How to be a better writer. A couple of suggestions by April Taylor

By definition, all writers are creative. If they were not, there would be no impetus to pick up pen and paper or sit at the keyboard. It is also true that no writer, however talented, comes out of the blocks with a piece of writing that is perfect and polished.

Writing, as all writers will tell you, is a solitary profession and this does not help the creative writer develop that subjective self-criticism we need in order to progress along the road to, perhaps not success, but certainly, to better writing, more in-depth writing, writing that pays attention to character motivations and conflicts and does not, as I certainly did when I began, force the characters to do things they would never dream of doing in the name of plot!

There are many resources to help the solitary writer, online courses, social media groups and the like. However, two things I believe to be essential to the development of creativity into solid, "good" writing are a constructive and supportive local writing group and by that I mean one that has experienced authors in it who do not pull their punches, but are never cruel and, once a year, a week at a writing school.

I will be honest and say that I would never have become a published writer - both traditionally and self-published - had it not been for Hornsea Writers. And as for a writing school experience, I suggest you pop over to my blog to read more. www.apriltaylorauthor.com/blog

For more information about April Taylor, you can find her here:

www.apriltaylorauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/britwriterapriltaylor?ref=bookmarks
https://twitter.com/authAprilTaylor

Research - Making the Most of What Comes Your Way

If the ubiquitous question asked of writers is where do you get your ideas from? close on its heels must be variations on how do you get to know this stuff? Yet mention Research is often to watch eyes glaze over. Non-writers seem to think that some sort of academic degree is a prerequirement, and with it hours spent poring over dusty tomes. 

Most basic research - the stuff that prompts our inquisitive gene to spend hours in libraries or on the internet - passes by our eyes and ears, and often our noses, every day. The trick is to notice it. Being relaxed and outside the daily routine helps, as Linda Acaster has been noting on her blog.

She's just returned from a holiday in the fjords of Norway, and kicks off a short series of posts based on her experiences seen through a writer's eyes. The first is about Landscapes. 

Still to come are posts on the architecture of the Hopperstad Stave Church outside Vik, Bergen's Museum of the Hanseatic League, and the rather cryptic Viking Ships Not From Norway.

Serendipitous Research

For novelists, research comes in all shapes and sizes. Linda Acaster shuffles hers into three

categories: general, background, and pertinent.

But there is also a fourth, serendipitous, which often equates to being in the right place at the right time with the right questions.

Guess what she found behind this facade? Check out her current blogpost and all will be revealed.

The Latest From Stuart Aken

On his website, Stuart Aken is today announcing the release of the print version of his latest book.

M.E. and me: Chronic Fatigue; My Recovery After 10 Years is a personal memoir relating the effects of the condition on his life and those of the people around him. It is also a guide for those suffering with the ailment or caring for a sufferer. Colleagues and friends of ME/CFS victims will also find information and guidance here.

The book is also available in digital form and you can discover more by visiting his website at  http://stuartaken.net/

Related articles

• My ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia Recovery Story - ProHealth

"For King & Country" - New Cover

Simon & Schuster, publisher to Annie Wilkinson's Wilde family saga series, has re-issued For King and Country with a new cover.

Set in August 1918, Sally Wilde is working in Newcastle City Hospital nursing officers injured in France. Her heart goes out to a young Australian Lieutenant, Kit Maxfield, suffering devastating facial injuries, but as she coaxes him through his ordeal she finds his reticence isn't just due to his disfiguring injuries. To speak the truth will condemn him. Not to will condemn her.

Now out on Kindle as well as paperback.

Beta Readers in Action

Hornsea Writers exists as a support group for professional authors and its main function during weekly meetings is to act as a group of Beta listeners. Members read aloud work-in-progress, usually a chapter or so, and constructive criticism – colloquially referred to as shredding – is offered. And yes, we do go into the minutiae of how a sentence is constructed, and no, trite responses such as that’s nice, never cross our lips. Visitors have been known to visibly quail.

While beta-reading on the hoof works well, a typescript also needs to be beta-read as a single entity. Usually a completed work comes around individually, but planets have aligned and at Hornsea Writers it is currently Beta-Reading Month.

Stuart Aken kicked it off with his health memoir M.E. and me  – check his blog via the link for full details. Fast on its heels Penny Grubb offered up a crime novel, April Taylor a crime novella, and Madeleine McDonald a historical novel. Never has MSWord’s ‘comments’ facility seen so much action.

However, we are not our only beta readers. Most members have outside contacts who bring their own skills to a text. Collating the various comments is where the true polishing of a work lies.

Why it is important to remember.

Be that a war 70 years ago or further back.

19^th May marked the 479^th anniversary of the execution of Anne Boleyn. On that day in 1536, courageous and proud to the last, she stood before her enemies on the scaffold on Tower Green, pledged her love for Henry VIII and commended her soul to God.

As writers of fiction, our constant, and probably favourite, game is “what-if?” What if Anne had not lost the two boys she miscarried? What-if Henry had continued to love her? What if she had outlived him?

These were the questions I played with when writing The Tudor Enigma series. I also added a dash of magic to the mix because Anne had frequently been accused of being a witch. What-if she were? But I didn’t want her to be a wicked witch, because, in truth, she was not a wicked person, but one who was deeply religious and looked after those for whom she was responsible. If you want to know how this worked out in my books, go to http://amzn.to/1HTBmqZ .

Anne was rare in a world ruled – some would say still ruled – by men. Furthermore, men who found women to be convenient scapegoats for any reverses. For me she stands with two other queens, Edward II’s wife, Isabella of France and Henry II’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. All three had strong logical minds. All three fought for what they wanted. All three suffered, although only Anne paid with her life. Each time I go to the Tower of London, I stand for a few moments at the place where she was executed – in front of the Wellington Barracks and not where the guards would have you believe – and say a prayer for her soul.

You can find out more about April Taylor here:

Website & Blog   www.apriltaylorauthor.com

Facebook           https://www.facebook.com/britwriterapriltaylor

Twitter             https://twitter.com/authAprilTaylor

New Cover for 'The Paintings'

Linda Acaster's supernatural mystery, The Paintings, is sporting its new cover.

Across on her website she discusses the merits of using a temporary cover from Fiverr, the $5 marketplace for creatives, while waiting for a slot with her professional cover designer Art by Karri.

Join her to discover which cover you prefer.

Crime on the rails

Hornsea is not an area well-served by trains, though go back a few decades and things were very different. It had its own station bringing holidaymakers aplenty.

This lack of rail track doesn’t keep trains out of Hornsea writers’ books. The First Hull Trains company, running services between Hull and London, recently shared a Facebook post about the Annie Raymond mysteries – a series of private investigator / police procedural thrillers that began life on board a train.

The first book in the series sees Annie arrive on one of their trains. She comes to the city reluctantly and without expectations, simply hoping to make the best of things, but mirroring the deceptively calm sheen on the Humber estuary on a summer day, she finds treacherous currents just below the surface ready to suck her under and never let her go.

It takes two whole books before Annie leaves the area, and when she does, it’s on with the backpack and on to a train again. When she makes another visit in a later book, a more prosperous Annie comes by car – but even more reluctantly this time because now she knows what to expect.

It's interesting to see these things pop up - like the Annie books on Hull Trains' Facebook page. Has anyone else examples of their books cropping up in unexpected places?