For those of you who suspected that putting all that time in at the bar was just an excuse, let me tell you that it paid off!  After an evening spent listening to me whimpering about how I was blocked on the plot front, a friend made a suggestion which proved to be just the breakthrough I needed.  It was such a relief to be able to send my editor a synopsis that for a while I overlooked the fact that I still had to actually write the book, and it was a bit of a shock to sit down and confront a blank screen again.  I have spent the last couple of weeks doing a very rough draft - little more than notes and scraps of dialogue – and decided this time not to try and divide it up into chapters at this stage.  Instead I aimed to fill 50 pages, the theory being that I would then just have to bulk each page out into four.  So far, I have done 35, and have given myself until the end of this weekend to finish.  I  might settle for 40+ pag ...

Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I am planning to finish today, which will leave me four days to re-read and re-write if necessary.  I’m trying not to think about Assig ...

I’ve had ‘update writing diary’ on my list of things to do for what seems like weeks now, so have made myself sit down and do it today. It’s only going to be quick, though, as I’m terrified of losing momentum on the book. So far, I’m a day ahead of schedule and all is going well – but am still only on Chapter Two, so plenty of potential for writer’s block ahead! There’s nothing like an imminent deadline for things falling into place. Books are a bit like horses, and play up until you get to grips and let them know that you mean business, at which point they settle down and you suddenly remember just why it is you like writing/riding (and in case you’re wondering how I know so much about riding, I’ve been on a horse all of, ooh, seven times).

I was in Glasgow last weekend to give a talk about writing romance, and then a workshop on how to plot a romantic novel. In theory plotting is very straightforward, and I suspect I sounded a lot m ...

Well, it’s the same old story … I start off in fine fettle, having carefully drawn up my three-days-per-chapter timetable.  The first three chapters crack along, the fourth sticks a bit and by the middle of Chapter Five, I grind to a halt, paralysed at the thought of filling another five and half chapters.  So the rough draft gets rougher and rougher.  At this stage, I’m just writing dialogue and the occasional stage direction (although I’ve never attempted a screen play, I guess it would be something like this) so while the first three chapters fill 15 pages each, and it’s easy to see how they’ll expand to the final 17 or 18, Chapter Four is only 10 pages and Chapter Five only 7.

My timetable, too, has been radically revised, which is just as well, as it left me only 10 days to rewrite the entire book.  Now, I’ve allowed myself a day each for the last four chapters,  and I’ll think m ...

So, here I am, back staring at a blank screen and wondering how on earth I’m going to write an entire book before the end of November.  I’ve just emailed a three page outline to my editor, which is a huge step forward from yesterday when I only had two paragraphs, but progress or not, three pages still leaves me a good 50,000 words to go …

I’ve gone with the outback setting, but am dropping the baby in favour of two slightly older children, and concentrating instead on (surprise, surprise!) a ‘marriage of convenience’ hook.  The basic premise was worked out over a bottle of champagne on the train up to Edinburgh just before my birthday, so I have to give credit where credit is due and thank Diana not just for the champagne, complete with plastic flutes, but for all her ideas, which I duly scribbled down in a notebook but which turned out to be virtually indecipherable when I came to read them later.  Diana was i ...

September 11th has always been a special date for me – it’s my birthday – but now it has a sickening resonance for everyone.  The last diary entry was dated then, obviously before we heard of the terrible events in America.  I know that a website like this is the last thing on anyone’s mind at the moment, but what happened was so indescribably horrific that  it can’t just be ignored.  At the same time, I have no idea what I can say.   There are no words adequate for a time like this.  If you’re reading this from the States, I hope you know that millions and millions of people like me around the world are thinking of you.  I think we have all been very conscious of our shared humanity since Tuesday.  In a very real sense, what happened then, happened to all of us, no matter who we are, what we do, or where we live.

Very little to report on the writing front for the last couple of weeks, as I have been working on my thesis, and trying to get a mass of data into some kind of order.  This is always the point where I think writing fiction is so much easier, because you can make it all up, but I’m sure I will be singing a different tune come October when I have to start the next book and am faced with an empty page …

As far as writing romance is concerned, I have come down from the cloud I was on last time I wrote, and my glow of smug self-satisfaction has faded somewhat, no doubt to the huge relief of everyone who knows me.  I have a new editor now, and I have been discussing options for the next few books – or rather, she has been patiently listening to me fretting about whether outback books are as popular in foreign language markets as they are in the UK and North America.  I get sent two copies of every international editi ...