Marcie Craig – Words Worth Writing

11 September 2023

Monday 11 September 2023: Anatomy of a messy desk

So this was the sight that greeted me when I went into the office this morning. I can’t stand an untidy desk and I can’t work at one. But this is how I left it on… Wednesday last week. Yes, Wednesday. And not a single item has moved. Why? Because I fell down a complete rabbit hole and stayed there...

writer at work

13 June 2022

Publication Day!

No publishing challenge post again today as I’ve been stupidly busy. One day – one day – I *will* manage my time and my workload a lot better. In the meantime… The short story Burn is out today! This story features Marcie Craig. All of the Marcie Craig full-length novels are named for albums or tracks released by Birmingham rock...

Publication

18 February 2021

Time management

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Tuesday afternoon was more ghostwriting. I was late getting started with it, due to date work and scheduling a couple of blog posts in advance. But by the time I got around to it, I’d run out of steam. I was left with a choice: Stare at a blank screen for the rest of...

writer at work

6 January 2021

A better day

I had a much better day yesterday. 10-project planner Once I’d written yesterday’s blog, which was 1,293 words before I even started anything else, I moved on to my 10-project planner to add in all the projects I’m working on first. These are: ghostwriting gig (63,000 words in total, 40,000 for January) The Beast Within (80,000 words in total, 10,000...

writer at work

2 November 2020

NaNoWriMo Prep: Day 5

My NaNoWriMo for 2020 starts today. I’m still having weekends off, and I’m still having some long weekends with the poet. This means that my daily target is just under 3,000 words. I’ll also be a (working) day behind on the blog. So today’s blog, for example, is where I was at by the end of the last working day....

writer at work

21 October 2020

Tier 3 lockdown

Here is another image from our walk around Hatfield Moor last week. I love that blue glow on the water. It makes it look like some kind of grotto, or as though something magical may emerge at any moment. As South Yorkshire enters tier 3 lockdown on Saturday, we may be taking a few more walks. We are allowed to...

writer at work

6 November 2019

I’ve been having a play …

… because, like, I’m really, really busy. Everybody else seems perfectly able to use Canva for promotional material, but I didn’t even know where to start. And when another one ended up on my newsfeed in Facebook, I just had to have a go. I found a step-by-step idiot guide and took it from there. And here are two I...

writer at work

17 June 2019

Diary of a pocket novel – and an oxymoron …

I’ve always wanted to write a pocket novel. There are two of our weekly magazines who publish pocket novels (PNs) – or apx. 39,000-word novellas – and as far as I know they both publish something like two PNs a month. The word-count requirement fluctuates, but they’re roughly 35,000 – 45,000 words long at one time or another, as far...

writer at work

24 May 2019

Diary of a Novel: special characters – part 2

Okay, at the start of this week I’d hit a brick wall and was struggling with whether or not to have a “supporter” character in my story. I’ve been playing around with this all week, shuffling between various scenarios. Could my supporter also be my opponent? Could Marcie’s mom be both cheer-girl and devil’s advocate? (Of course, the answer to...

Diary of a Novel

20 May 2019

Diary of a Novel: special characters – part 1

Now, when I say “special” I don’t mean “special” as such, I mean “other important characters not mentioned already”. According to Ron D Voigts and Writing the Killer Mystery, these “special” characters consist of the following: sidekick opponent supporter My “sidekick” was easy. That’s going to be Woody (aka Mark Palmer/Woodstock) from Night Crawler. He was easy to jot down things...

Diary of a Novel

12 April 2019

Diary of a Novel: the sleuth

I didn’t get very much work done on the novel at the weekend as we did shopping and gardening on Saturday, the poet had a gig Saturday night, and we were out all day Sunday, walking. Saying that, I did start work on the characters on Saturday morning, writing 85 words. This was mostly writing an alphabetic list and filling...

Diary of a Novel

2 April 2019

Diary of a Novel: 2 April 2019

Having abandoned – temporarily – Catch the Rainbow, yesterday I started work on The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. Marcie Craig is the main protagonist and amateur sleuth in my first novel Night Crawler. Whereas that novel was set in a pub where she works as a rock DJ, this story is set in a nightclub, where she works...

Diary of a Novel

25 March 2019

What took them so long?

*** AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION REQUESTED *** For the past four weeks there has been an inquest into the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974. Much of my book, Catch the Rainbow, was set against that period. Some of the plot hinged on speculation and suggestion behind the atrocity on my part. So far, quite a lot of what I speculated has emerged...

writer at work

8 November 2018

NaNoWriMo 2018 – day 8

So now I’m thinking, if I can do this in November for NaNoWriMo, why can’t I do it the rest of the year as well? My daily target is 2,000 words, which means I can also have 5 days off. My usual daily target is around 1,000 words per writing day. If I upped that to 2,000 words, and still...

NaNoWriMo

1 November 2018

NaNoWriMo 2018 begins

And so it begins again … I was a little late to the party this year. For the past few years I’ve been ready to go by the end of play on 31 October. This year, I finished most of the prep at around 1:30pm today. Eek! When I say prep, I mean my Scrivener binder – it’s currently mostly...

NaNoWriMo

25 October 2018

NaNoWriMo 2018 – decision made

With only a week to go I finally made a decision, and I’m hoping it’s the right one … bit of a gamble, but that’s how it goes. This year I’m being a NaNoReBel – again! Last year I chose to write a non-fiction book: A History of Cadbury (to be published on 30 November 2018). This year I’m going...

writer at work

23 October 2018

NaNoWriMo rules, OK

About a year ago … actually, exactly a year ago, I was preparing for NaNoWriMo 2017. I had a book contract under my belt for A History of Cadbury and I’d learnt how to use Scrivener. During NaNo I wrote that book and spent the following months (between other work) editing it, polishing it, submitting it, proofreading it and – finally...

Publication

3 September 2018

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within (Week 2) – planning work

We took last week off for the bank holiday. The last time we booked time off was a fortnight in June, when the heatwave was at its height. But we didn’t get to enjoy a single moment of it as we were moving house. So we decided to take last week off. And this time we were firm. We had...

Diary of a Novel

20 August 2018

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within (Week 1) – planning work

I didn’t have a lot of time in week 1, which I already knew about. I had two appointments in the midlands that took out two complete days, and I had editing work to do on the three days I was in the office. Saying that, I did manage to do some planning work in week 1. Monday The first...

Diary of a Novel

15 August 2018

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within

Here’s another new feature for Words Worth Writing, but one that has been well-received in the past, so it’s really being resurrected for the latest project. I’ve decided that my next project will be The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. When I hauled out my folders for this project last weekend, I was mortified to see I first started to...

Diary of a Novel

13 August 2018

Writing and editing and planning, oh my!

I only have a three-day week this week. This isn’t because of any actual holidays. It’s because I have two appointments in Solihull, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. And as it takes around 2 hours to get there and 2 hours to get back – on a good run – plus the time to get ready (me, the...

writer at work

5 April 2018

In a quandary

It was all going so well … With us “breaking up” for the Easter period and me submitting the history book late Thursday night, I was all set to crack on with the new cosy mystery. And I even registered with Camp NaNoWriMo … … and then we built a new office on Wednesday. It’s great. We both have loads...

writer at work

14 August 2017

Why I read books about writing

Lots of writers advise other writers to stop reading books on writing and just crack on with the writing. But I love to read books on writing. I love to see how other writers work and I like to find out new things to try. My husband has been a coarse fisherman for more than fifty years. He learned to...

52 books in 52 weeks