My Life as a Writer

Tomorrow will see the release on Kindle and in Paperback of The Poppy Garden, a project I've been working towards my whole life. It's not quite sunk in yet, from tomorrow my work is public and open to others to read and interpret how they may.   I hope people like it, I hope they enjoy it, most of all I hope it means something to someone. It's strange not having it to work on anymore, that story now at an end its like leaving a piece of you behind in order to move forward.  I have a choice, this was a genre I never intended to write in and soon enough I'll know whether it's a genre I can write, my choice will be what comes next. Its time to start a new story chapter by chapter while The Poppy Garden is out there being read and reviewed by all who are tempted to pick up a copy. But it's not really the end of that story - not the real story anyway. The Poppy Garden was never just one piece of work, one story to tell, it's more about the legacy it com...

It has been quite a while since I posted here, but to be honest what could I really tell you about the last few months in writing terms?  Not much really, it would be pretty boring to detail how I sat at my desk, or on my laptop and tapped out 26 letters in particular order to create a story.  That's what you expect me to be doing since you know I'm writing a book. A writers life can be pretty lonely, mundane and repetitive.  The only interesting part to the readers of this blog would probably be more about what distracted me from writing not the actual process of typing out the images in my head. So anyway, I didn't bore you and I don't intent to now. The update right now, well The Poppy Garden is complete. It's been around three weeks since I wrote the last words. Finishing a book is a strange sensation, there's elation that you've done what you set out to do, you got all of those words, images, emotions down on piece of paper or in my case saved o...

I started creating stories long before I could write, dolls and teddy bears acted out scenes from my imagination.   I used to play with Star Wars Figures – I had a rather obsessed older brother, in fact he still is – so I guess as he never grew out of his Star Wars obsession, I never grew out of my obsession with storytelling.   My ability to tell stories and the ways in which I tell them has adapted over the years.   I was at a lecture given by the author Anne Cleeves recently, she said she realised at an early age her mind worked differently to others and that she’d come to realise that is what made her a writer.   That struck a chord with me, I’ve always been a little different and that applies to how I think to.   Anne Cleeves described it as having a running narrative in her mind, describing everything she saw as though transcribing a novel in her head.   For me it’s like a living a movie running in my head, I’m always a step away from real li...

How do you imagine a writer works? Is it all just about laying out the words on paper from the first to the last? Does a writer simply scribble away, with multiple crossings out until that final moment when the work is willing to be shared? Well the answer is yes, but with a caveat for independent self-publishing authors, when the words are done there is more work to do. I’m a planner, a list person; I have a to-do list almost every day! So it would make sense to me to multi task in order to reduce the time taken to publish once my work is done. Those other non-writing tasks I have to consider are;  Book Cover   Jacket Copy   Dedication   Editing  Proof reading   Layout /structure for publishing formats   Publishing retailers / Exclusivity   Marketing plan   Pricing  Giveaways / Competitions   Reviews  Right now, as I’m about half way through the first draft of ...

Once the Prologue was drafted it was time to get on to the main bulk of the story.     The first chapter flowed quite organically, even though there were sections which were extremely hard to write.  I read once that if you want a reader to cry while reading, the writer must be tearful in the writing.  I quite agree with this I feel if you want your readers to feel emotion you have to feel it as you write.   This sometimes is quite hard to achieve, you can often spend hours working and only really write 50 words, or you may write several pages then have to delete them.   It’s also hard sometimes to fit working on my book in to my day.   I want to write everyday, however, I have a day job, I have a dog to walk, a home to take care of and basically a life that I have to live as well. Sometimes juggling my day works really well other times it’s not so easy.   I generally have a plan to set aside two hours a day to write, ther...

The first part of the Poppy Garden story happens in the prologue, here it serves to introduce my two main characters and fix them in a relationship and setting.   It’s almost like a snap shot a moment in time, like looking through a window on someone’s life seeing how it ticks before the story really kicks in.   I don’t want to spend chapter after chapter building a back story before the main event occurs because the main event is why you reading the book, I don’t want readers to get bored waiting for the main event but I also want to create an understanding of how things are before to enable and create an understanding of the impact one event can have. I’ve become quite fond in my work of using flashbacks to illuminate the back story.   I’ve used this technique in my other books to explain a situation at a key point or to signpost something in the future or something in the past that will trigger connections for a reader.   My synopsis however is of...

So, right now you know I have an idea, an outline and I have two main characters. You might be interested to know what my plan for them is and how the process continues. Now it's time for me to tell you without hopefully giving too much away, this is going to be a fine balance to find!   Here we go: What would you do if the love of your life didn't know who you were? What if he forgot you? Forgot the first time you met, your first kiss, the day he proposed and the day you married?  What if six months after your perfect start it was all taken away in the blink of an eye? So this is where we start,  if you ever read any of my work you will find I spend a lot of time dealing with "What if" which are two very plain words but put them together and their impact can be volcanic.   In this story there are a lot of what if elements, it's like walking along a road and coming to a fork every mile or so with a choice that needs to be made a...