Terrie

Interesting perspective, Andrew. It seems to me that an awful lot of ‘failure’ is not necessarily a failure in the writing, but a failure to direct the writing to the best audience – whether it be a competition, a magazine, an anthology (in short story terms), or an agent, a publisher or competition etc in novel terms. And a lot of that is down to…[Read more]

Thanks all.

I have since discovered that he was on police bail, having already been arrested a couple of days earlier for public order offences and assaulting a police officer. So he may be incarcerated for now. The gym will know, I expect.

Philippa – I entirely agree that he was less likely to assault a female than a male, especially since I…[Read more]

It’s so heartening that people in the industry are taking this seriously now. And good though it is that there are paid-for courses available, for someone with the knowledge and experience to offer a checking and advice service free of charge is really brilliant.

Wondering if you might be up for ploughing through a 150k m/s loaded with PTSD etc?…

I’ve entered the Bath Novel Award four times and been longlisted twice, but no further than that. It’s a good award, and well worth entering – there’s an excellent community around it if you have the time to engage.
Alan, it is judged completely blind, so there’s no favouritism going on, but it’s unavoidable that the judges of any award will…[Read more]

As Ricky Nelson sang “You can’t please everybody so you gotta please yourself”

At least the ghostwriting of books like O’Sullivan’s thriller will be keeping an author somewhere in gainful employment – and probably earning much more than if they had published it under their own name. If I’d got that gig I’d call it success

It’s undeniably scary when stuff like that happens, and you have my sympathy. In situations like this, staff training is worth its weight in gold. The trouble is that nobody really knows what to do in this kind of scenario when they are suddenly confronted with it, and can often either freeze up or make things worse. In a previous life I worked…[Read more]

To be honest, Alan, that the very act of having written something complete enough to be able to send it out to comps is a success, so I’d start off by saying Congratulations on that massive success before worrying about the relatively small “failures” that followed.
That said… It’s far easier to say these things than do them/feel them. My…[Read more]

crossed with you, Alan. Is failure not trying, or not winning? I’d say the former. Because if you don’t try, you might never win. And even if you don’t win because you never enter a comp, you have still succeeded in writing something.

Not sure ‘enjoyment’ comes into my reason for writing – it’s something that can feel like a chore at times! And…[Read more]

I think with anything creative, there’s the element of personal preference. You know I arrange flowers – well, I see some designs and think ‘how the heck is that flower design?’. Especially when it’s something like a single flower head and a twig. Yet others I see are amazing feats of engineering and have flow and rhythm or colour, and I’m blown…[Read more]