More than Writers

  There are a huge number of online writing courses and many of them are a scandalous amount of money! I sometimes watch the initial free webinar to glean what wisdom I can but without recommendations, I’m never really sure if a course will make me a better writer, or if I am just being ripped off. So let me help you decide if this one is worth your pennies. Last year, I signed up to the ‘Writing Children's Picture Books' with Julia Donaldson, hosted by BBC Maestro who run a number of celebrity fronted courses in a variety of practical topics from acting to wine tasting! Several of their courses are writing-based including Song writing, Writing for Children, Writing for Young Adults, Writing Drama for Television, Storytelling etc. Each one has a celebrity leading us through the topic in a series of short, 5 to 15 minute online videos. I decided that the price was affordable (and actually, if you sign up without buying a course, they’ll keep emailing you with offers! There’...

  Bedraggled Dishevelled, disordered, untidy, unkempt, troubled, disarranged – that is what Google’s dictionary offers for my title word. Looking at my sunflowers perhaps just plain ‘droopy’ says it all!   And it’s not just the sunflowers. That’s how I have been feeling lately. I don’t want to complain. I love the English summer. Basking in the sunlight with my favourite book or perhaps the writing pen, was my winter vision for this summer. But oh, the heat! Disturbing, exhausting, tiresome. My summer break has been extended. I’ve given myself time off from writing and the accompanying social media paraphernalia. YouTube can wait, as can Instagram, FB, and Tik-Tok. I was exhausting myself trying to keep up. FOMO. Then I injured my back. It was a blessing in disguise. I’ve had to slow down and simplify. Slow down because any activity caused me great pain. I no longer had to feel guilty if I just sat down and read my book. The NHS website didn’t help as it advocated moveme...

On the blog in June, I wrote about feedback being a gift to us, if only we can suspend our egos enough to receive it. Since then, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to put the skill of receiving feedback into action and it isn’t always the easiest or most comfortable of things. Some kinds of feedback leave me feeling satisfied, happy – that I’ve carried out a job and done it well or that I have useful ideas to take my work to the next level. Other kinds feel a bit empty or knock my confidence, if I’m feeling fragile. It got me thinking about the types of feedback we might receive, what their impact can be on us and why. Below, I have compiled what I consider to be some useful dos and don’ts for giving feedback: let me know whether you agree and if there are any you would add, from your experience as both giver and recipient. 1. Don’t over-rely on emojis Don’t get me wrong, a well-chosen emoji has its place (who doesn’t love everything a facepalm emoji can convey in so little space?!...

The grief of losing the love of your life, or in this case mine, is probably not something you want to contemplate at the moment, so I'll talk about my daughter's chickens instead. I'm looking after them while she and her family are on holiday. Mike, Helen's husband, set up the coop and its run in our garden, my garden, while my granddaughter and I looked at some family photographs taken soon after the war. There I was, aged four, beating off a small flock of hens who didn't know the first thing about sharing or taking turns, as I offered them handfuls of grain. Not a pleasant memory. A day later my daughter arrived and installed Margo (the posh one) Mavis, the small brown one, and Dolly, the naughty one. Danny my grandson, did some kind of foot-twirling with a football, before we ate Magnums and sweltered in the heat. The chickens and I have now been together for six days, and what a lot I have learnt in that time, not only about the persuasive powers of a dish of ...

  Bedraggled Dishevelled, disordered, untidy, unkempt, troubled, disarranged – that is what Google’s dictionary offers for my title word. Looking at my sunflowers perhaps just plain ‘droopy’ says it all!   And it’s not just the sunflowers. That’s how I have been feeling lately. I don’t want to complain. I love the English summer. Basking in the sunlight with my favourite book or perhaps the writing pen, was my winter vision for this summer. But oh, the heat! Disturbing, exhausting, tiresome. My summer break has been extended. I’ve given myself time off from writing and the accompanying social media paraphernalia. YouTube can wait, as can Instagram, FB, and Tik-Tok. I was exhausting myself trying to keep up. FOMO. Then I injured my back. It was a blessing in disguise. I’ve had to slow down and simplify. Slow down because any activity caused me great pain. I no longer had to feel guilty if I just sat down and read my book. The NHS website didn’t help as it advocated moveme...

Me right now :D What do you do when you're a writer and suddenly your hands don't work very well and your brain is muddied with a whole load of fog? As writers we are used to relying on our own strengths, both physically and mentally. But sometimes, those strengths are lost and we plunge into weakness and suddenly we have to find new ways of coping within that. About six weeks ago I caught Covid on holiday. My doctor has now told me I have 'long Covid' or 'post Covid' which could last days, weeks, or months (or longer.) The ravages it's taken on me has completely flattened me and frightened me too. After a long time shielding I'd finally felt less worried, but unfortunately it knocked me sideways. The hardest thing so far (after the two weeks of misery in bed) has been this sheer weakness and difficulty thinking, like my cognitive processes have slowed down - brain fog does really sum it up. For this, please forgive me for a short and probably not too ar...

Several weeks ago, I had a great meeting with Amy Scott Robinson of Kevin Mayhew Publisher, to discuss my next book, now renamed ‘The Dangerous Dance of Emma JJ’. Over coffee and cake, we talked at length and wondered whether it could be two books, so I’ve been working away at trying that out and writing a new ending to book one.  But, Amy suggested that a particular thing should happen to my protagonist in the second proposed book.. This would be something earth-shatteringly awful. It is exactly what should happen in a sequel but it is so devastating that, although I agreed at the time, I wasn’t at all sure about it. I came away from that meeting excited, after all this could lead to a two-book contract, but also unaccountably sad. My fictional character is a looked-after child who has had an awful life. Dangerous Dance follows her as she tries to find out about her family, develops her love of dancing and explores who she really is and what she believes. There are threats to her ...