What differences does it make in your brain if you write with a pen or type on a keyboard? Lots of writers believe that their creative juices flow more freely when they take to handwriting. I happen to be one of them. But is there any evidence that this is so? I wanted to know, […]
A Labour of Love
Whoever it was who said writing a romance novel is easy needs to spend a week in my shoes. I am around 5000 words (two writing days) away from penning the final words in The Defiant One – the second book in my Perth Girls series. Its been a mission. I’ve had to dig deep, […]
How much research is too much research?
Amongst my novels in progress is my nearly-twenty-year-old manuscript called The Hidden Duchess. It’s set in the time leading up to the French Revolution (1788-1789) and follows the fortunes of a Duchess who is wrongly accused of murdering her husband, and who is forced into hiding amongst the peasant classes far away from her beloved Paris. […]
Post-Draft Plotting for the Plotter
Plotter or pantser? It’s a question we writers ask each other a lot – are you a plotter, that is, do you know the details and progression of your story before you write it? Are all your duckies in a row before you even write a single word? Or are you a pantser – writing by […]
Yay! It’s finished! Now off to the publisher, right? Not quite…
The other day, I finished writing the manuscript for Perth Girls – The Quiet One. It’s the first time I’ve actually finished a novel manuscript. There’s an incredibly strange bunch of feelings that goes along with finishing a manuscript. You’d think euphoria would be right there at the top. And for five glorious seconds, it […]