Fiction Writer
Whether you want inspiration for Christmas presents, or ideas for what to read to complete your GoodReads challenge, or you'd just like to laugh at my bad taste to cheer you up on a grey day, I thought this might be a good time to post a list of 50 of my favourite books.
I have come to the end of my year as the The Bridge/Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer. It has been amazing. I really feel that winning this prize has propelled my writing forward. First there was the happy of shock of finding that I had been chosen, that my work had been chosen, that it was … Continue reading The Bridge Awards Emerging Writer Prize
This short story was shortlisted for the 2016 Berlin Writing Prize, and thus included on the Reader Berlin online Showcase here. The theme for the competition was “A Summer Night”.
I let people think I’d just arrived. And once I’d done that, I had to stick with that story until Sunday.
This story appeared in Mslexia issue 72, Winter 2016/17, in a 'secret fantasy' themed showcase.
The idea is to write 50,000 words in November. That averages out at about 1,600 words per day. Of course, commercial novels are actually 80,000 to 100,000 words long and a first draft is not a finished novel, but it's still a really good challenge to set yourself, very satisfying to complete, and can be a useful way to kickstart your writing, or to build up a good chunk of first draft to start working on.
Only days after winning the Bridge Emerging Writer award, I got another encouraging email regarding the Northern Writers' Awards.
When I returned her call she told me, unbelievably, that I was the overall winner of the Emerging Writer award! I gasped and I gabbled and I tried to absorb what she was saying, but overall I was just overwhelmed with happiness and rendered largely incapable.
I’ve heard a lot about sugar being addictive, so I thought that the first week would be the hardest, and that denying myself would get gradually easier as I broke bad habits and got the sugar out of my system. What happened, though, was the exact opposite.
My short story, Curly Fries, is included in this month's The Honest Ulsterman, which is a magazine for which I have a lot of fondness.
