Today's guest blogger is a bit of an enigma. We know Ari Meghlen's avatar from her Twitter site as she shares daily questions for us to consider under the hashtag #TheMerryWriter. She is working on several books yet hasn't been published. But she has flash fiction pieces on her website, as well as a wealth …
Writing Tips – Guest blog by author, J.P. Jackson
The third in this series of Writing Tips this year are from J.P. Jackson. By day, J.P. Jackson works as an IT analyst in health care during the day, where if cornered he’d confess to casting spells to ensure clinicians actually use the electronic medical charting system he configures and implements. At night however, the writing …
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Writing Tips – Guest Blog by author, Glenn Quigley
The second author to grace us with his writing tips this year is Glenn Quigley. Glenn is a graphic designer originally from Dublin and now living in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He creates bear designs for http://www.themoodybear.com. He has been interested in writing since he was a child, as essay writing was the one and only …
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Writing Tips – Guest blog by author M.D. Neu
It's been a while since I've posted a guest series on writing tips. But over the next few weeks several published authors are going to share their's. The first to guest blog for me is M.D. Neu. Neu is a LGBTQA Fiction Writer with a love for writing and travel. Living in the heart of …
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The cliff hanger
Do you round up your chapters or add a cliff hanger? This was a question posed by someone using the #writingcommunity hashtag on Twitter. My answer is that I initially rounded up chapters until an editor made me stop. Her reasoning was that if you round up your chapters into neatly self contained stories, then a …
Plotting love affairs and break ups
One WIP has been submitted, one is on the back-burner and one I've just started plotting. I'm taking my time with this. With my other two works in progress I found I plotted too quickly, then went back and tried to expand them. One of them paces well, so I changed my mind and submitted …
Starting a new novel
I'm at the ideas stage. A couple of months ago I wrote a blog about the research I'll do for this. You can find it here, but basically it's a story set in the 1990's and centres around a group of friends. My husband and I have been casting people we know as characters and …
Writing Life vs. Real Life
Since mid last year there has been a change to my life. My husband is at home full time, and this is nice. Our days off together include lying in bed with no hurry to get up. Of making coffee from the espresso machine and enjoying organic muesli in the morning. Of planning renovations together or …
That Problematic Chapter
One chapter in one of my works in progress has bothered me. It's a dramatic chapter where a character ends his affair. Every time I've read it in context with the rest of the manuscript, it hasn't made sense. It started with two men thrashing it out realising there was no room for bullshit anymore. …
Stories should have conflict.
Today's blog was sparked by a tweet from Kev St John (@Kev_away) He had given his work in progress to a Beta Reader who didn't like one character because she wasn't a good friend. He couldn't believe this response. This character is supposed to be a bad friend. That was the point. I had a …
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