Sylvia

@philippaeast Lovely to see you too! Was Cynthia the one I was chatting to with you? I’m pleased to have inspired her 🙂

@alanr Ha! Thank you very much, kind sir 😀

@squidge Indeed we do!! 😀

Bit late to this but yes, I’ve done (am doing!) a version of this. It works best when I’m trying to finish something. I’ve got a chart with a chain of squares and the idea is to make the chain as long as possible without breaking it. There’s no daily word count to reach. As long as I write a sentence, I can colour in a square. It’s worked…[Read more]

Lovely to meet you, Anna. I hope you had a great festival! 😊😊
Thank you, Kaz!

😊😊😊

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]

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]

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!

So great to read this! CONGRATULATIONS! You definitely still need an agent regardless of interest from publishers – they do all the tricky stuff like negotiating contracts and mine has been so brilliant anytime I’ve asked her about the bits of publishing I’m not so sure about. Plus she’s helped me stand my ground a couple of times on things I…[Read more]

YES!!! So blooming proud of you :-* Can’t wait to get my hands on it xxx

Still smiling 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’m halfway through a blog post about the festival – but also still catching up on sleep!