Why?
Did You Know That?
– Charles Dickens wrote his literary classic ‘A Christmas Carol’ in just 2 weeks.– Samuel Johnson wrote ‘Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia’in an amazing 4 days.
– Barbara Cartland took only 5 days to write each of her books, resulting in an amazing 623 best-sellersduring her lifetime.
The hit self-help book ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’ is still selling in its millions – and was written by Dr Richard Carlson during a 12-hour transatlantic flight.
Even the world’s best-selling novelist, Agatha Christie, claimed to have written all her manuscripts in under a month. In a BBC interview, she said: “I find no reason why one month isn’t adequate time to write a book”.
So why does it take me all day to churn out three or four blog articles?
Writing Crime Fiction: Kirsty Brooks
Kirsty Brooks is an Adelaide based writer of crime and romance novels. On her blog she has published a long and useful article on how to write crime fiction. The article covers many aspects of the craft and she includes the following topics:
- pace and action
- protagonist
- conflict
- motivation
- setting
- characters
- suspense
- point of view
- plot
- dialogue
- general hints
- writing tips – five important tips to help the writer be successful.
Click on the link to read the whole article:
Link:
- Writing Crime Fiction – a couple of ideas and some advice – written by Kirsty Brooks.
Resources for writers
Adelaide crime writer Kirsty Brooks has written a very useful article on her blog about resources that are useful for writers. She has many useful suggestions to make and the article concludes with a very thorough list of useful books for writers.
Her list is broken into a series of categories, including:
- general books for writers
- resource books for crime writers
- romance writing
- getting published
- editing
- script writing
It is a long list with an emphasis on the Australian scene, but there are many titles applicable to writers wherever you live.
Link:
- Resources for writers – a list by Kirsty Brooks
How I became a writer (and got published): Kirsty Brooks
Kirsty Brooks is a South Australian writer who lives in Adelaide. She has had a number of crime novels published over recent years. She has also started writing a blog. In a recent post she tells about how she became a writer and became published. It’s a long but interesting read.
She writes about how she goes about writing her stories, the influences on her writing, the books she enjoys reading, how to deal with agents and many other topics, all covered in a conversational style.
Click on the links below to read the article or access her blog.
Links:
- How I became a writer (and got published) – written by Kirsty Brooks.
- Kirsty Brooks – this is her blog.
A very short writing competition
A while back I wrote about author DBA Lehane who publishes a short story on his blog called Short Short Fiction every day.
This author has announced a short short short short short short story competition.
Yes – six “shorts” – meaning you have to write a story in just six words. Hemmingway did it with the deeply moving story: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
To read all the details of the competition and how to enter click here. The competition closes on December 31st 2006.
I haven’t tried writing stories that short though I have written many writing exercises in the form of short fiction with a maximum of 55 words, based on a competition that was run by a magazine some years ago. To read some of these stories click here.
I’m thinking of entering – how about you? Have a go.