Lisa Graham's Blog: My Writing & Inspiration

Hello, and I hope everyone reading has been keeping well during these strange and difficult times. Im back to share some news of my next novel with the idea of documenting its journey from early idea to completion and then, one way or another, onward to publication.

If youre a book-lover, I hope you might enjoy a little look behind the curtain at the creation of a novel as it happens, and if youre a fellow-writer, maybe youll be interested to compare notes on process or approach. For...

This time of year is a special one for me; I chose it as the backdrop for my first novel The Art Trip. The story takes place in February 1998, and I chose that time of year because February struck me as an inherently funny month. Always short, but not always the same length, often grey but with hints of spring and shot through romance, because plum in the middle of it is Valentine’s Day.

February doesn’t seem the most promising backdrop for romance, but nevertheless, there it is – this day of...

Now that the journey to publication is a few months behind me, I’ve had more of a chance to look back on the experience of writing The Art Trip. Recently, I’ve been reflecting more on the themes from the novel – what led me to create that story in particular, what lay beneath those characters, events and settings – what I was really writing about, if you like.

That’s important for me because as I get into the business of drafting my second novel, I’m interested to decipher if I’m addressing...

Having published The Art Trip earlier this summer, I’m just getting into the draft of my next novel, another romantic comedy, so I’m spending a fair few hours in the spare room at the moment, scrawling away, pen on paper. Never enough hours, of course, but any I can find among the leftovers of everyday life! For company in there, I have the usual detritus of a spare room – a holdall never properly unpacked, the bottomless well of clothes for ironing or minor repair, a yoga ball the size of Jupite...

Welcome or welcome back to this blog series reflecting on the experience of writing my first published novel The Art Trip! In the previous post, which I rather grandly titled ‘The Flowing Stream’, I’d completed my first draft and was taking a well-earned break. After six or so months of writing, 120,000 hard-won words was sitting undisturbed as a set of chapter documents on my laptop, whilst I was away bask...

In this series of posts charting the road to my novel The Art Trip, I’ve arrived at the sharp end of things. After sharing how I was first drawn to writing and how I found my voice, this time I’m going to be getting down to the writing itself, looking back on the happy months when I took my ideas and turned them into so...

I’ve been posting recently about the journey to writing my first novel The Art Trip, from how I began to write, to how I gained in experience, then in confidence. Today I’m continuing with the next chapter in that story. I’ll be sharing how I came to find my voice as a writer. Yes, voice, that slightly slippery concept! How to define it, let alone find it?

It’s easy to imagine voice as something rather mystical, which might emerge at cer...

Welcome to the next post in my blog series about the road to publishing my first novel, The Art Trip. This time I’m looking back at the long period I spent secretively working away and how I finally arrived at the time it felt right to break cover, share what I was doing and feel proud of my work. So it’s a post about confidence, I suppose – building it, taking peopl...

I’m continuing my series of posts on the journey to writing my first novel The Art Trip, and this time I’m looking back at how the idea of writing first came to me at all.

It’s interesting for me to look back several years and try to understand those mysterious forces, inspiration and motivation. Maybe it’ll help me find them again in the future if a lean time comes along, as I expect it easily could. Maybe it’ll shed some light for you on your own creative process, or at least share some reassu...

Having just published my first novel, The Art Trip, I’m itching to get started on writing my next. The idea came to me a while ago, I have a rough plot outline and a few scribbled notes, so the most exciting and creative times are all ahead. Other than the perpetual challenge of finding enough time, it’s so tempting to dive right in and get going.

Before I do though, I’m making myself pause and reflect on my experience. Looking back might not be as inviting as looking forwards, but it ought to be valuab...