the writer is a lonely hunter

writing by Gail Aldwin and other authors

Travels without my Laptop

I’m recently back from a trip to Cambodia where I met my Australian friend and we visited the amazing temples at Angkor Wat. After much consideration, I decided to make the journey without my laptop. The timing was good. I’d sent off my latest manuscript to beta readers at the end of December with the expectation I’d hear back from them after a month. The deadline for submitting my third novel The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell is on 1 February, and I figured I’d have enough time for a final read-though on return from Cambodia. Yet it was with some trepidation that I set off without my trusty laptop.

There was lots to distract me during the fortnight I was away. We stopped in Phnom Penh for four nights and spent many hours walking around the city. It’s much less frenetic than Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and I could actually cross the road unaided. (I once had to cling to the backpack of a Vietnamese schoolboy to safely cross a busy junction.) Phnom Penh hardly feels like a capital although there is a large business area. We stuck to the streets lined with colonial buildings which were a short distance from our hotel situated near to the royal palace.

One day we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Visiting the S-21 interrogation and detention centre was a sobering experience. Housed in a former school and it was incongruous enjoying shade in the playground offered by frangipani trees knowing the atrocities that went on in the classrooms. Upon confession, victims of torture where then transferred to be murdered at the nearby killing fields of the Khmer Rouge regime. It seemed disrespectful to take photos but you can learn more about the museum here.

I must admit to having itchy fingers for the first few days of my trip but used the notes on my mobile to jot down any important things that came to mind. The next stop on our journey was in Battambang where we stayed at a delightful resort hotel with a pool. Breakfast and dinner were served beside a lake and excursions included an outing on bicycles and a trip into the countryside on a bamboo railway. Getting off the railway line quickly became a necessity when the scheduled train from Phnom Penh thundered through.

By the time we reached Siem Reap, I wondered why I’d hesitated to travel without my laptop. There was far too much to absorb during visits to the temples to be bothered with writing anything down.

The vast scale of Angkor Wat means it could take days to see all the fine details. I just had a glimpse of its magic then moved on to other temples, completely different from the first.

I must admit during the ten-hour layover at Singapore, I could’ve done with my laptop for company. Instead, I spent time wandering the complex and enjoyed the butterfly garden that features as part of Changi airport’s attractions.

Now that I’m back at home and recovered from jet lag, the final check of the manuscript for submission is calling me.

Have you ever travelled without a laptop? How did you find the experience?

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Who do you write like?

Several years ago I published a piece called Find out which published author your writing style resembles which has turned out to be one of my most viewed posts. It gave a link to I Write Like where you can paste an excerpt of your writing for the website to analyse. (The facility is now also available as an app.) It turned out the piece I entered used similar word choices and was written in a similar style to Chuck Palahniuk. I’ve always been rather pleased at the match and wondered if my writing had changed over time to reflect another author.

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Cracking on with the writing

Ever since I received a publishing contract for my dual timeline mystery The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell, I’ve been slaving over a new manuscript. It seemed completely do-able to get this latest work-in-progress shipshape before the publication schedule for book number three arrives in 2023. In October, I had nothing near a complete draft. It seems to me I approach each new novel in a different way. For the current work, I kept losing the thread of what I was doing which made me turn back to the beginning and start again. During the early months, I wasn’t sure what the spine of the story was about. But I worked my way into it and discovered one of the themes to be coercive control. Phew! That was a relief. But writing has many layers and the next priority was to ensure the three viewpoint characters had distinct voices. This is when a little comedy crept in and I discovered one of the characters to be quite humorous. (As a rule of thumb, if the writing makes me chuckle, I assume others will find it funny too.)

I’ve worked as hard as I can to complete and edit the manuscript. The next stage involves sending it to five beta readers for feedback. During my last read through, I discovered I’d used the word with 655 times. That meant I needed to get the pruning sheers out and reduce the usage considerably. Other of my high frequency words include all, now and only. Thank goodness for the find and replace function.

I’m now settling into a few days away from writing. It’s my husband’s birthday today and with my adult children home for Christmas, we visited the I Grew Up in the 80s exhibition at Dorset Museum. We also treated ourselves to breakfast in the cafe. Here are a couple of photos:

Who remembers these? (The visit also acts as research for a story I’m developing set in the 1980s.)

I will be away from my computer for much the Christmas break. On 2 January, I’m heading off to Cambodia but I’ll be back in touch again afterwards. What plans do you have for the next few weeks?

Happy holidays everyone!

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Life Coaching Benefits

An interesting take on what to do when lack of progress in writing gets you down.

Sally Jenkins

Earlier this year I was feeling despondent about my writing. Over the previous three years I’d had the excitement of securing an agent, working with her on two books and then the subsequent deep disappointment when none of her submissions to the big publishers were successful. The whole act of writing seemed a fool’s game: the short story market was shrinking, publishers preferred to invest in well-known names to guarantee book sales and, during lockdown, everyone seemed to have become a writer. I was on the verge of giving up. Then, on social media, I discovered trainee life coach, Elizabeth Scott. I explained that I was at a crossroads in my writing career and didn’t know how to move forward or whether to give up completely. Elizabeth offered me three virtual coaching sessions.

Did the sessions work?

Elizabeth Scott Life Coach Elizabeth Scott

Yes. Elizabeth didn’t offer direct advice on what to do…

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Navigating Technology as a Writer

I received an email recently enquiring about my skills at navigating technology as a writer. I was invited to share my favourite hacks and short cuts in using Microsoft Word. In answer to the question what’s your best technology tip? I recommend use of the read aloud function. I use a MacBook Air and it’s easy to set up this facility following these easy instructions. You can even choose the gender of your computer-generated voice. For Microsoft support click here.

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Plans for 2023 and Ávila

While I was in Guatemala in 2019, I made a friend who’d volunteered with VaughanTown. I’d never heard of the organisation so she explained how she’d been recruited as a native English speaker to improve the language skills of Spanish business people. The commitment involves six days of timetabled activities to develop the participants’ spoken language skills whilst staying at a good quality hotel located close to Madrid. Travel to and from Madrid is at the volunteer’s expense but all food and accommodation is covered by the organisation. I squirrelled away this information for future reference. Recently, I’ve been thinking about writing a novel with a business woman as the protagonist and realised VaughanTown might make and ideal setting for the action to take place. Call this research, another overseas trip or a working holiday, I sensed an application taking shape.

The online form involves writing a bio including the following information:

  • Please tell us where you are from, who you are, what your interests and passions are, what your background is and about your education.
  • Tell us about places you have travelled to or lived in and what you loved about them. Tell us all about you!
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Reviewing The Artist’s Way: Weeks 7 and 8

Inspiring lessons from Rita E Gould on how to use Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way to heal artistic wounds.

Rita E. Gould: An Artful Sequence of Words

After examining some major creative blocks over several weeks, week 7 shifts the discourse by looking into the kind of mindset we should embrace for creativity. With these insights in mind, Cameron returns to dissecting creative blocks associated with time in week 8. Much like week 4, week 8 represents a turning point as we begin to look at healing our artistic wounds.

Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection

Listening

Providing a welcome respite from reconsidering our negative conditioning, week 7 focuses on practicing what Cameron defines as the right attitudes for creativity, beginning with listening. Cameron reminds us that we’re strengthening our listening skills with morning pages and the artist’s date, which respectively helps us hear past our inner censor and tap into inspiration. Describing inspiration as “getting something down” instead of “doing”, she asserts that another party (God, the universe) accomplishes the “doing”. Connecting inspiration to listening…

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Botanical Short Stories: call for submissions

Emma Timpany won the Dorchester Literary Festival writing Prize in 2019. See what she’s up to now!

Emma Timpany

I am looking for short stories by new, emerging and established writers which are approximately 3,000-5,000 words long. Please see the submission guidelines on the Botanical Short Stories website for further details.

From tokens of love to neolithic burial gifts, bridal bouquets to seasonal wreaths, healing potions to artistic masterpieces, flowers and plants have a multitude of meanings and a long and complex relationship with all our lives. They are the stuff of myth, of gods’ metamorphoses and the emblems of kings and saints. They brighten our homes and bring joy to our senses, delight us in gardens and countryside, convey our emotions, symbolise new birth and human mortality, and yet are often overlooked as an inspiration for writers of fiction. This stunning collection of contemporary fiction will celebrate the world of flowers and plants and the meanings they hold, in twelve intriguing and surprising new short stories.

Any…

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How to win a publishing contract

For anyone on Twitter, you may have come across online pitching events that encourage writers to compose a tweet using 280 characters to get their story under the eyes of literary agents and publishers. If the tweet is ‘liked’ there’s an opportunity to submit a query letter, synopsis of the work and the first three chapters for consideration. It’s a good way to bypass the slush pile and I’ve attracted some interest by honing my elevator pitch to the size of a tweet. In previous twitter pitches I’ve used the following to describe my latest novel (the words in capitals suggest comparable titles):

THE WIDOW x HIGH FIDELITY

Menopausal journalist rediscovers her mojo by developing a true crime podcast about a missing West Country teenager in 1979. The dual timeline reveals the girl’s story of infatuation and exploitation with an unforgettable twist. 

Earlier this year, I saw another twitter pitch advertised by Bloodhound Books, a leading independent publisher based in Cambridge.

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A few developments in my writing life

I’m now getting back into a regular writing routine after a happy and very sociable summer. The winner of the Dorchester Literary Festival Writing Prize was announced at a launch event on Tuesday and my congratulations go to Tess Burnett for her novel The Hanging of Hettie Gale. Tess wasn’t able to attend the prize giving but alongside the other shortlisted writer, Philip Beale, I hobnobbed with celebrated Dorset writers Tracy Chevalier and Minnette Walters. On hand to announce the winner was Kate Adie. Here’s a photo of me with co-director Paul Atterbury – you might recognise him from the Antiques Roadshow.

I’ve just be told that an interview I did with 10Radio back in March has been uploaded to SoundCloud. If you’d like to tune in and hear me chatting with Suzie Grogan about all things connected with writing This Much Huxley Knows, here’s the link.

Meanwhile, the publisher of my debut novel, Victorina Press, has been busy producing new graphics to market The String Games. I liked them so much, I thought I’d share them with you here:

That’s all my news for the minute. I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

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