Arvon Writers

A lovely quote from Beatrix Potter

You have now effectively filled the gaps...

When you do all the work for your readers, and leave nothing to the imagination. Leave the gaps for your readers to figure things out themselves

Now work some of this material into a single poem that plaits together three of the strands (or more, if you feel so inclined). Each strand must appear more than once, and all of them must be present in the poem’s conclusion. This will take as long as it takes.

Think of yourself as the reader when writing your novel.

Letting your characters speak for themselves in your writing. 

Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes. Start the timer and start writing, as fast as you can. Write without stopping, without judgement, without crossing out, without correcting your grammar or spelling, without really caring if you are writing in “proper” sentences. (Though you should be writing forward in a flow to the edge of the page, in free-flowing sentence-type things, not doing some kind of word association down the page).

C.S Lewis on the power of the creativity  

So don’t let your critical self stomp on your creative self. Compartmentalise. Never give them headroom at the same time. Doing a few minutes of free-writing every day is the best way of training yourself into this separation.

After the giddy rush of a first draft, how you edit and refine your work is of equal, if not more importance. For me, this is the point where the real writing starts, where I see what works and what doesn’t. It’s also when my word count drops; I try to delete anything I don’t need in order to ‘crisp up’ the writing

Ernest Hemingway on writing one true sentence

Viv Albertine’s writing exercise shows you how to write from your own experiences