Melissa Lawrence

Hi everyone . I'm not sure if it's the time of year, the time of life or the HRT I'm currently taking for the menopause but I seem to be in a clearing-out mood at the moment. I have all this energy that I've not had for years and nothing is safe any more, especially if it's been languishing in a cupboard for far longer than it probably should have done. Writing is not escaping this "new broom" feeling either and I recently dismantled the notebook containing writing exercises that I kept in my handbag. I kept it in my handbag because I used to go into town a lot, sometimes several times a week, and write in coffee shops and cafes. The notebook was very useful for helping to kick-start my writing, especially when the lure of a second cappuccino and another chocolate eclair seemed too difficult to resist. I thought it might be good if I shared a few of these exercises with you. Of course, you don't need to go into a coffee shop or cafe to try them. ...

Hi everyone. I hope you are having a good summer if it is summer in your part of the world. Today I have a big announcement to make. After years of railing against self-publishing and resisting it with every fibre of my writing being such as in this post http://melissalawrencewriter.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/why-ive-decided-not-to-self-publish.html , I have finally decided to throw my principles out of the window and give it a go after all. I am currently dusting off all eleven (yes, eleven) of my unpublished children's books which are currently sleeping peacefully in my filing cabinet, along with all the rejection letters from publishers and agents that they have accumulated over the years and starting the process of self-publishing them all. It has taken me a long time to come to this decision but in the end, my reasons for doing so are as follows: 1. It seems a bit pointless having them all shut away in the filing cabinet when they might as well be out in the world g...

Hi everyone. I hope you are having a good summer wherever you are in the world. I wasn't expecting to discover this week that I have something in common with former royal butler Paul Burrell but it appears that I have. His book A Royal Duty published in 2003, is based on his experiences as butler to Diana, Princess of Wales who tragically died in a car crash twenty years ago this year. The book caused considerable controversy at the time because of the "revelations" it contained about Diana's private life based on personal letters that Burrell had included in his book. Nothing unusual there then, given the apparent penchant of ex-employees for spilling the royal beans. What was different about Burrell's book however was that Burrell had not only included letters written by the late princess to himself, but had also included letters written by Prince Philip to his daughter-in-law in the early 1990s. Princess Diana dancing with John Travolta at the White...

Hi everyone. Happy National Limerick Day 2017! And sincere apologies that I didn't quite manage to "up my game" in terms of blogging as I said I would do in my last post which was way back in November. But "onwards and upwards" as they say. National Limerick Day is celebrated annually on May 12th every year in recognition of the birthday of the poet, author, illustrator and artist Edward Lear who was born in 1812. His Danish father apparently ended up in debtors prison so Lear had to start earning a living at a very young age. He began as an illustrator for the London Zoological Society and then went to live on the estate of the Earl of Derby. It was there that he wrote his first book of poems A Book of Nonsense which was intended for the grandchildren of the Derbys. Edward Lear by Wilhelm Marstrand  Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org Although Lear went on to write many travel books, he subsequently became most famous for his humorou...

Hi everyone. Well, I'm not sure where September and October went to but somehow it's now November and over two months since my last post. The good news is that after a lot of faffing about and spending way too much time "thinking" instead of "doing" (although you can probably blame the debilitating effects of the peri-menopause for that), I have decided that I'm definitely putting writing back at the forefront of my portfolio career. That means I'm upping my game in terms of blogging, sending stuff out and generally getting my writing act together. If I hadn't been rather comatose throughout most of October, I would definitely have blogged about National Poetry Day which was on October 6th. Actually, it was watching an inspiring programme about poetry on the BBC that aired around this time which helped to kickstart my writing again, as well as another programme on the slightly less well-known channel Notts TV which featured the very funny an...

Hi everyone. This is slightly spooky! I've been meaning to start posting on this blog again for a while now but hadn't quite managed to get round to it until today. I've just looked back to see when I last posted and it is almost exactly one year to the day. I certainly had no idea that this was the case and it does feel a bit like Groundhog Day or rather Groundhog Year as I could quite easily begin this post in exactly the same way as I did twelve months ago. "I hope you had a good Bank Holiday weekend. It was a bit of a wash-out here so I hope it was better where you are." But that would be rather lazy of me and besides, it wasn't so much a wash-out as more of a severe tropical storm with lots of thunder and lightning which was indeed very, very frightening, especially when you foolishly haven't renewed your home insurance. It was interesting looking back, as it always is, to see where I was at with my writing 12 months ago today. According to my p...

Hi everyone. I hope you had a good Bank Holiday weekend. It was a bit of a wash-out here so I hope it was better where you are. Actually, the wet weekend didn't really bother me too much. I spent most of it putting the finishing touches to a new website I've set up. This is to publicise the collection of letters I inherited from my grandmother which I'm trying to get published as a non-fiction book called 'My Dear Elsie'. Those of you who follow this blog will know that the letters have a strong link to the popular UK television series Downton Abbey . This is because they were written by my grandmother's close friend Ethel North, who was lady's maid and companion to Lady Winifred Burghclere, the elder sister of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. As you may know, the Carnarvon family were the real-life inspiration for the fictional Crawley family in Downton Abbey and much of the series was filmed at their ancestral seat of Highclere Castle. The website, as we...