Writing Groups: Taking Feedback

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by Ekaterina Fawl

Being in a writing group is tons of fun. Socialising with like-minded people, getting to read their first drafts and workshop their stories as they take shape, getting a glimpse of others’ creative processes – all amazing experiences. But sooner or later comes the time do that what you have ostensibly joined the group for: receive feedback on your own writing.

You might dread it, or can’t wait to hear what the others think, or some healthy combination thereof. But the fact is, taking feedback and effectively using it to improve the story and your writing as a whole is a skill in itself. If you’re new to it, there’s quite a lot to learn there.

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New Branches

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This is a very exciting week for the Writing Tree, as we launch our publishing branch, Writing Tree Press, with a collection of short stories from brand new writers, ‘Forest’.

The stories cover a range of genres, including fantasy, horror and romance.

You can buy Forest as an e-book on Amazon or Smashwords, with a print copy available in February. We hope you enjoy!

We’ve also relaunched our website with information about all the services we now offer, including one-to-one tuition, coaching and editing services, along with our Creative Writing Kickstart course, which is now open for enrolments for a start in April.

Have a browse and a read, and we hope you enjoy all the new shoots on the Writing Tree have to offer!

 

Crafting a poem: an insight

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by Susi Liarte

In this post I’m going to cover how I usually approach writing poems. It’ll be reflective of the type of poetry I like to read and write, which is short, rhythmic poems that try to capture some imagery or poignancy. There is no ‘knowledge’ required of types of poetry and it is not my aim to cover that in this post, so I’ll be using very little terminology. I’ll work on doing that in another post. With that out of the way, let’s start!

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The Writing Squad

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by Ekaterina Fawl

Writing is a lonely pursuit. There’s really no way around it: when it’s happening, it’s just paper – or the screen – and you. We have the company of our characters, of course. We draw constant, invaluable mentorship and inspiration from our favourite authors. But there’s nothing quite like sharing your stories with actual real people.

Unless you’re already a successful writer, swamped by fanmail, you might struggle finding readership. Your Mum might read your latest masterpiece, but you might not get much more than “That was nice, dear” in terms of feedback. It might be time to discover local members of your secret tribe of mad scribblers and join a writing group. Continue reading →

Journalling

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by Helen Kenwright

Most of the writers I know have a stack of notebooks that live a quiet life, sitting on a shelf or in the deep darkness of a drawer or chest. Doomed to be unwritten in, simply because they’re ‘too pretty to use’. I confess I have this problem myself. I can’t resist a pretty notebook, and generous friends buy them for me, too. But then I buy a stack of cheap, plain ones to write my drafts in. Workhorses. Ordinary enough that I won’t mind crossings out and bad handwriting and all that messy stuff that happens when you’re crafting something. Continue reading →

No writer is an island

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by Cathryn Burge

If there’s an opinion piece type that’s guaranteed to raise my blood pressure, it’s one in which the author pontificates about How To Write – particularly if their pontificating is dressed up as well-meant advice. And there are lots of articles like that out there, especially on the internet. Here, have a small selection:

  • If I’m reading a Western story and the author has tried to render the characters’ accents phonetically via non-standard spelling, I stop reading. Please don’t.
  • I don’t judge … well, actually, I do. I stopped reading a romantic story when the author thought the expressing ‘sucking face’ would make a nice change from ‘kissing’. It didn’t.
  • Careless spelling in summaries augurs ill for a story. ‘Adam’s proposal peeked Rickard’s interest’. Peeked. PEEKED. Someone please tell the author the word they were looking for was ‘piqued’.
  • Another phrase I’m sick of reading is ‘their tongues fought for dominance’.

Don’t get me wrong: we (almost) all do it. We look at other writers’ work and pass judgement on it. After all, why shouldn’t we? Developing the ability to differentiate between what works and what doesn’t can help us make our own writing better. But how can we be sure of what’s ‘good’ and what’s ‘bad’? What standards do we use to guide us? Continue reading →

The Writer’s Cooldown

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by Helen Kenwright

So, how was Nanowrimo for you? Or perhaps there’s another big writing project you’ve recently finished?

One of the criticisms sometimes directed at Nanowrimo is that it can cause writer burn-out. Hopefully if you’ve followed the advice in Ekaterina’s blog post last month you won’t have succumbed to total mental and physical exhaustion. But there can be an aftermath to be dealt with, and in this post we give you some advice to help move forward from the experience, however it went, and keep writing into the future. Continue reading →

Review: Lights, Camera, Fiction!

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Lights, Camera, Fiction! by Alfie Thompson

reviewed by Susi Liarte

In this post I’m going to write about why I love this book, what it offers (and what it doesn’t) and how it can help writers among the many other writing books out there. I haven’t read any of the author’s other books, but I know she has published one called Writing for the Reader which I’m interested in checking out next.

Lights, Camera, Fiction! packs a lot into a slim, 250 page volume. Its tagline is “A movie lover’s guide to writing a novel”. The book approaches the subject by analysing several well-known films and picking out different aspects such as character and plot in order to showcase what they do well, and how this can work for novels as well as screenwriting. The core structure pairs one film for each topic as follows, but references and examples to other films are scattered throughout. Continue reading →

NaNoWriMo, your wrists and the triumph of common sense

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by Ekaterina Fawl

My first NaNoWriMo was a wild ride.

I’d heard about this challenge from a friend. They weren’t doing it that year; all my questions as to why not were met with hollow laughter.

I decided to give it a try, and do it all by myself. I didn’t join the website, thinking it would just upset me if the Internet recorded my early failure for the posterity. I didn’t think I needed a writing buddy, or any kind of community support. All I needed was write 1667 words a day for a month. Easy.

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I write things

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by Ekaterina Fawl

Writing has been my hobby and obsession since I was about seven, and it has also been my secret.

As a child I hid away the stories I scribbled in my spare school notebooks. As many kids, I was somewhat fascinated with the macabre. My stories were dark and gory and I didn’t want my budding goth aesthetics to cause any alarm to my parents.

Of course I never told anyone about my writing when I was in my teens. Even wearing the wrong kind of hat could destroy your social standing in those years, let alone admitting to something so hopelessly uncool and nerdy. I had spent enough energy trying to dodge the swotter label. What would my peer think about me doing extra writing – for fun! – after I meticulously finished all my homework for the day? Continue reading →

The Landscape of Inspiration

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by Susi Liarte

Imagine you are walking through an old town. The houses and paving are all made from local materials because these were the easiest to gather at the time. This is what it means to write what you know – to draw from the experiences and inspiration you have to hand. However, it does not limit what you can create because you are always gaining new ideas. When you are walking through a different story, a different author’s landscape, even when you are looking at familiar things they are built in a unique way. Your work from the past is also an old town; what you create now can capture its style or rise like a piece of modern architecture. Regardless, what you design with your imagination needs a strong foundation – the writing craft itself. Continue reading →

Writer’s Block

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by Ekaterina Fawl

This happens to every writer sooner or later: the words stop flowing. The muses have left. The writer’s block has descended, and you can’t write anymore.

That, of course, isn’t really the case. We’re always able to write. Any skills we have learnt are still there, our talent, imagination and creativity don’t disappear. And yet sometimes it feels like there’s no way to push through this slump, or worse, no reason to even try writing again. Continue reading →

Why Write? Thoughts on writing for fun, health or wealth.

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by Helen Kenwright

In this, the first of a series of guest blogs, Writing Tree Tutor Helen Kenwright takes a look at the different reasons people might choose to write, and how to keep motivation going.

When students first come to my classes I ask them what it is about writing that interests them. It’s a question they’ve usually been asked before, and they often find difficult to answer, unless they are hoping to write with a view to publication. It’s a strange phenomenon, when you think about it. Artistic pursuits form the basis of lots of common hobbies: writing, colouring books, salsa dancing, knitting, singing in the shower… but all too often we feel as if we’re daft for doing it, unless we’re really good. And there’s the paradox: like other skills in life, we’re unlikely to get really good unless we do it a lot.

So why bother? Here’s a few ideas. Continue reading →