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Hello and welcome to my dumb blog for people who like to read and write and sing and dance and live and love. Okay, this blog mostly caters for the first two, but the others are neat things to do too. Feel free to submit your own work for posting or feedback. I (personally, me, yes, hello there!) would be more than very, extremely happy to give you ideas and reckonings, if you so wished. Or sometimes it's just nice to have somewhere to share what you've done. words.  writing tips. And hey, don't give up.

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I just found these cute prints on Etsy. What a neat way to upgrade scrapped books! (x)

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Give me the complex character.

Give me the complex character. Give me the flawed character. Give me the character who fails, who falls, or who doesn’t try at all. Give me the character all the other characters hate. The one who’s broken, who’s cruel, who’s afraid. Give me the character who drinks too much or thinks too little; who has to fight to succeed if they do succeed in the end. Give me the character who I’d never want to be, and yet who’s the most like me.

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Writing tip #36

Think of writing a lot like exercising your muscles. When you start, you're going to need to shape and tone your writing skills and it's going to be difficult, strenuous work. You type and note and create until your metaphorical writing muscles ache from the strain and then once you reach a level you're satisfied with, you keep working, because if you don't then you're committing yourself to a life of being that one guy who goes to the gym once a month to do 5 minutes on the treadmill. That is, you might as well not bother at all.

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written? kitten!: positive reinforcement at it's finest and most adorable. for every 100 (or more) words written, you're rewarded in the most charming fashion imaginable, so get writing. 

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Writing tip #35

It's extremely easy to (unintentionally) write a fictional story all too autobiographical. Try making your main character drastically different from yourself in one way or another in order to free up your imagination and ensure you're delivering crucial details and information to the reader. 

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esprit d'escalier: french term; when you think of the perfect comeback much too late.

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33 ways to stay creative (x)

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Writing tip #34

Sketch your characters and actually create their physical identity for you to refer to. Sometimes you can create characters simply as they occur to you, at other times they'll be variations of people you see, meet and know. Some of the best sketches are inspired by people you don't really know but get a brief view of, like someone sitting in a restaurant or queuing in line at the supermarket. 

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Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

AL Kennedy

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Roddy Doyle - On Writing 

1. Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph –

3. Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.

4. Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5. Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don’t go near the online bookies – unless it’s research.

6. Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg “horse”, “ran”, “said”.

7. Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9. Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.

10. Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – “He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.” But then get back to work.

This advice first appeared in The Guardian

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into , beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993.

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　Writing tip #33 People are going to criticize you, your ideas, your writing, and there is absolutely no avoiding that. You're going to need to develop a hard outer-shell and take these things on the chin. Absorb only the hardships from which you can learn and teach yourself to cast any others aside.

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Writing tip #32　

If you're ever feeling at the end of your tether- as though you'll never make it, what's the point, might as well give up now- just remember that Harry Potter was rejected by a dozen publishers before making it into the big bad world, and many other creditable works many more times than that.  Also take solace in the fact that you are not one of the publishers who rejected the billionaire writings of Miss Rowling!

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I picked up a cotton-bound thesaurus that’d been laying out in the sping’s sun because I wanted another way to say “ Speechless” without having to say another word. You taught me all the ways to trace my outline without appearing to be a crime scene and for that I should thank you, but I’ve always liked words, so instead I’ll write you this poem. There’s a flying bird overhead going east to find gold, and I’m sitting here holding old gold chains and nattering out morse code with my pencil for them to send help, come west, come to me. Maybe I shouldn’t find comfort in the scars people draw on their bodies because I still have insecurities in me that I don’t know how to get rid of, either. These words are self-inflicted and they bleed through my chest when I forget to bandage them closely enough. I close my eyes and my thoughts turn hard like wax. These trees are all wicks and when I put a lighter to their roots all I get is a dose of aromatherapy and another forest fire somewhere inside of me. My dad brought two roses to place on my uncles’s sick bed who told me, “you’re too much of a dreamer, Lucy”. My dad told me that I could never become a truly beautiful with words until I’ve seen more of the world outside of this patch of land and until I’ve collected enough memories beneath my nails to pick out a memoir. And I know, dad. I know. But I’m twenty and trying to create another world for people to escape into that doesn’t belong to us. When I’ve seen enough of the world to write six and a half billion stories in one, I’ll slip myself a dose of morphine and lay the world to rest with me. We don’t deserve this world. We don’t deserve these words. I want you to know that last night was the first night I saw you tear up because of something close to happiness, and I never want to see you cry again. Dad, I hope you’re happy for me. This is my universe that I’m building line by line. You know I always wanted to fall into a place where I could be completely free to be myself.  

Dad, this is it.