It is early morning after a day of fiddling around with my author facebook page, which I have just changed to ‘shop’ format so that I can link my books to The Store at Scholastic, updating the look of my website and adding some out & about notes from the last couple of months, putting together a newsletter of sorts, and generally getting a sore back from spending too much time on my behind. Note to self: get up and move more today. Outside, it is just getting light, clouds ar

Back to School Life after my last post on the Write Life means that my focus has been on making sure everything is going smoothly in the classroom. Oh, and on report writing – not my favourite kind of writing, especially when I find myself staring at the tick boxes and arguing with myself as to which box the tick belongs in (for most students this is really clear, you have the evidence, you have the vision, for others the water is murky for one reason or another). Luckily for

Believe it or not, getting words on the page can be daunting for anyone, even seasoned writers and best sellers. Having a firm idea for your story is only the start. Sitting down every day and knowing what you want to write is both a habit and a skill, and some days it will seem easier than others. The first thing to realise is that you have to commit to forming a writing habit. There are different ways to approach this. Word Count Some writers have a word count that they str

It was quarter to nine on Friday morning, and I had a delicious feeling creeping up on me. Quite unexpected. Mmmm. Why? Because it was the first Friday that I was officially not being a teacher one day a week. And it felt good. I had got up early as usual and started doing some revisions on one of my books that are in the process of being published by Omnibus, and I would be going back to that later, but first I had a boy to get moving and some school shoes to buy, ready for

Being a 'morning person' is tricky. It means that all my energy is at its peak in those first hours of the day. If I want to get anything done, it has to be in the morning. If i want to achieve any housework or gardening? Morning. Exercise? Morning. Writing? Morning. The downside? I also work full time as a teacher. Morning. To get to work, I need to be leaving home at 7:30 ish, and before that I am usually trying to motivate my non-morning person type husband and son i