John S Alty

It was great to be there, Skylark, and hear you tell your story. So inspiring. I bought Home at the end and you signed it for me. Just the perfect memory of York 2018. It was my first Festival of Writing, hoping for many more.

I’m pretty sure I do this anyway, probably 100++ if I’m honest. I see it as essential as I’m in the process of fine-polishing, and we all know a MS has to be as good as possible before submitting to agents. And frankly, if I should miss a day, I would feel guilty.
Today, I’ve had raging toothache, so I worked on my synopsis.
Make every day count.

Yes, well, exactly. There’s only seven plots in fiction, I seem to recall being told, and as you say, it’s all down to individual writing. So I wouldn’t worry too much.

Stella

It was Frank Carson I think!

Great blog, Skylark, and it’s so good to have seen your journey through the cloud and onto that stage (though I wasn’t there this year, you know what I mean). Long may it all continue! 🙂 Laughed at the train incident though. I did something similar when I was about 18 or so and had a few shandies. Difference was this was an older train where the…[Read more]

Thanks for posting this, Skylark. I, too, was very sorry to miss your speech, but glad to hear about it and glad it all went well. You continue to be an inspiration to others of us who are taking a LONG time!

It’s very visual, which I like. I also like your almost-informal style of writing, which should work for your target readership, which I’m assuming is younger teens/children? I vastly preferred your original opening sentence, for what it’s worth, it scanned better for me and ended with the interesting word illuminiorb, which makes you want to…[Read more]

Good tip @John T I’ll try that.

I downloaded a voice recorder app for my mobile so that when I’m out and about finding inspiration on my country walks, I can record ideas that pop into my head and save the mp3 files into their own folder for future use.

One I picked up from Brian Keaney at York for intense, magical or transformational scenes (to be used sparingly). Write it as prose, rewrite it as poetry (however crappy) then rewrite it again as prose. The idea is to knock away your own familiar turns of phrase and find a different language. I’ve already tried it in the last couple of days, and…[Read more]