Fi Phillips

There's been a change in my life recently, in a good way. In fact, it's been rather wonderful. The effect of this change has been to remove limitations that prevented me from doing and having certain things. There is very little holding me back and yet my brain still thinks there is. My gut reaction is that I still can't do those things when, actually, I can. It can be the same with my writing. For instance, they say to 'write what you know' and hence there are whole arenas of life and experience that I wouldn't dare touch on in my stories for fear of appearing naive or ill-informed. For instance, I worked in an office environment for decades, finally attaining a minor management role, and yet I don't feel comfortable writing about the upper echelons of the corporate world. I haven't ever held that kind of position so what would I know about it? There are other areas I would be reluctant to write about too - investment banking, brain surgery, politic...

So it's been just over a week since I received the manuscript assessment report back from Brian Keaney of the Writer's Workshop . He told me, in his report, that he thought I would find his assessment 'challenging' and I did. However, it's a good challenge. I now have information on what will make my story fit better in the publishing world. I always had a certain blindness to this reality. It's one thing to read a book, a shelf of books, in your genre, but it isn't always easy to apply that to your own writing. I now have a better idea of what will make my novel work. I'm making a number of amendments. For instance, the book is now solely from the point of view of Steve (albeit still from a third person perspective) which has meant removing some chapters. I'll have to find a way to convey the information from these chapters in other ways. I always wondered whether having access to Steve's internal dialogue, his thoughts, would work in a...

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...