One of the best little collection of practica tips I've come across:

http://www.davidalmond.com/writing/

Emma

Thanks for that, Emma. And I've been meaning to buy 'Clay' since I read a review of it a few weeks ago so this is a good reminder.

Myrtle

Cheers Emma. He talks a lot of sense, doesn't he?

Nik.

Yes, I thought so.

Emma

Thanks for the link Emma. I'm sure I heard him on the radio - maybe Book Club? - talking about Skellig.

I'll look out for this and other books.

Jim

David Almond's own works add an authentic voice to the tips and advice this lovely writer offers.

His success is proof of the validity of these Writing Tips. What I like about them is they are simple, common sense and well within the capabilities of most writers. They don't seek to teach or impress on an acedemic basis but just relate to the art of good storytelling.

Len

<Added>

can't spell 'academic' - must be bedtime ... good night.

He makes it sound very very simple. Which I suppose it is, if it means writing one sentence, then the next. I've been putting this into practice over the last week and have written the first 20,000 words of a novel in that time. Not worrying about how it sounds or whether it works. Just one sentence then another. Easy, eh?

Yup, that's the way to do it. One foot in front of the other. That's where counting words is such a help - ten words more than yesterday? Congratulations!

The most Yeats ever wrote in a day was six words, so I'm told. Can't help thinking that's connected to what absolutely great words they were.

Emma

Thanks for the thread Emma, the writing tips were very helpful.

The one that really "came home" to me was "You don't need to hold the whole story in your head." I used similar words about six months ago when I said to my self "How can I write a book if I can't hold an entire book in my head". I was explaining to myself why I couldn't write a book (negative self-talk).

I've only just overcome that problem recently doing exactly as suggested by David Almond i.e. writing in a series of parts which one day will add up to a complete book. His tip re-inforced my feeling that I'm on the right track. Focusing on the small sections made it easy to create a little story within a big story. I just wrote and wrote.

Di2

Thanks, Emma, I really got a lot from reading this. Like Di2, I also particularly liked the one foot in front of the other concept.

You don't need to hold the whole story in your head.

I think it's next-to-impossible to do this anyway, so well done David Almond for pointing it out. The broadest outline, maybe, but nothing you could describe in more than a sentence or two. Not a day has gone by in nearly four years without my working on or thinking about TMOL, but I still couldn't really say that I can hold it in my head.

Emma

I am sure that most writers realise that it is impossible to hold the whole story in one's head. You may think you can but the more you edit and re-write the more you come across characteristics of your MC's that are 'new' even to you. The same can apply to happenings and events within your story. You have created something that seems to have a life of its own.

When it has been put to bed or appears in print your reading the completed work can sometimes be a surprise and a funny kind of feeling that 'somebody else wrote all this'.

Len

Len
I know what you mean - that's a lovely feeling, isn't it?

Lovely stuff. Thanks for this Emma

John

I’m doing something similar with The Fifth Daughter, but writing in threads. I have a thread about a hotel that needs restoring after a fire, one about a marriage breakdown, and a man exploring previously unsuspected psychic abilities.

At the moment I'm concentrating on the hotel, because that’s the skeleton of the novel, then I’ll weave the other threads into it. Whenever I come to a section where two or more threads interlink, I put in a marker to remind me to connect them.

Dee