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Showing posts from April, 2016

Guest Post: Andrew Higgins - Lyrics and Creative Writing

... (how I learnt to collaborate)  Today's guest blogger is musician Andrew Higgins from ADHMusic : First up, I confess I'm new to blogging, so even the very form is intimidating me. What is a good blog...? I don't know, so apologies for the mental stream that follows, but I thought, just go with what pops up. Lets think about lyrics and creative writing I thought. I took a creative writing course last year. The intention was to learn tools, tips, techniques on how to 'unblock' ideas and help me write better lyrics (or perhaps I should just say lyrics, as sometimes I can't seem to put a single line together. My standard problem (as someone who tends to write the music first) is that I cook up a 'good' first verse, then it runs into the buffers. I have the rhythm and melody in my head and invariably I'm trying to 'fit' words to the music. Its like a 3D puzzle to me: the music, words, and tempo all have to scan in a way that is often

Mslexia: Chasing Dreams Finale

For the last few months I've had the good fortune to be a guest blogger for Mslexia . For those of you who, like me, subscribe to this fantastic magazine and devour the words of wisdom imparted by its talented writers you can imagine what a tremendous honour this has been. This week sees the publication of the final part of my series. It's charted my experiences from abysmal failure at a school talent contest, through years of stage fright and secret writing dreams, to the realisation that sometimes you just have to take a chance. Of course the reality is that it's much harder to do than it sounds. I haven't found the cure for my stage fright, but I have found the strength to battle through it and keep going. I haven't discovered the secret to getting published, and my novel isn't on the shelves of Waterstones and WHSmiths yet.  But it is sitting in an agents inbox patiently waiting to be read (and hopefully loved), which is a whole lot further than I

Thank you

I just wanted to say a huge  thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement after my blog last week. It's comforting to know I have such wonderful caring friends when I was feeling somewhat sorry for myself and my family. I'm delighted to say that whilst there are dark clouds still hanging ominously overhead, the biggest and scariest has thankfully now passed by. Dad got the all clear from the hospital. Yippee! I'm sure you can imagine how relieved we all are that he has managed to side step around that dreaded C word after having already battled it once. The other stuff, whilst still not great, somehow seems a little more manageable now in light of this fantastic news.

To The Friends Who Make You Smile

You may have noticed that my presence on my blog, and all things social media for that matter, has been a bit sporadic recently. Or possibly you haven't missed me at all, though surely not! Anyway, the reason for my absence has quite simply been reality. You know, that pesky thing that messes with all those great intentions and plans you had? Yep, that's the one. I'm used to it rudely interrupting my escape into my fictional world. Reality is like my alarm clock that goes off each week day morning to tell me to go to work. It's that infuriating reminder that there are other things to be done besides holding conversations with the voices in my head, (the ones that most people out grew in childhood). It needles me about the dusting, vacuuming and horrifyingly even the gardening. I ignore it as long as possible, until eventually I grudgingly comply, because I know that spending a little time in the real world is not only good for my sanity, or at least helping to m

Guest Post: Sophie Claire - Why Bother With Writing Courses

I’ve always enjoyed going to writing courses and that isn’t going to stop now I’m published. Surprised? A lot of people are, yet it was at a writing workshop that I came up with the opening scene of Her Forget-Me-Not Ex, and that’s just one example of how courses have really benefited me and my writing. Here are some others: They give you the chance to step back from your novel-in-progress and look at it in an analytical way, they make you think about overall structure and themes rather than the nitty gritty of individual scenes. I find that often in these circumstances, new plot ideas and insights about my characters come to me. Then there are the workshop exercises. When you’re given ten or twenty minutes in which to write something, you jump straight to it – there’s no time to stare out of the window and consider the possibilities. You’re given a task, and you simply put pen to paper and write! There’s something about the urgency of this which fires up my brain and opens