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The Battle of the Two Heroines
Thanks again to everyone who voted or commented on my Lily/Marsha dilemma. I loved reading all the comments and was interested to see people’s reasons for their choice. Obviously, Marsha won by a mile – but I was pleased that Lily had …
Posted in Blog, Writing
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Who has the rights to your writing?
Some years ago I was a regional winner in a short story competition with a story called The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done. As you can imagine, I was thrilled with the win and it was this win that finally …
Posted in Blog, Competitions, Writing
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Are novels like buses?
We all know the old complaint about buses – you wait hours and then … but I didn’t realise the same principle applied to ideas for novels! I’ve been feeling for a while now that I want to write another …
Posted in Writing
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Recipe for Heartbreak
(Apologies to any men reading this – you can always change the details to reverse the gender!) Serves One Ingredients 10 sheets of A4 paper (I find 10 works best, although some people need more.) 1 pen – make sure …
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Music & Writing
I came to write something about the link between music and writing through two separate avenues. First, I was given a CD by Ed Sheeran for Christmas. Not having my finger on the popular music pulse, I hadn’t heard of him. (Feel …
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The Excitement of Winning
I was going to post about something else today, but feel I have to write about winning the Cinnamon Press novel award with my novel The Piano Player’s Son. I am filled with joy at the affirmation of my writing. Publication isn’t until …
Posted in Competitions, Writing
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What’s in a Title?
How significant is a title for a novel, a short story – or a poem? What do we expect of a title? A successful title will probably grab our attention - hook us in some way -intrigue, surprise or amuse us, or …
Posted in Blog, Marketing, Writing
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The Importance of Rewriting
Nabakov, best known for his work Lolita said ‘One cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.’ He goes on to explain his belief: ‘When we read …
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Goodbye Stones
I’ve blogged about The River of Stones before, but today is the last one, a month of looking, noticing, absorbing, writing. Choosing the stone to write each day has been great fun, although much more challenging than I had expected. One of …
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Building an author platform
Sometimes it seems the only thing that matters these days is MARKETING. You have to network, plug, sell, tell, promote … on and on … you have to be out there shouting from the rooftops: Look at me! I’m here! If …
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