The Forgotten Words Story Generator

The English language is a truly ancient organism. Like all living things, it evolves constantly, growing new words and shedding old ones like a snake sheds its skin. Thanks to a wonderful website called The Phrontistery, many of those forgotten words have been preserved in a kind of lexical deep-freeze. In order to demonstrate the … Continue reading The Forgotten Words Story Generator

Copy Editing “Talus and the Frozen King”

Here's how the copy editing process works. Your editor emails you a copy of your manuscript in Word format, conveniently marked with proposed changes and pithy comments using the handy Track Changes feature, accompanied by a request that you read through their remarks, accepting or rejecting their suggestions as you see fit, before returning it for … Continue reading Copy Editing “Talus and the Frozen King”

Fishing for the Right Words

When I started out writing fiction, I thought all kinds of things were clever. Like using lots of different words. Better still, using really long ones. Like antidisestablishmentarianism (OK, maybe not that one). Over the years, my tastes have changed. Now that my hair is a little greyer and my joints are a little stiffer, … Continue reading Fishing for the Right Words

Your Free Writer’s Monologue

Suffering from writer's block? Fed up with that nagging internal monologue that distracts you from the process of writing? Fear not! I've created the Writer's Monologue®, a patent-pending system guaranteed to keep your fingers on the keyboard and your mind on the job. To use the Writer's Monologue®, simply record yourself speaking aloud the script shown … Continue reading Your Free Writer’s Monologue

The Writing Radio

When you write stories, the ideas don't come from you; they come from the ether. You're not a writer; you're a radio. You might think you're making things up but you're not. You're listening to them as they come in over the airwaves. You're making sense of the signal and recording what you hear. You … Continue reading The Writing Radio

Wide Angle Writing

I hated history at school. Except for the drawing. I liked some of that, especially the diagrams of motte-and-bailey castles. I was utterly bored by the endless lists of English monarchs, the sleep-inducing accounts of meaningless wars, tedious revolutions and labour marches within which no one thing related to anything else, much less to my … Continue reading Wide Angle Writing

The Storyteller Eternal

Nobody knows exactly when the first stories were told. I'm going to stick my neck out and pitch in at 250,000 BC, but only because it's a nice round number and I don't have a time machine. It feels like a fair guess. The "Out of Africa" theory of human evolution suggests our early homo sapiens ancestors may … Continue reading The Storyteller Eternal

The Writer’s A-Z

If you've got as many questions as I have about the craft of creative writing, you'll know how important it is to try out new things. The more you learn, the more it seems there is to learn. Every day, as they say, is a school day. That's what this A-Z is all about. It's … Continue reading The Writer’s A-Z

The Five Stages of Editorial Feedback

According to psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Most writers will recognise these as matching precisely the five stages of receiving editorial feedback on a manuscript. As in: Denial - "I refuse to believe that what I've written is anything other than an award-winning piece of … Continue reading The Five Stages of Editorial Feedback

The Research Funnel

I'm writing a novel set in Los Angeles in 1933. I've never been to Los Angeles. I've certainly never visited the year 1933. Clearly, research is required (rather more than I'd anticipated, actually, which just goes to show how blindly I plunged into the project). When you're writing a period piece, the details have to … Continue reading The Research Funnel