I am going to write a few blogs like this to help other writers concerning ideas. The first is the storage.

Hands up if you haven't ever had writer's block - if you don't, then this article may not be applicable to you. If on the other hand, you sit down at your compute screen and your brain suddenly wipes clean. If it is a Monday morning, this is not unusual to be seized perhaps by a moment's panic - remember old Corporal Jones flapping around, screeaming 'Don't panic Don't panic' when your inner gut is in a state of paralysis.

Well, don't panic because you cannot think of anything to write about. It is not a crime that deserves the ultimate sentence. It happens to just about everyone I am certain.

They say ideas are all around us and the truth is, there are. First of all, carry a notebook or if you are financially affluent, get one of those hand held recorders for temporary storage so that when you get home, you can type the ideas out in noteform. If you have a notebook, do not rely on your handwriting after a period of time, especially if it is your own version of Pitman or speedwriting. It can let you horribly down so when you get the chance, type it out on the word processor.

Now for the storage part for future reference. Get a large ring binder, yes I mean large as you will be surprised how this will fill up. Divide it into twelve months of the year or seasons, even both if you wish. Make it appealing with clip and word art, after all you will want to use it at some point when your mind has gone into melt down. Insert your ideas in noteform into the appropriate month you are in.

Become a kleptomaniac in terms of post cards. Store them in a shoe or appropriate sized box if the cards are large, file them under nature, British and International scenes etc. notable photographed painted portraits, country houses if you visit natinal Trust properties. This can be an asset as an aide to memoir if you are trying to describe somewhere. Oh yes, keep your camera with you as well so you can take piccies of something that interests you and put it on your computer. You can also set up an ideas folder on your computer to refer to as well.

Also collect cuttings of something that draws your attention. If you have a leaning towards major or petty crime where writing is concerned, then cut it out or make a photocopy. Listen to the radio or television news as well. My current piece of work is just one example. I heard a few years ago about a police detective up in the northern part of Scotland, who is investigating the mysterious death of a woman. I then heard another piece a few days later about a man from around about the same area, who was killed outside his house.[oddly enough, an area I am fairly familiar with owing to the fact my father who was in the Royal Navy] I strung the two ideas together so hence that is what I am working on.

Writing is an exciting activity and potential means of earning a living, so don't spoil it by wringing your hands over writer's block. Collect and store your ideas and you will find that you will never run out and face that 'Monday morning' terror.

I'd like to have lived in the days when people gathered for genteel evenings that included card games, when people took turns to entertain the company by singing.One of my favourite scenes in Pride and Prejudice is where the over-eager Mary has to be reined in by Mr Bennett.


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I've been struggling recently to write stories for women's magazines. A lifetime spent reading nineteenth century novels hasn't helped.

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I knew what to do when the fire alarm sounded at the City Lit last night: scarper.

I've been in plenty of evacuations in 30 years of teaching, much of it during the IRA years in London. The worst place for 'prank' alarms was Richmond College in Twickenham, a vast site with a couple of thousand students. The most memorable include Debenhams in Oxford Street, Crystal Palace Swimming Pool and a hotel on the Costa del Sol in December down a smoke-filled stairwell. Nothing to do with the IRA, that one.


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Bouyed by one of those ‘story starters’ that we use now and then to push our pens to work I wrote this little bit of nonsense this morning. The prompt I wrote to was The house had stood empty for years and it came courtesy of the Flash Fiction group at the WriteWords community based in the United Kingdom. I was told by the missus the twist at the end was clever but the hints are there for the the astute reader. Enjoy.

Nesters
The house had stood empty for years when Minnifred and the love of her life...Read More Here


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Frayn sets his play in Bonn, where twelve middle-aged men in suits, stand or sit in an office which occasionally converts to a first class train carriage. They talk and occasionally declaim. One of the main characters is Willi Brandt, (Patrick Drury) Chancellor of West Germany, paving the way for the fall of the Berlin Wall. The other main is a Stasi spy reporting back to his controller in East Germany . The controller is onstage, which serves two purposes: he's much younger and has a sixties hair-cut, so that's some visual variety; it also allows the mole, Gunter Guillaume, (Ed Hughes) a mildly comic figure, to give him a live commentary on the action. The others have names like Horst and Herbert and Helmut but it's hard to know which is which.

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A bit of a round-up post today.

Fancy going to bed with a good e-book? You may remember that a couple of years ago I had a story in an anthology of erotic short stories, In Bed With... along with writers like Fay Weldon, Ali Smith and Stella Duffy. The conceit of the collection is that we're all writing under pseudonyms, and in Writing Sex and Ringing Tills I blogged about why so many writers find writing sex difficult, and why some of us therefore find it extra-interesting. Today's news is that it's just come out as an e-book. That means you can get your hands on it NOW, and read it on the bus without anyone knowing why you've got that dreamy look in your eye ... but it's also an interesting demonstration of one way in which e-books are changing the game.

Erotica is one of the biggest gainers from the e-book revolution, working hand in hand with the social media, as proved by a certain book which lists a good many shades of a colour between black and white. But what the launch of the e-book of In Bed With... also shows is how the e-book has the potential to find new customers for a book which has been out for a while. And this is one of several reasons that I refuse to regard the e-book as the end of the world as we know it; it could be the beginning of a new life for many books.

This week is Independent Booksellers Week, and you can follow what's going on with the hashtag #IBW12 on Twitter. Use it or lose it, as they say:

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I wonder how many writers take a step back and consider their expectations, every time they sit down to write. I've found a technique that really helped me, so I'd like to share it, as it might be of some use to other people out there. 

After several rejections and the feeling that I was pushing things uphill, I began thinking from the end, scene by scene, chapter by chapter. I found it to be a fast track to getting in the zone. When I applied it, I rewrote a 100,000 word novel (which had taken three years to write) in ten weeks. I used the same process to finding an agent and had an offer of representation four days after submitting the MS and now have the first of a trilogy out to publishers. Our expectations shape the way we approach things, but we often forget them when we get down to the detail. I've written the details in an article, for anyone who might find this useful:
http://www.freeyourib.com/?page_id=185


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In my grumpiest moments, I wonder why I bothered to spend four years of work and hair-tearing to get a PhD in Creative Writing, when I now spend so much time explaining comma splices and other minutiae to students, only to find them still doing it in the next assignment. Only, of course, comma splices and other conventions of punctuation are only minutiae in the way that molecules are minutiae: barely discernible, but without them the story couldn't exist. So I reassure the new, nervous writer that a text-book, testable knowledge of punctuation and grammar is not a requirement before you're allowed to do the imagining-on-paper that is writing a story. But I also try to explain why, actually, this stuff does matter, because it's about making sure your writing has the effect on the reader that you want it to.

We normally think in terms of having creative ideas, and putting technique at their service. But if you remember my post on how a subordinate adverbial clause of purpose might just help you to sing, you'll know that I believe that unpicking the grammar and puncutation can illuminate the different creative possibilities.

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This Friday I will be playing in Houghton for an hour or so at the Portage Lake District Library. The performance is part of their popular “Music on the Menu” programming. I will play from noon until 1:00. (At least that long!) It can be windy along the waterfront so I will be lugging the PA along for sound support. Included below is their press release for Friday. The PLDL has been VERY supportive of the community poetry readings and many other literature opportunites for our community. The building is beautiful and is well appointed with art. There is far more than books in libraries these days. If you haven’t...Read More Here...

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