About: shelleyweiner

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…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading

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…
» Continue Reading