5 Films From The Nineties That Will Get You To The End Of Your First Draft
Struggling to finish your first draft? You could cry and shove chocolate cake in your face (this sometimes works), but perhaps it’s time for an alternative approach. So, hitch up your combat trousers, snap on your conical bra, and step into a happier, more nurturing writing environment… the world of Nineties movies. No wait really. […]
**A Writers’ HQ Manifesto On Bad Language**
At Writers’ HQ, we often get angry messages telling us that we can’t possibly be ‘real’ writers, or that we must not be very clever, because we swear, use slang and text speak, use bad grammar, and love puns.
10 Ways to Write Like a Kid
Over the last five years we’ve run hundreds of writing workshops for both adults and kids. The adult ones tend to be a lot more sweary and the kids’ ones tend to involve a lot more glitter and googly eyes, but the main difference between them is their approach to writing. The adults are riddled […]
The Moaning Method: The Life-Changing, Writing-Changing Magic of Complaining
Something’s been bugging me lately. Something complicated and vexing and upsetting that I won’t go into here. You know the drill: endless conversations in your head, long mental essays justifying your actions, feeling ever so sorry for yourself. So far, so uninteresting to anyone else on the actual planet. Writers do most of our work […]
Shiny Thing Syndrome: A Writer’s Malady
We’re here today to talk about a serious condition that afflicts hundreds of thousands of writers across the world. It’s called Shiny Thing Syndrome (STS). Shiny Thing Syndrome can strike at any time, but is a common symptom of writers who are mid-way through a work-in-progress and who will do almost anything to avoid putting […]
Beginning A Story: What Stops Us Starting?
I have this funny thing that I do before I start any new writing project. For whatever reason (spoiler: procrastination) I get it into my head that before I truly begin I have to have the absolute perfect opening sentence, and that this opening sentence will carry the voice of the piece I’m working on, […]
Give it space: How to grow stories in your head
We’ve all been there. You have a great idea, so you snap the laptop open and start hammering out words, but after a couple of paragraphs you’ve stalled. Where is the rest of the frigging story?! You worry the idea round a bit and try to think really hard about where it’s going, but your […]
Fear and Failure: A Guide to Giving No F*cks
In our Fear & Failure series, we’re going to bombard you with a whole shit-tonne of blogs on the terror of failure and rejection, and how to pull your little cotton socks back up and carry the fuck on. So take a seat. We’ve got important matters to discuss. First, we want to talk to […]
How To Cope With Rejection
It is a truth universally acknowledged that every writer, no matter how accomplished, will, at some point, get rejected. So join the club. Look, you get a free badge and everything: Look, it happens to the best of us. Some of the most rejected books of all time also happen to be massively successful, award-winning […]
Why We Find Writing So Scary (And Why That’s A Good Thing)
Get yourself a cup of tea and let’s have a lil’ chat about the overwhelming terror of writing (and how to get over it…)