This Blog is Mostly Filler

That’s right, it’s been so long since I wrote a proper blog post I now have to write a blog post about how long it has been seen I wrote a proper blog post.

I had Special K and a slice of toast for breakfast.

Back when I left Games Workshop and went freelance, I talked to Marc Gascoigne, chief editor of Angry Robot books now but back then recently-made former chief editor of Black Library – about going it alone in the big, harsh world of publishing. He told me to start a blog so that I would stay in the habit of writing often, and keeping in touch with my potential audience. He said that even if I just blog about what I had for breakfast, I should try to put something up regularly, or at least quite frequently.

Of course, at the moment I have more than enough projects to keep me busy writing everyday, from Black Library work, some speculative fiction of my own and some games design fun, which means that the blog has been the poor cousin of late.

When I started I wasn’t of a mind to write anything too personal; this would be a semi-professional blog not an online journal. It seemed a good idea to start with some writing advice, essentially putting my random thoughts in some kind of order for a blog post helped me focus on the other writing I was doing. This has fallen by the wayside of late, but not from any want of mine to knock it on the head. Just busy.

Also, I am hoping to relaunch my whole online presence sometime in the next few months, including a brand new website, all cross-platform with my various social media personas, links to back catalogue and all that jazz, and that means I have perhaps neglected the trusty old wordpress page.

So, here are a couple of bit of writing advice that I always give people, brought to mind by some conversations at the Horus Heresy Weekender.

* Work out your ending first, even if you don’t like doing a lot of planning. If you don’t know what you are heading towards, how do you know if you’re going in the right direction?

* Preparation sounds boring but it makes the exciting bit of writing all the easier and quicker.

* FINISH SOMETHING. You cannot edit unwritten words.

Thank you. I’ll be back with more insightful messages in the future. Follow me on Twitter or like my Facebook page where you can have far more frequent snippets of my brain.