How To Survive the NaNoWriMo Quicksand

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....

Four Stars for Far Out

Big Al’s Books & Pals Top indie review site, Big Al’s Books & Pals, awarded four stars for Far Out. You can imagine how Saffron feels about that, probably the same as I do. Far Out is a YA fantasy about 17 year-old Saffron, whose ambition is to...
How to start writing fiction

How to start writing fiction

I’m pleased to publish this guest post by Shirley Williams, who previously contributed Thoughts From a Reader (link in text below). In this post, she discusses various approaches to writing fiction, as presented in the Future Learn course, Start Writing Fiction....
What is a theme?

What is a theme?

Q. What is a theme and must I have one? A. The theme is the moral discussion or proposition of your story, for example, “Love conquers all,” (Rome and Juliet), or “People get what they deserve,” (The Scottish Play). Not every writer chooses to...
What is a theme?

First novel

Q. I’m an unpublished author seeking representation. How long should my first novel be? A. You should keep it under 100,000 words. A longer novel is considered unwieldy and expensive to produce for an unestablished author. Within the limit, your novel will vary...