Fi Phillips

As I've said in the past, new year resolutions don't generally work for me. January never seems like the right time to 'begin' anything. It's cold, an anticlimax after the festive break and generally, I'm skint. Spring always sees me much more motivated and likely to start new things. So instead of new year 'resolutions', I'm setting a number of goals for the year - realistic, doable goals that I've a more than fair chance of achieving. Firstly, there's my novel (Haven: Shadowbinder). It's currently in the care of the writer, Brian Keaney as he assesses it for me, via the Writer's Workshop . Brian writes novels for children and young adults and once I finish my current reading list , I've decided that I must buy a couple of his books. His report should reach me before the end of January so once I've read, re-read and mentally digested his words of wisdom (and probably dried my eyes), my first goal of the year will be to...

So November is over and NaNoWriMo is wrapped up for another year. The usual target for each participant is to write 50,000 words. My personal target was to complete the first draft of my second children's novel during the month. So, how did I do? Well, I didn't complete the draft but I did write the first fifteen chapters. That's approximately half of the novel. What stopped my progress, besides real life, was the fact that my original chapter plan unravelled slightly when I started writing it. I realised that changes had to be made to my plot and I also found that a certain amount of extra research was required. Personally, I'm delighted with last month's progress. NaNoWriMo has provided the kickstart I needed to begin novel number two and I can happily continue with writing the rest of the book. So where does chapter fifteen leave us in the novel? Well, Isabelle and Blessing have a mystery to solve, Cormac is stood outside Hartley's shop, and Steve and...

So this November, I'm taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) . The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. It doesn't have to be polished words, or even pre-planned words. It's quite acceptable for it to be an outpouring of 50,000 words of garbage (although I'm sure that doesn't happen). I started off with my chapter plan complete and for the first few days was keeping up with, and at points exceeding, the daily average of 1,667 words (to accomplish 50,000 by the end of the month). Then, I hit not exactly a brick wall so much as a sticky patch. Here was the problem - my chapter plan didn't work. Now, I know that the premise of NaNoWriMo is to plough on regardless but I just couldn't carry on without rethinking my plot so I had a few days where I went back over what I'd written. I realised that a 'method' to find clues in my novel was ridiculous. It just didn't work. I thought up a new one, made a few amendments to what ...

With the start of this year, comes a new start for my novel, Haven Falling. Having completed the third draft, I've decided to re-write it for the 9-12 year age range. Although it is really the fourth draft, it feels like a first draft in many ways so I was interested to read this article from Bookbaby - How to write your book's first draft like a professional.