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Being an Author

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Foxgloves on Gigha

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Paisley Shawl

Being an author is precarious but joyful. There's a lot of hard slog involved. The maxim that it's 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration is true enough. But when you're working at something you love, you don't mind. You'll put up with the boring parts and the exhausting parts, the endless rewrites and the occasional disappointments, because you just love telling stories, creating characters, bringing them to life on the page or on the stage.

Readers will often ask 'where do you get your ideas from?'
For most writers, ideas are not the problem. We all have more ideas than time to write them. Some writers plan everything out beforehand. I don't. I usually know the beginning and the end, but I write the book to find out how to get there. If I knew everything beforehand, I would get bored. And if I'm bored, it's a safe bet that my readers will be bored too!

When I'm writing a historical novel or play I'll do masses of research, immersing myself in the time and place. But then I'll force myself to stop and write the first draft, because it's only when you're writing the story itself that you start to know exactly what you don't know. And then you have to go away and do some more research.

I've tutored creative writing for Arvon at Moniack Mhor and spent four years as Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland, helping students with their academic writing. I'm currently on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland. I'm also part of the Scottish Book Trust's Writers in Public scheme and I'm available to give readings, talks and workshops on all aspects of writing.