Fi Phillips

Write what you know is a phrase that's often thrown at writers. I've even talked about it myself on this blog . Like most lessons, it can have different meanings and challenges to different people. Author Emma Newman wrote about this topic in The Untrue Truth of "Write What You Know" as a guest writer on Chuck Wendig's terribleminds site. Her article is well worth a read with its discussion of transferable skills. Have a look.

The intention of making new year's resolutions has always been to start anew but seeing as 2014 will be more of a continuation for me (working on my novel, writing more plays, losing more weight), I decided to make just one new effort. I'm constantly reading (on my bedside cabinet at the moment are Titania Hardie's The Rose Labyrinth and the first S kulduggery Pleasant novel) but in 2014, I've decided that I'll step away from my usual genres and authors and support some of the writers that I follow, know and converse with. So my reading list for the first half of 2014 looks something like this: Ninety-Five Percent Human by Suzanna Williams : a young adult alien adventure inspired by the 'Welsh Roswell', an alleged UFO crash in the Berwyn Mountains in 1974. A is for Angelica by Iain Broome : his debut novel, "Gordon Kingdom struggles with the fate of his seriously-ill wife while patiently observing and methodically recording the lives of th...