Authors Electric

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love using a wide variety of writing prompts. They’re great for triggering further ideas. Sometimes they’re enough for me to picture a potential character. Sometimes the prompt gives me a theme. Sometimes, especially with opening line prompts, I have a way into a story and I then create the best character to meet the needs of that prompt. I’m unlikely to have a character with their head in a book taking part in an action story, for example. (It’s not impossible but it’s unlikely I’d do it).  Writing to prompts regularly has helped me get used to writing to prompts set by anyone else. This is useful for competitions with set themes. It’s also handy for responding to writing exercises set by workshop leaders at events such as The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. I set prompts for the monthly Zoom meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group . I join in with the prompts on the night and, ...

You'd think that after writing novels since 1986 a writer would know how to start a new book. And I was confident I did after taking a a sabbatical to work on some Latin translations.  I planned to spend the fall doing what I always do before I start a new novel: taking notes for several months before I started writing. But it felt different this time since I wanted to start a new series with a different cast. But my fears began to grow. Had I learned enough in all those years to take my work to higher ground? Was I too old? Did I lack the right commercial genes? When  I'd filled two Moleskine-style- notebooks with questions and notes toward an outline, though I'd planned to start writing after New Year's, the first week in December my pencil started bucking like a stallion at the gate. And then-- I froze. The Muse said 'Bye!' And for the life of me I couldn't think how to start the book. I knew the importance of the first five pages..then 10, 25, and 50. Bu...

Image Credit:  All images created in Book Brush using Pixabay pictures. I’ll put my hands up and say I love editing. I’ll also confess to being an editor.   So not unbiased here, are you, Allison?  Correct.  Am not sorry.     I learned a long, long time ago (and in a galaxy far, far away) nobody writes the perfect first draft. Shakespeare didn’t. Dickens didn’t. Austen didn’t. So the chances of yours truly writing a perfect first draft are zilch to the power of ten million squared, cross out the first number you thought of etc. That’s fine. Knowing this has made me feel better about editing. Feeling better has been the first step for me getting on with the business of editing and finding this is okay. It can be creative in its own right.     What I love about editing is when you sense your draft has been “sharpened”. As a flash fiction writer, I must make every word count, which has brought on my editing skills considerably. I now know what ...