Melissa Lawrence

Just a quick post this week as after blogging last week about Sue Johnson's new book 'Creative Alchemy: 12 steps from inspiration to finished novel' I'm determined to spend most of this week's writing time working on mine. One of the (many) things I've found difficult about freelance writing and journalism over the years is getting hold of a copy of the magazines I think I'd like to write for. This sounds as though it should be really easy but in my experience it's not. "How to" books, articles and some editors often say that you should study at least six issues of any target magazine. This is rather OTT in my opinion (a couple of recent issues should tell you pretty much all you need to know) but they never seem to advise on how to get hold of sample copies. Obviously the popular weekly titles are usually available at the newsagents but monthly or quarterly ones can cause problems. If a magazine ...

I'm always interested in new books about writing and happy to promote them if I feel they would be of interest and use to other writers. In the case of writer and tutor Sue Johnson's new book ' Creative Alchemy: 12 Steps from inspiration to finished novel' it was a "no-brainer" as her book is definitely one to get hold of if like me, you are keen to get a novel published but are having difficulty starting or, as in my case, finishing. The title 'Creative Alchemy' comes from Sue's belief that writing is "a magical process that turns the base metal of your original idea into a memorable story". I really like this description of writing and it prompted me to ask Sue a few questions about her book and how she came to write it. Here are her answers. Why did you decide to write  'Creative Alchemy' ? The trigger came from when I read an article stating that for every 100 novels started, only one was completed. The reas...

If you have visited my website ( http://www.melissalawrence.co.uk ) you will know that one of the things I write is poetry for children. I've had some of my poems published in anthologies by publishers such as MacMillan and Oxford University Press and I've also been placed in competitions. Unfortunately, the anthology work seems to have dried up, probably because mainstream publishers are wary of publishing poetry for children because it gets such a raw deal on the National Curriculum and also because, when faced with budget cuts, poetry seems to be the first thing to go. I've been touting There's A Gorilla In My Pyjamas, my collection of poetry for younger children, round various publishers with no success, although it was a pretty near miss with Meadowside Children's Publishers ( http://www.meadowsidebooks.com ) I've also been trying to get someone interested in my collection of poems for older children called...

Just a brief post this week as I am feeling a bit under the weather (again) but as usual, not too ill to find another useful writing-related website. This time it is http://www.writing-world.com/ which describes itself as "a world of writing information for writers around the world" although it appears to be based in East Sussex. As well as lots of useful articles and other information covering many writing genres, what I particularly like about the site is that you can very easily subscribe to a pretty substantial free newsletter. This is issued on the first and third Thursday of each month and comes in the body of an email so that you can either print it out as hard copy or save it on your desk top if you care about the planet. Although the newsletter seems more geared to American writers, the articles are fairly universal in their content. The current issue has an excellent article on E-book publishing which I found really...