We’ve all done it. Self-editing. From my own experience, there’s also a blindness to self-editing because as a creator I am too close to my body of work. I see it every day. It’s like tasting your own cooking. Because you like the taste and you taste it every day doesn’t mean it’s good or at …
In this #thewritinglife post, I’d like to focus on what and who has made us interested in reading and writing. I’ve had the pleasure and honour to work with and talk to Cambridge-qualified Mary-Anne Farah (Maz) and Holly of Marginalia Manuscripts about their personal stories. Editors are one of the key backstage players of the actual …
Authors, do you have an Ideal Reader and readers, are you in fact one? I interviewed an avid reader and here’s what I found! Read my blog post here. Most blogs interview authors but that’s boring. As an author, I have been interviewed many times and I also have interviewed other authors. This time, …
Revamping website, starting with logo design. From the 1st one which is the rough concept to the finished design, all drawn by hand.
1/ Can you sit down for 20-40 minutes? This can be either days, nights, weekends, holidays, whenever. At any point can you sit down and not keep getting up? You know that writing is sitting down, right? First start with 10 minutes and then work your way up to 20 then 30 and finally 40 …
Without risk of cultural appropriation or misrepresentation or just being plain offensive. Diversity is a buzzword we all may at some point encounter. I have written from white, mixed and Asian people’s viewpoints and can say I am fairly comfortable now. My published stories or novels have a mixture of different cultures and it is …
A warm welcome to my guest, the legendary Bill Colegrave, who has collected and been inspired by travel books for more than four decades. He was the owner and publisher of the Cadogan Guides travel series. And now over to Bill… The unforeseen complications of a one-night stand are the foundations of this tale …
My aim had always been to be a published author. I have achieved my aim. Now what? Writing a novel or two is the biggest time, energy and mental pressure you can undertake. In fact to write this blog post I had to take two Nurofen and a double espresso macchiato in order to steady …
Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen. – Benjamin Disraeli Memory decides our journeys long before we do. It is the narrative drive of our travels and forms the organisation of our experience. Bill Colegrave has collected and been inspired by travel books for …
Somerset Maugham famously said that there are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. How to Write Like Tolstoy by Richard Cohen should be read with caution. It is, like all other writing books, a How To book that is a How Not To, which means it shows …
