S.P.Moss

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!

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]

I did a version of this… Rather than setting myself so many days up front, I just made a grid and marked off one square every time I wrote something. That way, there wasn’t so much pressure if I had to allow myself time off when life got busy or I needed a short break. I always wrote in the date so eventually I worked out that a break of any…[Read more]

oops – my bad! Sorry, Mad!!

Thank you, lovely people! Are you all trying to make me cry?!
@athelstone wish you’d been there too but we’ll certainly catch up another time and you’re not half bad at the encouragement yourself
@janette I laughed about the train once I was safely home! And thank you for not setting me off from the front row!
@johnt3 same fears as me but it was…[Read more]

Good to know Mashie’s Twittery thing’s working! (says she who has no idea how to Twitter). Good to have you on board, Alan.

Oh, brilliant to hear how York was for you, Skylark! And I’m echoing Daeds when he says that you deserve it all, because you are one of the most generous writers I know. (That’s one thing we had oodles of on the cloud – those who were willing to step in and offer help and support to other writers, and I’m glad to see the ethos had carried through…[Read more]

A great York festival (when I feared it might not be with all the changes at Jericho Towers) finished off with the best possible treat of seeing you assume your rightful place as keynote speaker, Mandy. The nerves didn’t show (much) xxx

@kazg Yes! I’ve found several aspects of the publishing industry quite daunting and such a relief to go to my agent and say ‘Help!’ and she’s brilliant every time!

All the colour disappeared from her world the day she moved in with him.

It’s minimalist, he told her. A blank canvas.

Surely, a blank canvas exists for the sole purpose of being filled, she wanted to say.

But didn’t, because it was all too new, too fresh, too…him. And more than anything else, she wanted him.

As time went on she still…[Read more]

I raised the same question earlier – Jules suggested putting it into the blogs like we used to, but do you mean the list of blogs we used to have on the side? It’d be lovely to have that, but I’d feel a bit funny about the Scribbles being quite so visible, because my blog certainly isn’t always about writing…

We’d also have to have some way of…[Read more]

Thanks, Daeds. It’s been an interesting exercise.