What the Dickens!

I’ve never been a fan. It’s one of those comments that either has people nodding furiously along in agreement or is met with a gasp. What? Not even David Copperfield...or Hard Times...but what about Oliver Twist? A classic, surely.  So, there you have it, I’m a fully signed up dismisser of Dickens, teacher of his …

Paper. Pen. Post its.

Current favourite notebook I had July all planned out. You see, I finished my second Western on Monday and thought I'd get back to it after a bit of a break and then sort out the plot holes. In the meantime I had planned to work on something else. But it hasn't quite worked out …

The book with no name

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com I finished a day ahead of schedule! Came in at about 46k words and overall I'm quite pleased. I'm going to put it aside for a few days, or maybe even a few weeks, and regroup. It's so much easier to focus and digest it all with a bit …

Counting words

Cat attack The chattering magpie outside my window woke me from a very deep slumber this morning. In this household we have learnt that the cacophony is the soundtrack that accompanies our cat's life. He is an impressive hunter and is prepared to take on pretty much anything that moves. This has its downsides of …

Procrastination

In the spirit of thinking about the writing process and planning I decided to press on with another book idea. Ordinarily all of this creativity shouldn't be discouraged, surely? The trouble is I have my first project still lurking in the background. I have left the characters in limbo. I can hear their whispers, wondering …

Planning Tools

I wrote a book. I wrote a book and then scrapped it. From the ashes of that book I wrote another. The difference between book 1 and book 2 was a plan. You'd think that planning wouldn't be such a novel idea seeing as it's something I implore my students do on an almost weekly …