Tag Archives: Creative Writing MA
Master’s update and new novel – it’s been a while!
Hello and welcome to this strange and tumultuous world in 2021. It’s been quite a long time since I last blogged (seven months in fact!) and while I’m disappointed not to have kept up my blogging schedule , I think I can be forgiven because, you know, it was 2020 and all. So much has […]
Finding inspiration and challenging myself as a writer
Hello and welcome back to the part of my blog where I document my journey as a writer, and write about how much I both love and hate writing. It’s been a bumpy couple of months. There have been many reasons – global pandemic notwithstanding – why I haven’t really felt like blogging, and writing […]
Dealing with criticism as a writer
Recently I submitted two short stories to my Creative Writing tutor. Sometimes when I submit my work, I have a feeling in my gut that she’s going to like it. When she opens her mouth to tell me what she thinks, I’m waiting for her to confirm my suspicions and tell me that I’m brilliant. […]
Creative Writing MA: checking in and freaking out
It’s about four months until I finish my Creative Writing MA and hand in my final project and dissertation, and although that seems like a long amount of time, I am sure, with a certain degree of dread, that the time is going to fly past. I promised that I would document my degree on […]
Writing a novel: taking myself away for a week
A recent article in The Guardian caused some controversy by suggesting that writing is an elite activity because it requires two things: time and space. Of course, both those things will often require money, meaning that as Lynn Steger Strong suggests, you can only be a writer if you can afford it. I’m not saying […]
My tips for entering short story competitions
Look, I’m going to be honest here: I’m no short story competition expert. Of the 20+ competitions I have entered in the past year and a half, I’ve had exactly 0 successes – longlist, shortlist, somewhere-in-between-list. No luck. But I haven’t given up, and I continue to methodically and strategically apply to short story competitions, […]
Review: Fen, Daisy Johnson
It took me a while to get into the stories of Fen by Daisy Johnson, and then it took me a little while to get out of them again. Reading these stories is like getting lost in the blurry, muddy fenland that Johnson is writing about. At some point you begin to question what is […]
What I’ll be reading in 2020
In the gloomy, dark January in which I have been doing Dry-January-Veganuary-No-Planuary (fun!), I’ve been finding myself reaching for a book more often than ever, and making good headway into my 2020 reading plans. Someone I follow on Instagram recently said that they felt like reading could sometimes seem like a competition where everyone is […]
Writing a novel: the beginning
In the interest of being honest and open, and sharing my entire writing journey here on my blog, I suppose I should say that I have started working (mainly thinking) on a new novel! It’s really exciting, but something in me hesitates to talk openly about it, simply because it is still all so new […]
How to stay motivated as a writer
Writing really is a strange and lonely occupation and, like many writers, my motivation ebbs and flows depending on how busy I am, what I’m writing, and my general mood. However, there are things I know that work to keep me organised and to keep me going. Here are my tips on how to stay […]
Forever on a Lilo 