When I asked Twitter last night what I should blog about, one suggestion was "How do you know when to give up on a work-in-progress? Or when to stop and come back? Or when to re-conceptualise the project?". It was a good question, so thank you Damon Young, although I'm absolutely sure there isn't a clear-cut answer, because it's always going to depend on you and the night and the music.... Sorry, you and the write(ing) and the novel. So, I think the best I can do is suggest some things to ask yourself and the novel, in the hope that things get a bit clearer.

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After a well earned break of sorts, one that saw me restless and writing both a short story, and trying to tackle something of a plan for the rest of the Delve series, I’ve started to get down words for the second book in the series, aptly named Evolve. I always think of a tag line for each of my novels, something to capture the essence of the book, and to keep me on the straight and narrow as I write it. This one is simple – Rowan’s powers begin to evolve, but she soon learns that she can’t save everyone, not even those close to her heart.

Having said that, it’s my first time tackling a sequel and whilst I have a rough outline in mind which no doubt will develop along the way, I’m pondering over the whole area of sequels and the temptation to ‘tell’ i.e. to reveal backstory from Delve so that anyone picking up the second book without reading the first will have some idea of how Rowan, my main character, and the rest of the crew got to the point that they’re now at

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So it recently hit me that my novel will be published on (don’t snigger) April 1st and that the file labelled Marketing, which has hitherto sat on a shelf above my desk in a floaty, non-threatening, futuristic kind of way, has begun to jump up and down and beckon me – or whatever a marketing file without hands or feet does to signal Urgency.


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It’s possible that every now and then someone stumbles on this blog entirely by accident. Looking for something else – I can’t begin to guess what – you find this. Me. I can only apologise.

In all likelihood, you will speed-click back to google. Get the hell out of there! It’s some writer’s blog! If that’s the case, you won’t be reading this now. So if you are reading this, the chances are you decided to spend a moment or two exploring. Trying to find out who the hell this R.N. Morris guy is.

So maybe, every now and then, I should take a little time to say a bit about myself and what I’m doing here. On the internet. With a website and blog. And everything.

So yes. I’m a writer. Of fiction. Crime. Mostly. Murder stories. Set in the past. In Russia. Sorry, I tend to come over all inarticulate when I try to talk about myself and my writing. Awkward. Especially when every writer these days has to be his or her own publicist.

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My blog is on my website. www.deborahfreeman.co.uk



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Finally I can say that I've actually to stuck to one my New Year's resolution. On 2nd January, I set myself the challenge of finishing the first draft of 'The Curse' (working title). I'd already pushed my way through December to 40k words, but the challenge was to finish the rest of the manuscript in 9 days. At an average of 5,000 words per day, I saw it as a tough but achievable challenge. After all, I have a demanding full time job as well as a family. Of course, I could have used that as an excuse, but I didn't.


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In the days when I had au pairs, they would often ask me for help with their English homework. Most of them were doing pretty advanced work, so I'd have to deal with things like, "Emma, when do you say, try to light the fire, and when try lighting the fire?" As so often with the idioms of your mother tongue, I could usually only work it out by demonstration, and it was all good for the writerly brain. But the thing which they struggled with most is what are usually called phrasal verbs.

Phrasal verbs, according to [my slightly-edited version of] David Crystal in Rediscover Grammar, are

full verbs which consist of more than one word. The most common type consists of a verb followed by one or two particles. come in - sit down - drink up - get off - put up with - look forward to - look down on. A few multi-word verbs have a less predicable structure, and thus have to be taken as idioms: take pride in - break even - lie low - put paid to. What can be a particle? Some spatial adverbs such as aback - ahead - aside - away - back - home - in front. Some prepositions, such as against - at - for - from - into - like - of - onto - with. Some words which can act as either adverbs or prepositions, such as by - down - in - on - over.

All Indo-European languages, at least, work like this but English is particularly rich in them. On a family holiday in Greece my teenaged sisters and I spent a long, hot drive from Nafplion to Sparta working out that the verb which shape-changed most, depending on which particle it was teamed up with, was put. Put off alone can mean discourage, postpone, or remove, while put up can mean raise, accommodate or dare and put on can mean dress, fake or ignite. And then there's put over, put upon, put by, put through, and the relatively recent sexual meaning of put out, to go with disconcert, extinguish, display and eject.

Now the great joy of phrasal verbs for a writer is that even though the two (or three) parts belong together grammatically, they don't have to be kept together syntactically: there's huge flexibility available to you.

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Recently, I came upon a neat phrase to use on those people who refuse to hear the fact that there has been net emigration of central Europeans from Britain, because all the waiters in their local Pizza Express come from Warsaw: "Data is not the plural of anecdote." But it reminded me of how a writer friend wanted her ancient-Persian heroine to start up a cottage industry making dyestuffs in her kitchen. "But it wasn't done like that," said the friendly expert at the British Museum. "The evidence is that dye production was on an industrial scale, and they wouldn't have employed a woman anyway." My friend's plot was dying (not dyeing), about her: she couldn't possibly do something that was "wrong". No doubt the general picture of the expert was true, but it's hard to believe that at the domestic, individual level, no "industrial" things were done; just because the only remains after Armageddon will be the McVities factory, I suggested, doesn't mean that no one ever set up a small business making cakes in their kitchen. My friend's plot was restored to health.

And then few weeks ago, Jerusha Cowless suggested that to find the energy in a passive, put-upon heroine, without being anachronistic to a period when women weren't suppose to be act-ors, it would help to research the period more deeply.

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Well my Twelve Days of Christmas challenge floundered right around Christmas Eve. The bottles of plonk sitting under the stairs, and the obscene amount of food that we buy every year and then wonder why, lured me away from the laptop.

Still for a novel that I began in July of last year, and which had only reached 17,000 words by December, I found that the fact that I'd laid the gauntlet down to myself spurred me that much further on. I managed 15,307 words in total over 5 days which is almost as much as I'd done in 6 months!


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We writers need all the support we can get on what can be a lonely journey. No wonder we join writing communities and writing groups, sign up for writing classes and follow writer’s blogs. It helps to know that others like ourselves are out there, rooting for us, encouraging us, teaching us and supporting us. The tribe of writers is a vast one, spanning the globe and almost every age-group and circumstance.

So as we embark on this new year, I thought I’d write about the resources which have been most helpful on my own writer’s journey. Perhaps you’d like to add your own.


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