It feels like today is either the 45th of April or the 273rd of January. All I know is that it’s a Tuesday and Ireland is (still) in lockdown. I no longer know how many days we have been in lockdown. It’s enervating. I haven’t wanted to write lately, or I have but I haven’t […]
Look at me, turning up again like the bad penny I am. If you’ve ever had to listen to me meander on about writing (in a non-work, possibly NaNoWriMo capacity), you’ll be aware that I’ve been noodling around with a post-apocalyptic concept for a few years now. I keep tackling it from different angles, trying […]
I was meandering through my external hard drive earlier this week, and came upon a story I wrote for a magazine a friend’s boyfriend-at-the-time was setting up. There was only one issue published and this story was in it. I’ve always had a weird affection for this story, but I never bothered submitting it anywhere […]
So, when I posted some of this the other day, there were a couple of comments asking for more. Rather than add on much to what happens next (although there is a little bit more at the end), I decided to add in more from the start of the scene. It’s a pretty big chunk, […]
Yesterday, Lauren Beukes posted a link to a very interesting article at The Atlantic about writers and a tendency towards procrastination. Having worked in a team of writers, I can attest to the truth of the genus scrivenus tending to seek any possible distraction in place of putting word after word in a document. I’m […]
AbsoluteWrite Blog Chain February 2014 – Characters writing about Authors. I ain’t one bit happy about doin’ this. She told me I ain’t allowed to lie, and I can’t just draw a picture because the rules say it has to be words. She says they ain’t her rules, but this is her blog, right? I […]
Wandering around the web this afternoon, I seemed to trip over more links than usual that led to pages where someone was angry about something. Angry enough to vent their spleen at any and all passing eyeballs. This wasn’t just in comments sections, or on message boards either. There were entire blog posts, sometimes multiple […]
WARNING: EXTREME PRETENTIOUSNESS FOLLOWS Ain’t no pretty wordybabble round these parts. And this could be a problem. I should explain. From the moment I started writing the story I’m working on (working title, Cuss), it was in first person. The main character narrates the story, and her voice came through clearly and effortlessly. She has […]
In my early twenties I thought I was super-talented when it came to writing. I’d edited my school yearbook, written reviews and articles for the local newspaper, written plays and seen them staged in college. I’d written a novel, to see if I could, and had mothballed it without doing anything with it. I had […]
