#motivation

Blog

Read about my journey into becoming a creative freelancer, interviews and reviews with great authors, and advice on writing and creative living.

If there's something you'd like advice on or a book you'd like me to take a look at, do get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.

If you enjoy reading my thoughts on writing, people, books and the world, please consider supporting me, for the price of a coffee. All donations get a reward. You can also become a regular subscriber for exclusive content.

Feb 1, 2020
3 min

Thickening My Skin

You may have noticed a large gap since I last wrote a blog. I certainly have. I’m currently working my way (very slowly, baby/job/rest of life permitting) through The Artist’s Way. It’s a wonderful book that is forcing me to stop and look at when I really stopped writing, stopped believing I could do it. For me, creative things have always been a hobby. A nice little thing you do on the side to make your day a bit brighter but certainly not something that should substitute ‘r

Oct 22, 2018
3 min

Finding My Voice

Over the past few weeks, something strange has happened. In the tiny bubbles of time I get between work and baby, I’ve started to write again. At first, it wasn’t much. A few scenes that barely reached 300 words. Some thoughts, a memory, nothing substantial. But it was something. I opened up ‘stickies’ on my laptop. Down the right side of the screen is one giant note with all the days of the week, with enough for two months’ worth. I get to the end of the day and log how many

Oct 26, 2017
3 min

Non-Fiction (like pie) is your Friend

My shelf is in danger of falling down. We put it up to replace the bedside tables, so it hovers above our heads, laden with all the stuff I used to cram into those drawers. A basket filled with far too many tubes of half-finished hand cream, assorted earphones, toe separators, the tiny glass pig I brought back from China years ago. And, of course, books. At the moment I’m reading six. There are a couple of literary magazines, one novel, and four non-fiction books. Herein lies

Jul 1, 2017
3 min

Windows – The View from my Writing Desk

Each time I’ve moved in the last five years, my writing desk has always gone next to a window. In four different houses, in four different boroughs of London, I’ve looked out over the street for inspiration, a quiet moment, or sometimes just to be nosey. I did try having it in another room in the last flat I lived in. Technically it was near a window, although it looked onto a wall. It was horrible. I felt closed in, shut off, unable to write anything. Thirty minutes was abou

Jun 26, 2017
4 min

Unplug – How to Step Back from the World

On a dog walk with my sister recently, she vented an uncomfortable but pertinent truth. Why is it, she asked me, as we trudged through a bracken-crusted wood, that people throw themselves into work, spending hours and hours doing things that make them stressed and unhappy? More than that, the proceeds of this treadmill of misery is all too often spent on going a holiday. Yes, there’s loads of adverts for them on the TV at the moment. Tranquil corners of the world where you ca

Apr 4, 2017
3 min

Not Writing

Recently, it’s felt like my life isn’t really my own. For various reasons, the usual things that fill up the gaps between work (and are the places where I feel my living really happens) have disappeared. Not to say that it’s all been bad. Much more time with family has made me appreciate them, and time spent looking after myself without piling on expectations can’t be a bad thing. It’s just been rather odd to face the lack of things I consider to be ‘progress.’ No drumming re

Oct 12, 2015
1 min

Let Me Clear My Throat

On finding the elusive ‘voice’ we all strive to find in our own writing and to hear in the things we read, and how blogging and non-fiction writing can be the route to hearing the version of yourself that you didn’t know existed. Read the article here. #writing #prose #literature #creativity #article #motivation #comment #productivity

Sep 11, 2015
4 min

How to be Awesome

I’ve always been a perpetual starter. So many hobbies, instruments, sports, arts, languages, begun but never mastered. Yet I’ve just finished the third draft of my first novel, and have completed numerous half marathons and two full marathons. I don’t think I started out particularly better at these two things than any of the others, so what’s the difference? I tried to piece together the differences and approaches that have allowed me to reach the ‘end’ of these things, whil

Jul 23, 2015
3 min

Encouraging Thunder

Blogging sometimes feels like throwing a pebble into a tunnel/cave (insert metaphor of something large and dark). You tap away, have a flurry of excitement each time you put something up. Dutifully read by friends and family of course, but you’re never entirely sure that it’s reaching anyone else. However, it would appear that the little rock I chucked in has indeed bounced off a train (not sure about this now) as the wonderful Annika Perry has nominated me for this award. Yo

Jul 9, 2015
5 min

Wasting Time

Sometimes it feels like the more time I have, the less I get done. I’ve had an erratic work schedule for almost two years now, doing everything from paternity leave in a school which took up five days a week, to doing nothing but evening and weekend tutoring to make ends meet while I write a book and complete my Masters. It’s a strange sensation, not having fixed work hours, a fixed income, a steady schedule to take you through each day. It also ups the pressure at the time I

Jun 18, 2015
1 min

What Inspires Your Writing?

I’m a winner! Check out this fantastic article which the lovely Timothy Pike wrote about the things that inspire my writing here. #writing #literature #creativity #article #motivation #comment #inspiration

Jun 12, 2015
5 min

The View from the Other Side

I’m trying to write a book with a dual narrative. It seemed like a good idea at the time. When I found myself wading in a sea of post-its, spending three hours on a Thursday afternoon shuffling them around to try and figure out how to intersperse the two stories I’d written independently of each other, it didn’t seem like such a good plan. It’s so much more complicated than I realised. The first go was simply to figure out what happened where, to whom, and when. The next phas

May 13, 2015
4 min

How Does a Completed First Draft Feel?

It is done. The very last words of the first draft, complete. What a…well, I’m not sure really. In the first case, it’s not actually the first time I’ve got to the ‘end’ of it, so to speak. I did that a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve read back through the whole thing and jiggled it about, written a surprising number of new scenes (this is what happens when you change your structure half way through) and generally moved stuff around a lot. But in this process, there are sever

Feb 23, 2015
3 min

Myself and I

I’m reading Margaret Atwood On Writers and Writing. It’s lovely to read an author musing on being the very thing that they are without sounding too grandiose or other wordly. Long have we been exposed to the accepted narrative that The Writer operates on some higher and more noble plane than mere mortals, and it’s pleasantly comforting to hear such a great writer talk about the insecurities her young self felt when treading out into these rather murky waters. Something that r

Jan 14, 2015
4 min

New Year, Same Trousers

This was the first January I’ve managed not to feel guilty in possibly my entire adult life (the exact beginning of this is debatable, but still). Having said that, in previous years, my guilt was always tainted with annoyance. It is grossly unfair that merely days before the very same media who were shoving cake, cream and alcohol down our necks are suddenly chastising us for being fatties. Christmas and the surrounding months are such a strange time of year – maniacal enthu

Sarah Scribbles

Blog