Writing on the beach is not what it's cracked up to be. The sand blows, and you perspire, and the page gets all blotty and messed up, so I don't do that anymore.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My first novel, 'You Lost Me There,' has been described as a beach read. Tough bracket, beach reads. There's not much room for mistakes when you're competing against the sun for a person's attention.
Here's my definition of a great beach read - a fabulous story that sucks me in like a black hole and when it's over, it jettisons my bones across the galaxy with a hair on fire mission to convince everyone I know that they must read that book or they will die.
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
The trouble with writing for the web is that writing is about getting people to forget they're reading. Anything that reminds them they are reading, or which annoys or distracts them, bounces them out of the world. And the web, it seems to me, is all bounce. A very, very difficult medium to write for.
The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.
Spend more time working before you write page one. Then, the story - at least parts of it - will feel as though it is writing itself.
I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.
What could be more exciting when the writing is going well and things are falling into place? It's just like riding a fabulous wave for a surfer. There's no better place to be.
I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.
Writing is pretty flexible work, don't you think? If you want to surf, you just have to get a lot done when the waves are lousy. That's what I'm always telling myself, anyway - write while the surf's down!