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Dunno if I was charging it - I just walked away from writing, distracted by other things in life. Then, other things happened that brought me back to writing. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to pick the same story up again - but I did, and it's been fairly steady sailing since, to the tune of about...

Stopped writing around 2008, I think. Picked it up again in 2022. So 14 years-ish. Been writing it ever since.

Closest book I have on hand, The Power by Naomi Alderman: A man arrives at the convent before seven o'clock the next morning. He drives up to the front gate and just waits there. Roxy knocks on Allie's door, drags her down the driveway in her dressing gown. "What? What is it?" says Allie, but...

Why does Anon 'ask' when it's already been clarified by the question mark? Why have Corty 'shout' when the exclamation mark already indicates heightened emotion (and that's an awful lot to be shouting).

I'd probably take a page from Stephen King's On Writing: get up as I would for any normal job (6 or 7 am), shower, eat, write. Write 2000 words. Done by noon? Great: read, do real-world stuff. Not done by 5pm? Keep at it, until 2k is done. 10k/week every week until the novel's done.

For a (relatively recent) terribly skilled example of 3rd person omniscient, you could try Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You? Skims between the four main protagonists, gradually drawing in closer and eventually bringing the four together for the finale. Brilliant stuff.

As someone who doesn't know you and hasn't read your work--but who has come very close, many times, to giving up on writing--and who did stop, for over a decade--my only question would be: why did you start writing in the first place? If it was for financial success, and after twenty years...

The best writers are readers. Read, actively and widely, not just within a favourite genre. From bad authors, you can learn what -not- to do. From good ones, emulate. Recent books that had a big influence on me: Stephen King's Billy Summer, Sally Rooney's Normal People. Oh, and I'd recommend...

Starting writing a story as "practice" - didn't put a lot of pre-thought into it, just had a fully realised opening and some clear ideas of where I wanted to end, and started writing. The intent was to get better at writing so that I could publish a "real" novel someday. Published online as I...

I'm an absolute rank amateur, but have made a go at monetizing my writing. Started on Patreon, with very little idea of what I was doing. Posted irregularly, had a few dozen subscribers, pulled in something like £25/month. It took some time, but now it's grown to just under two hundred...

Read - a lot - and attentively, too. Adapt to the genre you're writing: lurid Gothic horror? Lean into the flickering lights and gleaming cobblestones slick with damp. Tense character drama? Dial it way back, short, apt and evocative slices of character or place. Probably, you need to describe a...

You might not like the idea of getting married, but that doesn't mean 'most' millennials/GenZers aren't getting married, or at least significantly fewer than in the past. US marriage rates are down from just under 2.5 million in 1990 to around 1.9 million in 2022 (source: Statistica) with median...

I find the single best resource for writing is to read a wide range of authors, of varying quality and a range of genres. I think I got more from Sally Rooney's "Normal People" and Stephen King's "Billy Summers", both recent reads, than any "how to" writing guide. Though saying that, King's "On...

If my first introduction to a work of fiction is a summary written by AI, I'm very likely to skip reading it. For me, the implication is that if the summary was written by AI, then it's entirely possible that the story itself was, too; and I have little interest in reading word porridge produced...

Why do you -have- to use an AI to summarize your chapters? Surely it's easier to just do it yourself? Especially as AI-generated text always read like AI-generated text: a bit bland, a bit samey.

Two books I've got on hand, with very different styles: Here's the opening sentence from Stephen King's 2021 novel Billy Summers, 3rd person present tense: "Billy Summers sits in the hotel lobby, waiting for his ride."Other characters are summarily introduced as well: next paragraph, "... two...

Hiya, New to Scribblehub, and discovering the features and Statistics bit on the author's series page. I was wondering, when a series is listed as "Dropped" by a reader, is there a way of knowing where in the story they dropped? It'd be useful info - like, if most readers give uo at the same...