March 11th, 2009
Literary agents are the key to securing a viable publishing deal in these day of big business, global publishing. Today I submitted my book to three suitable London agents.
I am under no illusions about the nature of the climb ahead of me to get Persistent Spirit and the rest of the Table Rappers series published [...]
February 27th, 2009
This week saw an important step in Persistent Spirit’s development: three volunteers have offered their time to read, edit, and comment on the first ten chapters, and they currently have the text.
For the first time, eyes other than mine are looking over the words I have been poring over for well over a year. I [...]
February 20th, 2009
There are a multitude of texts covering self editing, but few extend their landing struts and come right down to earth with simple, practical techniques. Here is one very simple technique to give your writing more punch.
I regularly read about the danger of too frequent use of passive language in writing. We use passive language [...]
February 14th, 2009
If writing really is re-writing, then I’m thoroughly wrapped in writing right now!
In addition to completing the final chapters of Persistent Spirit, I am in the process of the third draft of the first ten chapters. These will be off to some enthusiastic friends for proofing.
The opportunity to submit to a publisher has motivated me [...]
February 5th, 2009
My personal 2008 was all about “less noise; more substance“. I just know that come January 1st this year, you roused from your alcoholic slumber with but one intent: find out what Neil’s 2009 is all about, right?
OK, perhaps not, but in the somewhat unlikely case you did, and have been gnawing on your knees [...]
February 3rd, 2009
As I have discussed fairly recently, plans for TableRappers invariably involve keeping a keen eye on the distant horizon. Last week came the idea for another book in the series.
Book one is in the early stages of its third draft. Well, to be more accurate, it’s second novel draft as the physical second draft was [...]
January 19th, 2009
I completed writing the latest Persistent Spirit audio chapter over the weekend and realised I had just created the starting points of five associated short stories in the space of a few paragraphs. There seems no end to the possibilities.
The TableRappers book series is planned to have short story collections spread amongst the full novels [...]
December 27th, 2008
Just over a year ago and with a very rough, hand written first draft, I decided to start writing and producing a regular audio book series of my first novel, Persistent Spirit. Now that I have struggled through a year of working this way, is it something I would repeat?
There are pros and cons to [...]
December 7th, 2008
A few months ago, when buried right in the middle of my novel writing, the thought of discovering a problem with the story large enough to consider rewriting perhaps 20,000 words and killing perhaps another 15,000 was horrific. Oh how attitudes change.
I’m 110,000 words complete in the second draft and a flaw has occurred to [...]
November 19th, 2008
Getting everything about your characters in place before the writing begins is the surest means of weaving your story and characters together throughout your book – erm… no.
I was thinking around a recent comment on my character arc post. Kev wrote:
Planning a story arc for a character can be difficult until you know the character [...]
