My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
Lil’s Bus Trip is published on the 26th August. It is my seventh novel, and my eighth one is currently under wraps for publication later this year. All my novels feature older people as main characters, embracing the fact that all people can still laugh, love, develop and enjoy life, whatever their age. I try …
Continue reading My latest novel, Lil’s Bus Trip: what I’m writing about now and what’s coming next.
I have a friend who claims to have completely cured her arthritis by swimming in the sea, whatever the weather. Her pains completely disappeared, and she swore that it was because she immersed herself regularly in freezing water. I recently saw British athlete Mo Farah and Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo do something similar on TV, …
Continue reading The immersion technique – it’s one way to write your next novel…
I know I’m blogging here about the novels I’m currently working on, but let’s not start with what I’m writing just yet - I’ll get on to that in a moment - let’s just set the scene first. I’m lucky to be way ahead on all writing schedules and outside right now, the weather is …
Based on my radio interviews with SoundArt Radio and the wonderful Julie Mullen, here's a blog post about writing comedy, whatever that might mean. I've been told that one genre I write might be termed 'romantic comedy', and so I'm always interested to talk about what makes people smile, what is uplifting, what is a …
Continue reading On Writing: why writing comedy can be so fascinating
Based on my radio interview on CakEhole last week with the wonderful Julie Mullen, I decided to write a blog post about editing. We discussed it on her show, as so often writers think it must be an awful process. The belief is: you've written it, so it must hurt to change it, right? Not …
Continue reading On Writing: What the editing process is like for a writer?
Once a week, on a Wednesday, I appear on a community radio show, 'CakEhole with Julie Mullen,' and we talk about all things to do with novels and writing for fifteen minutes. It is one of the highlights of my week as Julie is so much fun to chat with. Based on our conversations, I …
Originally given the working title The Hokey Cokey Woman, I set out to write a story about Molly, a seventy-year-old widow who leaps into situations with complete abandon, later realising that what she’s chosen isn’t for her and she should have considered all options and thought more wisely. But part of Molly’s charm is that …
I enjoy writing for specific events or audiences, as there is a kind of precision and framework to be considered. It's quite an interesting mental exercise when you have a word limit, or when you have to create something for a specific genre. I like writing newspaper or magazine articles, poems, speeches, plays, all of …
Continue reading The excitement of writing for a competition…
I'm always busy with novels, writing them or editing them or thinking of new ideas. But writing can be a fairly isolated profession, so I'm always glad of an opportunity to collaborate with others. The Boldwood writing community is very special; there's a supportive group of women and men who seem always to be there …
Continue reading I had so much fun with this writing exercise…
Remember the moment in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, where she falls down the rabbit hole? Or the wardrobe door that opens to Narnia? Or Platform 9 ¾, leading to the Hogwarts’s Express? Or the Doors of Durin in Lord of the Rings? Literature is full of enchanted doors that take us to a secret …
That quintessence of dust 