As writers, we all have projects we decide to leave behind or put on the backburner. Sometimes an idea is just not quite there, or we’ve lost momentum or motivation to keep working on it. This time, last decade, I was in my first year of secondary school. I had moved from a small village […]
Tag: writers
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog titled ‘Help, I’m Stuck With Writer’s Block’, where I talked about my struggles with writing. Now I’m back with some updates to tell you what I have found helpful. The biggest change I’ve made is to my timetable, I’ve found that focusing on one main target a […]
I have been looking at my old work again and my first ever attempts at writing a full length novel. To say I’ve learnt a lot since then would be an understatement, and I couldn’t help but cringe at the mistakes my younger self made which seem so blindingly obvious to me now, but weren’t […]
Outlet Publishing is a publisher that gives young writers the opportunity to have their novel published. They are looking for talented young novelists to publish and contributors to the Diary of a Young Writer blog. As a contributor of their blog I feel it is my duty to help young writers in any way I […]
The opportunity ambushed me, in a way. A dear poet friend of mine, Gayle Smith, needed another member for her team in the Greater Glasgow slam, and I had offered myself. Three days before the slam was to start, I thought ‘might as well’. You could read from a sheet of paper, notebook or folder, […]
In life, you have groups you work well in, and ones you don’t. It applies just as much to writing collaboratively as it does to everything else. I conveniently forgot about the horrible experiences I’ve had working with others when I eagerly signed up to contribute to an online magazine in August last year. I […]
I already touched on this topic in Blog 37: On The Importance Of Words, but I wanted to write more about the language and terminology that we use. As a writer getting the language and terminology right for your characters, setting, plot and storyline is important. The writers who nail this often have the […]
A friend once told me that they had an idea for a book that they wanted to write. When I asked why they weren’t writing it, they listed a number of excuses, but one stuck out to me in particular. They wanted their idea to be completely new and original, and they didn’t want to […]
Q1) In one or two sentences, how would you describe your Brunswick Saga series to someone who hasn’t read any of your work? The Brunswick Saga series follows the lives of six siblings following the death and neglect of a parent. Each book in the series mainly focuses on one of the six and their […]
Q1) In one or two sentences, how would you describe your novel ‘Consensus Breaking’ to someone who hasn’t read any of your previous work? Think an urban fantasy of the Matrix! It’s the sequel in the Auran Chronicles, and follows a young protagonist — Seb — who’s pulled into a secret world within our own […]