It’s official. If you have followed this blog for a while you will probably have wondered where I have been lately. It’s been close to a year since my last post. In social media terms, that’s like being dead. Perhaps you thought I had given it all up and become a buddhist monk on some hilltop, […]
Ok, I hold my hands up. I haven’t written anything this week. Or month… Times goes quick when you break the routine and have to focus on other stuff. In my case it was having to commit more time to photography, shooting weddings, meeting clients and redesigning my website from scratch. There is still more […]
Firstly, apologies for my blogging absence for the last 2 weeks. I had to learn how to create my new photography website and migrate both my domain and emails for the first time – a steep learning curve! Anyway, today it’s back to writing. I recently took up martial arts again, this time something closer […]
After the first draft is written a writer is entitled to bask in their own glory (“I have written a novel!”). But then comes the realization that it isn’t really finished, and the hard work begins. We stare at our pristine pages created with a mixture of utter love, frustration, late nights, and enough tea […]
It occurred to me recently that one of the ingredients in a writer’s style is the way they see the story in their mind’s eye. Whatever point of view (first person, third person etc) they adopt focuses a reader’s attention on certain elements of the story, while turning it gaze away from other areas. In […]
There is something wonderful about fantasy novels in that they evoke a sense of ancient history, as though when turning the pages we rediscover a forgotten part of our world. In turn, these stories often refer back to even more ancient times, where the foundations of that world began and the seeds of the story were […]
When writing creatively this question has been my most powerful weapon. As a writer you have to possess this boundless curiosity for what could happen next. It probably started in my early teens reading Fighting Fantasy novels, do you remember them? Where you had to choose what to do in the story before flicking to […]
I mentioned recently about having some of my work up on the Authonomy website, where I exchange critiques with other writers. Well, the other day I commented to someone that I thought their work was so good that ‘the words just disappeared’. It’s not the first time I have made that comment when reading different books, but this time […]
When I tell people I have written over 200,000 words of fiction, I am often asked how I ever managed to keep going, over the 10 years it has taken to get here. In all honesty, I don’t know. Call it an obsession, a writing addiction… perhaps that’s the nearest I can get to explaining […]
It was only a matter of time before I felt compelled to share my subjective and somewhat strange list of favourite music to write to/get inspiration from. Some of this music I used to roleplay to as well, so it’s been in my collection a long time. I highly recommend it for either purpose, or […]