Blog: Mel's Muse

In my last blog post, What Makes A Writer Write,  I mentioned the World Book Night event at Stoke Lodge, in Devon.  Invited to speak, briefly, to an audience of forty-plus about my own writing career, I began by saying that someone had asked me, ‘What is an elevator pitch?’ ...

Posted at 01:48am on 3rd May 2016

Last month, I wrote about a reader of my website, Skye, who had written to me for advice about her first self-published novel.  Her initial question was simply one of discouragement.  I say "simply", but there's nothing simple about the sense of isolation one can feel as an author.  And...

Posted at 08:15am on 3rd December 2011

What follows is based on a talk I gave to my Writers' Group, to encourage them to be brave and try a new form of writing. ;)

The word comes from an abbreviation of weblog, and began as a form of online journaling.

Well, anyone, of course! Social media...

Posted at 17:49pm on 5th June 2010

Do you ever feel that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know? I, for instance, didn’t know until I wrote that sentence that The More You Know was the title of public service announcements in the USA! Googling the phrase – as you do – brought up the following YouTube...

Posted at 18:13pm on 18th October 2009

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I wrote, last week, about the futility of relying solely on book publishing houses to promote your new novel, and the need to think in terms of self-promotion. Publishing a novel is not an end in itself (you want people to read it!) and, sooner or later, the process of creative writing has to be...

Posted at 11:02am on 12th October 2009

Have you ever thought about what makes the best blogging sites so attractive, and why you subscribe to some and not to others? Yes, I asked a similar question in a previous post titled Six Blogging Styles: Which Approach Turns You On? but, today, I want to take that further. The issues I’m raising...

Posted at 20:05pm on 1st May 2009

Do you write and own a blog? Or are you simply a reader of blogs? If so, what sort of blog most turns you on? What makes you want to subscribe to regular updates? And what urges you to leave a comment?

I’m not asking you to describe the niche for which you’re writing, nor...

Posted at 14:43pm on 23rd March 2009

The article that follows was written in August 2008 when I had been blogging for little more than three weeks. For reasons which I’ll explain later (see below) I thought it worth adding to. But first, the article as it was:

Please bear with me. I’ve been...

Posted at 18:16pm on 7th August 2008