Finding creative focus during the Covid-19 lockdown has been tricky for many writers and creatives and I’m no exception. Like many of you, I’m working from home, following all the advice about social distancing and trying to stay motivated and sane in these scary times we’re currently living through. No news is good news ….
Tag: mrkelly2u
Book Review – The Righteous Spy by Merle Nygate
In preparation for an upcoming episode of The Joined Up Writing Podcast, an interview with author, Merle Nygate, I read Merle’s espionage novel, ‘The Righteous Spy’. I enjoyed it for a number of reasons and what better way to end the year than by sharing a positive review and suggesting another novel to add to…
How to know when an idea is ‘THE IDEA’
As writers and creatives, the problem is rarely ‘I have no ideas’. It’s usually quite the opposite and we get inundated with the damn things. So how do we know which one is ‘THE IDEA’, the one that has the legs, the depth and the originality to be worthy of our valuable time? It’s a…
3 Ways Short Stories Will Improve Your Novel
Short stories can help improve your writing and freshen things up when you’re bogged down in a novel. In my last post I talked about the need to ‘reset’ and ‘rewrite your attitude’ when things get tough during a longer project, and taking a break to write something short can be a great way to…
When Writing Gets You Down, REWRITE YOUR ATTITUDE
Today I’m talking about my recent struggle with self-doubt and what you should do when Writing gets you down. It’s been a while since we spoke, hasn’t it? Here we are sprinting toward the end of September and a quick check tells me that my last post was in December (an evergreen post that you…
Genre, Brand and Starting Out
This weekly series of posts follows my writing journey as I prepare to independently release by debut novel, Safe Hands – a Crime story about an aging safe cracker called out of retirement for the sake of his dying wife and a son that hates his guts. It’s set for release in June 2018 and…
Safe Hands Release Date Announced
It’s a big day for me today, in the life of what will be my debut novel – Safe Hands. The time for hiding behind procrastination and self-doubt has come and gone. I’m committing to a release date! The Novel I’ve talked quite a bit about the book but here’s the blurb for those of…
Novel Writing – Research: How much & when to do it …
Weekly posts on Novel Writing with updates on the progress of my debut crime novel, Safe Hands, about an ageing safe cracker forced out of retirement for the sake of his dying wife and a son that hates his guts. This week I’m talking about Research – how much to do and when to do…
Novel Writing – Back on Track (again)
This is one of my weekly updates on the progress of my debut crime novel, Safe Hands, about an ageing safe cracker forced out of retirement for the sake of his dying wife and a son that hates his guts. In last week’s post I laid out the reasons for my poor writing performance (lack…
Novel Writing – Fail to plan . . .
Last week I talked about the work I’ve begun on redrafting the beginning of my novel, ‘Safe Hands’ – focusing specifically on my opening chapter and prologue. This week, the ‘plan’ was to complete the structural work on the novel – by discarding the current end section and working out how and where to add…