The Diary Of A Young Writer has officially reached 100 blogs! It feels like a big birthday, and to celebrate, I thought I would share with you what I have learnt so far… I can say with absolute certainty that your first attempt at writing a novel is going to suck. Sorry, but it’s true. […]
Tag: Writing Tips
Earlier this year I bought a copy of ‘The Terry Pratchett Diary’. It contains quotes from the Discworld novels and tributes from renowned authors such as Neil Gaiman and A.S. Byatt. It also contains 366 empty boxes (leap year included), for you to write a small paragraph, or a line or two about your day. […]
It probably goes without saying that many of us writers are a solitary bunch. We should, in theory, be experts on not leaving the house for a while. Once upon a time, social distancing may have been the ideal for many of us, but now it isolates and, in many cases, frustrates us. So, how […]
I love Fantasy it’s my favourite genre to read, but when it comes to writing, I find myself wanting to explore and write in a mixture of different genres. This makes it difficult as an author to choose only one preferred genre. Traditionally speaking, authors write in one main genre. John Green writes Young Adult […]
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 […]
You may be wondering; Haiku? What the heck is a haiku? A haiku is a very, very, short poem. So short in fact, that it only has three lines in English and a total of 17 syllables. The haiku originates from Japan and was previously called hokku, the name haiku came from the Japanese writer […]
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 […]
You may be a little relieved to read that there isn’t really a right or wrong answer to this question. There are so many factors and variables to include; Is it your first book? Tenth book? Do you have children? Are you a student? Do you have a full-time or part-time job? Are you a […]
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 […]
When I was in high school and studying English Literature, we read books like ‘Of Mice And Men’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’. One day that I remember clearly, a student asked the English teacher why we were bothering to study the sentences in such detail. This student was sure that writers would not and did […]