novelist

Renewal Writing Retreat

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Stop struggling to write. Retreat to the mountain for RENEWAL. Gain confidence, meet like-minded people and get writing.

How I used the Busybird Creative Fellowship – AC Watson

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In December 2015 I was lucky enough to be chosen for the Busybird Creative Fellowship. The fellowship aims to help an emerging writer through their current project. For me, this meant developing my skills as a writer, starting my own writing group, meeting a vast network of amazing people, and ultimately, bringing my novel up … Continued

The Evolving Idea II: Adaptation

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Last year I waxed lyrical on how ideas can evolve and change over time, even within a single short story that can become something totally different to its original intention. I was mostly talking about a single project going through its own individual course of development, but the natural progression from that is the idea … Continued

The Three Profiles of Fiction

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In an earlier post, ‘No Offence?’ I touched on the idea of certain modes of storytelling, and how important the ‘profile’ of certain content can be to determining its effectiveness as a piece of prose. This isn’t just some jargon I made up to feel self-important. This is a direct reference to a method that … Continued

NaNoWriMo Lessons

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Last October, when my daughter was almost a year old, I decided that after a year of minimal progress on my writing projects, it was time to get back into it. And what better way to throw myself right in than to take on the challenge of NaNoWriMo? (National Novel Writers’ Month = write 50,000 … Continued

Approaching Revision — Part II

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The Big Picture   Last week, we looked at a lot of the mechanics of writing which you can address during revision. This week, we’re going to look at the bigger picture – your story as a whole. Whatever your story, it will create a set of laws that govern that story’s universe. If we’re … Continued

Just Write

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We may all have ideas for a great book. We may even have a few chapters down. And we might even have time available to write – or, if not, we have the capacity to make time. But we face an unflappable enemy who stops us from taking it any further: ourselves. How many times … Continued

Happy New Year!

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We all MAKE resolutions for New Year. Some are for personal betterment, some for emotional and spiritual growth, and some for professional gain. We all want to better ourselves and that’s great. But guess what? The New Year is upon us. How’re we going observing those resolutions? As a writer, what resolutions did you make … Continued