Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison: how we went from being teenage sweethearts to writing partners
theguardian.com – Monday January 4, 2016
The authors of Lobsters and new middle grade book Never Evers on what it’s like writing together (and how they do it), why year 9 is a crazy time, and where they rank in the ‘cool’ league. Plus, read the first chapter of Never Evers here!
Why Do We Fixate on Writer's Block?
huffingtonpost.com – Monday January 4, 2016
"Writer's Block is bunk."
That's not exactly what prize-winning author Loren D. Estleman said a few years ago at a Michigan writer's conference, but it's close. And he'd already published over 60 books (which he wrote on a typewriter!).
The problem with even using the term, he said, is that it's a supremely unhelpful way of saying something very basic and ordinary in the life of a writer: you're stuck.
Why using exciting words can make you a worse writer
chicagotribune.com – Thursday December 31, 2015
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
— Ernest Hemingway
Leilen Shelton, a middle school teacher in Costa Mesa, Calif., might translate that famous dictum from the famously plain-writing Hemingway this way: "All you have to do is write one illuminating, ineluctably verifiable sentence. Author the most perspicacious sentence that you comprehend."
Shelton wrote "Banish Boring Words," a crusade against milquetoast words like "good," "bad," "fun" and "said." Some of her disciples also eschew "go," "run," "happy," "walk" and "see."
What the tools of the trade tell us: Emma Barnes
thebookseller.com – Wednesday December 30, 2015
I founded a little publisher that I still run, called Snowbooks, in March 2003. And in about April 2003 I realised that there weren’t any decent or affordable tools to run my company properly. So I spent the last decade and a bit learning to write code so I could create my own. Over that time we’ve all witnessed other amazing software come to market. Cloud-based apps and web services help us to do everything nowadays, from ordering the weekly shop to developing complex character arcs.
Are small independent publishers doing the work for big publishers?
theguardian.com – Tuesday December 22, 2015
Here’s an observation: it sometimes feels as though smaller independents are the research and development departments for the big publishers, where literary fiction is concerned. We find great writers, nurture them, wipe their brows, polish their work and buff it until it shines. Then we send them out, readers love the books and they get shortlisted and win major literary prizes.
On Star Wars, The Craft of Writing and What Novelists Can Learn From 'The Force Awakens'
huffingtonpost.co.uk – Monday December 21, 2015
I was 4 years old when I saw Star Wars for the first time. It was on a 12-inch cathode-ray television that had 4 buttons, 2 knobs and looked like a giant microwave (not, I'm guessing, what Lucas had in mind) and I got sent to bed during the trash compactor scene. It was 1982. The subsequent 50 or so viewings (making it to the trench run and victory) took place my Grandma's top-loading Betamax.
Literati cities: just the spot for networking, less so for writing a great novel
theguardian.com – Monday December 14, 2015
What happens when all the culture capital is concentrated in one place? Take Brooklyn, which the New York Observer called “a zone of infestation, not only of novelists but reporters, pundits, poets, and those often closeted scribblers who call themselves editors and agents”.
What’s the secret of good writing?
theguardian.com – Friday December 11, 2015
I first encountered Robert Boice’s name about three years ago, somewhere online; after that, it started popping up every other month. Boice, I learned, was a US psychologist who’d cracked the secret of how to write painlessly and productively. Years ago, he’d recorded this wisdom in a book, now out of print, which a handful of fans discussed in reverent tones, but with a title that seemed like a deliberate bid for obscurity: How Writers Journey To Comfort And Fluency. Also, it was absurdly expensive: used copies sold for £130. Still, I’m a sucker for writing advice, especially when so closely guarded. So this month, I succumbed: I found a copy at the saner (if still eye-watering) price of £68, and a plain green print-on-demand hardback arrived in the post. So if you hunger to write more, but instead find yourself procrastinating, or stifled by panic, or writer’s block, I can reveal that the solution to your troubles is…
A Simple 4-Step Process for Writing Your First Book in 100 Days
entrepreneur.com – Thursday December 10, 2015
It's on a lot of people's bucket lists, along with "go to space” or “walk through Central Park naked.” Okay, maybe that’s just my bucket list.
But my guess is, somewhere on your list too is the desire to write a book. I also know that the very thought of writing a book generally feels like a monumental task, probably something akin to launching a rocket into orbit.
Portico prize winner Benjamin Myers: 'Why bother chasing the big publishers?'
theguardian.com – Wednesday December 9, 2015
After being turned down by ‘every major publisher in London’ for his Portico winning novel Beastings, the author says landing the £10,000 prize ‘felt like a vindication’.
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