Write For Your Life

This week Iain is joined by Write for Your Life stalwart Manuela Boyle to discuss feeling obliged to blog, Hilary Mantel and the fuss over her story about Margaret Thatcher,measuring how 'good' you are as a writer. They also try and answer the question: should some subjects be off limits?

This week, Iain and Donna talk about whether you hear characters' voices in your head when you read and write, how to balance light and dark when your book is rather on the sad side, and then the age-old issue of daily word counts and how long what we write should actually be.

Iain and Donna talk about sliding doors moments as a writer, Super Thursday when all the books in the UK are published, remembering to write for your own special group of readers, and the many advantages and disadvantages of side-projects.

Iain and Donna talk about Amazon's newly launched Kids' Book Creator; picking names for characters; Eleanor Catton's grant for writers to read; and just how useful are writers' notebooks, really?

An action-packed episode that covers Roald Dahl, children's fiction and how much is too much, too young; choosing cliche-free titles; being addicted to our phones and tackling writing distractions.

Iain and Donna talk about Hanx Writer, the new writing app co-launched by Tom Hanks, why teenage girls love Wattpad, Facebook the destroyer, and then much more about the literary technique of foreshadowing.

Iain and Donna return from holiday to talk about the email Amazon sent to its KDP authors, some tips on how to approach the revision process, and a little about the death of the great Robin Williams.

Iain and Donna talk about having more than one string to your writing bow, services Video Scribe and Voice Bunny, then a lot about feedback, making money as a writer and classic author envy.

This week it's all about Donna's finger, the Man Booker Prize 2014 longlist, the trailer for the 50 Shades of Grey Film, the process of planning and creating characters, and the rest of those reasons editors put down your manuscripts from last week.

Topics this week include planning your writing, putting your words under pressure, JK Rowling's 'Potter Plotter', Overcast and how to listen to podcasts, and finally a look at why editors stop reading manuscripts.