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I have an accountability group on Facebook. Well, I say a group; it’s really just me and my friend Jill. We did have a couple more members, but one wasn’t on Facebook much, and the other had the audacity to go and have a baby, and even though I am a fan of accountability and… Continue reading Accountability and Getting Shit Done

I Went On Buzzfeed Instead And Learned How To Write Amazing Titles For My Posts. Not really. OK, maybe a bit really, but that's honestly not the point of this post. My love–hate relationship with social media is well documented. Mostly it’s love, but I can’t deny it takes up a hell of a lot… Continue reading I Stopped Going On Social Media Before Lunch And Guess What Happened.

My last post was about saying no. This post is about saying yes. Not to work, because I don’t think anyone particularly needs advice on saying yes when people want to give you money to do the thing you do. No, this post is about saying yes to opportunities that, quite frankly, scare the living… Continue reading Saying Yes

I’ve just sent back a job, and I feel great. Normally I hate returning jobs, even if the job has been difficult, and I dither over it for at least an hour before finally hitting send. This is because once it’s gone back, I’ve lost my chance to catch anything I might have missed, to… Continue reading Saying No

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I like a good swear. I even wrote about it on this blog. If you’ve followed me on Twitter for a while, you may remember that some months ago I decided to use my powers for good, so I created #TheDailySwear, where each day I tweeted… Continue reading A Very Sweary Dictionary

My babies are getting freakishly big now, so I often feel like the baby days are well behind me and my life is totally different. But now my sister has a baby, and spending time with them has made me realise that while many things have changed since over the last few years, some things… Continue reading Congratulations! It’s a … business!

(That's *definitely* a word and *definitely* the right way to use it.) For the first time in my life, and certainly for the first time in my editing career, I am learning to fight that most dreaded of beasts: imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a bastard. It is the thing that sits on your dreams,… Continue reading Unimposter-able Me

I recently saw a writer ask what she should do to make sure her manuscript was as clean as possible before sending it to an editor. This is the type of question editors like seeing. Not because we're lazy buggers who don't want to put any effort in (to editing, at least. I freely admit… Continue reading “How can I clean up my manuscript?” she asked.

One of my favourite films is The Matrix. Because it’s excellent, and because I’ve had a thing for Keanu Reeves ever since Speed came out. A line from the film popped into my head today, as a result of a few conversations I’ve read about editing and writing software. Morpheus: I've seen an agent punch… Continue reading Editing and the Rise of the Machines

Howdy! Today in the Pinches of Salt series is one of the seemingly great commandments of creative writing: Thou Shalt Use Strong Verbs. This is another one of those take-it-as-gospel pieces of writing advice that comes from a very good place, but like most of these bits of advice, it’s extremely easy to go overboard… Continue reading Pinches of Salt 5: Use Strong Verbs