This week’s top tip is self-motivated and inspired. From September, I plan to begin writing a new novel. It’s an idea I’ve had for ages and finally feel ready to complete. I’m not one of those writers that just sits down and writes a beginning-to-end story. All three of my novels have started with scattered…
On Integrity in Publishing. A response. The majority of the people I’ve published over the years end up becoming friends. I guess this is because my boundaries for friendship mirror my boundaries for publishing. Micro publishing is unlike any other job because it is unpaid work that you exert for another towards a larger, shared…
“Art is not about art. Art is about life. And that sums it up.” – Louise Bourgeois I’m interested in documenting how other people create art, and the best way to do this is by recording the process as it takes shape alongside daily experiences. I feel the process offers a more authentic window to…
How to Find the Time to Finish Writing Your Book. Firstly, you need to rearrange your idea of time and, probably, writing. You do not need a dedicated and allotted time to write a book. Nice, you bet, but not necessary for completion. The idea that you need a particular place and a certain amount…
How to Format a Book of Poetry. I was recently asked this question and thought it might be helpful if I addressed it in my weekly blog. There isn’t a hard and fast rule to laying out a book of poetry, but there are a few considerations to consider. Formatting works like sentence structure in…
An Image for Keeping Faith in Your Creative Endeavour After an Interruption. It is difficult to return to creative work after any length of the interruption. I’ve left projects for ten hours, ten days, ten years, and upon each return, I have felt acute anxiety at having left my intentions unfinished. A fear that I’ve…
Why You Should You Cut Your First Chapter.
I know it’s daunting but trust me.
It takes a while to get into voice and tone. It’s like running before the endorphins hit. You have to write yourself and your characters into realization through crafting; that’s a multi-faced exchange. This takes training.
When to Cut a Character? Even if you have finished a draft!
Do I know Enough to Write this Book? (Internal Voice)
When a small press editor reads a book submission, they consider the impact the book might have on the world first, then how to reach as many people as possible with the message.
The obvious thing is to read, look, listen, but you already know that, so do you want to have some fun? Try leaving the house as a spy. I’m serious. Spying is not just listening and watching. It’s espionage, which places one in an entirely different frame of mind, where everything takes on the uncanny…
“An artist’s job is to articulate what might otherwise be incoherent.” Nancy Spero My love affair with the artist Nancy Spero is recent and on point with my psychological, therefore artistic, development. Recently, I’ve begun experimenting with imagery alongside text because I’ve found that increasingly the topics I want to circulate with my thoughts, hence…
Research and write in batches of time if you want to increase your writing diversity and become prolific. This means choose a weekly slot of time (I batch on a Wednesday 8am to lunch) and place multiple documents on the screen, an article, poem, manuscript, blog, script, whatever you’re working on, and shift between them…
Before You Edit Your First Draft… Read. Read. Read. I choose three books to study after completing the first draft. One that’s similar in genre and plot, another that’s similar in tone, and a third that is completely different, but linked by a particular subject. For instance, I read A Convergence of Birds by Jonathan Safran Foer after…
Today is International Women’s Day. It is also the day that children in the UK are able to go back into school after, roughly, a year in lockdown home-schooling. I don’t think it’s a wild stretch to say that women have felt the brunt of life in lockdown more than men. In fact, we’ve held…
Occasionally, I am asked why I run Backlash Press. It’s a fair question and, truth be told, one that I have wondered myself sometimes…
Publisher and writer
To engage in creativity is to extend yourself as an active witness of your own truth.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to see something is from a distance.
To speak, through words or image, is to activate. Very soon, you’ll go from working alone to belonging to a social movement. It’s powerful.
A Helpful 5 minutes.
Here are some things you should consider before you choose and why.
Are You Thinking of Submitting Your Manuscript to Backlash Press?
Darren C. Demaree Reads Unfinished Murder Ballads at Secret Studio!
Let your working day be about adjusting and readjusting your beam based on your understanding of what the story needs.
