How to start a new novel : "As long as you have a word, there's never a blank page"

By Candy Gourlay

Last week on Radio 4's Open Book, Whitbread winning author Kate Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum) declared:

The trick is to get one sentence down - because once you have one sentence down you know you can write another.

Well, today I wrote the first chapter of my next novel.

Making a Living as a Writer

Well we missed this talk last night at the Professional Series but luckily Caroline Hooton blogged comprehensively about it!

The talk featuring multi-published Jane Clarke and Lorna Fergusson of the FictionFire site answered questions like:

Where do you find writing work and how do you fit in writing with your other work?

How long did it take you to start making enough money to support yourself?

Do you need the support of a partner to write?

Do you have to have an agent?

How do you deal with school events?

Now go read the answers over at Caroline Hooton's blog.

Don't blog, do blog ... let's call the whole thing off!

Cartoon: Johnny Ancich

By Candy Gourlay

Over at Jane Friedman's guest blogger L.L. Barkat has called on experienced writers to stop blogging.

Does this mean I would recommend that everyone stop blogging? No. I encourage new bloggers, just the way I always have. It’s an excellent way to find expression, discipline, and experience. But if writers already have experience, and they are authors trying to promote themselves and their work, I tell them to steer clear. If they’ve already found themselves sucked into the blogging vortex, I suggest they might want to give it up and begin writing for larger platforms that don’t require reciprocity (an exhausting aspect to blogging and a big drain on the writer’s energy and time). Read the whole thing