This Itch of Writing

This Itch of Writing is Moving to Substack: a new chapter

It's a Moment: the Itch is moving house to the blogging platform and community Substack. But

don't panic!

 

All the material that is currently here on Typepad will still be available to anyone who cares to drop by: the Tool-kit, the huge archive of posts, and the comment trails will be delighted to see you. 

What is changing is that this is the last new post here. From my next Itch post onwards all new posts, and I hope a whole new community, will be happening over on Substack, at This Itch of Writing With Emma Darwin.

Substack works in a slightly different way from Typepad. When I post on the main blogging platform it also becomes an email newsletter which automatically goes to subscribers. There are also "notes" (quick thoughts and links), comments, chats for the community to talk amongst itself, and a system of "Recommendations" by writers which means it's real people, not just algorithms, pointing you at Substacks you might like. One of the things I'm loving about Substack is it's absolutely a writer's platform, so it's full of excellent writing blogs and booky blogs, and there more possibilities which I'm hoping to explore and make use of in the future.

I appreciate that it might be a bit of a wrench after over 16 years here at Typepad, and I've more than once refused offers to move to other platforms in the past, so why now, and why Substack?

The thing is, I'm very proud of This Itch of Writing, and of the writers it's helped towards better writing, a happier writing life and even publishing and self-publishing contracts. And I've always felt very strongly that not all writers want, need or can afford formal ways of learning, even if it's just paying for a how-to book or a train fare to a writers' circle. So I take great pride in the fact that the Itch is freely available to anyone who wants to click through, and that under its Creative Commons Licence, you're free to share and distribute posts (with attribution, if you'd be so kind) as much as you like.

But my kind of blogging takes significant amounts of time, and since I've never felt comfortable with advertising, or providing affiliate links to the Online Retailer Who Must Not Be Named, I've have always had to fit the Itch into the gaps between the writing and teaching which puts bread on the table.

And as long-term readers know (and, bless you all, you are so very patient with!), those gaps are at times very gappy indeed. Which is where Substack comes in. If you decided subscribe, I will make sure you will get at least a post a fortnight, free, gratis and for your amusement, education, arguing-in-your-head with, or whatever the e-equivalent is of hurling a book across the room with a curse. That will all be absolutely free. 

But Substack is structured so that if you want to, you will be able to support my work on This Itch of Writing in a more direct way by paying a small amount every month, with a discount if you pay annually. In return, supporters will get at least two additional posts emailed each month (so four in all) emailed to you and accessible to you on my Substack, as well being able to comment on posts, and joining in with chats, Ask Me Anythings, and anything else that seems like a good idea as I learn how best to use this very versatile platform.

There is a higher tier for Super-supporters: in return for a larger annual contribution, you will get an annual one-to-one with me to discuss whatever you want to about your writing life, as well as signed copy of one of my books, and a few other treats.

So by subscribing to This Itch of Writing on Substack you will keep getting Itchy posts and encourage me to keep going. By becoming a paying supporter or a super-supporter you'll be helping me to keep the Itch going, keep the archive alive here, and hopefully develop it on on Substack so it can be even more useful to even more writers. 

I do hope you'll come with me to This Itch of Writing on Substack - but whatever you decide,

Happy Writing!

New At This Itch Of Writing On Substack: Riffing, Copying, Parodying and Pastiching

This hilarious post over at The Fence has got me thinking about what’s going on when we copy or riff on another writer’s work, because as part of a much longer creative engagement between the two artists, Cézanne copied his friend and mentor Pissarro's painting Louveciennes. Some time in the 20th century, straight copying went out of fashion as a way for artists to train their craft skills, but it’s worth asking why the founder of modern European art, Cézanne, still did it. If he wanted to paint the place he could perfectly well have popped back to Louveciennes and... Read more →

New at This Itch of Writing on Substack: Itchy Bitesized 27: Three Things About Your Writer's Notebook

Writers need notebooks, but this post is about what I’ll call your general, all-purpose, always-have-it-with-me writer’s notebook. This isn’t just about stationery, paper or electronic. ‘I work. I have the habit of art’ says Alan Bennet’s fictional W H Auden in The Habit of Art. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 26: What You Need To Know About Commas

So many writers are uneasy and unconfident about how to use commas, but thought the humble comma has several different jobs, when you separate them out none is really very complicated. And commas really are crucial in helping you to say what you want to say and have the effect on your reader that you want to have.  So here's a whistle-stop tour through the main ways that commas are used and useful, Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 25: Beware of Hidden Metaphors

True headline as of a few days ago, in an advert on Facebook: Our Most Glorious Knickers Yet Have Dropped. And I found myself thinking, "Glorious, perhaps, but couldn't they make them with stronger elastic?" Metaphors are powerful, but because the comparison is only implied, it's easy to miss that, by definition, a metaphor is made of something which is not physically and literally in the scene. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 24: Five Thoughts About Thinking in Acts

We are in the business of story-telling. I only understood why thinking in acts is so useful to a writer when I encountered John Yorke's Into the Woods: a TV series, like a novel, is a multi-sitting experience. You need a lot more story-material than a film does and, crucially, you don't just have to keep your audience once, you have to keep bringing them back. Read more →

Three Things About "It's Tough Out There"

It's tough out there, we all tell each other, trying to get books published, trying to get them bought, trying to keep them published. And since the background of publishers and published writers doesn't align with national demographics, that disparity can constitute a huge barrier to entry for those whose faces don't fit. But if you are developing your own creative processes for good and successful writing, then letting yourself dwell on tough facts may be actively unhelpful. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 23: Six Thoughts About Choosing Your Book's Title

A plea by novelist Lisa Medved on Twitter, asking for tips for choosing titles, has got me thinking about what makes a good title, and how you go about finding one. So far I've had very positive responses to the titles of my books (though one kind reader emailed because they were worried that I'd made a big mistake in titling a book with what it isn't). Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 22: Five Steps For Working With Feedback

Feedback is a fact of life for every writer; it's also an essential part of our training and professional development. There's no point in trying to communicate if you don't have a sense of the who/what/why of the receiver. This post is a quick aide-memoire for ways to make the most of feedback at any stage of working on a story. Read more →

New Events To Kick-Start Your Writing in the New Year

If you're hoping to work on your writing in the New Year - whether it's a specific project or a more general feeling that you need more tools, skills and inspiration - then let me help you kick-start your creative development, with my latest courses and workshops. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 21: Three Thoughts About "Breaking the Fourth Wall"

Blog-reader and blogger Mark Harbinger emailed me to say one comment he gets from alpha-readers "is them dinging me for 'breaking the fourth wall'," when he goes for "meta-narration in first person": i.e. a internal narrator, telling a story which includes themselves, who sometimes talked directly to the reader. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 20: Make it to the NaNoWriMo Finish Line

Today is 1st November, and all round the globe writers of every kind and every degree of experience and talent are embarking on National Novel Writing Month. The general idea - as explained on the NaNoWriMo website - is to spend November writing a novel of 50,000 words. I have writing friends who use NaNo, rather as others use #100daysofwriting, as an extra push-cum-support for any kind of writing project, but this post is about the classic NaNo goal of first-drafting a new novel. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 19: How Not To Commit Writerly Adultery

One of the most common difficulties that writers bring to our mentoring meetings is that they find it hard to see a project through to completion, so here are some quick diagnostic pointers which should help you to keep going - or give you confidence that you really shouldn't. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 18: Three Things About Chapters Breaks

This new blog in the Itchy Bitesized series is about how to make best use of chapter-breaks. I know writers who work in chapters right from the start; writers who just intuit when it's time for a break; writers write several drafts before they decide where the breaks go. A chapter-break affects the reader's experience. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 17: Writing Course or Festival Finished? What Now?

Every author I know has their story of a turning-point moment, but when writers have finished a terrific course, or reeled home from the overload of a big festival stuffed with agents and editors, they can be full of the buzz and the new energy to get going, and still feel overwhelmed. This Itchy Bitesized post is about what to do next. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 16: Three Things About Saggy Middles

If you've been told your novel or creative non-fiction has a saggy middle - or you've a nasty suspicion of your own - you are absolutely not alone. It's a perennial problem, because writing a novel may simply be a matter of "beginning, muddle and end", as you discover every time you download an unabridged audiobook of a full-sized novel, novels are very long, and so the middle muddle is also very long. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 15: Three Things About Point-of-View

Point-of-view is one of the chief tools you have for controlling your reader's experience of the story, and their reaction to it. So I have blogged about it a good deal, mostly in the four posts in the Point-of-View and Narrators series. This Bitesized series post is a quick check-in with a few of the questions which crop up most often. 1) Readers don't only get involved with the viewpoint characters and no one else. Think about it: there's no equivalent of point-of-view in films and plays - everyone is seen from the outside - any more than there is... Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 14: "Effect" vs "Affect"

One of the most common word confusions I see, even in writers who aren't easily confused, is between "effect" and "affect". It's very understandable - both can be a verb, and both can be a noun - and sorting it out is a bite-sized job, so here goes. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 13: Artist's Dates Don't Have to be About Art

It was Julia Cameron who started the idea of the "Artist Date",* in her book The Artist's Way. The idea is that any creative work draws on a well - or a larder is a more useful image, I think - and if you don't want to run out of creative food and therefore fuel, you have to fill the larder and keep refilling it. But how do you fill it? Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 12: Don't Pull Your Writing's Teeth

Another thing I frequently find myself writing on students' work is "Don't pull its teeth!". Here, "it" is a scene, a sentence, a character's thought, or a character's action, which has all the ingredients to be compelling, but somehow falls flat. Read more →

Itchy Bitesized 11: "Who Says This?" Make sure the reader knows who's talking.

One of the most frequent things I find myself writing on students' manuscripts is "Who says this?" I did a big post on writing dialogue a couple of years ago, so this is a round-up of solutions to this specific problem of making sure the reader knows which character says what. Read more →