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5 points to consider when commissioning a professional critique

11/12/2017

Although I have suggested that the creative writing industry exists as much for the tutors’ benefit as the students’ (as is often the case with helping relationships), I’m not against writing courses, mentoring and professional critiques. I’ve drawn on all three in my own journey to becoming a published novelist, and have a new piece on The Literary Consultancy website about how separate critical readings from members of their panel of experienced writers and editors helped shape my recently published second novel, Underneath. But these appraisals don’t come cheap. If you’re thinking of commissioning one, here are a few questions to ask yourself first.

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A writer’s audit of desk time

21/7/2017

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While our creativity might be without bounds, our time available to deploy it is limited. With so many potential distractions, it’s inevitable that we might wonder whether we’re using that time efficiently. Too many days leaving my desk feeling tired but unsatisfied, I decided to monitor how I was apportioning my time. Read on to see how I did it, what I learnt and how you can help me decide what to do next.

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#Bookbirthday celebrations and beyond

2/8/2016

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I spent my book’s first birthday observing customer behaviour in a bookshop, and chatting to those who weren’t so adept at avoiding my gaze. One was a self-declared non-reader, hanging around while awaiting her appointment with a tattooist. Not my thing at all, but I was intrigued enough to ask to see her chosen design as well as to enquire whether the process was addictive, given that she had a couple of earlier tattoos on display.

I might have had in mind my own addiction to blog tours, given the five-week tour I embarked on last year when I launched my novel. I was slap in the middle of another, this one much more modest – in its fortnight’s duration, if not in ambition – that has now come to an end. My thanks to you if you’ve been following, or hosting; here’s my summary of how it went … and what’s still to come.

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For Whose Benefit? A Sideways Look at the Creative Writing Industry

3/1/2016

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Over half a century ago, the social scientist and psychoanalyst, Isabel Menzies Lyth was commissioned to carry out an investigation into why so many promising nursing students were dropping out of training. What she discovered makes edifying reading for anyone using, or employed within, the human services or, indeed, any organisation at all. Despite the best intentions of all the staff, the social systems that had evolved within the hospital were like a spanner in the works, functioning against the primary task of healing the sick. Many highly motivated students, despairing at the impossibility of delivering compassionate care, simply left. Yet this human wastage was built into a system that relied on a high volume of low-paid students to deliver patient care, without having sufficient posts for them to move on to on qualification. Although the work is radically different, I’ve wondered for some time whether there’s a similar redundancy built into the creative writing industry, encouraging the dreams of far more budding writers than there are slots in the publishers’ lists.

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Why read? The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood

25/10/2015

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Why do we read fiction and why do we need a literary critic to comment on what we read? Seduced by a review in the Guardian and beguiled by the title, despite feeling distinctly unqualified, I thought I’d give this short book, a blend of memoir and criticism, a go. I was looking for ideas on how to improve my own fiction writing and reviewing and, failing that, insights into why so many of us have a passion for books.

The latter was the subject of the first section and, for me, the most engaging. As a child, James Wood found in fiction, as I did, “an utterly free space, where anything might be thought, anything uttered” as a refuge from the restrictions of the religious culture of his home. Wood argues that, while in principle we have the freedom to think what we like, we’re afraid of that freedom: “we nervously step up to the edge of allowable thought, and then trigger the scrutiny of the censuring superego” (p11). Fiction lets us explore that otherness in a containing manner, the fictional characters whose minds we are privileged to inhabit, holding our hands along the way.

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“I love this book” and other generous terms of adulation

9/7/2015

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What can be more excruciating than contacting your favourite reviewers and writers in advance of publication to beg them, not only to read, but to like, a proof version your forthcoming novel, and declare so publicly for all the world to see? Well, quite a lot, as it happens, but please indulge a first-time novelist’s egocentrism, if you can, for the duration of this post!

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Share your views on the annethology Q&A's with debut novelists

4/10/2013

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The annethology author interview menu grows apace and I'd love to know what you think of it so far. What's your take on the novels I've selected to unpick with their creators? Am I asking the right questions? Are you satisfied with the answers? What are your favourite quotes? How can I make the Q&A process even better? Please take the time to share your thoughts below. You might also like to take another look at the posts generated by my reflections on the similarities and differences between the novels and the things their authors have had to say about them.

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No comment!

7/7/2013

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In my early days of blogging, I took the 0 Comments by-line at the top of so many posts as an indictment my writing skills. I needed more than the spikes on the website stats chart to convince me I had any readers at all. Six months on I'm happy for you to use the site in any way you like as long as it's legal and decent, but still a little puzzled that so few of you seem to want to leave your mark. Are you all fans of detective fiction, donning kid gloves to come visiting, or has that great poet Leonard Cohen convinced you that true love leaves no traces? That's all well and good, but I can't help wondering if you might enjoy the blog more if it were interactive.
A few words for the hesitant. The system asks for your email address: this is standard practice, presumably to deter trolls, and is never published or used to plague you with junk mail, so please don't let that put you off commenting. For those more familiar with fancier systems that let you leave a thumbnail photo along with your comment, I'm sorry weebly is a bit Amish in that regard, but you could always keep it sparkly by linking to your gratavar if you have one. Sometimes it looks as if you can't post a comment after I've done so, but trust the technology, you can. And however elderly the post, or seemingly mundane your views, I'd be pleased to hear from you.
Overloading me with comments in response to a post on the shortage of the same would be a neat test of the popular misuse of the word irony, don't you think? I welcome your feedback, or lack of it.

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Is this thing switched on?

10/1/2013

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Happy New Year!

While many people are already shedding over-optimistic New Year resolutions, I'm still writing cheques for January 2012 so I hope I can be excused for kicking off my blog with a review of the last writing year.

It's been a good one for networking, getting my short stories out into the world and progressing my novels.

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