Cometh the Time, Eventually Cometh the Man

Perhaps the greatest annoyance with both deliveries and tradespersons is having to stay in for a large chunk of the day because they only give a rough estimate, and the only time they arrive on the early side if one has tried to run an errand before the slot started. With the current lockdown meaning …

10 Reasons Why a Cup of Coffee is Better for You than Kafkaesque Torture

One of the most pervasive pieces of advice in articles on how to be "successful" is to put aside hobbies in favour of extra graft on your job or a side-hustle. However, I've noticed another similar suggestion cropping up that suggests "success" listicles might be more sinister than a simple misunderstanding that money is a …

‘Excel for Writers’ & ‘Excel for Self-Publishers’ by M.L. Humphrey

Humphrey provides clear and thorough instructions on using Excel to support a writing career without descending into tedious detail. With the first book aimed at authors looking to put their writing on a more structured footing and those seeking to be published by others, and the second aimed at authors seeking to publish their own …

Reviewing The 2017 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle

I've been sent a free copy of Kevin J Anderson's 2017 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle with a request that I share my honest opinion of a few of the titles. Apart from the guide to Vellum (I already have a good eformating program and don't have a Mac) they all seem worth a read. However, …

Some Nitty, Some Gritty

The Nitty Gritty Writing Podcast now has a third co-host, Edward Sullivan (who publishes under David Ulnar-Slew). And, in clear evidence of the universe being more than random, he joined on a week I couldn't make the broadcast: so you lucky mooks didn't have to miss out. https://youtu.be/N_ru8Kfoses Of course, I am now jealous that …

Porlocked Again

I have been porlocked every day this week, so I've decided to change today's post to one on the virtue of lions. Coleridge was interrupted while writing a poem by a brush seller. By the time he had got rid of the seller and returned to his page, the soaring words flowing through his head …

One Habit of People With One Perspective

As a self-employed author-publisher, I spend an amount of time researching improvements to my processes; and I receive - directly or to groups I'm part of - recommendations for articles and methods that have boosted the greatest entrepreneurs to uber-mega-greatness. And some of the advice I find is very useful. But some of it misses …

Fuzzy Thinking

This morning I found myself faced with two questions: am I the smartest one in the room? and do I want to be? I was reading a book yesterday in which someone was described as the smartest one in the room. As my wife was in another room at the time, I was struck with …

A Holiday From Economics

Yesterday's Independent contained an interesting, if brief, article about citizens deserving frequent long weekends. I am in favour of not only this step but going further: moving to a post-scarcity economy where we don't need to work to fund our free time at all. Of course, the use (or not) of new technologies to reduce …

10 Reasons you stop writing your book and why to ignore them

All of these are true of writing as more than a hobby, but they also apply to making any hobby more than a pastime.

Even ‘You’ve written yourself into a hole’: our experience changes constantly which changes both what we can do and what we see as worthy, so it might be surprising how infrequently our plans to progress need revision.

Suffolk Scribblings

There isn’t a writer alive that hasn’t stopped writing, whether as a planned break or simply because they got out of the habit. It’s happened to me in the past and I’m sure it will happen again in the future. When it does, we often come up with excuses as to justify why we’ve stopped writing, but the majority of the time that’s all they are, excuses. The trick is recognising them for the lies they are and dealing with them. Here are the ten most common reasons people stop writing and why you should ignore them.

1 Your writing isn’t very good

You’ve just read back what you’ve been slaving over for the past few weeks/months and are horrified at how poor it is, so much so you’re questioning whether you’re a writer at all. I’ll let you into a little secret, every writer does this. OK, there may be a couple…

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