Writers Write Durban 2008 – Only Two More Places Available

37 graduates published – two places available for Writers Write Durban 25 – 29 August 2008
Special 1-week course (Durban only)
25 – 29 August 2008
The Writers Write Course Includes lectures and modules on:
1.   Story Ideas & Plotting
2.   Viewpoint & Genre
3.   Setting & Description
4.   Scenes/Beginnings, Middles and Ends
5.   Dialogue
6.   Characters
7.   Pacing/Rewriting & Research
8.   Manuscript Preparation & Advice [...]

Writing Disposable Romances

By Amanda Patterson
There’s something we don’t speak about much outside of the sanctity of the writing school’s walls.
It’s this desire – some might say obsession – to write romances for Mills & Boon.
The powerful pound has clout.
Tens of thousands of pound sterling per novel can’t be taken lightly.
Even you could do that, couldn’t you? Without [...]

Great Resources for Crime and Mystery Writers

We know that crime and mystery writers are always looking for resources to check the accuracy of forensic details and crime scene investigation procedures.

Criminal Psychology
Forensics and Evidence Analysis
Police and their Procedures
Poison and Antidotes

Here is a great list of resources – although they are mainly from the USA, they are interesting and helpful to South African [...]

8 Great Tips from Top Authors

Here are some great tips from authors
1. Set production goals. John Grisham wrote his first books while working 70-plus hours a week. His goal was to pen one legal- sized page every day. Stephen King writes 1,500 words every day.
2. Write because you like to write. You won’t accomplish much if you don’t like the [...]

Newspaper Blackout Poems to be Published

HarperCollins has signed Austin Kleon to write a collection of his popular Newspaper Blackout Poems for a book due from Harper Paperbacks in September 2009. Instead of starting with a blank page, the Austin-based writer and cartoonist picks up a newspaper and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need.
Kleon’s poems, which he [...]

Another Writers Write Graduate is Published

Dear Amanda
I am happy to tell you I received my first ever publishing contract today and your course was what started it all. Although this is a non-fiction book I used everything I learned at writers write.
Thank you so much for your generous and comprehensive sharing of your knowledge.
Warm regards
Annette Kinnear
Congratulations to Annette Kinnear, on [...]

The Night Class

by Amanda Patterson
Teachers dread it. They wake up sweating in the middle of the night, drenched with the horror of it. Only once you’ve experienced it, can you understand it.
You stand in front of that sea of blank faces. You see ten or twelve parasites – glassy eyed with an attentiveness that sucks the life [...]

Fiction Writing is Hard Work

Fiction Writing is about much more than just dreaming up a story and having it somehow materialise 50 000 words later. All of us who have been through the process and who have chosen this path, know that writing fiction is hard work – often it is wonderful and you feel like you’re flying – [...]

My Door by Christopher Dean

I would open the door marked “Apocalypse” to be the first to see the horsemen.
To ride with them, or be cut down by Death but not to stand in their way. They are the finality of the story of Time.
A story without an ending is meaningless. It has less relevance than my words and is [...]