WriteByNight is a writers’ service dedicated to helping you reach your creative potential. We work with writers of all experience levels working in all genres. Browse our book coaching, manuscript consultation, publication assistance services, and sign up for your free writing consultation today. Discussion questions: See the bottom of the post for a fun competition where you’re going to cut to 50 words a 91-word passage from…
Discussion questions: Let’s get morbid this week! What would you want to be the epitaph on your tombstone? What would you want read aloud at your funeral? What would be your deathbed book? Let’s talk about it in the comments… while there’s still time! Your Epitaph A few years ago we talked about the book we would choose to…
Discussion questions: Is your internal critic a Sunday quarterback or a Monday-morning quarterback? Does he/she/it try to prevent you from writing at all (Sunday), or does he/she/it allow you to write because he/she/it enjoys making you tear yourself down afterwards (Monday)? If you could change your internal critic’s workday from Sunday to Monday or vice versa, would you?…
Discussion questions: In what way(s) do you self-sabotage as a writer? How do you avoid self-sabotage? Those times when you can’t manage to avoid it, how do you set yourself right again? I did a weird, weird thing Sunday. It was deadline day for a flash fiction contest. For weeks I’d had a story prepared,…
Discussion question: Using fifty words or fewer, write a short story, scene, aphorism, snippet, etc., that includes the line “These pictures were in water-colours.” Write or past your story into the comments. It’s been a real minute since we last did a Micro Fiction Challenge, and I feel like it comes at a good time…
The Grand Oriental Hotel Colombo October 31st 1900 My Dearest Mother I hope you got my little letter some time in the middle of the week. I thought you would like to hear we had come away. But, mind, you are not to worry yourself and to think all sorts of dangers exist, because of George being mixed up…
Elephant Nook Nuwera Eliya Nov. 6th 1900 My dearest Mother Here we are in our little elephant hutch again and very jolly it is too. We came up on Thursday and had a very nice journey, getting in here about 5 o’clock. I am not enjoying myself just at present as I am a grass-widow. George had a wire…
Elephant Nook Newara Eliya Nov 13th 1900 Dearest Tommie We are really having very jolly weather here in spite of the monsoon. It is fine all day and comes on to rain about six, when it is nearly dark, so it does not affect us at all. I think the change is doing us both good, although things are…
The Grand Oriental Hotel Colombo Nov 27th 1900 Dearest Tommie A year on Friday since I left England. It seems longer than that, don’t you think? Sometimes it seems ages and ages since I saw you all, and yet the fact of not having had any winter makes it seem wrong somehow. We came down from N. Eliya yesterday,…
Baby Queen Elizabeth II Delighted by the news today that Harry and Meghan have named their new baby girl Lilibet Diana. A nod to her great grandmother and her late grandmother. Despite everything, this is a new addition to a family who have had a hard time – being rich and royal doesn’t exempt you from the strifes of…
Just over a week ago I reached saturation point with social media. Particularly Facebook. I was suddenly totally sick of it – not just, ‘that’s enough now, thanks’, but more, ‘oh for God’s sake will everyone just SHUT UP!’ What’s on my mind? You don’t need to know, Facebook! MYOB. This, of course, is my issue and not the fault of…
I’m probably overstating things with the title of this post, but I’m approaching a big birthday and it’s bringing with it some big thoughts. Forty *gulp* – it feels significant, and sensible. Irresolutely grownup. And I’m just not sure I’m ready for that. I remember my dad turning forty when I was a child. In celebration, I bought him a plastic…
Hello there! It’s been AGES since my last post – months and months in fact. I fell out of the blogging habit somewhere along the way and then it kind of felt pointless to try and get back to it. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to achieve and I didn’t really feel I had the time for it….
Hello! The months have raced by and we find ourselves in July – as I write, there are less than two weeks of term until the summer holidays! Yes, we’re nearly at the end of another academic year so, as usual, I’ve found myself getting all reflective… and those feelings have lead me back to my (rather neglected) blog. Two years ago…
2018 has been quite a year! So much so that, despite it being months since my last post, I felt the need to write something here to mark it in some way. I wish I could pour out everything that’s happened – writing being cathartic and all that – but this has never been that sort of blog and actually, the less often…
Today is my birthday. In the world as we know it, birthdays and cake are synonymous. In the world of An Expected End, my novel manuscript, deathdays and cake are also synonymous. In fact, cake features pretty prominently throughout the story. Marshall learns his deathday at Shyndigz, a real bakery in Richmond, Virginia. And although he is eating their…
So you finished your book. But nobody seems to be reading it. It’s not that your book isn’t good enough; it’s that your book isn’t visible enough. You have the writing skills, but may not have the marketing know-how. It’s okay, though. These days, online promotion can help get your book in front of readers. It can be a…
Jessica Bowser, host of the Virginia Outdoor Adventures Podcast, began Virginia State Parks Trail Quest in 2015, visiting every state park over the course of five years. In 2019, when then-state parks director Craig Seaver gifted her with a state parks journal while she was visiting Natural Tunnel State Park, she began journaling about the experience. In the interview…
