At 50,000 words into writing the first draft of Bethany Rose , I realise that while I love her character, I absolutely hate the plot. To scrap two and a half months' work is no small thing. But the story is simply not going where I want it to. Better to halt this version now than expend more time on something which I know can only become a major thorn in my side. Rain all day, but never mind. This gave me the perfect reason not to find more excuses to avoid starting a new short Sci-Fi story. Well, I did start it--and though I wrote all of 1 ½ pages of it, due to ceaseless distractions* at least a start was made. *Remember that film with Jack Nicholson , where he’s got his family holed up in some miles-from-nowhere hotel and he eventually kills them all with an axe? Well, there’s a scene a scene before he totally loses his sanity, where he’s trying to write and his wife keeps “helping” by bringing him coffee and sandwiches and other stuff he doesn’t want, and he ends up scream

A good article on turn-offs for lit agents: http://www.writersdigest.com/article/what-agents-hate/ The turn-out for the writers’ workshop broke all Riverside Writers’ previous records. There weren’t enough printed handouts to go round, unfortunately. So much for my guess-work! Among the crowd was Sci-Fi author Colin P Davies , who visited our group as a speaker some years ago. http://www.colinpdavies.com/index.htm Anyway, the workshop on constructive criticism - which I'd organised - generated a healthy amount of group discussion, which was one of my intentions. The practical exercise I’d prepared brought some levity. I read one page of what was supposed to be the start of a novel, which was written awfully on purpose, and people had to pretend that a member of the writers circle had presented this in all seriousness. How, then, would the group offer constructive criticism? Once they’d all stopped laughing, I pointed out that if they were to laugh at fellow writer’s efforts,

In reply to those who asked, last weekend’s Circle of Hands gathering was postponed at the last minute. It has been rescheduled for October 29th at the usual time. Tonight, I’ll be running a writers’ workshop on “The Craft of Constructive Criticism”, and so now I’m wondering how many people will turn up. All my notes and the exercises we’ll be doing are ready. If you’re in Wirral, join us at West Kirby Library at 7.30pm. Rain all day here. Richard went out to buy his revolting rice milk, which he uses as a dairy substitute. I think it tastes like watery wallpaper glue—and the one which has been flavoured with hazelnut is vile beyond vile…. Meanwhile, I’ve been pouring over maps of Knoydart and gazing longingly at photos of its forests, craggy glens and mountains. I found the perfect cottage—took one look at it and thought, “Wow! That’s Bethany Rose’s cottage!” Photo prompts are useful to me; so are little sketches. Do you ever get the feeling you’re wasting your breath? Some

1,626 words this morning - and chapter one of the total re-write of Bethany Rose is now underway. The draft I'm working from was originally titled Cry for Innocence but this doesn’t fit in with the theme of my two other novel titles so I simply changed its name to that of the main character, as with the others. The old draft is only 50,000 words long, so I need to double that. I have a solid plot in mind, to amend this. Also, there are many character and plot details which need to be changed so that everything blends with the mythos I’ve developed since penning the first draft of Cry…. For those who are now totally confused, I’ll explain that I wrote Cry… first, followed by Tamsin then Rowan . They can all be read in any order, so this won’t matter in the slightest. However, I’m not happy with Cry… at all; and so it’s about to be totally re-written with a whole extra plotline in the second half, and big modifications in the first. In a way, it might be easier just to start