A writer's life for me

I just emailed the third draft of my creative thesis to my primary and secondary supervisors, two friends from my PhD cohort, and I’ve uploaded a draft to my Kindle for my other half to read. I’ve hit upon the usual feelings that you face when finishing and distributing a new draft, I think. Blind panic, genuine disbelief, and this horrendous, horrendous feeling of waking up in the morning and simply not knowing what to do with my time (the answer, of course, is go back to researching my critical accompaniment, but we’ll just leave a pin in that for now). The drafting process has been troublesome up to this point – as regular readers of these self-indulgent rants will already know – although I have developed a divide and conquer approach to editing that has carried me through with minimal discomfort (or maybe that’s hindsight softening the pain). The third draft, though, well that’s been a different beast altogether. In turns out that the reason the third draft has been su...

Warning: Here there be spoilers and curse words.  L.S. Hilton’s Maestra, published earlier this year, was one of those books that I didn’t think had annoyed me – until I started to talk about it. I briefly reviewed it earlier today for my website ( www.madhatterreviews.co.uk ) and found myself torn between saying how much I enjoyed it – which I really think I did – and saying how much it annoyed me – which I really think it did. The novel itself isn’t the issue, as such, and by that I mean it’s perfectly fine in terms of how it’s written and even the plot is mostly okay – my issue is actually with the main character, Judith, and Hilton’s treatment of her. When my other half asked what I thought of this book, I said: ‘It’s okay, but I’d like a chat with the author, I think.’ ‘Why?’ he replied. ‘Because I’d like to know what her intentions were with the main character.’ It was an accidentally stiff response, but that’s what my issue boils down to. Judith is a s...