The Creative Writer's Toolbelt

The combination of new social media platforms and the rise of opportunities for self publishing has led to an amazing renaissance in poetry and poetic expression, both digitally and on the page.

This is truly an exciting time for poets, and there are lots of new opportunities for poetic expression opening up. In this episode I talk to award winning author, poet, and founder and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Orna Ross about her work and the ways in which new and established poets can take advantage of the resources that are available.

This episode features a conversation with me about my book "The Centauri Survivors" which is published today, and explores some of the lessons any author can learn as publication day approaches. I'm the guest for this one and the questions are being asked by my friend Wendy H. Jones. In this episode we explore issues like: the biggest mistakes I made along the way, the difficult decisions I had to make in editing, and why every author, however experienced they are, gets nervous just before publication.

Writers are becoming more convinced of the need to use professionals to help them with their work, and one of the essential members of the team is the Development Editor. But what do Development Editors do and how can they add value? In this episode I talk to my development editor Amanda Rutter who worked with me on my book The Centauri Survivors. We explore how writers should approach this stage of the edit, and how to get the best out of the relationship with your Development Editor.

This episode is a response to an issue I’ve been discussing with a listener. We talked about characters who seem to take over the story, who depart from the script and, as the title of this podcast suggests, go rogue. In this episode we look at what a rogue character is, why characters go rogue and what you can do about it.

Pamela Fernandes is a writer and doctor. She escaped the first Gulf War with her family, fleeing to India. Since then she has lived in Asia, the US, and the Middle East and writes both fiction and non-fiction, drawing on her personal and professional experience. In this episode we discuss the challenges of writing in less popular genres, how to capture and keep your reader, and never giving up on a project.

As I prepare for the launch this summer of "The Centauri Survivors" my YA SciFi novel, I have been using the services of Reedsy.com, and so I caught up with co-founder Ricardo Fayet to talk about Reedsy Discovery: https://reedsy.com/discovery a service that allows you to showcase your new publication, the free Reedsy Book Editor: https://reedsy.com/write-a-book, and Reedsy's marketplace for writers. We also talk about why now really is the very best time to be publishing your own book.

We all want to introduce diverse characters into our work and not be afraid to tackle difficult social and cultural themes, but can we be sure we're getting the tricky issues right? Sensitivity readers like my guest Patrice Williams Marks can help us navigate and master the challenge of avoiding naivete and offence in the way we present our characters.

In this episode, I have a great conversation with the writer and international speaker Jen Louden. I talk about my own personal philosophy for being a writer and we get into the hard questions: why do you want to write? What's your story REALLY about? And do you know who you are, and what you are writing for? This episode looks at the need for proper self-regard, self-care, resilience, self-awareness, and how to focus on the task at hand.

This episode is a conversation with the author, writing coach and academic Dr Ginger Moran. We talk about the right mindset for writing, the different disciplines that we need to bring to the first draft and editing, learning from great writers, and why we writers are such tender souls.

And yes, Ginger tells us what that one thing successful books have in common is, enjoy!

Can we talk about our work without hesitation, and without feeling like there's some aspect to it that could have been better? Have we done your best with our book project? In this episode, I look at what it means for us writers to be proud of our work, how we achieve that, and what the benefits are.