There are some words that literally drive me mad. Well no, not literally. Figuratively. They annoy me, but that doesn’t mean I have literally been declared insane as a result or have had to seek psychiatric help. The first of them is ‘Literally,’ which does not mean figuratively. It means the opposite of figuratively, andContinue reading “Being over-nice about words”
Category Archives: writing
The Unravelling: Keep Going.
How long does it take to write a book? How long is a piece of string? In the case of string, the answer is simple: twice as long as half. In the case of books, it can be really complicated. My novel, The Unravelling, took me three months to write. But it also took thirtyContinue reading “The Unravelling: Keep Going.”
Swimming with the Editing Current
This was a post I wrote years ago, after a particularly harrowing session of editing. If you want to write, there are rules you have to follow. Apparently. What I want to know is, who set these rules? And what will happen to me if I disobey them? I would really like to disobey them,Continue reading “Swimming with the Editing Current”
F
An old post from last year on naughty words. I’ve had a review of Motherlove, otherwise complimentary, but marked down because of the excessive use of obscenities, particularly F… Well I wouldn’t want to offend anyone in this post by writing it, but it’s derived from the Middle English word for copulation. And its original sexual connotationContinue reading “F”
The Great Devon Novel
This is a post I wrote years ago, and I still haven’t started on the novel. I’ve been delving, as I often do, into the branch of my family that came from Devon, and while mulling over lists of Devon parishes, I couldn’t help but think that they could surely provide an entire cast list for aContinue reading “The Great Devon Novel”
Women’s Lit Lib
copying this from February this year. A few years ago I was stopped in the street by a girl armed with a clipboard. She wanted to know which women’s magazines I read. I don’t take any magazines regularly, but there are a few that I occasional buy or seek out in waiting rooms, so IContinue reading “Women’s Lit Lib”
History: getting it right
and another old post finds a new home. Yesterday is history. It’s the past. I am informed that for a novel to qualify as “historical,” the past has to be at least 60 years ago. So my first novel, A Time For Silence definitely falls into that category, as it begins in 1933, but myContinue reading “History: getting it right”
Sagas: keeping it in the family
I was slightly surprised when my first novel, A Time For Silence, was classified on Amazon as a family saga. My publisher had told me it was crime fiction and I had thought of it as a simple mystery. Besides, it was a single book and I never expected to add to the series. SurelyContinue reading “Sagas: keeping it in the family”
