Julie Cordiner

Raine, that’s fab news and so well deserved. Happy dancing for you!

Thank-you @thea. 🙂 Those comps produce some amazing stuff!

The Flower and the Bee (370 words)

We watch the open window, falling sunlight, a red flower and an amber bee. This is just the start. Remember that. This is Venus raining diamonds above the black horizon in a damson sky. You have begun to breath the sea and your skin is a map of evenings and the moon will always rise, remember that. When my hand…[Read more]

Editing
“Listen to me, Luigi; we’re always on the lookout for new stage plays and this one sounded interesting. Ingenious plot, bit of sex, incest, prostitution, a potential murder and ending up with a suicide.” He put down the cigar he had been waving like a conductor’s baton and folded his hands on his expansive belly. “What’s not to like?”
“…[Read more]

Or any kind of mental illness really. It’s always tenuous to believe individual behaviour can be reduced to a binary either/or thing. Especially other people’s behaviour. I guess the dictionary definition gives us an end result of a behaviour, but it tells us nothing about anything leading up to that end.

Yeah, ‘procrastination’ i think is simply needing a break from the direct *act* of writing to allow the mental part of it to catch up. It isn’t a flaw, or a failure. Given the number of successful, well established authors I see on Twitter telling themselves off for procrastinating, and yet still going on to publish successful books, I think we…[Read more]

Procrastination is nothing to do with commitment! It is everything to do with recognising that you need something completely different sometimes to get the authorly juices flowing again. I do it – it doesn’t mean I’m not committed at all.

I prefer to call it what it is and look at WHY I’m doing it. If it’s simply time-wasting, then I give myself…[Read more]

Aw fanks @jillybean! But then I couldn’t write horror if you held a gun to my head. Although actually, that might be somewhat inspiring! :-O Histfic either – I don’t think I have the memory capacity anymore *sighs*

Yeah @richardb I guess that’s it! It’s not a part of actual life-that-involves-real-people! That’s aside from the fact that it’s…[Read more]

Haha just seen your comment, Ath. 76,000 words so far on NaNo this year – I’m not quite as fast as you’re making out. (Also only 5 books a week maximum, usually)
I think it depends what you write as well. I find urban fantasy is very speedy. Fantasy and historical are a bit slower. Sci-fi is slower to write again. Horror seems to be somewhere in…[Read more]

@alanr that seems a doable timeline. I usually take about 6 months from starting to plan to end of first draft, although this one might be quicker thanks to NaNo. The six zillion edits are kind of scattered about in between other projects, beta readers etc, so I don’t really know how much actual time I spend on that. Plus it’s bloody endless anyway init?

That’s the one, John. 🙂 I exclude writing from that because, well, I’m not sure really. Because it doesn’t involve anyone’s needs but my own, and doesn’t involve money!?

RL = Real Life

Yay for plots resolving themselves @alanr! Always a good feeling. 🙂

HOw’re other NaNoers doing? I’m on 36k, struggling a bit with days being taken up with RL, but am hoping to make it early next week – before a family invasion!

Fever Dream by Samanta Scweblin is a novella too – although I don’t know the wordcount – and it got shortlisted for the Booker!! I wasn’t her debut in Spain, but I think it was her first translated book.

I think there is more scope for novellas with the smaller presses, but yeah, I think a new writer would find it nigh on impossible to get…[Read more]

That’s great, @alanr! Hope the flow keeps going. I am in the process of hauling myself over my 25k wall. Getting there, but oof.

Well done @elle. Such a sad little piece, and the bird image is perfect.