Most of us writers don’t have a giant S printed on our clingy spandex chests. We find it hard to get even a few done in a day. We have jobs, studies, kids, spouses, sick family members, elderly parents, pets, fitness and a hundred million other things crowding our already…
Category: Free Advice
Mini-lessons on good writing . . . or maybe a lighthearted observation on the writing life. At no charge!
Writers are empty, not blocked
Like everyone else, I’ve been fanged by the evil writers’ block vampire, finding myself curled up on the floor, ash-pale, dried-out and wondering what the hell happened and why I can’t produce a word. But we writers are strong, creative, and ambitious. We’re heroes in our own stories, and whenever…
Maybe – just maybe – your editor is right
We writers can be pretty headstrong. We’re adamant about our work, and are always prepared to defend it, right down to the last punctuation mark. I remember annoying the hell out of my editor at Kensington when, pissed off at what I thought was a crappy edit, I flew into…
The dog’s bollocks
You’re never too old to learn something new. For example, I only just learned that this punctuation mark :— (a colon followed by a dash or hyphen) is known by typographers and other people who have a sense of humour as “the dog’s bollocks”. Really?Really. If you take a good…