This blog started as a joke after a friend subscribed to the newsletter advertised by this WordPress template. I’ve done my best to keep going with it though, sharing my goals, lessons and fears, as well as favourite reads. Enjoy!
(Header images doodled by me. I am aware they’re pixelated, but at this point I’m going with it and pretending it’s intentional.)
(Almost) Every Day I Read
(Title appropriated from Hwang Bo-Reum’s essay collection Every Day I Read, which I’m currently wandering through!) How’s it almost the end of January already!! Last year was the year of falling back in love with reading, and we’re fast approaching the time when it’s no longer appropriate for me to talk about it. This time…
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,…
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…
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…
My Favourite Middle-grade Books of 2024
Hello! I meant to post a lot this year, but depression and anemia did a pincer movement and caught me out! So let’s look back at what I read in 2024! I read 8 middle-grade novels this year (so far), so let’s go through them! (No Spoilers.) Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Writings from write-ins 3: December
More writings from the weekly write-ins! As a refresher, a write-in is a fun event/activity meant to challenge your creativity by making you come up with and write ideas on the spot. The host gives random prompts, and the participants then try to write something related to that prompt within a very short amount of…
My Favourite Book of 2023
(TL;DR: it’s What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama, translated into English by Alison Watts.) I keep a spreadsheet of the books I finish reading every year, with each entry scored out of twenty in a system-less vibe-based way. I also take extensive notes on things like plot, characterisation and…
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.…
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…
Writings from Write-ins 2: November
Here are some more little stories, this time from the November weekly Write-in sessions. As a reminder, in write-ins the host gives random prompts and timers (between 3 and 10 minutes in our case), and participants write whatever they can think of to match the prompt in that time. I like to write a story…
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…
Unlearning Fanfiction Crutches and Habits
Before I get into this post about bad habits I’ve been unlearning from my fanfic-writing days, a note to say: I love fanfiction. Totting up the ones with the biggest word-counts that I remember off the top of my head, I’ve written over a million words of fanfic, and read over fifteen million. This is…
Making the Most of Beta Readers
Some of the most common questions asked in writing groups and reddit subs involve beta readers: how to find them; how to know if they’re any good; what to do when you don’t agree with the feedback; dealing with rude feedback or radio silence. A year ago I was one of those people asking questions.…
Writings from a Write-In
Working on my novels, I don’t usually write anything short-form enough to share on a blog/newsletter like this, but I started taking part in a weekly virtual write-in recently and might as well share some snippets. If you’ve not been to a Write-In before, it goes like this: the host gives prompts, along with a…
How to support your creative friends
Through my life, while writing book manuscripts, poetry and fan-fiction, I’ve found myself asking the same question time and time again: where am I going to get beta readers for this one? How am I going to convince friends or strangers to help and support me? Maybe I should join a critique group, I’d think,…
Three Sentences from Black Narcissus
I thoroughly enjoyed poring through The Mabinogion in search of lovely sentences, so I’ve decided to do the same with a more recent favourite of mine: Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel, Black Narcissus. Honestly, skimming through it now, I don’t know how one could choose just three sentences from this book. It’s artfully written. Every sentence…
Three More Sentences from The Mabinogion
I could do this all year. I almost certainly will not. Last week I gave you three of my favourite sentences from The Mabinogion. Today I bestow upon you the ones I find funniest, once again from Lady Charlotte Guest’s translation. And thenceforth they made strong the friendship that was between them, and each sent…
Three Sentences from The Mabinogion
The Mabinogion hold a very dear place in my heart, and have for most of my life, but I’ll be the first to say they’re not the world’s most accessible tales. I’d loved the stories and characters for over a decade before I actually read a classical version from start to end. There are some…
Year 1 in the querying trenches
(Hello Evie, hope you and Maisie are doing great. And your bf too. I have not memorised his name. If he wants people to remember his name, he should probably try being a dog.) I sent my first ever book query to a literary agent on the 27th of April this year, nauseous with excitement…
Non Hughes 