Have you ever been so busy you end up doing nothing at all? Whenever you begin a task you so feel bad about all the other jobs you should be doing that there's nothing for it but to have a little lie down. I swear, it's amazing I get up at all sometimes. Never mind, read on to win a three month Audible.com membership worth 45 dollars. Free audio books! ... Full >
At the time of writing, my NaNoWriMo effort stands at 38500 words. So I'm in with a chance even though my plan fell apart like a wet pizza sometime into the second week. I almost walked away from it then. But I'm too stubborn for that even though I had to take a few days ... More >
Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig laid down a flash fiction challenge inspired by Occupy Writers: a 1000 word story on corporate abuse - any genre. Here's mine. ACTION REQUIRED Subject: Action required. Refocusing opportunity in your area! Congratulations! You have been selected to take part in Zanutabor's customer refocusing program. We know are a busy person. In fact that's ... More >
In preparation for NaNoWriMo, I have been reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. It's a useful book, especially when it comes to pinning down story structure. I kept notes as I worked through this section and I'm sharing a neat version below. If the diagram whets your appetite you can get the book for the ... More >
There is no shortage of books about literary criticism and critical theory. There are also plenty of popular how-to guides for writers. Poking about Blackwell's Bookshop the other week, though, I came across Story Logic and the Craft of Fiction by Catherine Brady. Brady is a professor of creative writing at the University of San ... More >
Last weekend (Saturday 15 October) The Guardian gave away a free booklet: How to write fiction: A Guardian masterclass with the print edition of the newspaper. For those who missed it, or live outside the UK, you can get the whole thing as a Kindle ebook for a few dollars. Not all the articles were ... More >
I've been a tad slack on the Twitter front recently, but I like to keep a record of good writing links around. I still mine my old link round up articles when I need to remind myself about topics like structure, characterization, and editing. Which is about every week. Maybe one day I'll make a ... More >
This week my workshop piece received its treatment at the hands of tutor and my fellow students. The story survived the ordeal pretty well, considering the subject matter included a baked bin tin the size of a house, a sea of gravy, and a soldier in the First World War. Besides, no work emerges from ... More >
It says something for how busy I've been that I found this ten day old piece in my queue, unedited and unposted. And that I have no recollection of having written it. So I'm on the road yet again, and I have a workshop story due in Monday. It's going to be a hurried affair. If ... More >
My friend and fellow writer Tom described a meeting he attended yesterday for his day job. In fact, it was a call-in affair. While he was wandering a wind-swept university campus waiting to go into class he was also speaking to co-workers in London and Silicon Valley. The conversation made him glad of his new-found ... More >
