Every week I promise myself I'll carry a notebook, and every week I don't. Ideas arrive in the shower, on a walk, halfway through someone else's sentence, and I tell myself that anything that good can't possibly be forgotten. Then it is. On Tuesday two ideas occurred to me for future Monday Writing Motivations, but when I woke this morning – it’s Saturday – in order to write, the ideas had fled. This week on the water So instead of an idea of my own, I'm offering one that someone else caught...
9 days ago • 5 min read
When a writer offers a book to a reader, she is implicitly making an offer to that reader, and if the reader buys the book, she seals the deal. What is the deal? I call it 'the credibility contract'. I will suspend my disbelief in this fiction that you have concocted, if you persuade me that the world in which your story plays out is real. This week on the water Of course, she knows it’s not real. Every fiction is invented, the world in which the drama is staged is a construct. So it’s the...
16 days ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, This week under the water I have a title idea. I hope you like it… Scrap that. I have it now. Okay, it’s between these three … I have it, I have it. This is the final. Please ignore my last mail… My poor publisher. My new book, my first work of non-fiction, had no definitive title yet. A working title, yes. The manuscript was being edited, a cover was being mocked up. But no agreement had yet been reached on the title. I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Titles...
21 days ago • 3 min read
Ever wondered where ideas come from – or how you can tap into a source of ideas around which to build your stories? I’m not sure whether you’ve come across references to a man – James Webb Young – and his book, published in 1939 and only recently rediscovered by a self-help industry. It’s called A Technique for Producing Ideas. It’s listed on Amazon as a book, but in reality, it’s no more than an extended article, just 28 pages long. Why mention it? Because its 'system' was designed for...
23 days ago • 4 min read
I’ve been thinking about “voice” a great deal lately. I started off feeling that, in fiction, a strong voice is one with plenty of interiority, one that invites the reader deep into the protagonist’s head, where all the character’s dirty linen is hung. But then I considered one of my favourite crime writers: Michael Connelly, whose Harry Bosch novels have been thrilling me for the last twenty years and more. These are all police procedural stories, inspired by Connelly’s six years of...
30 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, There are many things I’m fearful of, some rational, some less so. Like waves. I know, weird, right? I’m an open-water swimmer. Even smallish waves cause a kick of fright. And when I see what my friend calls a ‘block of flats’ building up in front of me, I experience a visceral panic. I know how to dive under a wave - my father taught me when I was but a tot. And yet, the sight of it can paralyse me into forgetting how. Fears embed themselves in our psyches from our earliest...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Last week I advised readers to 'write just three good sentences'. Well, it's easy enough to write three sentences - but what does it mean to write three good sentences? I said that they should be 'stripped of flummery and pretension'. This week on the water I’ve been thinking about that advice, and wondering whether it was actually of any practical use at all. So I thought I should dig a little deeper into what a good sentence is, and how you might go about writing it. I’ll do this by taking...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, Thank you so much for joining us for our webinar with the wonderful Sally Andrew, author of the bestselling Tannie Maria Mysteries. It was an evening full of honesty and hard-won wisdom – from where Sally's characters really come from, to how she keeps writing, to her own beautifully thought-out recipe for success. We hope you left with a renewed sense of permission to trust your own voice and treat ‘success’ as something far simpler and kinder than we usually imagine. Whether...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
You love to think of yourself as a writer, sitting at your desk, a cup of herbal tea wafting its subtle and inspiring fragrance towards you. You love the company of writers, and the book talk, and the common problems you all face, and the simple solutions that emerge from your discussions. You love all that. And you love the prospect of having a book – your book, with your name on its cover – sitting quietly on your shelf, a silent testament to the months of creative work you put into it....
about 1 month ago • 5 min read