Tag Archives: writing advice

Competitions.  I’ve never been a big fan of them.  Mainly, I think, because hundreds or even thousands of people can enter them, but there’s (usually) only one winner.  So, you have one person who’s feeling on top of the world and another 99+ who feel like losers.  So imagine my surprise to find myself spending most of January preparing my WIP for not one, but two, competitions. If you approach…

As soon as you tell people that you’ve finished the first draft of a manuscript, their inevitable question is “when can I read it?”.  The truthful answer – which always seems to surprise them – is “when it’s published” which still won't be for months/years.  Most people seem to think that as soon as a book is written, it’s ready. If only that were true!  The editing process almost always takes…

Holidays are usually the highlight of my year.  That’s not to suggest my life in between holidays is anything less than interesting, fun and challenging (in a good way!), but holidays are awesome. No matter what you can afford in terms of time or money, holidays – breaks from “normality” – are incredibly important.  Even just the act of getting on a train or plane and going anywhere is like…

When I scrolled through the list of competitions at the Winchester Writers’ Festival earlier this year, I never imagined for a minute that I’d find myself entering the Feature Article one.  For a start there were two children’s fiction categories that I could have entered B4 (codename) into, with very little effort.  More importantly, perhaps, was the fact that I hadn’t written a “professional” article before, although I suppose I…