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Community Publishing for the community

Writing and Me, BY jane Tulloch

26/8/2015

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It sometimes seems to me that half the people I meet are writing or planning to write a book and the other half is asking how do I do it.  Where do I get my ideas from?  What gets my writing juices flowing? Why?

No easy answers but it did set me thinking. Now I’ve done a bit more writing and am looking to writing in the longer term, I’ve been reflecting on this.

The “how” is quite straightforward. Creating a story seems to me to be like creating a painting, or at least how I would if I ever painted. First I sketch in the outline and characters then I go back over and over it adding in detail to highlight parts that need highlighting or even reducing the contrast so that outcomes can be more surprising when they come. Certain characters need to be delineated with more care than others. Dialogue might need extra work. So and so on until the day comes when it is finished. That’s the hard part: when enough is enough and it’s time to stop, to let go.

For the “where”, I find ideas for stories can be the distilled essence of overheard words or phrases, other people’s experiences rethought and retold, half thought notions and lots of what ifs. Sometimes it’s a character or set of characters that appear fully formed in my mind, sometimes it’s a situation. Such variety.

Why? Well that’s another story and one I’ve not worked out yet and somehow I suspect I never will.


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    CONTRIBUTORS

    Gordon Lawrie is the founder and managing director of Comely Bank Publishing, and the author of Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie. The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwelll-Hume and The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold. He is also a flash fiction aficionado. He’s currently in search of that book that earns him a fortune. 

    Emma Baird is a freelance/blogger, and the author of Katie and the Deelans. Since then she's moved onto pastures new where she self-publishes experimental YA and chick-lit novels both online and as print-on-demand.

    Jane Tulloch is the author of Our Best Attention (published 2016) Attention Assured (2017) and now has a further lease of life as an expert on the history of Edinburgh's lost department stores. She is relishing the freedom of writing an (almost!) complete pack of lies after years of writing very serious reports on her professional topic of autism in adults.

    Eric J. Smith lives in Maryland, USA, and is the author Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge, which is available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.​

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