Life has been particularly hectic in the last few months, with having to balance the increased demands of a full time job, family, and time for writing. But I’m still as determined as ever to be published.

A lot has happened since my last post. I repackaged and send out another round of submissions for Soul Seer (aka Delve), out of which I had another request for the full which was subsequently rejected. Unfortunately I didn’t receive any feedback. It was almost like getting a standard rejection letter for an initial submission.

I also started a new wip, a young adult supernatural novel, which I’ve called To Breathe Again. It had a slow start but I decided to spend a few days over the Jubilee weekend at a writer’s retreat in Sheepwash, Devon, run by the lovely Deborah Dooley and her husband. I spent three blissful days at their lovely thatched cottage. For once I could write without interruption, either in my room at the desk that overlooked the village square, or in front of the open fire, whilst Debs fed me and fellow guests throughout. I came away from Sheepwash having written c.15,000 words. My only regret was that I could not stay longer, and do not know when I’ll have the chance to return.

And then this weekend, I attended the Winchester Writers Conference for the first time.

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Last night the poetry reading at Gallery 325 was a blast. (Maybe not a blast by Independence Day standards but, certainly by any standard one might apply to a poetry reading.) Many original works were read. The fact that the poems had been rewritten, mulled over, and sweated out was proven by the authors’ confidence and comfort levels. By and large, this wasn’t a ‘this is my latest rough draft’ type reading. It was enjoyable at many levels. It’s wonderful to ...Read More Here...

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Tonight (Friday) the Copper Country Community Poetry Reading will be held at Gallery 325 in Baraga. The reading is from 6-7pm and then there will be an art show opening from 7-9. The Copper Country Poets feature 10 or so readings per year at various locations throughout the Copper Country. They are free to the public. New poets are welcome and ...Read More Here...

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Shortly after a bunch of aspiring writers start wrangling over the rules (which aren't rules, but tools, of course) someone will say, "But real readers won't notice, so why should I worry?" This is particularly true if some professional feedback has indicated that something technical is awry: point-of-view, say, or showing-and-telling. One way of fending off such feedback is to say that it's missing the point: who cares, if it's a good read? And it's backed up by the first handful of books you grab off your shelf. If it was good enough for Woolf/Rowling/Dickens/wotsername-who-wrote-50-shades-of-grey then it's good enough for us.

To a degree it's true, of course. As Mark Lawson said a propos Michael Crichton, of the three aspects of fiction - narrative, ideas and prose - a weakness in one can be made up for by the other two's brilliance.

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It wasn't a brightly-lit play; most of the indoor scenes were gloomy rooms above a bookshop where Mary's family jostled for space. The rest weren't much different: a graveside; a stormy sea-crossing; a garret in Switzerland.

Anyway, there I was, thankful that I'd learned the technique of writing in the dark years ago on a BFI film course -you use a flip notebook and your left thumb as a guide to write your way down the page. All very well until the interval, when I discovered my pen had run out of ink about two pages into the play!


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This morning I am putting the finishing touches on five short fiction pieces that have been on the shelf for several weeks. (Rewrites were back in April.) When we get back from Chicago I will whisk them off with a click to various slush piles across the etherpit. Read more here...

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We went out to Twin Lakes on Saturday morning. We put the dock in, mowed the grass, cleaned up a pickup truck load of junk, and caught 50 bluegills. All this happened in 90+ degree temps with black flies. While it may sound rather dreadful, we enjoyed it and stayed until noon today. (Monday) I found time to play fiddle and concertina after dark both nights and even wrote a couple of poems. I guess most people...Read More Here...

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Aspiring writers often seem to agonise about the thing they call Description, as if it was a whole, separate kind of writing from the rest of the narrative. They know they should have some, but they can't seem to get it right: it's "floppy" as one such writer put it, or "slows things down" as one of my students said. And most of all, there's the looming fear of cliché, of off-the-peg words or settings, which every aspiring writer knows they should be trying to avoid, without actually knowing how to do so.

I think the problem has two faces. First, you need to exercise your decribing-muscles, and since fiction takes the bits and pieces of the world and spins them into a new form, you need to exercise both skills. Then you need to be clear about what you're trying to do in this project, because it's that clarity which will mean the right words come.

Taking bits and pieces is the first step in learning to avoid cliché, too, because it's about getting back to the actual experience of things: you and the thing and no one else's words - second-hand words - trying to express it.

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Two of my poems can be found here at Crack the Spine in Issue #27. (Pages 30-33) One of them, Final Appearance, was born from a WW Flash Poetry group challenge. The other is a racy bit I wrote on the train a couple of years ago and...Read More Here

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