Tag: The Beast Within
The Beast Within
Because I didn’t get very much done on The Beast Within for NaNoWriMo in the end, I determined to add it to the planner for the last month of this…
Breathe a little
I’m starting to run out of pictures from our Hatfield Moor trip, so we’ll have to go out again and get some more. Fortunately, we have the last of our…
NaNoWriMo: Day 5
So it’s Day 5 for me for NaNoWriMo, despite it being 10 November. It isn’t going great at the moment, I will admit. This is because after I spent time…
NaNoWriMo: Day 1 of 17
Yesterday, then, was the start of my NaNoWriMo journey for 2020. I have around 17 days in which to write 50,000 words, and that gives me a daily target of…
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…
NaNoWriMo Prep: Days 2, 3 & 4
I’ve been working through the prep days for NaNoWriMo, trying to do everything in a certain order. Because I’ve decided on The Beast Within, much of the character work is already…
NaNoWriMo: And the winner is …
Today should have been NaNoWriMo Prep: Day 2. But after a long weekend, and with NaNoWriMo looming only this weekend, I had quite a lot of admin work to do. First…
NaNoWriMo Prep: Day 1
NaNoWriMo would not be the same without the participant badge and every year, in case you hadn’t noticed, I do like to display said badge. So, here it is. I…
I published a book
I didn’t get around to writing any of Catch the Rainbow yesterday, but I did sort some of the rest of the material into some sort of order. This one may…
And the winner is …
… Catch the Rainbow! I thought long and hard, I considered my current workload, and I decided that I don’t have the physical capacity at the moment to write something…
Decision time
The time has come (the walrus said) to make a decision. The picture above is the short list of works in progress I’m considering working on next. One of these…
I too should be writing …
I’m really getting the itch to be writing again. I keep booking it in, but then I keep running out of time. I have clients that all have deadlines. And…
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…
Wednesday 2 October 2019
October suddenly got busier late yesterday afternoon. But it’s okay, I was half-expecting it. It’s the new writing job I was in discussion about towards the end of last week….
Wednesday 25 September 2019
Over breakfast yesterday, I finished the NetGalley book I was reading and I wrote up today’s Pomodoros. That meant the first job at my desk was a 500-word blog post…
Diary of a Novel: plotting Acts I, II and III
I picked up the story bible for The Beast Within at the weekend and was mortified to see I’ve not done anything practical since the end of May. Saying that, I have been…
Tuesday 24 September 2019
I had a late start yesterday. I was quite tired, the poet had left early for a business trip, and I slept in. I got to my desk at around…
Monday 23 September 2019
Well, by the end of the week, I’d done a load of Pomodoros and got a lot of work done. Very productive indeed. I did start to wilt around mid-afternoon…
Wednesday 14 August 2019
We had a good session at the writers’ group on Monday. I’ll be writing a report just as soon as I can fit one in. Yesterday was a very busy…
Thursday 8 August 2019
Much of Tuesday was spent doing the client edit. I had promised it back by Tuesday, and he was going to get it back by Tuesday. I’d completed the hard…
Tuesday 6 August 2019
I’ve had a bit of a busy week where my own work has suffered – and some of my clients’ work. But I’m sorting a few things with my dad’s…
Thursday 25 July 2019
Yesterday’s to-do list was slightly adventurous … but I did it all. It doesn’t look a lot, but it is still time-consuming. I was late getting up, don’t forget, due…
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….
Busy writing, editing, proofreading …
My own work has become quite lax of late, with me either feeling very sorry for myself (tooth extraction) or concentrating on work for other people once again. (And I…
Goldthorpe Writers: “death at the pit-head”
I didn’t go to the meeting last Monday because I already had a dental appointment, and one we’d been waiting for for a long time. I had an email from…
Diary of a Novel: plotting the murder
I haven’t been completely idle since 10 June when I last updated the novel-writing diary. Aside from completing three large editing projects for a client, I’ve also started work on…
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…
Diary of a Novel: advance character work done
Over the past two weeks, including the weekend, I’ve been quite busy doing a client edit that turned into a major rewrite. Writing uses up most of my creative energy….
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…
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”…








