Blog posts with my creative writing experiments
My 2013 NaNo novel is set in a dystopian future.
Working title: Chasing Credit.
Tone: A mash-up of 1984 and Brave New World with a contemporary twist.
Words written so far =0 (but it’s only 10 am on NaNo day 1 – so not panicking yet).
You’re doing NaNo too? I’m happy to be your NaNo Buddy.
Forgive me for not writing in complete sentences. Time is short. The future beckons…
Two weeks ago I opened the BMA News Review* and read an anguished opinion piece written by a doctor. She had just discovered nits in the hair of her young children and she did what many busy working-mums do: she blamed herself.
Sometimes we do something on the spur of the moment and it has unexpected consequences.
Last week I opened and e-mail and discovered I had won £50 of books.
Included in the e-mail was a list of titles, all Random House publications, from which I could make a selection. I wasn’t too upset that the majority of the books seemed to be about cookery. It was an unexpected and wonderful surprise!
What had I done to deserve Continue reading “Letter published: BMA News Review”
My old novel had been a monster that had threatened to eat me alive. The new novel was going to be different. I was going to tame the beast before it got the better of me.
A couple of months ago I gave up on a novel I had been trying to write for a few years. I analysed what had gone wrong and listed some of the problems in a blog post: Why I Abandoned My Novel .
Giving up was a difficult decision to make and I spent some time convincing myself I was doing the right thing. In writing – as in anything in life – making mistakes is OK. This is how we learn. To stay cheerful, I found a great collection of quotes on learning from mistakes and many of these quotes come from some very good writers. Continue reading “Learning from mistakes: writing my new novel”
By the time I started typing I already had the novel set out in my mind. I typed quickly, I typed furiously and the words just flew onto the page.
In July 2013, I decided to abandon the novel I had been working on for a couple of years.
I began writing with great enthusiasm during NaNoWriMo in November 2011. At that time, I had completed the Open University course “Start writing fiction” and had just enrolled in a BA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University. I was an avid reader and knew a bit about writing.
At first it was easy. Continue reading “A writer’s confession: why I abandoned my novel.”
Occasionally I write non-fiction, often of a medical variety or about a health service topic. I had a short piece published recently in Pulse Magazine, a weekly publication for doctors. The topic was Burnout. The question I had to answer, in 200 words, was this:
One of my salaried GPs seems to be suffering from burnout. How should I approach the issue, what advice should I give and what are my duties as his/her employer?
Ruth Livingstone 