blogging
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Introducing Gentleman Joe Unlike my two cats, Clio and Morris, who regularly ‘help’ me with my writing by playing with my pens, attempting to walk across my laptop keyboard and lying across my carefully printed out work, Joe, up until now, can usually be found hidden away somewhere. Joe is a rescue cat, with a…
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My name is? It’s so easy to fall into the trap of changing a character’s name half way through a story. For example, your story might start off being about a boy called Joshua only for him to morph into a character called Jason towards the end of the story. This shows that you’ve been…
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Not many of us have the luxury of becoming a full-time writer as soon as we start out. Instead, it’s a case of snatching hours and minutes here and there in between the day job and all that life throws at us. The same can be said for where we write. A lot of writing…
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My writing week is going well, with several submissions sent out and an article published in The Guardian at the weekend. I recently covered this as a market (see Markets For Freelancers) so if you’d like to see an example of the type of piece they publish, you can find my article if you click on the…
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My funny of the week is a quote that will have many women nodding their heads as they read it: “Forget love, I’d rather fall in chocolate.” Author unknown Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to do an ‘Augustus Gloop’!
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Well, I suppose I should be grateful; at least my 17-year-old isn’t sprawled across my work today and stopping me getting on. No, she’s managed to find ‘comfort’ in a drawer 🙂
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Cringeworthy Clichés Building on my advice about short story endings yesterday, comes another tip about short story writing and that’s to watch your use of clichés. Over-used clichés such as, ‘Her skin was as white as snow’, ‘He looked outside and saw it was raining cats and dogs’ and ‘She looked as light as a…
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A couple of years ago, I wrote a tips piece for The Writers’ Bureau’s on-line magazine, ‘E-Zee Writer’ about how to grab your readers’ attention in the opening to your story: http://www.writersbureau.com/e-zee-writer/september-2011/page4.htm Having hooked that interest, you need to keep it there and then finish the story on a high, leaving readers feeling as if…
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A New Term It’s the first day of the school term and so I’ve had the house to myself once more and plenty of opportunity to start the big catch up. I’m concentrating on the tutoring work first as that has priority, though somehow I’ve managed to more or less stay on top of things…
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I’m often inspired to write when I see a photo of an animal, whether it’s my own beloved cats who’ve triggered an idea for a reader’s letter, or another image which has given me an idea for an article. When I saw this chap, all I thought was, grimace or smile? Any ideas?
Esther Chilton 