The rules of publishing seem to dictate that you find a writing style, and stick to it. But not everyone wants to do this. And not everyone is capable of it. J.K. Rowling made headlines last year when she published crime fiction under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, having previously confounded the market with adult literary fiction…
Month: March 2014
5 Book Review Rules Which Could Make Writers Hate You Less
Book reviews are the cod liver oil of the writing world. Writers need them, and they can do an awful lot of good, but they can also leave an incredibly nasty taste in the mouth. You can’t switch on the Internet these days without seeing an author giving out about book reviews and how unfair/mean/reprehensible/soul-destroying they are. There…
Flash Fiction / Book Title Generator Competition
I’ve been doing a lot of wittering on about competitions and prizes lately. So I thought it was time this blog had one of its own. Remember the Book Title Generators? Well, how about a flash fiction competition where you write a 500 word story, inspired by your very own personalised book title? Choose your genre! If you’re…
The Crime Thriller Book Title Generator
Stuck for a title for that crime novel you’re working on? Or perhaps you have no intentions whatsoever of writing a book, but find yourself preoccupied almost hourly with schemes and plans for murder, mayhem and wildly inventive violence. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a title to go along with your plotting? (Oho! You…
Book Prizes? In The Olden Days, We Were Lucky To Get Slapped
Following on from Tuesday’s rant on writerly whinging, I now want to expand on prizes. Writers’ earnings have always been as cyclical as weather. Yet to hear the Literati today, you’d swear that art would die if it weren’t for bursaries and awards and prizes and residencies and general state-level support for the gargantuan brains of…
6 Reasons Why Writers Need To Stop Bloody Whining
There’s a lot of talk at the moment about earnings in the arts – or to be precise, the lack of them. This article from The Guardian is particularly whiny. It literally does depict an author in his garret. If it weren’t for electricity, you might imagine him setting his fingerless gloves on fire whilst trying…
Tara Sparling writes 