Tag Archives | writing

Bacon is the best reward

By on in blog, writing

 

brunswick again rsz

On Sunday, I finished the latest draft of my novel.

On Monday, I woke up early to write as usual – and stumbled, because I’d given myself the week off.

Since I was up anyway, and it the weather was so gorgeous as to be almost imaginary (gorgeousness I’d noticed only vaguely that weekend,  as I stayed indoors typing with the curtains drawn), I went outside.

I bought a bacon sandwich from my favourite cafe & stowed it, still warm, in my bag. I wandered through leafy St Ann’s Well Gardens, where a ley line ends and a hermit once lived in a cave,  then crossed down to Brunswick Square, pictured above. No one else was there yet.

I ate my breakfast with the sea and the grass and the birds and the flowers, and it was blissful.

Next week I’ll go back to the early morning typing and the wordcount and the angst, but this week my only goal is to do Other Things, guilt-free. I love writing, but I love having written best of all.

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Bank Holiday shelfie & the Boreanaz Equation

By on in blog, books, colour, pictures, words, writing

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Bank Holiday weekend’s RULE. Enough time to write loads & still mess around doodling & watching Bones.

Deal is: for every 3k, I get 45 minutes of Boreanaz. Turns out rewards like this work better than ‘3k and then you don’t have to write any more’, to which my me would reply ‘But I’m already not writing! Let’s just stay here doing that!’.

Here’s my non-Boreanaz view, the books in reach of my desk. The ones to remind me how to write when I forget.

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Recommended resources for writing SF/F? (Mslexia Guest Blog)

By on in Mslexia Guest Blogs, words, writing, yonder

Since my last post, some of you have asked for links to useful blogs about writing fantasy/science fiction. Unfortunately, this has made me realise that most of what I read when I started writing is out of date now – no longer updated, or my bookmarks lost from when I changed laptops. Darn.

Recently I’ve been keeping my head down and writing, trying to limit my online reading til this novel is done, so I don’t have as much fresh content to recommend as I’d like. I’ve listed here a few links to some classics and content I still think is relevant, but I’m really writing this to ask what you read.

Which sites or books do you find useful when you’re stuck for what to write, or how to write it? Was there a genre-specific resource that helped when you were starting out?

Or, do you just use the same writing advice non-genre writers would? Is anything extra needed?

Read the full article (including ace Ray Bradbury video and a picture of a Cat Wizard) here.

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Genre is a community, not a ghetto (Mslexia guest blog)

By on in Mslexia Guest Blogs, words, writing, yonder

My latest blog about genre-writing is up at Mslexia. Here’s an excerpt – click here for the full read. And I do hope you like the zebra photo. I aim to serve.

No one wants to be pigeonholed. I just want to write books so wonderful that everyone loves them, all over the world. Even people who don’t normally read will adore what I write and praise me. Loudly. You want the same thing, right?

With that in mind, identifying yourself as a genre writer and distinguishing yourself from the mainstream – isn’t that cutting yourself off, selling yourself short?

I don’t think so. Far from being limiting, I have found more support, useful advice and a stronger sense of my writing identity since I defined myself as a fantasy writer. Here’s how it worked for me, and while my references and resources are particularly about Sci-Fi/Fantasy, I hope that some of this will be useful to those writing in other genres, too.

I hope you’ll read the full post here.

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