Tag Archives: writing

How to Battle through Writer’s Block

You’ve woken up, eaten breakfast, and have sat down in front of your laptop. You open the file titled Best Selling Novel and push open the door in your mind that grants you access to the fictional world you’ve spent the past few months creating. You poise your fingers above your laptop’s keyboard, ready to glimpse what happens…

How to Battle through Writer's Block

You’ve woken up, eaten breakfast, and have sat down in front of your laptop. You open the file titled Best Selling Novel and push open the door in your mind that grants you access to the fictional world you’ve spent the past few months creating. You poise your fingers above your laptop’s keyboard, ready to glimpse what happens…

The Importance of a Manuscript Assessment

Let me guess, you’ve just finished writing your novel after spending the past year pouring your soul into it—writing it, then editing it again, and again, and again. You think it’s perfect, an absolute masterpiece that will be hailed alongside the works of Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling. There’s nothing left to do now but…

Keeping Your Manuscript Safe

It is amazing how quickly and easily manuscripts can become confused, especially with different versions of the same one. If you have more than one copy of a manuscript, make sure they are all well labelled and even dated to ensure mistakes will not happen. There would be nothing worse than sitting for hours, writing or editing, only to find that you have been working on the wrong version. I have a system which I find works quite well:

1. When adding the file name to your original manuscript, make sure you add the word ‘original’ into the title. And then put that copy away if its complete, keep it as a reference. It will also safeguard against any unexpected happenings. Make a new copy to work with and number and/or date it. (I prefer to number it).

Writing with Inspiration

Where does it come from? What happens when one suddenly gets a ‘lightbulb’ go on? You can be anywhere, and it can happen at any time – day or night.

Although I am an editor and publisher, spinner and knitter, I have never considered myself a ‘writer’. But there are occasions when inspiration just happens and a whole lot of words will appear in my head, crying out to be documented on paper. Writing for me is a thing of ‘inspiration’ and hopefully, I’ll have pen and paper handy to write it down as once its gone, it never seems to reappear. Or at least, not in the same way. It comes and goes, and usually very fast. One minute its kind of just tumbling out, then next – whooosh, gone. I envy those authors  who can just call it up at will, its something that many of us would love to be able to do…