So… Anyone who read my blog in the summer will have seen me going through something of an existential crisis. I’m happy to report that (in so far as these things ever go away) it has receded and now I actually have A PLAN. I’ve established my three pen names, and they all have websites…
I know, you want to write the next Lord of the Rings, or possibly the next Game of Thrones. So do I, to be honest. But I also want to read as many more epic fantasies as can be brought to the bookshop table, and sometimes I go looking for them in the Kindle shop….
1. If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth doing. Just as nobody dons their baldrics and bellpads and capers in the street for strangers to sneer at because they think they’ll gain great glory or wealth from it, so you probably won’t gain great glory or riches from writing. You dance because it’s fun,…
I should have put this in last week’s post, since it’s part of the whole plotting thing, but as usual for me, I don’t have a lot to say about it, so it can slip in here with no problem. Writers appear to be divided between those who like to make a plan of their…
Sorry about this. I normally write my ‘Write on’ post on Sundays in readiness for the Monday coming, but was ill over the weekend, and still am, so I wasn’t able to. I will catch up as soon as I can put one word infront of another again and have them make sense. In the…
Which struck me as a more interesting way of saying “several small things served up together.” Evidently I’m not alone in being puzzled and even depressed by the fact that there seems to be no place in this world for m/m romance with sparse sex scenes other than being lumped in with “erotica”. Elin Gregory…
So, today I have finished the first draft of The Crimson Outlaw, which came in at 31,073 words. Huzzah! I feel the need to celebrate and also to tell everyone. But, I only wrote 1773 words of my daily 3000 words before I ran out of story. So to what should I turn next? I’m…
(The idea butterfly) (Seriously, its’ scientific name is “idea idea” – how cool is that?) Your notebook is open to a blank page and your pen poised. Your wordprocessing file is open to a blank screen and your fingers pressed to the keyboard. You have set aside an hour to write, and have the appropriate…
Having tucked The Pilgrims’ Tale away in the airing cupboard, under a damp tea-towel to prove, I’m in between big novel projects at the moment. This is a dangerous position to be in. It means I may suddenly be seized by a desire to write yet another story about Loki, and none of us wants…
Huzzah, and other, more period-appropriate, exclamations. The first draft of The Pilgrims’ Tale is complete at 87,890 words. It opens with a scene a little bit like this: only without the anachronisms and arrows, and carries on being less about war and more about music and gender-role confusion than is usual with me. It’s probably…