Who I am... at the minute, anyway.

I’m currently doing a Masters degree in Creative Writing and, since beginning that degree, I’ve been asked more than once to have a think about what type of writer I am, what type of writer I want to be, will be, could be, should be… it never ends. I appreciate that I sound somewhat ground down by these considerations but truthfully, I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. I got into the habit of reading about writing, and sometimes writing about writing, and discovered that it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be. This morning I settled down to write a blog post, which is due to be published to my review website at some point tomorrow (although, it will probably be published here now, too), and in that blog post I just talked about writing. What I’m working on, why I write, how I write - and I bloody loved it! So I thought that maybe, writing about writing is writing worth doing, particularly if it’s something that I enjoy, and something that will ultimately help me to understand my writing and the processes I go through when it comes to producing it.

For anyone hopefully looking at their computer screens, buzzing with the excitement that perhaps this random stranger, communicating with you through the beauty of the internet, is about to share a bunch of secrets that will somehow unlock the secret to your writing… then you’re wrong. And I’m sorry about that. Maybe people will read this and it will spark something for you and if it does then that’s brilliant, but it’s also entirely accidental. In a growing world of online writers, including people who make a career from this vocation without even leaving the comfort of their home - dream job or what - then it seemed worth delving back into blogging, if for no other reason than I thought I might be missing out on something brilliant. And I suppose time will tell whether that’s actually true or not.

The blog will mostly consist of prose writing, although please don’t be too alarmed or unsettled if the occasional bit of poetry appears at some point. All poems will be vetted thoroughly before being made public; please approach with caution, try not to startle them, and everyone should be okay.

C x

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The Diary of a Whatever I Am Now: Transition period.

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Copycat: Second book fears, panic-writing, and plans for a sequel

When people ask me how I wrote Copycat , I have to explain to them the constant state of panic that I was in while I pulled this book together. Intention , my debut novel which was also published by Bloodhound Books, was a labour of love that lasted three years in total, and five years to the point that it was published. I wrote that book as part of my PhD programme, which also means that throughout those three years I had a great support network in place to get me through the process of writing a book. The reason behind the Copycat -panic then was that this would be the first novel I would write without someone holding me up, and those first steps to get the book together were nervous and wobbly ones to say the least. Copycat ’s first draft came together in about two months. At the beginning and end of most days, I would sit down at my laptop and I would push and push until I managed a few hundred words at a...

The Diary of a Whatever I Am Now: Corrupted Hard Drive.

Take a walk with me. We’ll go back to August 2010, late August, when I finally found out that despite my below par A-Level grades, there was a university in the country that was prepared to give me a chance. Praise be to them. Ahead of starting this journey, my generous mother bought me a laptop. A brand spanking new laptop. That my kind and patient sister, and her partner, set up for me and taught me how to use. They deliberately picked something that would suit the university life style – and they were bang on the money in that respect. That laptop lasted I-don’t-care-to-remember how many assignments and a 10,000 word undergraduate dissertation. Let’s not forget, either, that during my first and second summers home from university, I also wrote two “novels” (I use that word in a bland and unimpressed tone, incidentally) that were typed on that same laptop. From there, we moved to postgraduate studies. More assignments and eventually a 25,000 word dissertation. By this point ...

A writer's life for me

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