Roz Morris's Blog

Starting a story is always a challenge. You have to do a lot at once, but not too much. Don’t overwhelm the reader, don’t confuse, don’t info-dump, don’t send misleading signals, don’t lose the reader’s interest.   Sometimes you can start in medias res. Get to the action fast. Open with a murder, or a… Continue reading The quiet beginning – one trick to keep the reader’s attention

What artists are made of.
ADHD counsellor recommends my novel Lifeform Three.
Judging done in International New Voices In Creative Nonfiction competition. Turn Right At The Rainbow. A little horse. All in my newsletter https://mailchi.mp/24cd64ac9759/what-...

Rachael Wesley spent nearly a decade pouring her heart into teaching, until burnout forced her to rediscover her first love: writing. Her debut memoir Second Set Chances weaves together life-changing coincidences, the cost of living authentically and the shared community to be found in the fandom of a band called Phish. Second Set Chances encapsulates… Continue reading Burnout to breakthrough to memoir: how Rachael Wesley rediscovered writing

One of the projects I’ve worked on recently is a guide to book marketing by the Alliance of Independent Authors. It has been an eye-opener. I thought I knew the basics of book marketing – choose the right keywords in book listings, figure out your genre, find some recent books that are like yours and… Continue reading Why marketing your book is selling your soul – in a good way

The 2025 Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction is about to be awarded. It’s for works that are categorised as ‘imaginative fiction’ – they have elements of science fiction and fantasy, but also of literary. What does this look like? Everyone has their own description. Here’s mine: they bend reality, maybe slightly, maybe a… Continue reading The Le Guin Prize and the lost continent of imaginative fiction

Soon it will be NaNoWriMo time! The official National Novel-Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organisation closed earlier this year, but the writing world is still hard wired to Nano in November, come what may. (What’s NaNoWriMo? A worldwide event where the aim is to write a work of 50,000 words in just the 30 days of November.)… Continue reading Plan smart, write fast, finish strong: my guide to writing a novel in 30 days

2 new pieces of life writing!
How they do the hour-change; judging begins on Vine Leaves Press creative nonfiction competition; 'wondrous' Lifeform Three; a little horse.
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If you’ve read my memoir collection Not Quite Lost, you’ll know I am laughably inept at foreign languages. So I greatly admire people who can navigate a language that isn’t their inborn tongue. Especially if they write in it too. One of those people is Claire Polders, who published several novels in her native Dutch,… Continue reading Wired to experience the world through words – talking to multilingual novelist, short story writer and memoirist Claire Polders

Is longform fiction dying? Everywhere we’re told attention spans are shrinking, readers want brevity and writers should be adding flash fiction or essays to their repertoire. So today I’m speaking up for length, and how rewarding it can be. I don’t do short. Not as a reader, not as a writer. Occasionally I enjoy short… Continue reading Age of distraction: two simple principles to keep readers’ attention in longform stories

I'm living their lives and they speak to me; we need a word for this; Turn Right At The Rainbow; a little horse. All in my newsletter https://mailchi.mp/920b46002a0f/livin...