Category: On my Writing Journey
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Goal: Improving my Book Openings
New year, new retrospective on my strengths and weaknesses as a writer! In 2024, I made progress with plot, character arcs and incorporating themes into them. I learnt to dial up the environment and characters, and how to merge scenes so that they serve multiple purposes. I focussed on the climactic sequence and the resolution,…
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Writing in the Trenches
I got another rejection yesterday! That’s 3 for this project so far, so they’re trickling in steadily. In the meantime, I’m working on my next book. The scene outlines are almost finished, and I hope to start the zero-draft next week. Yet I am plagued – plagued, I say! – by worries that this one…
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Bound to Succeed Eventually
So that post from last year was a bit of a downer, huh! I was feeling very doom and gloom, dragging my feet from rewrites to edits and staring at the words with empty eyes… Nothing was going to get better, I was never going to be good enough, why bother chasing my dreams? It’s…
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Doomed to Fail Over and Over
Hello there! After finishing the first draft of my current book project (Code Name: No Footings) at the end of March, I took a break of a month in order to reset, work on fun projects and get the story out of my head. Then I picked up the draft at the start of May,…
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I finished the first draft!
Sorry, I skipped the February check-in since I was already so close to finishing the first draft. It seemed daft not to wait a couple of extra weeks to give this update instead! My goal was initially to finish the first draft of my current middle-grade novel by the end of March, but then I…
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Writings and doings: January
This is the first hybrid ‘Writings from write-ins’ and general monthly writing update! If you’re only here to see how my monthly goals are coming along, skip to the end! Writings from Write-ins Write-ins are an activity in which a group of writers create flash fiction or ramblings according to a series of random, timed…
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2024 Goals and Blog Plan
Hi! Just a quick one today! In my 2023 Writing Retrospective post, I listed some of the ongoing projects I was working on in the second half of last year. Splitting my focus between so many books meant I didn’t finish any of them. As we know, the only books you can edit, query and…
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How much choreography is too much?
In my recent post about unlearning fanfic-writing habits, I said that over-choreographing is the one I find most difficult to shake. Hopefully writing about over-choreographing will help me to do that. What do I mean by choreography? Choreography in books is not bad. In fact, it’s generally a good thing. This is where everything happens.…
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2023 Writing Retrospective
It’s no secret that I love a good ol’ retrospective. Both in a team and as a solo event, retros are a useful tool for framing the past iteration of a project/goal and working out what you need to do next. I’ve experimented with weird and wonderful retro formats in the past, but today I’m…
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Why don’t I write in my native tongue?
My first language is Welsh, and I don’t write in it. Apart from a near-constant quest to write a decent englyn, I haven’t written a piece of fiction in my native language since secondary school. I’ve barely thought about it. Why don’t I, though? That’s the question mam asked me a few months ago, making…
Non Hughes 