Alison Morton | Alison Morton Author

Getting Published - London Book Fair Masterclass

On gloriously sunny Sunday 17 April, my writing buddy, Denise, and I attended the pre-Fair Masterclass entitled ‘How to Get Published’. Whilst we knew some of it already, conned from amongst other places, the inestimable Carole Blake’s book From Pitch to Publication: Everything You Need to know to Get Your Novel Published, we found the […]

Helping to track the timeline of a story

Writing the first book of my Roma Nova stories, I found I needed to develop a tracking system not only of the action but also of its timing.

It’s so easy when engrossed in producing any story, let alone a thriller, to inadvertently get events in the wrong sequence or introduce a character to another […]

Musings on my first rejection letter

I arrived back from my holiday and found my first rejection on the doormat. It was a polite letter, but a standard, non-personalised one. Of course, I was disappointed (swallows hard and sobs), but I feel I have passed a milestone, lost my publishing virginity, joined the ‘normal’ throng of writers.

Of course, I sent […]

Translating – don’t you just press a button on the computer?

Maybe not strictly a creative writing matter, but when fellow writers ask me about my previous life and I say I was a translator for over 20 years,they seem interested to learn more.

The main thing I tell them is about quality. Google’s great for getting the bare bones out of something, but if you […]

Tightening and shaving…

I’m editing the second part of my trilogy and it’s causing some blushes of embarrassment. No, not the romantic scenes, but the proliferation of bland and/or superfluous words.

However did I include so many ‘just’s, ‘I wondered’s, ‘I thought’s, ‘suddenly’s and ‘Well,..’s? Well, I thought I’d just bash the story out, then suddenly I wondered […]