Alison Morton | Alison Morton Author

Taking it on the chin

Who’d be a critic? I’m not talking about the flesh-tearing but insecure ego-tripper as in Sebastian Faulks’ A Week in December, but more somebody who assesses manuscripts and/or mentors writers.

Sending your baby out for review produces numbing fear in a writer; desperate for feedback, but scared the reviewer/assessor/critic will deem it a heap of […]

Conflicting advice and making your own decision

Conflicting advice is the very devil, especially if it’s given by different well-respected and hugely experienced writers. Especially when you’ve paid for it from a well-researched and carefully selected specialist or it comes via a highly professional writing organisation.

Like most newbie writers, I am passionate, energetic and in love with my story and characters. […]

How could I forget FOW YorK?

How very strange! I forgot to blog about the Festival of Writing at York. Actually, I didn’t forget. I’ve been so busy implementing things I learnt in the workshops, integrating wise pieces of advice I received and remembering stimulating and thoughtful conversations I enjoyed.

York was about people: authors, publishers, agents, to be sure, but […]

Obsession or addiction?

You start your novel, get the scenes down, complete the first draft. Fine so far. Any writer knows the first draft is not a work of art, or even saleable. So the real work begins; enhanching, slashing and burning, sweating over that love scene, ramping up the fight scenes, checking pacing, inserting tension, moulding and […]

Twenty quid for Japan

Nobody can fail to be shocked by the devastation in Japan. Word like apocalyptic and cataclysmic are flying around. Historians recall the Minoan civilisation was one destroyed by a tsunami.

The threads of modern life are multiple and complex, but fragile, vulnerable to stretching and snapping in seconds. Futurologists predict that tiny individual incidents in […]