for today, since it is Insecure Writers Support Group day, where we blog about things pertaining to writing, and support
Background in the third of a series is vitally important. Especially when you discover it’s several years since you published book 2. This year’s AtoZChallenge is mainly about my writing, and my Work In Progress, a science fiction adventure called
Thank goodness January is over. I’m not sure how much of my attitude for the last couple of weeks has been down to the start of the year, Covid, hiding away in my little lockdown space and wondering what the
9 years since I published the Princelings of the East. It seems a very long time ago, now, and I feel like a different person from the embarrassed pseudo-author I was then. But this is my IWSG post for December,
Character wrangling is a term I put together when writing my guest post for Ronel Janse van Vuuren today. I was writing of the discovery I made when I started writing the Princelings series, that characters do what they want,
I’m a co-host today! In all this time (I signed up on 7th January 2015) I’ve never been a co-host before. Being somewhat insecure (of course), I wondered whether you had to do something special to qualify. The answer is
Beta-reader of your choice… who would it be? That’s (roughly) the question for this month’s IWSG post, an event that has crept up on me, despite thinking about it last month. It’s probably down to two things, well, maybe three.
Hello IWSG-ers. Welcome to August. I know, how did we get here so fast? This month’s IWSG newsletter poses a very long question. The end of it was: Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even
Darkness is today’s #writephoto prompt from Sue Vincent. The picture is below. I took my inspiration from the word rather than the picture of dark roiling clouds over a rolling meadow. As soon as I saw the prompt I thought
July 2020. The IWSG team suggest today that we tell you our predictions for writing and books in ten years time. Yesterday, I read a thing on what it’s like to have to go on a ventilator if you get
April this year is dedicated to my Camp NaNoWriMo project for 2020. I’m revising Princelings book 10 ready for the beta readers. Have you read several Princelings of the East books? Would you like to give me feedback promptly on
Write under pressure? Yes, it’s IWSG day again, and I’m wilting under the pressures of life. How anyone with a job and young family does it I have no idea! I’m writing this in advance as momentous things might happen
A ‘message to my younger self’ was a comment I made in response to Damyanti Biswas on my review of Record of a Spaceborn Few. I thought the idea complemented January’s IWSG question, which was about the tipping point that
Yes, welcome to 2020, all insecure writers. Thank you to Alex J Cavanaugh and the IWSG team for letting us miss New Year’s Day as our posting date this month! The awesome co-hosts for the January 8 posting of the
The December question from the Insecure Writer’s Support Group relates to hopes and the reality. It suggests that insecure writers still in the ‘aspiring’ phase write about where they see themselves in a few years time. For those who have
Audiobooks. They used to be something you listened to on long journeys if you didn’t want to or couldn’t read. Or maybe while you did boring tasks around the house. According to the stats I’m seeing, they are coming into
Things creep up on me when I’m busy. When the season changes, the urgency shifts. One minute it’s summer, and I have ages to prepare to launch my book in November, the next minute it’s September, it’s autumn, and there’s
‘Red Wheelbarrow’ is the WEP/IWSG prompt for August. As you know I’ve been turning out some ‘interesting’ stories in response to these prompts. I’ve enjoyed them. I’ve also enjoyed and welcomed the comments on my stories. Caged Bird | Flash
Welcome to July. No. I was all set to write my July IWSG post but I couldn’t access my website. Then things got worse. If you’re interested you can read more here. Welcome to August. A thousand things I thought
Total immersion in my fictional world. That’s the thing that makes writing so exhausting—for me, at any rate. I thought I might write about this for this month’s Insecure Writers Support Group post, because I felt I really learnt something
Save Week is the next stage of WRiTE CLUB 2019. For the last three weeks we’ve been choosing between pairs of finalists. Now, before we get into the next round of battles, there’s Save Week, where we vote to save
Finishing the series: I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but given it’s the 1st May, and it’s Insecure Writers Support Group, and I’ve just got back from Camp NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d take it as my subject. I didn’t
Whenever is this month’s prompt for Fiction in Fifty words. You can join in. Just go to Rebecca Douglass’s page for the prompts of the month (the whole year is displayed for you, just in case you want to get