Lane Swift's Blog, page 4

The last six months, writing, reading

This is a run-down of the last six months, which is how long ago I decided that in order to be a writer, I had to do like a writer. There’s also been quite a lot of gardening.

Books read, according to my Goodreads list, 42. That does include a number of short stories and novellas. I don’t read quickly, so I consider that an achievement. I wholeheartedly agree with the advice that writers need to read, and widely.

Things written for publication:

Something Good: a FREE m/m romantic short story (5...

My Writing Process Blog Tour – Romance is Romance

I’ve picked up the baton to blog about my writing process from Charlotte Comley, my friend and fellow writer, who runs The Writers At Lovedean.

A day early, just because…

1. What am I working on?

I’m actually between projects. For the last few months, I’ve been focussing my efforts on editing and polishing. At the end of April, I finished and submitted a novella and a short story. Both are adult romances. One is a free read which will be published in an anthology as part of the ‘Love’s Landscap...

The Web is Your Oyster: Where to Find Free-to-Use Images

Originally posted on The Daily Post:

For many of you, images are an integral part of your site. But sometimes, you might not have the right photograph to use for a post. As we’ve mentioned before, you can use the Creative Commons to search for images you need across the web, from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons, andsource and attribute imagesthat you find.

This spring, WordPress.com announced embed support for Getty Images, which means you can also access and share photos from Getty’s extensive li...

Signs of spring

This weekend the weather turned. The daffodils have been straining against the wind and the rain for weeks, but this weekend they were able to stretch up their heads and bask in the sunshine. The whole world and his wife was out walking along Hayling beach. This morning the pavement was covered in moss flicked out of the gutters by birds finding nesting material.

My daughter’s school is a mile from our house. Most days we walk. It’s good exercise and gives me time to think through my day on th...

Shameless gloating

I rewrote the ‘wrong’ chapters, corrected the related arcs and chopped out 800 unnecessary words. The second draft of my novella is done and sent off to my beta. I can forget about it now for a couple of weeks and get started on some new projects!

I’ve also bought some new music. A Great Big World’s first album,‘Is There Anybody Out There’. It’s full of love, laughter and a wee bit of beautiful sadness. I highly recommend it.

Learning Curve

It’s a hard lesson, when you put hours and hours (hundreds of hours) into a writing project and realise at the end of your second draft it’s not going to work.

Several days ago, I had an offer from a published friend to read through my novella but she needed it by Sunday (yesterday) morning to take it on a trip with her. This weekend I slogged my guts out to tidy up my rough first draft (I got about 7 hours sleep total this weekend), so she would have a ‘clean’ second draft.

I saved it, put it...

Have #SpecialNeeds #Kids? Shut Them Up! #Malaysia #TCK #Autism

Originally posted on Daily (w)rite:

If you have special needs kids, that’s not my problem, shut them up and shut them down, put them where I can’t see them, nor hear them. They’re a NUISANCE.

Bangsa Ria Day Care Center

This is essentially what two Malaysian citizens have to say about a day care center for special needs in their neighborhood, they have filed a case against the school and want it removed from their locality.

To quote them from the article linked above:

“The applicants have suffered...

Browser woes

Many of the blogs I follow don’t have the option to ‘like’, ‘reblog’ or comment on my Reader page (the icons aren’t showing). Often, when I go to the original page I am able to do it there, but it depends.

Today I wanted to comment on someone’s blog and after much trial and error discovered I could leave a comment if I was using Mozilla Firefox, but not Explorer (only let me comment anon) or Google Chrome (‘ate’ my comment). My blog is on WordPress. The blog I wanted to comment on was Blogspo...

He whom I love the most

My husband doesn’t read anything I write. Occasionally he’ll skim a flash fiction (500 words) and invariably he’ll say, “That was good. I liked it.”

Yesterday, he got back from a week-long business trip to America. All his colleagues spent a big part of the trip shopping, which included gifts for their wives. They raided the Florida outlet malls for Coach shoes and handbags and Tiffany bracelets. My husband came back with an iPad mini for one of my children, a smart HP laptop for the other. Th...

What is your favourite piece of writing advice?

laneswift:

As I finished the first draft of a novella today, and realised even as I was writing the epilogue that one of the characters just isn’t right, this is the inspiration to let him stew for a bit and come back to him later. He wasn’t speaking loud enough to me and I wasn’t listening. Now the writing is done, I’m all ears.

Originally posted on Jodie Llewellyn:

I read something the other day that really stuck with me:

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

It’s a quote by...