Litopia Members Blog Archive

Welcome to the Litopia Members Blog Archive. You'll see the latest blog entries listed below by default - you can use the monthly archive filter at the top of the sidebar to find older items of interest.

Donna's picture
Donna

This week's headlines are up at The Write Report.


worldper's picture
worldper

When did I become this dumb? Stupid. Unable to communicate. Where did the brain go and why didn’t it leave a forwarding address? I tried to MapQuest it, but my fat fingers typed in NapWurst. I think that’s a mattress factory in Zurich.

Anyway, I’m on manuscript edit number four and all 81...


Calibriel's picture
Calibriel

Ace thinks he's trained the cat, but I know better. The cat has a short memory. He must have: he thinks I'm his mother. And when Ace points to the utility room and says "bed", the only reason he trots off in the direction of his basket is because he thinks he's going to be fed. Again.

He'...


Crowe's picture
Crowe

A few years ago I was taking pictures along a rocky stretch of the coastal path in Cornwall. A coastguard was yomping the same stretch and stopped to give me a warning. "So far this year we've had to rescue six photographers who fell off the cliff taking pictures," he said. "So you be careful...

8 comments

zerlina's picture
zerlina

The sky is grey. Every so often it spits out fat drops of rain, which somehow lower the temperature by about five degrees (Celsius). The dog is lying on his back in his basket, the husband is in the kitchen cooking dinner and I am trying to think what I have achieved this weekend. My first...

2 comments

Donna's picture
Donna

I watched What Happened in Vegas over the weekend. I figured with the ever-charming leads of Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher, it was hard to go wrong. The story was light and cute – perfect for wasting time instead of working on my outline.

However, the basic plot bothered me...


litlove's picture
litlove

It's a joke I often use against myself that I can only tell stories that have already been told - which is why I write non-fiction. I don't know how other people manage to figure out who does what to whom, under which set of circumstances and for what result. When you write non-fiction, fate has...

1 comment

Calibriel's picture
Calibriel

Just an excuse to go back to Venice? Well, I had to check the details ...

I didn’t set out to write a book set in Venice. I set out to write a book as different as possible from the one I’d just finished: and as that was boy-orientated comic fantasy for 9-12 year-olds, there was only one...

1 comment

Quacker's picture
Quacker

I have a problem. No, not that one. Another one. Just one hour into editing Quackenbush last night, and I had to put the manuscript aside. Out came the notebook, and I tried to resolve the issue I realised had been there from very early on.


David Bridger's picture
David Bridger

Background: a sudden fibromyalgia flare-up hit me in the middle of last week and put me out of action for five or six days.

6 comments

skipperjeru's picture
skipperjeru

It's a golf joke. I was wondering about making a Tiger Woods gag just to see if I could hear Donna the Debriefer's legal head explode all the way across the Atlantic.

2 comments

Donna's picture
Donna

I want to talk about some people operating in the legal system who move around enough or who have enough information that they might be useful to your stories. I’m going to tell you about them every once in a while. My book The Writer’s Guide to...


zerlina's picture
zerlina

One of the things I do to avoid writing is genealogy.  It is so easy these days, what with the internet and ancestry.com.  From little old NZ, at the bottom of the world, where everyone is an immigrant, I have been able to piece together the story of my ancestors.  The Maori are...

2 comments

Donna's picture
Donna

When can a poem land you in jail? How can you tell the government what it can do about copyright infringement? What's the latest inside scoop on publishing contracts? How did an author win big bucks in a royalty dispute? These and other stories are up in...


Quacker's picture
Quacker

On the Litopia After Dark podcast last night, one of the subjects was research, and how important it is for a writer to get the facts right, even in fiction. With The Manx Connection and The Manx Giant: The Amazing Story of Arthur Caley under my belt, both...