“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Douglas Adams There was a time when I considered deadlines to be a bit of a hindrance. Having to produce a piece of work by a certain time can be a great way of motivating yourself to actually get on with…
Category: Writing
Writery Adventures in the Land of Not-Planning
If you’re already a subscriber to the idea of writing without an actual plan (plot, backstory, synopsis etc), you won’t need me to tell you that it can be a little scary. However, embarking on an expedition to the Land of Not-Planning, doesn’t mean riding totally naked into the metaphorical wasteland, since there are several…
How to Write Like a Guitarist
While re-stringing my guitar the other day, I was reminded of something I read many years ago about the classical guitarist Francisco Tarrega. Coming from a musical family (his father was a talented flamenco guitarist), it was hardly surprising that the young Tarrega soon took an interest in learning an instrument. However, after some years…
The Hardy Boys and Me
What makes us write the books we write? Back in the summer of 2013, after years of writing stage plays, I finally got around to finishing two novels I’d started several years before. At the time, I had no inclination to write books for adults, so those first novels (‘The Devil’s Porridge Gang‘ and ‘The…
How to Stay Clear of the Three C’s
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or perhaps it’s just that I don’t have as much patience these days, but when I decide to add a new book to my ‘Want-To-Read’ list, it’s because that book has passed my Three C’s test. And no, I’m not referring to the business model developed by organisational theorist…
The Book of Moron (Why Not Everyone Should Write From Experience)
There’s an old idea that talks about everyone having at least one book in them – the story of their own lives. So it follows that every single one of us should be able to write at least one original story, right? Nope. Nope. Nopedy nope. Sure, it’s fine to write about your own life…
Three Easy Steps to Not Finding Your Writer’s Voice
Yes, you read that right – this is a post about not finding your writer’s voice. But first let’s just clarify what I’m talking about. Every writer has a voice. Sometimes it’s exactly like their actual voice (the writing sounds the same as the way they talk), but more often it’s a sophisticated version of…
Dipping a Toe in the Mighty Amazon
When I first started to look at putting my scribblings out as eBooks, Amazon wasn’t anywhere on my list of possibilities. However, having had a chance to see how things work at Smashwords, I thought I’d conduct a little experiment to see how the Amazonian experience differed. KDP UnSelect One of the reasons I’d been…
How to Not Write
Whether you’ve got a deadline to meet or not, the act of sitting down and writing every day isn’t the easiest of routines to stick to. And while the reasons we come up with for not working on that novel/play/story/poem are pretty much limitless, there are a few that always seem like a good excuse:…
How to Make Time to Write Every Day
As all writers know, one of the major things you have to do to succeed as a Writer is to write. All the time. Every day. But as many of us (in the real world) also have ‘proper’ jobs that we sort of have to do in order to stay alive, making time to write…
Colin Garrow 