Save the Cat Writes a Novel – 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

30 March 2023

Camp NaNo April 2023: Prep work 1

It was still morning when I arrived at my desk yesterday and the first thing I did was pick up the workbook I’d deliberately left there the night before and start to leaf through it. Then I got out my coloured pens and started to complete it in more detail. Read about what I was doing below. I started today’s...

writer at work

23 November 2021

I won an award

On Thursday evening I received a message via the contact form. It was from QueryLetter.com and it was to let me know that they’d given me an award. I receive a lot of spam via the contact form, so the first thing I did was go and check that this was a genuine organisation. It involved some searching, but the...

NaNoWriMo/writer at work

6 September 2019

Diary of a pocket novel – the end of Act 1

Thanks to my Monday afternoon writers’ group I’m being forced to work on the pocket novel. We’re supposed to bring something new to every session, either something we’re working on or something set to a theme. As I’m working on so many different projects, I decided to use this as an excuse to crack on with The Fool. It’s taking...

writer at work

17 July 2019

Wednesday 17 July 2019

It was so hot here yesterday I ended up stripping down to just a nightie and flip flops to sit and work in. That felt both refreshing and quite liberating. I’m not complaining. The last house was the coldest house in the world and cost us a fortune to heat. At least that’s one thing less to worry about here....

writer at work

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

15 February 2019

Getting out of the doldrums

I was feeling a tad overwhelmed this time last week when I posted about the various piles of work I had. But sorting them out and discussing it with the poet really helped. The first thing I did was finish the big proofreading job that was already in. That was completed yesterday and I nipped to the post office to...

writer at work

15 January 2019

52 books in 52 weeks: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

I set myself the goal of reading and reviewing 52 writing guides over the year. Here is book 44. Save the Cat! has been the last book on screenwriting that screenwriters will ever need since 2005, and then there was another, and another … until there were five books using this tried and tested method of writing, including … the...

52 books in 52 weeks