A writer I love working with (if you’re reading this, you’ll know who you are) has been working on the Golden Thread of her story. It’s a concept of Jennie Nash’s, of Author Accelerator. Imagine that your manuscript is a tapestry with a pattern. The golden thread is your awareness of what your story is […]
Allow your voice to be heard. Only that way will you make a connection between your mind and others’. You have a unique perspective and your book is important. So keep writing, with passion and authenticity.
Writing is an act of bravery Read More »
No writer has ever asked me this question. My clients have deep souls. But if I priced my books based on the time it takes to write them, they’d cost the equivalent of a small London mansion. We know the score. We write our books because we have to. To educate or entertain or question
What’s the return on investment in writing a book? Read More »
I’m revising the second draft of my next book. It’s a cosy village mystery, set in an English village. (The one I grew up in.) Rewriting gives me the chance to weigh the value of each word. It can be exhausting, as Inner Judge gives me a hard time. It seems like everything that plays
Revising. Like panning for gold Read More »
How do you want your reader to feel when they put your book down? David Cornwell, better known as John le Carre, wrote to Sydney Pollack about the Night Manager*: “…I wanted to give the reader the satisfaction of knowing that at some simple level personal courage and personal humanity had triumphed. I wanted him
How do you want your reader to feel? Read More »
When we throw ourselves into our work—our professional work, the daily work that pays the bills and feeds and clothes us—we sometimes feel our capacity for creativity has shrivelled up. Creativity means creating something that didn’t exist before. Some jobs allow for that. You might not be writing the first draft of a new ‘Gatsby’
Feel you’ve lost your creativity? Read More »
I’m in the second draft of my village mystery and see my main character does a lot of thinking. Thinking is great. I do a lot, myself. But it’s not so great watching people think. Given the soulfulness of my MC’s experience, I can forgive her but my readers won’t. I invited a minor character
Writing a book is: 20% writing 80% thinking/questioning/troubleshooting/staring out of the window/testing ideas/waking up at 3 am to scribble illegible ideas on a bedside pad.
This fact will stop you in your tracks Read More »
Writer, to me. ‘What does a successful book look like?’ The question stopped me in my tracks. What is the measure of a book’s success? Fame? How wide? Money? How much? 500 rave reviews on Amazon? Questions, questions. I asked the only relevant one. ‘What will make you feel this book has been successful?’ They thought. ‘For a stranger
How will you know if your book is successful? Read More »
There is so much thinking that needs to go into a book before it’s ready to be submitted: finding, then refining, the concept. We’ve all learned to think about crafting books in terms of writing. For a book proposal or a novel’s query letter to have any chance of success, a writer needs to be