Rules rule

Many of you will have seen this picture going round on Facebook and Twitter. It's Henry Miller's "work schedule". Or not a schedule in our modern sense, but a list of rules to keep himself focused.

I love being reminded that it's not just today's writers who have distractions. It's always (presumably) been hard to focus on the difficult part of our work, hard to stay positive in the face of

PUNCTUATION POINTS

Some time ago, I had a request from Kate B, who said:
I would love a post on punctuation. Is there a modern, acceptable form? Is it a new art form or something that should remain set in stone? An example. Instead of exclamation marks, using very short sentences and full stops.In a way, there is only one sort of correct punctuation: that which most clearly helps the reader read the words in the

CONFUSED BY CONFLICTING ADVICE?

You will have noticed that there's often conflicting advice about how to get published. You will be frustrated by this. And confused. And sometimes despairing. Natural responses, but wrong.Some of you have been talking about tearing your hair out or curling up in little balls of stress at the conflicting advice. Sometimes you'll read something on my blog and it conflicts with advice on a blog I

WHY WASN'T I PUBLISHED FOR SO LONG?

What, you mean apart from the fact I wasn't good enough?

Well, time I explained this, I suppose, after several weeks of appearing to know it all. Because the truth is that once I knew a lot less than I do now. Obvious, really.

First, for those of you who have missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more