About: shelleyweiner
Recent Posts by shelleyweiner
‘Stay inside your story’ – a mantra for our times
A plea for advice from a fellow writer, echoed a thousand times over from almost every country in the world: ‘How can I be – feel – creative in these awful times? I can’t concentrate. I have time and space, the words should be pouring out, but I’m stuck.’ My answer is to repeat my…
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Written on April 6, 2020 at 1:45 pm
Categories: Ask Shelley
Five top tips for a great short story – and five days to create one
It’s not true that short stories are easier to write than novels. They’re certainly shorter but have equally complex demands. A perfect piece of short fiction is as hard to achieve as a finely wrought item of jewellery. It calls for precision, supreme control, and a good strong tale at its heart. This is what…
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Written on June 5, 2017 at 10:14 am
Categories: Ask Shelley
Take a leaf out of Poppy’s book
As novelists we try to create a credible illusion of reality: things happen because things happen, a causal chain of events along an imaginary timeline. And after many years of arranging narrative plot we begin to believe that’s the way things really do happen. That effort leads to success, that good habits lead to better…
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Written on December 24, 2015 at 10:24 am
Categories: Ask Shelley, Blog, On writing
Tags: advice for writers
What does the new novelist really, really want?
So you signed up … or almost did … to the latest Faber Academy six-month ‘Writing a Novel’ course? Or joined me in Spain for the Literary Consultancy’s Literary Adventure? Or emerged triumphant from one of the summer Five Day Short Story courses? Well done – even for that moment of serious consideration. Out of…
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Written on October 12, 2015 at 10:00 am
Categories: On writing
Tags: advice for writers, creative writing, writing a novel
Is ‘scribomania’ a certifiable addiction?
When people want to know why I write, I look at them blankly. It feels like they’re asking me, ‘Why breathe?’ or ‘Why eat?’ And all I can say in reply is that it seems as necessary and sometimes as problematic as either of these life-sustaining activities. For, while it is true that it doesn’t usually…
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Written on March 18, 2015 at 10:27 am
Categories: Ask Shelley, On writing
Tags: ask shelley, creative writing, writing
Recent Comments by shelleyweiner
- April 30, 2020 on ‘Stay inside your story’ – a mantra for our times
- December 17, 2014 on A novel by 2020? Top ways to make it happen
- September 2, 2014 on What makes mentoring work? Ten top essential ingredients
- August 18, 2014 on Writing Your First Novel and Writing Short Stories – two 60-minute Masterclass eBooks