Sally Wainwright – we are not worthy…

Posted on Feb 12, 2023 by Emma

What I’m watching (no spoilers!)

Well… the end of Happy Valley! What did you think?

The series writer Sally Wainwright receives a lot of well-deserved praise for her depiction of strong female characters, her ability to create conflict and ramp up tension and her characterisation and dialogue (“I might have singed one of your crochet blankets”).

I would be grateful for teeny-tiny percentage of her writing talent.

Oh, and did you know that George Costigan (Happy Valley’s Nev Gallagher) and Siobhan Finneran (Clare Cartwright) have acted together before? In a certain 80s comedy-drama also set in the north.

Click the button below if you want to see the NSFW clip.

Rita, Sue and Bob too (very sweary!)

What version of WordPress do you use?

Do you use the premium or business versions of WordPress, and what are the benefits and drawbacks?

Many of you who are reading this are also bloggers. I use WordPress’s bog-standard free version because it meets the majority of my needs, however I pay an annual price for the domain name.

WordPress for business is expensive—£240 per year (about $292)—for a lot of features I won’t use or need, though signing up for some of the premium services would also mean that the adverts and WordPress branding would be removed, giving the site a more professional appearance. I can also upload videos directly if I want to.

If I want to sell books straight from this site, which I do, the only option via WordPress is the business because you can install the required plug-in.

For the time being, I can link folks to my Payhip store, but best practise dictates that if you’re attempting to sell something online, you should make the transaction as simple as possible, i.e. one click.

Amazon will always account for most of my sales. Will this site generate £240 in book sales per year? Doubtful…

What WordPress version do you use? What would you want for your website if you could buy individual components rather than having them all grouped together in a plan?

Baked with Love

My latest book—Baked with Love—is now available for pre-order! Here’s the blurb…

Can lifelong baker Lissie turn down a last-minute invitation to appear on the popular TV show Best Baker UK, even though her ex-boyfriend is one of the contestants?

Not a chance…

Her current boyfriend isn’t thrilled, and Lissie’s decision to put herself under the intense pressure of a reality TV show while spending so much time with the man who broke her heart six years ago appears to be a recipe for disaster…

But could Lissie uncover the truth about what happened all those years ago, prove herself to her grandmother, keep her boyfriend happy, and win Best Baker UK, forever changing her life?

A spellbinding, warm-hearted read for romance and Great British Bake Off junkies, Baked with Love is a thoughtful, unforgettable story with characters you will love about second chances, forgiveness, and the search for true love.

You can read a short extract from the book here.

Are there ANY alternatives to head nodding or shaking?

Posted on Jan 22, 2023 by Emma

The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety. quote by Deepak Chopra

This week in creativity, I’ve been wrestling with characters shaking/nodding their heads. Human communication relies heavily on head nods and shakes. We all do it, and we do it constantly.

While characters may bolt, dash, dart or flee rather than simply running away, there is no other way to say nod or shake his/her head. At a pinch, you could say, ‘made a shaking notion with his head’ and…

No, you couldn’t. It sounds ridiculous.

What’s a writer to do? So far, 34 head shakes and 38 nods have popped up in the 64,000 words I’ve written so far. That’s five head bobs too many*, though on the plus side, at least my characters are more positive than negative.

Other physical actions that are difficult to describe in any other way include:

Raised his/her eyebrows (quirked them?)
Shrugged (raised her shoulders up and down?)
Grinned (the corners of his mouth lifted upwards?)
Smiled (as above)
Opened/shut the door.

Here’s an illustration…

Nell opened the door. Daniel glanced up at her and smiled.
“Are we going out for dinner?” she asked.
Daniel shook his head. “Too busy, sorry. How about tomorrow night?”
Nell shrugged. “Let’s see how I feel after work. I might be too tired.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Too tired? You do nothing at work.”
He grinned to soften the insult.

Or,

Nell fastened her hand to the door and swung it open. Daniel glanced up at her, the corners of his mouth tilting upwards.
“Are we going out for dinner?” she asked.
Daniel turned his head from side to side. “Too busy, sorry. How about tomorrow night.”
Nell lifted her shoulders up to her ears. “Let’s see how I feel after work. I might be too tired.”
He piqued an eyebrow. “Too tired? You do nothing at work.”
He widened his mouth to soften the insult.

Creativity part 2

After reading a post about Pinterest for authors on a blog about writing, I’m revisiting the platform.

This paragraph stuck out:

For those of us overwhelmed by conversations and connections, Pinterest is a refreshing platform. You can spend hours (or minutes) looking at pretty things and not have to talk to another human. It is an introvert’s dream: a social platform where you don’t have to be social to be successful. This also means that it’s really easy to get started with Pinterest as compared to other platforms.
Kirsten Oliphant, Jane friedman blog on writing

Hooray! Permission granted to ditch Instagram and TikTok, where my feeble attempts to build a platform have failed miserably. Does anyone in the world put down their phone after scrolling through Instagram, and think, Well, I feel TONNES better now…?

So, after spending two years creating zillions of square and horizontally-shaped graphics, I’ve reverted to Pinterest-friendly rectangular ones, like the ones below.

Highland Fling, Highland Heart and Highland Wedding book covers

*And this one is for a board about my Highland books*

This week’s Google searches related to writing

What weekday was May 28 in 2016
Waldorf doormen uniform
Photos of Waldorf reception (hard to come by, but I did chance upon the magnificent ‘swan’ bath towel pictured below)
Industrial estates in Anniesland, Glasgow
Pegasus in Greek mythology
Jobs in tech

What I’m reading/watching

Last year, the book group I belong to participated in a reading challenge set by the Booker Prize’s organisers. You can find out more about that here. We did not win (boo!); however, taking part led to other things…

BBC Scotland consulted us about a new radio programme about books and reading, and as a result I’m ~~reluctantly~~ excitedly taking part in the pilot show, in which a group of us discuss Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

According to the blurb: In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Fingers crossed I don’t come across as too thick… If any of you have read the book, what did you think of it?

Do you need something cheery and not too brain-taxing to watch? The Bank of Dave on Netflix is delightful. The good guys win, the bad buys get their heads to play with and there’s a message about how the ‘establishment’ works only for a tiny minority of the UK’s population. (The Rupert Murdoch-owned Times critic described the film as ‘alarmingly simplistic’, proving the point oh-so-flipping well.)

*Characters in the novel Twilight are notorious for repeatedly nodding/shaking their heads.

A farewell to all that

Posted on Dec 31, 2022 by Emma

How’s your year been? Twenty-twenty two had a blink and you miss it quality—the year dashing past so fast it is difficult to believe the end is almost upon us.

In 2022, I hit a milestone birthday, travelled all over the UK relishing that freedom after the pandemic restrictions of the past few years, joined in a national book group reading challenge*, signed a contract for one of my books, received payment for the retention of the audio/visual rights for another, and caught up with a lot of people I hadn’t seen for years.

I fell off the blogging horse in 2021 and didn’t remount it in 2022 (that is one HORRIFIC analogy, sorry) BUT I plan to address that in 2023.

The best bloggers are consistent and single-minded about what they write about. I follow a good few of them. Alas, my scatter-brained approach has never lent itself to consistency or single-mindedness.

Great for writing fiction as it allows for flights of fancy, but not so good when trying to come up with a consistent theme for a blog. And the life of this writer doesn’t lend itself to thrilling blog content.

Got up early. Bashed out 1,231 words before grinding to a halt when I realised that I’d created a ginormous plot hole. Mulled it over for the rest of the day without coming up with a solution. Wasted time on Twitter working myself up into a righteous rage over the behaviour of terrible politicians. Did the paid job. Exercised. Wrote a little bit more. Ate dinner. Collapsed in front of the TV…**

Repeat ad nauseum.

However, I loved blogging when I started in 2012, and blogs are still my preferred choice for keeping up with what other people are doing, following my interests (writing, cooking, travel and nature, diabetes, nature photography 1 and 2, books, reading and archiving) educating myself and more.

Many of the platforms that later supplanted blogging did not exist in 2012. And yet given the choice between reading blogs or scrolling my way through Instagram/TikTok feeds? No contest.

There is also plenty of evidence that scrolling through social media does little, if anything, for you.*** Creatives tend to suffer extensively from comparison-itis. There is always someone popping up in your feed, excitedly detailing their book/TV/film deal/number of reads/commissioning for a script, etc.

I can’t think of a single blog I follow that makes me feel dissatisfied, envious, helpless, furious or any of the other emotions I routinely associate with social media.

So, to the future! Back to blogging… every week I plan to write about my week and find some way of making it interesting, funny and engaging.

A tall order, yes, but nothing wrong with starting the year with a lofty ambition or two. And talking of lofty ambitions, I plan on publishing not one, not two but three books this year, starting with the one in the illustration below:

Click here for an advanced review copy of Baked with Love

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all. May 2023 bring you health and happiness!

*Sadly, our book group wasn’t chosen, but the experience was terrific fun and BBC Scotland then used us as sounding boards for a potential new programme about book groups and reading.

**Other writers’ experiences may vary.

***Sleep disturbances, emotional dysregulation, diminished academic performance and depression. Hilariously, there’s a pop-up on the article I read urging you to follow the website on Instagram…

Horse photo by Pixabay from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/action-animal-bronco-bucking-33251/

Woman Writing Photo by JESHOOTS.com on StockSnap

New Year photo: Jernej Furman on Flickr

A Farewell to All That…

Posted on Dec 31, 2021 by Emma

Well, 2021 didn’t quite work out as planned—did anyone’s 2021?—but when you’re an optimist as I am, you seek out the good things when you look back on a year.

First and foremost, no-one I know and love died of Covid (or anything else). Last year, we joked about 2021 returning to the time when Corona was merely a beer, bubbles only belonged in champagne and self-isolation was not something so many people had to do.

Hey ho.

But I am in the extremely fortunate position of living in a country where the vaccination was made available to the masses quickly and I’m starting 2022 having had both doses and the booster.

Let’s raise a glass to science.

**Talking of glasses, I plan to do Veganuary AND Dry January, but in the meantime, let’s go out with a bang…**

Secondly, I didn’t lose my job. The pandemic has wrecked many sectors and businesses (compounded by the mess that is Brexit in the UK). My husband and I have been able to work throughout.

Thirdly, the dreaded writer burn-out didn’t hit. Many writers have talked about this—the inability to find enough concentration to put pen to paper and spin out stories while the hideousness of the pandemic plays out in the background.

(Ooh! Bonus points for three uses of alliteration in that sentence, right?)

I published two books, finished one and wrote another two this year. My book sales are slow but steady, rather like the running style I employed in the days when I jogged. I will never win awards, but I plod on, determined to get to the finishing line.

In the summer, I signed a contract with Wattpad in May for the audio-visual rights to one of my stories. In all likelihood, it won’t come to anything, but I enjoyed a few weeks of casting various actors as my characters, which is more challenging to do than you might expect.

On the minus side. I continue to find reading books a challenge. Ever since I can remember, I’ve read books, often getting through two or three a week. That stopped last year when I started reading newspapers and periodicals instead. Books feel like too much of an intensive work out for my dwindling attention span.

(Though if I can recommend one, I loved Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and raced through it when we holidayed in Dundee in May this year.)

Here in Scotland, we are effectively back in lockdown with large indoor and outdoor gatherings banned, and people encouraged not to mix with more than three households/go out. It’s all a bit same old/same old, but the current situation will end at some point, and I force myself to make the most of it as I’m now at the age where time flies by frighteningly fast and it is wrong to wish it away.

Anyway, thanks for reading. May 2022 bring you health and happiness.

Best wishes, Emma XXX

Buck-ups for Writing, and Eating Outside

Posted on Jul 4, 2018 by Emma

This week I’m…

Getting on with things. A book I finished in January has sat mouldering in my hard drive ever since. This will not do, Emma B, I tell myself. I’ve sent it out to a proof-reader. I’ve exchanged emails with Caron Allan where I bombarded her with questions about her publishing process seeing as she excels at writing AND selling books.

I’d like to publish Artists Town, a coming of age tale set in the 1990s, in the next few months.

Eating outside. I’ve been able to do so for the ninth, I’ll say it again, ninth evening in a row. This is a slaw-type recipe (below) with turkey mince, cabbage, spices and a cheeky bit of cheddar.

Testing out new trainers. These beauties turn up in a lot of reviews of great running shoes for women. I put them on and felt myself bounce delightedly. That’s what a good shoe does, right? It makes you want to move. I’ve got ten weeks to bed them in before I use them to pound Glasgow’s pavements for the Great Scottish Run.

Contributing to the CO2 shortage. This week would have been the ideal time to tackle that diet coke addiction seeing as the UK is currently experiencing a CO2 shortage. Plants have stopped making the stuff. Muffins are at an all-time low* and (whisper it) beers in Wetherspoon’s might run out. Quelle horreur!

But no. I’m thinking of asking everyone I know to stockpile diet coke on my behalf so that when supplies run low, I will be okay.

Yes, folks. I’m that citizen-minded. In my defence, this is thirsty weather.

Wittering on about the heat. Perhaps the time has come for we Scots to stop exclaiming in wonder at the weather. We walk the sun-soaked streets in a daze, unsure if we exist in reality or if we’ve been transported to a parallel universe where the skies are always blue, and you can wear just a tee shirt** at eight o’clock in the morning.

The forecasters say it’s to continue for another two weeks. I’m loath to say, then it’ll be back to business as usual, rain-drenched instead of sun-soaked streets, kind of things as that fatalism drives me mad. But I should make the most of it. It’s amazing to be able to spend so much time in the sun out with a week abroad. I want to store up lots of sun-filled memories to shore me through winter when it comes.

*Used in the packaging, not the actual muffin. Weird, hmm?

**Unless your tee shirt is a long one, please also wear shorts, trousers or a skirt.

Six Years of Blogging

Posted on Jul 1, 2018 by Emma

Congratulations me. This month marks my six-year blog anniversary. Six years of thinking up topics to write about, sometimes coming up with great ideas but most often opting for the lazy option, something I wrote for another platform.

I don’t have a huge following—just shy of 400—but I get good engagement, especially these days. It’s easy enough to like a blog post. You can do it without reading the article. People taking the time to read and then add their thoughts feels much more flattering.

And because I have such a small following, I don’t get negativity. Most of the comments people post are encouraging. Which is good. I’m your typical writer and my skin is wafer-thin.

My following increases steadily. At the moment, I appear to be getting one sign up a day. I’m a smarter blogger than I was when I first started up and I use some of the dark arts. I put my name into the alt text for the pictures I use. I set featured images and I craft my own excerpt. Liking and commenting on other blogs helps as does the intelligent use of tags.

I’ve got my posts automatically linked to most of my other social media platforms, so they appear on LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter as soon as they come out.

The life of a blogger can be great fun. I started my working life in journalism and what former journalist wouldn’t want to be their own publisher and editor?

You also get to read amazing content from others. There are plenty of doozies out there and I often wonder what on earth bloggers are doing to get hundreds of likes and comments for badly written guff. On the whole, though, if you keep your own blog following small, you can afford to follow only the good ‘uns back.

This is a friendly community for the most part. I’m hugely grateful to all the folks who’ve read, liked and commented on my articles over the last six years. Thank YOU.

Writing and Editing Software

Posted on Jun 27, 2018 by Emma

I use writing software—ProWritingAid, which works out at $50 a year (about £37). Is it worth the price? Absolutely.

Like any automated system, ProWritingAid doesn’t work perfectly. To take full advantage, you need some background in English grammar so you know what to accept and what to reject. Before using ProWritingAid, I subscribed to Grammarly previously, which is more expensive and not that great.

Grammarly suggested peculiar things and the only lesson I ever learned was the comma splice. (Guilty, a lot of the time—and for those of you who’ve never heard of it, a comma splice is where you use a comma to connect two independent clauses. You should use either a semi-colon, split the sentence into two or use a conjunction.) Grammarly also wanted to put commas everywhere.

ProWritingAid runs lots of reports on your writing—a grammar check, a writing style check, clichés and redundancies, corporate wording, sticky sentences and more. My favourite one is the overused words check, which is when you realise how repetitive your writing is. The writing style report is useful because it highlights adverbs so you can cut down their use and picks up every time you start three sentences in a row with the same word.

What ProWritingAid doesn’t have, unlike Grammarly, is the option to add your own words to the dictionary. This means that if you keep using slang in dialogue, for instance, it keeps picking it up. And it works best if you only check small amounts of text at a time rather than running your whole novel through it.

Other than that, ProWritingAid has improved my writing. The software picks up my bad habits and drums them out of me. When you rethink and rewrite sentences it’s terrific writing practice.

*Please note—this post isn’t sponsored by ProWritingAid.

High Quality Content in the Blogging World

Posted on Nov 9, 2017 by Emma

Most bloggers will have experienced this – out of the blue, you get a sales pitch from some SEO company, telling you your blog is pretty much invisible, so why not employ them to make it not so?

I got one this week, which is sort of reassuring. If I’m getting spammed by such companies, I must have some kind of online presence. The company listed the things that were wrong with the website, which included “doesn’t have high-quality content”.

What counts as high-quality content in SEO/marketing world isn’t the same as what counts for quality in other worlds. It often depends on links, keyword placement, pictures, videos, text length, coding and other things marketers promise inch us up the search rankings.

Y’know, so that when people type in ‘writing services’, or ‘great chick lit’, I’m their number one find…

So, I didn’t take the lack of high-quality content remark too personally. “Nothing to do with my marvellous writing,” I muttered to myself. “You can shove your offer where the sun don’t shine.”

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I did fire off an email to the company, pointing out that as sales pitches go, telling someone their content is basically rubbish won’t endear you to them.

I’ve had no reply, which almost disappoints me. I thought sales folks were supposed to have a come-back for every knockback? That could have been their opportunity to point out that because my copy doesn’t mention ‘writing services’ every hundred or so words (proper keyword density, apparently), it counts as keek*.

Anyway, what I also get on a regular basis are sponsored content suggestions. They bemuse me as they are often from companies that produce goods or services totally unrelated to anything I do or write about. I’ve received propositions from menswear and financial services companies, promising we’ll be a good fit for my audience.

Another person offered me a standing desk review, which was sort of relevant seeing as I use one myself. But reviews of desks… I couldn’t inflict that on anyone and sleep at night.

I’m in some media directory somewhere as a blogger/influencer, which is flattering. But not true. Now, if Cadbury’s/Dairy Milk/Freixenet/Reedsy wish to collaborate, I’m entirely open to a 400-word piece that mentions ‘Dairy Milk/Freixenet etc.,’ every hundred words. Free products and services would be welcomed too.

Either or, is fine.

*For those unfamiliar with this marvellous Scottish word, it means shit.

Re-ordering Blog Posts and Getting Rid of Pingbacks

Posted on Feb 13, 2016 by Emma

I’ve been tidying up book number three (working title: Parallel) as it appears on this blog.

I’d had feedback that it was confusing – which is understandable in that my book juggles the stories of three women so it can be hard to keep track of when it’s appearing in serial form on a blog. I added in some times and days for the start of each chapter and I also added in links to all the chapters on the blogs and on one page, here.

Incidentally, adding links in your own blog usually leads to pingbacks. According to the very useful website, WordPress beginner, pingbacks give software the ability to communicate between websites and if you link to an article on your own blog, WordPress automatically sends a self-ping.

I’m not entirely sure I understand it yet, but I did want rid of the feature because I found it annoying and, as it turns out, it’s easy to remove.

Go to the dashboard.
Go to settings.
Go to discussions.
At the top is an option – Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article.
Untick this.

Voila – no more annoying pingbacks!

And here’s my new page setting out the location of all the chapters of book number three that I’ve posted here.

The Many Adventures of Flash Fiction Writers

Posted on Nov 15, 2013 by Emma

So, some weeks ago, I started writing flash fiction on a regular basis. Mainly, it gave me a regular topic to blog about it. Always a bonus, as when you start out on blogging you usually fire off blogs left, right and centre at the beginning of your online life. Two months down the line and you get to the stage where you can’t bear to switch on your computer, so racked with guilt are you over your failure to write, entertain or annoy the masses.

I hit on a regular topic idea and heaved a sigh of relief. Heaven, I thought to myself, I have at least one thing I can blog about once a week. Folks may read it, folks may not, fellow bloggers may like or comment… or they may not notice. But my conscience will be squared. Hey, I signed up to this blogging deal, which meant writing when there is theoretically nothing to write about, and doing something on a REGULAR BASIS.

LinkedIn Flash Fiction Challenge

Actually, those preceding two paragraphs friends? I wandered off on a tangent. My main point is – at the same time as starting a regular Friday flash fiction post, I also started a flash fiction challenge on LinkedIn, asking fellow writers and editors to contribute to a 100-word flash fiction piece on a Friday as a kind of relaxing way of switching off.

It proved to be incredibly popular – lots of people joined in, lots of people contributed on a regular basis and I really enjoyed everything that I read. It takes talent and skill to write a 100-word story, and people also made their contributions topical. One lady chose to plagarise existing stories in a really witty way, another person went for plays, whilst several people opted for seasonal themes such as Halloween.

Publish, Publish, Publish

Three weeks in and people on LinkedIn started suggesting I take it further. One person said a website, another dreamt up a book of flash fiction stories for charity, another individual gathered together most of the stories for me and in general people seemed willing to sign over their permission for stories to be published. (I thank you).

So watch this space. It looks as if a Friday Flash Fiction challenge website may well appear. Here is what I hope. We post up lots of stories, which people like and then hundreds, if not thousands, of people all over the world start to contribute…

And now for this week’s Friday Flash Fiction challenge:

The Glamour of Writing

In her youth, Jenny had imagined the life of a writer as glamorous.

As she scribbled out her endless short stories which detailed the adventures of a teenager not dissimilar to Jenny, she imagined a grown-up writer’s life to be more or less the same. She would wait for the muse to strike and she would write about whatever took her fancy.

And get paid for it.

Alas, reality had since bit. Writing jobs often involved creating thousands of words about display cabinets or toner cartridges. And getting paid more than a pittance was the exception and not the norm.

Emma Baird – author

The home of from the heart writing

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