My Writing Process Blog Tour

I’ve been asked to take part in the My Writing Process Blog Tour, by Caroline Davies*. This is a sort of chain letter for writers who blog. We’re each given the same four questions to answer. Do we all do it the same way? Almost certainly not. There are those who plan meticulously before getting

Mo’ better words

I saw this in Jolyon Connell’s editorial piece in The Week last week and it got my language weathervane spinning merrily: “In the FT Simon Kuper … argues that … prose is ‘becoming blessedly more like speech. Social media, blogs and emails have hugely improved the way we write.’” Fellow writers may be blenching slightly at this

The joys of the digital deluge

I read this interesting snippet in my April issue of Literary Review today, it’s extracted from John Sutherland’s review of Dear Mark Twain: Letters from His Readers, ed R Kent Rasmussen, University of California Press: “… the internet is revolutionising historical research methods, and this volume is a testament to the possibilities. Among the online

Indie books v traditional publishing: fight the flab

My previous post about the quality of Indie books has reminded me of something. Some time ago a friend of mine who – like me – likes Greece, their myths and fiction about these, lent me a novel about Helen of Troy. It was well copyedited of course. But at 540 pages it … went

***** Indie Books

Leaving aside the quality of my own independently published book (I have soooo lost sight of whether it’s good, bad, indifferent or all of these) I find in my own indie reading that I have come across nothing, so far, to which I would give the accolade of 5 stars. If something I’ve read is

Technicalities

Anyone who’s read through the LBMC reviews I’ve posted on here to date will have noticed some variety in the formatting. Trust me – they left Word formatted identically. But somehow they’ve arrived here as twisted and deformed versions of their lovely selves. The principal bugbear is the disappearance of double spacing between paragraphs. I

Edinburgh try-outs

Various chums are bravely heading off to do their Thing in Edinburgh this summer. Next week – 26 July – Fay Roberts is trying out her material at the Hackney Attic in London E8.  Check it out online. More about that when I’ve been. Last night was the Milton Keynes try-out gig of McNeil and

O Happy We …

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that we Baby Boomers (I count myself as a suck-a-thumb, tagger-on to this happy breed) are THE generation who ‘never had it so good’. We had a welfare state, we had university grants, there were jobs, you could live on the money you earned,

Free content

So many people now expect all content to be free. I’m constantly being asked to contribute time and content for nothing. What do the people seeking free content expect me to live on? But wait now – did I contribute to Wikipedia when they asked for a mere pittance for the information which I use

Indie writing scene?

Vanessa Gebbie and various literati (with yours truly holding a watching brief) have recently been discussing e-books and self-publishing generally on Facebook. Now that there is Kindle anyone can put a reasonably professional-looking produce in front of readers, so this is timely. Vanessa – rightly – raised the queston of quality. And whether, despite the ease of acquisition with