Exeter Writers

When discussing the importance of deadlines, it is almost compulsory to quote Douglas Adams to justify not meeting them, so I won’t. Because I know it isn’t funny or clever to miss them.   But I do miss them.  Repeatedly. I don’t know what it is about deadlines, but they’ve always felt like a starting point rather than a place to end up. Come deadline day I must tidy up, finish everything else in the world that could possibly need to be done, and then, once I have a clear work space and a nice clean sheet of paper, sure enough, I can begin. Except, I can’t pretend to have even that level of respect for deadlines. As they pass, I experience a moment of silence. I think, ‘just this once, did I get away with it without anybody chastising me? Can I put it off to the weekend, or to a couple of nights next week?’ Before I know it, two weeks have gone by and a chasing email finally comes in asking whether I’ve had the chance to do anything. All very polite. All enough to prick my co...

Do you want to be traditionally published?  It can be a longer road than self-publishing, and you certainly have a great deal less control over the whole process.  My experience is far from typical, but some of the milestones are common to all the roads. Here’s – more or less – how it goes. Finding an agent   My novel won the Exeter Novel Prize , and that brought it to the attention of my agent, Broo Doherty of DHH Literary Agency , who eventually took it on.  Normally, you’d submit a synopsis, three chapters and a covering letter to various agents. They get thousands of submissions a year, so it's important to find out what each particular agent likes, and do your best to deliver it.  They will expect you to know which genre you’re writing in, your target audience, and how you plan to promote it. The actual writing is just the beginning… Once you have an agent, they will send it to various rounds of publishers, try to promote it at Book Fairs and so on. Typica...

To tag, or not to tag? That is the question. Dialogue is a tough nut to crack. Advice is often contradictory and complex to implement. There's been a firm rule circulating among writers in recent years that you should stick to simple dialogue tags, rather than rummaging through your thesaurus and using every tag under the sun. The reasoning in this rule goes back to Ernest Hemingway who was a great proponent of using language in its simplest form to convey a message. He was a master of minimalist writing and as a result his prose can deeply impact the reader. A good rule of thumb to follow is to 'use the simplest language and format possible'. Many of my writing companions and fellow bloggers said that using an assortment of tags is distracting, jarring, and unnecessary - an obscenely flagrant misuse of language when a simple, said, asked or replied would do. I'd like to challenge that thought today.  Although being understood is our main objective as writers, we must h...

People should obey the rules.  That seems obvious, doesn’t it?  Especially in the middle of a pandemic.  Who wants to be infected by someone with a severe case of: ‘Nobody’s going to tell  me  what to do?’  We all know the difference between a free spirit and selfishness. But what about us writers, who juggle creativity and simplicity, originality, and comprehensibility?  Are there any writing rules that you kicked against when you first picked up your literary pen?

Picture this scene: A gnarly hunchback in a dark cave (office).  Deformed hands poised over keyboard.  The glare from a computer screen casting light on the dark circles under their eyes and shadows in the hollows of their cheeks.  Where once a creative human full of hope and inspiration sat, a withered husk remains. His contorted expression fraught and wild with desperation. He's stuck. He's tormented by rejection. He's laboured over his novels. He's laboured over his blog posts. He’s poured his heart and soul into all the words he’s ever spilled forth.  Frantic for the world to hear his message. But nobody does.  Nobody cares about his posts. Or by extension his novels.  He receives few views, and even fewer likes. If you listen really hard. In a moment or so you’ll hear the subtle crack of his spirit breaking.