Good Friday, gentlepersons. I’m ending this working week with my top 5 excuses for not writing. Perversely, they include, well, work. But that’s not the point. Because I have so many writing projects I intended to have finished by now, and my success rate is only marginally better than that of an Irishman at a speed dating…
Flash Fiction Competition Update
Some news on the competition front! Remember the Book Title Generator/Flash Fiction contest? Which closed for entries last week? And which will enable one lucky entrant to end up with a lovely €/$50 Amazon voucher to spend through the computer of their choice? Well, I don’t have a winner yet. So don’t get excited. What I did get…
The Writer I Am, And The Writer I Want To Be (sort of)
This is how most people think writers write Lorna Sixsmith, writer of Would You Marry A Farmer? and blogger/chief over at Irish Farmerette, very kindly asked me to carry the baton on a blog tagging exercise where writers say a little something about how, why and what they write. As it turned out, I found it very unsatisfactory writing…
Book Covers Are Judging Me
Sometimes it feels like the publishing industry has us all boxed off into dastardly delineated categories. We are either readers of crime, science fiction, sports autobiographies, or bird-watching manuals, but never all four. Everything must be packaged according to its genre, and there are labelling rules. Chick-lit novels use loopy fonts, and have caricatures of shoes and dresses on…
Life, Books, and Everything
There was no blogging to be had last week, because there was nothing I could write about. Sometimes things happen in real life which make pretty much everything else pointless. It seems to me that writing, or indeed the making of any art, might be helpful for understanding the human condition, but only after you’ve already understood it. It’s no good at…
Flash Fiction / Book Title Generator Competition – REMINDER
A gentle reminder about this competition, which is closing on April 25th, but open for all entries now. Full details are here, but the rules couldn’t be simpler. Find your own personalised book title from any of the 3 title generators (Chick-Lit, Crime Thriller or Literary Fiction), and use that title for inspiration to write 500…
Does Writing Ruin Your Writing?
In a recent episode of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Hannah, the main character, quits a lucrative day job writing advertorials, because she’s convinced it will stifle or kill her creative writing abilities and prospects. Granted, this character is only 25 (and often mental). But many people do believe that writing in another style, kills their style. In…
On The Perils Of Having More Than One Writer Wandering Around Your Brain
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…
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…
Tara Sparling writes 