Andrew Jack Writing

Andrew Jack's Writing Blog

Do You Need An Agent in 2012?

This is becoming a tough question to answer. If Doctor Who showed up in the TARDIS and whisked you and I back even three years I’d have said yes, you absolutely need an agent if you want a career as a writer. These days there are definite ways to make it without one. Perhaps a [...]

12 Basic Writing Mistakes I’ve Made and How To Avoid Them

1. Trying to write two books at once This pretty much never works. Very rarely you will hear about a professional author writing two books at once, but in my experience what they’re actually doing is writing one book while editing the other. A big part of why this is a problem is that it [...]

12 Twitter Tips for Writers

Twitter is one of those good idea/bad idea things. On the one hand it’s an amazingly powerful tool for setting up a platform and communicating with your readers. On the other it’s a time sink equal to any other on the internet and it’s quite possible to spend a day doing almost nothing but tweet. [...]

A Quick Thought On Writing Temptation

Temptation is a fantastic plot device, and it’s an easy way to unstick a plot that isn’t going anywhere. The only real problem is that it’s very easy to get wrong, and the trap everyone seems to fall into is the temptation just isn’t very tempting. I’ve done, writing a scene where the main villain [...]

10 New Year Resolutions For Writers (that might actually stick)

So, it’s January, and the haze of food and drink is starting to clear. You might vaguely remember making some promises to yourself over the New Year, but we all know how the promises we make on January the 1st usually turn out.   Maybe it’s time we made some resolutions that we can stick [...]

Let’s Stop Punching One Another In The Face*

Comic by Randal Munroe of XKCD.com   Every month or so it seems like the self publishing vs traditional publishing debate flares up in some new and interesting way. Then four million writers jump on the band wagon and start calling each other dicks for having one opinion or another. I’m guilty too, of sticking [...]

Panic Stations

Panic stations, much like battle stations except instead of ending up locked and loaded and ready to fight you end up under your bed with a teddy bear and your undies on your head. That last one’s optional, but for my money you haven’t really freaked out until you’ve managed to screw up putting on [...]

Under Duress

So, when it all turns to shit, do you keep writing? The short answer is, if you can. I’m sitting here in my house, which is still a wreck (a structurally sound wreck thank goodness) and wondering if I should keep writing. For awhile I thought it would actually be wrong to post up anything [...]

Why Support Other Writers?

I got asked a little while ago why I pimp other authors on my site and on Twitter. This one was a surprise, but it may be one of those things that I think is obvious to everyone but which turns out to be obvious only to me. There are (at least) three reasons to [...]

Do You Need To Write Short Stories?

The short answer on this, is no. You don’t have to write short stories in order to have a career as a novelist.  But it helps.  I first heard the advice about short stories in Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing. Inside, King suggests that budding novelists strive to get short fiction published to give [...]

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