Final post tonight comes from Nic Alderton. His advice for writing a novel is: ( Thanks to Neil Gaiman for tweeting this picture over the weekend)

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As promised last month here is a list of writing competitions that are closing in March according to Sally Quilford’s Writing Calendar. Each competitions will be listed in date order and click on the name of the competition for more details: 2nd March Cardiff International Poetry Comp 4th March The Twisted Stringybark Short Story Award 19th March Mslexia 2012 [...]

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At the beginning of February WLW posted about BBC’s new Laugh Track competition. Now Paul Ashton, a Development Manager at the BBC has posted a blog full of useful advice on theBBC Writersroom Blog on How To Avoid Canned Laughter in Your Laugh Track Script. He recommends you keep the following things in mind while you [...]

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The past is another country — but an alternate history is a whole new world. The best alternate histories can make you see the real history of our world in a whole new way, and make you realize that events that seem like they were inevitable… may not have been. Here io9.com offer the 11 Worst [...]

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One of the hardest parts of writing is in fact writing. How do you fill that large white empty space in front of you? Caren Kennedy has a solution over at Writing.ie. She suggests vomiting! Writing the Vomit Draft is where you try and write as many words as possible in a short amount of time [...]

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At the moment Sarah Salway over at Mslexia is publishing a collection of workshops about how writers ‘steal’ their stories from the world around them. The first workshop looked at Stories from Strangers. The second looks at Family Stories by doing the following exercise: If you can’t think of a family story, interview family members about their [...]

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The next meeting of West Lothian Writers will be on Tuesday 21st of February between 7pm and 9pm at the usual location: South Barn Nether Dechmont Farm Fells Rigg Carmondean Livingston EH54 8AX If you are not sure where you are going either type the above post code into your sat nav or follow the [...]

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Below are six writing tips from George Orwell, the creator of Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm. These were sent to me by WLW member Jenifer. If you come across some advice or a writing exercise you would like to share with eveyone else who reads the WLW website please email me at WLWriters@gmail.com Never use [...]

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A major problem I have in my reading is starting every sentence  with expletives or dummy words such as “There is.” Luckily Daily Writing Tips has just posted on their website A Quiz About Expletives. Below are twenty sentences that contain an expletive. Re-write each sentence to omit it. This should result in each sentence [...]

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I couldn’t make the last meeting of WLW so I’m afraid this round up will be shorter than normal. However, I am pleased to reported that WLW had a record attendence with twelve people turning up including two new writers!

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