On Saturday I attended a crime writing workshop in Nottingham. The course was called “Researching and Writing the Perfect Murder”, and it was being led by Stuart Gibbon and Stephen Booth. This is a workshop the two of them do together
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 5 …
… Okay, so it’s not really week 5, but it’s the 5th week I’ve been able to allocate to the non-fiction book. I’ve honestly been so busy in the weeks since my last update. This is what comes of living on a
Read moreUpdate: Busy few weeks
It’s been a whole month since my last post (before this morning’s 52 in 52, that is). I haven’t been lax, I’ve been very busy – as usual. First of all, there was a bank holiday weekend. Then there was
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 4 – day 2
Day 2 was actually on Wednesday when I went to the Cadbury archives again in Birmingham. What a day! I was late leaving in the first place and didn’t get away until 9:30am when I really wanted to be on
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 4 – day 1
My first day back on the non-fiction book was yesterday. First of all I reviewed the list of storage material I’d compiled the last time I visited the company archives two weeks ago. I’d made a list of all the
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 3 – day 2
I don’t know. You wait all week for a blog post, and then three come along at once … I didn’t get much done on the non-fiction book last week other than research. I’m very much at the research stage
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 3 – day 1
Week three is still very much about research for me at the moment. I’m on chapter 3 of the research material and I’ve searched for and chosen my usual five websites, and added those to my Scrivener file. The cards
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 2 – day 2
Wednesday was a very long and tiring but certainly worthwhile day. I set off at about 8:45am and got to my parents’ in good time to drop the dog off and then cross town for my appointment, which was 11:00
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 2 – day 1
I’ve not been taking additional days off. I’ve been doing normal work stuff. It still needs doing, even when I have a book to write. Today it was back to the grind with a new research week. This week I’m
Read moreNormal work continues
Friday disappeared into the ether and I think I may have faffed a little. I know I did some reading for the non-fiction book as well as some regular research reading (or what other people call “reading novels”). I think
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 1 – day 4
Yesterday’s work session began with me updating the raw text version of this Diary of …that will be coming out after it’s all over. I added yesterday morning’s post, and formatted it, and then I wrote ten exercises for “pre-work” and
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 1 – day 3
By Wednesday I started to get into the swing of things and was beginning to feel like a proper writer again, writing for a living and all that. I was later to my desk as I was later getting up,
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 1 – day 2
Tuesday was a much better, more productive day. I finished my chores thirty minutes earlier than usual, so was able to do some catch-up work from Monday. The first thing I did was come up with four dates in the
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 1 – day 1
The day didn’t get off to a great start. I’ve been fighting a cold and a “bit of a throat” for a couple of weeks and at the end of the week before last, I thought it had gone. However,
Read moreDiary of a non-fiction book: week 1 – the story so far
A few weeks ago (on or around 12 June in fact, so it was longer ago than I thought), I was editing a book for lovely-already-boss and one chapter in particular gave me the germ of an idea for a
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