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"You stand and breathe in the moonlit air, slowly and steadily, until you no longer know what's breath and what's air; until you no longer feel where you end and the forest begins..."
Night of Demons & Saints
"There was once a scholar of literature who longed to be a poet. Reading poetry brought him great joy but attempting to compose it caused him great suffering. Still, it was what he wanted to do more than anything..."
Night of Demons & Saints
YouTube Tutorials
My 5 Top Tips to Beat Writer’s Block! And, ultimately, why I believe (like Madeline Miller) that the idea of writer’s block is just a matter of perception… With quotations from five famous writers, and examples from my own writing life, I discuss five ways you can keep your inspiration flowing!
Discover the five best ways to open your novel! Join me as I peruse my library of favourite books, along with examples from my own novels, to demonstrate the simple brilliance of the five W's: WHAT? WHAT NEXT? WHY? WHO? WHERE/WHEN? And learn how to craft your own opening with one or all of these...
In this video I demonstrate the importance of introducing the wants and needs (almost always different and often contradictory/conflicting) of your protagonist as soon as possible. Their want is external, their need internal. It can take some time, and self-reflection, to determine what they are and it can be helpful to discover your own first! I reference five films: Groundhog Day, About a Boy, Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Runaway Bridge & Dirty Dancing to highlight these points…
Struggling to finish your novel? Busy comparing yourself to other writers to find your own style? I discuss my journey to publication; waitressing for ten years while trying to finish a novel - but stuck in procrastination and perfectionism while comparing myself to all the writers I admired - before finally sitting down and writing novella in two weeks! After it was roundly rejected, I self-published it, then schlepped it around bookshops until it was finally accepted by a traditional publisher and soon translated into twenty-seven languages…
Inspired by the brilliant Dreyer’s English, I show why omitting certain words from your prose (and your emails and texts) will not only enhance your sentences, making them stronger and bolder but will make YOU stronger and bolder too…
What does your character have for breakfast? And what does it say about them? Demonstrating character through their relationship to food is an excellent way of showing who they are. We all have to eat but we all have different ways of eating and different foods we love and hate. What your characters eat and how they eat it reveals so many things: culture, body image, personal tastes... So, add as many food scenes into your novel as the plot and pacing will permit!
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