Category: writing

• July 10, 2018

  VLOG: Editing Short Stories

  Last week I spent a beautiful sunny Thursday editing one of my short stories. I’d gotten some great feedback from some writer friends and was ready to get stuck into the editing process. If you want to hear about how I write short stories to begin with, I have a video on that too. Happy…
• June 22, 2018

  4 questions to ask before you give up on a story

  I get it. Rejection is tough. Sometimes you start to wonder, is my story good enough? Is it good at all? Should I just give up and move on to the next thing. I’ve talked about rejection before. I’ve talked about how sometimes a rejection letter can be the most motivating thing you receive, I’ve…
• June 8, 2018

  Writing Exercise: The Buffy Effect

  I was watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently and it occurred to me that it would make an excellent writing exercise. Writing exercises are great to have in your back pocket for when you need an extra boost of inspiration. Exercises, whether you follow them exactly or not, get you thinking critically and…
• May 18, 2018

  Arranging Short Story Collections

  Hello Dreamers, I’ve been knocked out with the flu for the last week so forgive me if this post is a little incoherent. Last month I wrote and submitted my first short story collection and I wanted to tell you how I went about ordering my stories for submission. I’d expected it to be a…
• May 11, 2018

  How I wrote a crime story when I’m a fantasy writer

  When I won the Thuderbolt Prize for Crime Writing last year a lot of people started to think of me as a crime writer. If any of you have read my other published short stories you’ll know I’m much more of a speculative fiction writer. So, how did I come to write a crime story?…
• May 1, 2018

  Stop Being a Suffering Artist

  I want to talk about this idea of the suffering artist. I’ve been thinking, and this might sound harsh but, we bring it on ourselves. I think that part of us love the suffering, we love the idea of being a martyr for our art, we love being able to tell people how much we’ve…
• April 16, 2018

  I’m Writing a Short Story Collection!

  Hey Dreamers, I’ve been working on a short story collection lately and I really wanted to share with you a little of my process so far. It has been a major goal for me this year to gather all my short stories together into a cohesive collection for publication. I spent the first few months…
• March 28, 2018

  Making Money From Writing

  

  The age old question. Can anyone really make any money from writing? Whether it’s freelance or fiction plenty of people will tell you the answer is a resounding NO. Once when I was volunteering at a literary even I got chatting with a published author who was sitting on the panel. When I told her…
• March 1, 2018

  Are you a young writer? What it’s like getting old.

  Last month I turned 29. According to many grants, competitions, festivals and publications, that makes this my last, official year of being a young writer. Loosing this label is a little disheartening, panic-inducing some might say. It’s as if the clock hands have been suddenly wound forward. I know it’s not true. There’s no definitive…
• February 6, 2018

  Showing Hearts has been published!

  Two weeks ago Volume 18 of FIVE:2:ONE hit the stands with my name on the contents page. It was a long slog from acceptance (mid last year) to publication but it was worth it to see me name in an honest to goodness Amazon listing. The story, ‘Showing Hearts’ is about a pair of ex-lovers.…