Dec 09 2010
It’s hard enough being an unpublished writer, struggling along with the rest of the teeming multitude, trying to get noticed, so why the heck do we make things harder for ourselves by perpetuating myths, misunderstandings and downright untruths about the process of being published? Hang about in any writer’s community, be it online or in …
Nov 28 2010
As I’ve come to the end of Trinity Moon, I’ve found myself thinking about how it all began. As one so often finds, in endings are the echoes of the beginning and as I wrote these last few scenes I got to pondering. On questions of honour and integrity, on promises given and the value …
Nov 04 2010
Well, almost. I was writing up a storm at the weekend, and racked up just shy of 5k words in 24 hours, breaking the symbolic 180k barrier. A bit longer than I’d hoped, but never mind. I haven’t felt this energised about my writing in a looong time. This is A Good Thing. Naturally I …
Nov 04 2010
I haven’t had much to say lately. Not normally a problem for me, I must admit, but there you go. It’s been a fairly grim couple of months. Progress on Trinity Moon was agonisingly slow, and every few hundred words I managed was hard work. Let me rephrase that. It was sweating-bullets, squeezing-blood-from-a-stone Hard Work. …
Sep 20 2010
Fast! Effective! No willpower required! Just follow this easy 3-step plan and you too can look forward to a wardrobe full of clothes that no longer fit. Step 1. Develop numerous gallstones. Step 2. Pass a stone sufficiently large to form a blockage in the bile duct. Step 3. Contract acute pancreatitis. Side-effects include: extreme …
Aug 23 2010
Authors of fiction should wear their learning lightly, I feel. Research should subtly inform their writing, not dominate it, and the reader should never, ever feel as if they’re being lectured. After all, they picked up the book to be entertained and transported into another world, not sat down and told to pay attention, because …
Aug 02 2010
I had a crisis of confidence today. These things happen from time to time, so I’m used to them. Happened with the last book, and it’s a good bet that it’ll happen with the next one, too. But it’s never pretty. I work myself into a right old state. I can’t seem to focus on …
Jul 28 2010
Sounds vaguely perverse, doesn’t it? Well, if that’s how you got here, hello and make yourself at home. New friends are always welcome. Feel free to poke around. The main website www.elspethcooper.com has more about me and my writing.
Jul 25 2010
Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband dearly. In fact, if I loved him any more, it would be downright unhealthy. But I can’t write whilst he’s in the house. He’s had a week off work, and it’s a miracle I’ve got any writing done at all. He’s trying not to interrupt me, bless …
Jul 17 2010
It’s one of those cringe-worthy pieces of corporate management-speak that should have passed its best before date long before now, but which you still hear trotted out by the same people who think it’s cool to say “That’s blue-sky thinking! Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.” Urgh. But as it happens, …