Fran Macilvey's Blog, page 48
June 1, 2016
Online writers forums
Online writers forums
Online writing communities set up and run by aspiring writers or small publishers on the look-out for new material or like-minded fellowship, are a fantastic way to develop friendships and networks of support. As a member of an on-line community, we can read what is on offer from other writers and comment on it as well as uploading our own work and receiving feedback and, hopefully, some recognition. On-line communities help us get to grips with on-line processes, connec...
May 30, 2016
Getting Help to Get Started
Getting help to get started
Before even thinking about sending off submissions of your work, consider investing in a good, professional edit. If you are not sure where to start, take a look in the Yearbook, which lists many professionals who will be happy to review your work, for a fee. Here is a useful article from Sarah Ream, Commissioning Editor at ‘The Pigeonhole’.
Fresco showing a woman so-called Sappho, holding writing implements, from Pompeii, Naples
Research on-line, or, if you alrea...
May 26, 2016
How to Get Published
How to Get Published
That, as anyone who is trying to get published will tell you, is the sixty thousand dollar question, or maybe sixty million dollars, adjusted for inflation.
But as anyone who is published will tell you, getting published is really only the beginning. The more – some would say, the most – important question is, Do you have the stamina and the flexibility to be a focussed dreamer, a sociable writer, a faithful promoter, an intimate blogger, a modest self-publicist and a for...
May 24, 2016
Making Mistakes
Okay, so who here enjoys making mistakes? Anyone? I expect to be greeted with a deafening silence on that one. Stupid question? Not really.
The ways in which we can be taken for a ride, hoodwinked and generally made a fool of seem to grow exponentially as the years pass, though I don’t think it has anything to do with growing older, necessarily. Anyone who works alone or for themselves is constantly at risk of being pressured, emotionally pulled or socially expected to expend their energy or...
May 20, 2016
BookBub – Fran Macilvey – Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy
Hello Everyone! I have some very good news to share with you today.
My first book, ‘Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy‘ has now been selected for a BookBub promotion which runs until May 23.
The e-book of ‘Trapped’ is now available to buy on kindle at Amazon for only $1.99 / 1.44. You can find it on these links for
AMAZON UK and AMAZON.COM
All reviews, comments, tweets and shares are very much appreciated.
As my regular reader...
May 19, 2016
I have crawled across roads….
I have crawled across roads….
This report which I read recently on Facebook, is a chilling reminder of the real human cost of the government’s brutal cuts to the welfare bill. (If the current administration were less wedded to the idiocy that is Trident, the costs of welfare would be affordable, but that’s another story.)
In what feels like a former life, I used to keep lists of everything we had to get done at weekends, when Eddie was free and had a car to drive us around in. The nadir or my...
May 17, 2016
The Dangers of writing a book like ‘Trapped’
The dangers of writing a book like ‘Trapped’ are not always immediately obvious, though the title gives a clue or two.
The subject matter is bitter sweet, the memories sometimes painful, and the years, well, I’m glad they have passed, and yet, I sit here thinking I have really achieved very little for my fifty-plus years. The title, ‘Trapped’ reminds me how easy it would be to do not much. Existence is great, but to really live, we need to move forward.
Cerebral Palsy is not everyone’s idea o...
May 13, 2016
Questions, continued
How should I act when I meet a disabled person at a social gathering? There it would be normal to say, “hi”, yet at what point, if at all, should I mention the disability, and what can I say that’s neither hurtful, nor annoying, nor tactless?
All of life is a learning curve – and mine has been perpendicular, at times! Being disabled offers no special access in itself to wisdom, tolerance or kindness. But, with the benefit of some hindsight, I might say that meeting people at social gathering...
May 12, 2016
Questions from a reviewer of ‘Trapped’
Questions from a reviewer of Trapped.
Lilo very kindly read and reviewed Trapped and in her review she asks these questions. Please accept my sincere apologies for my delay in answering you, Lilo.
Fran, please tell my how I should act when, next time, I come across someone with a disability.
Don’t tell me to just say, “hi”, as I normally don’t say, “hi” to strangers. So this wouldn’t be natural behavior.—Should I smile? Yet couldn’t it be that the person takes my smile for charity?
And how...
May 10, 2016
Existential Crises
Existential crises
There are times when the sheer existential futility of everything threatens to stall – or worse, undermine everything we work for. Family crises come in all shapes and sizes, and come in battalions, to challenge everything we do, and everything we believe in. So, what do we do about that? Answers on a postcard…please.
I have wept, and raged at the unfairness of life. I have come to think that all I did and thought and believed was a waste, a desert of futility and puerile i...
