2019: Context, Focus, and Distraction I’ve travelled my latest learning curve in what has been a strange year for me and for most Brits, I think. I won’t be sorry to see the back of it, although things can always get worse. What writer was ever an optimist? Politics worldwide have become increasingly dystopian. The […]
My 2018
The Helsinki Bus Station Theory If any writer’s roller-coaster emotional journey could be plotted on a graph, it would probably look like a sin wave, or like the knee-jerk stock-exchange pic I’ve attached to this post. Writer, do you ever feel like one of those air-filled man-balloons dancing crazily outside gas stations? Yeah, probably all […]
Peak Performance
I can’t believe it. We’re almost halfway through 2019. Feels like I haven’t done much these past few months, but I try to measure writing progress in more than output. Thinking time is also writing time, although a working writer needs it on the page. Deadlines help, but if you’re writing on spec you have […]
Format Matters
I Hear You, I See You To begin a discussion about why format matters in screenwriting, I’m going to start with an amazing story. In 1977, NASA launched two exploration vehicles into space, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were programmed to explore around Jupiter and the outer reaches of our solar system. Voyager 2 […]
Flat Squirrel Book
It’s out! FLAT SQUIRREL My new book for middle graders, and for grown-ups who never grew up. I had a lot of fun writing it, although there were the tough bits of nailing the story logic and making the prose readable. You’ll find it in the Troubador Bookshop and on Amazon dot com and dot […]
Focus or Die
Focus or die is a line from my new book, FLAT SQUIRREL, to be published on 28 June this year. It’s in the screenplay too, which I wrote just for fun, since animation studios like to write their own scripts and I’m not inside the magic circle. Yet. Blogging Indifference I don’t blog as much […]
How To Survive the NaNoWriMo Quicksand
NaNoWriMo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month. It’s a 30-day write-fest in which you write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. It happens every November. Breaking this down, you have to nail 1667 words a day, on average, for each day of the month. Weeks one and two are mostly great. […]
The Small Stuff
Full of Angst Don’t sweat it, unless you’re a writer, then the small stuff becomes the devil in the detail. I’ll explain later, first I want to talk about stress. Writers are plagued by doubt and angst. Find me one who isn’t. Writers’ insecurity is magnified by our inability to pinpoint exactly what we’re anxious […]
The Process Of Writing
Decisions, Decisions I have a bunch of difficult choices in front of me. Why? I’m starting a new screenplay and I have to get it out of my head and onto the page. The first problems to hit are to do with the process of writing. Do I know what I want to say? Pretty […]
Are You Finished?
Let’s talk about those masterpieces shoved in your virtual drawers. The unmentionables. Are you finished with them yet? Wouldn’t you much prefer to tell me about the new idea you’re starting, or tell me about your writer’s block? Maybe I shouldn’t encourage you. I have a rule that I won’t allow myself to start the […]